* Family cat butchered, dumped
* Students find decapitated cat at school
* RSPCA says similar to recent puppy torture
A BELOVED cat was sawn to pieces and dumped at a primary school oval in Queensland on Thursday.
Four-year-old Basil was discovered decapitated and sliced up by horrified students.
The pet, described by his owner, Kylie Matthews, as a friendly sook, was decapitated and hacked to pieces sometime after dashing out the family's front door in Mackay on Tuesday night.
Ms Matthews, 22, has shielded herself from most of the horror of her beloved cat's torture.
"Dad is keeping some of the grisly details from me about what they found at the school oval and that is OK," she said.
"I have been a mess. Basil was the perfect pet. I just want the police to find the people who did this."
Ms Matthews was 18 when she bought Basil from a pet shop as a kitten.
"He really was a part of the family," she said.
Autopsy results suggested the pet's remains had been hosed down before being dumped at Northview State Primary School in Mt Pleasant to prevent there being any evidence linking the cat's remains to his killer.
Mackay police are investigating the matter but the family said initial autopsy results confirmed Basil's attacker was human, not animal.
"He was butchered. The autopsy said the cuts were clean," Ms Matthews said.
It is not known yet, however, if Basil was already dead when he was sliced open.
RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty said he feared there had been an escalation in acts of cruelty towards animals in the past two months.
The attack on Basil came just three weeks after a fox terrier puppy named Peanut was allegedly stolen in Moranbah, west of Mackay, and tortured to death with secateurs and a pocket knife.
"I hope this is not a copy-cat situation," Mr Beatty said.
"We must treat this seriously as a society. Torturing an animal is only one step away from torturing a human; the links have been clearly established."
Ms Matthews said she feared the cat killers might strike again.
"What type of sick person unleashes that brutality on a helpless animal?" she asked. "And to dump Basil in a school ground where it is very likely young children will find him is just sick".
The Matthews family has plastered posters around Mackay, offering a $500 reward for help to find Basil's killer.
#2
I am sickened to the point of being about to throw up. This is so awful. The only thing more predictable than the perp being on the fast-track to being a serial killer is the inevitable lawyer hired by the family of the perp to make excuses for the sick little b**tard.
#3
as a Cat "owner" (nobody really 'owns' cats) - I'd take a short carpet-cutting blade to their ......brains
I have no patience, sympathy, or empathy to (non-hunter) animal killers. The world is better off without their kind, and should not investigate their...disappearances..k?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 22:18
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#4
I agree,
This is a serial killer in the making. He or She (more likely He) has some of the classic signs. I don't 'own' any cats, although i do have 2 dogs which i care for and i can't imagine anyone doing such a thing to an animal. Poor thing.
AT least 10 people have been killed and dozens wounded in bomb attacks across Iraq as militants continue to strike in some of the country's most dangerous regions.
Four people were killed when a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded in a crowded market in the town of Khalis in Diyala province overnight, according to security officials and medics.
Another 13 people were wounded in the bombing, including an Iraqi police officer in charge of co-ordinating security operations in the town, said Dr Ahmed Ibrahim Hassan, a staff member at Khalis hospital.
A security official in the provincial capital of Baquba confirmed the details of the blast, which took place in an area that still sees frequent attacks despite recent improvements in security elsewhere in Iraq.
Earlier, a female suicide bomber exploded in front of a hospital near the city of Fallujah, killing a woman, a doctor and his wife, security officials said. Another seven people were wounded in the blast.
Fallujah is one of the main cities in the western province of Anbar, which was the epicentre of the Sunni-led rebellion against US forces in the months following the March 2003 invasion.
In the northern city of Mosul - which the US army considers the last urban base of al-Qaeda in Iraq - three Iraqi soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb targeting an army patrol.
Another four soldiers were wounded in the blast.
Elsewhere in the city a suicide car bomb targeting a police patrol wounded 11 people, including five civilians, according to police.
Iraq has had a dramatic drop in violence in past months but pockets of the country remain riven by sectarian tensions and insurgents continue to carry out scattered attacks against US and Iraqi security forces.
* 20 people killed in Russian sub accident
* Firefighting system released deadly gas
* "Victims didn't notice gas until too late"
TWENTY people died of gas poisoning and another 22 were injured in an accident on a Russian nuclear submarine in the Sea of Japan that revived memories of the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000.
The submarine's nuclear reactor was not damaged and background radiation levels in the naval testing zone where the accident occurred were "normal," a naval spokesman said.
"During sea trials of a nuclear-powered submarine of the Pacific Fleet the firefighting system went off unsanctioned, killing over 20 people, including servicemen and workers," said Captain Igor Dygalo, the navy's spokesman.
The high-speed attack submarine was being tested after a construction process that began in 1991 and became bogged down after the Soviet collapse.
State media said the vessel had been due to be delivered to India's navy.
Officials said three naval officers and 17 civilians had died in the accident. Capt Dygalo said the victims included servicemen and shipyard workers who had been participating in the trials.
Autopsies showed the victims died from inhaling freon gas released into part of the submarine when its fire extinguishing system activated for reasons that are unclear, news agencies quoted Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the federal investigative committee, as saying.
Although the crew were issued with portable breathing devices, "it's probable the submariners didn't notice the inflow of gas and when they felt it, it was already too late," RIA Novosti quoted an unidentified official at navy headquarters as saying.
The injured were evacuated from the stricken submarine aboard an accompanying ship and were taken to hospital to be treated for poisoning, Pacific Fleet hospital officials said. Their lives were not thought to be in danger.
The toll of dead and injured made the accident the worst involving a Russian submarine since the 2000 Kursk disaster, when 118 crewmen died.
The submarine itself returned to the port of Bolshoi Kamen, site of a large refitting shipyard, where the bodies of the dead were offloaded, a spokesman for the shipyard said.
Television pictures showed the hulking vessel, more than 100m in length and with a bulbous tail section housing its sonar array, heading for the port.
The accident occurred yesterday and Capt Dygalo said President Dmitry Medvedev had been briefed by Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and had ordered a "full and meticulous" investigation.
Capt Dygalo did not identify the submarine involved.
However, a source in the Amur shipyard administration named the vessel as the K-152 Nerpa, a submarine of the Project 971 Shchuka-B type, or Akula-class by NATO classification, RIA Novosti news agency reported.
The Nerpa was to be leased to the Indian navy, with New Delhi reportedly paying $US2 billion for the lease of two Akula-class submarines, with the option of eventually buying them.
In October officials from the Amur shipyard reported the launch of sea trials for the 8140-tonne Nerpa.
The Echo of Moscow radio station reported that the shipyard had been beset by problems including failure to pay workers since the arrest of a shareholder last December. It said this had led to a decline in standards.
Federal investigators opened a criminal probe into the accident, Interfax news agency reported.
Capt Dygalo said that the submarine itself was not damaged and there was no radiation leak.
A total of 208 people were aboard the submarine, of whom 81 were servicemen while the others were naval technicians and specialists.
Following the Kursk disaster in 2000, in which a vast nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea after an explosion on board, the Kremlin was harshly criticised for its sluggish and secretive response.
In addition to the Kursk disaster, Russia has seen a string of mishaps with its naval submarines.
Nine sailors died aboard a K-159 submarine that sank in the Barents Sea in August 2003 while being towed to port for decommissioning.
In 2005, a mini-submarine of the Pacific Fleet got snared underwater in a fishing net, requiring the help of a British rescue team that arrived many hours later as the vessel's oxygen supplies were dwindling.
#1
WORLD MIL FORUM > RUSSIAN MEDIA: AMUR SHIPYARD PROCUREMENT OF CHEAP CHINESE MATERIALS LINKED TO DEADLY "NERPA" SUBMARINE FIRE.
Meanwhile BATMAN, on another BAT CHANNEL:
SAME > INDIAN MEDIA: DEADLY RUSSIAN SUBMARINE INCIDENT MAY CAUSE INDIA TO ABORT PROGRAM WITH RUSSIA. As NERPA was only leased/rented to India by Russia [ala "lease-to-own"], India may reconsider MOST OR ALL ASPECTS OF ITS TRI-NATION JOINT SUB PROGRAM WID RUSSIA [+ China]???
#2
I highly doubt that the program will be aborted. India cannot acquire another nuclear submarine on short notice. Russia is their sole vendor of opportunity.
#3
ION RUSSIA > INTERFAX > PUTIN: RUSSIA'S FINANCIAL [+ ECON] SITUATION WILL NOT REFLECT/IMPACT ON RUSSIA'S STRATEGIC DEVLOMENT PLANS.
WAFF Poster > "NERPA" sub fire incident > opines that RUSSIA PROB IS THAT IT KEEPS TRYING TO MAINTAIN AND IMPROVE UPON ITS FORMER COLD WAR SUPERPOWER STATUS, CREDIBILITY AND FORCE PROJECTION, ETC. WID A POST-COLD WAR ECONOMY THE SIZE OF SPAIN [read, taint gonna happen].
* Church brawl caught on video
* Rival Christians trade blows
* Two arrested as police move in
GREEK Orthodox and Armenian worshippers have traded blows in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christian denominations jealously protect their hold over areas of the traditional site of Jesus' crucifixion.
Israeli police went into the shrine, which faithful also believe contains the tomb of Jesus, to restore order.
Two clerics were arrested.
Dozens of worshippers, dressed in the vestments of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations, traded kicks and punches, knocking down tapestries and toppling decorations at the site in Arab east Jerusalem.
The brawl erupted during the Feast of the Cross, a ceremony in which the Armenian community commemorates what it believes was the fourth century discovery of the cross upon which Jesus was crucified.
Fights are not uncommon in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre among the representatives of Christian denominations who are responsible for maintaining its different chambers.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 17:46
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#4
The guy is a saint in his own mind. What a bunch of self-serving crap. The guy is not only an unrepentant terrorist but an unrepentant idiot and not likely to get any better.
He says: we might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and prison abolition
Abolishing prisons is going to work isn't it? There are some really bad, bad people in prison Mr. Bill. There are really good reasons for them being there. Many admit that they ought to be in prison and that they would just kill again if not in prison. I don't think they are just misunderstood individuals that shouldn't be in prison. Maybe you can straighten these guys out.
Expect China to be front and centre in dealing with the worldwide economic down turn. How it's handled will be the difference between a short term recession or a long term depression.
China unveiled a $586 billion stimulus package Sunday in its biggest move to inoculate the world's fourth-largest economy against the global financial crisis. The Cabinet approved a plan to invest the money in infrastructure and social welfare by the end of 2010, a statement on the government's Web site said.
Some of the money will come from the private sector. The statement did not say how much of the spending is on new projects and how much is for ventures already in the pipeline that will be speeded up.
China's export-driven economy is starting to feel the pinch of weakening U.S. and European economies, and the government has already cut key interest rates three times in less than two months in a bid to spur economic expansion. Economic growth slowed to 9 percent in the third quarter, the lowest level in five years and a sharp decline from last year's 11.9 percent.
That is considered dangerously slow for a government that needs to create jobs for millions of new workers who enter the economy every year and to satisfy a public that has come to expect steadily rising incomes.
Exports have been growing at an annual rate of more than 20 percent but analysts expect that may fall as low as zero in coming months as global demand weakens.
The International Monetary Fund has urged governments to adopt economic stimulus packages and, in some cases, to cut interest rates further, to counteract the slowdown.
China joins other major economies such as the U.S., Japan and Germany which have already introduced their own stimulus plans. The U.S. allocated $168 billion earlier this year for tax rebates to individuals and tax breaks for businesses. Germany set aside $29 billion for tax breaks on new cars and credit assistance for companies. Japan allotted $275 billion for loans to small- and mid-sized businesses and discounts on highway tolls among other measures.
On Wednesday, finance officials from the G-20 group of major wealthy and developing nations convene in Washington to discuss a strategy for strengthening the global economy. Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to attend.
China's statement said the Cabinet, at a meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao, had "decided to adopt active fiscal policy and moderately easy monetary policies."
The statement said the spending would focus on 10 areas. They included picking up the pace of spending on low-cost housing -- an urgent need in many parts of the country -- as well as increased spending on rural infrastructure. Money will also be poured into new railways, roads and airports. Spending on health and education will be increased, as well as on environmental protection and technology.
Spending on rebuilding disaster areas, such as Sichuan province where 70,000 people were killed and millions left homeless by a massive earthquake in May, will also be accelerated. That includes $2.93 billion planned for next year that will be moved up to the fourth quarter of this year.
The statement said rural and urban incomes would be increased. Credit limits for commercial banks will also be removed to channel more lending to priority projects and rural development, it said. Reform of the value-added tax system will cut taxes by $17.5 billion for enterprises, the statement said.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 19:05
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#3
ION CHINA, WAFF > CHINA [Beijing and even Taipei] CLAIMS ARUNACHAL PRADESH AS CHINESE TERRITORY [part of TIBET]; + WORLD MIL FORUM POSTERS' THREADS [paraph = Chinglish translation] > [IIUC] PLA "SECOND ARTILLERY" MISSLE PHOTOS: CHINA MUST TAKE POSSESSION OF GUAM TERRITORY/REGION [or DESTROY GUAM?] FROM USA TO STOP THE US AIRCRAFT CARRIER FROM RESCUING TAIWAN!, + JAPAN IS THE COVERT ORIGINAL BOSS BEHIND TAIWAN'S NEW INDEPENDENCE TROUBLES!? PRO-CHINA Rapprochement-Cooperation versus Full Independence + CHINA WORRIED OVER MILITANT STRENGTHS OF TAIWAN INDEPENDENCE FORCES.0
U.S. forces in Afghanistan will "back off" from firing at insurgents if the fighters are using civilian buildings as cover, the U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan told CNN.
"I've given direct guidance, and so has my boss to me, that if there's any doubt at all that the enemy is firing from a house or building where there might be women and children, that we'll just back off," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, told CNN's Barbara Starr.
"That potentially is something that we did not do before, but now because of this increased emphasis, we are doing," he said in an interview at an outpost in Afghanistan's Paktika province near the Pakistani border.
Schloesser spoke the same day the U.S. military announced that fighting last week in Kandahar province left 37 civilians dead and another 35 wounded. During the two-day battle in Kandahar's Shah Wali Kott district, insurgents fired from some villagers' houses, using them as cover, villagers told the U.S. military.
Afghan officials said the civilian deaths in Kandahar were the result of a U.S. airstrike. But a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation concluded that the civilians died during a battle that was sparked when insurgents ambushed an Afghan-coalition patrol.
The U.S. military released the results of that joint investigation Saturday.
Schloesser said that avoiding civilian casualties has always been a priority of the U.S. military, even before Afghan President Hamid Karzai said last week that his "first and main demand" of the next U.S. administration under President-elect Barack Obama will be "to stop civilian casualties" in his country.
#1
In other words, Afghan lives are more important than our soldiers' lives. This is bullshit, what building in Afghanistan ISN'T a civilian building? So if they are in a building, any building, they are untouchable.
#3
It's time to pull out of Afghanistan now. Karzai's "stop civilian casualties" crap is totally ridiculous. How in Hell are our troops to have any idea just who is/isn't a civilian when the ENEMY DOESN'T WEAR UNIFORMS?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 17:16
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#5
Folks, we did this in the surge in Iraq. Yes -- civilian lives are indeed more important than our soldiers' lives, and when we demonstrated that in Iraq we got substantial assistance from the civilians to ID the terrorists.
This is classic small wars philosophy, and I think it is a smart move. We'll have plenty of chances to whack the bad guys, and by demonstrating publicly that we won't kill civilians who are being used as shields and hostages, we'll gain support in the population.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/09/2008 17:25
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#6
This is not a large departure from the current ROE's to be frank (not Frank).
#7
civilian lives are indeed more important than our soldiers' lives
You're damned well wrong about that. Every drug-dealing goatherder and corrupt Muzz politician in Afghanistan combined isn't worth the death of ONE American Marine.
#9
I wouldn't, and thanks, Mouse, for the clarification ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 18:14
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#10
Let Karzai's boys rush the mud forts.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 18:36
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#11
Steve White, regarding your comment about civilian lives being more important than our soldiers lives:
FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE.
Ban me, asshole. I don't give a shit. What you said is beyond the pale.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
11/09/2008 18:42
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#12
Whiskey Mike, you are wrong.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/09/2008 18:58
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#13
Whiskey Mike...Steve probably could have expresed it better. However, I think his point is that tactical expediency can trump operational and national policy. We have the tools, especially in Afghanistan to isolate and eliminate tactical targets without resorting to Sherman-esqe policy...as much as I (a senior reserve officer) would personally like to see it.
#14
WM - In my 7+yrs time here, I don't think Dr. Steve meant what you inferred. Poorly expressed, yes.
The problem is strategy vs. costs. I'd just as soon evacuate this den of thieves and destroy from orbit. Others have persuasive arguments against. Steve White is not one to sacrifice our blood for no reason
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 19:32
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#15
I think you're both correct. And we should get out now before a lot more die for no reason. We've finished our business in Afghanistan and it should not stand in the way of finishing the far moree important business in Iraq. We can always deal with the Afghans again if need be.
#16
Words have meaning. The meaning of Steve's words are clear. The statement might have been carelessly phrased, but statements like that must be challenged.
This deserves more discussion, just not tonight.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
11/09/2008 19:56
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#17
agreed
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 20:19
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#18
We need to get out of Afghanistan. It is simply ridiculous to assume that we can accomplish any lasting change there - even if we weren't fighting on the enemy's turf, with one hand tied behind our backs.
The British have fought there - and then given up - at least for times in the past 300 years - the Soviets once, and I think that Alexander, and Genghis Khan both gave it a try - and no one ever made a lasting impression. There is no central power to win over - it is just and endless series of clans, tribes - and even individuals.
There is no way that Karzai - or anyone like him - can ever serve as a dominant leader over the disparate rabbles.
Money will always win out - and the narco-dollars will subvert anything that the "good guys" can offer. And - the opium trade is the only thing that large chunks of the rural population have going for them. If you wipe out the poppy cultivation, they have nothing - and will hate the eradicators forever.
In a perfect world, it would be great to have a happy, prosperous, democratic Afghanistan, united under a central government, and coexisting peacefully with its neighbors. But - it is not a perfect world. Afghanistan is land-locked - with its only access to seaports being through god-awful routes. Internally, the country might as well be Indonesia, or the Philippines - its terrain makes it the equivalent of a nation of a thousand islands - each one of which must be individually pacified and defeated.
Put an army into the field against the Afghans, and the invader faces the ultimate challenge to maintaining supply lines - god only knows how much "shrinkage" occurs to get one increment of anything to our troops.
