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Nine soldiers killed, military convoy attacked in N Wazoo
Today's Headlines
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Europe
Socialist Hollande wins French election (Taiwanese edition)
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 14:09 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Fifth Column
Melon Terrorist Bill Ayers invited to speak at GreenFestival
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 05/07/2012 13:56 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This article may be interesting but it has absolutely nothing to do with the Great White North!
Posted by: Canuckistan sniper || 05/07/2012 18:13 Comments || Top||

#2  Granted - not related to Canada. However --

The green movement isn’t just a subset of the progressive philosophy. Rather, it’s the religion that’s taken over the left whose underlying principles are such that Weather Underground terrorists and Occupy activists fit right in at their family-friend festivals.

Spit.
Posted by: Bobby || 05/07/2012 18:32 Comments || Top||

#3  This article may be interesting but it has absolutely nothing to do with the Great White North!

Agreed, Canuckistan sniper -- good catch. Thanks! I moved it to Fifth Column.
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/07/2012 20:19 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
Dinosaurs passing wind may have caused climate change
Probably makes about as much sense as hysterics surrounding CAGW.
Huge plant-eating dinosaurs may have produced enough greenhouse gas by breaking wind to alter the Earth's climate, research suggests. Like huge cows, the mighty sauropods would have generated enormous quantities of methane.
What is it about the Brits and goofy scientific theories?
Sauropods, recognisable by their long necks and tails, were widespread around 150 million years ago. They included some of the largest animals to walk the Earth, such as Diplodocus, which measured 150 feet and weighed up to 45 tonnes.

Scientists believe that, just as in cows, methane-producing bacteria aided the digestion of sauropods by fermenting their plant food.

''A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate,'' said study leader Dr Dave Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University.
Then again, may not have.
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 13:44 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I'm guessin' these guys had to use both hands to pull this theory out of their posterior. Who needs a high falutin' edumakasion, I can make this stuff up in my sleep.
Posted by: Past Master of the Obvious || 05/07/2012 15:52 Comments || Top||

#2  Sure...why not?
Posted by: tu3031 || 05/07/2012 16:43 Comments || Top||

#3  Prove them wrong...
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 17:40 Comments || Top||

#4  the amazing thing about this theory is that the dinosaurs evolved and thrived during warm geologic periods or so it seems; fossilized ferns are found much further toward the pole during the mezosoic than before or after

thus logically, one would have expected that any co2 bump from dinosaurs would have prevented the cenosoic cooling

but alas, logic isn't the game here; grant money is
Posted by: lord garth || 05/07/2012 18:09 Comments || Top||

#5  Does anyone really know the actually composition of the atmosphere back then, or is that also a matter of 'guesstimate'.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 05/07/2012 20:15 Comments || Top||

#6  "what do you need it to be for me to get my grant?"
Posted by: Frank G || 05/07/2012 20:19 Comments || Top||

#7  We Dinos ate a few too many Beans during the Mesozoic andor Cenozoic Periods, didn't we???

[IIRC BLAZING SADDLES' SLIM "I THINK YOU BOYZ ALREADY HAD ENOUGH" PICKENS CAMPFIRE FLATULENCE SCENE here].
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 23:30 Comments || Top||


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syria's Muslim Brotherhood rise from the ashes
Oh goody. Just in time for the collapse of Europe and the second term of Champ...
ISTANBUL - At a meeting of Syria's opposition, Muslim Brotherhood officials gather round Marxists colleagues, nudging them to produce policy statements for the Syrian National Council, the main political group challenging President Bashar al-Assad.

With many living in the West, and some ditching their trademark beards, it is hard to differentiate Brotherhood from leftists. But there is little dispute about who calls the shots.
You can always re-grow a beard...
From annihilation at home 30 years ago when they challenged the iron-fisted rule of Hafez al-Assad, the Brotherhood has recovered to become the dominant force of the exile opposition in the 14-month-old revolt against his son Bashar. Careful not to undermine the council's disparate supporters, the Brotherhood has played down its growing influence within the Syrian National Council (SNC), whose public face is the secular Paris-based professor Bourhan Ghalioun.

"We chose this face, accepted by the West and by the inside. We don't want the regime to take advantage if an Islamist becomes the Syrian National Council's head," former Brotherhood leader Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni told supporters in a video.

The footage is now being circulated by Brotherhood opponents, seeking to highlight its undeclared power.

"We nominated Ghalioun as a front for national action. We are not moving now as Muslim Brotherhood but as part of a front that includes all currents," said Bayanouni.
They can seize power once Bashir is gone and the SNC is wobbly...
The Syrian Brotherhood is a branch of the Sunni Muslim movement founded in Egypt in the 1920s. It was a minor political player before a 1963 Baath Party coup but its support grew under the authoritarian 30-year rule of Hafez al-Assad, as his minority Alawite community dominated the majority Sunni country.

Mindful of international fears of Islamists taking power, and of the worries of Syria's ethnic and religious minorities, the Syrian Brotherhood portrays itself as espousing a moderate, Turkish-style Islamist agenda. It unveiled a manifesto last month that did not mention the word Islam and contained pledges to respect individual rights.

With backing from Ankara, and following the political ascendancy of the Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya since Arab Spring revolts broke out two years ago, the group is poised to be at the top of any new governing system in Syria.
The Turks no doubt think that the Syrian MB is their cats paw...
Extending the loose Brotherhood umbrella to Syria will raise pressure on the U.S.-backed Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, where the local Brotherhood has been sidelined by laws that favor tribal politicians allied with the security apparatus.

Iraq's Shi'ite rulers could also find they have a hardline Sunni government as their neighbor, and Lebanon's Shi'ite guerrilla group Hezbollah would lose its main Arab backer.

Working quietly, the Brotherhood has been financing Free Syrian Army defectors based in Turkey and channeling money and supplies to Syria, reviving their base among small Sunni farmers and middle class Syrians, opposition sources say.

"We bicker while the Brotherhood works," said Fawaz al-Tello, a veteran opposition figure who is a pious Muslim while being on the liberal end of the Syrian political spectrum.
Isn't that the way it usually works? Stalin out-hustled his competitors, Bonaparte out-hustled his...
"They have gained control of the SNC's aid division and the military bureau, its only important components," said Tello, a former political prisoner who fled Syria four months ago. "But they still have to work more do to get support on the inside. Lots of clerics, activists and rebels do not want to be linked to them."
Wait a few months and they won't have much choice.
Tello, however, acknowledged that the Brotherhood has clawed back influence inside Syria, especially in the cities of Homs and Hama and the rural province of Idlib on the border with Turkey, hotbeds of the revolt against Assad.

This is no small feat after three decades in the political wilderness. Unlike Arab rulers who tried to co-opt the movement by granting it limited operation, the Assads excluded it and all other opposition from the political system.

Bashar's father Hafez al-Assad's forces killed, tortured and imprisoned tens of thousands of people after leftists and Islamists began challenging his rule in the 1970s. The Brotherhood took the brunt of the repression, and a 1980 decree singled out membership as punishable by death.

Mulhem Droubi, educated in Canada and one of a younger generation of Brotherhood leaders, said the group is not primarily concerned with political prominence.

"We are a party that presents moderate solutions. We are not extremists, neither to the left nor to the right and our program is the most accepted by the Syrian street," he said.

"We are working for the downfall of Bashar al-Assad and not to find a popular base. We leave competition for the future in a free Syria," the softly spoken Droubi told Reuters.

Droubi, however, acknowledged that the road to democracy will be even more bloody, adding that the Brotherhood began supporting armed resistance in earnest a month ago.

The issue sharply divided the group in the 1980s, when it took up arms against the president. Assad's forces killed nearly 20,000 people when they overran the city of Hama in 1982, where the Brotherhood's armed division made it last stand.

Droubi said there is no dispute now about the need for armed resistance, alongside street protests against Assad.

"Too many of our people have been killed. Too many have been raped," Droubi said, adding that Brotherhood was committed to a setting up a multi-party democracy if Assad is toppled.

Droubi pointed to a political program unveiled by the Brotherhood last month in Istanbul, which committed to multi-party democracy in a future Syria. It said a new constitution would be reached through consensus and guarantee fair representation for diverse ethnicities and religious groups.

"Our proposals are more advanced than the Brotherhood in other countries," he said.

Bassam Ishaq, a Christian opposition figure who has worked with the Brotherhood within the SNC, said the manifesto bore the marks of the Brotherhood's pragmatism.

"If they get a chance to seize power by themselves they will do it, but they realize that it will be difficult in country where 30 percent of the population are ethnic or religious minorities," said Ishaq.

"The street has lost faith in leftist politicians. After the repression in the 1980s, the leftists dispersed. The Brotherhood kept together and rebuilt while in exile, aided by donations from wealthy Syrians in and support in the Gulf," he added.

In a demonstration of their financial muscle, Brotherhood operatives were dispatched last month with suitcases of cash to a dusty camp for Free Syrian Army defectors in a Turkish region bordering Syria near Antakya.

Sources in the camp said the Brotherhood was supporting Colonel Riad al-Asaad, one of the first prominent defectors last year, now at odds with more senior officers who deserted later. Colonel Asaad now sports a Brotherhood-style beard.

Street activists who have had little to do with the Brotherhood are also being lured by promises of instant support for the revolt.

"I approached them and they instantly gave me 2,000 euros when I asked for help...and I am not even Ikhwan (Brotherhood)," said veteran activist Othman al-Bidewi, who regularly travels between Syria and the border region in Turkey to drum up support for street demonstrations against Assad in Idlib province.

"The Brotherhood wants to restore its political base. It is their right," he added.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 09:48 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


-Short Attention Span Theater-
Chinese "medicine"
I'm posting this because it gives a bit of insight into the Chinese mentality on several issues related to trade, quality control, ethics, export control, testing, etc.. Although I'm sure the Chinese government is against this, even if only because it looks bad, it continues to happen. I can imagine one diseased individual or maybe a couple working together, but this includes folks from hospitals, manufacturing, sales, finance, and God knows what else working together to pull this off.

I know this isn't exactly on topic for this story, but I'm going to take the opportunity to repeat we should import nothing from China without thorough random inspections and testing, and billing the exporters for the costs. If we cannot identify the ingredients or componenets, ship it back and bill the shippers. Failure to pay means no further business for that exporter or shipper. Also, each shipper and exporter should be established and reputable so they can't easily skirt the law by just grabbing a new business name and license.

Do you or your kids or grandkids have any toys from China with lead in the paint or costume jewelry made out of Cadmium? Drywall with components that harm your health? I swear this is how some companies there get rid of their toxic waste.

Thousands of capsules filled with powdered human flesh have been discovered by customs officials in South Korea, it was revealed today. The are believed to have emanated from China and it looks as though the bodies of dead babies have been chopped into tiny pieces which were then dried in ovens before being pummelled into powder.

The gruesome series of discoveries since last August has shocked even hardened customs agents who have pledged to strengthen inspections.

There is a huge demand for alternative Chinese remedies - which include ground up rhino horns. The Chinese have historically consumed human placentas to improve blood supply and circulation.

The South Korean Customs Service said today that it had heightened its searches of suspicious packages being brought into the country by travellers from China in an attempt to stamp out the sickening trade.

According to customs agents, 35 smuggling attempts have been made since August last year involving more than 17,000 capsules disguised as 'stamina boosters'.

Hospitals and abortion clinics in China reportedly pass the remains onto drugs companies when a baby is stillborn or aborted, the South Korean SBS documentary team reported last year.

The San Francisco Times reported that tests carried out on the pills confirmed they were made up of 99.7 per cent human remains.
That's some pure ingredients they've got there. It's going to be hard for anyone to do much better than that.
The tests were successfully able to establish the genders of the babies used.

