We are now proposing to give cabinet positions to the Brüderbünd. Any question which side Champ is on?
UAE foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed, his Qatari counterpart Khalid Al-Attiyah, and US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns were scheduled to visit the Muslim Brotherhood's second-man Khairat El-Shatar in Tora Prison on Sunday night, government sources told Ahram Online. The trilateral delegation had aimed to present the Islamist leader with an initiative to at break the political deadlock and circle of violence that engulfed the country since the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi.
The deal also proposes the formation of a new cabinet, which would include three ministers from the Muslim Brotherhood in addition to two Salafist ministers.
However, El-Shater, who has been detained on charges of inciting to kill protesters since 6 July, has refused to meet with the US, UAE, and Qatari officials to discuss the deal, Al Jazeera TV reported.
"Mohamed Morsi is the legitimate president of Egypt. They should go talk to Morsi," declared El-Shater according to the Qatari based network.
Meanwhile, Egypt's interior ministry said late on Sunday that no delegation from the United States or the European Union visited El-Shater in prison.
Ahram Online has learned that the trio's deal calls for the replacement of Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi, who Morsi supporters harshly criticise and accuse of bias, with a premier that is viewed as more independent and objective.
Like one of their own...
However, no specific figure was offered as El-Beblawi's potential successor.
The deal also proposes the formation of a new cabinet, which would include three ministers from the Muslim Brotherhood in addition to two Salafist ministers. The incumbent government does not include any Islamist figures, as the Brotherhood and other Islamist forces have refused participation in protest of Morsi's ouster.
Furthermore, the deal entails a Brotherhood-orchestrated dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-ins held in Cairo. Tens of thousands of Morsi loyalists are maintaining three sit-ins; one near Nasr City's Rabaa Al-Adawiya Mosque, a second in Giza's Nahda Square, and a third in Heliopolis' Alf Maskan area.
The trio proposes that the 2012 constitution, which was frozen as part of the armed forces' political roadmap, be amended as planned, with Islamists included in the 50-man committee tasked with drafting the amendments. Islamist figures would also participate in drafting the law regulating the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Should the deal be accepted by all sides, the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, would not be disbanded. The law regulating political parties would not exclude religious parties, such as the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party or the Salafist Nour Party.
The deal guarantees that charges leveled against a number of Islamist figures "will not be politicised," and be subject instead to independent investigation by the judiciary.
Ahram Online has learned that the proposal was discussed with Egypt's interim Vice President for foreign affairs Mohamed ElBaradei and is negotiable.
The UAE and US officials have rescheduled their itinerary in order to leave on Monday, extending their stay by one day. The Qatari minister, who was also scheduled to leave on Sunday, has yet to set a date for his departure.
Qatar has been a strong backer of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, granting Egypt some $7 billion in aid during his year in power. Conversely, the UAE, along with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have welcomed the army's ouster of Morsi.
Western and Arab states, unsettled by the deepening turmoil in the Arab world's most populous state, have been working to mediate between Egypt's interim administration and allies of the toppled president.
Burns, along with European Union envoy Bernadino Leon, met with army chief Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Sunday, according to an army statement that did not comment further. The representatives sat earlier with government officials and Morsi allies.
US President Barack Obama has also asked two senators to travel to Egypt "soon" to hold talks with the interim government and the opposition.
In a meeting with US and EU envoys on Saturday, a spokesman from a pro-Morsi delegation said they are open to solutions but expressed rejection of any involvement of El-Sisi in a potential agreement. Morsi's supporters also demanded a pony the restoration of the 2012 constitution.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/05/2013
14:32 ||
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President Obullshit should shut up and mind his own business.
He is proving himself to be an apologist for Islamic extremists; our enemies.
On the day that almost two dozen U.S. embassies and consulates across North Africa and the Middle East are closed following the identification of a significant threat from an al-Qaeda affiliate, a senior U.S. official is providing new details about the communications intercepted from the terrorists, telling ABC News that al-Qaeda operatives could be heard talking about an upcoming attack. The official described the terrorists as saying the planned attack is "going to be big" and "strategically significant."
"The part that is alarming is the confidence they showed while communicating and the air of certainty," the official said, adding that the group -- Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- appeared to have a media plan for after the attack.
Authorities do not know the exact target of the planned attack, according to the official.
The senior U.S. official said there is concern about devices that could be implanted inside the body of a terrorist.
Oooooohhh, anal bombs, like the gentleman's brother who went off prematurely while waiting for the Saudi prince in his palace? How exciting that could be -- not quite flying around like a burst balloon in a children's cartoon.
"We are concerned about surgically implanted devices," they said. "These are guys who have developed the techniques to defeat our detection methods."
The official also said authorities were stunned that the group broke "operational security" -- meaning they talked likely knowing it would be picked up by intercepts.
The question that comes to mind is who will be laughed at should this turn out to be all smoke and no fire -- Al Qaeda for failing yet again to pull off a successful attack, or us for overreacting to a threat from the diminished Al Qaeda.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/05/2013
14:30 ||
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anal bombs? The line of volunteers...allan is pleased
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
08/05/2013 20:35
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Posted by: frozen al ||
08/05/2013
13:22 ||
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Sporting bright blue pants, a bullhorn and an Ecuadorian flag, Weiner repeatedly shouted, Que viva Ecuador! to the crowd as he energetically ran down Northern Boulevard in Queens with his loyal interns following.
I think I got his angle here. With a little bending of the rules - nothing too outrageous by Big Apple standards - he could compete for a title much more gratifying, and much more relevant to his talents, than a mere mayoralty. He could be Top Banana.
From Rooters. If true this is fundamental. We're supposed to have a government that serves us, not that looks for ways to control and imprison us. A scrupulous government agency might indeed respect the barriers imposed by the Constitution. The current administration looks to be unscrupulous in multiple ways, and the administrations to come are likely to be worse.
WASHINGTON -- A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.
Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.
The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."
It's not QUITE like that. Yet. But the point is made: if you can hide how you got a tip on the defendant, what else are you hiding, Mr. Prosecutor? If you're lying to us about this, what else are you lying about? There's even a legal phrase that covers this, Mr. Prosecutor: "Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus"...
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.
This is how the drug war has grown to threaten ordinary people...
Today, much of the SOD's work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked "Law Enforcement Sensitive," a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.
"Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD's involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD."
In other words, lie to the court...
A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.
But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to "recreate" an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.
A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, 'Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.
After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."
It's also called, "lie", "fraud", "dishonesty", and other words that can't be printed in a family blog...
The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."
A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might be concerned.
Oh, really, we might be concerned about how you gather information and use it against citizens, keeping it all secret, lying to judges and attorneys, and using it for purposes other than for why you originally said you were going to use it? Whatever gave you that idea?
"It's just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean," said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.
Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using "parallel construction" may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.
Wonder if the DEA has read the Constitution lately...
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases begin "would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional."
Lustberg and others said the government's use of the SOD program skirts established court procedures by which judges privately examine sensitive information, such as an informant's identity or classified evidence, to determine whether the information is relevant to the defense.
"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"
You don't. That's the point.
Some lawyers say there can be legitimate reasons for not revealing sources. Robert Spelke, a former prosecutor who spent seven years as a senior DEA lawyer, said some sources are classified. But he also said there are few reasons why unclassified evidence should be concealed at trial.
"It's a balancing act, and they've doing it this way for years," Spelke said. "Do I think it's a good way to do it? No, because now that I'm a defense lawyer, I see how difficult it is to challenge."
No reasonable person is going to want national security information and sources put in the open. But as the man says, this is about drug crime, not national security. And what's to stop the "two dozen" agencies from doing this with other types of crime?
One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.
"I was pissed," the prosecutor said. "Lying about where the information came from is a bad start if you're trying to comply with the law because it can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court." The prosecutor never filed charges in the case because he lost confidence in the investigation, he said.
So there's one honest prosecutor. Is he going to keep his job?
A senior DEA official said he was not aware of the case but said the agent should not have misled the prosecutor. How often such misdirection occurs is unknown, even to the government; the DEA official said the agency does not track what happens with tips after the SOD sends them to agents in the field.
The SOD's role providing information to agents isn't itself a secret. It is briefly mentioned by the DEA in budget documents, albeit without any reference to how that information is used or represented when cases go to court.
The DEA has long publicly touted the SOD's role in multi-jurisdictional and international investigations, connecting agents in separate cities who may be unwittingly investigating the same target and making sure undercover agents don't accidentally try to arrest each other.
The unit also played a major role in a 2008 DEA sting in Thailand against Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; he was sentenced in 2011 to 25 years in prison on charges of conspiring to sell weapons to the Colombian rebel group FARC. The SOD also recently coordinated Project Synergy, a crackdown against manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of synthetic designer drugs that spanned 35 states and resulted in 227 arrests.
Since its inception, the SOD's mandate has expanded to include narco-terrorism, organized crime and gangs. A DEA spokesman declined to comment on the unit's annual budget. A recent LinkedIn posting on the personal page of a senior SOD official estimated it to be $125 million.
Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE.
The DICE database contains about 1 billion records, the senior DEA officials said. The majority of the records consist of phone log and Internet data gathered legally by the DEA through subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide. Records are kept for about a year and then purged, the DEA officials said.
So they say...
About 10,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agents have access to the DICE database, records show. They can query it to try to link otherwise disparate clues. Recently, one of the DEA officials said, DICE linked a man who tried to smuggle $100,000 over the U.S. southwest border to a major drug case on the East Coast.
"We use it to connect the dots," the official said.
Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst.
"They do a pretty good job of screening, but it can be a struggle to know for sure whether the person on a wiretap is American," the senior law enforcement official said.
Tips from domestic wiretaps typically occur when agents use information gleaned from a court-ordered wiretap in one case to start a second investigation.
As a practical matter, law enforcement agents said they usually don't worry that SOD's involvement will be exposed in court. That's because most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial and therefore never request to see the evidence against them. If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement.
Memo to defendants: go to trial and the charges will be dropped...
Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren't always helpful - one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent. But current and former agents said tips have enabled them to catch drug smugglers who might have gotten away.
"It was an amazing tool," said one recently retired federal agent. "Our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."
DEA officials said that the SOD process has been reviewed internally. They declined to provide Reuters with a copy of their most recent review.
Of course not. It's secret, but I can reproduce the conclusion: "our internal review shows that our program is okay. Honest. Trust us."
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/05/2013
08:50 ||
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The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA,
SOD ? Please gag me.
And the "partners"....never vector taskings on US Persons right ?
#3
Given how Hizb'allah, al Qaeda in North Africa, in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Afghanistan and various other incarnations are entwined with the drug trade -- both as cover and as one of many criminal fundraising efforts for jihad -- I'm not sure this is unjustified. Here at Rantburg Chris Covert's series on the drug war in Mexico is posted on page 1 (War on Terror) for exactly that reason. And, while I am not at all keen on this level of observation and intrusion into the doings of the innocent (anybody watching me is going to be bored to tears -- "Oh Gawd, not another nap! Does that woman actually ever do anything?!" Sorry guys -- not really, no.)
Choke off the drug trade, and remove a significant funding source for the jihadis -- I'm all for that. Let them fight with the Russian and Romanian mafiyas for the theft of credit card numbers, and see how far that gets them, now that the Gulf oil money looks like it will soon start drying up.
#10
How about bringing back alcohol prohibition too? that worked a treat..
You know, Bright Pebbles, England's own Anthony Trollope commented on the drinking habits of Americans of all ages and stations... not to mention the common practice of paying Irish immigrant workers in alcoholic beverages rather than actual money. As a result of Prohibition, consumption of alcohol was down significantly across all segments of the population. And, given that there had been a trend of criminal gangs being concentrated in whatever was the latest population of immigrants throughout the nineteenth century, that this trend continued into the early twentieth is not really a revelation.
In summary, Prohibition did not significantly change the behaviour of criminal gangs, but did significantly impact per capita alcohol consumption, and radically decreased -- post-Prohibition, at least -- the availability of distilled alcohols cut with methanol , etc, a standard problem in the drinking establishments of working men and the poor in both Britain and America until purity laws came into vogue on both sides of the Atlantic.
#11
In all honesty, I used to be extremely anti-drug. But the war on (some) drugs has taken far too large atoll on fundamental liberty, expansion of government, and entrenchment of power with bureaucrats and police.
Time to declare victory and end it, and dismantle the DEA back to a small core force that assists local law enforcement and a proper border security agency.
