#1
...To be honest, I don't see a real problem with this recommendation. "Hostile Fire" and "Imminent Danger" are two different things, and I don't think most people affected would argue.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
06/23/2012 16:11
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#2
I have the mental image that "Pay" is for the second a bullet whistles by, and no other time,
Example a so were shot at, but not hit so?
Paid for that second.(NOT THE DAY)
Yup cheap bastards.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/23/2012 18:55
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The battle between Pakistain's judiciary and government took a fresh twist Thursday when a court issued an arrest warrant for a close ally of President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... , effectively blocking his nomination as the country's next prime minister.
Zardari wanted Makhdoom Shahabuddin, a former health minister from Punjab province, to replace Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's former prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics could be awe-inspiring ... , who was dismissed as prime minister by the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
But hours after Shahabuddin's nomination, the military-run Anti-Narcotics Force prompted a magistrate's court to order his arrest on charges relating to the illegal production of a controlled drug two years ago.
The court also issued an arrest warrant for Ali Musa Gilani, a son of the outgoing prime minister, in the same case.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
10:51 ||
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President Obama personally inserted himself into the Fast & Furious gun walking scandal after he extended executive privilege over certain DOJ documentation. Was the Fast & Furious a botched scandal, or a deliberate effort to undermine the Second Amendment? Find out as Bill Whittle explores the ideological motives behind the Fast & Furious scandal.
#3
It is a plausible explanation. They were pushing the "evil guns from the US" story line pretty hard, even though it was contradicted by the actual facts.
#4
This transcends party politics and is "just plain wrong" from a human society standpoint. These would be Maoist tactics; the enabling of the killing of hundreds of people in order to futher a policy position. This is a crime against humanity and any reporter spinning it, glossing it over, refusing to get to the bottom of it is an accessory.
If we don't get to the bottom of this then we transform our country into a place where the killing of hundreds of people to advance policy becomes standard practice. This is world changing, folks. For the sake of our society we have GOT to punish those responsible for this and see that it never happens again.
#5
Remember, it was about this time when Calderon was given permission to address Congress, and he spent the bulk of his time bitching about US guns being used by Mexican bad guys.
I hate to say it, but this is the conclusion I am gravitating towards. It creates chaos, especially on the border, causing a flood of Mexicans to flee north. Well we can't send them back for fear of their lives...wait this just happened right? Someone in the Mexican government had to have known the guns were coming from the US; not suggesting cooperation just yet but knowledge of.
Get your voters, tarnish the 2nd, expand welfare, punish Arizona & Texas. The only downside would be getting caught and nothing is going to stick unless some border agents trys to take down a hard boy with a beanie gun or someone rats.
So who was the local team, which would have to be on the in, at least the big honchos and local managers. What are their background, profile, history? Or is this what is not being released?
President B.O.'s presser at the G-20 summit in Mexico was the most boring political exposition I have ever seen. Not only did the president ramble on about nothing; he did it in a halting manner that was excruciating to witness. How Obama thinks he can convince the world that he is a strong leader with that kind of a presentation is an intense mystery.
Let's break it down. When asked whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was cooperating in trying to get Syrian tyrant Bashir al-Assad removed from power, the president would not answer yes or no. Instead, he chose to tell the world that maybe ... perhaps ... could be some day ... the Russians might help out.
Not only were the president's words garbled; they were untrue. Putin is now supplying Assad with helicopter gunships, which are being used to murder innocent Syrian civilians. That's the truth, but Obama would not speak the truth.
When asked about the economic mess in Europe, all that Obama could come up with was that European leaders are concerned. A 5-year-old could have arrived at that conclusion.
Obama has no idea how to solve the worldwide economic crisis, so he tries to do a verbal rope-a-dope and tell everybody solutions are in the wind. They are not. Countries such as Greece, Spain and Italia are on the verge of economic collapse, and Obama is powerless to do anything about it. In fact, I don't think he understands why these countries are going bankrupt. If he did, he would be trying to cut federal spending in America.
#5
3 years watching this leftist puke act like he has a clue about what to do about anything short of writing a federal check or swiping the federal credit card.
Soldiers training to fight in Afghanistan have been sacked in an apparent breach of rules laid down by the Ministry of Defence, it can be disclosed.
An officer speaking on behalf of the sacked men said: "With the pensions issue and now this you can imagine their thoughts after 15 years loyal service where they've regularly risked their lives."
Two highly experienced company commanders from the 2nd Bn The Yorkshire Regiment have been made compulsorily redundant despite their battalion being at 48 hours readiness to deploy to Afghanistan.
The officers will be sent to the front line in the knowledge that they "will not know where next month's income is coming from," colleagues have said.
The men are part of the Theatre Reserve Battalion based in Cyprus that is trained to fight in Afghanistan at a moment's notice. Every battalion that has been the TRB has deployed elements on every tour since the Helmand campaign began in 2006.
But their compulsory redundancy appears to flout the pledge made by defence chiefs and politicians that "no one who is currently preparing to join operations, already deployed on operations or in recovery from operations will be made redundant".
The officers have also suffered the financial blow, first disclosed by The Daily Telegraph earlier this week that means they will lose out on a pension worth up £300,000 by being sacked just months short of their 16 year qualifying period.
Soldiers also now face having to wait an extra five years to get a pension with plans to move the immediate pensionable age to 45.
#2
Treat them like mercenaries long enough and they'll act like mercenaries. Instead of fighting when the time comes, they can be bought as well. Northumberland could sit and watch as much as fight.
#3
A suggestion for the British government: it should explicitly announce that it is no longer a world power and cannot be responsible for affairs that occur outside of its immediate geographical location.
After all, that's what they're doing with all these moves to cut their Defence spending, cut personnel, and so on. And what they are doing to these offices now is downright dishonorable.
It's all brought about by the simple fact that the British government (and by extension the people) no longer can bear the burden of involvement in world affairs as a world power.
So stop. Step away from the world leadership role. Announce an intention to be a regional power only with a regional military. Confine one's diplomacy outside Europe to purely consultative and observational statements.
Become New Zealand. Or Ireland. Become a prosperous, middle-weight nation that tends to mind its own affairs. Contribute to UN peacekeeping forces. And otherwise stay quiet.
That's the path you're on anyway, Britain. Why not make it explicit?
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/23/2012 10:11
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has shot down calls for full mobilisation of the eurozone's bail-out funds to halt the raging bond crisis in Spain and Italy, ignoring unprecedented pleas for action from the International Monetary Fund.
"Each country wants to help but if I am going to call on taxpayers in Germany, I must have guarantees that all is under control. Responsibility and control go hand in hand," she said after a crucial summit of the eurozone's Big Four powers in Rome.
Mrs Merkel -- or La Signora No in Italy -- doused hopes of a break-through on proposals by the "Latin Bloc" leaders of Italy, France, and Spain to deploy the funds (EFSF and ESM) to cap the bond yields of "virtuous" countries vulnerable to contagion, or to recapitalize banks directly to take the strain off sovereign states.
"If I give money straight to Spanish banks, I can't control what they do. That is how the treaties are written," she said, before racing off to Danzig to tonight for Euro 2012 quarter final between Greece and German..
Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, warned before the summit that the eurozone is under "acute stress" and at risk of a downward spiral.
"The viability of the European monetary system is questioned. There must be a recapitalisation of the weak banks, with preferably a direct link between the EFSF/ESM and the banks, in order to break the negative feedback loop that we have between banks and sovereigns."
For all the rhetoric at Rome's Villa Madama -- a Rennaissance retreat of the Medici family designed by Raphael -- the trio of Latin leaders seemingly failed to shift German Merkel one inch in the direction of debt pooling or genuine fiscal union.
The contrast between pro-forma talk of "more Europe" in the Roman hills and the festering reality on the ground in austerity Europe was not lost on those at the summit. Across the Tiber, much of Rome was paralysed by a bus and metro strike, evidence of the growing resitance to the harsh fiscal squeeze imposed by Mr Monti's technocrat government.
French president Francois Hollande did not hide his frustration, warning that France would not accede to German demands for a step-change in EU integration until Berlin puts the neuraligic issue of shared debts on the table. "There will be no transfer of sovereignty without greater solidarity, " he said acidly.
The Latin Bloc's soft diplomacy has essentially failed. Europe's key leaders will converge on Brussels for next week's crucial summit as divided as ever on the great issue of the day.
The leaders were left offering the thin gruel of infrastructure projects and long-term investment worth €130bn or 1pc of eurozone GDP, financed by leveraging an extra €10bn of base capital at the European Investment Bank.
Critics say this type of spending will take years to bear fruit and and will do little to halt the insidious process of debt-deflation already at work across much of Southern Europe.
#1
Not the biggest Merkel fan, yet all of the rest of the Euro Nations and the US is calling for Germany to open their banks and she seems to be holding in there alone. Kinda gutsy
#2
Tell France to follow your lead, Germany. They are going to flush themselves and you down the drain otherwise and they just elected another pampered idiot pandering "leader" for them to the the stupid lemmings they already were.
#1
The recent large consignments of weapons are not only new, they are freeÂ…
But the new consignment hasn’t yet arrived. Indeed, there is growing frustration along the border among rebel commanders who have been waiting weeks for shipments due “any day now,” “in the next few days,” “soon Inshallah.”
Hey youÂ…yeah youÂ…cÂ’mere. Wanna taste of some good shit. CÂ’monÂ…donÂ’t worry dude itÂ’s free. AinÂ’t this shit da bomb? Want some moreÂ…sure go ahead help yerself. Go ahead man take a little stash for yerself too. Check it outÂ…I gotta a line on some real killer shit commin up soon. HeyÂ…IÂ’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a load if you want more. Oh yeah...by the way, tell all your friends if they want some too.
#2
Amusing passage from the article about the purported leader-in-exile of the rebels, the Sunni Arab defector As'aad:
While As’aad may be cut out of the new weapons transfers, that doesn’t mean other senior FSA defectors aren’t in on the deals. As’aad has often come under friendly fire from members of the opposition who have questioned his effectiveness and his contributions to the struggle against Assad. He has been publicly sidelined by the FSA’s military council in the embattled city of Homs. “Nobody has the right to issue press releases, take decisions or speak about operations in the Free Syrian Army’s name, except for the FSA command inside Syria,” the group’s spokesman, Colonel Qassem Saadeddine, said in a videotaped statement uploaded to YouTube last month. “From now on, all decisions will be taken from inside Syria … Anyone wishing to represent the Syrian people, the free army, or speak in its name, is invited to make their way to the battlefield, to Syria, and wait for the Syrian people to confer legitimacy upon them.”
A village defense volunteer was killed in a drive-by shooting in Yala province on Saturday morning.
Abdulrosek Sata, a defense volunteer in Yala's Raman district, was returning home on a motorcycle when he was shot by a terrorist gunman riding pillion on another motorcycle. The terrorists assailants then fled. Abdulroseh was hit several times and died on the spot.
The US Embassy has warned of an imminent terror threat in the coastal town of Mombasa. All US government personnel have been ordered to evacuate Mombasa. All travel to Kenya is suspended until July 1.
Abdullah died somewhere in Afghanistan or in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and now his family is paying the price.
“The Taliban informed us in January that Abdullah had died ... and now they would support his children,” Shah said. “Three bearded men knocked at our door after midnight to give us the message of the death of my son. They also gave me Rs. 20,000 (US $213) and promised that his kids would be given Rs. 5,000 (US $53) every month, but we didn’t receive ... that money they had promised or see those men again.”
