NEW Yorkers were left a little confused overnight as more than a million copies of a fake newspaper were handed out by a team of pranksters rallied through the web.
"Iraq War Ends" read the headline of a fake "special edition" of The New York Times, dated July 4, 2009, which was handed out to commuters as they rushed for work.
"Court Indicts Bush On High Treason Charge" and "Public Universities To Be Free" read some of the other spoof headlines, next to an admission by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the US Government had known Iraq did not have access to weapons of mass destruction.
As many as 1.2 million copies of the 14-page newspaper were handed out, along with an online spoof of the Times' website at www.nytimes-se.com.
Gawker identified the pranksters behind the stunt as The Yes Men, a liberal group famous for practical jokes.
According to the blog, The Yes Men organised the lightning operation by rallying a group of volunteers through secret emails and text messages.
An email reprinted on Gawker gave detailed instructions on where to collect copies of the fake newspaper and encouraged volunteers to spread the word by email.
"TONIGHT and especially, TOMORROW MORNING (WEDNESDAY) a year of work involving dozens of collaborators comes to a head," the email read.
Volunteers were reminded that they "did not know" who was behind the prank, and that the organisers wanted to remain secret.
"We want to maintain maximum mystery around this, for as long as possible at least for a couple of days," the message said.
However Gawker reported that the email was sent from an account linked to The Yes Men and that the volunteers were collected from a website run by the group.
At first glance, the parody, which uses the Times' Gothic-style font on the nameplate, could easily be mistaken for the real thing.
A Times spokeswoman said: "This is obviously a fake issue... We are in the process of finding out more about it.''
One of the newspaper's own online commentators had a wittier retort:
"Sorry, folks, the paper isn't free. And the Iraq war isn't over, at least not yet."
#3
I just hope these commandos aren't tried for murder when they get home. Shooting those poor defenseless fishermen for no reason. The UK should pay compensation to their families.
/sarcasm
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/12/2008 19:45
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The Pentagon has a new secret weapon to neutralize sites containing chemical or biological weapons: rocket balls. These are hollow spheres, made of rubberized rocket fuel; when ignited, they propel themselves around at random at high speed, bouncing off the walls and breaking through doors, turning the entire building into an inferno.
The makers call them "kinetic fireball incendiaries." The Pentagon doesn't want to talk about them, but published documents show that the fireballs have undergone tests on underground bunkers...
Each fireball is a hollow spherical shell with a hole in it; when the inside is ignited, the hole acts as a rocket nozzle. The kinetic fireballs eject an extremely high-temperature exhaust which will heat up the surrounding volume to over 1,000 F within seconds. Their random ricocheting around ensures that they will fill any space they occupy, and they are capable of diffusing throughout a multiroom structure.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - A California couple recently had an unexpected reunion with an old housemate: their pet cat who went missing more than 13 years ago.
The cat, named George, was last seen by Melinda Merman and Frank Walburg in 1995. He recently resurfaced when the manager of a mobile home park trapped the sickly feline and gave him to an animal hospital. A microchip implanted in George allowed him to be traced to his owners.
Merman says after George went missing she visited animal shelters and wrote to veterinarians in search of the grey, yellow-eyed cat, who now weighs less than half his original six kilograms.
But Merman and Walburg say George is now eating well and displaying some of his old behaviour, like jumping at flickering light on the wall. IT'S A CLONE! POD-PEOPLE!
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem suggested Wednesday that Israeli bombs may be the source of uranium traces that diplomats at the UN nuclear agency said were found at a suspected nuclear site.
That's certainly .. creative ...
Moallem said the leaks by the diplomats about the traces found at the site that was reportedly targeted by Israeli warplanes in September 2007 were politically motivated and aimed at pressuring Syria.
"No one has ever asked himself what kind of Israeli bombs had hit the site, and what did they contain?" he went on, adding that the United States and Israel had "similar acts" of using bombs containing depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Depleted uranium has a different isotope signature. Let's compare. You show us yours ...
