The manufacturer warned that the product could explode "like a small bomb." More than 80,000 of the upmarket ready meals have been distributed in mainland Europe. JMRTE. Jiihad Meals Ready to Explode.
There is now a threat that domestic appliances will be damaged and buyers will suffer personal injuries.
The "Couscous Royal' range is made by frozen food manufacturers Garbit in their factory at Pouilly-sur-Serre, in the Aisne department of northern France. The products at the centre of the scare were produced in June. "We would prefer to recall the product to avoid explosions in people's kitchens," said a spokesman. I would rather not like small explosions in me galley, popcorn excepted.
"They could go off like a small bomb, wounding consumers or causing damage to kitchens. "INCOMING!!!"
"Three months after they were made, a bomb like effect was observed in stores, and we have also have complaints from consumers. "Me microwave is toast, and it's yer fault. Yer gonna pay!"
"We would warn anyone who has one of these couscous dishes at home to return it to the store where it was originally bought immediately." Or call the bomb squad.
The product consists of relatively harmless ingredients - including semolina wheat, chicken and Merguez spicy sausages.
Last year an airline stewardess caused £20,000 of damage to a British Airways jumbo jet when her ready-made curry exploded in a microwave at 35,000ft. THAT would get your attention at FL350!
The transatlantic flight from Heathrow carried on to Miami after cabin crew grabbed a fire extinguisher to douse the blazing oven. "Crikey! The couscous exploded, but we are still airborne, by Gawd! If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going."
Couscous is a north African Berber dish consisting of spherical granules made by rolling and shaping moistened semolina wheat and then coating them with finely ground wheat flour. It is particularly popular in countries like Britain and France, which both have large Arabic communities.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
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NEW YORK (Rooters) - Fannie Mae said on Monday it is losing money so fast it may have to tap government cash to avoid shutting down after the largest source of funding for U.S. homes posted a record $29 billion quarterly loss.
Fannie Mae, which along with rival Freddie Mac owns or guarantees about half of U.S. mortgages, reported its fifth consecutive quarterly loss. The government forced the two companies into conservatorship in September.
The Washington-based company warned that the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression could wipe out its net worth by year-end, forcing it to seek funding from the Treasury in order to avoid the government putting it into receivership and closing down.
The company's loss stemmed largely from the write-down of the value of deferred tax breaks, which amounts to an admission it will continue to report losses. Deferred tax assets can be used to offset future taxes, but only if the company can show it will return to profitability.
Credit expenses also soared to $9.2 billion in the quarter due to deteriorating mortgage credit conditions and as home prices declined, the company said in a statement. Fannie Mae also took big hits on exposure to other financial institutions, including $811 million in losses following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Fannie Mae's loss was equivalent to $13 per share, compared with a loss of $1.4 billion, or $1.56 per share a year earlier. The company warned of a big loss for the fourth quarter if the current downward trends in U.S. housing and financial markets continue.
Further losses this quarter may wipe out shareholder equity, which fell to $9.3 billion in the third quarter from $44 billion at the end of 2007. Negative shareholder equity would require Fannie Mae to tap a $100 billion capital backstop from the U.S. Treasury to help the company maintain operations that support the bulk of U.S. mortgages.
Formed as a government agency in 1938, the company is an important crutch to housing because it purchases of loans and securities, and stamps its guarantee on loans it pools into mortgage-backed securities.
The Treasury has already injected cash into other financial institutions, and on Monday boosted a bailout for American International Group Inc as the giant insurer reported a record $24.47 billion loss.
"It's a glaring symptom of what we face in the financial markets," said Andrew Harding, head of taxable bonds at Allegiant Asset Management in Cleveland, Ohio. "The Treasury has to finance this."
Overall core business losses are "not so imposing" to traders and investors, who might have worried if the Treasury backstop was enough, said Jim Vogel, a strategist at FTN Financial Capital Markets in Memphis, Tennessee.
However, accepting capital from the Treasury under current terms could raise costs and make it harder for Fannie Mae to return to profitability, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Equity investors, while nearly wiped out under the conservatorship, have been eager to see if the regulator will instruct the companies to sacrifice profit for bigger volumes in their mortgage guarantee and investment businesses.
Both have been given the room to expand portfolios by a combined $200 billion through 2009, but they have been slow to follow through as waning demand for their securities has inflated funding costs.
On top of restrictive debt costs, Fannie Mae said that it cannot issue securities in excess of 110 percent of its total indebtedness as of June 30, based on the Treasury's senior preferred stock purchase plan negotiated in September. That "likely will prohibit us from increasing the size of our mortgage portfolio to $850 billion, unless Treasury elects to amend or waive this limitation," Fannie Mae said in its filing. The portfolio was $761 billion in September.
Fannie Mae said it was just $12 billion under its estimated debt limit as of October 31.
Provisions for loan losses and other charges more than offset a 53 percent rise in revenue to more than $4 billion in the third quarter from a year earlier, as lower short-term borrowing rates boosted interest income from the portfolio.
Shares of Fannie Mae were little changed near 73 cents in early afternoon in New York. Yield spread premiums on Fannie Mae five-year notes used to fund the portfolio narrowed about 0.05 percentage point to 1.115 percentage point.
"They have to tap into Treasury funding," Harding said. "Fannie Mae is mandated to buy mortgage-backed securities. How are they going to do that if they have a negative net worth?"
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Rooters) - The Turkish military struck the border area of northern Iraq on Monday, Iraqi officials said, in the latest apparent attack on Kurdish separatist PKK fighters.
Colonel Hussein Tamor, head of border guards in Iraq's northern Kurdish province of Dahuk, told Reuters that artillery shells had struck at around 4:00 p.m. (1300 GMT) in the area, which has a remote mountain border with southeastern Turkey.
A spokesman for the Kurdish Peshmerga Security forces Jabbar Yawar said there were three or four Turkish warplanes flying over Dahuk at the time of the attack.
"The bombing was very hard," Yawar said.
Both said there were no casualties in the strikes because the area was largely unpopulated.
PKK Kurdish separatist fighters use northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region as a base to launch attacks on targets in southeastern Turkey, and Turkish forces have frequently retaliated with air and artillery strikes.
Turkey has stepped up military action against the PKK since the guerrillas killed 17 soldiers in a raid into southeastern Turkey last month.
Ankara, like the European Union and United States, calls the PKK a terrorist organization. Around 40,000 people have been killed since 1984, when the PKK took up arms with a view to establishing an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.
Okkayyy.
TOKYO (Rooters) - A male Japanese air force major caught naked while shopping for women's underwear has been suspended from his duties for 10 days, a spokeswoman at his base said on Friday. The man, on his way home from a late-night farewell party for a colleague in early September, stripped off his clothes behind a convenience store before going in and buying panties and pantyhose.
"He had just his wallet and his shoes on him," said the spokeswoman from the Matsushima air base in Miyagi, northern Japan. "He thought it would be funny if he went into the store stark naked, that it would surprise people."
There was no one else in the store but the store clerk, who called the police shortly after the man left the store. Papers were filed against him on suspicion of indecent exposure.
The incident follows a series of scandals for Japan's military. The air force's top general was sacked last week for saying Japan was not an aggressor in World War Two, angering China and South Korea where bitter memories remain over Tokyo's past military aggression.
Lotp will love that one... (cf. STREET GANGS- THE NEW URBAN INSURGENCY - pdf)... rooters puts it in "oddly enough", why, it's no big deal, just funny stuff.
RIO DE JANEIRO (Rooters) - A group of men used dynamite to blow up a police station in a town in Brazil's Sao Paulo state on Monday, after seizing machine guns and a large cache of confiscated drugs from the building.
Globo TV network showed images of the wrecked building with its roof blown off and patrol cars nearby covered in rubble after the attack, which took place in Botucatu around 150 miles west of Sao Paulo city at about 5 a.m.
"I opened my window and saw a fire, the wall falling down, there was a lot of noise from things falling, one explosion after another," Neide Albertini, a cook who lives next door to the station, told Globo.
Witnesses said the men arrived at the station in a small truck and broke down the station's front door.
They took pistols, machine guns, bullet-proof vests, 220 pounds (100 kg) of marijuana and 50 pounds (23 kg) of cocaine paste and cocaine and then set fire to all the files in the building, police said.
"It was a very audacious act," said police chief Carlos Antonio Juliao Filho. "The station was completely destroyed."
Violence by organized crime groups funded by illegal drugs is a major problem in Brazil. A wave of attacks by a prison gang against police in the financial capital Sao Paulo shocked the country in 2006, but there has been no repeat of such large-scale organized violence.
#1
They took pistols, machine guns, bullet-proof vests, 220 pounds (100 kg) of marijuana and 50 pounds (23 kg) of cocaine paste and cocaine and then set fire to all the files in the building, police said.
No doubt stocking up for the Obama celebration, Chicago style.
Posted by: ed ||
11/10/2008 19:11
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German riot police tried Monday to break up a human blockade of a radioactive waste disposal site in the country's biggest anti-nuclear protests since 2001.
In a sign of the fierce popular opposition to nuclear power in Germany, security forces in riot gear began extracting and carrying one-by-one some of the roughly 1,000 demonstrators away from the entrance to the Gorleben waste dump in northern Germany, a police spokesman said. The demonstrators, many of whom had braved cold, damp conditions to camp outside the site for several days, were seeking to block the arrival at the site of 11 trucks containing between them 123 tonnes of radioactive waste.
The shipment had already seen the biggest and most violent anti-nuclear protests for years as it made its way by train from France over the weekend, with 16,000 police deployed against some 15,000 protestors along the route. Police had used truncheons to disperse protesters and used water cannon to put out barricades set on fire by activists.
As a result the train, which left a retreatment centre in western France on Friday, made it to the town of Dannenberg almost 14-and-a-half hours behind schedule, police said. There it was transferred onto lorries on Monday morning and was due to embark on the final 20-kilometre (12-mile) journey by road -- but not until the blockade at Gorleben had been cleared, authorities said.
Police said they expected this to happen by the end of the day but the protesters were not leaving without a struggle, with activists doing everything they could to hinder the authorities.
A few kilometres from Gorleben, activists built two tall cement pyramids, chaining four demonstrators to each, and parked 37 tractors along the route. "We will stick it out," one young female protester said on rolling news channel N-TV.
Environmentalist groups have for years demanded that the shipments be stopped due to possible radiation leaks and security risks. In March 2001, 30,000 police were deployed to halt protests in the largest single security operation in postwar Germany.
Environmental pressure group BI Umweltschutz said Monday that the containers were emitting stronger radioactive rays than is allowed on public roads, calling it "irresponsible" to subject police and demonstrators to such a health risk.
The German government has approved plans to mothball the last of its 17 reactors by about 2020, and polls show a majority of people in Western Europe's most populous country oppose nuclear power.
But Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for the process to be slowed down over fears it will be impossible to slash greenhouse gas emissions without nuclear energy, which produces a quarter of the country's electricity. Skyrocketing energy costs have also sparked the calls to reconsider the phase-out.
The head of Germany's Green Party, which was in government with Gerhard Schroeder's SPD when the decision to phase out nuclear energy was taken, said that opposition to nuclear power had been less visible in recent times.
"But when it comes to it, it can be mobilised," Reinhard Buetikofer said. "The peaceful protest by 16,000 people on Saturday and the numerous actions along the route have shown that people are firmly opposed to nuclear power," the head of the Greens' parliamentary fraction Volker Beck said.
The lawmaker called the protests a "huge success."
#2
Putin must be laughing his ass off. Gots em right where he wants em. When that solar and wind power doesn't work out, Russian gas will be their only source of power. Idjits.
U.S., French and Haitian firefighters used sonar, cameras and dogs Monday in the search for victims at a collapsed Haitian school, but hopes dimmed for finding any more survivors, and the stench of death grew from beneath the rubble. Three days after the school collapsed during a children's party, killing at least 94 students and adults and severely injuring 150 more, the scene at College La Promesse was grim.
"We have not abandoned the search. We are continuing searching and we are taking a lot of precautions," civil protection coordinator Nadia Lochard told The Associated Press.
Several bodies were pulled out Monday, caked in concrete dust. But there have been no indications of survivors since four children were pulled from the wreckage Saturday morning, said Daniel Vigee, head of a Martinique-based French rescue team.
Rescuers were probing spots where neighbors claimed to have heard voices or received cell phone calls from trapped survivors, without success. Finally, before dawn Monday, they opened up new areas to search by tearing down a two-story high concrete slab that had been hanging precariously since the collapse.
Firefighters flown in from Fairfax County, Virginia by the U.S. Agency for International Development had previously warned that removing the wall could be too dangerous to rescuers and any potential survivors, but as hopes dimmed that people below were still alive, they removed it anyway using hand-held power tools.
An eight-person military team from the U.S. Southern Command also helped the rescue effort.
It was unclear how many people were in the building when it collapsed, though the school is believed to have had about 500 students. Haitian officials said some had time to escape when it began to fall, and it was not known how many were pulled out unharmed on Friday.
Some students weren't at the school during the collapse because La Promesse was holding a party requiring a donation of about 50 cents that poorer families could not afford, said Deputy Steven Benoit, who represents the area in the Chamber of Deputies. "A lot of students had their lives saved because they couldn't get in," Benoit said.
The tragedy at the school--built along a ravine in a slum below a relatively wealthy enclave near Port-au-Prince--has brought more attention to chronic poverty in Haiti, where neighborhoods rise up in chaotic jigsaws and building codes are widely ignored.
President Rene Preval has made several visits to the disaster site, blaming the collapse on constant government turnover and a general disrespect for the law. "There is a code already, but they don't follow it. What we need is political stability," Preval told the AP.
More than 1.8 million of Haiti's 9 million people, according to one lawmaker's estimate, live in ramshackle slums that blanket mountainsides with squalid homes, shabby churches and poorly constructed schools like the one that tumbled down Friday.
Anger and frustration over the painstakingly slow pace of the rescue effort has boiled over. On Sunday, about 100 people rushed the wreckage and began trying to pull down the massive concrete slab. Thousands of onlookers cheered them before Haitian police and U.N. peacekeepers drove them back with batons and riot shields.
The school's owner and builder, Protestant preacher Fortin Augustin, turned himself in to authorities Saturday on charges of involuntary manslaughter, police spokesman Garry Desrosier said. Minister of Justice and Public Security Jean Joseph Exume said the case was still being investigated but the owner could face up to life in prison.
Neighbors said they have long complained that the three-story school building was unsafe, and people living nearby have been trying to sell their homes since part of it collapsed eight years ago. "You can see that some sections just have one iron (reinforcing) bar. That's not enough to hold it," said 55-year-old Notez Pierre-Louis, who pulled her children out and sent them to a less expensive school.
CAMP HERO, Afghanistan - In a country where danger constantly lurks underfoot and around every corner, members of the Afghan National Army are getting a crash course from Canadian soldiers in the delicate art of handling high explosives.
Warrant Officer Wade Osmond makes crude hand gestures to a young Afghan recruit who's learning the basics of the trade at Camp Hero, the Afghan National Army base just beyond the confines of Kandahar Airfield.
"Tell him to prepare his M-16 igniter. Just tell him - remember, you can squeeze this together to make it easier to come apart," Osmond, of 2 Combat Engineer Regiment, based in Petawawa, Ont., says to an interpreter.
"This soldier has done it once before already, so this is reconfirmation of his training so he already understands exactly what I'm saying to him. You're going to pull - remember, on the word 'fire,' it's 1, 2, 3 on fire."
Three recruits at a time learn how to set a charge on a half-kilogram of C-4 plastic explosive, all under the watchful tutelage of their Canadian trainers, including Osmond and Chief Warrant Officer Craig Grant.
A series of three loud explosions, accompanied by a mushroom-shaped cloud of dust, brings cheers and laughs from the participants.
Blowing stuff up is fun, after all.
The Afghan engineers were taking part in a basic demolitions range designed to allow them to better support their fellow Afghan National Army soldiers, said Capt. Jeff Allen, who oversees the training.
"It's part of a three-week skills camp that we're doing with the ANA sappers to bring their technical proficiency up to a level in which they can be more useful in deployed operations," Allen said.
"Basic demolitions won't give them the skills to use demolitions as an effective tool such as breaching or explosive digging, but it will also give them the knowledge and recognition of components and the safety that goes along with it."
There are 45,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army. The Canadian team is mentoring 3,000 of them, and the United States and the Netherlands are also involved in training - a vital element of NATO's exit strategy for Afghanistan.
Mentoring in the past has involved combat troops, police and auxiliary police. Now it is the engineers' turn.
No one questions the bravery of the Afghan soldiers, Osmond said. It's their skills that need refinement.
"These soldiers are braver than you could imagine," he said. "To see them go down a road with a mine detector, (which) they weren't sure they could use at that time, takes a lot of courage."
Nonetheless, there have been challenges, not the least of which has been the fact most of the Afghan soldiers are poorly educated.
"I can translate the information, but they're not necessarily going to be able to read," Osmond said.
"One of the other hurdles is they can't read a measuring tape, which is important to this but also important to the rest of the training we are doing, which is construction."
Confidence, however, is one thing the 30 trainees didn't seem to lack.
"It's easy," Naseer Ahmad, 21, said with a smile. Working with explosives doesn't bother or frightens him, he added.
"Why would I come in here if I was afraid?"
That bravado can be an issue, Allen acknowledged.
"They're surprisingly confident - sometimes too confident," he chuckled. "We don't have to be shy about saying, 'Hey, you guys are weak in this area,' but we don't talk down to these guys. These guys have been fighting since they were kids."
The mentoring is part of the NATO goal of training the Afghan security forces to the point that they can look after their own country.
"It's coming along really well," Allen said.
"If these guys can enable their fellow Afghan National Army guys to move around the battlefield and defeat the enemy, then they're an enabler - they're a bonus."
#1
An institution that I believe has the potential to make a great impact and have lasting influence on Afghanistan is their military academy. As they turn out things like lawyers and civil engineers who will eventually take a place in civilian society, the country develops the skill set required to sustain a country.
When Afghanistan is designing and building its own infrastructure using its own materials manufactured in Afghanistan, the appeal of the Taliban will diminish.
Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan says there is no truth to a Pakistan newspaper report that two Taliban leaders were released in a swap for CBC reporter Mellissa Fung.
Fung was kidnapped Oct. 12 and released on the weekend.
The Pakistan Observer is reporting that two senior Taliban leaders facing charges of terrorism were released by the Afghan government in exchange for Fung.
But Canadian ambassador Ron Hoffmann says that's not the case and the Canadian government did not cut a deal.
Hoffman says it was possible that the kidnappers made the demand, since it wouldn't have been out of line for a high-profile western hostage.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said there was no ranson paid for Fung's release and has praised the work of Afghan officials in securing her release.
GARISSA, Kenya (Rooters) - Heavily-armed Somali gunnies kidnapped two Italian nuns on Monday in a pre-dawn raid on a remote Kenyan border town, witnesses said.
Somalia is one of the world's most dangerous countries for aid workers, who are often abducted or killed in attacks usually blamed on Islamist insurgents or clan militia.
Cross-border raids are common in the remote, arid region, but usually involve cattle rustlers or criminal gangs targeting business people in both countries.
One local aid worker said at least 60 kidnappers entered the small town of El Wak at about 1 a.m. (2200 GMT Sunday), hurling a grenade and then firing a rocket at a Kenyan police post.
The abducted nuns' missionary group, the Movimento Contemplativo Missionario Padre de Foucauld, named them as 67-year-old Caterina Giraudo, and Maria Teresa Olivero, 60.
Italy's Foreign Ministry said it was providing "every possible form of cooperation with local authorities."
Chief Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi told Rooters that Pope Benedict had been informed of the kidnapping and was praying for the abducted nuns. Lombardi expressed hope for their quick release "without harm, suffering."
The Kenyan Red Cross Society said the gunnies had later escaped in three hijacked vehicles, and that it was feared they had taken their captives back across the border.
Sheikh Hassan Hussein, chairman of Somalia's neighboring Gedo Region, said he did not know where the kidnappers had gone or who exactly they were, but he described them as "Somali bandits."
"FLUSHED TOWN WITH BULLETS"
Suspicion for such attacks normally falls on Islamist extremists or clan militia, but rebel leaders have said government hardliners are behind the killings to discredit them and stir the international community to intervene.
The abduction came just days after Kenya's army ended an operation to seize illegal firearms in the area. There was no immediate comment from the Kenyan authorities about the raid, which involved many fighters and appeared to be well-planned.
"This wasn't about a simple extortion for money or something similar," said Pino Isoardi of the Italian missionary group.
He told Rooters neither nun had notable health problems, and he said no one were hurt during the abduction. His group has worked in the area since 1983, treating sick children as well as adults suffering from tuberculosis and malnourishment.
Isoardi said nothing was stolen in the raid, but a senior local official, District Commissioner Ole Tuti, said the attackers also seized phones, computers and cash from locals.
"The bandits used heavy weapons fixed to the top of vehicles and they flushed the town with bullets," Tuti told Reuters.
