HT to Gateway Pundit. A little more on why this asshat had to step down On the bright side, he's now available to lead the rewiring of our East Coast...
Scott Gration, who had led the US embassy in Nairobi since February last year, stepped down late last week, citing "differences with Washington regarding my leadership style".
It is understood that the State Department's inspector general is preparing to release a scathing report on Mr Gration, who is a close ally of President Barack Obama, following an extensive internal inquiry. just as narcissistic as his Executive
The former Air Force major general is said to have shown a "confrontational" and eccentric style of micromanagement that caused low morale and complaints among embassy staff.
Mr Gration repeatedly engaged in battles with employees and, according to a report by Foreign Policy, threatened at one point to "shoot them in the head" if they did not comply. Sounds reasonable
It is also alleged that Mr Gration might have lost his security clearance after the inquiry found he had used a personal email account for official business and set up an office in an embassy lavatory in order to get around the building's secure network.
Such was his eccentric style that soon after starting the job he also ordered that the heights of all embassy tables be adjusted and demanded that all clocks be recalibrated, according to reports. Obama would be proud
The disclosures threaten to embarrass Mr Obama, who previously made Mr Gration his special envoy to Sudan after the veteran diplomat became an early champion of his presidential ambitions.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/04/2012
16:42 ||
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"Veteran diplomat" or "former Major General"? Can't really be both, and sounds like he was neither.
#2
Gration's roots in Africa run deep. He grew up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya to missionary parents and speaks fluent Swahili. As Sudan envoy, he took a stance widely seen among activists as too solicitous to the Khartoum regime, focusing more on incentives than pressures -- or, as he infelicitously once described them, "cookies" and "gold stars." That stance caused friction between Gration and other top Obama officials, especially U.N. ambassador Susan Rice.
Only Obama can hand out the "cookies and gold stars." Under the crew bus for you general.
An Oregon town has reportedly canceled its annual fireworks show out of concern the Fourth of July pyrotechnics will scare sea birds roosting nearby. Boggle.
Town officials in Depoe Bay have announced the cancellation of the annual pre-Independence Day fireworks show on July 3 following pressure from federal wildlife managers who said the noise disrupts sea birds in the area, the Oregonian reports. Unboggle.
The move has irked local business owners who count on the popular show to bring foot traffic. Don't forget to vote in the upcoming elections.
"It's a great loss to our community," Peggy Leoni, co-owner of Trollers Lodge, a small motel in Depoe Bay, told the newspaper.
Rebecca Chuck, deputy project leader with the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex, said the move was necessary to protect species such as the Brandt's cormorant that nest at Pirates Cove. And don't forget to do a little bit of research before you vote.
The cove is less than a mile south of Boiler Bay, where the fireworks show is held, and seabird colonies on the north coast face intensifying pressure from bald eagles and other predators. The event at Boiler Bay has been a tradition since 1993. It looks like Independence Day is one of many things you really shouldn't take for granted, voters.
Great! Now we have too many bald eagles? Where's the irony meter?
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/04/2012 17:33
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#2
They're pulling this crap in San Diego too. Funny, though, how all those years before the wackos started making an issue of it, all the little critters seemed to be doing just fine.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
07/04/2012 17:52
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Question, How many birds have you Killed with fireworks?
Any?
None?
Prove that birds are stupid enough to flu INTO fireworks?
None?
Fuk off.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 18:07
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Now that the birds are safe from fireworks let's put up a big wind farm so they aren't killed by climate change!
TEHRAN (FNA)- Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that the IRGC has detailed contingency plans to hit 35 US bases in the region in the early minutes of a possible conflict.
"We have thought of measures to set up bases and deploy missiles to destroy all these bases in the early minutes after an attack," Hajizadeh said on Wednesday, referring to Iran's contingency plans for any potential confrontation with the US.
He said that the US has 35 bases around Iran, and stated, "All these bases are within the reach of our missiles. Meantime, the occupied (Palestinian) lands (Israel) are good targets for us as well."
The commander explained that the current IRGC missile wargames is a practice of targeting a single hypothetical enemy airbase which is a replica of the US bases in the region.
So they have a Potemkin village of each of our bases, eh?
On Tuesday, the IRGC Aerospace Force started massive missile wargames, codenamed Payambar-e Azam 7 (The Great Prophet 7), by firing tens of short, mid and long-range missiles from bases across the country at a single target in Central Iran.
They say they fired the missiles, and I'll bet they have photos to prove it...
The IRGC units fired tens of Shahab 1, 2 and 3, Fateh, Qiyam, Persian Gulf and Zelzal missiles at a hypothetical enemy air base - which IRGC officials had earlier said is a replica of the air bases of the trans-regional powers (the US) - in Iran's Lut Desert simultaneously.
The Islamic Republic's top military officials have repeatedly warned that in case of an attack by either the US or Israel, the country would target all American bases in the Middle East and close the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
An estimated 40 percent of the world's oil supply passes through the waterway.
In similar remarks last month, Hajizadeh had said that the numerous military bases of the trans-regional powers in Iran's neighborhood have provided an "opportunity" for the IRGC.
He said Iran believes that the US military bases in the region "are no threat; rather we view them as an opportunity".
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/04/2012
13:05 ||
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What if the Iranian missile bases disappear in the first minute of the attack? They won't be able to fire a few minutes later.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/04/2012 13:33
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I bet the AWACS were up and tracking signals and radar
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/04/2012 14:23
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I wonder how they simulated our F-22 Raptors in their missile exercises.
"Amir! Keep a good eye on that empty piece of sky over there."
Posted by: Matt ||
07/04/2012 15:09
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Obviously war is never a good thing, least of all when it has the potential of postponing of an election, or enhancing a candidate's credentials. Dire, long term measures could also result should a foreign adversary attack our homeland.
#6
Lincoln didn't Reschedule the Election when the Civil War was happening. There's no excuse to do so now. It would be a Death Sentence for the Democratic Party.
Posted by: Charles ||
07/04/2012 18:33
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NEW YORK -- Joey Chestnut won his sixth straight Coney Island hot dog eating contest.
The San Jose, Calif., man known as "Jaws" scarfed down 68 hot dogs and buns to win Wednesday in Brooklyn. He takes home $10,000 and a mustard-yellow champion's belt.
The total tied his personal best and the record. Last year, Chestnut won with 62 hot dogs.
Second place went to Tim Janus with 52 hot dogs, who takes home $5,000. He was third last year.
Chestnut is now tied with is former rival, Takeru Kobayashi, with six wins. Kobayashi did not compete.
Sonya Thomas, of Alexandria, Va., downed 45 hot dogs to win the women's competition.
The Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest has been a city tradition for 97 years.
A DeSoto [TX] homeowner shot and killed an intruder with an AK-47 assault rifle early Monday morning.
A group of at least two intruders pried open the front door of a residence in the 500 block of Ten Mile drive around 4 a.m., according to DeSoto police spokesman Capt. Ron Smith. They demanded money from the homeowner, who shot Christopher Bason, 22, and Arthur Rubalcava, 24, Smith said. The homeowner suffered no injuries other than bruising.
DeSoto police and a SWAT team responded after a neighbor reported hearing gunshots, Smith said.
Bason died on the scene. Rubalcava was critically injured and transported to Methodist Dallas Medical Center, where he received surgery. His condition is improving, according to Smith.
Just a little more time at the range, please, Mr. Homeowner. But nice going. Protect the family and the homestead.
At this point in the investigation, it appears that Alexxis Gonzalez, 21, knew the homeowner and planned the break-in. Police believe that Fabin Flores, 21, drove the getaway car.
Rubalcava, Gonzalez and Flores, all Fort Worth residents, have been charged with aggravated robbery, Smith said. Gonzalez and Flores are both in the DeSoto city jail each on $500,000 bond.
#1
It's not entirely clear who had the AK-47 - the intruder or the homeowner. Obviously the homeowner was armed, unless he wrestled the AK-47 away from the intruder.
If the homeowner had the AK and the intruders weren't armed, how did they have the cojones to "demand money"?
"Hey, Mr.Homeowner, give us money!"
"Say hello to my little friend"
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/04/2012 13:40
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they should have taken their time getting the second man too the hospital.
Posted by: chris ||
07/04/2012 22:03
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Investigators claim Hezbollah using Leb's banks in large scale money-laundering scheme; US activists call on firms to dump Lebanese debt, securities.
In a move that could destabilize Beirut's financial position, a US pressure group urged international financial firms on Tuesday to ditch Lebanese debt and securities, saying that Hezbollah is using Leb's banks in a large scale money-laundering scheme that is also helping Iran evade banking sanctions.
New York-based United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) made public the results of a three-month, confidential investigation into the influence of Iran and Hezbollah on Leb's banking system and its sovereign bond market. The group says Leb's financial system -- including Banque du Liban, the country's central bank -- is being used to funnel massive amounts of illicit cash from Hezbollah and its state sponsor, Iran.
Leb's banks then use the laundered money to buy Lebanese sovereign debt, which has the effect of making the country appear far more financially stable than it actually is, UANI claims.
In a recent letter to Banque du Liban's governor, Riad T. Salame, UANI CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace said Leb had become a "sovereign money-laundering jurisdiction that receives massive inflows of illicit deposits from Hezbollah terror and criminal activities." Wallace accused Leb of using the massive amounts of illicit funding to create a false picture to global markets of economic stability, particularly regarding Lebanese sovereign bonds and credit default swaps.
"In fact, the real picture of Leb and its sovereign backed securities reveals a fraud and market manipulation that is used by Hezbollah, Banque du Liban and the Lebanese banking system to continue money laundering on a massive scale," he added.
The massive funds came from Hezbollah's criminal activities and some also came from Syria, according to UANI.
Wallace said that the large majority of the illegal funds were laundered into the Lebanese banking system by front companies, Hezbollah supporters and Hezbollah Bayt al-Mal '("House of Money"), a Hezbollah-controlled organization that carries out financial services for the terror group.
Iran also transacts funds through the Lebanese banking system to evade the effects of international sanctions, including the banking embargo, Wallace added. He told Salame that Teheran was directing increasing support to Hezbollah to evade sanctions pressure by ensuring its proxy's stability.
Iran's support for Hezbollah is widely known. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly announced in a February speech that the Islamic Theocratic Republic supports the terror group.
In May, a US court ordered Iran to pay $44.6 million in damages to victims of Hezbollah's 1983 US Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, after ruling that the Lebanese terror group carried out the attack with massive technological and material support from Iran.
FBI experts testified that at the time of the attack, the PETN explosives used in the bomb were only manufactured in bulk form in Iran.
Earlier this year, Salame told Wallace that the Lebanese Central Bank does not have any relationship with Iran's Central Bank, Bank Markazi, and that there is only one Iranian bank, Bank Saderat Iran, in Leb. According to the US Treasury Department, which in 2007 designated Bank Saderat as a terror supporter, Iran uses the bank to transfer millions of dollars to several terror groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, and Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Mohammedan Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the liquidation of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... Meanwhile, ...back at the cheese factory, all the pieces finally fell together in Fluffy's mind... UANI say they have also written to Lebanese bondholders and international bond credit agencies, calling on the latter to issue a "no rating" for Leb. Lebanese sovereign debt is currently rated by Standard and Poor's as B (highly speculative). Four financial firms -- Austrian Erste-Sparinvest, Finnish bank Aktia, US-based Eaton Vance and Ameriprise Financial -- have already divested from Lebanese debt securities, according to UANI.
