Terrorist group recruited a western Islamic radical in an attempt to evade security procedures
Al Qaeda intended to use a radicalised Norwegian Islamic convert to attack U.S. planes in the build-up to the London Games
A terrorist plot to blow up a U.S. passenger jet timed to coincide with the Olympics has been uncovered by security agencies, according to intelligence sources.
Al Qaeda intended to use a radicalised Norwegian Islamic convert to attack U.S. planes in the build-up to the London Games - which start in 26 days on July 27 - it is understood.
The plan centred on using the so-called clean skin a terrorist with no previous criminal record and are unlikely to raise suspicions among the security services in order to evade airport security.
If you are blowing up aeroplanes you are likely to be killing Brits or having a big impact on the European or British economy. [So it] would in effect be an attack against Britain, a Whitehall official told the Sunday Times.
It is believed the suspect tasked with the attack uses the Islamic name Muslim Abu Abdurrahman, had converted to Islam in 2008, and was recruited in a terrorist training camp in Yemen, sources told the Sunday Times.
It is not thought to have been aimed specifically at the Olympics in London, but security forces protecting the Games said intelligence on any possible threat was constantly reviewed.
Terrorists from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP), based in Yemen, are understood to be behind this latest plot. The same group were revealed to have been behind at least four other attempted attacks in the last four years.
#1
So now they know the Norwegian's plans. Next step is to catch the gentleman and peruse his mobile phone and laptop to trace back to his support team.
Turkey has scrambled six F-16 fighter jets near its border with Syria after Syrian helicopters came close to the border, the country's army says.
Six jets were sent to the area in response to three such incidents on Saturday, the statement said, adding that there was no violation of Turkish airspace.
Turkey's government has been outspoken in its condemnation of Syria's response to the 16-month anti-government uprising, which has seen more than 30,000 Syrian refugees enter Turkey.
Turkey's military has more than 500 miles of border with Syria to defend. It has now decided to treat everything that happens on the Syrian side of the border with extreme suspicion.
The scrambling of the jets is a sign of continuing tensions. A little over a week ago, Syria shot down a Turkish warplane. Syria says that the aircraft was flying inside Syrian airspace - a charge denied by Turkey.
Following this incident, the Turkish government announced that it had revised its military rules of engagement towards Syria. From now on, every military element that approached the Turkish border from Syria would be considered as a threat. The military has now acted on its new rules.
Turkey is keen to show that it's protecting its territory. The government allows its southern border region of Hatay to be used as a staging ground for Syrian opposition rebels. But it doesn't want this region to become an actual battleground.
On Friday, Turkey said it had begun deploying rocket launchers and anti-aircraft guns along the border in response to the downing of its F-4 Phantom jet on 22 June.
The move came after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that Turkey had changed its rules of military engagement and would now treat any Syrian military approaching the border as a threat.
Four of the six jets were scrambled on Saturday from the airbase of Incirlik in response to two occasions of Syrian helicopters flying close to Hatay province, Sunday's army statement said.
Later, two more F-16s took off from a base near Batman, in southeastern Turkey, after Syrian helicopters were spotted close to the province of Mardin, it added.
The military said the helicopters flew as close as 6.5km (4 miles) to the border, according to the AP news agency.
I ran into a prominent conservative member of Congress Friday night just before the huge storms moved through Washington. He was, he said, far angrier on the day after the Supreme Court Obamacare decision than he had been the moment he learned Chief Justice John Roberts had joined the Courts liberal bloc to uphold the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare. He didnt resort to histrionics or profanity, but he was spitting mad and his anger was growing, not diminishing.
A short time later, I saw another conservative lawmaker who said much the same thing. And yet another conservative leader who was in the same frame of mind.
At the same time, a backlash was forming in response to analyses by some formidable conservative writers George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and others who argued the Obamacare decision was actually a victory for conservatives because it placed a limit on expansive interpretations of the Constitutions Commerce Clause.
Early polling also shows signs of increasing intensity among conservatives and Republicans in the wake of Roberts decision. In the first survey since the ruling, Gallup found that Americans are split down the middle 46 percent to 46 percent on the question of whether they agree or disagree with the Court. But when asked what should happen next, significant differences emerged. Sixty-five percent of Democrats said they want to see the law kept in place and the governments role in health care expanded. But 85 percent of Republicans said they want to see Obamacare repealed either in whole or in part. Its possible that in the wake of the Supreme Courts ruling, a long-running trend in opinion that Republicans dislike Obamacare more than Democrats like it will become more, not less, pronounced.
Finally, on Saturday afternoon, I sent out a couple of tweets in which I said: My sense is that conservatives are getting angrier, not calmer, about Roberts opinion. Shocked/confused on Thursday. Angry of Friday. Really angry on Saturday. Unhappiness trending up, not down. The tweets sparked an outpouring of impassioned responses.
The question is whether this will lead to donations, volunteering, get out the vote and a serious sustained movement to take back Congress and the White House.
#1
An interesting thing to watch over the next couple of weeks is whether the pace of corporate donations to Champ picks up. One effect of Thursday's debacle is that the value of an exemption from Obamacare just went up, since it's now more likely that Obamacare will become a reality. So Champ and his crew are in a much position to raise money by selling exemptions like a medieval bishop selling indulgences. It's a tough business choice: you can donate to Romney and hope that he gets elected and kills Obamacare by executive fiat, or donate to Champ in exchange for an assurance of an exemption. Or hedge your bet and do both.
Another thing to watch for is whether Champ cuts off the "it's a tax on the middle class" argument by announcing a broad policy that the tax won't be collected unless the individual in question refuses to genuflect to the new Emperor.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/01/2012 18:37
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To be enforced by IRS scrutiny if you don't publicly genuflect?
#3
An interesting thing to watch over the next couple of weeks is whether the pace of corporate donations to Champ picks up
I'd bet n making payments to both, Matt. Companies have a fiduciary duty (or something like that) to the shareholders to protect them from predatory government action by any legal means. Small businesses and privately held ones are likely a different story, it seems to me, but I don't imagine small businesses go in for much in the way of Washington, DC dealings.
GOP House leaders said Sunday they will forge ahead with efforts to repeal President Obamas health care law, drawing criticism from Democratic lawmakers who said Americans want them to instead go forward with efforts to improve the economy.
The GOP-led House has attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act numerous times and is scheduled to take up the issue again July 11, less than two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled the law was constitutional.
Boehner, R-Ohio, said House Republicans will take a practical, step-by-step approach, compared to the 2,700-page reform bill that has been called a complete government takeover of the insurance industry.
He also said the law "has to be ripped out but its roots."
The House could hold a repeal vote as early as July 11, but such a measure would almost certainly be defeated in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Unless enough Senators get the message from their constituents that doing so would endanger re-election ..... No doubt someone is looking at who might be vulnerable
#1
While understandable, I fear that this will be seen as a 'knee-jerk' response and might tend to dilute future more realisitc opportunities. Not to mention any negative optics for Joe Six-pack ( after the Lame Stream gets done with it).
The White House is considering sending suspected militants currently held at Guantánamo back to Afghanistan in a bid to kickstart stalled talks with the Taliban, it has been reported.
Citing US and Afghan officials as its source, the Associated Press said that under a plan being discussed, some Taliban fighters captured in the early days of the 2001 invasion would be transferred out of full American control but not released from custody.
To be put into a Yemeni prison, surrounded Saudi style, so that they can promptly escape...
It represents a leap of faith on the US side that the men will not become threats to Nato forces once back on Afghan soil. But it is meant to show more moderate elements of the Taliban insurgency that Washington is still interested in cutting a deal for peace.
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and others have said that while negotiations with the Taliban are distasteful, they are the best way to settle the prolonged war. The new compromise is intended to boost the credibility of the US-backed Afghan government.
President Hamid Karzai and American officials are trying to draw the Taliban back to negotiations toward a peace deal between the national Afghan government and the Pashtun-based insurgency. The Taliban have always been indifferent at best to negotiations with the Karzai government, saying the US holds effective control in Afghanistan.
And besides, Karzai is crazy...
Under the new proposal, Guantánamo prisoners would go to a detention facility adjacent to Bagram air field, the largest US military base in Afghanistan, officials of both governments said. The prison is inside the security perimeter established by the US military, and is effectively under US control for now. It is scheduled for transfer to full Afghan control in September.
Defence secretary Leon Panetta would have to sign off on the transfer and certify that the men did not pose a danger. He would not confirm details of the new proposal at a Pentagon news conference Friday, but he said discussions continue to try to promote a peace deal.
"There are no specific commitments that have been made with regard to prisoner exchanges at this point," he said. "One thing I will assure you is that any prisoner exchanges that I have to certify are going to abide by the law and require that those individuals do not return back into the battle."
Any such transfer is unlikely to include the five most senior Taliban figures held at Guantánamo, the subjects of separate stalled negotiations, a senior US official said.
Republicans in Congress bitterly opposed the plan to send those men to house arrest in Qatar, which has emerged as a key broker with the Taliban. The opponents feared the men would be set free and endanger the US.
Though house arrest is Qatar isn't so bad...
The latest proposal was a topic of recent discussions in Washington with members of Karzai's peace committee, a group of elders charged with reaching out to the Taliban on the government's behalf.
"The possibility is strong," for a transfer to Afghanistan that includes the five top figures, said Ismail Qasemyar, international relations adviser for the Afghan High Peace Council.
The Taliban has demanded release of all the Guantánamo detainees as a condition for talks. The Islamist group abandoned direct talks in March, accusing the US of reneging on several promises.
So we'll just have to drone-zap a few more...
The United States considers the talks pining for the fjords suspended, not dead.
Karzai has long sought the return of all 17 Afghans imprisoned at Guantánamo, men he sometimes calls brothers, as a point of national pride. He has argued that their imprisonment at Guantánamo undermines his credibility as a national leader, and that Afghanistan's own institutions should deal with captured insurgents.
"Gather your stuff Hamid, you're being transferred from your cushy Gitmo cell to ... a prison cell in Afghanistan!"
"Can I appeal?"
The US has said publicly that, in regards to the five senior Taliban, they would be transferred to another country's control, not released. But terms for the proposed transfer to Qatar were fairly loose.
Officials briefed on the discussions said the men would have to agree not to return to fighting, forswear any ties to al-Qaida, and submit to a ban on their travel. Beyond that it was not clear how closely they would be controlled by the Qatar government.
The Taliban would have been asked to release Bowe Bergdahl, the only US prisoner of war from the Afghan conflict. Saturday marks the third anniversary of the American soldier's capture.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/01/2012
10:31 ||
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#1
The White House is considering sending suspected militants currently held at Guantanamo back to Afghanistan in a bid to kickstart stalled talks with the Taliban, it has been reported.
Because that process has worked so well in getting the Israelis peace. Of course the same 'halt the bombing' gambit worked just as well too in Vietnam. YJCMTSU
#2
TheTaliban has demanded release of all the Guantanamo detainees as a condition for talks.
Traditional ME negotiating tactic of "give me everything I want and we can talk"
Officials briefed on the discussions said the men would have to agree not to return to fighting, forswear any ties to al-Qaida, and submit to a ban on their travel.
A genius plan! Because men who would commit murder, rape and arson would never stoop to lying to the infidel.
#3
The White House is considering sending suspected militants currently held at Guantanamo back to Afghanistan in a bid to kickstart stalled talks with the Taliban, it has been reported.
Translation: 'Just in time delivery' of campaign promises, in no particular chronological order:
1. GITMO closes.
2. Obamacare upheld.
3. War in Afghanistan ended.
4. Osama Bin Laden dead.
5. Immigration reform initiated. 6. Taxes will not go up one dime.
GITMO closes, Obama ends lease with Panama Cuba, provides $100,000,000,000. through EO to Cuba for base rehab and clean-up. Ten year savings said to exceed $ 900,000,000,000,000. Host nation renames facility Ernesto Guevara Naval Base (EGNB).
#7
The White House is considering sending suspected militants currently held at Guantanamo back to Afghanistan in a bid to kickstart stalled talks with the Taliban, it has been reported.
IOW: We can't kill them, and they're no more dangerous than any other militant out there if they're carrying a rifle, which is about the most they are going to do anyway.
Why not give them back so we can shoot their a$$es legally when they pop back up on the battlefield?
#8
Personally I'm for flying them back. Just nobody said anything about providing a landing...or, you know, have the plane carrying them blow up after the pilots jump out. That works in movies, about Obama's level of intellect.
Posted by: Charles ||
07/01/2012 14:43
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#9
Why not transfer them to Eric Holder's house?
Posted by: Rambler In Virginia ||
07/01/2012 15:00
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gorb, good plan, as long as one implants a locating transponder before releasing.
#12
Even if we don't implant radio chips, just announce that we did - with secret new Jooooo technology.
That should make the releasees poison - no one will want to be around them, in case the chips attract unwanted Hellfires.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/01/2012 17:15
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#13
Oooo, I like that. But say it's Nano-tech that self-replicates in the blood or some paranoid BS that will get them going through a Litany of third-world procedures on top of being alone.
Posted by: Charles ||
07/01/2012 18:33
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#14
To be put into a Yemeni prison, surrounded Saudi style, so that they can promptly escape...
Then shoot 'em!
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/01/2012 19:06
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#15
Execute them, send the Bodies back.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/01/2012 19:46
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The US launched its second straight drone strike in a remote valley in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan today, killing six "militants."
The remotely piloted Predators or the more advanced Reapers fired a pair of missiles at a compound in the Shawal Valley in North Waziristan, according to AFP. Pakistani officials said six "militants" were killed in the strike while the compound was set afire, burning several of the bodies beyond recognition. Sounds nice, but eventually someone will 'recognize' them as Mrs. 'bunny and the five kiddies.
No senior al Qaeda, Taliban, or allied jihadist commanders are reported to have been killed in the strike.
