The Palestinian Authority is quietly bracing for the prospect of collapse. PA officials said numerous officials have fled or plan to leave the West Bank for Jordan and other Arab states. They said the assessment of many in the PA leadership is that the authority could collapse by late 2005 as the split within the ruling Fatah movement widens "The Fatah is split between the young guard who wants to take over now and the old guard who wants to remain at all costs," a PA official said. "Whatever happens, the fate of Fatah is linked to the PA." Officials said PA security services have been unable to stem the increasing violence in the streets of Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They said Fatah factions have been engaged in gun battles in Ramallah, the center of Palestinian government, while police largely stood by.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
23:47 ||
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hat tip: LGF
In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe.
They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official.
Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him "Mr. Chairman." He liked that so much that he started calling himself "the chairman" and spouted other chairmanly phrases, such as "unanimous consent" and "without objection so ordered." The dress-up game looked realistic enough on C-SPAN, so two dozen more Democrats came downstairs to play along.
The session was a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war. As luck would have it, all four of the witnesses agreed that President Bush lied to the nation and was guilty of high crimes -- and that a British memo on "fixed" intelligence that surfaced last month was the smoking gun equivalent to the Watergate tapes. Conyers was having so much fun that he ignored aides' entreaties to end the session.
"At the next hearing," he told his colleagues, "we could use a little subpoena power." That brought the house down.
As Conyers and his hearty band of playmates know, subpoena power and other perks of a real committee are but a fantasy unless Democrats can regain the majority in the House. But that's only one of the obstacles they're up against as they try to convince America that the "Downing Street Memo" is important.
A search of the congressional record yesterday found that of the 535 members of Congress, only one -- Conyers -- had mentioned the memo on the floor of either chamber. House Democratic leaders did not join in Conyers's session, and Senate Democrats, who have the power to hold such events in real committee rooms, have not troubled themselves.
The hearing was only nominally about the Downing Street Memo and its assertion that in the summer of 2002 Bush was already determined to go to war and was making the intelligence fit his case. Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador whose wife was outed as a CIA operative, barely mentioned the memo in his opening statement. Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, said the memo "only confirms what I already suspected."
No matter: The lawmakers and the witnesses saw this as a chance to rally against the war. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) proclaimed it "one of the biggest scandals in the history of this country." Conyers said the memos "establish a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses." Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) concluded that "the time has come to get out" of Iraq.
The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."
Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."
At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.
The event organizer, Democrats.com, distributed stickers saying "Bush lied/100,000 people died." One man's T-shirt proclaimed, "Whether you like Bush or not, he's still an incompetent liar," while a large poster of Uncle Sam announced: "Got kids? I want yours for cannon fodder."
Conyers's firm hand on the gavel could not prevent something of a free-for-all; at one point, a former State Department worker rose from the audience to propose criminal charges against Bush officials. Early in the hearing, somebody accidentally turned off the lights; later, a witness knocked down a flag. Matters were even worse at Democratic headquarters, where the C-SPAN feed ended after just an hour, causing the activists to groan and one to shout "Conspiracy!"
The glitches and the antiwar theatrics proved something of a distraction from the message the organizers aimed to deliver: that for the Bush White House, as lawyer John C. Bonifaz put it, the British memo is "the equivalent to the revelation that there was a taping system in the Nixon White House."
Of course, Democrats controlled the real committees back then -- though Conyers was not deterred. "We have a lot of work to do as a result of this first panel," he told his colleagues. " 'Tis the beginning of our work."
i'll leave it for everyone else to comment - looks like the Donks are going down hard....
#3
I'm disappointed Babs Boxer wasn't there to cry
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 20:32
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I note that the infamous Conyers (CP-Detroit) played doctor chairman with the others. There are lot of good things about My home state, but he isn't one of them.
I hated Clinton when he was in office, but I sent a "get well" when he had his heart problem, and would send condolences to his family if something happened to him.
If Conyers died, I'd cheer.
#8
Actually, this is not the first pseudo Congress event run by Conyers. They had a similar piss fest to "probe" the supposed disenfrenchised voters in the November '04 election.
Posted by: Captain America ||
06/17/2005 23:40
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Arman identifies 7 people from video footage" Top terror" Arman now in RAB custody has identified seven people who were suspected of being involved in the August 21 grenade attack on Awami League grand rally from a video footage, informed sources told the New Nation last night.
"Ouch, OK, it was him, him and I think him. Now put "THAT" away!"
Sources said that police has now got important lead to the August 21 grenade attack but would not confirm the source of the information.
Meanwhile, RAB members yesterday are learnt to have recovered a live grenade in the early hours of yesterday from village Borodeshi in Savar, in the outskirts of the city, apparently acting on the confessional statement of Arman.
What, he didn't want to take you to it in person? Smart boy
The RAB also nabbed one Amzad Hossain alias Anju, an accomplice of listed criminal Nazrul Islam, who is also accused in a number of criminal cases, including the murder of a police officer.
According to intelligence sources, the recovered grenade was very similar to the grenades hurled at the Awami League rally on August 21 and British envoy to Bangladesh Anwar Choudhury last year.
Sources said Arman reportedly confessed to the interrogators that he had close links with 10 to 12 former and present ministers, state ministers and members of Parliament. Ten mobile SIMs were also recovered from Arman. Intelligence wing of RAB divided into four groups were verifying phone numbers from the SIM card memory banks.
Cross checking names with phone numbers. Making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty and nice, RAB is coming to town
Mob lynch top outlaw
CHUADANGA, June 16: Mob lynched an identified regional leader of outlawed Biplobi Communist Party at Boalia village of sadar upazila on Thursday, reports UNB. Informed sources said Akkas Ali, 32, went to the village at 6-30am for collecting tolls.
"Show me the money!"
The villagers caught hold of him and beat black and blue leaving him dead.
"No!"
Police said Akkas was wanted in 10 criminal cases, including six murders.
Nurses, doctors—all hostages-Faridpur Hospital—now a den of extortionists!
"Next on Fox!"
FARIDPUR June 15:—Faridpur General Hospital situated in the heart of the town is in the grips of anti-social elements. The doctors, nurses, patients and their attendants have become hostages in the hands of these elements most of whom are allegedly drug-addicts.
The notorious elements equipped with knives and daggers kept hidden in the pockets of their pants and shirts extort money from the patients and their attendants posing threat. This situation of extortion and cheating that has long been prevailing in the hospital has worsened recently.
Normally you only see this kind of extortion from the hospital billing department
On the night of June 11, a gang of drug addicts entered the hospital with lethal weapons and spend the whole night in and around the paying ward to the extreme horror of the on duty nurses and doctors. It is learnt by some nurses and attendants of patients that the miscreants forcibly took away money from some attendants of patients coming from far-flung areas of the district.
A sense of extreme insecurity has been prevailing among the inmates of the hospital. The concerned authority should security in the hospital campus.
20 injured as cops intervene in dispute over land in Sylhet
Sylhet :At least 20 people including two women were injured due to indiscriminate baton charge by the Kotwali police. A police constable injured himself by the bullet of his gun as he opened fire on the people at Khadimpara in the Sylhet city on Thursday afternoon. A sub-inspector was closed immediately and a divisional investigation committee was formed in this connection, said sources in the police.
The injured constable and two women were admitted to Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital in the evening.
Locals said there was a longstanding dispute over a piece of land between residents of Bahar Colony and the principal of Zinnunine Madrassah for a long time.
Ah, a madrassah land grab
The rival groups came to face each other on Thursday afternoon at around 5:00pm to take possession of the land.
"This land ain't big enough fur both of us!"
A team of the Kotwali police led by sub-inspector Derick, reached the spot and charged batons indiscriminately on the people of Bahar Colony to disperse them.
Taking the side of the holy man I see..
Constable Barney Fife Amal hit himself in the leg by his own gun, when he was trying to open fire on the mob.
"Shit, that's gonna leave a mark!"
At that time, the angry police personnel charged batons on the residents of Bahar Colony, which left at least 20 injured.
"Barney shot himself! Let's get em!"
Later, another team of the Kotwali police reached the spot and brought the situation under control.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
16:13 ||
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Jeane Kirkpatrick, also weighed in, telling lawmakers in a letter that withholding of dues would "create resentment, build animosity and actually strengthen opponents of reform"
BULLSHIT, Jeane. The UN can't resent us any more, can't have any more animosity against us than they already do.
As for the "opponents of reform," it makes absolutely NO difference what we do - the kleptocrats in the UN will oppose any reform that would cost them one damn dime.
Close the UN, kick them out of NYC, and ship the whole sorry mess to Paris. Or better yet, Harare. They deserve each other.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/17/2005 17:12
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A journey of a thousand li starts with one step.
Tammy Emery, a secretary at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, was walking along a wooded path on campus when she heard a shuffling in the woods. She looked up. A deer was charging. MasterCard, VISA, or AmEx?
SNIP
Since June 7, when Emery was attacked, seven people at the university have been threatened or attacked, including four who were sent to the hospital...
Copies of a well-thumbed Koran were later found in the deer's lair.
#1
Maybe we can arrange to douse the deer in cheap beer and have the beer bears from West Virginia imported to SIU, thus getting one problem to cancel out the other. Assuming they can fight off the frat boys.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
06/17/2005 16:30
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I appreciate the humor of the well-thumbed Koran line but it just missed the mark because Deers don't have thumbs. Well read would have crossed from mildly funny to hysterical. Still, nicely done.
#4
makes the O-Club complimentary Deer Nuts⢠more than just an appetizer.... a call to victory!
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 20:10
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RJS: Perhaps the Madrassa had an Imam to turn the pages for him. Also, I remember a few months back about a kitten that was born with thumbs. I thought "Well, that's it for the Human race."
Pyongyang, June 16 (KCNA) -- Leader Kim Jong Il sent thanks to all the agricultural workers who have successfully carried out the spring farm work and to the servicepersons, blue-collar and white-collar workers, students and dependent family members who have assisted agriculture materially and morally through a general turnout in supporting farms. The Workers' Party of Korea set the agricultural front as the main front in socialist economic construction this year and called upon the whole Party, state and people to render labor and material assistance to the rural districts, focusing and mobilizing all efforts in doing good farming.
The agricultural officials and workers had made substantial preparations for farming from the outset of the year, true to the Party's policy of agricultural revolution. The weather was unfavorable and a lot of things fell short of the need, but they successfully ensured the farm work including the growing of rice seedlings and transplanting as required by the Juche-based farming method.
The servicepersons, blue-collar and white-collar workers, students and dependent family members who turned out in response to the Party's order call for general mobilization in rice-transplanting rendered sincere assistance in farming, thus making a significant contribution to the completion of rice-transplanting in the most suitable time in the main areas across the country and the qualitative progress of overall farming in good time.
The agricultural workers and supporters to the rural districts all over the country once again demonstrated the true advantages of the Korean socialist system by displaying a high degree of beautiful traits of collectivism in the Songun era in the period of the farming campaign.
The proud successes registered in spring farming this year are a precious fruition of the wise leadership of the WPK. And they are manifestation of the steadfast spirit of devotedly defending the leader and the spirit of devotedly carrying through his policy displayed by the army and people who remain loyal to the Songun idea and leadership of Kim Jong Il and noble patriotism of all the agricultural workers and supporters determined to bring an autumn of bountiful crops to the country without fail.
And this is a demonstration of the might of the single-minded unity of the army and people of the DPRK who rise up like a mountain at the call of the Party and successfully fulfill its appeal, ready to go through fire and water, and convincing proof of the validity and vitality of the Party's policy in setting the agricultural front as the main front of socialist economic construction this year.
Pyongyang, June 16 (KCNA) -- Ambassador Ruben Perez Valdes and officials of the Cuban embassy here helped the DPRK-Cuba Friendship Hwasong Co-operative Farm in Ryongsong District, Pyongyang, in field work on June 15. While looking round the history room, the visitors were briefed on the farm which was associated with the leadership exploits of President Kim Il Sung and then weeded maize fields together with farmers who were hastening the immediate farm work.
Finally, some one with experience in sucessful collective farming, oh, wait...
At the break they conversed and sang songs with farmers, deepening friendly feelings. The ambassador said the friendly relations between the two countries were growing stronger day by day under the deep care of Fidel Castro Ruz and leader Kim Jong Il. He wished the farmers sizable fruits in agricultural production this year.
"Good luck, you'll need it"
Pyongyang, June 16 (KCNA) -- Great efforts have been channeled into the land management in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Kim Kwang Ju, a section chief of the Central Forestry Designing and Technology Institute under the Ministry of Land and Environment Conservation, was interviewed by KCNA on the occasion of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought which falls on June 17.
Damm, I meant to send a card
He said: Today the content to combat desertification comprises not only the dry areas but also all the lands degenerated by forest destruction. Land management has been raised as a pressing issue in the DPRK, a mountainous country which has limited arable land, no more than 17 percent of the territory, and thick population. In particular, the climate changes by abnormal high temperature phenomenon on the globe have brought about natural disasters such as landslide, flood, submersion and drought to the DPRK, too. For the recent ten-odd years, the country has had more than 1.5 million hectares of forest and not a small acreage of cultivated lands destructed or degenerated.
They're losing what little farm land they had
The DPRK government has formulated policies to manage land well and to make an effective use of it. And the sustained land management is guaranteed in the DPRK by various laws including the land law, environment protection law, land designing law, forest law and water resources law.
It has set up months of general mobilization for land management every spring and autumn to arouse all the people in the land management campaign such as afforestation, river improvement and land rezoning. As a result, over 130,000 hectares of forest have been created and hundreds of kilometers of rivers and streams improved every year.
The land rezoning projects have been undertaken according to annual plans as a state affair, with the result that some 293,700 hectares of paddy and non-paddy fields have been turned into large standardized fields and the arable land expanded over the last 7 years.
Taking small working farms and converting them into large collective farms. Nice move, blockheads
For a few years following the completion of the Kaechon-Lake Thaesong Waterway Project, gravity-fed channels extending 280-odd kilometers have been built, creating a safer environment for agricultural production. Along with this, the work for putting the management and utilization of land resources on a scientific and IT basis has been undertaken. Regular work for analyzing soil of each plot and surveying land erosion is carried on throughout the country once with an interval of 4-5 years.
The DPRK, a member nation of the Convention to Combat Desertification, will strengthen the international cooperation in the efforts to realize the sustained land management, Kim Kwang Ju stressed.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
14:34 ||
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#1
Juche-based farming method
and World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought
Somehow I think these are related, and not in the way the Glorious Leader would have us all think.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
06/17/2005 15:31
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#2
So this means that nobody has to send them any food this year right?
#4
"At the break they conversed and sang songs with farmers, deepening friendly feelings. The ambassador said the friendly relations between the two countries were growing stronger day by day under the deep care of Fidel Castro Ruz and leader Kim Jong Il."
I think I'm going to cry - that's so sweet. *sniff*
"He wished the farmers sizable fruits in agricultural production this year."
And I wish their leader sizeable hemorrhoids every day.
PARIS (AP) - Tom Cruise popped the question to Katie Holmes at the Eiffel Tower early Friday and then announced the news to the world - they're getting married. Now, back to our 24-7 coverage of the latest missing white girl.....
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
14:27 ||
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#1
The fun chemistry, aka temporary hormonal imbalance. This too, shall pass.
PARIS - Trust between the French and Americans has slumped to its lowest level in 17 years, more than two years after a bitter feud over the Iraq war, an opinion poll showed on Friday. The TNS-Sofres survey of 1,000 people in each country showed only 31 percent of French people have any "sympathy" for Americans, down from 39 percent in 2002.
Only 35 percent of Americans like the French, a drop from 50 percent in 2002, according to the poll, published in the Le Monde newspaper.
French President Jacques Chirac infuriated Washington and helped create anti-French feeling by his opposition to the Iraq war and his advocacy of a world in which the European Union would counterbalance U.S. power.
Americans retaliated by renaming French fries "freedom fries" and some even stopped buying French wine. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited France in February to help repair ties. She was greeted warmly and her visit was deemed successful.
The survey showed an overwhelming 70 percent of French people believe the United States is not a loyal ally. Fifty-six percent of Americans said France was not a reliable partner. French people with left-wing views are most likely to be hostile to Americans, the survey found. Left-wing French voters drove France's rejection last month of the EU constitution. Many who voted 'No' said they feared the charter would impose U.S.-style free-market economics on Europe.
In the United States, Democrats and the black community have a better image of France while 39 percent of Republicans said they do not like France. French people openly supported French-speaking Democrat John Kerry in last November's presidential election, infuriating President Bush's Republican supporters.
Are you kidding? We welcomed their support of him and made sure everyone knew about it.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
14:20 ||
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#1
What trust?
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 14:39
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Love it, Raj...too true.
I think the WashUpPost is being generous saying that "35% of Americans" still trust the Frogs.
Hatred of the French is the most universal sentiment I've found in the 2+ years since they put that fine Sabatier cutlery in our posterior.
Let's face it, the French weren't that popular here before they betrayed us...
#8
The lack of trust coefficient between the US and the French has fallen so low that it can only be expressed as a negative number times the square root of negative 1.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/17/2005 18:07
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KABUL, Afghanistan — Al Qaeda has ferried about half a dozen Arab agents into Afghanistan in the past three weeks, two of whom detonated themselves in homicide bombings in the south targeting a packed mosque and a convoy of U.S. troops, Afghanistan's defense minister said Friday.
Had to import Arab boomers, did they?
Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press he received intelligence that Usama bin Laden's terror group is regrouping and intends to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to Afghanistan. He also warned that the country could be in for several months of intense violence ahead of key legislative elections. "We have gotten reports here and there that they have entered — at least half a dozen of them," Wardak said. "The last report is that they came in just close to the time of the mosque attack."
The June 1 mosque blast killed 20 mourners at the funeral of a moderate cleric assassinated days earlier. That same day, a shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missile was fired at an American aircraft but missed.
On Monday, a homicide bomber drove up to a U.S. military vehicle in Kandahar and detonated himself, wounding four American soldiers.
"It looks like there has been a regrouping of Al Qaeda and they may have changed their tactics not only to concentrate on Iraq but also on Afghanistan," Wardak said over tea at his wood-paneled office next to the heavily guarded presidential compound. Authorities recovered the head of the mosque attacker and said he appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. Wardak said initial indications are that the second homicide attacker also was an Arab.
More than likely. Afghans have more sense.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
14:16 ||
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#1
The Afghan government would be wise to mobilize public opinion against this crap now before things start notching up.
WASHINGTON The Bush administration moved Friday to freeze the finances of Muhammad Yunis al-Ahmad, who is on a list of the most-wanted supporters of insurgent groups in Iraq. The Treasury Department's action means any bank accounts or financial assets belonging to him that are found in this country will be blocked. The government also is asking the United Nation's member countries to freeze al-Ahmad's assets. It's the latest effort by the administration to try to make it harder for insurgent groups in Iraq to get financial support. The department said al-Ahmad is currently a "financial facilitator" and "operational leader" of the New Regional Command of the New Baath Party. With the ouster of former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, the old Baath Party was dissolved and another formed under new leadership.
"The Iraqi government has charged al-Ahmad with providing funding, leadership and support to several insurgent groups conducting attacks against the Iraqi people, the interim Iraqi government, Iraqi National Guard, the Iraqi police and coalition forces," the department said in a release.
Al-Ahmad is on a list, released earlier this year by the U.S. Central Command, of the most-wanted supporters of insurgent groups in Iraq. A $1 million reward has been offered for information leading to his capture. The department said al-Ahmad was a "high-ranking" member of the Saddam's old Baath Party in Iraq and officials believe he has fled to Syria. Al-Ahmad is a key figure in the reconstituted Baath party, the government alleged. It said al-Ahmad is a deputy to Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, the leader of the New Baath Party. Al-Douri, a member of Saddam's inner circle who is already on the government's terror-financing blocking list, is also leader of the New Regional Command.
We haven't heard from Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri in a long time. Wasn't he really sick with cancer, or something?
This article starring:
IZZAT IBRAHIM AL DURI
Iraqi Insurgency
MUHAMAD YUNIS AL AHMED
Iraqi Insurgency
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
14:11 ||
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Arabic Channel Al Jazeera said it would air Friday a new video tape from al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in which he criticized U.S. plans for Middle East reform.
We haven't heard from him in a while.
It said that in the video Zawahri also attacked the pro-Western governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
The television briefly aired footage of the Egyptian right-hand man of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wearing a white turban with a rifle by his side, but no audio could be heard. Al Jazeera said it would later air Friday fuller excerpts of the videotape.
Must be sweeps week
Zawahri and bin Laden, believed to be hiding in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, have eluded capture since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities carried out by al Qaeda.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
13:40 ||
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#1
Why not the Big O? Why did he send in a second-stringer? Has he given up on public appearances?
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 15:17
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#2
perhaps he gave up breathing...
Posted by: Mac Suirtain ||
06/17/2005 15:18
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#3
Perfect timing actually.
We got the Dems and the Left clamoring about the Downing Street Memo where instead of telling all the analysts and intelligence people who were interviewed by the Senate panel to fix intelligence, we have the Administration telling some British spymaster.
On top of that we have Dick Durbin's (my home state senator and yes I sent him a note) comments on the treatment of Al-Qaeda at Gitmo.
Now we'll have Zawahri come and tie it all together. I'm sure he'l be making a Jihadist call to fight the infidels and the new governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thereby making those calling for a deadline on when to leave looking like useful fools giving aid and comfort.
NAIROBI, 17 June 2005 — US and British agents are now in Kenya tracking members of two Al-Qaeda-linked extremist groups thought to have infiltrated the country from Somalia to set up terrorism cells, a senior Kenyan official said yesterday. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said the spies had come to the east African nation to follow up intelligence suggesting that operatives from Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiya and Al-Takfir Wal-Hijra had crossed the border recently.
"We have agents here from the American government, from the British government and other governments who are here working," he told reporters at a news conference in Nairobi.
"They come, they go, they follow their leads." "We have been investigating a lot of these so-called cells, so-called organizations and so-called groupings," Mutua said. "A lot of them are just suspicions and hearsay and this is one of the cases we are looking into to find out if there is any authenticity (to it)," he said.
An official with the British embassy in Nairobi declined to comment specifically on Mutua's remarks but confirmed that Britain and Kenya were now actively cooperating on counter-terrorism. "I can confirm that we are in contact with Kenyan authorities and we cooperate where possible," the official said.
The two groups in question are both suspected of having strong ties to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, which has claimed responsibility for two deadly suicide attacks in Kenya. In August 1998, two car bombs went off almost simultaneously outside the embassies of the United States in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in neighboring Tanzania, killing 224 people and injured around 5,000. Then, in November 2002, a vehicle packed with explosives drove into the lobby of an Israeli-owned hotel near the port city of Mombasa and detonated, killing 15 people and the three presumed suicide bombers. Both attacks, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner leaving Mombasa on the same day as the hotel bombing, were claimed by Al-Qaeda, prompting foreign governments to issue terrorism alerts for Kenya and east Africa.
Washington says that the estimated 2,000-strong Al-Ittihad Al-Islamiya, which wants to impose Islamic law throughout lawless Somalia, are linked to Al-Qaeda and have a presence in Kenya and Ethiopia. Al-Takfir Wal-Hijra is now believed to have cells in Mogadishu from where it is looking to expand, according to intelligence officials who believe lawless Somalia is a potential breeding ground and base for terrorists.
"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious. "
In 2003, a UN panel said the country's arms free-for-all makes it a convenient springboard for groups such as Al-Qaeda to launch attacks in the region.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
13:32 ||
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AL-ARISH, Egypt - Egyptian forces swept the Sinai peninsula Friday for men suspected of deadly October 2004 resort bombings, sparking clashes that left a policeman and a gunman dead, security sources said. Acting on a tip, 1,000 police launched an operation in the centre of the Red Sea peninsula and were met with armed resistance from the suspects and the Bedouin tribes protecting them, the sources said.
One of suspects targeted by the raid, Salem Kheidr al-Shnub, was killed as well as one Egyptian policeman, Fathi Mohammed Abdel Hamid, the sources said. Three other policemen were wounded.
According to official figures, 34 people, including several Israeli tourists, were killed and more than 10 wounded on October 7 in triple bomb attacks on the Hilton Hotel Taba and two other neighbouring resorts. The Egyptian interior ministry had said that several of the suspects were killed or arrested in previous raids.
Security services detained hundreds of people in the Sinai region following the bombings, sparking a string of protests from detainees' relatives and criticism from rights groups.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
13:30 ||
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Iraq's al Qaeda wing denied on Friday that several people arrested in Spain and Iraq this week were its members, according to an Internet statement. U.S. forces said on Thursday they had detained a senior associate of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, while Spain announced on Wednesday the arrest of 11 suspected Zarqawi followers. "We've become used to the lies of the crusaders and their followers. Every now and then they hold a Muslim and say they have captured an aide to Sheikh Zarqawi," the statement said. "Spain claimed it has arrested a group of Zarqawi aides. Each Muslim, now is suspected of belonging to al Qaeda," said the statement signed by the group's spokesman Abu Maysarah al-Iraqi. "In Mosul, the enemies of God claimed to have arrested a senior official and aide to Zarqawi...We tell you that your brothers are well...and continuing their jihad," it added.
OK, we got the right guy then.
The statement could not be immediately authenticated. U.S. forces said they had captured Mohammed Khalif Shaiker, also known as Abu Talha or the emir of Mosul, on Tuesday in Iraq's third largest city. Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest bombings in Iraq. In December last year, U.S. forces in Mosul announced the capture of one of Shaiker's deputies, Abdul Aziz Sadun Ahmed Hamduni, also known as Abu Ahmed, and the next day seized another deputy.
This article starring:
ABDUL AZIZ SADUN AHMED HAMDUNI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU AHMED
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU MAISARAH AL IRAQI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI
al-Qaeda in Iraq
ABU TALHA
al-Qaeda in Iraq
MOHAMED KHALIF SHAIKER
al-Qaeda in Iraq
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
13:27 ||
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#1
Right. They belong to a different gang of thugs.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 13:34
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Enemies of God? Lol? Hell me and God are like that! We do lunch every day, breakfast too, I will admit that God's a tough dinner date tho, very A list, luckily he's got this weird trip of being in 3 or 6 fine parties at once. Very strange but very, very hip.
#1
Not only that but why should any country adhear to the GC and treat our men humanely if there is no downside? If we will treat theirs humanely no matter what?
Al-Q regularly targets, beheads, tortures, and kills civilians with impunity because they are not being held accountable. Why should they stop when , even if they are caught, they get treated like royalty at Club GITMO?
(Also I think this belongs on the 'Opinion' page :).
There are unconfirmed reports that a soldier from the Tri-State kidnapped in April in Iraq has been killed, WLWT has learned.
Pfc. Matt Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, a member of the 724th Transportation Company, was captured April 9. His convoy was attacked by gunmen using rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons.
According to military representatives close to the Maupin family who spoke to WLWT, sources are reporting that the Al Jazeera TV network has a videotape of Maupin being shot.
The military has not changed Maupin's status, and the report of his death has not been confirmed.
A tape showing Maupin being held by guerillas was released about a week after Maupin was reported missing.
Edited for new stuff:
WASHINGTON — After a barrage of criticism, Sen. Dick Durbin went to the Senate floor Thursday evening to repeat a controversial statement he made two days earlier and insist he said nothing objectionable. In remarks first expressed on the Senate floor late Tuesday and then re-read verbatim on Thursday evening, Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, read the report of an FBI agent who described treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Among the descriptions, the report noted one case in which a detainee was held in such cold temperatures that he shivered, another in which a prisoner was held in heat passing 100 degrees, one in which prisoners were left in isolation so long they fouled themselves and one where a prisoner was chained to the floor and forced to listen to loud rap music.
Following those remarks, the Illinois senator clarified that he was not comparing U.S. soldiers to Pol Pot, Nazis or Soviet guards, but was "attributing this form of interrogation to repressive regimes such as those that I note. "If this indeed occurred, it does not represent American values. It does not represent what our country stands for, it is not the sort of conduct we would ever condone ... and that is the point I was making. Now, sadly, we have a situation here where some in the right-wing media have said that I have been insulting men and women in uniform. Nothing could be further from truth," Durbin said, following up under questioning by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that he does not know if the interrogators cited in the FBI report were Americans or not.
Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he had inquired as to whether the FBI's descriptions are true. "I was trained as a lawyer, many years as a prosecutor dealt with the bureau, have the highest respect. But I do not accept at face value everything they put down on paper until I make certain it can be corroborated and substantiated. "And for you to come to the floor with just that fragment of a report and then unleash the words 'the Nazis,' unleash the word 'gulag,' unleash 'Pol Pot,' I don't know how many remember that chapter, it seems to me that was a grievous error in judgment and leaves open to the press of the world to take those three extraordinary chapters in world history and try to intertwine it with what has taken place, allegedly, at Guantanamo," Warner said.
The military operates under strict guidelines that are widely distributed. Only mild non-injurious physical contact is allowed, such as light pushing. Sleep deprivation is used along with stress positions, but they are limited in time. One knowledgeable official familiar with the memo cited by Durbin as well as other memos said the FBI agent made no such allegation and that the memo described only someone chained to the floor. Anything beyond that is simply an interpretation, the official said.
"Fake, but accurate", Senator? Where did you get those memos, Lucy Ramirez pass them to you at the Chicago Stock Show?
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
12:58 ||
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#1
Yeah, c'mon, Dicky, give us the memo. Show me the money, Dicky!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 13:31
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#3
Anything I say to him would likely result in a visit from the Feds.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 15:20
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Oh, and since this touches on a recurring subject:
Any bets on when he'll be removed from his post? Or when Democrats will criticize him AT ALL?
He's the "No. 2 Democrat in the Senate" -- hard to say he's just some fringer withot any following.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 15:22
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Dicky Turban may just be the one to defecate on himself if this spins out of his control. He was just looking for a meme he could hang his political hat on with the Blue imbeciles in SecondCityLand, methinks. I hope he lives to regret it, since he's now a traitorous asshole, crossing the line giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
#7
The Chicago Tribune, which supported Durbin in his last election, dropped the hammer in an editorial this morning. Their conclusion?
We know what Durbin thinks about the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners. So what's the proper treatment of our coverage-hungry senior senator when he displaces the ever-present microphone long enough to insert his foot in his mouth? Ignore him. That would be torture.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005 17:28
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"Now, sadly, we have a situation here where some in the right-wing media have said that I have been insulting men and women in uniform. Nothing could be further from truth,"
Mmmm-hmmm. Funny how so many of them seem to be insulted by those remarks.
#2
The bombs lack stabilising fins, making them far from precise.
They are a freaken area effect weapon moron! You drop them from 20 ft and hit within 10 ft of your aiming point and an area some 75ft is covered. Close enough for government work, as the saying goes.
#3
American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.
Bush lied . . . and bad guys fried!
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005 13:42
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The international community hates any weapon aimed at the enemies of freedom.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 14:38
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"the gel sticks to structures and to its victims"
VICTIMS?? You mean the guys wearing enemy uniforms, bearing arms, firing from prepared positions at coalition troops? These were not victims, they were TARGETS.
How do they expect anyone to take them seriously when they automatically slant the language of their reporting?
#6
I'm sorry, #2 and #5 together you made the point the article soft-pedaled - "they are far from precise", meaning we aimed them at targets, but napalmed innocent civilians , knowing full well this would happen, and not caring, because these were third-world muslim innocents.