There is a huge demand for the pills which are thought to enhance stamina. Microwave-dried placenta is also sought after for its alleged 'medicinal' benefits. However, in reality the human flesh capsules contain super-bacteria and other harmful ingredients.
They're just trying to scare customers away with the BS about superbacteria.
A number of smugglers who have been detained by the South Korean authorities have claimed they did not know what the ingredients were or the manufacturing process behind them.
Do you know what ingredients are in anything you import from them? They must live in a pretty backwards country not to inspect everything that comes in from a place like this.
'Ethnic Koreans from north-east China who now live in South Korea are those who were mostly intending to use the capsules or share them with other Korean-Chinese' said a customs official.
Maybe China could allow them to be exported to North Korea.
'They are normally brought into South Korea in luggage or posted by international mail.'
"Normally"?
Chinese newspapers have identified the north eastern provinces as the source
Somehow their customers are getting their hands on this stuff. Follow the trail.
Posted by: gorb || 05/07/2012 09:15 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  People in China will do anything to get ahead because 1) life is a zero-sum game, for you to win, others must lose and 2) if you don't know the others, then you don't care one whit about them. Confucius forgot to include the Golden Rule when telling people how to relate to one another. Screwing others over is how you ensure you're on the good side of the zero-sum equation. Otherwise, you're inevitably on the other side.

I should add that there are plenty of ordinary Chinese who are disgusted by this sort of thing, and regularly wail that they want to get away and emigrate.
Posted by: gromky || 05/07/2012 10:14 Comments || Top||

#2  There is a huge demand for the pills which are thought to enhance stamina.
I think they should let some thru, with full disclosure.
Posted by: Skidmark || 05/07/2012 10:15 Comments || Top||

#3  There is a huge demand for the pills which are thought to enhance stamina.

Feeding their Starcraft addiction. Must level up, just one more hour......
Posted by: Procopius2k || 05/07/2012 11:04 Comments || Top||

#4  You don't gain levels in Starcraft.
Posted by: gromky || 05/07/2012 12:01 Comments || Top||

#5  It's a reference to 'staying up one more hour' to achieve something which could be the next level, next scenario/quest, next rung in a competition ladder, or attain the next 'must have' token.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 05/07/2012 13:44 Comments || Top||

#6  If we could convince them that it is a superior choice to rhino horn, bear paw, tiger gall bladder or snow owl testicles, then I say go with it.
Posted by: bigjim-CA || 05/07/2012 16:31 Comments || Top||

#7  I know this isn't exactly on topic for this story, but I'm going to take the opportunity to repeat we should import nothing from China without thorough random inspections and testing, and billing the exporters for the costs.

Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 05/07/2012 17:42 Comments || Top||

#8  bigjim-CA
Your an idiot. Nazi environmentalist who care more for animals than humans. Why not volunteer yourself to save some owl balls?
Posted by: Thegum Snaviter1781 || 05/07/2012 18:17 Comments || Top||

#9  Sigh. Even the trolls are made in China these days.
Posted by: RandomJD || 05/07/2012 20:34 Comments || Top||

#10  D *** NG IT, DAT CAN'T BE - I KNOW FOR A FACT G4TV SAID IT WAS JAPAN THAT DOES ALL THE WEIRD STUFF.

The above being daid, EEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW!
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 23:32 Comments || Top||


Iraq
Iraqi court orders release of Hezbollah prisoner
A court in Iraq found a Hezbollah commander accused of killing U.S. troops in 2007 not guilty for lack of evidence and ruled that he be set free.

Terror experts have said Daqduq, a Lebanese commander for Hezbollah, is among "the worst of the worst" terrorists militants and would remain a severe threat to Americans if freed. U.S. officials say he trained Shiite militias in Iraq and helped to plan the 2007 killing of four American soldiers in Karbala.

Daqduq was caught in late 2007 and held in U.S. custody in Iraq as authorities tried to decide where to charge him. When the American military withdrew from Iraq late in December, U.S. officials were forced to hand over Daqduq to Iraqi authorities.
Too bad he didn't die of 'acute cirrhosis' while in custody...
This article starring:
Daqduq
Posted by: ryuge || 05/07/2012 06:50 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Hezbollah


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Israel warns Hizbollah over Iran
Any Hizbollah retaliation to an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would prompt Israel to launch a war in Lebanon so ferocious that it would take a decade to rebuild the villages it destroys, a senior Israeli military officer has warned.
Despite the inevitable international outcry, Israel would be left with no choice but to lay waste to swathes of southern Lebanon because Hizbollah has entrenched itself so deeply within the civilian population, he said.

The unusually stark warning comes after months of heightened speculation that the Israeli government is considering unilateral military action against Iran's nuclear installations despite opposition from the United States.

Although the prospect of an attack in the next few months is unlikely until after Israelis vote in a September general election, Ehud Barak, the country's defence minister, recently insisted that military strikes had not been ruled out.

Israel has always been aware of the heavy price it could incur from such an attack, with Iran able to retaliate through Hizbollah and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza. Both Islamist movements have long been funded and armed by Tehran and have built up vast stockpiles of rockets capable of reaching deep into Jewish territory.

But Israel has also sensed an unexpected opportunity as a result of the Arab Spring, which has significantly diminished Tehran's regional clout.
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 05:08 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Something President Reagan should have done after the Marine barracks bombing in 1983.
Posted by: dacama || 05/07/2012 19:27 Comments || Top||

#2  The gentleman was very good, but he wasn't perfect, dacama.
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/07/2012 21:21 Comments || Top||


Europe
Dummies Guide To Europe's Problems
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 03:08 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Zerohedge?
Posted by: gromky || 05/07/2012 3:35 Comments || Top||

#2  The end game is a collapse in multi-lateral trade. We are already seeing this in places like Argentina, Venezuela and Iran who don't have access to credit in an acceptable international currency.
Posted by: phil_b || 05/07/2012 5:37 Comments || Top||

#3  "Mittelstand"...have a look.

Klik
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 6:54 Comments || Top||

#4  2 Zerohedge rules.

1/Don't waste your time reading the comments.
2/Don't waste your time reading the guest posts.

Both are drivel.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 05/07/2012 11:52 Comments || Top||

#5  Tyler Durden isn't too bad for a soap salesman (lets not mention the liposuction refuse,yuck!). As an Austrian, he at least doesn't swallow the Keynesian cool-aid.
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 13:28 Comments || Top||

#6  Tyler Durden is pretty smooth, smooth enough that when I read what he writes, my background bullshit detector is chiming but when I bring it to the front I can't figure out exactly why.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 14:11 Comments || Top||

#7  ZeroHedge is kind of like Memri. I take their various posts with a grain of salt, yet some good 'catches' regarding the markets can be found there, too.
Posted by: Mullah Richard || 05/07/2012 14:44 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Obama Aide Says US Promotes Arab Spring Rebellions
The Obama administration "nurtures" Arab Spring rebellions, which have been promoted as democratic but so far have yielded anarchy, according to U.S. deputy national security advisor Denis McDonough.

He said the American administration views the rebellions in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen as positive for democracy, arguing that "a more democratic region will ultimately be more stable for us and our friends." McDonough estimated that a similar rebellion in Iran will be to the advantage of the United States.

The American experiment with direct involvement in promoting democracy in the Palestinian Authority resulted in a shock for then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when the Hamas terrorist organization won the first, and until now the only, PA legislative elections. Hamas' strong base in Gaza gave it the catalyst to oust the rival Fatah faction, headed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, from Gaza two years after the elections.

The Obama administration also openly backed the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak last year and now is faced with a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood, which fathered Hamas.

Since the Brotherhood's victory and its attempt to win the presidency, the movement has been openly anti-American and anti-Israel, imprisoning Americans and threatening to change if not cancel the 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 02:46 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Since the Brotherhood's victory and its attempt to win the presidency, the movement has been openly anti-American and anti-Israel.

All in parallel with the established tenets of the Obama administration.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:26 Comments || Top||

#2  Think "Carter and Nicaragua".
Posted by: Pappy || 05/07/2012 21:31 Comments || Top||


Southeast Asia
Abu Sayyaf discounts Australian Rodwell's ransom, threatens beheading
Dumbass. "Durr durr, let's live in the Southern Phillipines where life is cheap and foreigners are targets." A pistol vs. a kidnap gang. Nobody's going to buy him back, even at these low, low prices.
A newly released proof-of-life video shows Australian Warren Rodwell, 53, looking gaunt and making a desperate plea for a ransom payment to save his life after more than four months in captivity in the southern Philippines.

It should be noted that most embassies in Manila have strongly discouraged their citizens from traveling to the southern Philippines, particularly Mindanao and Sula, given the clear and present danger of ransom kidnappings by kidnap gangs and the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf.

Ron Masling, 57, an apparent friend of Rodwell's, who obtained the video, says the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers have set a four-week deadline to be paid or they will behead him. It should be noted, though, that the original ransom demand of A$2 million has been reduced to A$460,000.

COMMENT: In the second video, Rodwell, depicted as looking fatigued and frail, reportedly pleads for his life and appeals to Australia's prime minister and Australians to raise money for the ransom demand so he can be released. Obviously, Rodwell is unaware or is ignoring the fact that both the Australian and Philippine governments have stated policies of not making concessions to kidnappers.

Masling has reportedly told the media that the Australian government has done little to help Rodwell, which is unfounded. Assuredly, the Australian Embassy in Manila has urged its citizens not to travel to the southern Philippines for several years. Hence, if Rodwell had not "blown off" that advice, he would not be the predicament he finds himself.

Additionally, because of his risk of being kidnapped in Ipil, Rodwell was offered local police protection but declined it. Instead, he chose to buy a handgun to protect himself from kidnappers, only to be outgunned by kidnappers equipped with assault rifles.

Worse, the Australian resisted being kidnapped, which resulted in his being wounded at the time of the kidnapping. All and all, Rodwell has made several bad choices that have tragically led to his circumstances, all because he thought he knew better than anyone else.
Should be another couple of weeks before his beheading video comes out.
Posted by: gromky || 05/07/2012 02:03 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


-Election 2012
US election 2012: Joe Biden weighs into gay marriage debate
"I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties," he said a television interview.

His remarks came as the Obama administration continued to walk a political tightrope over same-sex marriages, with Barack Obama's own position on the issue said by aides to be "evolving".

In a sign of how sensitive an issue gay marriage is for Mr Obama's campaign strategists, gay rights groups initially took Mr Biden's words on NBC's "Meet the Press" as a significant step towards full endorsement, only for senior Obama aides to say the position remained unchanged.

David Axelrod, the Obama campaign chief strategist, clarified on Twitter that Mr Biden had only "precisely" stated Mr Obama's position that "that all married couples should have exactly the same legal rights".

A Biden aide then added further clarification: "The vice president was saying what the president has said previously – that committed and loving same-sex couples deserve the same rights and protections enjoyed by all Americans, and that we oppose any effort to rollback those rights.
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 01:52 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  and the reporter snipped the bit where he talked about dogs marrying cats and how his lambs slept with his lions.....
Posted by: Water Modem || 05/07/2012 8:22 Comments || Top||

#2  And the reporters had walked away as he began babbling something about donkeys in Tijuana.
Posted by: Water Modem || 05/07/2012 8:26 Comments || Top||

#3  We found in California with Proposition 8 that blacks and Hispanics are in general opposed to gay marriage, some of them quite strenuously. Axelrod won't want to risk losing this demographic.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 05/07/2012 17:26 Comments || Top||

#4  ..and as Prop 8 story demonstrates, they don't want the States to decide what they want.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 05/07/2012 20:16 Comments || Top||


International-UN-NGOs
As much of the world starves, UN sends hunger probe to… Canada
According to the World Food Program, half a million people don’t have enough to eat in Syria. Fears are growing that the regime is using hunger as a weapon.

This is the kind of emergency which should attract the attention of the UN Human Rights Council’s hunger monitor, who has the ability to spotlight situations and place them on the world agenda. Yet Olivier de Schutter of Belgium, the “Special Rapporteur on the right to food,” is not going to Syria.

Instead, the UN’s food monitor is coming to investigate Canada.

That’s right. Despite dire food emergencies around the globe, De Schutter will be devoting the scarce time and resources of the international community on an 11-day tour of Canada—a country that ranks at the bottom of global hunger concerns. A key co-ordinator and promoter of De Schutter’s mission is Food Secure Canada, a lobby group whose website accuses the Harper government of “failing Canadians…and [failing to] fulfill the right to food for all.” The group calls instead for a “People’s Food Policy.”
Wow. Like...North Korea?
I asked De Schutter if his time wouldn’t better be spent on calling attention to countries that actually have starving people.
...and why Canada?
“Globally, 1.3 billion people are overweight or obese,” he responded via his spokesperson, “and this causes a range of diseases such as certain types of cancers, cardio-vascular diseases or (especially) type-2 diabetes that are a huge burden.”
...and nobody will shoot at me in Canada.
Posted by: tu3031 || 05/07/2012 01:33 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  ...and nobody will shoot at me in Canada.