UANI has also called for the US Treasury to designate Leb as a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern under the Patriot Act, as it has previously done with Iran.
UANI's accusations come days after US officials targeted a Hezbollah-linked drugmoney- laundering network in Colombia.
Last Wednesday, the US Treasury named four people and three companies it said are involved in laundering drug trafficking monies for Hezbollah-linked drug kingpin Ayman Joumaa. The Treasury also designated a Colombia- based individual, Ali Mohamad Saleh, as directing Hezbollah's fundraising activities from business owners and residents in the Americas.
"The Joumaa network is a sophisticated multi-national money-laundering ring, which launders the proceeds of drug trafficking for the benefit of criminals and the terrorist group Hezbollah," said under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence David S. Cohen.
#1
Perhaps we can't stop them, but we can censure and refuse to deal with them, that'll put them out of business permanently.
(Watch for a name-only change)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 12:38
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I'll bet Dubai is not happy with having competition.
Press TV says suspects employed methods identical to those Israel trying to implement
Iran has placed in long-term storage Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! two Azerbaijanis on charges of espionage, English-language Press TV reported on Tuesday, after months of rising tensions between the Caspian Sea neighbors.
Â
"An official ... told Press TV that the collected evidence indicates that (they) entered Iran under the direction of the Republic of Azerbaijan's secret service known as MTN. They were supposed to recruit a number of dissidents in Iran to promote separatism," the report said.
The arrests, which Press TV said happened in May, are likely to add to tensions, already running high between the two countries.
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Iran has accused Baku of helping Israel in what it says was the Jewish state's liquidation of Iranian nuclear scientists - a claim Azerbaijan has denied.
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"The methods employed by the two agents is identical to those Israel has long been trying to implement," the report said, adding that the men had obtained confidential information and images of strategic locations.
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Tehran recalled its ambassador in May for consultations after anti-Iranian protest in Baku following Tehran's criticism of Azerbaijan's hosting of the flamboyant Eurovision Song Contest - capping months of accusations by the two countries of meddling in each other's affairs.
Â
The Iranian envoy returned to Baku last month.
Â
Azerbaijan has placed in long-term storage Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! dozens of people this year on suspicion of links to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, and of plotting attacks, including on the Israeli ambassador to Baku.
Â
It barred a senior Iranian official from entering the country in May and tossed in the clink ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... an Iranian news hound for two years for possession of drugs.
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About 15 percent of Iranians are ethnic Azeris and there are strong linguistic and family cross-border ties.
Shame indeed. Don't like July 4, 1776? Try July 4, 1863 - victory at Gettysburg.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
As the song says: "As He died to make men Holy, let us die to make men free". Ponder that, leftist wankers
#1
As the song says: "As He died to make men Holy, let us die to make men free". Ponder that, leftist wankers
Sadly, they dare not allow men to be truly free. Such a thing would consign them to history's trash heap.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/04/2012 11:45
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This would bother me more if being a lefty didn't involve signing away your humanity and soul to be a sub-human slave/drone that worships human sacrifice of infants and crime victims.
I mean, how much can you really expect from a soulless drone that can't understand facts delivered by cluebyfour.
#3
Don't like July 4, 1776? Try July 4, 1863 - victory at Gettysburg
Also on July 4, 1863, Vicksburg fell to the Union, which gave control of the Mississippi River to the Union, splitting the Confederacy. One could debate whether Vicksburg or Gettysburg was more significant in the course of the Civil War.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/04/2012 13:56
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Vokof jou communist gekkie, jy's nie American nie. Not even close! You are free to leave anytime you wish. Pack it up you worthless piece of kak.
#8
It takes little effort to scan the headlines from around the world to make one realized how fortunate we are to live in the country. It is difficult to understand why people who express views such as Sorkin, Chris Rock, and others are so bitter. The country has been good to them. Do they think they are clever parroting the tripe of the left which bashes the U.S.? Would they rather live in a Communist country? An Islamic country?
#14
Actually, it's been happening recently with Constitutionally illiterate judges acting as useful tools for the Left. Time to remove judicial immunity (btw, a creation of that same said caste).
As part of our ongoing project to update and improve the core documents of American history, we present the opening sections of the Declaration of Independence as they ought to have been written, and indeed as it would have been written if the still primitive colonial political process had only been sophisticated enough to restrict participation at important conferences to the appropriately certified, trained and peer-reviewed experts who could have produced a document worth remembering.
The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen Post-Colonial, Multi-Racial Societes of North America
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to strengthen the political bands which have connected them with the Global Community, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the cooperative and deferential station which a careful review of the relevant peer reviewed literature suggests is most appropriate for long term win-win outcomes, a decent and rigorously equal respect to the opinions of woman- and man- and transkind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the ever deeper union.
We hold these views to be consistent with the evolving cultural consensus, that all humans are equally obliged to the performance of certain Duties, that among these are the Participation in the Struggle against Racism, Economic Injustice, Genetically Modified Organisms, Homophobia, Nationalism and the Excessive Emission of Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gasses. That to secure the performance of these Duties, Governments are instituted among humans, deriving their just powers from the considered Opinions of the Educated Classes, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Duty of the Enlightened and Credentialed Guardians of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect the Unquestioning Performance of their Duties by the Less Enlightened Members of the Public. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Change cannot come too quickly to suit the Convenience and the Predilections of an Enlightened Minority;  Governments long established should be changed the Moment a Sufficient Number of Well Regarded Contributors to the New York Review of Books have determined that such Change is Morally Incumbent; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that intellectuals who have never run anything in their lives are the Fittest of all Living People to remedy virtually any evil by abolishing the forms of Government, Laws and Customs of Society to which the brutish and unreflective Common People are accustomed. And when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Failed Dogmas of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy evinces a design to allow said Common People to evade all obligations to the Global Community, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide New and Expanded Regulations for the future better restriction of the Lower Orders as they deem Meet for the Purpose.
#4
Thought this was from the Onion at first. After checking, these wankers are serious. What they are about: "The American Interest represents a new and fascinating sun in the expanding galaxy of opponents of Bush administration policy." Robert S. Boynton Pure unadulterated crap.
If you asked my true religion, I would not answer anything practiced in a church, synagogue or mosque. My real religion is America, and I feel privileged that, among the world’s 7 billion people, I am one of the roughly 300 million lucky enough to be an American. This transcends mere patriotism. I believe in what this country stands for, even though I acknowledge its limits and failures. As individuals, we are no better than most(selfishness and prejudice having survived). As a society, we have often violated our loftiest ideals (starting with the acceptance of slavery in 1787). Our loud insistence of “exceptionalism” offends millions of non-Americans, who find us exceptional only in our relentless boasting.
But these caveats do not dim my love of country. I am still stirred by “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I think our messy mixture of democratic traditions, respect for the individual and economic dynamism commands a unique place in human history. In most societies, people are marked by where they were born, their ethnic heritage or religious conviction. In the United States, these are secondary. Americans’ self-identity springs from the beliefs on which this country was founded, including the belief that no one is automatically better than anyone else simply by virtue of birth. Isn't that one of the things that makes us "exceptional"? No nobles and serfs? Do read the whole thing!
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/04/2012
09:15 ||
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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
#2
The deal is all men and women are created equal, not everyone is equal. They have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is about it. They are not guaranteed a bunch of free sh*t, contrary to what some people think.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/04/2012 17:37
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As we celebrate our nation's independence midway through a year of rabid presidential politics, it is refreshing to reflect upon our first president, the hero of America's revolution and commander in chief upon our liberation from King George.
To say that they don't make them like George Washington anymore is to insult understatement. But those who admire him have a duty, today of all days, to remember him before he is forgotten by younger generations who, through no fault of their own, have no sense of him. They haven't been taught, and the shame of this belongs to all, with a few notable exceptions.
Among these is a handful of ladies (and no, copy editors, you may not change "ladies" to "women") who strive daily to keep Washington's name and legacy in the dimming lights of history. Unheralded and largely unknown, they deserve recognition for their valiant and extravagant efforts to preserve one of America's most valuable assets, including the original ruminations of its greatest thinkers.
These would be the members of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, who volunteer their time and talents -- and open their wallets -- to maintain Washington's home on the Potomac. An excellent place to visit, but not free. Get there before the gates open, the tour is crowded. Not close by, but also worthy, is Jefferson's home, about four hours away -- today, a good four days away 240 years ago.
Latest to the collection is Washington's original copy of the "Acts of Congress," a 106-page volume that contains his personal copy of the Constitution, a draft of the Bill of Rights, and other documents pertaining to early acts of the new Congress. Washington's own handwritten scribbles are penciled in the margins.
The Mount Vernon ladies captured the book in a Christie's bidding war using private funds. Unbeknown to most visitors to Mount Vernon -- and certainly the millions who don't know it exists -- Washington's home was saved and is maintained without a penny of public funds.
The ladies' association is a lesson in volunteerism worthy of its own chapter. The association was formed in 1853 by South Carolina native Ann Pamela Cunningham, whose mother had noticed a large, dilapidated house perched on a hill along the Potomac River and was outraged to learn it was Washington's home. Inspired by her mother, Cunningham reached out to Southern women to raise funds to buy the estate and, in 1860, open it to the public, thus beginning a 152-year-old tradition.
Since then, more than 80 million have visited the house and grounds, which include an underground museum (so as not to mar the landscape), gardens, a slave burial ground, and the final resting place of George and Martha Washington. Even the opposite shore of the Potomac has been preserved so that visitors can enjoy the same view that Washington did.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/04/2012
09:06 ||
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I have been there but didn't know the history. Great place to visit but not in July and August.
Too blasting hot in summer with humidity. You need only bring a spoon as the others will bring a fork in summer.
A growing number of Republican state leaders are revolting against the major Medicaid expansion called for under President Obama's health-care overhaul, threatening to undermine one of the law's most fundamental goals: insuring millions of poor Americans. Maybe we could afford catastrophic insurance for them, but no ... the Dims want free aspirin for the poor. No, the Dims want to tell you when you can have an aspirin...
The Republican governors of four states -- Florida, Iowa, Louisiana and South Carolina -- have declared that they want to opt out of the expansion. Leaders of half a dozen other states -- including Texas, home to one of the largest concentrations of uninsured people -- are considering following suit.
The governors argue that expanding their Medicaid programs, which are jointly funded with state and federal money, would crush state budgets. But this was a partially-funded mandate, not an unfunded one, like so many others.
And they are turning the issue into a roiling election-year battle over the federal government's role. The Supreme Court opened the door Thursday when it announced that although the rest of the law is constitutional, the federal government cannot punish states that refuse to adopt the measure's more generous eligibility rules for Medicaid.
"The president . . . needs to understand what makes this country great in part is that we're not dependent on government programs," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Tuesday. "It seems to me like the president measures success by how many people are on food-stamp rolls and government-run health care. That's only the Democratic dream, but not the American Dream."
Such a message has the potential to further fuel the tea party movement, which galvanized three years ago over the health-care legislation and could put enormous pressure on GOP leaders. Already, large tea party organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are urging their members to lobby states to reject the federal Medicaid money, with a particular focus on the 27 that challenged the law in court.
The ramifications could be far-reaching, because the law's top ambition is to extend coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans. More than half of those people are slated to receive insurance through the Medicaid expansion.
"This has always been the core of the law, and the court has just made it optional," said Matt Salo, director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. Wotta coincidence!
The prospect has alarmed and energized not just advocates for the poor but also representatives of hospitals, which are chronically burdened with the cost of treating the uninsured. Now, they pass the costs along to the paying customers, without passing it through the Feds. That's a problem for Obama and cronies.