The only Afghan strategy that I have ever heard that makes any sense is to create peace by turning it into a desert nation, devoid of life. Destroy its airfields, demolish its roads, dams, pumping stations, cellular towers - and then leave it to its own 8th Century way of life. Keep an eye on it from space - and anytime a significant terrorist training camp is noted, quietly send in an airstrike of cluster bombs. Maybe also maintain a rotation of Special Forces teams into the Area - not as combatants, but as reconnaissance forces, and agent runners.
Selectively hit just the threats that have potential to affect the outside world. Leave the Afghan warlords to enjoy their traditional internal feuds, and impose their backwardness upon their own people, as they see fit.
There is no alternative. The meat-grinder of Afghanistan will chew up another four brigades - or four Divisions, or four Corps - without blinking. The tail to tooth ratio is so high, that only a tiny fraction of the effort thrown at Afghanistan will ever reach the "cutting edge" of our effort there.
It is simply unrealistic to believe that the answer lies in selecting just the right mix of current policies - and that if we hit that optimum mix, then well-deserved success will unfold, and we can go home in victory.
Afghanistan is basically Somalia - but more remote, more backward, more rugged, less centrally controlled - and less important.
I wish it were otherwise. But - it is time to call a spade a spade - and give up on th4e fiction that we are slowly moving toward a successful conclusion.
With blood and treasure, we bought the present central Afghan government an opportunity to create a nation - within the world community. They tried - and failed; and it was not a close miss - it was not even close. There was no realistic potential for any other outcome. It is time to admit it, and more on.
#19
Disassociating with a failed Afghanistan would not only save American lives in a failed battle with a corrupt government representing a third-world shithole civilization, but would also eliminate any need to supplement and support that fantical shithole Pakistan, which, without the great game $ would've starved on the heroin a blockade could impose
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 20:38
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#20
Karzai's "stop civilian casualties" crap is totally ridiculous.
By design. They know us well. We should leave and then glass the place.
And the narco-dollars are MARKET-DRIVEN. This is why the old War on Drugs matters. Either fight it to win or legalize it (either way is better than the status quo.)
I think understood is a better word than challenged. If at the end of the day you lose fewer lives to accomplish the goal by installing a policy of not wasting human shields, then it is arguable that it could be said that it is more "important". Steve is just swapping out politically correct language in order to be brief and hoping his shared history with you will serve to bridge the understanding gap. Besides, he is making you think after all, now isn't he? ;-)
#26
Time to get out of the Afghanistan and Iraq both. I do not trust the new administration to properly support our troops. In fact, it would not surprise me if they left them twisting in the wind. After all they didn't vote for The One anyway.
Elections have consequences. These wars have been lost here at home. Don't sacrifice our best in a lost cause.
.Muslim gangs inside Whitemoor Jail have created no-go areas for British jail officers and are policing the areas themselves. The Daily Star quoted guards as claiming that the Islamic mobs are "a law unto themselves," adding that the prison staff have passed a vote of no confidence in their governor.
MP Malcolm Moss, 65, said Whitemoor Prison, Cambridgeshire, was descending into turmoil. He added that staff blamed Governor Steve Rodford for pandering to political correctness and making the Muslims untouchable.
The Conservative MP warned that the unrest had created a "tense" atmosphere not seen since the 1990s when the IRA maintained an inner sanctum inside the maximum-security prison. "Serious problems will arise if there is dissatisfaction among staff at top security prisons, as is currently the case at Whitemoor. There are no-go sections policed by Muslim inmates, not staff. In the 1990s officers couldn't do their jobs properly and prisoners did what they like. We may be operating a similar situation," he said.
A third of the 458 inmates at Whitemoor are Muslims. Moss claimed that they were segregated from other prisoners.
In May an internal review of the jail by the Prison Service's Directorate of High Security warned staffs believe that a "serious incident is imminent" as several wings had become dominated by Muslim prisoners.
Moss is waiting for Government answers to questions he has posed about the vote of no confidence and segregation of Muslim inmates at Whitemoor.
Earlier, Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, has urged the prison service to do more to provide staff throughout the jail system but particularly in the top security prisons with help to deal with increasing Muslim numbers.
The number of Muslim prisoners in jails doubled in the ten years to 2006 to reach 8,243 - 11 per cent of the total prison population.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
13:57 ||
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#1
So they've created their own special little hell. Hope they enjoy it. Of course, if the Brits had any backbone left they could go in there with shotguns and regain control.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/09/2008 14:20
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#7
The prison could make that are a no water zone then
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
11/09/2008 19:57
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#8
Of course there are ways to deal with this. But they require the will to do so. If Britain retained the will to defend herself these prisoners wouldn't have gotten that far in the first place.
#10
there are ways to deal with this. But they require the will to do so.
It's ALL about the WILL (Gordon Liddy may be a jerk, but he had that part right.) If it was MY prison, if the officers can't go there, then neither can the food or water. If you don't have at least that much will, then you lose. (Of course, if it was REALLY my prison, if the officers can't go there, then their bullets can ---)
Five people of a family of ragpickers were killed and at least six others injured in a blast in a scrap heap in Meerut, western Uttar Pradesh, on Saturday afternoon.
Police said the blast occurred when the ragpickers were trying to extract metal from a live mortar shell in the Asiyananagar locality, inhabited mostly by Bangladeshi migrants. They have also recovered seven live bombs that are being defused by the bomb disposal squad.
The recovery of live mortar shells is surprising since there is no artillery range in the city. Also, very little copper and iron can be extracted from mortar shells, which are sold by ragpickers to junk dealers for meager sums.
This was not a terror attack, according to the police.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
13:05 ||
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From November 5, 2008, US President-elect Barack Obama started receiving from the Director National Intelligence (DNI) a daily brief on the state of the world the previous day called the President's Daily Brief (PDB).
The CIA would do well to incorporate the following in its PDB to Obama.
There is amazement - and confusion - in India over reports that one of the first acts of the President will be to appoint former President Bill Clinton as his Special Envoy on the Kashmir issue to facilitate a settlement between India and Pakistan.
Well-informed sources in India say that if the President-elect wants to severely damage the developing Indo-US relations he could not have thought of a better idea than to meddle in Kashmir. So many Americans----Presidents, Presidents-elect and defeated Presidential-aspirants---- thought they could help in finding a solution to the Kashmir issue and burnt their fingers and damaged Indo-US relations.
This started from Adlai Stevenson, who after losing the election to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, proceeded to Srinagar ostensibly for a houseboat holiday on the Dal Lake and tried to meddle in the affairs of the State by suggesting to Sheikh Abdullah, the then Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, that he should seek independence and promised that the US would support him.
When the Indian Intelligence Bureau informed Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister, of Stevenson's secret discussions with Abdullah, he sacked Abdullah. Adlai Stevenson became persona non grata with the Indian political class and public.
When Clinton became the President in 1993 he could not resist the temptation to have a go at settling the Kashmir issue. He chose as his secret emissary not a distinguished American, but an old college mate of his called Robin Raphael, who was posted as a junior diplomat in the US Embassy in New Delhi. Her American colleagues in New Delhi used to allege that after Clinton took office, she used to go around projecting herself as if she was a trusted adviser to Clinton, who took her into the State Department.
Our Indian sources say that she had two "achievements" to her discredit. She instigated the formation of the Hurriyat , a hotch-potch of anti-New Delhi Kashmiri personalities, which added to the existing mess.
She also encouraged the formation of the Taliban in 1994 with the help of her close personal friends Benazir Bhutto, the then Prime Minister, and Asif Ali Zardari, the present President of Pakistan. She even met Mullah Mohammad Omar, who subsequently designated himself as the Amir of the Taliban, secretly and sought his help for a project of the Unocal for a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via the Herat area of Afghanistan.
According to the sources, her misadventures in Kashmir further damaged Indo-US relations and her godmothering the Taliban inexorably set in motion the train of events that led to Osama bin Laden shifting from Khartoum to Jalalabad in 1996 and launching from Afghanistan the terrorist strikes outside the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August 1998, the attack on USS Cole off Aden in October,2000, and the 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland.
Our Indian sources say that in the history of Indo-American relations since India became independent in 1947, there have been more instances of meddling by Democrats than by Republicans. They feel that Democrats seem to think that they understand sub-continental affairs better than anybody in the US and find it difficult to resist the urge to meddle.
According to them, that is why Indian security agencies feel uncomfortable when the White House has a Democrat as incumbent. They say that if one draws a graph of terrorism in J&K, one would find that it tends to go up when a Democrat is the President.
At a time when India and Pakistan are on the road to slowly mending their bilateral relations, Indians are amazed that the President-elect oblivious of the past misadventures of the US in the sub-continent should be thinking of one more.
B. Raman is an expert on security and anti-terrorism operations. He headed the Counter-Terrorism Division of the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) for six years. He has been a member of various special task forces related to security and intelligence issues. An internationally acclaimed writer and lecturer, he regularly contributes articles to various national and international publications on security-related topics.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
12:35 ||
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#1
Can't wait to see the leftist losers he packs in foreign-policy destructive positions
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 13:37
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if the President-elect wants to severely damage the developing Indo-US relations he could not have thought of a better idea than to meddle in Kashmir.
BALASORE: The Balasore district administration has decided to shift about 3,010 residents, residing in proximity to the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur-on-sea, temporarily for a day prior to the test of a nuclear-capable missile, reportedly scheduled on November 12.
At the meeting chaired by District Collector Alekh Chandra Padhiary yesterday, it has been decided that the people would be shifted from 8 am to 12 noon and for that they will be properly compensated. The missile will be test-fired between 9 am and 11 am.
Sources said, as part of precautionary measures people from the villages that fall in the 2-km radius area of the ITR will be evacuated and taken to safer places. The villages included Kusumuli Pahi, Khadupahi, Bhimpur Pahi, Jaydeb Kasaba Pahi and Sahazanagar Pahi. As per the requirement of the defence authorities here we have chalked out the plan and accordingly the villagers have been intimated. The tentative date of the missile test has been fixed on November 12, the Collector added.
As per the provisions, each person above the age of 12 will be compensated with Rs 165 and below that age Rs 95 each. Defence sources said, India is planning to test fire nuke-capable 700-km range K-15 missile on that day from the launching complex-3 (LC-3) of the shore-based ITR.
Although designed for launch from a submarine, the missile will be this time test-fired from a land-based launcher. During the test the scientists will check speed, trajectory, azimuth and other parameters of the missile set for the mission, the source added. The slender K-15 which has a length of around 11.5 metre, can carry a payload of up to one tonne.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
12:27 ||
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#1
Defining the boundaries of Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile, was not a 16th century plot, but a biblical prophecy promised by God to those going into Babylonian exile as a future hope. The real 'Secret of Armageddon' is that Islamists have chosen Allah over the LORD Almighty and the showdown will be rather dramatic on the world stage.
#4
Compare wid DNA INDIA > ISLAMIC SCHOLARS CALL FOR REDEFINING "JEHAD", + TERRORISM NOW DECLARED "UN-ISLAMIC"; + TOPIX > INDIA'S JAIMAT-ULAM-I-HIND [JUH] GROUP ENDORSES MUSLIM FATWA AGAINST TERRORISM AND VIOLENCE.
Hat tip Instapundit
Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.
The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.' Probably means a kw/hour Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. 'It's leapfrog technology,' he said. Take that oil ticks!
#2
Color me skeptical. If they don't have demonstration models now, they won't be shipping anything in five years. And if they ever do have an actual product the cost will be more like $250MM/unit after litigation related expense.
#3
I'll believe it when I see it. The numbers sound more like wild promotional marketing than engineering numbers, and there are a whole lot of unanswered questions like where does the waste heat go and who pays for the fuel reprocessing and disposal.
"Probably means a kw/hour"
No, I think they do mean 10 cents a watt. $250 per home would allow each home 2,500 watts. Not enough for my modest home, but it may be enough in parts of the UK.
#4
I had to dig around on the Hyperion web site, but eventually I found it in a press release:
"Each unit produces 70 MWt, or 27 MWe when connected to a steam turbine - enough to provide electricity for 20,000 average American-size homes or the industrial equivalent."
So the price they're touting is just a heat source: steam turbines, condensers, generators, etc. are not included.
#5
The wife and I were flying out to the left coast to visit the daughter in October. I picked up the October 2008 issue of Discovery and was thumbing through it. The following excerpt caught my attention:
"...an obscure piece of technology known as the vanadium redox flow battery. This unusual battery was invented more than 20 years ago by Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, a tenacious professor of electro chemistry at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The vanadium battery has a marvelous advantage over lithium-ion and most other types of batteries. It can absorb and release huge amounts of electricity at the drop of a hat and do so over and over, making it ideal for smoothing out the flow from wind turbines and solar cells.
Jalpaiguri (WB) (PTI): A four-year-old child was tossed to death by a wild elephant at Mantagara in Jalpaiguri district on Sunday sparking protest by villagers who gheraoed forest officials.
Forest officials said the baby girl was tossed to the ground by the tusker which strayed into the area and barged into the hut of a tribal family.
While the girl's parents scampered to safety mistaking the girl to be away in a neighbour's house, the toddler fell before the jumbo.
As a forest team went to the area, they were gheraoed by villagers who alleged inaction by the department, which resulted in the straying of pachyderms.
The gherao was lifted after forest officials handed over Rs 5,000 compensation to the affected family on the spot and promised another Rs 95,000.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
10:56 ||
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gheraoed ?
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
11/09/2008 19:00
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Wikipedia: Gherao, meaning "encirclement," is a word originally from Hindi, and is a typically South Asian way of protest. Usually, a group of people would surround a politician or a government building until their demands are met, or answers given.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 19:03
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Two former British military officers are expected to give crucial evidence against Georgia when an international inquiry is convened to establish who started the country's bloody five-day war with Russia in August.
Ryan Grist, a former British Army captain, and Stephen Young, a former RAF wing commander, are said to have concluded that, before the Russian bombardment began, Georgian rockets and artillery were hitting civilian areas in the breakaway region of South Ossetia every 15 or 20 seconds. Their accounts seem likely to undermine the American-backed claims of President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that his little country was the innocent victim of Russian aggression and acted solely in self-defence.
During the war both Grist and Young were senior figures in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The organisation had deployed teams of unarmed monitors to try to reduce tension over South Ossetia, which had split from Georgia in a separatist struggle in the early 1990s with Russia's support.
On the night war broke out, Grist was the senior OSCE official in Georgia. He was in charge of unarmed monitors who became trapped by the fighting. Based on their observations, Grist briefed European Union diplomats in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with his assessment of the conflict.
Grist, who resigned from the OSCE shortly afterwards, has told The New York Times it was Georgia that launched the first military strikes against Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital. "It was clear to me that the [Georgian] attack was completely indiscriminate and disproportionate to any, if indeed there had been any, provocation," he said. "The attack was clearly, in my mind, an indiscriminate attack on the town, as a town."
Last month Young gave a similar briefing to visiting military attachés, in which he reportedly supported the monitors' assessment that there had been little or no shelling of Georgian villages on the night Saakashvili's troops mounted an onslaught on Tskhinvali in which scores of civilians and Russian peacekeepers died. "If there had been heavy shelling in areas that Georgia claimed were shelled, then our people would have heard it, and they didn't," Young reportedly said. "They heard only occasional small-arms fire."
Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister who helped broker the ceasefire that ended the war and has been a fierce critic of the Russian invasion of Georgia, is tomorrow due to announce a commission of inquiry into the conflict at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
The inquiry will be chaired by a Swiss expert as a mark of independence and will try to establish who was to blame for the conflict. European and OSCE sources say it is likely to seek evidence from the two former British officers.
The inquiry comes as the EU softens its hardline position towards Russia amid mounting European scepticism about Saakashvili's judgment.
And that's why this news is coming out now.
Europe is preparing to resume negotiations with Moscow this month on a new partnership and cooperation agreement, which it froze when Russia invaded Georgia, routed its army and recognised the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another breakaway region.
Although Grist and Young know only part of the picture, their evidence appears to support Russia's claim that the Georgian attack was well underway by the time their troops and armour crossed the border in a huge counter-strike.
Georgia attacked South Ossetia on the night of August 7-8. In the afternoon an OSCE patrol had seen Georgian artillery and Grad rocket launchers massing just outside the enclave. At 6pm the monitors were told of suspected Georgian shelling of a village.
Georgia declared a unilateral ceasefire. But at 11pm it announced that Georgian villages were being shelled and began a military operation to "restore constitutional order" in South Ossetia. Soon afterwards the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali began. By 12.35am the OSCE monitors had recorded more than 100 rockets or shells exploding in Tskhinvali.
Russia sent in troops and armour, saying they were there to protect its peacekeepers and the civilian population. The invasion attracted worldwide condemnation and led to a deterioration in relations between Moscow and the West. Many western leaders depicted Russia as an expansionist giant determined to crush its tiny neighbour. They rallied to Georgia's defence amid calls for it to be rapidly admitted to Nato, Saakashvili's most fervent wish.
The president argued that Russia had attacked Georgia because "we want to be free" and that his country was fighting a defensive war.
Critical to his argument was his claim that he had ordered the Georgian army to attack South Ossetia in self-defence after mobile telephone intercepts from the Russian border revealed that Russian army vehicles were entering Georgian territory through the Roki tunnel. "We wanted to stop the Russian troops before they could reach Georgian villages," Saakashvili said. "When our tanks moved toward Tskhinvali, the Russians bombed the city. They were the ones -- not us -- who reduced it to rubble."
Russia counters that the war began at 11.30pm, when Saakashvili ordered an attack, well before any Russian combat troops and armour crossed the border through the tunnel.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
09:52 ||
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definitely, Mr. G. The Russian's wouldn't ever possibly lie, now would they? Heritage aside, you've gotta be less of a booster and quit defending the undefensible - a grasping empire-building Putin?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 15:18
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A brawl erupted in Jerusalem Sunday between rival monks at one of Christianity's holiest sites, and police have detained two clergymen for questioning.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said fighting erupted between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem's Old City. The church marks the traditional site of Jesus' crucifixion, burial and resurrection.
Police called in to break up the brawl detained one monk from each side.
With the fate of domestic oil production promising to spill over into a new administration, oil companies in northwestern Colorado are steadily pushing ahead with projects to develop the American West's vast deposits of oil shale, estimated to contain the equivalent of more than 800 billion barrels of oil--three times more than Saudi Arabia's proven oil reserves.
But they are also among the first to caution against premature exuberance by lawmakers, saying that commercial production, despite some progress, is still years away.