#13
Yes, it is a war on your choice to consume, Bright Pebbles. But so are product purity laws. I have in my possession a reprint of Things A Lady Would Like To Know Concerning Domestic Management, the second printing of which is dated 1875 by the publishing house Hutchinson of London. The very first section is titled "Adulterations", and contains standard tests by which the housewife can learn whether her ingredients have been adulterated, though the Parliamentary "Sale of Food and Drugs Act" had been passed some years before: bread by alum; cayenne pepper by brick dust, red wood dust, and red lead, among other possibilities, requiring a good microscope to detect; sausages with things too disgusting to mention, though we all have read about the crusade to clean up the meat packing industry in school, and needn't go further into it here; and so forth. There are things that are not good to ingest, though an individual might want to ever so badly, and sometimes it is a good thing for government to intervene.
It is not, after all, that government is itself bad, but that too much government is as bad as too little.
And separately, do remember that the opium trade is controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda/Afghanistan jihadis, and Hizb'allah and Al Qaeda/North Africa are entwined in the Hispano-American drug tradethat badanov has been chronicling in these pages. So every time you exercise your freedom to imbibe, you are funding the jihad against your country and mine. And every time you agitate for the cartels' freedom to sell you that which you desire to buy, you are surrendering more deeply to the expansion of the caliphate.
Nowadays it is opium, etc. that is the opiate of the people.
Now that all the gang violence is under control they can move up to the tougher cases.
The old man, described by a family member as "wobbly" on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.
First they tased him, but that didn't work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally, according to the Cook County medical examiner.
The Park Forest police version is that on the night of July 26, John Wrana, a resident of the Victory Centre senior living facility, threatened staff and paramedics with a 2-foot-long metal shoehorn and a metal cane. The police statement neglects to mention that the old man also used a walker.
#4
in the mid-80s wimmin were told by the media not to pull over for Cook County Deputy Sheriffs as some were actually hit men for the mob and could rape and kill them.
#10
"Attempts were made verbally to have the resident comply with demands to drop the articles, to no avail," the police statement reads. "The resident then armed himself with a 12-inch butcher type kitchen knife."
But lawyer Grapsas says that Wrana's family never saw a knife in his room and that staff also told him Wrana didn't have such a knife.
"So where did the knife come from?" Grapsas asked.
#12
To be fair, it was a small suburban pd, (think Barney Fife) not the county pd itself, no excuse for the SWAT. These guys think they are on tv and pulling "raids" for almost anything and nothing at all. No excuse, shameless. Retired 30 yrs + CPD.
#14
I used to live next door to that suburb. I've had patients in that nursing home. I have no idea what the police were thinking.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/05/2013 18:24
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"The old man, described by a family member as "wobbly" on his feet, had refused medical attention."
Was he under a protective order? Had he legally been declared non compos mentis? (And, if so, did the idjit paramedics who called the cops have a copy of the paperwork in their hands?)
If not, he had the absolute right to refuse medical attention, no matter how much his family/nursing home whined about it.
When I was in the rescue squad, I'd talk and explain and get others to help persuade, and make sure the patient understood the consequences of refusing medical attention (hey - I've got all night). But if the adult patient refused to go, I wouldn't attempt to transport. That's called KIDNAPPING.
And if you're too stupid or stubborn to go to the hospital when you need to, I sure as hell ain't going to go to prison for your sorry ass.
Posted by: Barbara ||
08/05/2013 18:33
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A U.S. military helicopter has crashed on Okinawa on Monday. The crash took place at a maneuvering ground inside the U.S. Marine's Camp Hansen in central Okinawa, said an official, adding that there were no casualties among local residents but that he had no information about the military crew.
Video footage showed smoke rising from a fire on a remote mountainside and the local official said fire fighters had been dispatched. NTV said that the aircraft was a CH-46 helicopter.
#1
Define "Children" Trayvon was described as a "Child" But he wasn't.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/05/2013 8:21
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#2
Shooting at Police is usually fatal.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/05/2013 8:24
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#3
Moderators, please do not post Sharpton articles next to articles about helicopter crashes. It severely aggravates my Evelyn Wood 'quick scan' depression.
#8
*en comment with the title, it would be interesting to watch wonder bread Chrissi Mathews stagger his way through these names like an intoxicated John Madden reading the list of Samoan pro-ballers with a mouth full of Reese's pieces.
#9
Its not fair. It was my sisters only child. You shouldnt have to bury your child. My beautiful nephew got shot in the head. A mother of one now has to bury her only child.
The two officers, ages 26 and 27, were taken to Jacobi Hospital for ringing in the ears and trauma, police said.
Next time, insert your ear plugs before you start chasing a beautiful nephew.
(Also, check out the pic of the doofus in a moonsuit.)
Photo from before incident, when the good doctor was still able to shave himself and wipe his own bottom.
Survivors of the Fort Hood massacre are suing the U.S. government for allowing a jihadist soldier to rise through the ranks unchecked because of 'political correctness'.
Major Nidal Hasan, 42, is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder for after launching an attack at the Texas Army post in November 2009.
And on the eve of his trial, which is due to get underway on Tuesday, 148 victims and their relatives are launching a legal claim against the government for $750million (£491 million) for failing to prevent the killings from happening.
It is alleged military chiefs under the George W Bush and Barack B.O. regimes allowed Major Hasan to progress through the ranks despite his increasing jihad extremism because of 'political correctness'.
Reed Rubinstein, the lawyer acting for the group, told the Sunday Telegraph that Major Hasan w as awarded 'preferential treatment' because of his 'ethnicity and his religion'.
He said: 'The rules on the conduct of military officers were ignored. He was a terrible physician and had no business treating soldiers. Yet, because of where he came from, and how he prayed to his god, they promoted him and set him loose and ignored his open, very obvious jihadism.'
Mr Rubenstein added that the group wanted the government to meet 'its responsibilities to those harmed by its negligence' over Major Hasan.
Major Hasan doesn't deny that he carried out the November 2009 rampage at Fort Hood, one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
The attack occurred in a building where hundreds of unarmed soldiers, some about to deploy to Afghanistan, were waiting for vaccines and routine checkups.
Hasan walked inside with two handguns, climbed onto a desk and shouted 'Allahu Akbar!' - an Arabic phrase meaning 'God is great!' - then he fired, pausing only to reload.
There are dozens of witnesses who saw it happen but military law prohibits him from entering a guilty plea because authorities are seeking the death penalty.
If Hasan is convicted and sentenced to death there are likely years, if not decades, of appeals ahead. He may never make it to the death chamber at all.
Ahead of his trial, the Army psychiatrist spoke to the American media for the first time last week and said that the U.S. government is at war with Islam.
In the past, Major Nidal Hasan has only spoken via telephone with 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... , the transcript of which is evidence in his upcoming trial.
'My complicity was on behalf of a government that openly acknowledges that it would hate for the law of Almighty Allah to be the supreme law of the land,' Hasan said in the lengthy statement released to Fox News on Saturday.
He then says in reference to a war on Islam, 'I participated in it.'
'I would like to begin by repenting to Almighty Allah and apologize to the Mujahideen, the believers, and the innocent. ... I ask for their forgiveness for participating in the illegal and immoral aggression against Mohammedans, their religion and their lands,' he said in the statement.
He has twice dismissed his lawyers and now plans to represent himself at trial. He's suggested he wants to argue the killings were in 'defense of others' - namely, members of the Taliban fighting Americans in Afghanistan. The trial judge, Col. Tara Osborn, has so far denied that strategy.
Thirteen officers from around the country who hold Hasan's rank or higher will serve on the jury for a trial that will likely last one month and probably longer. They must be unanimous to convict Hasan of murder and sentence him to death. Three-quarters of the panel must vote for an attempted murder conviction.
No active-duty U.S. soldier has been executed since 1961.
The last man executed in the military system was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl. Five men are on the military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but none are close to being executed.
#1
Classify it as an enemy action (i.e. terrorist event), and you'd not have this issue. Damned PC Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon strike again. I thought we learned all about Courtney Massengale years ago. Seems this generation of flag officers forgot or deliberately ignored those hard learned lessons.
#5
Three incidents which strategically were huge battle losses for the United States in this war have been caused by poor junior officer leadership in non-combat units. Abu Graibh, Bradley Manning, and this asshole are failures of direct leadership. The first two should have been stopped at the E-8/O-3 level. Hasan's bosses failed as military officers let alone doctor's who specialize in identifying crazy people.
#6
Its going to be difficult to actually approve negligence. You will have to identify individuals. Then you will have to identify actions that they were required to take (not just actions that rational people would have taken) and show that they didn't take those actions. Also, the shooting was in 2009 and there is a procedure with statutory limits regarding filing claims and filing lawsuits for negligence.
Posted by: lord garth ||
08/05/2013 15:06
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#7
What negligence? The word from on high was "Muslims are good, there is just a small group of extremists etc..."
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
08/05/2013 21:41
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#10
IIUC, the basic argument of the victims' + survivors' families is that MAJOR HASAN became radicalized unto Radical Islamism while in Army service, + that the latter "knew or should've known" that it wouldn't end well, but failed to do something substantive or decisive to stop it.
[Ynet] Tribesmen blew up Yemen's main oil export pipeline late on Saturday, halting the flow of crude, the state news agency reported on Sunday.
The pipeline started pumping crude oil again last week after repairs that took several days, following a similar attack by rustics. Earlier this year, the pipeline was pumping around 125,000 barrels per day.
This is why they can't have nice things, including adequate food and drinking water..
[Al Ahram] A pro-Morsi Islamist coalition has called for fresh rallies on Tuesday as international mediators hold talks to put an end to the country's mounting polarisation.
The National Alliance to Support Legitimacy, consisting of Islamist parties and groups, called for yet another swathe of mass demonstrations backing deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, paying no heed to the government's orders to end ongoing protests at two sites in Greater Cairo's Nasr City and Giza districts.
International envoys, from the US, EU and Arab Gulf states, are currently in Cairo to help resolve the political crisis set off by Morsi's overthrow on 3 July.
"Coup makers continue to grope for excuses to disperse sit-ins and shut mouths, [establishing] military authoritarianism and a police state," read a Sunday statement by the Islamist grouping.
Many leaders of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood have been rounded up following his removal on charges of inciting violence. The toppled leader himself has been formally remanded in custody, facing investigations into an array of accusations including murder and plotting with Palestinian group Hamas.
An Egyptian court on Sunday set a trial date for six top Brotherhood leaders on 25 August, further infuriating Morsi's loyalists.
The statement went on to accuse the 'coup leaders' of plotting to carry out explosions it said they would blame on pro-Morsi protesters "in preparation for storming [their] sit-ins and breaking them up by force." The coalition, nevertheless, went on to assert it would abide by peaceful means of demonstration, voicing rejection of any bloodletting.
Egypt's army-backed government reiterated its calls on Saturday for supporters of Morsi to abandon their protest camps, promising them a safe exit.
"If you think you're upholding the Muslim Brotherhood, your safe exit from the squares will allow the group to return to its role within the democratic political process," interior ministry spokesman said.
Thousands of Morsi's loyalist have manned two sizeable sit-ins in Cairo to demand the reinstatement of the deposed leader, deepening political divide in a state reeling from turmoil since the overthrow of longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013
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Short version: Since Obama is switching from a military response to a lawfare response, why not declare the war against Al Qaeda over.
Because in President Obama's wars, the enemy doesn't have a vote. As always, The Smartest Man In The Room.
...President Obama recognized the problem in his May 23 speech at the National Defense University. He warned that "a perpetual war . . . will prove self-defeating, and alter [the United States] in troubling ways." Quoting James Madison, Obama warned: " 'No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.' "... The Obama administration should rethink its overly elastic definition of war on al-Qaeda and call an end to it. Roth also said in conclusion:
Those are the standards for policing, not war. So why not take the next logical step and declare the war against al-Qaeda over? Yes, there may be a price to pay. Obama's political opponents will holler and score points after the next, inevitable terrorist attack. But the cost of using war rhetoric to shunt aside appropriate limits on lethal force is even higher. Plenty of governments are eager for excuses to summarily kill their enemies, however tenuously defined -- even those living in the United States. The U.S. government has also committed abuses in the name of fighting terrorism. The Obama administration should rethink its overly elastic definition of war on al-Qaeda and call an end to it. Yeah, I remember scoring points that day four of our people were brutally murdered in Benghazi in a f*ck up that Obama still won't own up to nine months on. I think it was a three pointer, but it may have been a safety, for two points.
Only the left scores political points on dead bodies. Whether they make them dead or not. Ken Roth has been the exec director of Human Rights Watch since 1993 and before that was the deputy exec director of HRW
Who better to know what he's talking about?