In the last recent attack on humanitarian staff in lawless Somalia, gunnies in Jamame, north of rebel-held Kismayu port, assassinated a Somali man on Sunday who had been running the local office of the U.S.-based Mercy Corps charity.
Gunnies also stormed an airstrip last week in central Somalia, kidnapping four European aid workers and two Kenyan pilots. Locals said those hostages were taken to Mogadishu.
A multinational force of warships has carved out a narrow shipping corridor off the coast of Somalia that is helping protect merchant vessels from pirate attacks, the force's commander said Monday.
Ninety percent of ships transiting the perilous Gulf of Aden are using the guarded corridor and there have been no hijackings inside the zone since it was set up on Aug. 22, said Danish Commodore Per Bigum Christensen.
In a telephone interview from his East African base in Djibouti, Christensen said coalition naval forces were also having success using planes, helicopters and drones to find and track suspect vessels until they can be boarded and searched.
Pirate attacks off the Somali coast have surged 75 percent this year, as bandits lured by million-dollar ransoms have pushed farther out to sea in search of bigger prey among the 20,000 oil tankers, freighters and merchant vessels transiting the Gulf of Aden each year.
There have been 81 attacks this year, and 32 ships have been hijacked, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Eleven vessels remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 200 crew—most notably the Ukrainian freighter, the MV Faina, loaded with tanks and weapons, seized Sept. 25.
The multinational force created the shipping channel to better focus its patrols in the vast area. The zone is about 600 miles long and just three to six miles wide. It runs roughly north-south, allowing ships to safely bypass the Somali coast on their way to and from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
Most commercial ships enter the zone on their own, but others group together in convoys with a warship escort.
A few larger and faster Q-ships ships less vulnerable to attack still move outside the zone, as do "some crazy yachters," Christensen said. Luxury yachts have been among the pirates' targets this year.
Aboard stolen fishing trawlers and other "mother ships" loaded with food, diesel and water, pirates can loiter several hundred miles offshore for days. Hiding among clusters of fishing boats, the bandits launch armed skiffs with powerful outboard engines as attack craft when a target is spotted, often clambering aboard a ship by ladder or grappling equipment in a matter of minutes.
The bandits have already shifted their tactics in response to the patrols, positioning attack teams on the northern and southern ends of the shipping zone to stretch the already thin naval forces, Christensen said.
The naval forces have captured six pirate attack teams—around 60 people—since October, Christensen said. But after seizing their weapons and equipment, the sailors must release the bandits at sea to sail back to Somalia because no country has been willing to bring them to trial.
Somalia has no reliable central government to put them on trial or imprison them.
The naval task force that Christensen commands was initially set up under the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan to patrol the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and parts of the Indian Ocean. But earlier this year it was diverted to concentrate almost solely on fighting piracy. Known as Combined Task Force-150, it has anywhere from three to 15 ships on patrol at a time.
Besides Denmark, the nations that have been part of the task force are the United States, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Britain, Pakistan and Canada.
Separately, ships from the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet have been deployed to surround the Faina until a resolution to the standoff over the freighter is reached.
A NATO flotilla of seven vessels is also patrolling the area. European Union foreign ministers gave their final approval Monday to send four to six ships to replace the NATO force in December.
The use of military power, Christensen acknowledged, is limited in what it can do to stop a problem driven by lawlessness and poverty in Somalia, a nation at war with itself for most of the past 17 years.
"We can be there and suppress the piracy," Christensen said, "but the problem is on shore, it's named somalia."
Robert Malley, a top Middle East advisor that US President-elect Barack Obama promised months ago would play no role in his administration due to ties to Hamas, has reportedly been sent out on the next administration's first diplomatic mission.
According to a report in Middle East Newsline, Obama dispatched Malley to Egypt and Syria late last week with a message that the he intends to mend and bolster relations with both nations, and to give greater weight to their concerns regarding regional conflicts than did President George W. Bush.
During the Democratic Party primaries, Obama was lashed by critics for having Malley on his team after the latter admitted to being in regular contact with Hamas as part of his work with the International Crisis Group.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt quickly responded at the time that Malley had provided "informal advice to the campaign in the past," but insisted that he had "no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future."
BRUSSELS (AFP) -- The European Union launched Monday a security operation off the coast of Somalia -- its first-ever naval mission -- to combat growing acts of piracy and help protect aid ships. Dubbed Operation Atalanta, the mission, endorsed by the bloc's defence ministers at talks in Brussels, will be led by Britain, with its headquarters in Northwood, near London.
"Britain is a great military power, it's a nice symbol that this operation be commanded by a British officer and from a British headquarters," French Defence Minister Herve Morin said, after chairing the meeting. "It is a great symbol of the evolution in European defence, and I would say, of its coming of age," he told reporters.
The so-called EUNAVOR operation will be made up of at least seven ships, three of them frigates and one a supply vessel. It will also be backed by surveillance aircraft. It will include contributions from eight to 10 countries including France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and Spain, with Portugal, Sweden and non-EU nation Norway also likely to take part.
Seven ships, ten countries. I never was much good at math ...
"Our participation in the Somalia project is an important one," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told reporters. "This is obviously a very challenging project but one that European leaders are approaching with real humility as well as determination," he said.
The EU initiative was taken after Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed urged Somalis and the international community to combat rising piracy off the lawless nation's waters. Last month, a maritime watchdog said Somali pirates were now responsible for nearly a third of all reported attacks on ships, often using violence and taking hostages.
Meanwhile, the Danish operator of a cargo ship seized off the Somali coast by pirates last week with 13 crew members on board said it had received demands from the hijackers Monday."We have been contacted by the pirates who spelt out their demands. I do not want to say anything else at the current time for the security of the crew," the head of Clipper Projects, Per Gullestrup, told AFP. He added that the crew members, who include 11 Russians, a Georgian and an Estonian, are doing well and have been allowed to contact their families by telephone.
Despite its country's involvement in the latest pirate attack, Denmark is prevented from contributing to the mission because of a joint defence agreement signed in 1992.
NATO warships recently arrived in the region in a bid to secure the maritime delivery of food aid to the civilian population of Somalia, where a deadly civil conflict continues to rage. India and Russia have also sent ships to the area on anti-piracy duties.
The International Maritime Bureau said 63 of the 199 piracy incidents recorded worldwide in the first nine months of this year occurred in the waters off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden. The Somali figure is almost double that of the same period last year.
France, which has a major military base in neighbouring Djibouti, is so far the only country to have used its firepower against the pirates, in April and September operations following hostage-takings. Under the mission's rules of engagement, EU nations that capture any pirates will not be allowed to hand them over to a state where suspects could face the death penalty, torture or degrading treatment. So...are they going to Disneyworld?
Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.
Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items - everything from Iraq and immigration to taxes and urban policy - all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www.BarackObama.com.
Instead, the official agenda on Change.gov has been boiled down to one vague paragraph proclaiming a plan “to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives.”
“We are currently retooling the Web site,” said Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro.
The site went active on Wednesday and was available to the public Thursday. The agenda items, which were active for at least part of the weekend, appear to have been deleted by late Saturday.
#1
I wonder if this had something to do with the national security and intelligence briefing that the President-elect received shortly before his website was scrubbed.
One nasty (and usually fatal) consequence of infection with bird flu (influenza A/H5N1) in humans is that the virus doesn't just infect the lungs but becomes disseminated to many different organs. We know that a bird-like receptor that the virus can use to get into cells is found in several other organs, including the lining of blood vessels and neural tissues.
Central nervous system involvement is frequently a hallmark of fatal bird flu cases. The virus probably gets to a lot of other organs, as well. But how? An examination of the blood of a fatal case in a pregnant woman suggests answer -- white blood cells:
In the present study, we investigated organs obtained at autopsy from an H5N1 virus-infected pregnant woman and from her fetus in an attempt to study the mechanism of systemic dissemination of H5N1 virus. Neutrophils were abundant in the placenta, and therefore, we evaluated blood cells in the placental villi obtained at autopsy to determine whether neutrophils were infected by H5N1 virus.
[snip]
The unequivocal evidence of H5N1 viral proteins and nucleotide sequences in the nuclei and cytoplasm of neutrophils of patients with avian influenza indicates novel mechanisms of pathogenesis. These cells may serve as a viral carrier in systemic circulation and may cause multiple organ infection, as was reported elsewhere.
What this means is that viral proteins and viral genetic material was found inside the kind of white blood cells (neutrophils) that make up the majority of white cells in our blood and that constitute the vanguard of our innate (non-specific) immune response.
The neutrophils are like wandering policemen, engulfing foreign particles, bacteria, viruses and whatnot, and digesting them so they are no longer harmful. In this case it seems they have somehow internalized H5N1 virus, either by their normal "gobbling" process or because they have receptors on their surfaces that allow the virus to enter the cell and infect it.
Once inside the neutrophil we don't know if the virus becomes disabled or remains infective. If the former, it may still cause the neutrophil to die, thus imparing the immune response, and if the latter, it may be the way the virus gets around the body, inside a cell and protected by antibodies in the serum.
On November 9, 2008, the London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported, citing "a source close to the Al-Qaeda leadership in Yemen," that Osama bin Laden had ordered a new attack on the U.S. which will be "far greater than the 9/11 attacks."
The paper said the source was "a former Al-Qaeda commander who is still in touch with... the organization leadership, and who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons."
According to the source, the attack is meant "to change the world [both] politically and economically," and is planned for the near future.
#4
Face it - if the attack actually occurs - say on September 11, 2009, people will not blame Obama, the way everyone blamed Bush for 9/11/2001. They will blame Bush.
Of course, some people blame Bush for every bad thing that has happened since the beginning of time.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/10/2008 18:11
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#5
Good thing Obama's new AG Jamie Gorelick will work tirelessly to protect us from attack.
VIENNA, Austria — Diplomats say uranium has been found in environmental samples from a Syrian site bombed by Israel on suspicion it was a covert nuclear reactor.
The diplomats say that the uranium — combined with other elements found in the samples — merits further investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
One of the diplomats told The Associated Press that the findings and other details will be presented by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei in a report to the IAEA's 35-nation board next week. Oh, boy. The IAEA. They're in trouble now...
And so it begins...
At least five people were arrested across the city after Barack Obama's rally in Grant Park, including a woman who slapped a Chicago police officer, saying police couldn't arrest her anymore, prosecutors said today. ...and she get's her gas and mortgage for free too, honky pig.
Celita Hart, 19, stood silently in court today when she appeared for a bond hearing. Prosecutors said Hart, who is black, yelled " 'White [expletive], [expletive] McCain--you white police can't do nothing anymore.'" With that, she reached through the window of a squad car and slapped a white male officer in the face, according to Assistant State's Atty. Lorraine Scaduto. Testing her theory, no doubt...
The incident occurred after police responded to a crowd of people celebrating Obama's win on the corner of 69th Street and Western Avenue. Hart, of the 7100 block of South Rockwell Street, was charged with aggravated battery of a police officer and was ordered her held in lieu of $10,000 bail. I wonder if she thinks Barry's gonna bail her out? ...and gun sex comes to Chicago.
Most of the others celebrated the historic occasion with gunfire. Others who appeared before Circuit Judge Israel Desierto included Andre Murph, 37, of Aurora, who was arrested after police saw him shooting a handgun into the ground on the Southwest Side. Scaduto said he told the officers he was "shooting to celebrate Obama as president." Guess he didn't have any fireworks. They're illegal you know...
Narada Thomas, 23, of the 1200 North Central Avenue, allegedly gave a similar explanation after he was arrested with a handgun near his home. "He said he had the gun because he wanted to celebrate Obama becoming the first black president," Scaduto said. In wonder what his excuse was the night before? Had to procure the liquor for the celebration ...
Kenneth Smith, 24, of the 6700 block of South Ada Street, was arrested after he allegedly fired a handgun outside his home. Smith, who is on parole for a previous weapons conviction, told authorities that "the police only arrested him because a black man won for president," Scaduto said. Well, they gotta hurry up. They only got until January 20th to oppress you.
Robert Morgan, 54, of the 5700 South Lowe Avenue, appeared to have simply been caught up in the excitement. When officers arrested him for allegedly firing a handgun into the air from his back porch, "He told the officers, 'Everyone else is shooting off their guns--I figured, why not?'" Scaduto said. Sure, why not? Them bullets'll just go into orbit...
#1
Guns are easier for a person to find and purchase in Chicago than fireworks (at least the 'good stuff'). The local 'nanny state' has determined that even sparklers might hurt you and therefor should be regulated.
Incidentally, this celebratory use of firearms may put fuel into Mayor Daley's efforts to ban all guns in Chicago (at least for the law-abiding few).
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/10/2008 16:59
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#2
Give them all the hand grenades they can carry. Let them celebrate in style!
#6
I'm sure they were all just hoping to be part of that change that's coming, and wanted to be good citizens by taking their guns to the drop off points and disposing of excess ammo.
There are rumors of new Executive Decrees, which include magic Federal dollars for stem-cell research that uses human embryos - if you have any objections, you hate science - and a ban on domestic drilling and nat-gas exploration in public lands in Utah. (If you have any objections, you hate the environment.) The two form a nice mirror image: the former was a ban put in place to preserve a particular definition of human life; the latter is a ban lifted to preserve the environment. Again, itÂ’s understandable: we only have one Utah, but we can always make more people. As long as they donÂ’t live in Utah.
Will executive unilateralism remain a bad thing, a threat to our rights, or suddenly gain favor with old critics? Hmmmm. Cue the Jeopardy! theme. ThatÂ’s a stumper. Then again, this is Washington weÂ’re talking about. Heaped alongside the altar of politics are numberless goats with eyes open in shock. Principles be damned; when it comes to doing the things you want to do, thereÂ’s a knife for every throat.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/10/2008
12:05 ||
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Deutsche Bank views GM shares as worthless
By Simon Kennedy
Last update: 8:09 a.m. EST Nov. 10, 2008
Comments: 82
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Deutsche Bank downgraded General Motors Corp. (GM:
General Motors Corporation
News, chart, profile, more
Last: 3.36-1.00-22.94%
4:01pm 11/10/2008
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GM 3.36, -1.00, -22.9%) to sell from hold, with a price target of $0, saying the car maker may not be able to fund its U.S. operations beyond December without government intervention. Deutsche Bank said it believes the U.S. government will be compelled to intervene through a capital infusion or loan. "Without government assistance, we believe that GM's collapse would be inevitable, and that it would precipitate systemic risk that would be difficult to overcome for automakers, suppliers, retailers, and sectors of the U.S. economy," the broker said. Even if GM avoids bankruptcy, equity shareholders are unlikely to get anything back, it added.
#3
Elections won't matter anymore. I'm afraid we've turned a very dangerous corner with this bugger. Elections don't count for much in Mugabe's Zimbabwe or in most of Africa. They nearly didn't here in the States this time around. Obama's Chicago machine and ACORN cadre are in place and still humming along in preparation for 2012. I am not at all optimistic about our the future of democracy.
#1
1. DURING THE SUMMER OF 1982, IN THE WAKE OF A
PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE, MARINES WENT ASHORE AT BEIRUT, LEBANON.
FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER, ON 23 OCTOBER 1983, EXTREMISTS STRUCK THE
FIRST MAJOR BLOW AGAINST AMERICAN FORCES - STARTING THIS LONG WAR ON
TERRORISM. ON THAT SUNDAY MORNING, A SUICIDE BOMBER DROVE AN
EXPLOSIVE-LADEN TRUCK INTO THE HEADQUARTERS OF BATTALION LANDING
TEAM 1/8, DESTROYING THE BUILDING AND KILLING 241 MARINES AND
CORPSMEN.
2. EXTREMISTS HAVE ATTACKED OUR NATION, AT HOME AND ABROAD,
NUMEROUS TIMES SINCE THAT FATEFUL DAY IN BEIRUT. THEIR AIM HAS
ALWAYS BEEN THE SAME - TO KILL AS MANY INNOCENT AMERICANS AS
POSSIBLE. THE ATTACKS OF 11 SEPTEMBER 2001 CHANGED OUR NATION
FOREVER, AND OUR PRESIDENT HAS RESOLVED THAT THIS NATION WILL NOT
STAND IDLE WHILE MURDEROUS TERRORISTS PLOT THEIR NEXT STRIKE.
MARINES WILL CONTINUE TO TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE ENEMY - HITTING THEM
ON THEIR OWN TURF, CRUSHING THEM WHEN THEY SHOW THEMSELVES, AND
FINDING THEM WHERE THEY HIDE.
3. ONLY A FEW AMERICANS CHOOSE THE DANGEROUS, BUT NECESSARY, WORK
OF FIGHTING OUR NATION'S ENEMIES. WHEN OUR CHAPTER OF HISTORY IS
WRITTEN, IT WILL BE A SAGA OF A SELFLESS GENERATION OF MARINES WHO
WERE WILLING TO STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR OUR NATION; TO DEFEND THOSE
WHO COULD NOT DEFEND THEMSELVES; TO THRIVE ON THE HARDSHIP AND
SACRIFICE EXPECTED OF AN ELITE WARRIOR CLASS; TO MARCH TO THE SOUND
OF THE GUNS; AND TO ABLY SHOULDER THE LEGACY OF THOSE MARINES WHO
HAVE GONE BEFORE.
4. ON OUR 233RD BIRTHDAY, FIRST REMEMBER THOSE WHO HAVE SERVED AND
THOSE "ANGELS" WHO HAVE FALLEN - OUR REPUTATION WAS BUILT ON THEIR
SACRIFICES. REMEMBER OUR FAMILIES; THEY ARE THE UNSUNG HEROES WHOSE
SUPPORT AND DEDICATION ALLOW US TO ANSWER OUR NATION'S CALL.
FINALLY, TO ALL MARINES AND SAILORS, KNOW THAT I AM PROUD OF YOU AND
WHAT YOU DO. YOUR SUCCESSES ON THE BATTLEFIELD HAVE ONLY ADDED TO
OUR ILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY. GENERAL VICTOR H. "BRUTE" KRULAK SAID IT
BEST WHEN HE WROTE, "... THE UNITED STATES DOES NOT NEED A MARINE
CORPS ... THE UNITED STATES WANTS A MARINE CORPS." YOUR ACTIONS, IN
IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN, AND ACROSS THE GLOBE, ARE AT THE CORE OF WHY
AMERICA LOVES HER MARINES.
5. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARINES AND SEMPER FIDELIS! JAMES T. CONWAY,
GENERAL, U.S. MARINE CORPS, COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS
#1
Two hundred fifty grand was allocated for this dump—a quarter mil! By the time that money was passed from cousin to brother to friend and handed down to the contractor who finally slapped the structure up, there was only $40,000 left.
The Chicago Way! Maybe the O'man can work it. /sarcasm off
#2
A long piece, but a great read. My favorite quote:
"Goodwill is the key to this multifront counterinsurgency. It’s the only way to win the locals away from the brutal scum who’ve enslaved them in the past and over to some semblance of liberty and the rule of law. That’s why Information Operations—what they used to call propaganda—is so important. That’s why the bad guys work so hard to spread lies about us.
And thatÂ’s why Hollywood should maybe try not to help them."
"Leftist movies portraying our troops as reprobates and fools may not make it to the wilds of Nuristan. But you can bet they make it to the headquarters of our enemies and give them encouragement, not to mention ideas. They make our soldiers’ mission harder and increase the danger to their lives. And here’s a funny thing some people in LA may not understand about those lives: they’re real. Commander Perez and Rory and First Sergeant Mitchell and all the rest—they’re not characters played by actors. They’re real Americans who left real parents and wives and children at home and opted to fight our enemies in dangerous places far away. I don’t think De Palma and Robert Redford and Paul Haggis are bad men. They’re certainly entitled to believe what they want. But when they make these movies during wartime, when they endanger these soldiers and their mission, I think they’re doing something bad—something wicked, really. They are aiding and abetting the enemy’s Information Operations. And they ought to stop."
#1
Baggage: Her work at Fannie Mae, which had to be bailed out by the government in September as part of a $200 billion deal. Ms. Gorelick left the company just as it was coming under attack for huge accounting failures. She has also drawn criticism for her role at the Justice Department, in which she allegedly created an intelligence “wall” that hindered counterterrorism agents in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks.
#3
Are there any executives from the FMs which *aren't* being considered for cabinet posts? How about Frank's boyfriend?
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/10/2008 16:10
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#4
When Bush Jr. used his dad's ol partners, Rummy and his band of thugs, he learned just how bad that decision was. Obama should have taken note, now he will go down that same path as Bush Jr. Expect him to make executive decisions based on polls, just like Clinton. At least we will see it comming at us.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
11/10/2008 17:00
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#5
Jamie "The Wall" Guh-REH-lick? Gah.
How long before she puts the wall up again? Just insane.
#7
Jamie Gorelick was the one that created the legal wall between our intelligence agencies like the CIA and domestic ones like the FBI. She was one of the contributors to 9-11 through her policies.