Yeah, that's what they meant to say.
Besides, see #4.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 15:36
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These were not victims, they were TARGETS.
Or, to use another appropriate description, "the enemy".
#8
...a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.
However, the British loved incendiaries. Just ask the citizens of Lubeck, Rostock, Hamburg, Dresden. Now we get all worked up over tactical use in direct combat support as opposed to area bombing of cities.
#10
I'm sorry, can someone explain to me the reason I should actually care about the usual load of BS from the left in the House of Commons? Given the recent statments by Senator Durban (sp?) I think we have issues of treason and sedition to deal with here at home without bothering a rip about some socialist loon in London.
Posted by: Just About Enough! ||
06/17/2005 22:59
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Just About, a great many Rantburg readers are neither Americans nor resident in the States. Quite a few of them, in fact, are British subjects. So you don't have to care, but they may well do.
DUNBAR, W.Va. (AP) — Larry Gaynor and his brother had to cut their latest fishing trip short after a black bear ate their food and guzzled their beer. Gaynor, 67, and his brother, Billy Bob Gaynor, 53, were camping at Summit Lake near Richwood on Friday when the bear wandered into their campsite at about 9 p.m.
Of course his name is Billy Bob, it is West "By God" Virginia
Hearing a noise, they looked outside their tent and saw the bear with its mouth clamped on their cooler. Larry Gaynor said the bear dragged the cooler 30 yards into the woods and flung it against a tree, scattering a case of Coors Light. "He only drank three cans," Larry he said. "He would've drank all of them if it would've been Budweiser."
"Course, if it had'a been Bud, we'd a had to fight him fur it"
Billy Bob Gaynor said the bear ate all of their food, so they returned to Dunbar the next day.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
11:55 ||
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Ironically, the beer in the cooler was this stuff.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005 12:24
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Now there's an interesting marketing idea--give them bears some assorted 12- or 24-packs and see which beer they prefer.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/17/2005 13:26
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Steve - my very first thought: "from the land of sky blue waters"....and beaten again by the AOS! Damn!
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 19:51
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Back in the 60's here on Guam, when commercials were as long as 15-30 minutes, SMOKIE THE BEAR and GENTLE BEN were favs of us local kids. POTUS Teddy Roosevelt is famous for wanting the Bear as a national symbol of America - gentle and playful when left alone, absolutely fearless, ferocious, and invincible when riled, with no known natural or superior enemies except man or other bears. Maybe its time for America, Incorporated to make the Bear as a the next pop cultural icon again ala SPUDS, BENJI, "CLYDE" THE ORANGUTAN, and now the Geico GECKO!?
A local father and son have been convicted on fraud charges, but documents obtained by Local 4 suggest that the two may have been encouraging terrorist activity.
Ahmad and Musa Jebril , of Dearborn, were convicted of 42 counts, including fraud and conspiracy.
Their attorneys have asked for a lenient sentence, but prosecutors said the men do not deserve a break.
A 10-page document suggested that the men were encouraging anti-American training for a holy war, the station reported.
On Nov. 13, 1995, four Americans, including Jim Allen, of Michigan, were killed when a car bomb exploded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
A short time after the bombing, CNN received a fax that praised the attack. Federal agents said the fax was sent from the Jebrils' Dearborn home, Local 4 reported.
Authorities said they also seized a family photo album from the home showing Ahmad Jebril as a teenager, dressed as a mujahid, or fighter of a Muslim holy war. According to a memo, agents also found in the home a framed emblem of Hamas, a known terrorist organization, the station reported.
Federal agents said Ahmad Jebril, with his father's permission, would teach radical Islamic classes in the living room of the home. Ahmad Jebril is also accused of operating an anti-American Web site urging a holy war, the station reported.
Attorney Richard Lustig, who represents Ahmad Jebril, believes his client is being targeted.
"I'm taken aback by the personal conduct that's going in this case against my client and his father, and especially the letter," said Lustig.
The Jebrils have not been prosecuted for any terror-related charges and were not believed to have played a role in the Saudi bombing.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:45 ||
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A short time after the bombing, CNN received a fax that praised the attack. Federal agents said the fax was sent from the Jebrils' Dearborn home, Local 4 reported...
Ahmad Jebril is also accused of operating an anti-American Web site urging a holy war, the station reported.
Hello? Aid-and-comfort? Helloooo? Federal prosecutors? Treason mean anything to you? It's in that little-read appendix to US law called the Constitution; you may have heard about it.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 12:20
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"No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
We're a long way from those standards, unless you can make them squeal.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/17/2005 12:24
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Faxing nasty boomer rants from home? Jihadi web sites? Sounds like a family of many talented members including jihadi fraudsters and would-be rocket scientists! Convicted just in time for Father's Day as the two in California were charged! Good week's work I'd say.
A stick-up man tried to rob a Louisiana beauty school — and ended up getting an extremely nasty makeover. Cops say Jared Gipson, 24, entered Blalock's Beauty College in Shreveport at noon Tuesday and announced a robbery. "I thought it was someone just playing, but then I saw that big old gun," manager Dianne Mitchell told The Times of Shreveport. "He said, 'Get down, big mama.'"
The masked robber ordered the people in the room — 18 to 20 students and teachers — to lie on the floor, leading some to think they were going to be killed. "You'll be the first to go," he allegedly growled to one crying woman. After collecting everyone's money, the gunman pushed the school's sole male employee, Abram Bishop, toward the back of the room — but then turned and began to run out the door. That's when Mitchell stuck out her leg. The robber tripped over it, dropped the gun and slammed into a wall. Bishop immediately jumped on his back, forcing the stick-up man down to the floor. "Get that sucker!" yelled Mitchell, and the dozen and a half women present grabbed whatever they could get their hands on — curling irons, chairs, a table leg — and piled on.
I've seen the video, 20 very large, angry black women. I wouldn't want to make them angry
"They just whooped the hell out of him," said school owner Sharon Blalock. Crying in pain, bleeding and having soiled his pants, the gunman tried to crawl away, but the angry women held on to his legs and kept hitting him until police arrived.
Gipson was charged with armed robbery and taken to LSU Hospital in a neck brace, having suffered multiple lacerations. No one else was seriously hurt. "He got what he deserved," said student Renae Collier.
Gipson's gun turned out to be unloaded. "He walked into the wrong place at the wrong time," one police officer told KTBS-TV of Shreveport.
After he stopped laughing
"You can tell any prospective students: Blalock's Beauty College has got your back," said Mitchell.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
11:39 ||
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"You should be killed and your body thrown to the pigs!" was the daily curse that mothers of children killed in last September's Beslan school attack hurled at the sole surviving hostage-taker, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, when he went on trial in a Vladikavkaz court last month.
Yet as Kulayev's version of events inside the school unfolded, it contradicted the version put forward by the authorities in crucial details. As the hearings continued, the women's attitude began to change. After having heard officials publicly lie about the number of hostages inside the school and make other contradictory statements during the crisis, the mothers said they had no confidence in the prosecutor's version of events and found Kulayev's testimony more plausible. Some even started to show signs of sympathy for the suspected terrorist as he told his story of the storming of Beslan's School No. 1, in which more than 330 hostages, many of them children, died. "They've dumped the blame onto this one man; they've found a scapegoat," said a voice from the crowd of relatives and witnesses at the North Ossetian Supreme Court as a handcuffed Kulayev was led past them on Tuesday.
The relatives say they believe this haggard and gloomy young man, who avoids looking them in the eyes and speaks in stumbling Russian from the defendant's steel cage, is their only hope to learn the truth about what happened to their loved ones. They say they are even prepared to ask the judge for leniency or a pardon, if Kulayev can tell them the truth. "We need him to tell the truth. And we need for no force to be used against him by interested institutions. ... We need to be confident that he won't die of a heart attack or fall down the stairs," Susanna Dudiyeva, who leads the activist group Committee of Beslan Mothers, said in court Tuesday.
At a hearing last week, Kulayev testified that a bomb that had been set up by the hostage-takers detonated on Sept. 3 after Russian snipers shot a gunman who was keeping his foot on the detonators. This contradicted what the authorities said, which was that a bomb in the school gym, where the more than 1,200 hostages were being held, went off after it fell from a basketball hoop. The official version had the bomb going off after tape fixing it to the hoop came loose because of heat and humidity, causing it to fall. The explosion set off the storming of the building by security services and local vigilantes, in which hundreds of hostages died in a hail of bullets and explosions.
Kulayev was among a group of 33 gunmen who had been sent by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev and had arrived at the school early on the morning of Sept. 1. He told the court that there were other gunmen inside who opened fire into the crowd of children and parents in the schoolyard. He testified that the gunmen had so much arms and ammunition that they could not have brought it all with them. Kulayev's account tallied with claims by Beslan residents that the terrorists had prepared the raid well in advance and hidden supplies of weapons at the school. Federal officials have denied that such a weapons cache existed, though several witnesses among the hostages said it did. Kulayev's statements also contradicted the official account that there were only 33 attackers, and that none of them managed to flee the school.
Prosecutors say they are not surprised by Kulayev's revelations. "This is his line of defense," Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel, the lead prosecutor in the case, said last week. But for those who have lost relatives, Kulayev's testimony appears to fit with their suspicions of a coverup by the authorities, whom they blame as much as the terrorists for the bloody conclusion to the hostage-taking drama. "I will claim all the compensation from the state. What use is there in seeking damages from Kulayev?" Alexander Gumetsev, whose daughter was killed in the school, said at the courthouse on Tuesday.
In total, 1,343 people are registered as plaintiffs in the case, in which Kulayev faces life in prison if convicted of all charges. He has denied all but one charge: participating in an illegal armed formation, the legal term the state uses for rebel fighters in Chechnya. After survivors and hostages' relatives showed irritation with Kulayev's long hair on the first day of the trial, Kulayev's head was shaved. During the trial, Kulayev said that his testimony in court was different from what he was reported as saying during the investigation because of his poor knowledge of Russian and that he had signed interrogation protocols without reading them.
Dudiyeva asked him Tuesday whether he had been beaten during the investigation. "How come they haven't been beating me? Of course, I was beaten," he said.
What followed, no one predicted. "If you tell the truth, we are ready to appeal for a pardon for you," Dudiyeva said. "Just tell the truth about what you know."
Prosecutor Maria Semisynova reacted by saying in a mocking tone that maybe Kulayev's status in the trial should be changed from that of defendant to victim. "Who set up the booby traps and hung the bombs in the gym that exploded and killed your children?" Semisynova said. "Were these people not terrorists?"
Also on Tuesday, the plaintiffs announced that they would demand to have Kulayev's court-appointed defense lawyer, Albert Pliyev, changed, citing Pliyev's inertness in defending his client. In an interview with Izvestia last week, Pliyev said that he had agreed to take Kulayev's case after being begged to do so by the head of North Ossetian lawyers' association. Other lawyers in the republic had refused to defend Kulayev.
Another witness and mother of one of the children held hostage, Ella Dzasarova, told the court Thursday that she saw Kulayev run around the gym on the first day of the hostage-taking, shouting curses at hostages and threatening to shoot them, the agency reported.
Two psychiatrists who offered differing expert opinions in another high-profile North Caucasus court case, the murder trial of Colonel Yury Budanov, said they did not believe that survivors of the Beslan attack were suffering from "Stockholm syndrome," a condition that can occur when hostages come to sympathize with their captors and blame the authorities for their plight. "For this to happen, people need to put themselves in the place of a hostage-taker, to understand his motives," said Lyubov Vinogradova, a director at the Independent Psychiatric Association. "This is probably not the case at the Vladikavkaz court."
The Serbsky Institute of Psychiatry's Tamara Pechernikova, a senior psychiatrist who during the Soviet era was involved in the cases of several prominent dissidents, said that the plaintiffs were pursuing the only available, and absolutely rational, strategy for learning the truth about the events that affected their lives so tragically. "Kulayev is the only person whom they believe may tell them something in the court that would allow them to demand punishment of all those guilty in what happened," she said. "After his sentence is announced -- and it will most probably be a long one -- these victims will demand more punishment for him," she said.
This article starring:
Alexander Gumetsev, whose daughter was killed in the school
Colonel Yury Budanov
Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel
Kulayev's court-appointed defense lawyer, Albert Pliyev
Lyubov Vinogradova, a director at the Independent Psychiatric Association
mother of one of the children held hostage, Ella Dzasarova
Natalya Salamova, whose daughter -- a teacher at the school -- died in the attack
NUR PASHI KULAIEV
Chechnya
Prosecutor Maria Semisynova
Roza Alikova, who lost two sisters and three nephews in the attack
Serbsky Institute of Psychiatry's Tamara Pechernikova
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:39 ||
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Dmitri Kozak, presidential envoy to the North Caucasus that includes Chechnya, has told Vladimir Putin in a report that his policy of nominating rulers in the region could spawn the chaos it is meant to prevent, the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily reported Thursday.
Kozak, who was sent to the North Caucasus after the Beslan school seizure, accused regional leaders of handing out top jobs to their kinsmen. "As a result, the whole system of checks and balances has been destroyed which is leading to the spread of corruption," he said.
Many analysts have said the Kremlin's policy of opting to support a single group over others could be fatal for stability in a region that depends on a balance of clan interests.
The report, leaked from Kozak's circle and confirmed by his aide, amounts to a highly unusual warning that Kremlin policies in the tinderbox region are bound for disaster.
It came about six months after the adoption of a new law that cancels direct elections in the Russian Federation and allows Putin to appoint regional leaders directly.
At the time, officials said the new law would allow the Kremlin to break the back of criminal clans. But Putin has chosen to keep leaders like Ingushetia's Murat Zyazikov — blamed by the opposition for allowing the 10-year Chechen war to spread into his region, Reuters points out.
He also kept the clan surrounding North Ossetian leader Alexander Dzasokhov — blamed by survivors of the Beslan hostage-taking last September for failing to stop the tragedy that killed 330 people — in power after the veteran leader resigned.
Kozak's report said some regional leaders were so corrupt they were alienating their people. "The dominating clan-corporate groups ... have no interest in creating mechanisms that would allow feedback and lead to open dialogue with people," he said.
"The arbitrary nature of the authorities has created social apathy in a large section of the population... In many regional areas the authorities do not have any public support."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:37 ||
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An underground bunker with a communications network was discovered in a house where militants had been hiding during a special operation in the Chechen village of Novye Atagi.
"Specialists are getting ready to blow up the foundation of the building to let troops enter the underground premises," a participant in the special operation told RIA Novosti.
According to him, the dwelling house in Novye Atagi was a real fortress. "A tank had to shoot three times to break the meter thick fence," he said.
The owner of the destroyed building gave the plan of the building and underground communications to the law enforcement bodies, however, the plan does not correspond to what we saw, he added.
The special operation in Novye Atagi (the Shalinsky district) began yesterday. Militants were blocked in the building on Thursday.
The Chechen Interior Ministry said: "The militants put up armed resistance. 140 servicemen of the Russian Interior Ministry and ten armored vehicles were sent to Novye Atagi."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:33 ||
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It's always hard to sort out the fact in this stuff though the find as described is something new in the press coverage of what's been going on in Chechnya. The moojahdean are not that numerous and if this bunker was the goods as advertised it is a significant find. The poor bugger who provided the inaccurate house/bunker plans is probably more than a little under the weather today.
LOS ANGELES — A Pakistani military-parts dealer who was arrested outside a Rosarito Beach restaurant this week and deported to the United States at the request of U.S. officials made his first appearance in federal court yesterday. Arif Ali Durrani, 55, appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Nagle and was ordered to be held without bail until his trial, in part because his ties to Mexico and Pakistan make him a flight risk, Nagle said. He'll be arraigned Monday.
Durrani, convicted of illegally exporting HAWK missile parts to Iran nearly 20 years ago, faces charges of illegally exporting components for U.S. fighter jet engines to foreign buyers in 1994.
He was part of the Iran-Contra arms deal.
David Wales, resident agent in charge of the Ventura office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said government officials here have been "on the lookout" for Durrani and seeking his return for six years on the jet-engine charges. Although Durrani was known to be living in Mexico, he couldn't be extradited because he's not a U.S. citizen, Wales noted. "It was basically just a waiting game until the Mexican authorities picked him up," Wales said.
Mexican officials, who said Durrani was in their country illegally, arrested Durrani in Rosarito Beach on Sunday, and on Wednesday they put him on a flight from Mexico City en route to Pakistan via Los Angeles. He was arrested by federal agents when the flight arrived at Los Angeles International Airport.
Oops, I always get those "direct" and "non-stop" flights mixed up as well. I'm sure it was an innocent mistake by the Mexican officals.
The indictment, which dates from 1999, alleges Durrani's now-defunct company, Lonestar Aerospace in Ventura, illegally exported 150 compressor blades for the General Electric J85 military aircraft engine to foreign customers in 1994. The J85 engine powered the F-5E "Tiger II" fighter jet and the U.S. T-38 "Talon" trainer aircraft. The compressor blades for this engine are classified as "defense articles" by the United States, making their export subject to strict controls.
Like I said yesterday, up to his old tricks
In 1987, Durrani was found guilty of illegally exporting guidance systems for the HAWK anti-aircraft missile from the United States to Iran. Durrani served more than five years in prison and was released in September 1992.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
11:31 ||
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Jim Miller explains:
At least on the news side. Who says so? Well, I've said so for years. And Howard Kurtz, who writes on the media for the Washington Post, agrees with me.
During my six years as a reporter in the Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau, my opinions were nearly always in opposition to the line laid down by the Journal's conservative editorial page, and the same held for most of the other reporters I knew, too.
What to make of the fact that our most important business newspaper has mostly leftist reporters? It adds, as I have said, an interesting tension to that newspaper. But it also shows how hard it is for a newspaper, any newspaper, to recruit reporters who will cover politics in a balanced way.
#1
Nearly all journalists are liberal to leftist. The more conservative papers simply keep them on a short leash with strict oversight. If left to themselves, you couldn't tell the difference between the OC Register and the LA Times.
Judge Pedraz, ie the guy who wants to trial American soldiers involved in the death of a Spanish journalist at the Palestine Hotel during the last stages of OIF
Now he is allowing ETA terrorist De Juana Chaos to walk free (but Spanish DA is appealing). De Juana Chaos had been sentenced to three thousand years for many, many, many acts of terrorism. He has purged eighteen. But by using some pitfalls of Spanish law like the top on a penalty and discounting for having taken univeristy courses De Juana Chaos has been able to ask for liberation. Except that it appears that several of the term reducing steps of De Juana Chaos never existed. And except that while in jail he has continued activities for ETA thus voiding the effect of whatever term reducing activities he performed while in jail.
And De Juana Chaos is no ordinary terrorist: after the assasination of a young man and his wife (leaving two small daughters) he said: "I like to see the pain-difformed faces of the family", he is a fervent partisan of an alliance between ETA and the islamists, and a partisan of ETA causing a big bombing, one with hundreds or even thousands of victims. Several failed attempts those last years.
This is the guy, judge Pedraz, wants and when say wants I do not mean because the law ties his hands, it doesn't, but because he likes the idea. It says a LOT about that judge who wants to trial American soldiers.
(1) The journalist himself commented on TV, just hours before his death, that the hotel was being used by Baathist officials and armed elements. That made it a legitimate target. And according to Geneva it was the duty of the journalists to evacuate the hotel if at all possible instead of, by their presence, interfering in retaliatory fire by Americans against any attack or artillery spotting from the hotel
Note on Spanish, French and possibly most European judiciaries.
In European countries the people has no say direct and indirect (ie nominated by President and validated by Senate) over judges nominations. Judges cannot be removed by the political power suposedly to preserve their independence. I will pass on the indirect ways for influencing them. The interesting point is that French and Spanish judges become judges by passing an exam on law. The N best performers (N being fixed by the budgetary needs) enter a special school for judges but graduation from this school is automatic or nearly automatic (you rellay need to spend your scholarity being drunk for n,ot graduating) if you have entered it. Once there the candidates are under the supervision of professors and senior judges but they don't have the power of expelling a candidate for being a complete moonbat (that would be, shock horror, political) just giving him bad eveluations who would force him to take an unapalatable post in a god forsaken town when he leaves academy instead of the prestigious ones leading to Supreme Court (in French system the best pupil picks first, then the second and so on). It is also of interest to know that appliants to Judge school are young and unfiltered (they are graduates in law not senior lawyers) be it about opinions or about experience of their acting.
So a guy becomes judge without the people having a say on his nomination and then he cannot be removed by the people whatever shocking are his decisions: he is above the people. And even above the law, since he will not be sanctionned if his decisions are not conformant (they will be reverted by a higher court but he will not be punished for it) and even if he does something illegal (like filtering elements of the case to the press thus vilating the presumption of innocence) the sanctions are usualy limited to the judge being displaced to a more unpalatable town.
U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a new offensive on Friday near the Syrian border in western Iraq, killing at least 30 suspected insurgents, the U.S. Marines said.
The purpose of Operation Spear is to destroy a safe haven for insurgents and foreign fighters near the Iraq-Syrian border in Karabila, in the huge, volatile Anbar province, according to the military. About 1,000 troops -- including U.S. Marines and sailors and Iraqi soldiers -- are involved.
Insurgents fired on U.S. and Iraqi forces with small arms, machine guns, rockets, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, the military said. Coalition forces fired tank rounds, machine gun fire and 81 mm mortar rounds.
War planes dropped 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions on insurgent targets and set up an explosive line charge intended to clear routes of roadside bombs and vehicle-borne makeshift bombs.
Two U.S. Marines were wounded when their amphibious assault vehicle struck a mine in the southern part of the city, U.S. military sources said. A medical evacuation chopper carried away three injured civilians, but the wounds are not believed to be critical.
Marines encountered several car bombs rigged to explode as they approached Karabila Friday morning, said Col. Stephen Davis, commander of Regimental Combat Team-2, 2nd Marine Division. The Marines destroyed each bomb in controlled explosions, Col. Davis said.
Karabila, just a few miles from Qaim east of the Syrian border, is the same town in which Marines fought with insurgents about a week ago, on June 11, killing about 40 insurgents, the military said.
The U.S. military suspects there are about 100 foreign fighters in this city of 60,000, Davis said. Many of the civilians have fled the city, including women and children who were seen crossing the Euphrates River early Friday, he said.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have launched several offensives in the area in recent weeks aimed at stopping the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.
Earlier this month, an Islamist Web site posted the names of 390 foreign fighters it said have been killed in Iraq.
The site said that the greatest number of foreign fighters came from Saudi Arabia, followed by Syria and Kuwait.
CNN is unable to verify the information, but other Islamist Web sites have posted similar figures.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Alston said Thursday that coalition troops are learning lessons from two recent deadly attacks involving infiltration of Iraqi security forces.
Suicide bombers made their way onto two Iraqi bases, killing 23 soldiers at a dining facility at an Iraqi army post in Khalis on Wednesday and three Wolf Brigade police commandos in Baghdad on Saturday.
In the Saturday killings, Alston said the attacker was "a murderer who ... had found a way to get credentials ... and then he used those credentials to get the access that he did and to perform that deed."
Regarding the bombing at the Iraqi base on Wednesday, Alston said the bomber was "an impostor wearing Iraqi Army clothes, going into a restaurant, sitting down at a table waiting for more officers to come in so that he could ... cause as much death and destruction as he could."
Alston said the attack "speaks to a need to improve force protection procedures around these facilities."
A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque Friday afternoon near Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but the blast ignited two fuel containers and caused significant damage.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:15 ||
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War planes dropped 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions on insurgent targets and set up an explosive line charge intended to clear routes of roadside bombs and vehicle-borne makeshift bombs.
#3
About 1,000 troops -- including U.S. Marines and sailors Sailors? Aren't they supposed to drive ships? I didn't think there were many of those in the middle of the desert, but I s'pose I could be wrong. ;-)
A radical organisation of Christian converts to Islam with close links to the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group has emerged in the Philippines, raising fears of a new cycle of terrorist attacks, possibly suicide bombings.
The most senior Philippine security official sounded the alert as the Government set up a taskforce to investigate intelligence that Jemaah Islamiah and Abu Sayyaf are recruiting suicide bombers in the country's south.
The new intelligence suggests the two terrorist groups are also recruiting disaffected members of another group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is involved in peace negotiations with the national government.
"Abu Sayyaf has succeeded in networking itself with Jemaah Islamiah and even al-Qaeda," said Norberto Gonzales, national security adviser to President Gloria Arroyo. "Rajah Sulaiman group is an organisation of Christian converts that has established links to Abu Sayyaf [and] its operation is under the control of Abu Sayyaf."
Suicide bombings had been used by Jemaah Islamiah but were rare for Filipino terrorist groups, he said. "In the case of the converts, we are looking at this seriously. Martyrdom is very strong in the Catholic faith," he said, speaking of potential suicide bomber recruits. Abu Sayyaf appeared focused on the cleansing of infidels, and there "will be new attempts at conversion".
The Rajas Sulaiman Group claimed responsibility for bombing the SuperFerry 14 in Manila Harbour on February 26 last year, killing more than 100 people. The group member Redondo Cain Delloso is in jail awaiting trial for the bombing.
Mr Gonzales told the Herald the role of Filipino terrorists had historically been to provide training venues, not to export terrorists. But recent intelligence on marine terrorism from those in custody suggests this may be changing. It claims Jemaah Islamiah and Abu Sayyaf members are being trained in scuba diving in preparation for attacks on ships.
Mr Gonzales said fewer than 10 people were understood to be involved in the plot. "So far, all the operations we have uncovered were done by very small cells.
"In the past we always thought bombings were connected to some of the things we did domestically, but we are now looking at an international extension, at a new global phenomenon."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:13 ||
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Plans by the CIA to fly Sudan's intelligence chief to Washington for secret talks aimed at cementing co-operation against terrorism triggered such intense opposition in the Bush Administration that some officials suggested arresting him.
The row over the visit by Major-General Salah Abdallah Gosh, whose government Washington accuses of committing genocide in the western Darfur region, goes to the heart of a wider dispute about the CIA's alliances with foreign intelligence services.
Critics say dealing with countries such as Sudan sends a signal that the US is not serious about promoting democracy and human rights. Intelligence experts say Washington has no choice but to rely on some governments with questionable human rights records to it in its fight against terrorism. General Gosh's agency has allowed the CIA to question al-Qaeda suspects living in Sudan and detained foreign militants moving through the country on their way to joining Iraqi insurgents. The trip was intended to help strengthen the relationship.
With plans for the visit on the point of collapse, sources said a compromise was struck with opponents of the April 18-22 visit in the state and justice departments: General Gosh was allowed to come, but a scheduled meeting with the CIA director, Porter Goss, was cancelled.
Ted Dagne, a specialist on Sudan with the Congressional Research Service, said State Department officials believed General Gosh's trip would "send a political signal to the [Sudanese] Government that Darfur would not prevent Sudan from winning support in Washington".
Disclosure of General Gosh's visit also angered some in Congress. A Democrat congressman, Donald Payne, told a State Department official who was giving evidence on Capitol Hill last month that bringing General Gosh "to visit Washington at this time is tantamount to inviting the head of the Nazi SS at the height of the Holocaust".
But one senior US official defended the trip. "Mr Gosh has strategic knowledge and information about a critical region in the war on terror. The information he has is of substantial value to law enforcement, the intelligence community and the US Government as a whole," the unnamed official said.
The CIA's relationship with Sudan is especially controversial because of its previous ties to Islamic radicals.
The US continues to criticise Sudan for human rights violations. In September the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, accused Sudan of committing genocide in Darfur. President George Bush reiterated that charge earlier this month.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:11 ||
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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Zimbabwe has extended the destruction of informal homes and businesses from the cities to rural areas, police told state radio Friday. The government calls the campaign a cleanup effort, but critics at home and abroad say it is a violation of human rights and inspired by politics. Police spokesman Austin Chikwavara said his force has started tearing down shacks and kiosks found at major crossroads in Chirumanzu, Umvuma and Lalapanzi in the Zimbabwe Midlands, between 200 kilometers (124 miles) and 300 kilometers (186 miles) south of the capital, Harare. Another police spokesman, who was not identified, told the radio station that police also are demolishing homes built without permission on some of the thousands of farms seized from their white owners for redistribution to black Zimbabweans who are in tight with Bob.
However, Security Minister Didymus Mutasa maintained in the same broadcast that the monthlong campaign was aimed only at cleaning out city streets and would not affect the government's rural strongholds.
The government's Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, has already left more than 250,000 city dwellers homeless in the winter cold.
Oh no! Not the Brutal Zimbabwe Winter!
Police also have arrested more than 30,000 vendors, accusing them of dealing in black market goods and attempting to sabotage Zimbabwe's failing economy.
President Robert Mugabe's dismissed propaganda chief condemned the evictions Thursday as "barbaric." Jonathan Moyo, addressing his first public meeting in the capital since he was fired in January, said the blitz was linked to a power struggle within the ruling party over who would succeed the 81-year-old Mugabe. "It seems to be a directionless activity of some mischievous group which imagines it can profit by this in some mysterious way and position itself ahead of the pack in the succession game," he told the gathering at a Harare hotel Thursday.
That cleared things things right up. Thanks, Jonathan.
Moyo, who spent five years as information minister, was fired for opposing Mugabe's choice of Joyce Mujuru as a vice president. Moyo backed parliamentary Speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa, who represents a younger generation of ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front members.
Opposition leaders say the eviction campaign is aimed at driving their supporters among the urban poor into rural areas, where they can be more easily controlled. "The government wants to depopulate urban areas ahead of the 2008 elections and re-create a rural peasantry in which voters are brought under the control of local chiefs and Mugabe's militias," Sydney Masamvu, an analyst from the International Crisis Group think tank, said in a statement Friday.
SEE: Cambodia, Pol Pot
As the unpopular drive spreads, Zimbabwe officials sought to play down superstitious fears that the ancestors have been angered. Residents of a small mining town told a government newspaper that the presence of a baboon in a destroyed shack was a sign of the ancestors' displeasure. The animal leaped out of the shack as it was being pulled down and refused to leave the site in Shurugwi's Mukusha township, 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of Harare, The Herald reported. Many Zimbabweans believe the spirits of ancestors inhabit wild animals and invade human habitations to take revenge when offended. "We are not really concerned because a baboon can never harm a person," police spokesman Patrick Chademana told The Herald.
Only when he's president of Zimbabwe
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
11:06 ||
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a baboon can never harm a person
You might want to talk to the guy bringing the birthday cake to his old pet chimp - a baboon looks a lot stronger than the chimps that took him half apart.
#3
1)If Dick Durbin had reserved some of his vitriolic rhetoric aimed at the Gitmo soldiers for this regime he might not be in the hot water that he is.
2)Just hope that not a penny of the aid slated for Africa is going to Zimbabwe.
Baboons "are very destructive to crops, and, because of their large canines and powerful limbs, they are dangerous adversaries, especially since they travel in troops."
#8
I remember one night in Liberia when the night watchman for the compound knocked on the door to ask for a blanket, because it was too cold for him to sleep. (It had dipped below 60.)
Posted by: James ||
06/17/2005 16:34
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When I was child I remember a documentary over baboons. There was a leopard who had killed a gazel and before he could draw his prey to a tree for eating it, a baboon appeared fought the leopard. None was seriously hurt but the leopard abandonned his prey. Baboons can't rake with their claws for disemboweling like leopards do but their teeh are bigger than those of the leopard.