Such disparities between political rhetoric and on-the-ground reality are a common theme among national proposals for new sources of energy, but in the case of oil shale, the gap is particularly stark.
By most accounts, oil shale's proponents scored two big victories this fall. A congressional ban against oil shale leasing on federal land expired in September while, in the same month, the Interior Department issued guidelines for opening up about 2 million acres in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to potential commercial-scale oil shale drilling.
If nothing else, the changes are "psychologically important," says Glenn Vawter, executive director of the National Oil Shale Association, because existing restrictions "were sending a message to companies that the government was really skeptical of oil shale or didn't want oil shale."
But recent progress on the regulatory front is now colliding with the slow pace of research and testing. Observers say commercial oil shale development probably won't take place until at least the middle of the next decade.
...
Meanwhile, falling oil prices this fall are once again raising concerns about oil shale's future, since oil prices in the $70 to $100 range are needed for oil shale to be profitable. Insiders say that big companies aren't too worried by the downward trend, since they expect prices to climb back upward over the next few years. But smaller companies looking to raise capital may find it increasingly hard to attract investment.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008
09:01 ||
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IIRC, Shell has a new extraction process for oil shale that produces at $30/barrel.
#2
Lots of luck getting investment $ for anything in the next 5-10 years. Putting what investment $ there is into nuclear power would pay off much better IMO.
#3
The US has enough electricity capacity, unless battery powered cars really take off. It's liquid fuels we are not producing enough of. The problem with oil shale and coal2liquids is that they require very large upfront capital investments. That is not possible in a capitalistic economy when the controlling supplier of oil can lower the price until market alternatives are bankrupt.
So don't expect a market solution to alternative fuels as long as oil is controlled by monopolistic international oil cartels. It will require gov action to set an oil price floor or subsidy when oil prices crash (conversely a windfall tax to fill a subsidy fund when oil prices are high).
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 17:53
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Oil shale development is currently stymied by the need for large quantities of water in an area where water is consistently in short supply. At the same time, it's possible to start small and grow, IF alternative methods can be developed that use less water. The best choices right now are domestic oil production, expanded coal production for power generation, and a government program for developing both nuclear power generation and an expanded transmission capability. Oil shale, like solar, wind, geothermal, and virtually every other possible alternative energy supply will require several technological breakthroughs before they can be considered profitable. We can't wait until that happens - we need to establish short-term solutions using existing technologies, and investment in potential long-term replacement processes. Drill here, drill now, build nuke power stations, increase the use of coal, and invest in the continued development of alternative energy capabilities. That's the only way we can get from "here" to "there" without bankrupting the nation and causing far more destruction than progress.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/09/2008 19:12
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The official threat level is classed as being "Severe" - this is one down from the highest level, "Critical", which means an attack is imminent. Over the last few months, we in Britain have become a little obsessed with the economy, falling house prices and the credit crunch, but it should not be forgotten that a significant number of UK citizens have been planning to carry out attacks with the aim of causing mass casualties.
The report leaked to The Sunday Telegraph identifies three areas - London, Birmingham and Luton - which MI5 and Special Branch believe are enclaves or hot beds of terrorist activity, where "some thousands" of extremists committed to supporting Jihadi activities. It is this fact alone which will worry the security services the most. Each of these areas has sizeable Muslim populations and while the vast majority are peace loving and regard militant Islam as an abomination, some are also in denial about the size of the threat from members of their communities. But it should not be forgotten that Islamist terrorists are members of a covert conspiracy, where even members of there own families have little idea that their sons or daughters have become radicalised.
The Government has attempted to combat the radicalisation of disaffected members of the Muslim community by urging religious leaders to ban Islamist preachers from getting a foothold in mosques. While this policy has met with some success, this report would suggest that the numbers of young Muslims signing up to al-Qaeda philosophy is growing. Preventing radicalisation is almost an impossible task especially when Britain and a large number of its allies are locked into conflict in Muslim countries.
The report also tells us that Islamist groups are still managing to send British nationals, some of whom will be Muslim converts, to fight against British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In camps dotted along the Pakistan/Afghan border they are being taught how to build bombs and form covert cells. Some will be sent to fight on the frontline in Iraq and Afghanistan while others, according to the report, will be ordered to return to the UK to establish new terrors networks.
MI5 has doubled in size since 9/11 and now has nine regional offices across the country. But its staff can only achieve so much. Unlike the BBC television series "Spooks", not every covert MI5 mission will end in success. The Security Services' 3,500 spies have been working flat out since the 2005 London bombings and it is likely that the Security Service may need to expand again in the next few years to keep pace with the growing threat. This will no doubt raise certain moral questions for a liberal democracy.
MI5 is well aware that it cannot uncover every plot or stop every attack - eventually one will get through. All we can hope for is that the attack will be unsophisticated, like that attempted by Nicky Reilly, who attempted to blow up a restaurant in Exeter using a crude home made device. But the horrible reality is that eventually a highly sophisticated plot will one day slip under the radar and the consequences for us in the UK will be catastrophic.
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former director general of MI5, often said that in all likelihood al-Qaeda will detonate a "dirty bomb" in a western capital in the near future. If that was to happen in London today the entire western banking system - which is already fragile - would collapse. When the British Army was fighting a counter-insurgency war in Ulster, the mantra of the IRA was "We only have to be lucky once - the British have to be lucky all the time". The same is still true today in the war against Islamist extremists.
OPEC nations could further reduce oil output if moves last month to slash production do not bolster plummeting oil prices, OPEC president Chakib Khelil said Saturday.
Khelil, who is also Algeria's energy minister, said an OPEC report would show by the end of the month whether all cartel members have enforced the daily 1.5 million barrel reduction decided in October.
He said he hoped the production cut would raise and stabilize prices at a level manageable for both oil-exporting countries and consumer nations. Reasonable prices should range "between $70 and $90 per barrel," said Khelil, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. ...
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008
08:47 ||
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#1
an OPEC report would show by the end of the month whether all cartel members have enforced the daily 1.5 million barrel reduction decided in October.
Surely no report is needed, who in the hell would lie about their oil sales? I mean srsly.
We may think of this as a post 9/11 problem, but it's been with us all along. What was Reagan thinking, landing Marines in Lebanon to prop up the government of a country that didn't have one? In 1984, I visited the site where the Marines were murdered. It was a beachfront bivouac overlooked on three sides by hills full of hostile Shiite militia. You'd urge your daughter to date Rosie O'Donnell before you'd put troops ashore in such a place.
Since the early 1980s I've been present at the conception (to use the polite term) of many of our foreign policy initiatives. Iran-contra was about as smart as using the U.S. Postal Service to get weapons to anti-Communists. And I notice Danny Ortega is back in power anyway. I had a look into the eyes of the future rulers of Afghanistan at a sura in Peshawar as the Soviets were withdrawing from Kabul. I would rather have had a beer with Leonid Brezhnev.
Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.
The aftermath of the Gulf war still makes me sick. Fine to save the fat, greedy Kuwaitis and the arrogant, grasping house of Saud, but to hell with the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq until they get some oil.
Then, half a generation later, when we returned with our armies, we expected to be greeted as liberators. And, damn it, we were. I was in Baghdad in April 2003. People were glad to see us, until they noticed that we'd forgotten to bring along any personnel or provisions to feed or doctor the survivors of shock and awe or to get their electricity and water running again. After that they got huffy and began stuffing dynamite down their pants before consulting with the occupying forces.
Is there a moral dimension to foreign policy in our political philosophy? Or do we just exist to help the world's rich people make and keep their money? (And a fine job we've been doing of that lately.)
If we do have morals, where were they while Bosnians were slaughtered? And where were we while Clinton dithered over the massacres in Kosovo and decided, at last, to send the Serbs a message: Mess with the United States and we'll wait six months, then bomb the country next to you. Of Rwanda, I cannot bear to think, let alone jest.
**********
And now, to glue and screw the lid on our coffin, comes this financial crisis. For almost three decades we've been trying to teach average Americans to act like "stakeholders" in their economy. They learned. They're crying and whining for government bailouts just like the billionaire stakeholders in banks and investment houses. Aid, I can assure you, will be forthcoming from President Obama.
Then average Americans will learn the wisdom of Ronald Reagan's statement: "The ten most dangerous words in the English language are, 'I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to help.' " Ask a Katrina survivor.
#4
I read the whole thing--think I will go attach the garden hose to the exhaust and run it into the window (just kidding)--the article just compounded my depression.
I'm still looking for the pony in the room full of horse$hit.
#5
I dunno...while I agree with many of O'Rourke's specifics as to how we wound up at this low point, I disagree with his basic thesis that "conservatism, if it is ever reborn, will not come again in the lifetime of anyone old enough to be rounded up by ACORN and shipped to the polling booths." The very fact that those of us on the right side of the aisle are even having these conversations is a GOOD sign. What happened in the past when liberals got clobbered? They screeched about the menace of "big money in politics", whined about "vast right-wing conspiracies" and "right-wing noise machines", caterwauled about dark conspiracies of vote-stealing, fascist oppression and even murder (see Wellstone, Paul). Never once did the entire liberal movement take a collective time-out and start asking itself "okay, what's our core philosophy, how do we get back to it from here and how do we get the public to agree and believe?" That collective time-out - and yes, that's going to mean some time in the wilderness - is going to be an absolute necessity for conservatism to regain both its theoretical and practical groundings. But if we do it right (bad pun fully intended), the trek in the woods should be a successful one, and maybe even a relatively short one.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
11/09/2008 13:12
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#6
good call, Ricky
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 13:24
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#7
I was looking for a set of principles that set liberals apart from conservatives. Two that O'Rourke did mention were: 1. Less government meddling and intrusion in personal lives, and 2. A bedrock principle of conservatism is fiscal responsibility. I don't know, were there others? In the current bailout culture, I don't see either of these principles being followed by either party. Following these two principles would be a good start. It sounds more like the Libertarian ideal.
Conservatism, if it is worthwhile and has something to offer will, hopefully emerge as such.
Somewhere, in my searchings, I came across a set of conservative principles that were enumerated and posted on the internet. I don't recall where.
#8
What are the Republican Party's principles that will be employed to meet and surmount these challenges? We have five enduring principles:
1. Our liberty is from God not the government.
2. Our sovereignty rests in our souls not the soil.
3. Our security is through strength not surrender.
4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector.
5. Our truths are self-evident not relative.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 15:21
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#11
He fought the bailout and voted no on it every time. He's also in a congressional rock band "the 2nd Amendments" - plays lead guitar. Yeah, for a politician he's a good guy. One of the few out of my shitbagged home state. Hopefully, him, Jindal, Palin, Jim DeMint, Steele & Cantor (I'm not too sure of Cantor) can bring the party back to Reaganism and more importantly back to being in step w/the founder's intent of the U.S. Const.
#12
I hope my own, Duncan D. Hunter, continues his father's priorities. If he lives up to his campaign promises, he will
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 15:38
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Here's another good guy who'll be a force in the future GOP. He did vote for the first bailout, but told his (angry) consitituents that he did so because the financial meltdown put us in uncharted territory & that he didn't want to be part of causing a general economic collapse because of ideological purity. For those of us here at the Burg who might doubt his free-market credentials, here's the Wall Street Journal's take:
...there were many Republicans who for years aided and abetted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, yet this week ran for political cover.
Mr. Ryan is among the former. As early as 2000 he was warning in House hearings that Fan and Fred were rushing into subprime loans and mortgage-backed securities, growing and concentrating their risk, and putting taxpayers on the hook. He's so vociferously called for more supervision that he was once stalked by a Fannie Mae lobbyist.
In 2002 he co-sponsored legislation that would have put these beasts under SEC accounting standards. Fan and Fred, and their congressional enablers, killed it in committee. In 2005 he signed on to a bill that would have subjected the giants to modest reform. The Fan-Fred alliance speared it in the Senate.
In 2007, Mr. Ryan opposed a proposal by Texas Republican Randy Neugebauer to gut systemic risk protections for the duo. It passed 383 to 36, with 162 Republicans voting for the companies. Many were the same members who this week thought it too politically risky to stabilize a market rocked by the very Fan-Fred privileges they granted.
The congressman was no fan of Mr. Paulson's plan, and initially rallied conservatives around a rival approach. When it became clear that the administration's approach was the only thing going, he spearheaded negotiations to rid it of its worst liberal elements and to include more taxpayer protections.
As credit spreads widened, he said he also realized this was a "Herbert Hoover moment, where he sat by and let a Wall Street crash turn into a Great Depression . . . There are times when free-markets stop and rational thinking goes out the window. It then isn't enough to be a laissez-faire conservative and let Rome burn . . . This bill is not perfect, but doing nothing is far worse than passing this bill."
Regrettably, Ryan decided not to go after Boehner's Minority Leader post because he was worried about the effect the job's demands might have on his family. Hopefully he'll still put himself forward as a major leadership figure in the very near future. Between this guy, Bobby Jindal, Sarah and the raft of Iraq/Afghanistan vets I hope will be recruited as Trunk candidates in '10 and later, I think we're in better shape than it might appear right now.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
11/09/2008 16:09
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#14
And as for first principles...what Broadhead & Thad McCotter said is a damn good place to start.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
11/09/2008 16:11
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#15
My Congressman is John J. Duncan, Jr. He voted against the bailout. I wrote to him several times concerning my opinions about not passing the bailout plan. He wrote back to me and stated the following:
"I want to explain to you why I voted against the Treasury Department's bailout plan. There really was no good choice. It was going to be bad if we did it and bad if we did not, but I thought it would be better in the long run not to adopt the socialist approach."
He would be another good, honest, principled man to include in the list of people that adhere to our Constitution and tries to represent constituents.
#17
The trouble with the Republican platform is that 1) spending like a drunken Kennedy, 2) building a huge bloated bureaucracy, 3) endemic political corruption, and 4) support of a smothering Nanny-state is already the platform of the other party.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008
08:45 ||
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#1
I guess they're looking to hit lotto with some more Hollyweird personalities showing up to revive the old 'buy an African' adopt another child. Irony doesn't even come close to describing watching the lefty Hollyweird types start this 'trade' again.
#2
Nigerians seem to be big in african organized crime, and notably sex trade, from south africa to Europe, where there's a notable black african tint to organized prostitution, displacing the east european & albanian mobs IIUC.
#4
No word from our esteemed black leaders (Jackson, Sharpton, Obama, et al) about this human rights abuse; only continued cries of "the insidious racism" of America.
#5
Skyrocketing birth rates? Baby inventories in excess of market demand? Costly tribal wars and regional genecide wearing you out? The solution is not "above your pay grade." Consider the highly progressive and enlightened Obama Roe v. Wade infant reduction bailout plan.
#1
"Theres even a Hip-Hop Initiative at North Carolina Central University. Although it includes scholarly study of this kind of music, which has been around for more than 30 years, long enough to have its own interesting history, the program also uses hip hop to reach out to at risk males."
#2
Long ago SNL's Dan Ackroyd and Jane Curtain did a takeoff on point-counterpoint: Curltain made a point and Ackroyd always led off by saying: "Jane you slut." Rantings and blather of a mad woman.
#4
Children with two parents who love and care for them do MUCH better than children with one. Children with parents who care about education and make it their utmost priority get better educations than children with parents who don't.
Boys who grow up with hardworking, responsible, capable men as role models learn how to be hardworking, responsible, capable men. Boys who grow up in single-parent households with only gangsters as male role models don't.
Yup. Water will still wet us, fire will still burn. Surprise, surprise.
#5
Children is two parent families don't get the taxpayers to pick up the tab for both baby and momma. Change the financial incentives, change the family structure.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 18:33
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#6
I sense a return to what once was and will be again.
A senior U.S. official says American and European representatives have met with Arab countries worried about Iran's influence in the Mideast. Should have thought about that before attempting to kill 100,000 New Yorkers.
The official says foreign ministers from several Arab countries met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
A participant in Sunday's meeting says Arabs are worried about any potential deal on Iran's nuclear program that would give the Persian country more power in the Mideast. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008
08:32 ||
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#1
Useful idiots, now a feared enemy.
Its such an old story in them parts.
#1
"However, there is at least one big problem with opening combat positions to women currently, women do not have to meet lower physical fitness standards than men."
--umm, yes, they do. We give them an additional 3 mins to pass the 3 mile run. They do a flexed arm hang vice having to do pullups. At least get your facts right.
#3
When did Obama care what women and/or military members think, anyway?
(I do have one request....I want that snotty little cow who thought she was so clever wearing that "Sarah Palin is a C- - - -" shirt to get extra special verbal treatment from her drill sergeant during basic training. Y'know, something along the lines of "Full Metal Jacket".)
Al-Qaeda in Iraq have reacted to the US presidential election by issuing a statement on Friday directed at President-elect Barack Obama and his incoming administration.
The 22-minute audiotape was posted on several jihadist internet websites and includes an audio message from Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the pseudonym adopted by the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq. The US military said on Friday that al-Baghdadi was "an actor who provided a voice for al-Qaeda's propaganda".
The statement issued in his name calls on the incoming US administration and allied Western leaders to embrace Islam, withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and release Muslim prisoners from there and from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Compared to previous statements issued by the group this one is relatively mild, imploring America to return to what it calls "impartiality" and even offering not to disrupt Western oil supplies if its conditions are met.
"We promise that we will not stop the trading of oil or other commodities with you, provided that justice is achieved," the audio message said. ...
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008
08:21 ||
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#1
Yep, can't get any more subtle than demanding the US "withdraw from ALL MUSLIM LANDS", OR ELSE!
#2
ION OBAMA, TOPIX > LARIJANI:IRAN EXPECTS MAJOR STRATEGIC POLICY CHANGES FROM OBAMA, espec vee Iran's Nucprogs.
Also, WAFF > COULD THE WAR ON TERROR END? As per proposed US-IGA/Iraq accords, US milfors to be mainly restricted to their bases come mod-2009, wid full departure of US combat troops except for Advisory and Logistical elements in 2011; + OBAMA ADVISOR [Denis McDonough]: NO COMMITMENT [by OBAMA] TO US DEFENSE SHIELD IN EASTERN EUROPE. Obama is willing to deploy US GMD-TMD to Poland, etc. only iff the TECH IS "PROVEN TO WORK"!?
US President-elect Barack Obama has not given a commitment to go ahead with plans to build part of a US missile defence system in Poland, an aide says.
He was speaking after Polish President Lech Kaczynski's office said a pledge had been made during a phone conversation between the two men.
#2
So much for dithering on ratifying the agreement a couple months back. Actually, there might be a plan that will make some Rantburger's happy, this could be the beginning of the disengagement from NATO. Definite budget saving there.