Hospital associations agreed to help fund the law by accepting various cuts to their reimbursement rates with the expectation that they would be more than compensated by money from patients newly insured through Medicaid. Now they worry they'll only get the lower payments. I guess they'll just have to work to cancel the whole enchilada.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/04/2012
08:51 ||
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Once you accept the Obamageld, you never get rid of the Obama.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
07/04/2012 19:19
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Al-Qaeda offshoot Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) drove Touareg rebel group National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) out of Gao last week. The first-ever armed clashes between the two rival factions left at least 21 dead.
The strife followed a protest last Tuesday by residents upset over the killing of municipal councillor Idrissa Oumarou. Malian rebels opened fire on the rally, but it was not clear which rebel group had started shooting civilians.
MUJAO has now become the dominant force in the city and imposed a night curfew last Wednesday, Le Journal Du Mali reported Friday.
MUJAO member Abu Daoud said, "We are now present in the Koro Gusso area after MNLA's army escaped last night," adding that MNLA had a chaotic evacuation and left behind equipment, including two tanks, two trucks and a missile launcher.
Echourouk reported that terrorists had seized heavy weapons and anti-aircraft missiles. MNLA fled the scene after their field commander Belal Ag Sharif was injured and transferred to Burkina Faso for treatment along with four interim government ministers.
With the MUJAO controlling Gao, the three main cities in northern Mali (Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao) are now dominated by terrorist groups.
Gao-based journalist Osman Ag Mohamed Osman said Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb "provided military supplies and equipment to MUJAO and was a part of the military operation, forcing MNLA to depart from city and airport."
Meanwhile, rumours circulated that AQIM emir Khaled Abou El Abbas (aka Mokhtar Belmokhtar, or "Laaouar"), who was reportedly personally directing and participating in the clashes against the Touareg rebels, was killed in the battle.
MNLA media official Moussa Ag al-Saeed said his body had been seen on a road. On the other hand, MNLA member Yahya Osman Ag Mohamed said that the terrorist leader sustained critical wounds to his chest and leg. AQIM, however, denied rumours of Laaouar's death.
A senior Iranian official accused the West of "taking revenge" on the Syrian government because of its support for the Palestinians.
Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, made the comments during a meeting with the speaker of Syria's parliament, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, who is in Tehran for a three-day visit that includes talks with top Iranian officials.
In his meeting with Laham on Tuesday evening, Jalili said Syria "does not welcome foreign intervention and will not tolerate terrorist measures," and Laham said the Western media has exaggerated the situation in Syria.
#3
Iran is suffering economically for supporting Syria.
also suffering because of corruption
also suffering because of having to support so many Mullahs
also suffering because of diverting electricity to uranian refinement
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/04/2012 7:22
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#4
Awwwww, poor babies. Maybe we can do a nice EMP attack and accidently destroy all their electronic infrastructure, we'll then blame the Jordianian terrorists for it.
According to a Newsweek/Daily Beast poll of likely voters, Barack Obama now rates behind Jimmy Carter in the pantheon of great presidents. The poll asked likely voters to list the two best and the two worst presidents the history of the United States. Here are the tallies, based on net results:Â
VotersÂ’ list of the 10 best presidents:Â
1. Abraham Lincoln, +27 points (28 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
2. Ronald Reagan, +25 points (31 percent place in top-2, 6 percent place in bottom-2)
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt, +22 points (23 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
4. John F. Kennedy, +19 points (19 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
5. (tie) George Washington, +15 points (16 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
5. (tie) Bill Clinton, +15 points (28 percent place in top-2, 13 percent place in bottom-2)
7. Thomas Jefferson, +6 points (6 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
8. (tie) Teddy Roosevelt, +5 points (5 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
8. (tie) Harry S. Truman, +5 points (5 percent place in top-2, 0 percent place in bottom-2)
10. Dwight D. Eisenhower, +4 points (5 percent place in top-2, 1 percent place in bottom-2)
#4
Badanov, believe it or not, W is dead last as the worst president in history.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/04/2012 12:01
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I predict Kennedy will slide once people who remember his assassination are dead.
Bill Clinton and George Washington a tie? Comparing apples to road-apples.
I would bid that John Adams should be on the list. He kept us out of a war with Britain during the time of the French Revolution that a lot of the Colonies were agitating for.
Good to see Truman get a nod.
Funny how so many Democrats from today's point of view would have been Republicans. FDR was hugely against public sector unions (like a 4-term Nixon in terms of his policies) and Kennedy and Truman were Cold-War hawks, IMO.
#6
Don't forget folks - this was a NEWSWEEK poll of likely voters. I'm betting it was HEAVILY biased in favor of Dems which is why it's no surprise that Clinton and FDR are in the top 10, or that W is dead last, but it is an absolute JAW dropper that Reagan is #2 and that Obama ranks behind NIXON.
#1
Its not that they aren't into teh gheys, house of saud is likely wetting its panties at the idea, its just ya gotta call it something less obvious than Gay Cruise, howz about...the Tom Cruise?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 12:26
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#2
A lefty California movie maker named Eric Allen Bell set out to make a movie about the Murfreesboro mosque. Initially, he was going to make a movie with a lefish point of view about the discrimination against muslims, etc. He began to do some background research about islam, read the koran and came to the conclusion that islam was subversive and the koran was evil. He changed his point of view which he posted on his website through a series of articles. The left went wahoo and made life difficult for him. Work became hard to get.
[Yemen Post] In response to the recent remarks made by the US ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein, the Iranian embassy in Sana'a on Tuesday said that al-Qaeda in Yemen was made by Washington, lashing out at the US diplomat and describing his comments as instigating.Last week, Feierstein accused in a presser Iran of trying to thwart the GCC-initiated, west backed power transfer deal and of attempting to undermine Yemen's security and stability. He further accused it of backing beturbanned goon groups in the country such as the Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is "God is Great, Death to America™", Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews" ... Movement in the north and the Southern Movement in the south with the aim of stirring chaos.In a statement released Tuesday, the Iranian embassy said that the US is trying to consolidate its national security in Yemen, adding that the continuous American drones have killed hundreds of innocent civilians so far.The statement added that Washington's ambassador's moves in Yemen--the last of which was his visit to the southern trouble-torn province of 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... -- go against the diplomatic protocols and that there are several local sides in Yemen that showed rejection to his constant interference in the internal affairs.Last month, in the wake of dislodging the Orcs and similar vermin from Abyan's towns, Feierstein paid a visit to Abyan. His visit has prompted condemnation by the pro-Iranian Houthis who said that his visit is a proof that the US is paving the way for occupying Yemen.
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07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[Yemen Post] Three suspected Al-Qaeda gunnies were killed in an Arclight airstrike in south Yemen on Tuesday, where the army is pursuing the remaining and escaping faceless myrmidons after driving them out from Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... in the past few months, informed sources said.
The Arclight airstrike, believed to be from a US drone, targeted the car of the three carrying weapons in the Harib area in the district of Bayhan, Shabwa, the sources said.
"The suspects in the car were killed and kabooms of the weapons were heard after the strike," they added.
Earlier, the authorities said Al-Qaeda has been eradicated by 85% in Yemen and that the hunt for those who beat feet from Abyan after the recent offensive is continuing until all gunnies were killed or tossed in the calaboose Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! The army has regained control of all the strongholds of Al-Qaeda, which were seized in Abyan and Shabwa last year, and killed hundreds including senior Qaeda leaders.
The US and tribal fighters have provided direct support to the national forces, with many gunnies including wanted leaders targeted by drones.
Separately, three civilians were maimed in an kaboom in the Lawder town, Abyan, which was believed to be a landmine of those which were planted by Al-Qaeda after it was driven out from the province.
Dozens of civilians have been recently killed in landmine kabooms in Abyan just as many families are trying to return to their areas after almost a year of displacement in nearby provinces.
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07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia
DIWANIYA: Bombs killed at least 44 people at markets in Iraq yesterday, and authorities said they bore the hallmarks of sectarian attacks on Shiites by Al-Qaeda militants.
A bomb in a small truck exploded in a market in the city of Diwaniya, killing 40 people, and other blasts killed four more near the city of Karbala, police and officials said. The Diwaniya bombing was near a mosque where people gather on their way to Karbala to celebrate the birthday of one of their important imams, Al-Mahdi, this week.
Police announced a partial curfew and blocked all entrances to Diwaniya, 150 km south of Baghdad and 130 km southeast of Karbala. Police sources said 75 people had been wounded.
Earlier in the day, two bombs in a vegetable wholesale market killed four people and wounded 29 near the central Iraqi city of Karbala, hospital and police sources said.
“The bombing happened because of sticky bombs attached to two parked cars which went off separately,” said Hussein Shadhan, a provincial council member, who was at the hospital. “Four of the wounded people are seriously injured and their medical situation is very critical.”
“Initial investigations show that today’s bombs bear the fingerprints of Al-Qaeda terrorist group,” Salim Hussain, governor of Diwaniya, told Iraqiya state television.
IraqÂ’s Al-Qaeda wing has claimed responsibility for some of the recent bombings.
Last month at least 237 people were killed and 603 wounded in attacks, mainly bombings, according to a Reuters tally, making June one of the bloodiest months in Iraq since US troops withdrew at the end of last year. The deadliest attack occurred on June 13 when bombers killed more than 70 people.
Miss us yet?
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/04/2012
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(Sh. M. Network)- Sheik Ahmed Madobe, the Chairman of Ras Kamboni movement, pro-government fighters in southern Somalia, on Tuesday promised to seize soon the Al shabab-held port town of Kismayo, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) South of Mogadishu.
"My fighters [Ras Kamboni] along with Kenyan military are planning in the coming times to launch a major joint assault on Kismayo and take over its control from Al shabab," said Sheik Ahmed Madobe, adding that they will use infantry troops and fighter jets.
Somali government forces allied with Kenyan army have made military gains in the border regions, and are hoping to push Al-Shabaab ... Somalia's version of the Taliban, functioning as an arm of al-Qaeda... out of Kismayo, a main stronghold port town for the beturbanned goons in southern Somalia.
Ras Kamboni is involved the ongoing Somali government and Kenyan military battles against Al-Shabaab beturbanned goons in Lower and Middle regions, two states in southern Somalia
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Britain
[Bangla Daily Star] Top listed criminal "Dakat" Shahid and one of his accomplices were killed in a shootout with Rapid Action Battalion at Laxmibazar in Old Dhaka last night, Rab officials said.
Rab identified the second victim as Kalu, aged around 37.
A team of the elite force set up a check post at Laxmibazar of Sutrapur around 11:45pm yesterday following intelligence that "Dakat" Shahid and his gang might be in the area, Rab's Legal and Media Wing Director Commander M Sohail told The Daily Star.
Soon after, members of Rab saw three cycle of violences speeding towards the check post. The Rab team signalled the bikers to stop, but they sped away, Sohail said over the phone around 1:30am today from the spot.
However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... Rab personnel chased the bikes and managed to catch Shahid and Kalu from behind.
The duo then fell on the road, still trying to run away, added Sohail.
The "criminals" opened fire as the Rab members approached them, prompting the force to fire back. The two died instantly, he said.
Rab recovered two pistols from the spot, said the top official.
Shahid was accused in 18 cases, including six for murder, according to Rab. Also, more than 100 general diaries were filed against him with different cop shoppes in the capital.
Apparently relieved at Shahid's death, locals in Laxmibazar brought out a procession.
Rab sources said Shahid came to old Dhaka from abroad a few days ago.