Today's strike in Shawal is the second in the valley this week. On June 26, a similar strike on a compound in Shawal killed five militants. So far this year, four of the 25 drone strikes in Pakistan hit targets in the Shawal Valley.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott now says Florida will do nothing to comply with President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and will not expand its Medicaid program. The announcement is a marked changed after the governor recently said he would follow the law if it were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we're not going to implement exchanges,'' Scott's spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.
#3
My current feeling is to agree with the WH "declaration" that it is a penalty, engage in civil disobedience by refusing to get my own insurance, pay the penalty, and get insurance when I have a catastrophic condition. Heck, I am SURE the hospitals and doctors can automate the process. My money goes to the IRS for Congress to p*$$ away instead of 0bama's buddies in the Insurance industry: they are NOT innocent victims.
Time to make all corporate collaborators of 0bama PAY.
#4
I bet the Obama Administration is working feverishly to craft a way to punish the states that do this, and at least give some excuse for violating the SCOTUS ruling. Won't have to be much of an excuse either - who's going to enforce anything against them?
The PLO announced Saturday that it has begun proceeding to call an emergency meeting of the United Nations ...where theory meets practice and practice loses... Security Council to discuss Israel's settlement policy.
"The PLO Executive Committee decided to call the Security Council to convene an emergency meeting to discuss settlements... in home of getting a resolution saying that the colonization must stops," a PA statement said.
The 525th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade (BFSB) is the old 525th Military Intelligence Brigade. The Brigade completed it's year long rotation in Afghanistan in the July 2011 timeframe. They did an outstanding job in the vicinity of FOB Spin Boldak and AFG Highway #4, monitoring the border crossings and interdicting Taliban infiltrators coming across the border from Chaman, Pakistan. Rest well Colonel! We'll see you on the high ground.
[Dawn] "At least 60 people belonging to Hazara community living in Quetta have been killed in targeted attacks, including suicide, remote-controlled and timer device bombings and firing," says a report published in this newspaper, following a brutal attack on Shia pilgrims belonging to the Hazara community.
Thursday's kaboom in the Hazarganji area on the outskirts of the scenic provincial capital of Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... was not the first such attack of the year. Not even the first of the month. The Hazara community has been targeted, with great impunity, by outlawed bad boy organizations on at least six occasions in the current year. While all attacks have claimed precious lives, one of worst attacks against the community came last September, when a bus carrying Hazara passengers was stopped by assailants heavily armed with rocket launchers and Kalashnikovs. They identified Hazara men, took them off the bus and slaughtered them one by one within half a kilometre from a security check post. A similar incident was repeated a few days later in Akhtarabad area of Quetta. Some unconfirmed reports say "over 800 Hazaras have been killed in 24 incidents of mass-murder and 131 targeted ambushes since 2001."
Murderous motives Responsibility for most of these attacks has been claimed by outlawed group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... , who have gone as far in their hate preach as declaring the community "wajib-ul-qatl" or deserving of death in their edicts handed out in the Balochistan province. Moreover, the community has been warned that its settlements in Hazara Town and on Alamdar Road will be transformed into graveyards as the war against them continues, according to a column published in this newspaper.
The killings have received mixed reactions and analyses from government officials, politicians and Hazara community leaders. Some blame security forces and intelligence agencies for the killings. Others point the fingers at the sectarian fanatics, Taliban and land mafia while some people even suggest a complex amalgam of all the aforementioned factors.
Role of security forces While there is little doubt that all the attacks have been unprovoked and unidirectional without any apprehensions for many years, for Hazaras, the failure of security forces to protect their community remains an unanswered question.
"They have not failed. They have rather no intentions to protect us from the terrorists" explains Sardar Saadat Ali Hazara, a community leader.
Members of the community allege that Hazara killings are designed as a counterinsurgency campaign to divert attention away from the activities of security forces in Balochistan.
"The Hazaras are being systematically killed because they are anti-Taliban and because they do not agree with the policy of strategic depth towards Afghanistan," says Tahir Khan Hazara, a political activist.
"They consider the Hazaras as pro-Northern Alliance and suspect our patriotism," says Zaman Dehqanzada of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP).
Dehqanzada alleges that his community's 'refusal to fight the Baloch' has led them to become targets of unabated violence. "We are not going to destroy our relations with our brothers in Balochistan," he adds.
Meanwhile, ...back at the scene of the crime, Lieutenant Queeg had an idea: there was a simple way to tell whether Manetti had been the triggerman -- just look at his shoes!... a former chief sectary Balochistan revealed on the condition of anonymity that the state policy towards the Hazaras has dramatically changed since 2001. "They are kept away from sensitive administrative posts both in the armed forces and civil bureaucracy as they are considered, albeit falsely, pro-Iran and Pro-Northern Alliance just because they are Farsi-speaking Shias," the official said.
According to a recent report on the killings of Hazaras, the Frontier Corps (FC) believes that "the Hazaras are receiving funding from Iran to incite Shia revolution in Pakistain," a statement refuted by the community. How can a small community, they say, surrounded by military cantonment bring about Shia revolution in Pakistain?
While the FC also blames the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) for the Hazara killings. Hazara leader Sardar Saadat strongly disagrees. "BLA has no issues with the Hazaras. It is, in fact, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi operatives who kill the members of my community and roam freely all around. Everybody knows that they are being trained and protected in Qubo area of Mastung," he says.
Chairman of HDP Abdul Khalique Hazara is of the same view. "We have repeatedly demanded targeted actions against Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, who are a handful of snuffies but the government and security forces have given us a cold shoulder. Balochistan Home Minister Zafarullah Zehri has said on the floor of the provincial assembly that he had clues about those involved in the murders but he was helpless. So we were forced to call international protests against Hazara genocide in order to pressurise the government to take actions"
Religious radicalisation
All the secular nationalist parties of Balochistan are of the view that religious extremism is thriving in the province in order to counter the activism of the Baloch nationalists. The nature of killings, they say, also indicates the same. Almost all the attacks on Hazaras have either taken place in the vicinity or in between two FC check posts -- raising questions over the ability of heavily gunnies to cross the check-posts, kill innocent civilians and escape on their pick-up vehicles without being caught or chased after.
"If you look at the videos of the Mastung and Akhtarabad massacres released by the snuffies on YouTube, you will find out that all these incidents have taken place on an international highway, bustling with traffic but the snuffies seem in no haste as they slaughter our people. It takes them almost half an hour to accomplish their mission and not a single vehicle passes the site of the attack. How was the traffic blocked on both sides?" asks a Hazara activist, who wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons.
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) issued a statement on its website a day after the Mastung massacre under the title of "Members of Shia community were under attack while the military forces look on" questioning the role of military establishment in such attacks. According to AHRC "more than 500 Shias have been killed in terrorist attacks during the past three years after the FC received the powers of the police"
It further adds: "These campaigns against the Shia religious community is very well known to police, FC, the army and its intelligence services but no action has been taken against the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi."
According to columnist, Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad, "Attacks on the Hazara community started only two years after former president and army chief General Pervez Perv Musharraf ... former dictator of Pakistain, who was less dictatorial and corrupt than any Pak civilian government to date ... 's coup. These coincided with the period when agencies were directed under a master plan to give religious parties and bad boy groups a free hand."
Talibanisation of Balochistan The Taliban had massacred tens of thousands of Hazaras in Afghanistan during their reign in Afghanistan and had warned them to leave the country. The Hazaras of Afghanistan were part of the so-called Northern Alliance which resisted Taliban's rule and later on allied with the international forces to overturn the radicals. To avenge their defeat the Taliban pointed their guns towards the Hazaras of Baochistan by allying with LeJ and Al-Qaeda operatives.
In an open threat letter distributed at Hazara localities in Quetta Lashkar-e-Jhangvi warned the Hazaras to leave Pakistain by 2012 and in another, they vowed to continue targeting the community in Pakistain, particularly in Quetta.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/01/2012
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[An Nahar] Bombings and shootings in Iraq killed three police, two soldiers and two civilians on Saturday, security and medical officials said. The Zarqawi Memorial Turban Club is up to a major attack a day now.
Two roadside kabooms at a checkpoint west of Samarra killed three federal coppers and maimed three others, police and a medical source at the Samarra hospital said.
In the north, a roadside kaboom killed a soldier and maimed two others in the city of djinn-infested Mosul, while another roadside kaboom near the town of Tal Afar killed an army captain, and gunniesrubbed out a civilian near the village of Baaj, an army officer said.
And gunnies with automatic weapons killed a civilian in Al-Tun Kubri, an area north of Kirkuk city, police said.
Saturday's deaths brought the number of people killed in attacks since June 13 to at least 224 -- an average of 12 per day. That is a far higher toll than the 132 official figures show were killed in May.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/01/2012
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[Dawn] A man suspected of association with al Qaeda has been incarcerated You have the right to remain silent... here and charged with providing material support to the terror network and possessing and using firearms to promote violence.
The indictment of Minh Quang Pham was announced by Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and other security officials.
According to court papers, in December 2010, Pham travelled from Britannia to Yemen where he showed up at the principal base of operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
While in Yemen, Pham took an oath of allegiance to AQAP, carried an automatic assault rifle, obtained training from the group and helped it prepare online propaganda.
Pham returned to the United Kingdom from Yemen in 2011. Prior to his arrest, Pham was held by British authorities in immigration custody.
If convicted on all counts, Pham would face a maximum sentence of life in prison, with a mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years.
His nationality has not been announced.
"The international law enforcement cooperation that led to today's arrest of Minh Quang Pham, an alleged associate of a terrorist organization committed to killing Americans both here and abroad, underscores our joint commitment to identifying, prosecuting, and punishing those who would do harm to our country and our people," Bharara said in a statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/01/2012
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#1
I'd guess Thai.
Posted by: American Delight ||
07/01/2012 7:09
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Some stories describe him as Vietnamese, American Delight.
[Dawn] Five men, including a suspected gangster, were rubbed out in different parts of the city on Friday, said police.
The officials said 27-year-old Dur Mohammad alias Durra was found rubbed out in a Mauripur locality. They added that area people informed them about the body lying on an open plot in Mowach Goth.
"It's yet to be ascertained if the killing was the result of a feud within his gang or a rivalry with another gang," said an official at the Mauripur cop shoppe.
"He was wanted by police in a number of criminal cases, including kidnap for ransom, murder and armed robberies."
He said the body was found in the area known to be a stronghold of Shiraz Comrade said to be the leader of one of the criminal gangs in Lyari ...one of the eighteen constituent towns of the city of Karachi. It is the smallest town by area in the city but also the most densely populated. Lyari has few schools, substandard hospitals, a poor water system, limited infrastructure, and broken roads. It is a stronghold of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. Ubiquitous gang activity and a thriving narcotics industry make Lyari one of the most disturbed places in Karachi, which is really saying a lot.... though Dur Mohammad did not belong to his gang, indicating that he might have been kidnapped and killed by rivals.
After medico-legal formalities at the Civil Hospital 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...
, the body was handed over to the family, said the police.
Man found rubbed out
A young transporter who had gone missing on Thursday was found rubbed out a few kilometres from Sohrab Goth, off the Superhighway, officials said. The police believed that 26-year-old Shahzad Chandio was killed over personal enmity.
"The victim was a resident of Jamshed Quarters and associated with some transport business," said DSP Iftikhar Lodhi, the area's sub-divisional police officer.
"We have reason to believe that it was not an act of assassination but a matter related to some personal issues. The family is in a state of shock and grief. We will definitely seek their cooperation to set the course of investigation."
Shop owner killed
Another young man who had gone missing on Thursday was found rubbed out in Ramswami within the remit of the Garden cop shoppe.
The police said the killing of 29-year-old Junaid Habib, who had a shop in the Ramswami area, appeared to be mysterious. "He was not associated with any political or religious group, while his family also denies his enmity with any individual or group," said Garden SHO Inspector Athar Malik.
"He was probably kidnapped from his shop," he added.
Labourer bumped off
Earlier during the day, a 25-year-old labourer was bumped off in a drive-by shooting near a bus stop in Pak Colony, said police.
"Sajid Brohi was targeted just after he left home in Jehanabad for a garment factory where he was employed as a labourer," said Pak Colony SHO Inspector Abdul Moid.
The officer said that the victim was intercepted by gunnies riding a cycle of violence near the bus stop. One of them fired a single shot at him before they sped away. The victim sustained a single gunshot wound to his head and was struck down in his prime, the inspector added.
"The reason is not yet clear but the way he was killed indicates that criminal gangs are behind this incident," he added.
Young man rubbed out
A tyre puncture shop owner was rubbed out in Buffer Zone over what police believed personal enmity.
Imran, 24, was at work when gunnies riding a motorbike pulled up there and fired at him before fleeing, said Taimuria SHO Inspector Sajid Javed."Initial findings show that he fell to prey to personal enmity over some monetary issue," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/01/2012
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#1
Lyari has few schools, substandard hospitals, a poor water system, limited infrastructure, and broken roads.
In otherwords, it's a typical Pakistani neighborhood.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/01/2012 11:36
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(Sh. M. Network) A British marine expert was killed for standing up to a gang who tried to cash in on false claims that Somali pirates had attacked their ships, an inquest heard.
David Mockett defied the "bully boys" and paid for it with his life when a bomb blew apart his car as he drove from work in Aden in July last year, the hearing was told.
He had been investigating the Brilliante Virtuoso, a Liberian registered oil tanker allegedly attacked by Somali pirates 20 miles off the Yemen coast. In an email to his wife, Cynthia, 65, Mr Mockett had said that he "could not find any evidence of bullet holes or exposure to grenades".
After his death, Mrs Mockett spoke to one of her husband's friends, John Murphy, who claimed that Mr Mockett had been killed "because of his investigation" into the tanker.
She said that Mr Murphy told her two other ships had the same captain as the Brilliante Virtuoso and both had also allegedly been attacked by Somali pirates, which was described as 'unusual'.
Mr Mockett had been in the Middle East for 34 years and Aden for the past decade.
Det Supt Jonathan Tottman, from Scotland Yard's counter terrorism squad was sent to Aden after being "authorised at the highest level of deployment" by the Government to investigate his death.