And to boot, she was on the 9-11 commission.
Change, my a$$. This is more business as usual. These morons are going to get us attacked again through their stupidity and incompetence.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/10/2008 19:58
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Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.
I really donÂ’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts.
If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesnÂ’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew heÂ’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/10/2008
08:50 ||
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#1
Extremely well done. Nice to see someone finally remark on the striking banality of Obama's rhetoric. Might have to track this guy's columns. A tiny speck of light in the galactic darkness of the media and the public square.
'When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader. Often, people, tired of the status quo, do not have the patience to examine the nature of the proposed change. All they want is change.'
caught via AOSHQ
The American businessman lay shackled in a mud hut 8,000 feet up a remote mountain in Afghanistan, armed captors posted inside and outside to prevent any escape attempt.
Earlier in his captivity, he had made a run for it, but -- barefoot and much older than the insurgents who held him -- he was snatched back before he could get far.
After nearly two months in captivity and out of contact with anyone who cared about him, the hostage reviewed what his fate might hold -- whether ransom negotiations or rescue efforts or a miracle might bring him freedom.
"One option was for the money to arrive and be ransomed," the 61-year-old engineer from Ohio told Military Times, speaking on the condition that he remain anonymous. Another was "that they'd just get tired of me and let me loose." A third was "some kind of military intervention," he said. "In my mind I'd given a military intervention a one out of a hundred chance. Not that they couldn't do it, but they're busy and I'm not that important a fellow."
On an airstrip many miles away, however, several twin sets of Chinook helicopter rotor blades were starting to turn as about 60 of America's most elite troops prepared to prove him wrong. Members of a task force that Military Times agreed not to name, the commandos had been hunting for the businessman since soon after he went missing. Now they were ready to act.
This is the story of one of the most daring and successful U.S. hostage-rescue missions in years. heh - RTWT - you know you wanna
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/10/2008
07:55 ||
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#1
Great read. And, as usual, State comes across as d*ckless as ever.
#2
yeah i was thinking the same thing PTAH, don't wanna make the bad guys look too bad.
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 10:50
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#3
State has no firepower, so they have little other than talking points. That doesn't mean they're not worthless, just that there's an inbred reason for their being worthless. This stupid notion that they are the "senior" organization and should handle EVERY foreign policy program is another reason they're worthless. Chad is an excellent example.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/10/2008 12:32
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#4
Actually, I appreciate State's position - don't publicize it locally, let the results speak for themselves. Let them never know who's rescued or how or where. Sow confusion, harvest uncertainty, breed stupidity.
Back home, or on base, medals and drinks all around.
Posted by: Large Spomoling6782 ||
11/10/2008 14:20
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#5
Great story. Great op. I can just see the captors snoozing away, getting popped in the head with suppressed weapons, and waking up in Hell, saying, WTF???!!!!!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/10/2008 18:32
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#6
And no trials or claims of political asylum.
Posted by: ed ||
11/10/2008 18:42
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#7
"Nevertheless, “They knew who was who,” the engineer said. the SEALs quickly demonstrated that, aiming their silencer-equipped weapons to shoot and kill the kidnapper in the room before he could fire a round. The engineer said he heard the sounds of the operators shooting and killing a guard posted outside."
Ah yes, the lessons of Gitmo, well learned.
BAGHDAD – A suicide bomber struck Monday in a crowd gathered at the site of an explosion that moments earlier had damaged a bus filled with schoolgirls, with both blasts killing at least 28 people and wounding 68 others, authorities said.
Also Monday, a female suicide bomber attacked a security checkpoint in downtown Baqouba, killing five people including a local leader of Sunni group opposed to al-Qaida, police said. Fifteen other people were wounded in that explosion, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The twin blasts — the deadliest in Baghdad in months — occurred during the morning rush hour in the mostly Shiite Kasrah section of Azamiyah neighborhood in the northern part of the Iraqi capital. They shattered storefronts along a crowded street and set fire to more than a dozen cars.
Police said the first explosion damaged a minibus carrying young girls to school. The second happened when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt in the middle of a crowd that had gathered around the vehicle.
No group claimed responsibility for the blasts, the single deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in weeks.
But suicide attacks against Shiite civilians are the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq, which maintains a limited presence in Baghdad despite military setbacks and the Sunni revolt against the terror movement last year.
The continuing attacks show the determination of extremist groups to continue the fight against the U.S.-backed government and lie behind U.S. military concern about drawing down the 151,000-member U.S. military force too quickly.
The article is dated March 28th. I don't know why this is being posted now. AoS.
The University of Chicago released a statement on Thursday saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) "served as a professor" in the law school--but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed on Friday.
"He did not hold the title of professor of law," said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the school, on East 60th St. in Chicago
The U of C statement was posted on the school's website two days after the Clinton campaign issued a memo headlined "Just Embellished Words: Senator Obama's Record of Exaggerations & Misstatements." The memo was generated by the Clinton campaign as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was put on the defensive for claiming incorrectly that she dodged sniper fire while First Lady when her plane landed in Bosnia.
Continued on Page 49
#1
No he did not officially hold the title of professor, and many within the University of Chicago system were not at all happy about his appointment, privilege, and status as a "guest lecturer." The question that should be asked is, precisely how did he get there?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) describes narcissism as a personality disorder that “revolve around a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and sense of entitlement. Often individuals feel overly important and will exaggerate achievements and will accept, and often demand, praise and admiration despite worthy achievements.”
#6
I think its pretty clear Obama has been groomed for some time by a wealthy benefactor, who will dictate the payback. He has had quite an expensive education at elite schools, given opportunities few dare dream of. Same was said of Bill Clinton, a Rhodes scholar, and unlikely star as a son of a single mother from Arkansas. Rumors of a Rockefeller connection then also make sense now, considering the extensive family connections to Columbia, University of Chicago, etc.
#8
We don't know yet who "the Guy behind the Guy" is, but every sucessful Chicago politician has one, or more. They will get to feed at the trough first, and at a private seating.
It's the Chicago Way, and I will try my best not to say "I told you so" to my non Chicago based friends.
#2
A lot of the bailout money is ironic. For example, the two largest banks, BOA and Wells Fargo, are at the head of the unofficial list, taking dozens of billions of dollars.
But they are being wise with that money, true to form, unlike those corporations that were foolish to begin with, and are still foolish. Morgan Stanley, for example, took a $12 billion bailout, then immediately gave out $14 billion in bonuses to its executives and personnel.
We have seen it all the last two years: Weeping journalists on election night; a journalist openly promising to help make Obama successful ("Yeah, it is my job."); film takes of journalists cheering an Obama speech; the savaging of Sarah Palin and the hands-off treatment of Biden; soft-ball interviews and long puff-pieces on Obama as the young cool crusader;comparisons to JFK's Camelot, and on and on.
In the 3rd book of his history, Thucydides has some insightful thoughts about destroying institutions in times of zealotry—and then regretting their absence when there is a need for refuge for them. The mainstream press should have learned that lesson, once they blew up their credibility in the past election by morphing into the Team Obama press agency.
There will come a time in the year ahead when either Obama's unexamined past will come back to haunt him, or his inexperience and tentativeness in foreign affairs will be embarrassingly apparent, or his European-socialist agenda for domestic programs simply won't work. And as public opinion falls, what will MSNBC, the New York Times, the editors of Newsweek, a Chris Matthews or the anchors at the major networks say?
Not much—since they will have one of two non-choices: (1) either they will begin scrambling to offer supposed disinterested criticism, which will be met with the public's, "Why should we begin believing you now?" or "Why didn't you tell this before?", or (2), They can continue as state-sanctioned megaphones of the Obama administration in the manner that they did during the campaign. They will lose either way and remain without credibility.
In short, we live now in the Age of Post-Journalism. All that was before is now over, as this generation of journalists voluntarily destroyed the hallowed notion of objectivity and they will have no idea quite how to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
#1
The products of late 20th Century academia. The same folks who were so effective in creating our current public school systems. The same folks who's Law Schools opening flaunt laws against discrimination based upon color race and creed. The same folks who support academic freedom by tenuring only those of like mind. /sarcasm off.
#4
They're not even journalists anymore. They're the Ministry of Information. And, as long as the paychecks keep rolling in, they'll continue to be so. The problem for them is, those paychecks might not keep rolling in...and that's what you've got to hope for.
7:10 PM - Radio transmission between the Anderson and the Fitzgerald. The Fitzgerald is still being followed by the Arthur M. Anderson. They are about 10 miles behind the Fitzgerald.
Anderson: "Fitzgerald, this is the Anderson. Have you checked down?"
Fitzgerald: "Yes we have."
Anderson: "Fitzgerald, we are about 10 miles behind you, and gaining about 1 1/2 miles per hour. Fitzgerald, there is a target 19 miles ahead of us. So the target would be 9 miles on ahead of you."
Fitzgerald: "Well, am I going to clear?"
Anderson: "Yes. He is going to pass to the west of you."
Fitzgerald: "Well, fine."
Anderson: "By the way, Fitzgerald, how are you making out with your problem?"
Fitzgerald: "We are holding our own."
Anderson: "Okay, fine. I'll be talking to you later."
They never did speak later...The 29 men onboard the Fitzgerald will never again speak with anyone outside of the ship.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/10/2008
06:45 ||
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#1
R.I.P., Allen G. Kalmon, Second Cook.
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
11/10/2008 8:59
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#2
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.
From Gordon Lightfoot's song about the Edmund Fitzgerald
#3
As someone who went to sea, that song always made me feel uneasy. The book "The Perfect Storm" was absolutely frightening. What they've found out through satellite analysis about "killer" hundred-foot waves in the North Atlantic is that they not only exist, there are a lot more of them than anyone ever thought there would be.
All those "old sea stories" talking about huge waves were considered bogus for a long time. Turns out a lot of them were quite probably true.
The 79-foot Andrea Gail probably got pitchpoled by a 100+ foot wave. Ships don't recover from that.
Jurors in the Holy Land Foundation retrial will hear closing arguments starting today, and then they begin days or even weeks of deliberations on the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history.
Prosecutors hope that evidence in their case, overhauled after last year's mistrial, proves that the defendants used the former Richardson-based charity to funnel more than $12 million to the Palestinian group Hamas, which is deemed a terrorist group by the U.S. government. Defense lawyers will stress in their closing arguments that Holy Land was once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. and followed a "need, not creed" philosophy by helping Palestinian families living under oppressive Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Since opening statements on Sept. 22, prosecutors have shown jurors seized documents that they say prove Holy Land, formed in the late '80s, was designated from the start as Hamas' chief fundraising machine. Travel records reveal that Holy Land flew radical Hamas clerics to the U.S. to headline often raucous fundraising festivals, featuring open support of Hamas and talk of "economic jihad" against the Israelis in their decades-long land struggle.
Some of the defendants were caught on clandestine FBI recordings of private meetings plotting to derail Arab-Israeli peace deals and in intercepted phone calls praising Hamas suicide bombings. The FBI tracked millions in wire transfers to and from Hamas operatives and a series of Palestinian charity groups, called zakat committees, which the government contends are Hamas front groups in the occupied territories. Records show that much of Holy Land's aid money went to families of suicide bombers and Hamas political prisoners.
But the defense says that most of the government's evidence predates 1995, the year when support of Hamas became illegal in the U.S. They have characterized the Justice Department's nearly 15-year investigation of Holy Land as a witch hunt spurred by pressure from the Israelis, who supplied prosecutors with most of their evidence linking the zakat committees to Hamas. The defense presented jurors with a former high-ranking State Department official who testified that Hamas did not control the zakat committees. And none of those committees, even today, are listed on government terrorist lists, they point out.
Jurors have a tough job ahead. Deliberations in last year's trial of the same five defendants collapsed after 19 days on Oct. 22, 2007. There were no convictions in that trial, but the jury acquitted one defendant of all charges and found two others not guilty on several charges before a juror changed her mind at the last minute. That prompted a mistrial that voided all their verdicts except for several not-guilty counts on one defendant. He still faces one conspiracy charge.
This time around, prosecutors pared down the number of charges against the defendants and significantly overhauled their presentation, which previously was criticized as confusing, boring and lacking in context. During testimony this fall, they worked in repeated references to the investigation's key players, pausing frequently to spell Arabic names. They rolled out more and better charts, graphically illustrating relationships and key points.
What will probably be most helpful to jurors – who must plow through more than 500 exhibits, including reams of translated Arabic documents and mountains of banking records – is a series of evidence road maps. These direct jurors to specific page numbers of documents that prosecutors say prove the zakat committees were controlled by Hamas – which is key to getting convictions. Prosecutors also packed in six additional witnesses, yet managed to shave off about two weeks from last year's two-month-long presentation.
One of the most anticipated new witnesses this year was Mohamed Shorbagi, Holy Land's former Georgia representative. He is serving more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to giving support to Hamas. His testimony, viewed by a courtroom packed with Holy Land supporters, was that it was well-known in the Palestinian community here and abroad that the Richardson group's money went to Hamas. He said Hamas, which sponsors suicide bombings against Israelis, was widely viewed as a good steward of the money. Defense attorneys attacked his credibility, pointing out that he was getting time off his prison sentence for testifying.
The government's most controversial returning witness was "Avi," an Israeli Security Agency lawyer. He testified that it was well-known in the occupied territories and in Israeli intelligence that Hamas operatives staffed and controlled the zakats.
NEW DELHI: It seems there are simply no full-stops in the Indo-Israeli strategic partnership despite geopolitical sensitivities as well as allegations of kickbacks in defence deals. All set to further ramp up the already expansive defence ties, a top Indian delegation will leave for Israel on Sunday to discuss joint R&D projects, missile defence, procurements, intelligence-sharing and counter-terrorism strategies, said sources.
Led by defence secretary Vijay Singh, the Indian delegation will hold talks with the Israeli side under the joint working group on defence cooperation from November 10 to 12. The Indian side will be represented by IAF deputy chief Air Marshal N A K Browne, Army deputy chief (planning and systems) M S Dadwal, Navy assistant chief (policy and plans) Rear Admiral Girish Luthra and DRDO chief controller Prahlada, among others.
During the talks, India will also seek Israel's assurance that there will be no further delay in the delivery schedule of the much-awaited three Israeli Phalcon AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) to IAF. As per the revised timeframe, the first AWACS, initially slated to be delivered in November 2007 under the $1.1 billion deal signed in March 2004, is to be delivered in February 2009, with the second and third ones coming in September 2009 and April 2010.
The robust defence engagement between the two countries, which saw India buy military hardware and software from Israel worth around $8 billion since the 1999 Kargil conflict, has continued despite Delhi's foreign policy sensitivity to the Muslim Middle-East. The only difference has been that while the previous NDA regime had brought the relationship out of the closet, the UPA government has pushed it back in, eager to keep it away from prying eyes.
There is, of course, also the shadow of the CBI probe into the kickbacks in the Rs 1,160-crore Barak-I deal hanging over the relationship, with Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael being named in the case. The defence ministry, on its part, has decided that since the Barak-I case is under CBI investigation, the final clearance for a new project or deal involving the two Israeli firms will be taken from the Cabinet Committee on Security and the "competent financial authority" before it is actually inked. The ongoing joint DRDO-IAI project to develop a supersonic 70-km-range Barak-2 missile defence system at a cost of Rs 2,606 crore for Navy, for instance, has not been rolled back.
The UPA government has also cleared the mammoth Rs 10,000 crore project with Israel to develop a new-generation surface-to-air missile system, capable of detecting and destroying hostile aircraft and spy drones at a range of 120-km, to boost IAF's air defence capabilities. Under this, IAF plans to induct nine air defence squadrons initially.
Then, of course, India is on course to buy 18 low-level quick-reaction missile systems SpyDer systems for around Rs 1,800 crore, and four more EL/M-2083 Aerostat radars for around Rs 145 crore in the near future.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/10/2008
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A roadside bomb killed one paramilitary ranger and wounded five others Monday as they were patrolling a trouble-torn district in Narathiwat - part of Thailand's deep South, police said. The remotely controlled 20-kilogram bomb exploded at about 10 am (0300 GMT) in Ruesoh district of Narathiwat, 800 kilometres south of Bangkok, as a pickup truck carrying a patrol of paramilitary troops passed by, said Ruesoh Police Sergeant Paosri Jaetae.
"We think influential people hired Muslim terrorists militants to do this in order to create chaos," said Paosri. Besides the jihad separatist struggle, the region - including Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces bordering Malaysia - is rife with illegal activities such as drug smuggling operated by "influential people" who benefit from the state of fear and disorder.
The president-elect's advisers quietly craft a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials
WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.
During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.
Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.
A third group of detainees -- the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information -- might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks.
Isn't that what we've been advocating the last six years?
The move would be a sharp deviation from the Bush administration, which established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba and strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States. Obama's Republican challenger, John McCain, had also pledged to close Guantanamo. But McCain opposed criminal trials, saying the Bush administration's tribunals should continue on U.S. soil.
The plan being developed by Obama's team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But it is almost certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. and from Democrats who oppose creating a new court system with fewer rights for detainees.
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and Obama legal adviser, said discussions about plans for Guantanamo had been "theoretical" before the election but would quickly become very focused because closing the prison is a top priority. Bringing the detainees to the United States will be controversial, he said, but could be accomplished. "I think the answer is going to be, they can be as securely guarded on U.S. soil as anywhere else," Tribe said. "We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there."
The tougher challenge will be allaying fears by Democrats who believe the Bush administration's military commissions were a farce and dislike the idea of giving detainees anything less than the full constitutional rights normally enjoyed by everyone on U.S. soil.
"There would be concern about establishing a completely new system," said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and former federal prosecutor who is aware of the discussions in the Obama camp. "And in the sense that establishing a regimen of detention that includes American citizens and foreign nationals that takes place on U.S. soil and departs from the criminal justice system -- trying to establish that would be very difficult."
Apparently hard if you're a Democrat. No one else seems to have a problem with it.
Obama has said the civilian and military court-martial systems provide "a framework for dealing with the terrorists," and Tribe said the administration would look to those venues before creating a new legal system. But discussions of what a new system would look like have already started.
"It would have to be some sort of hybrid that involves military commissions that actually administer justice rather than just serve as kangaroo courts," Tribe said. "It will have to both be and appear to be fundamentally fair in light of the circumstances. I think people are going to give an Obama administration the benefit of the doubt in that regard."
Though a hybrid court may be unpopular, other advisers and Democrats involved in the Guantanamo Bay discussions say Obama has few other options. Prosecuting all detainees in federal courts raises a host of problems. Evidence gathered through military interrogation or from intelligence sources might be thrown out. Defendants would have the right to confront witnesses, meaning undercover CIA officers or terrorist turncoats might have to take the stand, jeopardizing their cover and revealing classified intelligence tactics.
In theory, Obama could try to transplant the Bush administration's military commission system from Guantanamo Bay to a U.S. prison. But Tribe said, and other advisers agreed, that was "a nonstarter." With lax evidence rules and intense secrecy, the military commissions have been criticized by human rights groups, defense attorneys and even some military prosecutors who quit the process in protest.
"I don't think we need to completely reinvent the wheel, but we need a better tribunal process that is more transparent," Schiff said.
The whole point of trying these jokers was to be as opaque as possible: judge them quietly, don't release the evidence, don't open up sensitive sources, and ship them to a quiet place for a long time. They're not US citizens and they don't enjoy the protections of the Constitution.
That means something different would need to be done if detainees couldn't be released or prosecuted in traditional courts. Exactly what that something would look like remains unclear.
According to three advisers participating in the process, Obama is expected to propose a new court system, appointing a committee to decide how such a court would operate. Some detainees likely would be returned to the countries where they were first captured for further detention or rehabilitation. The rest could probably be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts, one adviser said. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing talks, which have been private.
Whatever form it takes, Tribe said he expects Obama to move quickly. "In reality and symbolically, the idea that we have people in legal black holes is an extremely serious black mark," Tribe said. "It has to be dealt with."
#2
Obama is expected to propose a new court system, appointing a committee to decide how such a catch & release court would operate.
Behold the ACLU Bar Mitzvah. They now have matured enough to run the military. There goes the interrogation of these virmin, and future "POW's as well." The "committee" will appoint defense council. Federal and State Pens will be ordered to construct Mosques, hire Islamic speaking guards, provide special chow, computers, etc.
#6
There is the double problem that the US still has these scum because no other country will take them, and now Obama gets the joy of having "brought dozens or hundreds of terrorists onto US soil." Talk about a lose-lose.
It's likely that many of them will be acquitted, so will have to be turned loose in the US. That will be hugely popular.
#9
They're not US citizens and they don't enjoy the protections of the Constitution.
In fact not applying them the Geneva Convention (ie shooting them as unlawful combatants) bas only caused additional innocent deaths through the world.
#10
One of the many catastrophes these idiots will cause. Gorelick for any job other than the Club Fed prison laundry?
I get sicker about this every day. Quite the opposite of coming to terms with it.