Posted by: lord garth ||
08/05/2013
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#1
Yeah its over... over there, and over there too, and even over there (pointing to multiple embassies, insurgencies, and other AlQ/Muslim hot spots on the map).
#7
Here you go RJ, something the MSM has spent a decade trying to shove down the Memory Hole(c) -
S.J.RES.23 -- Authorization for Use of Military Force (Enrolled Bill [Final as Passed Both House and Senate] - ENR)
--S.J.Res.23--
S.J.Res.23
One Hundred Seventh Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE FIRST SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Wednesday,
the third day of January, two thousand and one
Joint Resolution
To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.
Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and
Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and
Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and
Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and
Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force'.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements-
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.
Congress can repeal this to end the process. Did that when the Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty to end the state of war (WWI) with Germany et al.
[Dawn] Police on Friday conducted search operations in the federal capital along with contingents of Pakistain Air Force and Pakistain Navy in the vicinity of Margalla hills.
They maintained high alert in the city to ensure foolproof security.
"Policemen were assigned the task of combing the nearby areas of Margalla Hills where search operations were conducted," a police front man said.
The heads of all cop shoppes were also directed to maintain high vigilance in their respective areas where they screened houses, workshops, markets, under construction buildings and residential areas.
Following the directions of SSP Islamabad Muhammad Rizwan, coppers in the form of teams conducted search operations in the vicinity of Margalla Hills.
Search operations were was also conducted in slum areas, inns, hotels, restaurants and Afghan habitats.
These measures are being taken to ensure foolproof security and keep a vigilant eye on suspicious elements.
The police front man maintained the search operation would continue in the coming days.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat says Israel will free the first of four groups of long-held Palestinian prisoners next week as part of the deal to resume the peace talks for the first time in three years. Erakat said in a statement that 26 men will be released August 13.
Israeli negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, has said the release will be carried out only if the Palestinians prove to be a serious partner in the negotiations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overcame strong opposition in his Cabinet to approve the Palestinian prisoner release.
Next time just shoot them...
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said Israel must free long-held prisoners in order for negotiations to proceed. Israeli media have said the prisoners include Palestinians convicted of decades-old deadly attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces.
The prisoner release drew opposition from ultranationalist ministers who said it would be a reward for "terrorism." According to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu told his ministers the prisoner decision was "difficult" for him and the families of those killed, but also necessary to renew the peace process.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Erbil -- A Kurdish military delegation that arrived in Baghdad yesterday announced the resumption of talks with the Iraqi Defense Ministry over Erbils readiness to deploy Peshmerga forces across Iraq for the purposes of confronting terrorism.
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Peshmerga secretary-general Jabbar Yawar told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Kurdish military delegation informed the Iraqi side of the Peshmerga ministrys complete readiness to send its forces to any spot in Iraq to confront terrorism, in the event of the federal Ministry of Defense requesting this.
He added, Terrorism is a scourge that we must all work together to confront and eradicate, we are ready for any form of military, security, and intelligence coordination and cooperation with the Iraqi forces to confront terrorism and armed militias.
Yawar emphasized, This was confirmed by the KRG presidential statement in terms of the deteriorating security situation that has taken place in Iraq recently, on the basis that what threatens Iraq will also threaten us, and we are part of the Iraqi defense force, carrying out our duty towards our people and the people of Iraq as a whole
Yawar, along with Gen. Shirvan Abdel-Rahman, was in Baghdad to meet with senior military officials.
Speaking exclusively to Asharq Al-Awsat, he revealed: Our discussions started from the point at which they had stopped at the last meeting we reviewed all the points that we had previously discussed to develop a specific mechanism for implementation.
We also discussed military plans for greater joint coordination and cooperation in managing the security file, he added.
An official statement posed on the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan website on Saturday confirmed that a military delegation from the Kurdistan region arrived in Baghdad under the supervision of Shirvan Abdel-Rahman and Jabbar Yawar to discuss previous agreements [between the KRG Ministry of Peshmerga and Iraqi Defense Ministry] and ways of activating these.
The statement added that the latest round of meetings comes after mutual visits between Baghdad and Erbil, with the two sides agreeing on the need to find appropriate solutions to outstanding issues.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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The United States says most of its diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa will remain closed all week. More than 20 embassies and consulates were closed Sunday due to security concerns.
The State Department said Sunday a small number of additional posts will be closed, while others will reopen Monday. It said the extension was not related to new security threats, but that officials were simply exercising caution.
Sunday's move to close U.S. embassies and consulates came several days after American officials warned of a possible al-Qaida attack.
Most of the more than 20 diplomatic missions are in Muslim countries, where Sunday is a regular business day, and included embassies in Iraq, Libya and Yemen. The embassy in Baghdad will reopen on Monday.
The United States has issued a global travel alert to American citizens that said the potential for terrorist attacks is strong in the Middle East and North Africa.
The State Department says diplomatic posts in the following places will be closed all week: Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Dhahran, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Manama, Muscat, Sanaa, Tripoli, Antanarivo, Bujumbura, Djibouti, Khartoum, Kigali, and Port Louis.
The following embassies and consulates were closed Sunday, but will be allowed to reopen on Monday: Dhaka, Algiers, Nouakchott, Kabul, Herat, Mazar el Sharif, Baghdad, Basrah, and Irbil.
U.S. lawmakers and former high-ranking officials called the decision to close diplomatic missions and to issue the global travel alert an extraordinary move.
Other countries took similar actions, and the international police organization Interpol issued its own security alert.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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BOSSASO, Somalia --- Former Puntland President Gen. Mohamud Muse Hersi (Adde Muse) has told that Puntland will split into regions and districts on Saturday, Garowe Online report.
Speaking on a Puntland radio station, Adde Muse said he travelled from my Diaspora home in Canada to "work for peace" and "help my people". On the contrary, Adde Musse fled to Ceel-Afweyn district of Somaliland where he formed an armed clan militia who took part Puntland's first-ever deadly civil war in 2002 and later, without bringing to account for his action was elected as Puntland President in 2005.
Those statements aren't irreconcilable...
Continuing, He added that "Puntland will crumple region by region and district by district".
Speaking about his view towards that Puntland Government suspended cooperation with the Somali Federal Government in Mogadishu until the country's genuine constitution is restored; Gen. Adde Muse called the public decision as "Private one" as thousands of students who successfully took their PNEB (Puntland National Examination Board) exams are unlikely to join universities after the Somali Federal Government mishandled their Sudanese scholarships.
On May 29, two weeks before Puntland's suspended democratic elections, Puntland Information Minister Mohamud Aideed Dirir, who has now become Puntland's Planning and International Cooperation Minister, criticized the negative role Gen. Adde Muse was playing to sabotage the Local Council Elections in Qardo.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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#4
As per FREEREPUBLIC, the Bammer Admin says the GWOT is over - OTOH, no one knows iff the Hard Boyz = Jihadis/MilTerrs were officially notified or informed???
GAROWE, Somalia - Puntland government in northern Somalia has rebuffed a coastal agreement in which the Federal government of Somalia signed with the Atlantic Marine and Offshore Group on Saturday, Garowe Online reports.
For the Dutch it's all about the oil. For the Punties it's all about the graft...
In a press statement released by Puntland Ministry of Maritime transport, Ports and Counter Piracy, Puntland government warned of criminal offense and threat to its sovereignty and resources by assuring that Puntland territorial waters are under the full control of the Puntland government.
The government called on the contract signed on July 30, between the Defence Minister of the Somali Federal Government and the Dutch Company Atlantic Marine and Offshore Group with President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud present unacceptable and unsuitable in Puntland state according to the statement.
Continuing, the statement read: The agreement clearly undermines the Regional Somali States (Kampala Process Members) efforts of maintaining Somali Sovereignty and control over its territorial waters.
Puntlands statement with the signature of Puntland Minister of Maritime transport, Ports and Counter Piracy Eng. Saeed Mohamed Rageh further noted that Puntland Government will not honour such agreements as the recent coastal agreement violates the points documented under Somali Maritime Resource and Security Strategy agreement which was agreed upon by the countrys regional states.
Somalias Puntland government has been enforcing its authority in waters and deployed its coast guard into Puntland waters to protect the exclusive economic zone, according to ministry officials.
The Somali Federal Governments coastal contract with the Atlantic Marine and Offshore Group allows the Dutch Company to monitor and patrol the countrys Exclusive Economic Zone by using Long Range Patrol Vessels.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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This has been the subject of some discussion over at the Officers Club, as to whether the program will deploy a working ship that has some benefit to US naval doctrine.
From TFA, part of the executive summary. The report itself is a downloadable PDF:
GAO found that the Navy has made progress in addressing some of the early design and construction problems on the LCS 1 and LCS 2 seaframes, and quality defects and unit costs are declining, now that the seaframes are in steady production. Based on projected learning curves, shipyard performance can be expected to continue to improve over time.
This expected progress could, however, be disrupted, as the Navy is considering potentially significant seaframe design changes. For example, the Navy is currently studying changes to increase the commonality of systems and equipment between the two ship variants, primarily with regard to the ships' combat management systems, and add new capabilities. In addition, the Navy still has outstanding gaps in its knowledge about how the unique designs of the two variants will perform in certain conditions.
The lead ship of the Freedom class is currently on an extended deployment to Southeast Asia, and the Navy views this as an important opportunity to demonstrate some of the ship's capabilities and allow the crew to obtain first-hand experience with operations. Yet, developmental testing of the seaframes is ongoing, and neither variant has completed shock and survivability testing, which will demonstrate that the ship designs can safely absorb and control damage.
Importantly, operational testing of the LCS with its mission modules is several years away, which I will discuss later. Late discoveries of problems while the seaframes continue to be constructed could lead to further design changes.
#1
What is its mission? I know what my M1A2 does in the Army, I know what the mission of the B52 is and just how effective it can be, I even know the mission of the Marines Osprey, the Navy subs, cans, gators, cruisers and carriers -- and can therefore make some semblance of a pass at what tactical and strategic impact these military vehicles have, and therefore how well they are fulfilling their mission better than any other thing we could put in its place.
So what does the LCS do better than any other ship, what is its tactical function and strategic mission, and how does it rate?
Right now the primary mission seems to be making money for contractors, and teaching the navy all about how not to design and build a ship.
#2
...well, maybe, before 'destroyers' morphed into much larger 'frigates' (aka Light Cruisers), they could actually get in real close to the shore, sometimes to provide direct fire (eye ball) support to marines and troops. However, when you can deliver ordnance on target just as effectively via other systems, maybe that redundancy isn't called for anymore.
#3
I discovered there's a FRAM-ified Gearing Class Destroyer about an hour down the road. I took some pictures the last time I passed through, I guess I'll have to see how they came out when I get time.
From TFA:
For some time, the power-struggles of the listed nations have been largely characterized as civil wars among various Muslim factions, including the Muslim Brotherhood. But civil wars are confined within national boundaries. Once the boundary lines have bled into one another, as is presently the case with Syria, the wars become a generalized struggle, with various factions joining with the likeminded of surrounding nations. As World Wars I and II demonstrated, when war escapes national boundaries or aggressive entities invade other national boundaries, nations with a vested interest in maintaining or extending their power bases begin to team up with one another according to ideological empathies. The fighting then spreads as more and more nations get sucked into a black hole of conflict.
#6
I'm not sure closing an embassy is such a sign of weekness. I'd be tempted to permenantly close a few of the embassies in the middle east. What do we have to say that can't be said to their ambassador in Washington? Certainly shouldn't be giving out Visa's to some of these countries and we should be telling Americans travelling their they are on their own.
#7
Welcome to "Globalism" + OWG "Co-Superpowers", where the USA must PDeniably unilaterally give China roughly 1/2 of the Pacific, + a Global Islamic Nuclear Superpower {Shia? Sunni? centric] must dominate the ME + Muslim World.
The Hard Boyz are militarily or violently fighting, among other, for nonb-traditional, extra-Islamic areas of influence - CHINA HASN"T DITTO EVEN STARTED YET VEE JAPAN, ETAL. IN EAST-SOUTH ASIA + WESTPAC, BUT ITS COMING.
THe Clock is ticking ... Its NOT going to matter iff the US has the world's most pwerful military iff the Bammer or other anti-US Marxist-Anarchist-Globalists CAN'T OR WON'T USE IT IN DEFENSE OF US INTERESTS + OVERSEAS ALLIES.
Allies of deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi told mediators on Saturday they respected the popular will expressed in mass protests that led to his downfall, suggesting they might be backing away from a demand he be reinstated.
Folding like lawn chairs, are they...