Dakat Shahid's gang, which operates in the old city and in Keraniganj across the Buriganga river, is one of the largest in the capital. Over the last few years, his gang was allegedly involved in many killings and extortions.
His gang was also infamous for land grabbing. Shahid had long been absconding and was suspected to have been leading his group from India, police sources said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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#1
Good shooting.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 13:02
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[Yemen Post] Al-Sharq Saudi newspaper reported that Iran is currently bolstering its sway and influence in the southern Yemeni province of Taiz as it began strengthening its cooperation and enhancing its relationship with the some political factions and media groups in the province which is considered the scientific hub in Yemen.
The paper said citing what it called 'familiar sources' that Tehran started, through some Yemeni and Arab mediators, carrying out development projects in Taiz, backing some political factions there, and providing military training for some of the southern province citizens supporting its policy and sect of Islam.
Familiar sources pointed out that the Islamic State is planning to spend nearly $ 10 million-- through Shiite religious clerics and private sector members with whom it has good relations-- in private educational and health projects in Taiz, the spark of the Yemeni revolution.
Iran is going to establish three private hospitals, five schools and a media institution with the aim of spreading and promoting its ideologies, said the sources, according to the paper.With regards to the military field, they revealed that Tehran has just finished training 200 people from Taiz. The 200 citizens received the training in the far northern Yemeni province of Sadda, which is controlled by pro-Iran Houthi Movement.
Furthermore, Iran intends to provide some Yemeni people with scholarships to Lebanon. Those who will be offered the scholarships are going to be trained by the pro-Iranian Hizb Allah Party on how to make explosives and will receive some military training and techniques, according to the unidentified sources.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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#1
I guess the location choke point is not that important or that the Saudi have Tehran varmints working their way around them. They most certainly will have a pest control problem at the least.
YANGON: MyanmarÂ’s president has freed 46 people in a general amnesty, state media reported yesterday, and 23 of them were political prisoners, according to a pro-democracy activist. In addition to the 46 Myanmar nationals, authorities freed 34 foreigners under the amnesty, state media said.
Human rights activist Ko Ko Gyi, who was himself only released in January, told Reuters that 23 political prisoners were freed, among them Than Zaw, a former youth member of opposition leader Aung San Suu KyiÂ’s party.
“We are still trying to contact those released from other prisons. We met the ones freed from Insein Prison (on the outskirts on Yangon) at our office today and gave them words of encouragement and necessary assistance,” Ko Ko Gyi told Reuters.
Under President Thein SeinÂ’s quasi-civilian government, which took office in March last year, more than 650 political prisoners were freed between May last year and January.
Than Zaw had been in prison since 1989. He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years for a bombing that another man had confessed to, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
Another prominent political prisoner freed under the amnesty was Ko Aye Aung, serving a 59-year sentence.
The number of political prisoners still being held in Myanmar remains subject to dispute and the government has said the delay in releasing them is to distinguish between activists and what it calls terrorists or common criminals.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/04/2012
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#1
just don't call it "Burma", or back in the slammer
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/04/2012 10:14
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#2
Myanmar. Such a pretty name. Maybe they can use it for the US when they're finished turning it into the country they really want.
[An Nahar] Members of an Internal Security Forces patrol were assaulted by Hizbullah supporters in the Rweiss neighbourhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, security sources told An Nahar daily on Tuesday.
The sources said the ISF had set up a checkpoint on Monday as part of the one-month security campaign launched by Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, when the security forces saw a motorcyclist carrying a gun.
The copperstossed in the slammer Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! the gunman identified as Ali Shoaib, they told An Nahar.
But around 30 Hizbullah members rushed to his help and engaged in a dispute with the patrol, which left policeman Mohammed Zoaiter with bruises.
Later Tuesday, Hizbullah's press office denied the report, saying the party had nothing to do with the alleged assault.
Charbel has said that scores of people were tossed in the slammer Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! as part of the security plan that was launched last Wednesday, and the ISF has confiscated unlicensed trucks and cycle of violences.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#4
Happy Birthday, America - the most interesting political experiment in the last 500 years. We have been successful beyond all expectations for two centuries now. Thanks to everyone who has made that possible. Let's try to not screw it up, OK?
[Dawn] Afghan National Army troops intruded into a village in Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... on Monday and killed two rustics and injured another, officials said.
The incident took place in Muqbal village, some 20km south of Parachinar, the agency's administrative headquarters.
Hours before the incident, a security post of the ANA came under attack near Anzer Kali in Danda Pattan area of Afghanistan's Paktia province. The border post is adjacent to Kherlachi village in Upper Kurram.
Sources said the pre-dawn attack had been repulsed by the Afghan army. They said Afghan troops intruded into Pak territory while pursuing the fleeing attackers and came across people of Muqbal village.
Local people said the ANA personnel fired at three farmers. Lahore Khan and Gul Wazir was struck down in his prime while Khwaja Din was injured.
Residents said they had seen more than 50 Afghan soldiers near the village and armed rustics exchanging fire with them. The gunbattle continued for over an hour.
Assistant political agent Javidullah Mehsud and other officials visited the village after the incident.
It may be mentioned that Pakistain deployed troops at two trade posts with Afghanistan -- Kherlachi and Borki -- last month after about five years.
INCURSION DENIED: Afghan defence officials denied the alleged incursion. "We are not aware of such an operation by the Afghan National Army in that area," AFP quoted Daulat Wazir, a front man for the ministry of defence, as saying.
Colonel Ahmad Jan, a front man for army corps 203 in southeastern Afghanistan, said: "It is not true; our forces have not entered Pakistain. We have not had any operations near the border recently."
But in Pakistain, border attacks have raised fresh concern that Pak Taliban, who fled a 2009 army offensive, have regrouped and again pose a threat.
Officials said dozens of gunnies based in Afghanistan had attacked a checkpost in Upper Dir on Sunday for the second time in eight days. They said six gunnies were killed after crossing into Sabir Killey village in Upper Dir.
One official said there were reports that `hundreds of krazed killers' were gathering in Afghanistan's eastern province of Kunar.
"Authorities have alerted local lashkars (tribal militia) amid fears of a bigger clash," he told AFP.
Afghan threat: Afghanistan threatened on Monday to report Pakistain to the UN Security Council over what Kabul alleges is the shelling of its villages along the border between the two countries.
Authorities in the eastern province of Kunar have complained for weeks of being bombarded from across the frontier, blaming the barrage on Pak security forces.
Thousands of villagers in Kunar fled their homes as a result of "Pak rocket shelling" in recent weeks, officials said last
week.
Foreign ministry front man Faramarz Tamana said Kabul was discussing the attacks with Islamabad and President Hamid
Karzai would raise the matter with Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf when he visits Afghanistan in the coming weeks.
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07/04/2012
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MANILA: The Philippines yesterday said the deployment of US spy planes, suggested by President Benigno Aquino, was just one option to monitor the countryÂ’s territory, as China appealed for stability in the region.
Which translates into Yankee go home...
“If they happen at all, they are surveillance flights, they are not meant to be provocative. There’s no offensive capability here,” said the president’s spokesman Ricky Carandang.
China’s foreign ministry, in an embassy statement quoting spokesman Liu Weimin, called on all parties to maintain “peace and stability” in the South China Sea. “We have noticed the reports,” the ministry spokesman was quoted as saying. “It is the hope of the Chinese side that peace and stability can be maintained... and parties concerned do things conducive to regional peace and stability,” the statement said. It did not specify the Philippines or the United States or mention the almost-three month long dispute between China and the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea.
The Scarborough Shoal dispute began after Chinese government vessels blocked Philippine ships from arresting Chinese fishermen near the shoal on April 10. Both countries have been pressing their respective claims to the area with the poorly-equipped Philippines seeking the support of its main defense ally, the United States.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, even waters close to the coasts of neighboring countries. The Philippines says the shoal is well within its 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. The shoal sits about 230 kilometers (140 miles) from the western coast of the PhilippinesÂ’ main island of Luzon.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/04/2012
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#1
China want's stability?
Of what kind?
Their rule or none, sounds suspiciously like.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 12:29
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#2
"If they happen at all, they are surveillance flights, they are not meant to be provocative. There's no offensive capability here," said the president's spokesman Ricky Carandang.
In other words, if Uncle Sam fights China to preserve the territorial integrity of the Philippines, he will have to do so with the Pinoys jeering from the sidelines. The amusing thing is that the Philippines has almost double the GDP of Vietnam but a tiny defense budget and no jet fighters and a gun-armed Vietnam-era Hamilton class Coast Guard corvette for its flagship, even while Vietnam has 200 jet fighters in its inventory and 50 missile- and torpedo-armed frigates, corvettes and gunboats, and 6 Kilo subs due to arrive in 2013.
[Dawn] Six members of a family, including an infant, were killed and three others injured over a matrimonial dispute in Afzalabad area here on Monday.
According to police, Sajjad, an official of FC, had contracted a second marriage six months ago that annoyed the family members of his first wife. Both of his wives often quarreled with each other, they added.
Police said that on Monday noon, the father, brothers and other relatives of Sajjad's first wife entered his house and opened indiscriminate firing on the inmates.
As a result, Sajjad's father Rasool Gul, mother Miharmand, second wife Ayesha, brother Abdullah, 10-year-old sister Khadija and 26-day-old niece Gulalai were killed while Sadia, Imtiaza and another infant Hasiba were maimed. Sajjad was on duty when the accused stormed his house.
The officials of Jabbar cop shoppe registered FIR on the complaint of Mehar Bacha, a cousin of Sajjad, against Zafeerud Din, his sons Javed, Zulfiqar and Liaqat and relatives Yaqoob Khan, Abid, Qasim, Muzamil, Atiqullah and Ismail.
Police also claimed to have cooled for a few years I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! one of the accused, Javed. Efforts were underway to arrest the remaining accused, who managed to escape after the incident, they said.
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Four terrorists militants were killed in Russia's Caucasian republic of Dagestan on Tuesday, according to the National Antiterrorism Committee.
One of the terrorists militants was subsequently identified as a Bagavudin Bagayev, also known as Gusein Apandi, a purported terrorist recruiter.
The terrorists militants were holed up in a private country home following a security check. They refused to surrender and opened fire. All four were killed by in the return fire.
A terrorist militant leader was killed on Tuesday in the North Caucasus republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.
The terrorist militant, Azparukh Shamayev, has long been on a federal wanted list for a series of murders. On November 14, 2011, he personally killed two precinct police officers in Nalchik, the republic's capital.
Police tried to stop Shamayev and another man on Tuesday morning for a document check. The two opened fire on police. Shamayev was killed by return fire
[Dawn] US 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 Charles Evans Hughes ... said Tuesday that Pakistain was reopening its supply lines into Afghanistan, after the US belatedly issued an apology for the November killing of 24 Pak troops in a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... Arclight airstrike.
Clinton expressed her condolences for the deaths in a telephone conversation with Pak Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.
The incident badly damaged already strained relations between the two countries and forced the US and its allies to send supplies via costlier northern routes into Afghanistan.
"We are sorry for the losses suffered by the Pak military," Clinton said in a statement, recounting her discussion with Khar. "I offered our sincere condolences to the families of the Pak soldiers who bit the dust. Foreign Minister Khar and I acknowledged the mistakes that resulted in the loss of Pak military lives," she added.
It is the first time any US official has formally apologized for the deaths, a step hotly debated within the B.O. regime and one demanded by Pakistain while its supply routes remained closed for seven months.