Deprived of their breadwinners, the families of terrorists who died in battle or in suicide attacks often become penniless, and are forced to survive on charity and the kindness of neighbours, Central Asia Online learned from interviews with the families.
Faizullah said he feels betrayed by the Taliban. “They didn’t honour their promise of giving financial support to the widow and children of my son,” he said.
Muhammad Yousaf, a blind man, still curses Taliban militants for luring his lone son to militancy, leaving his family destitute.
One reason for this trend can be attributed to an international crackdown on terror financing, Ahmad said. Before 2008, terrorists financially supported the families of dead colleagues, but the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is suffering from a shortage of funds in light of these efforts.
Although the TTP has turned to raising money through kidnappings for ransom, extortions from the rich, and bank robberies, the cash flow is insufficient for the militants to support surviving families as they once did, he said.
#1
Faizullah said he feels betrayed by the Taliban. "They didn't honour their promise of giving financial support to the widow and children of my son," he said.
Sounds like he's pissed he's on the hook for them now. Too bad, asshole...
#7
Don't feel sorry for them - they're guaranteed a place in paradise along with 72 of their closest friends and relatives. I'm sure that deep down inside, his widow is actually thrilled with the idea of being pampered by 72 female virgin BFF's.
South Sudan must stop arbitrary arrests and improve the "dire" conditions in its prisons, where a third of inmates are held on remand and some without having been charged, Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... said Friday.
"Flawed processes, unlawful detentions, and dire conditions in South Sudan's prisons reflect the urgent need to improve the new nation's fledgling justice system," the New York-based group said in a report.
"A third of South Sudan's prison population of approximately 6,000 has not been convicted of any offence or in some cases even charged with one, but are tossed in the clink Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! often for long periods," the majority without legal representation in an impoverished country with no legal aid, it said.
The research was carried out over 10 months before and after South Sudan's independence from Sudan last July after decades of civil war.
A former rebel army, that fought Khartoum for decades in the bush during decades of civil war, is now tasked with building a new nation from scratch.
"The experience of those in detention in South Sudan reveals serious flaws in the emerging justice system," HRW Africa director Daniel Bekele said.
HRW visited 12 of the country's 79 institutions that were often "damaged or crumbling" with cells that were "unhygienic, severely overcrowded and lack sufficient ventilation".
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#5
WTF??? There was the 400 lb naked woman at the bus stop and one on TX that wrecked her car, left her kids, and was found naked and eating ice cream! They have been banned in some states because of a rash of suicides, too. What is in 'bath salts' that cause such bizarre behavior? I know they are considered designer drugs, like ecstasy, but what is the origin of this? Also, most of the zombies are in FL, with TX and NC on the list of articles of seen...same routes as the Venezuelan cocaine ring.
Bath salts is just the official storyline. Earlier it was 'bad LSD'. But people ate bad LSD for a decade in the '60s without any outbreaks of face-eating cannibalism.
I suspect Patient Zero, the locus of the infestation, is somewhere in Central/South America. Somewhere in Venezuela, there is a jungle village overrun with zombies.
#8
Ah, come on, if there was a zombie outbreak you could rely upon the government to tell us. Sorta like if they were running guns to Mexico or something, they'd fess up when something went seriously wrong.
#10
Bath salts is a street term for designer drugs. And by designer it doesn't necessarily man that they have gone through the full FDA approval process. The mix is constantly being changed to skirt the law, so there's no telling what's in each batch. It could have rat poision in it, insecticide, or whatever. As long as it makes the user high, it's good.
These charming fellows call themselves the "Match Brigade" because they use matches to burn down villages. This cell phone video was recovered from the body of the man at 1:02 after he was killed. Village was in South Kordofan, near Nuba Hills, border with South Sudan.
[Jerusalem Post] Jihadi groups are said to be operating in the Strip without any consideration for Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,'s interest.
In 2006, Abu Abd Al-Rahman, a top al-Qaeda operative based in Afghanistan, received a letter.
One of the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now sometimes referred to as Mister Bones... 's closest associates and known by a slew of aliases, Rahman -- who was killed in a drone strike in Pakistain in 2011 -- was at the time a renowned Islamic religious authority in global jihad circles.
He often received letters from global jihad followers stationed across the globe, but this letter was different; It came from the Gazoo Strip.
Sent by the Army of Islam, at the time a fairly obscure terrorist group, the letter included a number of questions pertaining to Islamic religious law.
Over the years, the Army of Islam has turned into a formidable force in Gazoo. It assisted Hamas in kidnapping Gilad Schalit and later was behind the abduction of BBC news hound Alan Johnston. Designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department, its members have been targets of Israeli assassinations over the years.
The first question in the letter was whether the group could receive money from Paleostinian organizations to fund its terror activities. One example it gave was the Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Mohammedan Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the liquidation of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... , which wanted to give the Army of Islam money to carry out attacks against Israel. The problem, the letter noted, was that Islamic Jihad was heavily funded by Iran, perceived as an "infidel" Shi'ite state by the global jihad Salafis.
The second question was whether the Army of Islam could invest in the stock market to finance its terrorist activities. Finally, the letter asked whether the organization could kill drug smugglers, steal their drugs and money and use it to finance terrorist activities.
The letter was discovered last year in the home in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... , Pakistain where United States Navy SEALs found and killed bin Laden. It was one of nearly 20 documents that were declassified and published recently by the US military's Combating Terrorism Center.
For the Mossad and Military Intelligence, the discovery of the letter in the intelligence treasure trove reinforced what it had already known: al- Qaeda and global jihad do not pose a virtual and imaginary threat but are real and have cells operating along Israel's borders.
The attack on Monday along the Egyptian border, which killed construction worker Said Phashpashe, is believed to have been the work of another global jihad organization called Tawhid wal- Jihad, a shadowy group in Gazoo that was behind the kidnapping of an Italian activist in Gazoo last year. Hamas clashed with the group, stormed the home where the worker was being held and secured his release.
The group's involvement in the attack on Monday might be one of the reasons why Hamas decided this week to break its longstanding abstention from rocket attacks. Before this week, the last time Hamas fired was in April 2011 in the round of violence that erupted following a Hamas anti-tank missile attack against a school bus, which killed an Israeli teenager.
But now, global jihad groups are operating freely and without consideration for Hamas's interests.
The attack on Monday, for example, could have been carried out without Hamas's knowledge or approval. As a result, it is possible that Hamas felt its status was being undermined and therefore decided to renew its rocket fire and show who the real terror leader is in the Gazoo Strip.
Another possibility is that Hamas feels bolstered by the potential Moslem Brüderbund takeover in Egypt with a possible win in the presidential elections.
As a result, it feels like it can be less restrained when it comes to attacking Israel than it has been in recent years.
Ultimately though, the IDF does not believe that Hamas is really interested in a major escalation, the scale and scope of which could lead to another Operation Cast Lead. With the school year ending this week and summer vacation about to begin, Israel is also looking to avoid a larger conflict.
For that reason, the IDF's response has been relatively moderate with nearly 10 air strikes but none that really targeted manned Hamas positions.
In the past, Hamas has not hesitated to use force against the Salafi groups in Gazoo. One memorable incident was in August 2009 when Hamas forces raided the Ibn Taymmiyah mosque in Rafah.
During the festivities, 24 Paleostinians were killed and more than 130 were maimed. Several hundred more were enjugged Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! by Hamas.
"The presence of these organizations in the Gazoo Strip is not new," a senior IDF intelligence officer said this week. "We have been tracking them for years."
The lawlessness in the Sinai Peninsula, though, the officer noted, has created new opportunities for these organizations, some of them ranked as more radical than Hamas.
The ability to move between Sinai and Gazoo -- two places where the rule of law is not prominent -- has provided these groups not only with the means (weapons, explosives and money) but also with new operatives who can travel to Sinai to take up arms against Israel.
But while Sinai creates opportunities for these groups, for Israel it currently appears to be an almost unsolvable problem. The IDF, which admits to having limited intelligence on what happens there, is also voicing concern over the growing involvement of the local Beduin population in attacks against Israel, something expected to increase as the border fence is completed and the smuggling industry, which Sinai relies on, is hit hard.
The main problem for Israel is that unlike Gazoo -- where it feels it can operate freely against terror infrastructure -- the same cannot be said about Sinai where a single Israeli incursion or air strike would be viewed as a violation of Egyptian illusory sovereignty and likely lead to the immediate annulment of the peace treaty.
For that reason, the message coming out of Jerusalem this week was that the Egyptian government and whoever leads it as president needs to take immediate action to restore control over Sinai and remove the threat from Israel's borders. The message has yet to include an "or else" threat but if the attacks continue, the pressure will be on Israel to begin taking action to stop them.
[An Nahar] Yemeni security forces rubbed out two people taking part in a protest in the port city of Aden on Friday for the secession of the formerly independent south, activists and a medic said.
"Security forces fired live rounds on protesters, killing two and wounding five," said Ghassan al-Shuaibi, an activist from the separatist Southern Movement.
An official at Aden's Al-Naqib hospital confirmed the toll.
The demonstrators had been demanding an end to a week-old crackdown on a longstanding protest camp in the city's Mansour neighborhood, Shuaibi said, adding that nine people had been killed in the security force operation.
A security official told Agence La Belle France Presse that seven security personnel had been maimed in festivities in the district since June 15.
"Security forces are present in Mansur because of the gangs there," the official said.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#3
This is their racism on display. You say one thing and they will be contrary to what they believe. No matter what the truth is. Get used to it as I have. This goes back as far as I can remember. The riots to intergrated schools.
Like the Martin business. Some bragged how they ganged up on white people comming out of a bar. With the unemployment for youth where it is I expect more stories this summer will be told.
I lived it. I don't have to make it up.
#5
Al, everything is racism to you. Better look in the mirror and check yourself re/racism. As one of our representatives said the race card is the last card in the deck.
[Al Ahram] The Sudanese government has come under fire from the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) for its crackdown on peaceful protesters over the last week.
"There should be dialogue with the opposition and respect for the human rights ...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... of its citizens to express themselves and protest without harassment," a statement from the rights group said on Thursday.
"We have seen the Sudanese authorities conduct mass arrests and use force to disperse peaceful protests. If the government continues in this way, there will be a catastrophe ... as happened in other Arab Spring revolutions."
Sudan has been rocked by five days of protests against a possible rise in fuel prices, with some demonstrators demanding the fall of the regime. Police and security forces have used tear gas and batons to disperse the protests.
The network also asked for the lifting of what it called a "media siege" on the protests, as well as for increased pressure on the Khartoum government to respect human rights.
"The Sudanese intifada cannot be another revolution that is buried in silence," ANHRI added.
An AFP news hound was incarcerated Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! for 12 hours on Wednesday while covering protests in the Sudanese capital.
On Thursday morning, Egyptian journalist Salma El-Wardany was incarcerated Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! , along with blogger Maha El-Senussi, while reporting on protests at the University of Khartoum.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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[An Nahar] The Islamist krazed killer group Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... could be responsible for crimes against humanity in Nigeria, the U.N. said on Friday.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights is "extremely concerned" by the recent attacks on churches in Kaduna province and "tit-for-tat" reprisals by Christians which since June 17 have left more than 100 people dead, said Rupert Colville, front man for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told news hounds.
Boko Haram has said it was behind the attacks.
"Members of Boko Haram ... if judged to have committed widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population -- including on grounds such as religion or ethnicity -- are likely to be found guilty of crimes against humanity," said Colville.
