Oliver Stone, Michael Shamberg, and Stacy Sher have created a Movie and that's all it is. Some of the rescuers had signed on as consultants in order to assure that the movie would be accurate to content and emotion. We did our best to provide every detail of the events of September 11, 2001 to the producers and were assured by all involved that the film would be factual. We were deceived by the director and producers of the film throughout production.. Mr. Michael Shamberg even attempted to convince me after I had already seen the film that the story was "as factual as they could make it" "with time constraints". This Movie is a far cry from a "true" story and it has nothing to do with "time constraints." Officer Jimeno had temper tantrem after temper tantrem on set in Hollywood and threatened to leave several times in order to get his way. Ssgt David Karnes, FF Tommy Asher, and myself all find the film to be very disheartening. I second Ssgt. Karne's opinion (NY Post). Fame and Fortune with no regard for the "truth". Oliver Stone, Michael Shamberg, Stacy Sher and William Jimeno have no honor. They have forced a fictional movie about the worst day in American history on us in order to glorify themselves and stuff their pocket's with the procedes from ticket sales. They are attempting pull the wool over the eye's of America. If you are interested in seeing Officer Jimeno you can tune into Country Music Television next week during his interview on what country music he enjoy's listening to "I urge American's to refrain from supporting the film until members of the media can bring the "truth" to light."
Respectfully,
Chuck Sereika
NYSAEMT-4 Paramedic
#093394
" I urge American's to refrain from supporting the film (Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center") until members of the media can bring the "truth" to light" NYSAEMT-4 Paramedic Chuck Sereika #093394
#1
I'd like to hear what, exactly, are the problems with the movie? Could he include even one example? I despise Ollie Stone, but I had heard that he'd been put on a tight leash and forced to behave himself and that the result is a film that didn't have the usual distortions, conspiracy-theories, revisionism and lefty hogwash. This is the first time I've heard otherwise but this guy didn't give any details.
#2
In the future, the carriers won't necessarily be needed as much. Air-Carriers for the drones and maybe some unter-sea style ones as well. Less profile to be taken out. Harder to track.
Now for sure we will still have some, but, yeah The Birds for sure.
#3
I imagine a large vessel, more like a supertanker, but carrying an armada of simple GPS-guided buzzbomb type drones. It's deck would have a dozen launch ramps, and the drones would be brought up on conveyor belts.
Below deck it would be fueled and have its small electronic brain programmed. Automatically hoisted onto its ramp, its wings would be spread and its bomb set to arm after takeoff.
When ordered to, the ship would begin launching salvo after salvo of a dozen buzzbombs, flying low over the water to avoid radar until at a set time when they would rise up over the land.
No other "cruise" guidance, though, just cheap and cheerful. Each buzzbomb carrying a 250, 500 or 1000 pound bomb.
All the buzzbombs would be in flight before being detected, but the ship would then instantly be a target, so it would be put on autopilot at high speed to return to safe waters, while the crew abandoned ship to a small, fast ship accompanying it and headed in another direction.
Ideally, the buzzbombs would cost about as much as an economy car. Steel shell, engine, gas tank, motor for wire guidance and GPS brain. And bomb. It might even be designed to use off-the-shelf iron bombs.
Islamabad, Two gas pipelines were damaged in explosions in Pakistan's Balochistan province early Saturday, disrupting gas supply to several cities in Punjab, the GEO television reported.
The explosion occurred near Doli check post in Sui, some 285-km south-west of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, the private television report stated.
Authorities have cordoned off the area, and a bomb disposal squad was called to ascertain the nature of the explosion, according to the report.
In Balochistan's Dera Bughti district and adjoining areas especially Sui, gas pipelines and electricity lines have been attacked by anti-government tribal militants, disrupting gas and power supply to the region
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
17:02 ||
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#1
other cyclists?
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 17:33
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Pakistani gas pipelines damaged in explosion
Nothing a competent gastro-intestinal specialist can't cure.
By the end of 2003, we were being told that our agencies had neutralised over 160 ISI modules counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast. Since then, up to July 11, 2006, again counting only those outside Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, another 75 modules are reported to have been neutralized.
These are substantial achievements we can imagine how many more deaths and how much more dislocation would have been caused if these had not been got at and the persons caught or killed. But the figures have another side to them.
First, that there were that many cells to be neutralized shows that ISI had been able to set them up. Second, the cells that have been unearthed were found to exist across the entire country.
Going by the tabulation of the cells that have been located and finished just since January 2004, we see them having been found in state after state, town after town. In Andhra: Hyderabad (several), including one at the Begumpet airport, Nalgonda; in Karnataka: Alamati, Hesaraghatta on the outskirts of Bangalore, Jelenabad area in Gulbarga district; Delhi (several separate ones in several localities across the city); in Bengal and neighbouring regions: Ghosepur, Darjeeling district, Rishra, Hooghly district, Chowgacha village, Nadia district, Kaliachak, Malda, Kolkata; in Uttaranchal: Dehra Dun; in Maharashtra: Mumbai, Aurangabad, Manmad, Malegaon; in Rajasthan: Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur; in Punjab, where a serious effort is being made to stoke up Sikh militancy: Jalandhar, Amritsar, Nawanshehar, Ropar, Hoshiarpur, Batala, Malerkotla; in UP: NOIDA, Lucknow, Hardoi, Lalkurti; Goa; in MP: Gwalior; Faridabad; in Gujarat: Ahmedabad; and so on.
The list of these 75 modules apart, just look at the far-flung places from which suspects of the July train blasts in Mumbai are being picked up that itself shows the long reach of the ISI and its terrorist limbs within India, of the faraway places at which they have been able to set up sanctuaries.
Finally, that the blasts and other terrorist operations have continued unabated shows that the cells which have been located are but a fraction of the ones that have been set up. Several factors have afforded such easy access for the ISI. The principal one is the near collapse of law enforcement from intelligence to investigation to combat to the courts.
As is well said, you cannot have a first class response to terrorism in a third class system of governance. Why should anyone be deterred from executing another round of blasts in Mumbai trains when he sees that those caught for the blasts executed 13 years ago are well and kicking; when he sees that their lawyers have been able, and with such ease, to ensnare Government prosecutors in the courts?
But the evaporation of governance and of the law-enforcement mechanisms is just one aspect, indeed it is in large part a consequence of complicity. In particular, of the perversion of pubic discourse by which every action against terrorists, their sponsors and their collaborators is called into question and the national resolve dissipated; second, by the ever-strengthening nexus of rulers and criminal elements. And by the permissive atmosphere that has been fomented by these factors.
Which terrorist group, which potential recruit to terrorism will be deterred when he sees the solicitude with which the prime suspect of the blasts in Coimbatore, Abdul Nasser Mahdani, is being looked after? When he sees, as The Indian Express has reported (July 24-25, 2006) the comforts that the DMK Government has arranged for him, including Ayurvedic massages with 10 masseurs and a senior physician labouring over him; and that too at the tax-payers expense? When he sees that even the elementary restrictions on Mahdanis moving about in the prison have been cancelled in the face of opposition from security services?
When he sees that the representatives of the CPI(M) come calling on him in jail to seek his help in fighting elections? When he sees the Kerala Assembly pass a unanimous resolution on his behalf and sees that that Assembly has not passed any comparable resolution for any other individual?
When he sees how doggedly the Government of Karnataka holds up the investigation into Telgis doings? When he sees a Chief Minister defend SIMI, an organization that has been banned for secessionist and anti-national activities? When he sees what happens in our Parliament how members shout each other down and cannot speak in one voice even while discussing the blasts in Mumbai? When he sees how, even after the Supreme Court has struck down the IMDT Act as unconstitutional and as a threat to national security, the Government, the principal party of which depends on votes of illegal infiltrators from Bangladesh, incorporates those very provisions in the Foreigners Act? Who would not feel emboldened to sign up for the greater glory of jihad and shahadat?
THE FATAL CONCESSION
Nor is it just the terrorist module that is encouraged. The organisers and controllers of these modules are given a free hand. In the statement that Mr Vajpayee and General Musharraf issued on 6 January, 2004, the words that Pakistan was made to agree to were very, very carefully chosen. There was great resistance from Pakistan. But, in the end, it had to agree to those words. By that declaration, Pakistan was made to commit that for sustaining the dialogue it would stop cross-border violence, and ensure that no part of the territory under its control that is, including PoK shall be used for terrorism.
By contrast, in the statement that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed with General Musharraf in April 2005, India agreed that to ensure that terrorism will not be allowed to thwart the peace process. This was a fatal concession for by it Pakistan was in effect enabled to continue terrorist activities at will. The onus would henceforth be on India to continue the peace process and the dialogue in spite of the terrorist attacks.
The result has been dramatically brought home in the wake of the Mumbai train blasts. The Prime Ministers address to the nation was anaemic. Perhaps that registered even in the Government. The second statement had a hue of firmness. And with much background briefing we wont put up with this nonsense forever the Foreign Secretaries meeting was called off.
And then? The Prime Minister goes to Moscow. Meets Bush. And suddenly, the official line becomes, We wont let the terrorists succeed in their design to halt the peace process!
So, Pakistan can pursue both limbs talk peace, wage war! And all we can do is to go through the ritual again.
Blasts in Mumbai. Blasts in Srinagar. Another debate in Parliament. Another slew of statements We resolutely/ strongly/unequivocally condemn this dastardly/ cowardly/treacherous/barbaric act... It shows their desperation... Government remains committed to fighting terrorism in all its forms... We will not allow them to disturb communal harmony We will not allow them to derail the peace process...
The Home Minister repeated all the standard phrases in his statement to Parliament last week. He also implied that his ministry had done its job. The Central Government has been sensitising the state governments/UTs about the plans and designs of terrorist outfits. They were asked to streamline physical and protective security of vital institutions...
And the Government is on the job even now, he assured. The Government has made an assessment of the situation following these blasts, he told Parliament. And what did the assessment yield? The security apparatus has to focus greater attention and improve intelligence-gathering capabilities particularly at the local level to collect actionable intelligence... There is also a need to further enhance physical security and access control at airports, metros, vital installations... besides accelerated border fencing, overall coastal security... State Governments have been asked to improve coordination between the Railway Police Force and the Government Railway Police to enhance security of trains and railway stations...
Should he not have said, The Government has made yet another assessment of the situation following these blasts? And did we really need yet another assessment of the situation? After all, what is new in this list? And what happened to that claim of 100 per cent of the recommendations of those Task Forces having been implemented?
THEIR SUCCESS
But while we keep repeating, Terrorists will not be allowed to succeed, the fact is that through them Pakistan has already succeeded in several respects:
It has succeeded in creating the impression I dare say, in India too that the status of Kashmir vis a vis India is not a settled issue. Indeed, that what will happen in the future, what some Government of India will do is an open question. When it is asked in Parliament, Does the Government stand by the unanimous Resolution which Parliament had passed, namely that the only unfinished business relating to J&K is that we have to get back the parts of the state that Pakistan has usurped?, the Government remains silent.
Pakistan has succeeded in establishing that it shall have an equal say in what the final solution shall be.
It has succeeded in establishing that the secessionists it has been patronising, arming, financing are the representatives of the Kashmiris, and so they are the ones to whom the Indian authorities must talk.
And the Indian authorities must talk to them without the secessionists agreeing to anything in advance in the Rajya Sabha, on July 26, the Home Minister was specifically asked by Yashwant Sinha, Has Hurriyat agreed to give up violence?; all he could claim was that they are giving the impression that they are willing to do so! As for their avowed goal of taking Kashmir out of India, they are not even giving any impression that they have diluted that goal one whit.
Pakistan and its local agents have already accomplished the ethnic cleansing of the Valley, having driven the Hindus out. They are now systematically driving them out of Doda.
Equally ominous is the fact that, while India has always maintained that issues between Pakistan and India shall be dealt with bilaterally, that we will not agree to any third party mediation, now the US is the very visible third party in everything. Recall the change in the Prime Ministers tenor after he met Bush in Moscow.
Moreover, the initiative has by now passed completely into the hands of Musharraf. He is the one who is forever proposing formulae, and we are put to reacting. Worse, he has succeeded in bringing the various political groups in Kashmir to talking his language. Omar Abdullah, the PDP leaders as well as the Mirwaiz are now lauding Musharrafs formulations, and proclaiming that these Self Rule, division into Regions are the ones that show the way forward.
FUNDAMENTALISATION OF DISCOURSE
It is because our media is so preoccupied with the controversy of the day, it is because it is so preoccupied with life-style journalism, it is because there is the censorship of political correctness that we do not realise how fundamentalist the discourse has become in Kashmir. We keep repeating nonsense about the great tolerant traditions of Kashmir, about the Sufi Islam of Kashmir, about the unique catholicity of Kashmiriat, about the incomparable blend of Shaivism and liberal Islam in Kashmir.
In fact, the very persons who are people like us are now taking positions that cannot but shock every Indian, and cannot but wreak a terrible outcome. Hari Parbat is sacred to every Kashmiri Hindu: how do you feel when Hindu refugees hear it being referred to in speeches and publications as Kohi Maaran the hill of evil? Can you imagine a person who has held high office in the state telling Kashmiris that hey must learn from Hamas? Can you imagine his leading associate denouncing the Amarnath yatra as a cultural intrusion? Can you imagine a situation, when persons holding a peaceful observance against the massacres in Doda are killed, the Chief Minister proclaims in effect that the protestors invited the deaths upon themselves? Can you imagine a person who was till the other day Chief Minister telling the second Round Table Conference that we must accept One country, two systems? Can you imagine a leading political light of the Valley tell the same conference that the Kashmir Constituent Assembly was a sovereign body, that Article 370 was a treaty between two sovereign bodies?
How do you feel as you see the glee with which a Pakistani website reports a mainstream, nationalist Kashmiri politician proclaim that New Delhi is responsible for the volatile situation in Kashmir, where its troops are killing Kashmiris unjustifiably and forcing them to take up arms? How do you feel when you read him demanding to know, Why is India killing innocents?, and declaring, By these evil designs, India forces our youth to take the gun and sacrifice their lives? When he declares that the Indian Army has been given a free hand to kill innocent people? When you see that his charge against his political rivals, that is the current Government in the state, is that it is in league with the occupation authorities to run a campaign of terror against Kashmiris?
Such rhetoric is the staple today. And the results are brought home every other day. When a Lashkar man is killed these days, four to five thousand turn up for an ostentatious demonstration in his honour. The counter-insurgency groups which had been built up with such great effort have all been abandoned by Delhi. The killings by the terrorist bands become more and more brutal by the week corpses are left with their heads hacked off, people are sent back to their homes with their limbs and parts sawn off... New technologies are introduced car bombs; grenades the man who throws it is paid when he produces the pin...
Has Pakistan not succeeded? Has its instrument, terrorism, not succeeded? And our Government applies itself to organizing yet another assessment of the situation. Actually, it does more. It is only by a hairs breadth, it is only at the very last minute that the decision that had been taken namely, to agree in the Indo-Pak meeting of May 21, 2006 to withdraw troops from Siachin was abandoned.
The terrorist infrastructure remains intact in Pakistan, and securely in the hands of ISI and the Army. Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other such groups have been allowed a free field to operate in POK after the earthquake to organise relief, to open educational institutions. A better opportunity to pick up recruits for jihad and shahadat could not have been provided. Musharraf remains set in his singular aim.
HENCE
The first thing that is required for standing up to what is in store can be put in the words that were used by a high-up in the present Government itself:
The PM and others must see that this Government does not have the mandate to make any fundamental changes in our foreign policy, certainly not in our defence policy; that it does not have the mandate to take decisions that will jeopardise our countrys territory;
They must give up the delusion that problems that it has not been possible to solve in 55 years can be solved by out-of-the-box thinking in five weeks;
Individuals must give up the delusions of what has been rightly called the Gujranwala School of Foreign Policy the delusion, namely, that while others have failed, I will succeed because I am manifestly more sincere, because I am from that part of the sub-continent.
Next, the Government must spell out what the ultimate solution is that it has in mind for Kashmir. It must share with the people and Parliament what is happening in talks around Round and other tables.
In the alternate, Parliament must insist that it be taken into confdence. Once the deed is done, it will be too late.
Parliament must also get Government to specify what it understands by Self Rule; by making borders irrelevant; by autonomy - is the sky the limit still?; by the proposals that are being bandied about joint management for power, tourism, horticulture...
Most important, it must rescind the fatal concession it made in the April 2005 statement that we will continue the peace process irrespective of terrorism.
And a final plea to the media: report in detail what the nationalist, mainstream political leaders of J&K are saying in the Valley. Unless the country is alerted now, obituaries will be all that will be left to pen.
Arun Shourie is a former Minister
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
15:55 ||
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Another photo agency fakery. That is rockets being fired from Tyre not the other way around. Note the rocket launcher blast direction, the flames(there is no engine they would being at end of the range) neither they are so precise.
#2
Israel needs to get tough. Send in overhwhelming numbers of troops and open up the rules of engagement. Does Israel not realize this is a war it must win for its national survival? "Set phasers on kill" and don't come back until the job is complete.
#3
I believe Olmert is fighting THIS war the way Al Gore would have "fought" alQueda after 9/11 if HE had been President. And Olmert is just as wrong now, as Gore would have been then.
Bush did it right in Afghanistan...and took the Taliban down hard and quick. Yes, the place is still screwed up. But alQueda no longer has access to an entire nation-state with full freedom of movement. Exactly what Hezbullah now enjoys in Lebanon.
I think Olmert's government will fall soon after hostilities end anyway. It's a shame he get a chance to screw this up first.
War protester has gained praise and criticism since son's death in Iraq.
WASHINGTON Cindy Sheehan looks tired as she sits down to lead a handful of demonstrators outside the Iraqi Embassy on a recent afternoon. It has been a long year for the anti-war activist who just completed a whirlwind tour of speaking engagements in Italy.
Then the shouts of "U.S. out of Iraq!" begin, and her face brightens and swells with pride, like a mother who has given birth to a political movement.
A few feet away, a flurry of activity offers a glimpse into how a once obscure Catholic youth minister has become the public face of the U.S. anti-war movement. "Cindy is protesting," one of her assistants says into a cell phone while clutching a thick yellow almanac of media contacts. "I can get you a minute." Step right up and see the Amazing Protesting Bimbo! Performances every hour on the half hour! Step right up!
As Sheehan prepares to return to Crawford today, renewing a round of protests that thrust her into the national spotlight a year ago, the story of her rise to notoriety from a ditch outside President Bush's ranch is peppered with joy and pain.
She's become a household name, yet her once strong family ties are in ruins. Her work has become a 24-hour-a-day obsession, generating praise from around the world, yet it also brought condemnation even death threats from opponents who suggest that her constant harangue has made her a bit of a political gadfly. Others say it has diluted her message.
Opponents "have been trying to get me for a long time," says Sheehan, 49, reflecting on her work since the death of her son Casey while serving in Iraq two years ago.
"I raised four kids in six years. If they think they are going to ruffle my feathers, they are mistaken."
But there are signs Sheehan is not the same person who stumbled into the national limelight last year. In addition to having an aide who handles media, she has an agent who arranges paid lectures most of them a platform to speak against the war. A blockbuster anti-war book is slated for release next month, and she recently bought 5 acres in Crawford, using some of her son's life insurance money, to ensure that protests outside Bush's ranch continue. Thanks, Casey!
Sheehan turns circumspect when asked to share the financial details of her work, such as who pays for the dozens of hotel rooms, airline tickets and meals for her and sister Dede Miller, who often travels with her. "Supporters," she says. And, she pays for some of it. "My expenses are low," Sheehan adds. The "Skating on Casey's Bones Tour" rolls on!
Still, her work has come with a costly emotional price tag.
Sheehan's fiery rhetoric and inflammatory attacks on the president have sent once close friends running for cover. She has referred to Bush as a terrorist and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as an "angel of death."
Sheehan's 28-year marriage is over. Family members have spoken out against her.
"Out of everything, that hurt me the most," she said. "After 31 years of being in the family, I thought they would support me. They totally disowned me and chose George Bush over murder."
John Tierney, author of the book "The Politics of Peace: What's behind the anti-war movement?" said Sheehan is not only an effective advocate for the anti-war cause, but she has also brought a mother's touch to a fight that tends to be difficult for average Americans to grasp.
To those who view Sheehan's activism with suspicion, her mission is about feeding an insatiable appetite for public attention.
"Cindy has a lot of hatred about her," former sister-in-law Cherie Quartarolo said. "Cindy has chosen to use her dead son's image to promote political causes. That's just inappropriate." But it is lucrative...
#1
like her lies about getting that headstone for her son....Bitch. W is only spending 10 days at the ranch this summer - expect to see her sell the property. She bought it through someone else's name, and the original owner is furious, cuz he wouldn't sell it if he'd known it was going to her
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 14:00
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#2
"I raised four kids in six years. If they think they are going to ruffle my feathers, they are mistaken."
That is a very strange statement. Does this mean she only spent 6 years raising 4 kids? As far as I know it takes 18 years minimum (and with some kids your entire life).
A blockbuster anti-war book is slated for release next month,
How can it be a blockbuster when it hasn't even been released yet?
"They totally disowned me and chose George Bush over murder."
Another strange statement. They chose George Bush over [instead of] murder. Apparently Cindy would have chose murder.
Still a vampire trying to suck the last drops of blood out of her son's death.
#6
Hatred, anger, and wallowing in one's grief are no basis for a long and healthy life. Ms. Sheehan now looks like death warmed over. She's not long for this world, and on her current path, will die a very sad, pathetic and unhappy woman. I think Casey looks down with a mixture of sorrow, disgust and pity. I wish I could say the same. I have only disgust.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 14:59
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#8
They [her family] totally disowned me and chose George Bush over murder."