Plus they have food. In case you get hungry or something.
Posted by: SteveS || 05/07/2012 3:57 Comments || Top||

#2  And they have better hotels.
Posted by: kelly || 05/07/2012 6:55 Comments || Top||

#3  Because starving countries don't have five star restaurants. Way past time to boot the UN.
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili || 05/07/2012 7:53 Comments || Top||

#4  The group calls instead for a "People's Food Policy."

For more information and details, please contact any Super Walmart cashier.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:57 Comments || Top||

#5  Just lending a hand to their fellow travellers "Food Secure Canada" and their “People’s Food Policy.”. Starving Africans aren't party members, they're just hungry.
Posted by: Spot || 05/07/2012 7:59 Comments || Top||

#6  UN Hearts dictators.

Only the ruling classes are fat in U.N. favoured countries.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 05/07/2012 11:54 Comments || Top||

#7  Why do we still fund the UN?
Posted by: DarthVader || 05/07/2012 12:25 Comments || Top||

#8  People have a "right" to food? Do they also have the "right" to enslave the farmers who grow it for them?
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 05/07/2012 18:36 Comments || Top||

#9  "Why Canada" > the logic is the UNO already knows that many of these Third World juntas would rather deny or kill their own people than initiate serious reforms, which in turn puts the burden on the world's major food-producing Countries, e.g. Canada, to save these Juntas from themselves as per Agriculture.

OTOH, THE ABOVE IS THE KIND OF COUNTRY-SPECIFIC, INTERNAL OR DOMESTIC SITUATION WHICH THE "OBAMA DOCTRINE" WAS SUPPOSED TO ALLEVIATE, vee "food/hunger crimes"???

Giving out food to reward corruption and graft, or denying food to keep resisting regions docile.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 23:45 Comments || Top||


Israel-Palestine-Jordan
UNRWA workers begin open-ended strike
UNRWA staff started an open-ended strike on Sunday, shutting down basic services for Jordan's 1.5 million Palestinian refugees.

Nearly all of the agency's 7,500 employees responded to a call by their representative councils to hold a work stoppage commencing May 6 in protest against UNRWA's "reluctance" to meet their demands, which include a JD100 pay raise retroactively from the beginning of this year without any cut in their incentives.

The employees are also demanding promotions for teachers, directors and supervisors; filling of vacancies in all the agency’s sectors; and the improvement of work conditions.

The strike has "knock-on effects" on all of the Kingdom’s Palestinian refugees, who depend on UNRWA for their livelihood, according to the agency.

"Shaker Risheq, head of UNRWA's employees’ union in the five fields of operations, tried to mediate between the administration in Jordan and heads of workers councils during the first day of the strike, but his attempts have failed to resolve the issue," said a head of one of the employees' councils, who preferred not to be named because he was not authorised to speak on the record.
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 00:58 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  But we'll still get paid...right?
Posted by: tu3031 || 05/07/2012 1:19 Comments || Top||


Europe
Socialist Francois Hollande wins French presidency - Sark looses.
Posted by: Water Modem || 05/07/2012 00:27 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Groovy.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/07/2012 0:47 Comments || Top||

#2  Surely Benjamin Netanyahu must be softly chuckling to himself.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:17 Comments || Top||

#3  Euro declines on French and Greek election results.

That didn't take long.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:53 Comments || Top||

#4  Obama invites Francois Hollande to White House.

That didn't take long.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 8:44 Comments || Top||

#5  The danger of bribing the public with free public goodies, is that they become dependent on them and when a real cut is needed for the good of the nation, the public won't do it.

Goodbye Europe. You had a good run. Enjoy your bankruptcy and racial civil wars.
Posted by: DarthVader || 05/07/2012 9:30 Comments || Top||

#6  #4 - so it's a Socialism Summit™?
Posted by: Frank G || 05/07/2012 10:44 Comments || Top||

#7  AFAIC this is the French equivalent of Russia's VLADVEDEV = SARKOLLANDE??? I anticipate Sarkozy shall return like NOT-Gen. MacArthur.

* ION WORLD MIL FORUM > BACHELOR LEADERS: FRANCOIS HOLLANDE THE THIRD FRENCH PRESIDENT WID NO GOVERNING EXPERIENCE, NO OUTSTANDING OR EXEMPLARY CHARACTERISTICS, + NO WIFE. EURODOLLAR CRISES MAY EFFECTIVELY PREVENT HOLLANDE'S IDEALIST SOCIALIST PARTY AGENDA FROM BEING IMPLEMENTED IN FRANCE.

No Boon + no Babe - ouchies!
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 23:22 Comments || Top||


-Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
Demographic Bomb Set to Go Off in Europe
Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 05/07/2012 00:20 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Subjectively speaking, Islam may win be default thanks to Sun/Solar-centric GWCC = "Land-Sea-Enviro Changes" + consequent pan-Human desire, methods to survive, ala "forced" basic or minimal human need to adapt to new changed environment.

THE ISLAMIC RELIGION PER SE MAY NOT BE THE SAME, BUT ANY + ALL MUSLIMS OR NON-MUSLIMS WILL WEAR THE BURQUA, ETC. JUST TO TO LIVE + WORK???

Time to put an ancient ICBM on the altar, live underground while wearing long-flowing white clothes or robes, + wait for a Leader among the Bigfeet [Sasquatch] to organize the Apes-Simians + then rise up + take over the Earth!

D *** NG IT, DAT MOVIE SOUNDS AWFULLY FAMILIAR, BUT WHERE!?
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 0:46 Comments || Top||

#2  In the U.S. there are reportedly 2.6 million Muslims, according to Pew people, not 9 million as the video claims. American Muslims own projection of 50 million in 2034 is considerably larger than the Pew's projection of 6.2 million in 2030... Were those perhaps the same Muslims who claimed an American population of 6 million a few years ago, until Pew showed them to be taking a Palestinian approach to counting?

It's going to get ugly, I agree. But possibly not as ugly as the video claims.
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/07/2012 8:17 Comments || Top||

#3  As North Africa slides into chaos, famine and war. Not to mention the third horseman pestilence. Europe will have to do something to stop the flow and the demographics of previous flows.

Much as it will drive the Left nuts, the solution is to corral them into ghettos.
Posted by: phil_b || 05/07/2012 9:10 Comments || Top||

#4  In America the census doesn't track religion so Cair and other groups took the Arab number as Muslum. Of course a lot of Arabs in America are non-Muslims who came here to avoid persecution but Cair doesn't care.

At one point they inflated their numbers trying to claim equal numbers to Jews but I believe they found lesser numbers more helpful to their plans of claiming persecution.
Posted by: Rjschwarz || 05/07/2012 9:51 Comments || Top||

#5  This is true in UK.Somali families are huge and the state keeps them.Same goes with the Bangladeshi and Pakistani families where the womens role is to bring up children dont work and the state keeps them.No wonder Europe is Skint!
Posted by: Gruth McGurque5303 || 05/07/2012 9:54 Comments || Top||

#6  Looks like Europe is already a lost cause. Russia's salvation may turn out to be a few tens of millions of non-Muslim Chinese taking a short walk north, perhaps becoming Christian on the way and ethnically mixing it up with the few Russians remaining.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 05/07/2012 13:03 Comments || Top||

#7  All the more reason for government funded birth control.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 05/07/2012 13:43 Comments || Top||

#8  /sarc
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 05/07/2012 13:43 Comments || Top||

#9  FWIW, TW.....

Pew isn't always the most accurate when reporting statisitcs. Their record in the area of fisheries, for example, is....ahem....less than stellar.

But your point is well taken. If we take the Pew report as an artificially low estimate, and the above ones as the upper asymptote, and split the difference, then that is most likely where the truth lies.
Posted by: no mo uro || 05/07/2012 16:37 Comments || Top||

#10  Good point, no mo uro. I can accept that. :-)
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/07/2012 19:49 Comments || Top||


Arabia
Airstrike kills Al Qaeda leader wanted in USS Cole bombing
SANAA, YEMEN – An airstrike Sunday killed a top Al Qaeda leader on the FBI's most wanted list for his role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole warship, Yemeni officials said. The airstrike resembled earlier U.S. drone attacks, but the U.S. did not immediately confirm it.
Accordion Lady is here to warm up the crowd; Fat Lady will make her appearance when we get official US confirmation, DNA testing and/or a severed head...
Fahd al-Quso was drone zapped hit by a missile as he stepped out of his vehicle, along with another Al Qaeda operative in the southern Shabwa province, Yemeni military officials said.

Al-Quso, 37, was on the FBI's most wanted list, with a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. He was indicted in the U.S. for his role in the 2000 bombing in the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen, in which 17 American sailors were killed and 39 injured.

He served more than five years in a Yemeni prison for his role in the attack and was released in 2007. He briefly escaped prison in 2003 but later turned himself in to serve the rest of his sentence.
And after his release he went back to his old ways. Which he won't do anymore...
A telephone text message claiming to be from Al Qaeda media arm confirmed al-Quso was killed in the strike.

Al-Quso was also one of the most senior Al Qaeda leaders publicly linked to the 2009 Christmas airliner attack. He has allegedly met with the suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Yemen before he left on his way to execute his failed bombing over Detroit.

In December 2010, al-Quso was designated a global terrorist by the State Department, an indication that his role in Al Qaeda's Yemen branch had grown more prominent.

Local Yemeni official Abu Bakr bin Farid and the Yemeni Embassy in Washington confirmed al-Quso was killed in Rafd, a remote mountain valley in Shabwa. It is the area where many of Al Qaeda leaders are believed to have taken cover, including the U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen last year.

Yemeni government officials reported that Al-Quso and al-Awlaki were killed in an airstrike in 2009 in Rafd, but they both resurfaced alive.
That's why we'd like more confirmation than what the Yemenis have offered so far...
Al-Quso was known for his ability to move in disguise.
He looked fabulous in a burqa...
He was from the same tribe as al-Awlaki, and local tribesmen said he was a close aide. He studied ultraconservative Salafi Islam as a teenager in northern Yemen, then returned home to learn welding.

Al-Quso's association with Al Qaeda dated back more than a decade, when he met with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Bin Laden allegedly told him to "eliminate the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula."

From there he rose through the ranks. He was assigned in Aden to videotape the 1998 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, but he fell asleep. Despite the lapse, the local leader, Nasser al-Wahishi, declared him the regional leader in Aden. He was also believed to have played a prominent role in Al Qaeda's attack and capture last year of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Bin Laden allegedly told him to "eliminate the infidels from the Arabian Peninsula."

Q: would that be the Americans or the Saudi Royal Family?
A: Yes
Posted by: Frank G || 05/07/2012 9:32 Comments || Top||

#2  As per FOX NEWS AM, the US is claiming that AQIY, aka AQAP, is now a bigger threat to the US + ME than Ayman + post-OBL "Core" Al-Qaeda.

That remains to be seen, but it is true that AL-QUSO is one of the younger members of Osama's inner circle, among Other - IMO the US is formally recognizing + prepping to deal wid the "Next Generation" of Hard/Bad Boyz.

Which begs the Maha-Rushian Questione' du Jour - does the US know where Osama's Heir-Apparent = AQ's so-called "Crown Prince" HAMZA is nowadays [post-Abbottabad]???

* MSM-NET > ABBOTTABAD DOCUMENTS = Osama was seemingly trying to set Hamaza up in Peshawar???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 19:52 Comments || Top||


Caribbean-Latin America
1st Mexican presidential debate of 2012 concludes

I watched the whole debate on Milenio.com which streamed it live, but gained most of the data from twitter feeds, mainly from AnimalPolitco.com and ElImparcial.com

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

The first debate among the four candidate for president of the republic of Mexico ended Sunday evening as frontrunner Partido Revolucionario Institucional(PRI) candidate Enrique Pena Nieto fended off barbs from his two closest, if remote rivals.