It came as key Pak civilian and military leaders were meeting on Tuesday evening in Islamabad to discuss whether to reopen NATO supply routes.
Clinton said a decision had been reached. "I am pleased that Foreign Minister Khar has informed me that the ground supply lines into Afghanistan are opening," Clinton said. She said Pakistain won't charge any transit fee, the subject of an earlier negotiation, and that the reopening would help the US draw down its war in Afghanistan "at a much lower cost."
"This is a tangible demonstration of Pakistain's support for a secure, peaceful, and prosperous Afghanistan and our shared objectives in the region," she said, calling the agreement "critically important to the men and women who are fighting terrorism and extremism in Afghanistan."
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ...current SecDef, previously Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta served as President Bill Clinton's White House Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997 and was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993.... also welcomed Pakistain's decision.
"As I have made clear, we remain committed to improving our partnership with Pakistain and to working closely together as our two nations confront common security challenges in the region," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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[An Nahar] Moammar Gadhafi's last premier, Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, who was controversially extradited from Tunisia to Libya to face justice, said on Tuesday that he was innocent.
"I am not guilty, not guilty, not guilty," Mahmoudi told journalists during a visit to his prison organized by the authorities in an apparent bid to quash rumors that he had been tortured on his arrival in Libya.
"I am ready to be tried by the Libyan people. I am sure of myself and of my innocence," a tired but healthy looking Mahmoudi said.
Mahmoudi, speaking calmly but in a tone tinged with sadness, said he was being questioned by judicial authorities almost daily and that his family would soon appoint a lawyer to defend him.
He denied reports that he was tortured upon his arrival in Libya.
"I am in front of you and in good health. There was no assault against me. Reports that I was tortured, all of that was lies," he said, speculating that they reflected a "political agenda."
Mahmoudi fled to neighboring Tunisia in September shortly after rebel fighters seized the capital Tripoli, effectively putting an end to more than four decades of iron-fisted Gadhafi rule.
From March 5, 2006 through the war of 2011, Mahmoudi served the former regime as the secretary of the General People's Committee, the equivalent of prime minister.
Libyan journalists grilled the former premier on why he had stood with Gadhafi until the end of his regime. Mahmoudi said that he feared that foreign intervention in Libya would pave the way for a new era of colonialism.
"My defense will be in front of the court," Mahmoudi said.
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[An Nahar] Beirut Examining Magistrate Judge Ghassan Oueidat decided on Tuesday to put Wissam Alaeddine, who participated in the attack on al-Jadeed television, under judicial supervision, the National News Agency reported.
According to the news agency the judge's decision after questioning Alaeddine in the presence of his lawyer Mohammed Mantash.
Alaeddine's passport was also confiscated.
He is charged with attempted murder and the possession of weapons.
Last week, unknown gunnies attacked al-Jadeed television's headquarters in the Beirut neighborhood of Wata el-Msaytbeh, opening fire on the building, hurling Molotov bombs and setting fire to tires.
Alaeddine was nabbed I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! at the scene after his clothes caught fire.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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[Bangla Daily Star] Former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar had ordered the CID to submit the charge sheets in the 10-truck arms haul cases without implicating NSI officials, ex-DIG of CID Farrukh Ahmad told a Chittagong court yesterday.
"According to the order of Lutfozzaman Babar and with consent from former home secretary Omar Faruq, the charge sheets were submitted without disclosing the involvement of NSI officials in the smuggling of arms and ammunition," Farrukh said in his deposition as a prosecution witness in two cases in this connection.
Farrukh also implicated several former National Security Intelligence (NSI) officials including its former director general Brig Gen (retd) Abdur Rahim, deputy director Major (retd) Liakat Hossain and field officer Akbar Hossain and former director of Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) Brig Gen (retd) Rezzakul Haider Chowdhury in the offence.
Law enforcers seized 10 truckloads of arms and explosive at the jetty of Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Limited in the wee hours of April 2 in 2004.
The following day, a five-member enquiry committee was formed led by Omar Faruq, said the former deputy inspector general (DIG) of Criminal investigation Department (CID) adding, he was made one of the members of the committee.
The committee members arrived in Chittagong on April 5 to start the investigation and left for Dhaka on April 8.
A few days later, CID (Chittagong) ASP Kabir, who was the investigation officer (IO) of the cases, had informed Farrukh that he found the involvement of NSI field officer Akbar Hossain and a smuggler Hafizur Rahman in hiring the 10 trucks for transporting the arms and ammunition.
Farrukh had ordered Kabir to interrogate the two, but Kabir failed to grill them as Hafizur remained absconding and the Chittagong office of NSI did not cooperate with the IO for producing its field officer before the CID.
The ex-DIG of CID told Chittagong Metropolitan Special Tribunal-1 that when he informed state minister Babar about NSI's non-cooperation with the CID, the latter said, "There are many things where national interests are involved. So we have to work meticulously."
"Giving reference to a previous arms haul, Babar told me that a trawler loaded with arms was seized in Cox's Bazar in 1996, but no case was filed then," said Farrukh.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: HUJI
[Saudi Gazette] An official source at the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Hai'a) has refuted allegations leveled against it by the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR).
Responding to the charge that some Hai'a personnel deal roughly with detainees, he said: "The Hai'a had taken measures to correct the erratic behavior of some of its members. The organization does not condone physical and psychological abuse of anyone, regardless of the reason for detention. Every individual is entitled to fair treatment that preserves his honor and self-respect."
He said such changes were more evident over the last six months. "No one has complained about being chased by the Hai'a since such acts have been criminalized. It should be understood that the Hai'a has stopped seeking the help of volunteers, especially in fieldwork. Moreover, we don't give a chance to anyone to impersonate our members as all of our field staff are required to wear the Hai'a badge," Al-Hayat newspaper quoted the source as saying.
He said the public should understand that anyone without a badge does not belong to the Hai'a and the organization should not be held accountable for his actions.
The source also denied accusations by the NSHR of Hai'a personnel using force to extract confessions from detainees.
"We have explained a number of times that we are not law enforcers. We are only a monitoring body and when the Hai'a personnel notice something unwholesome in society we seek the help of the police to arrest the violators because law enforcement comes under their jurisdiction," said the official.
He said the Hai'a rejects such malpractice because they contradict Islamic teachings.
As for the accusations that Hai'a members search personal possessions such as mobile phones and laptops unjustifiably intruding into people's privacy and without search warrants, he said, "We work according to the legal guidelines and allow such search operations only in special circumstances."
He also reiterated that the Hai'a personnel do not force suspects to sign reports before allowing them to read the reports. Such practices are forbidden by law, he added.
The source said the Hai'a does not take any action in 90 percent of misdemeanor cases in accordance with the Islamic principle of concealing wrongful behavior except in cases involving blasphemy and atonement.
"When Hai'a members discover that suspects taken into custody had no previous criminal records, we release them quickly after giving them necessary advice," he added. --
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07/04/2012
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] The international community on Tuesday weighed options to help embattled Mali save its north from Islamist fighters who have smashed ancient shrines in Timbuktu and rigged another city with landmines.
As post-coup transition authorities in Bamako find themselves powerless in the face of the armed Al Qaeda-allied groups occupying the north, its neighbours seek a stronger unity government that could request African military intervention.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc says it has 3,300 troops ready to enter Mali, whose vast north has been occupied by armed rebels for three months after a March 22 coup plunged the nation into chaos.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told journalists in Gay Paree his country was "confident" the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... Security Council would soon pass a resolution authorising the force to assist Mali win back its territory.
"This will allow our African friends to take a series of decisions, with international backing of course," Fabius said.
Guinean President Alpha Conde told AFP after meeting Fabius that only a government of national unity would have the legitimacy to request African military intervention.
"One cannot resolve the problem in the north if you don't first solve the problem in Bamako," he said.
Currently a 12-month interim government is in place in Bamako, which took over from the junta who overthrew the former regime in March.
The coup had eased the way for Tuareg separatist rebels to seize an area in the north larger than La Belle France that they consider their homeland.
However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... the previously unknown Islamist Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) fighting on their flanks swiftly took the upper hand.
They openly allied with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and pushed the Tuareg rebels from all positions of power.
In Timbuktu, where they have enforced sharia law for the past three months, Ansar Dine has in recent days smashed seven tombs of ancient Mohammedan saints as well as the 'sacred door' to a 15th century mosque.
The UN cultural agency UNESCO on Tuesday called for an end to the "repugnant acts" of destruction and called for the head of the agency to create an emergency fund for the cultural treasures and send a mission to assess the damage.
The destruction has deeply upset Malians and prompted outpourings of condemnation from abroad.
"What Ançardine and MJUAO are doing in TimbuKtu is a serious provocation," said Mr Assoumane Maïga, a humanitarian worker.
[Dawn] THE wave of religious extremism in large parts of Africa from the Horn to the Atlantic has assumed dangerous proportions and threatens to destabilise a number of states, including the continent's most populous country. From Nigeria to Somalia, Islamist krazed killers, some of them well-armed, are on the rampage, attacking Sufi shrines, blowing up churches and bombing civilian targets. In Mali, on two successive days, religious Islamic fascistiattacked shrines in Timbuktu, one of non-Arab Moslem Africa's most prized cultural assets, and destroyed them. Armed with pickaxes, supporters of Ansar Dine, Mali's armed Islamist movement, which controls the country's northern part, demolished a number of mausoleums over the weekend and have vowed to destroy more. The rampage did not stop there; on Monday, there were reports that the Islamic fascistihad attacked a 15th-century mosque in Timbuktu to prove wrong a legend associated with the place of worship. The Mali attacks immediately bring to mind the growing intolerance within Pakistain, which has seen krazed killers, subscribing to orthodox ideologies, target symbols representing the softer face of Islam and at variance with their own views.
Sufi shrines have increasingly been attacked all over the country by hardliners. The fanatical elements among those subscribing to the Salafist movement may or may not have links with Al Qaeda. But there is no doubt that their krazed killer philosophy, often translating into cut-thoat movements, have sprouted across the Islamic world from Indonesia to Morocco. What is unfortunate is that efforts to tackle their bigoted stance have been piecemeal in the Moslem world. There is no wide-ranging counter-narrative to challenge the discourse that sees Islam in monolithic terms. And in its absence a narrow interpretation of religion is bound to dominate. Those countries battling cut-thoat Islam today should also realise that krazed killer thought cannot be countered through drone attacks or state force. In fact, these have an opposite effect and end up creating more space and sympathy for the krazed killers. The only response to those who advocate an krazed killer position on religion is greater openness and sustained democratic processes in Islamic countries where the discourse on religious tolerance and pluralism must also be encouraged.
Good luck with that, guys. Really.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: Global Jihad
#1
Part of the historic pattern: whenever Islam meets strong opposition in its western expansion, it turns to Africa.
[Free Beacon] A South Florida Democratic National Committee representative who engaged in an anti-Israel tirade over email had resigned from the post following outrage over her remarks.
Evelyn Garcia, a Palm Beach County representative to the DNC and ally of its chair, Florida Rep. Debbie Downer Wasserman-Schultz, ...Congresswoman from Florida, the abrasive chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. She has been a politician since 1992, and prior to that was in training as a political science major. Her primary accomplishment seems to be that she's Jewish... was caught by the news website BizPacReview advocating for an end to the U.S.-Israel alliance and accusing Israel of war crimes.
Garcia, who additionally serves as a Democratic Executive Committee member and is running to become a member of the Florida State House, quit her post at the DNC following the fallout from her tirade, BizPacReview reported:
Though she gave up her DNC position, Garcia told the newspaper she still plans to continue her campaign for the House District 88 seat.