Amusingly revealing phrasing there, Ms. Sheehan. Soon enough your erstwhile supporters will move on to the next cause du jour, and you will die many years hence alone, unloved and unnoted. And it will be your son Casey who kicks your shrunken soul down the stairs to the depths of Hell.
Today, the United States rightly lives in fear of the Bomb it created because the decision to use it--if and when it becomes available--has already been made. But this time around, pious men with beards will decide when and where on American soil atomic weapons are to be used. Shadowy groups, propelled by fanatical hatreds, scour the globe for fissile materials. They are not in a hurry; time is on their side. They are confident they will one day breach Fortress America. And what then? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counterreaction whose horror the human mind cannot comprehend.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
13:31 ||
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#1
Interesting that if you scratch deep enough, even the most liberal and educated of Pak people will display this islamic zeal
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 13:36
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#2
"Hood-boy" - apt name, methinks.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 14:42
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I can absolutely guarantee you that should your 'pious men' manage to set of a nuke in the US, that all this talk of 'reaction and counterreaction' will be rather one-sided.
(john - I agree with you, and this is a major worry)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 18:59
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The Brazilian daily Folha de Sao Paulo said Saturday that the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is working with the hypothesis that Cuban President Fidel Castro "is sick" and that the cancer he is suffering could keep him from returning to office. "Cuban authorities told the president and the Workers Party (PT) that the dictator has cancer and that even if he recovers he might not return to power," the newspaper said without mentioning sources.
"They said that the dictator might be kept from returning to power even though he recovers from the illness, a malignant abdominal tumor, according to the version with which the Brazilian government is working," said the article signed by journalist Kennedy Alencar, Folha de Sao Paulo's correspondent in Brasilia. "'It looks like we are going to lose our friend,' Lula told an assistant after being informed of the dictator's critical state of health," the article said. Oh, how sad to lose your "friend." The tumor is not half as malignant as Fidel.
The story said that "word from Havana received confidentially indicates that Castro is very ill." According to the daily, Lula was deeply moved and asked his collaborators for discretion and told his friends he is hoping for Castro's recovery. The Cuban leader will be 80 on Aug. 13. Please, become stable by then.
#1
One thought does occur to me, however - Fidel and his merry men were supporting clowns like Lula and Chavez. If everybody goes home to fight for the succession, that could leave them short some of their muscle.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
08/06/2006 14:30
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Oh, the poor man. Abdominal cancer hurts a lot in the later stages, right?
And given Mike Kowalski's point, life could get very interesting for his wannabe dictator friends in the near future. Which would be nice for giving the Special Forces guys a bit of a break, I imagine...
MUMBAI: Soon after the failure of the GSLV-F02 launch rocket carrying the Insat-4C communication satellite, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has decided to act fast to meet the growing need for Ku-band transponders from the direct-to-home (DTH) sector.
Isro will be replacing Insat-4C, where Kalanithi Maran's Sun Direct had booked seven high-power Ku-band transponders, with the launch of an identical satellite by July 2007. The satellite, Insat-4C(R), will be launched at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota.
Maran will have the option to take transponder space on that satellite for his DTH venture. But if he decides to launch the service earlier, Isro will make provisions on an alternate satellite which could be foreign or Indian. Insat-4B, which is meant for Doordarshan's DTH service DD Direct Plus, is being launched early next year.
"We have the flexibility to accommodate Sun. If there is an early requirement, we can give them space on an Indian or foreign satellite," says Isro contract management and legal services director SB Iyer. For DTH providers who want to operate from foreign satellites, Isro will have to provide the approval and lease it out for them.
Will Insat-4C(R) disturb the scheduling of Isro's other satellite launches? "We plan to launch Insat-4C(R) by July 2007 from Sriharikota. It will have the same number of transponders as Insat-4C. The other satellite launches will be on schedule," says Iyer.
Of the 12 Ku-band transponders Insat-4C would have carried, Sun TV had booked six for DTH and one for DSNG (digital satellite news gathering). While Isro plans to launch Insat-4D in 2006-07, Insat-4E is expected to go up by 2007-08.
Isro had earlier said that the failure of Insat-4C was "a brief setback" which it would correct by recasting its programmes to accelerate the Ku-band capacity growth.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
13:10 ||
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GSLV failure not to affect Moon mission: ISRO chief
Ahmedabad: The failure of the geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle will not have any bearing on Chandrayaan, the country's first mission to the Moon, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief G Madhavan Nair said on Saturday.
Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a function at the space application centre (SAC) to give away the Astronautial Society of India's annual awards, Nair said, "the GSLV failure will not affect the launch of Chandrayaan because it will be launched by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
Chandrayaan, an unmanned mission to carry out a chemical and mineral mapping of the moon to understand it better, is scheduled for launch in 2007-08.
Replying to another question, Nair said India had plans to create its own satellite navigational system.
Nair presided over the function in which the prestigious Aryabhata Award was presented to R Narasimha, an expert in aeronautics and astronautics.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 13:12
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Nicholas M. Guariglia - 7/15/2006
It was late 2001. Northern Alliance soldiers, aided by U.S. commandos, had ended the brutal reign of Mullah Omar. With the Taliban fleeing to the sky-high and mountainous Tora Bora terrain, the al Qaidists had been run out of their camps and bases, and the Afghan locals had reclaimed their towns. Men began listening to the radio and, if they felt so inclined, shaved their beards; women began enrolling in schools and showing their faces all once outlawed under the theocratic rule of the now-overthrown regime. A return to some semblance of normalcy was i n the air, and a yearning for respectable statehood and independence was prevalent.
Overhead, bombs largely became food packages, as the United Nations Children Fund concluded that the American intervention in Afghanistan had led to conditions as to where 35,000 additional Afghan babies a year would now survive childbirth, 10,000 additional Afghan women a year would now survive labor due to adequate prenatal care, and an additional 115,000 Afghan children a year would now make it passed the age of five due to receiving vaccinations they otherwise would not have. Yet it was around this time that Ibrahim Nafie, the leading editor of the Egyptian state-run Al Ahram newspaper, maliciously told his reading audience that the U.S. purposely dropped humanitarian products on areas with landmines to kill hungry Afghans, and genetically treated the food to poison the Afghan population.
In the present day Arab world, such cynical indoctrination is the norm, not the exception. Blatant antagonists in Tehran and Damascus boldly and directly sponsor and host our adversaries, while more blasé thugocracies, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, capture a few crackpot fundamentalists here and there to highlight their support, all the while indoctrinating their populace into believing warped lies. It goes without saying that this game serves a double function a continued faux friendship with the U.S. to keep us at bay, and the production of an external enemy Americans and Jews to maintain internal vulnerability.
How and why is this so customary? By walking on both sides of the fence, these peculiar autocracies claim to be our brothers in arms, and yet simultaneously generate the next generation of our killers, through state-run media and television (like a 30-part Syrian miniseries that suggested Jews drink the blood of children), nonchalance of hateful and racist rhetoric from punk imams and clerics, and inciting school curriculum (which concentrates not on mathematics, but on martyrdom). For a moment consider that most members of al Qaida are natives of nations with friendly governments Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen. Add this to the fact that most hostile Middle Eastern states Iran, Syria, Iraq under Hussein, Afghanistan under Omar generally have more receptive populations (at least we dont condone their dictatorial governments, the thinking may go).
What are we to make of this? The ruling families of moderate and allied Arab states may wine and dine with members of Congress, play golf with department secretaries and cabinet officials, and laugh at Seinfeld reruns with members of their Gestapo in their palace getaways, but in their madrassas and schools they point their finger to us, the Great Satan, for their peoples illiteracy, unemployment, and shame creating a fertile ground where the literature and radical interpretation of Islam looks like an attractive alternative when in actuality, the true nature of their populations distress is their enslavement.
Lets review some of the more asinine fantasies: an Israeli pledge to aid tsunami victims somehow became a theory, held by the hypnotized Arab masses, that Israels relief offerings were really designed to (get this) militarily occupy Indonesia or more comical the deadly wave was purposely caused by a super-secret Israeli submarine, lurking under the depths of the sea, with the intent on killing as many Southeast Asian Muslims as possible.
And we are all aware of the silly Islamic accusation that the World Trade Center was attacked not by nineteen fanatical jihadists, but by Israeli intelligence operatives on the orders of Sharon, bogyman Zionists, corporate lobbyists, economic globalists, and a small Jewish cabal inside the Pentagon to turn American might and fury against innocent Muslims worldwide. The humorous irony to these slanders is what they expose within the Middle Eastern mindset: apparently they believe only sophisticated intelligence agencies like the CIA or Mossad could mastermind and conduct such a large, well thought out operation not half-witted Muslim degenerates. This highlights Thomas Friedmans thesis that uneducated and unemployed Islamic youths suffer not only from a poverty of riches, but a poverty of dignity. This, coupled with rampant Third Reich-like indoctrination, creates a deadly psychosis of inferiority, in which brainwashed teenagers in the Middle East turn their celibacy, illiteracy, inadequacy, insignificance, and misdirected anger against those who have nothing to do with their poor condition like, say, New Yorkers whose tax dollars were going to their cause in the first place.
Apology is not a helpful exercise in flipping this equation. Instead our objective must be to end this neurosis of fascism, homophobia, racism, and sexism that has unfortunately manifested itself into a widespread problem all throughout the Arab world. The problem is not genetic Muslims are not inherently violent, opposed to democracy, anti-Semitic, or brutal toward women. Just look at the Muslims in democratic India, which represent the largest Muslim minority in the world. Rather than hijacking airliners and slicing throats, they are fixing the worlds computer problems in Bangalore. O ne must wonder why over half of the worlds Muslims who live outside the Middle East in free societies do not fall to barbarism, as well. Rather than bombing embassies and barracks, they are CEOs, doctors, lawyers or perhaps just peaceful family men and women who are more interested in their childs report card grades than in toppling skyscrapers.
The entire dictatorial system of the Middle East would collapse precisely our long-term goal if the masses knew the truth or, in the least, were allowed to question what they were told. The people are hushed for their fear of the tyrant, whereas the tyrant deflects hatred and criticism on us, for his fear of his people. This mode of thinking spurred former CIA Director James Woolsey who famously concluded the U.S. was now engaged in World War IV, with the Third World War being the decades-long battle against Soviet communism to explain to a small college audience that, We are on the side of those whom you (Saudi Arabia and Egypt) most fear were on the side of your own people. His premise? Iraq is the blood-spattered proje ct, Egypt is the strategic pivot, the Saudi kingdom, the prize.
Such convictions have often been caricatured in recent years. From the Left, men like Woolsey are reckless warmongers, whereas from the Old Right, they are naïve and overly idealistic interventionists. Europeans shame such positions as cow-towing to the Israeli lobby, whereas the Arab media considers these positions to be the beginning of a new American imperialism. But for a moment consider the nonviolent mechanisms used to reach Mr. Woolseys objective after all, he doesnt advocate military action against Egypt or the House of Saud.
The policy is called linkage, and has been endorsed by human rights activists, most notably Soviet prisoner and now Israeli politician Natan Sharansky. It could be described best as a kind of detail diplomacy, where U.S. diplomats highlight specific abuses that occur within adversarial regimes, treating the littlest of nuances as the end all-be all within diplomatic dialogue.
The objective? To link our relationship to foreign countries based upon how they treat their citizenry. Ignoring the grievances of the oppressed, after all, could be considered our sole (or at least, our largest) past mistake. We relied on classic Cold War realpolitik Keep the black gold flowin and the Russians out which may have helped us, strategically, to bankrupt the Soviet Union. But the price to be paid was costly. By disregarding religious indoctrination and political oppression, and by not really raising the issue of human rights abuses within Arab societies, it created a power vacuum where the supposed promises of Islamic fundamentalism seemed to be a viable option.
Which brings us to this new approach, and we can look back to recent history for a colloquium. It is often said Ronald Reagans finest moment was at Reykjavik, where Mikhail Gorbachev was willing to make huge concessions regarding strategic nuclear arms reductions agreeing with almost everything Reagan and his diplomatic team put on the table. Gorbachev and his Soviet squad had one demand: for the U.S. to abandon plans for the Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI), the so-called Star Wars concept of a space-deployed anti-ICBM nuclear shield, which would conceivably one day give the United States immunity from a Soviet nuclear attack. Gorbachev has since admitted his cabinet was terrified of this particular American initiative, knowing his government would be unable to spend as much as Washington for such a weapon-system. Reagan knew this then and abruptly stood up, said no deal, and walked out of the meeting rendering all possible agreements regarding other issues as moot.
At the time, it was political suicide for the embattled Reagan. What politician, after all, would want to go down in history as the leader who declined the Soviet Unions greatest concession? Rather than end the meeting with a photo-op of handshakes between the two heads-of-state which could have sent his poll numbers soaring Reagan instead insisted defense spending and the SDI program would continue unabated, hoping an arms race with the Soviets would eventually bankrupt their inferior communist system. The media, at the time, castigated the decision as reckless, dangerous, and foolish.
Knowing now in retrospect how this scenario unfolded, what we need is a new core of hardliners, with Reykjavik-like moments of diplomatic brinkmanship. Instead this time, the issues we must expose center around human rights abuses, curbing religious intolerance, and highlighting political indoctrination within the nation-state we are negotiating with. If we are to receive considerable Egyptian concessions vis-à-vis Israel, we are to insist Hosni Mubarak release democratic dissident Ayman Nour from his dungeon. If we are to receive significant Syrian compromises vis-à-vis Lebanon, we are to demand democracy advocate Mohammad Ghanem be freed. If we are to get the Saudis to lower the pric e of oil, were to also demand they take the widely translated and distributed Mein Kampf out of circulation.
If our counterparts agree to our demands, then we are to boldly come out and let it be known that our request was honored, which will in turn tell the dissidents of the region that we are as serious about reform as we say we are. If released political prisoners want to know who was responsible for their discharge, they would know to look to the West. This would tell the people of the region that Americans do in fact believe our idealism and interests are at least intertwined. What other oil-importing country demands womens rights at a time of high gas prices, rising economies in China and India, and petroleum shortages?
Such a policy of linkage would do wonders for the United States even if those we were negotiating with absolutely refused to abide by our demands but only if we were to openly and unapologetically make their refusal to reform an issue on the international stage. Imagine for a moment Arab media channels covering a Condoleezza Rice press conference, in which she proclaims, Our energy deal with Saudi Arabia, to lower gas prices, will be postponed until the royal family allows its women to drive.
Contrary to popular belief, we do in fact have Lech Wałęsa-type allies in the Middle East that call for plural liberality and democratic freedom. They all tend to be suffering in the dungeons and chambers of their fascist slave masters, and under the twisted apparatus of dictatorship. Our job is to find them Amr Khaled, Omar Karsou, Ayman Nour, Hashem Aghajari, Massoud Hamid, Ali Abdallah expose their oppression, align our interests with theirs, and empower them. Anything less is reverting back to the old status quo of turning a blind eye and de f acto tolerating fascism, which has only led the Middle East to its current disgusting state.
Nicholas M. Guariglia writes on the issues of national defense and counterterrorism, specifically regarding Middle East geopolitics. He is a student at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he is studying American foreign policy. He can be contacted at nickguar@comcast.net
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
12:53 ||
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Whew -- clearly written at white heat! Let's keep an eye on this young man, he looks to be following in Dan Darling's footsteps.
#3
I sense a young, idealistic Seton Hall (bring checkbook for regular donations to the maintainance of the most valuable real estate parcels in the Garden State) student honing his writing skills;which IMHO are all over the map, but not bad.
The UN Childrens Fund, UNESCO, etc., can really lay a guilt-trip on the uninitiated; but "Hey", Most Afghans are goatherds after all. When the poppies are in bloom---Oops. Back to square one.
#4
I once owned a used car, which I've bought for 500$. One day it broke, and a garage owner wanted 1250$ to repair it. I got rid of the car instead. Now, why did I remember that?
The centrepiece of Pakistan's relationship with the West since September 11, 2001, has been dubbed "enlightened moderation" by its president and philosopher-general, Pervez Musharraf. Under his rule, Musharraf claims, Pakistan has rejected the orthodox, militant, violent Islam imposed by the previous chief of army staff to seize power in Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq (who ruled from 1977-1988), in favour of a more 'modern' and 'moderate' Islam. But Musharraf's actions, and those of his government and its allies, are often at odds with this.
In fact, after almost five years of 'enlightened moderation,' it seems there is more continuity than change. And, with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how such a policy can hope to stem the tide of religious radicalism that is overwhelming Pakistani society.
No one doubts that there have been some changes for the good. There is a perceptible shift in institutional practices and inclinations. Heads of government organizations are no longer required to lead noon prayers as in the 1980's; female announcers with undraped heads freely appear on Pakistan Television; to the relief of many passengers thickly bearded stewards are disappearing from PIA flights; the first women fighter pilots have been inducted into the Pakistan Air Force.
More importantly, in early July 2006, Musharraf directed the Council of Islamic Ideology to draft an amendment to the controversial Hudood Ordinance, put in place by General Zia-ul-Haq and not repealed by any of the civilian governments that ruled from 1988 to 1999. This law gives women a lower legal status and punishes the victims of rape. Repeal of these anti-women laws has been a long standing demand of Pakistani women's groups. A vastly overdue - but nevertheless welcome - action was taken by the government when it released in July hundreds of women prisoners arrested under the Hudood Ordinance, many of whom had spent years awaiting their trial.
But the force of these pluses cannot outweigh the many more weighty minuses. General Musharraf has formally banned some of many Jihadi groups that the Pakistan army has helped train and arm for over two decades, but they still operate quite freely. After the October earthquake, some of these extremist groups in Kashmir seized the opportunity of relief work to fully reestablish and expand their presence.
Exploiting Musharraf's ambivalence, they openly flaunted their banners and weapons in all major towns of Azad Kashmir and fully advertised their strength. Some obtained relief materials from government stocks to pass off as their own, and used heavy vehicles that could only have been provided by the authorities. Many national and international relief organizations were left insecure by their overwhelming presence. Only recently have the jihadists moved out of full public view into more sheltered places.
Other Pakistani leaders send similar messages. Shaukat Aziz, a former Citibanker and now prime minister of Pakistan, made a call for nation-wide prayers for rain in a year of drought. This effort to improve his Islamic credentials became less laughable when, at an education conference in Islamabad, he proposed that Islamic religious education must start as soon as children enter school.
This came in response to a suggestion by the moderate Islamic scholar, Javed Ghamdi, that only school children in their fifth year and above should be given formal Islamic education. Otherwise, said Ghamdi, they would stand in danger of becoming rigid and doctrinaire. The government's 2006 education policy now requires Islamic studies to begin in the third year of school, a year earlier than in the previous policy.
Other ministers are no less determined to show Islamic zeal. The federal minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul Haq, speaking at the launch of a book authored by a leading Islamic extremist leader on "Christian Terrorism and The Muslim World," argued that anyone who did not believe in jihad was neither a Muslim nor a Pakistani. He then declared that given the situation facing Muslims today, he was prepared to be a suicide bomber.
According to a newspaper report, Pakistani health minister, Mohammad Nasir Khan, assured the upper house of parliament that the government could consider banning female nurses looking after male patients at hospitals.
This move arose from a motion moved by female parliamentary members of the MMA, the Islamist party that commands majorities in the provincial assemblies of the Frontier and Baluchistan provinces and offered crucial support for Musharraf staying on as president. Women's bodies are of particular concern to these holy men: "We think that men could derive sexual pleasure from women`s bodies while conducting ECG or ultrasound," proclaimed Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, provincial secretary of the MMA.
In his opinion women would be able to lure men under the pretext of these medical procedures. Therefore, he said, "to save the supreme values of Islam and the message of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), the MMA has decided to impose the ban." Destroyed or damaged billboards with women's faces can be seen in several cities of the Frontier because the MMA deems the exhibition of unveiled women as un-Islamic.
Total separation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and 8 children were crushed to death, and scores injured, in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi where a large number of women had gathered for a weekly congregation. Male rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving injured women to hospitals.
One cannot dismiss this as just one incident. Soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their school building. The action of these elders was similar to that of Saudi Arabia`s ubiquitous religious "mutaween" police who, in March 2002, had stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas. In rare criticism, Saudi newspapers had blamed the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.
The Saudiization of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytizers bringing this message, such as Mrs. Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to heights of fame and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades ago the fully veiled student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. Now she outnumbers her sisters who still dare show their faces. This has had the effect of further enhancing passivity and unquestioning obedience to the teacher, and of decreasing the self-confidence of female students.
The intensification of religious feelings has had a myriad other more significant consequences. Depoliticization and destruction of all non-religious organizations has lead to the absence of any noticeable public mobilization - even on specifically Muslim causes like US actions against Iraq, Palestine, or Iran. Events in these areas rarely bring more than a few dozen protesters on to the streets - if that.
Nevertheless large numbers of Pakistanis are driven to fury and violence when they perceive their faith has been maligned. Mobs set on fire the Punjab Assembly, as well as shops and cars in Lahore, for an act of blasphemy committed in Denmark. Even as religious fanaticism grips the population there is a curious, almost fatalistic, disconnection with the real world which suggests that fellow Muslims don't matter any more - only the Faith does.
Religious identity has also become increasingly sectarian. A suicide bomber, as yet unidentified, killed 57 people and eliminated the entire leadership of the "Sunni Movement" when he leapt on to the stage at a religious gathering in Karachi in April, 2006. Months earlier, barely a mile down from my university, at the shrine of Bari Imam, 25 Shias were killed in similar attack.
In the tribal areas, sectarian tensions have frequently exploded into open warfare: in the villages of Hangu district, Sunnis and Shias exchanged light artillery and rocket fire leaving scores dead. Earlier this year, when I traveled for lecturing in the town of Gilgit, I saw soldiers crouched in bunkers behind mounted machine guns. It looked more like a town under siege than a tourist resort.