Tarek El-Malt, spokesman for the pro-Mursi delegation that met envoys from the United States and the European Union, said his camp sought a resolution to Egypt's crisis based on the constitution that was suspended after he was deposed.
Speaking to Reuters by telephone, Malt said Mursi's allies told the envoys they wanted the constitution restored and said it held "more than one solution" to the crisis. He added that General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the army chief who overthrew Mursi, must not be part of a political deal without Mursi.
Asked whether the delegation had told the envoys that Mursi must be reinstated, Malt said that would be worked out in the details, notably not reiterating the demand for his return.
"This is part of the political initiatives," he said. "We did not get into the details of the political initiatives".
Under the bus you go, Mursi. The Brüderbünd recognizes that he's dispensable so long as they get back into power.
He said if those who opposed Mursi continued to insist that he should not be part of the "political equation", then "the steadfastness and sit-ins of the millions in the streets for five weeks requires that Sisi must also not be in the political equation."
A member of the Muslim Brotherhood-allied Wasat Party, Malt is the appointed spokesman of the delegation that met with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, US Ambassador Anne Patterson and European Union special envoy Bernardino Leon.
The delegation also includes top members of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
Later, senior Brotherhood politician Essam El-Erian said restoring the 2012 constitution meant Mursi would see out his term. However, diplomats say the Brotherhood understands Mursi, detained at a secret location, will not return as president but they want a face-saving legal formula for him to step down.
"Those empowered to speak for the FJP understand that Mursi is not coming back. But they are maintaining that as a negotiating position," a Western diplomat said.
Another diplomat involved in the talks said pro-Mursi alliance had shown flexibility in Saturday's meeting.
Relaying the messages delivered to the envoys, Malt said: "I respect and hold in regard the demands of the masses that went out on June 30, but I will not build on the military coup."
He added that the demands of the Mursi supporters must also be respected. Mursi supporters still protesting in Cairo want the constitution and Mursi reinstated.
Reinstate Mursi and it's the same-old all over again. Reinstate the Brüderbünd-written constitution and you'll get another Mursi...
"We have the readiness and flexibility to accept political solutions to get out of this crisis as long as they are based on constitutional legitimacy, by which we mean the return and reactivation of the 2012 constitution," Malt said.
He added that political solutions must be hammered out with the National Salvation Front - the loose coalition of non-Islamist parties that backed Mursi's overthrow and which includes interim Vice-President Mohamed ElBaradei.
"We (will) sit together and we will assess proposed political initiatives and reach solutions that respect all popular desires. But the army will not have a role in political solutions," he said. "The army must remain neutral and not interfere in political life."
Malt said a period of calm was needed to build confidence among all parties. He said this would include a renunciation of violence, the release of what he called political detainees and allowing Islamist television stations to reopen.
All to benefit the Brüderbünd...
The army-backed government says the Brotherhood has incited violence, accusing it of engaging in terrorism. Malt said the delegation had underscored the pro-Mursi camp's commitment to peaceful protests.
They also condemned violence in the Sinai Peninsula, where attacks by militant Islamists have escalated since Mursi's downfall.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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[Dawn] Heavy rains swept across eastern Afghanistan, leveling homes and killing at least 58 people in five provinces, while an estimated 30 others remain missing, officials said Sunday.
Provincial spokesmen in Nangarhar The unfortunate Afghan province located adjacent to Mohmand, Kurram, and Khyber Agencies. The capital is Jalalabad. The province was the fief of Younus Khalis after the Soviets departed and one of his sons is the current provincial Taliban commander. Nangarhar is Haqqani country.. , Kabul, Khost, Laghman and Nuristan said that all the floods struck early Saturday. Flash floods are common in those provinces and all are fed by rivers that eventually intersect in Nangarhar.
In Kabul's Surobi district, police chief Shaghasi Ahmadi said 34 people were killed in a remote and mountainous area. He said 22 of the bodies from Surobi were later found downstream in Laghman.
Surobi has a number of rivers running through it. It is also rife with Taliban activity.
Ahmadi said food, tents and other emergency supplies were being sent to the district from the capital.
Downstream in the adjacent province of Nangarhar, a government statement said 17 people were killed by the floods.
President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... 's office said another seven died in Khost and Nuristan. Rains can quickly weaken the structures of the mud-walled homes that dot the countryside in Afghanistan, causing the buildings to quickly collapse during heavy downpours.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
It is also rife with Taliban activity.
Flash floods are common in those provinces
NO sympathy.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/05/2013 8:30
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#2
Allan's Will.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/05/2013 19:43
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[Ynet] The United States extended the closures of some embassies and consulates in the Middle East - which had been closed Sunday due to an al Qaeda threat - through August 10 due to caution but not the emergence of any new threat, the State Department said.
Other US diplomatic posts, including in Kabul, Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... and Algiers, that had been closed on Sunday, will reopen on Monday, the State Department said.
#1
It seems to me that Al Qaeda needs to initiate their TET Offensive as soon as possible if they want to stay a viable Islamist organization. The stars are aligned as far as reasons to justify their terrorism..
-Egypt- The Bros got overthrown and are in physical danger. Zawahiri's buddies are back in jail. If he wants to recapture Islamist glory he better do something quick.
-The End of Ramadan. No comment necessary.
-Hasan's trial is starting. The President is going to look awful when AQ takes US hostages and want to trade for the blind sheik and Hasan. Appeal to the Muslim public that AQ want to save these guys from more American torture.
-AQ needs to draw attention to the detainees in GITMO. Although here doesn't seem to be a public outcry about force feeding them anymore.
-They need to make a statement on the drone strikes to their allies in Pakistan.
#3
Picked it up from "chatter". Yes, chatter... you know, NSA collection stuff that we don't talk about [unless brought up by a disgruntled contract employee now living in Russia]. No sense just closing up shop for a few days and putting a lid on it. Gotta give credit to somebody in the regime right? Let no crisis go to waste...etc.
We pay close attention to "chatter" as well as tips and direct reporting from non-US intelligence sources....except where the Tsarnaev Bros. or the late Anwar al-Awlaki are concerned.
#5
I doubt there is an al Qaeda threat. This all strikes me as smoke and mirrors. Too much bad press for a bad president, so al Qaeda comes to the rescue.
#7
You have to understand that to the Administration and the media the term 'terrorist' means U.S. Citizens who are patriots, Tea Party members, Conservatives, Returning Vets, etc....
Definitely not Islamic radicals who only want to destroy us.
So by 'chatter' they likely mean people are starting to pay attention to Benghazi again, and the IRS/NSA/Etc... scandals.
And they desperately need a new 'Squirrel!' to keep people distracted. The Embassies will stay closed until they can find something else. They had hoped to ride the 'Zimmerman is a racist' headlines for awhile but so far Holder hasn't found anything.
From TFA:
China military development has become a key focus of US security policy as well as that of virtually all Asian-Pacific states. The Burke Chair is issuing a new report on the trends in Chinese strategy, military spending, and military forces based on Chinese defense white papers and other official Chinese sources; US reporting by the Department of Defense and other defense agencies; and other government sources, including Japanese and Korean defense white papers and the International Monetary Fund. The analysis also draws on the work of experts outside of government, various research centers, and NGOs.
#1
ION see also CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > [People's Daily Online] MARITIME POWER KEY TO CHINA'S FUTURE.
* SAME, FREEREPUBLIC > PLA GENERAL ADMITS CHINA IS DEVELOPING A LARGE [USN LHA-style?] AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > [VOA News] CHINA TRYING TO CHANGE REGIONAL STATUS "WID [aggressive displays of] MILITARY FORCE": JAPAN.
* SAME > [India Today = Times of India] PLA CUTS OFF INDIAN ARMY FROM ITS FORWARD BUNKERS | CHINESE TROOPS ADOPT NEWEST TACTIC: STOP INDIAN ARMY FROM PATROLLING IN ITS OWN TERRITORY.
China + PLA once again doing a "Senkaku/Diaoyu"???
* BHARAT RAKSHAK > [Yomiuri Shimbun]JAPAN DEFENCE MINISTRY CONSIDERING "ATTACK" CAPABILITIES, espec in response to any Ballistic Missle attacks.
* SAME > [The Hindu] INDIA TURNING BHUTAN INTO A "PROTECTORATE", SAYS CHINESE COMMENTARY [Global Times].
Once again, YEAR 2018 = roughly the benchmark year when the US hopes to firmly or permanently establish GMD-TMD in East Asia vee its Regional Allies: + also when JAPAN HOPES TO HAVE ITS POST-WAR CONSTITUTION SUCCESSFULLY AMENDED AS PER JAPAN BEING ALLOWED TO POSSESS NUCWEAPS + ITS JSDFS BEING ALLOWED TO ENGAGE IN NON-"DEFENSIVE", INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES OR VENTURES.
YEAR 2018 = WHEN JAPAN HOPES TO BEGINS ITS "LOMNG MARCH" BACK TO BEING A MAJOR WORLD POWER IN MANY OR ALL GEOPOL DIMENSIONS, INCLUD NUCLEAR, NOT JUST REGIONAL OR ECONOMIC.
[NY Times] Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Supressor of the Damascenes... of Syria on Sunday banned the use of foreign currencies in business transactions, part of the government's effort to prop up the Syrian pound, which has plummeted to 200 pounds to the dollar from 47 to the dollar in March 2011.
SANA, the government-run news agency, said that people offering goods and services for foreign currencies without the government's approval could be fined and sentenced to at least six months in jail. In cases involving deals valued at more than $5,000, the punishment could be up to 10 years of hard labor.
Syrians have grown increasingly desperate to move their money to foreign currencies as the civil war, now in its third year, ravages the economy. Currency exchange shops in central Damascus are often packed. Real estate and manufacturing deals are increasingly conducted in dollars. Even taxi drivers and others working in small, informal businesses often demand to be paid in foreign currencies.
Last month, the Central Bank was able to reverse a deeper plunge in the value of the pound, which briefly traded at more than 300 to the dollar, by selling off dollars at a deep discount to banks, said Steve H. Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University who studies troubled currencies. The banks then sold the dollars to the public for a modest profit.
Smaller currency traders in Damascus said they were under pressure to follow the banks' lead, but many refused to sell dollars so cheaply. Mr. Hanke said it was unclear whether the government could sustain such interventions as a long-term strategy. Still, the government's move had enough impact on the market that the informal and official dollar rates converged, he said.
The government has increased salaries by more than 40 percent during the crisis, but since wages are demarcated in pounds, the raises have not offset the loss in buying power.
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#4
"Fixing" income disparity is impossible, because there will always be some who are smater than others, some who work harder than others, and some who simply have better sense than others. The only way you can eliminate disparity is to force everyone down to the salary level of a pakistani bricklaye. ANd I for one do not want my surgeon or pilot or or my RN or ... paid like that. Why? Because they will simply disappear.
Is Obama really that stupid - and are his followers really that blind that they think they can "solve" this by any manner other than totalitarian flattening of everything in society - aka Communism?
#10
interesting that approximately half of income tax payers pay zero (and a larger and larger population actually gets more back than withheld during the year) yet there is still a growing disparity?
Sounds like the rich are working harder, investing more and saving more than the non-tax payer population.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
08/05/2013 14:08
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#12
Ever notice how none of the calls for redistribution never involve redistribution of 'responsibility'? Never ask those receiving the purloined resources of others to give up behaviors and practices that are self destructive and limiting in their ability to actually contribute in bettering their position in life.
#14
AP I dont give a crap who John Galt is, I just want to know where Galt's Gulch is, so I can get moving. Unlike the novel, it doesn't seem to be in Colorado - maybe Texas?
#15
The standard of living is the level of wealth, comfort, material goods and necessities available to a person or population.
In 1970 the U.S. had the highest standard of living in the world. Today there are sixteen countrys in the world that have a higher standard of living than the U.S.
Balance of trade is the amount of money spent on imports compared to the amount of money recieved on exports. A country that spends more than it receives has a negative balance of trade. Between 1945 and 1969 the U.S. had a positive balance of trade. Since 1970 until today the U.S. has had an increasingly negitave balance of trade.
Balance of trade is like a nations bank account. Any country that spends more than it receives reduces it's national wealth. Reducing the total national wealth reduces the amount of money available to everyone and the country's standard of living falls.
Since 1970 the U.S. has proped up our standard of living by borrowing money to offset our negative balance of trade. Today the interest on that borrowed money is larger than our negative balance of trade. Which in turn means we can no longer prop up our standard of living on borrowed money.
The increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor is due in large part to the wealthy's ability to earn money in overseas markets (that are not available to the poor). This money never comes back into U.S. because of the U.S. tax policy and regulations, and is therefore unavailable to be shared by the working class.