"Deliberate acts leading to population 'cleansing' on grounds of religion or ethnicity could also amount to a crime against humanity," he said.
The group is also blamed for bomb and gun attacks, mainly in Nigeria's northeast, that have claimed more than 1,000 lives since mid-2009.
The sect's attacks have grown increasingly sophisticated and have spread from the group's base in the northeast across the wider north and down to the capital Abuja, in the centre of the country.
It grabbed credit for a suicide kaboom of U.N. headquarters in Abuja in August that killed at least 25 people and a suicide kaboom on the Abuja office of one of the country's most prominent newspapers.
Its deadliest attack yet occurred in the northern city of Kano in January, when at least 185 people died in coordinated bombings and shootings.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
Someone's made a grave mistake...only the USA and Israel commit crimes against humanity.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/23/2012 23:04
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Show your friends and relatives how much this election means to you. Donate to Obama instead of giving wedding gifts, birthday gifts, or any other occasion.
And of course, the Right chimes in with Twitter fun here. The president's team must be feeling like the whacked mole.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
06/23/2012
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#1
Wow. What genius on his staff thought this one up?
#3
I have difficulty imagining that anyone, even those with Donk Derangement Syndrome, would be so far gone as to do this. Hey Obama, you got any aluminum siding for my trailer, any cash my clunkers, WH pots and pans, or any other WH memorabilia for sale or trade?
#6
The depths of delusion that someone must be in to think that this was a good idea, that people really would want their special day turned into money for this grifter is just unfathomable.
(Sh. M. Network)-At least one person was killed and several others have been injured in an Al shabab attack on Somali government troops in Elasha Biyaha neighborhood, on the southern outskirt of Mogadishu, reports said.
Eyewitnesses said the fighting erupted after fighters from Al shabab ambushed on Somali military pick-ups en route to Afgoye district, 30 kilometers south of Mogadishu, killing Afrah Ali Afrah, the police chief in Elasha Biyaha area.
Military sources confirmed to Shabelle Media the death of the chief Mr. Afrah, adding that the took place after the Somali army convoy came under ambush attack during their travel to Afgoye district to supply logistics to the troops in the town.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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[Al Ahram] Sources close to the ruling military council and the Brotherhood confirmed to Ahram Online that both sides are intensely negotiating a compromise agreement to end the standoff
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
Methinks the Generals-n-Admirals are going to regret helping to overthrow Mubarak - IMO they thought they could easily control the Muslim Brotherhood + aligned, but are learning such is NOT the case.
[Al Ahram] At least eight people were killed and more than 50 maimed when two roadside kabooms went kaboom! in quick succession at a popular market on the northern outskirts of Iraq's capital on Friday, police and hospital sources said.
The attack was the latest in a wave of bombings this month that have targeted mainly Shi'ite Mohammedan pilgrims and religious sites and have revived concerns of widespread sectarian violence.
The first kaboom struck a main market area of Husseiniya - a predominately Shi'ite area on the edge of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... - where people were shopping for groceries and other goods, sources said.The second blast occurred shortly after in the same area, as security forces and people gathered to tend to the injured, one police source said.
Tensions have been high in Iraq since the departure of U.S. troops in December especially due to feuding between Iraq's main Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish political factions over power.
While overall violence in Iraq has dropped since the peak of sectarian fighting in 2006-07, recent bombings against Shi'ites have reignited fears the country risks sliding back into major bloodshed. On Monday, a jacket wallah killed at least 15 people mourning at a Shi'ite funeral in the northern Iraqi city of Baquba.
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[Al Ahram] At least 26 regime supporters were killed in an ambush in the northern province of Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... on Friday, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. "At least 26 supporters of the regime - believed to be forces of Evil - were rubbed out in the west of the province of Aleppo," the watchdog said, adding that regime forces have shelled villages in the area for several weeks.
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[An Nahar] MPs elected Raja Pervez Ashraf as Pakistain's new prime minister Friday, in a bid to end a crisis sparked by judges ousting the premier and demanding the arrest of his would-be successor.
The national assembly rubber stamped Ashraf's appointment by 211 votes in the 342-member lower house of parliament, dominated by the main ruling Pakistain People's Party (PPP) and its fractious coalition members.
"Raja Pervez Ashraf is declared to be elected as prime minister of the Islamic republic of Pakistain," speaker Fehmida Mirza announced.
President Asif Ali President Ten Percent Zardari ... sticky-fingered husband of the late Benazir Bhutto ... will now hope that Ashraf can form a cabinet able to see through the government's five-year term in office, due to expire in February 2013, without the need for early elections.
But Ashraf is a controversial choice. Currently fighting a corruption case from his tenure as water and power minister, he has also been blamed for much of the government's inability to resolve a disastrous energy crisis.
The change in premier is likely to ease little of Pakistain's myriad problems, not least appalling power cuts that enrage millions or a stalemate in US relations that have led to a seven-month blockade on NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It's headquartered in Belgium. That sez it all.... supplies into Afghanistan.
Ashraf will also come under immediate pressure from the Supreme Court to write to Swiss authorities, asking them to reopen investigations into Zardari.
The Pakistain People's Party government, dogged by corruption allegations, has been locked in a stand-off with the judiciary for years, accused of working behind the scenes with the military and the political opposition.
Its culmination came on Tuesday when the Supreme Court unceremoniously evicted Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... from the prime minister's office after convicting him of contempt for refusing to reopen Swiss corruption cases against Zardari.
Two days later an anti-narcotics court ordered the arrest of Makhdoom Shahabuddin, Zardari's nomination to replace Gilani, over a drugs scandal.
The PPP dropped Shahabuddin. Analysts suggested the arrest warrant had been engineered by the military, the chief arbiter of power.
Ashraf has promised to make the power crisis his priority despite being widely criticized for incompetency when power minister from March 2008 to February 2011.
"I hope soon we will find a solution," he told news hounds Friday.
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06/23/2012
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#1
What An Syrian Colonel Of MIG Plane Defects To Jordan : Turkey Hears: - France : Syria Military Defect From Being Soldiering ! Turkey Will Pay Defectors Than Retaliate In Fight For Suspect Downed Plane ! Money Pay In Gain Than Bane In Warfare Onto Islam ! Undo Being Thy Good Than Hoods , Allah O Akbar ! - al Qaeda
Terrorists arenÂ’t supposed to get visas. But Hani Nour Eldin was apparently invited to D.C. this week to meet with top officials. Did no one Google him?
[Dawn] Makhdoom Shahabuddin, the first choice of the PPP for the office of the prime minister, was stunned on Thursday when he was informed soon after he had filed his nomination papers and made a speech thanking the party and his supporters for reposing trust in him that a special court had issued warrants for his arrest in the ephedrine case.
Similar warrants were also issued for the arrest of Ali Musa Gilani, son of former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile former prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... , although the names of neither Mr Shahabuddin nor Musa Gilani were included in the incomplete original challan ... list of charges ... submitted by the Anti-Narcotics Force.
The ANF moved before Special Judge (Narcotics) Shafqatullah Khan an application expressing the possibility of their involvement in the scam on the basis of statements of witnesses recorded by an investigation team over past two months and the judge issued the non-bailable arrest warrants.
The ANF contended that its Sherlocks required their custody to investigate the sale of 9,000kgs of ephedrine to smugglers by two pharmaceutical companies -- Berlex Lab International and Danas Pharmaceutical (Pvt) Ltd.
According to an ANF investigation officer, some witnesses, including former officials of the health ministry who worked under the supervision of then health secretary Khushnood Akhtar Lashari and Mr Shahabuddin, linked the former health minister and Musa Gilani to the controlled chemical scam.
ANF sources said the application for their arrest had been moved after they did not appear before the investigation team for recording their statement in the case.
According to the ANF challan, Tauqeer Ali Khan, an alleged frontman of Musa Gilani, was intermediary in the scandal.
The scam came to limelight in March 2011, when Makhdoom Shahabuddin while responding to a point of order assured the National Assembly that a thorough investigation would be carried out into the alleged illegal allocation of ephedrine to the two pharmaceutical companies.
The ANF was assigned the task in October last year which started a formal probe on October 10, 2011. According to the ANF investigation, former director general of health Rasheed Juma illegally allowed the allocation. Another former director general of health, Asad Hafeez, and Khushnood Lashari also allowed the allocation and sale of the chemical to the companies.
The challan said Tauqeer Khan was a frequent visitor to the office of the health secretary and was behind all the alleged illegal dealings in ephedrine. The chemical was procured from Alpha Chemicals and delivered to one Zari Mohammad, who was neither a licensed dealer nor worked for any of the pharmaceutical companies.
The challan disclosed that Danas Pharmaceutical had claimed that it produced over 80 million tablets of meton from the ephedrine but could not produce any evidence to prove the claim. The company's claim that it distributed the tablets in Gilgit and Skardu also turned out to be wrong as its chemists in these areas mentioned in the list provided by the company denied having received any tablet from it.
Likewise, Berlex also claimed to have distributed 210 million tablets of meton, but it also failed to prove it.
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06/23/2012
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[Dawn] I've been in Washington for 15 years, and I've never seen such high levels of hostility directed toward Pakistain.
I don't attribute this sentiment solely to the steady stream of incidents that have angered America. Tension points have been present for decades; the Shakil Afridi incident and the refusal to reopen NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... supply lines are simply the latest incarnations.
That said, one cannot overstate the extent of US government anger about the Pakistain-based Haqqani network's repeated attacks on American troops and interests in Afghanistan. I recently attended a private meeting involving high-level US government officials, and the group's assault on the US embassy in Kabul last September was cited as a chief reason for Washington's unhappiness.
This anger is a bit easier to understand in light of recent revelations that a June 1 attack on a US military facility in Khost Province (carried out by the Haqqani network, in Washington's view) was much more serious than originally reported. Initially described as a US-casualty-free incident, the operation in fact involved a truck bombing, two American and five Afghan deaths, and dozens of maimed troops.
Beyond all this, however, a larger force is at play -- what political scientists refer to as a paradigm shift. In recent days, two noted Washington Pakistain-watchers have published commentaries in prominent outlets that suggest the relationship is doomed. In a Washington Post op-ed, the Stimson Center's Michael Krepon asserted that "more Paks and Americans are reaching the same conclusion: that it is not worth the effort, money or subterfuge required to patch up relations." Meanwhile, ...back at the ranch, Butch and the Kid finally brought their horses under control... Shamila Chaudhary, formerly a National Security Council staffer and top aide to Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as The Heroine of Tuzla and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another John Foster Dulles ... , wrote in a Foreign Policy piece (entitled "The Patience Runs Out") that up to now, "we've all just put up" with Pakistain's "outdated and destabilising Afghanistan policy" because "it's been taken as gospel that the United States needs Pakistain. That truism, at last, is no longer true."
Such conclusions come on the heels of Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... 's recent trip to India, where he openly advocated for India to play a larger role in Afghanistan -- for years, a suggestion US officials wouldn't dared have made publicly for fear of offending Pakistain. Instances like these prompt Chaudhary (one of the savviest Pakistain analysts in town) to conclude that Washington is "actively looking to replace Pakistain."