The clearest political expression of this shift towards a more violent and intolerant religious identity is the rise of the MMA as a national force, which on key issues both supports and is supported by General Musharraf's government. A measure of its power, and the threat it poses to society and the state, is the Pakistani Taliban movement that it has helped create, especially in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Their success draws in large measure on the lessons they learned when working hand in the hand with the Pakistan army to create and sustain the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Unable to combat the toxic mix of religion with tribalism, the Pakistani government is rapidly losing what little authority it ever had in the tribal parts. Under US pressure, the army has been mounting military offensives against Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who fled Afghanistan. The convenient fiction that the army is merely combating "foreign militants" from the Arab and Central Asian countries is accepted by no one. Its assaults have taken a heavy civilian toll and local resistance has grown.
The local Taliban, as well as Al-Qaida, are popular and the army is not. In the tribal areas, the local Taliban now run a parallel administration that dispenses primitive justice according to tribal and Islamic principles. A widely available Taliban-made video that I saw shows the bodies of criminals dangling from electricity poles in the town of Miranshah while thousands of appreciative spectators look on.
In Wana, a regional capital, about 20 miles from the Afghan border, Taliban supporters have decreed that men are forbidden to shave. A Pathan barber, who migrated to Islamabad, told me last month that many others like him are making their way to the big cities or abandoning their traditional occupation.
The Pakistani Taliban (like their brothers in Afghanistan) see education as insidious. Pakistani newspapers frequently carry news of schools in the tribal regions being attacked destroyed by the Taliban. But rarely are these incidents followed by angry editorials or letters-to-the editor.
Implicit sympathy for the Taliban remains strong among urban middle-class Pakistanis because they are perceived as standing up to the Americans, while the government has caved in. In Waziristan, one of the locales of a growing insurgency, the state has essentially capitulated and accepted Talibanic rule over tribal society as long as the army is allowed to maintain a spectator presence.
Stepping back, the Islamist shift underway in Pakistan becomes yet more evident. According to the Pew Global Survey (2006), the percentage of Pakistanis who expressed confidence in Osama bin Laden as a world leader grew from 45% in 2003 to 51% in 2005. This 6 point increase must be compared against responses to an identical questionnaire in Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon, where bin Laden's popularity has sharply dropped by as much as 20 points.
It is worth asking what has changed Pakistan so and what makes it so different from other Muslim countries? What set one section of its people upon the other, created notions of morality centred on separating the sexes, and sapped the country's vitality? Some well meaning Pakistanis - particularly those who live overseas - think that it is best to avoid such difficult questions.
These days they are venturing to "repackage Pakistan" for the media. They want to change negative perceptions of Pakistan in the West while, at the same time, hesitating to call for a change in the structure of the state and its outlook.
But at the heart of Pakistan's problems lies a truth - one etched in stone - that when a state proclaims a religious identity and mission, it is bound to privilege those who organize religious life and interpret religious text. Since there are many models and interpretations within every religion, there is bound to be conflict between religious forces over whose model shall prevail. There is also the larger confrontation between religious principles and practices and what we now consider to be 'modern' ideas of society, which have emerged over the past several hundred years.
This truth, for all its simplicity, escaped the attention of several generations of soldiers, politicians, and citizens of Pakistan. It is true that there has been some learning - Musharraf's call for "enlightened moderation" is a tacit (and welcome) admission that a theocratic Pakistan cannot work. But his call conflicts with his other, more important, responsibility as chief of the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan is what it is because its army finds greater benefit in the status quo. Today the Pakistan Army is vast, and as an institution, has acquired enormous corporate interests that sprawl across real estate, manufacturing, and service sectors. It also receives large amounts of military aid, all of which would be threatened if it comes into direct conflict with the US. In the 1960s and 1980s, and again since 9/11, the army discovered its high rental value when serving the US. Each time the long-term costs to the society and state have been terrible.
The relationship between the army and religious radicals is today no longer as simple as in the 1980's. To maintain a positive image in the West, the Pakistani establishment must continue to decry Islamic radicalism, and display elements of liberalism that are deeply disliked by the orthodox. But hard actions will be taken only if the Islamists threaten the army's corporate and political interests, or if senior army commanders are targeted for assassination. The Islamists for their part hope for, and seek to incite, action by zealous officers to bring back the glory days of the military-mullah alliance led by General Zia ul Haq.
Musharraf and his corps commanders well know that they cannot afford to sleep too well. It is in the lower ranks that the Islamists are busily establishing bases. A mass of junior officers and low-ranking soldiers - whose world view is similar to that of the Taliban in most respects - feels resentful of being used as cannon fodder for fighting America's war. It is they who die, not their senior officers.
So far, army discipline has successfully squelched dissent and forced it underground. But this sleeping giant can - if and when it wakes up - tear asunder the Pakistan Army, and shake the Pakistani state from its very foundations.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
12:37 ||
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#1
With these clowns, I think Godot will come long before enlightment.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 14:45
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#2
Meanwhile across the border...
Technologies of India has been chosen to supply software in support of Boeing's 787 program. HCL DO-178B software will be used by Turbo Power Systems to verify and validate ram fan motor controllers being supplied by Hamilton Sundstrand for the 787's power electronics cooling system. HCL software already supports a number of other 787 suppliers, including Volvo Aero, Meggitt and BAE Systems.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 17:22
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Jammu and Kashmir Police on Sunday said it had unearthed a Lashkar-e-Taiba module with the arrest of five terrorists of the outfit involved in a series of grenade throwing incidents in Doda district over the past three months.
The five Mohammad Qasim, Javid Ahmad, Mohammad Hussain, Javid Iqbal and Riyaz Ahmed were involved in separate grenade throwing incidents in the district which claimed two lives and left 69 others injured, Inspector General of Police, Jammu range, SP Vaid told reporters in Jammu on Sunday.
He said Mohammad Qasim, a hard core terrorist, was working as a guard with the chairman of Jammu wing of Hurriyat Conference and Jamaat-e-Islami leader Saidullah Tantray.
"It is obvious that Tantray would be knowing about the activities of his domestic servant and investigations are going on in the matter," Vaid said.
Asked whether police would initiate action against Tantray, he said nobody would be allowed to go unpunished if found involved in the heinous crime of attacking innocent people.
He said two persons were killed and 69 others injured when these terrorists hurled series of grenades during the past three months in Doda.
The IGP said the terrorist, who fired on an ex-serviceman Ghulam Ali deployed on duty at Jamia Masjid, Doda on June 20 with an intention to snatch his weapon has also been identified.
Efforts are on to arrest Irshad Ahmed of Kashrian in Doda.
Two more terrorists Gul Nawaz Mangnoo, a tailor by profession, and Javed Sofi of Doda, wanted in militancy related incidents were absconding, he said.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
12:15 ||
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#1
no pliars n panties graphic?
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 13:34
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Hardline Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq are targeting a new type of victim with the full protection of Iraqi law, The Observer can reveal. The country is seeing a sudden escalation of brutal attacks on what are being called the 'immorals' - homosexual men and children as young as 11 who have been forced into same-sex prostitution.
There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking asylum in the UK because it has become impossible for them to live safely in their own country.
Ali Hili runs the Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group out of London. He used to have 40 volunteers in Iraq but says after recent raids by militia in Najaf, Karbala and Basra he has lost contact with half of them. They move to different safe houses to protect their identities, but their work is incredibly dangerous.
Eleven-year-old Ameer Hasoon al-Hasani was kidnapped by policemen from the front of his house last month. He was known in his district to have been forced into prostitution. His father Hassan told me he searched for his son for three days after his abduction, then found him, shot in the head. A copy of the death certificate confirms the cause of death.
Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an 'honour killing' to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq's penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.
'The government will do nothing to tackle this issue. It's really desperate when people get to the stage they're trading their children for money. They have no alternatives because there are no jobs,' Hili says.
Graphic photos obtained from Baghdad sources too frightened to identify themselves as having known a gay man, and seen by the Observer, show other gay Iraqis who have been executed. One shows two men, suspected of having a relationship, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs - guns at the ready behind their heads - awaiting execution. Another picture captured on a mobile phone shows a gay man being beaten to death. Yet another shows a corpse being dragged through the streets after his execution.
One photograph is of the mutilated, burnt body of 38-year-old Karar Oda from Sadr City. He was kidnapped by the Badr Brigade in mid-June. They work with the Ministry of Interior and are the informal armed wing of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who make up the largest Shia bloc in the Iraq parliament. Oda's family were given an arrest warrant signed by the Ministry of Interior which said their son deserved to be arrested and killed for immorality as a homosexual. His body was found ten days later.
Dr Haider Jaber is currently seeking asylum in the UK after fleeing Iraq in 2004. He says the abuse started to escalate in his neighbourhood after the invasion. One night, walking home from work, he was surrounded by five men, who told him he had to become a heterosexual Muslim. He says they abused him for wearing jeans and a T-shirt with English writing, and told him he should adopt traditional robes. As a crowd gathered to watch, he was then beaten and kicked to the ground.
The threats continued. Armed militiamen broke into his family home and then his workplace looking for him. Jaber finally left the country in April. His partner, Ali. was not so lucky. Jaber learned of his Ali's murder a few days after leaving Iraq. 'They didn't send the body to the family to have a grave or a flower garden. They said he didn't deserve it because he was an animal,' he said.
Ibaa Alawi has also fled Iraq. A former employee at the British embassy in Baghdad, Alawi met Tony Blair on one of his surprise visits to Iraq. He said Blair was concerned about the safety of the Iraqis working there and praised their bravery. 'Tony Blair said the British government was thankful for our efforts and knew we were putting our lives at risk working for the British embassy in Baghdad.'
Alawi is upset the same government is not willing to help him out. He believes the Home Office will refuse him asylum because it would have to face up to the level of chaos in Iraq, and how much influence is being waged by radical Islamists - and face the fact that, for some, there is still no freedom in Iraq.
· Jennifer Copestake's film on homosexual executions in Iraq will be shown on More4 News on August 7 at 8pm
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
12:05 ||
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#1
gotta be real unsafe for Saudis in Iraq, then
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 12:25
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· Jennifer Copestake's film on homosexual executions in Iraq will be shown on More4 News on August 7 at 8pm
That should drive up ratings. Too bad it's not a sweeps month.
#5
Here's a question. This article is specifically about Shia killing suspected homosexuals. Does this have anything to do with the queer Sunni jihadis? There were articles that many suicide bombers were closet homosexuals.
#6
Sounds like Iraq needs the equivalent of the "Lavender Panthers", mostly as a PR stunt. The propaganda puts out that they torture and murder those who torture and murder gays.
If that is too blunt, then expand the PR to a vigilante movement that murders honor killers and buries them with pig offal. No matter who is murdered, homos, girls, children, they hunt down the killers.
Since honor killers are cowardly in character, this would scare the hell out of them.
#7
This is indeed shameful, but bespeaks the evil that is the Shia militias supported by Iran, rather than the morality of invading Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. In fact, this clarifies the dilemma of the "Progressives"; in order to protect their favoured population (who do deserve protection -- agree or disagree with their behaviour, nobody should be tortured and killed for it) they have to demand that their country not only stay in Iraq, but increase its control of the country, not decrease it, since clearly most Iraqi homosexuals and child prostitutes will not be able to flee to Britain for asylum.
ISLAMABAD: A Pakistan military inquiry committee which probed the Kargil debacle had recommended "court martial" of General Pervez Musharraf but he overthrew then Nawaz Sharif government in 1999 and "stole" the report before it was implemented claimed a White Paper on Kargil released by Sharif's PML-N party.
Sharif had "constituted a military inquiry committee that recommended court martial" of Army Chief Musharraf, but the General, now also the President, overthrew then government and "stole" the report from the Prime Minister's House "to save his face," Joint Secretary of Pakistan Muslim League-N (PMN-N) Siddiqul Farooq, who released the 100-page 'White Paper' yesterday, was quoted in the media here as saying.
Anticipating court-martial in the wake of the Kargil debacle, Farooq said, Musharraf overthrew the Sharif government on October 12, 1999 to save his "neck."
"The General wanted to take over in the first week of August, but he had to hold his horses till October," he said.
Musharraf had wilfully avoided constituting a commission to fix the responsibility for the huge military defeat that had demoralised the entire nation, Farooq said and called for setting up a high-power commission on the Kargil debacle that should submit its findings to Parliament within six months.
The PML-N White Paper titled 'Kargil Adventurism: Another Huge Defeat after Dhaka Fall, Who is responsible' recommended that Musharraf should "admit his blunders" and present himself for a court-martial.
"If he does not have the moral courage to own his blunders then his court martial is a must to close the doors of future takeovers by adventurer Generals," excerpts of the White Paper published in the media here said.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006
12:01 ||
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(IANS) Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has urged Pakistan to send its troops to his war torn country 'as armies from Muslim states' will help in restoring the situation.
To what? Is Fuad out of his mind?
'If armies from the Muslim states are deployed in the country, the situation will improve,' Siniora told Pakistan's private Geo TV channel in his first detailed interview after the Israeli attack in Lebanon. In the interview broadcast Sunday, Siniora said, 'Unless Israel withdraws from the occupied areas in Lebanon and provides maps of the landmines, a settlement is impossible'.
Meanwhile, The Nation newspaper criticised the government's stand that Islamabad would await a UN resolution before sending peacekeepers to Lebanon. It noted that Pakistan has yet to officially condemn the Israeli action due to the US support to the latter on the issue.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
11:21 ||
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#1
Oh goody. Pakistanis soldier boys seeing Westernized women for the first time, run riot raping through the streets. They'll never get beyond the Beirut city limits. But do try the experiment, Mr. Clever Prime Minister. Your countrymen will so appreciate the results.
#2
The troops in the Mog considered the Paks to be basically useless. The Malaysians would fight, but the Paks had to be pushed and pushed hard. If the Somalis could make them cower what do you think the Hezzies will do? Pak UN assignments are based upon politics not skill.
"Disproportion" is the concept of the moment. Do you know how to play? Let's say 150 missiles are lobbed at northern Israel from the Lebanese village of Qana and the Israelis respond with missiles of their own that kill 28 people. Whoa, man, that's way "disproportionate."
But let's say you're a northwestern American municipality -- Seattle, for example -- and you haven't lobbed missiles at anybody, but a Muslim male shows up anyway and shoots six Jewish women, one of whom tries to flee up the stairs, but he spots her, leans over the railing, fires again and kills her. He describes himself as "an American Muslim angry at Israel" and tells 911 dispatchers: ''These are Jews. I want these Jews to get out. I'm tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.''
Well, that's apparently entirely "proportionate," so "proportionate" that the event is barely reported in the American media, or (if it is) it's portrayed as some kind of random convenience-store drive-by shooting. Pamela Waechter's killer informed his victims that "I'm only doing this for a statement," but the world couldn't be less interested in his statement, not compared to his lawyer's statement that he's suffering from "bipolar disorder.'' And the local FBI guy, like the Mounties in Toronto a month or so back, took the usual no-jihad-to-see-here line. ''There's nothing to indicate it's terrorism related,'' said Special Assistant Agent-In-Charge David Gomez. In America, terrorism is like dentistry and hairdressing: It doesn't count unless you're officially credentialed.
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Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006
10:54 ||
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A suicide bomber was killed early Sunday in southwestern Pakistan when the explosives belt he was wearing exploded prematurely, police said. No one else was injured in the blast in Hub, an industrial town in Baluchistan province, local police official Munir Hussain said.
"This man was riding a cycle. He had strapped explosives to his body for a suicide attack and they exploded," Hussain said of the blast in Hub's Zehri Street neighborhood. The man's intended target was not immediately known, and police were investigating, Hussain said.
Hub is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Quetta, Baluchistan's capital. Baluchistan has been the scene of attacks targeting security forces, gas pipelines and gas fields. Authorities accuse ethnic Baluch tribesmen of engaging in violence to press demands for increased royalties for resources mainly natural gas extracted from their territories. However, tribesmen haven't been known to launch suicide attacks.
Police found the severed head of the man, Pakistan's Geo television station reported. "From his face and dress, he appears to be a Baluch," police officer Mohammed Rafiq told Geo.
#3
"This man was riding a cycle. He had strapped explosives to his body for a suicide attack and rode too fast and his hat flapped up and blow'd off UP!"
#8
Don't you just hate that when it happens..hehe.
Posted by: steven ||
08/06/2006 14:52
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#9
What's not to like about this story?
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 14:57
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#10
The poor Muslim suffered from premature ejackoffultion at the thought of those 72 raisins, or was it the Koran's promise of "young boys, fine as pearls". Having been nn Pakistan I'm guess the later.
#14
How do you explain to the family that your sonny-boy screwed up a a homicide bombing...he gets no virgins and there's no monetary reward from the Saudis via the Madrassa?
#1
Blair strikes me as the British equivalent of Joe Lieberman; I often don't agree with them, but they're both pretty consistent and understand what the truly important issues are.
Britain we be weaker without Blair and the Democrats will be weaker without Lieberman.
One of the Hizbullah captives held by the IDF was involved in planning and perpetrating the kidnapping of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, head of IDF intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told cabinet ministers on Sunday during the weekly cabinet session.
According to Yadlin, the captive was a mid-level operative in the Hizbullah hierarchy. Few reports have since generated about the fate of the kidnapped troops. Last week, special forces conducted a raid in Baalbek following information that the kidnapped soldiers were treated in a hospital in the area. The battle lasted for several hours, following which the elite force of close to 200 soldiers, returned to Israel carrying loads of intelligence information and without any casualties. At least 10 Hizbullah gunmen were killed.
By Ian Bremmer
Now that market experts interested in oil prices are persuaded that Israel's war on Hezbollah will not spill into Syria or Iran, their attention has shifted 900 miles to the east and three weeks into the future.
Tehran has promised to respond by Aug. 22 to a Western-sponsored incentive package intended to halt development of its nuclear program. We can expect the regime to offer either a conditional pledge to temporarily suspend uranium enrichment or a new burst of belligerence. Either way, most analysts believe, Aug. 22 will be a red-letter day for energy prices.
But the bloodshed in Lebanon and Iran's nuclear program are hardly unrelated. Israel's conflict with Hezbollah has, in fact, raised the stakes at the nuclear bargaining table, contributing to the diplomatic momentum that on July 31 produced a Security Council resolution -- the first legally binding mandate to suspend enrichment that Tehran has faced. The war in Lebanon has helped the Iranian nuclear issue become the center of gravity in a wider battle for dominance in the region.
On the eve of her recent visit to the region, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserted that the conflict in Lebanon should be understood as part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." But what kind of Middle East will emerge from this war? One in which Iran, Syria and their militant proxies hold greater regional leverage? Or one in which the United States, Israel and moderate Arab governments coordinate a more effective political response to the metastasis of regional radicalism? Which group now holds the winning hand?
Continued on Page 49
Pakistan has sought the help of United Nations and the United States to provide incriminating evidence against its banned religious extremists groups to expedite prosecution of members of these outfits. It is difficult to proceed in such cases (against members of banned militant groups), therefore, information is required from the UN and other countries to proceed in such cases, a Pakistani official said. The officials informed the US during a recent meeting of the Joint Working Group in Washington about the need for evidence and asked US to provide any proof it has of these groups involvement in acts of terrorism, Daily Times newspaper quoted him as saying.
Pakistan has told the UN and the US that though it has banned these organisations in line with the UNs listing of them as terrorist groups, it now needed incriminating evidence against these religious groups, which have moved the courts challenging the government ban on them. Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad besides proscribing sectarian extremists groups in 2002. The groups were banned again in 2004 as many of them had re-surfaced with new names. Despite the ban, most of the leaders have been released after brief detentions.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
10:02 ||
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#1
The US has been given these opportunities in the past, and has been known to decline citing "national security reasons". Kinda makes you wonder.
#2
"...to expedite prosecution of members of these outfits".
Or to build more powerful legal defenses against the prosecution.
Posted by: Jules in the Hinterlands ||
08/06/2006 15:33
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Afghanistan has several times given them extensive evidences, which are promptly and thoroughly ignored. Both Hamid Karzai and the Afghan Foreign Minister have openly complained about the Pakistan non-response.
Ten more people have voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered to the authorities in Chechnya in the past twenty-four hours. "Three people have reported to the Grozny district police department. A resident of Grozny, who headed the Staropromyslovsky district police department in Grozny from April 1997 to April 1999, said he was not involved in armed actions against federal forces. A resident of the community of Alkhan-Kala served in the national guard of the so- called republic of Ichkeria in 1998. A resident of the community of Oktyabrskoye procured food and medicines for members of illegal armed groups from April to May 2000," a source from Chechen law enforcement agencies told Interfax Saturday.
Two residents of Argun surrendered to the city police department, confessing that they had been involved in combat activities against federal forces as members of a unit led by Damayev from January 2000 to December 2001, the source said.
Four other men reported to the Gudermes district police department. One of them a local resident, served in the Ichkerian national guard from June 1997 to October 1999. Another local was a member of a militant unit led by Tamayev from February 1995 to February 1997. A resident of the community of Engel Yurt was involved in armed actions against federal forces within a group led by Salman Raduyev from September to December 1996. Another local said he was a member of a militant unit led by Eskerkhanov from October to November 2001. A former militant reported to the Urus-Martan district police department and confessed that he had taken part in armed clashes with federal forces between December 1999 and February 2000.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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IRAN does not give orders to the Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, Iran's ambassador to France said in an newspaper interview published Saturday, without explicitly denying that Tehran supplied weapons to the militants. "As for Hezbollah, our relations have always been emotional and spiritual. It does not take orders from Iran," Ali Ahani said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper.