He ruled out official Yemeni claims that al-Qaeda was behind the bombing because, he said, such terrorist groups boasted about what they had done.
Mr Tottman told the inquest that Aden and Yemen are "very dangerous places to work" and only a handful of British workers remain there, with no British passport holders left in Aden. "David had obviously upset somebody. Money is a great motivation for people," he said
Mr Tottman said Mr Mockett's last job was to investigate "criminal enterprise, piracy on the high seas where a third of the world's oil goes through at any one time in very busy shipping lanes".
Somali pirates had made targets of these shipping lanes but a fraud was being operated so insurers would pay out once "attacked" ships had been surveyed for damage and loss, he claimed. "This was a scam and a lot of money was being made," he told the Plymouth and south Devon coroner Ian Arrow. "David had great integrity and professionalism and would not bow to bully boy tactics."
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07/01/2012
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#1
OK .. so big money is being made in an insurance scam. Who takes down the perpetrators for murder ... cuz' this is not looking like a case that an insurance investigator would touch.
[Yemen Post] Seven Yemeni soldiers were poisoned last Thursday, while they were performing their tasks in a checkpoint located in a main entrance of the capital Sana'a, military sources said.
The sources affirmed that the soldiers were transferred to hospitals, pointing out that their cases are very serious and that they were put at the intensive care unit.
They made it clear that the soldiers were provided with poisoned sandwiches by an unknown person, accusing Al-Qaeda of attempting to kill them.
They said that Al-Qaeda aimed at killing the soldiers to enter the capital Sana'a, asserting that Yemeni security forces were mostly deployed after the incident in anticipation of Al-Qaeda operatives infiltration to Sana'a.
Meanwhile, ...back at the revival hall, the SWAT team had finally arrived... the front man of the Military Committee formed under the GCC power transferred deal, Ali Saeed Obaid, has revealed that the Yemeni government has a plan to put an end to tribal support for Al-Qaeda in some Yemeni governorate including 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... , Shabwa, Marib and al-Jawf.
He affirmed that the committee dispatched new military reinforcements with the aim of taking part in the military offensives conducted by the Yemeni army against Al-Qaeda hard boyz in some districts of Abyan.
Obaid reaffirmed that most areas of Abyan were cleansed from landmines planted by the hard boyz before their withdrawal to other areas, stressing that morale of the army is high after the defeat of Al-Qaeda hard boyz and get them out of Abyan. He revealed that al-Qeada hard boyz are currently positioned in some remote villages and areas located in borders of Abyan.Yemen's Interior Ministry had cautioned against the infiltration of Al-Qaeda operatives to the capital Sana'a, pointing out that Al-Qaeda has plans to carry out a suicide kaboom using car booms.
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07/01/2012
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Mali's desert north has fallen into the hands of Islamist hardliners in the past three months, sparking regional and international fears of a new haven for gunnies in north Africa.
The Islamic fascistiswept through the region amid a power vacuum created by a March 22 coup in the southern capital Bamako.
Ethnic Tuareg desert nomads and Al-Qaeda linked gunnies quickly took key towns in northern Mali, a land of ancient caravan routes that is also notorious for drugs and arms smuggling and kidnappings for ransom.
Since then, the hardline Islamists have largely usurped their former brothers-in-arms, the secular Tuareg group who have long demanded an independent homeland they call Azawad.
The Islamists, among them Al-Qaeda's regional franchise, have imposed strict shariah law and started destroying world heritage-listed religious monuments in the fabled city of Timbuktu.
West African group ECOWAS is considering sending an intervention force of more than 3,000 troops into Mali, sparking a threat from the Islamists that nations taking part will become targets.
Below are profiles of the main groups:
Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA)
The Tuareg, nomadic desert tribes known for their indigo turbans, have long felt marginalised and waged several rebellions in past decades, demanding independence for "Azawad", their ancestral homeland.
The MNLA formed in late 2011 when it was boosted by the return of armed, battle-hardened Tuareg who had fought as mercenaries for Libya's dictator Moamer Qadaffy before he was killed in last year's uprising.
In a series of lightening strikes after the March 22 coup, the MNLA seized the three northern cities of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, joined in their campaign by Islamist rebel groups.
However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... since then their Islamist battlefield allies pushed them out of Gao and Timbuktu to impose sharia law, an interest the MNLA does not share.
The MNLA is led by secretary general Bilal Ag Acherif and head of the political wing Mahmoud Ag Aghali, according to its website. In early June, it created a so-called Transitional Council of Azawad State, presided over by Bilal Ag Acherif.
Ansar Dine ('Defenders of Faith' in Arabic)
This new Islamist movement was formed by renowned Tuareg commander Iyad Ag Ghaly who led a 1990-95 rebellion.
He then became a key player in peace talks between the government and Tuareg during a 2006-2007 rebellion.
Ansar Dine made its presence on the northern battlefield known in February with the release of a video seen by AFP in which it said it wanted to impose sharia law in Mali and named Ag Ghaly its commander.
Both the Tuareg and Ansar Dine fought together for Kidal and Timbuktu.
In both cases, Ghaly made a triumphant entrance and planted ominous black flags bearing Arabic symbols around the captured towns.
In Timbuktu, his forces chased out the MNLA and ordered women to cover themselves with veils, saying they did not want independence, but Islamic law.
Long said to have ties to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ag Ghaly's military victories have seen him flanked by the orc group's most notorious leaders.
Ag Ghaly, described in US diplomatic cables as an unpredictable and "inscrutable character", had at one point been in the government's good books, and was sent by Bamako as an envoy 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... He was reportedly expelled from that country in 2010 for having links to jihadists. While he appears to have abandoned the Tuareg national cause, the details of why remain murky.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)
AQIM stems from a group started in the late 1990s by radical Algerian Islamists, who in 2007 formally subscribed to Al-Qaeda's ideology.
These Islamists, numbering around 300, have spun a tight network across tribal and business lines that stretch across the sub-Sahara Sahel zone, supporting poor communities and protecting traffickers.
They are comfortable operating in the harsh desert terrain and have made millions of dollars from ransoms of European hostages.
Along with a splinter group, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), AQIM has been holding more than a dozen Western hostages.
A notorious AQIM leader, the Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar who has been sentenced to death for attacks in his home country, has appeared in Timbuktu alongside Ag Ghaly.
He is known as "the uncatchable" or "Mister Marlboro" for his smuggling activities.
Also operating in the Sahel -- often in a symbiotic relationship with AQIM and Tuareg tribes -- are various criminal groups involved in drugs and weapons trafficking who could benefit from the political disarray.
The offshoot MUJAO kidnapped seven Algerian diplomats in Gao in April.
This week it grabbed credit for an attack against Algerian paramilitary police that killed one person and maimed three.
On Friday it threatened countries who would join an intervention force, warning that its branches "in several countries are ready to strike the interests of countries that intend to participate in the force of ECOWAS".
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07/01/2012
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The Iranian oil minister on Saturday called for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to hold an emergency meeting to cut output as oil prices have dipped to a "critical level" under $100 a barrel, MNA reported.
"We have asked the secretary general to set up an emergency meeting as prices have become irrational," Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying by the Shana News Agency. Qasemi stressed that the last OPEC meeting, on June 14, had decided the organization's overall quota would be 30 million barrels but "members' production has reached 33 million barrels a day."
#1
ION DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > IRAN RECEIVES [mighty Air Flight, Squadron or Air Fleet of ONE] F-16 FROM VENEZUELA, TO TEST ["calibrate"] DEFENSE SYSTEMS.
You knew they would.
Methinks "reverse engineer" is more correct???
* SAME > [Deputy LTCDR of IRGC Ground Force for Operations Gen. Morteza Miriyan] COMMANDER: BIG SLOW us AIRCRAFT CARRIERS GOOD TARGETS FOR HIT-N-RUN TACTICS | FARS NEWS AGENCY: IRGC COMMANDER: IRAN CAN EASILY REACH, HIT US WARSHIPS, espec since over 3000 Iranian small boats + dhows, etc. are in the Persian Gulf at any given time engaging in trafficking, fishing, + commerce, + often get very close to USN Warships.
IIUC ARTIC > GEN. MIRIYAN = ITS UP TO THE US TO DECIDE HOW THEY WANNA TAKE US[Iran] ON IN THE GULF.
* SAME > IRAN WILL SET THE RULES OF THE GAME IN CASE OF MILITARY ENGAGEMENT.
(Sh. M. Network) -- The administration of Banadir region under Somali government, declared Friday that the commanders of the Al Qaeda-linked Al shabab cut-throats have failed to continue their fighting in Somalia.
Speaking to the news hounds in Mogadishu, Somali capital, the governor of Banadir region Mohamud Ahmed Nur better known as 'Tarsan' ... his wife is named Jane...
said that top Al shabab leaders, mainly Ahmed Mohamud Godane, the groups chief and Fuad Mohammed Khalaf (Shongole) and Sheik Ali Dheere, the front man for Al shabab, all failed to organize further the guerilla-style war in the country.
Meanwhile, ...back at the abandoned silver mine, the water was up to Jack's neck and still rising... Mr. Tarsan called upon the leaders of Al shabab cut-throats to bring to a standstill for using the young children, to carry out the hit and run deadly attacks against Somali people, as he put it.
This remarks followed after some MPs in Somali parliament disclosed that Al shabab commanders in Jubba states of southern Somalia, asked locals to hand over them weapons and youngsters to step up fighting against Somali government and the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... Mission in Somali (AMISOM ) forces.
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07/01/2012
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[An Nahar] Nigeria's military on Saturday said it had placed in durance vile Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! the leader of a gang responsible for a series of attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta region.
Seifa Gbereke, known locally as "General Cairo," is also suspected of stealing crude from pipelines, a widening practice that costs Africa's largest producer roughly $5 billion a year, according to some estimates.
"We've been on the trail of General Cairo for five months," Lieutenant Colonel Oyeama Nwachukwu, front man for the military's regional Joint Task Force (JTF), told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"It is a very significant development, considering the fact that he's been terrorizing the entire Delta region," he added, referring to the Thursday arrest.
Gbereke, said to be 25, is accused of orchestrating kabooms on pipelines and wells in the three Nigerian states with the largest crude deposits: Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers.
He and his seven associates are also thought to have stolen a considerable amount of oil to fund their criminal operations, according to the military front man.
Oil theft has been a growing problem in Nigeria, and Shell chief executive Peter Voser said in April that there have been estimates that 150,000 barrels of oil and condensate is stolen in the country each day.
Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil producer, has been producing between 2.0 and 2.4 million barrels per day in recent months. The sector generates 90 percent of the country's foreign exchange earnings.
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A joint force consisting of Mexican Naval Infantry troops and police agents with the Veracruz state Secretaria de Seguridad Publica (SSP) raided two locations in Xalapa, Veracruz early Saturday morning, detaining nine suspects and killing one, according to a news relase posted on the website of the Secretaria de Marina (SEMAR), the controlling agency for the Mexican Navy.
According to the news release the group raided a hotel and subsequently a safe house located on Calle Cesar Velarde. The release said one armed suspect died at the encounter at the safe house.
A news report posted on the website of El Diario de Coahuila said that a Mexican Marine unit came under small arms fire near the hotel as the joint patrol attempted to stop a group of armed suspects. The report also said that hand grenades were used in the counterfire by the armed suspects.
The El Diario de Coahuila report also said that the fighting spread throughout the city ending at the safe house.
At the safe house were recovered weapons and vehicles, but the news release did not detail any quantities. A total of nine detainees were taken into custody in the aftermath of the raids. El Diario de Coahuila reported six of the detainees were from Guatemala.
The raid was conducted by a joint force as part of the Seguro Veracruz, a security program which is intended to concentrated federal and state forces at transportation choke points to make the cost of contraband such as drugs guns and migrants much higher. Similar operations are under way in Tamaulipas state and in the La Laguna region which is astride the borders of Coahuila and Durango states.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
(Sh. M. Network)-At least two soldiers are reportedly killed after gunnies launched an ambush attack on Somali government troops in Gedo province, southwest of the country, residents said on Saturday.
The attack came after heavily armed gunnies attacked on a convoy of vehicles carrying the government army at Tuulo-Barwaqo township, a village sits between Bald-Hawo and Garbaharey towns near Somali border along withKenya. Two government soldiers reported dead.
"The army convoy was traveling from Balad-Hawo back to Garbaharey, the quiet provincial capital of Gedo when they were came under attack by gangs at Tuulo-Barwaqo area, some 22 kilometers north of Garbaharay," a resident told Shabelle Media by phone.
During the combat, the two parts used different weapons including rocket propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns, according to the local inhabitants.
No government Official in region has yet released any comment on the attack.
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07/01/2012
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Nearing the end of his second term, the Afghan president wants early elections before US and NATO troops leave. His opponents are wary
The next two years are very important for Afghanistan. The US and 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... are handing over security responsibilities to the Afghan cops and this transition will continue probably until 2014. Meanwhile, ...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter awoke groggily, his hand still stuck in the Ming vase... political parties and coalitions are gearing up for the upcoming presidential election scheduled for the spring of 2014.
President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... is nearing the end of his second term, and the Afghan constitution only allows two terms for a president. Karzai has said he is considering holding presidential elections a year early, in 2013, and does not want to put too much pressure on the country when NATO combat forces are due to leave in 2014. "Either the elections could be brought forward, or the handover of security to Afghan forces could be speeded up," he said in a presser in Kabul on April 12.
"Skillfully navigating the complex regional, tribal and ethnic landscape has been Karzai's strongest ability"
Some Afghan politicians and analysts backed the proposal and warned the 2014 votes might be unfeasible if security declines as NATO troops withdraw. The election should be held while NATO troops are still present, they argue. Others see Karzai's proposal as a worrying admission that the Afghan cops might not be able to maintain peace in the country.