For chimpanzes they don't have baboon's teeth but an animal who spends his life in treees will develop inmensely powerful arms.
U.S. intelligence and security agencies are investigating reports that Sudan's government has renewed its covert support for al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists, The Washington Times has learned. The information was obtained in the past several weeks and includes details on an agreement the Islamist government in Khartoum reached with al Qaeda-linked terrorists and other Muslim extremists, say U.S. government officials familiar with the reports. The officials say the reported covert support of terrorism includes training in the use of chemical and biological weapons acquired from Iraq and comes as retaliation for foreign intervention in Sudan's Darfur region.
The disclosure comes as the CIA has set up a liaison program with Sudan's intelligence service that included a recent U.S. visit by the head of Sudanese intelligence. Sudan's government claims to be cooperating with the United States in the war on terrorism. And one U.S. official told The Times: "Al Qaeda no longer has an established operational presence in Sudan."
A State Department official said the reports of al Qaeda aid are being investigated. But the official said the reports have not been confirmed and that so far they do not appear credible. "We don't have any indication of any sort of government of Sudan links to al Qaeda at this point," the official said. However, the official noted that Sudan is a large country and that "elements of the government" could be involved in backing terrorists. A Sudanese Embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment.
The U.S. officials said the reports disclosed that Sudan concluded an agreement with al Qaeda-linked terrorists in July 2004, under which Khartoum lifted restrictions on foreign Islamists who were in Sudan working with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 1994. The reports being investigated include information stating that bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, visited one of the camps in southern Sudan in the past two to three years, the officials said. The camp was a base for bin Laden before he moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996.
U.S. officials say nearly 500 foreigners are in Sudan for training as Islamic terrorists. The trainees include Palestinians and nationals from Iraq, Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan. At least four al Qaeda training camps are operating in Sudan. A fifth training camp in Khartoum is limited to Sudanese Islamists. Two of the five are in Khartoum, one is in southern Sudan, and officials said the locations of the other two are still under investigation. The reports also indicate that the training includes the use of explosives and machine guns, as well as training in the use of weapons of mass destruction reportedly obtained from Iraq, the officials said.
Officials say the Sudanese government agreed last year to release funds held in banks that were deposited by al Qaeda in the 1990s, and to allow al Qaeda members to travel from outlying regions in Sudan into Khartoum. The Sudanese also agreed to give al Qaeda trainees free passage, and to arrange for the Sudanese army to provide supplies and equipment for the training.
The FBI is one of the U.S. agencies investigating the new information on foreign terrorist training in Sudan. An FBI spokesman declined comment on the probe. The CIA also has been briefed on the information. Asked about new reports of terrorism training, an agency spokesman declined comment. The activities of the foreign terrorists are being carried out under the direction of an Islamist cleric known as Sheik Mohammed Abdel-Kareem, the officials said, and are retaliation for what the government sees as Israeli and other foreign meddling in Darfur, where government-backed militias have been killing civilians in tribal violence. Interesting that it's Kareem and not Turabi whose auspices al-Qaeda is allegedly operating under. One of the major reasons why al-Qaeda fell out of favor in Khartoum (at least openly) post-2001 was because of bin Laden's backing of Turabi. If they've found a new holy man to start running with who's in good with Bashir he probably wouldn't have any qualms about supporting them.
Sudan's Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein told London's Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper earlier this month that "aid is reaching the [Darfur] rebels from Israel via Eritrea."
"They are also receiving aid from a number of church organizations in Europe," he said.
The new information on Sudanese terror training also backs reports from nongovernmental organizations working in Sudan, said Eric Reeves, a Sudan specialist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. "NGOs operating in Darfur have told me they have seen camps for Middle Eastern nationals, although they are unsure what the connection is to al Qaeda," Mr. Reeves said in an interview. "But they're there."
Mr. Reeves said the Sudanese government is "extremely adept at covering its tracks." If Khartoum is backing Middle Eastern terrorists, it is probably because the government wants to warn the United States and other Western supporters of aid efforts in Darfur that Sudan is willing to turn the region into "another Iraq," Mr. Reeves said.
This article starring:
AIMAN AL ZAWAHRI
al-Qaeda
Eric Reeves, a Sudan specialist at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.
Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein
SHEIK MOHAMED ABDEL KARI
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
11:04 ||
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The activities of the foreign terrorists are being carried out under the direction of an Islamist cleric known as Sheik Mohammed Abdel-Kareem, the officials said, and are retaliation for what the government sees as Israeli and other foreign meddling in Darfur, where government-backed militias have been killing civilians in tribal violence.
Sudan's Interior Minister Abdel Rahim Mohammed Hussein told London's Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper earlier this month that "aid is reaching the [Darfur] rebels from Israel via Eritrea."
"They are also receiving aid from a number of church organizations in Europe," he said.
How utterly dreadful. I can see why retaliation would be necessary. /end sarcasm
June 17, 2005: While there have been no Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States since September 11, 2001, this is not reassuring to analysts at the Department of Homeland Security. This is because most of the counter-terrorism effort in the United States since September 11, 2001, has been wasted. Over four billion dollars was spent on security equipment that didn't work, and numerous new procedures were implemented that didn't work either. The most obvious of these have been those encountered at airports.
The money was spent, and new procedures implemented for political, not security, reasons. People had to be reassured. Politicians could lose elections if they did not appear to be doing something about security.
But that's not the scary part.
When analysts look closely at what has been preventing terror attacks, the most important reasons have nothing to do with the Department of Homeland Security. First, there's the active participation of Americans themselves. On aircraft, passengers realize they have to act quickly if anyone tries another hijacking. There have already been several incidents where a flight attendant called for help, and the troublesome passenger was suddenly buried by other passengers. This is far more effective than seizing nail clippers or cigarette lighters, and patting down grandmothers just before boarding.
Then there's the FBI. Still a bit stiff and unresponsive, the FBI does have a lot more good leads coming in. The feds reached out to the Arab-American community and got the help it needed. Local police have also benefited from grassroots counter-terrorism efforts. People are much more alert about the terrorist threat. That has made it a lot more difficult for any al Qaeda, or their supporters, to get anything going. The Islamic radicals are trying, but with the American media still going bonkers with real, or imagined, terrorist plots, there are too many eyes and ears alert for any of these amateur operators to get something started. These guys are trying, because they keep getting caught. While many of their plans are half-baked and pathetic, it means the threat is still there. So Americans will keep paying attention. That is the mightiest counter-terror weapon out there.
And then there's Iraq. If you check out the Islamic radical web sites, you see a lot more talk about the need to run the infidel soldiers out of the Middle East, than for attacks to be made on American cities. Islamic terrorists are overwhelmingly headed for Iraq, not North America. The March bombing in Madrid gave the Europeans a wakeup call, which has made it easier for al Qaeda to recruit European Islamic radicals to go fight in Iraq, than to try and pull something off in Europe. The army and marines are killing Islamic terrorists who might otherwise have found their way to the United States, or made attacks on Americans elsewhere in the world.
Operation Roach Motel, they check in and never check out
So this leaves the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wondering what they can do to fight terrorism. Nothing they have done so far has made much difference. But like any new bureaucracy, they have to appear as if they are doing something, and making a difference. So more billions will be spent on anything that can look good in a press release, and more Americans will be annoyed, just to let them know that DHS is on the job.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
11:02 ||
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Perhaps we need something like a modified Riot Act, requiring the immediate physical aid of the citizens. I suggest perhaps the bylaws of the Hell's Angels might be worth peeking at.
Belgian police on Friday said they have seized a huge arsenal of weapons, including rocket launchers, hidden in a garage and are investigating whether arms were sold to terrorists or organised crime rings.
The owner of the garage, a Belgian man with military background, is on the run. No one has been arrested in connection with the cache, found on Wednesday in a town near Brussels.
"He's a big dealer," the head of the Belgian judicial police, Glenn Audenaert, told reporters.
"To my knowledge, this is the biggest arsenal we have ever seized."
Police found a ton of ammunition, a ton of spare parts and dozens of machine guns, rifles and pistols, as well as eight detonators.
Much of the weaponry was illegally smuggled into Belgium from the United States and eastern Europe in the form of spare parts and assembled by the dealer, police said.
Audenaert said there was a clear danger such arms dealers could have links with extremist groups, although police have not found any evidence so far in this case.
But some of the weapons in the stash were the same type found at the time of the arrest of Tunisian-born former professional soccer player Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi, who was convicted in 2003 for plotting to blow up a military base in Belgium on behalf of al-Qaeda.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
10:59 ||
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The general leading the force to free the captive enemy from the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, and inflict a humiliating defeat on the United States is so-called ''civil rights'' and ''Constitutional'' attorney Michael Ratner. It was Ratner who led the way in recruiting elite lawyers to defend the enemy combatants being interrogated at Gitmo. But Ratner is a long-time leader of two pro-Communist and anti-American organizations who have for decades have lent aid and comfort to America's enemies in the Cold War and beyond.
Michael Ratner is a lawyer who began his legal career in the late 1960s at the National Lawyers Guild, a Soviet created front group which still embraces its Communist heritage. He worked his way up through the NLG's radical ranks to become its president, then moved on to hold the same position at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which share's the NLG's anti-American radicalism and was founded by pro-Castro lawyers Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler. Among its many outrages, the CCR has defended domestic and international terrorists, and has honored Ratner's NLG colleague and convicted terrorist enabler Lynne Stewart, a modern Legal Left idol. Since 9/11, Ratner and his comrades have attempted to extend undeserved ''civil rights'' on Islamist murderers with notable success. On this front, Ratner and the Legal Left have dealt America its few setbacks in the War on Terror.
One year ago the U.S. suffered its first major loss in this war, a strategic and propaganda defeat, related to America's abilities to imprison and interrogate enemies that it captures. Abu Ghraib was a huge propaganda victory, both for Islamists, who used it to ''justify'' their violent attacks, and for fifth column leftists, who made use of the media's saturation coverage to portray the U.S. as the world's biggest oppressor, the Bush administration as a cabal of Nazi thugs, and the Iraq as an immoral undertaking. The gross overplay of that prison scandal in concert with other overblown and sometimes fabricated stories ââ¬" like Newsweek's ''Koran in the toilet'' canard ââ¬" emboldened Islamic terrorists, eroded U.S. public support for the War on Terror, and damaged America's credibility around the world.
...
Ratner's CCR has almost always received modest funding, most of it from far-Left organizations and leftist-run foundations. But funding of CCR increased by leaps and bounds after Ratner adopted his post-9/11 high profile.
The George Soros-funded Open Society Institute, the Tides Foundation, and other leftist support groups began heavily funding Ratner and CCR's anti-Bush, antiwar, anti-American agendas.
Thanks to these forces, the proper relationship between prisoner and guard, deemed vital for successful interrogation, has now been damaged and the Department of Defense (DOD) faces a dilemma. Ratner's suit has already somewhat undermined its effectiveness at Guantanamo Bay. If the DOD closes Gitmo, the prisoners are set free or are moved to the U.S. where it will be nearly impossible to deny them access to U.S. courts. If the department moves the prisoners to another location outside of U.S. jurisdiction, Ratner and his fifth column legal army will simply begin another high-profile fight for the prisoners' ''rights,'' and the propaganda battle begins anew with continued erosion of popular and political support for the War on Terror.
Though the battle for Guantanamo's prisoners is not yet over, but from the time the first plane-load of lawyers touched down in Cuba, two things became abundantly clear: Islamist psychopaths had won a major victory against America's resolve to fight them.
And Michael Ratner, George Soros, and a host of prestigious American law firms helped them.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/17/2005
10:59 ||
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I don't see a problem here. If we must close Guantanamo detention facility, simply take all the inmates offshore - WAAAYYYY offshore - in a "fredom boat" - preceded by a "chum dispensing boat" - and then declare the detainees "free" - and invite them to swim home - after, of course - we apoligize for the minor misunderstanding that brought them to the sunny Caribbean. 'Give 'em each a box of (bloody) Omaha steaks, just to show there are no hard feelings. Then invite them to un-ass the boat.
"Walking the plank" in shark-infested waters - that should appeal to the sense of bravado of these "Lions of Islam". Personally, I'd invite the US lawyers to accompny their terr clients on the long swim.
The sharks probably won't mind a little "halal" cusine.
June 17, 2005: In a major change from past practice, the U.S. Army is now taking care of "brown water" (riverine) operations. During the Vietnam war, the riverine operations were run by the navy and coast guard (although the army supplied the infantry and heavy other support ashore.) In Iraq, the army bought small boats (for example, 26 foot fiberglass models, with twin, 115 HP outboard engines), and put its troops on the water. The army does have boats for river operations, but these are used by army engineers to quickly build bridges across rivers, or to move small number of infantry across rivers to clear enemy forces from the other side. But in Iraq, the rivers and marshes are major highways for Iraqis, plus the source of fish and other materials. The waterways are used by terrorists and anti-government forces as well. The bad guys have boats, and move people and weapons on the water. The many islands in the rivers and swamps also provide good hiding places for weapons. But now that U.S. Army troops are patrolling the river, the enemy has to be more cautious, and less effective. American troops also use helicopters, and vehicles along the shore, to move troops around. And then there are the UAVs, which terrorists have come to hate. The UAVs often pick up signs of recently buried weapons, ammo or explosives. Troops in boats soon arrive with shovels, and another terrorist attack plan is torpedoed.
The U.S. Navy still does some riverine operations, but only with their SEAL commandoes. The SEALs have their own boats for this work. But, otherwise, the navy has gotten out of the riverine business.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
10:57 ||
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Notin new, in 1945 the US Army operated the largest force (in numbers) of military watercraft in the world.
June 17, 2005: Two modified Phalanx anti missile system have been sent to Iraq, to destroy rockets and mortar shells fired into the Green Zone (the large area in Baghdad turned into an American base). The Phalanx is a 20mm cannon designed to defend American warships, by destroying anti-ship missiles. Phalanx does this by using a radar that immediately starts firing at any incoming missile it detects. The modified versions sent to Iraq, called the C-RAM (Counter-Rocket Artillery Mortar) system has had it's software modified to detect smaller objects (like 82mm mortar shells).
The original Phalanx, it was found, could take out incoming 155mm artillery shells. This capability is what led to C-RAM. The other modifications include linking Phalanx to the Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar and Q-36 Target Acquisition Radar. When these radars detect incoming fire, C-RAM points toward the incoming objects and prepares to fire. C-RAM also uses high explosive 20mm shells, that detonate near the target, spraying it with fragments. By the time these fragments reach the ground, they are generally too small to injure anyone. The Vulcan used 20mm depleted uranium shells, to slice through incoming missiles.
The C-RAM, like the Vulcan, fires shells at the rate of 75 per second. Another advantage of C-RAM, is that it makes a distinctive noise when firing, warning people in the Green Zone that a mortar or rocket attack is underway, giving people an opportunity to duck inside if they are out and about. Without C-RAM to stop the incoming shells, they usually land without hitting people. The Green Zone is a big place, but something usually gets damaged during each attack, and sometimes the shells are duds, meaning they remain dangerous until found and removed. It took about a year, from the time an army general demanded that some kind of anti-mortar weapon be found, until the first C-RAMs arrived in Iraq.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
10:51 ||
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Trouble with this is that what goes up must come down. I wouldn't be surprised if the hail of high explosive 20mm shell falling from the sky do more damage than the mortars. The same is true from antiaircraft batteries in urban areas.
On a related note, the Germans continued Zepplin raids on London in WWI even after it became clear that their relatively light bomb loads were having little effect because of the damage caused by falling AAA shells and the high cost to the Brits of making and shooting the shells.
#2
I just wouldn't want to be on the down side of all those 20mm rounds when gravity does its thing, if you know what I mean. It's one thing for a big ship to fire hundreds of round at something at sea, but I can just imagine the damage these 20's make when they hit something in a city.
#3
Read the article, the shells detonate to safe size. That said I'll bet the accidents caused by the sound of the system are greater than mortar damage.
#4
Shipman, not sure there is a safe size. A penny doesn't weigh very much, but would you like to be under one that was dropped off a building? How many stories?
Bad idea for the Green Zone. Better idea for FOB's in the boonies.
#8
Fragment size from fused 20mm set for use in CRAM is less than the nail on your pinkie finger. Far less than a penny. and they lose thier velocity rather quickly outside the burst radius due to irreular shape (bad aerodymanics), much like the fragments from a grenade do at a given distance (5m for the M203 40mm grenade for example)
Consider that the detonation altitude should be in excess of 50m (remember these are high-trajectory mortar shells and rockets being shot down), I doubt there is any risk at all, except for UXO, and that is minor compared to impact of HE rockets or mortar rounds.
I hope they get these up to the field positions too - places like LSA-A and some of the FOBs could use an R2D2 standing guard against mortars, plus the vectors for the POO from the fire-finder radars that come with the system would be pretty handy too for the QRF to roll up on (or UAVs to look at and track when the Muj scoot).
#9
Not that I'm not thankful for all the wondrous efforts made to protect us in the Zone (of course I am), but I agree with those who say it might be a better fit for FOBs and other areas with less surrounding urban area. In any case, in one of the other under-reported good news stories of the war, indirect fire on the Zone had dwindled to practically nothing -- and literally nothing, compared to the second half of '04. You will have noticed the deafening silence about this -- but that seems to be MNF-I policy, and it might make sense not to draw attention to the fact.
The controlled detonations in the Zone have caused more (accidental) damage than enemy fire in recent months. They under-estimated one last month and blew out several windows in the Palace. One this afternoon sounded like it probably broke some glass at one our buildings here.
All that said, I have to add that it's just incredibly cool that we now have a means to intercept short-range ballistic weapons like mortars.
#10
ViI! Welcome back! Um, did the concussion damage the gold-plated (or are they solid?) bathroom fixtures? Ya gotta maintain some standards, bro, lol!
#11
Precisely Old Spook, your wisdom rings true... perhaps connect the whole system to a roaming UAV with a mini gun or some Hellfires or some shit. Let's integrate some more whoop ass into this so their first mortar is their last! One way ticket to Allah!
Posted by: Mountain Man ||
06/17/2005 15:31
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Consider that the detonation altitude should be in excess of 50m (remember these are high-trajectory mortar shells and rockets being shot down), I doubt there is any risk at all, except for UXO, and that is minor compared to impact of HE rockets or mortar rounds.
I hope they get these up to the field positions too - places like LSA-A and some of the FOBs could use an R2D2 standing guard against mortars, plus the vectors for the POO from the fire-finder radars that come with the system would be pretty handy too for the QRF to roll up on (or UAVs to look at and track when the Muj scoot).
Those have to be two of the geekiest, most Tom Clancyesque paragraphs ever written.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005 15:35
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perhaps connect the whole system to a roaming UAV
A prof. buddy has a proposal out to mod some UAVs to tie things together in interesting ways....
#16
Sorry for the jargon guys. I've actually discussed this with some old buddies who are still in and have come off deployment in al-Iraq recently. THey and I were talking with some engineers from "name" contractors about C3I systems integration for field use (the geneiss for my other posts today on how DHS/Border-patrol could leverage curent technology to lock down a border region). Someone has to tell these great engineers/geeks how things work in the "real world". So, you learn the geek-speek (and the way they think is important too), and it mixes rather well with military jargon and acronyms.
And when you get into that mode, you tend to jargon up - and I fogot to drop it into plain English for you folks. SOrry bout that.
Codex below:
R2D2 is what the CIWS was called when first deployed shipboard back in my youth due to its dome-on-cylinder appearance.
QRF = Quick Reaction Force (bascially the guys staning by locked and cocked to go after baddies or pull some ambusehd/ied'd group's nuts out of the fire)
LSA = Logistics Support Area (BIG fixed bases)
LSAA = LSA Anaconda
POO = Point of Origin (bascially where they bad guys fired from)
POI = Point of Impact (when used as counterpart to POO).
also can be Person of Interest when executing a "cordon and search" of premises.
FOB = Forward Operating Base. A lot smaller than an LSA, used mainly by the triggerpullers to serve as a central point for area patrol/operations, fire control, barracks and field maint.
UXO = Unexploded Ordnance. (I think this is a Brit term, or at least thats where I picked it up ages ago from some gent in a red beret with an enourmous moustache and a sadistic attitude when it comes to realism in field training)
CIWS = Close-In-Weapons-System. Mk-15 Phalanx 20mm automatic gun&mount rapid firing. Ship-mounted, desinged as a last ditch direct fire against incoming missles (sea skimmers, or popups mainly)
#19
LSAA is an FTM as a TLA as it has four letters.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/17/2005 19:18
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...Now, let's take an R2 and give it an IR/LL capability that can be slaved to a joystick. Imaging the fun when you can pinpoint a terr with a few thousand rounds of 20mm.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/17/2005 20:53
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Thanks for the vocab lesson, OS. I saw FOB and started to think the U.S. Postal Service had gotten involved. I have an aquaintance who is an inspector for the USPS, and his phone number is unlisted for cause, but this would have meant they were taking the job perhaps just a tad too seriously. ;-)
The search for Osama bin Laden has shifted hundreds of miles north, but Pakistani and U.S. officials tell ABC News it remains centered in an area around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border where the al Qaeda leader and his deputies seem to be able to move freely.
Some of the new clues in the search come from a small Pakistani market town in the tribal region of Chitral.
The town is believed by officials to be part of the al Qaeda supply network and shopkeepers told ABC News consultant Alexis Debat this week of foreigners buying large quantities of food.
Debat says shopkeepers told him that "a group of Arabs came down from the mountains in a jeep and loaded bags of rice and flour and drove back up the mountain back to Afghanistan."
Along a rugged road and then by foot, ABC News followed the trail described by the shopkeepers to an area just short of the border where Afghanistan is visible over the mountains.
Just last month, Pakistani Army officials say they discovered an al Qaeda compound in the nearby Bajaur region, which captured fighters said was regularly used as a safe house for bin Laden's number two man Ayman al-Zawahri.
The prisoners reportedly told Army interrogators that a heavily guarded, masked man regularly visited in February and March.
"Tracking the supply lines, tracking the communication lines is something everyone is trying to do," says former CIA Afghanistan and Pakistan station chief Gary Schroen.
"It's very, very difficult there," says Schroen. "I think that the Pakistani Army movements are probably telegraphed long in advance."
Pakistani officials believe Zawahri and bin Laden move between a string of safe houses in the winter months and then retreat to mountain caves in the summer months when Pakistani forces operate.
The Pakistani Army now says it came very close to Zawahri last year when it raided another house, in South Waziristan, which they say turned out to be a hidden al Qaeda command center.
Buried underground was a huge cache of weapons, radios, and sophisticated electronic equipment, including video editing machines.
Video of the secret hideaway obtained from the Pakistani Army was broadcast for the first time today on ABC News' "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings."
"It's a command and control facility because it does have radio communications," says ABC News consultant and former White House counter-terrorism chief Dick Clark, who viewed the tape obtained by ABC News.
"Exactly how many bunkers are there?" asks Clark. "And if this was a year ago it obviously hasn't led us to Zawahri or bin Laden."
Last month Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf claimed significant progress in the fight against al Qaeda there. "We have broken their back," Musharraf said in an interview with the Financial Times.
"They cease to exist as a cohesive, homogenous body under good command and control, vertical and horizontal," he said.
However, ABC News has discovered other recent signs of unabated al Qaeda activity in the region.
A new set of propaganda tapes obtained by ABC News this week shows fighters in a night attack on what is described as a military convoy. The fighters praise bin Laden.
The tapes also show a truck being rigged as an improvised rocket launcher. According to the narration on the propaganda tape, which is in the local Pashto language, the weapon was intended to hit a U.S. target in Afghanistan.
And there is also a harsh warning for anyone helping in the hunt for bin Laden.
The tape shows an Afghani man it says was about to die for spying for the Americans. The man is identified on the tape as Masail Shah. No date is specified with the claim.
In a forced confession, the man says he was recruited by Americans in the Afghanistan city of Khost and offered up to $80,000 for each al Qaeda commander he spotted across the border in Pakistan.
The tape shows a satellite phone the man says the Americans provided him.
The CIA had no comment on the tape but its officers have been attempting to establish a network of informants in the area.
"It does illustrate how dangerous it is for the guys that we hire," says the former CIA station chief Schroen. "Why it is difficult to find people who are willing to risk themselves to go into these areas and look for the al Qaeda. His execution apparently was proof that there's a high price to pay if you're caught."
At the end of the tape, there is a picture of the slain man, as seen in a local newspaper under a headline saying the American informant had been slaughtered.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
10:51 ||
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"The tape shows an Afghani man it says was about to die for spying for the Americans. The man is identified on the tape as Masail Shah. "
In case all of the explosions weren't subtle enough ...
The al-Qaeda network in Iraq has threatened anyone who collaborates with the Iraqi government with serious consequences, whether they take part in the creation of the new Iraqi constitution, or enter into direct talks with the Iraqi government or cooperate with them. The threat comes as Sunni Muslims struck a deal on Thursday with Shiite leaders in the government to allow more Sunnis to join the committee that will be drafting Iraq's constitution.
A message, attributed to the terrorist network and published on the internet, said that "whoever deals with the Iraqi government in one way or another will be hit with the wrath of the mujahideen and, we swear to God, we will kill all those who enter into talks with the Iraqi government or have links with them."
The threat follows an announcement by certain tribes and prominent citizens of the northern city of Mossul, who have agreed to collaborate with the Iraqi government to hand over extremists and the terrorists found in the city, especially those that are part of the al-Qaeda linked militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, the main terrorist group believed to have its strognhold in Mossul.
Following Thursday's agreement Sunni Muslims - who largely boycotted national elections in January and are underepresented in Parliament - are also set to provide additional members to the panel that will draft Iraq's new constitution. In a deal with the Shiite-led government, the Sunnis were allowed to take 15 of the panel's 55 seats as well as having 10 advisers.
According to some observers, the al-Qaeda network is fearful of these talks between Shiite and Sunni groups in the political process and in particular that it will serve to boost the role of those that are in the committee for the new constitution.
Sunni leaders have denied any support al-Qaeda, and want to proceed alongside with the Iraqi government to curb the number of terrorist attacks in Iraq.
In another development, the Islamic Union of Kurds, a group of Muslim scholars, have received a letter addressed to them on the electronic mail of some local newspapers, threatening to kill them, threatening those "who throw themselves into the arms of the [Iraqi] authorities to return to the righteous path before death strikes them."
According to Muhammad Kanzi, the president of the Union of the Ulama' of Kurdistan and the minister of religious affairs of the regional Kurdish government in Iraq (under the administration of north eastern eastern Iraqi city, Sulaymaniyya), announced that his group did not directly receive any message with similar content, defining this as a "desperate attempt on the part of some extremists who are picking on the sons of the Kurdish people, among whom are also men of faith."
These threats, he said, did not affect them, but that they will continue to take part in their obligations to their religion and their people.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005
10:48 ||
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I don't think they have enough hit men to kill everyone! Just anyone. So its like cops pulling you over for speeding in any major city. Roll the dice.
In a June 15, 2005 editorial titled "All the Evidence Proves that Al-Zarqawi is an American Agent," a leading Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar's states that Al-Zarqawi is working for the U.S. and is massacring Iraqis in an effort to extend the occupation in Iraq. [1] The following are excerpts from the article:
"All Evidence Proves that Al-Zarqawi Works for America"
"All the evidence proves that Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi is working for America, because his victims are Iraqis and not [members of] the coalition forces under the command of the American occupation forces in Iraq. Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's official title is 'leader of Al-Qa'ida's faction in Iraq.' Osama bin Laden is the commander of the Al-Qa'ida organization, and this proves that [Al-Zarqawi's commander,] bin Laden, has [also] been an American agent ever since he operated against the USSR forces in Afghanistan in favor of the Americans!
"Let's read the statement issued two days ago on behalf of Al-Zarqawi in Iraq after he killed and wounded dozens of people from among the Interior Ministry and Iraqi army forces, by means of booby-trapped cars in a number of cities in Iraq!
"Raising a few questions is unavoidable in order to clarify the situation and [to understand] who this Al-Zarqawi with Jordanian nationality is.
"One of the questions is: which of the two should Al-Zarqawi oppose — the American occupation army and the foreign coalition forces, or the Iraqi military and police forces?! The statement issued by Al-Zarqawi and his organization says that they struck and killed dozens of [members of] the Interior Ministry and Iraqi army forces, whereas there was no mention of Al-Zarqawi targeting the American occupation forces and the coalition forces of the various nationalities. [In fact,] the statement did not even mention the occupation army in Iraq!"
The Massacre of the Iraqi People is Aimed at Strengthening the U.S. Occupation in a Region Vital to American Interests
"Another question [to be raised] is whether the world is so naive as to believe the American statements, which claim that Washington has allocated $25 million for Al-Zarqawi's arrest or for information leading to his arrest. [After all,] why arrest Al-Zarqawi and allocate all these millions while he is working for America?
"In addition, why is Al-Zarqawi massacring innocent Iraqi citizens and [members of] the Iraqi National Guard, the Iraqi army and the Iraqi Interior Ministry? Al-Zarqawi undeniably aims to harm the Iraqi people and members of the Iraqi forces, who undergo training to protect [their] homeland in the future. This massacre of the Iraqi forces and the Iraqi people is meant to strengthen the American occupation of the region [that is known to be] the main route to Central Asia, formerly under USSR control, [and that is] rich in oil wells, and surrounds Iran and the Caspian Sea..."
Wow, man, that's heavy shit! Pass the bong over here, will you.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
10:40 ||
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Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/17/2005 11:00
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They've graduated from blaming Mossad for everything, then. Is that progress or regression?
#3
Some of the best fiction in modern literature these days comes out of the arab press. They have great imagination but it always seems to find expression through the same well-worn variations on the theme of the crafty enemy of the arab nation. Poor bastages can't help themselves.
#9
Golly, the Disinformation Department is really doing a great job planting stories like--oooops, uh, never mind. Shouldn'a said that. "Top secret" and all that.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005 16:06
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Details removed, See if you can guess where:
"In the spring of 2003, accounts of two egregious incidents made headlines in the (XXXXXXX XXXXXXX) when a jail investigator and two correctional officers came forward to corroborate the prisoners' accounts of the abuse. In one incident, an elite squad of 40 guards took over a maximum-security division of the jail in (XXXX) for the sole purpose of beating and terrorizing the prisoners. A jail investigator determined that the guards' misconduct was covered up by (XXXX XXXXXX) medical personnel, who filed false reports and refused or delayed treatment to the prisoners, and by the (XXXX XXXXXX) inspector general, who refused to cooperate with the investigation. In the other incident, five inmates in a special incarceration unit of the jail alleged that they were beaten by 20 or more officers in 2000 as they lay cuffed and shackled on the floor."
"Last month, I interviewed a prisoner who said he was beaten unconscious by guards who had wrapped handcuffs around their fists to make the beating worse. When I met with the prisoner several days later, the whites of his eyes were nearly obscured by the red from blood vessels that had ruptured during the beating, and deep lacerations were held together by staples that had been applied to his scalp. Late last year I visited another prisoner who told of being dragged by several guards through a fire of burning paper and debris that had been raging in the cellblock. His account of this abuse was substantiated by blisters and deep burn marks on his leg."
Nazis? Pol Pot? Gulag? Gitmo? Nope. The Cook County Jail, run by Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan, Senator Dick Durbin's political ally and fellow Democrat in Chicago. Any comments, Senator?