Asked whether Tehran provided military assistance to Hezbollah, Ahani said: "That is part of the American accusations. Hezbollah has many channels through which it obtains what it needs."
However, the ambassador later added: "We don't have the slightest desire for a military option on a regional level. Support given to Hezbollah does not give Israelis the right to act against Syria or Iran. But if the Israelis want to start World War III, we'll see if the Americans let them."
A report published Friday in Jane's Defence Weekly said Iran will supply Hezbollah with surface-to-air missile systems in the coming months to boost the guerrillas' defences against Israeli aircraft.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
"Of course we don't give orders. The phone lines are down, and cell reception is just horrendous!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 10:35
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Government troops hunting suspected Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines have overrun their jungle camp but the rebels escaped, the military said yesterday. The camp, near the town of Indanan on the southern island of Jolo, was believed to have been used for training in bomb-making by members of Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). The explosive-making facility overrun by the ground troops is said to be the place where the JI militants teach the Abu Sayyaf members how to build and create improvised explosive devices, Brig. Gen. Alexander Aleo, the military commander in Jolo, said in a statement. The military said the camp, in the foothills of Mount Bud Kapok, contained fortified bunkers and ground shelters.
Filipino soldiers, backed by US intelligence and equipment, have reported killing 12 Abu Sayyaf members since fighting in Jolo began on Tuesday, army Maj. Mabini Abduhadi told a news conference in Zamboanga City in southern Philippines. He said the bodies of five of the dead had been recovered. On Friday, Aleo said six Abu Sayyaf members were wounded, seven captured in ground and air assaults on Jolo since Tuesday, with seven soldiers wounded. Hundreds of villagers have fled the fighting.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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The Syrian foreign minister declared on Sunday that the U.S.-French cease-fire plan was "a recipe for the continuation of the war" and he warned his armed forces were under orders to respond immediately if Israel attacks. "If Israel attacks Syria by any means, on the ground, by air, our leadership ordered the armed forces to reply immediately," Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said after emerging from a meeting with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
10:00 ||
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy Hizbollah and insisted he did not underestimate them, saying they had fired just 3,000 of their arsenal of 15,000 rockets so far.
"Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?" Olmert said when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll. "European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket. I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please: Don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians."
Kosovo became a U.N. protectorate in June 1999 after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced out Serb security forces accused of atrocities against Albanian civilians during a rebel insurgency by separatist Albanian guerrillas. The New York-based Human Rights Watch estimates about 500 civilians were killed in the NATO bombing in Kosovo. Some 10,000 Albanians died in Serbia's 1998-99 counter-insurgency war and there were allegations of random brutality by both sides.
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Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
09:56 ||
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#1
Ah, Olmert, but that's all they have. Maybe if you [and we] quit paying attention to their noise, things can actually get done around here without all the stupid 'time outs'.
#2
They are beaten but it is not possible to completely destroy they. Israel has nevertheless been more successful than any other country in the battle against a guerrilla organization.
Ehud, we don't get much trouble from the Apaches anymore. Haven't for over 100 years.
Doctors at the exclusive Cimeq hospital in western Havana are accustomed to handling the delicate health problems of Cuba's communist elite. It was here last weekend, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt, that they battled for several hours to save the life of the regime's most important patient, Fidel Castro. Unable to stem intestinal bleeding with drugs, the country's top surgeons performed an emergency operation on the veteran leader.
To all but a handful of trusted doctors and his closest lieutenants, President Castro's medical condition has been shrouded in mystery, described as a "state secret" in words attributed to the dictator until, on Friday, the health minister, José Ramón Balaguer, said he was recovering and "will be back with us soon".
The 79-year-old president is understood to have undergone surgery on Saturday at Cimeq before being wheeled back from the operating theatre to the floor reserved for him and his 75-year-old brother, Raúl. The facility is in the district of Siboney, home to Cuba's most prestigious scientific research complex and near Gen Castro's official residence in a tightly guarded military zone.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
09:53 ||
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#1
Surgeons fought for hours to save Castro's life
#3
"Unable to stem intestinal bleeding with drugs, the country's top surgeons performed an emergency operation on the veteran leader."
What they tried was an asshole transplant But the asshole rejected him.
Posted by: The Paradise Nazi ||
08/06/2006 12:11
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#4
Even though he is in good health for a guy his age, he's still eighty with a history of smoking. His odds of living a month are less than fifty per cent. I don't even have to know what they operated on. If it was a gimme, like an appendectomy, they would have announced it.
#10
I am sure all the while they were "fighting to save Castro" for hours, he was dead as a door nail.
They were just trying to save their own hides by saying, "we tried for hours", to brother Raul and family. He probably has third degree burns from the defibulator pads all over his chest AND ass.
a nice column about an athlete who's not doping, beating the wife, in jail, or acting like an ass. Someone doing wonderful things for all the right reasons.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006
09:31 ||
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#1
Good people doing what's right. God bless them.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/06/2006 9:52
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#2
No kidding. Now God can pay him back by moving his hand away from the long iron and to the pitching wedge when Phil's leading by 2 with 1 hole to go in the next major and he's sliced his drive into the trees.
IRAN tried to import uranium for its nuclear program from the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the shipment was intercepted in Tanzania, The Sunday Times reported today, citing a senior Tanzanian customs officer.
A huge shipment of uranium 238 bound for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas was intercepted on October 22, 2005, by customs officials in Tanzania making a routine check, the officer told the newspaper.
The British weekly also cited a UN report, due to be considered by the Security Council, which said there was "no doubt" that a large shipment of uranium 238 was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the DR Congo.
The customs official said the uranium shipment was found hidden in a consignment of coltan, a rare mineral, which was destined for smelting in Kazakhstan after being transported through Bandar Abbas.
"There were several containers due to be shipped and they were all routinely scanned with a Geiger counter," he said.
"This one was very radioactive. When we opened the container it was full of drums of coltan. Each drum contains about 50kg of ore. When the first and second rows were removed the ones after that were found to be drums of uranium," he said.
"The container was put in a secure part of the port and it was later taken away, by the Americans, I think, or at least with their help. We have all been told not to talk to anyone about this."
The Sunday Times also quoted a source with access to security service assessments as saying that there was "great concern" about Iranian sleeper cells in Britain conducting reconnaissance at nuclear power plants in preparation for a possible attack.
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said today his country would not suspend uranium enrichment, in a clear rejection of a UN resolution calling for a freeze of the sensitive nuclear work.
Iran insists it wants to enrich uranium only to make reactor fuel for power stations but the US and other countries suspect Tehran wants the capacity to make weapons-grade uranium.
The UN resolution requires Iran to halt uranium enrichment and other sensitive nuclear fuel work by August 31 or face the prospect of sanctions.
#4
The Iranian uranium is only about a third as concentrated as the stuff from the Congo. It's much easier to use Congolese uranium for a bomb than Iranian uranium, which needs extensive refinement. Also, most of the Congolese uranium is already partially enriched. It's radioactive enough to use in a crude "dirty bomb".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/06/2006 15:51
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...IIRC the uranium in the first three US atomic bombs came from the Congo because of its relative purity.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
08/06/2006 18:34
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#6
This has got to be the dumbest thing they've ever done.
Why would they do this? Did the US bait the Iranians with Congolese help?
A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.
... photo editing software was improperly used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvience...
The photograph showed two very heavy plumes of black smoke billowing from buildings in Beirut after an Air Force attack on the Lebanese capital. Reuters has since withdrawn the photograph from its website, along a message admitting that the image was distorted, and an apology to editors.
In the message, Reuters said that "photo editing software was improperly used on this image. A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. We are sorry for any inconvience." . . .
Earlier, Charles Johnson, of the Little Green Footballs blog, which has exposed a previous attempt at fraud by a major American news corporation, wrote : "This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop clone tool to add more smoke to the image." . . .
The Sports Shooter web forum, used by professional photographers, also examined the photo, with many users concluding that the image has been doctored. "I'll second the cloned smoke...but it looks so obvious that I don't know how the photographer could have gotten away with it," wrote one user. . . .
Score another one for the bloggers in pajamas!
Posted by: Mike ||
08/06/2006
08:31 ||
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#1
We wuz just tryin' to get across our message, that war is bad.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/06/2006 8:48
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#2
And you got across [again] that MSM is basically a fraud. Just another commercail enterprise which operates on hype and con to sale its product.
#8
Michelle Malkin reminds us what the newservice mouthpieces said about the possibility that Qana photos were staged:
"It's hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy," said Kathleen Carroll, AP's senior vice president and executive editor.
Carroll said in addition to personally speaking with photo editors, "I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can't get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described."
#9
Back in the Soviet era, two of the major newspapers were Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (News). They were the target of a folky proverb that seems just as appropriate today: In truth there is no news, in news there is no truth.
#10
"We confess, we dunnit. We'll try to do a better job next time."
Do I recall some news executive type being completely offended at the idea of journalists being complicit in spinning any photograhic evidence? Such as the "massacre" in Qana? I think I do . . . . I wonder what they have to say now. "Oh, this is different!"
#11
#10 gorb: "I wonder what they have to say now. 'Oh, this is different!'"
Kinda. But it's "Oh, this is different - this time you found proof!"
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 14:40
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#12
... photo editing software was improperly used on this image. (DAMMIT THEY CAUGHT US)A corrected version will immediately follow this advisory. (YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO CATCH IT SO EASILY) We are sorry for any inconvience...
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 16:35
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#13
Some have compared the current situation with the press to the American Civil war, when the press was often hostile to Union efforts. I think that that analogy misses the mark. Since the arrival of the telegraph and the birth of the modern newspaper, I cannot think of a single incidence where the Western press (there certainly were similar situations in East Europe between the wars when Facist or Communist sympathizers/agents infiltrated the press organs there) has been so thoroughly infiltrated and compromised by enemy agents. Photos are and articles provided by Arab nationalist (Ba'athist) or Islamist stringers are being published by editors with no effort to determine whether of not they are truthful or propaganda. Previously, only individuals had been compromised. Walter Duranty is a well documented case and William Schirer, in Berlin Diary, points to several jounralists that he thought had been corrupted by the Nazis. We have put US service members on trial for capital crimes based on the testimony of obvious enemy stringers, photographers and spokesmen. Our enemies can now reach into the innermost parts of our system to attack and destroy. This is unprecedented.
Any nation, society, or group that so utterly fails to recognize and protect it's own self interest, is doomed to being attacked and destroyed both from within and without by some other grouping that is fully aware of its own interests. I can only hope that it is the old MSM that dies and not Western civilization itself.
#14
"I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can't get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described."
That is why they have their own camera men and tour guides to neatly package the propaganda.
You aren't too likely to make those Anderson Cooper admitions with the Hiz Tour guides standing there. Notice he isn't in Beirut anymore.
I think that old saying was more flat.
" There is no truth in pravda and no news in Isvestia"
Which brings me to my Soviet joke.
How many soviets to change a lightbulb ?
Doesn't matter , new bulb won't work either.
Posted by: J. D. Lux ||
08/06/2006 19:18
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#15
Fraud and fakery in reporting is not an "inconvenience", Sir, it is a travesty.
Author, author! My only quibble is how indistinguishable "travesty" is becoming from outright treason.
Back in the Soviet era, two of the major newspapers were Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (News).
This reminds me very little of a great old joke:
Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Atilla the Hun and Napolean Bonaparte are all standing on the Kremlin's balcony watching the Soviets' annual Mayday military parade.
Alexander looks at the rocket launchers passing by and exclaims, "With fire arrows like that all Asia would have been mine!"
Caesar glances down at the tanks and shouts how, "With chariots like those, Rome would never have fallen to the Goths!"
Atilla the Hun espies the artillery rolling past and announces how, "All Europe would have fallen before me with such catapults!"
Naoplean looks down at a Pravda newspaper rack and mutters, "If only I'd had that, no one would ever have found out about Waterloo!"
#1
If Israel had returned the Golan Heights and signed a peace treaty with Syria in a timely fashion, presumably this war would not have broken out.
That's all I needed to read. If frogs had wings, they'd be pigeons.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/06/2006 8:52
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#2
Israel is reaping what it has sewn. Land is either under the domain and control of a nation, or it is an anarchy. You cannot make peace with an anarchy, because there is no one to make peace with.
So Israel is bordered on three sides with anarchy.
This leaves them only two options. Either they take over the land and manage its people, or if the people are unmanageable, take over the land and drive the people into a nation more capable of managing them.
But you cannot leave barbarians to their own devices, as they have done. This is because barbarians respect no law, and are brutish beasts.
#3
Peace with Syria would have guaranteed peace with Lebanon and peace with both would have prevented Hezbollah from fortifying on Israel's northern border. Peace with Syria would have also isolated Iran, Israel's true, dangerous enemy, and cut off Hezbollah from one of the two sources of its weapons and funding. It's so simple, and so removed from conventional Israeli thinking, which is subject to brainwashing.
Idiot. So Hezb would've had another source of weapons and funding, then your sentence above was wrong. "It's so simple" he can't get past paragraph 2 without contradicting his basic premise. Another self-hating Joooooo/tool for Islam
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 10:31
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At least ten people were killed, and four others were seriously wounded after a rocket hit a community near Kiryat Shmona on Sunday afternoon, MDA reported.
Other casualties included one with moderate wounds, and three who were lightly injured.
MDA said that those who were badly hurt were treated on location, and were airlifted to hospitals in the region. Rockets also landed in Nahariya and Karmiel, Rosh Pina and Safed.
On Sunday morning, At least seven rockets were fired at northern Israel on Sunday morning, causing no injuries or damage. Two rockets struck the Golan Heights, three landed near Ma'alot, and two fell in an open area in the city of Safed.
It seems like Kiryat Shmona is getting hit with dozens of rockets every day. How is it that the IDF can't get a location on their launch points by now?
#3
This struck me as a key point, although I imagine the IDF is fully aware of it:
Iran and Syria are constantly restocking Hizballahs diminishing supplies of rockets of all types, launchers and operating manpower by a round- the-clock airlift from Iran via Syrian military air fields. Some of the incoming supplies are destroyed by Israeli air attacks as they cross into Lebanon, but a substantial part is conveyed to Hizballah by smuggling networks employing mules to traverse Lebanese mountain paths.
Thousands of Muslim pilgrims entered the Taj Mahal without tickets on the pretext of offering prayers, as security personnel and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) officials struggled to maintain order. According to reliable sources, for close to three hours on Friday there was total chaos at the historical monument here and all security arrangements came to a naught as pilgrims returning from Ajmer Urs entered in huge numbers. The Taj Mahal, which is closed to visitors on Fridays, opens for about two hours in the afternoon to allow local Muslims to offer prayers at the mosque inside.
According to eyewitness accounts, over 10,000 people barged into the monument as security personnel found it tough to screen every one of them and one of them said: Those who entered the Taj Friday were definitely not there just to offer prayers. This confusion is also said to have resulted in substantial revenue losses through the non-sale of tickets.
Meanwhile, the right-wing Shiv Sena announced they will perform a Maha aarti (Hindu services) at the Taj Monday to reassert their claim of the mausoleum being built at the site of a Shiva temple. When asked how they would enter, a Sena official said: This will be a guerrilla operation. Shiv Sainiks believe that the Taj Mahal was originally a Rajput structure, which housed a Shiva temple. They have prepared a long list of evidence in support of their claim, which most historians do not accept.
According to sources, hundreds of Muslims have been forcibly entering the historical monument situated across the Taj Mahal called Etmauddaula, commonly known as Baby Taj in the past few weeks. People come in on the pretext of saying prayers, but they all enjoy a picnic and leave.
#3
No, let them in, after they're all in, close and bar the doors for a couple of days.
Then call the Police and let them out, charge them with Tresspassing, arrest and fine heavily each and every one.
That should put a screeching halt to this kind of shit.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 9:17
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#4
The "maha aarti" was quite effective in Mumbai a few years ago when muslims groups began to offer namaz in public spaces.
Whenever there was a call to prayer, hundreds of muslims would spread rugs and pray, blocking roads, sidewalks, the entrance to train stations.
It was an expression of muslim mass power. They could close down the city arteries when they wished. All people had to wait until muslims finished praying.
Well, the Shiv Sena was having non of this. They began to have "maha aartis", with thousands of hindus offering aarti in front of mosques and blocking the entrances to muslim areas.
The muslims soon saw sense and stopped their foolishness.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 9:32
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#5
Whenever there was a call to prayer, hundreds of muslims would spread rugs and pray, blocking roads, sidewalks, the entrance to train stations
that only works if the cars and pedestrians will stop for you. I'd put the pointy end of my boot a foot deep in the ass of the first one that blocked my path
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 9:48
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#6
The muslim prediliction for taking over public spaces affects even the most educated.
Dr. Zakir Hussain, a former University Chancellor, when he was President of India in the late 1960s, converted a section of the Presidential Palace into a mosque so he could pray there. Not a common prayer room, available for all faiths, but a mosque, for muslims only.
Now this is a magnificent British Raj era building, larger than Buckingham Palace, built for the viceroy and protected, like other Lutyens designed buildings, under Indian law. Hussain broke the law by altering the stucture.
When he left office, the next President was confronted with a mosque he did not want but could not touch in any way, since it was a mosque and muslims would riot if it were demolished.
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 10:00
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#7
Whenever there was a call to prayer, hundreds of muslims would spread rugs and pray, blocking roads, sidewalks, the entrance to train stations.
That's another good thing tanks are for. It will only take one or two good grinding of gears and slide-slipping through the "masses" to put an end to all of that kind of sh$$.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/06/2006 22:08
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#1
Well earned treatment. If you are stupid enough to submit to Muzzies, you deserve what you get. And what you'll get will not be pleasant. Prepare to descend into 7th century darkness. You made the problem. You solve it.
#6
His stats are frightening. I bet they understand being dominated and kept isolated from the rest of the rational free world. If not they will.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/06/2006 9:25
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#7
However, the vast majority share the attitude of Sheeryn, a teacher of Koranic studies in Bradford, who said she felt comfortable in Britain and had close British friends. I think I have a place for these people and a place for my religion, she said.
These people... Funny way to refer to "close friends" isn't it? Kind of shows up the lie.
#8
"Restarting any sense of integration is going to require real dialogue and understanding of what Muslims think if the deepening divide is to be bridged . . . "
Yeah, but only if they're willing accept what Muslims think for what it actually is, and what it ain't. Doubt that will happen in Britain anytime soon, since it seems to be beyond the understanding of Brits that anybody might not "like" them and what they stand for. They blame it all on a lack of understanding, when what it really is, is a fundamental conflict of values and an absence of logical, rational thinking on the part of Muslims.
#9
It's about time you dimwit Brits come out of your coma. These Muzzies have no intention of adopting British laws/customs. They want to take everything you've built over the centuries. Once they achieve a certain mass of population they begin demanding. Then dictating. You'd best pay attention and start moving them out. It's your only chance. You don't have the backbone to kill them in place, like we will in US if any additional "incidents" occur.
#10
"It's about time you dimwit Brits come out of your coma."
A coma it has to be since they aren't able to notice how NO other non-muslim immigrants have caused these amount of trouble to their society thus far.
#11
Immigrants have usually tended to become more secular and less religious than their parents by the second generation. But the survey shows Muslims have gone in precisely the opposite direction.
Islam, as compared to most of the earth's population, seems to have "gone in precisely the opposite direction", for quite some time now. Only the prospect of widespread access to weapons of mass destruction has altered our need to scrutinize it more thoroughly of late. So many of its tenets and practices (e.g., jihad, taqiya, ect.) would normally be of much less concern but, instead, have now become substantially greater threats when leveraged by the destructive potential of modern technology.
Nothing epitomizes Islam's regressive nature more than its perpetual longing for a sharia-ruled global Caliphate. Similarly, nothing else (save, perhaps, communism), represents such a dire threat to all other cultures than that of unreformed Islam.
There will soon come a time when Islam must be redefined as a political ideology such that any right to practice it may be proscribed in all countries allowing true religious freedom. Once such prohibitions are put in place, Muslims desiring continued residence in their host countries will be confronted with the choice of changing the way their religion is practiced or, simply, changing religions. Islam, as it stands, is utterly incompatible with modern society. No attempts should be made to accomodate it's retrogressive dictates. Its incorrigable (read; "fundamentalist")adherents must be herded back into those states which willingly embrace such theocratic rule so that they may enjoy all of the benisons of such archaic governance.
Only when Islam overcomes its intense insecurity and embraces religious diversity should be allowed back onto the world's cultural stage. Until then, it must be regarded as anathema to all the hard-won progress and stability that modern civilization has struggled to achieve.
Ban Islam now. Revoke its ostensibly religious status. Deport all Muslims who are unwilling to authentically reform it. Dismantle all theocratic governments.
#1
Beneath that macho exterior is a sensitive soul who enjoys poetry, long walks on the beach, gourmet cooking, and Lifetime Network disease-of-the-week movies.
Posted by: Mike ||
08/06/2006 8:55
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#2
One who considers himself a good friend of Castro is George Galloway MP, who has described El Comandante as "the most impressive person I have ever met, a most charismatic man". And that was after he met Saddam Hussein. Galloway even strongly implied he went "skinny-dipping" in the Caribbean with the Cuban leader.
"He likes to meet late at night and talk into the early hours," the MP said. "One time I met him at 1am and the meeting lasted until dawn." In another interview, asked about the alleged skinny-dip, he replied: "You meet Fidel, you have to be prepared for a long night. If you are there on the right night, you end up in the Caribbean with Castro. It's quite a treat. I'll not go into what we were wearing... that would be a breach of confidence."
bet it was that red unitard....
nice journalistic fellatio by the Independent
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 9:40
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#1
Hey! Anybody noticed that we haven't seen our old buddy Levant around here lately? Guess he got tired of having his head (and other body parts) handed to him on a regular basis, particularly now that Israel is soundly kicking Hezb's butt. AMF!