For some reason this Weezer song lyric popped into mind: If you want to destroy my sweater.
(I don't want to destroy your tank-top.)
Pull this string as I walk away.
(Let's be friends and just walk away.)
Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked.
(Hate to see you lyin' there in your Superman skivvies.)
Lying on the floor, lying on the floor
I've come undone!.....
#7
You know, a present er president-elect should play his cards close to his chest before he is elected. But hey, knock yerself out if you want to. It's not like everybody is watching and listening now, is it?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/09/2008 14:41
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#8
A misstep with 2 left feet.
And so it begins INDEED.
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
11/09/2008 15:40
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Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor stirred up a hornet's nest by endorsing a demand from the Hispanic Bar Association to censor words and phrases such as "illegal aliens" and "illegal immigrants" and substitute "foreign nationals" in court documents.
#13
Illegal alien is accurate. Illegal Immigrant is patently false - the illegal alien has *not* been granted immigrant status.
Calling them 'foreign national' is inaccurate also - it does not convey their illegal status - which, of course, is the entire point of the demand from the Hispanic Bar Association.
BTW: Isn't the term 'Hispanic Bar Association' Racist?
Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign. The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric. But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
And of course no one can actually find anyone who yelled these things about Obama at a rally. This was disproven a month ago but it's now part of the 'narrative' to tear Palin down.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"
The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin's credentials as a future presidential candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.
So hopes the MSM ...
Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."
Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.
None of the aides are named, and to be clear, Senator McCain did a nice job of losing the election all on his own.
That claim is part of a campaign of targeted leaks designed to torpedo her ambitions, with claims that she did not know that Africawas a continent rather than a country.
Leaks that the MSM is happy to spread ...
The advisers have branded her a "diva" and a "whack job" and claimed that she did not know which other countries are in the North American Free Trade Area, (Canada and Mexico). They say she spent more than $150,000 on designer clothes, including $40,000 on her husband Todd and that she refused to prepare for the disastrous series of interviews with CBS's Katie Couric.
In a bid to salvage her reputation Mrs Palin came out firing in an interview with CNN, dismissing the anonymous leakers in unpresidential language as "jerks" who had taken "questions or comments I made in debate prep out of context."
She said: "I consider it cowardly. It's not true. That's cruel, it's mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that's not fair and not right."
She was not asked about her incendiary rhetoric against Mr Obama. But she did deny the spending spree claims, saying the clothes in question had been returned to the Republican National Committee. "Those are the RNC's clothes, they're not my clothes. I asked for anything more than maybe a diet Dr Pepper once in a while. These are false allegations."
Speaking as she returned to her native Alaska, Mrs Palin claimed to be baffled by what she claims was sexism on the national stage. "Here in Alaska that double standard isn't applied because these guys know that Alaskan women are pretty tough, on a par with the men in terms of being outdoors, working hard," she said. "They're commercial fishermen, they're pilots, they're working up on the North slopein the oil fields. You see equality in Alaska. I think that was a bit of as surprise on the national level." New day, new handler, new story and we're stick'n with it! Just remember boys, the Renegade could have been der Hilderbeast redux.
#1
I don't know if this sh*tstorm is a deliberate attempt to push her supporters out of the GOP (self-selection purge?) or just elitist asses falling back on what they know best, but if this doesn't quit it's going to relegate the GOP to the outer darkness for a long time. I know it's making me think twice about voting GOP going forward (not that I'll ever vot Dem again).
#2
Heaven forbid the GOP VP candidate criticize Teh One! Any criticism might raise the negatives on the messiah! That is verboten!
What a piece of journalistic trash
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 13:22
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More "anonymous" sources. If real sources and members of Secret Service, they should be fired for unprofessional conduct. If the reporters are lying THEY should be fired.
#4
The Country Club Republicans always felt uncomfortable with Reagan, but couldn't argue with success. They have been trying ever since to take the party back from "the great unwashed" from flyover country.
Sarah Palin is just the latest obstacle to get in their way. These "inside the beltway" Republicans hate Palin just as much as their Democrat counterparts. This is just an attempt to make her radioactive for the 2012 elections.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/09/2008 13:47
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#5
The country club republorcans not only cost us the election with their bailout crap, they got the knives sharpened for us all beforehand.
We CAN'T work with these people; we're gonna have to start a new party of our own.
And as I said before, I got the _perfect_ name for it.
#6
The Belle Moose Party--that's funny. Palin was swimming with sharks in both parties. She seemed to me like a good person that didn't know everything but could learn--that was refreshing for a change instead of a lot of blowhard windbags pontificating from D.C.
#7
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"
#9
TFSM - I would be happy to support a new party, but I've got a better name for it - the American Constitutionalist Party, with the primary policy issue the adherence to the Constitution as it was written and amended. Of course, I'd love to do away with several of the amendments, especially the 17th.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/09/2008 16:33
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#10
I guess it was asking for a diet Dr. Pepper that pissed off anonymous aides. Palin worked hard during the campaign--something that maybe these same incompetent aides should done. She is a good woman that doesn't deserve what she got. These gutless no-name aides should go screw themselves. They are scapegoating and looking for cover for their own inadequacies.
#11
I want these anonymous backstabbing c**ksuckers named and banished from all future campaigns. Who needs them? They ran a terrible campaign, including Johnny Mac, who can't bestir himself to defend Palin, but was snap-responding in a nanosecond to anyone who mentioned "hussein", "wright", "ayers", "socialist", etc....
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 16:41
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#12
I think the insiders know who the unnamed aides are, and I don't think they'll work a national campaign ever again.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/09/2008 17:43
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#14
Third parties only ensure that the other side wins. You have to work to take control of one of the two dominant parties. That's what the Marxists and Socialists did with the Democratic Party.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 19:26
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#15
I'm guessing that the Axle-guy and the In-the-tank-media have absolutely nothing to do with these anonymous sources....because if the 2012 campaign has already, commenced, then the Jindal smears are pending.
The Palin slime attacks are a measure of just how much any Repub candidate will have to endure.
The Tank has already decided that their candidate will bear no scrutiny, while the opposition must be destroyed.
#18
OK, I'm officially extremely skeptical about the USSS advising the Obama family as claimed. It doesn't pass the smell test - how would the USSS actually assess the motivation of threats? Did people making threats cite (incorrect) reports of shouted statements at Palin rallies? Excuse me? Just doesn't add up.
To make things far, far more bitter - in the '04 campaign, I have heard from a friend who shared sat at a luncheon next to a high-ranking USSS offical in October of that year, the presidential protection operation faced the most severe threat environment it has ever faced. Spending and personnel were surged to deal with it.
That's right - the national hysteria of BDS, whipped up by a despicable irresponsible opposition, and a contemptible media, and a demented popular culture, resulted in a hot environment for GWB during his last campaign. If you were in the US that year, this DOES pass the smell test.
I don't doubt that Obama will bring out a particular element of insane idiots (as opposed to other elements, who other president would bring out), and I hope/trust the USSS will squash them like bugs. Obama's security, like that of his predecessors, remains a vital national interest.
But it would be nice if a former USSS official would blow the whistle on this B.S., and let people know how their casual adoption of BDS helped result in a real threat to our president four years ago.
#20
The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign,
Consider the source - Newsweek - the propaganda arm of the Socialist Democratic Party. Must be feeling the pressure of competition from MSNBC for Leftist of the Year award so had to come up with something!
WASHINGTON Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is demanding payback from President-elect Barack Obama for silencing WND staff writer and bestselling author Jerome Corsi, who investigated Obama's links to the authoritarian African official.
Odinga told Kenya's newspaper, The Nation, that he expected Obama's election to provide a windfall of U.S. trade, tourism and investment.
"What we want to see is the expansion of relationships in terms of trade and direct investments," said Odinga. "We want to see more of our products finding markets in the U.S. and expect more direct investments by the Americans in the country."
Odinga made it clear he played a small role in helping Obama win the White House specifically by detaining Corsi and preventing him from holding a press conference in Kenya to disclose the findings of his investigation.
BAGHDAD (AP) - A female suicide bomber blew herself up at a hospital west of Baghdad on Sunday, killing three people and injuring five others, police and hospital officials said.
The officials said two women and a 10-year-old girl were killed in the attack in Amiriyat al-Fallujah near the city of Fallujah, 40 miles west of the capital.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to the media.
The attack follows a suicide bombing on Saturday that killed eight people and wounded 17 at a police checkpoint near Ramadi. Both Fallujah and Ramadi are located in Iraq's Anbar province.
The violence comes two months after the U.S. handed control of the province over to the Iraqis and shows that militants have not given up the fight despite setbacks at the hands of U.S. and Iraqi forces.
Anbar, a predominantly Sunni Arab expanse stretching from the western edge of the capital to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, was long center stage of the war and a springboard for attacks inside Baghdad.
Two Spanish soldiers were killed and another critically wounded by a suicide bomber in Herat, western Afghanistan, the Spanish Defence Ministry said Sunday. "Two Spanish soldiers were killed and another was critically wounded in an attack south of Herat," a ministry spokesman said. Defence Minister Carme Chacon would to speak to the media about the incident at noon Sunday, he added.
Earlier Sunday Afghan police said one foreign soldier had been killed and five wounded when a suicide attacker rammed an explosives-filled minivan into a NATO-led convoy.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed the attack but was unable to give details or nationalities. Police said the troops involved were Italians. Italy has 2,350 soldiers in ISAF, most of them based in Herat.
Three Islamic terrorists militants executed for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people were buried Sunday before hundreds of emotional supporters. Some hard-liners shouted "God is great!" and called the men holy warriors. Fearing attacks in retaliation for the executions, Indonesia increased security at tourist resorts, shopping malls and office buildings. Several embassies, including from the U.S. and Australia, urged their citizens to keep a low profile, saying they could be targeted.
Imam Samudra, 38, and brothers Amrozi Nurhasyim, 47, and Ali Ghufron, 48, were taken before firing squads in a field near their high-security prison on Nusakambangan island just after midnight, Jasman Panjaitan, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, told reporters. The men died instantly, he said, adding that their eyes were left uncovered at their request.
The three men never expressed remorse, saying the blasts were meant to punish the U.S. and its Western allies for alleged atrocities in Afghanistan and elsewhere. They even taunted family members of victims 88 of whom were Australian at their trials five years ago.
The executions, which were sensitive for both political and security reasons, ended years of uncertainty about their fate. Repeated postponements have frustrated survivors and relatives of victims, and enabled the bombers to rally supporters from behind bars by calling for revenge attacks in interviews aired on local television stations or published in newspapers and books.
The bombers' bodies were taken by helicopters to Tenggulun and Serang, their hometowns in east and west Java respectively, where thousands of sympathizers and onlookers turned out Sunday for their funeral processions. Dozens of radicals scuffled briefly with police in Tenggulun, home of the two brothers, Nurhasyim and Ghufron, but there were no serious disturbances.
Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, led the prayers for the brothers, one of their final requests. Former terrorists militants and police allege Bashir headed Jemaah Islamiyah in the early 2000s. But while he was found guilty of giving his blessing to the Bali attacks, his conviction was overturned after he spent more than three years in jail. Bashir said Saturday the bombers had "sacrificed their lives" for "the struggle of Islam."
Though the three Bali bombers said they were happy to die as martyrs, their lawyers fought for years to stop their executions, arguing they were convicted retroactively on anti-terrorism laws. They also opposed death by firing squad, saying their clients preferred beheadings because they were more "humane."
#1
Torrent of rage as Indonesia on high alert As hundreds of extremists gathered in the bombers' home villages in East and West Java for the funerals yesterday, there were two hoax bomb threats against the Australian Embassy and Indonesia's anti-corruption watchdog, the KPK. The threats were an indication of the widespread resentment towards foreigners, and Australians in particular, after the executions.
...
By first light, mobs of supporters had descended on the men's home towns for their funerals, chanting jihadist slogans, clashing with police and threatening foreign journalists. An exception was made for the Qatari-based news service al-Jazeera.
...
Supporters of Samudra handed out copies of a letter he wrote before his death "urging all grandchildren to kill all kafirs (non-believers)".
Their deaths drew renewed sympathy from both sides of Australian politics for victims' families, and a commitment to seek an end to capital punishment.
I question which society has the true suicide cult.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 9:19
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#2
There's a sad sort of clanging
From the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple, too
And up in the nursery
An absurd little bird
Is popping out to say coo-coo (Coo-coo, coo-coo)
(Imam, Arozi, Ali) (coo-coo Regretfully they tell us coo-coo
But firmly they compel us
to say goodnight coo-coo
(Umah)
To you
(Umah)
So long, farewell
Auf Wiedersehen, goodnight
(Imam)
I hate to go and leave this pretty sight
(Imam, Arozi, Ali)
So long, farewell
Auf Wiedersehen, adieu
(Amrozi)
Adieu, adieu
To you and you and you
(Imam, Arozi, Ali)
So long, farewell
Au revoir, Auf Weidersehen
(Ali)
I'd like to stay
And taste my first champagne
(talking to the captain) yes?
(Captain Hook) no!
(Imam, Arozi, Ali)
So long, farewell
Auf Weidersehen, goodbye
(Lerch)
I leave and heave
A sigh and say goodbye
Goodbye
(Teeereeesay)
I'm glad to go
I cannot tell a lie
(Ant Esther)
I flit, I float
I fleetly flee, I fly
(Ali)
The sun has gone
To bed and so must I
(Imam, Arozi, Ali)So long, farewell
Auf Weidersehen, goodbye
#1
The note pinned to Theo van Gogh's body was addressed to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He was murdered exactly 911 days after 9/11. When Ali speaks about Islam or anything else, I listen carefully.
#4
To drive home Mr. Hirsi Ali's point, credible sources have told me that the national security briefing given to President-elect Obama the other day, "freaked the sh*t out of him."
Obama and his supporters fail to grasp the cold realities of the world. Evil exists and no amount of diplomacy, negotiation, or reasoning is going to stop it. Evil is not interested in any of those things unless it can manipulate them to its advantage.
I suspect Mr. Obama got a healthy dose of reality in that security briefing. I imagine it made clear the evil that this counry is up against. I also suspect it made Bush's national security and foreign policy appear far more sensible, pragmatic, and necessary than his detractors would have us believe.
#6
Obama should have gotten a brief security briefing before he signed on as a candidate. That would have woken him up and he would have had the sense to stay in the Senate, all warm and fuzzy like.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/09/2008 14:45
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#7
We're going to miss George W. Bush, and every day we have this Obama fool in office is going to make us miss him more.
I am truly sick at the thought that Americans elected this worthless affirmative action POS to the job. That said, there are a LOT of stupid people out there who were screaming "racism" for lots of years. Well, let's see what they say when their boy starts screwing up. I've been predicting for some time that Bama is going to be America's most hated President before two years is out. So far nothing I've seen makes me think I was anything less than dead on in that prediction.
#10
Obama will never become the most hated President.
The In-tank media have already ascribed that honour to GWB, while they will continue to overlook or spin everything BHO does. Deviations from either of those story lines would only reduce the already diminished credibility they now enjoy and will not be tolerated (hence the revival of The Fairness Doctrine).
#11
WASHINGTON President-elect Obama plans to use his executive powers to make an immediate impact when he takes office, perhaps reversing Bush administration policies on stem cell research and domestic drilling for oil and natural gas.
Some interesting EO's at his disposal:
Martial law is defined as: military rule or authority imposed on a civilian population when the civil authorities cannot maintain law and order, as in a time of war or during an emergency.
Hitler turned Germany into a Nazi dictatorship through executive orders.
Executive Order 10995: All communications media are to be seized by the Federal Government. Radio, TV, newspapers, CB, Ham, telephones, and the internet will be under federal control. Hence, the First Amendment will be suspended indefinitely.
Executive Order 10997: All electrical power, fuels, and all minerals well be seized by the federal government.
Executive Order 10998: All food resources, farms and farm equipment will be seized by the government. You will not be allowed to hoard food since this is regulated.
Executive Order 10999: All modes of transportation will go into government control. Any vehicle can be seized.
Executive Order 11000: All civilians can be used for work under federal supervision.
Executive Order 11490: Establishes presidential control over all US citizens, businesses, and churches in time of "emergency."
Executive Order 12919: Directs various Cabinet officials to be constantly ready to take over virtually all aspects of the US economy during a State of National Emergency at the direction of the president.
Executive Order 13010: Directs FEMA to take control over all government agencies in time of emergency. FEMA is under control of executive branch of the government.
Executive Order 12656: "ASSIGNMENT OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS RESPONSIBILITIES", "A national emergency is any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States. Policy for national security emergency preparedness shall be established by the President." This order includes federal takeover of all local law enforcement agencies, wage and price controls, prohibits you from moving assets in or out of the United States, creates a draft, controls all travel in and out of the United States, and much more.
Martial law can be declared due to natural disasters, Y2k Crisis, Stock Market crash, no electricity, riots, biological attack, .... anything leading to the breakdown of law and order.
Violence in Thailand's predominantly Muslim south could increase in the coming weeks as jihadis separatists there step up their campaign for an independent homeland. In the past few days violence has spiked in the three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala. Two young suspected terrorists insurgents were killed in a gun battle with soldiers on Friday while at least five other people have died and more than 80 were injured in two major incidents last week.
The increase in violence comes amid Thailand's worst political crisis in decades. While the government of Somchai Wongsawat is preoccupied with preventing the country's economic woes worsening as a result of the international financial crisis, anti-government protesters have besieged the capital, forcing the government to move its centre of operations to the old airport on the outskirts of the city. "The political mayhem in Bangkok has hijacked the policy towards the south, allowing the army to conduct increased suppression activities without any real scrutiny," said Sunai Pasuk, a Thai human rights expert with the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The violence is only likely to rise further, as increased repression will only encourage more young Muslim men to join the jihad separatist movement and fight back." Because, as we all know, nothing decreases terrorism like "scrutiny" designed to tie the hands of the government in its struggle to survive.
This week three massive explosions rocked the southernmost province of Narathiwat killing one person and injuring more than seventy. The biggest explosion was outside an annual meeting of local village chiefs and the bomb used was twice as large as anything the terrorists insurgents have used before. "November is always the month that violent jihadi separatist attacks peak, after a lull during Ramadan," said Srisompob Jitpiromya, director of Deep South Watch, a research centre at the Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani.
"These latest attacks are a wake-up call to the authorities -- the message: 'We are still here and capable of doing damage'," said Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok who specialises in stating the obvious military affairs. "These bombs are significant because of the size and target [hundreds of government officials] -- it's a clear warning to everyone and was certainly meant to sow increased tension and fear within the communities in the south," Prof Panitan said.