If one steps back and places this all in the proper strategic context, Washington's behavior starts to make sense. The B.O. regime has announced its intention to pursue an "Asia pivot," which involves intensifying engagement with countries in the Asia-Pacific. In recent days, President B.O. met with the president of the Philippines; Clinton hosted officials from Cambodia, Thailand, and South Korea; and Panetta travelled to Singapore, Vietnam, and, of course, India. While rarely stated explicitly, a chief motivation for this policy shift is to counter the rise of China, one of Pakistain's closest allies. Washington, of course, views India as a counterweight to China's rise.
Yet one need not resort to grand strategy to understand what's afoot. Given America's domestic troubles during this election season, it's simply not politically expedient for Washington to be advocating for a long-term, aid-driven relationship with Pakistain.
Take the case of Reading, Pennsylvania. Last week, I travelled to this city -- a three-hour drive from Washington -- to give a talk to the local chapter of the World Affairs Council. In its heyday, Reading prospered from coal and steel production. Today, it has the nation's largest share of residents living in poverty. The city has residents interested in foreign affairs (about 75 of them attended my presentation), but with a poverty rate of 41 per cent, there's much more concern about struggles closer to home. Pakistain rarely registers on radars, except in dismissive ways ("That's a pretty crazy country, isn't it?" a waitress said to me a ta local restaurant).
This is not the ideal venue to make an impassioned appeal for, say, continued US economic assistance to Pakistain.
Thankfully, Washington is not giving up completely on the bilateral relationship. Behind the scenes, policymakers and think tanks are feverishly exploring how to get the relationship back on track. Increasingly, Americans are grudgingly acknowledging this will have to be done knowing that Pakistain will not help attain many key US interests (including the elimination of the Haqqani network's Pakistain-based sanctuary).
Still, these efforts will not get any easier with the dismissal of Pakistain's prime minister earlier this week, and the general outlook remains gloomy. There's a saying heard often around these parts: Pakistain and the United States have a failing marriage, yet they insist on keeping the relationship together for the sake of their child, Afghanistan.
Alas, the situation now appears so grave that the two sides may be prepared to act against the best interests of their child -- and, perhaps, of each other.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
We need to cut off Pakistan's access to Indian Bollywood movies. That'll bring them to their knees, begging in no time. No movies until you open up the supply routes. Short of that we should open up our own supply routes, by force if necessary. Pack up our sh!t and get out of that part of the world. China and Pakistan deserve each other.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] The trial of Anders Behring Breivik ended Friday, exactly 11 months after he massacred 77 people in Norway, with the confessed killer insisting his attacks were justified and demanding acquittal.
The court announced that the verdict would be issued on August 24, while Breivik claimed at the end of his 10-week trial that his attacks were necessary to defend Norway against multiculturalism and a "Mohammedan invasion".
"The July 22 attacks were preventive attacks in defence of my ethnic group and I can therefore not acknowledge guilt," the 33-year-old right-wing Death Eater said.
"I was acting on behalf of my people, my religion and my country. I therefore demand that I be acquitted," Breivik said, concluding his 45-minute-long final remarks.
On July 22, 2011, Breivik first set off a car boom outside government buildings in Oslo, killing eight people, before going to Utoeya island, northwest of the capital where he shot and killed another 69 people, mostly teenagers.
The victims, the youngest of whom had just celebrated her 14th birthday, had been attending a summer camp hosted by the governing Labour Party's youth organization.
Before Breivik made his final remarks Friday, many survivors of his attacks and family members of his victims stood up and left the Oslo courtroom in protest.
"He has a right to talk. We have no duty to listen," Christian Bjelland, the vice chair of the support group for the attacks' survivors and victims' families, told the NTB news agency.
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#1
"I was acting on behalf of my people, my religion and my country. I therefore demand that I be acquitted,"
So he thinks his religion believes it is right to murder? I wonder how many other in the Church of Norway would agree with that?
#2
Current poll has 59.1% of Norwegians in favor of extensive psychiatric treatment. When we speak of this event to them they remind us of our Timothy Mcveigh.
[Yemen Post] The security authorities have jugged ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... Al-Qaeda leader involved in assassinating a senior Yemeni military commander in the south this week, security sources said.
Sami Dayan was the head of the terrorist cell behind the suicide kaboom which killed Salim Qatan, commander of the southern military region, the sources said.
Dayan and two of his assistants were jugged ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... at a checkpoint in Aden and explosives and ammunition were seized with them, they said.
"The group fled from Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... after the army drove all snuffies from their strongholds two weeks ago and had planned for more suicide kabooms," the sources added.
The three gunnies were inside the same car which carried the jacket wallah, who killed the commander, and were seen in Aden searching for an apartment for rent, the sources said.
Al-Qaeda has grabbed credit for the liquidation of Qatan and other security leaders and vowed to attack more senior military and security commanders in Yemen.
After Al-Qaeda snuffies received severe blows in Abyan, the retreated to hideouts and secret positions in nearby provinces and now the authorities are continuing a hunt to clear them from all parts in the country.
In the past few days, the authorities dismantled terrorist groups and thwarted suicide plots.
In the US-backed offensive in Abyan over the past few months, hundreds of snuffies including big shots were killed.
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[Dawn] The commander of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... forces in Afghanistan said on Friday that a deadly attack on a hotel on the outskirts of Kabul bore the signature of the Taliban-linked Haqqani group which he said continued to operate from Pakistain.
Elite Afghan police backed by NATO forces ended a 12-hour siege at the popular hotel, leaving at least 20 dead after Taliban gunnies stormed the lakeside building, bursting into a party and seizing dozens of hostages.
"Afghan National Security Forces and coalition military sources acknowledge that this attack bears the signature of the Haqqani network, which continues to target and kill innocent Afghans and blatantly violate Afghan illusory sovereignty from the safety of Pakistain," General John Allen said in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
In other news: The mountain pine beetle (MPB) Dendroctonus ponderosae is known inhabit forests.
[Jerusalem Post] Following nearly two days of relative quiet, hostilities on Gazoo front resume; six rockets fired into southern Israel cause no injuries; Paleostinians say 2 killed, 5 maimed in two IAF Arclight airstrikes.
After an informal ceasfire brokered by Egypt brought two days of relative quiet to southern Israel, rocket fire into the communities bordering the Gazoo Strip resumed Friday night, prompting two separate Israel Air Force forays into the coastal territory to strike rocket launching terrorist cells.
The first IAF strike targeted a terror cell preparing to launch a rocket at Israel, killing one member of a pro al-Qaeda fringe Salafist Islamist group and wounding two others at the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gazoo. The Paleostinians had originally reported that the man was a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, a terrorist group that is often involved in rocket shooting into Israel.
Following the IAF strike on the cell, Death Eaters fired five rockets into Israel over the span of two hours on Friday night. No injuries or damage were reported in the attacks. Three rockets landed in the Eshkol Regional Council area and another landed in the Sdot Hegev Regional Council area. The fifth rocket, fired at the Ashkelon Coast Council area, prompted the IAF's second strike of the night in Gazoo.
Immediately after the rocket was launched, IAF aircraft targeted the terror cell responsible for the launch, recording a direct hit. Paleostinian sources said the strike hit a cycle of violence in northern Gazoo, wounding four Paleostinians, one of whom was at death's door. The man later succumbed to his wounds, marking the tenth Paleostinian death from IAF strikes since hostilities began Monday, according to Paleostinian sources. Minutes later a sixth rocket hit southern Israel, again in the Ashkelon Coast Regional Council area.
More than 130 rockets have been fired into the South from Gazoo since Monday, prompting Israel on Thursday to lodge an official complaint with the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor complained to UN Secretary-General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon ... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan... that "the lives of about a million Israelis are paralyzed" by the projectiles.
Prosor stated that "as long as Israel's southern communities will not know quiet, it will not be quiet in Gazoo."
He added that Israel fully cooperates with the UN, allowing civilian material and humanitarian aid into Gazoo, "and in exchange weapons continue to flow into the Strip and rockets are fired into Israel."
#1
"IAF aircraft targeted the terror cell responsible for the launch, recording a direct hit. Paleostinian sources said the strike hit a cycle of violence in northern Gazoo, wounding four Paleostinians, one of whom was at death's door."
I continue to be amazed at how few ground DRT casualities there are from a direct hit rocket blast. Did the IAF give up on craters?
#2
The Israelis should put up a rocket counter (similar to our national debt counter) recording each missile fired at the nation in real time -- dating back to, say, 1948.
The biggest threat to American Moslems comes from extremism in their own communities, not from government surveillance or police profiling, a Moslem activist told politicians Wednesday.
"The greatest threat ... is actually a theopolitical ideology that is hijacking my faith: ... Islamism," Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy told a House Homeland Security Committee hearing chaired by Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican.
The hearing was the fifth in Mr. King's much-criticized series about homegrown radicalization and terrorism.
The hearing was the fifth in Mr. King's much-criticized series about homegrown radicalization and terrorism
Mainstream American Moslem groups were "in denial" about extremism, "claiming victimization," and disparaging legitimate questions as "Islamaphobia and McCarthyism," Dr. Jasser said.
But his views were sharply contested by another witness and even his qualifications to testify were questioned by committee Democrats during a hearing where widely differing views of the relationship between terrorism and Islam sharpened the partisan divide.
"A person's ideology or religiosity is simply not an effective means of predicting terrorism," said Faiza Patel, the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University Law School's Brennan Center for Justice. Is it just me or does that statement make no sense to a rational person?
"The best way to keep our country safe is to use facts to drive counterterrorism policy and using religiosity as an indicator [of potential terrorist activity] doesn't work," she added, citing research by the Rand Corp. think tank and the Pentagon.
Rep. Laura Richardson, Caliphornia Democrat, volubly questioned the credentials of Dr. Jasser and the other two witnesses -- former news hound and counterterrorism scholar Asra Nomani and New York medical professor Dr. Qanta A. A. Ahmed.
The dispute over the witnesses' qualifications was just one of many at a hearing where several points of view appeared to be talking past each other.
Polling evidence showing that 5 percent of Moslem Americans actually had a "favorable" view of al Qaeda was cited both by Mr. King and Ms. Patel.
Ms. Patel called that percentage "tiny" and noted the data also showed that Moslems were more opposed to the use of suicide kaboom and other violence against civilians than were any other religious group.
Mr. King pointed out, however, that a 5 percent approval share "would come to more that 150,000 Americans."
#1
Ms. Patel called that percentage "tiny" and noted the data also showed that Moslems were more opposed to the use of suicide kaboom and other violence against civilians than were any other religious group.
"you should see dose Catholics and Lutherans. Vicious killers, I tell ya"
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/23/2012 12:19
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more opposed to the use of suicide kaboom and other violence against civilians
I suspect quite a bit depends on the exact definition of 'civilians'.
For a map, click here.
If this is true, it is a huge screw up by Obama's DEA and Mexico's attorney general. Some of the information used in this story was provided by Borderland Beat reporter Chivis Martinez.
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
A man detained by Mexican naval infantry units in Zapopan, Jalisco Wednesday was not Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar AKA El Gordo, the son of Sinaloa drug cartel boss Joaquin Guzman Loera AKA El Chapo, but a hapless used car dealer from Guadalajara caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to various Spanish and English language news reports.
The counternarcotics operation took place in Jardines de la Patria colony where the misidentified detainee, now identified as Felix Beltran Leon, a used car dealer by trade with family in Los Angeles California was arrested.
According to a statement, Mexican marines found two rifles, two handguns, four grenades and USD $135,000 (MX $1,867,454.96) and MX $295,000 (USD $21,325.81) in cash. Kevin Daniel Beltran Rios, 19, was also detained at the scene and identified in a Secretaria de Marina (SEMAR) news release as a Sinaloa cartel operative.