Analsysts believe Karzai is either preparing to run again or backing one of his brothers or close aides as his successor. "An early election would leave little time for electoral reforms to prevent a repeat of the massive ballot-stuffing fraud and use of government resources that marred Karzai's last victory," said General (r) Abdul Wahid Taqat, a former intelligence officer and a political analyst.
Independent candidates and coalitions are gearing up for the upcoming polls because there are no strong political parties in the country and the democratic system is weak
"Early elections can happen if something happens to the president or if the president resigns," said Bashir Alkozai, a senior analyst who monitors Afghanistan's parliamentary politics. "If he moves up elections, Karzai would have to resign and his first vice president, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, would take over. Emergency elections would then have to be scheduled within three months according the country's constitution."
The two largest political oppositions of the country - the National Coalition of Afghanistan (NCA) and the National Front of Afghanistan (NFA) - issued a joint statement on April 30 alleging the Karzai government was 'personalizing' the election institutions and engineering the date and outcome. The NCA is led by Dr Abdullah Abdullah ... the former foreign minister of the Northern Alliance government, advisor to Masood, and candidate for president against Karzai. Dr. Abdullah was born in Kabul and is half Tadjik and half Pashtun... , who was a candidate in the 2009 presidential elections, and Mohammad Younas Qanoni, MP and leader of Afghanistan e Naween (New Afghanistan) political party. The NFA is a political alliance between Ahmad Zia Massoud, former first vice president and brother of late anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban capo Ahmed Shah Massoud, General Abdul Rashid Dostum ...ethnic Uzbek warlord who distinguished himself fighting the Soviets and the Taliban. The story that he had a bad guy run over with a tank is an exaggeration. It was an armored personnel carrier... , the founder of Jombesh Party, and Muhammad Muhaqqiq, a leader of a faction of Hezb-e-Wahdat and a member of parliament from Kabul.
"The early election issue is just a political gimmick with specific objectives," said Sayed Fazel Sancharaki, front man for the NCA.
Analysts say Karzai has not decided whom to support as his successor, and he is not likely to, until the last minute. "Gaining the support of Karzai and the international community, especially the US, is essential to winning the vote," said Engineer Kamaal Khan Safi, an MP from Kunduz.
So far, only two people have formally announced that they plan to run for president: Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former interior minister and Fawzia Koofi, the deputy speaker of the Afghan parliament and the first woman to hold that office. Political analysts say neither of candidates is strong.
Karzai's elder brother, Qayyum Karzai, is also said to be planning to enter the race. Sources privy to the plans say Karzai's aides have advised the president to nominate Qayyum as his successor. But Karzai hinted he would not support Qayyum, fearing it may create the impression that he wants to keep the presidency in his own family.
Qayyum, 55, resigned from parliament in 2008 citing poor health. He has also reportedly been involved in back-channel peace diplomacy with the Taliban through 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... .Two other potential candidates are Omar Daudzai, the Afghan ambassador in Pakistain and former chief of staff of the Afghan president, and Farooq Wardak, the education minister. Analysts believe one of them would get Karzai's backing.
"Daudzai, a long time confidant of Karzai, was the man behind the scene who helped bring Muhaqqiq and Dostum into the coalition," said Bashir Alkozai. "If either of these candidates receives Karzai's support, they will also benefit from his financial and political networks."
Abdullah Abdullah - Karzai's top contender in the 2009 presidential elections - and Ahmad Zia Massud - former first vice president and brother of Ahmed Shah Massud - are likely to be the candidates from NCA and NFA
While it is too early to anticipate, Karzai's voluntary departure before the election will not only sit positively with many Afghans, but will also leave him a respectable legacy in Afghan history, experts say. But they think Karzai wants to remain a Milli Mashar or 'national leader' after quitting. The absence of an alternative keeps the coalition forces dependent on Karzai. "Skillfully navigating the complex regional, tribal and ethnic landscape has been Karzai's strongest ability," said Arif Ansar, an Af-Pak expert at Politact, a Washington-based think tank. "Karzai has masterfully exploited the sensitivities of Pakistain's relations with India and the US and the recently signed Afghansian-India strategic deal is a case in point. When it comes to connecting with the Afghans, Karzai has consistently projected Pakistain as desiring to dominate them and has raised the issue of civilian casualties when it comes to NATO."
The NCA and the NFA have started initial preparations for the presidential elections. It is not known if they will be able to back a joint candidate. "There hasn't been any discussion over joint candidates," said Sancharaki, adding that they don't even know who the potential candidates are.
Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's top contender in the 2009 presidential elections, and Massoud are likely to be the candidates from the NCA and the NFA respectively.
Some circles believe that Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN, and Hanif Atmar, former interior minister and a leader of Hezb-e-Haq-wa-Edalat (Truth and Justice Party) are also interested in running for president.
Political analysts say the majority of Afghans, who are Pashtuns, will accept the next president if he is a Pashtun from a leading tribe. Karzai was able to hold his own in large part because he is a Pashtun from the southern province of Kandahar, said Israr Ahmed Karimzai, another political analyst. Historically, he said, the south is the region where leaders come from.
"Most people go by what has traditionally been the case in Afghanistan," Arif Ansar said. "Moving forward, it should be what the majority of Afghans think. Although for this to happen, it will require unity amongst Afghans."
Experts say only independent candidates and coalitions are gearing up for the upcoming polls because there are no strong political parties in the country and the democratic system is weak. According to the website of the Afghan Ministry of Justice, there are 84 registered political parties in the country. These parties have been formed by Mujahideen leaders, members of the former People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), and some independent figures. But because of a number of contributing factors, the political parties have no visible role in Afghan politics, especially the presidential polls.
"The affiliations of political parties are mostly with their ethnicity, tribes and region, and none of them are truly nationalistic in orientation," said Ansar.
The current Afghan government is structured around coalitions of individuals - former Mujahideen and influential tribal elders - and not around coalitions of political parties, said Bashir Alkozai. "Political parties have been isolated over the past decade, and will therefore not likely to strengthen."
Zia Ur Rehman reports from Kabul, where he is a part of the Pak-Afghan Media Exchange Program. He can be contracted at zia_red@hotmail.com Continued on Page 49
MANILA: Philippine soldiers killed 13 communist guerrilla rebels in two separate clashes yesterday, in what military officials described as one of the biggest victories over the insurgents in years.
Eleven New Peoples Army (NPA) rebels were killed around noon in San Narciso town of Quezon province, southeast of Manila, while two rebels were killed in a pre-dawn gunbattle in Botolan town in Zambales province, northwest of the capital.
Military spokesman Col. Arnulfo Burgos said both clashes were a result of tip-offs from civilians, which showed that the governments new counter-insurgency strategy was working.
This is by far the largest number of NPA casualties in one single encounter in recent history, he said, describing the San Narciso clash.
Fifteen rebels were setting up an ambush for troops on a roadside when soldiers intercepted them, said local army commander Col. Eduardo Ano. Two soldiers were also wounded in the 30-minute gunfight, he said, adding that six guns and two grenade launchers were recovered.
The (local population) gave us information. They must be getting tired of the NPA, Ano said.
Just hours earlier, soldiers clashed with about a dozen NPA fighters in Botolan, killing two and capturing four, said local army commander, Lt. Col. Michael Samson. Five rifles and two grenades were recovered in the incident, he said in a statement.
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[Dawn] The White House has quietly blocked yet another attempt to stifle US aid to Pakistain, saying that the congressional move will "severely constrict" America's ability to combat terrorism in the South Asian region.
The proposed restriction was included in a resolution to amend the Department of Defence Appropriations Act, 2013.
The White House issued a statement on Thursday evening, noting that the resolution was seeking to impose new limitations on reimbursements to the government of Pakistain.
A section of the resolution would require the Secretary of Defence to certify Pakistain's cooperation on issues "outside of his purview and would severely constrict DOD's ability to respond to emergent war-time coalition support requirements", the White House pointed out.
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#1
Okay, but-t-t FYI ...
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > NO APOLOGY, NO SUPPLIES [SDN], GEN. KAYANI TELLS GEN. ALLEN.
Pak COAS to Commander, ISAF.
IMO Pakistan's Best Frenemy Forever Iran is taking a high risk iff its going to be applauding this move.
#2
Proving once again, anyone can throw in the chips and cut their losses. Successful political disengagement however, comes at a premium. Young lives wasted during the process is unfortunately of no great concern.
#4
With a population of 190 million people, pockets of extremism, and nuclear capability, a stable and prosperous Pakistan is of critical importance to both our regional strategy and our direct national security interests, he said.
No matter how much U.S. taxpayer money is thrown at Pakistan, it is not going to become prosperous and stable. Meanwhile, the economy sucks in the U.S. and nothing has been done about the high unemployment rate. Time for that one term the Champ talked about. Time to change the Senate also.
[An Nahar] At least 53 people were killed, mostly civilians, in violence across Syria on Saturday, and hundreds more were trapped in Douma as regime forces stormed the town in Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... province, monitors said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights urged the International Committee of the Red Thingy and the Syrian Arab Red Islamic Thingy to "urgently send medical teams" to Douma.
"The security forces have seized control of the main hospital in Douma," the Observatory said. "There are no doctors in the town, though dozens of maimed need urgent care."
The Britannia-based monitoring group warned of a "catastrophic humanitarian situation" in the city, which "has been subjected to a fierce military campaign since June 21."
Violence has killed "scores and maimed hundreds" there since regime forces escalated attacks on the outlying suburb of Damascus, the group said.
"More than 100 families remain in the town, unable to flee and forced to take refuge in shelters," it said, adding that most of those trapped were women and kiddies, after the majority of the men had fled repeated arrest sweeps.
The Observatory said those killed on Saturday included a civilian rubbed out by a sniper in Douma; a rebel in Daraa, southern Syria; a family of three killed by shelling in the northwestern province of Idlib and 14 soldiers.
Douma has seen frequent fighting between rebels and troops in recent months.
The watchdog also reported fierce festivities in the capital itself and the suburbs of Damascus, with regime troops using helicopters to shell several neighborhoods on Saturday.
Elsewhere, the army shelled Rastan in the central province of Homs, the watchdog said, adding that the town has been under rebel control since February.
Meanwhile, ...back at the scene of the crime, Lieutenant Queeg had an idea: there was a simple way to tell whether Manetti had been the triggerman -- just look at his shoes!... an kaboom rocked the Qaboon district of Damascus, the Observatory said, and a blast hit the country's second city 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... in the north. No casualties were reported.
Another blast hit an oil pipeline in a rebel-held area of the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.
The latest violence came amid fierce countrywide festivities and a day after 75 people were killed nationwide.
More than 15,800 people have been killed in violence since an anti-regime uprising broke out in March 2011, the Observatory says.
Posted by: Fred ||
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For a map, click here. For a map of Durango state, click here
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
A total of four bodies were exhumed from two mass graves in far eastern Durango state Thursday, according to Mexican news reports.
The find was made in Lerdo municipality which is in the western part of the region colloquially known as La Laguna, which includes Ciudad Lerdo and Gomez Palacio, Durango and Torreon Coahuila. A Mexican Army unit had been dispatched to the area based on an anonymous tip, which found the graves.
According to a report in El Siglo de Durango news daily, two graves were found three kilometers away from each other, the first was a grave in Las Noas canyon area which contained the remains of two women in advanced state of decomposition.
The second pit was located in an area dubbed Los Compadres, which contained the remains of two men, also in a state of decomposition.
The report said the new find raises the death toll in Durango to 335, but plenty of doubt exists to that claim.
More than two weeks ago a Mexican Army unit began to excavate a site in Cristobal Colon colony in Durango city, where the last 50 dead were found last January. That report said the remains of at least one individual had been uncovered, and more were expected.
To date no further news has been released as to the new death toll by the Durango state Fiscalia General del Estado (FGE) or attorney general from the latest excavation in Durnago city. The Durango FGE has been maintaining the official count to date.
Last January when the last of the Cristobal Colon bodies were exhumed, confusion reigned as to the final death toll. Local press had the total at 300, while Proceso news weekly counted 321. This writer had the death toll at 330.
The great bulk of the dead found in Durango, more than 90%, were killed in Durango city itself, while ten total were found in Lerdo municipality. It had been determined by Durango state legal officials that nearly all the dead were killed between 2007 and 2011 in the course of normal organized crime business.
While cumulatively the Durango mass graves are the worst in modern Mexican history, the honor of the worst mass murder goes to the San Fernando, Tamaulipas mass graves were 193 individuals were killed and buried between August 2010 and March 2011. Those murders were all apparently done by the same criminal group.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
(Sh. M. Network) Gunmen kidnapped four aid workers and killed a driver at Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp near the border with Somalia on Friday, in the first kidnapping of foreigners since Kenya sent troops into Somalia in October to try to crush Islamist bully boys.
The gunnies are suspected sympathizers of Somalia's al Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab ... Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahidin aka the Mujahideen Youth Movement. It was originally the youth movement of the Islamic Courts, now pretty much all of what's left of it. They are aligned with al-Qaeda but operate more like the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban... beturbanned goons, regional deputy police chief Philip Ndolo, told Rooters.
In Somalia, al-Shabaab said it was not aware of the attack.
"So far we are not aware about any aid workers kidnapped from Kenya's refugee camps," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, the front man for al-Shabaab's military operations, told Rooters.
Kenyan police said the four were nationals of Norway, Canada, Pakistain and the Philippines. A Kenyan driver in a second vehicle was killed during the attack.
They were working for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the group's secretary general, Elisabeth Rasmusson, was also in the convoy and was unharmed, the aid group said.
A Kenyan driver was shot in the attack had died of his injuries while being treated, Ndolo said. Two other Kenyans were also shot, another driver and a contractor for the NRC, he said.
Police and the military were now pursuing the kidnappers who drove towards the Kenya and Somalia border, police said.
"I can confirm that military helicopters have been dispatched," Colonel Cyrus Oguna of the Kenya Defence Forces told Rooters.
Ndolo said the car in which the aid workers were travelling had been abandoned by the attackers, and that the group were probably using another vehicle or were on foot.