While many, especially those in uniform, deserve much better, it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the American people, and the foreigners ignorantly and ungratefully hostile to us when we're responsible and serious, are likely to get exactly what they deserve.
#11
Maybe they can set up special "no go zones" for these prisoners, where Sharia will prevail, and where guards will not be allowed to venture, like in British jails. And maybe let them have silk sheets and slave girls.
Posted by: Some One Not The One ||
11/10/2008 14:56
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#14
much as the newer theories of quantum physics override Newtonian physics, constitutional law has moved beyond strict constructionism toward the view that the Constitution is a relativistic living document.
Hey Tribe, don't screw with Newtonian physics. They work just fine. And don't screw with the Constitution. "Relativistic Constitution?" Whoaa!
I can see this guy is bucking for the Supreme Court.
#15
They're not US citizens and they don't enjoy the protections of the Constitution.
Very true. I cannot argue with you about that but maybe if Bush had not screwed around for 7 years and actually did something wiht them in that time besides keep them locked up Obama would never have had a chance to do this.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
11/10/2008 16:24
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#16
JFM has it exactly right. THEY ARE NOT PRISONERS OF WAR! They are illegal combatants. They can be shot in the field after a summary court martial.
Most of them will probably be acquitted, since much of the evidence against them is based on classified sources. Since the only lawyers who will defend them will be security risks without clearances, they cannot see the evidence. Therefore they will demand that the charges be dropped. After that, since no country wants these animals, the terrorists will probably be set free, with a monthly stipend or a cash award for all the "torture" they have undergone.
Feh! Shoot the bastards in the field next time.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/10/2008 18:07
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#17
They are VICTIMS, under the brutal Bush adminstration, they've been denied basic human rights such as satellite TV and soft-serve ice cream. I'm sure Obama will correct this.
LONDON (Reuters) - The international financial crisis has given world leaders a unique opportunity to create a truly global society, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown will say in a keynote foreign policy speech on Monday.
In his annual speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet, Brown -- who has spearheaded calls for the reform of international financial institutions -- will say Britain, the United States and Europe are key to forging a new world order.
"The alliance between Britain and the U.S. -- and more broadly between Europe and the U.S. -- can and must provide leadership, not in order to make the rules ourselves, but to lead the global effort to build a stronger and more just international order," an excerpt from the speech says.
Brown and other leaders meet in Washington next weekend to discuss longer term solutions for dealing with economic issues following a series of coordinated moves on interest rates and to recapitalize banks in the wake of the financial crisis.
"Uniquely in this global age, it is now in our power to come together so that 2008 is remembered not just for the failure of a financial crash that engulfed the world but for the resilience and optimism with which we faced the storm, endured it and prevailed," Brown will say in his speech on Monday evening.
"...And if we learn from our experience of turning unity of purpose into unity of action, we can together seize this moment of change in our world to create a truly global society."
According to a summary of the speech released by his office, Brown will set out five great challenges the world faces.
These are: terrorism and extremism and the need to reassert faith in democracy; the global economy; climate change; conflict and mechanisms for rebuilding states after conflict; and meeting goals on tackling poverty and disease.
Brown will also identify five stages for tackling the economy, starting with recapitalizing banks so they can resume lending to families and businesses, and better international co-ordination of fiscal and monetary policy.
He also wants immediate action to stop the spread of the financial crisis to middle-income countries, with a new facility for the International Monetary Fund, and agreement on a global trade deal, as well as reform of the global financial system.
"My message is that we must be: internationalist not protectionist; interventionist not neutral; progressive not reactive; and forward looking not frozen by events. We can seize the moment and in doing so build a truly global society."
#3
Socialism can only exist by leeching off of capitalism. They see the writing on the wall and know the only place left to keep the dying carcass alive a wee bit longer is to get its teeth into the American body while its wounded and stunned now.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said that the Obama administration in the United States needs far-reaching 'perestroika' reforms to overcome the financial crisis and restore balance in the world.
Look how well it worked in the Soviet Union...
The term perestroika, meaning restructuring, was used by Gorbachev in the late 1980s to describe a series of reforms that abolished state planning in the Soviet Union.
And look how well that turned out ...
In an interview with Italy's La Stampa published on Friday, Gorbachev said President-elect Barack Obama needs to fundamentally change the misguided course followed by President George W. Bush over the past eight years. Gorbachev said that after transforming his country in the late 1980s, he had told the Americans that it was their turn to act, but that Washington, celebrating its Cold War victory, was not interested in "a new model of a society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand."
Oh good, a communist is lecturing us on morals ...
Certainly the former Soviet Union represents a model for all the world to follow... Oh. Wait. Never mind.
He said the Republicans have failed to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists, that Europe has changed, and that new powers like China, Brazil and Mexico have emerged as important players on the world stage.
Turns out Mike that we've seen the changes. The Soviet Union doesn't exist but it's been replaced by something only a little less odious. Europe in fact hasn't changed so much as it has continued to devolve. We saw the emergence of China forty years ago, back when we cut deals with them to stifle your ambitions. Mexico, a country we know well, is a basket case.
He told the paper that the world is waiting for Obama to act, and that the White House needs to restore trust in cooperation with the United States among the Russians. "This is a man of our times, he is capable of restarting dialogue, all the more since the circumstances will allow him to get out of a dead-end situation. Barack Obama has not had a very long career, but it is hard to find faults, and he has led an election campaign winning over the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton herself. We can judge from this that this person is capable of engaging in dialogue and understanding current realities."
Just what Bambi needs, an endorsement from a washed up commie. Thought he already had that in William Ayers.
Former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of now defunct Yukos oil giant, who is in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges, also used the word perestroika in discussing the future course of the Obama administration. In an article published in the business daily Vedomosti on Friday, Khodorkovsky said Obama's election win was not merely another change of power in a separate country, but was important for all states. He said that, "being a liberal himself, he thinks that the world will take a left turn," and that "a global perestroika would be a logical response to the global crisis."
"The paradigm of global development is about to change. The era inaugurated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 30 years ago is over."
He said decisions in neoliberal economies had been made mainly by supranational institutions and transnational corporations. Khodorkovsky predicted: "Globalization will slow to a crawl, but will not stop. The 'golden billion' of the world's richest people will have to abandon hopes of increasing their wealth, but high consumer standards which developed at the end of the 20th century will be unaffected by the change. The striving for political freedom and open competition of personalities and ideas will not disappear."
#2
was not interested in "a new model of a society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand."
Big BS alert: gorby was and most probably still is (though he's now a watermelon) a bona fide commie.
Perestroika & glasnost were no reforms "where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand" aimed at abolishing the communist state apparatus, in fact, it was quite the opposite, they were aimed at making it sustainable, so it could go on. Make some changes at the margins and make it more efficient, so to prevent collapse (didn't work out, thanksfully).
And gorby was no liberal neither, his goal was to have a convergence with the then EEC (cf. Bukosky's claim) and so expel US influence fom the so-called "european home".
So, really, having a real-life, unreformed commie apparatchik lecture the USA about "morals" and political reform is pretty funny, should be infuriating, but, well, we ARE living in bizarro world, aren't we?
#3
and that the White House needs to restore trust in cooperation with the United States among the Russians.
IIUC, reading and listening to people I trust like Françoise Thom, not the putin-zombies of the french right, my understanding is that the new deal in russia is a massive and concerted effort by the power through the various media, academia, entertainment, paramilitary youth movements,... to :
1) re-abilitate stalin's memory as one of the greatest russian leaders (second to czar putin, of course), and whitewash and excuse his crimes against the russian people among others by
2) painting foreign powers, and most notably the West and the USA in particular (western Europe is depicted as africanized and decadent, which actually is pretty accurate) as perennial ennemies o the Motherland, always plotting and scheming against it, and so entities to be hated and feared (thank god the Fearless Leader is here to protect the russian people).
The national-communist-imperialist russia of putin is gearing up for war, if not in the armed forces, at least in the massification of the public opinion (apparently, there is a much more uniformized hatred of the West and the USa now than during the soviet era, when the official propaganda was not believed by most). Remember, the collapse of th eUSSR was the "greatest tragedy of the 20th century", russia has been "humiliated" (by the collpase of the communist mepire, think about it), russia has a natural "vital space" and "spheres of influence" which are being trampled on by the USA, which are trying to "surround it" (notably through the Color Revolutions, all Cia-plots),...
And the America-hating wingnuts in France are eating it up like candy, by the way.
So, this really is doubletalk, as russia itself is not interested at all by "restoring trust", quite the opposite.
#4
"a new model of a society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand."
Sounds like Russia today, but not in the way he means, I'm sure.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/10/2008 5:19
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#5
but high consumer standards which developed at the end of the 20th century will be unaffected by the change.
Brought about by free trade, but by the means of Obama magic, can be continued by protectionism.
The striving for political freedom and open competition of personalities and ideas will not disappear."
I'm sure in some alternative reality that makes sense. Former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of now defunct Yukos oil giant, who is in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges,
#7
Putin's big mistake is the classic Russian argument of beans vs. bullets. Putin assumed that capitalism would take care of the beans argument, so he could concentrate on bullets. But in this he was mistaken.
The end result is that he is trying to built a steel superstructure on a wooden hull. Instead, he should have applied himself to first and foremost, encouraging more Russians to have a lot of children.
And while every Russian leader tries to do this, usually it is in ineffectual ways, like giving prizes or awards for having children. Instead he should have built new cities just for young couples, to make a baby boom.
#10
Gorbachev hasn't drunk himself to death yet? And a unity of politics, economics and morality sounds like the classic definition of fascism to me...
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/10/2008 10:33
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#11
By 'Perestroika', he means 'weaken'. Don't worry Gorbi, Obama will weaken the US plenty before he is done.
#12
To me, the furthest separation of all three is better.
They are making a place where there is no way you can "agree to disagree", no choice, and no freedom. Political control of the economy will be a disaster (see 100 million murdered by Marx worshippers). Political control of "morality" is a disaster (see the War on Drugs, the Taliban, and the Kingdoms Morality police).
#13
Gorby's what you might call a useful idiot except he was useful to us, not them. But now that he's served his purpose it's important to remember that he is still an idiot.
Once the mightiest of Shiite militias, the Mahdi Army finds itself on the run as rivals benefit from government ties and U.S. backing. Efforts to reorganize into a socio-religious group may not help.
Reporting from Baghdad -- The Mahdi Army fighter gets nervous every time he passes an Iraqi army checkpoint in Sadr City. He has even shaved his beard, a sign of his piety and his fealty to the Shiite Muslim militia, so the soldiers won't recognize him.
"I am hunted. I can't stay home. The neighbors are informing on us," 28-year-old Bassem said at a recent rally for his leader, cleric Muqtada Sadr. Using a derogatory term for the Iraqi army, he added, "Four times, the dirty division has raided my house."
At the height of Iraq's civil war, the Mahdi Army was arguably the mightiest group in the country, revered as a protector of Iraq's Shiite majority and feared for its death squads and criminal activities. The militia functioned as a state within a state, its members collecting protection fees from businesses, its fighters intimidating the Iraqi security forces that were supposed to police them.
In a telling measure of the militia's power, the U.S. military credits Sadr's decision more than a year ago to call a cease-fire as one of the chief reasons for the sharp drop in violence in Iraq. But Sadr's fortunes have also plummeted, and his followers now contemplate a world where they are on the run and their Shiite rivals have the upper hand.
The current order in Sadr City is a bitter pill for the militia, a testament to its weakened state. Iraqi soldiers march through the street outside Sadr's headquarters in the crowded Baghdad district. Nearby, an army base fills the dirt lot where people once prayed on Friday afternoons. Deprived of the traditional spot, worshipers lay their prayer mats on the street.
The movement is trying to survive hard times by restructuring, absorbing fighters into a new social organization, and by waging a political campaign against an unpopular U.S.-Iraqi security agreement. The maneuvers could resurrect Sadr's militia as a leaner, more disciplined force that could vie for power in Iraq if America draws down and no longer provides military support to Sadr's rivals. Or they could mark the beginning of the end for the populist movement.
Although fighters such as Bassem say they must honor Sadr's freeze, others in Sadr City whisper about Mahdi Army loyalists who have started to set off explosives or shoot Iraqi soldiers at close range. The U.S. military says it has no record of such assassinations; still, the rumors suggest that some Mahdi Army factions could continue to carry out attacks even if the broader movement is marginalized, raising the specter of a return of the violent days of the past.
Sadr's troubles are rooted in the fighting between his militia and Iraqi security forces that erupted in March after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki ordered the army to clear the militia's strongholds in the southern city of Basra. The clashes there ended only when Sadr commanded his militia to stand down, and then did the same in Sadr City six weeks later.
The cleric's retreat was hailed as a victory for Maliki. Former Sadr supporters expressed relief at the end of the fighting and resentment toward the Mahdi Army for endangering them.
With his armed wing formally frozen, Sadr looked to repair his movement's image. He announced in June that his fighters should form a new social and religious education organization, named Mumahidoon, which aims to teach Iraqis about Islam. Some fighters would also be tapped to join an elite armed wing that Sadr has authorized to fight the Americans, outside the cities away from civilian populations.
Sadr's top aides echoed his message that the old Mahdi Army was finished in the cities. "The Americans may fear that the Mahdi Army will come back with weapons. We tell them no. That chapter is finished. The struggle is now in parliament and the political arena," said Sheik Hazem Araji, a senior advisor to Sadr.
Inside the Sadr headquarters, young men wait in a room with folding chairs to join Mumahidoon. Sayed Fareed Fadhili, the 28-year-old head of the group, admits things have become difficult for the movement since the government began targeting members last spring.
"Yes, we had more freedom before the Basra operation and good relations with the government. After Basra, everything changed," said Fadhili, dressed in the black turban and robes that denote a descendant of the prophet Muhammad.
Fadhili believes Mumahidoon will help sustain the movement. He plans to send representatives all over Baghdad and Iraq to instruct people about the proper teachings of Islam. He pledges that the Sadr movement will survive its current tribulations. "Any party or person cannot erase the Sadr movement," he said.
The U.S. military sees Mumahidoon as Sadr's bid to keep his militia alive. "To avoid having his organization continually targeted, he had to do something with them, so he followed the Islamic Brotherhood and Hezbollah model," a U.S. military intelligence officer said, referring to other Islamist movements that provide charitable services and enjoy popularity in the Arab world.
It allows Sadr to keep his ex-fighters present in communities. "Obviously the same guy who was committing violence is now supposed to be a community organizer. If you are in that community, you know who this guy is. That carries with it a certain amount of force behind what they say," said the intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons. "The elements can also collect intelligence and serve as a front for other violent elements."
At the moment, veteran militia fighters are still reeling. Abu Baqr, a mid-level member in the Sadr organization, describes how stunned he was last spring when Sadr commanded the militia to stop fighting in Sadr City.
One of the reasons violence in Iraq has subsided so dramatically was a significant battle that U.S. forces won in Sadr City just five months ago. Sadr City - part of Baghdad - is home to two million Shia, and the turf of fiercely anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. For years, insurgents in Iraq have been stymieing U.S. troops with homemade, low-tech weapons, like car bombs and improvised roadside explosives.
But in this battle of Sadr City, as 60 Minutes learned in a high-level debriefing with the U.S. commander in Iraq, the Americans overpowered the Shiite militias with hi-tech, including the most advanced, sophisticated, whiz bang hardware and software on Earth, like electronics, lasers, and high-resolution cameras that can literally cut through the fog of war.
When 60 Minutes was in Iraq to interview the new commanding general, Ray Odierno, we went with him as he surveyed the former battlefield, through neighborhoods now pacified and into a market returning to life. At his side was the brigade commander who led the battle there, Col. John Hort. "This was some of the heaviest fighting that we had experienced during our two months in Sadr City," Hort told Stahl. "Right where we're standing."
Standing there, or any place in Sadr City, could not have been done just five months ago - the area was off-limits to Americans. For years, the fiery cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Shiite militia controlled the streets.
Last March, they began using the neighborhood as a launching pad to lob rockets into the nearby "Green Zone," the seat of the Iraqi government and site of the U.S. Embassy. "Not just one or two, but we're talking 20 to 30 rocket attacks coming out of Sadr City," Hort explained.
Col. Hort gave General Odierno his first briefing on the battle, and 60 Minutes was invited to sit in. It's rare that reporters can videotape sessions like this. We were asked to turn our cameras off only once, and were allowed to broadcast only a few slides that were later de-classified for us.
The U.S. military had wanted to mount an attack in Sadr City, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki balked for a year because the militias are Shiites like him, and that made a decision to fight them politically risky.
Odierno waited for the prime minister, saying the decision to go ahead was Maliki's to make. "I think what he finally realized were that the militias that had safe havens in Sadr City were really trying to destabilize the government of Iraq, and he realized it would add instability to his own government," the general told Stahl.
Once Maliki gave the go-ahead, a U.S. Stryker battalion went in, but they confronted a steady stream of militia reinforcements. "I mean every day, it was 20, 30, 40 new guys that were coming down to fight," Hort recalled.
So Hort and his men had to do something to keep them out. They decided to build a barrier straight across Sadr City. It would also create a buffer zone wide enough to prevent militia rockets from reaching the Green Zone. To build the wall, Col. Hort's Charlie Company began putting up massive T-shaped concrete slabs. Fighting erupted almost immediately, as sniper fire came in from every direction; Charlie Company retaliated with massive tank fire.
"We fired 800 tank rounds in this fight. We haven't fired that many tank rounds since the start of the war," Hort told Stahl.
Col. Hort said "the building of the [so-called] T-wall became a magnet for every bad guy in Sadr City." This was one of the most intense engagements in the entire war. Yet even as the battle raged, the wall went up. "It was literally concrete barrier by concrete barrier. We just wasn't goin' out there puttin' up some barriers. I mean, it was a fight every inch of the way," he said.
"Guys would climb the ladders to unhook the crane chains from the wall unarmed, while people are firin' at 'em. So it was high adventure," Lt. Col. Brian Eifler remembered, whose team laid down cover fire while some soldiers, wide open and exposed, unhooked the chains from the crane.
#1
why in the world would you let 60 minutes record anything that the military says in a debriefing? I wonder if they kept the the stuff they didn't declassify?
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 10:58
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Maybe now that it's Barack Obama's war CBS is all for it.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's President Hu Jintao told U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in a telephone conversation that proper handling of the Taiwan issue would help improve Sino-U.S. ties, state media reported on Sunday.
Both countries should respect and accommodate the other's concerns and properly handle sensitive issues to promote Sino-U.S. relations to an even higher level, Hu was quoted as saying. "Particularly the Taiwan issue," said Hu.
"The relationship between the United States and China is the most vital relationship on today's international stage," Obama said to Hu, according to the reports.
The exchange mirrors the message China issued to Obama after his election victory, which also urged him to halt $6.5 billion worth of arms sales to the self-ruled island. China denounced last month a U.S. plan to sell the arms, including attack helicopters and missiles, to Taipei, and demanded Washington halt all military exchanges with Taiwan.
Obama, who enters the White House in January 2009, expressed support for the arms sales during his election campaign.
Hu will travel to Washington to attend a November 15 summit with other world leaders from the G-20 grouping of nations to discuss ways to fight a downturn in economic growth amid the global financial crisis. Hu would attend bilateral meetings during the summit, but a meeting with Obama had not yet been fixed, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman has said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008
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Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008 10:31
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Christ, I didn't even think about that one. Sellout of Taiwanese democracy in 1...2...3...
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/10/2008 10:34
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Reminds me of the episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye and BJ have a NKor soldier surrender to them and they escort him back to camp. The NKor surrenders to everyone he meets on the way, so Hawkeye tells him: "C'mon Fred, there's a whole camp full of people you haven't surrendered to yet."
Already nearly broke when the global financial crisis took hold, Pakistan now faces further woes that could take the nuclear-armed nation's security situation closer to the edge, experts said. The country, a frontline ally in the US-led campaign against Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, has been forced to seek 10 billion dollars from western backers to stave of the threat of going bankrupt as early as February 2009.
The situation is perhaps the biggest challenge yet for Pakistan's new government as it tries to replace former president Pervez Musharraf's outdated economic and security policies.
Pakistan saw years of rapid growth after Musharraf seized power in a coup in 1999, with former Citibank executive-turned-premier Shaukat Aziz overseeing an apparent turnaround in the country's finances. But after Musharraf's allies were defeated in elections in February, the new civilian government quickly found itself facing gaping holes in the economy and public anger over rising prices.
The administration here denies that the country is facing a balance of payments crisis -- but admits that outside help is necessary to stabilise a crucial nexis of fears over Islamic extremism and atomic proliferation.
Pakistan saw years of rapid growth after Musharraf seized power in a coup in 1999, with former Citibank executive-turned-premier Shaukat Aziz overseeing an apparent turnaround in the country's finances. But after Musharraf's allies were defeated in elections in February, the new civilian government quickly found itself facing gaping holes in the economy and public anger over rising prices.