"These media leaks are a clear-cut signal that the purpose was to pressure Syria. This means that the subject is not technical but rather political," al-Moallem said at a news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
The latest nuclear accusations against Syria were disclosed by unnamed diplomats at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. They have said samples taken from a suspected nuclear site bombed by Israeli planes last year contained uranium combined with other elements that merit further investigation.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday his agency is taking allegations of a secret Syrian atomic program seriously and urged Damascus to cooperate fully with his investigation. He also urged other nations with information that could help the investigation to share what they know. Elbaradei declined to comment on what the diplomats had said, telling reporters during a visit to the Czech capital of Prague only that his agency still has "a number of questions" linked to the allegations.
The US has said the facility was a nearly completed reactor that - when on line - could have produced plutonium, a pathway to nuclear arms.
Al-Moallem said the original US contention was that the alleged Syrian reactor was under construction, and not operational. "So the question is: From where the traces of enriched uranium came?"
Syria has previously denied any covert nuclear program, and al-Moallem said Wednesday Damascus was waiting for ElBaradei's report to respond.
IAEA mouthpiece Melissa Fleming said Tuesday the latest findings on Syria were "still being drafted and our assessment and evaluation is still under way." Once the process is finished, the report will be submitted to the IAEA Board of Governors ahead of its next meeting, which is scheduled to take place Nov. 27-28.
#1
The IAF is responsible for uranium traces at the nuclear site. They scattered it around in the raid from the bombing. However, Syria (and their NORK friends) provided the uranium for the party, so both sides are to blame. Now is everyone happy? Hey, we are trying to build on common ground. Work with me, people.
[insert strongly worded statement of condemnation from the UN here]
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/12/2008 15:44
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#2
Well, we all agree on one thing: That Uranium should not exist at the site.
Now all we have to do is figure out who the bad guy is.
Palestinians fired two Kassam rockets at Israeli communities in the Western Negev on Wednesday evening, several hours after clashes between IDF troops and Hamas gunnies in the Gaza Strip killed four Paleostinians. No one was hurt in the attack and the rockets did not cause damage.
Earlier, six mortar shells were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel. The Islamic Jihad terrorist group claimed responsibility for firing the shells, which landed in open areas and did not cause any injuries or damage.
Must have been trained by Hekmatyer ...
On Wednesday afternoon, IDF troops gunned down four Gaza terrorists as fresh clashes raised new concerns that the increasingly shaky five-month-old truce could collapse.
Troops spotted a group of Palestinian gunmen some 300 meters from the Gaza border, near the Kissufim crossing, the army said. The gunnies were apparently planning to plant a bomb near the fence. The soldiers crossed the border and entered the Strip in pursuit of the gunnies, the IDF said. In the ensuing firefight, four terrorists were killed and an IDF soldier was shot in the feet hand. The soldier was evacuated in light condition to Sokora Hospital in Beersheba.
The army said that an explosive device was detonated by the terrorists during the incident and that AK-47s and grenades were found on the bodies after they were killed.
Shortly after the firefight, a number of mortar shells were fired by Paleostinians at Israel, landing on the Israeli side of Kissufim. The IAF carried out two air strikes in the Khan Yunis area, the IDF added.
The army said there has been a significant rise in recent days in attempts by terrorists to plant explosives along the border in an effort to attack army patrols.
Hamas's military wing threatened retaliation. "The anger of our people and our Resistance will reach everybody, God willing, and our response to the enemy will be painful, and will spill the Zionists' blood," the wing's spokesman, Abu Obeida, said in a statement.
"We shall have Dire Revenge!!!"
Hamas stopped short of saying the truce was over but said gunmnies would fight any entry of IDF troops into Gaza. "This is a clear violation of the truce, and the Resistance has every right to respond to an attack," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas mouthpiece.
The latest clash came one day after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited the IDF's Southern Command, where he was briefed on the preparations being made by a Hamas-led coalition of terror groups. Israel and Hamas were on an inevitable collision course, Olmert said following the briefing. "It is merely a question of when and not a question of if," Olmert warned.
Defense Minster Ehud Barak, who accompanied Olmert on the visit, added, "The IDF is prepared, alert, and ready for any possibility. We are looking at this relative calm around and we know that many things are happening under the surface."