She may have an uphill climb in winning back leaders of her own party.
As soon as BizPac Review President Jack Furnari's post on the inflammatory emails went live on Sunday, a number of Democratic leaders across Palm Beach County expressed horror at comments many considered anti-Semitic.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under:
#1
This is a constant struggle for the Democratic Pary leadership.
Large blocs of Dem officials are anti American, anti Semitic, anti Christian, anti marriage, and anti business. However, at the Dem convention and similar events that many people actually watch on TV, these constituencies need to be suppressed otherwise the country will figure out who the Dems are.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/04/2012 7:54
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#2
Finish the job Garcia. Pack your bags and move to Gaza.
#3
While I do have some liberal friends, they all know that this is one thing I will not tolerate. Actually, I point out them repeatedly that they are far more intolerant than I, with great glee and gloat over their whinging about it.
There's one human race, if you claim to be otherwise, you should be seized and dissected to figure out what sort of non-human species you are. Anything else is just racist.
[An Nahar] Syrian troops pounded several rebel-held districts in the central city of Homs on Tuesday, as the corpse count mounted across the country, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In total, at least 48 people were killed on Tuesday, bringing to more than 120 the corpse count over two days, the Britannia-based watchdog reported.
Two civilians and three rebels were killed in Homs, as festivities raged in and around the neighborhood of Baba Amr, a former rebel stronghold that the army seized on March 1 after a fierce 27-day assault.
Rebels and troops also battled for the district of Khaldiyeh, the monitoring group said. Khaldiyeh is one of several rebel-held districts of Homs that have been besieged by the army for almost a month.
On Monday troops tried to storm the encircled district of Jourat al-Shiah, according to the Observatory.
Troops also rained shells in the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the 16-month uprising against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators... , killing six people, the watchdog said. Among the victims were a woman and her three children.
In the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, much of which is rebel-controlled, violent festivities broke out with regime forces, at least four of whom were killed, the Observatory said.
The Local Coordination Committees -- a network of activists on the ground -- said "125 families fled the city of Deir Ezzor and its suburbs ... as a result of the unrelenting military attacks."
Several areas of Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... province also saw heavy violence, the Observatory said. Troops shelled the town of Arbeen, killing one child, while two people were rubbed out by snipers near the city of Douma.
Of those killed on Tuesday, at least 18 were troops and six were rebels.
Earlier, the Observatory reported at least 78 people were confirmed killed across Syria on Monday, 44 of them civilians.
The watchdog also said it had received reports that 15 people were rubbed out in a village in the central province of Hama, although it had been unable to confirm the names of those killed in the Sunni-populated village of Douma.
The reported killings followed the liquidation in the area late on Sunday of three pro-government militiamen.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
Go ahead, "apologize" [tell them how sorry "we" are about the senseless killing] for the loss of life and move on. Do NOT send money. Do NOT send troops, advisors, contractors, observers, subject matter experts, negociators, communicators, strategists, equipment of any type, or "non-lethal" aid personnel.
Ring me up for additional clarification if needed.
[An Nahar] Russia on Tuesday accused the West of seeking to "distort" the agreement reached last weekend in Geneva on a plan for a political transition to end the escalating conflict in Syria.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hailed the accord based on proposals by 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... as an "important step" but said that Western capitals had already read more into the final statement than what was written on paper.
"Unfortunately... some Western participants have started in their public statements to distort the agreements that were reached" in Geneva, he told news hounds at a news conference with his Vietnamese counterpart.
"These (Geneva) agreements are not there to be interpreted. They mean exactly what is said in the communique and we need to follow the agreements that were made," Lavrov added.
"Our (Russian) position is honest and we are not trying to make it seem more than what is written in the text."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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#1
Russia Accuses West of Distorting Geneva Syria Accord
Pot calling the Kettle Black.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 12:42
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I think they mean 'attrited' or something similar...
[Yemen Post] Commander of the Central Security Fadhal Al-Qawsi has affirmed that Yemen has undermined Al-Qaeda 85 percent in 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... and Aden, pointing out that Al-Qaeda movements were founded out in Al-Baidha governorate.
Al-Qawsi told the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper that Saudis, Somalis, Tunisians and Africans were captured while fighting with Al-Qaeda, pointing out that hundreds of Al-Qaeda gun-hung tough guys were killed.
He made it clear that Yemen exerts efforts to release the Saudi diplomat Abdullah Al-Khalidi, indicating that several government agencies and tribal leaders seeks to free al-Khalidi.
He declined to name those countries that backed al-Qaeda with weapons, reaffirming that Yemen locked away Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! elements who plotted to kill the Southern Region commander Salem Qatan.
Meanwhile, ...back at the secret hideout, Scarface Al sneeringly put his proposition to little Nell... Yemen's security services have stated they locked away Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! a number of terrorist cells and published names of the suspects in many state-run media outlets, singled out that a number of Al-Qaeda suicide kabooms were thwarted in Sana'a, Aden and other governorates.
chiefs of the National Security Mohammad Al-Anisi and the Political Security Ghalib Al-Qamish presented a detailed report about a number of terrorist cells including the cell that killed about 100 soldiers in a military parade rehearsal on May 21.
The Yemeni authorities stated on Monday that three Al-Qaeda jacket wallahs in the capital Sana'a after the foiling of three suicide kabooms Al-Qaeda planned to carry out. Security sources told Al-Khaleej Newspaper that the bombers planned to carry out bombings in the Old Sana'a and Souq Bab Al-Yaman.
The Interior Ministry, for its part, has 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.
Commander of the Central Security Fadhal Al-Qawsi has affirmed that Yemen has undermined Al-Qaeda 85 percent in Abyan and Aden, pointing out that Al-Qaeda movements were founded out in Al-Baidha governorate.
Al-Qawsi told the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper that Saudis, Somalis, Tunisians and Africans were captured while fighting with Al-Qaeda, pointing out that hundreds of Al-Qaeda gun-hung tough guys were killed.
He made it clear that Yemen exerts efforts to release the Saudi diplomat Abdullah Al-Khalidi, indicating that several government agencies and tribal leaders seeks to free al-Khalidi.
He declined to name those countries that backed al-Qaeda with weapons, reaffirming that Yemen locked away Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! elements who plotted to kill the Southern Region commander Salem Qatan.
Meanwhile, ...back at the argument, Jane reached into her purse for her .38... Yemen's security services have stated they locked away Drop the rosco and step away witcher hands up! a number of terrorist cells and published names of the suspects in many state-run media outlets, singled out that a number of Al-Qaeda suicide kabooms were thwarted in Sana'a, Aden and other governorates.
chiefs of the National Security Mohammad Al-Anisi and the Political Security Ghalib Al-Qamish presented a detailed report about a number of terrorist cells including the cell that killed about 100 soldiers in a military parade rehearsal on May 21.
The Yemeni authorities stated on Monday that three Al-Qaeda suicide bombers in the capital Sana'a after the foiling of three suicide kabooms Al-Qaeda planned to carry out. Security sources told Al-Khaleej Newspaper that the bombers planned to carry out bombings in the Old Sana'a and Souq Bab Al-Yaman.
The Interior Ministry, for its part, has 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.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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(Sh. M. Network)-At least seven Al shabab suspects were locked away Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please! in an operation carried out by Somali especial security forces in the town of Afgoye, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) northwest Mogadishu, Officials said.
According to military source, who spoke with Shabelle Media via phone from Afgoye on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said the forces launched on Tuesday house-to-house searches in the town and captured seven youths alleged to have close links or members with Al shabab bad boys.
"There has been heavy presence of army from corner to corner in Afgoye this morning, and they were hunting elements of Al shabab hiding themselves in the villages of the town. At least 7 people aged between 18 and 25 years in connection with Al shabab," said a local resident who asked anonymity.
The crackdown is reportedly halted public movements and vehicles for a moment, but later, things have returned into normal, according to the locals.
Somali army chiefs said the operations are meant to secure the city and prevent insecurity acts and attacks from Al shabab Death Eaters who have last month carried out a suicide kaboom at Somali army base in the town that left 4 people, mostly soldiers.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: al-Shabaab
[Dawn] The Supreme Court on Tuesday suspended the National Assembly membership of Pakistain Moslem League -- Nawaz's Jamil Awan for holding dual nationality, DawnNews reported.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and comprising Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain was hearing the case pertaining to politicians holding dual nationality.
The court said Awan had already admitted to holding the nationality of the Netherlands.
During an earlier hearing, Awan had submitted a statement before the court claiming that there was a difference between nationality and citizenship. "I am a national of the Netherlands, but not a citizen," Awan had said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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BERLIN: A German regional intelligence chief was dismissed Tuesday over a botched probe into serial killings blamed on neo-Nazis, a day after the national domestic intelligence chief resigned. Interior minister in central Thuringia state Joerg Geibert announced that Thomas Sippel was being sent into early retirement, saying he “no longer has the confidence of the (state) parliament.”
“We are agreed that this step is right and necessary,” Geibert said adding the decision was the outcome of talks with Sippel.
The move follows a surprise announcement Monday that GermanyÂ’s national domestic intelligence director Heinz Fromm, 63, would take early retirement over blunders in the investigation. Fromm had been under fire since November when it emerged that a far-right trio calling itself the National Socialist Underground (NSU) was likely behind a murder spree with 10 victims, most of them of Turkish origin.
But he finally threw in the towel after an interior ministry official testified to a parliamentary committee last week that files with information about neo-Nazis were destroyed by agency employees.
The Thuringia state branch of the domestic intelligence service was part of an operation which saw intelligence agents try to recruit Thuringia-based right-wing extremists as informants.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/04/2012
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[news.com.au] TWO men who allegedly tried to hijack a plane in China were beaten to death by passengers and crew. A pack, not a herd...
The Global Times newspaper reported that two of the suspects died in hospital from injuries they suffered during the ensuing fight with passengers and crew on board. "Doctor Casey! They're sinking fast! Oh, what shall we do?"
"Hmmm... Should we have a late lunch at Dino's? Or should we just knock off early and go dancing?"
"What about the patients?"
"Somebody'll put them on ice when they finally peg out."
The men were part of a six-strong gang involved in the foiled hijack of a Tianjin Airlines flight bound for the regional capital of Urumqi last Friday. "Mahmoud? Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"No. But it's our Islamic duty."
"Well, okay then. But I get to make a martyr's video!"
Just minutes after the flight took off from Hetian, southwest Xinjiang, the men, all aged between 20 and 36, stood up and announced their plans to terrified passengers. "Arrrr! We're terrorists an' we're takin' over this plane!"
"Oh, we're so frightened."
The gang reportedly broke a pair of aluminium crutches and used them to attack passengers while attempting to break into the cockpit, Hou Hanmin, a regional government spokeswoman said. "Mother's crutches! They broke Mother's crutches! The bastards!"
They were tackled by police and passengers "Let's roll!"
who tied them up with belts before the plane, carrying 101 people, returned to the airport safely just 22 minutes later. "Mr. Wang! Are you sure that belt's not too tight around the miscreant's neck? He's turning blue!"
"Don't worry about it. He was that color when he came on board."
"Yeah, I seen it, too."
"That's right. He commented on it to me!"
"Heh heh!"
"Heh heh!"
"'He was that color when he come on board!' [Snicker!]"
Hanmin added that police were still testing materials they had been carrying, thought to be explosives. [Sniff!]
"What's it smell like, Sergeant Xiu?"
"Either some kinda cheese or C4. I can't make up my mind!"