Posted by: mac ||
08/06/2006 4:33
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#2
lotta hand-wringing. As if Mugniyeh can turn the tide by himself. His appointment signals desperation, rather than Debka's take
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 8:17
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#3
Mugniyeh's career could be short-lived. No loss to mankind--actually a great improvement if he does get one dropped on his head by the Israelis. Mugniyeh was linked to Saddam Hussein as far as I can tell. Mugniyeh is AQ. Thought there was no love lost between Bin Ladin's AQ and Nasserallah. Goes to show there are linkages between these terrorists organizations that was and is being denied in the MSM. As is said, blood is thicker than water. All of these groups are terrorists and need to be regarded as the enemy. Nasserallah said he had no issue with the U.S. There should be a movie made along the lines of algore movie entitled "A Convenient Lie." The terrorists would lie to their mothers if convenient to their end goal which is the end of the West. I have heard the MSM refer to the islamofacists as "rebels and insurgents" and believe it or not "freedom fighters." These people are murderous thugs. They are the worst of the worst and should be treated accordingly. The true freedom fighters are the found in the West. The islamofacists enslave countries like a cancer rather than liberate them. The islamofacists create nothing but chaos and destruction--they destroy everything and build nothing. Darkness falls around them wherever they go.
#4
Poor Mr. Levant ran out of steam after mocking my luxuriant moustache, mac. And oddly enough, he'd somehow got the idea that I might want to dance with him at some imaginary party. Very confusing -- perhaps he'd taken some of the drugs his daddy was transhipping from the Bekaa for Cousin Bashir? I did wonder how a Syrian boy with such good English got internet access to the West...
#5
Rockets on Haifa Launched from Kana
22:42 Aug 06, '06 / 12 Av 5766
(IsraelNN.com) The IDF has stated that Hizbullah terrorists used the village of Kana as a launching site for the deadly rocket attack on Haifa Sunday evening. Air Force planes destroyed one of the rocket launchers.
More than two dozen people, including children, were killed in the village more than a week ago when Israel bombed Hizbullah terrorist sites in the village. The IDF has released aerial photographs showing that terrorists used the village's buildings as a cover for trucks carrying rocket launchers.
#6
Stop lying "trailing wife." All of your readers can check the earlier post where you most kindly requested me to be on your dance card on the Halloween ball that you Rantburgers hold yearly. And all of your readers can also check the post where one of your writers talked about your problem with facial hair. And here are some excellent sites for you to post your verbose articles on...fasthorses.com, adiorondackracetrack.com, hairybears.com (Children's series by Enid Blyton), selfconfidencebooster.com (This is a sight for unattractive women who also have extensive political/historical knowledge-I mean lady nerds).
As for the war-today was another day for massive "Israeli" casualties-16 dead and over a 100 injured and many more in shock. Don't get decieved by the low number of deaths on the "Israeli" side and the high number of deaths on our side. I consider western weapons "sissy pant" weapons. They are great for us. Tons of explosives causing us painless death and instant transportation to the next life with its awesome sensual pleasures. Yaaahoooo and Thank You!!!
As for our weapons-our rockets and missiles have their warheads filled with ball bearings-these are, upon impact, shot out at incredible velocities over hundreds of meters, ripping open testicles and eye balls. They leave their victims alive but in the MOST EXCRUCIATING PAIN. No wonder millions of "Israelis" are running to bomb shelters, and hospital wards are full of shock victims. They are dead scared as if a killer is always stalking them. Hardy Har HAAR HAAAAAAR HAAAAAAAR!!!!!
Posted by: the Levant ||
08/06/2006 15:59
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#7
very nice, coward. Still hiding in Syria?
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 16:02
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#9
Moderators, can we track his IP address, then forward the address and this post to the FBI?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 16:07
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#10
My error, never mind the Freaking Bureau of Idiots, forward it to MOSAD.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 16:09
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#11
#6 "levant" - Nice try, but not very good. I'd give it a score of no more than 4.
Try again?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 16:19
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#12
The poor, deluded thing is posting via Syria, Redneck Jim. Definitely Mossad territory... or just straight to the IDF Intelligence boys. Perhaps when Oldspook pokes his head in he can give one of his old friends a heads up.
I wonder what I said that hit such a nerve. And so quickly after I posted, too, y'all will note -- he must have been lurking here for days, hitting Refresh at frequent intervals... the last sentence in my post perhaps?
Mr. Levant, the readers here can indeed read the archives to see exactly what was said. Which is why I'm not worried, and you should be; big talk and windy insults do not pursuade here like they do in your part of the world, a critical detail you've not managed to absorb along with your extensive English grammar lessons. Perhaps Cousin Bashir's government will survive long enough for you to learn to live in the bigger world.
#14
When Levant dies, he is going where there is awesome sensual pleasures. The problem, bubblehead is you will be dead. When you're dead, can you see ? Can you hear ? Can you taste ? Can you feel ? Can you smell ?
I think most would agree with me that when you are dead, you will smell. I also think that you are far too stupid to understand what I'm writing. Allah sucks, live with it. You see, I can write about Allah and this god of yours does nothing about it. He, Allah is powerless. He like Mohammed is a fake and you are too stupid to figure it out. Death will be a step up for you won't it ?
#15
Oh, I hope not, bombay. Normal men do not fixate on other people's wives; they form a healthy relationship of their very own.
wxjames, only successful jihadis go to that Paradise, and Mr. Levant shows no signs of qualifying. Besides, he's an Alawite, and everyone knows they are damned heretics.
#16
Hey Levant. Have you ever wondered why those 72 virgins you have your heart (or whatever) set on so much cannot be 'deflowered'? Allan has promised you that they will be 'forever virgin' didn't he?
Do you think maybe they cannot physically be deflowed because -- some vital piece of equipment is missing? Has Allen promised you they would be 'complete'? That you would be complete and functional? Has he promised you viagra? No?
Hmm.... sounds like that might be hell for a person as fixated on 'sensual pleasures' as you are.
#17
Oh FFS Levant, get a grip. In other words try a bit harder...and I quote;
As for our weapons-our rockets and missiles have their warheads filled with ball bearings-these are, upon impact, shot out at incredible velocities over hundreds of meters, ripping open testicles and eye balls. They leave their victims alive but in the MOST EXCRUCIATING PAIN. No wonder millions of "Israelis" are running to bomb shelters, and hospital wards are full of shock victims. They are dead scared as if a killer is always stalking them. Hardy Har HAAR HAAAAAAR HAAAAAAAR!!!!!
Quite apart from sounding like some bad mixture of Yosemite Sam and Marvin the Martian, you are missing the point, which is; Hizbollocks are having theirs handed to them on a silver platter, the Israelis are being giving the green light by the US (at last), the Syrians can't find their arses with both hands and are realising that they've bought into a bigger game than their mortgage can handle and the Iranians are still waiting for some dork to come out of a friggin well!
And there's still the carrier groups...where are they?
Got any thoughts?
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 17:14
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#18
Dang, #15 Tony - don't hold back.
Tell us what you really think! ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 17:22
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#19
Quite apart from sounding like some bad mixture of Yosemite Sam and Marvin the Martian
I'd include Foghorn Leghorn for sheer Arab/Islamo braggadocio that doesn't approximate reality
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 17:26
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#20
Levant is a whack job like the rest of his ilk. You are all too kind to him.
#21
Levant must be very proud. Like the mortars fired by Hizb'allah into Syria, their rocket aim is just as good. It seems Levant's heroes can no more hit Jews than the Syrian army, but they are quite proficient at killing fellow Arabs. Israeli Arabs: Finish off Nasrallah
Perhaps Hizzbie's aim will improve if Bashir gave each and every one an eye exam.
Posted by: ed ||
08/06/2006 17:51
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#22
Coming from you Barbara, that's a distinct compliment! ;)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 17:56
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#23
"Don't get decieved by the low number of deaths on the "Israeli" side and the high number of deaths on our side."
We aren't: it means you're losing.
"Tons of explosives causing us painless death and instant transportation to the next life with its awesome sensual pleasures."
Headed for Pimp Daddy Allah's Cosmic Whorehouse In The Sky, are ya? Don't forget to take condoms (hint: they're NOT virgins).
"Yaaahoooo and Thank You!!!"
You're welcome, Idiot.
"As for our weapons-our rockets and missiles have their warheads filled with ball bearings-these are, upon impact, shot out at incredible velocities over hundreds of meters, ripping open testicles and eye balls."
That's true enough, in principle; except your rockets seldom manage to hit anything. In four weeks of fighting, and after firing some 3,000 rockets, you've managed to kill barely three dozen Jews. Why? Are you too stupid to aim at something?
Posted by: Dave D. ||
08/06/2006 18:18
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#24
No, no, they are aiming just fine. The Zionist pigs with their American allies are using space ray weapons to re-aim the rockets on Arabs in the area. Damn, don't you know anything?
#25
Don't get decieved by the low number of deaths on the "Israeli" side and the high number of deaths on our side.
We aren't. You're succumbing at a much greater rate. The Arab fixation on past greatness also seems to include desperately clinging to ineffective, outdated technology and warfare strategies.
I consider western weapons "sissy pant" weapons. They are great for us. Tons of explosives causing us painless death and instant transportation to the next life with its awesome sensual pleasures. Yaaahoooo and Thank You!!!
They are "great for us" too. You die in large numbers and we don't. And good riddance to you, as well. It must do wonders for your legendary detestation of humiliation to have such effete "sissy pant" weapons blowing your collective @sses straight to he|| while we sit back and have another cold beer.
#26
Besides, this needs to be pointed out to at least one of them that can read (I assume he's one of them, as the defence of them is so strong)
Your heroic martydom tactics are actually useless. Your motivated poplutation, the ones that can actually make a difference, and would make your future leadership are sacrificed early.
This leaves the bottom of the barrel, cowardly masses, to um, hold the tourch. Good job.
Problem is, once the West truly has enough (not like today's turning over when bit by a mosquito and going back to sleep), we'll pull out the stops and it is peace out big time.
Imagine a Japan back with divine wind tactics, only this time on our side. Or America willing to firebomb, or even nuke again - you think we are evil colonialist empire now, just wait.
Give up, it is your only chance to actually meet your salvation.
#27
dang go work out and come back and sheeesh ... this levant character, he (?) is what we call in middle earth elvish - a man-bitch (rough english transaltion)
#30
I for one am truly pleased Levant appears on RB and makes comments like the last. Besides the obvious that someone of his persuasion should be carrying a weapon and doing Lion of Islam tasks (I mean the heroic things they talk about, not the actual hiding behind women and children and pretending to be civilians when not backshooting). We are arriving at a tipping point in the world, and not a moment too soon. War with much of Islam is upon the West, and most of our compatriots are either asleep, ignorant, too frightened to act, or a combination of the three. The islamic fifth column is already here, and it is going to be damn hard to root it out without some outrage. So rant on you dumb Sh--head, wake my nation up, actually get us angry, and then watch the mass transit system we set up to send you and yours to your moonbat, B.S. god.....
Posted by: Just About Enough! ||
08/06/2006 20:09
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#31
Levant, before I was being flippant, now I'm serious.
Read what bombay has said - the West is not as weak as you think, and unless things change, there will be carnage. Example; read up on the Rand corporation, and Herman Kahn, he wrote a book On Thermonuclear War where he envisaged a winnable general nuclear war with hundreds of millions of deaths (some people don't like him because he thought 'the unthinkable', but his reasoning was sound). By the way, Donald Rumsfeld and Condaleeza Rice amongst others have been associated with the Rand corporation... Also, the United States has plans for fighting almost every conceivable war, and you can be certain that those plans have been changed since 9/11. My point is, the West has had 60 years of living with the ability to kill everyone on the planet, and has come up with various weapons systems and protocols to ensure that ability would always be available. At the moment, ability is not married to intention - pray it remains that way.
Do not be taken in by idiots screaming 'no blood for oil', the West is not weak, and if necessary it will coldly and clinically do what has to be done.
You would be well advised to pass that message onto as many people as you can, because time is running out (eg see the other post today about a Pak scholar ruminating about 'pious men in beards' and nukes in the US - this would be a marrying of ability and intention and it would be...unwise)
If this carries on, that old joke about Arabs and Star Trek might be seen to be quite prescient.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 20:21
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#32
I had to look it up.
"
The Saudi Ambassador to the UN has just finished giving a speech and walks out into the lobby where he meets President Bush.
They shake hands and as they walk the Saudi Ambassador says, "You know, I have just one question about what I have seen in America."
President Bush says, "Well your Excellency, anything I can do to help you, I will do.
The Saudi whispers, "My son watches this show 'Star Trek' and in it there are Russians, Blacks, and Asians, but never any Arabs. He is very upset. He doesn't understand why there are never any Arabs in 'Star Trek.'"
President Bush laughs and leans toward the Saudi, and whispers back, "It's because it takes place in the future...."
"
Posted by: J. D. Lux ||
08/06/2006 20:30
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#33
Ah, yes. Levant. L'eunuque lâche - willing to fight to the last Lebanese.
#34
there's still the carrier groups...where are they?
If you mean the US carrier groups, it appears the navy hasn't been updating its status of the fleet page quite as often as it sometimes does. No doubt they're out and about on training missions or such.
Uh huh.
can we track his IP address
Yes, of course. But there's no need to pass it along to authorities. As TW correctly points out, in Syria connections of that particular sort are monitored by several agencies already. If Levant manages anything other than his adolescent neener-neener taunts, it is already known and if now, well then his hot air here is the (rather unimpressive) biggest achievement.
#38
I have a friend in Israel, someone I trade postage stamps with. He's a colonel in the Israeli Army, and some kind of judge. We haven't discussed his duties... He knows I worked in Air Force intelligence, and sends me tidbits from time to time. It's interesting just what Israel DOES know. They're not QUITE as far-reaching as NSA and a few other places, but they do keep close tabs on the Middle East. I doubt they have to read Rantburg to keep tabs on what "Levant" and any other arab on the internet say.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/06/2006 23:40
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According to the German scholar Matthias Küntzel, the Berlin daily the Tagesspiegel published a letter-to-the-editor from Dr. Mounir Herzallah, a Shiite from the South of Lebanon. Dr. Herzallah reports on how Hezbollah-terrorists came to his town, dug a munitions depot and then built a school and a residence directly over it. He writes: Laughing, a local sheikh explained to me that the Jews lose either way: either because the rockets are fired at them or because, if they attack munitions depot, they are condemned by world public opinion on account of the dead civilians. Hezbollah, he says, uses the civilian population as a human shield and then when they are dead as propaganda.
Sonia Verma
National Post
Saturday, August 05, 2006
TYRE, Lebanon - When Dr. Fouad Fatah emerged bleary-eyed from the ruins of his hospital during a pause in Israeli air strikes last week, it felt like the first time in forever.
He counted himself as the last living soul in the five-room clinic, the only hospital serving this devastated swath of Lebanon's south. His surviving patients had already been evacuated.
The surgeon led a group of journalists over what remained: mangled debris, shredded walls and a roof punched through by an Israeli shell.
"Look what they did to this place," Dr. Fatah said, shaking his head. "Why in the world would the Israelis target a hospital?"
The probable answer was found a few hours later in a field nearby. Hidden in the tall grass were the burned remnants of a rocket-launcher.
At last, the truth comes to light !
Confronted with the evidence, Dr. Fatah admitted his hospital could have been used as a site from which to fire rockets into Israel.
More details in the continuation of this very good article...
(IsraelNN.com) Hizbullah terrorists have received weapons hidden beneath goods and supplies in trucks ostensibly destined for humanitarian aid, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters Sunday afternoon. He instructed intelligence officers to explain to the press Hizbullah tactics.
The IDF has begun sending to the media films from ground troops and from pilots on Hizbullah actions, including the use of residences as storage centers for rocket launchers. One film shows a truck with rocket launchers entering a building.
#4
I don't care if Hezbollah launches from daycare centers. Only consistent counter-battery is going to persuade the locals just how fatal unwise it is to tolerate the presence of these terrorist cretins. When apartment blocs open fire on arriving Hezbollah trucks, only then will a corner have been turned.
#5
It is not just Hezbollah - Lebanon and the people in southern Lebanon are guilty too. Every sovereign nation has the responsibility to abide by international law. Lebanon's claimed position as an innocent bystander is belied by the facts. It has allowed the Hezbollah terrorists to become entrenched in southern Lebanon where it is permitted to freely conduct its illegal terrorist operations. The idea that terrorists can conduct murderous terror operations from safe havens within willing sovereign nations ended with 9/11. Nations must make choices - they are either for or against the fundamentalist Islamist terrorists. A decision by a government to allow terrorists within its sovereign borders to accumulate rockets and arms and then discriminately fire those rockets into civilian populations of a neighboring state cannot be tolerated. When the terrorist forces within a country become so powerful they cannot be ontrolled by the government, then the government and the people within the country who by choice or acquiescence allowed this to happen have assumed the position of human shields protecting the terrorists. The consequences of such decisions assure that innocent people on both sides of the border will be become casualties, and those casualties are the responsibility of the terrorists and human shield government.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 20:12
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#8
Hezb'Allah was put into the government in an election by the Lebanese people. They are not innocent, they are complicit. The adults deserve what they get. The only innocents in Lebanon are the children.
#9
Let's not forget that the Lebanese civil war was one of the opening rounds in the current Islamic world war against the rest of us. Up until relatively recently, Lebanon was a majority Christian country. However, because of the formidable reproductive capacity of their captive females, the Islamists are now the majority--that and the propensity for the Christian Lebanese to immigrate to the west. Unfortunately, I think Lebanon is probably the Islamic model for the future of the west.
I'm sure that we will soon see the Muslim refugees from the south being sheltered in the Christian areas of Lebanon in "refugee camps". Once they are in place the whole area becomes Islamic property...
Hard drive containing data on 26.5 million vets was returned in June
Two teenagers were arrested Saturday in the theft of a laptop and hard drive containing sensitive data on up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, authorities said.
The equipment was stolen May 3 during a burglary at the Maryland home of a Veterans Affairs employee. The laptop and hard drive were turned into the FBI June 28 by an unidentified person in response to a $50,000 reward offer.
The equipment contained the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of veterans discharged since 1975, in what was the worst-ever breach of government data.
Jesus Alex Pineda, 19, and Christian Brian Montano, 19, both of Rockville, Md., were arrested early Saturday, Montgomery County police said.
Pineda was charged with first-degree burglary and theft over $500. Montano was charged with first-degree burglary, conspiracy to commit first-degree burglary, theft over $500, and conspiracy to commit theft over $500.
Police said charges were pending against a third male suspect who is a juvenile.
I commend the FBI, Montgomery County Police, VAs Office of Inspector General and other law enforcement agencies for their professionalism and diligence throughout this investigation, Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson said in a statement. Todays announcement that arrests have been made is good news.
Suspects unaware of laptop's contents
Authorities said the suspects did not specifically target the VA employees home in Aspen Hill, Md., and did not realize the hard drive contained veterans information until the case was publicized.
Police did not have any information about attorneys for the suspects. A bond hearing could be held Monday at the earliest, officials said.
The VA announced last month that the FBI has determined with a high degree of confidence that the files were not compromised.
While this arrest is good news, we were lucky that the data belonging to veterans was not accessed and misused, Steve Buyer, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a statement.
The vulnerability is real and with the help of Congress, VA must move forward with information security reform, said Buyer, R-Ind.
Congress is investigating the steps leading up to and after the theft. It also is pondering legislation to improve information security.
Islamabad has issued directives to the Karachi police on potential women suicide bombers who could target majlises or religous gatherings, Daily Times learnt Saturday. I cannot deny that there is no danger of more suicide attacks, said IG Jehangir Mirza whose office issued a comprehensive Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to check suicide attacks and make clear what security measures should be taken. This exercise is not linked to the Allama Hasan Turabi case but some federal instructions have been received after which we are having to focus more on gatherings for women, Mirza stressed. These directives are meant to serve as reminders and refreshers for the lower staff of the police who need to be regularly issued instructions on their duties.
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Hours after Saturday's first barrage of rockets on the cities surrounding Haifa, two houses in Ma'a lot were also struck by Katyushas. The residents, who have been alert by an alarm that sounded in the area, have already left the buildings, and so no one was wounded in the attack, Army Radio reported.
IDF identifies, destroys launcher aimed at Ma'alot
IDF troops identified and destroyed a rocket launcher in the village of Bint Jbail, in the central sector of southern Lebanon on Saturday. The launcher was aimed at the northern town of Ma'a lot, the IDF said. Eleven rockets were fired at the Haifa area earlier in the morning.
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Hundreds of Britons are being urged to attend what is being branded as Europe's first "Masturbate-a-thon", a leading British reproductive healthcare charity said.
Bring your own tissue, though...
Marie Stopes International, which is hosting the event with HIV/AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, said it expected up to 200 people to attend the sponsored masturbation session in Clerkenwell, central London, on Sunday. "It is a bit of a publicity stunt but we hope it will raise awareness," a Marie Stopes spokeswoman said. "We want to get people talking about safer sex, masturbation and to lift taboos."
Guess you can't get much safer than stretching your own baloney or tickling your own clam...
Participants, who have to be over 18, can bring any aids they need and can take part in four different rooms - a comfort area, a mixed area, along with men and women only areas. However, the rules on the event's website states there can be no touching of other participants nor are people allowed to fake orgasms.
"Want me to help you with that, handsome?"
"Keep yer hands to yerself, you brazen hussy! Din't ya read the rules?"
"The amount you raise will be determined by how many minutes you masturbate and/or how many orgasms you achieve," the website said.
Hope they've got that broken down by age groups...