Last week, IDF special forces raided a tunnel dug by Hamas near the Israeli border, which the army said was to be used in an imminent kidnap attempt. The raid, which involved an armed clash with Hamas gunnies, killing a number of them, led to over 60 rockets being fired on southern Israel in the following days, and a number of Israeli air strikes on rocket launching crews.
A female Egyptian lawyer has very publicly recommended that Palestinian and Israeli Arab men begin sexually harassing Israeli Jewish women as a means of pressuring them to leave the region and thereby bringing about the demise of the Jewish state.
In an interview on the pan-Arab Al Arabiyah television network late last month, Nagla Al-Imam said that Israeli women "are fair game for all Arabs, and there is nothing wrong with this...this is a new form of resistance."
In its reporting on the interview, Israel National News noted that ever since signing a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, Egypt has been widely portrayed in the US and Europe as a "moderate" Arab nation dominated by secular people who reject violence and Islamic extremism.
#1
Any scholarly work on why it should be restricted to Israel?
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
11/12/2008 15:02
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#2
Already been tested in various Muslim countries ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/12/2008 16:32
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#3
yeah all the women are attracted too the big gold chains and the 70's collared shirts
Posted by: chris ||
11/12/2008 16:51
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#4
How's this for a response: Israeli women shoot any Arab male that even looks twice at them. Two rounds: first to the groin area, second to the head at close range, right between the eyes. Then all said Arab's relatives deported to Gaza after revocation of Israeli citizenship and forfeiture of all assets.
Spunky Israeli women who find themselves harassed should flash their bare breasts at the muzz males doing the harassing telling them they'll never get a touch or taste...followed up quickly with a timely rejoinder: All male muzz follow in the path of Mohammed: they all have small c*ck and and know not how to satisfy their women.
Jim Geraghty, "The Campaign Spot" @ National Review
. . . I checked my e-mail and came across this report from CQ, too good not to share immediately:
Here's some change that supporters of President-elect Obama may not want to see: all of the policy commitments on specific issues have been removed from his transition Web site.
On Nov. 7, global health advocates noticed that some of the details of Obama's "fight global poverty" statement had been removed. Specifically, the site no longer promised to fully fund debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries or provide the full U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Activists already were concerned, since boosting foreign aid was the one thing Obama mentioned during the campaign when asked what proposals he’d have to scale back due to the faltering economy...
By this morning, all of the issue-specific pages on the transition site had been removed from the agenda section. In its place, a statement that mentioned details but provided none at all: "The Obama Administration has a comprehensive and detailed agenda to carry out its policies."
Too bad for Obama that I went through and saved copies of his promises in most issue areas.
Everybody, all together now: "All statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date. All of them."
Posted by: Mike ||
11/12/2008
13:53 ||
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#1
Do we have access to some bottomless pit of money that I don't know about? Even tax dollars and T-bills have a limit.
#4
Every disaster is a new opportunity. I see the Left working with the Right over what O wants to deliver and what he cannot deliver. We will both be pi$$ed. Common ground.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/12/2008 17:10
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#5
What! President HopeyChangey is RENEGING ON HIS PROMISES? But, but, I thought he wasn't like all the other politicians...He's the LIGHTBRINGER! How can he do this? I'm just SHOCKED, SHOCKED, I TELL YOU!
#6
Nonsense....! If you are TRUE believer in Change you will give him at least two terms, then rescend the antiquated Twenty-Second Amendment to that old constitution thing. There is no reason The One's tenure shouldn't be on a par with Supreme Court Justices. Come on, get with the Change program.
#7
You mean 52.5% of us got duped? You mean there's no lemon law wrt President Elects? One more reason why libz are morons. It's hilarious how these idiots bought off on all the crap the street agitator sold them.
#11
Specifically, the site no longer promised to fully fund debt cancellation for the worlds poorest countries or provide the full U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
The former has already been agreed to, and the latter are the usual United Nations slush funds for buying 5 course lunches at 6 star hotels for nepotistic appointees of 2 bit 3rd world dictators.