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
10:18 ||
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Whoa! Don't be taken in by the peaceful colour, greenman carrys a rapier-like rapier.
Posted by: Senator Dick Durbin ||
06/17/2005 12:17
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On a related topic, yesterday Drudge reported that the Defense Department will soon be releasing approx. 150 Abu Ghairab POW mistreatment photos ( old ones- GI's punished already) to the public, as a result of an ACLU lawsuit. That should add to the media frenzy about Gitmo "mistreatment." Moral of the story - just shoot the jihadists on the field. Forget about this warehousing nonsense.
AHOSKIE, N.C. — Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been charged with animal cruelty after dumping dead dogs and cats in a shopping center garbage bin, police said. Investigators staked out the bin after discovering that dead animals had been dumped there every Wednesday for the past four weeks, Ahoskie police said in a prepared statement Thursday. PETA has scheduled a news conference for Friday in Norfolk, Va., where the group is based. It is all Rove's fault!
Police found 18 dead animals in the bin and 13 more in a van registered to PETA. The animals were from animal shelters in Northampton and Bertie counties, police said. The two were picking up animals to be brought back to PETA headquarters for euthanization, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk (search) said Thursday. Neither police nor PETA offered any theory on why the animals might have been dumped. Why the hell is PETA doing what the shelter should? Is there a law against it in NC?
Police charged Andrew Benjamin Cook, 24, of Virginia Beach, Va., and Adria Joy Hinkle, 27, of Norfolk, Va., each with 31 felony counts of animal cruelty and eight misdemeanor counts of illegal disposal of dead animals. They were released on bond and an initial court date was set for Friday. Hinkle has been suspended, but Cook continues to work for PETA, Newkirk said. Newkirk said she doubted Hinkle had ever been cruel to an animal and said if the animals were placed in the bin, "We will be appalled." I'm appalled by your continued exsistance on this planet.
Posted by: Gir ||
06/17/2005 10:40
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#2
Penn and Teller have a cable series on Showtime, I think, titled "Bullshit". One episode was dedicated to PETA. At the end of the episode, Penn remarked on an odd item in PETAs financial records -- a very large, industrial freezer.
While he was speaking, Teller lead a group of dogs and cats into a large, industrial freezer and closed the door on them.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 10:49
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That series (both seasons 1 & 2) are available on Netflix if you don't have Showtime. I've seen season 1. I hope that show you're talking about is on the season 2 collection, RC.
The University of Colorado has expanded its inquiry into alleged research misconduct by professor Ward Churchill in the wake of a recent series of stories in the Rocky Mountain News.
CU-Boulder Interim Chancellor Phil DiStefano asked for the inquiry's expansion to "consider additional allegations" reported by the News, the university said Wednesday in a prepared statement.
DiStefano told the committee in a letter dated Monday that he "wished to supplement his original March 29 referral by asking the panel to include the new allegations in its inquiry and to determine whether they warrant investigation," the statement read.
"Chancellor DiStefano noted that he had not investigated the new charges concerning copyright law, fabrication and plagiarism, among others, and could therefore offer no opinion on their validity."
Churchill responded to the News with a one-word e-mail: "Yawn."
The research misconduct committee put Churchill on notice April 22 that it had launched a 60-day inquiry into his scholarship as well as allegations that he had misrepresented himself as American Indian to give his writings added weight.
The probe could produce outcomes ranging from exoneration to termination from his tenured post as an ethnic studies professor.
David Lane, Churchill's attorney, criticized CU's method of communicating the latest news.
"In keeping with longstanding CU policy, the announcement is made through the media, not with any direct communication with me or Ward Churchill," he said.
The "preliminary inquiry phase" of the case is now expected to be extended by up to 60 days to accommodate DiStefano's supplementary referral, the university's release said.
The recent series in the News focused on the four main areas of possible misconduct that DiStefano in March asked the committee to review, including allegations that Churchill:
⢠Accused the U.S. Army of deliberately spreading smallpox among the Mandan Indians of the Upper Missouri River Valley in 1837 without a factual basis for the assertion, and in some cases apparently contradicted the books and authors he cited.
⢠Published an essay in 1992 that largely copied the work of Canadian professor Fay G. Cohen after she had withdrawn permission for him to use it. The committee is also considering parts of an essay in a 1993 book that closely resemble a piece that appeared the year before under the name of Rebecca L. Robbins.
⢠Mischaracterized an important federal Indian law in repeated writings in the past two decades, claiming that the General Allotment Act of 1887 established a "blood quantum" standard that allowed tribes to admit members only if they had at least half native blood. The committee is looking at allegations that he also mischaracterized the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990.
⢠Claimed American Indian ancestry to make his scholarship more widely accepted.
Churchill defended his work to the News, saying that he had not plagiarized and that in some instances, is accused of taking work that he originally wrote.
He said he was correct about the Mandan Indians, and that his characterizations of the intent of the two laws are accurate.
Churchill also has said that he qualifies as an Indian under three of four criteria.
In the course of its investigation, the News uncovered additional evidence of possible research misconduct by Churchill.
In one instance, the News discovered a little-known 1972 pamphlet, The Water Plot, written by activists concerning an aborted water-diversion scheme in Canada, that Churchill later began claiming as his own work.
And in least three other cases, the News revealed that Churchill published works by others without their permission. Churchill credited authors Robert T. Coulter, Rudolph C. Ryser and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, but they say he failed to notify them that he was publishing their articles. Experts described those instances as potential copyright violations.
Churchill refused to respond to those News stories.
CU spokeswoman Pauline Hale said last week that rules precluded the research committee from adding new allegations.
On Wednesday, she said, "The rules, while they are fairly explicit, do allow for some flexibility in interpretation, in order for the university to carry out its obligations."
KHOW 630-AM radio talk show host Dan Caplis, a CU graduate, filed a formal complaint with CU on Friday concerning The Water Plot allegation. Lane drew a connection Wednesday between Caplis' complaint and the DiStefano announcement.
"Dan Caplis, who is a media personality, apparently motivated Di-Stefano, who lives in fear of the media, to respond to a media-inspired series of articles as punishment for Ward Churchill exercising his First Amendment rights."
Churchill stirred national controversy early this year when it was discovered that he had written an essay on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that likened some World Trade Center victims to Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, suggesting that they deserved their fate.
#4
âDan Caplis, who is a media personality . . .â
Churchillâs mouthpiece is a bit too dismissive. Mr. Caplis (who does host a talk radio show here in Denver, Colorado) also is a darn good, plaintiffâs trial attorney, and staunch conservative (thatâs right, âtrial lawyerâ and conservative ;) ).
My guess (and hope) is that the state will fight Churchill to the death to keep from paying him a dime. It is sad the LLL will increasingly fawn over this goofball, the more heâs discredited, but hopefully supporting Churchill will drain at least some of their resources away from their PAC favorites.
Listen and learn from our enemies. Highlights from interview with a terrorist
(1) that the goal of the jihadists is the restoration of the ancient caliphate ("The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world")
(7) that collateral damage was not always so collateral: "Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants," Abu Ibrahim said. "But actually, they were fighters."
(9) that supporters in Saudi Arabia always played a key role: "Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis. The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals. There was celebration amongst his brothers there!"
We have been told that jihadists and secular Baathists have little in common, and that only our war brought them together. But like the Japanese and Nazis in World War II, autocrat and jihadist have shared interests in hating liberal democracies — and well before our response they were jointly fanning efforts against the United States.
In the United States, we are told that we have created terrorists. Saudi liberals would beg to differ. So the theologian Al-Maleky confesses, "If Wahhabism doesn't revise itself, it will produce more terrorism."
Free-thinking Arabs refute all the premises of Western Leftists who claim that colonialism, racism, and exploitation have created terrorists, hold back Arab development, and are the backdrops to this war.
Indeed, it is far worse than that: Our own fundamentalist Left is in lockstep with Wahhabist reductionism — in its similar instinctive distrust of Western culture. Both blame the United States and excuse culpability on the part of Islamists. The more left-wing the Westerner, the more tolerant he is of right-wing Islamic extremism; the more liberal the Arab, the more likely he is to agree with conservative Westerners about the real source of Middle Eastern pathology.
emphasis added by me. As they say, read the whole thing. You'll have plenty of stout cudgles to use on softeaded liberals who try to hide their anti-americanism behind the lies VDH exposes here.
#2
Interesting thing is that any true analysis (correspondence to reality) is always succint and to the point. The last paragraph tells it like it is.
[Sorry for my hiatus... Moved to OK (about 14 days ago), finally. Buh-bye Canuckistan {Image: Celebratory fireworks}. Have been busy and working my ass off, barely having enough time to read a few RB articles, let alone to comment. Probably more of the same for another two weeks, so if I am missing, ya'all can bet I am sleep deprived. ;-)]
#4
Congrats Sobiesky! I assume you moved from Shariaville to Jesusland. Did you ask for the complementary NRA rifle/pistol welcome basket at the border crossing?
Posted by: ed ||
06/17/2005 11:07
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#5
I assume you moved from Shariaville to Jesusland.
Heh.
Did you ask for the complementary NRA rifle/pistol welcome basket at the border crossing?
No, and you never know whom you talking to at the WA state border crossing. But I am filling in NRA application as we speak. My wife is already longtime member.
#12
Welcome home, Sobiesky!
Sounds like its been a long journey in more ways than one.
And don't forget I'm right "next door" in God's/Bush's Country: Texas!
Put up your feet and stay a spell - like forever. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/17/2005 17:04
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#14
Welcome home, Sobeisky.
;)
Posted by: From all the Spembles ||
06/17/2005 21:42
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OS - I vote for the "crush the cockroaches" campaign :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 22:00
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I'm glad you finaly made it, Sobiesky. You would be an asset for your Latin knowledge alone, let alone your life experience and technical skills. Think six months to get the new job under control, a year for your new life... at least that's been my experience. In the meantime, sleep when you can, and try to be extra nice to your wife -- especially as she's the one with the guns! ;-)
In March 2005, a unit of the Kentucky National Guard was ambushed in Iraq. That combat resulted in the deaths of 27 terrorists, and no U.S. deaths. The reports have made their way up the chain of command, and there was an awards ceremony yesterday. Oh, yeah, a girl won the Silver Star.
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester of the 617th Military Police Company, a National Guard unit out of Richmond, Ky., received the Silver Star, along with two other members of her unit, Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein and Spc. Jason Mike, for their actions during an enemy ambush on their convoy. Other members of the unit also received awards.
Hester's squad was shadowing a supply convoy March 20 when anti-Iraqi fighters ambushed the convoy. The squad moved to the side of the road, flanking the insurgents and cutting off their escape route. Hester led her team through the "kill zone" and into a flanking position, where she assaulted a trench line with grenades and M203 grenade-launcher rounds. She and Nein, her squad leader, then cleared two trenches, at which time she killed three insurgents with her rifle.
When the fight was over, 27 insurgents were dead, six were wounded, and one was captured.
Hester, 23, who was born in Bowling Green, Ky., and later moved to Nashville, Tenn., said she was surprised when she heard she was being considered for the Silver Star. "I'm honored to even be considered, much less awarded, the medal," she said.
Being the first woman soldier since World War II to receive the medal is significant to Hester. But, she said, she doesn't dwell on the fact. "It really doesn't have anything to do with being a female," she said. "It's about the duties I performed that day as a soldier."
Hester, who has been in the National Guard since April 2001, said she didn't have time to be scared when the fight started, and she didn't realize the impact of what had happened until much later. "Your training kicks in and the soldier kicks in," she said. "It's your life or theirs. ... You've got a job to do -- protecting yourself and your fellow comrades."
Nein, who is on his second deployment to Iraq, praised Hester and his other soldiers for their actions that day. "It's due to their dedication and their ability to stay there and back me up that we were able to do what we did that day," he said.
Hester and her fellow soldiers were awarded their medals at Camp Liberty, Iraq, by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, Multinational Corps Iraq commanding general. In his speech, Vines commended the soldiers for their bravery and their contribution to the international war on terror. "My heroes don't play in the (National Basketball Association) and don't play in the U.S. Open (golf tournament) at Pinehurst," Vines said. "They're standing in front of me today. These are American heroes."
Three soldiers of the 617th were wounded in the ambush. Hester said she and the other squad members are thinking about them, and she is very thankful to have made it through unscathed. The firefight, along with the entire deployment, has had a lasting effect on her, Hester said. "I think about it every day, and probably will for the rest of my life," she said. Blackfive has the After Action Reporthttp://www.blackfive.net/main/2005/03/after_action_re.html. John Donovan has the medals awarded.
#1
I just hope some of the brave Lions of Islam™ got to look in this woman's face as she twisted the bayonet deep in their guts, wrenching their piss-poor excuses for lives from them. Nice.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/17/2005 10:18
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Sounds like these guard folks acquitted themselves with honor, spirit, and intelligence. A credit to those who trained them and their leadership.
RIYADH — Three weeks after King Fahd was taken to hospital with pneumonia Saudis are waiting anxiously for news of their frail and elderly monarch, skeptical about repeated official assurances that his health is improving.
Us too.
Fahd, who is in his early 80s, has been treated amid relative secrecy at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital in southwest Riyadh since his admission on May 27. A medical source who saw the king in recent days told Reuters he is on a respirator to help maintain the illusion he's alive his breathing as he continues to battle decomposition the pneumonia. From the outset, his brothers have said Fahd's health is improving and he could be out of hospital "within days."
Well, one way or the other
But many Saudis remain unconvinced. "There is a deliberate media blackout on the real state of his health," said Ahmed Otaibi, a 32-year-old owner of a health clinic, adding that the policy might be aimed at avoiding "domestic or international problems."
I'll take domestic fight for power for $500, Alex
"I just want the king to be well," he said. The royal family is anxious to give the impression of business as usual in the world's biggest oil exporter, which has been tackling a two-year wave of violence by supporters of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Interior Minister Prince Nayef -- Fahd's younger brother -- traveled to the United Arab Emirates this week to discuss a border accord and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal flew to Egypt for talks, apparently to show that Fahd's illness has not paralyzed affairs of state.
----snip-----
The usual early summer transfer of Saudi Arabia's royal court from the capital Riyadh to the Red Sea city of Jeddah has been delayed because of uncertainty surrounding the king. Diplomats say Fahd's continued hospital confinement, despite first-class medical facilities at his royal palaces, show that the monarch remains gravely ill. Officials say Fahd was born in 1921 or 1923 -- at the time few records were kept in the impoverished desert kingdom his father was still creating before the discovery of oil.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
09:19 ||
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#1
The King's not gonna get well, pal. The King's been a veggie for years, and is only alive because he's a convenient front.
EFL:VIENNA, Austria (AP) - The U.N. atomic watchdog agency on Friday agreed to create a committee to help crack down on nuclear proliferators but left it without the teeth sought by the United States. Jackie Sanders, the U.S. chief delegate to the board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, hailed the move as "an important step" that meets a 2004 proposal by President Bush to fight rogue states trying to make the bomb and their black market suppliers. Bush had said such a committee should "focus intensively on safeguards and verification." "The proliferation challenges of today, including ... North Korea and Iran and the revelation of nuclear procurement networks, call for more evolution," Sanders told reporters. "This new committee should play a key role in helping us meet those challenges."
That's it! Form a committee! Brillient!
But the language of the document creating the committee was stripped of specific U.S. proposals, including authority to recommend U.N. Security council action against - and special inspections for - suspected proliferators.
Instead, its mandate was vague and reduced to considering "ways and means to go strengthen the safeguards system and to report ... with recommendations," to the board.
Both the rejected U.S. proposals and the restricted U.N. document setting up the committee were made available to the AP by diplomats who demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to pass on such information to the media.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
09:13 ||
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#1
Phear our strongly worded and non-binding resolutions!
#4
Stripping it of the US proposals, the UN's cowards and apologists turns a possibly effective idea into yet another guaranteed pointless toothless wank-o-matic UN circle-jerk. And I'm sure someone will think that the US should increase its UN dues to pay for it, too. It was our idea, after all.
The UN is permanently and fatally broken. Flush it.
EUREKA, Calif. (AP) - Just hours after a moderate earthquake shook most of Southern California, a strong quake struck off the state's northern coast to become the fourth significant shaker to jolt California this week. Neither quake Thursday caused serious damage. One person was injured.
A 6.6-magnitude temblor hit about 125 miles off the coast of Eureka around 11:30 p.m., rattling the ocean floor. In the afternoon, a 4.9-magnitude quake struck east of Los Angeles, startling people and knocking items off shelves and desks. Four significant quakes have hit California this week: A magnitude-5.2 quake shook Riverside County on Sunday, and a magnitude-7.2 quake trembled Tuesday under the ocean 90 miles off Northern California.
Stephanie Hanna, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey, said Thursday night's quake was likely an aftershock from Tuesday's shaker.
The early afternoon quake was centered near Yucaipa in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. About 25 aftershocks followed in a little over an hour, the strongest estimated at magnitude 3.5.
Let's see, we've had the heavy rains, earthquakes and MJ beating the rap. I believe wildfires are next followed by locust.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
09:01 ||
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It was only Michael Moore and Queen Latifa slam dancing.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/17/2005 10:49
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The Southern California quakes were nothing really. It shook things around and made some noise; but nothing caused much damage. The only injury the "news" people could find was a woman hit when a lamp fell over. There were worse injuries on a school yard. If it's got be over 6 before it matters much.
#5
#4 that is a stretch...you cannot tell the future...a quake can hit at anytime..in any magnitude..but you are correct..there usually is more damage up north..but it has more to with building quality and not the magnitude of the quake..if that 6.6 hit up north there would've been significan damage
#10
Counties! Dammit! Counties voted blue! See: SF. Bezerkeley, et all.... San Diego, Imperial, San B and Orange voted FOR W - don't slam us for the state's lean
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 21:54
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A father and son were indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges they lied to authorities investigating links to Pakistani terrorist training camps connected to al-Qaida. Hamid Hayat, 22, was accused of lying to the FBI earlier this month when he said he did not attend a terrorism camp in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004, prosecutors said.
His father, Umer Hayat, 47, was charged with lying to investigators when he denied that his son had attended such camps. The FBI said the elder Hayat later admitted to flying his son to Pakistan and paying for the camp, which was run by the friend of a relative.
The indictment said the younger Hayat falsely told authorities he was not involved with a terrorist organization, he never attended a terrorist camp and he had never received any weapons training at such a camp. In an affidavit, the FBI said Hamid Hayat attended a terror camp for about six months before returning to the U.S. intending to wage attacks. They said they found no immediate threat or terrorist activity.
Defense lawyer Wazhma Mojaddidi said Thursday that Hamid Hayat "has most definitely never attended a terrorist training camp." The Hayats, both U.S. citizens living in the farming town of Lodi, have pleaded not guilty and are being held without bail. They are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.
The FBI spent several years investigating possible links to terrorism in Lodi, about 30 miles south of Sacramento. Members of the 2,000-member Pakistani community there have said they have been harassed by authorities, and on Thursday two groups said they would file complaints.
In other developments, a 68-year-old Pennsylvania man who told undercover federal agents he had "no loyalty for America" was indicted Thursday on a single count of attempting to support al-Qaida by allegedly trying to build a bomb and sell it to the terrorist group or its affiliates. If convicted, Ronald Allen Grecula, of Bangor, Pa., could face up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In Arkansas, a graduate student who allegedly told a professor that he was leaving to fight in a Palestinian holy war was in federal custody Thursday. Federal agents arrested Arwah J. Jaber on a criminal complaint accusing him of knowingly attempting to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
08:53 ||
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EFL: I'll believe it when I see it. Fresh information involving the Secretary-General forces the reopening of UN inquiry THE steady drip of revelations about the Oil-for-Food scandal threatens to force Kofi Annan from his job as United Nations Secretary-General before the end of his term. Speculation is mounting at UN headquarters in New York that Mr Annan will announce his resignation at a summit of world leaders in the city in September, in the larger interests of the organisation. Ya gotta take one for the family, Kofi...
It follows the reopening of the Volcker inquiry into the scandal, part of which had focused on the award of a border inspection contract in Iraq to a company employing Mr Annan's son, Kojo. One senior UN official told The Times that the UN leader could present his resignation as a means of sparing the organisation further embarrassment. "It would be a way of regaining the initiative," he said. Kofi, let's go fishing...
Asked about the rumours of his resignation at the September summit, Mr Annan told New York magazine last month: "That's a question for the future. In life, you cannot rule out. You cannot say never or for ever." In an interview for the French newspaper Le Figaro today, however, he denies "absolutely" any plans to quit. And, what, go back to... Ghana?
Once a diplomatic superstar who won the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, Mr Annan is now the target of a full-scale investigation by a UN commission and the US Congress. I thought the UN won it, not Kofi. Not that he wouldn't take credit for it...
After the stress of the Iraq war, the normally sunny UN Secretary-General became haggard and lost his voice. Aides cut his schedule and ordered him to take a holiday. On one occasion he skipped a summit in Africa so that he could return home to New York. One ambassador said that Mr Annan's mood has been fluctuating ever since like a "sine curve". When you're close to being busted, you're probably pretty moody.
Mr Annan, a Ghanaian, married to a Swede, has been personally linked to the Oil-for-Food scandal because of Kojo, one of two children by his Nigerian first wife. Thanks, Pops!
In 1998 the UN awarded a lucrative border inspection contract in Iraq to Cotecna Inspection Services, a Swiss firm that employed Kojo Annan. Kofi Annan denies that he knew about Cotecna's interest in the $10 million (£5.5 million) annual contract until after it was awarded. Oh, wow. Look at that. Doesn't my son work for them?
A UN inquiry, led by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, found that Kofi Annan "could have been alerted" to Cotecna's efforts to get the UN contract at "several points". But it found no conclusive proof. The inquiry concluded in March that "the evidence is not reasonably sufficient to show that the Secretary-General knew that Cotecna had submitted a bid". That was when he was "exonerated", right?
The Volcker commission's two top investigators in the case resigned in protest. Calling the inquiry's finding "flawed", one of the investigators gave the US Congress six boxes of documents from the Volcker files. They are now the subject of a court battle. On Tuesday Mr Volcker had to reopen the investigation into Mr Annan after the release of a potentially devastating Cotecna memorandum suggesting that the UN chief secretly backed the company's bid. The e-mailed memo was written by Michael Wilson, the son of the former Ghanaian Ambassador to Switzerland and a childhood friend of Kojo Annan, who considers Kofi Annan his "uncle". Thanks, Uncle Kofi!
Mr Wilson was a Cotecna executive at the time, but left the company in 2000 and joined Kojo Annan on the board of Air Harbour Technologies, founded by Hani Yamani, son of the former Saudi Oil Minister. Recently Mr Wilson has been embroiled in a separate UN scandal involving suspected kickbacks in the rebuilding of the Geneva headquarters of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. Thanks, Uncle Kofi!
In the newly released Cotecna memo, dated December 4, 1998, Mr Wilson reports discussions with the UN Secretary-General at a francophone summit in Paris in November 1998. The memo says: "We had brief discussions with the SG and his entourage. Their collective advice was that we should respond as best as we could to the Q & A session of the 1-12-98 and that we could count on their support." The "1-12-98" session was a meeting Cotecna had scheduled with UN procurement officials about its bid for a UN contract, which the firm won ten days later. Cotecna acknowledged this week that the document "may result in speculation about the procurement of its Oil-for-Food authentication contract". But the company insisted it "obtained that contract fairly and on the basis of price". Fred Eckhard, the chief UN spokesman, said Kofi Annan had "no recollection" of meeting Mr Wilson on the 1998 trip. But he was unable to say whether the UN chief had met his son, Kojo, then a Cotecna consultant, during the trip. I've got a son named Kojo? I don't recall.
Mr Wilson's lawyer said: "Mr Wilson never met or had any discussion with the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, on the issue of the bid for the UN contract by Cotecna at the francophone summit, during the bidding process, or at any time prior to the award of the contract." Diplomats say they can foresee a scenario in which Mr Annan magnanimously resigns at the September summit on UN reform. Would that get him off the hook on any possible charges down the road?
The Volcker commission's final report was originally due this month but has been pushed back. Sources say that it may even be delayed until after the summit. That would allow Mr Annan to step aside before Mr Volcker delivers his findings. Mr Volcker's investigators have recently been to Britain, seeking to answer "significant questions" about Kojo Annan's business dealings. Why do the powers that be seem so concerned about letting this bastard skate on this?
#1
Why do the powers that be seem so concerned about letting this bastard skate on this?
'Cause most of them are up to their eyeballs in it too and they also want the status quo left in place. How else are they gonna get rich while denoucing the US?
Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist, AQ Khan, who admitted illegally transferring technology overseas, is in a stable condition after a heart scare.
And we all know what "stable" means.
A presidential spokesman said Dr Khan, 69, had suffered chest pains on Tuesday but denied he had had a heart attack. Dr Khan undertook a check for blocked arteries and was given the all-clear. Dr Khan is seen by many Pakistanis as a hero for founding the nation's nuclear industry but has been under virtual house arrest since February 2004. Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, military spokesman and media secretary for President Pervez Musharraf, said Dr Khan was now "absolutely fine and stable".
There's that word again.
"He did not have any heart attack," Gen Sultan said.
Yet. This is what you call "laying the groundwork"
He said Dr Khan had been declared fit and well after an angiogram at a military hospital in Rawalpindi on Friday.
"Has the remote controlled device been inplanted?" "Yes, General."
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Dr Khan was still at the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology along with his family members. Dr Khan has been confined to his home since his public confession early last year that he illegally transferred nuclear technology to countries including North Korea, Libya and Iran. He was given a pardon by President Musharraf because of his services to the nation's nuclear industry. The government has always denied any involvement in the leaking of the technology. This year it confirmed Dr Khan had supplied nuclear centrifuges - which can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons - to Iran. Dr Khan has not been allowed to receive visitors and international investigators probing global nuclear proliferation have not been allowed to question him.
"Sorry, you can't see him. He's much too ill. Maybe next year."
President Musharraf has said the discovery of the Khan network was the most embarrassing episode in his political career. Former CIA director George Tenet described AQ Khan as being at least as dangerous as Osama Bin Laden.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
08:45 ||
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President Musharraf has said the discovery of the Khan network was the most embarrassing episode in his political career.
#4
...Given the Iranian announcement earlier in the week that the Pakistanis in general and Dr Khaaaaaaaaan! in particular had helped in their nuke program, I kinda had a feeling the Doc was going to have heart problems.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/17/2005 20:37
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heaven forbid his hospital suite has stairs
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 21:23
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The Israeli navy plans to build a sea barrier off the coast of northern Gaza to keep out potential attackers once Israel pulls out of the coastal strip this summer, military officials said. euroweenie/ISM/muslim/dhimmi outrage in 5.....4.....3....
The navy concluded the barrier, stretching 950 yards into the sea, is necessary because of the expected loss of surveillance systems in the planned pullout, military officials told an Israeli reporter in Gaza, requesting that their names not be used because the project is still being discussed.
Designed to keep potential attackers from swimming to the Israeli coast, the barrier's first hundred yards will consist of cement pilings buried into the sandy bottom, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported Friday. The paper said the structure will extend another 800 yards in the form of 1.8-yard-deep fence floating beneath the surface. they should figure out how to electrify it. now that would be cool!
A Palestinian official reacted angrily to the report. seething? was there any seething involved? I dunno, maybe I'm spoiled, but it's just not any good anymore without some first class pali seeting.
"I hope the Israeli mentality of barriers will end," said negotiator Saeb Erekat. "Now they have land barriers and tomorrow sea barriers and the day after sky barriers and what else? Will they put a barrier around each Palestinian individual or house?" "Plus," he added, "it makes it so much more difficult to kill joos. We're going to have to ask for more aid."
Gaza, home to 1.3 million Palestinians, is surrounded by an Israeli fence built to keep back attackers and which prevents Gazans from being able to come and go. Israel is also building a barrier between itself and the West Bank.
SPAN CLASS=HILITE>they left out the word effective..."an effective Israeli fence."
"This is the wrong policy. This is political blindness," said Erekat. "The answer to all these woes of security and so on in is a meaningful peace process, is building the bridges with the Palestinians, is ending the occupation." seems the article left out the part where he also talked about disarming and dismantling terrorist groups
The military officials said construction of the new sea barrier will begin soon and that it will be a major project costing millions of dollars, though they did not say how much. The barrier is not expected to be complete in time for Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza, set to begin in mid-August.
Israel closed two border crossings with Gaza on Friday after receiving intelligence information warning of Palestinian militants on their way to carry out attacks, the military said, adding that Israel notified the Palestinian Authority but they did not act to apprehend them. hmmm. paleos are curiously silent on this topic
In another development Friday, Israel said its dispute with the U.S. over its military technology sales to China will be worked out soon, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, due in Israel this weekend, acknowledged a sharp disagreement with Israel over the issue.
"We are attentive to American concerns. The issue will be solved over the next few weeks and we will work out all the points of dispute," said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Rice told a news conference on Thursday that Israel "has a responsibility to be sensitive" to U.S. concerns, adding that American officials have had "difficult" discussions on the China sales with the Israelis.
"I think they understand now the seriousness of the matter," Rice said.
She said Washington is increasingly concerned about military modernization in China. The U.S. fears this could upset the security balance in Asia and make it more difficult for the United States to help defend Taiwan from a mainland attack.
China must not be allowed to undertake a "major military escalation" before there are assurances that it will be a "positive force" on the international scene, Rice said.
According to Israeli officials and recent media reports, the United States has imposed a series of sanctions on the Israeli arms industry in recent months because of it sales to China.
Washington has halted cooperation on several projects, frozen delivery of sensitive equipment, and is even refusing to answer telephone calls from Israeli defense officials, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported this past weekend.
The dispute stems from the Israeli sale of unmanned drone aircraft technology to China. State-owned Israel Aircraft Industries sold Harpy drones to China in the early 1990s. Harpy parts were shipped to Israel last year for what American defense officials said was an upgrade.
Israel has denied the American contention, saying the Harpy units were undergoing routine maintenance. Israeli military officials have said work on the Harpy deal has been frozen.
#4
950 metres? That's nothing... go ouot 2 km, turn south for 5, turn east for 2. Drain.
Posted by: William the Silent ||
06/17/2005 11:34
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#5
William, if the sea levels are going to rise due to global warming (yeah, right), what is the point of starting up a Dutch-style polder system? Especially when the Palestinians will only destroy the dikes anyway? ;-)
#1
The headline is misleading. The Israelis plan to build a barrier along the maritime border between Israel and Gaza - i.e. from the coast out to sea. The Paleos are predictably seething.
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a truck filled with explosives, say UN investigators. The head of the team, Detlev Mehlis, told reporters this contradicted widespread speculation that the explosives were buried under the road. Some Lebanese believed recent road works near the attack site suggested officials may have been involved in a plot to assassinate Hariri. His death led to protests calling for the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon. Syrian troops withdrew last month following a wave of opposition protests blaming Damascus for the assassination. Correspondents say the investigators' report opens up the field of possible suspects to beyond Lebanon or Syria.
Trying to find some way to pin it on the Jews?