The debate followed the pattern of a series of subject areas including Economics and Employment, Justice, and Social Development and Sustainable Development. The debate was sponsored by the Mexican Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) and hosted and moderated by Guadalupe Juarez.

Pena Nieto spent several instances fending off barbs from leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador over PRI's past by showing photographs of Pena Nieto with PRI politicians, notably Carlos Salinas de Gortari who served as president from 1988 to 1994.

Lopez Obrador seemed to play the role of spoiler in the debate, hammering on Pena Nieto and his PRI party for what he said was an economic crisis that began during the Salinas administration. He charged that PRI had spent decades trafficking in the people's poverty, a double entendre meant to subtly link PRI with statements made in the recent past that PRI governors had been in collusion with drug traffickers. He also charged that because of the Salinas government, Mexico has "opulence in the midst of poverty."

Partido Accion Nacional candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota seemingly bided her time in the debate, putting forth several proposals such as the formation of a National Police with "military discipline", and life imprisonment for officials found to be in collusion with organized crime.

Pena Nieto, however, made economic proposals that made him sound like he was the PAN candidate, wanting structural change to make Mexican more competitive and approving the flat tax, already in existence through the offices of PAN presidents. Vazquez Mota added her proposal for a development bank for loans to medium and small enterprises.

Lopez Obrador explained in speeches just before the debates his intent to scrap the Mexican flat tax, to raise taxes, and to redistribute the proceeds to the poor. That proposal was never mentioned by Lopez Obrador in the debate mainly because he spent so much energy hammering away at Pena Nieto on his record as governor of Mexico state and his party, the PRI.

Among those gems was his contention that the return of the PRI to Los Pinos, the Mexican president's official residence, would be like the return of Santa Ana, and would "destroy everything." Another charge was that Pena Nieto spent MX $600 million (USD $45,193,680) on self promotion his first year as governor of Mexico state.

Pena Nieto was far from helpless, however. He countered against Lopez Obrador reminding viewers of Julio Cesar Godoy, the disgraced Partido Revolucion Democatica (PRD) federal deputy, and by telling Lopez Obrador, subtly reminding him of how far back he is in the polls: "If television made presidents, you would be president."

Vazquez Mota managed to get in a few charges herself by reminding viewers that the disgraced former president of PRI, Humberto Moreira's treasurer is a federal fugitive in both Mexico and the United States. She was referring to disgraced Coahuila state tax collector Javier Villarreal Hernandez. Under electoral rules, Pena Nieto does not have to respond and he didn't.

One amusing incident was when Vazquez Mota thanked the moderator using the personal "Lupita" when naming the telegenic moderator. A few Mexican journalists wagged on Twitter during the debate asking "Can we vote for Lupita?"

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news fro Rantburg.com
Posted by: badanov || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Rooters disclosed: Clad in a tight-fitting white dress with a cut below the neckline to show much [pretty much ALL] of her cleavage, Julia Orayen was working as an assistant on the televised debate, which focused on the economy and the drug-related violence ravaging Mexico.

At the start of Sunday night's debate, Orayen walked in front of the camera to hand out cards to the four candidates, and created an immediate stir on online social media.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 05/07/2012 21:48 Comments || Top||

#2  Sometimes a woman with a pretty smile and a real job to do (named "Lupita") has more of a "buzz" with me that a woman with cleavage.
Posted by: badanov || 05/07/2012 22:09 Comments || Top||

#3  Here is information (en Espanol) and a photo of Guadalupe Juarez.
Posted by: badanov || 05/07/2012 22:40 Comments || Top||

#4  "Little Latin Lupe Lu"...
I thought that the "Kingsmen" did the dumb-ass tune first; followed by The Righteous Brothers and lastly, "Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels"...

I always thought that the tune was inane, but when out with one's young friends in "The Day", it rocked-out!
Little Latin Lupe Lu lyrics

"Little Latin Lupe Lupe Lu"

Talk about my baby
Little Latin Lupe Lu
She's a hot footin' baby
There ain't no dance she couldn't do
She's my groovy little baby, hey-hey
Little Latin Lupe Lu

A-bop-a-bop-a, Lupe Lu
Well, shake it, shake it, shake it, Lupe
Wahtusi pretty baby, hey-hey
C'mon and do the hoochie coo
My true love, pretty baby, hey-hey
Little Latin Lupe Lu

If ya wanna do the twist
Lupe Lu can put it down
If ya Wah-Wahtusi
She's the best for miles around
She's my Mash Potato baby, hey-hey
Little Latin Lupe Lu

A-bop-a-bop-a, Lupe Lu
A-shake it, shake it, shake it, Lupe
( From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/r/righteous-brothers-lyrics/little-latin-lupe-lu-lyrics.html )
Wahtusi pretty baby, hey-hey
C'mon and do the hoochie coo
My true love, pretty baby, hey-hey
Little Latin Lupe Lu

(instrumental)
Ah, one more time
A-shake-it, shake-it, shake-it, Lupe
You Wahtusi pretty baby, hey-hey
C'mon and do the hoochie coo
My true love, pretty baby, hey-hey
Little Latin Lupe Lu
(Little Latin Lupe Lu)

A-bop-a-bop-a, Lupe Lu
(Little Latin Lupe Lu)
A-shake it, shake it, shake it, Lupe
(Little Latin Lupe Lu)
Wahtusi pretty baby, hey-hey
(Little Latin Lupe Lu)
C'mon and do the hoochie coo
(Little Latin Lupe Lu)

FADES
My true love, pretty baby, hey-hey
(Now we're done)
Little Latin Lupe Lu
(Little Latin Lupe Lu)
A-bop-a-bop-a, Lupe Lu
(Little Latin Lupe Lu)
A-shake it, shake it, shake it, Lupe.
Posted by: canalzone || 05/07/2012 23:12 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Shia passenger coach attacked in Kurram
PARACHINAR: Several passengers, including three women and some children, were injured on Sunday when unidentified terrorists ambushed their coach on Tal-Parachinar Road near Urwala Frontier Corps (FC) Fort in Lower Kurram.

The van carrying Shia passengers was on its way from Parachinar to Peshawar when the terrorists attacked it with automatic weapons. The incident sparked panic among the locals, who said the unabated acts of terrorism had raised serious questions about the efficiency of the FC and other security agencies.
No, it confirmed yet again what we already know about the undertrained, under-equipped Frontier Corps, the poor things.
Toori and Bangash tribes summoned an emergency meeting after the incident, declaring it an attempt of genocide against the tribes. The elders of the tribes declared that the attack was part of a series of such incidents being carried out in the presence of FC troops, who merely stood as silent spectators. People of Lower Kurram had been left unprotected, they said.

They expressed disappointment that the checkposts the government had promised to establish at the Tal Road in Lower Kurram were instead being established in less-threatened areas of Upper Kurram. The elders urged the government to deploy troops in Lower Kurram, saying terrorists had been carrying out their criminal activities in the area because of government's failure to ensure proper security arrangements.

They said if the government faced a shortage of troops, it could re-locate those in Bahrain area.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Africa North
Egypt parliament limits future military trials
CAIRO - Egypt’s Islamist-dominated parliament is banning the country’s next president from sending civilians for trial by military tribunals.

Hosni Mubarak, deposed as president in February 2011, used military courts to go after opponents, especially Islamists. Egypt’s military, which took over from Mubarak, has sent more than 10,000 civilians to their own courts, including for criticizing the military.

The measure approved Sunday refers to the president who would replace Mubarak. The first round of presidential elections is set for May 23-24. Even then, the military itself would still have the authority to refer civilians to military courts.
I'm sure then this is seen as progress. Somewhere...
The vote came a day after the ruling generals referred 300 civilians for military prosecution after violent demonstrations near the Defense Ministry in Cairo.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Caribbean-Latin America
Chavez reelection bid in doubt
Be still my beating heart...
President Hugo Chavez's repeated trips to Cuba for cancer treatment and the government's silence about his health are fueling rumors that he will name a successor to run in October presidential elections.

So far, the government has fiercely maintained that there is no alternative to Chavez, who still leads in the polls. But several names have begun to circulate among observers to take the helm should Chavez delegate his powers.

Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, Vice President Elias Jaua and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello are considered potential candidates. They are already cited in polls, triggering speculation over the ramifications of a possible succession battle.

Any departure of Chavez from the national stage would have profound consequences in Venezuela, where he has governed since 1999. It would also have a huge impact across Latin America, especially in leftist ally nations which have been showered with his country's oil wealth.

Jaua will soon be named president of the Council of State, an advisory body whose creation this week is seen by some analysts as the first step toward a potential political transition since Chavez experienced a relapse of the cancer first detected in June 2011.
It's an 'advisory council' in the way such committees exist in socialist states...
"With the lack of information, all scenarios are possible, including Chavez's absence and the naming of a successor" for the October 7 vote, said Datanalisis polling firm president Luis Vicente Leon.

Chavez returned to Cuba on Tuesday for what he called the "home stretch" of his radiation treatment, without providing more details. His previous stay, which was supposed to have been his last, stretched out for 11 days. The exact nature of the cancer has never been disclosed. The 57-year-old underwent an operation in Havana on February 26 to remove a second cancerous tumor in his pelvic area, where a baseball-sized growth was extracted a year ago.

Usually all over the Venezuelan media, Chavez now rarely appears in public and has been reduced to sending out tweets during his long absences in Cuba.
Definitely swirling the drain then...
Chavez is running for reelection as a "revolutionary socialist" against Henrique Capriles, the youthful Miranda state governor and center-left candidate for the united opposition.

Capriles scoffed at the pervasive uncertainty surrounding Chavez's political future. "A country cannot be ruled via Twitter, the Internet or by telephone," he said Friday.

Even in the president's own ranks, tensions and divisions are growing. But so long as Chavez is alive, "these confrontations will be relegated to the back stage, because the president of the United Socialist Party can still destroy" his rivals, Leon said.

For now, the firebrand leftist leader's health is overshadowing the run-up to the presidential campaign. Yet "his absence is not yet having an effect on how most Venezuelans intend to vote," analyst John Magdaleno said.

But Leon warned that the government's silence on Chavez's wellbeing and ability to run the country could be hiding a political maneuver. "The president could be trying to prepare a triumphant return and then, the bigger the speculation about his health, the less he will need to make new proposals" upon his return, Leon added.

The electoral campaign officially gets under way on July 1, but the law allows for replacing a candidate unable to run at any time, constitutional lawyer Enrique Sanchez Falcon noted.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Gilani throws challenge to PML-N
LAHORE: Throwing a challenge to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani asked the opposition party to resign from assemblies if they had courage to do so.

“I will announce by-polls same day” the PML-N resigns from assemblies, the prime minister said in a meeting with office-bearers of the Lahore Press Club.

Gilani asked his political foes not to live in a fool’s paradise as general elections would be on time, in 2013. He said the Sharifs were expressing solidarity with courts only to save themselves from several cases against them such as Mehrangate.

“If they want to express solidarity, they should go to courts and get themselves cleared of cases.”

Gilani said he and President Asif Ali Zardari had faced dictators with courage while PML-N President Nawaz Sharif had flown away after signing an agreement with dictator Pervez Musharraf.

“The PPP leadership will again face dictators, if need be, but Mian brothers will again escape from the country in such a situation,” the prime minister said.

Gilani said he was a constitutionally and democratically elected prime minister, adding that a vote of no-confidence by assembly members was the only way to oust him. He said that filing an appeal against the Supreme Court’s verdict was his right according to Article 10-A of the constitution. “But qualifying or disqualifying a prime minister is not the job of courts because it is a parliamentary process,” Gilani said.

He said lawyers had supported stance of the PPP not only on the issue of ad hoc judges but also on legality of office of the prime minister.

“Nobody can remove me from the office of prime minister through any undemocratic or unconstitutional method. There is a constitutional procedure to remove a PM from his office,” he said.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Medvedev sacks Russia navy chief
President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the head of Russia’s accident-prone navy and named a new air force chief on his last full day in office on Sunday as he prepares to take the No. 2 post under Vladimir Putin. Medvedev, who is on track to become prime minister after Putin returns to the presidency on Monday for a six-year term, has replaced the heads of the army, navy and air force in the past two weeks.