Since Jan 2004, when jihadi terrorism separatist violence erupted in these three southern provinces, more than 3,000 people have died and more than 5,000 have been injured. More than 7,000 children in the area have been orphaned by the conflict according to community workers in the area -- higher than the number of tsunami orphans. There are concerns that the violence will spread possibly to key tourist resorts in southern Thailand, including Phuket and even to Bangkok. Tentative plans for a bombing campaign have been found on obvious terrorists suspected insurgents detained by the authorities, according to military sources.
But Mr Pasuk from Human Rights Watch said no evidence has been found to suggest the terrorists insurgents are planning attacks outside the three southern provinces or that they are being assisted by foreign Muslims bodies. "For all we know, they may be planning on lying down with the lambs as we speak!"
He added that civilians were bearing the brunt of the violence. "The real tragedy of this wave insurgency is that it's mainly civilians who are suffering. More than 90 per cent of the victims are students, teachers, doctors and government officials," he said.
A climate of fear hangs over the three southern provinces and a crackdown by security forces in the area has created the conditions for the jihad insurgency to thrive, according to fellow travelers development workers based there. "The authorities accuse all young Muslim men of being insurgents or sympathisers, harass and intimidate them," said Soraya Jamjuree, a leading community organizer member of Friends of Victimised Families, a Pattani-based non-governmental front organisation that works with communities affected by the violence in the south. "As a result the youth leave the villages, angry and dispirited -- it increases the mistrust felt towards the authorities, and hopefully leaves many feeling there is no choice but to join the movement."
Fifteen battalions, or nearly half of the Thai army, is deployed in these three provinces. As a matter of policy they are kept from developing cordial relations with the local community, according to leftist enablers human rights workers monitoring events in the south and who accuse the army of fighting back brutal suppression. "Assassinations, abductions, disappearances, torture and intimidation are the government's only answer to the outrageous provocations legitimate grievances of the bloodthirsty terrorists local people," said Isma-ae Salae, a leader of the Young Muslim Association in Yala province.
Some northern politicians have raised concerns over the government's methods in the south. "It's little wonder they hate us," said Kraisak Murtha Choonahavan, an MP and deputy leader of the Democrats, the main opposition party in parliament, who regularly visits the southern provinces and has conducted his own propaganda campaigns investigations there. "The conditions of those detained are inhuman -- I recently visited a prison where 300 people were cramped into one cell with only one toilet available. These conditions are intolerable," he said.
But the jihad insurgency in the south seems intractable for the time being. Efforts this year to negotiate a ceasefire between the government and representatives of the terrorists insurgents in Indonesia got nowhere as expected. "The military is not interested in dialogue or negotiations," Mr Kraisak said. "They now have an enormous budget -- 30 billion baht -- which has increased six-fold since the violence started four years ago, and we parliamentarians cannot scrutinise any of the budgets." With the Thai government distracted by the political chaos in the capital and the country's economic crisis, the army's operations in the south are not likely to be hindered by civilian concerns. The real fear is that this violence will escalate if the authorities do not move to adopt a more feeble conciliatory approach to the problems in the south. "We must grovel negotiate -- there is no other way out," Mr Kraisak said.
A bomb blast wounded nine paramilitary rangers in the violence-plagued province of Narathiwat. The remote controlled bomb, weighing five kilogrammes, was detonated when paramilitary rangers were patrolling a roadside area on Petchkasem Road in Bacho district by foot. Nine men in the government patrol were wounded, three severely. A combined force of about 70 police and military are pursuing the attackers who are thought to be hiding out in nearby areas.
This appears to be quite serious....
Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation's 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20.
"Yes We Can" planning rallies will be at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every Tuesday at the downtown McDonald's restaurant, 1100 Kansas Ave., until Jan. 13. The goals are to secure a national holiday in Obama's honor, to organize celebrations around his inauguration and to celebrate the 200th birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12 1809.
At 7:30 a.m. on Inauguration Day, Obama Cake will be served at the downtown McDonald's, to be washed down with Obama kool-aid....or else
....and a celebration is scheduled for 8 p.m. to midnight Jan. 20 at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, 420 S.E. 6th. Bob Hope was right, the 'rats really are like friggin' zombies.
#2
Obama Cake: looks like whatever you want it to look like but tastes like a dirt sammich.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 6:42
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#3
Frank, Let's call em...."Bailout Biscuits." Put em in a little green can with black letters, use a P38 to open it. Gotta be dry, very, very dry, no sugar, tasteless.... and crumbly. Very thin, 4-5 per can. Gotta make you want to drink lots and lots of water. Make em so good you can only stand to eat one or two before spreading the wealth passing them around.
NEW DELHI - India is among the few dozen countries, largely clustered in Asia and Africa, where sentiment in favour of the United States actually rose during the administration of George W. Bush. Nonetheless, more Indians favoured the election of Barack Obama than they did John McCain. What explains this seeming contradiction?
At the heart of the Bush administration's success with India was a belief that India was a nation whose rise was beneficial to US interests. This led Bush to seek to adjust the international order to India's benefit, most notably by negotiating an exemption from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty for India. The net result was a closer Indo-US relationship and a positive view of Bush that overrode unpopular actions such as invading Iraq.
Obama's election - the success of a member of a non-white minority in the world's oldest democratic polity - has seized the imagination of many Indians. He is exhorted in the media and among the intellectual classes. Among the most fervent supporters of Obama in the US have been the nearly three million-strong Indian-American community. "You can't swing a dead cat in the Obama camp without hitting an Indian-American," said an Obama advisor.
In the run-up to the election, many Indians could not believe that an African-American would ever be chosen to reside in the White House. His election inevitably enhanced the standing of the US as a land of genuine opportunity, a nation whose multicultural credentials were as great if not better than polyglot and poly-ethnic India.
The greatest scepticism about an Obama presidency lies among Indian strategic elite, who are focused on promoting India's economic and political interests in the wider world. They found an ally in that cause in Bush. Whatever Obama's ethnic credentials, India's government has detected in his statements reason to believe that he will be less supportive than Bush.
First, India is wary that any Democratic administration will include the same proponents of nuclear nonproliferation who opposed Bush's exemption for India. Obama has publicly said he intends to push for a comprehensive test ban treaty, a treaty that India opposes because it feels its own nuclear deterrent remains incomplete.
Second, Obama has attacked the outsourcing of service jobs to places like India and the offshoring of manufacturing jobs to Asia as a whole. His advisors also indicate that they will seek to incorporate social provisions, like labor standards, into future international trade negotiations. Though candidates tend to rollback from protectionist stances once they come to power, the Democrats' control of both houses of Congress may not give Obama that leeway.
Third, a Democratic administration has said it will put climate change at the forefront of its global policy concerns. If the focus is about mitigating carbon production through technological means, there will be few concerns. However, if the policy slips into more coercive measures such as carbon tariffs and the like, the result is likely to convert climate change into an energy security struggle. It will also pit the big carbon emitters of the future, like India and China, against present polluters like the US and Europe.
Finally, conversations with a few Obama advisors and his own speeches indicate that Washington's number one security concern in the coming years will be Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Iraq is yesterday's problem," said one advisor to an Indian audience several weeks ago.
At the heart of that problem, say Obama advisors, is the growing neurosis of the Pakistani regime. Pakistan suffers from internal strife and is prone to seeing conspiracies against it that include virtually all of its neighbors and often the US. Easing those fears is big concern in the US these days. One element in such a policy of reassurance, repeatedly said by Obama and most recently in a television interview, is to "try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they [Pakistan] can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants."
This is a sensible goal, and one India's leaders will acknowledge as in their country's interest. But any Kashmir peace process that is seen to be a consequence of US pressure is politically dead on arrival in India. Kashmir is a diplomatic minefield. One misstep by the new Obama administration could result in a deep freeze of the Indo-US relationship for years.
Ultimately, the indicators are that the new Obama administration will seek to restore an international status quo that preceded the Bush presidency. This includes restoring ties with Europe, tightening the nuclear nonproliferation regime and possibly a restoration of China as the centerpiece of US policy in Asia. If so, the question for India will be whether this is accomplished by reducing the international space that the country gained under Bush.
If so, there is a strong likelihood that one area in which an Obama administration will fail to gain traction is in advancing the Indo-US relationship in areas outside the strictly economic.
(Pramit Pal Chaudhuri is the senior editor of the Hindustan Times and a member of the Asia Society International Council)
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
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#2
It will also pit the big carbon emitters of the future, like India and China, against present polluters like the US and Europe.
Future polluters? China now exceeds the US and Europe as the world's leading polluter. Check out, on satellite photos, the brown clouds over china and over india as proof.
Finally, conversations with a few Obama advisors and his own speeches indicate that Washington's number one security concern in the coming years will be Afghanistan and Pakistan. "Iraq is yesterday's problem," said one advisor to an Indian audience several weeks ago.
At the heart of that problem, say Obama advisors, is the growing neurosis of the Pakistani regime. Pakistan suffers from internal strife and is prone to seeing conspiracies against it that include virtually all of its neighbors and often the US. Easing those fears is big concern in the US these days. One element in such a policy of reassurance, repeatedly said by Obama and most recently in a television interview, is to "try to resolve the Kashmir crisis so that they [Pakistan] can stay focused not on India, but on the situation with those militants."
This is a sensible goal, and one India's leaders will acknowledge as in their country's interest. But any Kashmir peace process that is seen to be a consequence of US pressure is politically dead on arrival in India. Kashmir is a diplomatic minefield. One misstep by the new Obama administration could result in a deep freeze of the Indo-US relationship for years.
There are things in the Obama Administration that we can hope for, and things that we have to count on. F*cking up the Indo-US relationship is the latter, not the former.
Israeli soldiers exchanged fire with Hamas forces on Saturday in the Gaza Strip, Hamas sources and Palestinian medical workers said, in the second violent incident this week to rupture the calm of a truce since June.
Hamas sources and medical workers said Palestinian ambulances rushed to the area near the town of Khan Younis where Israeli troops had entered, drawing fire from Hamas forces deployed in the area and responding with gunfire.
An Israeli military spokeswoman denied there was any shooting, saying troops detonated two explosive devices on the Gaza side of a border fence then returned to Israel with no reported casualties.
Israel killed six Hamas members in air raids and a ground strike on Tuesday that was the first lethal Israeli-Palestinian confrontation in the coastal territory since an Egyptian-brokered truce took effect in June.
Rockets were fired rockets at southern Israel on Friday, causing no damage or casualties, the Israeli army said. The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for these shootings.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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(APP): Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sherry Rehman has condemned the US missile attack in North Waziristan that killed 10 people on Friday. "The series of unilateral actions against targets on Pakistan's soil is a self‑defeating strategy. The US Administration's reluctance to consider the repercussions of such operations is damaging the whole purpose of global efforts to combat terrorism," said the Federal Information Minister commenting on the reports of the fresh US attacks on the FATA region, according to a press release issued here.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
Shut up, Sherry
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 6:21
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(APP): Fifteen militants were killed in exchange of fire with Security Forces and many others injured in various parts of Swat, said a press release issued here on Saturday by Media Information Center Swat. Security Forces were fired upon by the miscreants in Shangwatai areas of Tehsil Matta and during exchange of fire 10 miscreants were killed who were disguised in FC uniforms. Three soldiers also embraced shahadat.
In another incident in Wanai area of Matta, three miscreants were killed during exchange of fire with Security Forces deployed there for the security of people while a soldier was also injured. Security Forces engaged the suspected hideouts of militants in Shamozai area of Matta.
Security Forces have cordoned Kabal village early this morning and militants were ordered to surrender but to no avail.
Ample time was given to the residents of Kabal to leave the area so that collateral damage could be avoided. During exchange of fire with militants in Kabal two miscreants were killed.
Gunship helicopters also destroyed a compound of Dr. Ehsan in Kabal which was being used as planning centre by the miscreants and now it was also declared as a Kabal Bench of Miscreant's Shariah Court.
The Security Forces have appreciated the cooperation extended by the local people of Kabal in vacating their houses before the start of operation.
Authorities have assured that this operation has been under taken as a last resort. Security Forces were constantly receiving fire from this village. Militants are directly responsible of these losses. A relief camp has been established for the displaced people in Balogram by the administration.
Army Engineers have successfully completed the repair work of damaged road near Ayub Bridge due to suicidal attack and now traffic has been restored.
Efforts are also in hand with collaboration of National High Authority (NHA) to repair the damaged arched bridges near Sangota and Fiza Gat which were destroyed by the miscreants.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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New Zealand's Prime Minister-elect John Key, a wealthy, conservative former financier will start to form a new government.
Key, the 47-year-old leader of the conservative National Party, swept easily to power in this South Pacific country of 4.1 million people, ousting Prime Minister Helen Clark's Labor Party after nine years in office.
"I'm very confident we can work our way through it. I'm very confident about our policies, our positions," Key said after his victory speech to jubilant supporters in Auckland on Saturday.
The National Party won 45.5 percent of the vote, or 59 seats in the 122-seat Parliament. Key will have a majority with the support of allies the right-wing ACT Party with five seats and one more from United Future's Peter Dunne.
New Zealand's farming export-dependent economy fell into recession early this year, and Key said the worldwide downturn is the immediate problem for the country.
Key has promised a more right-leaning government than Clark's, which for almost a decade made global warming a key policy issue.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
We came to a fork in the road. They went right, we went left. GO ALL BLACKS!
Hat tip Belmont
Secret enclaves of al-Qaeda extremists based in London, Birmingham and Luton are planning mass-casualty attacks in Britain, according to a leaked Government intelligence report.
The document, which was drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and Special Branch, states that "some thousands" of extremists are active in the UK. They are predominantly UK-born and aged between 18 and 30, and many are believed to have been trained in overseas terrorist camps.
Under the heading "International Terrorism", the report, which is marked "restricted" states: "For the foreseeable future the UK will continue to be a high-priority target for international terrorists aligned with al-Qaeda. It will face a threat from British nationals, including Muslim converts, and UK-based foreign terrorists, as well as terrorists planning attacks from abroad."
The report states that the threat from the Islamist extremist community in the UK is "diverse and widely distributed" but adds that the numbers of terrorist in Britain is "difficult to judge".
The document does state, however, that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which is based in MI5's headquarters at Thames House in London, estimates that there are "some thousands of extremists in the UK committed to supporting Jihadi activities, either in the UK or abroad".
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Since 2001, over 1,200 terrorist suspect have been arrested, over 140 have been charged and more than 45 have been convicted of terrorism offences, according to Home Office figures. That's 3.75% success
It is also estimated that there are some 200 terrorist networks functioning in Britain today who are involved in at least 30 plots.
But this latest security assessment appears to suggest that the number of individuals who now pose a threat to the UK is even higher.
The report continues: "The majority of extremists are British nationals of south Asian, mainly Pakistani origin but there are also extremists from north and east Africa, Iraq and the Middle East, and a number of converts. The overwhelming majority of extremists are male, typically in the 18-30 age range.
"The main extremist concentrations are in London, Birmingham, with significant extremist networks in the South East, notably Luton. Extremist networks are principally engaged in spreading their extremist message, training, fund raising and procuring non-lethal military equipment to support the Jihads in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, and sending recruits to the conflicts.
"UK-based extremists, either under the direction of al-Qaeda, or inspired by al-Qaeda's ideology of global Jihad, have also engaged in attack planning in the UK."
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#1
At least they are not totally in the PC Tank and can clearly identify the group posing the greatest threat while TSA (Thousands Standing Around) shakes down granny in the wheel chair.
The Algerian lawyer Mr. Benyamina said a huge number of real estate properties are still legally owned by French colons who left them after the Independence of Algeria in 1962, adding that several cases concerning these disputes have been submitted to Algerian courts.
In this regard, Mr. Benyamina has pointed out that he has been contacted by French colons to be in charge of their cases, with the aim of recovering their properties, but refused, because of the political character of such cases. He further said that cases alike require an accurate opinion from Algerian Judges and Jurists.
A communiqué released by the Ministry of Justice, posted on internet, said the institutions defending the interests of the former French colons in Algeria, submitted more than 600 records, and lodged several complaints to the United Nations Committee of Human Rights (UNCHR), with the aim of obliging Algeria either giving them back their properties they left after the independence of Algeria, or compensate them.
In this context, the Ministry of Justice has received the final sentence issued by the UNCHR, last January, confirming the refusal of such claims. The UNCHR said these properties have been nationalized by the Algerian Government before the access of Algeria to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
Properties in Viet Nam(formerly Republic of) too? Truman, demtard POS. Next we'll see the descendants of stalin want whatever back.
#2
Ok, I'll leave JFM comment on this. My view on the subject from a somewhat young guy who was taught in school and by the whole chattering class that the french colonization of algeria was a crime against humanity, and who made his mind slowly about that...
French or french citizens (lotsa naturalized spaniards & italaians) BUILT algeria. algeria DIDN'T exist as a country, before it was invaded (mostly) BECAUSE of the constant piracy from algiers, up to and including slavves-snatching raids up to the coast of the UK... Not only was the country CREATED by France, but all of its ressources and even its population growth were created ex-nihilo by France... agriculture was so primitive (remember, back in the antiquity, before the arab invasion, north africa was an advanced and rich area), infrastructures were so limited, hygiena was so bad, that the french humanists actually were very concerned that the local population was going to be extinct (incredible infant mortality, way higher than in european middle-ages),...
After the counter-insurgency war was won, de gaulle sold the french algerians down the river, and when the FLN immediatly went against the "peace" accord and started giving them the choice between being chased out with only their clothes on, or being slaughtered, the french army was ordered to SHOOT unarmed crowds of pieds noirs (french algerians), BOMB their neighbourhoods, and DISARM the harkis (muslim algerians fighting for France, who outnumbered the "independentists" something like 10:1). So, pieds noirs had to flee a country where they had lived for 130 years, and were badly welcomed in France, with an indifferent/hostile population (commies again), zero aid from the State, while the harkis were slaughtered in unfashionably cruel ways (just like the war led by the FLN was marred by acts of obscene cruelty you wouldn't think are possible if you saw them in one of those "saw" flicks, roasting babies like chicken, or slitting the throats of entire villages, mutilating prisoners by poking their eyes out or removing the flesh from their forearms to the bones... the FLN killed way more muslim than french, by the way, as it used mass terror to gain control of the population)... estimates range from 30 000 to 100 000 killed in just a few weeks.