It is still not clear whether the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, Mr Mehlis said. "The explosion was beyond any reasonable doubt above ground," he said. "There was no indication of an underground explosion." Mr Mehlis, whose team arrived in Lebanon at the end of May, said he would question officials in charge at the time of the attack - including Syrians. "We will of course investigate everyone who was in one way or another responsible for security in Lebanon at the time of the crime," he said. Mr Hariri was killed in the bomb attack in Beirut on 14 February, along with 19 other people. Syria denies any involvement. The investigation continues as Lebanon holds staggered parliamentary elections over four Sundays with the last round being held this weekend.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
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The US and the UK have closed their consulates in Nigeria's biggest city, Lagos, citing "security fears". A spokesman at the US embassy in the capital, Abuja, said: "The embassy is reacting to a security incident and we thought it prudent to close." The Foreign Office in London said the UK had shut its mission in Lagos as a precaution following the closure of the US consulate, which is just 100m away.
The threat was of "mutual concern" to the US and Nigeria, diplomats say. No further details have been released.
Nigerian police are investigating the incident and the BBC's Anna Borzello in Lagos says there is a high security presence in the area.
Police are stopping passers-by and checking their bags, she said. The AP news agency reports that a Nigerian police bomb disposal squad van was parked outside the US mission. Other consulates on the same road on Victoria Island, Lagos, had also closed, a Foreign Office spokesman said. These include the missions of Germany, Italy and Russia, AP reports.
We haven't heard from the African branch of al-Q for a while. They're about due for another booming
Additional: The United States, Britain and Germany closed their consulates in Nigeria's largest city Lagos on Friday due to a threat from foreign Islamic militants, U.S. military and diplomatic sources said. Intelligence from foreign Islamic militant channels indicated a specific threat to the U.S. presence in the oil exporting country, diplomatic sources said. "There was some kind of terrorist threat made. It was a terrorist threat that was called in. They knew about it yesterday and decided to close the embassy," said Major Holly Silkman, a spokeswoman for the US European Command, at a military training exercise for West African forces in Senegal.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005
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#1
DEAR SELLER GOOD DAY TO YOU. I WISH TO PARTAKE IN A PURCHASE OF YOUR WIDESCREEN TELEVISION. I WISH FOR YOU TO SHIP TO MY STORE IN AFRICA. I WILL SEND YOU THE DHL DETAILS SO YOU CAN COMPLETE THE SHIPMENT. ONCE THE PICKUP HAS BEEN MADE I WILL FORWARD THE WESTERN UNION PAYMENT DETAILS TO YOU.
GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR, CHARLES AKWUMBLUIO
Posted by: CHARLES AKWUMBLUIO ||
06/17/2005 10:23
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Hey Charles,
I'm still waiting for the 3.4 million dollars your daughter needed me to store in my account.
by Bret Stephens, Wall Street JournalEFL'd -- you really should read it all.
TGA, if you know this guy from the consulate, you need to take him aside for a good talking-to.
. . .What occasioned this discovery was meeting a relatively senior German diplomat posted to the New York consulate. My wife--also German--knows his wife socially; our children use the same playground. They had invited us to their home for Sunday brunch.
I should say here that I speak almost no German, and it quickly became apparent that the diplomat's wife spoke almost no English. So it was perhaps natural that, soon after we arrived, she and my wife took to one corner of the spacious apartment while the diplomat ushered me into his study. Less natural was the conversation that followed. I made the normal chitchat of first encounters: praise for the unobstructed (and million-dollar) views of the Hudson River; a query about what he did at the consulate.
But the diplomat had no patience for my small talk. Apropos of nothing, he said he had recently made a study of U.S. tax laws and concluded that practices here were inferior to those in Germany. Given recent rates of German economic growth, I found this comment odd. Indefensible, even
But I offered no rejoinder. I was, after all, a guest in his home. Actually, I must give Mr. Stephens credit for the self-discipline to hold his tongue through what followed. I would not have been so restrained.
The diplomat, however, was just getting started. Bad as U.S. economic policy was, it was as nothing next to our human-rights record. Had I read the recent Amnesty International report on Guantanamo? "You mean the one that compared it to the Soviet gulag?" Yes, that one. My host disagreed with it: The gulag was better than Gitmo, since at least the Stalinist system offered its victims a trial of sorts. "So you mean Gitmo is more like what you folks were doing in the early to mid 1940s--without the gas chambers, I mean."
Nor was that all. Civil rights in the U.S., he said, were on a par with those of North Korea and rather behind what they had been in Europe in the Middle Ages. When I offered that, as a journalist, I had encountered no restrictions on press freedom, he cut me off. "That's because The Wall Street Journal takes its orders from the government." "So you've discovered Democratic Underground, I see."
"Nein! Daily Kos!"
By then we had sat down at the formal dining table, with our backs to Ground Zero a half-mile away and our eyes on the boats on the river below us. My wife and I made abortive attempts at ordinary conversation. We were met with non sequiturs: "The only people who appreciate American foreign policy are poodles." "But, Herr Diplomat, I thought you said a moment ago we were bloodthirsty cowboys, not poodles."
"You are bloodthirsty cowboy poodles!"
After further bizarre pronouncements, including a lecture on the illegality of the Holocaust under Nazi law, [a new low point in world moonbattery] my wife said that she felt unwell. I'm the same nationality as this moonbat? Eeeewww!.
We gathered our things and left. "Sweetheart, I'm so glad we didn't move to Germany after we got married."
"Honey, why do you think I emigrated? It was to get away from people like him!"
For days now, I've been asking myself why I didn't answer the diplomat in the way he deserved. Partly it had to do with my wish not to spoil the friendship between our wives. I suspect your wife may be rethinking that relationship.
Partly, too, his assault was so discombobulating I didn't trust myself to respond coherently. On the other hand, he was pretty incoherent himself, so no biggie.
But the main reason is that, as his guest, I was restrained by an innate sense of propriety, a sense the diplomat did not share. "It's called 'common courtesy,' Herr Diplomat. Perhaps you have heard of it?"
And herein lies the essence of the torturer's art.
To inflict harm on a defenseless person--whoever he may be, whatever he has done--goes against the human grain. It is one thing to strike out at somebody who has just hit you. It's another thing entirely to abuse someone who, whether as prisoner or as guest, is in your power.
Long ago the Greeks understood that nothing is so barbarous as inhospitality. And according to popular exegesis, God did not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of its citizens' sexual crimes but because of their crimes against hospitality--the rape of strangers.
Torturers, however, are those rare people who can inflict injury on the defenseless, work which is made easier for them because they know most people are unable to respond in kind. Thus it was with the German diplomat. Seated at his table, I submitted to his rules. But rather than oblige my submission with courtesy, he took the opportunity to inflict his insults--insults to which I, as a guest, was bound not to resist. . . .
I am tempted to violate journalistic standards here by revealing the diplomat's name. Of course I won't: That's not the sort of man I am. The trouble is, that's one big reason why he is the man he is. German readers especially may recall the words of Brecht: The womb is fertile still, which bore this fruit. Love that last paragraph.
The e-mail contacts for the German consulate in NYC may be found here. The consul general is Uwe-Karsten Heye, who is probably not the guy in the story. (He looks too old to have school-age kids.) If you choose to write, be polite in your critique--Herr Diplomoonbat might learn from the example.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005
08:00 ||
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#1
Interesting story that clearly illustrates the Left's complete derangement. There is no date on when this happened but the European grand (Leftist) project coming unglued in the face of popular democracy doubtless contributed.
#2
It may well have been the ambassador himself. David's Medienkritik covered the ambassador's enlightening interview with the New Yorker at the end of May, and his subsequent clarification. I actually corresponded at length with the ambassador's spokeswoman about his rudeness and historical innacuracy. If you wish to write to her directly, her email is martina.nibbeling-wriessnig@diplo.de
#3
Logic and reason don't work on knuckleheads and you'll never change the twisted beliefs of somebody as far gone as this. Stephens should have gone ahead and ripped this guy to his face.
If it screws up his wife's friendship with this toad's wife then at least he will never have to endure getting invited over again.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
06/17/2005 9:33
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#4
An interesting but not at all suprising description. For that we should thank the informant for providing a better understand of that which was generally understood. One thing bothers me though. The poor man's got no backbone or open field running skills whatsoever it seems. It's rarely a good idea to suffer a ejgit nutter fool whether it be in his home or his country. This would especially be the case when he's in your own country and feels entitled to go on an ideological rant about your country. There are a thousand ways to make an ejgit well aware of exactly how you feel short of sucker punching or insulting directly. Repeated, gentle vebal truncheon blows that leave no visible marks are best especially when mixed with disarming humor. I've had the dubious honor of having to deal with a very similar type of experience ever year when I'm with some of my unreformed socialist Irish inlaws as well as a friend's German wife here at home in America. When you feel out the rules of the hometeam so as not to cause grievous harm, it can become great sport and entertainment.
#5
Bret Stephens should reveal the guy's name, and the State Department should PNG his ass.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 10:00
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Phuck 'em.
It's time to give as good as we get. Next time some leftist scum gives you (anybody) crap for being an American, tell them to piss off and crawl home to their shit-hole country.
Now he goes to a guy's home and endures insults without comment because of concern for his wife's relationship with the other wife. Is he really incapable of any clever retort? Instead, he goes home and writes a get-even column and has it published in America's best newspaper (or at least it was till Mr. Stephens got to the editorial staff). As if no one in their circles will know about whom this column is written. In a day or two, some member of these circles might even leak the name to the NY Post. Maybe even the oh-so-ethical Mr. Stephens. Wonder what that will do for the wife's friendship.
Sorry, Mr. Stephens merely chose not to fight a fight worth fighting face to face, but to go home and get the proverbial pen/sword and stick it to the other guy between the scapula. Not somebody I'd want to toss back a few brewskis with.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/17/2005 10:18
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#8
phil_b:
It cannot be the embassdor himself: the embassador lives at the embassy in Washinton not at New York's consulate.
BTW: When a diplomat is offensive to the country he is assigned to, that country can pressure the diplomats's country for a new one or, if he really, really goes too far, declare him Persona non grata and expel him.
BTW2: Diplomat's job is to soften feathers so it strikes me as highly unusual to send a guy to a country he hates, at least when he is unable to hide this hate. The fact this guy has been appointed to New York means that either the guy who appointed him is a complete idiot or that he considers Germany to be at war, diplomatically speaking, with America
#9
JFM, it is clearly both. Look at the way Schroeder is acting. He's the head honcho. It is hard to believe Fischer appears to be the responsible member of the German foreign policy team, but that appears to be the case. This election can't come too soon for German-American relations.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/17/2005 10:37
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#10
Mrs Davis:
Many people, myself included, can find themselves unable to adequately respond to such attacks, specially when they are taken by surprise or have to deal with considerations like being the guest of the attacker or when going for the clash would cause a displeasure to their consort, because the attacker is family or because the consort works with him.
It happenned to me last week-end and was unable to find on the spot a good reply for letting know to the moonbat what I thought from him but without going too far. I found it 10 minutes later.
#12
JFM, I don't disagree, but I am suspicious of an editorialist who appears on TV talk shows regularly having the same unrecoverable gobstruckednes that mortals such as you and I suffer.
But even if he did, it is a pretty low thing to write about it in this manner when you finally do come up with the riposte, instead of keeping it to yourself or addressing it to the source. Something just isn't right about Mr. Stephens.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/17/2005 11:16
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#13
I'd say it's much more likely that Stephens didn't say anything cuz he was too busy encouraging this guy.
That's what I'd do.
I love to get goof-balls wound up: I'd *really* love it if I could do so & record my efforts in the WSJ.
#15
I agree with Mrs. Davis. Although the diplomat's comments were inappropriate, there's something "not right" about the way Stephens handled the situation. At least the diplomat was up front with his statements, which he mainly recited from what was said or written by American politicians and American MSM media,whereas Stephens waited until he got to the safety of his office to formulate a response that ended up being a US wide expose. Strange. Did Stephens half believe the accusations? Is he a runofthemill back-stabber - odd that he talks about respecting his host, an innate sense of propriety but then he turns around to tell everyone under the sun about what was said in the privacy of the diplomat's home. What the diplomat said was insulting but what Stephens did was cheesy.
#16
Engaging idiots' idiocy gives them power by perpetuating the conversation on their terms.
Whether this story is true or not, it's easy to find similar pathetic spew. These fools care nothing for logic or reasoned discourse, and they will not be swayed by facts and history. This vile filth simply deserves ridicule and scorn, not serious debate.
Next time you're confronted by rediculous drivel, don't bother trying to think of the appropriate intelligent response. Treat it like the garbage it is and laugh in their face. Nothing stops them in their tracks like laughing at them.
#17
I don't know Mr. Stephens well enough to know what kind of person he is. I do have some sympathy as I have occasionally been in this situation. I work with a number of fine people at the University, most of whom are in the political spectrum of moderately left to rabidly left. I'm clearly the most conservative person in our group, and I consider myself a moderate conservative. So from time to time I'm in a situation at work (faculty lunch, conference, etc) where I'm biting my tongue rather hard.
I could snap back. I could start the political argument. I'm well-armed with facts (thanks to Rantburg and other weblogs), and I consider myself to be a decent debater. I could do it.
But many times I don't. I bite my tongue. As Mr. Stephens points out, I extend a courtesy to my colleagues. Sometimes I get slapped for that.
Perhaps it's the way I was raised, where courtesy and decent treatment of others was very highly prized. I don't know. But I do know that in the situation Mr. Stephens noted, I very likely would not have gone for the diplomat's throat.
I will note that I was at a dinner party with very good friends of mine about a year ago. Another couple, friendly with my wife adn the wife of our friends, was there, and it was clear that the man of this couple was a card-carrying member of ANSWER. And he and I got into it, pretty intense and in the end, very rude. I still hear about it. My friends support me and understand why I laid into the guy, but I still hear about it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005 17:57
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#18
But Dr. Steve, you didn't turn around a few days later and regurgitate what offended you at the coctail party and publish your rebuttal arguments in the University's newsletter or send all this info by broadcast mail to everyone in your department. I think that's what disturbed me about Mr. Stephen's behavior. He tried to have it both ways. He did not take a stand at the time. But then he made a big to-do after the fact for everyone to read. I still think that's cheesy.
#19
Dr Steve! You're a closet mauler! You may not want to hear this, especially from me, lol, but good on ya. If you don't actually like it just a little teensy bit when you "still hear about it", then I think there's a problem.
Defending your beliefs, your right to believe them (despite the Fascists' desire to make you shut up and listen to them), and our way of life, well, it's just not something to apologize for - to anyone, anytime, anywhere. If you didn't defend them against a rabid barbarian, since you're an honest man, you would have to face the toughest and harshest judgement possible: your own.
:-)
#20
I do have some sympathy as I have occasionally been in this situation.
It seems a lot of us have been in this situation. Count me in. I've given up on rational conversations and rebuttals with these types of people. But there does come a point at which I just have to say something, and it usually isn't pretty. I have a low tolerance threshold for anti-American diatribes, what can I say :)
Posted by: Rafael ||
06/17/2005 18:41
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#21
The thing is, Germans in this situation don't see themselves as being rude. If challenged, they insist they are offering criticisms in the spirit of honest friendship... the same way they slam Israel for defending itself against terrorists.
#22
For the record, I think Mr. Stephens did the right thing. He is a journalist, its his job to inform the public. The diplomat, an official representing his country, OTOH was deranged enough to say these things to a journalist and someone he had never met before. And even if Mr. S wasn't a journalist or the diplomat didn't know, then in this day and age anyone can be a blogger. I have no time for people like the diplomat who live in a Leftist, timewarp, alternate reality of their own (collective) invention. I repeat Mr. Stephens did the right thing and his motivations for doing so are immaterial to the discussion.
#23
Mr Stephens is a total fool. He should have said, "very interesting, can I quote you on that. That would have forced the man to consider if his statements are worth ending his career over or not, and it would have been done in a professional (he's a journalist after all) and polite manner.
#24
Dr. Steve - apparently that's why I'm seldom invited to faculty dinners - honest to a fault.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 19:09
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#25
Dr. Steve,
I can assure you that whenever you want to leave the Blue City, you will have no trouble starting a practice. And it's kind of fun to be the neighborhood liberal for a change.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
06/17/2005 19:33
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#26
It was a private conversation, so I think it should have been resolved privately.
I don't know how authentic it is. Being a guest does not mean you have to tolerate this kind of crap.
And would a German diplomat would talk like this to a journalist?
It should be remembered that most diplomats did not have a "green" or "red" career. The German Foreign Office has been the "domain" of the Liberal Democrats (FDP) for decades, and diplomats are usually US-friendly, especially the older ones. Older diplomats may even be a bit to conservative, with some "brown" heritage.
I'll guess in a few days this will hit the German press. The WSJ is not ignored here.
And after September 18th we'll take care of problematic cases.
But I can't help it: This article is strange. I guess it would be easy to find out who this diplomat was. Something smells like a cheap shot.
#27
Not a diplomat involved....But... in the mid 80s I was sitting in the bar of the Barbican Hotel (City of London) and the bartender tried to start a fight with me because he hated Americans and was upset that I was trying to train the help to serve me better then other's with the ILLEGAL ACT of TIPPING. (no VAT included)
It turned out he was head of the local Communist Party chapter and hotel workers union. I was on per-diem with expenses so I decided to argue with the guy and buy drinks at the same time....
I said: I'm bored. How about I buy you drinks with me and we talk about it. There are no other customers around. About six drinks in I got him to admit that he voted for Thatcher!
Argument over!
#28
Truth to tell (I realize this is my 3rd comment in this thread -- sorry, I'm not thinking efficiently today) this reminds me of the story that broke in England some time back. The French diplomat at a dinner party attended by an English journalist who happened to be Jewish -- and the diplomat spent the evening spewing about why should the world have to suffer because of "that shitty little country, Israel." All there knew that this woman was both Jewish and a joournalist, which didn't stop him. Big brouhaha, on his part that a private conversation was made public. This kind of bloody-minded nonsense will only stop when it once again becomes socially unacceptable for the elites to feel free to say such things... and unfortunately the only way to do so is to publically pillory the nasty fools, as Mr. Stephens, who lived for years in Israel and wrote a column for the Jerusalem Post, has done. That the diplomat didn't think to check on the background of his guests shows the calibre of the German foreign service under the Schroeder regime. Hopefully Frau Merkel will quickly appoint someone to clean out the dregs following her election, leaving behind those that TGA speaks so kindly of, who will have the unwelcome task of repairing Germany's reputation in diplomatic circles.
#29
All I can say is that I wouldn't need the WSJ to make my point if I'm confronted with an idiot like that.
Even in his house. Does Mr Stephen think his article won't be investigated? Sorry man, name your source.
Only bad journalists quote the odd taxi driver when trying to prove what "those folks really think".
#30
I was once out for drinks with a Japanese sarariman when he suddenly declared that there should be no more Hiroshimas, Vietnams, or Nagasakis. I immediately agreed and added that there shouldn't be any more Nanjings either. One thing about the Japanese, they can take a hint, unlike most of the teutonic types I've met.
#31
Frankly, there are certain responsibilities that befall a host as well; even for the mentioned German diplomat.
But in fairness to Herr Diplomat, he has probably entertained his share of weasel American lefties and thought he was free to make an ass of himself. You know, the same lefties who vowed to move out of the country should Bush be reelected.
Posted by: Captain America ||
06/17/2005 23:22
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I have written to the assistant to the German ambassador in Washington, DC, to give her a heads up that damage control will be needed again. And to let her know that her boss may have been tactless in his comments during an interview last month, but that this gentleman was entirely out of line. I thought it a kindness to do so, she wrote back to me so earnestly after I commented about the last contretemps.
by Paul Johnson, Wall Street JournalEFL. Yoiu really should read it all.
That Europe as an entity is sick and the European Union as an institution is in disorder cannot be denied. But no remedies currently being discussed can possibly remedy matters. What ought to depress partisans of European unity in the aftermath of the rejection of its proposed constitution by France and the Netherlands is not so much the foundering of this ridiculous document as the response of the leadership to the crisis, especially in France and Germany.
Jacques Chirac reacted by appointing as prime minister Dominque de Villepin, a frivolous playboy who has never been elected to anything and is best known for his view that Napoleon should have won the Battle of Waterloo and continued to rule Europe. Gerhard Schröder of Germany simply stepped up his anti-American rhetoric. What is notoriously evident among the EU elite is not just a lack of intellectual power but an obstinacy and blindness bordering on imbecility. As the great pan-European poet Schiller put it: "There is a kind of stupidity with which even the Gods struggle in vain."
The fundamental weaknesses of the EU that must be remedied if it is to survive are threefold. First, it has tried to do too much, too quickly and in too much detail. . . . Long, but very good, discussion on economic policy snipped.
. . . There is another still more fundamental factor in the EU malaise. Europe has turned its back not only on the U.S. and the future of capitalism, but also on its own historic past. Europe was essentially a creation of the marriage between Greco-Roman culture and Christianity. Brussels has, in effect, repudiated both. There was no mention of Europe's Christian origins in the ill-fated Constitution, and Europe's Strasbourg Parliament has insisted that a practicing Catholic cannot hold office as the EU Justice Commissioner.
Equally, what strikes the observer about the actual workings of Brussels is the stifling, insufferable materialism of their outlook. The last Continental statesman who grasped the historical and cultural context of European unity was Charles de Gaulle. He wanted "the Europe of the Fatherlands (L'Europe des patries)" and at one of his press conferences I recall him referring to "L'Europe de Dante, de Goethe et de Chateaubriand." I interrupted: "Et de Shakespeare, mon General?" He agreed: "Oui! Shakespeare aussi!"
No leading member of the EU elite would use such language today. The EU has no intellectual content. Great writers have no role to play in it, even indirectly, nor have great thinkers or scientists. It is not the Europe of Aquinas, Luther or Calvin--or the Europe of Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Half a century ago, Robert Schumann, first of the founding fathers, often referred in his speeches to Kant and St. Thomas More, Dante and the poet Paul Valery. To him--he said explicitly--building Europe was a "great moral issue." He spoke of "the Soul of Europe." Such thoughts and expressions strike no chord in Brussels today.
In short, the EU is not a living body, with a mind and spirit and animating soul. And unless it finds such nonmaterial but essential dimensions, it will soon be a dead body, the symbolic corpse of a dying continent.
Comments from our European contingent? Over to you, JFM, TGA, Howard, et al.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005
07:38 ||
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#1
C'mon guys - you have a French Socialist in charge of writing the document and then you're surprised that it's an unabridged dictionary-sized mass of boilerplate feel-good twaddle mixed with paleo-commie horseshit?
#2
I suggest that there are only four main variants to western philosophy, in practice. They consist of optimism and pessimism, realism and idealism. America thrives because it is mostly OR, that is, optimistic and realistic. You see it in our founding documents, and in our culture and society. It is the "red state" opinion. However, in the US, there is also the "blue state" opinion; diametrically opposed to both optimism and realism. It is the IP, idealism and pessimism of the neo-Calvinist old world. Picture Howard Dean: "Everything is horrible, but only we can make it perfect! (Yaargh)." From a realistic and optimistic viewpoint, it looks insane, totalitarian and repulsive. Europe, however, is PR, pessimistic and realistic. Over 2000 years of bitter war and failed promises, the idealism has been burned out of them, and so their attitude is "Things will go on cruddily like this for years and then get worse." This combination philosophy is best expressed in French movies that Americans would rate second choice after a root canal. Miserable people being bored and miserable, then descending into even worse misery. Ironically, despite their strong penchant for the morbid, Russians are OI, that is, optimistic and idealistic. For this reason, they actually get along better with Americans than they do with Europeans. The shared sense of optimism stimulates realistic Americans to be more idealistic, and makes Russians more practical. So what does Europe (and, for that part, the blue states) need? That is a very good question: how does one resurrect optimism in people who abhor it as "naive" or downright "stupid", when they see it in others (especially republican presidents)? Are they damned as a people?
#3
'Moose: Interesting theory. Might I throw in an observation that may add something to it?
Europe always has had an elite ruling class and a mass of not-so-elites who are expected to shut up and go along with the program. The Euro-elite generally did not move to the New World because they were already sitting pretty where they were. The New World was therefore mostly settled by the not-so-elites of Europe. To be more precise, the more talented, risk-taking subset of the not-so-elites who believed they could improve things by hard work. Those of the not-so-elite who lack optimism and idealism stayed at home and resigned themselves to their fate.
We see this same pattern in more recent emigration as well: e.g., the socialist elite of India stays in New Delhi and lords over the fatalistic lower caste, while the motivated not-so-elite goes to medical school at Ohio State and ends up with new $1M houses in Delaware County.
Americans are, therefore, to a great extent, self-selected for optimism and idealism--and became so by draining the idealistic optimists from the rest of the world.
Either that, or I'm all wet. Comments?
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005 11:39
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#4
Jacques Chirac personally sold Saddam a nuclear reactor though he KNEW it was not for energy but to build a bomb. He didn't care.
I'd like to see that man dangle on the end of a rope.
#8
Mike: self-selected for optimism, certainly, but not for idealism. For realism. The two biggest draws for immigrants to the US are economic improvement and educational opportunity. Immigrants know, or at least are under few illusions, that the US is perfect, or is anywhere near perfect--but it is a place that, with hard work, comes success. It is not seen like Sweden, the land of the hand out--perfect for an idealist wanting rewards for the sweetness of his smile--but as a place where government will get out of your way and let you succeed. Compare the viewpoint of American idealists, that rich people have somehow "won life's lottery", versus the reality, that most of the new millionaires in the US live in middle-class suburbs and work 12-14 hour days at their small business, take fewer vacations, and spend a lot of time caring for their financial well-being. An idealist loathes earning his keep that way. Almost by definition, an idealist believes themselves to somehow be "elite", that is, elite enough to imagine the ideals that they love. And the elite shouldn't have to work hard doing dull things to make their living. They should produce art and music, and be fawned over and rewarded for their brilliance and talent by lesser men. For this reason, they bitterly resent the burgeoisie, the grubby little people who work hard and have all the money. If there was justice in the world, I (the idealist) would have the money, and they (the realistic burgeoisie) would do the dull work that they are so good at. Both of these types exist in the US, with the red states filled with happy, optimistic, realistic people; and the blue states having concentrations of miserable, pessimistic, idealistic people.
#9
'Moose: good point, and good catch on the correction. I misread what you wrote as I was typing.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005 15:31
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#10
Moose, who's pessimistic here...Jesus. Even fatalistic.
Let's for a second assume that idealism represents no specific ideals, just the drive, the faith that makes men do great things. Indeed your methods, not your intentions determine your outcome.
Your explanation of idealism was far too absolutist in its focus, and don't provide for the inherent inventiveness of people, especially Americans.
Were our founding fathers not idealist, I argue that they were. While I'm sure that many others had the same idea of a free and equal society that they had, those others were too lazy or stupid or too French to build a solid democratic republic that would last.
Your "only the Republicans" mantra may fly by Fox News logic standards, but let's not stereotype idealists as commie pinkos here.
Idealists just need a work ethic to bring their ideas to fruition.
Jesus, Napoleon, the Wright Brothers, Rockefeller, MLK, Bill Gates, all idealistic about their ability to make it, they backed their idealism up and what did they do?
My Point... idealism and success can be compatible and perhaps they are inseparable.
Posted by: Mountain Man ||
06/17/2005 16:06
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#11
Mike, Its called the Emigrant Phenomena. Emigrants as a group, self-select for the qualities required for success. As someone remarked (it might have been me) - Those with get-up-and-go tend to get up and go.
#12
Compare the viewpoint of American idealists, that rich people have somehow "won life's lottery"
Actually, the "if he's rich, he must've gotten it through nefarious means" attitude came over with the Irish. They got it through bitter experience, and the attitude spread here, especially in the New England factory towns where I grew up (two guesses what Party ran things?).
#14
Mountain Man: A point of semantics, here. I am very careful to use the word idealism only in contrast to realism. Idealism, by itself covers much of what you said and more; for example, religious idealism, atheist idealism, even such beliefs as environmental idealism. But often these forms of idealism are diametrically opposed to each other in their own right. But realism stands apart from idealism as a whole. Take your MLK example. While he preached idealism in civil rights, he was clearly focused on the reality before him. As such, he did not advocate equality in all things at a racial-personal level; he advocated things like equality of opportunity and success based on character. So, while people embraced his idealism, they still understood his realistic goals. (And, noteworthy, the idealists who took over from him have long since abandoned his practical goals, and replaced them with pragmatic, greedy and short-sighted ideals.) So, was MLK really an idealist? It toto, yes; but compared with realism, no. He was a realist who spoke in terms of idealism.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military launched a major combat operation Friday, sending 1,000 Marines and Iraqi soldiers to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters in a volatile western province straddling Syria.
Operation Spear started in the pre-dawn hours in Anbar province to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters, the military said. The area, which straddles the Syrian border, is where U.S. forces said it killed about 40 militants in airstrikes in Karabilah on June 11.
The rest of the article is a re-hash of old news.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005
07:16 ||
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As large and area as it is, geography and logistics provide some limits to movement for the terrs. We, on the other hand, with JSTARS, unmanned UAV's and manned aircraft have an unlimited ability to patrol. Our only issue is the ability to act in near real time on intelligence gained. The better able our ground forces can react with immediacy, the more terrs get their raisins.
Anti-terrorist police have arrested four men in London. Officers raided three addresses in Barnet and Finchley, in the north of the capital, early on Friday. The men were arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and taken to a central London police station for questioning. Police are searching the addresses, raided as part of "ongoing enquiries". Two of the men were arrested in a vehicle in High Road, Barnet. Thoroughly nice boys. Pillars of the local community. Always at the Mosque. I say brice them.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/17/2005
04:16 ||
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#1
Ooops - looks ike Iranian dissidents. WTF? Helping out Tehran are we?
Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/17/2005 5:41
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#2
Some of the Iranian dissidents are pretty nasty themselves (Khomeni was an Iranian dissident himself, once). Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is no improvement. I hope these four are an example of that and not some of the good guys.
Prime Minister John Howard has announced major changes to Australia's system of immigration detention.
Families with children will be placed in community housing, rather than in detention centres, and thousands of those on temporary protection visas will be allowed to stay in Australia permanently.
The primary decision on an asylum seeker's case must be made within three months, and the Refugee Review Tribunal must also finalise decisions within three months.
Long-term detainees who have been held for two years will have their cases referred to the Commonwealth ombudsman for review.
If a person has been detained for two years or more there will be an automatic requirement that every six months a report on their detention must be given to the Ombudsman who will give an assessment to the minister.
The Ombudsman's report to the minister will be a recommendation only.
Mr Howard says he wants a more cases to be dealt with in a timely way.
"Above all in a more timely manner," he said.
"It's fair to say that the more I have delved into this issue the greatest areas of complaint really arise around the issue of time, and therefore quite a number of the announcements I am about to make relate to the issue of the time it takes to deal with matters."
Mr Howard says mandatory detention remains.
"I think they represent a sensible advance on the existing arrangements. They don't undermine the existing policy," he said.
Liberal MP Petro Georgiou has welcomed the deal, saying he will withdraw his two Private Members Bills.
Lobby group, Justice for Refugees, has welcomed the changes.
But its chairman, Don McMaster, says detention cases should be reviewed sooner than after two years.
"I suppose anything is a step in the right direction, but I think two years is a bit too long," he said.
"Certainly after a year would be a much better time span, and using the ombudsman is an improvement."
#1
This is not a major change to Australian immigration laws. This is a relaxing of the strict detention policy on illegal immigrants. I assume the Howard government has concluded this is a battle no longer worth fighting with the constant drip-drip of Leftist 'this is cruel and inhuman'. These people can return to their home country anytime they like courtesy of the Australian taxpayer. Unfortunately we cannot expel people who claim asylum or claim persecution. It's contary to International Law(TM).