In a decree announced by the Kremlin, he dismissed Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, whose nearly five-year stint as navy commander included a fire aboard an atomic-powered submarine in December and a deadly accident on another submarine in 2008.

Authorities initially said all nuclear arms aboard the Yekaterinburg had been unloaded long before a fire broke out aboard the docked vessel on Dec. 29, but a senior official later suggested it may still have been carrying the weapons. The official spoke after the respected magazine Vlast quoted Russian navy sources as saying the submarine was carrying 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each armed with four nuclear warheads, during the fire set off by welding sparks.

“After something like that, the head of the navy in any functioning state would have been sacked,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of Moscow-based defence think tank CAST. He said the decision was probably made by Putin, who becomes commander-in-chief of the armed forces when he is sworn in as president on Monday.

Medvedev replaced Vysotsky with a vice-admiral, Viktor Chirkov. In another decree, he named General Viktor Bondarev to replace former air force chief Alexander Zelin, who had grumbled about military restructuring and was dismissed on April 27.

Medvedev also dismissed the commander of the army in late April, but appointed him to a high-level post as deputy head of the military general staff. On Sunday, Medvedev named Zelin as an aide to Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

Russia’s military branches have been weakened by the growing power delegated to its geographical military districts, and the air force has lost some of its functions to the Aerospace Defence Forces, said independent military analyst Alexander Golts.

But Medvedev’s main aim of the last minute announcement may have been to show “that he must be taken seriously”, Golts said.

Steered into the presidency by Putin, who faced a bar on a third straight term in 2008, Medvedev has been seen as the junior partner in Russia’s “tandem” leadership and may face trouble commanding authority as prime minister. He seems determined “to demonstrate that he is staying on - that the tandem still exists and that he still exists as the No. 2 leader of the state,” Golts said.
He's not a Joe Biden, he'll have you know...
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


Southeast Asia
Will OIC visit be a game-changer in Thai conflict?
Posted by: ryuge || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Thai Insurgency

#1  Trying to salvage the concept of a "We-don't-need-the-US-or-NATO-for-our-Security" [handle Rogues] OWG "Islamic/Muslim Union"???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 0:53 Comments || Top||


MILF military chief buried
The Egyptian-trained military leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front who died from cardiac arrest Thursday was buried beside the grave of MILF founder Salamat Hashim on a hill in the hinterland of Lanao del Sur in keeping with his wishes.

Ustadz Abdulazis Mimbantas was buried on Friday in keeping with the Islamic tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours.

Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF's vice chair for military affairs, said MILF members in Central Mindanao, the Zamboanga peninsula, and the island provinces of BasIlan and Sulu are mourning Mimbantas' death. He said, "He was buried beside the spot where our founding chairman was buried, That was the wish of our departed brother when he was still alive."

Mimbantas and Hashim, who founded the MILF in the early 1980s, both finished a degree in Islamic theology at the Al-Azzar University in Cairo.

Mimbantas died of cardiac arrest on Thursday while traveling from Maguindanao , where he and other members of the MILF's central committee visited for two days to hold discussions with the president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Akihiko Tanaka.

JICA has programs in impoverished communities covered by the ceasefire between the government and the MILF. The Japanese government also has representatives to the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team, which has been overseeing the enforcement of a government-MILF agreement since 2003.

Mimbantas was the MILF's vice chairman for religious and spiritual affairs, and subsequently its military leader when Al-Haj Murad Ebrahim vacated the post when he was named chairman of the rebel group after Hashim's death in 2003.
Educated as a theologian, he went from being a top spiritual leader to being the top military leader. Name that religion.
I know! It's Amish, right?
Posted by: ryuge || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Moro Islamic Liberation Front


India-Pakistan
Two schools blown up in Mohmand, SWA
PESHAWAR: Suspected terrorists blew up two more schools in South Wazoo Waziristan and Mohmand agencies bordering Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.
That's why they build 'em there, after all..
According to sources, the suspects destroyed a girls' middle school in Kari Kot area, five kilometres from Wana district of the South Waziristan. In the second incident, a primary school in Halimzai district of Mohmand Agency was destroyed.

Sources said both the schools were completely destroyed in the attacks, however no loss of life was reported as the schools were closed due to Sunday holiday.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Afghanistan
Taliban stronger than before US troop surge: US lawmakers
WASHINGTON: The Taliban are stronger now than before US President Barack Obama ordered a surge of US troops to Afghanistan, two senior US lawmakers said on Sunday, contradicting the administration’s assessment of the insurgency.

“I think we both say that what we found is the Taliban is stronger,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told Fox News Sunday in an interview that included US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who agreed with her statement. The two lawmakers returned last week from a trip to Afghanistan.

The US Defence Department said last week in a report to Congress that its surge of 33,000 extra troops in Afghanistan ordered in late 2009 had weakened the Taliban but that the insurgency remained resilient.

The report said overall insurgent attacks declined in 2011 for the first time in five years, even though violence increased in areas surrounding the Taliban’s southern stronghold of Kandahar, a region where US efforts have been focused since 2009.

Feinstein, a Democrat, said radical madrasas in Pakistan were providing new recruits to the Afghan insurgency. “So an insurgency which one can expect will burn itself out after a period of time will not necessarily burn out,” she said.
Unless we do something about Pakistain which no one will do...
Obama travelled to Kabul last week to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The deal sets out a long-term US role in Afghanistan, including aid and advisers, after most American and NATO combat soldiers withdraw by the end of 2014.

Rogers said there was a danger that Obama’s announcement of a date of withdrawal of US combat forces in Afghanistan and Washington’s decision to hold talks with the Taliban could undermine the US objective of denying a safe haven to terrorists. “The first priority is to deny safe haven and that means a strategic defeat of the Taliban and we have to also defeat the safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” said Rogers, a Republican.

The Obama administration is due to pull the last of its 33,000 surge troops from Afghanistan by this fall, leaving around 68,000 US soldiers there. Rogers and Feinstein both said the United States should designate the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent group believed to be based in Pakistan, as a terrorist organisation. “They’ve killed nearly 500 US troops. They are based in Miranshah (in Pakistan) ... This is something we have to be very aggressive to put an end to,” Rogers said.
Just a little hard to believe the Haggani network hasn't already been declared a 'terrorist organization'...
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Just wait until Hollande meets Obama
Mr Hollande will take the presidential Airbus to a meeting of the G8 at Camp David on May 18-19, followed on May 20-21 by a Nato summit in Chicago.

He can expect a chilly reception from President Barack Obama when he tells him France is going to withdraw its 3,400 troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, a year ahead of schedule. "We will find the terms of language that will enable us not to break the china," said a Hollande aide.
Posted by: tipper || 05/07/2012 0:40 Comments || Top||

#2  Note the complete silence of the media on the dismal failure of Obama's surge.
Posted by: phil_b || 05/07/2012 5:30 Comments || Top||

#3  Feinstein, a Democrat, said radical madrasas in Pakistan were providing new recruits to the Afghan insurgency.

Come now people! The entire conflict is being orchestrated under ISI tutulage and auspices from safehavens in Chaman and Quetta. It has been for YEARS! We are obviously unwilling to smite them, so we might as well declare it the miserable failure that it is, pack it up and leave.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:07 Comments || Top||

#4  OK, Taliban may be stronger, but the "Tollybon" is not stronger, just ask Zero
Posted by: Frank G || 05/07/2012 9:42 Comments || Top||

#5  No shit, Frank. What's up with that? Too much Harry Belafonte growing up, Barry?
Posted by: tu3031 || 05/07/2012 16:56 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
One killed in Timergara blast
LOWER DIR: At least one person was killed and three others injured when an explosive device went off in a shop near Timergara bus stand on Sunday, local police said. The injured were shifted to a nearby hospital. Police cordoned off the area and started a search operation to apprehend the culprits.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Culture Wars
Jews unwelcome on campus
From the outside, Western faculties appear as genteel oases of wisdom and knowledge. In truth, institutions of higher education are becoming brutal offspring of anti-Jew hatred. Famous faculties that have been an historical cradle of European civilization are sacrificing freedom and Israel to barbarism and obscurantism.
 
Even in America the gloves are coming off. The Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco recently published a report titled "Alone on the quad: Understanding Jewish Student Isolation on Campus," one of the most comprehensive surveys of its kind. More than 40% of students confirm anti-Semitism on their campus; some 41% of students have encountered anti-Israel remarks made in class by professors.
 
Numbers are also telling in Europe. While boasting large numbers of Mohammedan students and students from Arab countries, European universities count very few Jewish or pro-Israeli students among their population. Whereas 15-20% of young people matriculating in America's top universities are Jewish, in Europe only a few faculties claim even a tenth of this figure.
 
Today, we are witnessing the worst wave of anti-Israel hatred since April 6, 2002, when 123 academicians signed an open letter, published in Britannia's The Guardian, calling for a moratorium on all cultural links with Israel.
 
Recently, the University of Gay Paree VIII closed its doors for two days to avoid a harder stance about a planned conference against the Jewish State. Elsewhere, while septuagenarian Israeli novelist and Holocaust survivor Esther Orner has been banned from the University of Provence, Hezbollah officials spoke at the Sorbonne University.
 
Meanwhile,
...back at the bunker, his Excellency called a hurried meeting of his closest advisors. It was to be his last. They discussed the officers's efficiency rating system...
Rotterdam's Erasmus University recently hosted events in which Israel was equated with South Africa's apartheid regime.
 
'Israel absolute taboo in Europe'
But the case of Pieter van der Horst, the professor of Early Christian History and Judaism at Utrecht University, is emblematic of the fear and hatred dominating Dutch academia. The pioneering researcher wanted to argue in his valedictory lecture that "the Islamization of European anti-Semitism is one of the most frightening developments of the past decades." However,
it's easy to be generous with someone else's money...
his university's chancellor prevented him from doing so by censoring the lecture in advance.
 
"It should have been my last lecture", van der Horst told me. "In the Middle East of today, the demonization of Jews has reached unprecedented levels. Jews are accused of every evil under the sun, from cannibalism to the attacks on the Twin Towers, to causing the tsunami, the bird flu, AIDS and so on. The University's committee claimed it was too dangerous to give the complete lecture because it might trigger violent reactions from 'well-organized Mohammedan student groups.' I decided to submit an expurgated text because I did not want to expose myself and others to potential danger."
 
"I capitulated to self censorship," he added. "In the country of Anne Frank we accept that today the Jews don't walk in the streets with their religious symbols. We accept that in Holland synagogues are protected by the police. What will be the end of all this?"
 
Dozens of academicians just signed a petition condemning Liverpool University's invitation to Israel's deputy ambassador to the UK, Alon Roth-Snir. Meanwhile,
...back at the bunker, his Excellency called a hurried meeting of his closest advisors. It was to be his last. They discussed the officers's efficiency rating system...
students at Edinburgh University voted in favor of the boycott of Israeli goods. At Queen's University in Belfast, Paleostinian snuffies violently attacked Israeli attaché Solon Solomon.
 
Benny Morris, professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was assaulted last year on a street by a group of Mohammedans before a conference at the London School of Economics. When Morris finished his lesson on Israel's war of 1948, he was unceremoniously bundled away through the back exit of the faculty, past the garbage cans, out of fear for his safety if he left the building in the normal manner.
 
"I felt like a Jew in Berlin in the '20s", a shaken Morris told me. "Israel is an absolute taboo in Europe. At Cambridge, my class was canceled after intimidation by Islamist groups. And I think that it will only get worse."
 
Matthias Küntzel, a German political scientist, was invited by Leeds University for three days of seminars. His lecture on "Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-Semitism in the Middle East" was expected to draw a large audience. But when Küntzel arrived at the British faculty, he was informed that his lecture had been cancelled "on security grounds."
 
'Peace with Israel is a crime'
Last autumn, Israeli professor Ronen Cohen, whose "sin" is that of teaching at Ariel University, was expelled from a German academic conference in Berlin (he was later reinstated after a storm of protest.) Elsewhere, Spain's Housing Ministry disqualified Ariel University from participating in the international competition on solar power because of its address in Samaria.
 