Organisers said participants will have the option of wearing clothes that "they feel hot or erotic in" and will be able to go into private booths, and male-only or female-only areas, should they wish. Individuals who are too embarrassed to get sponsorship can "self-donate".
"Ummm... I brought you this."
"For me? Oh, thank you!... Hey! This is mayonnaise!"
Around five people are aiming to break the masturbation record (eight-and-a-half hours for a man and six hours 20 minutes for a woman).
We're talking blister city here, folks...
The Marie Stopes spokeswoman said local religious groups had been initially outraged, but after people had heard what the event was about, most had approved it.
"Whacking off? In groups? I'm ouraged! They'll all burn in... Ummm... They're raising money, y'say?... How much?... Well, except for that thing about Onan, there's nothing against it in the sight of the Lord... And we'll give you a dispensation for the Onan part..."
Police had also given it their approval.
"Yeah, sure. Keeps 'em off the streets. And when they get back on it they're mellow."
Similar events have been staged in San Francisco for the last six years raising $US25,000 ($32,927) for women's health initiatives and HIV prevention. If successful, Marie Stopes said it could take place elsewhere in mainland Europe next year.
"Where y'going for yer vacation this year, Herb?"
"I'm going to the Munich Beer Hall Whack-a-thon!"
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#1
Didn't the tabloids report earlier this summer how the Japanese? sponsored a huge organized orgy between couples???
#3
Seriously ick. And the human race was so happy to leave communal caves for houses with rooms and doors, too. Based on the SF experience, this isn't actually a very good fundraiser, nor likely the best way to get most people to talk about safe sex, neither.
#11
Eight-and-a-half hours... hum, I guess I'll go to bed tonight having learned something... I guess... that's with this kind of stuff you can see how much the internet has to bring when it comes to knowledge. The information highway, indeed.
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE) have halted an offensive on the eastern town of Muttur, putting an end to recent hostilities in the predominantly Muslim town. "The offensive operation in Muttur has stopped and the LTTE is going back to its former positions in our own territory," a Tiger source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
According to the same source, the LTTE was pulling back because they want thousands of Muslims who fled their homes on Friday to return. "It was a limited operation, and we are doing this on humanitarian grounds," the source told Reuters.
'The government can play with semantics, but it's hard to see what's going on as anything but a war,' said one Western diplomat...
Although the Tigers are pulling back a cease-fire has not been reached yet. The government officials said that they would not chase the Tigers but would continue to clear landmines from around a sluice gate, where they say Tigers have blocked the flow of water to farmers in government areas. "We are not going to chase them ... We wanted certain areas cleared of terrorists and we have done that," said Keheliya Rambukwella, a spokesman for the ministry of defence. "Once the last single Tiger leaves [government territory] the firing will stop. But if they come back again we will have to hold the territory and safeguard the civilians," he said.
The government insists it is committed to the 2002 truce, and said that hostilities would stop if the Tigers kept their word. Analysts, however, fear that more clashes are in store. "The government can play with semantics, but it's hard to see what's going on as anything but a war," said one Western diplomat.
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But I thought it was a war. I mean, isn't that the whole point of an insurrection?
(BNA) Israeli forces kidnapped two Palestinians this evening in the North of Gaza Strip after shooting them. Medical Sources said that Israeli forces refused granting medical staff access to the two injured men or revealing their identities. The men were moved to an unknown location, added the sources.
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At least people including a US soldier were killed in violence across Iraq on Saturday. Iraqi insurgents gunned down five soldiers and killed two police in a separate bomb attack on Friday, as government forces stepped up their campaign to regain control of a war-torn country.
Captain Mahmud al-Jiburi of the Kirkuk police said gunmen had ambushed an Iraqi army patrol in the town of Hawija, in the north of the country, and killed five of them. This clash came after police captured 23 insurgents affiliated with Tawhid wal Jihad and Ansar as-Sunna, he said, referring to two Sunni Muslim extremist groups with ties to Al Qaeda.
Further south in Khalis, 80 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed two Iraqi police and wounded eight people, police said. And in Baquba, a town just north of the capital notorious for sectarian attacks by rival Sunni and Shiite extremists, three bombs detonated in a crowded street market, wounding 10 people.
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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs Kashmir policy appears to have suffered yet another setback with former Chief Justice of India, Justice (r) AM Ahmadi, pulling out of leading one of the five working groups on Kashmir, sources have revealed. Ahmadi had previously agreed to head the Working Group on Jammu and Kashmirs Relations with New Delhi, including examinations of the demand for autonomy, devolution of powers and special status for the state.
During the second Roundtable Conference on Kashmir, held in Srinagar in May, the prime minister had established five separate working groups of political representatives to resolve different aspects of the Kashmir imbroglio. Each group was directed to report back to him with their recommendations prior to the third roundtable conference. Although some charge Ahmadi with having put a spanner in the works, the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) has been quick to identify Abid Hussain, Indias former ambassador to the United States, as a suitable replacement.
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Manmohan Singh, when faced with any problem reverts to his bureaucrat ways and appoints a committee to study the problem.
He has appointed almost two hundred committees since becoming PM.
Looks like Judge Ahmadi doesn't agree with studying Kashmir until the cows come come (and India has more wandering cows than anyplace else on the planet).
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 9:27
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A grenade attack on Friday shook up Da Khwendo Kor, or sisters home an education centre run by a civil society organisation in Landikotal, Khyber Agency but no one was hurt, the centres administration said on Saturday. Apparently, religious extremists were behind the attack, Mariam Bibi, the centres director, told Daily Times.
Gee. Golly. Shucks. Y'think?
Fortunately, there was no one in the centre during the time of attack. Only the building is damaged, she said. Landikotals political agent, Riaz Mehsud, when contacted, also confirmed that the education centre had been attacked. This was the second attack in less than two months on the centre, that teaches development skills to tribal men and women. Last month, a British civil society organisation vehicle was blown up in Darra Adamkhel, 25 miles south of the provincial capital.
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A HEZBOLLAH cabinet minister said Saturday his group's guerrillas would accept a ceasefire only once Israel halts attacks and pulls out of southern Lebanon. "We are in a defence situation. When the Israeli aggression ceases, very simply, we will stop (fighting) on condition that no Israeli soldier remains inside Lebanese land," Energy Minister Mohamad Fneish said. "We will not accept that they stay" inside Lebanese territory, he told reporters before attending a cabinet meeting. Fneish was reacting to news from French President Jacques Chirac's office which said earlier Saturday that France and the United States had agreed on a draft UN resolution on the Middle East conflict.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
Seen this times before - at best MIGHT only speak for Hezbollah, NOT Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, and assorted armed Jiglis/Camel-kazes.
I tried yesterday and today to access to those photos, but the links are no more valid.
Does someone know how to access again to those photos (I want to download them and send them to friends, so that they can discover what really is Hezbollah)? Or can someone mail them to me ?
#6
I'd like to point out that the Lebanese government is keeping senior members of Hizb'Allah in its cabinet.
If the Lebanese State wants peace with Israel, they need to arrest Hizb'Allah leaders, try them for terrorist acts, and execute them. Otherwise, they are simply inviting more destruction of their country.
(BNA) Iraq has primarily agreed to supply Jordan with crude oil from its Northern fields as soon as the Jordanian Al Zarqa'a Refinery is ready to operate. Al Sharqia TV quoted an Oil Ministry media spokesman saying that an agreement took place during the presence of Oil Minister Hussain Al Shahristani in Jordan who accompanied Prime Minister Nouri Al Malki in his last tour. Iraq will supply Jordan with crude oil from the Beiji Oil Refinery via Jordanian tanks carrying it to Al Zarqa'a seaport as soon as Jordan's Zarqa'a Refinery is ready, he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Hmmm.... Another step of progress?
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/06/2006 8:49
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I think after the wedding bombings, the Jordaneans quit their fence sitting and are cooperating very much under the 'radar'. This appears to be an indication.
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader says an Egyptian group has joined its network. The Egyptian group, Jamaa Islamiya, is apparently a revived version of a group that waged a campaign of violence in Egypt during the 1990s but was crushed in a government crackdown. "We announce to the Islamic nation the good news of the unification of a great faction of the knights of the Jamaa Islamiya ... with the al-Qaeda group," Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a videotape aired on Aljazeera on Saturday.
We announce to the Islamic nation the good news of the unification of a great faction of the knights of the Jamaa Islamiya ... with the al-Qaeda group...
Al-Zawahiri said the Egyptian group was led by Muhammad al-Islambouli, the younger brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, who assassinated Anwar al-Sadat, the then Egyptian president, in 1979 and was later executed. Muhammad al-Islambouli left Egypt in the mid-1980s and was believed to have been in Afghanistan working with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said Diaa Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on armed groups.
It was the first time that al-Qaeda has announced an Egyptian branch, but it was not clear whether the new version of Jamaa Islamiya really has a presence on the ground in the country. The Egyptian government detained many thousands of Jamaa Islamiya members or sympathisers in the 1990s, when the group was waging a low-level guerrilla war against the security forces, mainly in the south of the country. Hundreds have come out of detention over the years after renouncing the use of violence to overthrow the government. And its leaders declared a truce with the government in 1997, after an attack on tourists in Luxor. The group has not claimed any attacks since the late 1990s.
Egypt has seen a string of bombings against tourist resorts in the Sinai Peninsula since October 2004, killing 98 people. Egyptian authorities have said those attacks were carried out by a group calling itself Monotheism and Jihad [al-Tawhid wal Jihad], with links to Palestinian fighters.
Actually, the links would be with Zark's al-Tawhid organization, but close enough.
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#1
This reminds me of the the illusions fostered by local political groups concreting on the web. A 10-person lefty group in upper Washington State meets up with another 10-person group in lower WA and suddenly they have 20-person protests. From their perpective they've doubled in numbers; but the independent reality is that they are not more, and the actuality is that several are about to lose their dead-end jobs because they've skipped out of work too often. Besides, they are all going broke because they are spending considerably more on gasoline driving all over the landscape to protest the cause du jour.
#2
Since the evil doctor is an Egyptian who was also jailed for the killing of Sadat, I see very little newsworthy in this merger.
Posted by: Captain America ||
08/06/2006 7:05
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This sounds like an extension of the practice of taking name of fallen comrades. Now they are using the names of defunk terror groups. I vote the next be called red september, it always had a frightening ring to it. Or Saladin.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/06/2006 9:31
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Or Crimson Jihad.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006 10:24
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#5
When you run into recruiting problems, you announce a merger.
Posted by: Captain America ||
08/06/2006 16:28
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Israeli warplanes struck dozens of targets throughout Lebanon into the early morning hours today, and an Israeli commando raid in Tyre turned into a fierce gun battle. The aerial bombardment was particularly heavy in the southern port city of Tyre, where journalists could hear jet fighters, helicopters, the boom of bombs and the rattle of heavy machine-gun fire in the darkness. Helicopter gunships raked the streets leading into the city All told, the Israeli military said, its aircraft struck at 70 targets in Lebanon overnight, from Tyre in the southwest to the Hermel, at the upper end of the Bekaa Valley to the northeast, where they bombed a road leading to the Syrian city of Homs.
By late this afternoon, about 40 rockets had been fired into Israel, the police said, with one large cluster of about a dozen hitting Haifa. There were no serious casualties.
The air attack raging around Tyre for much of the night appeared to be cover for a raid by Israeli naval commandos on a four-room apartment used by Hezbollah guerrillas, leading to some of the most intense face-to-face fighting of the war so far. While details were still sketchy, and the accounts from both sides differed, it appeared the commandos landed by helicopter near an orange grove around 3 a.m. and crept up to the apartment, cutting their way through a chain link fence to reach it. Afterward, bloodstains on a wall and a parking lot indicated at least two mortal struggles, with bullet holes pocking the walls near the deep red marks.
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We see them being launched from different places, he said by telephone from his observation post in the border town of Naquora. Its not a pattern. Theyre mobile.
How very observant of you. Job well done UNIFIL! You must be so proud of your work. Did ya note any of the "positions" and pass it on? No? Didn't think so.
(BNA) Sudanese National Assembly Speaker Ahmed Ibrahim Al Taher reiterated his country's refusal of deployment of any international force in Darfur and said that the issue is not negotiable. The armed forces that have signed the Darfur Peace Agreement will soon be in control of all the district and will work on protecting residents and maintaining its stability, said Al Taher during a meeting with North a legislative council delegation from Darfur. The National Assembly Speaker pointed out to the partnership with Abuja pact signatories and the will to cooperate with them according to a comprehensive view on implementing the agreement.
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DUBAI: Some 170 Muslim scholars, thinkers and politicians called Saturday for backing the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples in the face of Israeli onslaughts and urged Arab and Muslim rulers to cut any ties with Israel.
...disavow any political or economic ties ... with the Israeli enemy and to drop any illusions of peace with (Israel) and which have brought our nation nothing but killing, destruction and shame...
We call on all the Muslim and Arab peoples to stand by their brethren in Palestine and Lebanon and ... support them by all moral and material means available and in keeping with Islamic rules, they said in a statement.
The statement, signed by 169 preachers, academics and Islamic politicians from Arab and Muslim countries, expressed full support for the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples as they confront Israels offensives in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Calling for Muslims from all sects to close ranks and cast aside any differences, the signatories urged Arab and Muslim governments to disavow any political or economic ties ... with the Israeli enemy and to drop any illusions of peace with (Israel) and which have brought our nation nothing but killing, destruction and shame.
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#3
Lots of new nyms lately. Welcome RB scholar and all the rest of you! I look forward to learning all you care to teach (I've plenty of empty brain space to fill, y'see).
#7
Blueberries grow new brain cells, RD. I've been gobbling them like candy in the hope it will do some good. ;-) Besides, you use your brain in the work you do so well, while I'm just a little Midwestern housewife who occasionally says startling things at suburban dinner parties.
#8
I'm just a little Midwestern housewife who occasionally says startling things at suburban dinner parties
Is that like Rantburg Tourette's?
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 15:51
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We'll have to ask Dr. Steve (salmon comments, not pink!!!) for a diagnosis when he gets back, Frank G. Either that or a hereditary side affect of growing up in the Ivory Tower --- I'm not possibly qualified to judge. ;-)
At least 20,000 people marched through London Saturday to demand that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush stop Israels offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The demonstration passed the US Embassy and the office of the prime minister who worked the telephones to arrange for a draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at ending the conflict, which began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
Its about telling the British and US governments that we want an unconditional ceasefire. Were the people who have the power to stop the Israelis in Lebanon...
The Metropolitan Police said around 20,000 protesters marched through central London, while the organisers, the left-wing Stop the War Coalition, claimed a turn-out of around 100,000. A few hundred yards from Blairs office the demonstrators massed opposite the Houses of Parliament. Stop the War spokesman John Rees said that the protest was to hammer home a message to Blair. Its about telling the British and US governments that we want an unconditional ceasefire. Were the people who have the power to stop the Israelis in Lebanon, he insisted. Their silence is permitting mass murder in Lebanon by the Israeli forces. Look at the casualties: its eight to one. Salma Yaqoob, chairwoman of Stop the War in Britains second city of Birmingham, said: Were here to protest because of Israels attack in Lebanon and the fact that Britain, America and Israel are on one side and 160 countries are on the other side.
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#1
Were here to protest because of Israels attack in Lebanon and the fact that Britain, America and Israel are on one side and 160 countries are on the other side.
#2
Problem is mister terrorest sympathizer is Israel only needs one on their side to kick all your ass, so you can protest all you want until the US decides it not going to support Israel(as if that would happen)you lose.
#3
Decendants of the idiotically vile "Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament" crowd of the sixties and seventies fortified with islamofascists numbers. Britons are that stupid?
#4
Scotty
Aye, Capt'n
How about beaming that car bomb we detected in Baghdad to the parade in London
Aye, Capt'n and may they enjoy a little of their own medicine
The military suspects that Fridays attack on a security forces command base in South Waziristan was a suicide attack, army spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan
... the very model of a modern major general...
said on Saturday. We suspect it was a suicide attack, Sultan told Daily Times. The attack is the first of its kind in South Waziristan and comes when a grand tribal jirga is trying to broker peace between militants and the government in the neighbouring North Waziristan.
Surely that's coincidental...
Official sources said a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into the boundary wall of the base in Shakai Valley, once a stronghold of foreign militants. Five soldiers were reported injured in the attack, which also left a dozen military vehicles damaged. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. The base has been set up in the private rest house of slain tribal elder Faridullah Khan and the attack appears to be the work of foreign militants, sources said. A tribal source in Wana said that foreign militants were roaming around in Rustam Bazaar, a few hundred yards from the Zarinoor military base.
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#1
excellent combover.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 8:54
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Taliban attacked a police patrol in southern Afghanistan overnight, with an intelligence official and a militant killed and two police wounded in the ensuing gunfight, police said on Saturday. The patrol was attacked in Ghazni province late on Friday, provincial police chief Tafsir Khan said. One intelligence official and two police were wounded in the fire fight, Khan said. One Taliban was also killed and four were wounded. Police arrested 15 suspects in a subsequent sweep of the area.
A Canadian solider with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-led peacekeepers died on Saturday and three others were wounded in a traffic accident in southern Afghanistan, a statement said. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers were travelling in an armoured jeep as part of a convoy when the accident took place. The cause is not known but enemy action has been ruled out, it said.
One ISAF soldier is dead and three others are wounded following a vehicle accident at noon today in Kandahar province, according to the NATO statement said. The wounded soliders were evacuated by helicopter to the multinational forces hospital at Kandahar Airfield after receiving first aid by a ISAF soldier at the site. NATO took control of southern Afghanistan, which is hard-hit by an ongoing insurgency waged by remnants of the Taliban regime, this week from their American predecessors. The coalition is maintaining a counter-terrorism force alongside NATO in the restive area.
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Heavy exchanges of fire were taking place between IDF and Hizbullah in the Lebanese village of Ita A-Sha'ab Saturday afternoon. No casualties were reported.
IDF uncovers 100 mortar shells in s. Lebanon
IDF forces uncovered mortar weaponry with a diameter of 120 mm. aimed towards Israel in the village of Mehaviv in south Lebanon on Saturday night. Found next to the mortar, were approximately one hundred mortar shells ready for use.
Barrage of rockets strikes Haifa area; 10 wounded
A barrage of some three rockets was fired on Saturday from Lebanon, landing in the Haifa area. MDA reported that they had treated ten people who were wounded in the attack, including five who sustained light wounds from shrapnel and five others who suffered from anxiety.
Rocket barrage disrupts Haifa-area power supply
The electrical supply to cities in the Haifa area was disrupted by the barrage of rockets that fell in the area on Saturday morning. The Israel Electric Company asserted that power should be restored within some two hours.
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This is the intro to a very interesting post over on Little Green Footballs, complete with photo-animations that really demonstrate the fraud being swallowed hook, line and sinker by the Western media. Go see the whole thing. I'm not sure which category this belongs in, but figure 'Opinion' will do for now.
This Reuters photograph shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop clone tool to add more smoke to the image. (Hat tip: Mike.)
Its so incredibly obvious, it reminds me of the faked CBS memos. Smoke simply does not contain repeating symmetrical patterns like this, and you can see the repetition in both plumes of smoke. Theres really no question about it.
But its not only the plumes of smoke that were enhanced. There are also cloned buildings. (See below.)
#6
Can you or will you ever trust an Ruters or AP photograph from now on is the question? It's not like the is Weekly News of the World or something. The consequences have to be real.
#7
I've never ever even used that Photoshop software but fck eh i know i could do better then that give me just 10 fckin minutes!! Why is this not headline news i ask myself, the MSN's main source of propaganda caught out beyond all beleif and yet not a word about this. What a tragic and sad era we now live in. I was thinking last few days, this war is utterly unwinnable for the west versus islamic savages because of the fact our own medias are nearly all rooting for and activly encouraging and reporting enemy propaganda. I give up hope, no one holds these people accountable for their lies and there lies just get bigger and bolder and more sinister every time. Truly horrid beyond what my limited vocabulary can describe.
#8
Chill Shep - what you do is this; keep coming to sites like this where the truth is being found out and contribute (as you have been), keep telling it to your mates (word of mouth *does* work), keep calling Al-Reuters and the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation out when they blatantly lie and their bias begins to show and you look out for outbreaks of sanity.
I'm massively encouraged by the situation in Lebanon; the MSM is being shown up all over the place (seen the new logo for the BBC for instance?), more people than you might think are in favour of the Israeli action (the Saudis and the Jordanians for example - although they can't say it), the UN is being played for the tools they are and that means the Israelis are getting more time to act (the Iranians really should have jumped at the chance of being a force of 'stability' as the French said, as we know, they don't take kindly to having their nuance thrown back in their face), the Syrians are bricking it, the Iranians are doing what they can, but it seems to me that their strategy is to see what some loon emerging from a well has to say about the whole situation.
And finally, GWB has said the Iranians won't be allowed nuclear weapons - so they won't
Add to that the fact that the Americans owe the Iranians some massive payback for the embassy hostages, the Beirut marines and many many more incidents that the Mullahs have had their filthy fingers in, there are carrier groups 'nearby' and we have all the ingredients for a reckoning...
So, feel better now? ;)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 7:52
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Posted by: DanNY ||
08/06/2006 10:35
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#13
When I submitted this around 10 o'clock last night it was still kind of conjectural so I put it under 'Opinion'; by the time I got up around 6 this morning it had clearly moved into 'fact'. The blogosphere is FAST!
Palestinian officials said IDF forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house early Sunday. The officials - the director of the speaker's office and security officers - said about 20 Israeli army vehicles surrounded the house of parliament speaker Abdel Aziz Duaik, a member of Hamas, and took him into custody. The army said that as a Hamas leader, he was a target for arrest.