The largely impoverished population of 168 million is suffering from inflation that hit a 30-year-high in June, the last available figure, of 25.33 percent, making staple foods and fuel unaffordable. Meanwhile the Pakistani rupee has plummeted 23 percent against the US dollar since the start of the year. At one point last week it hit a record low of 80.5 rupees to the dollar.
The biggest impact of Pakistan's economic problems could be on its battle against extremism near the Afghan border. The country is still reeling from the bombing last month of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, one of the few remaining symbols of foreign investment.
"Economic hardship and the militancy are directly linked," Talat Masood, a retired Pakistan army general and now a leading security analyst, told AFP. "People become more vulnerable to exploitation by militant forces, who always take advantage of public deprivation. Also, for Pakistan's huge army, economic problems make it impossible to sustain and upgrade the necessary equipment to wage counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations," Masood said.
#1
Civil war against the Islamofascists is inevitable and should be encouraged by outsiders. I saw a Greek produced film on the "Tribal" areas of Pakistan, and it is plain and obvious that 100% support Talibanization of the region and return of al-Qaeda training. And this political development follows indulgence of the heroin industry. There won't be a cultural revolution, favoring a pro western regime. Tribals are our mortal enemy and their political order needs to be eradicated.
And they'll take all the credit, and buy up all the Toyota Land Cruisers, and chase the local wimmins ...
You're thinking too small. They want the oil.
I think they're going to find out just what the Iraqis think of them. But the Euros might grab the oil anyways ...
BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: The Lebanese Daily Star on Saturday reported that the European Union is set to step up its engagement in Iraq once a new U.S. administration takes office, according to an internal paper by the French EU presidency.
"Our common interest is to contribute to the success of Iraq," the document seen by The Daily Star says. "Therefore, the European Union intends to re-engage in the country without delay."
According to the Daily Star, European countries like France and Germany were alienated from Washington in light of President George W. Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq in 2003. When Spain's socialist government withdrew its troops after a series of terror attacks, Madrid's relations with the U.S. also soured. The desire to re-engage with the U.S. over policies in Iraq coincides with Bush's designated successor Barack Obama's preparations for taking office.
Which demonstrates that the European abandonment of Iraq was never about principle but rather spite.
The document is part of a European effort to identify policy areas the 27-member block and the U.S. have in common. The Daily Star said that the EU foreign ministers discussed the paper, which is not intended for publication, on the sidelines of a meeting in Marseille Monday. The eight-page document is intended to provide a framework for European cooperation with the U.S. in key foreign-policy areas - the Middle East, Russia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Diplomats familiar with the talks insisted that any level of re-engagement was linked to the security situation in Iraq. "At the moment, the country is probably still too insecure. But we're starting the discussion now. The better things get, the more we can do," a European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "We are certainly concerned and we are thinking of ways of how to help stabilize the country," another diplomat said.
During his campaign, Obama had promised to withdraw American troops within 18 months from taking office. The U.S. and Iraq are currently negotiating a deal that would see the U.S. pull out of Iraq by 2011.
According to EU diplomats, considerations among European nations are still at an early stage. If the security situation improves, many of them may be ready to step up their work on development projects. In addition to that, diplomats said their governments would be ready to talk about enlarging an already existing law-and-order mission in the country.
You won't see a Euro in Baghdad until it's safe, at which point they really won't be needed, or especially wanted ...
Other diplomats floated the idea of stepping up training efforts of Iraqi police or gendarmerie forces. In the past, Germany has trained police officers outside Iraq on a limited scale. Italy had assisted Baghdad with the creation of a paramilitary force similar to its own Carabinieri. Earlier this year, the UN special envoy to Iraq, Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura, had called for more European help in setting up such a force.
Perhaps you guys should ask the Iraqis as to what they need?
It's not about the Iraqis. The EU wants the oil.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008
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FCK the EU.
Give the Sadrites their GPS locations.
#2
"European countries like France and Germany were alienated from Washington in light of President George W. Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq in 2003."
The alienation had nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with the fact that W was a Republican ie not-a-socialist. I was in Europe in 2002 and observed the behavior up close and personal. Iraq wasn't even on the radar and they were already bitching. The issues change but the behavior pattern never changes. The same behavior was observable during Reagan and Nixon.
Posted by: Some One Not The One ||
11/10/2008 8:27
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It's all about the money. Europeans don't care of other people suffer and die under tyranny, if they can make a buck out of the deal. They never imagine that this crap will come back to haunt them.
Ironically, in this case, the US probably wants them back in Iraq, solely so they can get oil from someone other than Russia.
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.
Gonna rule by decree, huh? Good idea.
Works for Hugo ...
John Podesta, Obama's transition chief, said Sunday Obama is reviewing President Bush's executive orders on those issues and others as he works to undo policies enacted during eight years of Republican rule. He said the president can use such orders to move quickly on his own.
"There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that," Podesta said. "I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set."
Continued on Page 49
#3
If 0bama wants to set the clock back to when the Clinton's left the White House, the Republicans can help by removing all the "Ws" & "Os" from the all keyboards in White House and replacing all the signs with a photo of "The One" giving us the finger.
The Court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's (CMM) in Barisal yesterday issued show cause notice to two officials of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) and police about delay in presenting arrested Babuganj upazila BNP Secretary Shamsul Alam Fakir before the court and physical torture on him and his family members.
Sheikh Ahmed Ali, assistant deputy director of Rab-8, and SI Anwar, complainant of the case, will have to show cause appearing in person before the court on November 16 about delay in presenting Shamsul before the court (at 3:00pm on November 7) after his arrest at 11:35pm on November 5.
If only they had arrested Shamsul at 3 am all this could have been avoided ...
The CMM, Mainuddin Islam fixed November 16 for hearing the prayer for remand against Shamsul and also for the bail prayer submitted on behalf of Shamsul.
No problem guys, that's plenty of time for Shamsul to get caught in a crossfire will attempting to escape ...
The court also ordered to present the 'recovered' shutter gun firearm and explain the cause of alleged physical torture on Shamsu Fakir and family members including his wife and children during his arrest and further torture on Shamsul under custody.
The CMM also asked the complainant and IO of the case to explain why previous 10 cases against Shamsul Islam Fakir were mentioned in the present case despite the fact that police failed to frame any charge for starting trial in those cases.
Pro'ly cause they were too busy beating the stuffing out of Shamsul ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008
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The CMM, Mainuddin Islam fixed November 16 for hearing the prayer for remand against Shamsul and also for the bail prayer submitted on behalf of Shamsul.
POLICE in a small eastern Arizona community are investigating the possibility that a boy, eight, who is charged with killing his father and another man with a rifle had been abused. The boy, who faces two counts of premeditated murder, did not act on the spur of the moment, Police Chief Roy Melnick said yesterday.
"I'm not accusing anybody of anything at this point," he said. "But we're certainly going to look at the abuse part of this. He's eight years old. He just doesn't decide one day that he's going to shoot his father and shoot his father's friend for no reason. Something led up to this."
A judge said there was probable cause to show the boy fatally shot his father, Vincent Romero, 29, and Timothy Romans, 39, with a .22-calibre rifle. Under Arizona law, charges can be filed against anyone eight or older.
The judge ordered a psychological evaluation of the boy. The boy was charged as a juvenile, but authorities were pushing to have him tried as an adult, Chief Melnick said.
That's absurd. The lad is eight years old. Unless he's a monster he has no adult understanding of what he did. And if he is a monster he'll need to be kept away from adult prison.
Why have a "juvenile justice" system if you're going to try obvious juveniles as adults? They're juveniles because they're assumed not have an adult level of understanding.
If convicted as a minor, the boy could be sent to juvenile detention until he turns 18.
Police had responded to calls of domestic violence at the Romero home in the past, but authorities were searching records to determine when those calls were placed, Chief Melnick said. "We're going to use every avenue of the law that's available to us, but we're also looking at the human side," he said.
Chief Melnick said officers arrived at Mr Romero's home within minutes of the shooting on Wednesday in St Johns, which has a population of about 4000 and is 275km northeast of Phoenix. They found one victim just outside the front door and the other man dead in an upstairs room.
Mr Romans had been renting a room at the Romero house, prosecutors said. Both men were employees of a construction company working at a power plant near St Johns.
The boy went to a neighbour's house and said he "believed that his father was dead", said Apache County attorney Brad Carlyon.
Chief Melnick said police had a confession, but the boy's lawyer, Benjamin Brewer, said police overreached in questioning the boy without representation from a parent or lawyer and did not advise him of his rights. "They became very accusing early on in the interview," Mr Brewer said. "Two officers with guns at their side. It's very scary for anybody, for sure an eight-year-old kid."
Prosecutors were not sure where the case was headed, Mr Carlyon said. "There's a ton of factors to be considered and weighed, including the juvenile's age," he said. "The counterbalance against that, the acts that he apparently committed."
Mr Carlyon said the boy had no record of complaints with Arizona Child Protective Services. "He had no record of any kind, not even a disciplinary record at school," he said. "He has never been in trouble before."
FBI statistics show instances of children younger than 11 committing homicides are very rare.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/10/2008
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A complete set of original plans for construction of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz have been found in a flat in Berlin, according to a report in Bild newspaper. The 28 yellowing blueprints show an 11.66 metre by 11.20 metre room marked "Gaskammer" (gas chamber). The plans also include a crematorium and a room marked "L. Keller" - an abbreviation for "Leichenkeller", or corpse cellar.
Hans-Dieter Kreikamp, head of the federal archives office in Berlin, told Bild that the blueprints offered "authentic evidence of the systematically planned genocide of European Jews".
The plans also offer evidence that the Nazis planned the Holocaust from an earlier date than previously believed.
The decision to kill Europe's 11 million Jews has historically been dated to the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. A copy of the minutes, known as the "Wannsee Protocol", is generally regarded as one of the most important documents from the war.
But the newly discovered Auschwitz plans, published ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Kristallnacht purge against Jews, are dated Oct 23, 1941, offering evidence that the Nazis had developed plans to kills Jews on a mass scale earlier than previously thought, the newspaper said. The plans of the death camp, which was built near Krakow, in Poland, were drawn by SS technicians and inmates.
Dr Kreikamp said one green ink sketch on the plans appears to be in the hand of SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Dr Kreikamp said he attached "extraordinary meaning to the documents".
He added; "The documents reveal that everyone who was concerned with the planning and building of the extermination camp would have known that human beings were to be put to death here on an industrial scale.
"The documents disprove beyond all doubt that which Holocaust deniers claim - that Auschwitz was nothing more than a labour camp where no gassing took place."
The planning documents are to undergo further research at the federal archive before being turned over to scholars interested in using them.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/10/2008
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Eh...'they' will just say the Jews forged the perfect instrument to prove their point, and 'they' will believe it just because 'they' want them to and, simply, 'they' also WANT to believe it...
What species is the only one to have effectively neutralized the law of natural selection?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 6:05
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I'll bite:
They were 'Yellowing'...
Seriously, though, have you ever met a person that saves EVERYTHING? You should have seen my grandmother's house by the time she was moved into hospice with Alzheimers. No surprise it happens in other countries, too.
My bet: Relatives were clearing out the 'junk' & salvaging familial items. If it were the property owner, they might have been tossed as 'garbage'.
#4
It's 11 million now?
I thought it was 6 million just a few years ago, at this rate they will have gone extinct 60 years ago by next year. I don't know if there is anything in the media that I would believe anymore, but if these prove to be real they will certainly give the arabs someting to squeal about for a while.
#5
i think they meant there where 11millionn jews in europe. 6 million were killed
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 11:37
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"The decision to kill Europe's 11 million Jews has historically been dated to the Wannsee Conference in January 1942"
The decision was well made before that date. What was decided at the Conference were the exact measures and organization. One of the most important "technicalities" was about how to deal with people who were only partly Jewish.
The documents are certainly interesting but "prove" nothing new. There is probably no single historic event (and atrocity) better documented and proven without any doubt than the holocaust including the gas chambers.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
11/10/2008 16:42
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#7
Approximately 11 million people were killed in the death camps. 6 million were Jews.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/10/2008 19:14
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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Southern African leaders said on Sunday that Zimbabwe's political rivals must split the leadership of a key ministry, a move rejected by the opposition in a further sign that power-sharing talks were unraveling. The 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) said in a resolution Zimbabwe's squabbling political parties should form a unity government immediately to end a stalemate over the allocation of ministries.
But opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he was "shocked and saddened" by the outcome of a summit, which brought together leaders and ministers of SADC countries for more than 12 hours of talks on Zimbabwe's political impasse and the violence in eastern Congo. "The MDC is shocked and saddened that SADC summit has failed to tackle these key issues ... a great opportunity has been missed by SADC to bring an end to the Zimbabwean crisis," Tsvangirai said at a post-summit news conference.
SADC said Tsvangirai did not agree with SADC's call for his Movement for Democratic Change to co-manage Zimbabwe's Home Affairs Ministry with President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF.
The resolution calling for joint control of the ministry -- which controls Zimbabwe's police and is the main sticking point in the talks -- was backed by all 15 members of SADC, said Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway MDC faction.
The SADC said a unity government must be formed. "We need to form an inclusive government, today or tomorrow," SADC Executive Secretary Tomaz Salamao told reporters late on Sunday night after the summit in South Africa. "... SADC was asked to rule and SADC took a decision and that's the position of SADC. Now it's up to the parties to implement," he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008
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I recall the Clinton to Bush transition and marveled that a bunch of Democrats could be so .. petty. Taking the 'W' keys off the computer keyboards? Luckily the current President is far more honorable and decent.
Faced with one of the most important transfers of presidential power in American history -- amid wars on two fronts, the looming threat of terrorism at home and a full-blown economic crisis -- the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama team have responded with exceptional cooperation on those issues, aides and outside experts say.
Serious decisions, and potentially divisive ones, still remain for the politically and ideologically divided camps, such as access to classified information and, in particular, battles over the regulations and executive orders that will define the policy of the two administrations.
But the days since Tuesday's election have shown a striking level of comity following the rancor of the campaign, enhanced by President Bush's months-long efforts to pave the way for a smooth transition and President-elect Barack Obama's preelection determination to move quickly.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
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It's the usual thing: we're nice to them, they bash us as hard as they can. The stupid bastards that voted this POS in are going to bitterly regret it, but they got what they wanted. Now let's see how long it takes for buyer's remorse to kick in. It's already starting with the press, not that I'd ever again believe anything those cretinous shills said or wrote.
We're going to miss George W. Bush, not because he was so good but because his successor will be so terribly bad. The only saving grace about this election is that it drove a stake through the heart of the MSM. They won't be believed again under any circumstances and hopefully they'll soon go under.
Barack, if you and I could have a very private word please. Barack, over the past few days I've been watching and listening to you very closely. Quite frankly Barack, you have not been living up to your statement "America can only have one president at a time." As a Texan, I take a man at his word. It's a personal thing Barack. It's personal, let me try to put it in context. It would be like me telling you how ugly that red and black dress is that your wife wears. You understand personal don't you Barack. Great!
I've been attempting to be a gentleman, play ball, etc. You understand sports, the game, sportsmanship, doing the right thing by your opponent. Now listen and listen closely you SOB. I've got a lot of sick leave built up and my stomach is really upset. The very next time I hear or read of you making or releasing any statement even remotely executive, of an international nature, or presidential... I am outta here and back in Crawford on permanent holiday. No transition, No briefings, No access, No staff, No back to D.C. for inaugeration hand-off, nada, zipp. You'll start like I started. If you want it ugly, I can make it very ugly. Do you understand me young man? It's your choice cowboy. Now, get the phuech outta my office and give me a call tomorrow with your decision.
MUSCAT: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday conceded that economic growth may slow down “somewhat” next year but said the fundamentals of the economy were strong and the banking system was safe and sound.
Addressing the Indian diaspora and the business community at two functions on the second day of his two-nation tour, the Prime Minister maintained that despite the shadow of a slight fall in the growth rate, India would continue to train its sights on investing $500 billion in the economic and social infrastructure over the next five years.
“Due to the current international economic and financial situation, our growth rate may come down somewhat next year. However, we still hope to achieve a growth rate of seven to seven-and-a-half per cent next year. The fundamentals of our economy are strong. Our banking system and financial institutions are well capitalised and secure,” he said. The high-level committee appointed by him to monitor the situation would suggest short and long-term measures to accelerate growth.
The Prime Ministers observation means that this would be the first time India faces a dip in economic growth after averaging nine per cent over the last four years.
Dwelling on the macro-economic fundamentals, he pointed out that the domestic savings rate remained at a healthy 35 per cent and was hopeful of the “young demographic profile” leading to a further increase in the rates of savings and investment over the coming years.
Turning to the Indian diaspora in Oman, estimated at roughly five lakh, he observed that their annual remittance of over $780 million is a “reflection of your ties with the motherland and your confidence in India.”
The India-Oman Memorandum of Understanding signed on Saturday for setting up a joint investment fund would open the door for greater investment.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/10/2008
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Pakistani madrassas, having come to be viewed with deep suspicion in the West, are seeking to change the perception that they are incubators for extremism that spur young Muslims to commit acts of violence, according to a Washington Times report published on Sunday.
Media reports have tied former madrassa students to terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe and to militant groups operating in Afghanistan, but reporter Jason Motlagh finds the reports "hard to reconcile with the atmosphere of Jamia Naimia in Lahore".
"The actions of a small minority have given a bad name to Islam and a centuries-old educational system that can interface with a modern world," he quotes madrassa head Mufti Sarfraz Naimi as saying.
He said it was the duty of the government to 'find and crush' madrassas that preach violence. "We are preparing our students for every field of life," Naimi said. "They can become engineers or imams."
Teachers at the madrassa "promote tolerance above any political alignments, allowing students to form their own opinions independently", another administrator said.
Out of about 150,000 schools nationwide, roughly 15,000 are madrassas, a spokesman for the Ministry of Education told the Washington Times, but "only 1,000 or so have adopted the standardised curriculum".
The report says former president General (r) Pervez Musharraf had pledged in June 2002 to overhaul thousands of madrassas 'under pressure', and the US had 'put up $83 million toward this end', but "Musharraf's efforts were half-hearted, and resistance was strong, according to analysts and current state officials".
Khalid Rahman, director of the Institute for Policy Studies in Islamabad, said that in conservative parts of the country such as the Tribal Areas and Balochistan, religious institutions generally see prescribed reforms as 'out of context' with Islam and the traditional lifestyle. "This does not necessarily mean they are extremists, but because madrassas in these areas tend to play a dominant role in the development of children with limited exposure beyond school walls [it is] easier for them to be converted to any kind of [violent] venture" if influential figures are so inclined, Rahman said.
Asked about the ongoing US missile attacks on suspected Taliban targets that included madrassas, students of the madrassa in Lahore said "they harbour no ill will toward Americans but are angry with the government".
"We are only against their policies that have hurt Muslims," said Akbar Syed, 21, a native of NWFP. "The US wants to treat us like slaves here, when they should treat us like friends."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
maybe if they want to shake the terror label, they should stop producing terrorists and start teaching something more useful than islamofacisim and hate.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
11/10/2008 21:30
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A special court yesterday sentenced former prime minister Khaleda Zia's assistant personal secretary M Shamsul Alam to 13 years' imprisonment for amassing wealth worth Tk 1.79 crore illegally and concealing information about wealth worth Tk 1.48 crore from the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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The son of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said Sunday he has moved to Qatar after being prevented from entering Egypt and being denied political asylum by Spain, he told AlArabiya.net in an interview from Qatar.
Omar bin Laden said that Egyptian authorities had refused to renew his residency after it expired. "When I inquired about it, I was told I should return back to my country," he said. "I couldn't stay in Egypt illegally, so I decided to leave the country so as not to violate the Egyptian law."
He said that when he was in Spain he had received an offer from the American embassy there promising to grant him political asylum in Washington. "I preferred to travel to Qatar. I am happy now that I am living in an Arab and Muslim country. I will stay here until I get the British visa," Omar said.
Egyptian police said on Sunday they did not interrogate Omar bin Laden upon his arrival at Cairo International Airport, an Egyptian security source said. "Omar bin Laden was not prevented from entering the country and was not questioned by the Egyptian Police," Cairo International Airport Security Chief Mohsen Fahham told AlArabiya.net. "If he wants to return back to Egypt, he is welcomed. He decided to leave directly to Qatar after returning from a failed bid for political asylum in Spain," Fahham said, noting out that it was up to Omar to remain in Egypt or leave it.
Omar's English-born wife earlier told AFP that they were deported from Egypt after returning from a failed bid for political asylum in Spain, which turned down his request for political asylum on Saturday. "The Spanish government said that Omar was safe in Egypt and so had a place to go, but when we arrived in Egypt they deported us," his wife Zaina Alsabah bin Laden said by telephone from a passenger plane at Cairo airport.
The 27-year-old Omar, one of the children of the fugitive founder of the al-Qaeda terror network, had appealed against Spain's refusal on Wednesday to grant him asylum after arriving in Madrid from Cairo. But the Spanish authorities deemed that his security was not in danger and he returned late on Saturday to Cairo, where the couple met and have been living for several months.