According to a poll commissioned by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 62% of university students say they do not want Jewish classmates. These numbers are as surprising as they are worrying: the most anti-Semitic people in Spain are supposedly the most educated.
 
A prominent figure in Belgium's Jewish community, Jacques Brotchi, just resigned from the board of University of Brussels after denouncing grave anti-Semitic incidents within the campus. A study published by Professor Marc Elchardus of the Phlegmish University showed that 50% of Mohammedan students harbor anti-Semitic sentiments.
 
In Italia popular anti-Semitic websites called for the "blacklisting" of Jewish professors. An Israeli student at the University of Turin, Amit Peer, confessed to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that "the Jews here are hiding their own identity because they risk becoming a target". Israeli attaché Shai Cohen has been prevented from speaking at Pisa University after a violent attack by students, who called him "butcher." The Israeli ambassador, Ehud Gol, decamped Florence University after a similar "protest."
 
A shoe was hurled at Israeli ambassador Benny Dagan while he was giving a lecture at the Stockholm University and a Jewish student, Anja Savosnic, was forced to give up Hebrew studies at the University of Oslo due to anti-Semitic attacks from fellow students.
 
Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz was banned from Norwegian universities because of his views on Israel. In an article titled "Judar, ta avstånd," Stockholm University Professor of Philosophy Torbjörn Tännsjö argued that Jews should distance themselves from the State of Israel, or otherwise they might be subjected to anti-Semitism.
 
In 1936, at the beginning of a new wave of terrorism against the Jews, Zionist leader Berl Katznelson wrote: "We are called upon to defend ourselves not only from the physical marauders but also from the spiritual marauders." Today the new spiritual marauders are based in Western faculties. They want to bring the war to the home of every Jew. It's an academic final solution epitomized by a sign on the walls of London University: "Peace with Israel is a crime."

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism
Posted by: || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Tell me something Theodore Herzl didn't know.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/07/2012 0:47 Comments || Top||

#2  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Run to the altar of Islam as the religion of peace and wind up like Lenin's "useful idiots" when the roof falls in.

These morons never look at the ultimate consequences of an agenda they support.

The Second Crusade killed about 150,000 Jews and Moslems when Jerusalem was sacked.

Tamerlane killed an estimated 1.5 million when his army ravaged Baghdad and let it uninhabited with pyramids of human heads at the corners of the city walls.

Guess who the Moslems cry about?

The Left has been playing the Anti-Semetism card for over a hundred years. It is a red herring to divert attention away from the corruption and incompetence of both the ruling parties and the media. It is also a red herring for the superficial and intellectually barren academic cultivated by the Left to indoctrinate the students.
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 05/07/2012 0:59 Comments || Top||


Africa North
Egypt extends curfew in Cairo
Egypt extended an overnight curfew around the Defence Ministry on Sunday to deter a repeat of Friday’s deadly violence, less than three weeks before a presidential vote.
A soldier died and almost 400 people were wounded in Friday’s clashes, the second time in a week that protests over the army’s handling of Egypt’s troubled transition from army rule to civilian government have turned violent.

The military re-imposed the curfew in the Abbasiya district around the Defence Ministry for the third straight day, the state news agency quoted a military source as saying.

Many protesters who gathered near the ministry were ultra-orthodox Salafi Muslims furious that a sheikh they backed for president has been disqualified from the race. Liberals and others were also there, accusing the army of seeking to manipulate or delay the vote. The military has dismissed those allegations, insisting it will stick to its timetable of handing over power to a new president by July 1, or even earlier in the unlikely event of an outright winner in the first round of voting this month.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: WoT
9/11 Defense Attorney Calls For women To Wear 'Appropriate' Clothing
The defense attorney who wore a traditional Islamic outfit during the rowdy arraignment of the accused Sept. 11 terrorists is defending her courtroom appeal that other women in the room wear more "appropriate" clothing to the proceedings -- out of respect for her client's Muslim beliefs.
Appropriate attire for a woman attorney in a U.S. courtroom is a dark blue or gray business jacket and skirt (slacks okay, I'm told) with a white or pastel-colored blouse. Conservative cut, of course, and tailored. An American flag lapel pin is a nice touch.
Cheryl Bormann, counsel for defendant Walid bin Attash, attended the arraignment Saturday dressed in a hijab, apparently because her client insisted on making the proceedings a circus it. She further requested that the court order other women to follow that example so that the defendants can make the proceedings even more of a circus do not have to avert their eyes "for fear of committing a sin under their faith."
Imagine all this playing out in a New York federal courtroom...
At a press conference Sunday at Guantanamo Bay, Bormann said she dresses in a hijab at "all times" when she meets with her client "out of respect" for his beliefs. Asked why she requested other women do the same, Bormann said, "When you're on trial for your life, you need to be focused."
She's just begging to antagonize the court, and all this does is further her clients' goals of turning the proceedings into a travesty.
Bormann, who is not Muslim, claimed the issue came up several years ago, when a paralegal wore "very short skirts" and it became a distraction for the defendants.
They were rolling their eyes like mad, and they couldn't even have gun sex...
And their right hands weren't working?
She said that on Saturday, "somebody" was also dressed "in a way that was not in keeping with my client's religious beliefs."
Her clients need to get a thicker skin. And blinders...
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Martin Bormann's daughter?
Posted by: Water Modem || 05/07/2012 0:07 Comments || Top||

#2 
Posted by: Water Modem || 05/07/2012 0:08 Comments || Top||

#3  If you swore an Oath and had faith in the Military system, this must be an eye opener. Do not tell me POTUS has not corrupted the system almost beyond repair.
Posted by: newc || 05/07/2012 0:18 Comments || Top||

#4  Boy Howdy,

I've sat on a couple of General Courts Martial and I guarantee you the mean old SOB Colonels that normally chaired those things would have told her to STFU in those exact words and to sit down and not say another word unless it was pertinent to the case.

Good Lord the tenacles of the lefts appropriation of law schools throughout the US has hit the Military.

Maybe we could have her flogged since she was not being appropriately respectful to the Presiding officer?
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 05/07/2012 0:49 Comments || Top||

#5  How about tar & feathers, missi?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 05/07/2012 0:52 Comments || Top||

#6  Well you know the saying...

If your eyes offend thee.... pluck them out.

(however I think that is from the Bible...)
Posted by: CrazyFool || 05/07/2012 1:18 Comments || Top||

#7  Gitmo being a Navy base, keel-hauling would be the appropriate sanction. But let's get to the Islamo-point: what is this woman doing outside, unaccompanied by a male relative? Git in the kitchen and make us some falafal, woman!
Posted by: SteveS || 05/07/2012 1:20 Comments || Top||

#8  Your clients appearances offend me, honey. I think they'd look better with bullet holes in their foreheads.
And...oh, yeah. Go suck ass.
Posted by: tu3031 || 05/07/2012 1:26 Comments || Top||

#9  #3 If you swore an Oath and had faith in the Military system, this must be an eye opener. Do not tell me POTUS has not corrupted the system almost beyond repair.
Posted by newc


It began long before Obama, but he's behind the wheel in the victory lap.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:18 Comments || Top||

#10  Thisainthell was live-blogging it
Posted by: Frank G || 05/07/2012 7:44 Comments || Top||

#11  I'm waiting for her to introduce a motion that the defendant's faith requires that they be acquitted.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 05/07/2012 7:57 Comments || Top||

#12  If the hijab fits, you must acquit!
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:59 Comments || Top||

#13  From Wiki:

Cheryl Bormann is an attorney from Chicago best known for defending Waleed bin Attash during his trial before the Guantanamo military commission in 2012. Bormann studied law at Loyola University Chicago. From 2008 through 2011 she headed the Capital Trial Assistant Unit at the Illinois State Appellate Defender, the state agency responsible for providing legal assistance to defendants in death penalty cases in Illinois. The abolition of the death penalty in Illinois in 2011 rendered Bormann's position redundant.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 8:17 Comments || Top||

#14  More from the Chicago-Kent Law School

Adjunct Faculty Biographies
Cheryl T. Bormann
Joined the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender: 1989 Joined its leadership: 2003

Cheryl Bormann is an Attorney Supervisor at the Third Municipal District, Rolling Meadows Criminal Courthouse. As the only representative of Office leadership at Rolling Meadows, Cheryl supervises the work of 18 Assistant Public Defenders, who staff both felony and misdemeanor courtrooms. Cheryl’s duties include, in addition to administering day-to-day supervision, all the responsibilities that would normally adhere to being a work site Chief – ensuring the proper staffing and handling of all courtrooms and cases, acting as a liaison between the Office and other agencies, and attending regular meetings with judges and other court personnel. Cheryl also maintains her own active caseload which primarily consists of capital and noncapital homicide cases.

Cheryl is certified by the Illinois Supreme Court to serve as lead counsel in death penalty trials as a member of the Capital Litigation Trial Bar. She is also an active speaker and teacher. At Loyola University School of Law, she was an adjunct professor where she has served as head coach of the Philip Corboy trial team. Cheryl teaches trial advocacy for the annual program sponsored by the Office of the State Appellate Defender. She is a frequent lecturer for many local bar associations on the subject of criminal law. Cheryl is actively involved with the Constitutional Rights Foundation of Chicago, where she volunteers her time teaching public school students.

Cheryl became an Attorney Supervisor in 2003. Before serving in her current position, Cheryl was an Attorney Supervisor at the Sixth Municipal District, Markham Criminal Courthouse. This is Cheryl’s second time working for the Public Defender. When Cheryl first joined in the Office in 1989, she worked as an Assistant Public Defender at the Juvenile Justice Division. After four years, she transferred to the Felony Trial Division at 26th Street. She briefly left the Office in 1999, and maintained a private practice specializing in serious criminal defense litigation, but then returned to the Office in 2003. Cheryl has defended clients in excess of 50 jury trials and hundreds of bench trials, many of those facing murder and capital murder charges.

Cheryl received both her Bachelor’s degree and law degree from Loyola University.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 8:22 Comments || Top||

#15  It would appear that Ms. Bormann is a true progressive believer. Loyola Law and Chicago Kent are mid second-tier law schools (#67 and #61 respectively).

How she went from defending death penalty-eligible thugs in Chicago to Gitmo is an interesting question.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 8:30 Comments || Top||

#16  Coupla possibilities here.
One is the clowns are convicted but there is an appeal based on the failure of other women to wear hijabs in court unfairly prejudiced, or demonstrated existing prejudice and islamophobia.
That's a win, even if the appeal is refused. It goes into the record books as persecution of Muslims by the rotten US.
Or, the women on the prosecution team start dressing "appropriately" and that's a win because the entire US military is buffaloed by the fear of being accused of islamophobia--again, see Hasan's greased slide to Ft. Hood--and the left laughs. Also ratchets the power of the threat of accusation of islamophobia.
The trial becomes so confused by Ms. Borman and her Stockholmed ilk that it ends up a mistrial.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 05/07/2012 9:57 Comments || Top||

#17  Appropriate clothing would be that prescribed by the relevant uniform regulations of the applicable service per regulation [e.g. - AR 670-1], per law, per Constitution [Article I, Section 8 Congressional authority to make all laws governing land and naval forces].
Posted by: Procopius2k || 05/07/2012 10:01 Comments || Top||

#18  procopius. You are so twentieth-century. You have no empathy.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey || 05/07/2012 10:38 Comments || Top||

#19  Ok, I'm shocked Attash is allowing a Woman to represent him. Seems more the type to charge at her before being beaten by MP's.
Posted by: Charles || 05/07/2012 10:51 Comments || Top||

#20  Perhaps we could interest him in a blindfold.
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 05/07/2012 11:53 Comments || Top||

#21  Shot him, the lawyer and any other snot nosed twerp that whines about being "offended".