An attorney for the family sent out several emails Friday to various Mexican media outlets and released an oral statement on MVS Radio saying the detainee was not Guzman Salazar.
The attorney, Jesus Alfredo Guzman, had scheduled a news conference for 1100 hrs CDT Friday in Guadalajara, but to date the media event has not taken place.
A juicio de amparo suit has already been filed in Mexican federal court challenging the extradition of Beltran Leon to the United States. Under Mexican jurisprudence, amparo suits must be adjudicated before prosecutors can move forward on any criminal case, even in a high profile extradition such as the putative Alfredo Guzman Salazar detention.
Juicio de amparo suits are appeals meant to slow down legal procedures, and to ensure an individual's rights under the law.
Despite the amparo suit Felix Beltran Leon will likely serve prison time for possession of guns and cash.
The errors likely committed in this case are of epic proportions. Loera Guzman himself was detained by Mexican authorities in 1993 but escaped in 2001. That means that the Mexican SubprocuradurÃa de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), the organized crime unit of the Procuraduria General de la Republica or attorney general probably had a DNA profile on Loera Guzman. A report could have easily been prepared in advance of the marine operation that could have compared DNA profiles taken immediately following the raid.
Word on the narco blogs is that the operation was a DEA operation from the very start, which if true means the raid and subsequent news of the capture was from its basis a political operation by an American administration in deep political trouble at home trying to score cheap points by using a foreign counternarcotics operation.
For example, the administration of US president Barak Obama has been milking the 2011 assassination of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for months using questionable leaks to trusted news outlets such as the New York Times.
The US DEA has played politics with Mexican politics and politicians in the past. A good example is the 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles in the New York Times which smeared, among others, then Sonora governor Fabio Beltrones as having connections with organized crime. Nearly every source in that series was unnamed or was from the DEA itself. None of the rumors and allegations against now Senator Beltrones has ever been proved.
Most dismaying to all concerned with legal reforms about to be imposed on Mexico is Marisela Morales, Mexico's current PGR who took over that post two years ago. Her elevation to the top legal job in Mexico has been praised by US news outlets such as the Los Angeles Times as exemplary of how far Mexico has come in jurisprudence. SIEDO was Morales' job prior to becoming attorney general.
Far more revealing is the current US administration that is under intense pressure because of its refusal to provide Congress with documents pertaining to the failed gun running monitoring operation dubbed "Fast and Furious". That operation has allegedly cost the lives of 300 Mexican citizens and three US Federal agents from weapons illegally purchased in the US and permitted to cross the border into Mexico.
It is hard to imagine the DEA not trying to score points for its boss as well as itself by rushing a questionable bust. It is equally hard not to imagine no fallout coming from such as sloppy attempt.
The current Mexican national administration under President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa is on the way out, as its longtime political rival the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) is about to retake the Mexican presidency as well a substantial portion of the Chamber of Deputies in next week's elections.
It is therefore very likely the Mexican government did nothing more than react to a set of facts provided by the US DEA.
SEMAR, Admiral Mariano Francisco Saynez Mendoza must be furious as a tremendous waste of his best counternarcotics forces.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
#2
Golly gosh, I thought the Mexicans didn't like it when the gringos to the north involved themselves in Mexico's internal affairs. And here the DEA has been meddling these past couple decades and not a peep!
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06/23/2012 10:15
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The "dysfunction" in the U.S. Congress, where Republicans and Democrats have failed to compromise on debt reduction, threatens U.S. national security, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... "One my greatest concerns as secretary is the dysfunction that we see in Washington," he said late Thursday at a ceremony in which he received an award for public service.
"It threatens our security and it raises questions about the capacity of our democracy to respond to crisis."
He went on to express concern over a round of automatic defense spending cuts set to take effect in January 2013 in the event that feuding politicians are unable to hammer out a deal to slash the country's $15.8 trillion debt.
"It will force the Department of Defense to throw our new defense strategy out the window. It will pose, I believe, an unacceptable risk to our ability to defend the country," Panetta said.
If Congress fails to agree on how to slash spending by January, dramatic defense reductions of about $500 billion would be automatically triggered under a law adopted last year.
Bitterly divided politicians have been struggling for the past year to reach a deal to rein in the debt, with Republicans demanding steep cuts in spending and Democrats calling for higher taxes on the wealthy.
The looming election-year showdown comes as President Barack Obama B.O.... , a Democrat, fights for a second term in a campaign dominated by fears over the sluggish U.S. economic recovery.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Are we talking real cuts or a reduction in pre-programmed expansion?
"It will force the Department of Defense to throw our new defense strategy out the window.
Ignoring the continuation of past and present program of military welfare for first world countries in Europe and Asia.
#2
Former SecState James Baker would likely agree wid Leon ...
To wit,
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [CharlesRose.com = Video wid Hillary]FORMER US SECRETARY [SecState] JAMES BAKER SAYS US CANNOT BE A SUPERPOWER [anymore] IFF THE ECONOMY IS NOT CORRECTED.
#3
Slightly off topic, but in the still within the realm of dysfunctional; as the former DCI, please tell us if you will Mr. Panetta, what you knew about F&F?
(Sh.M.Network)- Pak officials said Thursday that a French al Qaeda bully boy linked to the 9/11 attacks was probably heading to Somalia when he was captured near the Iranian border.
Naamen Meziche was placed in long-term storage Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! in May after disclosures by Younis al-Mauritani, captured inPakistainlast year and apparently tasked by the late Osama bin Laden ... who no longer has to waste time and energy breathing... to plot attacks onAustralia, Europe and theUS.
"Meziche was probably on his way to Somalia when he was caught," one Pak security official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The official said it was difficult to know exactly what route Meziche was taking on the day of his arrest.
Western experts said he had been en route toPakistain's semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, a stronghold of al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But another security source suggested he was in transit fromIran, en route to Somalia.
"Recently lots of al Qaeda people left Pakistain to move toYemen or Somalia. The tribal belt is a very important place for jihadis on their way, because there they can get the support, logistics and contacts to move on," the source told AFP.
Pak agents are interrogating Meziche and information has been shared with American, French and German intelligence agencies, the first security official said.
"Eventually he will be deported toLa Belle France," he added.
The arrest came with Islamabad under huge US pressure to do more to eliminate the threat from al Qaeda and other hard boyz sheltering on its soil.
Pak-US relations have been in freefall since Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in Pakistain in May 2011.
Born in 1970 and of Algerian descent, security sources say Meziche is an "important" al Qaeda figure in Europe who was linked to the 9/11 attacks as a member of the Hamburg cell that theUSsays criminal masterminded the 2001 hijackings.
He reportedly recruited jihadists at a notorious mosque in the northern German city, which authorities closed in 2010 for breeding fanatics.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
Is this why Pakistan was so upset about us killing Bin Laden? It has discouraged terrorists who were operating in Pakistan from staying there, causing a jihadist brain drain. Pakistan is losing its best & brightest infidel killers.
Posted by: American Delight ||
06/23/2012 15:48
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#2
border region : Kenya Somalia & Terror Israel Embassy
French airline Air La Belle France has announced it is to cut more than 5,000 jobs by the end of 2013 in an attempt to reduce costs and return to growth.
The figure represents just under 10% of the total workforce of 53,000.
The job cuts form part of a restructuring plan to restore profitability, in the face of increased competition and soaring fuel costs.
Air La Belle France says it is hoping to avoid compulsory redundancies through natural turnover and voluntary redundancies.
The company estimates some 1,700 jobs could be lost through natural turnover.
Air La Belle France, one component of the French-Dutch air carrier Air La Belle France-KLM and the first air carrier in Europe, launched a major cost-saving programme, Transform 2015, earlier this year, after posting a loss of 809m euros (£653m) for 2011 and a first quarter net loss in 2012 of 368m euros.
Shares in Air La Belle France-KLM shot up by 6% after the job cuts announcement, the AFP news agency reports.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
wonder how much of this is due to the carbon tax on airliners.
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan ... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau... on Friday fired his national security adviser and defence minister, his front man said, as fears mounted over spiralling unrest in the country's north.
"The NSA has been dropped ... The minister of defence has also been dropped," Jonathan front man Reuben Abati told AFP.
He said the new security adviser would be Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel, prominent northerner and cousin to the Sultan of Sokoto, Nigeria's highest Mohammedan spiritual figure.
Dasuki was also implicated in a 1995 coup attempt against the government of former dictator Sani Abacha and went into exile in the United States at the time.
It was not yet clear who would replace defence minister Bello Mohammed.
Nigeria has faced a deadly insurgency from Islamist group Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... for months, but criticism of Jonathan greatly intensified this week after three suicide kabooms at churches sparked reprisals from Christian mobs who burnt mosques and killed dozens of Mohammedans.
There have been growing warnings that there could be more cases of residents taking the law into their own hands if something is not done to halt the Boko Haram attacks.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and largest oil producer, is roughly divided between a mainly Mohammedan north and predominately Christian south.
The fired national security adviser, Owoye Azazi, is a political ally of Jonathan's, with both men from Bayelsa state in the country's oil-producing south.
The decision was announced after Jonathan met with his security team on Friday, hours after returning to Nigeria from a UN environmental summit in Rio.
Jonathan's decision to leave Nigeria on Tuesday for the summit as fresh riots broke out had also drawn heavy criticism.
Several days of unrest in parts of northern Nigeria began Sunday in Kaduna state, with suicide kabooms at three churches that killed at least 16 people and sparked reprisals by Christian mobs, who burned mosques and killed dozens of Mohammedans.
More rioting broke out in Kaduna later in the week, while on Monday and Tuesday, shootouts between security forces and suspected Islamists in the northeastern city of Damaturu left at least 40 people dead.
At least 106 people were killed in the days of violence.
The initial suicide kabooms were claimed by Boko Haram, whose insurgency concentrated in the north has killed hundreds.
Criticism has mounted over the government's response to the violence, with few public indications of what strategies are being employed beyond heavy-handed military raids to stop the onslaught of attacks.
"Since these terrorist acts began, nothing the president ... has done has been reassuring that the end to this spate of bombings and gun attacks is in sight," the Christian Association of Nigeria, the country's main Christian body, said this week.
"On the contrary, his utterances after each bombing and killings, even if unwittingly, seem to have cast a hallmark of weakness on his presidency and an escalation of the terrorist acts."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
defence minister Bello Mohammed
I bleev I see a problem right there.
Is that a name or an incitement to jihad?
Speaking of names, Nigeria sure has a kit bag of colorful first nomikers: Goodluck, Bello, Reuben(!?), Sambo (!!??)(As as child, twas my favorite pancake house in Oakland, CA. Hadda inlaid mural above the kitchen pass-out bar depicting an Indian -- w/a dot, notta feather -- rescuing his order of flapjacks from a tiger.)
U.S. military and intelligence officials are so frustrated with Pakistain's failure to stop local thug groups from attacking Americans in neighboring Afghanistan that they have considered launching secret joint U.S.-Afghan commando raids into Pakistain to hunt them down, officials told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
But the idea, which U.S. officials say comes up every couple of months, has been consistently rejected because the White House believes the chance of successfully rooting out the deadly Haqqani network would not be worth the intense diplomatic blowback from Pakistain that inevitably would ensue.