Harkis fleeing to France were welcomed by the gaullist power, which put them in ACTUAL concentration camps, where they remained until the early 80's.
De gaulle had his Grand Plan about France become a thrid way between the USa and the USSR, much to the delight of the USSR, overjoyed by such an useful idiot to divide the western camp. The sahara oil and natural gas were GIVEN to algeria (which had never had any kind of historical claim on the region), and up to this day, France buys algeria natural gas ABOVE market price, as a kind of subsidiy.
Of course, algeria went straight into moscow camp, and even now, the attitude of algiers regarding France was and is very hostile, France is a scapegoat for the regime's totalitarian an inept nature, and everything is done to teach hatred for the former colonizing power to the algerian population, with great success it seems. As a note, according to a speech by an algerian minister, there are 4 MILLIONS algerians living in France in 2008, and believe me, algiers didn't renounce to its networks, overt or not, and "french" algerians do not feel french at all, but algerian (just recently, there was a scandal by the usual anti-racist suspect, because a french para NCO wiped his boot with an algerian flag... which had been found in possession of a "french" paratrooper... the "french" paras who saw him do that denounced him to the mimitary brass, who quickly apologized and went into full-multiculti mode with the colonel apologizing via a press communique and all)...
what can I say more? French cemetaries in algeria not only are not cared for like the independence treaty specified, but are even degraded and desacrated; during the flight of french algerians, many were kidnapped by the FLN, never to be seen again, thousands upon thousands, and it is now known for a fact that many men were sent to forced labor in mines, and that women and girls were sent to brothels - the gaullist power was of course fully aware of that, and never raised a complaint (algerian military guys boasted of the sex-slaves to their french counterparts during cooperation).
Also, algeria is NOT on the West's side in the WOT. It is not a secular dictatorship, it has been, increasingly, and even now, pushing the islamization and arabization of the country, and the dirty war of the 90's was marked by a very high level of "murkiness", there are lotsa indication to believe part at least of the islamists were infiltrated and manipulated by the military just as the french did during the independence war, and a large part of the late 90's violence was actually intercecine warfare between the islamists, with whole villages controlled by other factions being wiped out to the pets. Also, just to give an example, it is now known that the tiberine monks were kidnapped on behalf of the military (the only uncertain issue is if they were beheaded on purpose, or were killed accidentally, and beheaded post mortem).
#4
Yup, it was not a colony, but a french department; french civil rights were proposed to the native jews (non-citizens under the muslim turkish rule), who accepted it, and to the muslim, who refused it (I'm a bit fuzzy on that, but that's the basics). algeria was indeed considered part of the french mainland. But, again, wait for JFM for more precise infos, I'm just a law school drop-out with too much time on his hands, he's the history guy.
#9
Particularly shameful was the treatment of harkis (that a Gaullisty minister had teh front to call "collabos". Not only they were denied passage to France (despite that FLN had given aple proofs of its cruelty and sadim), since they were more than enough to defeat the FLN it was teh French Army who disarmed them. Then they were abandonned to meet horrible deaths: those who were "only" impaled were fortunate. Those harkis, who thanks to help from French officders disobeying orders came into France wee parked into concentration camps. In teh first winter they lived under tents. A woamn giving birth was brought to hospital and in the same day, she and the baby were brought back to the tent camp. Temperature -10 C.
De Gaulle could not forgive the North Africans (both Pied Noirs and harkis) from inferior races to have done the dying at Cassino and at the Bulge (it was a North African unit who stopped the German push towards Strasbourg) and taken the glory from the real French. Just as he could not forgive British and Americans.
Anonymous 5089 report about De Gaulle and Algeria is very good.
I will add however that during WWII De Gaulle ever showed a very conciliatory attitude towards teh Communists. Despite Russia's backstabbing of Poland in 1939 (given how late the campain was started it was not impossible that without it Poalns could have resisted until the autumn rains who, in a country with so few roads as Poland wpould have paralysed the German Army and led to a protracted and bloody campaign with teh German no longer able to attack France in 1940)
it is atonishing or more excatly "atonishing" that he sent an air unit (escadrille Normandie-Niemen) to fight alongside the Russians. Also he made great efforts to introduce the Communists in the coordinating instances of the Resistance (Jean Moulin's mission) despite the opposition of most resistants who remembered their treason in 1940. In 1944 he gave them positions who allowed them to mold French intellectual life for decades (book publishers, juries of litterary prizes). I suspect something fishy was agreed with Stalin when De Gaulle visited Soviet Union during the war: "Anglo-Saxons will not let France fall into communists hands but if they help me to get in power I will make France a neutral country and provide them with means of influence
Posted by: s ||
11/09/2008 11:52
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The preceeding post was mine. And I reiterate: Anon509's post is outstanding.
Iran's confrontational attitude toward the rest of the world is costing the country dearly in lost trade and investment, according to a letter signed by 60 economists published on Saturday.
The open letter, the latest addressed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and published by the semi-official Ilna news agency, denounced the "heavy price paid by the country over the negative consequences of government policy."
In particular, it spoke of the "misguided trade policy and the policy of tension with the rest of the world, which has deprived Iran of opportunities for trade and foreign investment."
It said the sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council over Iran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment had added billions of dollars in extra costs to the country's foreign trade.
The letter, signed by economists from major universities around the country, criticizes what it calls "extremist idealism," an "undue haste in acting" and the "absence of cost assessment on economic programs."
Ahmadinejad swept to power in 2005 on a populist campaign of ploughing huge amounts of cash into local infrastructure and granting low-interest business loans to create jobs.
He has come under fire over those policies, and that has resulted in several key economic figures being sacked, including the central bank head and economy minister.
Economists have lamented a focus on encouraging consumption that has seen imports surge, rather than investing in domestic industry and saving for the future.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
$60 / barrel oil may accomplish what years of diplomacy couldn't. If we're lucky, Imadinnerjacket and the Mad Mullahs may say hello to the Shah.
Regulators shut down Houston-based Franklin Bank and Security Pacific Bank in Los Angeles on Friday, bringing the number of failures of federally insured banks this year to 19.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of Franklin Bank, which had $5.1 billion in assets and $3.7 billion in deposits as of Sept. 30, and of Security Pacific Bank, with $561.1 million in assets and $450.1 million in deposits as of Oct. 17.
The co-founder and chairman of parent Franklin Bank Corp. (FBTX) (FBTX), Lewis Ranieri, is credited with inventing mortgage-backed securities two decades ago, but apparently was unable to save his own company from getting ensnared in the home-loan bust.
The bank's failure is a bitter irony because it is the mortgage securitization business of which Ranieri is known as a pioneer - the repackaging of home loans as bonds that are sold to investors - that was at the heart of the mortgage and credit crises. Last spring, the audit committee of the company's board found in an investigation certain weaknesses in accounting, disclosure and other issues relating to residential real estate loans.
Franklin Bank Corp. just Sunday said it had received proposals for transactions to strengthen Franklin Bank's capital position and was keeping regulators informed of the talks' progress.
The FDIC said all of Franklin Bank's deposits will be assumed by Prosperity Bank of El Campo, Texas. Its 46 offices will reopen as branches of Prosperity Bank with their normal business hours, including those that open on Saturday. In addition to assuming Franklin Bank's deposits, Prosperity Bank also will acquire about $850 million of the failed bank's assets.
Parent company Franklin Bank Corp. just Sunday said it had received proposals for transactions to strengthen Franklin Bank's capital position and was keeping regulators informed of the talks' progress.
Meanwhile, all of Security Pacific's deposits will be assumed by Pacific Western Bank of Los Angeles. Its four offices will reopen Monday as branches of Pacific Western, a unit of PacWest Bancorp. (PACW) (PACW) In addition, Pacific Western will purchase around $51.8 million of Security Pacific's assets.
The FDIC will retain the remaining assets of the two banks for eventual sale.
The agency said depositors of Franklin Bank and Security Pacific Bank will continue to have full access to their deposits, which will continue to be insured by the FDIC.
The FDIC estimated that the resolution of Franklin Bank will cost the federal deposit insurance fund between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion, while that of Security Pacific Bank will cost the fund $210 million.
Regular deposit accounts are now insured up to $250,000 as part of the new financial rescue law enacted in early October. The limit on individual retirement accounts held in banks remains at $250,000.
The 19 bank failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007 and are more than in the previous five years combined. It's expected that many more banks won't survive the next year of economic tumult. The pressures of tumbling home prices, rising mortgage foreclosures and tighter credit have been battering many banks, large and small, across the nation.
The failures this year include that of Seattle-based thrift Washington Mutual Inc. in late September, the biggest bank collapse in history. It had $307 billion in assets. In July another big savings and loan, IndyMac Bank based in Pasadena, Calif., failed and was seized by regulators with about $32 billion in assets.
The FDIC estimates that through 2013 there will be about $40 billion in losses to the deposit insurance fund, including an $8.9 billion loss from the failure of IndyMac Bank. The FDIC is raising insurance premiums paid by banks and thrifts to replenish its fund, which now stands at around $45.2 billion, below the minimum target level set by Congress and the lowest level since 2003.
In addition, the FDIC may guarantee nearly $2 trillion in U.S. banks' debt and deposit accounts in an effort to break the crippling logjam in bank-to-bank lending.
Well over half of the roughly 8,500 federally-insured banks and savings and loans are expected to tap the FDIC's temporary guarantees. The agency will provide as much as $1.4 trillion in insurance for more than three years for loans between banks, guaranteeing the new debt in the event the issuing bank fails or its holding company files for bankruptcy.
Of the 8,500 FDIC-insured banks, 117 were considered to be in trouble in the second quarter - the highest level in about five years and up from 90 in the first quarter. The agency doesn't disclose the banks' names.
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The three-member presidency council of Iraq approves a controversial resolution that will set aside six local council seats for minorities. "In order to fix the rights of the minority seats in the future, the presidency council decided to approve the decision voted on before by the parliament," said Naseer al-Ani, chief of staff for the council.
The Iraqi constitution has foreseen a three-member Presidency Council, consisting of the President of the Republic and the two of his vice presidents.
The decision comes after the county's Christians complained that controversial legislation passed in September by the Iraqi parliament, excludes guarantees of representation for minority groups at the local council level.
As a result of the opposition, that had also caused unrest and heavy exodus in cities like Mosul, earlier this month, parliament voted on Monday in favor of a quota to give three seats to Iraq's Christians and three to other religious minorities, the Yazidis, Sabeans and the Shabaks.
The three-member presidency council had to approve the measure for it to come into effect.
The new quota is still controversial among Christian politicians who had hoped to receive at least six local council seats for their community.
Iraq with a population of an estimated 29m has around 400,000 Christians, which is half the number of Christians living in Iraq before the US invasion of the country in 2003.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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Tension between Bangladesh and Myanmar intensified Friday as Myanmar started reinforcing border troops after talks in Myanmar over disputed waters in the Bay of Bengal failed. This should be friggin' hilarious.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
I'll be rooting for them both to lose, which is an entirely possible outcome. India decides it needs sea access for its northeast and decides to separating the beligerents with a neutral zone it controls.
#4
CHINESE MILITRAY FORUM > SHOWDOWN IN THE BAY OF BENGAL, AND ITS NOT CHINA OR THE INDIANS. Myanmar versus Bangla over NATURAL GAS EXPLORATION + EXTRACTION RIGHTS; + TOPIX > SMALL SHIPS BIG MISSLES: MYANMAR AND BANGLADESH IN MISSLE AND NAVAL STANDOFF OVER GAS RIGHTS IN GULF OF BENGAL/INDIA.
SILKWORMS and SUNBURNS.
As a reminder, TOPIX [old] > SOUTH KOREAN MEDIAS-NEWS > JAPAN CLAIMS MASSIVE CONTINENTAL SHELF.
Democratic congressmen call on the Bush administration to offer more financial assistance to US automakers in the face of a nationwide recession.
Let Bambi do it and take the heat.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote a Letter to US Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson on Saturday, urging that the government should include the auto industry in the USD 700b bailout plan.
A downward spiral in auto sales resulting from lower purchasing power among Americans - who are more concerned with paying their mortgage and feeding their families than buying new cars - has led to the cut of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US.
"A healthy automobile manufacturing sector is essential to the restoration of financial market stability, the overall health of our economy, and the livelihood of the automobile sector's work force," the letter read. "The economic downturn and the crisis in our financial markets further imperiled our domestic automobile industry and its work force," it said.
Officials from top automating companies of General Motors, Ford, Chrysler LLC as well as the president of the United Auto Workers held talks with congressional leaders on Thursday to discuss the prospect of an additional USD 50b loan.
General Motors, the biggest US automaker, said on Friday that about 3,600 workers would be laid off indefinitely beginning early next year as the automaker slows down production at 10 of its assembly plants. The second-largest American automaker, Ford also announced it would slash more than 2,000 white collar jobs.
This is while speculations of a possible General Motors-Chrysler merger, raised last week, would result in the loss of some 200,000 jobs throughout the United State.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
Drop the CAFE standards. Simple. More contrived demtard economic crisis.
#2
--- From the Detroit News 7 Nov: "General Motors Corp. and Cerberus Capital Management LP have called off talks about a possible deal to transfer Chrysler LLC's automotive operations to GM."
--- I think way more than 200,000 jobs are at stake. Add in the domestic parts makers dependent on US automakers and also the retirees drawing pensions from them.
--- In my opinion, it's too late for changes in the CAFE standards to help the automakers. One thing that might help within a short time frame is dropping extreme air quality restrictions, the ones that prevent Ford from selling its Ford Transit Van with 2.2L turbodiesel that gets 40-50 mpg in the USA. I'd buy one tomorrow if it were available. Ford does plan to sell the Transit with a 2 L gas engine that gets all of 20 mpg, no thanks, I'll pass on that one. Air quality nationwide should improve due to loss of industrial activity and decreased commuter traffic.
#3
Another thing that might help is letting the Big 3 and UAW go BK and letting non-union successors compete in the world market. It has been widely known for 20 years that there would be over capacity in the auto industry. The weakest are dying. Why should I pay for their life support?
#4
Nationalization of the auto industry is not the answer. Yes imports have taken their toll, but it's a bit late to do anything about that.
Everybody needs a car, I have 3. They either make a car that people will buy or they end up like the Polaroid camera, B&W TV and the Studebaker!
#8
The Japanese are building cars and parts in America. It's not a domestic production issue. It's a combination of the UAW killing the goose that laid the golden egg, senior management who treated the operation as 'how many (poorly engineered and built) units could they push out the assembly line door', and institutional investors who's only interest was immediate return [shades of subprime]. All can join the dinosaurs on a absolutely terrible corporate model that is truly uncompetitive.
#9
the Chrysler bailout of 79 (signed in 80) did work and the govt ended up making money (in current accounts the profit was $350M on an 'investment' of $1.8B), I'm not sure about in constant dollars) but
- it required substantial union givebacks
- it required executive pay cuts
- it required a new series of better cars (the so called k cars that had 40-75% better mpg than the 79 fleet average)
- it required Chrysler to sell their profitable defense subsidiary
#10
We are watching the destruction of not just a couple of car companies, but an entire social system in the Detroit area comprising the automobile companies and their suppliers, the unions, the excessive pay and fringes, and a large group of hide-bound managers running ossified organizations.
It's being replaced by a system of younger, leaner, non-unionized, and more nimble companies in the southern states which pay half the wage and have minimal fringes. These companies are also unfairly subsidized by the states involved - another non-level playing field, similar to foreign competition.
It doesn't appear possible to morph Detroit's social model into the new one. Creative destruction is required, with governmentally mandated 'damping' and safety nets to allow more gradual social adjustment without excessive overshoot and upheaval.
I don't see a government with socialist tendencies being able to manage the transition successfully. Central planning which doesn't involve competitive forces just doesn't work, particularly when the planners (like Congress) are amateurs.
#11
A thought from Neil Cavuto on Fridays show...make the bailout contingent on the executives resigning their positions with NO golden parachutes for cushions 'cause they obviously did not manage the companies well in the past. Implemnt this and see how many executives still want the bailout.
#12
CAFE standards have nothing to do with their current problems. They make over-priced crap cars with little to no innovation. The SUV/large truck market implosion has been happening in slow motion for the past 2 years. They should have seen the writing on the wall and started making changes then to be ready now. Of course the unions are killing them from the inside as well. Best to let them die now and hope something better arises from the ashes.
#13
We might also point out that the benefits of conglomeration continue to work just as well today as they did for Freddy Ling. If there were multiple car companies, say Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac and Saturn, and one of them went titzup the others wouldn't be effected. Instead all of the automotive eggs are in one basket, none of them have to compete against the others, and management is not only ossified but in many cases hereditary.
Chrysler going under doesn't really effect Chevy and Ford. None of the "big three" going under is going to effect Toyota or Nissan or KIA, anymore than Daewoo going under effected the rest.
The same applies to the insurance companies, who've been spending way too much time acquiring each other, and to the banks, who've been doing even more of it. It applies to tech companies, to the tire companies -- remember when Kelly tires were domestically produced? -- and to airlines. Single point of failure, as any engineer will attest, will result in catastrophic failure if it goes, and it's always just a matter of time until it goes.
There were good reasons Teddy Roosevelt fought the monopolies, and what we're seeing is lots of them right here.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008 12:57
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The Detroit Lions are 0-8 (prolly 0-9 as of this post). They employed that perennial loser Matt Millen for yrs w/out result (actually the result was the worst NFL record over the past 15 yrs). The Lions are owned by the Ford family, is there any wonder that their NFL franchise is a mirror image of their auto company?
#16
CAFE standards, what there is, helped to soften Detroit's downturn. It's the big $40-50K SUV sales that are off 60% while Detroit is adding $15-20K small fuel efficient car plants. If CAFE were 5mph higher, the US auto industry would be in better shape.
This downturn is different that previous. The US auto market is saturated w/ most 2 adult families having 2-4 cars parked at their house. They can go a long time before they have to replace a vehicle.
One bailout condition (while it was "only" $25B) was that new plants must produce vehicles that get 25% better mileage than the ones they are replacing in their class. That's nice, but I think that gives Detroit incentive to produce the same over sized vehicles with smaller engines.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 18:13
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The large SUV/Pickups were a golden goose for the GM and Ford. As long as the F150 and Silverado were the best selling vehicles in America, you cannot blame their manufacturers from trying to protect that market.
Toyota and Nissan have tried to get into that game but the additional capital investment for engines, transmissions, axles, required to build the big trucks has always held them back. Outside of America, Canada, and Mexico, this type of product is non-existent.