Problem solved.
Posted by: DarthVader || 05/07/2012 12:24 Comments || Top||

#22  But I don't respect your client's beliefs, darlin' - I think he's a depraved mass-murderer and follower of a death cult. So LET him be offended, I give not one single damn.
Posted by: mojo || 05/07/2012 12:46 Comments || Top||

#23  I went and read Thisainthell's little liveblog. She actually was in the BACK of the courtroom rather than beside her client! That Judge has the Patience of a Saint to put up with that, among other things.
Posted by: Charles || 05/07/2012 16:24 Comments || Top||

#24  When in Saudi Arabia, you follow the rules there. When in the USA, you follow the rules here. He's messing with us, softening us up, trying to figure out where the lines are so the next guy can take advantage of it. This is crap. Maybe we can accommodate him when it's not inconvenient, but there should be no bending the rules based on anything. When he attacked us he gave himself to our rules if he got caught. This stupid attorney of his needs to stop kissing his feet.
Posted by: gorb || 05/07/2012 19:20 Comments || Top||

#25  I wouldn't worry too much about her "client" sinning. He probably won't see a woman again after his trial is over. He'll face grey empy walls for the next 20 years before he'll meet his destiny in a certain chamber.

I mean, NEVER see a woman again.

as or "respecting" the "beliefs" of her client, this sounds like asking Holocaust surviors to respect zthe Nazi beliefs of Eichmann in that Jerusalem courtroom.
Posted by: European Conservative || 05/07/2012 19:23 Comments || Top||

#26  I've sat on a couple of General Courts Martial and I guarantee you the mean old SOB Colonels that normally chaired those things would have told her to STFU in those exact words and to sit down and not say another word unless it was pertinent to the case.

LOL, totally! I never tried a case before Pohl, so I don't know how squishy he is. Probably a bit twitchy because it's so political and high-profile. I'm just sad it's not Barto. Kind of guy who didn't allow gum-chewing in his courtroom. If he caught you, he'd call a recess, announce what color it was, and require silence so everyone could watch you frantically search for someplace other than your hand or your notepad to dispose of it. There'd be nothing left of Ms. Bormann's ego but a smoking crater.
Posted by: RandomJD || 05/07/2012 20:28 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
3 killed in Balochistan
QUETTA: A Hazara man was among three people killed in separate incidents of shooting in Quetta, Mastung and Hub areas of Balochistan on Sunday.

In the first incident, unidentified armed men gunned down a man in Dasht area of Mastung. According to levies, the man identified as Muhammad Ali was sitting at his tyre shop when the armed men, riding a motorcycle, opened fire on him. Resultantly, he received multiple bullet wounds and died on the spot.
"Which spot?"
"THAT spot!"
Levies officials rushed to the spot
Yes, that spot...
and cordoned off the area. A levies official said the man belonged to the Hazara community and that it was a sectarian killing.

The Hazara Democratic Party has strongly condemned the killing of Muhammad Ali, saying that the government had failed to provide security to Hazaras.

Separately, a man was killed in Hub, an industrial township of Balochistan. According to sources, unidentified armed men shot dead Kuda Baksh in Goth Haji Murad area of Hub. Police rushed to the spot and body was taken to a nearby hospital.

A man was also gunned down in the Sariab Road area of the provincial capital. Police said gunmen, riding a motorbike, opened fire on the man near Faizabad area while he was on his way home. He died on the spot.
No, that was a different spot...
The body was moved to the civil hospital. The attackers managed to escape.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Down Under
Al Qaeda magazine calls for firebombing Australia
Al-Qaeda has named Australia as a prime target for firebombing in an online terrorism magazine.

The article in Inspire magazine, entitled "It is of your freedom to ignite a firebomb", gives a step-by-step guide to building an "ember bomb", which it says is the best way to start brush fires, and suggests the best times of the year to start fires in different parts of Australia. A picture of the Sydney Opera House with smoke clouds behind it - captioned "Sydney city on fire" - was used to illustrate the story.

The article was condemned yesterday by Attorney-General Nicola Roxon, who reassured the public that there was no imminent terrorist threat. However, she said it was a timely reminder that the threat of violent extremism in Australia remains. She said, "I have instructed my department to draw this material to the attention of relevant authorities, including the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Communications and Media Authority."
Posted by: ryuge || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The Hard Boyz hate Opera???
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 0:49 Comments || Top||

#2  They don't like the fat lady singing, Joe.
Posted by: Harry the Galactic Hero8388 || 05/07/2012 5:36 Comments || Top||

#3  This is just common sense. Couple of guys could do horrible damage using wildfires as their weapon if they knew what they were doing.
Posted by: Rjschwarz || 05/07/2012 9:54 Comments || Top||

#4  I'd assumed that the fact this hasn't happened was because we are extra watchful in that area. Low population areas have the benefit of making strangers stand out at least.
Posted by: Rjschwarz || 05/07/2012 9:55 Comments || Top||

#5  Firebombing works both ways.
Posted by: gorb || 05/07/2012 14:04 Comments || Top||

#6  See also WAFF > [AQ Magazine = AQIY aka AQAP] "INSPIRE" MAGAZINE CALLS FOR "LONE-WOLf" ATTACKS, TARGETING "POPULATIONS, ... Permitting [use of] Chemical and Biological Weapons.

and

* IIRC TOPIX, FREEREPUBLIC > AL-QAEDA MAGAZINE CALLS FOR "LONE WOLF" TERROR ATTACKS IN THE US.

Iff US-based Jihadis = MilTerrs/NGOS do not carry out such attacks, WILL AL-QAEDA = RADICAL ISLAM DENOUNCE US MUSLIMS AS IMPROPER OR NOT "ISLAMIC/MUSLIM" ENUFF???

I think so - it will justify the Hard Boyz coming to America = CONUS-NORAM to instruct local Jihadi wannabes on how to be "proper" Muslims + how to wage "proper" effec Jihad-Terror.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/07/2012 23:58 Comments || Top||

#7  OOOOPPSIES, forgot DEFENCE FORUM INDIA > OP-ED: IS MEXICO THE "NEW AFGHANISTAN": 50,000 DEAD IN FIVE YEARS.

And counting.
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 05/08/2012 0:00 Comments || Top||


Arabia
Yemen to deport two Belgian terror suspects
SANAA: Two Belgian nationals could be deported from Yemen after being detained last month on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, a Yemeni security official and Belgium’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

The Yemeni official identified the men as Ebrahim Bali and Ezzeddine Tuhairi, Belgians of Arab descent,
Are those names Flemish or Walloon?
and said they were detained on April 13 at Sanaa’s airport as they tried to enter the country.

“They were arrested on suspicion of planned terrorist activities in Yemen. We are in a process of negotiation with the Belgian government. We expect them to be deported...within days,” the official said. A Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed the two men were being held over suspected involvement in “terrorist” activity, and said Brussels was seeking consular access to them.
Instead of deporting them, you could try them. Just saying...
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: WoT
Honor student pleads guilty in Jihad Jane plot
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Maryland honor student pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to help a Pennsylvania woman known as "Jihad Jane" plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had offended some Muslims. Mohammed Hassan Khalid, 18, is believed to be the youngest person ever charged with terrorism in a U.S. civilian court. He faces a sentence as high as 15 years in prison.

Khalid, who moved with his family from Pakistan to suburban Baltimore in 2008, was a high school student who had been accepted on a full scholarship at prestigious Johns Hopkins University.
And he wasn't even 1/32 Cherokee...
According to filings by U.S. prosecutors, Khalid began communicating online with fellow jihadists in the United States, Ireland and South Asia as early as age 15. One of them was Colleen R. LaRose, the suburban Philadelphia woman who called herself "Jihad Jane." LaRose pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to kill Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. The artist had offended some Muslims by drawing a cartoon with the head of the prophet Mohammed on a dog's body.
Colleen not quite getting the American idea that we have the right to be offensive, and the corresponding right to suffer offense from others...
U.S. officials have said the "Jihad Jane" case is unusual because it involves a green-eyed, blonde American woman who boasted that her appearance and U.S. passport allowed her to conduct terror activities without drawing suspicion.
Unless the blonde starts boasting on-line...
"Today's plea, which involved a radicalized teen in Maryland who connected with like-minded individuals around the globe via the Internet, underscores the evolving nature of violent extremism today," said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Lisa Monaco.

During a short hearing at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia, officials said, Khalid pleaded guilty to a single charge of providing material support to terrorists.

Khalid's lawyer, Jeffrey Lindy of Philadelphia, said in an interview afterward: "This is saddest case I've ever been involved with in my career. He's a smart kid who understands what's happening. But how much can an 18-year-old brain comprehend about a life-altering experience like this?"
Enough to know he shouldn't have done it...
Khalid helped LaRose raise money and recruit other conspirators online "to wage violent jihad in and around Europe," U.S. officials said. In addition, Khalid helped LaRose hide a stolen U.S. passport and, officials said, hoped "he could personally provide it to the mujahideen."

Khalid also communicated with one of the plot's alleged leaders, Ali Charaf Damache, an Algerian living in Ireland. Damache, who used the alias "Black Flag," is charged with conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists. He was arrested in 2010 in Ireland on an unrelated charge and the United States is seeking to extradite him on the American terror charges.
We won't execute him. Promise that to the Irish. We'll just jug him forever in a SuperMax.
LaRose was arrested in October 2009, shortly after returning from a visit to meet Damache in Ireland.

The FBI arrested Khalid in July, when he was still a juvenile, but the case was not unsealed until September, when he turned 18. Under the plea agreement, he faces adult charges.

In a statement, Zane Memeger, the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia, highlighted Khalid's youth.

"This case has demonstrated that age is not a limiter to threats to our nation's security," Memeger said. "Regardless of a defendant's age or background, we are committed to keeping our communities and our country safe through the investigation and prosecution of violent extremist activity."

Khalid was a legal U.S. resident, but, unlike his siblings and parents, he did not become a naturalized American citizen. As a result, Lindy said, Khalid is likely to be deported back to Pakistan after he finishes serving his U.S. sentence.
There's insult to injury...
Another blonde American woman, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Leadville, Colorado, was also involved in the case. She traveled to Ireland and married Damache. Paulin-Ramirez and LaRose arrived in Ireland at about the same time - early September 2009 - and met for the first time there. Paulin-Ramirez returned to the United States and pleaded guilty to a lesser terror charge.

U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker in Philadelphia has not set a sentencing date for any of the defendants.
This article starring:
Jihad Jane
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "He's a smart kid who understands what's happening. But how much can an 18-year-old brain comprehend about a life-altering experience like this?" his attorney asked.

Dunno, jerk. You people call him an honor student every chance you get. So he should be smart enough to figure out what going to jail means.
Posted by: American Delight || 05/07/2012 7:26 Comments || Top||

#2  At eighteen he is old enough to work, to marry, to serve in the military, and to vote. Legally he is an adult. And, nobody is claiming any sort of mental handicap on his behalf. He comprehends just fine.
Posted by: trailing wife || 05/07/2012 9:04 Comments || Top||

#3  nobody is claiming any sort of mental handicap on his behalf. His attorney has already claimed he is 18 years old. If THAT isn't a mental handicap, then nothing is.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 05/07/2012 12:57 Comments || Top||


-Election 2012
Greek voters punish ruling coalition, reward far left
Translation: Greek voters are petulant children who don't want to pay for the many mistakes they've made.
Greece’s former finance minister and Socialist party leader called for a broad coalition government of pro-European parties, ruling out a two-party government with his conservative rivals after his party received a drubbing in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Official projected results showed Evangelos Venizelos’ PASOK party plunging to third place with 13.6 percent and 42 seats in the 300-member parliament. The conservative New Democracy was projected in the lead with 19.18 percent and 109 seats, far below the 151 needed to form a government. The margin of error was 0.5 percentage point.

“A coalition government of the old two-party system would not have sufficient legitimacy or sufficient domestic and international credibility if it would gather a slim majority,” Venizelos said. “A government of national unity with the participation by all the parties that favor a European course, regardless of their positions toward the loan agreements, would have meaning.”
Doesn't the leader of the leading party get to decide what the coalition will be? Why is Venizelos running his mouth? His party is in third. Perhaps he should let the two leaders work it out and give him a call if they need/want him.
If borne out by final results, the outcome is devastating for PASOK, which won a landslide victory in 2009 with more than 43 percent of the vote.