There is an estimated 28 trillion dollars of U.S. money invested in the global economy outside the U.S. This amount has grown by an estimated 7 to 10 trillion dollars since Obama took office.
Wealthy people DO NOT keep their money in offshore bank accounts. They INVEST IT in economically emerging nations. Stifling any person's or business's ability to earn a profit will never put money into the pockets of the poor. Only by repairing our catastrophic trade inbalance and by incorporating tax and regulation policies that encourage investment in OUR OWN businesses and infrastructure will we elevate the standard of living for the middle and lower classes.
It is well known that the lower the population perceives their standard of living to be,
the easier it is to force an autocratic system of government on those people.
This should explain a lot about the true motives behind Obama's excessive and ignorant castigations of the wealthy. His orations are aimed primarily to incite the masses in our country, who appear mostly uneducated on, or unwilling to acknowledge Obama's fallacies and distortions of even the most basic and proven economic principles.
Nine displaced Syrian nationals have were killed Saturday in a airstrike near the Arsal border region in the Bekaa valley, according to reports. A further nine were injured during the attacks and are being treated at the General Hospital and other medical facilities in Baalbek, the Lebanese National News Agency reported.
There were conflicting reports as to whether the airstrikes took place on Lebanese or Syrian territory. The Hezbollah-run news outlet Al-Manar said that any such attacks had taken place on Syrian soil, claiming, Nine dead and 10 wounded were transferred from Syria to Lebanon.
The mayor of Arsal, Ali Al-Hajiry, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Syrian Air Force had carried out two raids. The first had targeted Khubra Dawud, a village to the east of Arsal. The second, Hajiry says, took place in Jardiyahpart of the Arsal municipalitykilling six displaced Syrians.
A Lebanese security official, speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to avoid being killed, told that the airstrike had been targeting a Syrian border town under rebel control. Yabroud, in the countryside around Damascus, is roughly 12 miles (19 kilometers) from the Lebanese border and 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the Lebanese town of Arsal.
Syrian warplanes have targeted Lebanese territory before. When four missilesfired by two Syrian jetsstruck Arsal last September, Lebanese president Michel Suleiman ordered an investigation into the incident.
Arsalboth a village and a municipalityis home to many refugees that have fled from towns and cities in neighboring war-torn Syria. Many are thought to have arrived from Al-Qusayr, where Lebanese Hezbollah militias spearheaded operations against the former rebel stronghold.
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After car bomb blasts at a mosque and then a mall in less than a month, a public park was the latest target of a similar attack in Bahrain on Saturday. The car bomb in Budaiya area exploded near the fence of a park frequented by families and children. Fortunately, there were no casualties in Saturdays blast as the explosion occurred during the time of Iftar when the garden was devoid of people.
On July 10 a car exploded near a mosque as worshippers offered Taraweeh prayer and last weeks car blast occurred next to City Centre Shopping Mall in Seef district.
The spokesperson of the Northern Governorate Police said on Saturday that the bomb was fuelled by a gas cylinder. He said police rushed to the scene immediately after receiving a call about the explosion at 6:24pm. Initial investigation showed that two gas cylinders had been placed in the pick-up vehicle but only one of them exploded.
The investigation will continue in order to identify and arrest the suspects and bring them to justice, he said.
Bahrain has been witnessing escalation of violence since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan with calls for protests on August 14.
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[BBC.CO.UK] The US has offered Iran a "willing partnership", after President Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated in Tehran.
The White House said Iran now had a chance to allay fears over its nuclear programme and meet its international obligations.
Mr Rouhani used his inauguration speech to promise a government of moderation for all Iranians, but also called for international sanctions to be lifted.
US-Iran relations soured under ex-President Mahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad.
He regularly made inflammatory speeches denouncing the US and Israel.
Analysts said Mr Rouhani's inauguration speech was conciliatory in tone, and he appeared to be reaching out to groups inside and outside Iran.
"In international interactions, my government will try to build mutual trust between Iran and the regional and global countries," he told parliament.
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#1
IMO Iran is hell-bent of becoming the world's first true Muslim/Islamic Nuclear Superpower - that means it M-U-S-T have potent NucWweaps in modern arsenal no matter the cost.
[Ynet] TV station affiliated with Shiite group provides glimpse into deployment in south Beirut following July boom-mobileing. 'When sun sets, every stranger who enters becomes suspicious'
Paranoia runs deep...
Show of force in Dahiya: On Saturday, one month after the kaboom of a boom-mobile in Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburb, the Lebanese television channel Al-Jadeed provided a glimpse into preparations taken by the organization following the blast, in which dozens were maimed.
The story was broadcast one day after the general address of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, in which he emphasized to ardent supporters that it was in the Arab world's best interests that Israel disappear from the face of the Middle East.
The station's news hound explained at the beginning of the story that he was standing at the scene of the blast. "This destruction is similar to the destruction of the Second Leb War," he said. "But here in the parking lot in Bir al-Abed where a boom-mobilewent kaboom! one month ago, there are no Israeli fingerprints, this was revealed by the investigation of Hezbollah and Lebanese security forces." The news hound added that following this conclusion, many questions were raised regarding the identity of the persons behind the blast, "How did those behind this dare to play the game of death with Hezbollah?"
While covering the story, the correspondent shows Hezbollah personnel in the southern suburb walking around during the daytime hours with sniffer dogs, searching for explosives in cars and on the streets of Dahiya. "This game of death led Hezbollah to raise its alert to record levels," the correspondent said, adding that no one in the southern suburb of Beirut was ashamed that it had become a "Hezbollah state," and members of the organization were even proud of the fact.
When the sun set, the news hound said, the level of preparedness of Hezbollah in the southern suburb rose even further and the security measures taken at night were different from those during the day. According to the news hound, any stranger who entered the southern suburb of Beirut became immediately suspicious to Hezbollah personnel, until proven otherwise. During the night tour presented in the article, Hezbollah members examine people in cars and the contents of vehicles, as well as trucks coming into the area.
As mentioned, the story aired the day after the Friday World Jerusalem Day ceremony held by the Hezbollah, in which Nasrallah delivered a combative diatribe against Israel. "He who stands against the Zionist entity protects Paleostine and the future of his children and grandchildren," Nasrallah said passionately.
Yeah, yeah. Big words, grown threadbare from overuse.
Later that evening, the former Lebanese prime minister and chairman of Al-Mustaqba, Saad al-Hariri, replied to Nasrallah in a special speech from Jeddah. In it he said that Hezbollah had lost its power in the struggle against Israel, since it was using its arms against the Syrian people, and not Israel. His remarks joined the statement a day earlier of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman ...before assuming office as President, he held the position of commander of the Leb Armed Forces. That was after the previous commander, the loathesome Emile Lahoud, took office as president in November of 1998. Likely the next president of Leb will be whoever's commander of the armed forces, too... , who made it clear that in light of Hezbollah's fighting in Syria, the group's arsenal should be under the control of the state.
That's a lovely idea. Who, then, will bell this particular cat?
A month ago, Hezbollah Parliament members were quick to blame Israel for involvement in a suicide kaboom in the southern suburb of Beirut. At the same time, groups affiliated with Syrian rebels grabbed credit, but the Free Syrian Army which is fighting the regime of Bashir al-Assad said it had no connection to the incident.
Tunisian police shot dead a militant in Tunis and arrested several suspected militants on Sunday, an official and witnesses said, as the government grapples with growing security and political crises.
Interior ministry official Lotfi Hidouri said the shooting on Sunday took place when police raided a house where militants were hiding weapons in the Kabaria district of Tunis. The police killed a terrorist and arrested five others, he said.
Witnesses said police also arrested several hardline Salafists suspected of ties with militant groups, in the town of Sbitla, north of the capital.
One witness said dozens of Salafists then gathered at the police headquarters in Sbitla to protest against the arrests and that the police fired in the air to disperse them.
Over the past week, a roadside explosive device and a car bomb have targeted security forces in Tunis, the first such attacks to hit the capital. No one was hurt.
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NORFOLK -- Three Somali men were sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of release on charges they hijacked a sailboat in 2011 off the coast of Africa and killed the four Americans they found on board. It took a federal jury about 8 1/2 hours of deliberation to reach the decision and reject the pleas of prosecutors to sentence the men to death.
Pity, but it would have become a circus...
"What everyone should be thinking about today is the victims' families," Lawrence Woodward Jr., one of seven defense attorneys involved in the case, said outside the courtroom. While acknowledging he was "professionally gratified" by the jury's decision, Woodward stressed "our hearts go out to the families."
Reached by phone in California, the sister of one of the victims lamented the jury did not see fit to sentence the three men to death.
"I don't know how they can shoot someone with an AK-47 and not get the death penalty," Cynthia Macay said through tears. "They almost will have a better life in prison than in Somalia."
Good point...
Ahmed Muse Salad, Abukar Osman Beyle and Shani Nurani Shiekh Abrar were convicted July 8 in U.S. District Court of 26 crimes -- 22 of which were punishable by death.
The charges stemmed from the deaths of four Americans on Feb. 22, 2011, on a 58-foot yacht named Quest. The victims were Scott and Jean Adam, a California couple who owned the boat, and Phyllis Patricia Macay and Robert Riggle, both of Seattle, who had joined them on the voyage.
FBI agents, Navy officials, and convicted pirates who were involved in the fatal hijacking testified during the trial. According to prosecutors and court records, the Adams and their friends were asleep at sea Feb. 18 when 19 men boarded the yacht armed with assault rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. They took control and began to sail for Somalia, where they intended to conduct ransom negotiations.
The hijackers never made it to shore, however, and four days of negotiations at sea with Navy officials failed.
Prosecutors said one of the pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the American guided missile destroyer Sterett. Shortly thereafter, Salad, Beyle and Abrar opened fire on the hostages.
Next time, Navy, don't take prisoners...
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[Dawn] Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf ...a political party in Pakistan. PTI was founded by former Pakistani cricket captain and philanthropist Imran Khan. The party's slogan is Justice, Humanity and Self Esteem, each of which is open to widely divergent interpretations.... (PTI) chairman Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who who convinced himself that playing cricket qualified him to lead a nuclear-armed nation with severe personality problems... has stated that he will take Maulana Fazlur Rehman Deobandi holy man, known as Mullah Diesel during the war against the Soviets, his sympathies for the Taliban have never been tempered by honesty ... to court for calling him an agent of the Jews, DawnNews reported.
Speaking at a presser in Islamabad, he said that Maulana Fazlur Rehman should tell the people as to who secretly met with the US Amabassador and expressed his wish to become the prime minister.
Imran Khan said that a legal notice will soon be sent to the Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam ...Assembly of Islamic Clergy, or JUI, is a Pak Deobandi (Hanafi) political party. There are two main branches, one led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and one led by Maulana Samiul Haq. Fazl is active in Pak politix and Sami spends more time running his madrassah. Both branches sponsor branches of the Taliban, though with plausible deniability... (JUI-F) chief.
The JUI-F chief has made statements in the past attacking Imran Khan. Tensions between the two politicians reached a new level after the May 11 General Elections.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman had denounced the PTI win in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... and stated that the polls were rigged.
He also said that he did not accept the PTI's mandate in the province.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman has also called Imran Khan a "western agent" and claimed that Khan wants to destroy Pak society by injecting his 'western thoughts' in it,
Imran Khan on the other hand has also returned criticism at the JUI-F chief stating that Fazlur Rehman had been using religion for political gains.
The PTI chief has also said that people like his JUI-F counterpart have given Islam a bad name.
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[Dawn] The Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KP) government has sanctioned Rs198.200 million for enhancing the security of jails to counter hard boys' threat in the wake of intelligence reports.
This amount will be used for extra deployment of troops and equipping the force with latest gadgets.
Meanwhile the Punjab government has decided to deploy Rangers at at least seven jails of the province which are facing threats from hard boyz and krazed killer elements.
A Home and Tribal Affairs Department official letter issued by Section Officer Anti Narcotics, Foreigners and Media Qamar Ali on August 2 said: "The government of Khyber Pakthunkhwa Home & Tribal Affairs Department has sanctioned and released an amount of Rs198.200 million for enhancing security of jails in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa." ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
Following the Dera Ismail Khan ... the Pearl of Pashtunistan ... Jail break on July 29, the intelligence agencies have issued warning of similar attacks on other jails, especially the Haripur Jail which also has a number of high value prisoners.