Duaik was the most senior Hamas official arrested by the IDF since forces in the West Bank rounded up dozens of Hamas officials on June 29, including eight Cabinet ministers. One was released earlier this week. Since then, IDF forces have twice surrounded Duaik's house but failed to arrest him. In a statement, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas called the arrest "another crime of piracy by the [Israeli] occupation against the elected representatives of our people" and called for international parliamentary action to win release for him and the other arrested officials.
Hamas did not allow representatives of the Red Cross to visit kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, sources said Saturday. The humanitarian organization had requested last week to see Shalit in order to assess his health condition, and were denied the visit by Hamas. "We will not allow visitors to see the soldier while the families of thousands of jailed Palestinians cannot see their loved ones," Hamas officials said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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At least the ICRC tried, which is more than I expected. How likely is it that he's still alive?
Posted by: ST ||
08/06/2006 3:10
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Funny, I didn't see this on the front pages of MSM?
Posted by: Captain America ||
08/06/2006 6:53
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Unfortunately I think the poor guy was killed soon after capture. No videos, pictures, nothing has been released since then showing him in the land of the living. I hope he isn't but I'm afraid he is.
I think Ham-ass would be hard pressed to cover up the fact that he's dead.
#5
I'm with CF. Can't ever hand him back cuz he's dead
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 8:55
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But the Red Cross IS in GITMO
Yes, and don't expect any of the critics of Gitmo to acknowledge it or the refusal of terrorist groups to 'play by the rules'. You know of course the Supremes said that regardless of them not playing by the rules, and therefore not covered by the Geneva Convention, they are entitled to GC treatment. Enablers, one and all.
Uganda's Lords Resistance Army has declared a unilateral ceasefire with peace talks due to start next week, but the government has yet to reciprocate the gesture. A spokesman for the LRA confirmed the decision on Friday from the rebel group's base in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He said the laying down of arms had been ordered by the deputy commander, Vincent Otti, acting on behalf of Joseph Kony, the LRA leader. "I order all of our field commanders to, with immediate effect, cease all forms of hostilities against UPDF (Ugandan army) positions and others," Otti said in the statement. "We hope that the government reciprocate this gesture of goodwill."
In the capital, Kampala, a spokesman, Robert Kabushenga, said the government would not declare a ceasefire but confirmed the Uganda delegation would return to peace talks in Juba, the capital of autonomous southern Sudan next week.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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QUETTA: Cable operators in Balochistan are facing losses as hundreds of households are cancelling subscriptions or refusing to pay monthly fees, following the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authoritys (PEMRA) directive to ban Indian television channels. Certainly, our business is being affected. But we cannot afford to squabble with PEMRA, admitted one cable operator.
...the decision was undertaken because Indian media posed 'a threat to the Pakistani culture'.
Defying PEMRAs directives can have serious consequences for the cable companies: a fine of Rs 1 million and annulment of licence. A PEMRA insider said that the ban has been imposed under the presidents instructions. He said that the decision was undertaken because Indian media posed a threat to the Pakistani culture. However, most PEMRA officials thought that the threat posed by Indian media was commercial rather than cultural: slack viewership means scanty advertisements for local channels. Sources in PEMRA said that the ban was not likely to be lifted in the near future. The cable operators need not wait for lifting of the ban, said a PEMRA official in Islamabad. If they only rely on the Indian channels then they can shut their businesses, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
How is "Pakistani culture" different to Indian Muslim culture?
Especially since many of the biggest bollywood stars are muslim?
King of Bollywood
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,1837317,00.html
In India, Shah Rukh Khan is so famous he can't leave home without half a dozen minders. In the UK, he sells out Wembley in minutes. Emine Saner meets the world's biggest film star
In this country, few people outside Asian communities and Bollywood fans have heard of him (he sells out Wembley arena in minutes when he comes here to perform song-and-dance routines from his films).
Shah Rukh Khan (also known as "King Khan") has been in more than 50 Hindi films and has won 13 Filmfare awards, regarded as the "Bollywood Oscars". He is the biggest star in Hindi cinema and this means billions of fans (Bollywood has a global audience of 3.6 billion; Hollywood has 2.5 billion).
In India, where he lives with his wife and two children in Mumbai, he can't leave his house without six bodyguards (the hysteria that follows him makes Beatle-mania look like a librarians' convention).
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 10:09
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They obviously have a French cultural attache advising them on how to become more isolationist, xenophobic, and ignorant of other cultures.
Lebanon has rejected a draft UN resolution proposed by the US and France that calls for "full cessation of hostilities" between Israel and Hezbollah. Nouhad Mahmoud, a Lebanese foreign ministry official, said on Sunday that the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text" of the draft resolution.
...the government "would have liked to see our concerns more reflected in the text...
"Unfortunately, it lacked, for instance, a call for the withdrawal of Israeli forces which are now in Lebanon. That is a recipe for more confrontation." He said the government was also unhappy that the resolution does not call for the Shebaa Farms area to be put under UN control, as Lebanon has asked, while its future status is figured out.
The UN draft resolution was released on Saturday after Washington and Paris reached an agreement on the document's details. Mahmoud said Lebanon had proposed some amendments to make the draft more acceptable to Beirut. "It must address the concerns of the Lebanese people. Otherwise it won't fly," he said. He added that Beirut remained committed to the seven-point plan adopted last month by its cabinet, which includes Hezbollah ministers. The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, the return of Lebanese people driven from their homes by the fighting and the deployment of UN and Lebanese forces in the south, along with the disarmament of Hezbollah.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting held to discuss the document, Ghazi Aridi, the Lebanese information minister, said:
None of us will give up anything to do with national sovereignty, rights, dignity™...
"Even this draft is not final ... we will not discuss the intentions of this side or that. None of us will give up anything to do with national sovereignty, rights, dignity," he said, affirming the government was committed "to Lebanon's territory, Lebanon's liberation, the withdrawal of the occupation from Lebanese land".
Mohammed Fneish, one of two Hezbollah cabinet ministers, said: "We [will] abide by it on condition that no Israeli soldier remains inside Lebanese land. If they stay, we will not abide by it."
We will abide by it on condition that no Israeli soldier remains inside Lebanese land. If they stay, we will not abide by it...
John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said the draft was the start, not the end. "This is not a resolution that provides the comprehensive solution. I'm sure there are aspects of it that are displeasing to almost everyone but the point is this is a way to get started and that's what we hope to do."
An Israeli cabinet minister said the draft resolution put pressure on his country to complete its military operation quickly. "We have the coming days for lots of military moves. But we have to realise the timetable is getting shorter," said Isaac Herzog, the tourism minister and a member of the security cabinet. "It is a fact that we have to accept and act in accordance with," he said on Israeli Channel 1 television.
... a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations...
The draft resolution's central demand is for "a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations". The document charts a detailed path for the two sides to follow to achieve a lasting peace, envisioning a second resolution in a week or two that would authorise an international military force for southern Lebanon. Among those steps would be the creation of a large buffer zone in southern Lebanon free of both Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters, monitored by the Lebanese army and international peacekeepers. But it sets no timetable for the withdrawal of thousands of Israeli troops that have moved into southern Lebanon in recent days.
Nassir al-Nasser, Qatar's ambassador to the UN, the Security Council's only Arab member, said: "If we call for cessation of hostilities, then what after that? The Israeli forces are on the territory of Lebanon. They should go back."
The draft also called for Hezbollah to be disarmed and for Lebanon's borders to be solidified, especially in the disputed Shebaa Farms area...
The draft also called for Hezbollah to be disarmed and for Lebanon's borders to be solidified, especially in the disputed Shebaa Farms area, occupied by Israel since 1967. Another element was an arms embargo that would block any entity in Lebanon except the national government from obtaining weapons from abroad. That was aimed at blocking the sale or supply of arms to Hezbollah from Iran and Syria, which are believed to be the group's main backers. The resolution would put significant pressure on Lebanon's government, which ceded control of the south to Hezbollah.
A vote on the resolution is expected within the next few days. Some political analysts said the UN initiative would be difficult to put into practice. "There's going to be a huge gap between the content of this resolution and the military and psychological reality on the ground [which] will make it hard to implement," said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Telhami said one problem was that Hezbollah has not been involved with drafting the resolution. "It isn't clear that they (Hezbollah) have any input in this, and it's hard to see how you're going to implement something like this [without it]."
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
IOW, the Lebbies demand, Demand, DEMAND, D-E-M-A-N-D to be Iranians, Shias, repressed and regresssed and anti-democratic in the name of God.
#3
The Lebanese government thinks it can make demands -- instead of apologizing for letting a bunch of terrorists use their land to attack Israel. Maybe more destruction is what they need.
I predict no resolution passed in the next 10 days. Not saying one will be passed on the 11th day either...
#6
Telhami said one problem was that Hezbollah has not been involved with drafting the resolution. "It isn't clear that they (Hezbollah) have any input in this, and it's hard to see how you're going to implement something like this [without it]."
Normal people don't discuss with terrorists: they kill them. That's the only treatment for this plague.
#7
This is shaping up to be a major defreat for Hizbollocks, Iran and Syria. We may well see Hizb substantially disarmed. Much humiliation and seething to precede and follow.
Posted by: Captain America ||
08/06/2006 7:03
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Just don't forget to send in the archeologists to restore the historic bits, after. Mankind's heritage, and all that -- and Israel has some of the world's best archeologists for the key periods. Who know? They may find more evidence of the House of David, especially the key, semi-mythical Solomonic Period. ;-)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 8:56
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#12
sorry, it posted out of context.
#9 Scrub down Lebanon and start over
#11 Being done as we speak.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 8:58
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None of us will give up anything to do with national sovereignty, rights, dignity," he said, affirming the government was committed "to Lebanon's territory, Lebanon's liberation, the withdrawal of the occupation from Lebanese land".
Lebanon has already given up sovereignty, dignity and rights to Hezb. They've given up the country to terrorists.
Israel is in the process of liberating you from terrorist control. Wanna take the blinders off and lend a hand?
#14
Hey Mahmoud! Shebaa Farms is Syrian by UN order, asshole. They just lost it along with the Golan. Don't start wars you can't win is the message, that's why Assad lets your country take the beating. Proxy loser!
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 9:10
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I was watching some of the UN resolution blather on Fox. What a bunch of crap. I remember in, what was it, 1958, when Eisenhower sent in troops to Lebanon, the UN Lebanese rep was going on and on with the same blather. The problem is that the UNies will not admit that these terrorists are terrorists. Good and evil. These countries try negotiating with murderers. It is truly a mad hatter's tea party. I could not stand it any more and watched a show about making an aircraft carrier.....and I felt a whole lot better.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Hooper Bay, AK ||
08/06/2006 12:53
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#16
Lebanon is signatory to the Geneva Conventions. Does that mean they are responsible for Hezb'Allah's war crimes? As far as I am concerned, they are because they aren't doing anything meaningful to control Hezb'Allah. Perhaps this ought to be factored into their rejecting this resolution.
#17
Technically, it makes sense that the Lebanese government should be, gorb. After all, Hizb'allah is the largest single party inside the government, even controlling two cabinet ministries. And, the Lebanese government has not only never openly disavowed Hizb'allah antics, but has said the Army will back them if necessary and in another article the PM is looking for Pakistani troops to fight for the Fatherland.
#19
I'm sure three or four ARCLIGHT strikes down through the center of Beirut would convince them to sign ANYTHING, just to get them to stop. We don't fight wars, we play games. I'm disgusted. Nuke Tehran, nuke Qom, and nuke Damascus. Run ARCLIGHT strikes down through the center of the Bekaa valley until it's nothing but ground sand. Screw Baalbek and its "roman ruins" - it's just another hiding place for arab perfidity. Eliminate Tyre and Sidon. Show these idiots what real war means, and make them wet themselves just for thinking about it. George Patton is spinning at 70,000rpm.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/06/2006 15:58
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#20
Looks like it might come to that OP. There's 2 things we can do, solve the problem now or pass it down to the next guy. What do you thing W ? What do you think Olmert ? Solve or pass ?
#21
John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, said the draft was the start, not the end
I've got to take the kids to camp. I think I'm going to have some important family matter to attend to. I haven't taken any vacation and need some time off. I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Talk amongst yourselves while I'm gone. Thanks. Sincerely, John Bolton
IAF fighter jets attacked at least 15 targets around Beirut on Friday - three bridges linking Beirut with north Lebanon and a bridge linking Beirut to the south. It was the first time Israel struck a major Christian population center to the north of the Lebanese capital. Four civilians were killed and ten wounded in the strike, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.
The IAF also attacked a power station in the southern Bekaa Valley, causing a blackout in the area of Kiraoun. Four bridges on the main north-south coastal highway were hit. The road links Beirut to Syria. Three more bridges, linking Beirut to northern Lebanon were also destroyed. The bridges were located in Maameltain, Madfoun and Halat.
South of Beirut, a Lebanese soldier was killed in an air strike on an army base near the airport. Three were also killed as warplanes targeted a building, a 'safe house' and an office used by Hizbullah terrorists in the Dahiyeh neighborhood in south Beirut. The IAF also flew 15 sorties over the neighborhood of Ouzai, another Hizbullah stronghold. The highway to the south begins in the southern Beirut neighborhood.
The attacks come in the wake of a threat by Hizbullah chief terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, who warned on Thursday that Tel Aviv would become the next target if Beirut was attacked. If you bomb our capital Beirut, we will bomb the capital of your usurping entity, he said. We will bomb Tel Aviv. The White City, as Tel Aviv is known, remains untouched thus far.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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Great Photoshopped picture! Reuters, I presume? ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 14:37
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that's an actual pic....excellent work for bridge builders in Lebanon in the future :-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 14:52
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It's a still shot taken from a video. I saw the video on Fox. Looks like an earth-shattering kaboom.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/06/2006 18:08
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"Looks like an earth-shattering kaboom."
I certainly hope so, Deacon. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/06/2006 19:48
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An estimated 120 katyusha rockets landed throughout the north within a 90 minute period late Saturday afternoon. A mother and her two daughters were killed in the village of Arab al-Aramshe. Fadya Juma, 60, and her daughters Samira, 33, and Sultana, 31 were killed when their home in the Arab-Israeli village of Arab-al-Aramshe suffered a direct rocket hit just after 4:00 PM. Members of the village located near Shlomi along the Lebanese border grieved openly, mourning the loss of the three family members.
Some 170 rockets were thrown at northern Israel during the day on Saturday, landing in Kiryat Shmona, Safed, Nahariya, the Tiberias area, Shlomi, and Ma'alot. During the heaviest bombardment 120-130 rockets fell within a one and a half hour period in the late afternoon between 4:00 and 5:30 PM. According to Israel Radio security sources confirmed that long-range rockets were launched and hit Israel in the Hadera area on Friday.
Two people sustained light injuries in Kiryat Shmona and an ammonia leak was reported after a rocket hit a factory in the city's industrial zone. Authorities cautioned residents to stay clear of the area while they determined the extent of the leak and whether it would be harmful to the public.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
Of the estimated 34 Israel civilians killed thus far by Hezbo-fired rockets, about 10 have been Israeli Arabs, proving beyond a shadow of doubt that the Hezbos don't give a damn about any life but their own.
#2
This will go far to remind Arab Israelis which side they want to be on, although many are already quite clear on the matter despite the best efforts of the Palestinian re-unitees to poison the well. I'm always pleased by the little stories of the exploits of Arab volunteers in the IDF, especially the Beduin and Druze. The vicious nihilism isn't in the blood.
#3
"proving beyond a shadow of doubt that the Hezbos don't give a damn about any life but their own".
Why aren't you embarrased by the stupidity of your statement. Firstly, using your reasoning Israel also "don't give a damn about any life but their own", it's military has killed about ten times as many innocent civilians. Secondly, a more obvious and well known alternative explanation is that the rockets have very limited guidance capabilitities, as such it is not a proof beyond doubt of anything.
I know you're all excited about the killing going on and stuff but why can't you at least spout your nonsense with some basic reason.
#4
Mr. Strangelove, the Geneva Conventions make clear that when one of the combatants emplaces troops and weaponry amongst the civilian population instead of well away, *they* are the ones responsible when the inevitable retaliation strikes against the civilians. Thus, under the Geneva Conventions, it is the fault of Hizb'allah that Lebanese civilians are harmed when the Israelis shoot back at their rocket launchers shooting from kitchen windows and back gardens.
And, in fact, Hizb'allah has been boasting about the fact that most of the deaths are civilians they've gotten killed rather than their own bully boys.
I realize your insistence on this 1984-style moral equivalence is the hallmark of an antisemite (see that lovely study which demonstrated the strong link between "anti-Zionism" and antisemitism -- it just came out a few days ago, and the story is archived here at Rantburg. It won't be hard for a clever lad like you to browse through the last few days and find it), but polite people do not display such attitudes so openly.
#5
Why aren't you embarrased by the stupidity of your statement. Firstly, using your reasoning Israel also "don't give a damn about any life but their own", it's military has killed about ten times as many innocent civilians.
Yoohoo! Your slip bias is showing. When the Palestinians legitimately elect a terrorist government, they become complicit in all ensuing acts of terrorism committed by their leadership and its minions. Similarly, when a population willingly tolerates the open conduct of warfare from civilian areas, they suddenly become military bases and are subject to proper reprisal.
Have you bothered to notice that Israel hasn't simply begun flattening large tracts of civilian neighborhoods? They could have exterminated the Palestinians and all of their terrorist neighbors long, long ago. The only thing restraining them is some sense of humanity and decency. Things entirely lacking in their genocidal foes.
#6
"Secondly, a more obvious and well known alternative explanation is that the rockets have very limited guidance capabilitities, as such it is not a proof beyond doubt of anything."
So by your logic, if they are given more accurate munitions, they will refrain from killing Israeli Arabs and only kill the Jewish ones?
#7
I seriously doubt that '10 times the number of innocent civilians' claim.
First of all not all those 'civilians' are innocent. In fact I would guess that most of them are Hizbos. You see YOU CANT TELL! They aren't brave enough to be clearly identifiable. No uniforms, no insignia, armbands, etc... They hide among the civilians. That in itself is a war crime.
You see one of the main reasons for the Geneva Convention is to protect innocent civilians. That is why it has rules against firing from civilian areas, or hiding among the civilians and not being clearly identifiable. That is why its perfectly legal to shoot 'spies' and others (illegal combatants) who dress like, and hide among the civilians.
That is also why I advocate sumarily shooting illegal combatants in the field.
The Hezos break all those rules. They dress as civilians. They hide in civilian houses. They fire their rockets from behind civilian homes, hospitals, schools, etc... In fact they often build a 'school' on top of an ammo dump hoping to hide behind the children. What brave 'Lions of Islam'.
And they are deliberately targetting civilians. Their leadership has all but said so. Their orders are to 'Kill as many civilians' as possible. If they had precision rockets do you think they would target military targets? I dont think so.
And like a rabid dog the only thing you can do is put it down.
An Australian man who robbed a bank while dressed as a woman then made his getaway on rollerblades has been jailed for six years, it was reported on Friday. Nino Leo Lanu, 32, dressed in women's clothes and made up his face using his mother's cosmetics before holding up the bank in Melbourne with an imitation pistol last February, Australian Associated Press reported. It said he then made his escape on rollerblades, speeding along narrow walkways so no cars would be able to pursue him.
The report said Victoria county court judge John Smallwood described Lanu, who lives with his mother in a house opposite the bank he robbed, as an 'emotionally and socially disconnected young man'.
The report said Victoria county court judge John Smallwood described Lanu, who lives with his mother in a house opposite the bank he robbed in suburban Brunswick, as an "emotionally and socially disconnected young man". He said the bizarre robbery had been carefully planned, even though Lanu had undermined his female disguise by failing to shave before he robbed the bank, where he was also a customer. "You also endeavoured to create a set of quote 'fake boobs', end quote," Smallwood said. "It's clear that the rollerblades were used to affect a very quick getaway and you chose to go down a walkway in which no car could follow you. Whilst on a superficial view - you not even having shaved - the robbery could be described as inept, on closer view it was effective. You had thought about this beforehand, planned the way in which you were going to carry it out and planned your escape route." Lanu pleaded guilty to armed robbery, possessing an unregistered firearm and cultivating cannabis plants.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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Major story in the BongWater Gazetter and Edible Paper.
The Ukrainian parliament has approved Viktor Yanukovich as prime minister, ending four months of political deadlock in the country. He will share power with Viktor Yushchenko, the president who ousted him in 2004. The president said he had guarantees from Yanukovich that he would not try to reverse the revolution's pro-Western principles.
Yanukovich, who held the prime minister's job before the revolution, gained 271 votes from the 450 deputies in parliament. His supporters applauded his victory and presented him with a bouquet of red flowers. "I am itching to get down to work," he said before the vote. "I've been ready [to serve as prime minister] for a long time," Yanukovich told reporters.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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(IsraelNN.com) Hizbullah terrorists have received weapons hidden beneath goods and supplies in trucks ostensibly destined for humanitarian aid, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters Sunday afternoon. He instructed intelligence officers to explain to the press Hizbullah tactics.
The IDF has begun sending to the media films from ground troops and from pilots on Hizbullah actions, including the use of residences as storage centers for rocket launchers. One film shows a truck with rocket launchers entering a building.
#11
Nice find, Legolas. Israel has to keep pounding away at Hizb'allah perfidy if they are to keep their winnings this time around, as they absolutely must. Hopefully they'll be sure to mention that these are *not* falsified Reuters photos -- R. couldn't possibly be more of an enemy than they already are.