#2
This can occur when one intends to be the USA of Europe, or least an integrated entity, instead of the more realistic super-confederatist, super-neutralist Cantons of Switzerland, etc, AND NO D* *** BIKINI TEAM TO BOOT. If one wants the AL BUNDYS, etal. of Europe to like and fight and die for the concept of an integrated "EU", you gotta give them something to wanna fight and die with, and fight and die for!? Don't be putting the cart before the horse like the USSR and now North Korea, wanting a Nation of engineers and specialists at the expense of degrading farmers - you know, the ones whom till and grow the foods that everyone, from the lowliest People's Soviet Waffen SS soldier to the Great Leader himself, survives off of. SO now all the educated Norkie bureaucrats and army units are out getting their hands dirty trying to feed themselves.
#3
Let's hope our days of propping up fat, corrupt, inbred, gauloise smoking, port-blockading French farmers are over. Good news from the continent for once.
Posted by: Howard UK ||
06/17/2005 5:39
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#4
WHAT!??! You mean that French farmers will actually have to work for their money!?!? Merde! The horror! This is a sign of the Apocalypse!
#7
If they really want to be a united country they should consolidate the national banks and the debt and take it all out of the control of the various nation-states. Just as Alexander Hamilton did.
They won't do that because control of your economy is control of your future, even if your economists are idiots.
After totaling it all up, the Treasury Department announced Thursday that it had collected $61 billion on Wednesday. That surpassed the old one-day record of $56 billion set on Dec. 15, 2000.
The bulk of the revenue — $49 billion — came from corporate tax payments, also a one-day record for such receipts. The old mark was $46 billion set last Dec. 15. Wednesday's date, June 15, and Dec. 15 are both deadlines for corporations to make quarterly tax payments.
The government's coffers have been swelling this year as tax receipts from both individuals and corporations have been on the rise, reflecting an improving economy. Because of those increases, this year's federal deficit is expected to fall to around $350 billion, down from the $413 billion record in dollar terms set in 2004.
#1
Which is why recruiting is so tough [while retentions are no problem] for the Army. Was the same in the economy when it was rolling in the 80s and 90s. Not that MSM could ever figure out cause-> effect.
#2
Also the MSM and the Dems don't get the fact that if the people have more money, they spend more. Thus the governments get higher tax dollars from the increased spending. Remember, the people are much better at spending money for economic growth than the government is.
ABOARD A-STAR HELICOPTER - The pilot flew deep into Sweetwater Canyon, the downdraft from the whirling helicopter blades kicking up mesquite branches to show eight people in a huddle.
"Surprise, boys," grinned Border Patrol pilot Randy Herberholtz, circling the group of undocumented immigrants from 800 feet above the rocky canyon, about five miles north of the U.S.-Mexican border.
As summer approaches, top U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection officials are ramping up air power above Arizona's deserts to an unprecedented level. The agency has assigned 52 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft there, more than double from just a year ago and the greatest concentration along the 1,950-mile Southwestern border.
The reason for the increase is a simple, basic fact that smugglers have known for ages and agents now reluctantly concede.
"The only way to patrol this," Herberholtz said, his hand sweeping over a map of Arizona's remote deserts, "is with aircraft."
The added air power is a key component of the federal government's push to gain a degree of control along Arizona's 389-mile border with Mexico, the most popular and deadly crossing point for undocumented immigrants. In March, officials announced reinforcements as part of the second phase of the Arizona Border Control Initiative and temporarily deployed aircraft normally assigned to other stretches of the U.S.-Mexican border, hoping to drive down the record-setting death toll in Arizona.
So far this fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, the helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft have been credited with netting more than 69,000 arrests, compared with almost 51,000 in all of last year. At the same time, the pilots, who are paired with search-and-rescue agents, have participated in about 95 percent of the Tucson sector's 260 rescue attempts, helping about 447 undocumented immigrants in distress, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics. But with the deadliest months still to come, the Border Patrol in Arizona is on pace to break last year's record of 172 deaths with 113 fatalities so far this year.
On topographic maps, it's clear that large stretches of deserts are too vast, canyons are too deep and mountains are too steep for regular patrols. Certain areas, such as the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range or Cabeza Prieta Wildlife Refuge in the southwestern part of the state, are off-limits to the Border Patrol or only accessible on established roads, agents said.
Even with ATVs and Humvees, some areas simply are too hard or impractical to patrol on the ground. The result: Smugglers gamble and cross through some of the most treacherous deserts in North America, betting that agents will be less likely to follow them.
On the June morning, Herberholtz buzzed over the desert in the A-Star helicopter with a search-and-rescue agent riding shotgun. The helicopter flew over places found on few maps but with picturesque, if misleading names: Bluebird Pass, Locomotive Rock, El Camino del Diablo (Devil's Road). Particularly during the summer months, the helicopter response time in such remote areas becomes crucial, said Ron Bellavia, commander of the Tucson search-and-rescue squad. Rescues that would take 12 to 18 hours for agents on the ground, are reduced to two to four hours...
"One of our main goals on the search-and-rescue team is to shorten the amount of time someone is out there in the middle of the desert," Bellavia said. The helicopters, he said, "increase our chance of finding those people alive and increase our ability to stabilize them. It's a very valuable asset."
#2
Elements within the USAf reportedly are calling for the dev of AIRBORNE AIRCRAFT CARRIER [mostly UAV] plus large dedicated UAV payloads for convertible or near-term aircraft types.
#3
"Surprise, boys," grinned Border Patrol pilot Randy Herberholtz, circling the group of undocumented immigrants from 800 feet above the rocky canyon, about five miles north of the U.S.-Mexican border.
And circling them does, what, exactly? Why not do something useful -- drop a load of dye-filled balloons on them.
Or, if that's considered too cruel, just use cluster bombs. They're invaders, after all.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 7:44
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#4
Check out Dale Brown's last few"Dreamland"novels,RC.Way ahead of you.There area lot of people that do not like Clancy and Brown for not being realistic enough,but they always seem to be ahead of the curve in talking about new,developing tech.
#5
A much more practical idea are the blimps deployed against drug smuggers in the region. No longer as restricted to low-level surveillance, because of better cameras, a single airship could cover a wide area. Once again, remember that much of the border is "impassable", in that there is nothing for many miles on either side of it; so entry routes are much narrower than supposed. The most important concept is not to try and stop *all* infiltration--that is not cost effective--just try and stop the great majority of infiltration.
#6
What is needed is a "virtual fence" until a real one can be made in the hardest areas (Later the virtual can be used in the more flat and open areas).
Too bad nobody has even bothered to bring this up in Congress except possibly Tom Tancredo from Colorado (whom the press loves to misrepresent as a maniac, at least outside of Colorado).
Virtual fence as follows:
Initial satellite surveillance for suspect movements, comunications, and imagery changes-over-time (with satellites we already have up there - all they need is tasking), then 2-layer Static automated observation blimps as tippers (think something like an aerial GSR/IR with an image processor, and a data link, one up at 100K feet above the weather, and several around 10K feet for better resolution, all with interlocking areas of observation). Moving target analysis software invented for the JSTARS could be used by a ground site that takes feeds from all these airborne automated radars, and "decultter" it, providing better targets - ones that are highly probable as humans in the terrain, ones fitting the profiel of an illegal border intrusion.
Then use UAVs as confirmer/trackers off the tips generated by satellite and surveillence blimps. THey fly up to the area, with better cameras, and the aility to chang their angle so as to see "under" overhangs by taking up "off angles" and different perspectives. Also, they would provide live visual and IR pictures for getting a description and count, so the border patrol will know how many they are after.
Then they woudl send in heliborne (armed) QRF to do the bust via air assault into bad terrain, or sels wheeled assets in reachable terrain. As a bonus, they can medevac of any that are hurt or in bad shape = humanitarian mission too. In addition the traditional scattered foot patrols would be used to back up the sensors and provide a visible physical presence.
NExt, regional ground transport would be there from van sized, to "cattle truck" sized elements. They woudl meet up with the "bust" teams after all were in custody. They would "tag, transport & transfer" the illegals from the QRF site back to Mexico. This would also include a processing element, on the spot. The processing element would include a judge, a medic to address & treat minor mrdical issues, a logistic person to be sure they prisoners are fed and watered, and a third party observer to insure fair witness to the process. These people would ride up in a single vehicle, and all the gear needed would likely fit in a van or large SUV (or even a Humvee set up like the command vehicle Humvees the Aarmy has)
Also the portable processing center is datalinked back to DHS/Border/FBI databases. On the spot the illegals would be digitially photogrphed, iris and fingerprint scans taken, their case held in front of a specially appointed US judge, IMMEDIATELY. Followed by their IMMEDIATE deportation back to Mexico, in the same transports they were picked up in.
The part is important - justidce delayed is justice denied. These are not US Citizens nor are they lawful residents, they are breaking US law, they were caught in the act of breaking US law, (thanks to the satellite/blimp tracks) therefore when they see the US judge (comes with the transport proccessing center) and are presented along with the track data and video directly showing them comitting the illegal activity, judgement can be rendered on-the-spot, and then they should be immediately deported as the sentence. Even if it means just dumping them at the border sitee where they previous came from, with a humanitarian MRE & a cheap plastic bag of water, thats what shoudl be done - and if the place is remote, they get a courtesy phone call form the border patrol HQ to the Mexican government to come get the illegals at those coordinates.
Of course there is an exception to all this for obvious "coyotes", DoD "persons of interest", or US residents (citizen, green card), who are held & examined, and if found guilty of smuggling, are jailed for a long time.
Repeat offenders (via the biometric ID part of the bust process I mentioned above), would be held, tried and jailed, and deported after their jail term. Multiple offenders (i.e. they get caught again after jail) would be sentenced to longer terms, this time in federal prison instaed of border jails.
This system has the advantage of being redeployable to percieved risk sectors, and being expanded as needed, in a modular fashion (say, for example, up to Canada). It could even be deployed over a maritime area, with foot patrols of coastal areas, and maritime boarding troops from the Coasties and firepower from the US Navy.
But its primary purpose would be to "lock down" an area while the fence for that area was being built. Fence off the hardest areas to patrol for us, making it an much longer and more difficult route for the illegls, which will funnel them thru easier to patrol areas. ANd contoinue to observe the "hard" areas, because that is where only someone desperate (i.e. criminal) to get into the US without being observed will go.
Not that hard, and the technology for all this is already there (and its not all that manpower intensive either). All thats lacking is the budget and the political will.
Oncve we had this system in place, then fully implement President Bush's "guest worker" card, and as part of it, be sure to take biometric data (fingerprints, photo, eye scan).
Anyone busted without one of these gets the same treatment as border illegals. And anyone that is a repeat offender (i.e. busted more than once) is barred from the guest worker program.
Any employer found to be using "undocumented" aliens woudl be subject to fines of $10,000 per person per incident. 10 percent of this fine would go to the local government, 10 percent to the state government, and 10 percent to whomever tipped off the border patrol (including guest workers - rat out the cheaters, make money). This fine would not be dischargable in bankruptcy, and would attache to the corporate officers and board of directors in the case of corporations.
As for the workers themselves, they have a choice to make when they apply:
1) Accept the laws of the US, including tax laws, and minimum wage laws and OSHA regs, and agree to be bound by them (and report when they are vciolated). You do this, you get full acvcess to US social services, including midcare, schools, etc.
or
2) Declare yourself to be free of US employement laws. This means you work for whatever you cvan negotiate. It also means you and anyone with out that has not agreed to (1) abovve is ineligible for OASH, workman's comp, minimum age, social servicves, schools, medicare, etc.
Either you pay into the system to take advantage of it, or you exist completley outside the system (and get none of it). Fair is fair, especially to those immigrants who came here and did things the hard way (green card, etc).
It will all be there on the guest worker card and the computer record - so if you change your mind, visit the US cvourthouse and file an affadavit to cvhange your status, get a new card issued after verification of your biometric data, and go on your merry way.
This way everyoneis happy: businesses can negotiate freely like they do now with illegals, without fear of repurcussions, and the social safety net is available to guest workers who desire it and play by the rules that US Citizens are bound by.
Bottom line: If you want to work here, come on in, legitimately and make a deal to get what money you can. If not, we will find you, and throw you out - and eventually jail you. If you hire illegals, you will pay the price -and will be PERSONALLY responsible. And local/state governments will have a fiscal incentive to root out illegals.
I wouldn't trust but a handful of 'em, they'd pull all the teeth and stoke up the yummy-gummys.
Puhleeeze - If there is anyone here with a personal relationship to a Congresscritter or Senator - who isn't gutless or on Kool Aid (same thing?), please, please, PLEASE forward OS's posts to them. We would all be grateful.
Reading around, its easy to see the dead hand of Kyoto at work here. Demand for gas is soaring everywhere becuase, apart from Nuclear, its the only way to reduce carbon emissions. More insidiously, I suggest that Kyoto targets morphed into energy projections and they are now being exposed as the fiction they are. Winter fuel bills are likely to soar this year as future gas prices hit their highest-ever level yesterday. The price of gas for delivery in October was 66p a therm, some 75pc higher than it was at this point last year and more than double the current spot price. The head of Powergen, Paul Golby, said it was 'difficult to envisage' that gas bills would not rise
Energy companies said domestic bills would rise again and World Gas Intelligence, an industry analyst, said factories may be forced to shut for "days, weeks or longer in order to cut gas use". Yesterday, Ofgem, the energy regulator, sought to reassure the market, and pointed to a National Grid Transco report that states there will be enough gas to supply the market.
Sonia Brown, Ofgem's director of markets, said this winter would be "the same as last year". However, Ofgem recently gave a presentation to the industry which forecast that gas supplies would drop by 20m cubic metres a day this winter, more than 5pc of total demand, as production in the North Sea dwindles "faster than anticipated". Actually demand has risen faster than anticipated and this has resulted in more production and hence declining production yields.
A spokesman for Powergen, one of the largest domestic suppliers of gas, said: "The whole world and his wife are saying that prices are getting higher." The head of Powergen, Paul Golby, said it was "difficult to envisage" that gas bills would not rise, and that any company that held them this year would only have to raise them more aggressively next year.
British Gas warned last month that it may increase prices for the third time in a year and a half. Sir Roy Gardner, chief executive, said: "If wholesale prices stay at these levels an appropriate retail price increase will be necessary". His comments were echoed by Ian Marchant, the chief executive of Scottish and Southern Energy.
Gas prices have been forced up because the UK has been caught short as new pipelines to import gas from Norway and Russia are still under construction. This is becuase the projections said they wouldn't be needed until 2007 - refer to my opening comment. Last winter, prices ran at between 20p and 40p a therm, although they spiked up to £1.70 during a cold snap.
A report from consultancy Global Insight for the Government showed that industrial users responded to the gas price spike last year by shutting factories and cutting consumption by 27pc.
The current infrastructure - the interconnector between Bacton and Zeebrugge in Belgium - provides a spasmodic supply of gas to the UK. Mark Smedley at World Gas Intelligence said that, at one point last winter, the price of gas in the UK was 30p a therm higher than on the continent, but the interconnector still did not provide enough gas. The failure of the market to correct itself is under investigation by the European Commission, but Mr Smedley said the large French and German energy companies dictated the way the gas flows through the pipeline. Lets blame those nasty Europeans.
Gas traders are also worried about competition from the United States for supplies of liquefied natural gas. And lets blame the Americans as well even though the UK doesn't (as far as I can determine) import any LNG - although its first terminal is due to open this year.
#2
phil-I read today that the price of oil hit a new record high of $58.47/barrel. I'll post the link for everyone to read. I guess it could be worse - OPEC has some pretty anti-American nations like Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria - OPEC could choose to turn down their spigots so scarcity would enhance the value of their product but they aren't doing so. In fact, OPEC countries are raising their quotas to keep with the demand.
#4
OPEC countries are raising their quotas to keep with the demand. Quotas don't satisfy demand, supply does. There is no more available supply in OPEC. Thats it for a number of years. Economic growth will slow until demand for oil stops increasing or alternate energy supplies come on stream. This means a severe and prolonged recession like none of us have ever seen. This seems inescapeable to me, but I'd be interested to hear alternate scenarios.
#5
My theory is that those countries that can't afford petrol will stop using it first. :) I look for a steep drop in demand from India, China and Brazil. Followed by an instant 3 million brl a day surplus.
#6
There could be more supply if certain OPEC nations' dictators (I won't mention Chavez by name) didn't screw up their industry to make it more politically reliable.
LANGKAWI, June 16 (Bernama) -- Police believe that the 10 pirates who attempted to hijack the oil tanker Nepline Delima in Langkawi waters on Tuesday have connections with an international syndicate.
Deputy Inspector-General of Police Datuk Seri Musa Hassan said Thursday that this was because they had to sell their ill-gotten gains to others. He also did not discount the possibility that more crewmen of the vessel would be arrested on suspicion of providing insider help.
Speaking to reporters at the Langkawi International Airport here after being briefed on the incident and investigation, [Deputy Inspector-General Musa] said police were investigating the possibility that the pirates, believed to be Indonesians, were also involved in an earlier hijacking of a commercial ship in the Malacca Strait.
...police had sent a team of divers to the scene to look for weapons because the pirates were believed to have thrown their weapons into the sea before surrendering.
Musa said the pirates' motive was to seize the tanker and sell the RM12 million worth of diesel that it was carrying... he said police had no proof that the pirates came from a mother ship because at the time of the 4am incident they only used a fibre glass speedboat.
He said that with the speedboat, they could flee to any of the islands in Malaysian or Thai waters after hijacking commercial ships or tankers. Asked whether the pirates had links with separatist groups in Indonesia, he said the matter was being investigated.
He said investigations so far showed that insiders in the form of crew members were involved... two Indonesian crewmen and the 10 pirates had been remanded and would be charged once there was sufficient evidence against them while the other crew members were still here to help in the investigation.
Musa, in a ceremony at the Bukit Malut marine police base here, presented commendation letters from the Inspector-General of Police to Mohamed, 28, and 24 officers and personnel of the marine police patrol boat PZ15 that arrested the pirates.
A separatist leader based in Pakistani-administered Kashmir has alleged that Kashmiri militants were initially trained by Pakistan's intelligence agency - the ISI - in the late 1980s. Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Amanullah Khan says the move had the blessings of Pakistan's then military ruler General Zia ul-Haq. His allegations are made in a new edition of his book Continuous Struggle, which was first published in 1992. The new edition of the book is yet to be published but the BBC News website was able to secure extracts of the book. It contains the most hard-hitting account of Pakistan's alleged involvement in the Kashmir insurgency from a Pakistan-based Kashmiri leader so far.
Mr Khan says the ISI first made contact with the JKLF in early 1987, through the organisation's senior leader Farooq Haider. He says Mr Haider made a deal with the ISI whereby the JKLF was to bring young Kashmiris willing to fight Indian rule to Pakistan-administered Kashmir. They would then be given military training and arms by the ISI, he says. The objective was to start an insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir.
According to Mr Khan, the JKLF was told by the then chief of the ISI, General Akhtar Abdur Rehman, that the ISI would not interfere with the JKLF's ideology. "I was told by Brigadier Farooq of the ISI that the agency would lend us unconditional support as directed by General Zia ul-Haq," he says. "He also said the ISI would not intervene in JKLF's organisational matters." Mr Khan says it was also agreed that no JKLF leader "engaged at the political and diplomatic front" would accept money in cash from the ISI. It was a verbal agreement, he says. The first batch of eight young fighters from Indian-administered Kashmir were said to have reached Pakistan-administered side in February 1988. They were given military training and weapons by the ISI and sent back with instructions not to start anything until they were given a green signal from Pakistan, Mr Khan writes.
Mr Khan then says that three separatist leaders, Mohammed Afzal, Ghulam Hasan Lone and Ghulam Nabi Bhatt were called to the Pakistan side in June 1988. "After lengthy deliberations, we asked them to start the insurgency on 13 July, 1988. But for some reason, the insurgency could not begin before 31 July when the Amar Singh Club and the central post and telegraph office in Srinagar were bombed." Mr Khan gives "credit for the first action" to six militants - Humayun Azad, Javed Jehangir, Shabbir Ahmed Guru, Arshad Kol, Ghulam Qadir and Mohammed Rafiq. "After that, there was an endless stream of militants coming into Azad [Pakistan-administered] Kashmir." Mr Khan says the JKLF parted ways with the ISI in early 1990 when the ISI demanded that one of its officers be allowed to attend the JKLF meetings "as an observer". It was after this that ISI support shifted to Hezbul Mujahideen, and the movement went from being a nationalist insurgency to a pan-Islamic Jihad.
I thought the Hizb ul-Mujahideen were popular with the ISI because they're the only jihadi group that is made up, well, largely of Kashmiris. So was the shift towards them really a case of moving away from a Kashmiri insurgency towards a multi-national Islamist movement or did that come later?
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
06/17/2005 10:44
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#2
Dear Dan, Not sure if the relationship between the HM and ISI made this a pan-Muslim insurrection but I do know that ISI has established several Terror groups including the HUJI, LET and Badr outfits. I also read there are some internecine clashes between these groups as well as Fedayeen attacks on Indian SF. The ISI also supports NE Indian rebel groups in Assam, Tripura and Nagaland. Pakland is a problem and the whole nuke thing gives me the willies. Need to get chummy with India.
The JKLF was a secular liberation movement, the Hezb on the otherhad was set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami. They are less fanatical than the pan-Islamists that came later, but the Hezb fought in favour of annexation to Pakistan, rather than independence, and they argued this with the typical Islamist argument that there should be less Muslim countries rather than more.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/17/2005 18:12
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#4
typical Islamist argument that there should be less Muslim countries rather than more.
whaaaaaat? We agree on something?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 19:32
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#5
So the ISI started it all.
The claims that Indian rigging of elections in 1988 led to an uprising by Kashmiris that was later used by Pakistan is false.
It was never a nationalist struggle. It was jihad, using the Afghan jihad as a template.
Posted by: john ||
06/17/2005 20:22
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"Significant" extra funds for fighting the Afghan drug trade have been pledged by the most industrialised nations, the UK home secretary has said. Charles Clarke announced the deal after G8 justice ministers met in Sheffield. But he admitted the British-led effort to counter drugs in Afghanistan, which produced 90% of the world's opium in 2004, had been disappointing.
Despite the toppling of the Taleban regime, last year saw a near-record opium poppy harvest in Afghanistan. Mr Clarke said there had been "major problems", which he blamed on the need for more resources and the difficulty of ensuring money goes was channelled by an effective agency.
He said the UK would continue its work on the issue. And he said he was confident Afghan President Hamid Karzai would be able to produce an answer alongside the G8 nations.
Mr Clarke said the new agreement covered intensifying efforts on three fronts. "Firstly, more money - and everybody agreed that more resources were necessary," he said. "Countries committed around the table to the principle of putting more resources in." He refused to put a figure on the new funding but suggesting it was "significant".
Significantly significant?
Mr Clarke said the G8 would also work closely with the Afghan Government to ensure resources were shared around the country. "Thirdly, we agreed that we needed to work more co-operatively in the region," he said.
Russia had been positive about work it could carry out on its border with Afghanistan.
I'm sure the Afghans are really encouraged by that.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005
00:28 ||
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LONDON (AP) - Vandals desecrated 86 tombstones dating to the 1870s in a Jewish cemetery in London, spraying some of them with Nazi swastikas and racial slurs while knocking them over, police said Thursday. London police said a large hole was made in the heavy wooden doors of a mausoleum building in West Ham Jewish Cemetery, and the structure was sprayed with swastikas. The mausoleum contained members of the wealthy Rothschild banking dynasty.
Dozens of headstones around the mausoleum lay on the ground, some of them cracked or caved in. Jagged knee-high bases stood over the broken fragments of the stones, which previously stood about 5 feet tall. The barely legible inscriptions were mostly in Hebrew. "This was a despicable racist attack," detective Steve Lane said.
Two of the damaged graves belonged to children aged 4 and 13 and had stood undisturbed since the 1870s, said Melvyn Hartog, head of burials for the United Synagogue, which maintains the cemetery and 10 others in the London area. "It's the lowest of the low," Hartog said of the vandals.
The caretaker at the burial site, which opened in the mid-19th century, discovered the vandalism Sunday. By Thursday, cemetery workers had removed the swastikas and racial slurs from the mausoleum and graves.
Daniel Stockdale, a 21-year-old mason who works for the United Synagogue, said the toppled headstones would be put upright but the broken ones would not be replaced with new stones. "It's so bad," Stockdale said. "These stones are irreplaceable."
The attack is the third desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Britain this year. The first involved the painting of swastikas and SS signs on 12 gravestones in a Hampshire cemetery. Earlier this month, staff at a Jewish cemetery in Manchester, northern England, discovered that at least 96 graves had been toppled or smashed. Some of the stones, which are up to 70 years old, may have marked the graves of Holocaust survivors who came to Britain after the war, Jewish community leaders said.
Earlier this week, Europe's top human rights watchdog expressed concern at the "considerable and steady rise of anti-Semitic incidents" in Britain. "While these incidents usually mirror tensions in the Middle East, representatives of the Jewish communities report that there now seems to be a higher level of background violence against these communities," said the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, the Council of Europe's body on combating racism.
There were 532 anti-Semitic incidents in Britain last year, the highest figure in 20 years, said Michael Whine, a spokesman for the Community Security Trust, a Jewish group that works against anti-Semitism. Those incidents included life-threatening assaults, criminal damage to property, hate mail and abusive behavior. The CST did not yet have figures for this year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005
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#1
Bet there's a lot more anti-semitism there than 'islamophobia' - and i bet a lot of the anti-semites are Islamic.
The US threw its weight behind an expansion of the UN security council that would take in Japan as a permanent member yesterday but not the other prime contender from the developed world, Germany. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said Washington backed a limited expansion from 15 members to about 20, with "two or so" new permanent ones, including Japan.
The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, confirmed American support for Japan's permanent council seat in a telephone call to the country's foreign minister.
Mr Burns said the new permanent members should have the same veto powers as the existing five - the US, Britain, France, Russia and China. He did not specify which other country should take a new permanent seat, but US officials have been quoted as suggesting that the candidate come from the developing world.
That's a bad idea. SC countries with a veto have to have the economic, political and diplomatic power to make things happen. Only developing country that could meet those criteria would be India. Otherwise just expand to include Japann and be done.
He said the US hoped the restructuring of the security council would be part of a comprehensive reform of the organisation to be discussed at a summit in September.
Washington's strong backing of Japan, and its failure to mention other contenders by name, was a blow to Germany, which has been campaigning for a permanent seat.
And not the least bit unexpected, especially here at Rantburg.
The structure of the security council has not changed for more than three decades, since China joined the main victors of the second world war as a permanent member. Along side the permanent five, there are 10 other seats which are rotated every two years.
Mr Burns said the US accepted that the time for change had come: "The United States recognises that the security council needs to look more like the world of 2005 than the world of 1945." Germany, Brazil and India had lobbied for a bigger expansion, with six extra permanent seats and four rotating ones bringing membership to 25. Mr Burns said that would make the council unwieldy.
He said the US would propose new criteria for choosing security council members next week. Geographical balance would play a role but other criteria would include the size of a country's economy, population and armed forces as well as its ability to contribute to peacekeeping missions. He said the candidate country's record on democracy, human rights, UN contributions, counterterrorism and non-proliferation should also be taken into account.
Ms Rice said the restructuring should not take precedence over the other reforms the US is seeking. "We will not let the security council reform sprint out ahead," she said.
The Bush administration believes the UN should operate under stricter financial and management controls, and has secured the appointment of a state department financial officer, Chris Burnham, as the UN's newly-created under secretary for management.
There's a score.
Washington is also backing reforms suggested by the secretary general, Kofi Annan, in cluding the replacement of the human rights commission, in which dictatorships often sat in judgment on democracies, by a smaller council that would exclude all countries that lack personal liberty and the rule of law countries under sanction for abuses.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005
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#1
Oh yeah, the ChiComs will sit still for this, lol!
I cannot see anything that all five perm UNSC members agree on and would all vote "Yes" on. This expansion thing, unless somebody seriously screws up or pulls a massive under the table deal, just won't happen - especially if a veto is attached.
Tear it up and start over. What we have just won't work - it's fatally flawed. It's worse than worthless, it's expensive and divisive over everything, from trivia to genocide. *flush*
#3
.Com, if the Chinese will never allow the addition of Japan then the US has nothing to lose and everything to gain by championing the Japanese seat. We can look good to the Japanese while showing the world how impossible the UN really is when the number 2 economy in the world doesn't qualify.
#4
RJS - I would agree if I thought it could be / should be reformed - and was thus attempting to rally support. But I don't think that at all. I think it's a dead rat on the kitchen floor. :-)
#5
Whilst I agree the UN is unreformable, it doenst mean the US shouldn't play the game. The US is saying 'if we are going to reform the UNSC, this is how we would do it using our criteria.' I think the un-named second country is India. The 'reforms' can now progress towards their inevitable failure, without the US being seen to obstruct the process. Otherwise I think the new members should have vetos, not least because it dilutes the French/China/Russia vetos.
#7
remember how, when you were a kid, you sat at the kids' table and decisions were something you got on a rare basis? Remember how later, you got to sit atth eadults' table but didn't get all teh adult privileges? Like how Mom got Jack Daniels in a water glass....
oh, wait, nevermind
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 20:31
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Snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were indicted Thursday on six counts of murder in Montgomery County. Each is charged with murdering six people in the county between Oct. 2 and Oct. 22 2002, including four who were shot and killed within a three-hour span Oct. 3. Prosecutors say if convicted, Muhammad could be sentenced to death, while Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, faces six consecutive life sentences. Ten people died and three were wounded during the shootings that terrorized metropolitan Washington and involved police from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia on a regionwide manhunt.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi held talks on improving relations with Washington with the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs on Thursday, Libya's official news agency reported. Assistant Secretary David Welch met Gadhafi for more than an hour at the end of a three-day trip to Libya, JANA reported. Welch is the former U.S. ambassador to Egypt. The report said Welch expressed Washington's appreciation of Libya's efforts to bring peace to Darfur, the west Sudanese region where a rebellion and counter-insurgency has led to the death of at least 180,000 people during the past two years. Welch also said the United States was interested in developing economic and political relations with Libya, JANA reported. In Washington, State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper would not confirm the meeting, but he did say that Welch was in Libya this week for "broad-ranged bilateral consultations" with the Libyans.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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#1
I'll bet we presented him with a fine set of Shimano derailleurs, gold-plated, of course.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/17/2005 3:14
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#3
He has set the gold standard other tin-pot dictators aspire to. Is that a gold tipped cane or a riding crop in his left hand? Wait, it has to be one of those swagger sticks you see in old Brit war movies.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005 8:22
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Opposition politicians campaigned hard against Syria and its Lebanese allies Thursday, telling voters to reject pro-Syrian candidates in this weekend's elections which will decide the face of Lebanon's new parliament. In Sunday's polls in north Lebanon, voters will elect 28 legislators, and the anti-Syrian opposition needs to take 21 of these seats to win a majority in the 128-member legislature. The staggered elections began May 29 and finishes Sunday.