Members of the Haqqani tribe have been targeted by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft, but sending American and Afghan troops into Pakistain would be a serious escalation of the hunt for forces of Evil and potentially the final straw for Pakistain, already angered over what it sees as U.S. violations of its illusory sovereignty.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
06/23/2012 0:24
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#2
DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > US [again = practically]RULES OUT APOLOGY OVER SALALA ATTACK. SecDef Panetta.
All but absolutely positively categorically undeniably .......@etc. guaranteed to MIGHT/MAY NOT OCCUR [but could]!
So there.
* SAME > US SAYS TIME OF PAKISTAN HEDGING BETS ON TERROR GROUPS [Taliban, AQ, Haqqanis; LeT agz Indjuh] IS OVER | US TELLS PAKISTAN: STOP KEEPING POISONOUS SNAKES IN [your] BACKYARD.
and
* SAME > NO PROGRESS ON NATO SUPPLY ROUTES: VICTORIA NULAND.
* BHARAT RAKSHAK > TALIBAN ATTACKS ON US BASES IN AFGHANISTAN, ENABLED BY PAKISTANI FORCES?
Espec the Pak ISI/ISID???
Militants, etal. observed driving back-n-forth freely = unchallenged across the Afghan-Pak borders in trucks packed full of explosives, etc. from somewhere, someone(s) in Pakistan???
* SAME > NO COUNTRY FOR ARMED MEN: PAKISTAN IS IN SUCH BAD SHAPE THAT EVEN THE GENERALS DON'T WANT TO STAGE A COUP; + PAKISTAN RESPONDS TO FAILED STATE INDEX.
(Sh.M.Network)- Technical committees from Somaliland and Somalia who met on Thursday in Chevening House inKent, on the outskirts ofLondon,UK capital, have agreed to an 8-point plan including future talks.
The talks which went for two intense days at Chevening House, both parties concluded with positive outcome, mainly to establish a framework for future substantive talks between Somali and Somaliland presidents Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed and .
Both sides have sent a team of five members who ratified to an 8-point plan during their first face-to-face dialogue in 21 years with observers from the hosting and co-hosting European Union,Norwayand the British government.
Noted the need to adopt a common approach to avoid anything that would undermine the continuation of the talks as defined above;
Committed to the continuation of the talks and called on the two presidents to meet to review progress as soon as possible;
Called on the international community to continue to facilitate the talks, including providing the two sides with external experts on legal, economic and security matters;
Agreed to share experience on working more effectively with the international community on the use of development and humanitarian assistance for the people of both sides and called for the international community to increase that assistance;
Agreed to cooperate in the fight against terrorism, extremism and serious crimes;
Agreed to cooperate in the fight against piracy at sea and on land, maritime crime, illegal fishing and toxic dumping; and
Reiterated their support for ending the Transition in Somalia.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Sudanese anti-government protesters on Friday burned tyres and clashed with police on the seventh day of widening demonstrations sparked by rising food prices, witnesses said.
Demonstrations even occurred in the upscale district of Khartoum Two, home to business magnates and foreign embassies, where an AFP news hound saw tyres burning Friday afternoon and said police had fired tear gas.
In Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, about 200 demonstrators rhythmically clapping and shouting for "freedom," earlier threw stones at police who fired back with tear gas, the AFP news hound said.
Security officers also used whips and batons against the demonstrators, who had blocked a road and set tyres ablaze.
Across town in the Burri area, tear gas fumes still stung the air after residents reported that police used force against their protest over high prices. Residents had blocked neighbourhood streets with stones, an AFP news hound observed.
Earlier, hundreds of people, mainly from the opposition Umma Party, gathered in Omdurman to call for regime change, a demonstrator there said. The crowd hurled stones while police used batons against them, he added.
Elsewhere, in Khartoum North district, about 100 youths burned tyres and shouted, "No, no, to high food prices," but they dispersed when riot police arrived, an AFP news hound observed.
A slightly smaller group, many of them women, held a sit-down protest on chairs to block a road in the same district on Thursday night. An AFP news hound saw riot police beat and detain several of the demonstrators objecting to the cost of food.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
Birthday/Daily Gam Shot
Vera Steadman aka Blanche in "Elmer and Elsie (1934)" aka Telephone Operator in "The Drunkard (1935)" aka Mayme in "Ring Around the Moon (1936)" aka Molly Murdock in "Gambling with Souls (1936)" aka busy, appearing in approximately 100 silent films between 1915 and 1929 aka Sennett Bathing Beauty (Died in 1966 at age 66)
Emmanuelle Seigner aka Michelle in "Frantic (1988)" aka The Girl in "The Ninth Gate (1999)" aka Gloria in "Buddy Boy (1999)" aka Celine in "Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)(2007) " aka Titine in "La vie en rose (Life in Pink)(2007)" aka Mrs. Roman "Child Molester" Polanski "Bride 23, Groom 56, True Love" (age 45)
[Al Ahram] Leila Ben Ali, the reviled wife of deposed Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, says a plot by top security officials ended his long rule, in a book launched in La Belle France on Thursday.
The unpopular 55-year-old, dubbed the "Queen of Carthage" and reputed to have a voracious appetite for power and money, also said she and her husband were ready to return to their homeland for trial if guaranteed a fair hearing.
In the book, "My Truth", she also admits that the flashy lifestyle of her Trabelsi clan -- which had a stranglehold on business in the country -- played a large part in ending Ben Ali's 23-year rule in January last year.
Their control over the north African country's economy was vast and they were said to have stakes in banks, airlines, car dealerships, radio and television stations and big retailers.
"Among my own, there were some who exaggerated -- often the younger ones who freely indulged in their appetite for profits and refused to set limits," she says in the book, written from interviews given on Skype to journalist Yves Derai.
"These weaknesses and errors of my family were amplified outside and used with the sole objective of bringing down the regime of Ben Ali... We were the Achilles heel of the president."
Leila, Ben Ali's second wife and 21 years his junior, also denied she had worked as a hairdresser when she met her husband or had numerous lovers, as widely reported in the media.
After Ben Ali took power in 1987 he obtained a divorce and wed Trabelsi, who allegedly set about installing members of her family in positions of power.
In ensuing years, the Trabelsi name came to personify the corruption that riddled Tunisian society and business, and a byword for shameless greed and excess.
Leila Ben Ali squarely blamed her husband's chief of presidential security Ali Seriati, currently in jail, of being behind a "plot" that led to the uprising, which sparked the Arab Spring revolts.
She outlined the stages: "indoctrination of the masses, the distribution of money in poor areas, the recruitment of snipers, the intensification of protests through assassinations, the torching of homes."
Their flight into exile to Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... would not have occurred "without Seriati's insistence," she said, adding: "Even once we were in the air, my husband thought he could return the following morning."
Last week, a Tunisian court sentenced Ben Ali, in absentia, to life in prison for presiding over the bloody crackdown on the protests against his regime.
He faces countless trials and has already been sentenced to more than 66 years in prison on a range of charges including drug trafficking and embezzlement.
Despite all that, the former first lady said she and her husband were ready to face trial back home if "we are guaranteed the impartiality of the judgments and assured of the legitimacy of those in charge" of the trial.
She remained largely tight-lipped on her days in exile in Saudi Arabia, saying she passed "the major part of the day looking after my husband and my children... I go out rarely, hardly meet anyone and pray a lot."
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06/23/2012
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[Al Ahram] The Moslem Brüderbund is to announce concessions it will make to more liberal activists for the sake of unity to overcome the "crisis," at 2:30 on Friday, youth activist Ahmed Imam informed Ahram Online.
The addendum to the Constitutional Declaration announced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), granting it immunity, making it the sole authority over the military and giving it the right to interfere in the drafting of Egypt's new constitution, is described by many as a "military coup."
Revolutionary figures have already been actively working to push for an immediate transition to civilian rule, and now the Moslem Brüderbund, seeing itself being pushed out of power by the military and the High Constitutional Court which ruled against the Brotherhood-dominated parliament, are taking bolder steps to unite with revolutionary forces.
Several political figures have proposed specific compromises the Brotherhood would need to cede in order for them to align with them. As a consequence, several meeting were held on Thursday between Mursi, political figures and several of the revolutionary youth in hopes of finding an agreement.
Eight demands were proposed to Mursi, including:
1- Releasing all political prisoners immediately upon Mursi's election as president
2- Cancelling the judicial law allowing the military to arrest civilians
3- Guaranteeing that the constituent assembly tasked with drafting Egypt's new constitution will be equally representative of non-Islamists so that it reflects a national consensus. This may be done by rejecting the military junta's addendum to the Constitutional Declaration, which makes the SCAF the body allowed to reform the constituent assembly. Another way is to maintain the current assembly, but replacing several of the Islamist figures and using the assembly's right to expand the assembly by ten more members, who can then also be chosen from the civil parties.
4- Giving political organizations and movements legal recognition
5- Reshuffling the governors in consultation with the political movements
6- Forming a cabinet that is representative of all the political factions and in which the Brotherhood do not have a majority and in which the prime minister is not an Islamist
7- Adopting a plan to purge major institutions of ex-regime members
8- Forming a group to manage the current crisis period to be composed of several of those who have attended the discussions
Imam also confirmed that Mursi, former presidential candidate Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh and a representative of the Hamdeen Sabbahi camp will be forming a presidential council.
ElBaradei, however, did not want to be part of the presidential council and proposed to act as a mediator between the "crisis managing" group that will be formed by those attending yesterday's meetings and the SCAF.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
one-time "concessions" that would be revoked at first opportunity
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/23/2012 12:13
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BAIL REVOKED: Child Molester Sandusky Heads To Center County Correctional Facility
The verdict will impact not only Sandusky and the eight young men who accused him of molestation, but a range of civil and criminal probes of the scandal that shamed the university and brought down coach Joe Paterno
#3
What I would like to know is if his basement is soundproof. Send Sandusky down there to get buggered by his new cellmate "Bubba" and see if Mrs. Sandusky can hear him holler.
[An Nahar] Bahraini security forces on Friday fired rubber bullets to disperse an unauthorized rally by the opposition Al-Wefaq wounding its leader, the Shiite bloc said.
Sheikh Ali Salman was "maimed with rubber bullets in his shoulder and back when security forces fired at a peaceful demonstration held in Bilad al-Qadeem," three kilometers (two miles) from Manama, it said in a statement.
It said two other leading opposition figures -- Al-Wefaq's Jawad Fairouz and Hasan al-Marzouq -- were also maimed.
"Security forces besieged the area, chased citizens and repressed them brutally, beating them up and firing live rounds at them," it added.
Witnesses told Agence La Belle France Presse that security forces used tear gas, sound bombs, rubber bullets and birdshot to disperse the rally, adding that several people were maimed in the crackdown.
The interior ministry had announced late Thursday it had "turned down a request submitted by Al-Wefaq... to stage a rally" in the area, state news agency BNA reported.
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06/23/2012
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[An Nahar] U.S. diplomats working in Pakistain face increasing harassment amid a sharp deterioration in ties in the wake of last year's killing of the late Osama bin Laden ... who no longer exists... , a State Department report said Thursday.
Such harassment and obstruction is described by U.S. embassy staff as "deliberate, willful and systematic," according to the 76-report by the department's watchdog, the office of inspector general.
"Official Pak obstructionism and harassment, an endemic problem in Pakistain, has increased to the point where it is significantly impairing mission operations and program implementations," the report said.
Harassment included such things as delaying visas for staff, blocking shipments of materials for aid programs and construction work, and surveillance of staff and contractors.