Omar bin Laden, who has a Saudi passport, is the fourth child from Osama bin Laden's first marriage. His wife, 52, whom he married in 2007, is British, having changed her name from Jane Felix-Browne.
Omar trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan from age 14, but by 2000 became disillusioned with the Taliban's fight, according to an interview on earlier this year on CNN, and left with the blessing of his father. But he said he did not know where his father was and did not think his father was a terrorist. Omar said in a statement that he has not spoken to his father since 2000.
The couple, who met while horse riding, set up the "Al-Mirage" horse ranch just outside Cairo this spring and had planned to make a business out of arranging horse and camel back desert safaris from the ranch, which lies in the shadow of some of Egypt's lesser-known pyramids.
Zaina said on Sunday that she hoped they would be able to go to Britain in early 2009. In April Omar was denied entry to the United Kingdom, where his wife's children live, over fears his presence would cause "considerable public concern."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Excellant decision.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 6:11
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I guess Spanish officials didn't like that AQ inspired Arab terrorists bombed the trains in Madrid. Good decision by Spain.
NATO jets today bombed Tirah Valley in Khyber Agency, killing eight members of a banned outfit -- Amar Bil Maroof -- and injuring three, Dawn News reported. The channel said the NATO jets targeted hideouts of the banned outfit in the Moga area near Torkham.
Amar Bil Maroof spokesman Munsif Afridi confirmed that those who had died were members of his group. He said that 10 Afghan soldiers had been killed in a gunbattle with his group at the Torkham border earlier in the day.
Sounds like the hard boyz got followed home.
Newscopter Nine, the 'Eye in the Sky' ...
16 Taliban killed: Meanwhile in Bajaur, security forces continued targetting Taliban positions with fighter jets and helicopters, killing 16 more militants, officials claimed. They said the areas targeted today included Sapri, Banda, Khakai, Damadola and Sewai of Mamoond tehsil, and six bases and an arms depot were also destroyed in the offensive.
The Pakistani military said last month that some 1,500 Taliban fighters and 73 soldiers had died and hundreds more militants been captured since the start of its operation in Bajaur in August. Suspected US missile strikes have also targeted militants in the border regions.
Several Taliban posts had been destroyed. NNI quoted officials as saying that more troops arrived in Bajaur on Sunday to intensify the offensive against the Taliban.
Separately, unidentified assailants fired two rockets at a security post in the Serai area -- four kilometres from Khar -- but there were no casualties.
Step up efforts: Meanwhile, locals said tribesmen had stepped up efforts for the restoration of peace in the Tribal Areas, with two separate jirgas of the Salarzai and Mamoond tribes called to make plans to flush out the Taliban. Also, the political administration has warned Afghan refugees to stay clear of the area, and notes have been distributed telling the locals not to shelter Afghan refugees.
Also in Swat, NNI reported that mortar shells fired by security forces killed six civilians. Police said the civilians were killed as security forces and the Taliban exchanged fire.
The mountainous Swat valley, which features Pakistan's only ski resort, was until last year a popular tourist destination where many Pakistani city dwellers went for their annual holidays. But it has been turned into a battleground since local cleric Maulana Fazlullah, who has links to the Taliban, launched a violent campaign for the implementation of Shariat.
Separately, the Taliban set a television cable operator's office on fire in Sangota and torched two girls' schools in Kabal tehsil, AFP quoted police as saying.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
What are NATO jets doing in Pakistan? Got lost, maybe? Where is the cry of violation of the soverighty from Pakistan? Something very strang about this.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 6:27
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Hot pursuit would be my guess. Kinda hard to bitch about that, innit?
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008 8:53
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One benefit of the Obamination is that the narrative changes in this fashion. Suddenly NATO is cooperating with the Pakistani forces in clearing out bandits and reactionary forces in the Pashtun back-country, instead of American imperial mercenaries murdering baby ducks and babes-in-swaddling clothes with saturation bombing.
I'm trying to take the Yezidi world-view as a model these days. All hail the Peacock Angel! For he brings us Hope and Good PR!
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/10/2008 10:11
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can't wait too get back too that ski resort.
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 11:01
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The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators sought on Sunday to keep alive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks although political uncertainty in Israel has scotched hopes for a deal this year. The European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States strongly backed the talks launched at Annapolis, Maryland, nearly a year ago by U.S. President George W. Bush, despite expectations he will fail to meet his year-end target.
The Quartet also called for a halt to Jewish settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land, one of the thorniest issues in the peace talks, and for the dismantling of "terrorist infrastructure."
The Quartet also called for a halt to Jewish settlement activity on occupied Palestinian land, one of the thorniest issues in the peace talks, and for the dismantling of "terrorist infrastructure."
"The Quartet called for the continuing of the peace process in the framework of Annapolis," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said after a meeting of the Quartet in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. He was referring to the U.S. city where negotiations were revived in November 2007 after a near seven-year hiatus, with both sides committing to reaching a long-elusive deal by the end of this year.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, warned that the British military was already over-stretched, and suggested that troops from other Nato countries should be sent to fight.
Mr Obama has spoken of his desire to see a surge in troop numbers in Afghanistan, similar to that which appears to have had success against extremists in Iraq, to finally quell the Taliban insurgency. But Sir Jock said that British troops were already struggling to cope with fighting in the two theatres of Iraq and Afghanistan, and could not take on more demands.
His words were echoed by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who agreed that other Nato countries should take responsibility for any fresh surge in Afghanistan. Both men also ruled out sending British troops to the Congo to bolster the United Nations force in central Africa.
There are currently 8,100 military personnel serving in Afghanistan, with another 4,100 in Iraq due to withdraw by the middle of next year. Sir Jock said that they should not be redeployed to Afghanistan once their mission in Iraq ended, adding: "I am a little nervous when people use the word 'surge' as if this were some sort of panacea. We welcome more military force being sent to Afghanistan. Everybody needs to do their share, we are very clear on that. In the context of what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are shouldering a burden which is more than we are able to shoulder in the long term, so we expect the others to take up their share of that burden."
Appearing with Sir Jock on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Miliband was asked if Mr Obama's proposed surge would require an increase in the size of Britain's commitment there. He said: "Not necessarily, no. As the second-largest contributor of troops in Afghanistan, the first thing we say is that we don't want to bear an unfair share of the burden."
William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, also warned that Britain was already making a "disproportionate contribution" to the Nato effort in Afghanistan. He told Sky News' Sunday Live: "We do need the rest of Nato to play its part in Afghanistan and undoubtedly it seems that Barack Obama does intend to send larger US forces and that is part of what is necessary in Afghanistan. We would all take some persuading that there would have to be a much larger British contingent there - there's already a very large British contingent."
Meanwhile, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said that the Government should talk to Iranian and Taliban leaders in order to find lasting resolutions to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He added: "Negotiation with both the Taliban and Iran may be unpalatable, but it is the only route to success, and if it doesn't happen now it will be too late."
Posted by: john frum ||
11/10/2008
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#1
the British are in Iraq? I thought they left awhile back
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 11:23
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Anyone with the name Jock Stirrup is going to have a tough time getting credibility/respect. His old man musta left at an early age per the Boy Named Sue theory.
#3
Chris, what's left of them are holed up at Basra Airport, cleaning their (unused) weapons.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/10/2008 13:03
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And thus the screamingly obvious fact of the non-existence of "allies" in any concrete sense bursts onto the scene, after years of distortion by the media and Dems, and characteristic silence of the Bush administration. Yes, yes, many Brits are true allies, and their military is good and over-stretched (and under-resourced, and demoralized) - but aside from them, there are hardly any allies who can, literally, be of much use. Lack of political will, and the indolence and dependency of decades, render them thus. I'm wondering whether we'll actually get to enjoy the spectacle of one of the opposition's dumbest and most counter-factual idiocies of the Bush years exploding in their faces, now that the electorate has inexcusably allowed them back in power.
#6
And y'know, if it were my country's troops, I wouldn't want to surge them into Afghanistan anyway. President Zero doesn't have a secure way of supplying them, if he'd ever done anything besides politics and acadamia in his entire life he could probably grasp that.
We need to make sure we're not sending them there to just wind up as hostages.
#8
The overstretch of British forces in Afghanistan is due to the meat axe approach to defense spending taken by the Labour governments in Britain since the end of WWII. As bad as it may seem to be in the US military with the teeth to tail ratio, it is 10 times worse in any of the European militaries. Also, the US has been replacing/rehabbing/rebuild equipment the whole time since 9/11, while the Europeans have been coasting along on their Cold War era equipment. The approach works for awhile, since most military equipment is very robust but eventually stuff wears out and needs to be replaced. And the British and other Europeans have taken the "penny wise and pound foolish" approach to procurement : don't buy it until there is nothing left, and buy only European models of all major weapons systems.
#9
Given the ongoing saga reflected in this and infinite earlier stories, it really makes one wonder about the French, British and Russian nuclear arsenals. Could they be approaching Pakistani levels of efficiency?
Posted by: Large Spomoling6782 ||
11/10/2008 19:04
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(IsraelNN.com) According to a report on Middle East Newsline, President-elect Barack Obama has dispatched his "senior foreign policy adviser", Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria to outline Obama's policy on the Middle East.
Malley's been promoted from 'never heard of him' to 'he has no role in our campaign' to 'senior foreign policy advisor' now, and may get promoted further in the near future to 'national security advisor'.
Malley reportedly relayed a promise from Obama that the United States would seek to enhance relations with Cairo and reconcile differences with Damascus.
This will be a distinguishing characteristic of Bambi's administration: he'll buy into a more traditional view of foreign relations from days gone by, one in which the U.S. cozies up to thugs and dictators in the name of stability. It doesn't work, and 9/11 was the result of fifty years of searching for 'stability'. Bush got it right, but Obama (of course) can't admit that, especially not now. The 'progressive' community is more than happy to sell other people's freedoms down the river in the name of 'peace'.
"The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests," an aide to Malley was quoted as saying. The aide said Obama plans to launch a U.S. diplomatic initiative toward Syria. Malley met both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad "to explain Obama's agenda for the Middle East."
Aides to Malley also said that Obama told Mubarak that the United States would maintain military and civilian aid and sell advanced F-16 aircraft to Cairo. Egypt has not ordered F-16s in nearly a decade.
Just make sure the advanced kill switches are installed ...
Malley was an advisor to President Bill Clinton and played an active role in the Camp David summit with Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat. He later published an article in which he laid some of the blame for the failure of those talks on Israel's doorstep.
Another Clintonista. I thought one of the good things about Bambi coming into office was that his wing of the party was going to get rid of all the Clinton types ...
In May 2008, Malley said in an interview that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, as part of his work for a conflict resolution think-tank called the International Crisis Group.
The ICG being another Soros-type group that just happens to be in the middle of everything controversial and stupid ...
This aroused ire and concern in pro-Israel circles, and prompted a spokesman for Obama to say that "Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future."
Surprise!
One of the sponsors of the International Crisis Group is billionaire George Soros, who sits on its board and its executive committee. Other members of the board include former United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former general Wesley Clark, who called US support for Israel during the Second Lebanon War a "serious mistake" and said that "New York money people" - a phrase interpreted by many as a reference to Jews - were pushing the United States towards a confrontation with Iran.
Not a single one of these guys is a friend of Israel, of capitalism, or of a strong America.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Bambi's name is already taken for Zaptero. Use Obambi
Another Clintonista. I thought one of the good things about Bambi coming into office was that his wing of the party was going to get rid of all the Clinton types ...
Clintonista is a minor evil compared to an Ayerista.
#2
Beware, beware, beware.....The International (multi-state) Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental....NON-ELECTED entity which who reports to NO ONE but a select illuminati!
#4
The 'progressive' community is more than happy to sell other people's [i.e. foreigners'] freedoms down the river in the name of 'peace'.
As long as it leaves them free to push the US ever-leftward
Posted by: Peter Carroll ||
11/10/2008 9:58
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Are any of these clowns cognizant that Syrian and Egyptian interests are in opposition to each other? Egypt's the foremost non-oil-producing member of the Sunni group of Arab states, and Syria's the (very!) junior partner in the Shia axis. Egypt sponsors Fatah, Syria sponsors Hamas, and both sides seem more interesting in sparring with each other and playing influence games in Lebanon than opposing their nominal Israeli enemy.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/10/2008 10:26
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May 10, 2008...
One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him.
Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council. “I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people,” he added.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama, responded swiftly: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.” The rapid departure of Mr Malley followed 48 hours of heated clashes between John McCain, the Republican nominee-elect, and Mr Obama over Middle East policy.
Welcome back to the fold, Bobby. We hardly missed ya...
Political administration of Khyber Agency on Sunday arrested around a dozen tribesmen belonging to Loi Shelman and impounded three vehicles used in blocking a road between Shinwari and Loi Shelman. The action was taken after residents of Loi Shelman set up an illegal check post in Loi Shelman. Tribes of Pero Khel and Sheikhmal Khel had also erected chains on a road to extort money from transporters. These check posts have now been removed.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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The largest broadcaster in the Middle East will forgo millions in advertising revenue by refusing to air a series of tobacco commercials in conjunction with an anti-smoking initiative spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, the Saudi health minister announced.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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China on Sunday announced a massive $586 billion stimulus package aimed at boosting domestic spending over the next two years in its most aggressive response so far to the spreading global financial crisis.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Let me guess...
Ummm...
Infrastructure, roads & bridge building with community involvement?
US SENATOR John Kerry owed Massachusetts voters more candor as he sought a fifth term. During his recent reelection bid, he said, "I intend to serve my term. If I'm elected, that's what I'm doing."
Politicians frequently do this. They pretend they have no ambition beyond their current office. It's a standard part of the political game. But in Kerry's case, his interest in being secretary of state in a Barack Obama administration was widely discussed in Massachusetts political circles. The average voter deserved to be clued in.
Instead, he imperiously waved away questions about the future, just as he imperiously waved away opponents who dared challenge him.
Kerry had to be forced into debating Ed O'Reilly, the Gloucester lawyer who gave the longtime incumbent his first primary challenge in 24 years; their single match lasted 19 minutes and was broadcast on a Sunday morning. Two weeks before Election Day, he and Republican Jeff Beatty debated twice, once on television up against a Patriots game and once on the radio.
The junior senator from Massachusetts was more experienced, better informed, and, on the issues, the better choice than either rival. He easily crushed O'Reilly and Beatty. So, as he rolled to certain victory, why couldn't he be more transparent about the future? A total confession of ambition would be presumptuous. But, how about something along the lines of, "It's premature to discuss an Obama Cabinet position before an Obama victory, but it would be a privilege to be considered"?
Now, Kerry is said to be on Obama's short list for secretary of state, leading to the possibility of a mad political scramble to replace him if he takes a Cabinet position. Let the contenders, Democrats and Republicans, scramble away. It would be nice to have vigorous debate, a real campaign, and a new US senator who really wants the job.
Under Massachusetts law, a vacant US Senate seat would have to be filled by special election within 140 to 160 days of the resignation. The Democrat-controlled Legislature approved the law when Kerry was running for president in 2004. Democrats wanted to prevent Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, from appointing a possible successor.
Governor Deval Patrick is indicating that he might be open to the idea of changing it back. That would be wrong. Massachusetts voters, not their governor, should decide who represents them in the US Senate.
Massachusetts Democrats already have so much concentrated power. Must they also cut off even the charade of a two-party system, by taking away a special election? As it is, the rules favor well-known candidates with easy access to campaign money. In this state, that is another way of describing Democrats.
The Republican Party in Massachusetts is pitifully weak. After Tuesday, the number of Republicans in the House of Representatives dropped from 19 to 16. There are only five Republicans in the Massachusetts Senate. And, of course, all members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation are Democrats.
Rebuilding the GOP shouldn't be the concern of the Democratic Party. If Massachusetts voters prefer to vote for Democrats, that's their right. But you would think those voters would also want the Democrats they elect to level with them. Kerry didn't do that.
Four years ago, he came very close to realizing his dream of becoming president. In August, he delivered a strong and eloquent speech on Obama's behalf at the Democratic National Convention. Watching him in Denver, it was hard not to think what it must be like to stand once again in front of thousands of cheering delegates, this time as an unsuccessful presidential candidate instead of as the Democratic Party nominee. It takes a certain strength of character to do that.
When Kerry gives interviews, it's clear he has spent a lot of time reliving the 2004 campaign and would like to have more than a few moments and strategy decisions back. It's also clear that he wants to be somewhere else, like in the Cabinet.
He ran for reelection to hedge his bets. As he hedged them, was it idealistic to expect something else with it, like a little honesty?
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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The State Dept. needs him. It is an intellectual and cultural environment only a camilion like Kerry could fully appreciate. Massachusetts, let your son go!
#5
Aw, come one, mirrorboy! You know you want a disappointed pompous wind-bag of a former presidential candidate as your Sec'y o Staat! Just imagine the visions of Webster, John Quincy Adams, and William Seward that must be dancing in Kerry's overheated brain at the very thought!
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/10/2008 11:04
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#6
Waffles lies to himself twice a day, just to keep in practice, you fools!
Posted by: Titus Omusotch2059 ||
11/10/2008 11:41
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At this point, Kerry's waiting for Obama to release his birth certificate.
#8
Anybody remember the touching story Kerry told during his presidential campaign about his grandma on her deathbed saying to young John: "Remember John - integrity."
This was supposed to give the voters the idea that integrity was an important thing in his family.
Except it also emphasized to my way of thinking, maybe yours, that grandma thought that grandson John Kerry was lacking in integrity.
The guy was such a dope, he thought we'd all be impressed.
Posted by: Titus Jetch7346 ||
11/10/2008 22:01
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Taliban posters put up in Landi Kotal on Sunday warned women against going to the offices of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA). A large number of men have recently been accompanying their wives to the NADRA office in the Khyber Agency town to apply for identity cards for enrolment in the Benazir Income Support Programme. But the Taliban posters in various bazaars of the town call the practice 'obscene' and 'un-Islamic' and threaten the families of 'serious consequences'. Locals had earlier complained the NADRA office did not have female staff to serve women. Monday is an exclusive day for women visitors to the office.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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Thousands of people from a liberal Muslim sect, the Alevis, took to the streets here on Sunday, denouncing the Islamist-rooted government and calling for equal religious rights. About 50,000 people, arriving from all parts of the country, gathered in downtown Ankara, chanting slogans against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and dancing traditional Alevi dances.
Protestors carried Turkish flags and portraits of Turkey's secularist founder Ataturk and placards with slogans such as: "End discrimination" and "Turkey is secular, it will remain secular."
"The AK Party ignores the rights of 20 million Alevis in this country. This shows that they are not honest with their talk of religious freedoms," said Suleyman Erseven, a 48-year old demonstrator.
The main Alevi demands include an end to Sunni dominance in the religious affairs directorate, the government agency regulating Muslim affairs; the abolition of compulsory religion classes in schools; and the recognition of Alevi temples as places of worship.
Turkey's sizeable Alevi sect is a distant relative of Shiite Islam, known for its traditionally leftist and secularist leanings. It has long been suppressed by the Sunni majority. The Alevi faith, closely related to Sufism and Anatolian folk culture, is the specifically Turkish version of Alawism, prominent also in Syria.
They say that despite its advocacy of broader religious freedoms, the AKP government has done little on promises for reconciliation with the Alevis, who account for 15 to 20 million of Turkey's 70-million population.
Many Alevis tend to support secularist parties because they fear Islamists will put further restrictions on their faith. They say the AK Party strives to expand freedoms for Sunni Muslims, while ignoring the demands of Alevis.
Some protesters called for abolishing the Religious Affairs Directorate, which they say is defending Sunni Islam. The directorate tightly regulates Turkey's thousands of mosques, appoints imams, pays their salaries and approve sermons for Friday prayers. Alevi representatives also said the government should stop building mosques in Alevi villages. Most Alevis do not attend mosques but prefer gathering in houses of prayer, called Cemevi, where women and men pray together.
The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, has also urged Ankara to expand Alevi rights.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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Doctors struggled yesterday to contain an outbreak of cholera in a sprawling refugee camp near Congo's eastern provincial capital of Goma, as new fighting ignited fears that infected patients could scatter and launch an epidemic.
At the Kibati camp and in Goma, thousands packed church services Sunday to pray for peace after rebels and pro-government militiamen executed civilians in two waves of terror that the top UN envoy to Congo has called war crimes.
The killings highlighted the inability of UN peacekeepers to protect civilians or halt a 10-week-old rebel offensive that has convulsed eastern Congo and forced more than 250,000 people from their homes.
The fighting in Congo is fueled by ethnic hatred left over from the 1994 slaughter of 500,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda claims to be fighting to protect minority Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu rebels who participated in the genocide and then fled to Congo. He wants direct talks with President Joseph Kabila's government to end the fighting, and a rebel-declared cease-fire around Goma has mostly held.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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A Saudi poet was arrested at his workplace and taken to the religious police headquarters for allegedly writing "heretic" poetry containing "sorcery symbols."