"What's it taste like?"
"Either C4 or Liederkranz. I still can't decide..."
The men were reported to be Uighurs, the local Muslim ethnic minority. Dilxat Raxit, ... a close relative of Nurse Raxit...
spokesman for the German-based World Uyghur Congress which campaigns for Uighurs' rights, said that it wasn't a hijacking attempt, rather an in-flight brawl over a seat dispute. "We warn China not to use this incident as another excuse for crackdown," he said in an emailed statement. ... which has left all the Han Chinese ever so frightened. All the party members are hysterical.
Two more suspects are reportedly being treated in hospital after mutilating themselves. "Whoa! Chopped 'em right off, did they?"
"Betcha that hurt."
"Betcha it still does."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: East Turkestan Islamic Movement
#1
Works for me....
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/04/2012 2:22
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#2
...without the vast expense and inconvenience of a TSA.
#3
Two more suspects are reportedly being treated in hospital after mutilating themselves.
Thats right officer, after punching himself in the back of the head 15, 20 times he tore his ears off and threw himself into the toilet then did a headstand.
#5
This is what would really happen in America if someone tried to hijack a plane today. On 9/11, we learned that it does no good to sit there passively while someone takes over the plane. That and the fact that the cockpit doors have been reenforced make it so that no one is likely to take over the plane. Yes, they can still blow it up, but if the terrorists are discovered trying to set off the explosives, they will suffer the same fate as if they tried to take over the plane.
In other words, all the security theater of the TSA is just that - theater.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/04/2012 10:47
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#6
If that happened in the US, Holder would prosecute the killers.
[An Nahar] The United States will release about $1.1 billion to Pakistain's military as part of a deal that will see Islamabad lift a blockade on NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... supply convoys into Afghanistan, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
The money, from a U.S. "coalition support fund" designed to reimburse Pakistain for the cost of counter-insurgency operations, had been withheld due to tensions between the two countries and Islamabad's closure of the supply routes.
Pakistain and the United States announced earlier that the border would be open once again to NATO convoys.
The coalition support fund is often the subject of wrangling between U.S. and Pak officials, with Islamabad's claims often rejected and smaller sums approved by Washington for reimbursement.
The $1.1 billion that will be freed up under the border deal does not include large sums that Pakistain says it is owed, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"This is the amount that has been approved and already gone through the process," the U.S. official told Agence La Belle France Presse.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
U.S. to Free Up $1.1 Billion for Pakistan
From where, pray tell.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 0:11
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#2
China, Jim.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/04/2012 0:30
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#3
We apologize and pay them $1.1 billion? What a bargain!
Posted by: American Delight ||
07/04/2012 5:32
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#4
Ditto that AD. Just what I thought. Purchased good graces. Yes and China money. Laughing all the way to the bank.
The cold, hard facts are, Pakistani Frontier Corps personnel at that border outpost (or other personnel at the outpost) fired on ISAF aircraft. The aircraft returned fire. The incident was thoroughly investigated by ISAF authorities. No fault was found on the part of the ISAF pilots.
#6
What twists and wrenches my gut is those US Taxpayer dollars, (my tax dollars as well) at least some portion of the $1.1 Billion, will undoubtedly end up aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents and killing our young soldiers, and other ISAF soldiers.
Isn't a decade of aiding and abetting Bin Laden enough proof of Pakistani complicity? How much message traffic and open source data must one read related to the intentions of the Quetta Shura and the training madrassas of Chaman to link nefarious activity to the government of Pakistan? All Taliban infiltration routes along the Durand Line lead into Pakistan.
While I prefer the Roman method, If we must pay our way out of Afghanistan, so be it. But get the young people out safely first, then pay the worthless bastards if you must.
An assistant village leader was killed by a bomb explosion in Yala province on Tuesday.
Maromulee Eyuno, an assistant to the chief of Ban Lumo was returning home from a meeting in Raman district town back to his village in a pick-up truck. A 10-kg home-made bomb, buried on the road inside the village was detonated as the truck passed over it. The blast wrecked the vehicle and killed Maromulee.
Also in Yala, another bomb was detonated on a road in Bannang Sata district as a patrol vehicle from Infantry Company 7021 drove over it. One soldier was injured in the blast.
[Dawn] At least six people were killed in incidents of violence in 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... on Tuesday, DawnNews reported.
Moreover, the police claimed arresting a suspected hit man.
In the city's Orangi Town area, two people, including a political worker, were rubbed out.
Separately, one man was bumped off in the Baldia Town neighbourhood.
Another man was killed in SITE's Metroville area whereas a policeman was rubbed out in Gulbahar.
Furthermore, a man who had been maimed in an overnight firing incident in Bloody Karachi's Quaidabad area succumbed to his wounds at a hospital.
'Target killer' tossed in the slammer
West zone police on Tuesday claimed arresting Shahid alias 'darinda' over suspected involvement in over 30 incidents of assassinations and gang war.
A hand grenade and arms were also recovered from the suspect's possession, police claimed.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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(Sh. M. Network)-Unknown assailants in Somalia have shot to death overnight former deputy police Commissioner of Puntland ...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion... , a semi-autonomous state in northern Somalia, reports said.
According to Witnesses two faceless myrmidons armed with pistols have bumped off Col. Abdullahi Salah Nadalo, the victim in the vicinity of Bulshale hotel at 1st August village in Garowe town at about 7:15 pm local time on Monday evening.
"He was shot multiple times on head by anonymous attackers with pistols who escaped unscathed from the scene shortly after they carried out the coordinated shooting," said a witness who spoke with Shabelle Media by phone from Garowe town on condition of anonymity.
On July 1, 2012, the 54-year-old deceased official was sacked from the post of deputy police chief under unknown circumstances by the officials of the semi-autonomous state of Puntland in northern Somalia.
The move behind the murder and the identity of the killers are yet to be established, but he is believed to have been the driving force for the anti pirate operations of the Puntland police forces.
Dozens of Puntland security forces mounting on vehicles have reached at the crime spot in Garowe town and conducted manhunt operations, but no one was reported tossed in the slammer Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! for the killing so far.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: al-Shabaab
#1
Myrmidons ???
Is that like - male mermaids?
What the he** is a myrmidon???
I definitely wouldn't want that on my epitaph.
Hahahahahahahahaha !!!
[An Nahar] German researchers said Monday they have discovered a fossil of a feathered hatchling that may be the earliest evidence of a plumed, meat-eating dinosaur that was not closely related to birds.
The fossil is believed to belong to a young land-based dinosaur from the Late Jurassic period, some 170 million years ago, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Named Sciurumimus albersdoerferi, in part after its bushy, squirrel-like tail -- tree squirrels come from the genus Sciurus -- it is the "most complete megalosauroid fossil yet," the study said.
Megalosauroid is the name for a wide-ranging group of carnivorous dinosaurs that could grow as big as 30 feet long (nine meters) and weigh up to one ton.
The fossil, which shows a juvenile dinosaur with its jaws open and tail extending far over its head, was found in a quarry in Bavaria, Germany.
The hatchling likely had a large skull, shorter hind limbs and smooth skin with feathers covering its entire body.
Earlier this year, paleontologists in China said they had found a bizarre species of giant feathered dinosaur that weighed as much as a car and was related to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The soil has been dated to around 125 million years ago to the mid-Cretaceous period, at the peak of the dinosaurs' long reign over the planet.
That new species was named Yutyrannus huali, an amalgam of Latin and Mandarin which means "beautiful feathered tyrant."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under:
#1
they're still around
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/04/2012 10:05
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[Dawn] French authorities have locked away Book 'im, Mahmoud! the administrator of an turban French website who is suspected of playing a key role in financing and recruiting for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups from Pakistain to Spain, the Gay Paree prosecutor's office said Tuesday.
The man, whom prosecutors call an "operational vector and formidable financier of the bloodiest terrorist groups'', is being questioned Tuesday. He faces preliminary charges of planning terrorist acts and financing a terrorist enterprise, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
The man, a Tunisian born in 1977 based in the southern French city of Toulon, was locked away Book 'im, Mahmoud! Friday after a yearlong investigation, the prosecutor's statement said. It did not give the man's name.
The prosecutor cited "serious and concordant evidence" that the suspect sent material from his computer to terrorist groups. It says he played a "centralizing role" in collecting funds for terrorist groups to buy weapons, but did not elaborate on how much money was involved.
Prosecutors say he is suspected of acting as a financier and recruiter for groups including al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (North Africa), Fatah al Islam, and the Islamic State of Iraq.
Investigators studied thousands of email messages and analyzed a "considerable mass" of data, prosecutors said.
They called it an exceptionally advanced example of "the use of the Internet for terrorist ends in the domain of radical Islam."
The arrest comes three months after a gunman who police said claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda killed Jewish schoolchildren and paratroopers in a rampage in southern La Belle France, in La Belle France's worst terrorist attacks since the 1990s.
Also earlier this year, a French court sentenced an Algerian-born nuclear physicist to five years in prison for his role in plotting terrorism with al-Qaeda's north African wing via online contacts. Adlene Hicheur, a former researcher at Switzerland's ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... CERN laboratory, was convicted of "criminal association with a view to plotting terrorist attacks."
His defenders say he was a victim of allegedly overzealous French anti-terrorism laws and that he explored ideas on jihadist websites but never took any concrete step toward terrorism.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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#1
Friday after a yearlong investigation, the prosecutor's statement said. It did not give the man's name.
a financier and recruiter for groups including al-Qaeda
Don't need a name, hang him and burn the body before the people as an example.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 13:00
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[An Nahar] Hizbullah and Iran will fight alongside the Syrian regime if it is attacked by foreign forces, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Paleostine -- General Command Ahmed Jibril said on Tuesday. Which is not to be confused with the plain vanilla PFLP. PFLP-GC is headed by a former Syrian captain, is headquartered in Damascus, and controlled therefrom. Not that it actually does much but issue communiques and sometimes blow up somebody's car in Leb...
In the event of "a foreign attack, we discussed with our brothers (in the Syrian regime), with Hizbullah chief His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb... and our brothers in Iran, we will be part of this battle," he revealed.
In an interview with Beirut-based Mayadeen television, Jibril said that if a "Turkish-European alliance or NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... escalate... we will take to the streets and fight on behalf of all those with honor and our Syrian brothers."
Jibril also cited Nasrallah as saying Hizbullah would fight on behalf of the Syrian regime, and described the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah alliance as "one axis" that the PFLP-GC is part of.
He added that he met recently with Nasrallah, Iran's diminutive PresidentMahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad and Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Lord of the Baath... , without specifying when.
He also noted that the Hizbullah chief "said he would join this battle, in the event of a foreign attack" on Syria.
The Iranian regime, he said, told him it would not allow a strike on Syria. "We have warned the Turks several times not to play with fire," Jibril said.
Echoing the Syrian regime's discourse, the PFLP-GC chief said the 16-month uprising against Assad was not a genuine local movement, but rather "a change in the foundations of this region in order to create a new Middle East," referring to a term coined in 2006 by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Jibril described the defense of the Syrian regime as "a decisive battle." Victory would be necessary, he said, in order to "defeat the American and Zionist projects."
The PFLP-GC is a radical Paleostinian faction that is based in Damascus ...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world... .
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
That picture of Am-a-dinner-jacket never gets old. :)
(Sh.M.Network)-China is closely cooperating with the navies of Japan and Indiain patrolling against piracy off Somalia as the country shows more willingness to work with other nations in safeguarding global trade.