He could not say if they had already crossed into Somalia.
Dadaab, about 100 km (62 miles) from Somalia, was set up in 1991 to house Somalis fleeing violence in their country. It has since become the world's biggest refugee camp with almost 500,000 residents.
Kenya deployed its troops days after two Spanish women working for Medecins Sans Frontieres were kidnapped at Dadaab last October. They are still being held.
That kidnapping took place within weeks of two incidents that saw Somali gunnies seize Western female tourists from beach resorts in northern Kenya. One of the women, a Briton, has been set free while the other, from La Belle France, died in captivity.
Ndolo said the gunnies shot at a convoy of two vehicles.
"They shot at the first of the two vehicles, but it drove off. It had other workers. The staff were driving from one camp to another," Ndolo said.
Oslo-based NRC confirmed there had been an incident with an NRC convoy in Dadaab.
"There has been an incident involving the general secretary of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Elisabeth Rasmusson, but she is now safe," said Rolf Vestvik, director of advocacy and information at the NRC.
"We can confirm that our secretary general was part of that convoy. And she is unharmed and safe. We are now trying to get more information on what has happened."
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#1
I may be preaching to the choiur here ... but how come these humanitarian agencies keep driving into high-risk zones with no weapons and no armed security. This makes no sense. Somebody needs to kick the a** of the high-level execs in these groups. It's not a game when people wind up as hostages with Al Shabaab or the Somali pirates.
[Dawn] Pakistan's military establishment and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) have resolved that territories of Pakistan and Afghanistan will no longer be used as safe havens for cross-border attacks.
The commitment was made at a meeting of top military officers of the two sides. According to a joint statement of the Pakistan Army and Isaf issued by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Friday, Isaf Commander General John R. Allen, who had arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday, held a detailed meeting with Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
The ISRP spokesman quoted Gen Allen as saying: "This visit helped advance our efforts to achieve the regional stability. Additionally, the meeting provided us a perfect opportunity to refocus our attention on our continuing efforts to eliminate the corrosive effects of extremists operating on both sides of the border."
The purpose of the trip was to build on the positive momentum established during last month's meeting of the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Isaf Tripartite Commission.
During the tripartite gathering, the first such discussion in nearly a year, commanders and key staff discussed issues of tactical, operational and strategic importance, including cross-border cooperation. The meeting served as an opportunity to renew everyone's desire to address topics and issues of mutual importance.
During the current visit, the commanders specifically discussed the mutual progress being made to eliminate terrorism, combat extremism and ensure that territories of both Pakistan and Afghanistan are no longer used as safe havens for cross-border attacks. "The commanders also discussed current operational realities," the military spokesman said.
The US military authorities have already described the meeting between commanders of the two sides as "very productive".
Pakistan-US relations hit their lowest ebb after the November Nato air strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at the Salala checkpost near the Afghan border. The attack led to suspension of Nato supplies by Pakistan.
Gen Allen's visit took place two days after militants from Afghanistan attacked a checkpost in Dir and killed six security personnel.
According to informed sources, General Kayani forcefully raised the issue with Gen Allen and said such incidents would cause further deterioration in the already strained relationship between Pakistan and the United States.
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#1
Will he start with North Waziristan then Gen Kayani?
[Dawn] RECENTLY, I came across a quote ascribed to Albert Camus: "No cause is worth a single innocent human life." Applauding the sentiment, I did a quick search for the context in which the Nobel Prize winner might have written the sentence. It's one of those profound-sounding statements Camus and similar professional Intellects used to make. There's no actual empirical evidence to support the statement, but it sounds really good. Makes you think of how you want to keep Mom safe, that sort of thing. Possibly he did say such a thing, but being an absurdist philosopher he professed to be convinced that life was actually meaningless, so if it's meaningless why should the loss of it, innocent or otherwise, cause a fuss?
Sadly, I failed to find the reference in the French philosopher and novelist's works. If a reader can supply the exact quote and where Camus expressed the thought, I will be grateful. I actually read Camus' The Myth of Sysiphus when I was a very young man. It brought to mind green meadows and sunny days, where you really have to be careful about stepping in the bull paddies, at least in the parts of it that were readable...
The reason I want to pin it down is that increasingly, I am depressed by the rising violence in actions and rhetoric, not just in Pakistain, but the world over. The last decade, in particular, has witnessed a steady upward trend in state-directed violence as well as terrorist activities. And in Pakistain the two are often one. And world-wide it's becoming increasingly evident that Pakistain's primary export is guys wearing turbans and waving automatic weaponry...
The rise in the number, sophistication and reach of non-state actors has been met with disproportionate force from some governments. Often, states have supplied terrorist groups with the justification to turn to violence. But mostly, romantics, utopians and nihilists have flocked to the turban banner in their search for adventure, identity and self-worth.
Nine-eleven has given rise to the perception that terrorism is the exclusive preserve of Islamic turbans. But the fact is that it has been widely used by secular groups just as it has been by groups drawing their inspiration from religion.
Terrorism has always been a weapon of the weak. The targets are undefended civilians, and the objective is to destabilise the state by repeated blows at the innocent.
Thus, when the Zionist Irgun gang attacked the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing a number of British soldiers and civilians after the end of the Second World War, their aim was to drive the British army out of Paleostine. Incidentally, the leader of the terrorist group was Menachem Begin, the future prime minister of Israel.
In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers, a secular group, pioneered many of the terror techniques and weapons copied by other groups around the world. Suicide bombing, in particular, is a gift to us from this deadly, and now defunct, band of killers. But whatever we may think of their methods, the fact is that their goals were political, and the causes of Tamil discontent persist three years after the end of the civil war.
After 9/11, many nationalist movements with legitimate political goals were lumped into the category of terrorists. However, if you can't say something nice about a person some juicy gossip will go well... in many cases, they lost legitimacy and respect by deliberately slaughtering innocent civilians. In Kashmire and Chechnya, for example, freedom fighters often turned their guns on bystanders, thereby losing international support. This also gave New Delhi and Moscow an excuse to increase their repressive measures.
Fred Halliday was, until his early death at 64, one of the leading British experts on the Middle East. A scholar and linguist, he brought an impressive degree of intellectual rigour to his writing. With 20 books to his name, he contributed a number of essays to the webzine Open Democracy that were later published as a collection called Political Journeys. In the section titled 'Violence and Politics', Halliday writes:
"...[ T ]errorism, as ideology and instrument of struggle, is a modern phenomenon, a product of the conflict between contemporary states and their restive societies. In rich and poor countries alike, it has developed as part of a transnational model of political engagement. Its roots are in modern secular politics; it has no specific regional or cultural attachment; it is an instrument, one among several, for those aspiring to challenge states and one day to take power themselves."
So as I have observed in this space before, religion has little to do with the acts of terrorism that have become routine in Pakistain. Although the Pak Taliban and their many evil offshoots use Islam as a fig-leaf to hide behind as they slaughter innocent men, women and kiddies, the truth is that what they really seek is power. The Sharia is merely a device they use to browbeat and impress the rest of us with.
Their success in their asymmetrical struggle against the Pak security forces and the state has been made possible by the enabling space created by politicians, the judiciary and the media alike.
In many cases, gun-hung tough guys have been released by judges either on bail, or because of insufficient evidence. Being armed at the time of capture apparently is not proof enough. In TV studios, there is seldom any condemnation of jihadi terrorism; similarly, politicians hardly ever criticise terrorist groups for their actions. The recent beheading of seven Pak soldiers went largely unnoticed by our media and the political class.
This benign attitude towards vicious killers lends them a spurious legitimacy that encourages them to further violence. Many fail to condemn them because they are supposed to be fighting for an avowedly Islamic cause. But anybody even vaguely familiar with the tenets of the faith would know the Taliban's claim to be utterly false. No religion in the world permits or justifies the violence these people have inflicted on thousands of innocent people.
Ultimately, violence dehumanises us all. But paradoxically, its prevalence and increased intensity is met with acceptance at various levels. Governments are reluctant to make the political decisions necessary to drain the swamp of the poison of extremism.
The harsh Israeli occupation of the West Bank continues to infuriate and radicalise Mohammedans. NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... 's ill-conceived operations in Afghanistan, and American drone attacks, provide snuffies justification for their attacks on innocent civilians. In the wake of the Second World War, a system for peacekeeping under the UN was put in place to prevent future conflicts. Never perfect, these institutions did manage to make the world a safer place for 50 years. And when the Cold War ended, we thought an era of peace would finally emerge. Dream on.
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#1
THE PURPOSE of the military is to kill, and if you cannot stomach that, you should not have a military.
LTC(Ret) Ralph Peters, Fighting for the Future, 1999
Mexican citizens go to the polls Sunday to select a new president of the republic as well as the entire slate of national deputies and senators.
Little drama was to be had throughout the duration of the political campaign as the frontrunner, Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) candidate Enrique Pena Nieta has been from the start maintained a double digit lead over any of his closest rivals, and currently enjoys a 16 percentage point lead over Partido Revolucion Democratica (PRD) candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
That lead by the telegenic Pena Nieto has held despite several adverse campaign events including a meeting with university students last May who protested an action his state police took to quell a demonstration in Mexico state early in his term as governor in 2006. Two individuals were killed by Pena Nieto's security forces, but it has been charges of sexual assault of female protesters in his state police custody which has dogged him since.
Another problem for Pena Nieto throughout the campaign was his ties to former PRI president Carlos Salinas de Gorari, widely considered even in PRI circles one of Mexico's worst presidents. That nexus Lopez Obrador hammered on Pena Nieto, even bringing it up during the first presidential debate in May. Those charges failed to stick, nor did they produce any kind of bounce in the polls for Lopez Obrador.
The ghosts of PRI governments past, while seeming to haunt the candidate did not hurt him in the polls at all. PRI held sway over Mexican politics for nearly 70 years before being swept away in the 2000 and then the 2006 election, which placed Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) presidents in Los Pinos, the president's official residence, for the first time ever.
International and the Mexican leftist press have been touting PRI's return as a direct result of current president Felipe Calderon's war on the cartels he launched back in 2007. His signature solution, using the nation's armed forces to confront cartel operatives in the field has been roundly condemned and then touted as the reason why PAN will not return to Los Pinos. That is probably true,but for a counterintuitive reason.
A recent survey by the Pew Foundation on Mexican citizens' attitudes indicated that Calderon's strategy has been the right one politically. More than 80 percent of those surveyed said they supported the use of Mexican armed forces against the cartels. Concerns for human rights in those surveys abound as the number one problem with the use of the nation's military. However, little doubt exists that Calderon did exactly the right thing in deploying his army against the cartels
That Mexicans want a change in government because of Calderon's actions, popular as they are, probably has more to do with the PRI's ruthlessness in dealing with political opponents in the last 30 years before the 2000 elections.
Pena Nieto has said publicly he would continue using he extremely popular armed forces to fight the cartels, but the basic strategy would change. What the change would entail is anyone's guess, and will more likely be better represented next September when the candidate for Pena Nieto's Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA), the controlling agency for the Mexican Army leads the military parade during Revolution Day.
As of June 27th, the final day of campaigning, Pena Nieto has 43.6 percent of the vote with Lopez Obrador with 28.1 percent, and PAN candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota with 25.2 percent of the vote.
According to data supplied by Mitofsky, PRI popularity will likely hold as PRI may receive a comfortable majority in the Chamber of Deputies.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com
"The Federal Executive shall have the exclusive power to compel any foreigner whose remaining he may deem inexpedient to abandon the national territory immediately and without the necessity of previous legal action." It also states: "Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country."
[Dawn] THE story is not new. But with each attack, the targeting of the Shia Hazara community becomes a more firmly entrenched feature of life in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... today. Thursday's kaboom on a bus of pilgrims returning from Iran was only the latest in a string of incidents that have taken the lives of at least 60 Hazaras this year alone, including students and people from the community simply going about their daily business. Easily identifiable because of their physical features, neighbourhoods and the routes they take for routine pilgrimages, Balochistan's Hazaras are now sitting ducks, victims of a relentless campaign that can only be compared to ethnic cleansing in its laser-like focus and its desire to kill as many members of the community as possible.
Given this focus and the pattern of attacks that has been established, the inability of the Balochistan government and paramilitary troops to protect the community can only be the result of extreme incompetence or a lack of commitment. Many of the attacks take place along the set routes that buses take when transporting pilgrims to and from Iran. Policing along these routes has reportedly been stepped up, but surely they can be monitored in a way that is better able to identify suspicious activity or prevent attackers from planting bombs. As for police escorts to accompany pilgrims, these have clearly not been adequate; if Balochistan's politicians can be provided with extensive and expensive security arrangements, why is the same level of protection not being provided at least to Hazara pilgrims?
The more effective method, of course, would be to tackle this problem at its roots, going after the Islamic fascistiand dismantling their infrastructure rather than trying to prevent already planned attacks at the eleventh hour. Balochistan's anti-Shia militancy has morphed into a force in its own right, with its own motivations, operational bases and centres of propaganda. For this, too, there are clues: the locations of madressahs propagating anti-Shia views and some of the bases of the Balochistan arm of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... have been identified, and include the chief minister's own base of Mastung. In the face of such a predictable pattern of attacks and available information about those behind them, the failure to prevent them has only fuelled speculation that Balochistan's civilian and security establishments are deliberately not taking action against sectarian militancy. These theories reflect the lack of trust in the provincial set-up, which is seen as being focused on clamping down on separatists instead. Whatever the thinking among state actors, the continued targeting of the Hazaras is increasingly becoming a massive abdication of responsibility on their part.
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[An Nahar] Egypt has seized a large weapons consignment, including Grad rockets ...Soviet-developed 122-mm rockets, usually launched from trucks. Newer versions are reported to have a range of up to 30 km.... , that had been smuggled from Libya and could have been headed to the Gazoo Strip, press reports said on Saturday.