Four officers from the Commission for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice stormed the office of Saudi poet Rushdi al-Dawsari in a Dammam company on Tuesday morning.
After a verbal dispute that ended with punches, Dawsari was forced to go to the commission headquarters for publishing a poem that alleged contained sorcery. "While I was at work I got a phone call from the security at the company telling me that some people are waiting for me. When I did not go down, they came up to my office," the award-winning poet told AlArabiya.net.
Three bearded, well-built men entered his office, while a fourth waited in the unmarked car, Dawsari recounted. They were not accompanied by a police officer as is customary. "One of them grabbed my arm and said, 'come with us, you licentious heretic.' One of them punched me, and I punched him back."
Dawasri added that he was worried about his image at work, so he had to go with them to the commission's headquarters, , where officers showed him some of his poems on the internet and charged him with promoting sorcery. "I told them these texts require aesthetic, and not religious, analysis and that those who quote heresy are not heretics," he explained to AlArabiya.net
Dawasri received the Contemporary Literature Award for Poetry in Warsaw for his poem Shahadet Sareer (A Bed Testimony) and has taken part in several poetry readings inside and outside Saudi Arabia.
In his poem "Poetic Sorcery," Dawasri used a paragraph from the sorcery book Shams al-Maaref (The Sun of Knowledge) by Aboul Abbas al-Bouni.
Sorcery is against the law in Saudi Arabia and carries a heavy penalty, including death.
Dawasri was detained for eight hours and was not allowed to use the phone. He said those who detained him did not have badges and he assumed they were waiting to turn him in to someone, but this someone did not show up. "Looks like they disagreed about me," he said.
The officers then forced him to write a pledge vowing to stop writing "heretic and sorcery poetry" and to stop publishing poems on the internet. They also warned him not to mention the incident. "I had to sign to get out of this crisis," Dawasri said.
The following day Dawasri filed a complaint at the police station and said he is awaiting a response from the authorities.
The Saudi Interior Ministry imposed restrictions on the Commission regarding detentions and interrogations after officers committed violations including illegal detention. According to the new rules, the Commission's role ends as soon as it hands an alleged offender over to the police. Commission officers are also not allowed to detain anyone at their headquarters.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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"None of us could read his high-falutin' words, but he had a piture, so we seen it was sorcery!"
Defense Minister Ehud Barak urged the cabinet on Sunday to consider discussing in its next session the use of counter fire in response to the Qassam rockets being launched at the Negev from the Gaza Strip. During a debate on the matter of reinforcing Gaza-area homes, Barak suggested that the matter of responsive fire be raised during the cabinet's next meeting on Wednesday.
The defense minister stressed that the most recent Israel Defense Forces operation, which was carried out to destroy a tunnel from the coastal territory believed to be intended for abducting soldiers, was a "defensive raid."
"The operation does not give the Palestinian organizations justification for breaching the calm," he said. Barak was referring to the barrage of Qassam rockets which were launched following the raid. IDF and Israel Air Force troops killed at least six Hamas gunmen and one Islamic Jihad militant during the operations. In response, militants in Gaza fired 35 rockets at Israel on Wednesday and four each on Thursday and Friday.
Barak told cabinet ministers that should a discussion of the sort being held in the cabinet, he would like to see Attorney General Menachem Mazuz present to discuss the legal ramifications of response fire. Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer added that during this discussion, ministers must also consider the legal aspects of cutting off electricity to the Gaza Strip.
Vice Premier Haim Ramon proposed holding an expansive debate regarding Israel's policy on the cease-fire with the Gaza Strip. "The calm was called for a limited period and that time is running out," he said.
The special cabinet session called for Wednesday is thus far intended for debate on reinforcing homes in western Negev communities against rocket fire.
It is not clear why Barak chose to raise the subject of counter fire during that debate, considering that such a move would be in violation of the five-month old cease-fire. Not having a highly trained legal mind, I can't quite see the logic in that statement.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
The Israelis should instead build tall observation towers, allowing them to see deeply into Gaza. Then if they see someone setting up, with overlapping fields of vision, they can call in an accurate arty strike on them before they can fire.
Myanmar withdrew its warships, the oil and gas exploration rig and the fossil fuel exploration vessels from Bangladesh waters yesterday but tension between the two countries still exists as both the nations mobilised more troops along their border. "Shwe, I been thinking about this whole 'war with Bangla' thing."
"Yeah?"
"When was the last time us Burmese won a war?"
"You mean against another country? Not against monks or students or something?"
"Right."
"Ummm... Lemme see, here... Didn't we fight a war with the Thais in... uhhh... sometime in the 1800s?"
"Right. Did we win it?"
"I don't think so."
"How about the one before that?"
"Nope."
"Bangla used to be part of Pakistain."
"Pakistain's never won a war, either."
"But the Banglas threw the Paks out."
"Oh. I see what you mean. But they had help from India."
"Took a lotta prisoners, too."
"Not officers, though?"
"Officers, too."
"Maybe we should negotiate."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Bangladesh vs. Myanmar. Geez, who do we root for?
Was Rev. Jesse Jackson crying tears of joy at President-elect Barack Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park? Or was the civil rights leader weeping in regret that he might now be out of a job?
Caught by television cameras, Jackson's tears spoke volumes. It is important to remember that Jackson helped to pave the way for Obama. But, like some other old-school leaders, Jackson has been slow to recognize when to step out of the way.
For example, his most memorable contribution to Obama's presidential campaign came when Jackson's whispered wish to "cut his nuts off" was caught by a hot Fox News microphone. Jackson apologized profusely. No problem. His gaffe undoubtedly reassured skeptical whites that Obama was not a Jackson clone.
Much was said about how Obama was opening a "post-racial" era, although "multiracial" is more appropriate. Race and racism have not evaporated. Nor has the need for diversity to be respected, not just tolerated. Jackson's not out of a job yet. But Obama's victory moves our old baseline of racial expectations to a higher and happier level. It's hard to argue that our society is irredeemably racist when our multiracial electorate just elected a man with African roots and an Arabic-sounding name to be commander in chief.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
But Obama's victory moves our old baseline of racial expectations to a higher and happier level
No, Fred, it doesn't. It just marks the fact that the diversity/affirmative action insanity has reached all the way to the top of the political food chain. Anyone who thinks this lying bastard's election was good for anything is seriously deluded. What it really shows is a)that skin color trumps competence, honor sacrifice and experience, and b)that the black populace of the U.S. is irredeemably racist. No WHITE candidate ever got 95% of the white vote.
I'm disgusted with the performance of the electorate this election. I will, however, have the grim satisfaction of seeing most of the stupid bastards who voted for him live to bitterly regret their action in doing so.
They deserve what they'll get. Unfortunately, a lot of other people will have to share in the reckoning they've brought on themselves.
#2
The future's market on 'white guilt' took a hit. Maybe not as big as oil, but its now on the down turn. Those who've always pimped themselves out won't change, but the value to others is going to have less impact as time and performance pass.
#3
I will, however, have the grim satisfaction of seeing most of the stupid bastards who voted for him live to bitterly regret their action in doing so.
That is assumming, they live. We are in a dangerous world remember?
#5
In November, 2007, Jesse had an opportunity to purchase exclusive rights to sell all African themed black light velvet canvas art paintings sold east of the Mississippi River, including Candada and Mexico. He took a pass. Rumor is that some white guy named Rahm owns the rights now. Hence the tears.
#6
I understand why 95% of blacks voted for Obama. If you don't then you should open up a history book. Regardless of his being a vapid marxist, his race did matter to them, hugely. That a black man could run for and win the highest office in the land is a major milestone. I don't begrudge them one bit.
#7
Remoteman, I don't "begrudge them" one bit, either. However, not being patronizing or racist myself, I make the appropriate conclusions about their political maturity and responsibility. You might want to think about that. The condescension towards blacks, masquerading as broad-mindedness and historical sensitivity, is just another discouraging confirmation that race relations are trapped in PC bizarro world.
Naturally I refuse to begin lumping people together on this, as on anything else. Worked as a civilian alongside and under too many outstanding black Americans in uniform - many of whose reactions to the last few years equals mine in despair and anger - to do so. And I know some them are as appalled as I am at all this.
#8
Verlaine, I would argue the fact that blacks have traditionally voted more than 90% for the Dem presidential candidate as far more concrete evidence of their political maturity, or lack thereof. Of course the Irish/Catholics did the same thing until Kennedy was elected.
Regardless, now they have their black man in the White House, and they will get to see how effective he is, or not.
#11
Jackson isn't going to give up his shakedown racket. It is too soon to start the real complaining, but by Feb expect to start hearing whispers that Obama "isn't black enough" and that a Kenyan can't have an authentic sense of the ghetto life. Jackson won't say that sort of thing himself, of course; but Obama will start to need somebody to help maintain good relations with the black communities, and who better than "Benjamins" Jackson?
Posted by: James ||
11/10/2008 23:10
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Nine doctors of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU) yesterday told the Supreme Court registrar the medical reports on former BNP lawmaker Mosaddek Ali Falu's health were not made by a medical board but were individual examination reports.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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Four suspected robbers were beaten to death by a mob at Hatbaria village of Santhia upazila in Pabna early yesterday. The four were identified as Ebadat alias Ebad, 35, regional leader of outlawed PBCP 'Janajuddha' faction and son of Moylal of Vulbaria village, Robiul Islam Robi, 30, son of Mojai, Lal Pramanik, 32, son of Ahmed Pramanik of Bhabanipur village, and Shamim, 28, son of Shahed of Tebaria village in the upazila.
Police said locals rushed to the spot after hearing cries when a gang of 10 to 12 robbers stormed into the house of Abdul Aleem at about 1:00am. They caught four robbers and beat them up, leaving them dead on the spot. But most of the robbers managed to flee, police said.
On information, police rushed to the spot and sent the bodies to Pabna General Hospital morgue for autopsy.
Police also arrested another alleged robber Hablu alias Habu and recovered a local-made gun, a shutter gun and one bullet.
M Moniruzzaman, officer-in-charge of Santhia police station, told The Daily Star that they were investigating the matter as the arrested robber gave them important clues. The alleged robbers are also outlawed 'Janajuddha' operatives and engaged in looting, extortion and such type of criminal acts, he said. Three separate cases were filed with Santhia police station in this regard.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Silly thieves, you need to have the cover of an election to steal and get away with it. You get the pol to do it for you. It's call 'redistributing the wealth'.
TigerHawk demolishes Tom Friedman and points out what we at Rantburg already know: that when the going gets tough in Bambi's brave new world, the Euros will be sitting on the sidelines.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008
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Indian security forces shot dead 11 suspected militants in fighting over the weekend in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), police said on Sunday. Five militants were killed in Poonch district, close to the Line of Control, a police official said, while four others were killed in the southern district of Doda.
Kashmir is in the grip of a 19-year insurgency against New Delhi's rule that has left more than 43,000 people dead by the official count. Violence has declined since India and Pakistan launched a peace process in 2004.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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Iraq on Sunday timetabled long-awaited provincial elections for January 31 as a survey showed religious parties apparently losing support. The elections, which Washington sees as key for achieving national reconciliation, will take place "in one day in Baghdad and the other provinces," Qazim al-Abudi, administrative director of the Iraq High Electoral Committee, told AFP.
"The electoral campaign will start at the end of this month or at the beginning of next month and it will last for two months," he said.
In a survey by Al-Amal Association, an Iraqi non-governmental association, only 22.7 percent of 12,000 people polled in 11 provinces said they would vote for religious parties. Voting for independent candidates was deemed a priority by 26.3 percent of the 11,000 Iraqis surveyed, while 23.7 percent said they would select democratic and secular blocks.
In the last provincial elections, in December 2005 , religiously affiliated parties won all the seats in the councils, with the exception of the Kurdish region and Kirkuk.
Washington has long said the poll was critical to consolidating Iraq's fledgling political process and reconciling its deeply divided ethnic groups following the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled now executed President Saddam Hussein. First planned for October 1, the polls were postponed when the national Parliament struggled to pass an election law due to concerns over the disputed oil-rich Kirkuk Province.
The January ballot will be held in only 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces after the new law excluded Kirkuk and the three Kurdish provinces of Irbil, Dohuk and Suleimaniyya. Elections in the three Kurdish provinces will not be held until after March 2009 and the existing multi-communal council will continue to administer the province of Kirkuk.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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A Canadian journalist kidnapped in Afghanistan was released Saturday after four weeks in captivity, according to Afghan and Canadian officials.
Mellissa Fung was abducted Oct. 12 while reporting for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Fung, 35, who worked with the CBC on a freelance basis, was traveling with a translator and driver when she was seized after interviewing refugees in a sprawling camp about five miles west of Kabul.
Few details about Fung's abductors or where she was held were released Saturday. But an official with CBC in Kabul said Fung was returned to the capital about 7:30 p.m. and appeared to be in good health.
Jamie Purdon, director of news gathering for CBC, said Fung was probably held by the same captors for the duration of the ordeal.
Fung, who was taken to the Canadian Embassy after her release, will undergo a full medical examination before returning to her family in Canada, CBC said. "We are very, very relieved," Purdon said.
Adam Khan Serat, a spokesman for the governor of neighboring Wardak province, told the Associated Press that tribal elders and provincial council members helped negotiate Fung's release.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
So, now that they've had their way with you, what do you have to say for yourself?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 6:21
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#2
Was she abducted or embedded? What payment was given to her hosts?
Islamist insurgents on Sunday attacked Somali interim government troops in the capital, triggering clashes that killed five civilians, witnesses said. Seven other civilians were wounded in the fighting in southern Mogadishu's Folorensa Junction and Taleh districts where interim government troops are based.
"I saw three bodies near Foleransa Junction, where insurgents exchanged machinegun fire with Somali forces. Four civilians were wounded," said Osmail Salad, a witness.
Another witness, Mohamoud Adan Shire, said a civilian and a child were also killed by stray bullets in Taleh district.
An Islamist commander, Sheikh Kofi, claimed that insurgents had killed several soldiers, but there was no independent confirmation. "We killed several Somali government troops when we attacked three of their bases," he told AFP.
Several witnesses confirmed the civilian toll and said that three others were wounded in the skirmishes.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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South Korea denies rumors suggesting that a recent photograph of North Korea's leader may have been forged, amid reports over his health.
An undated still photo of Kim Jong-II was released on Wednesday, portraying the communist leader in front of a military lineup. South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) told AFP on Sunday that it believed the photo, which British media had questioned, was real.
The picture shows the 66-year-old leader standing next to military commanders, while South Korean and US officials say he has missed a September 9 parade, which marked the country's 60th anniversary, because of a stroke he suffered in mid-August.
The British broadcaster BBC, and the London-based The Times newspaper questioned the picture's authenticity on Friday. Both highlighted differently-angled shadows and mismatching pixels. BBC carried a zoomed-in picture of the leader's leg, to demonstrate the mismatch. "The possibility of Mr. Kim's photo being forged seems very low," an NIS spokesman told AFP, but declined to comment on British speculations.
The South's unification ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyoun also told AFP he had no evidence to suggest forgery after observing the photo.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
The fall of the Nork regime is SoKo's worst nightmare.
#3
Bah. Forget the leg (although the shadow FROM the leg is suspicious.) focus on the WALL behind the front row: It has a top course of bricks that's missing immediately on either side and behind Dear Leader.
#4
The shadow of the legs is a dead give-away. I don't have the charts to do the calculations, but I'd bet that the original photo was taken in the late afternoon, with the shadows falling at an angle toward the back. Kim's shadow, however, is virtually straight-up, indicating the photo was taken much earlier in the afternoon. The shadow behind Kim is of an officer with a billed cap, not a bare head (unless Kim has six-inch long ears). The shadows also indicate that the sun was quite LOWER in the sky (and not just from different times), when the two photos were taken. The original was probably taken in the fall, while the one of Kim was taken during the summer. All in all, it's a photo-shop job.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/10/2008 13:53
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#5
"(unless Kim has six-inch long ears)"
I'm pretty sure he does, OP - surely you've seen the picture.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/10/2008 14:07
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#6
What is with the jokers on each side of Shrimpy. Everyone else in the front row, including Elvis, has clean pressed dress uniforms, ribbons. Those two have wrinkly pants, scuffed boots, missing arms...
A Jersey City councilman has reportedly been arrested for urinating on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington D.C. nightclub. The New York Daily News reports in Sunday's editions that two-term Jersey City councilman Steve Lipski has been charged with simple assault.
The newspaper says 44-year-old Lipski was removed from a place called the 9:30 Club on Friday night. That's after club staffers saw him relieve himself onto the crowd from a second floor balcony during a concert by a Grateful Dead tribute band. Messages left at Lipski's council office, and a Jersey City listing under his name were not immediately returned.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Ah, somdays I feel like doing that. He beat me to it. Wonder if he is a better person for it?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 5:48
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#2
Way back in merry old England, there was a long standing tale of some Lord who was in an upper balcony and did the same during some performance, until someone down below yelled out, "Pardon me, my lord, would you mind shifting to the left a bit? I'm getting the most of it!"
#5
Easy BH6, Jerry never peed on anyone. Nice fella, great guitarist.
I've seen the tribute band in question several times (Dark Star Orchestra). Like putting a quarter into the way-back machine. Always enjoyed their show. Never got peed upon, or anything else upon for that matter.
#6
The New Jersey councilman who allegedly urinated on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington, D.C. nightclub swore off booze on Sunday -- two days after he was busted for the embarrassing stunt. "I've resolved not to touch alcohol again," two-term Jersey City councilman Steve Lipski told the Fox 5 New York. He went on to say that the incident was "deeply humiliating, very embarrassing" and troubling," the Daily News reported.
Never again, I tells ya!!!
The 44-year-old Democratic councilman refused to admit to the lewd stunt.
Oh. So what was so "deeply humiliating, very embarrassing" and troubling,"? Seeing a Grateful Dead cover band?
"I can't comment on that," he told Fox5 News. "I'm going to continue to do all the good things, and I'm not going to let this overshadow me."
So..party on, doods!
Lipski was in D.C. to see a Grateful Dead tribute band and was spotted relieving himself by one of the club's staffers around 9:50 p.m., club sources told the Daily News. He was charged with simple assault.
President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff says something should be done to save the auto industry amid low sales and massive layoffs. "Washington needs to look at fast-forwarding the 25 billion dollars that has been provided for retooling the factories for basically a more fuel-efficient auto fleet," Congressman Rahm Emanuel told ABC on Sunday, AFP reported. Good idea. Loan them as much money as they need to get competetive again. Relax CAFE restrictions. Subsidize sales for a period of years if need be. But only do it on condition they break up into smaller, self-sufficient, competing companies. Rather than a single point of failure, build a net that can be repaired when something breaks.
Emanuel said the President-elect has asked his team to consider ways aimed at rescuing the US car industry. "As president-elect Obama has said throughout the campaign and as I think as recently as Friday ... the auto industry is an essential part of our economy and an essential part of our industrial base," he said.
Earlier House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid also urged congress to allocate a bigger share of the 700 billion dollar US aid plan to the auto sector. Emanuel declined to say whether Obama backed the appeal. "President-elect Obama has repeated that there's one president, one administration at a time and so you don't want to get in front of that," he said, as Obama's transition team prepared to take over from President George W. Bush on January 20.
However, he said, "there are existing authorities within the government today that the administration should tap to help the auto industry."
According to statistics collated by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the US automotive industry has laid off 94,900 workers in the nine months through September this year. The US auto giants have announced new rounds of job cuts nearly every day over the past weeks. Chrysler recently revealed that 25 percent of its salaried employees would be sacked before the end of the year, and that further restructuring will be seen "in the near future".
Ford Motor Co. also reported heavy financial losses and plans to slash an additional 10 percent from its salaried North American worker costs, citing the impact of a global slowdown that has already gravely weakened the US auto industry.
Experts believe that the layoffs are a mere foretaste of the tens of thousands of job cuts that will accompany a finalized merger involving the major auto companies.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
"Washington needs to look at fast-forwarding the 25 billion dollars that has been provided for retooling the factories for basically a more fuel-efficient auto fleet"
Retooling? I thought it was going into the UAW-administered Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (VEBA)?
I believe this is done annually in the auto industry in preparation for the roll-out of the upcoming year's new models. Seems to me it used to be done in the Summer time, lasted from 2-6 weeks and was referred to as "changeover." Is the gummit now going to fund model changeovers?
What is really being "retooled" is the taxpayer's arss and all it's fixtures.?
#4
this shit has got too stop somewhere and it either need too be here or not give AIG another dime. Sorry but a bailout of the US carmakers is not gonna help. the cars suck the employees are overpaid so handing the big men of the companies too piss away is not gonna help.
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 11:34
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#5
This bailout should only be considered if the UAW is forced to make very major and long-lasting concessions. I don't see that happening with the in-coming administration.