The effort also comes despite mixed sentiments among Chinese toward the country's main Asian rivals.
Chinese Defense Ministry front man Yang Yujun saidJapan's Maritime Self-Defense Force on Sunday became the lead navy among the three aiming to synchronize patrols and best allocate their ships.
China joined theGulf of Adenpatrols in late 2008. It's gradually moved from guarding Chinese ships to escorting ships of all nationalities.
The three nations began coordinating their patrols this year.
Analysts say the escort pact is a sign of Chinese naval confidence and could reduce the chances of confrontation in Asian waters.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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[Dawn] The voice had long haunted Indian police investigating Mumbai's deadly 2008 terrorist attack.
They had repeatedly listened to a tape of cell phone intercepts containing chilling words from one of the men guiding 10 hard boyz through the gun-blazing rampage that killed 166 people in India's financial capital.
"Pass this message to the media--'this is just the trailer; the real film is yet to come,"' the voice said.
Anti-terror police engaged in one of India's largest investigations had no idea who the man was, only that he had a Mumbai accent and used Hindi words unusual for Urdu speakers like the attackers on the ground.
Police believe they finally have the man behind the disembodied voice after ferreting out the suspect from 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... where he was hiding, according to officials close to the investigation. They say he had given himself away to the police by opening a Facebook account under his real name--Syed Zabiuddin Ansari.
Ansari--an Indian citizen whose aliases include Abu Humza, Abu Jindal and Abu Jundal--was placed in long-term storage Maw! They're comin' to get me, Maw! at New Delhi airport on June 21 after Saudi Arabia agreed to hand him to Indian officials and put him on a flight home.
Indian Sherlocks told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named that Ansari was considered a key player in the plans for attacks on India. They say he was so central to the Mumbai attack plans he was among those giving orders by the minute to the attackers or directing them on their cell phones from a control room in 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... , Pakistain during the Nov 26-28 bloodbath.
The Sherlocks spoke on condition of anonymity because they were disclosing sensitive information.
Ansari's interrogation is expected to bolster the Indian government's accusations -- and accepted as a fact by most ordinary Indians -- that Pakistain was behind the attack, the most brazen terrorist operation on India's soil.
His arrest is a rare piece of good news for a government reeling from economic and political troubles.
"Clearly there was state support for the 26/11 massacre," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said Friday.
Indian Sherlocks say Ansari has already told them that Pak intelligence officials were in the control room during the 60-hour siege -- corroborating testimony by American terrorist suspect David Coleman Headley, who said during his Chicago trial last year that Pak intelligence officials were involved.
Ansari has also told Sherlocks he fled India in 2006 across the border to Bangladesh, escaping from a police raid in the western Indian town of Aurangabad on an illegal cache of weapons and explosives intended for future attacks within India, the officials said.
The assault was like no other India had experienced. Bombs and grenades went off at the famed Taj Mahal and Trident hotels. Then, 10 trained beturbanned goons fanned out through the hotels and through the main train station and a Jewish cultural centre and bumped off people in their paths.
The attack went on for three days, as Indian police scrambled to keep up with the beturbanned goons who were receiving detailed instructions by cell phone.
Eventually all but one of the gunnies were killed.
The survivor, Ajmal Kasab, told a special Indian court he and the others were tutored by a man named Abu Jindal on how to speak with a Hindi accent to avoid detection in India and confuse police about their origins.
Police are now looking for a second man who is heard on the tape from the control room. That man, who police believe is Muzammil Butt, based on testimony from other suspects, is heard cutting the attackers off as they exclaimed about the size of the television screens and the luxury fittings in the five-star hotels.
At one point, he is heard saying: "How hard is it to throw a grenade? Just pull the pin and throw it."
Investigators had been looking for Ansari for years after he was implicated by other suspects in the Mumbai attacks, but they never knew his exact role in the attack, said officials close to the investigation.
India learned Ansari was living in Saudi Arabia on a Pak passport, officials said.
Both India and Pakistain then began lobbying for his release into their custody, but India clinched the arrest by providing DNA samples from Ansari's Indian family members, who live in the western state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located, the officials said.
Intelligence agents are now interrogating Ansari in a secret location on the outskirts of New Delhi.
Ansari told Indian Sherlocks he had gone to Saudi Arabia to raise funds and recruit more Indians as beturbanned goons. Investigators say beturbanned goon groups routinely try to recruit Indians from among the two million Indians living in Saudi Arabia or the millions who visit the country to perform the Haj.
He might have remained in the shadows had he not opened a Facebook account in his real name to find new recruits, the officials said. The Times of India reported last week that Ansari also used the account to contact accomplices, who may have been under global scrutiny by intelligence agencies.
Indian Sherlocks followed his electronic trail to Riyadh, and this week used voice recognition tests to match Ansari's voice with the man on the tape. While the Hindi he spoke is similar enough to Urdu that speakers understand each other, there are many words that differ.
The man recorded giving instructions to the attackers used a few Hindi words an Urdu speaker would not use, such as "prashasan" for "administration," officials said. The Urdu word would be "intizamiya."
Investigators have sent the voice samples to a lab for further analysis, newspaper reports said.
Saudi Arabia's decision to hand Ansari over to India, rather than Pakistain, appeared to surprise Indian officials.
Foreign Ministry front man Syed Akbaruddin described the arrest as something "rather new" in Saudi-Indian relations.
"Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is expanding in a variety of ways."
Analysts said Riyadh's decision marked a significant shift.
"It is a signal to Pakistain that it will get isolated if it thinks state sponsorship of terrorism can be a viable policy option," said Ajit Doval, former chief of India's Intelligence Bureau.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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[An Nahar] Algerian authorities have identified a suicide kaboomer who killed one person and maimed three at a paramilitary police headquarters in the town of Ouargla, al-Watan newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Investigators have "identified the DNA of the attacker," local commander Colonel Tahar Othmani was quoted as saying on al-Watan's website, without naming the person.
They also have the serial number of the car used in the attack and of the Kalashnikov assault rifle that was used.
A Mali-based Islamist group has already grabbed credit for the dawn attack on Friday.
The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) said in a text message to AFP in Mali's capital Bamako that a young Algerian from the southern town had carried out the attack in a 4X4 packed with almost 1,300 kilograms of explosives.
According to reports cited by the APS news agency, the attack was carried out "by a terrorist who sought to break into the headquarters building in his vehicle, after an exchange of fire with gendarmes."
The term "terrorist" is generally used in Algeria to describe armed Islamist krazed killers, mainly active in the northeast of the country.
The MUJAO front man said the group accused Algeria of encouraging Tuareg rebels to go to war with it, although the secular MNLA Tuaregs had got together with the Islamists three months ago to take control of the vast north of Mali.
Ouargla is a town of almost 150,000 people, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) southeast of the coastal capital.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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[Saudi Gazette] Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, was poisoned by polonium, according to the findings of laboratory research carried out in Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... and cited in an Al-Jazeera ... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means the Peninsula, as in the Arabian Peninsula. In recent years it has settled in to become slightly less biased than MSNBC, in about the same category as BBC or CBS... report Tuesday. So he died of AIDS and polonium. But mostly of AIDS...
The analysis focused on biological samples taken from the late Paleostinian leader's belongings given to his wife Suha by the military hospital in Gay Paree where he died, according to Francois Bochud, head of the Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne.
Arafat, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, died on Nov. 11, 2004, following several weeks of treatment.
"The conclusion was that we did find some significant polonium that was present in these samples," Bochud told Al-Jazeera.
To confirm the theory that he was poisoned by polonium it would be necessary to exhume and analyse Arafat's remains, Bochud said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2012
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Top|| File under: PLO
#7
A spokesman for the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, where those items were analyzed, stressed that the "clinical symptoms described in Arafat's medical reports were not consistent with polonium-210 and that conclusions could not be drawn as to whether the Palestinian leader was poisoned or not", and that "the only way to confirm the findings would be to exhume Arafat's body to test it for polonium-210."
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/04/2012 11:06
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Top||
#9
Arafat was poisoned?
Good riddance.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2012 12:12
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Top||
#10
Games within games within games
Polonium has been used at least three times on expat Russians by the KGB.
This is a real head scratcher for me. If the KGB did off Arafat, what were they hoping to accomplish in his stead?
I can't find my conspiracy theorist cap and decoder ring so I need some help from everyone.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
07/04/2012 14:03
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Top||
#11
I've always thought that the Mossad got to Arafat. Probably through some third-party intermediary who was in Arafat's trusted inner circle. But polonium poisoning - if this is even true - is a kinda dumb way of doing things. It was stupid for Putin to use the same method on Litvinenko. Putin wanted to make the point that he hated traitors, but polonium is traceable and rare. It's not exactly a low-signature way of killing someone.
The question is ... with Arafat gone, was Isreal really better off dealing with Hamas instead? I doubt it. Arafat may have been a pain in the a**, but he was a predictable pain in the a**. Hamas is a bigger problem.
#12
Might simply be the KGB hated him and once he's no longer useful, offed him. Remember what they did to the ones that kidnapped their Diplomat in Leb.
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.
Investigators claim Hezbollah using 
To say that they don't make them like George Washington anymore is to insult understatement. But those who admire him have a duty, today of all days, to remember him before he is forgotten by younger generations who, through no fault of their own, have no sense of him. They haven't been taught, and the shame of this belongs to all, with a few notable exceptions.
A senior Iranian official accused the West of "taking revenge" on the Syrian government because of its support for the Palestinians.
[Yemen Post] In response to the recent remarks made by the US ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein, the Iranian embassy in Sana'a on Tuesday said that al-Qaeda in Yemen was made by Washington, lashing out at the US diplomat and describing his comments as instigating.Last week, Feierstein accused in a 
[Yemen Post] Three suspected Al-Qaeda 
cycle of violence
Al-Sharq Saudi newspaper reported that Iran is currently bolstering its sway and influence in the southern Yemeni province of Taiz as it began strengthening its cooperation and enhancing its relationship with the some political factions and media groups in the province which is considered the scientific hub in Yemen.
Members of an Internal Security Forces patrol were assaulted by Hizbullah supporters in the Rweiss neighbourhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, security sources told An Nahar daily on Tuesday.
Kurram Agency
Six members of a family, including an infant, were killed and three others injured over a matrimonial dispute in Afzalabad area here on Monday.
Four 
US Secretary of State 
Hillary Clinton
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] The international community on Tuesday weighed options to help embattled Mali save its north from Islamist fighters who have smashed ancient shrines in Timbuktu and rigged another city with landmines.
[Dawn] THE wave of religious extremism in large parts of Africa from the Horn to the Atlantic has assumed dangerous proportions and threatens to destabilise a number of states, including the continent's most populous country. From Nigeria to Somalia, Islamist
Syrian troops pounded several rebel-held districts in the central city of Homs on Tuesday, as the 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
(Sh. M. Network)-At least seven Al shabab suspects were 
The Supreme Court on Tuesday suspended the National Assembly membership of Pakistain 
The United States will release about $1.1 billion to Pakistain's military as part of a deal that will see Islamabad lift a blockade on 
[Dawn] At least six people were killed in incidents of violence in 
(Sh. M. Network)-Unknown assailants in Somalia have shot to death overnight former deputy police Commissioner of 
Mahmoud 
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
(Sh.M.Network)-China is closely cooperating with the navies of Japan and Indiain patrolling against piracy off Somalia as the country shows more willingness to work with other nations in safeguarding global trade.
[Dawn] The voice had long haunted Indian police investigating Mumbai's deadly 2008 terrorist attack. 
... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means 