The KP government has also sanctioned and released an amount of Rs50 million for strengthening Directorate of Prosecution and Provincial Crisis Management Cell (PMDC) of the Home and Tribal Affairs Department
One the other hand in the wake of Dera Ismail Khan Jail break and threat to Punjab jails, the Jail Authorities and Rangers have revised the jails security and devised a plan to jointly take care of security in at least seven sensitive jails of the province where hardcore elements are jugged Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
Director General Rangers Major General Bilal Hussain, while speaking to the media at the Rangers Headquarters after a meeting with IG Jails Punjab Mian Farooq Nazir, said that a viable security plan has been devised for strengthening Jails security, which also includes the capacity building and training of forces.
He said that the plan would be put in place after carrying out the feasibility of the jails and Rangers would be deployed at sensitive jails.
He remarked that at least 5 to 7 jails in Punjab are sensitive where fool proof security arrangements would be made to avert any mishap.
According to official data there are hundreds of hardcore krazed killer elements and snuffies in Punjab jails, where there could be a possible hard boy attack to set free these people.
Inspector General Jails Mian Farooq said that serious threat alerts have been issued for jails and all possible measures are being taken to counter those threats.
He said that the latest jammers will be installed in jails to counter the use of mobile phones and electronic equipment, while existing equipment would also be upgraded.
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[Al Ahram] Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority warned that more thunderstorms and heavy rains were expected on Monday and some rivers may flood.
Unexpectedly, just like every year. And the bereft survivors will never be able to leave their refuges.
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#1
Global Warming! I mean Climate Change!
Naah, Allan's Will. I wonder who the beneficiary of Allan's Will is? Who were the Attorney's who filled it? Has anyone been allowed to read it? I call dibs on the Virgins. Oh, wait. I don't have enough Vlliagra. My Doctor won't give it to me. He said, "Why would you want to put a brand-new flagpole on that old, condemned building"?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/05/2013 19:49
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The Somali city of Kismayo "should be handed over" to the central government, regional leaders said at the end of a summit Sunday, a decision that puts pressure on Kenyan troops who face charges of backing a powerful militia in the disputed port city.
African leaders said in a statement at the end of a summit in Kampala, Uganda's capital, that Kismayo's airport and seaport should be under the control of Somalia's central government, which has struggled to assert its authority there despite the exit of al-Shabab militants.
The statement said a "multinational force" should be urgently deployed in Kismayo. It also urged the central government in the capital, Mogadishu, to "reintegrate" into the national army all the militias that have no links with al-Shabab militants.
The Kampala summit was organized under the banner of the African Union peacekeeping force deployed in Somalia, known as AMISOM, and was for countries that have troops in Somalia. The prime minister of Ethiopia and the presidents of Uganda, Kenya and Somalia attended the summit.
The decision on Kismayo puts pressure on Kenya, whose troops in the strategic Somali city have been accused of backing one militia, the Raskamboni brigade, against others in deadly fighting there. The Raskamboni brigade -- which helped Kenya to push al-Shabab militants out of Kismayo last year -- is led by Ahmed Madobe, a Somali warlord who has established a local administration in Kismayo that is independent of the central government. Madobe is a key power broker around Kismayo, although he is not backed by the federal government in Mogadishu.
After the Raskamboni brigade took the upper hand in fighting for control of Kismayo, Somalia's government said last month it wanted a "more neutral African Union force" there, an apparent indictment of the conduct of Kenyan troops in Somalia.
Kismayo is important for Kenya, which seeks a friendly buffer zone near its border with Somalia -- one of the main reasons it sent troops to Somalia in late 2011 to fight the rebels of al-Shabab, Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaida. But the rival militias now at war there appear to be interested in the economic engine of Kismayo. Its port generates large and reliable income, and has been the export point of Somali-made charcoal that the U.N. has deemed illegal.
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#1
Sounds like a splendid idea, whatever it was. Stay out of it !
[Al Ahram] Syrian rebels battled forces loyal to Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now... in the Jabal Akrad mountains overlooking the Mediterranean on Sunday and a monitoring group said at least 30 people were killed.
Video footage showed fighters identified as members of an al Qaeda-linked Islamist brigade waving from the roof of an army tower in the village of Barouda, one of several Alawite villages attacked by the rebels on Sunday.
The mainly Sunni Mohammedan rebels are battling to overthrow Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, in a civil war which erupted two years ago when mainly peaceful protests against his rule were put down with force.
Assad, with support from Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, has gained ground in recent months from the rebel fighters who are backed by regional Sunni Mohammedan powers but remain largely outgunned by his army.
The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 12 rebels and 19 pro-Assad fighters - including soldiers and members of his militia known as the National Defence Army - were killed in Sunday's fighting in the mountains of east Latakia province.
A source in Latakia said the fighting started at dawn and that the rebels, based in the town of Salma, attacked 10 Alawite villages.
Ambulance sirens, punctuated by the sound of bombardment and government air raids on Salma, could be heard throughout the day, he said.
Further south, in Homs, the army launched artillery fire on remaining rebel-held areas of the city, a week after capturing the rebel district of Khaldiya - its latest victory after gains around Damascus and in the Lebanese border region near Homs.
Rebels say they need more foreign military support to reverse their military setbacks, arguing that Assad's military backing from Iran and Hezbollah has turned the tide of the war.
Syrian state media said on Sunday that Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani told Damascus that ties would remain strong.
Rouhani "stressed the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran's determination to strengthen its relations with Syria and stand together in the face of all challenges," SANA news agency said.
"No power in the world can destabilise or undermine the deep-rooted, historic and strategic relations between the two friendly peoples and countries," it quoted him as telling Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halki during his visit to Tehran to attend Rouhani's swearing-in ceremony.
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#1
If the rebels take the coast and link up with the Sunnis in N Lebanon, its game over for Assad. Although Jabal Akrad is a kurdish region.
MARKA, Somalia -- Heavy fighting erupted in Gobale vicinity of Lower Shabelle region between the loyalists of Al Shabaab chief Ahmed Godane and former Al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow (Abu Mansur) on Saturday, Garowe Online reports. Local reports say that the fighting lasted for nearly "seven hours" with Robow loyalists gaining the upper hand.
"The battle began Saturday's afternoon and stopped at midnight, Militants loyal to Robow are now controlling the area and the local communities fled here," said an eyewitness who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being killed.
"Many militants including two foreigners died in the battle and one of the foreigners seemed as battle commander," he added.
As dissension and splitting continue to spread within Al Shabaab ranks, in an audio recording provided to Somali media last week, Ahmed Godane, Al Shabaab chief, said an enemy wants to split 'Mujahedeen" lines and I warn those figures not to encourage the group's division.
Sheikh Robow is one of senior Al Shabaab members who accused Godane of straying from the path of Jihad and following an attempt to arrest him by Godane militants months ago; he escaped from Ramo Adey village of Bay region where he had bases.
Al Shabaab militants loyal to Ahmed Godane previously executed Godane's deputy Ibrahim Haji Jama (Micad) and Abdihamid Hashi Olhaye (Moallim Burhan) in Barawe, a coastal town in Lower Shabelle region.
The growing violent dispute within Al Qaeda linked Al Shabaab group also resulted to be detained one of their prominent officials, Hassan Dahir Aweys who had been serving in different administrative capacities by the Somali Federal Government after he fled to his native region of Galgudud in late June 2013.
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[Al Ahram] Tunisian police rubbed out an Islamist myrmidon in Tunis and two soldiers were killed in a blast near the Algerian border on Sunday, as the government grappled with growing security and political crises.
There has been a surge in Islamist myrmidon attacks over the past two weeks in the North African country, and on Friday security forces launched heavy air and artillery strikes on myrmidon hideouts in the Mount Chaambi area near the Algerian border.
At the same time, the secular opposition, angered by the liquidation of two of its leading members and emboldened by Egypt's army-backed ousting of its elected Islamist president, is seeking to topple its own moderate Islamist-led government.
Tens of thousands of Tunisians came out in a show of force for the ruling Ennahda party on Saturday. The opposition has pledged to rally even more supporters in its own demonstration later on Sunday.
Two soldiers were killed and six others were maimed by a landmine that hit their tank as they combed an area in Mount Chaambi, where faceless myrmidons killed eight soldiers last week in the deadliest attack on Tunisian forces in decades.
In the capital Tunis, Interior Ministry official Lotfi Hidouri said police raided a house where faceless myrmidons were hiding weapons in the Kabaria district. "The police potted a terrorist and tossed in the slammer You have the right to remain silent... five others," he said.
Witnesses said police also arrested several hardline Salafists ...Salafists are ostentatiously devout Moslems who figure the ostentation of their piety gives them the right to tell others how to do it and to kill those who don't listen to them... suspected of ties to myrmidon groups in the town of Sbitla, north of the capital.
One witness said dozens of Salafists then gathered at the police headquarters in Sbitla to protest against the arrests and that the police had gun sex to disperse them.
Over the past week, a roadside bomb and a boom-mobile have targeted security forces in Tunis, the first such attacks to hit the capital. No one was hurt.
ARAB SPRING MODEL
Also on Sunday, a Salafist myrmidon fired on police who tried to stop his car as he drove near the southeastern town of Ben Guerden, near the Libyan border, state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
reported.
The channel said weapons were found inside the vehicle and the man was believed to be one of a large group of prisoners granted amnesty by a previous transition government in the days after autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted.
Once considered a model among fledgling "Arab Spring" democracies, Tunisia is facing its worst crisis since protesters toppled Ben Ali and sparked a wave of revolts across the region.
The opposition has accused Ennahda of being linked to or tolerating Islamist myrmidon attacks. The party denies that and has stepped up recent efforts to crack down. It denounced recent attacks as terrorism.
Demonstrations swept Tunisia after the liquidation of Mohamed Brahmi, a member of the Arab nationalist Popular Front party, on July 25. The killing followed the liquidation of party leader Chokri Belaid in February.
Prime Minister Ali Larayedh told journalists on Sunday a man suspected of ties to the Belaid liquidation was captured by security forces. He called on faceless myrmidons to turn themselves in.
"I call on the Death Eaters being hunted by security forces to turn themselves in. There is no future in terrorism," he said, speaking outside the Interior Ministry, where he had been meeting officials.
The air and artillery strikes by security forces in the Mount Chaambi area were launched after the deadly attack on soldiers.
State Tataouin radio and other local media reported on Sunday that Tunisian forces had killed 10 faceless myrmidons in Chaambi and arrested three others.
No security officials were willing to comment.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Tunisians crowded into the Kasbah Square in a show of force for the Ennahda-led government.
"No to coups, yes to elections!" they shouted, in one of the biggest demonstrations since the 2011 revolt.
The opposition is planning a mass protest on Wednesday to mark the six-month anniversary of Belaid's liquidation.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013
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Things continue to go poorly in Iraq since our departure. No one yet in the MSM, at the U.N. or in Washington has made the connection...
Baghdad, Asharq Al-AwsatIraqi security forces have been put on maximum alert in expectation of terror attacks during the end of Eid festival celebrating the end of Ramadan at the end of this week.
A number of attacks have already claimed the lives of several Iraqi civilians on Saturday. A colonel in the Ministry of Interior, speaking on condition of anonymity, said one person was killed and five were injured as a result of an explosion of an improvised device on the roadside near a shopping center in the Amel district, western Baghdad.
He added that two more people were killed and five injured in another explosion in the Abu-Dasheer district of Al-Doura area, southwestern Baghdad. A medic at Baghdads Yarmouk Hospital confirmed the number of casualties, adding that there was a woman among the injured.
Lieutenant Khalis Al-Khalidi, at the Mosul Police Department (almost 220 miles north of Baghdad) said unknown armed men killed two guards from the judges protection unit when they attacked their car at the Hamam Al-Alil neighborhood, about 20 miles south of the city.
In another attack, a police officer was killed in an armed attack on a checkpoint in the Al-Salamiyah district (18 miles southeast of Mosul), according to security and medical sources. And in Baaqoubah (almost 40 miles northeast of Baghdad), a source from the Awakening Forces, speaking on condition of anonymity, said unidentified gunmen killed three women, a mother and her two daughters, inside their home in the Bahraz area, on the southern side of the town.
A senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said unknown assailants killed two brothers from the Awakening Forces, near their home in Mahoulah district, north of Baaqoubah. He added that One person was killed and two members of his family were injured in an explosion near their home in Al-Amin district, in the center of Baaqoubah.
In another incident, an attack in Tikrit killed a man and his 11 year-old daughter in an explosion near Al-Shuhadaa Mosque, in the center of the city, according to an unnamed Tikrit police officer.
The month of July has claimed the lives of around 1,000 people in Iraq, the highest number of victims of violent incidents since April 2008.