The haul, which included 138 Grad rockets and a further 139 Grad warheads, was made in the Mediterranean coastal town of Marsa Matruh, not far from the Libyan border, Egyptian newspapers reported.
The interior ministry said that police were searching for two men suspected of trafficking weapons "to the Sinai Peninsula or towards Paleostine."
Libya has been awash with weapons since last year's armed rebellion which led to the ouster and killing of veteran dictator Muammar Qadaffy ...The late megalomaniac dictator of Libya, admired everywhere for his garish costumes, funny hats, harem of cutie bodyguards, and incoherent ravings. As far as is known, he is the only person who's ever declared jihad on Switzerland... , and Egyptian authorities have made a string of seizures near the porous desert border.
On May 10, the security forces said they had seized a large cache of weapons, including 50 rockets, in Marsa Matruh.
Israel has expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... that such shipments are intended for the Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,-ruled Gazoo Strip, through the extensive network of smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian border.
It has also voiced concern that Islamic krazed killer groups might be taking advantage of what it sees as the growing lawlessness of the neighboring Sinai.
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[Dawn] Bodies of five civilians were recovered from Alamgudar locality of Bara tehsil in Khyber Agency on Friday.
The security forces had claimed on Thursday night that they killed three suspected beturbanned goons during a search operation in Qambarabad where beturbanned goons targeted an army vehicle with a remote-controlled bomb, killing eight soldiers,
including a captain.
Bullet-riddled bodies of three local residents, including Ubaidullah of Karigar Garhi (Sipah tribe), Tahir Qambarkhel and Khan Mir Qambarkhel, were found near Alamgudar on Friday morning. Local sources said that all the three were watchmen at the house of a Sipah elder Haji Mir Badshah, which was located close to the site of attack on military vehicle.
They said that all the victims were non-combatants with no affiliation with any turban group and also they did not pose any resistance during the search operation by the forces. Volunteers of Al-Khidmat Foundation handed over the bodies to their relatives after they were removed from Alamgudar.
In the same locality, beheaded bodies of two more persons were found by residents.
Sources said that the two were residents of Bazidkhel village in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar and identified as Munir Khan and Inamullah. Nobody has so far grabbed credit for their killing.
PRISONERS ON STRIKE: Three under-trial prisoners went on an indefinite hunger strike at Landi Kotal lockup on Friday against their incarceration.
Relatives of two brothers, Akhtar Hussain and Fida Hussain, told Dawn that they were tossed in the slammer Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! on murder charges two weeks
ago and released after submitting surety bonds with the local administration.
However, corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds... both were again tossed in the slammer Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! two days ago on charges that they were wanted to commandant of Khyber Rifles for allegedly committing murder on the army land.
Another prisoner Qismat Ali of Sultankhel area was tossed in the slammer Into the paddy wagon wit' yez! by the local administration on suspicion of having links with turban groups.
His relatives, however, contended that he was declared 'white' after undergoing interrogation in Peshawar a few weeks ago.
All the three went on hunger strike against what they called their illegal confinement by the political administration.
Local officials, however, claimed that while Mr Akhtar and his brother had murdered a local person over a land dispute at daytime, Mr Ali was accused of demanding ransom from wealthy people in the name of Taliban.
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Apparently tiring of US soil as a source of campaign dollars, the Obama campaign is headed overseas -- with its celebrity friends in tow. The European Obama campaign starts next week in Paris
France, not Illinois...
on July 4 with a reception organized by various fundraising heavy-hitters. Independence Day fundraisers in Paris -- now that's a flag-waving campaign.
The Obama campaign will host events in Geneva, Switzerland
Not Geneva, Illinois...
in August as part of their "European outreach effort." George Clooney will headline a fundraiser there, with 150 tickets going for $20,000 per piece. There's even more to the bargain: if you go as a couple, the second ticket is half-off!
With the Obama campaign's increasingly desperate campaign emails begging for cash from the American people, perhaps the campaign thinks they'll find more fertile soil outside the country. Especially in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling that upholds Obama's European-style healthcare plan, Obama's hoping to cash in on like-minded folks abroad. Americans don't believe that Obamacare is a triumph; they see it as a massive net negative, sucking our coffers dry and handing us long-term rationing in return. Europeans, however, know nothing else. The entitlements have already kicked in. What better place to ask for campaign cash?
That also may be the only place Obama can still find cheering throngs.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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#1
Visiting a Marxist president on our national Independence Day with his Hollywood sycophants in tow? I detect no character deviation at all.
#8
...Mr. One Percenter, in mind and action. The words he extrudes are for political theater. [and remember Julie Baby aka the patrician Julius Caesar was a 'champion' of the plebs in his political environment]
#14
Not Paris, TN, Paris, TX or Paris, OH either. The Hustler-in-Chief hustling bucks from his Europeean elitist buddies. Forgoing the $3 raffle for the little people this time? I will never watch a George Clooney movie again. The last movie I saw him in was the Ides of March on cable. The movie captured the rot and corruption of the Democratic left perfectly. He doesn't need my hard-earned bucks.
#15
There is a George S. Patton story where he was quoted by the press. His statement got him in considerable trouble with his superiors. While speaking to a group of reporters, he compared the Nazis to losers in American political elections, and that being a Nazi in Germany was, "like being a Democrat in the States." Patton was soon relieved of command of Third Army and transferred to the Fifteenth Army, a paper command preparing a history of the war.
Patton was not politically correct. IMO he was an astute observer of domestic politics.
Armed fighters of Mail's al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine Islamist group on Saturday destroyed mausoleums in the ancient trading city of Timbuktu, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site, witnesses said.
The attack came just four days after UNESCO agreed to a request by the West African state to place Timbuktu on its list of heritage sites in danger following the seizure of its northern two-thirds in April by separatist and Islamist rebels.
A little late for that, isn't it?
"They have already completely destroyed the mausoleum of Sidi Mahmoud (Ben Amar) and two others. They said they would continue all day and destroy all 16," local Malian journalist Yeya Tandina said by telephone of the 16 most prized resting grounds of local saints in the town.
"They are armed and have surrounded the sites with technicals pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly," he said,
Why is the population helpless? Do they not have weapons?
adding that the Islamists were currently taking pick-axes to the mausoleum of Sidi El Mokhtar, another cherished local saint.
"It looks as if it is a direct reaction to the UNESCO decision," Timbuktu deputy Sandy Haidara said by telephone, confirming the attacks.
Since government forces were routed in April, Ansar Dine and other Islamist groups with links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have gained the upper hand over less well-armed Tuaregs whose goal is a secular, independent northern state.
Ansar Dine is pushing for strict sharia, Islamic law, across the whole of the country and deems un-Islamic the shrines of Timbuktu, an expression of the local Sufi brand of the religion.
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Rawalpindi should not to be consoled by the prospect of a Pashtun buffer along Pakistain's western borders'
The economy has been winding down for the past year and has reached a point where the population is forced to stage localised uprisings in all four provinces. The rupee is rapidly losing value and the employed are gradually losing their jobs. A prime minister has been fired, hailed by TV channels, most of whom don't pay salaries. The new prime minister is universally despised and the opposition is following 'scorched earth' policy to get rid of President Zardari. Pakistain has scant chance of surviving.
Foreign Minister Khar is challenging the US, insisting on an apology from President B.O. on the eve of elections in America, asking him to 'show understanding'. Pakistain needs help with an economy that is stalling. It needs to go back to the IMF to save its balance of payments from collapsing. Pakistain wants to allow passage to NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants... but is incapable internally to make it possible, putting the teeth of Europe on edge and affixing a fatal seal on its obsession with 'honourable' isolation.
The Supreme Court has got rid of a prime minister who had a majority in a parliament that pronounced itself clearly against its encroachment into the domain of the legislature. ANF, an anti-narcotics force manned by serving military officers - and supposedly subordinated to the elected government - is pursuing a PPP politician named as next prime minister. The next election is early next year but the opposition thinks it is once again time to get rid of the government before its tenure is concluded.
Half of the Afghan Pashtun population will flee into Pakistain and seek shelter, not so much from the Pak state as from the nonstate actors collecting money from Pak population through kidnappings and bank holdups
With the mood Pakistain is in, no government can save it from collapsing into the 'failed state' category whereas the patently 'failing state' of Afghanistan is ensured survival till 2024 by the US and its partners to prevent Al Qaeda from coming to power there with the help of Pakistain. International opinion has swung against Pakistain, especially against the Supreme Court which was earlier seen as a rarely 'independent' guarantee against corruption. Former Chief Justice of India Justice Markandey Katju wrote in Hindu (21 June 2012):
'Following this principle in British constitutional law, almost every Constitution in the world has incorporated a provision giving total immunity to Presidents and Governors from criminal prosecution. Thus, Section 248(2) of the Pak Constitution states: No criminal proceedings whatsoever shall be instituted or continued against the President or Governor in any Court during his term of office.
The language of the above provision is clear, and it is a settled principle of interpretation that when the language of a provision is clear the court should not twist or amend its language in the garb of interpretation, but read it as it is. I therefore fail to understand how proceedings on corruption charges (which are clearly of a criminal nature) can be instituted or continued against the Pak President.
'Moreover, how can the court remove a Prime Minister? This is unheard of in a democracy. The Prime Minister holds office as long he has the confidence of Parliament, not the confidence of the Supreme Court. I regret to say that the Pak Supreme Court, particularly its Chief Justice, has been showing utter lack of restraint. This is not expected of superior courts. In fact the court and its Chief Justice have been playing to the galleries for long. It has clearly gone overboard and flouted all canons of constitutional jurisprudence'.
Social media prophet with a growing following of devotees, Zaid Hamid has foreseen the next episode in the unending misfortunes of Pakistain. His message reads:
'Dear Children and members, read this carefully and do NOT panic. We expect violent protests, riots and lawlessness in the country in the next 2 months. In the absence of a stable government, the bad boys, snuffies and criminals will take full advantage of the chaos and anarchy already present in the country.
Prepare yourself for these difficult times. Stock some food and essential supplies and if you have licensed weapons, keep them at home for self protection. With the levels of anarchy that we have seen in the last few days in urban Punjab, you may have to protect your own homes, honour and lives.
'We expect that till the end of August, this anarchy would continue, when finally, InshAllah, Supreme Court and army would then be forced to step in decisively to bring in a caretaker government which would start to stabilize the country. InshAllah, there will be no elections. Also, InshAllah, the PPP regime and the PML(N) will not form the caretakers as they plan to do. This duty will also be done by the SC and army, InshAllah'.
If Pakistain Army, which runs the country's foreign policy and doesn't want to fight the snuffies that attack other states, takes over it will hardly be able to take the tough decisions dictated by the economy. It has pushed the elected government to embrace isolationism and thus commit hara-kiri. Both Army and the judiciary are inclined to favour the forces that threaten the world with terror. They can firm up the identity of Pakistain as a rogue state, not a state inclined to self-correction.
Soon the next deniable Pak war will start in Afghanistan. Towards the end of 2013, it will reach its first climax with Pak nonstate actors lending a hand in the Taliban's war against the 250,000-strong Afghan National Army, with another 150,000 police added in a war that will be a mixture of terrorism and battlefield conflict. Half of the Afghan Pashtun population will flee into Pakistain and seek shelter, not so much from the Pak state as from the nonstate actors collecting money from Pak population through kidnappings and bank holdups.
Ashley J. Tellis writes: 'Any Taliban control of southern and eastern Afghanistan would lay the geographic and demographic foundations for resuscitating the old Pashtun yearnings for a separate state, a "Pashtunistan" that would threaten the integrity of Pakistain. Given the current resentment of the Taliban leadership toward its Pak protectors, Rawalpindi should not to be consoled by the prospect of a Pashtun buffer along Pakistain's western borders' (Commentary, June 22, 2012).
#1
See also DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > PAKISTAN'S IMPENDING DEFEAT IN AFGHANISTAN.
IIUC, by seemingly continuing to suppor major MilTerr Groups even post-Osama, Pakistan's has only shown that its greatest obstacle to achieving influence in Afghanistan is itself???
#2
Prepare yourself for these difficult times. Stock some food and essential supplies and if you have licensed weapons, keep them at home for self protection.
Sounds like an admonishment from some of our readers and contributors here at home.
#4
Zaid Hamid is a spokesman for the Pak army from memory
I just googled the name, and there seem to be a number of them, Fester Clunter7205. It occurs to me to wonder if a social media prophet is anything like a blogger, but the journalists of The Friday Times are pretty good.
[Bangla Daily Star] Leader of the Opposition Khaleda Zia Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... held Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since 1981. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide... and her family's "corruption" responsible for the World Bank's cancellation of Padma bridge funding.
She made the allegation in Chittagong yesterday on the occasion of distributing relief among landslide and flood victims at Swadhinata Park under Chandgaon Police Station.
The BNP chairperson said this government in its election manifesto had pledged to construct the bridge but its ministers opted for demanding commission before the work could start.
According to her, the government had promoted corruption by not removing the corrupt ministers and giving them the responsibility of other ministries.
Khaleda said the WB had already declared not to finance the Padma bridge project which indicated that this government would not be able to implement the project, as the bridge was not possible without the funding from the WB.
She said the previous BNP governments had constructed many bridges in the country without any controversy and if her party is elected again they would build two bridges over the Padma river.
She urged people to vote for BNP in the next election to ensure development of the country. She pledged that they would solve the waterlogging problem of the port city.
Khaleda also reiterated her demand for the restoration of caretaker government system and that her party would not participate in the election under any political government.
The BNP chief urged everyone to join the anti-government movement which is set to begin after Ramadan.
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China blocked web searches Saturday for the name of leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping, a day after cutting access to Bloomberg sites following the agency's publication of a report on his family's wealth.
Financial newswire Bloomberg used publicly available records to compile a list of investments by Chinese Vice President Xi's extended family, which the agency said totaled $376 million
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#1
LEADER-IN-WAITING XI XINPING ...
versus
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > [DM Spox Geng Yansheng]CHINA'S DEFENCE MINISTRY COMMENTS ON US' ASIA-PACIFIC DEPLOYMENT [Asia "Pivot"], arguing that such moves are not conducive to security + mutual trust in the Region.