The official report, made available Thursday, comes after a February fact-finding tour of the U.S. diplomatic missions in Islamabad, Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , Beautiful Downtown Peshawar and Lahore.
It urged U.S. officials to ensure that the issue of harassment is raised in bilateral talks with the Pak government.
Although it was marked "sensitive but unclassified," sections giving greater detail about the conditions faced by U.S. embassy staff were blacked out along with several recommendations made by the watchdog.
The U.S. commando raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... in May 2011 had been a "double embarrassment" highlighting both the government's "incompetence" and "its inability to detect or defend against a military intervention."
Confidence between the U.S. and Pakistain was further shaken by the attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul in September, as well as a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... attack which killed 24 Pak soldiers in November.
"The impact of these events has been felt across the full spectrum of the bilateral relationship," the report said.
"The expectation is that the future relationship will be less ambitious, more pragmatic," it said, adding that the embassy also "struggles with the challenge of programming more than $2 billion in annual funding for development and security assistance programs."
The report makes 32 formal recommendations for improving the security and working conditions of the embassy staff, including updating its policy on the use of armored vehicles.
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06/23/2012
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[An Nahar] Syrian protesters erupted into the streets on Friday as the government accused rebels of carrying out a "brutal massacre" of 25 of its supporters, and activists said regime forces killed at least 55 people across the country.
The independent Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave a higher toll for the pro-regime losses, saying at least 26 government supporters -- most of them members of the feared shabiha militia -- had been killed.
The Britannia-based watchdog also reported that government forces met the demonstrators with hot lead in the northern city of Aleppo ...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... killing nine, as activists called nationwide protests.
The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime forces killed 55 people across the country, among them five children and two women.
It said 13 people were killed in the central province of Homs, 11 in the northern province of Aleppo, 10 in the countryside around Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... , eight in the southern province of Daraa, seven in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, three in the western province of Latakia, two in the capital Damascus and one in the northwestern province of Idlib.
In the capital, troops fired on demonstrators in the upscale district of Mazzeh, the Observatory said, without giving any immediate word on casualties.
Protesters in other areas of Damascus and its suburbs were also fired on, the Observatory said, adding that two children were rubbed out in two different areas of Damascus province, although not at demonstrations.
In Syria's third largest city Homs, residents held a small protest despite a renewed bombardment by government forces of rebel-held neighborhoods, activists said.
The bombardment scuppered a new Red Thingy attempt to evacuate trapped civilians as the United Nations ...When talk is your weapon it's hard to make yourself heard over the sound of artillery... said up to 1.5 million people needed aid.
It came after at least 168 were killed in violence across Syria on Thursday, the highest single-day corpse count since a U.N.-backed ceasefire was supposed to take effect on April 12, the Observatory said.
In the reported massacre, "armed terrorist groups... kidnapped a number of citizens in Daret Azzeh area in the countryside of Aleppo, according to official sources in the province," the state SANA news agency said.
"The terrorist groups... committed a brutal massacre against the citizens... through shooting them dead and then mutilating their bodies," it added.
"Initial information indicates that more than 25 of the kidnapped citizens were killed... with the fate of the rest of the kidnapped people still unknown."
Amateur video posted on YouTube and distributed by the Observatory showed piles of mangled bodies of young men, their clothing soaked in blood. At least two of the bodies in the footage were wearing fatigues.
"These are shabiha of (President) Bashir al-Assad's regime," the narrator said, without identifying himself.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), meanwhile, said up to 1.5 million Syrians now need humanitarian aid, up from the one million estimated at the end of March.
"The humanitarian situation in Syria continues to tank," said the latest OCHA bulletin.
Turkey on Friday denied reports it was shipping weapons to fighters of the rebel Free Syrian Army. "Turkey does not ship weapons to any neighboring country, including Syria," foreign ministry spokesperson Selcuk Unal said.
The BBC, for its part, reported that Britannia has refused to grant the head of the Syrian Olympic Committee a visa to travel to London for next month's Games.
General Mowaffak Joumaa's application was refused because of his links to the Assad government, even though his name does not appear on a European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... list of Syrian officials banned from traveling to the bloc, the BBC reported.
And La Belle France called for more defections from the Syrian armed forces after the high-profile flight of a MiG fighter pilot to neighboring Jordan on Thursday.
"Yesterday's defection leads us to call on members of the Syrian army and security forces to continue these defections, these desertions, and no longer to obey the Damascus regime's criminal orders," a foreign ministry front man said.
Jordan granted Colonel Hassan Hammadeh asylum after he made an emergency landing at Mafraq base near the border.
On Friday, the Turkish army said it lost radar and radio contact with one of its aircraft over the Mediterranean near neighboring Syria.
"Search and rescue efforts have started immediately," the general staff said adding that it was not immediately clear if the plane crashed or if there were casualties.
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06/23/2012
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[Dawn] Pakistain's top judge has asked the defence ministry to produce the notification under which the notorious political cell of Pakistain's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was set up in 1975, DawnNews reported.
A bench of the Supreme Court comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawwad S. Khwaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain was hearing the 1996 petition of Tehriq-e-Istiqlal's chief Asghar Khan about allegations of the ISI's financing of politicians in the 1990 election to prevent the victory of the Pakistain People's Party.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry said here in his remarks during Friday's hearing that if admissible evidence was produced, then the court would send notices to politicians guilty of receiving funds from the ISI.
Attroney General Irfan Qadir told the court that the notification under which the ISI political cell was formed could not be found.
"How is it possible that a notification was issued and the defence ministry does not have a copy of it?" remarked the CJ.
The court was informed that the notification was issued by the Cabinet Division.
The CJ ordered the defence ministry to produce the missing notification in court, also directing the attorney general to facilitate the ministry in doing so.
When inquired by the bench, the ISI's former chief Asad Durrani told the court that the money was distributed amongst the politicians on the orders given by former Chief of Army Staff Aslam Beg ...occasionally incoherent retired four-star general who was the Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army, succeeding the creepy General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, after the latter was rubbed out died in an air crash in 1988. The general was involved up to his hairy ears in the Mehran bank scandal, shuffling millions in public money to buy or lease politicians, and is believed one of the prime movers in the sale of Pak nuclear technology to Iran. He ranks second only to Hamid Gul in the volume and flavor of his anti-Western vitriol.. According to Durrani, the total amount of money was Rs 140 million out of which Rs60 million was disbursed.
Chief Justice remarked that this case will be heard in the open court and after receiving ample evidences the court will announce the verdict. He also said that verdict cannot be announced until the alleged people testify in the court.
Durrani requested for more time so that he could contact other people and the court granted him three weeks to do the same.
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06/23/2012
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[An Nahar] International envoy Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... on Friday urged the world to raise the level of pressure on Syria's rival sides and said Iran should have a role to play in the effort.
"It's time for countries of influence to raise the level of pressure on the parties on the ground and to persuade them to stop the killing and start the talking," he told a presser in Geneva.
The peace envoy spoke amid continuing efforts to coordinate a final drive to find a diplomatic solution to the Syria crisis.
"I urge all parties to heed the call for a cessation of violence," said Annan, adding that it would soon be too late to stop the crisis from "spiraling out of control".
Annan also told news hounds that he could not confirm whether a key meeting of nations would meet in Geneva on June 30, adding that an announcement would be made about the contact group meeting next week.
The envoy said he hoped the permanent members of the Security Council would attend as well as countries with influence on the regime of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Light of the Alawites... He later told news hounds Iran "should be part of the solution" in Syria.
Annan, who underlined the importance of making sure the crisis did not spread to neighboring countries, also praised the work of the U.N.'s unarmed observers under Major General Robert Mood, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS).
Mood, who was by Annan's side in Geneva, said his observers could be "proud" of "a job well done".
On Tuesday Mood told the U.N. Security Council that it was too dangerous for 300 U.N. monitors to operate at full capacity and suspended much of the mission's tasks.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
Iran IS already part of the solution. but not the solution we're looking for.
We should keep stirring up a civil war in Syria and draw Iran in bit by bit killing their soldiers one-by-one day after day - slowly bleeding them. Just like they did to us in Iraq. Payback time.
[An Nahar] WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lashed out at Australia and Sweden on Friday as he spoke for the first time since turning up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London requesting political asylum.
The former computer hacker told Australia's ABC radio of his fears that he would end up in the hands of the United States, which he says want to try him for divulging American secrets.
But he conceded there was as yet no current U.S. indictment against him.
"Of course not, at the moment the matter is before the grand jury," he told ABC. "Until it comes out of the grand jury there will not be such evidence afforded."
Assange sought asylum on Tuesday in a dramatic bid to avoid extradition to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual assault.
He made the bid, he said, because he was not prepared to go to Sweden under the terms in which he believed he would be held there.
"The Swedes announced publicly that they would detain me in prison, without charge, while they continued their so-called investigation," he said.
"We had heard that the Ecuadorians were sympathetic in relation to my struggles and the struggles of the organization with the United States..."
WikiLeaks enraged Washington by releasing a flood of classified U.S. information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as more than 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that embarrassed a slew of governments.
Assange said he chose the Ecuadorian embassy ahead of his home country's because he felt Canberra had done nothing to protect him, a charge the government has denied.
"There are serious issues here, and they are being hidden by the slimy rhetoric coming out of the U.S. ambassador to Australia, via (Australian Prime Minister Julia) Gillard... and that needs to stop," said Assange.
Assange will remain inside the embassy while Ecuador considers his request, a process that could take "hours or days", a front man for the whistleblower website said Thursday.
Earlier, Ecuador's president Rafael Correa said his government would take its time in deciding whether to grant asylum to the Australian anti-secrecy campaigner.
British police said on Wednesday that because he was no longer staying at his designated bail address, Assange had breached his bail conditions and was now subject to arrest if he left the embassy.
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06/23/2012
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[An Nahar] Turkey searched for a missing fighter-jet and held an emergency security summit Friday, as the prime minister backed off reported comments suggesting Syria had downed the aircraft.
The military plane -- reportedly an F-4 Phantom with two pilots aboard -- lost radio contact and vanished off radar screens around 0900 GMT over the eastern Mediterranean, near the border with Syria.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has had tense relations with Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... amid the uprising there, met military and intelligence chiefs and key ministers for the security meeting.
He said "an exact explanation could be issued after the summit".
Earlier, local media had quoted Erdogan as saying that Syria had apologized over the fighter jet crash, in a comment that suggested it had downed the plane.
"Syria immediately offered a very serious apology for the incident and admitted it was a mistake," the Haberturk daily newspaper quoted Erdogan as saying onboard a plane on his way back from Brazil.
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06/23/2012
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(Sh. M. Network)-A remote-controlled land mine blast is reportedly struck at Somali army base in Southern region of Bay, the latest in series attacks against Somali and Æthiopian troops in the region, witnesses and officials said on Friday.
Conflicting reports are coming out of the kaboom, some say the attack was foiled by the Somali forces before it detonated its primary target according to the officials of Somali forces and witnesses said the bomb hit a convoy of military vehicles mounting soldiers at Qansah-dheere district.
Aden Abdikalil Qooqane, the commissioner of Qansah-dheere district for Somali government, told Shabelle Media station in Mogadishu via phone that security forces on Friday defused a land-mine place in a ground near a building locating a Somali army officer in the town.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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(Sh.M.Network)-- A family member of a South African couple who were freed from Somali pirates denied Thursday that ransom had been paid, contradicting an earlier statement by another relative.