From the northern mountains to the Mediterranean coastal cities, opposition politicians this week delivered one message: drive out the symbols of Syrian power and don't let them hold any seats. The theme focuses on resentment against Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon, which ended in April when the last Syrian troops withdrew following mass protests after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February. "Say 'no,' a thousand 'noes,' to the intelligence regime (of Syria and Lebanon); 'no' to (Syrian) guardianship over Tripoli, the north and Lebanon," Saad Hariri, Rafik's son and political successor, told a crowd of thousands in the northern port of Tripoli on Thursday. The rally responded with roars of "Syria out!"
Competition picked up in north Lebanon this week after a strong showing by Michel Aoun in central and eastern Lebanon. Aoun, a Christian and former commander of the national army, broke with the main opposition groups early in the campaign and ran on an anti-graft ticket. His success in last weekend's polls threatened to jeopardize the opposition's plans to win a parliamentary majority. On Thursday, Saad Hariri spoke in Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, and criticized Aoun for allying himself in the north with an allegedly corrupt former Cabinet minister who is pro-Syrian. "How can they say they are fighting corruption while they are allying themselves with the head (of corruption)?" he asked. "To the people of the north, it is your responsibility to act. The north must rise and speak its mind."
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Kidnappers holding two German oil workers captive in Nigeria's Niger Delta area have demanded a ransom of USD 20 million (EUR 16.6 million), it was reported on Thursday. The abductors are also reported to have demanded that multinational oil concern Shell step up efforts to assist the poverty-stricken local population. "If the SPDC Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria does not comply immediately, we are going to take over all the oil installations," Nigeria daily This Day quoted a member of the kidnap gang as saying. The two Germans, employees of a Mannheim-based company sub- contracted by Shell, were seized along with four Nigerian co-workers while travelling in a boat to a platform operated by the oil giant.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il plans to meet Friday with South Korea's unification minister, a ministry spokesman said. A South Korean delegation has been visiting North Korea to celebrate the five-year anniversary of a historic joint summit between both nations. The delegation was to return Friday but decided to stay when Kim agreed to meet them. The North Korean leader rarely meets officials from other countries.
The reclusive Kim last talked with a top South Korean official in the North's capital in April 2002, The Associated Press reports. Before that, a June 15, 2000 meeting between Kim and then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung resulted in a declaration by the two leaders that is credited with helping to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula. The current South Korean delegation is led by Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, who is to brief Kim on concerns by other countries about North Korea's nuclear program. On Thursday evening, Chung met the North's No. 2 leader, Kim Yong Nam, who said his country could treat the United States as a friendly nation if Washington acknowledges its regime. "If the United States recognizes North Korea's system, North Korea too will treat them as an ally," Kim Yong Nam told Chung, according to the Unification Ministry.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
System? They have a system? Lol! I'll accept the word "systemic" is useful in describing them, but I had no idea they thought they had a system. Systemic self-delusion.
#2
"IF the United States recognizes North Korea's system..." - IOW, since Commies throughout their bloody history only recognize themselves, what Kimmie is actually inferring is that AMERICA WILL HAVE PEACE ONLY WHEN AMERICA BECOMES COMMUNIST, as per CLINTONISM the only good FASCIST is a COMMUNIST - you know, Hitlerists-for STalin, Germanists-for-Asia, Rightists-for-Leftism, etc.!? Looks like the 50+ years it will gen take Norkie and othe Commies currency(s) to attain purchasing power parity with the USD ISN'T GOING BE SHORTER/LESS ANYTIME SOON, as compared with SOLYENT GREEN.
#7
Saipan is great, especially if you like WWII history. Nice beachs complete with sunken landing craft. I liked pointing those out to all the Japanese tourists that overrun the island.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005 9:43
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#8
Ima jump on the Joe for UN Ambassador bandwagon. Looser's leap is supposed to be purdy at Saipan.
GAZA - Hamas said on Thursday that European Union diplomats had met some of its newly elected mayors, an apparent shift in the EU's position towards the Palestinian group it designates a terrorist organisation.
The EU has shifted from appeasing terror to bowing before it ...
Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri's comments coincided with an Israeli newspaper report that the EU had given some low-level diplomats permission to meet representatives of the group's political wing.
There was no immediate comment from the 25-nation EU, based in Brussels.
"Please don't ask us to say any more!"
Masri said the mayors, elected in local council polls over the past several months, had discussed international assistance and the current de facto ceasefire with Israel with EU diplomats in recent meetings. "Hamas is open to dialogue with all countries except the Zionist enemy, which occupies the land and kills our people," Masri said.
In an unsourced report, the Haaretz daily said the EU decision had surprised the United States -- a co-sponsor with the EU, Russia and the United Nations of a Middle East peace "road map" -- and raised Israeli concerns. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw disclosed last week that diplomats from his country had met officials from Hamas's political wing on two occasions. He said Britain would not have contacts with Hamas leaders until the group renounced violence.
This article starring:
MUSHIR AL MASRI
Hamas
Hamas
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005
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AMMAN - A gunman who fired randomly at people in downtown Amman on Thursday died after apparently shooting himself in the head, eyewitnesses and police said.
There's gun sex and then there's gun sex ...
The body of the gunman, whose identity and motive were not known, was carried on a stretcher out of the Jordanian Hunters House, a arms dealer shop in the heart of Amman's commercial district, said an Associated Press reporter on the scene.
Police said the man killed himself after wounding several people during an hour-long shooting spree. A police official on the scene, insisting he not be identified under police regulations, declined to disclose the number of wounded people or provide other details.
An eyewitness who identified himself as Ammar Mohammed said the gunman, dressed in a black shirt and trousers and sported a long beard, entered the arms dealer shop and threatened the owner with a knife.
Brought a knife to a gun shop?
Police had sealed off the area to keep people away, and fired tear gas to try in an effort to have the gunman surrender. But later, the police official on the scene said the gunman killed himself. An eyewitness, who declined to be identified, said he saw police shooting the man after he failed to surrender.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005
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Police fired a few warning shots through him,eh?
'Good way to convince the gunman to commit suicide.
Violence spread to various parts of the city on Thursday following the killing of three Sunni Tehrik (ST) activists late Wednesday night. In the violence on Thursday three men, a woman and a girl were injured in firing and three public transport vehicles were set on fire in the city, the police said. Two ST activists, Faizul Hasan, 35, and Ashraf Sammon, 32, were shot dead on M A Jinnah Road. Danish Hameed, who was shot in Ramaswamy, died in a hospital late Wednesday night.
Later, violence erupted in Ramaswamy, Ranchhore Lines, Kharadar, Garden, Bohrapir, Chuna Bhatti, New Karachi, Lines Area, Al-Falah, Shah Faisal Colony, Landhi and Lyari where miscreants fired in the air and forced shopkeepers to pull their shutters down. A passenger coach was set on fire in Arambagh. Clashes were reported between ST and MQM workers in New Karachi, where two minibuses were set on fire. In Lines Area, Shah Faisal Colony, Al-Falah, and Landhi, miscreants pelted vehicles with stones. Police patrolling was intensified in the troubled areas. Tension was prevailing in the areas.
This article starring:
ASHRAF SAMON
Sunni Tehrik
DANISH HAMID
Sunni Tehrik
FAIZUL HASAN
Sunni Tehrik
Sunni Tehrik
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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This from a nation with primitive nukes..
"What football?"
#5
Sunni Tehrik are Brehvli Sunni Jihadis, the MQM are ethnic Mohajirs. The MQM is currently favoured of the administration, so now they are trying to expand their turf into areas controlled by other parties; like the ST
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/17/2005 18:03
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#6
sounds like civil war material?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 19:18
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A top German governmental official praised California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday for pledging to fight global warming over objections from the White House. In a message to Schwarzenegger, German federal environment minister Juergen Trittin congratulated the California Republican for his courage in splitting with President George W. Bush on the issue of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. "With his exemplary programme for reduction emissions, California - like Germany - has proved that even a country of car lovers can be in the vanguard of protecting the environment," Trittin said. Earlier this month, the governor attended the United Nations
World Environmental Day Conference in San Francisco, where he won praise from environmentalists with a plan to reduce the state's emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere and raising temperatures worldwide.
Schwarzenegger signed an executive order that calls for reducing the state's emissions of greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010, 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The Republican governor said that developing cutting-edge environmental technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells will conserve energy, curb pollution, protect natural resources - and be good for business. Some very interesting background information and a rebuttal to Arnie's eco-fantasy at the always excellent Greenie Watch blog.
#1
Em? I thought you had special editor-highlighting?
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
06/17/2005 0:21
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Oh, and getting back on topic:
Given how much of California's power is out and out bought from out of state, isn't this a comedy of errors, in a way? The CO2 generated by California's pwoer needs is emitted in Texas and the great plains. So all he'd be doing would be shifting the blame around, at the cost of making the state even more vulnerable to the sorts of crises it faced in 2000, both from power wholesalers and the already strained electrical grid.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
06/17/2005 0:30
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#3
Oops. My fine, hand-carved mahogany blue hilighter pen inlaid with jasper and lapis lazuli unfortunately fell back behind the desk and I was too lazy to go fish it out from under the dust bunnies.
I'm also goooogling around for the meeting resolutions signed by the mayors attending on behalf of their cities. Horrifying. Worse than Kyoto, if any international law could be. Will post when I find 'em, later today.
#5
Phil, that is the hydrogen economy in a nutshell. Shift the emissions somewhere else and so what if it doubles or triples energy consumption. It's happening somewhere else.
#6
Hydrogen economy is a no-go unless supported by massive changeover from coal/oil electrical power generation to nuclear power. And that includes so-called "breeder reactors" that will produce more fuel (enriched plutonium and uranium) as part of the process.
If we want to truly go "green" (without the masked marxism that often accompnaies it), and get to a hydrogen/fuel-cell economy, we need to go nuclear, NOW.
#7
Petroleum is a solar savings account that was deposited (read: converted) millions of years ago. Now we humans are drawing on that savings account. To substitute another energy source will require an energy conversion, and none of the conversions are ideal. The only one I can think of that is "green" is solar, and we are certainly not there yet.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Plug in your electric car and somewhere there is a dead dinosaur going up in flames to power a generator.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/17/2005 9:58
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#8
Arnie can sign an executive order declaring that the moon is made of green cheese if he likes, but that don't make it so.
Dozens of hooded insurgents surrounded a downtown mosque in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, to prevent a meeting of local politicians and tribal leaders on the country's new charter and reconciliation efforts. "We told them to leave Iraq's issues for us, we are the only ones who can liberate Iraq by fighting infidels and not by holding conferences. And instead of spending money for this conference, they have to give it to us to buy weapons to help our fighting against the Americans," a masked man told Iraqi reporters outside the empty mosque.
Posted by: Fred ||
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One of the 'benefits' of letting the terrorists alone in Ramadi is that they tick off the locals.
It makes the ultimate clean up easier.
Having said that however, Ramadi is a big city and its hard to cordon it off (the fallujah cordon wasn't that effective and many suicide bombs got through)
#11
"And instead of spending money for this conference, they have to give it to us to buy weapons to help our fighting against the Americans"
Conferences are stupid wastes of time, but weapons and force are good. Geez, if only these guys werent Islamists and baby killers, they could fit in pretty well with some other folks I know :)
#12
WTF liberalhawk? Normally I enjoy reading your comments, but I am truly disappointed and offended by your clumsy effort at equivacation. Did you actually mean to equate Rantburgers who want to defeat Islamofacsism and who believe in robust self defense, with those who seek to mass murder and enslave mankind under a religion based on the selfish whims of a egomaniacal madman, and whose most notable contribution in the last several hindred years has been the suicide car bomb? Smiley face or not, I expected higher standards from you.
Posted by: ed ||
06/17/2005 11:21
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#13
Where?
Posted by: Bismarck ||
06/17/2005 11:31
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#14
for the ultimate in tanking plasure back in CONUS, nothing beats Irwin in August.
#15
bad - One of the most fun things I've ever done is firing LAWs (the old M-72s) on the hulk range at Knox. Last one I saw was in Falling Down, heh. BTW, methinks hitting hulks is funner than blowing up sewers, lol!
#18
Ar Ramadi (Ramadiyah) info page at Global Security. The maps they offer there, here and here, leave a LOT to be desired. Anyone have a good map / sat image of Ramadi?
#19
a pic of a parking lot of small rubble substitute?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 20:06
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#20
bgrebel9: "all in due time." @ 03:12 AM.
Huummmm, bgrebel9 can see into the future!
Posted by: Red Dog ||
06/17/2005 21:01
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#21
This sort of situation is really looking for a transparent robot blimp (make it a tad harder to shoot) with IR or UV laser and a good power source.
(sit way up there and cause unexplainable 2nd and 3rd degree burns on trigger fingers and such... Mess with their minds.)
#22
3dc, check out the work of a dear friend of mine. The basic work was done long ago, it's now just a matter of fine-tuning for this particular need and situation. ;-)
Mr Khan says the ISI first made contact with the JKLF in early 1987, through the organisation's senior leader Farooq Haider. He says Mr Haider made a deal with the ISI whereby the JKLF was to bring young Kashmiris willing to fight Indian rule to Pakistan-administered Kashmir. They would then be given military training and arms by the ISI, he says. The objective was to start an insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir. "After lengthy deliberations, we asked them to start the insurgency on 13 July, 1988. But for some reason, the insurgency could not begin before 31 July when the Amar Singh Club and the central post and telegraph office in Srinagar were bombed."
Posted by: john ||
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This demolishes the fiction that the insurgency in Kashmir was an "indigenous" struggle that arose from "election vote rigging" and that it was only later utilized by Pakistan.
According to this JKLF terrorist leader, it was an ISI operation from day one.
Posted by: john ||
06/17/2005 20:06
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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So ripping or burning pages from the Koran is a hate crime, and the local muslim spokesperson is certain the police would consider it a hate crime if the Bible or Torah were ripped or burned.
Simpleton. It's "free speech", or maybe "freedom of expression", just like muslim-Americans stomping all over the flag. Somebody bought some Korans, or got them free from reading Rantburg, and torched them. The only crime would be littering on the property of the local mosque.
Hate littering.
Buring the mosque would be a hate crime.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 7:34
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#2
The whole idea of "hate crime" is a null concept. It's either a crime or not, motivation doesn't matter.
Three radical imams have been ordered to leave the Netherlands after the country's intelligence service said they represented a security threat, the Justice Ministry said on Thursday. The clerics from Eindhoven's Al Fourkaan mosque are the first to face expulsion after the Dutch government vowed to crack down on militants following the murder last November of a filmmaker critical of Islam. The AIVD intelligence service said the men worked to radicalise Muslims and turn them away from Western values and tolerated the use of their mosques as recruiting grounds for militancy.
Just good holy men being discriminated against for keeping weapons preaching to the flock ...
"The AIVD has come to the conclusion that the imams willingly and knowingly contributed to the radicalisation of Muslims in the Netherlands and were also responsible for the creation of a breeding ground for a Jihad," the ministry said. It added one of the imams had already left the Netherlands -- home to 1 million Muslims who are mostly of Turkish or Moroccan descent -- and that if the other two did not leave they would be expelled.
"Get the hell out and stay out!"
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Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 7:45
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#3
"The AIVD intelligence service said the men worked to radicalise Muslims and turn them away from Western values and tolerated the use of their mosques as recruiting grounds for militancy."
I assume the last is MSM euphemism for recruit for terrorism. I have zero, repeat, zero problems with expelling Imams who recruit for, or incite, any kind of violence.
I think weve done some of this with regard to that mosque in New Jersey, Hoboken was it?
We should be on the alert to any other Imams who do this. I would approve sending agents into mosques to check for this. The best folks to do the watching would be (vetted) muslims working for the FBI, etc.
JAMMU, India - Three policemen died on Thursday after being ambushed by militants in revolt-hit Indian Kashmir and 11 people were wounded when a grenade tossed at a minister's car exploded among pedestrians, police said.
The rebels ambushed a police patrol at Budhal in the border district of Rajouri, 156 kilometers (97 miles) northwest of Kashmir's winter capital Jammu, said police spokesman J.P Singh. "We have recovered three dead bodies from the ambush site in Budhal and are looking for the four other constables who were part of the police team," said Singh. "They are missing as of now...probably taking cover in the jungle after the militant firing," added Singh. "We have rushed troops to the area."
At least 11 pedestrians, including three paramilitary soldiers, were injured when a grenade hurled by militants missed its target and exploded on the road in Avantipore, 36 kilometers south of Srinagar. "The rebels had hurled the grenade at Kashmir Junior Home Abdul Rehman Veeri's car but it fell short of the target. The minister was not even travelling in the car at the time of the attack," said a police spokesman. "Three security personnel from the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force and eight civilians were wounded by the grenade explosion," he added.
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Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
I'm telling you, folks. The left is pulling out all the stops for a run for the senate in 2006. They are doing their dead level best to stampede incumbent republicans into pissing off their own base. They have got to be making calls to as many rinos as they can to get them nervous.
The left knows if they can do that, they can cause conservatives to stay home, especially in light of gains by republicans. The left knows that kowtowing to the antiwar left culd be a political disaster for conservatives.
We have to remind out senators that we should be controllng the agenda, not the left.
#2
The headline is not as bad as the free paper in DC, which headlined it as "Congress " wanted a pullout, but when you read on, it's four folks. Out of ...um ... 435 Representatives. Yeah, they speak for Congress.
So "Call" seems more fair, but "whine" would've been more accurate.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 7:40
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#3
Karl Rove is asleep at the wheel.
You're telling me that in all the active, reserve, and National Guard, there is no one nearing their 20, has had an Iraq tour, has combat scars, with a clean record and wants 'to serve'? If the state and national party organizations would get their heads out of their respective rectal orifices, they'd be recruiting these servicemembers to run for office in the next election cycle. Since public trust of the military is at an all time high the the politicians wading around below swamp level, the best opportunity since the end of WWII for a new crop of representatives to be sent to Washington is presenting itself. When the opponent presents you with an opportunity like this, you exploit it because they can never recover from it.
#4
badanov - while it's true that the left has been effective in undermining the WH, I believe that the President has not taken advantage of his bully pulpit to speak directly to Americans - he is very popular personality to Americans ( both left and right) and even though he is not as articulate as Cheney or Rice, Bush is far more believable and likeable than either ... when he speaks naturally ( and not just reciting tired speech writers lines - eg. "we'll leave Iraq when the mission is accomplished" boring ), he can be very persuasive. Talking about SS and immigrant guest worker cards is not what Americans want to hear now. That's why they're losing patience and confidence in the war - they see no leadership trying to connect with them on the subject,and to allay their fears and pessimism.
If the President could give American voters some numbers, for example, about down sizing US military in Iraq, I believe that would be a big help. This wishy washy "no deadline" for pull out has everyone on edge. As for the WH line that pull out schedules would give comfort to "the enemy" - why is that? - the enemy should get much more worried if they know the coalition forces will be handing over Iraq to the Kurdish Peshema and Shiite soldiers/militia on Jan. 1, 2007. No Geneva Convention nicey nicey Western troops to walk softly around civil rights. No Int'l Red Cross invited to inspect the jails to see if "POW's" are getting 3 squares and nightly prayer readings from the immams. Also, a definite date might make the locals perk up and apply themselves QUICKLY to building a fighting force if they knew the bottom might fall out of their "democracy" unless they started standing up to the "insurgents/foreign fighters" in their neighborhoods. Geez, all Iraqis have many weapons in their homes - what's with the cowering in their broom closets and allowing the bad guys to run amok in their streets?
The GOP politicians are just responding to what the polls are telling them that American voters are thinking about the Iraq War. And the polls are not good from left wing polls to right wing polls- the results are either very bad or lukewarm bad - no ringing endorsement of the Iraq War. Many of the GOP politicians are up for re-election in 2006, not Cheney not Rice. The President could try to use the power of his likeable personality and SOME NEW IDEAS to get the American public on board again about the Iraq War to help the skittish GOP politicians win the 2006 elections. It ain't going to be pretty if the GOP loses seats in Congress in 2006.
Leaders of the demoralized European Union have agreed to extend the deadline for ratifying their troubled constitution, insisting they were determined to keep it alive despite French and Dutch "No" votes.
"We're sure the common folk will come around, once we explain it all to them. If not, we can have their rulers approve it in their name."
Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced after chairing the first day of a crisis summit that the 25 leaders had agreed that the treaty, meant to streamline EU decision-making, could not be ratified until at least mid-2007. "The date of November 1, 2006 initially foreseen for ratification is no longer tenable," Juncker told a news conference. Countries that were planning referendums would need more time to convince their publics, he said.
"If that doesn't work, the prime ministers and presidents and such can just sign off and it'll all be legal."
Denmark said it was cancelling a referendum due in September, an Irish government source said Ireland would cancel one due in the autumn, and Juncker said Luxembourg's parliament would have to think whether to go ahead with a July plebiscite. Sweden and the Czech Republic said they would delay ratification until the future of the treaty was clear. Europe would now enter a period of "reflection, explanation and debate" on citizens' expectations, and leaders would review the way forward probably in mid-2006, Juncker said. The summit was widely seen as a test of whether the enlarged Union could overcome the shock of the double referendum defeats, or whether political rivalries among its weakened leaders would leave it in limbo.
Posted by: Fred ||
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On latest news in those countries planning referendums the polls show a strong increase of percentage for the NO after the France and Netherlands rejection. In fact in about every country the NO is leading. Even in Luxembourg (of all places) the NO has a good chance of winning.
#6
I drove by a Haliburton facility a few Ks from my house (in Perth) today. It stood out because it was so neat and it gave no indication what its business was. We have had some unusual tornados in the last few weeks and they seem to be clustered around the same area. Did anyone mention the Haliburton Tornado Machine?
#7
Did anyone mention the Haliburton Tornado Machine?
No one mentions the Tornado Machine.....and lives.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005 10:40
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Some answers to some of the public's questions since the news of this contract was released to the media.
1. No. We will not be building a shark tank adjacent to the facility.
2. No. The sprinkler heads will not be designed to spout fire when activated.
3. No. We will not "switch around" the current signs pointing the inmates at Mecca.
4. No. There will not be a branch of Victoria's Secret built at the Guantanamo location.
5. No. The Zionist Scream Machine will not be installed at the Guantanamo location to blast Christina Aguillera music at pain level decibels.
6. No. The Koran Shredding Machine has been eliminated from the project.
7. No. We have no control on the use of Koran brand toilet paper.
We here at Halliburton: Terrorist Prison Construction Division welcome your questions and appreciate your interest. We look forward to serving you in the future.
#10
2. No. The sprinkler heads will not be designed to spout fire when activated.
Images at link are disturbing. You've been warned: Been done. Just ask Sen. Durbin.
Posted by: ed ||
06/17/2005 14:26
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Ah-hah! Just like they said on Democratic Underground!
Posted by: Mr. Moonbat ||
06/17/2005 14:49
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ed - Following your link to the excellent My Pet Jawa, then following his link (one of many) to the excellent Protein Wisdom, then reading the comments -- I hit the following drop-dead, carve it in stone, it don't get no better than thispost from Jeff Goldstein. It is the penultimate catch-all response to moonbattery. My face still hurts from laughing.
Please, click the link, believe me --- you will be amply rewarded, lol!
#2
Good on ya, Sgt Hester! Warfare is blind to everything but war-fighting ability, whether in the form of firepower, mobility, bravery, smarts and coolheadedness, lifesaving skills, and / or marksmanship. She had it and applied it. Bravo, Leigh Ann!
#6
Hester, a native of Bowling Green, Ky., joined the Kentucky Army National Guard in April 2001 and moved to Nashville in 2003, according to a biography provided by the Army. She works as a retail store manager. Her unit deployed to Iraq in November 2004 and remains in the Baghdad area, escorting convoys and assisting the Iraqi Highway Patrol.
Also receiving the Silver Star for that action was Staff Sgt. Timothy Nein of Henryville, Ind., and Spc. Jason Mike of Radcliff, Ky. Five other members of their unit received other medals for the action, including another woman, Spc. Ashley Pullen of Edmonton, Ky.
Wonder who their Representatives and Senators are in their districts and states. We have some potential candidates here boys!
Posted by: Mike ||
06/17/2005 11:00
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Congrats to all the squad. They did a great job of attacking the 40-50 ambushers in defilade.
One item that jumped out when first reading their account was that their .50 BMG only had tracer rounds. The low down was that the .50 was unable to penetrate trench lines and walls where the jihadis were shooting from, making this squad's job twice as hard.
That is an indictment of unseriousness and piss poor planning by the pentagon when the US doesn't have enough ball and AP ammo to equip a unit that has a high probability of engaging in firefights. Instead of using the past 3 years to build war production plants to supply all our needs, the pentagon has had to go to civilian and foreign companies to supply even the most basic materiel such as .223 rounds.
Posted by: ed ||
06/17/2005 11:40
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Two thoughts:
1) My opinion on Women in Combat is, Changing...
2) I have never understood why the Feminist Movement does not embrace Gun Rights.
Posted by: Tom Anon ||
06/17/2005 12:58
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Tom Anon - Because the Feminist Movement is dedicated to gaining political power, and the kind of power they wish to exercise (socialist) is threatened by an armed populace.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
06/17/2005 14:24
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ed
I just heard that 50 Cal tracer rounds are real rounds with a coating that burns so the gunner can tell where the rounds are hitting.
#16
Sorry. Incendiary, not tracer, rounds. From BlackFive's After Action Report: Their only complaints in the AAR were: the lack of stopping power in the 9mm; the .50 cal incendiary rounds they are issued in lieu of ball ammo (shortage of ball in the inventory) didn't have the penetrating power needed to pierce the walls of the building; and that everyone in the squad was not CLS trained.
Posted by: ed ||
06/17/2005 17:56
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These folks don't quite yet understand the principles of Western liberalism ...
I think they do, and the very thought gives them the runs...
A man accused of raping his daughter-in-law in a north Indian village has been arrested, police said on Thursday, amid a growing outcry over an order by local clerics that the woman marry her rapist and treat her husband as her son.
That's logic, I guess... If your turban's really, really tight...
Ali Mohammed was arrested at Charthawal village in the Muzafarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh state and appeared in court Thursday, district police chief Amrindra Kumar Sengar said. He was remanded in custody for 14 days, another police officer told television news channels. He added that Mohammed had claimed his daughter-in-law had consented to having sex with him.
"Of course I'll let you diddle me! I'd love to! Just put the acid down, okay?"
Local clerics had said the rape had annulled the woman's marriage to her husband and had ordered that she marry her father-in-law. "Her father-in-law has used her and she must marry him," one of the clerics told NDTV television news, citing Islamic Sharia law.
I'm not even sure that this makes sense in an Islamic way ...
As I mentioned before, what's to prevent the husband from "using" her and getting her back?
"Whatever takes place now (in regard to the criminal trial), she will remain the symbolic mother to her husband."
... and the clerics will remain the nuts in the scrotum of India...
Another cleric said the woman, a 28-year-old mother of five children, had been party to a criminal act and she too should be punished. But an Islamic scholar said the rulings by local clerics in the village, 350 kilometers (217 miles) from the state capital Lucknow, are not legally binding. "The cleric is acting as an arbitrator, he has no judicial power. Both parties have to accept the decision voluntarily. The woman can approach a normal court of law to enforce her existing marriage if she wants," said Zafarul Islam Khan, editor of a fortnightly Indian Muslims' newspaper called the Milligazette. "No panchayat (village council) or moulvi (cleric) can force her to give up her existing marriage unless she wants to," he added.
"Of course, if she refuses we'll have to stone her," he added.
After the incident about two weeks ago, the woman left the house to live with her brother. She pleaded with her husband, a rickshaw puller, to join her, but he refused, news reports said. The matter was taken up by the village council comprising local Islamic clerics who ordered her to marry her father-in-law and treat her husband as her son. The incident has outraged women's rights groups.
The National Organization for Women is especially outraged over ... oh right, not that womens rights group.
A member of the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board, a body for protecting the rights of Muslim women in India, has demanded that the man be whipped 60 times and then stoned according to Islamic law.
You go, girls!
"The decision taken by the clerics is totally wrong and against the premises of the Koran," said board member Shahista Amber. "We are going to write to the board. Ali Mohammed should be subjected to 60 lashes and he should also be stoned for the heinous crime he committed." The National Commission of Women has asked for a report from the Uttar Pradesh state government and has demanded the man be punished if found guilty. It has also asked that compensation be paid to the woman.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/17/2005
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Local clerics had said the rape had annulled the womanâs marriage to her husband and had ordered that she marry her father-in-law. âHer father-in-law has used her and she must marry him,â one of the clerics told NDTV television news, citing Islamic Sharia law.
Doesn't that sorta say it all? Even if they're squabbling about it, now, just the fact that anyone, anyone at all, could've thought this was the rational solution puts the "OverDue" (by about 1400 yrs) stamp on Shari'a. Just one of a zillion reasons why this pathogen needs to be put down, forever.
#2
an order by local clerics that the woman marry her rapist and treat her husband as her son.
Head-slapping moment of realization. I just remembered where they got this oh-so-charming idea.
From ol' Mo' himself. That's right, folks, the prophet of Allan (piss on him), is the model in this case. I can't remember the exact source -- one of the hadith, I'm sure -- but Mo' went to visit his son and his son's new wife. Turns out the new daughter-in-law was a nice piece, and Mo' got jealous. So Mo' did his frothing and twitching routine, then claimed that Allan had passed onto him a new message: His son MUST divorce his new wife.
The son -- and daughter-in-law -- were distraught, but what could they do? If they disobeyed, then one of Mo's holy men would slit their throats -- no acid available in those days, after all. So they divorced.
A few days later, Mo' goes into another fit of getting messages from Allan. This time the message is -- get this -- the ex-daughter-in-law has to marry Mo'!
So the "cleric" in this case is just applying his religion, the lessons of his "prophet". We really shouldn't be surprised.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 7:55
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LOL, RC. Of course one must never forget that the famous and "tolerant" "four muslim males must witness adultery for it to be adultery" schtick wasn't so very tolerant after all. Folks were accusing one of Big Mo's wives (I think it was Aisha) of fooling around. So in another "prophetic" moment, God's Little Ol' Messenger revealed Allah's will: four mooselimb males had to witness intercourse to prove adultery. People often wonder how mooselimbs can be so oportunistic, callow and self serving. When the "model for all mankind" was himself oportunistic, callow and self serving, then it follows logically.
ISLAMIC leaders have accused Muslim cleric Taj al-Din al-Hilaly's spokesman of inflating the mufti's role in securing the freedom of hostage Douglas Wood.
The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has spent thousands of dollars funding Sheik Hilaly's trip to Iraq, where he worked closely with local religious and community leaders to try to negotiate the Australian engineer's release.
AFIC leaders are angry at Sheik Hilaly's Sydney-based spokesman Keysar Trad claims that the sheik had advanced knowledge of Mr Wood's "release" and that he had been dropped off by agreement at a safe house rather than rescued in a random military raid.
One AFIC leader said Mr Trad's claims appeared to contradict the Federal Government's official version of events and could jeopardise the cleric's standing in the community.
Mr Trad said the sheik had played a "key role" in winning Mr Wood's release, despite flying to Cairo last week because of security and health concerns.
He said negotiations about paying money to the kidnappers had been continuing this week, despite the Government saying no ransom was paid.
Mr Trad was unrepentant yesterday, saying he regularly telephoned the sheik and was simply passing on the cleric's knowledge of the situation.
He said Sheik Hilaly had played a fundamental role in Iraq in extending the first deadline set by the kidnappers.