Voters outraged by Greece’s protracted financial crisis and the austerity measures imposed in return for international bailouts punished both main parties, turning to smaller anti-bailout groups instead. The leftist Syriza, which was projected in second place with 16.3 percent and 50 seats, has been strongly opposed to Greece’s bailout agreements.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Translation: Greek voters are petulant children who don't want to pay for the many mistakes they've made

couldn't have said it better myself
Posted by: Waldemar Hupereque3841 || 05/07/2012 2:54 Comments || Top||

#2  They're just hastening the inevitable. Might as well get it over with.
Posted by: Spot || 05/07/2012 8:01 Comments || Top||

#3  Hoping to pick up a Greek Island for my retirement home in 2015. $500-$600 bucks?
Posted by: Frank G || 05/07/2012 10:43 Comments || Top||

#4  not a bad idea Frank!
Posted by: Water Modem || 05/07/2012 11:22 Comments || Top||

#5  To be honest the far-left is doing what proper capitalists would do.

i.e. no bailouts.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 05/07/2012 11:57 Comments || Top||

#6  Looks like the far right also gained seats. Anti immigrant, tired of supporting non greeks, called neo nazis.
Posted by: bman || 05/07/2012 12:20 Comments || Top||

#7  Common to all democracies are electorates who act like petulant children, unwilling to pay (themselves, anyway) for the many mistakes they have made, are currently benefiting from, continue to make, and will make in the future.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 05/07/2012 13:00 Comments || Top||

#8  Didn't the EU install the current gov't by fiat not long ago? My take is that either they will step in again, or the Greeks will be summarily kicked out of the Euro as the Germans decide that they've played Daddy Warbucks for too long.

I figure that France is rapidly looking to join Greece. At that point the whole house of cards collapses.
Posted by: AlanC || 05/07/2012 14:47 Comments || Top||

#9 

What austerity?
Posted by: Beavis || 05/07/2012 15:35 Comments || Top||

#10  Fair point, Beavis. When the Greeks cut their government budget by a third they can call. Spain, Italy, same thing.

Of course, we could cut ours by a third and not miss much.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 17:46 Comments || Top||

#11  Looks like the far right also gained seats. Anti immigrant, tired of supporting non greeks, called neo nazis.

Wanna bet their economic policies are indistinguishable from the rest of those elected? "National Socialists" are "far-right" only in the eyes of "International Socialists".
Posted by: Rob Crawford || 05/07/2012 18:33 Comments || Top||

#12  "Facism is always descending on America, but it always lands in Europe."
Posted by: Barbara || 05/07/2012 18:51 Comments || Top||

#13  "National Socialists" are "far-right" only in the eyes of "International Socialists".

This is one of my pet peeves lately. The Nazis were Socialists. They called themselves the National Socialist German Workers Party, fer cripes sake. Try telling this to someone who 'knows' the Nazis are right-wing. You'd have an easier time explaining quantum mechanics to a cow.
Posted by: SteveS || 05/07/2012 19:47 Comments || Top||


Afghanistan
New Names for a Wall That Keeps Growing - The Bravest of the Brave
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  A rather insensitive; and not at all well conceived article heading title from the uber-cerebral hacks at the Slimes, IMHO. -cz-
Posted by: canalzone || 05/07/2012 21:13 Comments || Top||

#2  This past Saturday i was an attendee at a friend's b-day party; he and all other guys were retired EOD; they tried to keep a good face on, but a couple hours into the beer, they cracked; all knew at least one of the new names being added. God bless them all.
Posted by: USN,Ret || 05/07/2012 21:34 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Nine soldiers killed, military convoy attacked in N Wazoo
PESHAWAR: Terrorists in North Waziristan ambushed a military convoy on Sunday morning, killing nine troops. Army officials said the convoy was passing through Amin Checkpost, a security outpost on a hilltop outside Miranshah, when “dozens” of terrorists attacked the troops.

“Militants hiding there opened fire at the soldiers with AK-47 assault rifles and RPG,” a senior Pakistan Army official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

“Three gunship choppers were called in but the militants even fired rockets at the choppers.” Nine troops, including an officer were killed, and 12 more injured in the attack. The army official said the troops had retaliated and killed “a number of militants”.

Tribesmen in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan and a known hotbed of terrorists, including the Taliban, al Qaeda and the Haqqani network, said they saw army helicopter gunships pounding suspected terrorist positions in the town.

It was not known exactly who attacked the convoy, but one security official, requesting anonymity, said the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan were behind the attack.

A senior commander affiliated with Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a pro-government militant leader in North Waziristan, condemned the attack and denied involvement.

“We have a peace accord with the government and condemn the killing of Pakistani soldiers in Waziristan. We will continue following the peace agreement with the government,” he said.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: PLO


Afghanistan
Man in Afghan army uniform kills NATO soldier
KABUL: An attacker wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire on international troops on Sunday, killing one, NATO said. Coalition forces returned fire and killed the attacker.

The alliance did not provide more details, saying an investigation was under way. It also did not disclose the nationality of the service member killed. NATO usually waits for member nations to provide those details.

The shooting was the latest in a string of attacks against US and other foreign forces by their Afghan partners or assailants posing as them. Such attacks have raised the level of mistrust and ill will between the US-led coalition and its Afghan counterparts and drawn concern about the readiness of government forces to take over their own security ahead of the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of foreign combat troops.

The insider threat to foreigners trying to mentor and strengthen Afghan security forces has existed for years but has grown more deadly. The US-led coalition routinely reports each time an American or other foreign soldier is killed by an Afghan in uniform, but the military is under-reporting the number of overall attacks. It doesn’t report the wounding of troops who were attacked alongside those who were killed.

US officials say that in most cases the Afghans who turn their guns on their allies are motivated not by sympathy for Taliban or on orders from insurgents, but rather act as a result of personal grievances against the coalition.

Also on Sunday, a NATO service member was killed by a bomb in eastern Afghanistan. The coalition initially said three service members were killed in the attack, but later corrected its statement.

So far this month, seven coalition members have died in Afghanistan, bringing the year’s toll to 139.
Posted by: Steve White || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  US officials say that in most cases the Afghans who turn their guns on their allies are motivated not by sympathy for Taliban or on orders from insurgents, but rather act as a result of personal grievances against the coalition.

We shall NOT use the term "Taliban Infiltrator".... we shall NOT, we shall NOT! We will use the word "grievance" instead, and liken it to a conflict where blame can be shared and resolution successfully mediated.
Posted by: Besoeker || 05/07/2012 7:33 Comments || Top||

#2  Marine from West Chester killed in Afghanistan
The Marine Corps informed Sgt. John Patrick (JP) Huling’s mother, Debbie Huling, on Sunday that he was killed while on foot patrol in Anwar Province. He was shot to death Sunday, likely at close range, by a suspected Taliban member who appeared to be an Afghan National Army police officer, she said military officials told her.

He was flown to a hospital but died about an hour later.

It appears Sgt. Huling will be buried in Ohio.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 05/07/2012 12:52 Comments || Top||

#3  I don't think they are Taliban entirely. Oh sure some of them are. But the increase in attacks coincided, it seems, with Obama's change of the RoE and his "Afghan surge".
Posted by: Charles || 05/07/2012 16:19 Comments || Top||


Southeast Asia
Video of kidnapped Aussie released
Australia's government believes a new video provides evidence an Australian man kidnapped in the Philippines is alive.

Warren Rodwell was living with his Filipino wife on the island of Mindanao when Islamists kidnapped him at gunpoint in December.

Philippine authorities have received a second video of Rodwell, confirming he was alive on March 26, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

A spokesman said, "The video provides proof-of-life as at 26 March. This is welcome, given our ongoing concerns about Mr Rodwell's welfare."

A video obtained by the media in January showed Rodwell pleading for his life. He looked haggard and distressed.
Posted by: ryuge || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Caribbean-Latin America
Mexican Army deploy 600 troops to Choix, Sinaloa

For a map, click here

By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

The Mexican Army has deployed 300 troops in the Sinaloa municipality of Choix with 300 more scheduled to deploy in the coming days as army troops move into the area in the aftermath of some of the bloodiest fighting in the Mexican Drug War to date, according to Mexican news reports.

While the total death toll after more than a week of fighting amongst Mexican security forces and an amalgam of criminal gangs is 22, according to data provided by the Sinaloa Fiscalia General de Estado (FGE) or attorney general Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez, the article posted by El Debate news daily website hinted the death toll is likely much higher.

This writer counted the dead at 57, including 13 in Guasave municipality near the Pacific coast of Sinaloa and several others in nearby municipalities including El Fuerte. Mexican press reported villagers claiming a number of others were left for dead by criminal groups and are now decomposing in the extreme summer heat of the Mexican Sierra Madres. For example, Urique municipality in Chihuahua state just across the border recorded a high temperature of 46C (114.8F) last week.

In Choix proper where the bulk of the fighting took place, the death toll by this author's count is 32. The count should be higher but for some criminal groups' tendency, most notably Los Zetas, to remove their dead to prevent security forces and rival gangs from gaining intelligence.

According to the article, refugees from Choix have been filtering down to the west, ending up in El Fuerte, which is only about 20 kilometers southwest of Choix municipal seat along Sinaloa State Highway 32. Other villages reporting refugees from the eastern part of Choix include Chinobampo, which is directly south of the battle area, and a village called Montoya. Those villages report 70 families have fled the mountains in Choix. Other have moved completely out of the mountains to coastal municipalities such as Mazatlan.

In El Fuerte municipality, El Debate reported 25 families have fled from the villages of La Cofradía, Sabino Cuate, El Platanito and El Pantano seeking shelter in El Fuerte municipality seat.

The causes of the fighting according to El Debate is a move by the Sinaloa Drug Cartel to eliminate Beltran-Leyva criminal groups operating in the area.

The possibility also exists that Choix, sitting astride the only mountain pass between Sinaloa state and Chihuahua state without a major highway, was a logical place to stop Los Zetas infiltration into Sinaloa.

Recent fighting between Sinaloa affiliated groups in the Los Zetas home turf of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas has caused Los Zetas operatives to respond in kind in Sinaloa state. Having an ally of their bitterest rival controlling a major mountain pass for the movement of drugs, guns and operatives may have been a risk the Sinaloa Cartel wanted to eliminate.

What makes the fighting so unusual is the sheer number of different groups which came to the aid of the Beltran-Leyva group including Los Zetas and Los Aztecas, both gangs aligned with the Juarez Cartel.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
Posted by: badanov || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Culture Wars
AT&T to pay Muslim woman $5M in discrimination case
Posted by: ryuge || 05/07/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Very misleading headline. AT&T will appeal. And Missouri caps punitive damages at 5x actual damages, meaning that the total award will amount to $1m, at best. That's assuming AT&T doesn't get the verdict and the award overturned on appeal.
Posted by: Zhang Fei || 05/07/2012 18:03 Comments || Top||



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On Sale now!


A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
Click here for more information

Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
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Two weeks of WOT
Mon 2012-05-07
  Nine soldiers killed, military convoy attacked in N Wazoo
Sun 2012-05-06
  Man wanted in USS Cole bombing killed in Yemen: tribal chief
Sat 2012-05-05
  Pro-Regime Gunmen Kill 12 'Qaida' Militants in Yemen
Fri 2012-05-04
  Bajaur teenyboomer kills 24
Thu 2012-05-03
  Afghanistan: Pakistani driving truck bomb arrested
Wed 2012-05-02
  Suicide bomb blast hits hotel in Somalia, two MPs believed dead
Tue 2012-05-01
  'Egyptians thwart Iranian plot to kill Saudi envoy'
Mon 2012-04-30
  US drone 'kills three militants' in Miramshah
Sun 2012-04-29
  Syria Troops Kill 10 Rebels in Damascus Region
Sat 2012-04-28
   21 Taliban Insurgents Killed in Clashes
Fri 2012-04-27
  Separate bomb blasts rock Nigeria's newspapers, at least six killed
Thu 2012-04-26
  Libya bans religious, tribal or ethnic parties
Wed 2012-04-25
  Sacked Yemen Air Force Commander Quits Post
Tue 2012-04-24
  India orders deportation of 10 French nationals over Maoist links
Mon 2012-04-23
  Kazakh court sends 47 men to prison for terrorism

Better than the average link...



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