[An Nahar] Researchers reported Friday they have found signs of the oldest animal known in existence, a centimeter-long slug whose fossilized tracks in Uruguay are 585 million years old. I don't think the guy who used to work for me was that old. And he was taller, I think...
That would make the creature almost 30 million years older than any previous animals known to modern humans. The findings are described in the U.S. journal Science.
The tracks of the slug-like animal known as a bilaterian were found in Uruguay by University of Alberta geologists Ernesto Pecoits and Natalie Aubet. The evidence was not in the body of the animal itself, but in the burrows through sediment it left behind.
Previous evidence of bilaterians dates back to about 558 million years ago in Russia.
The age of the Uruguayan fossil tracks were established by dating the age of a rock that intruded into the siltstone in the area where the tracks were found.
Researchers spent two years going over their mass spectrometry analysis and making repeat trips to gather more samples before writing the peer-reviewed paper for Science.
Kurt Konhauser, a geomicrobiologist at the University of Alberta, said the next step is to "find out how these animals evolved to the point where they were able to move about and hunt for food." If they didn't eat they wouldn't evolve for long...
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#1
...Didn't think AG Holder was that old.
Mike
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Some people are too naive to be let out on their own.
RABAT - Organizers of an all-gay cruise on Saturday blamed Moroccan officials for the cancellation of what would have been the first visit of its kind to a Moslem country, but the tourism minister denied the ship was banned and said its passengers were welcome.
Cruise liner Holland America Line and trip organizer RSVP Vacations told the 2,100 holiday-makers aboard the MS Nieuw Amsterdam ship that the July 1 visit to Casablanca had been cancelled.
"Our port agent in Casablanca has advised us that authorities in Morocco have -- despite previous confirmations -- now denied our scheduled visit," the two companies said in a letter tweeted to news organizations by passengers of the ship.
"For all of us, this is a very disappointing development," they added. "It was ultimately the decision by local authorities in Morocco that has necessitated us to adjust our plans."
WASHINGTON - International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde called Egyptian President-elect Mohamed Mursi to discuss the economic challenges facing Egypt and how the international lender can best help, a spokesperson for the IMF said on Friday.
"The MD reiterated that the IMF stands ready to support Egypt and looks forward to working closely with the authorities," the spokesperson said.
Of course they do. It's not their money. Big chunk from Europe and a big chunk from Uncle Sugar.
She also congratulated Mursi on his election as president, "which represents an important step forward in Egypt's transition," the spokesperson said.
However, no timetable has been set for an IMF staff visit to Egypt to discuss a $3.2 billion IMF loan. That "will depend on the formation of the government," the spokesperson said.
Brotherhood officials have said they plan to resume the previous government's stop-and-start negotiations for a $3.2 billion IMF loan. A staff visit to meet Mursi and members of his new government would be an essential part of that process.
"As we have said before, Egypt's economic situation is hopeless challenging," the IMF spokesperson said.
"Steps are required to re-establish confidence, restart growth, and safeguard macroeconomic stability, while protecting the most vulnerable. We will update our assessment when a staff team visits Egypt," the IMF spokesperson said.
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[An Nahar] Renewed tribal festivities in the Libyan city of Kufra have claimed at least 47 lives and left more than 100 others maimed in three days, local leaders and a medic told Agence La Belle France Presse on Saturday.
"Thirty-two have been killed this week in the two Toubou residential areas," a medic treating Toubou casualties in Kufra told AFP.
"The number of maimed exceeds 100. Women and children make up more than half of the injured, with the majority of them hurt by mortar fire," added Doctor Taher Wehli.
The medic said his clinic had documented eight deaths on Saturday alone.
Tribal leader Hussein Sake said the shelling against Toubou areas in the desert city was ongoing and unrelenting.
"It is a situation of war with continuous attacks on Toubou neighborhoods," Sake told AFP. "They keep shelling us, so of course now we hit back to defend ourselves."
Sake blamed the outbreak of violence on rival Zwai rustics and their allies, who he said include the Libya Shield brigade, a force deployed by the interim government to act as a buffer between the conflicting camps.
Wissam Ben Hamid, commander of the brigade, insisted his forces were neutral and trying to broker a new truce after festivities broke out late Wednesday.
He said the fighting pitted Toubou rustics against Zwai and other tribes.
The commander confirmed the corpse count was "high, about 30" and stressed that "negotiations are now underway to calm tensions."
Abdullah Zwai, meanwhile, said his tribe had also suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Toubou, "with 14 people killed in the past two days."
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[An Nahar] United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit... Interim Force spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said on Saturday that a dispute occurred between peacekeeping troops and the residents of the southern border town of Maroun al-Ras .
According to the National News Agency, the UNIFIL peacekeepers were taking snapshots of the area when several civilians came across and took the camera from them.
The UNIFIL and the Lebanese army are working on resolving the incident and recover the camera, the NNA said.
However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... security sources told Future News that a UNIFIL patrol was intercepted by members from Hizbullah.
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[An Nahar] Mohammed Morsi took the oath of office on Saturday to become Egypt's first Islamist president and its first elected head of state since Hosni Mubarak's ...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011... overthrow last year. Hosni would be taking the gas pipe if he wasn't in a coma.
The ceremony took place in the constitutional court rather than parliament, the result of an ongoing tussle with the military that took charge after Mubarak's overthrow and insists on retaining broad powers now.
"I swear by the Almighty God to sincerely preserve the republican order and to respect the constitution and law, and completely care for the people's interest," he said at the ceremony at the court.
Morsi had wanted to take the oath before parliament, but the military has disbanded the Islamist-dominated house following a court order.
In an address at Cairo University following his swearing-in, Morsi thanked the military for seeing through the presidential elections but pointedly mentioned the "elected parliament" several times.
"The elected institutions will return to fulfilling their roles. And the great military will devote itself to the task of protecting the country," he told his audience, which included the military's leader, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.
He then set out some of his international and domestic objectives, saying he would be a "servant of the people" in a "democratic, modern and constitutional state".
Internationally, he said Egypt respected would back the Paleostinians and called for an end to the bloodshed in Syria.
"I announce from here that Egypt, its people and presidential institution stand with the Paleostinian people until they regain all their rights," he said.
"We support the Syrian people. We want the bloodshed to stop," he added.
He repeated that Egypt would respect its international treaties, in an allusion to its 1979 peace accord with Israel.
"We carry a message of peace to the world, accompanied and preceded by a message of right and justice."
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[Yemen Post] About 70% of the inhabitants of Jaar town have returned to their homes after the army drove Al-Qaeda cut-throats out of the town and other strongholds in the southern 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... province, deputy governor of Abyan province, Ahmed Al-Rahawi, said on Saturday. I'm starting to think the Paks should hire the the Yemenis to clean out their Wazoos. But that would mean the Paks were serious about it.
The 26 Sept website quoted the official as saying the return started immediately after the authorities restored all basic services in the town and its suburbs coinciding with securing all roads leading to Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan.
Al-Qaeda seized Zinjibar and the strategic town of Jaar and declared them Islamic emirates in mid-2011, but the armed forces with direct support from the US and tribal fighters cleared the cut-throats from all parts in Abyan.
Hundreds of cut-throats including big shots were killed in the offensive, which has been continued in nearby provinces, mainly Shabwa, to have a militancy-free Yemen.
Al-Rahawi said other citizens have been unable to return to their homes because of landmines, which were planted by cut-throats inside homes, farms and deserted areas, according to the website.
On Friday, Abyan governor, Jamal Al-Aqil, said technical teams from GCC countries have arrived in Yemen to help remove all landmines in Abyan. "The GCC help comes because removing the mines and helping the people return are top priorities," he said.
Tens of people have been killed in landmine kabooms in the past few weeks, just as they started to return to and check their properties, triggering calls on the displaced not to rush back for now.
Al-Rahawi said the inhabitants of Zinjibar have been warned not to return until the authorities remove thousands of landmines in the capital, pointing out that a committee was formed to count those who were killed and went missing when Al-Qaeda seized the towns.
More than 270,000 people fled Abyan during the war on Al-Qaeda to Aden and nearby provinces.
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[An Nahar] World powers agreed Saturday to a plan for a transition in Syria that could include current regime members, but 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... doubted if Syrians would pick leaders "with blood on their hands".
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as The Woman to Call at 3 a.m. and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Henry L. Stimson ... made it clear that Washington did not see any role for Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... in the new regime, even though there was no explicit call for him to cede power.
"Assad will still have to go. He will never pass the mutual consent test," said Clinton.
While Annan did not name names and said it was up to the Syrians to decide who they want in a unity government, he added: "I would doubt that Syrians... would select people with blood on their hands to lead them."
The deal came despite initial pessimism from participants about the prospects of the Geneva talks due to deep divisions between the West and China and Russia on the future of Assad.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said following the meeting that Moscow had convinced other parties to accept that the transition would be decided by Syrians and that no party should be excluded from the process.
"How exactly the work on a transition to a new stage is conducted will be decided by the Syrians themselves," he said.
"There are no demands to exclude from this process any one group. This aspect had been present in many of our partners' proposals. We have convinced them that this is unacceptable," Lavrov said.
A long-time Syria ally, Russia is loathe to cast Assad aside, even as relations between Moscow and Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... have cooled.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also stressed that "outsiders cannot make decisions for the Syrian people."
As divisions threatened to scupper talks earlier Saturday, Annan had warned at the opening of the meeting that history "will judge us all harshly" if world powers failed to bridge their gaps on how to end the bloodshed in Syria and chart a transition.
A failure to unite also raised the spectra that the conflict that has claimed 15,800 lives over 16 months in the strategic Middle East country could spill over to the region and expose the world to fresh threats, said the former U.N. chief.
"History is a somber judge -- and it will judge us all harshly if we prove incapable of taking the right path today," Annan told the five permanent Security Council members -- the United States, Russia, Britannia, China and La Belle France -- as well as regional powers Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait and Iraq.
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#1
All these UN/EU/USDS idiots really want to be responsible for the massacre of several million Alawites and Christians?
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. (AP) Police in Maryland say a man has been charged with assault for using a slingshot, though not the military variety, to fire glass marbles at a speed camera van. "He's doing thirty-one, thirty-two, spiderweb..."
Authorities say Bruce Lawrence May of Ellicott City was read his rights and given state-sponsored lodgings Tuesday. The 50-year-old Lawrence was also charged with destruction of property and reckless endangerment. He was released in exchange for thirty pictures of Benjamin Franklin.
Howard County police say that at about 5 p.m. Tuesday, the van was near Manor Woods Elementary School when the operator heard something collide with the side of the vehicle. The operator saw a minivan pass and saw the driver with a slingshot fire another projectile at the speed camera van. "Watch it, beauzeau! You could put an eye out with that!"
"I just intend to put a radar eye out with it."
Police say that May had received two speed camera violations recently.
[Dawn] Holding police responsible for the murder of its chief Fahimur Rehman and his three associates, the Bazidkhel Qaumi Lashkar on Friday decided to move the court for seeking help in getting a murder case registered against some top Beautiful Downtown Peshawar police bosses.
On the other hand, Sherlocks are clueless about the two missing officials of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, who accompanied the lashkar leaders from Peshawar to Islamabad 'on a mission'.
"We have been continuously contacting the missing coppers but their mobile numbers have not been responding since the murder of the four," an investigation officer told Dawn.
Asif Khan, brother of Mr Rehman, blamed Peshawar SSP Tahir Ayub and DSP Shah Nawaz for the murder of his brother and
others.
He said police had sent them on a mission with their guards but they were later found dead with the whereabouts of the said
guards not known.
Mr Asif rejected the claims of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain and Lashkar-e-Islam, to have killed the lashkar leaders and said none of the peace body members was ready to buy the orc outfits' version.
"Everyone knows very well that Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam never kill their opponents. They rather separate behead opponents, dump their bodies by roads and pathways with warning notes, and distribute video clips among people," he said. He
said it seemed his brother had been killed while he was asleep.
Mr Asif said he would decide about the next line of action in a meeting of area elders but he was sure that a murder case would be registered against the culpable police.
He said Mr Fahim had taken around Rs0.3 million and sophisticated weapons with him but nothing was found when his body was recovered. A member of the lashkar said the peace body would continue anti-militant activities without seeking help of
law-enforcement agencies.
"We will never trust police unless they take the sought-after steps to our satisfaction," he said.
When contacted, DSP Shah Nawaz denied role in the four killings and said he had no relations with the lashkar people.
"I am the in charge of the Anti-Terrorist Squad and have to follow the directives of my bosses," he said, and added that he had send two ATS officials, sub-inspector Javaid Akhtar and assistant sub-inspector Mohammad Gul with the lashkar leaders as
guards on the orders of the Peshawar SSP (operations).
He said relatives of the missing coppers were contacting the relevant officers but their cellphones had been found switched off since June 25.
SSP Tahir Ayub told Dawn that he was hopeful that after return of the coppers, things about the killings would be clear.
"I have done nothing wrong. The lashkar people voiced doubts after police guards went missing," he said, adding that they had gone on a mission to Islamabad and wanted to go to Murree.
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(Sh.M.Network)- Kenyan security forces on Saturday scoured border regions with war-tornSomaliain the hunt for armed kidnappers who seized four foreign aid workers from Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp.
The two men and two women, who work with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), come from Canada,Norway,Pakistainand the Philippines. A Kenyan driver was killed and two others were maimed during Friday's attack.
"The search is intensifying and more security forces have been sent to make every effort possible but, so far, no one has been recovered," Kenyan army front man Cyrus Oguna told AFP.
Aerial searches were ongoing using both military helicopters and aircraft, while vehicles and troops on foot searched the remote scrubland either side of the mostly non-existent border withSomalia.
Kenya, which invaded southern Somaliain October to attack Al Qaeda linked Islamist beturbanned goons, has troops some 120 kilometres (75 miles) deep into Somalia. However, the way to a man's heart remains through his stomach... the forces control only pockets of the vast territory.