A GROUP of US anti-war activists on Saturday said they will head to Lebanon to denounce their government's failure to call for an immediate ceasefire between key ally Israel and the Hezbollah. The group made the announcement after two days of talks in Jordan with Iraqi parliamentarians on ways to gain US Congress backing for a swift end to US troop deployment in Iraq and US funds to rebuild Iraq. "We are leaving tomorrow (Sunday) for Syria and hope to go the next day to Lebanon," said Medea Benjamin, founding director of the US human rights organisation Global Exchange and member of several other anti-war groups.
We are appalled by our government's refusal to call for that ceasefire, appalled that the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, stopped the Security Council from calling for an immediate ceasefire.
"We feel that the US government, by not calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, is also responsible for a lot of the deaths and destruction that is going on today," she told a news conference. "We are appalled by our government's refusal to call for that ceasefire, appalled that the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, stopped the Security Council from calling for an immediate ceasefire. That puts a great weight on us as US citizens."
Ann Wright, a retired US army colonel and veteran diplomat, said the group wants "to bear witness to what is happening" in Lebanon and hook up with civil rights groups to assess the humanitarian crisis and help provide aid.
'I don't really understand Hezbollah's motives and I don't understand how the Israelis mobilised so quickly,' he said...
Celebrated US anti-war campaigner Tom Hayden meanwhile questioned the motives behind Israel's onslaught. "Is this a desperate effort by the Israeli and US neo-conservatives to escalate their way out of deceit in Iraq before the November (congressional) American election?" Hayden asked. "Are they trying to scramble and sub-divide the whole Middle East? Do they hope this escalates into a conflict with Syria and Iran?" asked Hayden who was most famous for his involvement in the anti-war of the 1960s. "I don't really understand Hezbollah's motives and I don't understand how the Israelis mobilised so quickly," he said, adding that an investigation was essential to determine if Israel had notified Washington of its actions. Hayden will not be going to Lebanon but he joined Benjamin, Wright and 12 other US activists in meetings Friday and Saturday with Iraqi MPs to discuss a US troop pullout from Iraq.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
Let's export for good all those American and European anti-war activists to Syria.
#4
Hey Hayden! You don't understand because you're doorknob stupid! You (and Jane's vagina) couldn't figure out the Vietnam war either.
How many Vietmanese, not to mention Cambodians, died in camps at your commie friends hands? How many Lebanonese and Israeli's will have to die this time?
But don't feel bad. We have therapy sessions you can attend all over the country. Its bigger then AA. Just join the Democratic Party.
#5
Just like Frank and I said yesterday. When the Hez roll them up and take them hostage, not one dime of America's money shoud be paid and not one US troop should go in to rescue them. Let the Hez keep them.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
08/06/2006 9:58
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#6
I know Cindy's still on her "hunger fast". It's gonna be really tough to find a good smoothie or protein shake in Beirut now. I fear for her health.
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 10:18
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#7
I know Cindy's still on her "hunger fast". It's gonna be really tough to find a good smoothie or protein shake in Beirut now. I fear for her health.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has not ruled out an assassination attempt on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah by the Israeli military, in an interview with a German newspaper to be published on Sunday. Olmert told the weekly Welt am Sonntag that the normal rules of war did not apply to Nasrallah, who was not a head of state but "the chief of a terrorist organisation". Nasrallah could not expect to be treated like a legitimate leader, Olmert said, while adding that he was not waging a "personal war against anyone in particular".
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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Adminadinnerjacket and Pencil Neck deserve the same thing, too, as Nasrallah. They support terrorists---they get taken out. And all these screaming mullahs. Once the leadership is culled, things will get quieter....all over the world.
Posted by: Alaska Paul in Hooper Bay, AK ||
08/06/2006 1:52
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#5
Different language use. I think PM Olmert is using may in the literal sense of is permitted to, rather than meaning might possibly.
(IsraelNN.com) Thousands of anti-Israel protestors took to the streets of Cairo over the weekend calling on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to permit them to join Hizbullahs fight against Israel. The protestors shouted anti-Israel epithets while expressing their support for Hizbullahs war.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
Only thousands? That's as pathetic as the latest round of "anti-war" protests in Europe!
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that the IDF operations against Lebanon and the Palestinians were reminiscent of the actions of the Nazis.
... they are killing children, innocents and whole families...
"The Israelis are doing exactly what Hitler did to them," he told al-Jazeera, "they are killing children, innocents and whole families." On Thursday night, Caracas instructed its ambassador to Israel to return to Venezuela.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
You are the one beating the Jews, Hugo. Few stick around your despotic socalist regime. P.S. Hitler was a Socalist. So was Pol Pot, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Mugabe. Tell me how many Jews made it through that?
#3
Chavez > "Nazi" = Hitlerist > A well-meaning but misguided arrrogant defective CLINTONIAN LIMITED COMMUNIST-TOTALITARIAN-GOVERNMENTIST, etc, whom didn't listen to the Motherly Sheehanist-Hillarist warnings of the Virgin Mary while in the trenches of WW1??? See kidz, igg you don't eat your veggies or listen to Mother Mary, the Commie Airborne's gonna get you.
The ringleader of a Dutch-based internet scam that raked in up to $US2 million ($2.6 million) has been arrested in Nigeria, police in Amsterdam say. The Nigerian, who headed a band of fraudsters operating out of Amsterdam, was arrested in Nigeria's economic capital of Lagos, police said. The fraudsters sent emails all over the world promising the recipients quick financial gains from a make-believe inheritance or fictitious lottery wins in exchange for "processing fees" of several thousand dollars. Those who paid up never heard from the supposed organisations again or saw a penny of their promised windfall.
...the group sent up to 140,000 emails per week...
Twelve Nigerians were arrested in the Netherlands in February over the scam. Some were held at the request of prosecutors in the United States where most of the scam's victims are located. According to the Dutch ANP news agency, the group sent up to 140,000 emails per week.
... opf which approximately three quarters landed in my inbox...
Nigeria is a major hub for internet scams with criminals bombarding computer owners with emails seeking to trick them into handing over bank details or making advance payments on non-existent money-making schemes. Experts say that the so-called 419 fraudsters - named after the relevant section in Nigeria's criminal code - steal hundreds of millions of dollars every year from unsuspecting victims.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
"... of which approximately three quarters landed in my inbox... "
Brilliant! LOL!! Well then I must have the other quarter.
Posted by: Mike ||
08/06/2006 8:52
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#3
About Goddam time.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 9:11
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#4
Before he was arrested, he left me a suitcase with all the money from his scam. The suitcase is being held by a security company in London. If you can send me the fee I need to get the suitcase released, I'll split the money with you. Email me with your bank account number and mother's maiden name for details.
#5
Dear Sir, I am Karen Obowale, wife of Kenneth Obowale, a Nigerian IT Businesman, falsely imprisoned by the Nigerian goverment.
Before he was led away, he managed to transfer his funds...
Posted by: john ||
08/06/2006 9:34
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#6
:-) youse guys....
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/06/2006 9:49
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Six mortar shells that were fired from Lebanon on Saturday cleared the Golan Heights and landed in Syrian territory. The IDF assessed that the launch, the second that landed in Syria in the past 24 hours, was meant to encourage Damascus to join the fight against Israel.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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#1
return to sender
Posted by: Captain America ||
08/06/2006 6:58
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The Syrians can just darn well cheer for joy, like the Palestinians, as the things fall about their ears.
(IsraelNN.com) A Kassam rocket fired from northern Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled Gaza landed in an open area near Kibbutz Nir Am on Saturday night. There were no reports of injuries or damage.
IDF foils female suicide bomber near Nablus
IDF soldiers from the Herub Brigade confiscated two explosive belts late Saturday night near Nablus. Forces stopped two cars at a checkpoint and arrested five Palestinians who attempted to throw a bag containing explosives. One of the suspects, a Palestinian woman, was apparently on her way to perpetrate a suicide attack in one of the cities in central Israel. The explosive belts were detonated safely. As a result of the attempt, the terror warning level was raised in Judea and Samaria and the surrounding area.
Palestinians throw explosive device at IDF troops
An explosive device was thrown at IDF troops operating east of Tulkarm early Saturday morning. Also, Palestinians opened fire at an IDF base south of Nablus, the army said. No one was wounded in either attack, nor was there any damage.
10 terrorists taken out in Gaza Strip
IDF forces killed ten armed terrorists during an operation in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday night. Sources said the terrorists were involved in the launching of Kassam rockets towards Israel.
Kassam lands in western Negev
A Kassam rocket fired from the northern Gaza Strip into Israel landed in an open territory near a Kibbutz in the western Negev Saturday night. No casualties were reported. Several cars parked in the area were damaged.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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NEPAL plans to seize lands owned by King Gyanendra and other royal family members and distribute them to the poor while the monarch will be treated like a "normal citizen," a minister said Saturday. The law that will limit the amount of land the king can hold will be drafted once an inventory of royal land holdings are completed, the minister said. "The king and the royal family members will be treated just like normal citizens," Prabhu Narayan Chaudhary, minister for land reforms and management, said. "The seized royal property will be nationalized and handed over to poor farmers and landless people," Chaudhary said.
The minister gave no timeframe for enaction of the law. Under the law, Nepalese people are allowed to possess 7.45 hectares (18.4 acres) of land, the minister said. But according to a preliminary report by the land reforms ministry, the king and royal family members own1729 hectares (4274 acres) of land throughout the country, including palaces and forests, the minister said.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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"Yheft by Government"
Nothing to see here, all is normal, move along.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 9:19
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#2
"THEFT" dammit.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
08/06/2006 9:20
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#3
Look soon for "Firing Squad Fires Royal Salute Into Royal Family"...
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006 15:07
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Huh? Nepal is 56,827 sq miles of territory (wikipedia). That's 14.7 million hectares, and there are 27 million people in Nepal. That's 0.5 hectare for each person, so where's the other 7 hectares coming from? Budget deficits? Or maybe only *certain* people are getting the 7.45 hectares...
Hmmm...
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/06/2006 18:07
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TWO Palestinian teenaged siblings and two militants were killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, as the Israeli military pressed an incursion in the southern city of Rafah. Omar al-Nuri, 17, and his 15-year-old sister Kiffah were killed by a missile fired from a drone as they fled an Israeli tank near their house in the Egyptian border town of Rafah, hospital officials said. Their mother Huda, 45, and another unidentified family member were in critical condition after being wounded in the strike, hospital officials said. A third family member was lightly wounded.
Earlier, two armed militants were also killed in separate Israeli air strikes in the area, hospital and security officials said. Mohammed al-Khawajih, 23, belonged to the military wing of the hardline Islamic Jihad group, while Sharif Ayyash, 23, to that of the governing Islamist movement Hamas.
An Israeli army spokesman said that "four armed terrorists were hit by army fire in two separate incidents in the Rafah sector." The Israeli army has been involved in a major incursion around Rafah since early on Thursday, which has involved dozens of armoured personnel carriers and bulldozers backed up by aviation.
According to an AFP count, a total of 15 Palestinians have been killed in the operation, including a 12-year-old boy and at least 11 militants. An army spokesman said that "more than 35 Palestinian terrorists have been eliminated in army operations in the Gaza Strip over the past 48 hours."
The Rafah incursion was aimed at destroying "terrorist infrastructure," an army spokesman said. The Israeli military says that Palestinian militants use tunnels dug between Gaza and Egypt to smuggle arms into the coastal strip. The Rafah incursion is part of a wider offensive in the coastal strip that Israel launched on June 28, three days after Palestinian militants from Gaza killed two soldiers and seized a third in a cross-border raid. The military says it aims to recover the soldier and to stop militants from firing rockets from the strip onto Israeli territory.
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08/06/2006
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Israeli forces opened fire today at a Palestinian security force station south of Rafah and then removed it completely. Palestinian sources indicated that Israel sources penetrated towards the centre of Rafah towards Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2006
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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.
(IANS) Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has urged Pakistan to send its troops to his war torn country 'as armies from Muslim states' will help in restoring the situation. 
A suicide bomber was killed early Sunday in southwestern Pakistan when the explosives belt he was wearing exploded prematurely, police said. No one else was injured in the blast in Hub, an industrial town in Baluchistan province, local police official Munir Hussain said.
Ten more people have voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered to the authorities in Chechnya in the past twenty-four hours. "Three people have reported to the Grozny district police department. A resident of Grozny, who headed the Staropromyslovsky district police department in Grozny from April 1997 to April 1999, said he was not involved in armed actions against federal forces. A resident of the community of Alkhan-Kala served in the national guard of the so- called republic of Ichkeria in 1998. A resident of the community of Oktyabrskoye procured food and medicines for members of illegal armed groups from April to May 2000," a source from Chechen law enforcement agencies told Interfax Saturday. 
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy Hizbollah and insisted he did not underestimate them, saying they had fired just 3,000 of their arsenal of 15,000 rockets so far.
Doctors at the exclusive Cimeq hospital in western Havana are accustomed to handling the delicate health problems of Cuba's communist elite. It was here last weekend, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt, that they battled for several hours to save the life of the regime's most important patient, Fidel Castro. Unable to stem intestinal bleeding with drugs, the country's top surgeons performed an emergency operation on the veteran leader.
Islamabad has issued directives to the Karachi police on potential women suicide bombers who could target majlises or religous gatherings, Daily Times learnt Saturday. I cannot deny that there is no danger of more suicide attacks, said IG Jehangir Mirza whose office issued a comprehensive Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to check suicide attacks and make clear what security measures should be taken. This exercise is not linked to the Allama Hasan Turabi case but some federal instructions have been received after which we are having to focus more on gatherings for women, Mirza stressed. These directives are meant to serve as reminders and refreshers for the lower staff of the police who need to be regularly issued instructions on their duties.
Hundreds of Britons are being urged to attend what is being branded as Europe's first "Masturbate-a-thon", a leading British reproductive healthcare charity said.
Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels (LTTE) have halted an offensive on the eastern town of 
(BNA) Israeli forces kidnapped two Palestinians this evening in the North of Gaza Strip after shooting them. Medical Sources said that Israeli forces refused granting medical staff access to the two injured men or revealing their identities. The men were moved to an unknown location, added the sources. 
At least people including a US soldier were killed in violence across Iraq on Saturday. Iraqi insurgents gunned down five soldiers and killed two police in a separate bomb attack on Friday, as government forces stepped up their campaign to regain control of a war-torn country.
A grenade attack on Friday shook up Da Khwendo Kor, or sisters home an education centre run by a civil society organisation in Landikotal, Khyber Agency but no one was hurt, the centres administration said on Saturday. Apparently, religious extremists were behind the attack, Mariam Bibi, the centres director, told Daily Times. 
A HEZBOLLAH cabinet minister said Saturday his group's guerrillas would accept a ceasefire only once Israel halts attacks and pulls out of southern Lebanon. "We are in a defence situation. When the Israeli aggression ceases, very simply, we will stop (fighting) on condition that no Israeli soldier remains inside Lebanese land," Energy Minister 
(BNA) Iraq has primarily agreed to supply Jordan with crude oil from its Northern fields as soon as the Jordanian Al Zarqa'a Refinery is ready to operate. Al Sharqia TV quoted an Oil Ministry media spokesman saying that an agreement took place during the presence of Oil Minister Hussain Al Shahristani in Jordan who accompanied Prime Minister Nouri Al Malki in his last tour. Iraq will supply Jordan with crude oil from the Beiji Oil Refinery via Jordanian tanks carrying it to Al Zarqa'a seaport as soon as Jordan's Zarqa'a Refinery is ready, he added.
Al-Qaeda's deputy leader says an Egyptian group has joined its network. The Egyptian group, 
Israeli warplanes struck dozens of targets throughout Lebanon into the early morning hours today, and an Israeli commando raid in Tyre turned into a fierce gun battle. The aerial bombardment was particularly heavy in the southern port city of Tyre, where journalists could hear jet fighters, helicopters, the boom of bombs and the rattle of heavy machine-gun fire in the darkness. Helicopter gunships raked the streets leading into the city All told, the Israeli military said, its aircraft struck at 70 targets in Lebanon overnight, from Tyre in the southwest to the Hermel, at the upper end of the Bekaa Valley to the northeast, where they bombed a road leading to the Syrian city of Homs.
(BNA) Sudanese National Assembly Speaker Ahmed Ibrahim Al Taher reiterated his country's refusal of deployment of any international force in Darfur and said that the issue is not negotiable. The armed forces that have signed the Darfur Peace Agreement will soon be in control of all the district and will work on protecting residents and maintaining its stability, said Al Taher during a meeting with North a legislative council delegation from Darfur. The National Assembly Speaker pointed out to the partnership with Abuja pact signatories and the will to cooperate with them according to a comprehensive view on implementing the agreement.
DUBAI: Some 170 Muslim scholars, thinkers and politicians called Saturday for backing the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples in the face of Israeli onslaughts and urged Arab and Muslim rulers to cut any ties with Israel. 
At least 20,000 people marched through London Saturday to demand that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush stop Israels offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The demonstration passed the US Embassy and the office of the prime minister who worked the telephones to arrange for a draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at ending the conflict, which began when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
The military suspects that Fridays attack on a security forces command base in South Waziristan was a suicide attack, army spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan 
Taliban attacked a police patrol in southern Afghanistan overnight, with an intelligence official and a militant killed and two police wounded in the ensuing gunfight, police said on Saturday. The patrol was attacked in Ghazni province late on Friday, provincial police chief Tafsir Khan said. One intelligence official and two police were wounded in the fire fight, Khan said. One Taliban was also killed and four were wounded. Police arrested 15 suspects in a subsequent sweep of the area. 
Palestinian officials said IDF forces arrested the speaker of the Palestinian parliament at his house early Sunday. The officials - the director of the speaker's office and security officers - said about 20 Israeli army vehicles surrounded the house of parliament speaker 
Hamas did not allow representatives of the Red Cross to visit kidnapped soldier, 
Uganda's 
QUETTA: Cable operators in Balochistan are facing losses as hundreds of households are cancelling subscriptions or refusing to pay monthly fees, following the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authoritys (PEMRA) directive to ban Indian television channels. Certainly, our business is being affected. But we cannot afford to squabble with PEMRA, admitted one cable operator. 
Lebanon has rejected a draft UN resolution proposed by the US and France that calls for "full cessation of hostilities" between Israel and Hezbollah. 
IAF fighter jets attacked at least 15 targets around Beirut on Friday - three bridges linking Beirut with north Lebanon and a bridge linking Beirut to the south. It was the first time Israel struck a major Christian population center to the north of the Lebanese capital. Four civilians were killed and ten wounded in the strike, according to the Lebanese Red Cross. 
An estimated 120 katyusha rockets landed throughout the north within a 90 minute period late Saturday afternoon. A mother and her two daughters were killed in the village of Arab al-Aramshe. Fadya Juma, 60, and her daughters Samira, 33, and Sultana, 31 were killed when their home in the Arab-Israeli village of Arab-al-Aramshe suffered a direct rocket hit just after 4:00 PM. Members of the village located near Shlomi along the Lebanese border grieved openly, mourning the loss of the three family members. 
An Australian man who robbed a bank while dressed as a woman then made his getaway on rollerblades has been jailed for six years, it was reported on Friday. Nino Leo Lanu, 32, dressed in women's clothes and made up his face using his mother's cosmetics before holding up the bank in Melbourne with an imitation pistol last February, Australian Associated Press reported. It said he then made his escape on rollerblades, speeding along narrow walkways so no cars would be able to pursue him. 
The Ukrainian parliament has approved 
A GROUP of US anti-war activists on Saturday said they will head to Lebanon to denounce their government's failure to call for an immediate ceasefire between key ally Israel and the Hezbollah. The group made the announcement after two days of talks in Jordan with Iraqi parliamentarians on ways to gain US Congress backing for a swift end to US troop deployment in Iraq and US funds to rebuild Iraq. "We are leaving tomorrow (Sunday) for Syria and hope to go the next day to Lebanon," said 
Israeli Prime Minister 
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that the IDF operations against Lebanon and the Palestinians were reminiscent of the actions of the Nazis. 
The ringleader of a Dutch-based internet scam that raked in up to $US2 million ($2.6 million) has been arrested in Nigeria, police in Amsterdam say. The Nigerian, who headed a band of fraudsters operating out of Amsterdam, was arrested in Nigeria's economic capital of Lagos, police said. The fraudsters sent emails all over the world promising the recipients quick financial gains from a make-believe inheritance or fictitious lottery wins in exchange for "processing fees" of several thousand dollars. Those who paid up never heard from the supposed organisations again or saw a penny of their promised windfall.
Six mortar shells that were fired from Lebanon on Saturday cleared the Golan Heights and landed in Syrian territory. The IDF assessed that the launch, the second that landed in Syria in the past 24 hours, was meant to encourage Damascus to join the fight against Israel.
NEPAL plans to seize lands owned by King Gyanendra and other royal family members and distribute them to the poor while the monarch will be treated like a "normal citizen," a minister said Saturday. The law that will limit the amount of land the king can hold will be drafted once an inventory of royal land holdings are completed, the minister said. "The king and the royal family members will be treated just like normal citizens," Prabhu Narayan Chaudhary, minister for land reforms and management, said. "The seized royal property will be nationalized and handed over to poor farmers and landless people," Chaudhary said.
TWO Palestinian teenaged siblings and two militants were killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, as the Israeli military pressed an incursion in the southern city of Rafah. Omar al-Nuri, 17, and his 15-year-old sister Kiffah were killed by a missile fired from a drone as they fled an Israeli tank near their house in the Egyptian border town of Rafah, hospital officials said. Their mother Huda, 45, and another unidentified family member were in critical condition after being wounded in the strike, hospital officials said. A third family member was lightly wounded.
Israeli forces opened fire today at a Palestinian security force station south of Rafah and then removed it completely. Palestinian sources indicated that Israel sources penetrated towards the centre of Rafah towards Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