#6
If "card-check" becomes law, what are the odds that the UAW walks into Toyota or Honda?
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
11/10/2008 13:21
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#7
Sorry, Fred, I don't think your social engineering is desirable, even though it's ten thousand times smarter than the sort we'd actually see out of this crowd of idiots.
It is to puke to see how the public square in the US almost excludes any intelligent discussion of economic issues. And now, thanks to Dubya, we're off to the races. The races to mediocrity, avoidable problems, deepened national insolvency, and galactic-sized opportunity costs unseen by the slowly boiling frogs.
As I noted once before, the radio ads for Fred G's and my new congresscritter, Duncan Hunter the Younger, included bigoted nonsense about "Wall Street greed" that Huey Long would have felt comfortable with. My sense of connection to others in this country, and concern for their futures, grows more tenuous by the day.
#8
how do you sign up for these bailouts? i need one too at a fraction of 1% of what they are giving these guys and would prob go too better use
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 15:02
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#9
Fred G? I still have hair!
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/10/2008 16:07
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#10
NEW YORK (AFP) – General Motors shares plunged more than 30 percent Monday after an analyst forecast their price would fall to zero, saying that even if there is a government bailout of the auto giant, shareholders would not benefit.
"We are lowering our target on GM equity to zero dollars," the Deutsche Bank report said. "Even if GM succeeds in averting a bankruptcy, we believe that the company's future path is likely to be bankruptcy-like," it said.
"While we believe that GM's secured creditors may get a par recovery, unsecured creditors may get very low recovery. Equity shareholders are unlikely to get anything."
#11
If "card-check" becomes law, what are the odds that the UAW walks into Toyota or Honda?"
Followed shortly thereafter by Japan, Inc. walking out of the U.S.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/10/2008 19:03
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#12
I recommend we ask the Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Foundation to bail out GM. Since they don't pay retail property taxes.....
"According to the Cook County Assessor's website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and likely new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn't exist. While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel's residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections' website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home... Why wouldn't 4228 North Hermitage property owners Rahm Emanuel and wife Amy Rule not pay property taxes?
One reason may be because Emanuel and Rule declared their 4228 North Hermitage home as the office location for their non-profit foundation appropriately called the "Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Foundation". As a non-profit headquarters, they may consider their home as exempt from paying taxes."
Yemeni honey, famed for its regenerative and healing properties, is under threat after floods destroyed thousands of beehives in the southeast, threatening the production of what is commonly known as "natural Viagra."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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Great sex drive. Bad teeth. Works for me.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 5:56
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#2
Floods might be caused by global warming. We better send Al Gore over there to investigate. Keep him out from under the O man's feet.
#3
IIRC, wasn't/isn't yemeni honey one of al quaida money sources? Yemen, the happy arabia, where men are men but have cavities, women are wimmen, and goats are worried.
Thousands of people gathered for the funerals of three Indonesians executed on Sunday for the 2002 Bali bombings, sparking clashes between police and emotional supporters.
The three men from the group Jemaah Islamiah, Imam Samudra, 38, and brothers Mukhlas, 48, and Amrozi, 46, were executed by firing squad in central Java shortly after midnight, claiming to want to die as "martyrs" and having shown no remorse for the attacks.
The bodies were delivered to the village mosque for prayers, before being carried through a crowd of onlookers--shadowed by armed police and many reporters--to an Islamic boarding school.
"Of course they are martyrs. They fought hard in the name of Islam but they died. But dying doesn't mean they lost -- they still won," said one supporter, refusing to give his name.
"This is God's grace. The mujahedeen (holy warriors) will fight on!" shouted someone in the crowd, crying and holding his hands to the sky in religious awe.
Among those in the streets were followers of controversial cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who was accused of co-founding regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah and jailed for conspiracy over the Bali bombings, but later cleared of wrongdoing.
The bombers said they launched the attacks against packed nightclubs on the resort island of Bali -- killing 202 people, mostly foreign tourists -- to defend Islam and avenge U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq and to create an Islamic caliphate spanning Southeast Asia.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
More martyrs, please!
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 6:12
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In a drafty warehouse in northeast Minneapolis, Dave Nelson spent his Friday afternoon doing the political equivalent of watching paint dry. "I've got to tell you, this is different," he said, taking a break from reading "Sagitarius Command," a sci-fi novel.
A dozen miles away, on the third floor of St. Louis Park City Hall, Sharon Shaffer was doing pretty much the same thing from lunchtime until the 4:30 p.m. closing time. "This is new territory for me -- I've never done anything quite like this," she said.
Very few Minnesotans, it turns out, have ever done what Nelson, Shaffer and at least two dozen other supporters of Sen. Norm Coleman have been doing since the Senate race ended: They're standing watch over 2,885,399 ballots in the Senate race. They're on the lookout for monkey business.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Who's guarding the guards? I suggest the entire storage and counting process be done in full public view - maybe a storefront or such with a big, thick window onto a public place.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/10/2008 10:57
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#3
Probably, but not good enough, Mitch. It's politics - bribery and threats can be effectively used against specific people, but not against the population as a whole.
Thanks to Tuesday's presidential election, Congress is now two Senators short of a full house. Here's some early grapevine on who's in the running to fill the Illinois and Delaware Senate seats being vacated by the President-elect and his running mate.
In the Prairie State, Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich will name Sen. Barack Obama's replacement -- that is, if the embattled governor, who is being investigated for corruption, manages to hold onto office. Mr. Blagojevich briefly flirted with the idea of creating a special commission to help make his pick, but appears to have abandoned the idea. The governor has made clear he's in no hurry, and may not announce anything before Christmas.
Prominent Illinois politicians have been lobbying for the position for months, including Chicago Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Danny Davis, or Evanston Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Mr. Obama will have some input and both Mr. Jackson and Ms. Schakowsky were heavily active in his campaign. Another person who gets a lot of mention is Tammy Duckworth, a disabled Iraqi war vet and unsuccessful House candidate in 2006 who works in the Blagojevich administration. The governor could also use the pick to shore up his own political position, appointing either Comptroller Dan Hynes or Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- both potential Democratic rivals for his seat in 2010. He could also, for that matter, appoint himself.
Over in Delaware, it isn't even yet clear who will do the appointing. Joe Biden has suggested he's in no hurry to relinquish his seat, so the task might fall to incoming Democratic Governor Jack Markell, rather than outgoing Democratic Governor Ruth Ann Minner. Rumors indicate the Delaware political establishment is coalescing around the idea of appointing a placeholder who would carry the seat until 2010, when Mr. Biden's son, Attorney General Beau Biden, could run for the Senate. Among those mentioned are Lt. Gov. John Carney, Supreme Court Chief Justice Myron Steele, former state Rep. Robert Byrd, or Secretary of State Harriet Smith Windsor.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
Duckworth will likely get it. Hate to say anything disparaging about a wounded vet, but if you think The One is a piece of work...wait-out.
#2
Nah, not Tammy, smart money is on retiring State Senate President Emil Jones. Emil went to the mat for Blago over the recall amendment.
At least then Illinois would have a Senator who brought home some pork
#3
JJ Jr wants it real bad, and I think he'll do whatever it takes.
But if Blago appoints himself it could be sweet: Fitzgerald WILL eventually get him and the seat will become vacant. In the meantime there'd be a mad scramble for the governor's mansion. That would be way entertaining.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/10/2008 10:29
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#4
I thought there was no recall amendment.
My dad told me at the last Constitutional Convention in 1970 - King Richard I made sure that went by the wayside.
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad accused Israel on Sunday of "instinctively" seeking aggression and cast doubt on the Jewish state's willingness to make peace with Syria at a meeting of Arab lawmakers in Damascus.
"Israel's refusal to meet the minimum legitimate demands of the Palestinians and the requirements for peace on the Syrian tack shows that peace for it is a tactical thing, not a strategic choice," Assad told the gathering. "Israel has never ruled out aggression because the Israelis have an instinctive fear of peace, especially with the shameless rise of their religious and racial extremism," he added.
Indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel were suspended about two months ago after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned over a corruption scandal. The talks started months after Israeli planes bombed a military complex in eastern Syria. The United States, Israel's chief ally, said the target was an illegal nuclear reactor under construction. Syria denied the charge and Israel kept quiet.
Olmert, who is still caretaker prime minister, has said he wants to renew the Turkish-mediated talks. Syria has shown no objection and Assad did not address the issue directly.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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#1
We still haven't finished digesting the idea that there is only one way to make peace with Arabs.
The Iraqi government is set to put former rebels in Baghdad on its payroll, partially integrating what is arguably the country's largest militia into the armed forces, a senior official said Sunday. The transfer of responsibility for paying the so-called Sons of Iraq from the US military to the government begins with 54,000 men in the province of Baghdad on Monday. Sounds pretty fair, since the Sons of Iraq played a major role in beating up AQI an chasing them out of town, at least most towns. It'll probably be a tricky and intricate operation to actually integrate them into the official government forces, but it needs done, if only as an insurance policy. With its religious and ethnic divisions Iraq's future lies in a secular state. At some point in the future the only people who won't be able to see that will be sundry holy men -- or Iraq will be back where it was prior to Petraeus.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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[10 views]
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#1
sounds too me like they were payed not too fight the US.
Posted by: chris ||
11/10/2008 11:17
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A sudden change of plans. I suspect the prospect of a secessionist Sunni regime within Iraq had something to do with the decision. I would have loved to convey that message personally.
Senate Democratic leaders plan to cut Republican committee seats to reflect the new balance of power in the upper chamber, according to Democratic aides.
Republicans will lose at least one seat on most committees and may lose as many as two on some of the larger panels, such as the powerful Appropriations committee.
One aide said that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will likely follow the model set at the start of the 103rd Congress, when Democrats held a 57-seat Senate majority, the same margin they are expected to hold when the results of the election become final. The aide said leaders are not likely to add Democratic seats to achieve the proper ratios.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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[15 views]
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#1
Chop Chop! Then all the glory for the coming messes will be all his. I can hardly wait.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/10/2008 5:53
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Remember how mere weeks ago Ms. Nancy desperately wanted Trunks to sign on the Bailout Bill to give her cover. [How'd that work for the Trunks?] The scorpion will remain a scorpion. If you want to be gentlemen, go elsewhere. Now's the time to tag every action as One Party's action so its absolutely clear to the public when this ship doesn't turn around, who's been captaining it.
#7
Ah, mouse, the Trunks have never shown the spine to 'do on to others as they have been done upon'. Like an abused spouse, they keep thinking if they only act nicer that the abuser will stop and respect them.
#8
If the Republicans dare do anything to even slow down the One's agenda, they will be attacked as standing in the way of "progress", and interfering with Obama's ability to rulegovern.
The Democrats tried the same crap back in 93 when the Republicans opposed Clinton.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/10/2008 20:10
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IF I were a congresscritter there would be only 2 votes - present and nay.
A Democratic president who feels "a righteous wind" at his back has at least six more Democratic senators and realized a net gain of 22 seats in the House of Representatives ought to make this the age of influence for 28-year Senate veteran Christopher Dodd. But the fates divide our fortune, and not always equally.
As the Democrats moved toward victory at the end of October, a story by NBC's Lisa Myers set Dodd apart from his triumphant fellow Democrats. Myers reported that federal agents are investigating the notorious "Friends of Angelo" list maintained by subprime mortgage giant Countrywide Financial's co-founder Angelo Mozilo. Dodd was the most prominent member of that exclusive club.
Since the Dodd story broke in June, the five-term senator has offered contradictory fragments of explanations and intentions. Scheherazade after a six-pack of Red Bull would not have told more desperate tales. Dodd gallops the gamut from calling the allegations of special treatment "outrageous" to pledging repeatedly and specifically to release documents related to the $800,000 in sweetheart deals he got from Countrywide.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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[12 views]
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Look for Dodd to be found guilty of everything by the "ethics" commitee and receive the compulsory "stern warning" and a whack on the peepee. This will also probably "go on his permanent record". Probably on the Friday night or Saturday after Thanksgiving.
#5
"Scheherazade after a six-pack of Red Bull would not have told more desperate tales."
Talk about bull. I'd be surprised if anything happens. I can see the headline now. "Federal Probe Finds Nothing Unusual." He might even be in line for an Oscar or the Nobel Peach Prize.
Iran's Parliament has set new strict limits for people wishing to run for president in the country's upcoming presidential election. "And what are those rules?"
"Y'gotta be named Mahmoud."
Under the new electoral law, applicants must be aged between 40 and 75 and hold the equivalent of a master's degree. How about an honorary doctorate from Oxford? Will that do?
The amendment comes after Interior Minister Ali Kordan failed to win Majlis support in an impeachment session over his forged Oxford University Ph.D degree and was removed from his post. Oops. Guess not.
The new law also requires candidates to have already served in a national post such as president, vice-president, minister, judiciary, military or broadcasting official, or as mayor of a major city. Faculty members ranked assistant professor and above, lawyers with more than 10 years' experience, the leaders of recognized political parties, directors and editors of newspapers and private company directors are also eligible to register.
The tightening of electoral rules is expected to prevent frivolous candidacies ahead of Iran's presidential election scheduled for June 12, 2009. "Frivolous candidacies" being candidacies by anybody not named Mahmoud?
Iran's incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also expected to seek a second term. No! Reeeeeally?
Former Iranian president Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, Head of the Iranian Expert Assembly's Center for Strategic Research, Hojjatoleslam Hassan Rowhani, and the secretary general of Iran's National Confidence Party Mehdi Karroubi are also among expected candidates in the country's 2009 presidential election.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told international finance ministers Saturday that developing countries must be given a greater role in finding solutions to the world's financial crisis. I'm kinda hazy on the "why" of that. If they were real good at finding solutions they'd be "developed" countries, wouldn't they?
Posted by: Fred ||
11/10/2008
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[8 views]
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Gee, there seems to be quite a lot of globalism in the talk of various leaders around the world since the Zero has been elected, don't you think... seems like the USA will have to be reformed (and they will be reformed) to fit better into that global New World Order (if you pardon me the pun).
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.
NEW YORK (Rooters) - Fannie Mae said on Monday it is losing money so fast it may have to tap government cash to avoid shutting down after the largest source of funding for U.S. homes posted a record $29 billion quarterly loss.
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Rooters) - The Turkish military struck the border area of northern Iraq on Monday, Iraqi officials said, in the latest apparent attack on Kurdish separatist PKK fighters.
German riot police tried Monday to break up a human blockade of a radioactive waste disposal site in the country's biggest anti-nuclear protests since 2001. 
CAMP HERO, Afghanistan - In a country where danger constantly lurks underfoot and around every corner, members of the Afghan National Army are getting a crash course from Canadian soldiers in the delicate art of handling high explosives. 
Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan says there is no truth to a Pakistan newspaper report that two Taliban leaders were released in a swap for CBC reporter Mellissa Fung. 
By Daud Yussuf
A multinational force of warships has carved out a narrow shipping corridor off the coast of Somalia that is helping protect merchant vessels from pirate attacks, the force's commander said Monday. 
Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site. 
The president-elect's advisers quietly craft a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials 
LONDON (Reuters) - The international financial crisis has given world leaders a unique opportunity to create a truly global society, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown will say in a keynote foreign policy speech on Monday.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said that the Obama administration in the United States needs far-reaching 'perestroika' reforms to overcome the financial crisis and restore balance in the world. 
Once the mightiest of Shiite militias, the Mahdi Army finds itself on the run as rivals benefit from government ties and U.S. backing. Efforts to reorganize into a socio-religious group may not help.
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.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Southern African leaders said on Sunday that Zimbabwe's political rivals must split the leadership of a key ministry, a move rejected by the opposition in a further sign that power-sharing talks were unraveling. The 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) said in a resolution Zimbabwe's squabbling political parties should form a unity government immediately to end a stalemate over the allocation of ministries.
Pakistani madrassas, having come to be viewed with deep suspicion in the West, are seeking to change the perception that they are incubators for extremism that spur young Muslims to commit acts of violence, according to a Washington Times report published on Sunday.
The son of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said Sunday he has moved to Qatar after being prevented from entering Egypt and being denied political asylum by Spain, he told AlArabiya.net in an interview from Qatar.
NATO jets today bombed Tirah Valley in Khyber Agency, killing eight members of a banned outfit -- Amar Bil Maroof -- and injuring three, Dawn News reported. The channel said the NATO jets targeted hideouts of the banned outfit in the Moga area near Torkham. 
The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators sought on Sunday to keep alive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks although political uncertainty in Israel has scotched hopes for a deal this year. The European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States strongly backed the talks launched at Annapolis, Maryland, nearly a year ago by U.S. President George W. Bush, despite expectations he will fail to meet his year-end target. 
Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, warned that the British military was already over-stretched, and suggested that troops from other Nato countries should be sent to fight.
(IsraelNN.com) According to a report on Middle East Newsline, President-elect Barack Obama has dispatched his "senior foreign policy adviser", Robert Malley to Egypt and Syria to outline Obama's policy on the Middle East. 
Political administration of Khyber Agency on Sunday arrested around a dozen tribesmen belonging to Loi Shelman and impounded three vehicles used in blocking a road between Shinwari and Loi Shelman. The action was taken after residents of Loi Shelman set up an illegal check post in Loi Shelman. Tribes of Pero Khel and Sheikhmal Khel had also erected chains on a road to extort money from transporters. These check posts have now been removed.
The largest broadcaster in the Middle East will forgo millions in advertising revenue by refusing to air a series of tobacco commercials in conjunction with an anti-smoking initiative spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, the Saudi health minister announced.
China on Sunday announced a massive $586 billion stimulus package aimed at boosting domestic spending over the next two years in its most aggressive response so far to the spreading global financial crisis.
US SENATOR John Kerry owed Massachusetts voters more candor as he sought a fifth term. During his recent reelection bid, he said, "I intend to serve my term. If I'm elected, that's what I'm doing."
Taliban posters put up in Landi Kotal on Sunday warned women against going to the offices of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA). A large number of men have recently been accompanying their wives to the NADRA office in the Khyber Agency town to apply for identity cards for enrolment in the Benazir Income Support Programme. But the Taliban posters in various bazaars of the town call the practice 'obscene' and 'un-Islamic' and threaten the families of 'serious consequences'. Locals had earlier complained the NADRA office did not have female staff to serve women. Monday is an exclusive day for women visitors to the office.
Doctors struggled yesterday to contain an outbreak of cholera in a sprawling refugee camp near Congo's eastern provincial capital of Goma, as new fighting ignited fears that infected patients could scatter and launch an epidemic.
A Saudi poet was arrested at his workplace and taken to the religious police headquarters for allegedly writing "heretic" poetry containing "sorcery symbols."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak urged the cabinet on Sunday to consider discussing in its next session the use of counter fire in response to the Qassam rockets being launched at the Negev from the Gaza Strip. During a debate on the matter of reinforcing Gaza-area homes, Barak suggested that the matter of responsive fire be raised during the cabinet's next meeting on Wednesday. 
Was Rev. Jesse Jackson crying tears of joy at President-elect Barack Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park? Or was the civil rights leader weeping in regret that he might now be out of a job?
Indian security forces shot dead 11 suspected militants in fighting over the weekend in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), police said on Sunday. Five militants were killed in Poonch district, close to the Line of Control, a police official said, while four others were killed in the southern district of Doda. 
Iraq on Sunday timetabled long-awaited provincial elections for January 31 as a survey showed religious parties apparently losing support. The elections, which Washington sees as key for achieving national reconciliation, will take place "in one day in Baghdad and the other provinces," Qazim al-Abudi, administrative director of the Iraq High Electoral Committee, told AFP.
A Canadian journalist kidnapped in Afghanistan was released Saturday after four weeks in captivity, according to Afghan and Canadian officials. 
Islamist insurgents on Sunday attacked Somali interim government troops in the capital, triggering clashes that killed five civilians, witnesses said. Seven other civilians were wounded in the fighting in southern Mogadishu's Folorensa Junction and Taleh districts where interim government troops are based.
South Korea denies rumors suggesting that a recent photograph of North Korea's leader may have been forged, amid reports over his health. 
President-elect Barack Obama's chief of staff says something should be done to save the auto industry amid low sales and massive layoffs. "Washington needs to look at fast-forwarding the 25 billion dollars that has been provided for retooling the factories for basically a more fuel-efficient auto fleet," Congressman Rahm Emanuel told ABC on Sunday, AFP reported. 
Yemeni honey, famed for its regenerative and healing properties, is under threat after floods destroyed thousands of beehives in the southeast, threatening the production of what is commonly known as "natural Viagra."
A Hamas spokesman has said the Islamic movement will not implement a long-term truce with the Israeli regime for the time being.
Thousands of people gathered for the funerals of three Indonesians executed on Sunday for the 2002 Bali bombings, sparking clashes between police and emotional supporters. 
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad accused Israel on Sunday of "instinctively" seeking aggression and cast doubt on the Jewish state's willingness to make peace with Syria at a meeting of Arab lawmakers in Damascus. 