While many fear the gunnies and their hostages crossed swiftly intoSomalia-- only some 100 kilometres from Dadaab -- Oguna said he was still hopeful they remained inside Kenya.
"We are thinking that they are inKenya, we are making every effort that we can, and we are hopeful of a positive outcome," he added.
The aid workers' vehicle, which the gunnies stole after killing the driver, was found abandoned a few hours after the attack. Similar abductions in the past have seen the gunnies disappear into the bush to evade capture.
NRC is working to support some 465,000 inhabitants in the Dadaab complex, which constitutes Kenya's third-biggest town in terms of population.
The kidnapping is the latest in a series of attacks in Dadaab, where gunnies last October seized two Spaniards working for Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). They are still being held hostage in Somalia.
The abduction of the Spaniards was one of the incidents that spurredKenya to send troops and tanks into Somalia to fight the Al-Shabaab ... the personification of Somali state failure... forces of Evil Nairobi blames for abductions and for cross-border raids.
However, those who apply themselves too closely to little things often become incapable of great things... Kenyahas also voiced concern that Dadaab, too, poses a security threat, and has blocked registration of new refugees to the camp.
"The information we have is that the attackers came from the camp, and it raises serious questions that if they were refugees, how they got into the camp armed," Kenyan Defence Minister Yousuf Haji said.
Al-Shabaab still control large parts of southern Somalia, despite recent losses to African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... troops, government forces and Æthiopian soldiers, who have wrested several key bases from the beturbanned goons.
Representatives of the countries of those kidnapped said they were ensuring every effort was being made to secure the release of the aid workers.
"We are pursuing all appropriate channels... We will not comment or release any information which may compromise these efforts," said Canadian foreign ministry front man Claude Rochon, adding that the "first priority is the safety and security" of its citizens.
Philippine foreign affairs front man Raul Hernandez said the embassy in Nairobi had asked the Kenyan government for assistance, and was coordinating with the embassies of the other hostages.
Since the 1991 ouster of then president Mohammad Siad Barre,Somalia has been variously governed by ruthless warlords and militia groups, each controlling their own limited fiefdoms.
Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled to neighbouring countries since the collapse of a formal government two decades ago, while crippling drought and famine racked the lawless nation last year.
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[Dawn] ANOTHER day, another attack from across the Pak-Afghan border inside Pakistain. On Wednesday night, the attack in Upper Dir was not as damaging as the one launched Sunday -- security officials claimed that the only deaths were of cut-throats involved -- but it underscored the deteriorating security conditions in the area. The savagery of the Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... Taliban led by Maulana Fazlullah is well-known. At the height of their power in the Malakand region they committed atrocities that made them stand out even in the world of myrmidon violence. Having lost their fiefdom in 2009 but with their leadership on the run, there was always the likelihood they would creep back in and use tactics like beheadings and overrunning security check posts to sow fear in the region again. That is precisely what seems to be happening, notwithstanding the fact that the military does physically dominate the area in which Fazlullah and his band of violent Islamists ruled for several years.
Two points need to be made. One, pushing out cut-throats from one area -- whether into an adjoining tribal area or across the Pak-Afghan border -- is not a long-term solution. Only a concerted effort on both sides of the border to clamp down on militancy will stabilise the region. However, the way to a man's heart remains through his stomach... that process cannot be selective. There is a suspicion in Pak security circles that Afghan and foreign forces in Afghanistan are, at the very least, looking the other way while Pakistain-centric cut-throats pour across the border -- a tit-for-tat response to the Pak security establishment which refuses to squeeze the Haqqanis in particular on this side of the border. But that is a dangerous game in which only so-called non-state actors win. Better, then, for the Afghan, Pak and American governments to cooperate instead of engaging in what amounts to proxy warfare that could spiral out of control. The other point is that the Malakand operation was a success story that gave the inhabitants of the area a chance to rebuild their lives without the Taliban menace. Unless security is strengthened there, the perception that the Taliban are returning will only grow and may well prove a reality.
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[Yemen Post] A senior Yemeni lawyer Mohammad Naji Alaw has demanded President Abdurabu Mansour Hadi ...the second and possibly the last president of Yemen, successor to former President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh... and Interior Minister Abdul-Qadir Qahtan to investigate repeated escapes of Al-Qaeda prisoners from Yemeni jails.
in remarks to Akhbar Alyawam Newspaper, Alaw accused some security services including intelligence services of standing behind the escaped of al-Qaeda inmates.
Yemen witnessed last week two escapes of al-Qaeda prisoners as ten prisoners escaped an Aden jail and 23 others managed to escape from a jail in port city of Hodeidah.
Alaw, who is also chief of Hood Organization for Rights and Freedoms, affirmed that the escapes of Al-Qaeda prisoners were pre-planned, pointing out that officials of the former regime were involved in facilitating the escape of Al-Qaeda inmates.
He called for forming judicial committees to investigate the subsequent escape incidents, stressing that those jails from which the prisoners escaped enjoy good protection and guard.
Alaw, who is a high-ranking leader of the Islamic Islah party, expressed concern ...meaning the brow was mildly wrinkled, the eyebrows drawn slightly together, and a thoughtful expression assumed, not that anything was actually done or indeed that any thought was actually expended... s about the escapes, indicating that the officials of the jails have not never been investigated about the escape processes and how they were carried out.
He cited that about 80 Al-Qaeda prisoners previously beat feet from a jail of Hadramout ...the formerly independent Qu'aiti state and sultanate, annexed by Communist South Yemen in 1968, encompassing a region along the Gulf of Aden, extending eastwards to the borders of the Dhofar region of Oman. The people are called Hadhramis and speak Hadhrami Arabic. The city Tarimis estimated to contain the highest concentration of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (PTUI) anywhere in the world, approximately seven in every square yard... governorate and dozens others beat feet from Aden and Sana'a in past years, emphasizing that no official was tried about such escapes.
"Abdul-Karim Al-Iryani (a veteran Yemeni politician) once said that Al-Qaeda is made up inside the Political Security (anintelligence service), this process is still ongoing, and these escapes are a part of that" he added.
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[Bangla Daily Star] Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since 1981. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide... yesterday alleged that carrying out killings, conspiracies and indulging in corruption were the characters of BNP.
"BNP had gifted the nation grenades, Bangla Bhai and snuffies during its previous rule," she told a rally at Sarishabari upazila of Jamalpur.
Hasina alleged that the then BNP government had killed people in the name of 'Operation Clean Heart' and made many people crippled. "But we didn't take any measures out of vengeance. We've engaged all our efforts for the development of the country," she said.
The Awami League president said the present government had ensured food security, education for all and also arranged higher education through the Education Trust Fund.
Accusing the BNP of adopting the 'policy of begging' and making the country and its people dependent on others, Hasina said: "Awami League works to make people self-dependent without taking support from others and let them march ahead with heads held high."
She alleged that the then BNP government had 'arbitrarily stopped' operation of mills and factories including jute mills, and "fuelled high inflation and brought miseries for the farmers".
On the contrary, the prime minister claimed that her present government was reopening the closed mills and factories, and providing fertilisers to the farmers at lower prices.
About electricity, the prime minister said that the BNP government had 'looted public money' in the name of power generation. "We had left 4300 megawatts of electricity generation, but the subsequent BNP government brought it down to 3200 megawatts," claimed Hasina.
Assuming office this time, she said the present government added nearly 3800 MW over the last three and a half years, and ensured power supply in the mills and factories to keep the wheels of production running.
Hasina said her government was working to bring financial solvency for the people. "We've brought down the poverty rate to 31 percent, showing a decline of 10 percent."
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[An Nahar] About 1,000 people were set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock You have the right to remain silent... and hundreds injured -- many by tear gas -- during anti-regime protests on Friday in Sudan, an activist group said on Saturday's anniversary of President Omar al-Bashir Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to Arabize Darfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it. 's coup.
The information minister called the protesters "rioters" who threaten the country's stability.
"Some were tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! and released," said an official from the Organization for Defense of Rights and Freedoms.
The organization's figures indicate a dramatic rise in the number of arrests on Friday, the 14th day of anti-regime demonstrations sparked by inflation.
"The figure of those tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! before yesterday (Friday) was about 1,000 in the whole country," said the official who asked not to be identified because of the tense situation.
Many are still being held in prisons or "ghost houses," the location of which is unknown, he alleged.
"They don't tell you where they are. You are not even allowed to ask," he said.
One of those set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock You have the right to remain silent... is Sudanese journalist Talal Saad, who had brought some freelance photos of the protests to the Agence La Belle France Presse bureau in Khartoum on Friday.
Armed national security agents raided the bureau, ordered AFP's correspondent to delete the photos and took Saad away.
He has been unreachable for about 21 hours.
Police said in a statement that "some of the rioters" were tossed in the calaboose Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! and would be brought to trial after "small groups" demonstrated in Khartoum and elsewhere.
Police contained the situation "with a minimum use of force," they said.
The Organization for Defense of Rights and Freedoms said "a few hundred" people were maimed during the Friday protests.
Many elderly people were affected by tear gas, but other injuries came from rubber bullets, tear gas canisters or beatings, the Rights and Freedoms official said.
Information Minister Ghazi al-Sadiq issued an appeal for people "not to allow the rioters to undermine security and stability of the Sudan."
In a statement on the official SUNA news agency, he said Sudanese have the right to peaceful expression without resorting to violence "to allow the enemies to exploit these protests to carry out foreign agendas against the country."
Activists had called for a major day of protest on Friday.
In one key disturbance, witnesses said police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of peaceful protesters who had gathered in Hijra Square beside the mosque of the opposition Umma party in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman.
One witness said demonstrators carried Sudanese flags and banners reading "The people want the regime to fall," a slogan used by protesters during the Arab Spring uprisings against regional strongmen over the past year.
They burned tyres and threw stones at police before running for cover, the witness said.
Similar running battles between protesters and police took place elsewhere in Khartoum, the witness added.
International criticism of Sudan's crackdown increased on Friday with Canada's top diplomat expressing concern.
"We condemn the arrests of bloggers, journalists and political activists that have taken place over the last week and call for their immediate release," Foreign Minister John Baird said.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has urged the government to avoid "heavy-handed suppression" of protests and to immediately release those set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock You have the right to remain silent... for exercising their rights to freedom of assembly and expression.
Britannia and the United States have also sought the release of those set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock You have the right to remain silent... for peaceful protest.
On June 30, 1989, Bashir seized power from democratically elected prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, who currently leads the Umma party.
Bashir was declared winner of a multi-party election in 2010, but observers from the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... and the U.S.-based Carter Centre said the ballot failed to come up to international standards.
Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ... for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide allegedly committed in Sudan's western region of Darfur.
He has played down the demonstrations as small-scale and not comparable to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere, maintaining that he himself remains popular.
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[Dawn] Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf defended on Saturday President Asif Ali Zaradri's immunity, saying it would end the day after he leaves office.
His comments come after the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the new prime minister two weeks to indicate whether he would ask Swiss authorities to reopen corruption cases against the president.
The issue has caused removal of Ashraf's predecessor Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's former prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics could be awe-inspiring ... from office as prime minister on June 19 after the court convicted him of contempt in April for refusing to reopen the multi-million-dollar cases.
"He (Asif Ali Zardari) is the democratic elected President of Pakistain and as per law he enjoys the immunity as long as he holds the office," Ashraf told news hounds in Lahore.
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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.
Pervez 
A man suspected of association with al Qaeda has been 
Five men, including a suspected gangster, were rubbed out in different parts of the city on Friday, said police.
cycle of violence
Somali pirates
[Yemen Post] Seven Yemeni soldiers were poisoned last Thursday, while they were performing their tasks in a checkpoint located in a main entrance of the capital Sana'a, military sources said. 
(Sh. M. Network)-At least two soldiers are reportedly killed after 
At least 53 people were killed, mostly civilians, in violence across Syria on Saturday, and hundreds more were trapped in Douma as regime forces stormed the town in 
Pakistan's military establishment and the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) have resolved that territories of Pakistan and Afghanistan will no longer be used as safe havens for cross-border attacks.
[Dawn] RECENTLY, I came across a quote ascribed to Albert Camus: "No cause is worth a single innocent human life." Applauding the sentiment, I did a quick search for the context in which the Nobel Prize winner might have written the sentence.
The more effective method, of course, would be to tackle this problem at its roots, going after the 
Apparently tiring of US soil as a source of campaign dollars, the Obama campaign is headed overseas -- with its celebrity friends in tow. The European Obama campaign starts next week in Paris 
Leader of the Opposition 
She made the allegation in Chittagong yesterday on the occasion of distributing relief among landslide and flood victims at Swadhinata Park under Chandgaon Police Station.
China blocked web searches Saturday for the name of leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping, a day after cutting access to Bloomberg sites following the agency's publication of a report on his family's wealth.
WASHINGTON - International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde called Egyptian President-elect Mohamed Mursi to discuss the economic challenges facing Egypt and how the international lender can best help, a spokesperson for the IMF said on Friday.
About 70% of the inhabitants of Jaar town have returned to their homes after the army drove Al-Qaeda 
...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...
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. (AP) Police in Maryland say a man has been charged with assault for using 
Holding police responsible for the murder of its chief Fahimur Rehman and his three associates, the Bazidkhel Qaumi Lashkar on Friday decided to move the court for seeking help in getting a murder case registered against some top 
(Sh.M.Network)- Kenyan security forces on Saturday scoured border regions with war-tornSomaliain the hunt for armed kidnappers who seized four foreign aid workers from Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp.
ANOTHER day, another attack from across the Pak-Afghan border inside Pakistain. On Wednesday night, the attack in Upper Dir was not as damaging as the one launched Sunday -- security officials claimed that the only deaths were of 
A senior Yemeni lawyer Mohammad Naji Alaw has demanded President 
...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since 1981. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide...
International Criminal Court