In another development, there are conflicting report about the numbers of car bombs which may have made their way into Baghdad, or may be prepared to sent to Baghdad, with the approach of the end of Ramadan.
The security forces have raised the alert level to Level-C, which is the highest level in the Iraqi army and the internal security forces. While some information said some 100 car bombs had arrived in Baghdad, security forces said they received intelligence about terror groups intentions to carry out attacks on civilians and security forces during the Eid festival.
He added that there were fears that the prisoners who had escaped from Al-Taji and Abu Ghraib prisons recently would carry out revenge missions. The sources also added that the Iraqi army is on maximum alert and is still looking for the escaped prisoners.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/05/2013
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Something in one of the Burg's articles yesterday struck me as 'funny':
Benghazi was the cradle of the [Libyan] uprising two years ago, and attacks there are generally blamed on radical Islamists who have also targeted Western interests. Last September 11, U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in an attack on Washington's consulate in Benghazi.
That's a curiously interesting remark, aside from it being standard Western media boilerplate, when taken in the case of the Benghazi attack on the US consulate. Western interests have been targeted in Benghazi; both the International Red Cross and British embassy assets had been attacked prior to the assault on the consulate and its annex. But the attack on the U.S. consulate and later its annex is different.
It's possible that Islamists intended to attack the US consulate on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and things just deteriorated. Given the follow on developments of the consulate being scouted the day of the attack, the timing of the attack, the inaction of the Transitional National Government (TNG) and its assets in Benghazi, the obstruction by TNG during the attack, the and the overall after-actions taken by the US government and its agencies, it does seem rather unlikely it was just a "9-11 event".
Here are some other, more likely suppositions. Some of these may sound basic to the reader, but they lay the foundation for later discussion:
1. Given the developments that the CIA had a sizable presence in Benghazi (reportedly up to 35 agents,) it's possible that there was a faction or factions unhappy with such a sizable US intelligence presence in the Benghazi region and wanted to 'blind' it by destroying its infrastructure.
2. If the US had an active program in place to thwart the shipment of weapons, or of certain weaponry such as MANPADS, to Syria, the attack may be due to a faction's or faction's displeasure at the US attempt and the attack was intended to remove or cripple the US program in Benghazi.
3. If the US was shipping or facilitating the shipment of weapons to Syria and then stopped shipping them for any number of reasons, the attack may have been due to a faction's or factions' displeasure at those US-sponsored shipments being stopped,
4. If the US was shipping or facilitating the shipment of weapons and then stopped shipping certain types of weapons (such as MANPADS,) the attack may have been due to a faction's or factions' displeasure at those US-sponsored shipments being stopped,
5. If the US was shipping or facilitating shipment of weapons to Syria, then there were some other factions displeased at the US-sponsored shipments occurring in the first place and those factions took action to destroy the infrastructure involved in shipping those weapons.
Now as to a faction or factions: Some of these were discussed back in late 2012 at the Burg, some are discussed in the media and by certain interests elsewhere in the blogosphere.
If we go with the objection-to-US-intel-presence, that makes for a fairly sizable list. AQiM and its aligned militias, Al Shabab, the Algerian GIA, Hamas, Iran, the Egyptian MB, and organized crime. There may be others, but these are the most likely.
If we go with suppositions involving displeasure over the US stopping of the flow of of all or some weapons, that still leaves AQiM and its aligned militias, plus Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, the Egyptian MB, the Egyptian government and its military, the UAE, Saudi Arabia or members of the House of Saud, or organized crime, plus any aligned parties of any of these potential actors. It still makes for a long list.
If we go with the faction wanting to stop the arms shipments theory, that means looking at Syria and/or the pro-Syrian factions. Syria itself makes obvious sense. The Israelis are pointing to the Iranians or an Iranian/Hesb'allah axis. That seems to be a quite popular idea. Curiously left out of the discussions is a third pro-Syrian faction.
I'll leave the reader to ponder this: The US had an emplaced ambassador who had been in Libya in contact with Libyan rebels during their uprising. The same ambassador had established early connections to the Libya's Transitional National Government, including a US facility. The ambassador was still on friendly terms with some of the Libyan militias in Benghazi, to the point where one militia was involved in providing some measure of security for the consulate.
If there were US-sponsored shipments of weapons to Syria using the US' Benghazi-based consulate and annex, would radical Islamists in Benghazi (with many of their compatriots fighting the Syrian government), attack the consulate and its annex because it was a "Western interest"?
#1
If a last minute decision was made to make inert a large shipment of MANPADS, how many technicians along with a security element, might it take to do complete the task overnight or in a day or two. ? Twenty, possibly thirty ?
What high ranking US official might be held responsible for notifying the logistical leg that the shipment had been cancelled ?
The requested URL /Self was not found on this server.
The link's dead.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/05/2013 8:12
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#3
Pappy wrote it. It's a Burg original.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013 8:22
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#4
If somebody was giving me goodies and then stopped, I don't think the first thing I would do is attack my benefactor! First would come the complaining, then the threats, right?
Even if it was too secret to let out. heck, that's one of the threats - I'll spill the beans unless you resume shipments.
Or is that too logical for some of the groups under discussion?
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/05/2013 11:54
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#5
But I like the outline of possibilities and look forward to tomorrow! That's what I like about the 'Burg - a thinking man's person's blog.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/05/2013 12:34
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#6
This is a movie production opportunity if I have ever seen one. "The Actors" yes, blockbuster hit I'd bet. Hillary will have her part to play. Something like a Rasputin sort, perhaps a sexless Lady De Winter.
For a map, click here. For a map of Zacatacas state, click here
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
Zacatecas governor Miguel Alonso Reyes told the press Sunday that stories of 46 dead criminal suspects over the previous three days were false, according to Mexican news accounts.
Press reports primarily from Mexican leftist press say that a total of 46 armed suspects had been killed in Zacataceas state since last Thursday, primarily between Los Zetas and Gulf Cartel shooters.
A news account which appeared on the website of La Jornada news daily said that there were a number of clashes between armed gangs in Zacatecas, the largest taking place Thursday night on a road between Valparaiso and Fresnillo municipalities.
In the gunfight, a Gulf Cartel group ran into a 14 vehicle convoy with 80 Los Zetas shooters aboard. According to the report a total of 38 died in the shootout.
Other encounters were said to have taken place as well. A second smaller gun fight took place late Friday night and went into early Saturday morning in Jerez municipality. Eight dead were reported in that gunfight and another five were kidnapped. The report also made mention of the Los Zetas practice of clearing a battle zone of their dead and wounded as a security measure, which tracks actual cartel tactics.
The reported source of the news was an anonymous source within the headquarters of the Mexican 11th Military Zone based in Guadalupe municipality. The news report said that "higher ups" had ordered news of the shootings and shootout be suppressed. The reason is that a folklore festival was in its last days, and presumably such news would scare away tourists.
According to a news report which appeared in lasnoticiasya.com news daily, Governor Alonso Reyes told the press Sunday that not only did the information released not "fit reality", he said the incidents simply did not happen.
Local Mexican press, until the return of the Partido Revoluinario Institucional (PRI) to national power late last year, have been diligent in reporting such encounters. However, new Mexican federal information policy, mimicked in some form by agreement from private press owners, will not only slow walk information for release, some information will not be released at all.
Even so, new Mexican information policy has been to compile the statistics of crime without reporting on such incidents as shootouts, fulfilling transparency requirements imposed by law since 2000.
According to the La Jornada report other encounters have taken place in Panuco, and Guadalupe municipalities, but no casualty figures have been reported.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com.
[Al Ahram] Iraqi security forces hunted for faceless myrmidons and weapons in the Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... area on Sunday, while attacks killed six people, including three soldiers and a judge, officials said.
Iraqi authorities are struggling to contain the worst violence to hit the country in five years. About one thousand people died in attacks last month.
The defence ministry said security forces locked away Youse'll never take me alive coppers!... [BANG!]... Ow!... I quit! 32 people wanted under an anti-terrorism law and tossed in the slammer Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! a further 141 suspects over a period of 24 hours, during operation "Avenge the Martyrs" in areas north and west of Storied Baghdad.
They also destroyed three "terrorist hideouts" and seized a boom-mobile factory, weapons, ammunition and explosives, a ministry statement said, adding that similar operations were conducted in other areas.
But more deadly attacks, which security forces have so far failed to stem, struck on Sunday.
In the northern province of Nineveh, a roadside kaboomwent kaboom! near an army patrol, killing three soldiers. The blast, about 60 kilometres (35 miles) south of the placid provincial capitaldjinn-infested Mosul, also maimed four soldiers.
And another bombing targeted a police patrol further south, wounding three coppers.
In Tikrit, north of Storied Baghdad, a boom-mobilewent kaboom! near a judge's house, killing him and severely wounding his wife, while another blast in the Iraqi capital itself killed one person and maimed five.
And gunnies killed a man and maimed his son west of the northern city of Kirkuk.
The attacks came a day after violence in Iraq killed 24 people, including nine soldiers.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013
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For a map, click here. For a map of Durango state, click here.
A total of three unidentified individuals have been killed in an armed confrontation in the mountains of western Durango, according to several Mexican news reports.
According to data supplied in a news account which appeared in the online edition of El Siglo de Durango, the shootout took place in Otaez municipality Saturday.
According to the account, a road patrol detachment of the Mexican 10th Military Zone encountered a group of armed suspects at a location between the villages of Macho Bayo and Huajupa, and attempted to stop them. Instead the unit was fired on, forcing return fire by soldiers.
Two armed suspects were killed. They were identified as Jesus Andres Nuñez Sarabia, 26, and Juan Francisco Núñez Ortiz, 18. Presumably more suspects were at the scene but escaped.
The soldier who was killed in the encounter was not identified in any of the news accounts. It is said he was 28 years old.
Separately, according to statistics compiled by editorial personnel of El Siglo de Durango, to date 21 security personnel from local, state and federal agencies have died since January. A total of 16 were murdered, with the rest involved in accidents. The total killed in all of 2012 was 54, of which nine were accidents.
Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com
[THESTATE] Security officials say suspected al-Qaida gunmen have killed a military intelligence official in central Yemen.
Officials say Lt. Col. Mohammed el-Mamari was shot on his way home Sunday. He was walking to his car after work when two unidentified gunmen killed him in the central province of Bayda. The officials spoke anonymously in line with regulations.
Al-Qaida's branch in Yemen is active in Bayda. The U.S. is believed to have carried out drone strikes on militants there.
Separately, hundreds of supporters of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh burnt tires along a main road in the capital Sanaa on Sunday to protest his successor, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. That idea probably makes more sense in the original Arabic. Like the Koran.
The protests come after clashes erupted on Friday when a group of soldiers loyal to Saleh tried to storm the presidential palace.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013
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[Dawn] "I was blinded by the false promises made by friends who had invested money in Modaraba (an Islamic investment system) for I was made to believe that by doing so, I would be following the path of the Prophet (PTUI!)."
This was how Mohammad Ejaz, who runs a local restaurant in Saddar Rawalpindi, explains who he ended up investing in an illegal investment venture operated by Mufti Ehsanullah of Rawalpindi.
By investing Rs500,000 in the 'Islamic' venture, Ejaz hoped to reap the benefits of both worlds with a single transaction.
However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... soon after he made his investment in the beginning of this year, he found out that the National Accountability Bureau was investigating the investment venture.
Within months, the venture was found to be illegal and shut down.
Ejaz also found that many such ventures existed across the country in which people invested money with clergy, thinking it to be Islamic and interest-free only to find out later that these ventures were illegal and perhaps even shady operations.
Background conversations with NAB officials and others have revealed that these ventures are basically operated by a network of clergy, which ensured the faithful of the spiritual benefits and hefty returns (for example Ejaz was promised Rs8,000 per month on every Rs100,000 deposited) and though investors were provided documentation verifying their 'investment', the transactions were illegal and the investors had little idea about where the money was being invested and in what sort of businesses.
But people were lured in because the clergy promised a lucrative deal that was devoid of interest and other 'impurities' which they argued were present if the money was kept in banks or invested in regular companies.
The investors were assured that the profits would also be reaped from Halal sources.
Like other investors, Mr Ejaz was attracted by the holy talk especially as the people who headed these people were Muftis (in hierarchy of Sunni Islam, a Mufti is highly educated holy man).
The main contact between the investors and muftis were the directors of the companies, who were operating the venture. These directors tended to be active preachers. This made interaction with potential investors easier.
The director through whom Mohammad Ejaz invested the money was a local preacher in Rawalpindi who operated out of a small office at Choor Chowk, Rawalpindi.