"I have been in regular contact with the mufti and am passing on information that everybody in the country wants to hear. They can't just turn around and shoot the messenger. This is what AFIC has to understand."
AFIC president Ameer Ali said Mr Trad did not belong to the leading Islamic body nor to the influential Lebanese Muslim Association in southwestern Sydney.
But other leaders from AFIC, an umbrella body for Muslim community groups, were seething over Mr Trad's comments. AFIC, which has kept a low profile since the kidnapping, paid for the sheik to fly business-class to Iraq and will pick up his phone and hotel tab, and that of a Sydney-based Iraqi who travelled with him.
Mr Ali said the whole story of his involvement would not be known until Sheik Hilaly returned to Sydney, possibly as soon as this weekend.
Mr Ali revealed that former prime minister Malcolm Fraser and founder of aid organisation Care Australia, had asked AFIC and Sheik Hilaly to help win the release of Care's kidnapped British director in Iraq, Margaret Hassan, last year but Ms Hassan was murdered before they could mobilise.
Shiite politicians succeeded at including Sunni Arabs in the work of drafting Iraq's new constitution. Senior members of the Shiite-dominated parliament committee writing the charter reached agreement with Sunni groups on their representation on the panel, a political breakthrough just two months before a deadline to prepare the charter. The stalemate over that issue had threatened Iraq's political process as it was about to enter its final stretch, with two key nationwide votes planned for later this year _ a constitutional referendum in October and a general election in December.
The constitutional process, and attempts to open channels with some militant groups not tied to extremists, are touted by the United States and Iraq's government as a way to help defuse the insurgency. "Those who are terrorists, those who are al-Qaida and al-Zarqawi, and those who are Saddam elements, we have (nothing to) say to them," Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Thursday. "But other Iraqis who are dissatisfied with something and believe that struggling with weapons will not lead to achieving their demands, we are ready to listen to them and permit them to come back to the democratic process in Iraq."
Posted by: Fred ||
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seems like even the Sunni Arab Iraqis are capable of seeing the writing on the wall, and finally realizing the train was leaving the station and they couldnt haggle for a better deal. So now the guys who boycotted the election, who demanded an end to debaathification and withdrawl of all US and coalition troops, are willing to join the process in return for 15 reps, 10 advisors,and a promise decisions will be made by consensus? Big improvement, I say.
It will be hard for them to finish a constitution by August though.
Hazmat crews are investigating a case of white powder at the Israeli Embassy in Northwest Washington. D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Alan Etter says an employee in the building on International Avenue opened what appeared to be a greeting card and was exposed to white powder. There are no reports of injuries, and only one person was exposed to anything potentially harmful. Traffic in the area will likely be tied up during the investigation.
More talcum powder, is my guess...
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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Bwaaahaaaaa, little do they know that Anthrax hasn't bothered Jooooooooos since 1917.
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has drafted a law abolishing the un-Islamic and inhuman custom of so-called marriage of a girl to the Holy Quran and recommended life imprisonment for persons involved in this practice. This practice, commonly known as 'Haq Bakhshwan,' is rampant in rural areas of Pakistan where feudal lords and other rich people deny the right of marriage to a woman just to preserve their property.
The CII approved the draft bill in its 157th meeting. Official sources said the bill has been sent to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for its subsequent approval by parliament. The bill titled 'Pakistan Penal Code Amendment Act 2005' seeks amendments to section 295(b) of PPC which makes 'Haq Bakhshwan' a punishable offence whereby anyone involved in such practice would be liable to be sentenced to life imprisonment. According to the amendment whoever wilfully defiles, desecrates or damages a copy of the Holy Quran or allows the Holy Quran to be used for purpose of its marriage to a female or induces any person to swear on the Holy Quran never to marry anyone in her lifetime, shall be punishable with imprisonment for life.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Chairman Yasin Malik on Thursday said that a Pakistani English newspaper published concocted and unfounded contents while reporting his June 13 speech. "My speech never carried contents like training camps or guns, but the newspaper showing professional dishonesty included these unfounded and baseless sentences as part of my speech," he told reporters before leaving for Muzaffarabad.
The newspaper had reported Yasin Malik as saying that Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed had patronised a training camp for Kashmiri militants. He lamented the Indian External Affairs Ministry for reacting on the alleged disclosure without confirming the veracity of the report. "The External Affairs Ministry should have seen the video tape of my speech prior to issuing their reaction on the subject," he said. "I did not make the speech in front of a camera. Around 100 reporters were present there. It is a simple case of journalistic dishonesty," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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Lol!
"The External Affairs Ministry should have seen the video tape of my speech prior to issuing their reaction on the subject," he said. "I did not make the speech in front of a camera. Around 100 reporters were present there. It is a simple case of journalistic dishonesty," he said.
Lol - That just makes no sense at all. Shoulda looked at the tape, but it wasn't taped. Right. Aw hell, who cares?
The opposition in the Senate on Thursday suspected the involvement of intelligence agencies in terrorist activities in the country and urged the government to investigate the matter and punish the officials involved. Speaking on a point of order, Senator Farhatullah Babar of the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) said that according to news reports an intelligence official was arrested from Pirwadhai with one kilogrammes of explosive material. "The said official was handed over to the military police for interrogation and an anti-terrorism case was registered against him," he said, adding that this was a matter of concern and needed to be pursued vigorously as intelligence agencies' role had been suspicious in the past.
Senator Babar referred to a November 28, 1994, report of the house committee on terrorist activities in the country. Two sitting members of the house were also among the members of that committee, he added. The report, which is part of the Senate record, had stated that internal as well as external intelligence agencies had been involved in terrorist activities in Pakistan. "The committee had also directed the government for strict vigilance of intelligence agencies like the Military Intelligence (MI), Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)," he quoted the report. Senator Prof Khurshid of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) said that it was unfortunate that Pakistan's own agencies were involved in creating law and order situation in the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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Cambodian police have arrested a security guard suspected of masterminding the hostage-taking at a school near the Angkor Wat temples in which gunmen shot dead a Canadian toddler, officials said on Friday. The guard, 29-year-old Ul Samnang, worked at a souvenir shop and did not take an active part in Thursday's hostage drama at the international school in Siem Reap, Phoeng Chenda, the town's police chief, told Reuters. The four hostage takers, all Cambodians in their 20s who were seized as they tried to escape at the end of an eight-hour siege, were also being held for questioning in the tourist town 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh and the gateway to the famous Angkor Wat temples.
Visible through the window of the police station, the suspects were handcuffed and in their underwear. Bruises could be seen on their faces and one had stitches across his forehead. The men, armed with a handgun and knives, stormed into the school, first demanding $1,000 and a van, increasing the sum later to $30,000, police said. The two-year-old Canadian boy was shot in the head in the opening moments of the siege and 29 other children and their teacher were held at gunpoint.
An eerie calm had settled on Friday morning on the dirt road leading to the school which had been packed the previous day with soldiers and police, distraught parents and onlookers. Around 20 military policemen stood guard in front of the school and police said security had been stepped up at all tourist locations across the booming town to ensure the safety of foreigners. "This incident has forced us to improve security, not only at hotels but also guest houses and restaurants where foreigners are," said provincial police chief Noun Bophal. "This is a lesson for us." Authorities in the deeply impoverished country, which is still awash with weapons after decades of war, including the Khmer Rouge genocide of the 1970s, ruled out terrorism. "It is an act of revenge or armed robbery," the province's deputy governor, Ung Oeun, told reporters after questioning the suspects. Doctors at the town's main hospital said they were setting up a trauma unit for the 29 children from as many as 14 different countries who had had to endure the ordeal.
Posted by: Fred ||
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"Visible through the window of the police station, the suspects were handcuffed and in their underwear. Bruises could be seen on their faces and one had stitches across his forehead."
That's what I'd call a good start, though I wonder why they wasted some perfectly good stitches.
#5
According to the version in the morning paper, the children's parents attacked the hostage takers. A number of angry dads pounded the tar out of them.
#7
SIEM REAP, Cambodia (Reuters) - A Cambodian man who shot dead a Canadian toddler during a school hostage drama near Angkor Wat was driven by revenge against his South Korean ex-employer, police said on Friday. Chea Khom quit last week as driver for a Korean restaurant owner in Siem Reap, gateway to the famed 800-year-old temples, after being slapped in the face for taking the children to school late, senior police investigator Ou Em said.
He then decided to exact revenge by kidnapping the Korean's children from the school, hatching a plot with friends in Phnom Penh which led ultimately to Thursday's school siege and the death of the 2-year-old Canadian boy, he said.
"When he entered the school his first target was to kidnap the Korean children, but when he saw the parents of the children he was afraid to do it," Ou Em told reporters. "So he turned to another classroom and took them hostage."
Armed with knives and a handgun, the four hostage-takers, all in their 20s, first demanded $1,000 and a van in return for the release of the 29 infants in the class. Later, they increased the sum to $30,000, police said.
When negotiators stalled over the demand for weapons, Chea Khom and his accomplices started to lose their cool. "The gunmen demanded we give them money, a van and grenades. We did not agree to give them grenades and guns, so they got mad and shot the kid in the head," he told Reuters.
Kanika Cowled, a 6-year-old Cambodian-Australian girl who hid in the school library, said the Canadian child was singled out and shot in the head "because that little boy just yell."
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005 14:11
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Screwing with foreigners kids in a Cambodian town dependent on tourism? How long you figure these guys have to live?
These days your local newsstand isn't the only one selling The New York Times, The Washington Post or USA Today. Investors have also been unloading the biggest names in the newspaper business, driving down shares of the group by about 10 percent this year amid worries about harsh circulation and advertising declines in the age of new media.
That's alright, though. Keep peddling the same old tired product. The public's sure to come around, eventually...
... watching Newsday execs get indicted for padding circulation prolly didn't help calm invester nerves ...
Next week, top executives from the country's leading publishers will try to win back investors during two days of presentations at the Newspaper Association of America's Mid-Year Media Review. But convincing Wall Street that newspaper companies are being treated too harshly -- their stocks have underperformed the broader market by about 9 percent this year -- will be no easy pitch, experts say. Peter Appert, a media analyst with Goldman Sachs, wrote in a recent report that investors will likely "come away from next week's meetings with a more cautious view of the near-term industry outlook" than they have now.
I think Rantburg shows that you can publish interesting and timely stories and still get your politix in — that's what the yellow, green, mauve, blue, and plaid comments are for. If you let the politix drive the story, rather than interpreting it, people are going to blow you off. I'm a great believer in Just the Facts, Ma'am, and I'm of the opinion that newspapers were a lot better when they had reporters, rather than journalists. Maybe that's just me and my antiquated outlook, but maybe it's just me and the stockholders, too. And the readership, that's been going elsewhere.
Posted by: Fred ||
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And just look at the so-called reporters, Fred. They just ask softball questions, never go for depth, avoid the real stories, their grammer and syntax sucks, and they can't write worth a crap. Other than that, they are doing great.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/17/2005 3:28
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What is it about sowing and reaping?
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 7:44
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If papers had dismal sales in a year where there was a presidential election then it smells very, very bad for them. Aren't you sad the equivalents of Dan Rather for the printed press being soon on unemployment? Just like I thought, you heartless individual.
#4
Their 'Enron' opportunity is coming nearer.
The sooner the real numbers come to light, the more will fall. For decades the newspapers have been hiding behind corporate creative bookkeeping and conglomerate paper shuffling, but the foundation is rotten cause they have become instruments of power rather than a commercial commodity directly subjected to the market place. When the advertisers start to sue for the inflated rates they were charged based upon inflated circulation numbers, watch the executives bail like Enron and Worldcom, but don't expect to see the same amount of 'news' coverage of that event. One set standards for members of the inner circle and another set of standards for everyone else.
#5
A good exemple of of the media's sources ability to inform (AP, Reuter, AFP, etc...) is the story by AP (U.S. Launches Major Operation in West Iraq) you report this morning under "Another big operation in the wild west". Only 2 small paragraphs are relevant.
#7
question the abilities of the MSM - you don't have to be competent to get along with like-minded editors. To disagree, you better have your ducks in order and your resume current. Tell me how this breeds "diversity" in the media? riiiigghhhtt
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/17/2005 21:21
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A U.S. Army staff sergeant was charged with murdering his two commanders last week at a base outside Baghdad, the military said Thursday in what is believed to be the first case of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors. The military initially concluded that the June 7 deaths of Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, of Milford, Pa., were caused by a mortar round. But on Wednesday, the military charged Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez of Troy, N.Y., with two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement issued in Baghdad.
Martinez, 37, is a supply specialist with the Headquarters Company of the 42nd Infantry Division, New York Army National Guard. Esposito, 30 and the father of a 1-year-old girl, was company commander and Allen, 34 and a father of four, was a company operations officer. The "fragging" incident occurred near Tikrit — Saddam Hussein's hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad — at Forward Operating Base Danger (search) in what used to be one of the ousted Iraqi leader's palace on the banks of the Tigris River.
The military initially concluded the commanders were killed by "indirect fire" on the base — a mortar round that struck a window on the side of the building where Esposito and Allen were. A criminal investigation was launched after it was determined that the "blast pattern" at the scene was inconsistent with a mortar attack. Martinez is believed to have allegedly used some kind of explosive device, possibly a grenade, in the attack, military officials said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still under investigation. He was charged with two counts of premeditated murder, said a statement by the Multinational Task Force in Iraq. He currently is at a military detention facility in Kuwait. His alleged motive was unclear. He has been assigned a military attorney and has the option of hiring a civilian lawyer, authorities said. "Staff Sgt. Martinez has been and will continue to be afforded the extensive rights under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice," military spokesman Col. Billy J. Buckner said.
A senior NCO? What on earth ...
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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#1
It'll be interesting to hear if Martinez has undergone a religious conversion lately.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/17/2005 7:40
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#2
Fred,
The National Guard is a mixed bag, so a SSG may or may not be of the same skill and calibre as an active duty SSG. Much more organizational politics in promotion/slotting in state units. May have something to do with back home [NY] rather than Iraq.
#3
Fragging the Company Commander and Ops Officer sounds like he thought they "had it in for him". Maybe got a bad write-up, passed over, wouldn't let him go home early to handle a personal problem, etc.
And a E-6 Staff Sergeant is not a "Senior NCO", more a mid-level. E-7 is where senior grade starts.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005 9:53
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#5
Ah, here we go: TROY, N.Y. -- The family of a U.S. Army staff sergeant charged with murdering his two commanders in Iraq was touched by a string of recent tragedies, a neighbor said Thursday.
Alberto B. Martinez, 37, lost his home to a fire in December 2002 and moved back to his childhood residence with his father in this industrial city along the Hudson River just north of Albany, long-time neighbor Barbara Prevost said. His mother also had died in recent years, Prevost said. In a January interview with WRGB-TV in Albany, Martinez's wife described her struggle with her insurance company over the fire at their home in nearby Cohoes.
"I really want my husband to be able to concentrate on what he needs to do in Iraq, and that's unfair to him," Tamara Martinez told the station. The couple has two children.
The "wouldn't let him go home to handle personnel problems" reason is looking better.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/17/2005 11:31
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#6
what about the muslim who threw the grenade in the tent
The report also highlighted concerns about church pastors identifying children as witches, who then suffer violence at the hands of their parents. The report says the pastors and their churches have "lucrative business" operations in the UK, Europe and Africa. It said: "A number of pastors maintain that God speaks to them and lets them know when someone is possessed ... After much debate, they acknowledged that children labelled as possessed are in danger of being beaten by their families. However, they would not accept that they played a major role in inciting such violence." The report concluded that police encountered a "wall of silence" in investigating such cases.
Last month Scotland Yard disclosed that 300 black boys, aged between four and seven years of age, had vanished from London schools and only two had been traced. Detectives in the capital are investigating about 30 allegations of children being abused in magic rituals. The potential scale of the problem was exposed by the discovery in the Thames in 2001 of the torso of a four-year-old boy, dubbed Adam. Apparently the victim of a ritual killing, he had been made to eat rock, bone and pieces of gold before he died. Earlier this month Sita Kisanga, 35, of Hackney, London, was convicted for torturing an Angolan child whom she accused of being a witch. Kisanga was a member of a west African church that sanctions aggressive forms of exorcism. John Azar, an adviser to the Metropolitan Police, said that known cases could be the "tip of the iceberg". But Dr William Les Henry, a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmith's College, said that there was an element of racism to be seen in the report. He said: "The model that they're based on, they always seem to base their models on the fact that Africans are less civilised, less rational, so their whole systems of rationality are irrational."
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/17/2005
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I'm rather startled at the use of the phrase "fundamentalist sects" to describe these fantastically syncretic religions. They certainly aren't fundamentalist Christian--there's too much animism mixed in, sometimes a little Islam as well, and always a lot of new "prophecy" from the leaders.
Not all the syncretic groups go in for witch hunts (luckily), and the HIV sex "cure" notion is found among animists, Christians, and Muslims alike.
Dr. Henry missed a good opportunity to shut up. It isn't racist to notice that a large fraction of some group of people have dangerously crazy ideas.
Posted by: James ||
06/17/2005 0:35
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The tranzis, in the US or Europe, all despise real Christianity, and especially the fundamentalist kind, viewing them as ignorant dolts. So, any other religion/cult that does get the multicultural seal of approval can be compared to the people of JesusLand as ignorant.
And I'm also not surprised re: they always seem to base their models on the fact that Africans are less civilised, less rational, so their whole systems of rationality are irrational.
Well, yeah, that's the rational thing to do. If all your evidence points a certain way (penis-shrinking polio shots, witchcraft, sex with virgins to cure AIDS, having a culture that brings Charles Taylor, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, and on and on into the fore), after a while you treat it as a working hypothesis. There's nothing genetically wrong with Africans, but their culture is hellishly bad, and will sabotage any attempt at making life better.
#7
Obviously, the "Christian Fundamentalist" phrase is out of place. Apparently, the confusion is with the Arch Bishop being the Arch Druid. Druid's were believed to have involvement with human sacrifice.
Incidentally, "fundamentalist" comes from a series of materials published in the early 20th century, bound as "The Fundamentals". The books are on line here: http://www.xmission.com/~fidelis/
#9
There was actually an episode of Cold Case Files ( A & E) or Forensic Files that covered the boy's torso they found in the Thames in 2001. There have been other reports but I can't seem to place exactly where.
A U.S. general on Thursday blamed Iraq's recent spike in bloodshed on a terrorist leader condoning the killing of fellow Muslims, while a suicide car bomber rammed into a truck in Baghdad, killing at least eight police officers and wounding 25 others. The U.S. military also reported that five Marines and a sailor were killed Wednesday near the volatile western city of Ramadi. Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's hope to provoke sectarian war suffered a setback Thursday when the Shiite-led parliament and leaders of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which is thought to provide the backbone of the insurgency, agreed on a process for drafting Iraq's constitution.
U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston took aim at al-Zarqawi, saying the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq is most responsible for the nearly 1,100 violent deaths since the Shiite-led government took office seven weeks ago. "With Zarqawi's push recently, we certainly see the fantastic rise in the number of civilians killed, given that he has proclaimed that taking out civilians is an acceptable thing," said Alston, spokesman for the U.S.-led international military force in Iraq. Last month, an audiotape said to be from al-Zarqawi denounced the country's majority Shiites as collaborators with the Americans and said it was justified for Muslims to kill such people even if they are Muslims.
Alston's focus on al-Zarqawi, whose small group is blamed for many of the bloodiest attacks and hostage takings in Iraq, apparently was aimed at reinforcing growing dissatisfaction among Iraqis over insurgents targeting civilians. He said that anger has brought an increase in calls to tip lines. "We are getting reports that cells in his network are concerned about the consequences of this behavior and a consequence of what it has done to the Iraqi people," Alston said. "The Iraqi people are increasingly exposing the insurgency. This is not a popular insurgency." He said tips to Iraqi authorities resulted in Tuesday's arrest of Mohammed Khalaf, also known as Abu Talha, who was al-Qaida's leader in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. "This is a major defeat for the al-Qaida terrorist organization in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi's leader in Mosul is out of business," Alston said.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/17/2005
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What? Iraq terrorists disclose terror routes on internet forum,
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Terrorism&loid=8.0.177662212&par=0
Posted by: War on Islam ||
06/17/2005 3:50
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You? You think you're some tough WarGod fighting Islam? Moron. You couldn't lick a stamp, cheesedick.
[rant]
Sometimes I almost wish that those who come here full of wild-eyed hate and bile - real or imagined - without a scintilla of experience or reason or logic or understanding or knowledge to support it - would find themselves under Zarqi's knife. Then they could have the short ugly epiphany, just before the lights go out, and actually fathom what they spew. The blithe skippy scatter-brained fucks who blow in and rattle & prattle about casually nuking shit are less than clueless.
It takes life-long training in insanity to be a Zarqi. You've got to be sterile, hollow, everything of value exterminated or scooped out and ground to dust by a grim barren bestial ideology that feeds on the unfortunate captives and dysfunctional offal of mankind.
Someday, we will all be forced to skirt close to the edge of sanity to survive. I'd wager it will happen more than once, too, as there are equally implacable abominations, other than Islam, ahead. They're just biding their time and playing their hands better than the jihadis - waiting to see who wins this round.
[/rant]
#9
Don't forget, Al-Z is under the control of Americans, who are all controlled by the Jews. Where did we lose the aliens controlling our world?
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/17/2005 13:27
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#10
Hear, hear, .com. All except the "bite me" bit, of course. Liberalhawk, I sometimes manage to get to the end of JosephMendiola's posts. Skirting close, indeed. And then other times he makes perfect sense to me... so which side of the divide am I on, I wonder. ;-)
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.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Palestinian Authority is quietly bracing for the prospect of collapse. PA officials said numerous officials have fled or plan to leave the West Bank for Jordan and other Arab states. They said the assessment of many in the PA leadership is that the authority could collapse by late 2005 as the split within the ruling Fatah movement widens "The Fatah is split between the young guard who wants to take over now and the old guard who wants to remain at all costs," a PA official said. "Whatever happens, the fate of Fatah is linked to the PA." Officials said PA security services have been unable to stem the increasing violence in the streets of Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They said Fatah factions have been engaged in gun battles in Ramallah, the center of Palestinian government, while police largely stood by.
Arman identifies 7 people from video footage" Top terror" Arman now in RAB custody has identified seven people who were suspected of being involved in the August 21 grenade attack on Awami League grand rally from a video footage, informed sources told the New Nation last night.
DUNBAR, W.Va. (AP) — Larry Gaynor and his brother had to cut their latest fishing trip short after a black bear ate their food and guzzled their beer. Gaynor, 67, and his brother, Billy Bob Gaynor, 53, were camping at Summit Lake near Richwood on Friday when the bear wandered into their campsite at about 9 p.m. 
, big brains and crazy strong arms.
AHOSKIE, N.C. — Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been charged with animal cruelty after dumping dead dogs and cats in a shopping center garbage bin, police said. Investigators staked out the bin after discovering that dead animals had been dumped there every Wednesday for the past four weeks, Ahoskie police said in a prepared statement Thursday. PETA has scheduled a news conference for Friday in Norfolk, Va., where the group is based. 
RIYADH — Three weeks after King Fahd was taken to hospital with pneumonia Saudis are waiting anxiously for news of their frail and elderly monarch, skeptical about repeated official assurances that his health is improving. 
EUREKA, Calif. (AP) - Just hours after a moderate earthquake shook most of Southern California, a strong quake struck off the state's northern coast to become the fourth significant shaker to jolt California this week. Neither quake Thursday caused serious damage. One person was injured.
THE steady drip of revelations about the Oil-for-Food scandal threatens to force Kofi Annan from his job as United Nations Secretary-General before the end of his term. Speculation is mounting at UN headquarters in New York that Mr Annan will announce his resignation at a summit of world leaders in the city in September, in the larger interests of the organisation. 
Former Lebanese Prime Minister 
Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo were indicted Thursday on six counts of murder in Montgomery County. Each is charged with murdering six people in the county between Oct. 2 and Oct. 22 2002, including four who were shot and killed within a three-hour span Oct. 3. Prosecutors say if convicted, Muhammad could be sentenced to death, while Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, faces six consecutive life sentences. Ten people died and three were wounded during the shootings that terrorized metropolitan Washington and involved police from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia on a regionwide manhunt.
Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi held talks on improving relations with Washington with the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs on Thursday, Libya's official news agency reported. Assistant Secretary David Welch met Gadhafi for more than an hour at the end of a three-day trip to Libya, JANA reported. Welch is the former U.S. ambassador to Egypt. The report said Welch expressed Washington's appreciation of Libya's efforts to bring peace to Darfur, the west Sudanese region where a rebellion and counter-insurgency has led to the death of at least 180,000 people during the past two years. Welch also said the United States was interested in developing economic and political relations with Libya, JANA reported. In Washington, State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper would not confirm the meeting, but he did say that Welch was in Libya this week for "broad-ranged bilateral consultations" with the Libyans.
Opposition politicians campaigned hard against Syria and its Lebanese allies Thursday, telling voters to reject pro-Syrian candidates in this weekend's elections which will decide the face of Lebanon's new parliament. In Sunday's polls in north Lebanon, voters will elect 28 legislators, and the anti-Syrian opposition needs to take 21 of these seats to win a majority in the 128-member legislature. The staggered elections began May 29 and finishes Sunday. 
Kidnappers holding two German oil workers captive in Nigeria's Niger Delta area have demanded a ransom of USD 20 million (EUR 16.6 million), it was reported on Thursday. The abductors are also reported to have demanded that multinational oil concern Shell step up efforts to assist the poverty-stricken local population. "If the SPDC Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria does not comply immediately, we are going to take over all the oil installations," Nigeria daily This Day quoted a member of the kidnap gang as saying. The two Germans, employees of a Mannheim-based company sub- contracted by Shell, were seized along with four Nigerian co-workers while travelling in a boat to a platform operated by the oil giant. 
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il plans to meet Friday with South Korea's unification minister, a ministry spokesman said. A South Korean delegation has been visiting North Korea to celebrate the five-year anniversary of a historic joint summit between both nations. The delegation was to return Friday but decided to stay when Kim agreed to meet them. The North Korean leader rarely meets officials from other countries.
Violence spread to various parts of the city on Thursday following the killing of three 
Dozens of hooded insurgents surrounded a downtown mosque in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad, to prevent a meeting of local politicians and tribal leaders on the country's new charter and reconciliation efforts. "We told them to leave Iraq's issues for us, we are the only ones who can liberate Iraq by fighting infidels and not by holding conferences. And instead of spending money for this conference, they have to give it to us to buy weapons to help our fighting against the Americans," a masked man told Iraqi reporters outside the empty mosque.
Mr Khan says the ISI first made contact with the JKLF in early 1987, through the organisation's senior leader Farooq Haider. He says Mr Haider made a deal with the ISI whereby the JKLF was to bring young Kashmiris willing to fight Indian rule to Pakistan-administered Kashmir. They would then be given military training and arms by the ISI, he says. The objective was to start an insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir. "After lengthy deliberations, we asked them to start the insurgency on 13 July, 1988. But for some reason, the insurgency could not begin before 31 July when the Amar Singh Club and the central post and telegraph office in Srinagar were bombed."
Three radical imams have been ordered to leave the Netherlands after the country's intelligence service said they represented a security threat, the Justice Ministry said on Thursday. The clerics from Eindhoven's Al Fourkaan mosque are the first to face expulsion after the Dutch government vowed to crack down on militants following the murder last November of a filmmaker critical of Islam. The AIVD intelligence service said the men worked to radicalise Muslims and turn them away from Western values and tolerated the use of their mosques as recruiting grounds for militancy.
Leaders of the demoralized European Union have agreed to extend the deadline for ratifying their troubled constitution, insisting they were determined to keep it alive despite French and Dutch "No" votes. 
A man accused of raping his daughter-in-law in a north Indian village has been arrested, police said on Thursday, amid a growing outcry over an order by local clerics that the woman marry her rapist and treat her husband as her son.
ISLAMIC leaders have accused Muslim cleric Taj al-Din al-Hilaly's spokesman of inflating the mufti's role in securing the freedom of hostage Douglas Wood.
Shiite politicians succeeded at including Sunni Arabs in the work of drafting Iraq's new constitution. Senior members of the Shiite-dominated parliament committee writing the charter reached agreement with Sunni groups on their representation on the panel, a political breakthrough just two months before a deadline to prepare the charter. The stalemate over that issue had threatened Iraq's political process as it was about to enter its final stretch, with two key nationwide votes planned for later this year _ a constitutional referendum in October and a general election in December.
Hazmat crews are investigating a case of white powder at the Israeli Embassy in Northwest Washington. D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Alan Etter says an employee in the building on International Avenue opened what appeared to be a greeting card and was exposed to white powder. There are no reports of injuries, and only one person was exposed to anything potentially harmful. Traffic in the area will likely be tied up during the investigation. 
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has drafted a law abolishing the un-Islamic and inhuman custom of so-called marriage of a girl to the Holy Quran and recommended life imprisonment for persons involved in this practice. This practice, commonly known as 'Haq Bakhshwan,' is rampant in rural areas of Pakistan where feudal lords and other rich people deny the right of marriage to a woman just to preserve their property. 
The opposition in the Senate on Thursday suspected the involvement of intelligence agencies in terrorist activities in the country and urged the government to investigate the matter and punish the officials involved. Speaking on a point of order, Senator Farhatullah Babar of the Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) said that according to news reports an intelligence official was arrested from Pirwadhai with one kilogrammes of explosive material. "The said official was handed over to the military police for interrogation and an anti-terrorism case was registered against him," he said, adding that this was a matter of concern and needed to be pursued vigorously as intelligence agencies' role had been suspicious in the past. 
Cambodian police have arrested a security guard suspected of masterminding the hostage-taking at a school near the Angkor Wat temples in which gunmen shot dead a Canadian toddler, officials said on Friday. The guard, 29-year-old Ul Samnang, worked at a souvenir shop and did not take an active part in Thursday's hostage drama at the international school in Siem Reap, Phoeng Chenda, the town's police chief, told Reuters. The four hostage takers, all Cambodians in their 20s who were seized as they tried to escape at the end of an eight-hour siege, were also being held for questioning in the tourist town 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh and the gateway to the famous Angkor Wat temples.
These days your local newsstand isn't the only one selling The New York Times, The Washington Post or USA Today. Investors have also been unloading the biggest names in the newspaper business, driving down shares of the group by about 10 percent this year amid worries about harsh circulation and advertising declines in the age of new media.
A U.S. Army staff sergeant was charged with murdering his two commanders last week at a base outside Baghdad, the military said Thursday in what is believed to be the first case of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors. The military initially concluded that the June 7 deaths of Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, of Milford, Pa., were caused by a mortar round. But on Wednesday, the military charged Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez of Troy, N.Y., with two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement issued in Baghdad.
A U.S. general on Thursday blamed Iraq's recent spike in bloodshed on a terrorist leader condoning the killing of fellow Muslims, while a suicide car bomber rammed into a truck in Baghdad, killing at least eight police officers and wounding 25 others. The U.S. military also reported that five Marines and a sailor were killed Wednesday near the volatile western city of Ramadi. Jordanian-born terrorist leader Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's hope to provoke sectarian war suffered a setback Thursday when the Shiite-led parliament and leaders of the disaffected Sunni Arab minority, which is thought to provide the backbone of the insurgency, agreed on a process for drafting Iraq's constitution. 