Last year GM and Ford sold close to 3 million of the full size truck and its variants. It was not their fault that gas prices went through the roof, making big vehicles expensive to run. It was not their fault that the housing crisis killed the small contractor business, who buy millions of trucks annually. It was not their fault that the credit crunch has killed sales altogether, even though the "buy now, no money down' has corrupted the entire consumer business.
And it was not their fault that consumers bought those large vehicles in droves but now complain they cannot get a multi-purpose vehicle that gets 40 miles to the gallon. GM did not create the Laws of Physics.
Even the NHTSA admits that raising the CAFE limits and pushing smaller vehicles on the driving public will result in higher accident fatality levels.
Disclaimer: As a retired GM engineer who spent close to 40 years building large trucks in a plant that is scheduled to close within a few months, I do have a personal interest in the future success of GM. For over 30 years, we could not keep up with the demand for trucks, working 3 shifts and Saturdays to move the product. Suddenly within 3 months the plant closes. How does anybody can anticipate change of that magnitude.
#18
I quit buying Detroit's cars four years ago because I was tired of quality problems and high maintenance costs. The minivan that needed a new transmission every 20 to 30 thousand miles was the final straw, even though I didn't have to pay for the first two replacements. Detroit never quite got the engineering thing right, never quite got the quality thing right, and never quite the customer service thing right. But the UAW members still collected high wages and benefits and the executives still got big compensation packages. I've been hearing them sing the blues for decades. It was never them: it was the imports, it was CAFE standards... hell, it was even seat belts and airbags. I don't want to hear it anymore. Some or all of the biggies need to fold and the survivors need to slash salaries and benefits all the way to the top. After four years with a made-in-USA Japanese company product, I don't foresee ever buying from Detroit again.
#19
I put a dollar into a vending machine last week and it didn't give me a soda. I think Congress should give me a bailout too. Just a few million bucks would be about right.
#20
I've noted my beloved F150 truck. I'm happy, the quality's great, at 70K miles. Trouble is, I bought it in Dec 2003 (my Xmas gift to me) - paid off soon, running great, and no reason to replace.
the bitching and moaning about domestic quality is news to me.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 20:44
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#21
was not their fault that gas prices went through the roof, making big vehicles expensive to run. It was not their fault that the housing crisis killed the small contractor business, who buy millions of trucks annually. It was not their fault that the credit crunch has killed sales altogether, even though the "buy now, no money down' has corrupted the entire consumer business.
It's no ones fault. Bad things happen to fat slow people. Now, pork-chops or grease-burger? It's all on me, have all you want, it's free.
#23
Frank G, yeah, they got the trucks right. Problem is....not everyone wants or needs a truck or something built on a truck platform. They were fat, dumb and happy on the profit margin and saw no reason to make decent but less profitable cars. And here we are.
It's not that Americans can't build a good car. Our Subaru Legacy (built in Indiana) is terrific and we couldn't be happier. You can run all the catchy ads you want, I am not going to pay hard earned cash for a bucket of bolts that will barely keep running after my last payment.
If, and that's a big if, Detroit ever got their crap together and built a decent family truckster, the customers will come back. Problem is, they have known that Americans don't believe their product is worth it and have refused to get serious for decades. Tossing cash at them ain't gonna get rid of the rot under the hood.
Eight Russian nationals have been captured by the Somali pirates while sailing under the Bahamian ensign off the troubled Horn of Africa coast. The cargo vessel had, as well, four Estonians and a Georgian on board.
The Danish ship was reportedly destined for Asia having departed from the Middle East. "These attacks are going up, despite the increase in international patrols and we are concerned over the ongoing attacks and hijackings," the head of the International Maritime Bureau's (IMB), Noel Choong was reported by AFP as saying.
Somalia's territorial waters have witnessed 81 cases of piracy this year including the recent one. The issue has drawn international attention prompting Russia, NATO and the European countries to subject the area under close naval surveillance.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#4
While 81 piracy cases seems high, it is not considering the heavy traffic in this sea lane. I'm wondering if these are selectivly chosen, as a Danish ship Bahamian flagged and heading to Asia wouldn't normally raise any flags, but the Russian crew just departing from the Middle East may easily have illicit cargo. The chances of pirates "accidently" intercepting Russian weapons and Iranian WMD's within months of each other seems curious to me.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is swimming in a sea of red ink and sources tell CBS 2 HD drivers in the city might not like the bailout plan.
Nearly half a million cars go back and forth over the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and 59th Street bridges every day for free. Some people think that's not right. "We already have tolls at the Battery Tunnel, Midtown Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge let's put pricing on all of the crossings in between," said Sam Schwartz, one of the leading transportation engineers in the country.
Guess what? State and city officials now seem to agree. Sources tell CBS 2 HD that putting tolls on some or all of the East River bridges is part of the bailout plan being considered for the MTA. "People coming into the city should be paying for some of the service they get," Schwartz said.
Tolling all four bridges may be a heavy lift for Mayor Michael Bloomberg right now, which is why it's possible tolls could be put on just two.
Another option is to have tolls only during morning and evening rush hours.
Sources say putting tolls on all four spans could raise almost $1 billion for mass transit. "That's crazy," said Alex Shaw of the Bronx. "We're taxed enough. They've got to get the money from someplace else. Stop putting it on the motorists."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
The good thing about a plan like this is that many of the people who cross the bridges every day are not residents of NY city. They don't vote for the Mayor or city council. So they can be pissed off as much as they want, and it won't hurt the NYC politicians at all. It's a win-win (for the NYC pols, that is.) Maybe they should raise the tolls until people stop coming into the city. That would ease congestion, pollution and global warming. Of course, that would ruin the economy of NYC, but you can't make an omelet without breaking a few golden eggs.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/09/2008 0:13
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#2
Traffic jams? Nah...maybe they can raise money selling pitchforks and torches?
#3
I would imagine the more tolls collected the slower the traffic & the longer the backups.
It would be easier to tax commuters for parking in NYC, $5-10 an hour would do.
#4
Let everyone travel free, but Nationalize confiscate the polluting car titles and auction them off in two year intervals until all the polluters are gone. The sell gummit green hybrid "People's Lada Cars" at extreme prices and high gummit interest until everyone uses public trans.
#6
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.
#7
I know this may be heresy in some of our more progressive and enlightened enlaves, but how about cutting spending?
Just mandate going back to spending levels of 5 yrs ago, and I bet that deficit clears right up.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 11:37
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#8
Do not ask for whom the bridge tolls
It tolls for thee.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/09/2008 14:38
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#9
LOL, AP!! :)
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/09/2008 15:01
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#10
Asking people to pay for services delivered. What a concept. Next thing you know, the FAA will add a tax on airplane tickets to finance improvements in the air traffic control system. Naaah, that'll never happen.
#11
Perfesser, you already pay local and federal gas/air travel taxes that should pay for maintenance and upgrades to your transportation systems. I suggest you look into where those funds are diverted to. Hint: not there
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 16:55
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"People coming into the city should be paying for some of the service they get,"
This Ass Hat has the typical "Manhattan IS the city" attitude common among the city's elite. New York City is composed of FIVE boroughs (Counties to anyone from the outside). Most users of those bridges are NYC residents to begin with. Putting tolls on those bridges would restrict travel within the city.
In simple geographic terms New York City is an archipelago made up almost entirely of islands. The only portion of the city on the mainland is the Bronx. Everything else is on an island. That is why we have so many bridges, tunnels and ferries. The East River bridges provide links between Manhattan and either Brooklyn or Queens both of which are EQUALLY part of New York City.
Brooklyn itself was once the fourth largest city in the US. It could be so again, particularly if it, Queens and Staten Island split off to form their own city (unlikely though that may be).
Posted by: DanNY ||
11/09/2008 22:18
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More than 80 people were injured as Awami League factions clashed over finalising the panels of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary polls in Patuakhali, Noakhali and Comilla yesterday.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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This may be the Nerpa, an Akula-2 SSN which is rumored to leased next year to India
At least 20 people have died in an incident involving the failure of a fire extinguishing system on a Russian nuclear submarine, local media report. Russian Pacific Fleet spokesman Igor Dygalo said both sailors and shipyard workers died in the incident, which occurred during sea trials. He said the submarine itself had not been damaged and there had been no radiation leaks.
Military prosecutors are investigating the incident. The submarine, whose name and class have not been revealed, has been ordered to suspend sea trials and return to port in the far eastern Primorye territory, Capt Dygalo said. "I declare with full responsibility that the reactor compartment on the nuclear-powered submarine is working normally and the radiation background is normal," he said, quoted by Itar-Tass news agency. There were 208 people on board at the time, 81 of whom were servicemen. Twenty-one injured people have been evacuated from the submarine, sources at the fleet said. I read in the Iran Press account of the incident that it was an accident with the fire extinguisher system.
Reports say the incident occurred in the nose of the vessel. The nuclear reactor, which is in the stern, was not affected. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is being kept fully informed about the incident, his press service said. Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Kolmakov and Navy Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Vysotsky are flying to the scene of the incident.
Russia's worst submarine disaster happened in August 2000, when the nuclear-powered Kursk sank in the Barents Sea. All 118 people on board died.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
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#2
If there were 208 people in that sub they must have been packed in like sardines. Maybe someone hit the button with his elbow.
Per a comment on another thread, if they used a "noble gas" system then they may have died from lack of oxygen. Halon was the super-duper system for a while (displaced air including oxygen and no damage to anything in the room) until a few folks killed themselves in closed rooms.
If we really want to rattle the Russian cage, offer to lease a Los Angeles class boat to the Indians. I understand we have several that were decommissioned before their time just because we didn't want to refuel them. The Indians could pay for that and get a submarine with which to learn.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/09/2008 1:05
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#4
Naval Reactors would have to be disbanded for that to happen.
#6
The Chakra, which the Russian Navy calls the Nerpa was on trials off Viadivostok when the fire extinguishing system accidentally triggered off suffocating the crew.
At the time of accident, there were total 208 personnel including 81 Russian Navy personnel on board the submarine. No Indian crew was on board defence sources told India Today.
The first Indian crew were to leave New Delhi for Vladivostok next week to start training on the submarine. The chakra was to be handed over to the Indian last year but delayed due to technical glitches. It is to be included in the Navy on August 15, 2009, though this accident has now cast a question mark on this date.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008 7:13
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#7
experts reacting to preliminary reports of the accident on board the Nerpa say it could have been the result of an accidental discharge of deadly Freon gas used in the AFFF system to combat serious fires on submarines.
Every Russian submarine has three types of fire fighting systems. Portable extinguishers which use water and chemicals to douse small fires and need no breathing apparatus for operation, a fixed VPL system which uses water and chemicals for medium fires which has hoses in every compartment but needs no breathing apparatus for operation.
Aqueous Film Forming Foam or AFFF system used to combat Class B fires on submarines by providing a barrier between the burning substance and oxygen uses a deadly Freon mixture which kills instantly. This is released only when the compartment is fully engulfed in fire. It is released after the compartment is vacated and sealed. The chemical is then released from an adjacent compartment to completely smother the fire. The crew can enter the compartment, wearing breathing apparatus, only after the fire is doused and the compartment ventilated for a few hours.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008 7:17
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#8
All those extra people coming on board did not bring their own "extra" PPE with them. When the accident happened, a very deadly game of musical-PPE ensued.
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
11/09/2008 11:59
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#9
Will someone "in the know" explain what PPE is?
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/09/2008 13:52
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#10
personal protective equipment - OSHA required for certain jobs, like confined spaces, etc.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2008 14:05
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#11
WORLD MIL FORUM > INDIA NO LONGER NEEDS TO FEAR CHINESE MIL SUPERIORITY AS INDIAN NUCLEAR MISSLE SUBMARINE WILL PROWL AROUND CHINA.
Wel-l-l, methinks the plans of Indian Generals, Admirals, + Politicos may now change after this incident???
Somalis living in Britain are channeling cash to al Qaeda-linked Islamist groups committing human rights atrocities in their war-torn homeland, a community leader has claimed.
Sums thought to be totalling tens of thousands of pounds a week are being sent to the Shabaab militia, a fundamentalist Islamic group blamed for sentencing a 13-year-old girl to be stoned to death in the southern city of Kismayo.
The execution, details of which were revealed last week by Amnesty International, was imposed on the girl, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, after she complained to a Shabaab-run Sharia court that she had been gang-raped.
Instead of sentencing her alleged attackers, the court found her guilty of adultery and sent her a local stadium, where she was buried up to her neck in sand and then stoned in front of a 1,000 strong crowd.
The brutal punishment was part of the Taliban-style Islamic regime imposed on the city by the Shabaab, who are designed as a terrorist group by the United States and whose leadership was the target of American missile strikes earlier this year,
A London-based Somali community leader has claimed that much of their funding is coming from the Somali diaspora in Britain, many of whom support the groups' fierce guerrilla war against Somalia's long-time enemy Ethiopia, which invaded in January 2007.
"People are sending money over to back the Shabaab because they want to see the Ethiopians kicked out, even if they don't have much sympathy with the Islamist agenda," said Mohamed Abdullahi, director of the UK Somali Community Initiative.
"But over here in Britain, they are not seeing the violence that they are fuelling, or realising that al-Shabaab has some very hardline policies. Many people here were shocked to hear about the stoning incident, and said that it was not Islamic. In that case, they should think twice about sending money."
Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia as part of a US and British-backed bid to topple the Shabaab's more moderate allies, the Islamic Courts Union, and replace them with internationally-backed transitional federal government. Although the courts union had managed to impose order on the lawless nation, which has been without a functioning government since 1994, it was suspected by Washington of harbouring foreign al-Qaeda fighters. Since the invasion, however, the country has reverted into all-out anarchy and clan warfare, with the increasingly brutal anti-Ethiopian insurgency costing thousand of lives and sparking a refugee crisis that has spilled into neighbouring Kenya.
"Many Somalis are funding the Shabaab now because they remember the peace that the Islamic Courts Union brought when they were in power," added Mr Abdullahi. "Even if it meant a hardline Islam, they were prepared to put up with it because it was better than the complete chaos before,"
Mr Abdullahi said that most of the money being channeled to the Shabaab came via the traditional hawala money transfer system, an informal wire service arrangement which is hard for the authorities to monitor. Post-September 11, hawala agents in Britain agreed to abide by money laundering rules, but in practice there is little real restriction on which inviduals they send money to in Somalia.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008
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Rebels and pro-government militiamen executed civilians this week in two waves of terror that the top U.N envoy to Congo said Saturday amount to war crimes--ones that highlight the inability of undermanned U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians.
Meanwhile, Congo's army advanced toward rebel lines Saturday, with renewed fighting near the provincial capital of Goma threatening a fragile cease-fire.
Fighting broke out Friday near Kibati, about six miles (10 kilometers) north of Goma. By Saturday morning the army had moved more than half a mile (at least one kilometer) north into a no man's land that had been unpatrolled since the rebels called a cease-fire 10 days ago after routing the army.
U.N. envoy Alan Doss said "war crimes that we cannot tolerate" were committed at Kiwanja, by rebel leader Laurent Nkunda's fighters and by Mai Mai militiamen supporting the government.
U.N. investigators on Friday visited 11 graves containing what villagers said were 26 bodies, U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg said. New York-based Human Rights Watch said the death toll could be higher.
"We are getting reports of more than 50 dead, but we are still in the process of confirming that information," Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, told The Associated Press.
Van den Wildenberg and Dietrich said it appeared the rebels committed many more executions than the militia.
U.N. peacekeepers have a well-established base in Kiwanja, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Goma, but it has only 120 soldiers in the town of 30,000 to 50,000.
They were pinned down under crossfire for some of the first day of the killings Tuesday, and were hampered because militiamen were hiding in houses among civilians, military spokesman Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich told The Associated Press.
Peacekeepers also were trying to deter rebel attacks on two other towns, Nyanzale and Kikuku, on Wednesday when the killings in Kiwanja continued, he said.
The peacekeepers carried out small patrols in Kiwanja and were fired at by militia, he said. The peacekeepers returned fire.
"It's very difficult to protect thousands of civilians, especially at night," Dietrich said.
Doss told a news conference, "Sadly we can't protect every person in the Kivus (provinces)."
Regional leaders at a summit Friday in Nairobi condemned the peacekeepers' failure to protect civilians--the primary mandate of the 17,000-man force in Congo, a country the size of Western Europe where dozens of armed groups daily perpetrate gross human rights abuses.
An AP reporter in Kiwanja on Thursday saw the bodies of two men lying on the main road where they had been shot, less than a mile (1 1/2 kilometers) from the U.N. camp.
Witnesses said rebels had targeted people from the Nande tribe, from which the Mai Mai draws most of its fighters.
On Friday, six relatives wrapped the body of 49-year-old Zawadi Katsuva in a tarpaulin and carried it to a shallow grave in the back yard of his home. It is not known how many such victims may go uncounted, as Congolese bury their dead as soon possible because of the tropical heat.
Katsuva's brother Willem Kambale, 66, said he watched more than 20 rebels come to the house, demand money and a mobile phone and, when they did not get either, shoot his brother behind the left ear.
U.N. officials say residents suffered two waves of terror: first the Mai Mai militia came and killed people it accused of supporting the rebels; then the rebels won control and killed those they charged had supported the militia.
The rebels also looted and burned homes and a hotel, witnesses said.
They killed many victims execution style, with bullets to the head, residents told the AP. Some residents said the rebels dressed the dead, most of them young men, in military uniforms.
"It's not justice," Kiwanja municipal judge Jean Katembo said. The rebels "kill people with no respect for the law."
Rebel leader Nkunda already is accused of crimes against humanity, and Congo's government issued an international arrest warrant against him after he defected from the army in 2004. It cites war crimes including massacres of civilians in 2002, when he was still in the army, and in 2004 when he took his rebellion to eastern Bukavu town.
Nkunda has accused the government of committing war crimes.
More than 250,000 people have been forced from their homes since Nkunda launched a new offensive Aug. 28 and captured large swaths of eastern Congo as the army retreated. The conflict is fueled by ethnic hatred left over from the 1994 slaughter of a half-million Tutsis in Rwanda. Nkunda first said he was fighting to protect minority Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu rebels who participated in the genocide and then fled to Congo.
Lately he has said he is fighting to "liberate" all Congo from an allegedly corrupt government.
Thousands more refugees were on the move again Saturday. Some have been on the run for weeks, hefting bundles of belongings, children and goats as they try to keep ahead of the violence.
They trudged past hundreds of soldiers guarding the road toward Goma. Among them, AP reporters saw Portuguese-speaking black soldiers wearing green berets with pins in the shape of a map of Angola. Doss said Saturday he did not have direct independent confirmation that Angolan soldiers were in Congo.