All this came to light when NAB started to look into Mufti Ehsan, the head of the venture Ejaz had invested into.
Codenamed the 'Mufti Scandal' within NAB, the Bureau nabbed the Mufti behind the operation and imprisoned him for two months after which he offered to pay Rs450 million in exchange for his freedom. Another Rs100 million are still to be recovered and Ehsan's name has been placed at the Exit Control List (ECL).
In order to reclaim their investments, some 85 investors, including Mr Ejaz, had filed a written application with the NAB about a month ago.
However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... not all investors in these illegal ventures were as lucky.
When this scandal came to light, another similar venture, run by Mufti Osama, fell apart because its operators bravely ran away fearing investigation. Those who had invested in it have now lost their money.
According to NAB officials, Mufti Osama, the operator of this illegal Modarba business, escaped to United Arab Emirates (UAE) along with the investors' money.
He belongs to Southern Punjab and is said to be linked to Lal Masjid (Red Mosque). However, the hip bone's connected to the leg bone... the Lal Masjid management denies this.
Furthermore, a NAB official said Mufti Khalid, the partner of Mufti Osama who lured people to invest in the Islamic business, was also close to the Lal Masjid.
Originally from Fatehjang, the holy man holds sway over major seminaries in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, he added.
The building of the Mosque has now posted a message stating that they had nothing to do with such investment schemes. Maulana Abdul Aziz has regularly denied any links with such Islamic investment schemes.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013
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#1
that Rs500,000 investment was equivalent to about $5k - a lot by Pakistan standards but small claims court stuff in much of the USA
Posted by: lord garth ||
08/05/2013 0:36
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#2
She's obviously been pouring over that Colt 1911 Field Manual on the table left over from yesterday's discussion. A Russian bride with an interest in 1911's, could there possibly be more ?
On Friday, the U.S. State Department issued a worldwide travel alert for Americans, citing an unspecified al Qaeda threat. The bulletin said that the highest threat levels are the Middle East and North Africa, "and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arab Peninsula."
On Saturday, unnamed U.S. officials told media outlets Yemeni intelligence agencies alerted Washington to the threat during the visit by the Yemeni president to Washington. U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity further told press representatives that "chatter" among "operatives" from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had been taking place over the last several weeks, and increased over the last few days, lending further credence to the Yemeni warning.
Intelligence officials are dismayed that the administration provided so much detail on what prompted the closings, and that the disclosures could work against obtaining new information. Militants are now likely searching for the sources of the information to both the U.S. and Yemeni officials, and almost certainly will kill anyone they suspect of working with Western intelligence. In warning about possible al Qaeda attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials may have provided too much detail about intercepted chatter and the source of the information, and that may make it more difficult to get such tips next time, former and current intelligence officials say. Other sources are also likely to reconsider their relationship with the United States over the disclosures.
The statement that the threat could be from " the Arab Peninsula" suggests that the terrorist group planning the operation is al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). That group has brown stronger over the last two years, according to intelligence sources. It has garnered new adherents and developed new weapons. The United States views AQAP as such a significant threat that it not only uses drone attacks to target the group, but it has also sent advisors to Yemen to help the military combat AQAP on the ground. Intelligence, however, is the most successful method to counter terrorism.
"I can't even begin to tell you how many attacks we have stopped thanks to intelligence. But we don't go out and broadcast that to the world. It doesn't work that way," says an active intelligence officer in the Middle East. "Now? We are going to have to start all over again. We are operating blind."
Were they dead before or after the mausoleums were destroyed?
[Al Ahram] Two mausoleums in North and central Sinai were bombed by unknown assailants late on Sunday, state news agency MENA reported, as militant attacks continue to rock the lawless Sinai Peninsula.
Bombs detonated at the sites of two separate shrines, one in the village of Rawda on the international freeway in northern Sinai and the second in Al-Hasna district in the center of the Peninsula, wrecking the domes and walls of both buildings, MENA added.
No deaths or injuries have been reported.
In May 2011, the Sheikh Zuwaid shrine in the northern Sinai town of Sheikh Zuwaid was blown-up in the same manner.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013
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From TFA:
Watch enough YouTube videos of the fighting in Syria, and you'll start to notice it: a long-tubed gun, mounted on the back of either a jeep or large, fast pickup. Usually it's blasting bunkers, blockhouses, fortified positions, or places where snipers are hiding. It even goes after tanks. And whenever it fires, the gun seems to kick up way more hell behind it than what it sends out the barrel's front end. It's the M40 106mm recoilless rifle, an American-made, Vietnam-vintage weapon that got dropped from the Army and Marine inventory back during the early 1970s.
Until recently, the 106mm hadn't seen much action in the irregular wars that have swept the globe. Then M40s somehow came into the hands of rebels in Libya and Syria. Suddenly, the 106mm -- light, cheap, easily transportable, simple to operate, and packing a punch all out of proportion to its modest size -- has emerged as a possible Great Asymmetric Weapon of the Day.
#2
That long tube slender tube atop the main barrel in the video is a single shot, .50 cal tracer 'spotting rifle'. The spotting rifle [as the title implies], is a sort of 1950-60's ballistic laser which enabled the 106 gunner to mark the target prior to [quickly] firing the main gun. If you were good at estimating range and trajectory, looking through the 106 barrel and 'bore-sighting' to target would work as well. The weapon was designed primarily for use in a US Army Infantry company anti-tank platoon. It was mounted on the back of a 1/4 ton jeep where it could be fired and moved quickly by a crew of 3 as I recall. It is very accurate but has a back-blast which kicks up a lot of dust and can start fires in dried brush and grass. Standing behind a 106 while it is fired can ruin your afternoon.
The video was obviously an 'out in the open' training session. Appears at least some of the operators were quite impressed [meaning they had probably not had a lot of experience with it, most not being born until decades after its hayday]. The dismounted, ground mode is a challenge, it's very heavy and awkward to handle. The closer to the ground, the more back-blast dust and fire it kicks up, which can be easily seen by the enemy, hence the need to fire and unass the area. Other disadvantages are the logistics of re-supply. The rounds are large and come in wooden crates. I can't remember the basic load per anti-tank platoon, but it wasn't very many.
Smart money for Syrian rebels would be to mount the 106 in the back of a Toyota with a full tank of gas and keep it there. Employment of the 106 in Syria appears to be a new development. Real news would see the employment of the Davy Crocket.
#5
There were various ranges where old tanks were targets. Even an M48 would have a neat hole punched in its frontal armor by one of these. The range instructors made sure we all saw them.
Firing one is like being punched in the nose all over your body.
There were three types of ammo: shaped charge, plastic ("squash head"), and flechette.
I don't recall how many darts were in the latter round, but since they were like 3/4" brads with crude fins stamped out, it would be a lot of them. And you could, unlike with the 90mm, set the detonation range.
Problem with the spotting rifle is that you can see tracers both ways. Big WP head on the spotter. See the puff on the target, trigger the main round, hit the road.
'nother problem was that the thing weighed a lot compared to the jeep, so, with the center of gravity up about the driver's shoulder, you could roll it pretty easily.
The airborne equivalent was to mount it on a large motorized coffee table powered by a lawnmower engine. Called a "Mighty Mite".
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
08/05/2013 9:01
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#6
90mm's used to prone to broken firing pins. Removing live rounds after the 2nd or 3rd misfire.... great fun. :-(
I had forgotten about the roll-overs Rich. I never have been able to understand the popularity of civilian Jeeps.
#7
Besoeker:
When heading out to the range, the RR jeeps would slow to a crawl going around a corner. The thing was only mobile in the sense that you didn't have to carry it on your back. Once you were going to fight with it, there you were. About the only thing you could usefully do with it was reverse into defilade and then carefully turn to go to an alternative position.
I happened to be at Bragg the summer of '70 on Hearts and Minds biz prior to deploying. There was the Jordan Alert where, I discovered, the 82d's alert bde didn't have platoon leaders. So enterprising company commanders sent their XOs to the club to find buddies who were jump-qualified.
Pretty much everybody with a combat MOS was going to go, one way or another. So you jump or you arrive and deplane like gentlmen, to be parceled out as replacements.
We heard the Syrians had sent 500 tanks, plus, we supposed, the TO mech infantry and SP arty.
I think we would have had 16 106 RR on the Mighty Mite in the 82d, but I don't think we would have had 500 rounds.
Unlike the clowns at Entebbe, the terrs this time had dispersed the hostages and so we didn't go. Had to finish a paper for a class instead. Bummer.
Turned out I didn't deploy to SEA.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
08/05/2013 13:20
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#8
1970, Infantry AIT Fort Lewis. Missed SEA as well. Picked up a few gardens spots after that, nothing heraldic. A few more as a contractor. The 3/82 was just up the road at FOB Speicher near lovely Takrit Iraq. I was there when Saddam flew in on a UH-60 in the middle of the night. NCO I knew from the Bde was ordered to grab his people and set up a perimeter at the LZ over behind Division HQ. REMF's AT Division were all CHU bound, snoring away, not to be disturbed. He didn't know what it all about until the funeral entourage arrived. Saddam was planted the next morning in his beloved ancestral home.
[CBSNEWS] Egypt's highest security body warned Sunday that the clock is ticking for a peaceful end to the standoff over sit-ins by supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, suggesting that authorities will break up the protests unless mediation efforts produce results soon.
More than a month after the military overthrew Morsi, thousands of the Islamist leader's supporters remain camped out in two main crossroads in Cairo demanding his reinstatement. Egypt's military-backed interim leadership has issued a string of warnings for them to disperse or security forces will move in, setting the stage for a potential showdown.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/05/2013
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[Al Ahram] Salafist El-Nour Party spokesperson Sherif Taha said in a statement Sunday that Interim Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi has not sent an invitation for dialogue to Islamist parties and has met only non-Islamist parties, condemning this as an "increase to the already existing polarisation."
Consequences. In this case, as ye treat others, so shall ye be treated when you lose power. This is why it behooves slave owners to be kind.
Taha further crtiticised claims that a separate meeting will be held with Islamists, adding that this "divides the country further" and that the premier should have sent invitations to all parties at once.
"We also condemn [the] lack of transparency, as the meeting with non-Islamist parties was not publicised," Taha said, confirming that until now El-Nour Party has not been invited to this meeting.
According to media reports, El-Beblawi, who is also a founding member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, met with several members of National Salvation Front parties late Saturday.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
... an Arab news network headquartered in Qatar, notorious for carrying al-Qaeda press releases. The name means 
[Dawn] Police on Friday conducted search operations in the federal capital along with contingents of Pakistain Air Force and Pakistain Navy in the vicinity of Margalla hills.
The United States says most of its diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa will remain closed all week. More than 20 embassies and consulates were closed Sunday due to security concerns.
Allies of deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi told mediators on Saturday they respected the popular will expressed in mass protests that led to his downfall, suggesting they might be backing away from a demand he be reinstated.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
NORFOLK -- Three Somali men were sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of release on charges they hijacked a sailboat in 2011 off the coast of Africa and killed the four Americans they found on board. It took a federal jury about 8 1/2 hours of deliberation to reach the decision and reject the pleas of prosecutors to sentence the men to death.
Maulana Fazlur Rehman
[Al Ahram] Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority warned that more thunderstorms and heavy rains were expected on Monday and some rivers may flood.
The Somali city of Kismayo "should be handed over" to the central government, regional leaders said at the end of a summit Sunday, a decision that puts pressure on Kenyan troops who face charges of backing a powerful militia in the disputed port city.
[Al Ahram] Syrian rebels battled forces loyal to 
MARKA, Somalia -- Heavy fighting erupted in Gobale vicinity of Lower Shabelle region between the loyalists of Al Shabaab chief Ahmed Godane and former Al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow (Abu Mansur) on Saturday, Garowe Online reports. Local reports say that the fighting lasted for nearly "seven hours" with Robow loyalists gaining the upper hand.
[Al Ahram] Tunisian police 
Something in one of the Burg's 
[Al Ahram] Iraqi security forces hunted for 
[Dawn] "I was blinded by the false promises made by friends who had invested money in Modaraba (an Islamic investment system) for I was made to believe that by doing so, I would be following the path of the Prophet (
On Friday, the U.S. State Department issued a worldwide travel alert for Americans, citing an unspecified al Qaeda threat. The bulletin said that the highest threat levels are the Middle East and North Africa, "and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arab Peninsula." 
[Al Ahram] Salafist El-Nour Party spokesperson Sherif Taha said in a statement Sunday that Interim Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi has not sent an invitation for dialogue to Islamist parties and has met only non-Islamist parties, condemning this as an "increase to the already existing polarisation." 