Somali authorities said a joint raid by security forces and the army had led to the freeing of the couple from "Al-Qaeda-affiliated" beturbanned goons.South Africa said Italiawas also heavily involved in the operation.
Nora Wright, the sister of one of the hostages, Bruno Pelizzari, said $500,000 in ransom had been agreed with the pirates two weeks ago, but that she was unaware of any money having been paid to secure their release.
"An amount was agreed to and everything happened very fast," said Wright, who said she is one of the three signatory to the bank account set up by the family to raise the ransom. "I can't confirm whether ransom was paid."
Two signatures are required for any funds to be released, and Wright said she and a second signatory had not signed off on any payments. The third signatory has departed forRome.
"I have not signed for any amount to be paid," Wright told AFP.
Pelizzari and his partner Debbie Calitz were sailing in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya in 2010 when their yacht was hijacked by 12 pirates who set course for Somalia and took the couple ashore at Baraawe.
"I am happy that they actually managed to rescue them without anything (being) paid. I don't believe that they should be paid for stealing people from their families," she added.
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06/23/2012
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[An Nahar] A United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... worker found guilty of participating in a terrorist group in Æthiopia was Friday sentenced to seven years and eight months in prison.
Abdurahman Sheikh Hassan, an Æthiopian, was found guilty of "participating in a terrorist organization" earlier this week over alleged links to the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), an outlawed secessionist rebel group.
"Under the guise of his job, he has been passing information to a terrorist organization with the aim to help them," Judge Mulugeta Kidane said, delivering the sentence.
Hassan appeared in court Friday wearing a track jacket and slacks and holding Moslem prayer beads.
He shook his lawyer's hand after she translated the sentence to him as Hassan does not speak Æthiopia's main language Amharic.
He was sentenced along with Sherif Badio, whom the charge sheet lists as a senior member of the ONLF. Badio was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for "serving as a leader or a decision maker in a terrorist organization."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
A UN worker is a terrorist?
Boy you could knock me over with a feather. Well, maybe a 2x4.....with a nail in it.
[Al Ahram] Egypt's electoral body is set to announce Ahmed Shafiq as the country's new president on Sunday evening, several government sources claimed.
Western diplomats in Cairo also said they have heard similar predictions from Cabinet members over the last three days.
A source in the current government said that Shafiq will be declared victor with 50.7 per cent of the vote, in an outcome that is likely to be strongly disputed by the Moslem Brüderbund's candidate, Mohamed Mursi.
Mursi's campaign has previously shrugged off Shafiq's claims of a victory, insisting they have compiled strong evidence to the contrary.
Sources at the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) would not confirm to Ahram Online the claims of a Shafiq win.
It is unclear if it is simply another salvo in the ongoing campaign agains the Moslem Brüderbund.
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06/23/2012
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[An Nahar] A U.N. panel has found Chinese involvement in more than half of the suspected violations of the North Korean arms and luxury goods embargoes, a Japanese media report said Friday.
The panel identified 38 instances in which banned goods have gone to or from North Korea. Of these, 21 have involved China, the Asahi Shimbun reported, citing unnamed sources.
"The findings reflect in the end China has helped North Korea expand its weaponry and military threats," the Asahi said.
The panel, created in 2009 after the North's second nuclear test, reviewed the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning trade with North Korea in certain goods, the paper said.
In the majority of cases examined, Chinese ports served as transit points or Chinese firms were involved as intermediaries, it said, adding the panel's report could be released as early as next week.
Of the 21 cases linked with China, two involved the export or import of items related to weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles, the Asahi said.
One of them was a 2007 attempted shipment from North Korea to Syria -- via the Chinese port of Dalian -- of electronic parts and metal plates to be used for ballistic missiles, the Asahi said.
The other was a 2010 shipment from Taiwan, via China, to North Korea of machine tools that could have military applications.
Six other cases involved the export or import of weapons. The remaining 13 cases were about imports of luxury goods to North Korea, the Asahi said.
Friday's report followed earlier claims that a Chinese firm had exported four giant trucks capable of transporting and launching ballistic missiles in August.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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#1
no, not the chinese!
Posted by: chris ||
06/23/2012 1:12
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#2
See CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [China-Defense-Mashup]CHINA CONDUCTS MILITARY DRILL ON THE YALU FOR POSSIBLE NORTH KOREA COLLAPSE?
Besides any instability vee NOKOR, China also to deal wid the following ...
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > JAPAN TAKES FIRST STEP TOWARDS NUCLEAR ARMAMENT | [Asahi Shimbun] EDITORIAL: NUCLEAR LAW'S "NATIONAL SECURITY" CLAUSE MUST BE DROPPED - AJW.
Proposal to make Civilian NucEnerPlants linked andor directly [but PDeniably] contributable to Nippon national security.
* SAME > VIETNAM SU27'S MAKE FIRST PATROLS FROM PHU CAT, oer disputed SCS islands to China's angst.
* TOPIX > HANOI CLAIMS TO ISLANDS NULL + VOID: BEIJING.
Beijing demands that Hanoi = Manila = NOT DO ANYTHING STUPID TO EXACERBATE TENSIONS IN THE SCS.
* SAME > VIETNAM REJECTS CHINA PROTESTS ON ISLAND CLAIMS.
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > CHINA ESTABLISHED PREFECTURAL-LEVEL "SANSHA" [Sanshi] CITY TO ADMINISTER SOUTH CHINA SEA ISLANDS.
IIUC, CHINA HAS FINALLY FORMALLY DECIDED THAT THE PROCLAIMED SOVEREIGNTY OF ITS SMALLER ASEAN NEIGHBORS TO THE SOUTH CHINA SEA ISN'T.
China continuing to put its foot down.
* WORLD MIL FORUM > JAPAN SCHEMA TO PURCHASE THE DAOYU ISLANDS ALLUDES TO MAINSTREAM JAPANESE FEAR OF CHINA BASING PLA TROOPS, WARSHIPS, + STRIKE AIRCRAFT IN DAOYUS + TAIWAN. LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY + EEZ IN SEA OF OKHOST [Russia], OKINAWA-TAIWAN STRAITS SAVE FOR EASTERN JAPANESE PORTS + MARIANAS.
versus
VARIOUS POSTERS = Chinese Missles covertly delivered to North Korea = Pakistan's, Iran's new future LR ICBMS, IRBMS, etc???
* TOPIX > CHINA TO HIRE 20,000 MORE NORTH KOREAN WORKERS AT COMPLEX.
Good for the DPRK's gross econ + Sino-DPRK FTAS, bad for the DPRK's sovereignty over its own land???
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > CHINA ORDERS [cross-strait = Taiwan] LOVE. THEY ARE ALL SUCCUMBED TO THE BEAUTY OF CHINA DOLLS.
Wet-Wild-n-Crazy Mainland + Island foreplay, sex, + marriage between Taiwan Bachelors [Business-Industrial-Govt. sectors] + sexy slinky Beijing Honey Pots, wid Govt. Orders + Mil Acronyms flying around in ecstasy.
#3
China is about to implode. I have always referred to them as a paper dragon. They will sell arms or anything right now. Built upon lies and corruption. They have had their day in the sun. Think also that they must export. Thats not happening. Now when they have a population that wants all the good things in life that they have worked so hard for. Controlled economy mayhem to follow with an aging population.
[Dawn] The Beautiful Downtown Peshawar High Court on Friday granted interim bail to Makhdoom Shahabuddin, the first choice of the Pakistain People's Party (PPP) for the office of prime minister, DawnNews reported.
Lawyer for Makhdoom Shahabuddin said that ANF personnel wanted to arrest his client at the Punjab-Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... border in order to stop him from contesting the elections for the prime ministers office.
He requested the court to grant interim bail to his client in order to enable him to contest the prime ministorial elections.
Talking to the media on the occasion, Shahbuddin said that the arrest warrant would not have been issued, had he not been nominated for the prime minister's office.
He added that a case was filed against him in the previous year but the arrest warrant was issued on Thurday June 21 2012, on the same day that his candidature for the prime minsters office had been announced.
President Zardari had nominated Shahabuddin as a candidate for the new prime minister and Shahabuddin had also filed his nomination papers for the slot on Thursday.
An hour later, the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) issued warrants against Shahabuddin, Musa Gilani and one other person in the ep.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/23/2012
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A Moroccan man pleaded guilty on Friday to attempting to bomb the US Capitol building in Washington in February, 2012, and could face up to 30 years in prison.
Amine El Khalifi, 29, an undocumented Democrat who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, struck an agreement with prosecutors under which he pleaded guilty in US federal court in Virginia.
He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against property owned and used by the United States, intending to detonate a bomb and to shoot people.
He was tossed in the calaboose Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! near the US Capitol on Feb. 17 wearing a vest he believed was full of explosives supplied by al-Qaeda. He was charged with the attempted suicide kaboom of Congress, the US Department of Justice said.
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.
Asif Ali 
South Sudan must stop arbitrary arrests and improve the "dire" conditions in its prisons, where a third of inmates are held on remand and some without having been charged, 
[An Nahar] Yemeni security forces 
[An Nahar] The Islamist
(Sh. M. Network)-At least one person was killed and several others have been injured in an Al shabab attack on Somali government troops in Elasha Biyaha neighborhood, on the southern outskirt of Mogadishu, reports said.
Sources close to the ruling military council and the Brotherhood confirmed to Ahram Online that both sides are intensely negotiating a compromise agreement to end the standoff
[Al Ahram] At least eight people were killed and more than 50 
[Al Ahram] At least 26 regime supporters were killed in an ambush in the northern province of 
MPs elected Raja Pervez Ashraf as Pakistain's new prime minister Friday, in a bid to end a crisis sparked by judges ousting the premier and demanding the arrest of his would-be successor.
Makhdoom Shahabuddin, the first choice of the PPP for the office of the prime minister, was stunned on Thursday when he was informed soon after he had filed his nomination papers and made a speech thanking the party and his supporters for reposing trust in him that a special court had issued warrants for his arrest in the ephedrine case.
Hillary Clinton
The trial of Anders Behring Breivik ended Friday, exactly 11 months after he massacred 77 people in Norway, with the confessed killer insisting his attacks were justified and demanding acquittal.
The security authorities have 
The commander of 
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
(Sh.M.Network)- Pak officials said Thursday that a French al Qaeda
Goodluck Jonathan
(Sh.M.Network)- Technical committees from Somaliland and Somalia who met on Thursday in Chevening House inKent, on the outskirts ofLondon,UK capital, have agreed to an 8-point plan including future talks.
Sudanese anti-government protesters on Friday burned tyres and clashed with police on the seventh day of widening demonstrations sparked by rising food prices, witnesses said.
Leila Ben Ali, the reviled wife of deposed Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, says a plot by top security officials ended his long rule, in a book launched in 
[An Nahar] Bahraini security forces on Friday fired rubber bullets to disperse an unauthorized rally by the opposition Al-Wefaq wounding its leader, the Shiite bloc said.
U.S. diplomats working in Pakistain face increasing harassment amid a sharp deterioration in ties in the wake of last year's killing of 
Syrian protesters 
Pakistain's top judge has asked the defence ministry to produce the notification under which the notorious political cell of Pakistain's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was set up in 1975, DawnNews reported.
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
(Sh. M. Network)-A remote-controlled land mine blast is reportedly struck at Somali army base in Southern region of Bay, the latest in series attacks against Somali and Æthiopian troops in the region, witnesses and officials said on Friday.
Somali pirates
North Korea
The 