The presence of Angolans in the volatile region could be seen as a provocation by neighboring Rwanda, raising tensions and fears that Congo's conflicts could again spill over its borders.
Congo asked Angola for support Oct. 29, as the rebels advanced toward Goma, which is on the border with Rwanda.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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An Israel Air Force strike on Saturday destroyed a rocket launcher set to fire at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said.
Local residents said the launcher was set to go off remotely and no one was wounded.
Earlier on Saturday, IDF soldiers exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip, Hamas sources and Palestinian medical workers said, in the second violent incident this week to rupture the calm of a truce since June.
Palestinian ambulances rushed to the area near the town of Khan Yunis where Israeli troops had entered drawing fire from Islamist Hamas gunmen deployed in the area, medical workers and Hamas sources said.
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a series of rocket attacks on Israel on Friday, on the third consecutive day of renewed rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
Gaza militants pounded southern Israeli territory on Friday with nine Qassam rockets.
Two of the homemade rockets struck an open field south of Ashkelon, others struck areas in the western Negev. There were no injuries or damages reported in any of the Qassam attacks.
An Islamic Jihad spokesman said the group would consider stopping launching rockets if Israel ceased its actions. "It depends on Israel, if they stop their aggression and abide by the truce we are ready to consider stopping firing," Abu Ahmed of the Islamic Jihad armed wing said.
Islamic Jihad said its gunmen had launched 14 rockets against Israel during the day in response to IDF operations in the area.
The rocket fire began in response to a mid-week IDF raid on the Gaza Strip that killed six Palestinian militants.
The IDF said it carried out the operation after learning Hamas was digging a tunnel between Gaza and Israel to use in an attempt to abduct soldiers.
The renewed hostilities represent the worst fighting between the IDF and Gaza militants since a cease-fire in the coastal territory took effect in June.
On Thursday, Gaza militants fired four Qassams at southern Israel.
Late Wednesday, an Israel Air Force strike targeting a Qassam firing squad in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least one Palestinian gunman. The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad identified the casualty as a one of their own.
Islamic Jihad militants on Wednesday fired two rockets at the western Negev town of Sderot. One of its leaders, Khader Habib, declared the truce over.
Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers sought to contain the fallout from the fighting, but the continued flaring up of violence threatened to unravel it anew.
Neither side seems to have much to gain from a renewal of hostilities, and officials on both sides said they wanted to restore calm.
Hamas, which agreed to the Egyptian-mediated truce, said Israel was breaching it. The group also claimed responsibility for dozens of rockets fired at the western Negev on Wednesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
Egyptian-mediated truce, there's the fucking problem.
#2
The problem is, Israel isn't responding disproportionally to the attacks. If the Israeli Air Force pounded Khan Yunis every time there was a violation of the 'truce'(hudna) like the (probably) B-17s did in this photograph, there would be a lot fewer violations of the truce, and a lot more willingness to hold serious talks.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/09/2008 13:20
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#3
lot more willingness to hold serious talks
They're Muslims OP, there is no such thing as a binding agreement with infidels.
Aswat al-Iraq: Security forces on Saturday arrested 12 wanted people and suspects in operations throughout Ninewa, said an authorized security source from the province. "An Iraqi army force today arrested three wanted people south of Mosul," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. "A force from the national police arrested two suspects, in western Mosul," he said. "Another Iraqi army force arrested seven suspects, west of Mosul," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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Aswat al-Iraq: Three people were wounded when an explosive device that was adhered to a car went off in Haifa Street, central Baghdad, a source from the Iraqi police said on Saturday. "The car belongs to the Iraqi Ministry of Health," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. "The car's driver and two civilians were wounded. The explosion caused heavy damages in the car," he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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Aswat al-Iraq: Police forces in Falluja on Saturday arrested a wanted person who is a senior figure (Ameer) of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) Organization, said a source from the police. "The arrested person is considered among the most criminal elements," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. "He produces explosives that target innocent people," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
And to think, they were doing so good with the shot dead thing.
Palestinian reconciliation talks due to be held in Cairo were called off on Saturday after Hamas announced a boycott in protest at the detention of hundreds of its members by president Mahmud Abbas's security forces.
"They've been cancelled," Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told AFP. Another Egyptian official, who asked not to be named, said the talks "have been delayed to an undetermined date... at the request of Hamas."
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told AFP that "Hamas decided not to attend the dialogue talks in Egypt. We have informed the Egyptian authorities of our decision."
"Our decision was made because president Mahmud Abbas is continuing to weaken the Hamas movement and he has not released any Hamas detainees in the West Bank," he said.
Hamas and Abbas's secular Fatah movement have been bitterly divided since Hamas violently seized power in Gaza in June 2007, confining Abbas's rule to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and cleaving Palestinians into two hostile camps.
Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina criticized Hamas's decision and blamed the group for being responsible for the failure of the talks.
"Hamas carries the responsibility for the failure of the Cairo dialogue and the responsibility for losing the opportunity to regain Palestinian unity and stop the division between Palestinians," he told AFP.
Abu Rudeina also denied Abbas has arrested Hamas members.
Abbas insisted his law enforcement forces arrested people who posed a security risk, irrespective of political affiliation. "They are arrested and brought to justice," he said at a joint news conference on Friday with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Hamas expressed reservations about the plan, which calls for a politically independent transitional government to pave the way for new elections, saying Abbas would get an automatic extension of a term the Islamists insist ends in January.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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Eleven European politicians set sail to Gaza from Cyprus on Friday on a mission aimed at breaching the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip and assessing the humanitarian crisis in the impoverished territory.
Members of parliament from Britain, Ireland, Switzerland and Italy left the tiny Mediterranean island on a boat arranged by peace activists of the U.S.-based Free Gaza Movement.
"This is an historic time as we have European members of parliament going to Gaza to draw international attention to Israel's collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians," said Lord Nazir Ahmad, Labor member of Britain's House of Lords and head of the delegation.
British MP Claire Short, a former minister in Tony Blair's government, said: "We want to witness the living conditions of these people, challenge the siege, and challenge the failure of our governments to uphold the Geneva convention."
"The whole of the EU is colluding to what is taking place in Gaza to our shame," she added.
"There is nothing like seeing what's happening on the ground, it's horrifying," British politician Baroness Jennifer Tonge said.
"To see what humiliation Palestinians go through is just incredible and I don't know how they can stand it on a day-to-day basis," Tonge added.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
Here's hoping they have a Klinghoffer(sp?) outcome.
#2
To summarize, these corries are setting out to see for themselves the terrible atrocities and outrages being inflicted on the Deutcher Sudeten volk Palestinians and other true Aryans dissenters by the evil Jews Zionist entity.
#3
Leave Claire Short in Gaza. That will guarantee that there won't be a fourth 'mission' to Gaza.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/09/2008 1:09
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#4
The people of Gaza have better nutrition, health care, education and economic prospects than hundreds of millions living in Africa, India and China.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/09/2008 8:18
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#5
Deport the Gazans to Cyprus.
Posted by: ed ||
11/09/2008 8:26
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Barack Obama would never have become prime minister in Britain because the political system is "institutionally racist", the head of Britain's equality watchdog said Saturday.
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told the Times newspaper that while voters would be prepared to vote for a black candidate, the political "machine" would prove a huge obstacle.
"If Barack Obama had lived here I would be very surprised if even somebody as brilliant as him would have been able to break through the institutional stranglehold that there is on power within the Labour Party," Phillips said, referring to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's governing party.
"The parties and the unions and the think-tanks are all very happy to sign up to the general idea of advancing the cause of minorities but in practice they would like somebody else to do the business. It's institutional racism," he added.
But Phillips, who is black, said he did not think that British voters "would be at all resistant to electing a black prime minister" after seeing Americans vote in their first black president.
Despite Obama's historic win Phillips believes the U.S. is still divided on racial lines and said Britain is less racially divided.
"Here it's more about class. It is about culture, a different way of life and speaking. The Muslim community occupies the space that black Americans have in the United States. If you asked British voters whether you could have a Muslim prime minister their mouths would drop open, but not with a black one," he said.
Philips showed is admiration for Obama and said: "this guy walks on water, he is a miracle, he does things none of us thought could be done in politics -- but don't expect him to end war and racial discrimination, give everyone a home and engender love and peace by Christmas."
Labour lawmaker Sadiq Khan said Labour's system of selecting candidates and its party leader did allow for ethnic minorities to be widely represented.
"I work with very talented, very able black politicians and I know from talking to constituents around the country, that our constituents are very sophisticated and we judge our politicians by their policies, not by the color of their skin," Khan told the BBC.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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#1
personally, I yearn for the day when a white male could aspire to be chairman of the Equality and human Rights Commission. That'll happen when hell freezes over. Blacks represent just over 2 percent of the UK population - and we haven't had a black PM yet? Well darn if that doesn't just prove we're all raving racist scum.
#4
I look forward to the day that a white male can aspire to become the elected leader of a black African country.
Diversity is for european populations only, who must share space and power in their own homelands with a never-ending stream of new comers. The rest of the world actually has been getting *less* diverse over the last few decades, as whites were chased out of their oversea lands (by non-whites who didn't want to share space nor power with them in their own homelands), still are, actually (zimBobwe, for example or the ongoing slow-motion ethnic cleasing through crime in south africa).
Bottom line is : Diversity is a stricly one-way street, and it's a feature, not a bug.
#5
I look forward to the day that a white male can aspire to become the elected leader of a black African country.
Zero is a luo (sort of) : I, for one, look forward to the day when a luo black male can aspire to become the elected leader of kenya without riots ensuing and elections being marred by tribal violence and religious persecutions.
#6
Compare wid DNA INDIA > OBAMA TRIBUTES FROM INDIA'S MOST ACCLAIMED WOMEN IN FILM [3 ea. = Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, + Shabina Azmi].
* META > Obama's election is "an AMAZING VICTORY FOR ALL PEOPLE OF COLOUR, + "BEST NEWS OF THE CENTURY"!
* NAIR > "ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE"!
* AZMI > "AN HISTORIC OCCASION... ART CAN [best] SURVIVE IN [an environ of] FREEDOM, LIBERAL VALUES, AND DEMOCRACY}!
(APP): President Asif Ali Zardari Saturday reiterated the resolve not to spare any effort to root out militancy and terrorism in the country. Talking to a seven-member delegation of MPAs from Swat at the President House, he said police and para military forces were being strengthened in Swat and other areas to enhance their capacity to fight the militants.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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At least 35 militants have been killed in an ongoing military operation in Bajaur and Mohamand agency in northwestern Pakistan.
On Saturday, the security forces crushed militant's hideouts in Mammond, Doma Dola, Kharaki and Zoor Bander with artillery and other heavy weapons, killing at least 28 militants and injuring several others, according military officials.
Meanwhile, at least seven militants were killed in a clash between security forces and the militants in Mohamand agency.
Military official said that a check post was attacked with a mortar shelling and security forces opened fire in retaliation. As a result, seven militants were killed.
There are also reports of an explosion in a primary school building in Mohamand agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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US President-elect Barack Obama on Friday prepared to meet his economic lieutenants on a day of more dismal news for US workers while his aides dampened expectations of imminent Cabinet announcements. After the meeting with his high-powered advisory panel, the Democrat held the first news conference since his election triumph Tuesday over Republican John McCain, which was still in progress when The Daily Star went to press.
Obama will inherit a recession-bound economy when he succeeds President George W. Bush on January 20, after the government said the US unemployment rate rose to its highest level since 1994 in October, at 6.5 percent. The Labor Department said 240,000 jobs had been cut in October, the 10th straight month of job losses, and new revisions meant that a whopping 651,000 workers have lost their livelihoods in the past three months alone.
Ahead of the advisory meeting, speculation was rife that the president-elect would move quickly to reassure jittery markets by announcing his pick for Treasury secretary.
But Obama's aides said there would be "no personnel announcements" on Friday, following Thursday's selection of pro-Israeli Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief of staff.
Obama started his third day as president-elect with a parent-teacher meeting at his two daughters' school with his wife Michelle, a reminder that the next First Family will be the youngest in decades. He was to hold more meetings to plan his transition to the White House, receive a now-daily classified intelligence briefing from the CIA, and record the weekly Democratic radio address airing Saturday.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/09/2008
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RALEIGH Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers personal retirement accounts including 401(k)s and IRAs and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
#4
If your question is about the Gummit 401G Plan, Just say DA PLAN.
I think you said "DA PLAN." If that is correct, say "Yassa." Lets see, you ALREADY have a military pension, and I see here you have $ 350K in our Gummit Consolidated Bailout 401G pension fund, so.......
You qualify for reduced benefit Social Security at age 91. If you has any other questions. Just say "Mo Help."
Hi, My name is Julie McConnell.... I have your file in front of me, how can I help you?
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.
The official threat level is classed as being "Severe" - this is one down from the highest level, "Critical", which means an attack is imminent. Over the last few months, we in Britain have become a little obsessed with the economy, falling house prices and the credit crunch, but it should not be forgotten that a significant number of UK citizens have been planning to carry out attacks with the aim of causing mass casualties.
Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign. The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
Three Islamic 
Violence in Thailand's predominantly Muslim south could increase in the coming weeks as 
Israeli soldiers exchanged fire with Hamas forces on Saturday in the Gaza Strip, Hamas sources and Palestinian medical workers said, in the second violent incident this week to rupture the calm of a truce since June.
(APP): Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sherry Rehman has condemned the US missile attack in North Waziristan that killed 10 people on Friday. "The series of unilateral actions against targets on Pakistan's soil is a self‑defeating strategy. The US Administration's reluctance to consider the repercussions of such operations is damaging the whole purpose of global efforts to combat terrorism," said the Federal Information Minister commenting on the reports of the fresh US attacks on the FATA region, according to a press release issued here.
(APP): Fifteen militants were killed in exchange of fire with Security Forces and many others injured in various parts of Swat, said a press release issued here on Saturday by Media Information Center Swat. Security Forces were fired upon by the miscreants in Shangwatai areas of Tehsil Matta and during exchange of fire 10 miscreants were killed who were disguised in FC uniforms. Three soldiers also embraced shahadat. 
New Zealand's Prime Minister-elect John Key, a wealthy, conservative former financier will start to form a new government. 
The Algerian lawyer Mr. Benyamina said a huge number of real estate properties are still legally owned by French colons who left them after the Independence of Algeria in 1962, adding that several cases concerning these disputes have been submitted to Algerian courts. 
Iran's confrontational attitude toward the rest of the world is costing the country dearly in lost trade and investment, according to a letter signed by 60 economists published on Saturday. 
Regulators shut down Houston-based Franklin Bank and Security Pacific Bank in Los Angeles on Friday, bringing the number of failures of federally insured banks this year to 19.
The three-member presidency council of Iraq approves a controversial resolution that will set aside six local council seats for minorities. "In order to fix the rights of the minority seats in the future, the presidency council decided to approve the decision voted on before by the parliament," said Naseer al-Ani, chief of staff for the council. 
Tension between Bangladesh and Myanmar intensified Friday as Myanmar started reinforcing border troops after talks in Myanmar over disputed waters in the Bay of Bengal failed.
Democratic congressmen call on the Bush administration to offer more financial assistance to US automakers in the face of a nationwide recession. 
Eight Russian nationals have been captured by the Somali pirates while sailing under the Bahamian ensign off the troubled Horn of Africa coast. The cargo vessel had, as well, four Estonians and a Georgian on board. 
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is swimming in a sea of red ink and sources tell CBS 2 HD drivers in the city might not like the bailout plan. 
More than 80 people were injured as Awami League factions clashed over finalising the panels of candidates for the upcoming parliamentary polls in Patuakhali, Noakhali and Comilla yesterday.
At least 20 people have died in an incident involving the failure of a fire extinguishing system on a Russian nuclear submarine, local media report. Russian Pacific Fleet spokesman Igor Dygalo said both sailors and shipyard workers died in the incident, which occurred during sea trials. He said the submarine itself had not been damaged and there had been no radiation leaks.
Somalis living in Britain are channeling cash to al Qaeda-linked Islamist groups committing human rights atrocities in their war-torn homeland, a community leader has claimed. 
Rebels and pro-government militiamen executed civilians this week in two waves of terror that the top U.N envoy to Congo said Saturday amount to war crimes--ones that highlight the inability of undermanned U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians. 
An Israel Air Force strike on Saturday destroyed a rocket launcher set to fire at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman said. 
Aswat al-Iraq: Security forces on Saturday arrested 12 wanted people and suspects in operations throughout Ninewa, said an authorized security source from the province. "An Iraqi army force today arrested three wanted people south of Mosul," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. "A force from the national police arrested two suspects, in western Mosul," he said. "Another Iraqi army force arrested seven suspects, west of Mosul," he added.
Aswat al-Iraq: Three people were wounded when an explosive device that was adhered to a car went off in Haifa Street, central Baghdad, a source from the Iraqi police said on Saturday. "The car belongs to the Iraqi Ministry of Health," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. "The car's driver and two civilians were wounded. The explosion caused heavy damages in the car," he added.
Aswat al-Iraq: Police forces in Falluja on Saturday arrested a wanted person who is a senior figure (Ameer) of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) Organization, said a source from the police. "The arrested person is considered among the most criminal elements," the source told Aswat al-Iraq. "He produces explosives that target innocent people," he said.
Palestinian reconciliation talks due to be held in Cairo were called off on Saturday after Hamas announced a boycott in protest at the detention of hundreds of its members by president Mahmud Abbas's security forces. 
Eleven European politicians set sail to Gaza from Cyprus on Friday on a mission aimed at breaching the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip and assessing the humanitarian crisis in the impoverished territory. 
Barack Obama would never have become prime minister in Britain because the political system is "institutionally racist", the head of Britain's equality watchdog said Saturday. 
(APP): President Asif Ali Zardari Saturday reiterated the resolve not to spare any effort to root out militancy and terrorism in the country. Talking to a seven-member delegation of MPAs from Swat at the President House, he said police and para military forces were being strengthened in Swat and other areas to enhance their capacity to fight the militants.
At least 35 militants have been killed in an ongoing military operation in Bajaur and Mohamand agency in northwestern Pakistan. 
US President-elect Barack Obama on Friday prepared to meet his economic lieutenants on a day of more dismal news for US workers while his aides dampened expectations of imminent Cabinet announcements. After the meeting with his high-powered advisory panel, the Democrat held the first news conference since his election triumph Tuesday over Republican John McCain, which was still in progress when The Daily Star went to press.