Hatty had been banned from the Jolly Sailor pub in Prestatyn, Denbighshire, north Wales, for chewing beer mats. Baaaaaaaaaad Doggie. No more Beer Mats!
But landlord Nigel McLelland finally relented and let the Lakeland Terrier return - under strict conditions. He lowered the boom on Hatty.
Jeff Hughes, the dog's owner, explained how Mr McLelland had put his pet on a pub watch scheme last year after a rowdy night out.
Drinkers started throwing beer mats about which caught the dog's attention. The Frisbee Reflex, found after searching the veterinary medicine literature.
Mr Hughes, 35, a roofer, said: "One night we went in there and it was packed, there had been football on or whatever. She just went berserk." INCOMING!!! Two many flying beer mats to keep track of for a dawg. Information overrrrrrlooooooooad!!
He said that the landlord had "got a bit annoyed about this and basically put her on the pub watch scheme."
Mr McLelland said he only reversed his decision after a petition was launched to let Hatty back in and he feared he was going to lose trade. It all comes down to money.
Now Hatty can enter the pub but only if she wears the specially made reflective jacket, which she also wears while accompanying her master on building sites. Attention all hands!!! Dawg on Deck.
The landlord insisted on the vest so staff and customers can see where the dog is when she is rooting around under tables for the mats.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/12/2008
13:53 ||
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BURBANK, California (Reuters) - Former U.S. presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday shrugged off criticism leveled at his running mate, Sarah Palin, saying he expects her "to play a big role in the future of this country." The Republican senator from Arizona rallied to the defense of his vice presidential pick in an appearance on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," his first television interview since losing his White House bid to Democrat Barack Obama a week earlier.
Asked by Leno about commentary from pundits across the political spectrum who judged the Alaska governor to be a drag on the Republican ticket, McCain, 72, denied she had hurt his campaign. "I'm so proud of her and very grateful that she agreed to run with me. She inspired people. She still does," McCain said. "I couldn't be happier with Sarah Palin, and she's gone back to be a great governor, and I think she will play a big role in the future of this country."
Palin, virtually unknown outside her home state before McCain tapped her as his running mate in late August, in recent interviews has left open the possibility she may seek higher office.
Palin has drawn a strong following among the Republican Party's conservative base, but also substantial fire from critics who charged that her record as Alaska governor was at odds with her image as a political reformer.
As the 2008 presidential race drew to a close last Tuesday, the media was filled with stories attributed to McCain campaign aides questioning Palin's judgment, her readiness to serve and her intellect. In addition to mounting criticism about pricey wardrobe purchases for her during the race, a recent Fox News Channel report cited unnamed campaign sources saying Palin did not know Africa was a continent and could not name the three countries that had signed the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Palin has dismissed such criticism as false smears planted by "jerks" too cowardly to speak publicly. William McGurn, a former speech writer for President George W. Bush and editorialist for the Wall Street Journal, urged McCain in a newspaper column on Tuesday to condemn the attacks on Palin.
Asked about them by Leno, McCain suggested such criticism amounted to sour grapes from people claiming to be campaign insiders. "I think I have at least a thousand, quote, 'Top advisers,'" he said. "These things go on in campaigns, and you just have to move on."
Choosing the relaxed setting of America's top-rated late-night talk show for his first post-election TV interview, McCain joked that since the election he has been "sleeping like a baby."
"I sleep two hours, wake up and cry," he said to laughter, but when pressed he declined to second-guess his own campaign.
He also ruled out another run for president, saying: "I wouldn't think so, my friend ... we're going to have another generation of leaders coming along."
#1
Regarding the mortgages, looks like he's applying the Soros method of adding funds to banks to bring them up to their reserve requirements.
Paulson said 40 percent of U.S. consumer credit is provided through selling securities that are backed by pools of auto loans and other such debt. He said these markets need support.
"This market, which is vital for lending and growth, has for all practical purposes ground to a halt," Paulson said.
"Other such debt."
Ah, now we are bailing out consumer loans? And this was discussed when?
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An individual in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on U.S. troops in Nineveh province Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding six others, a U.S. military spokesman said.
The U.S. military has not confirmed the identity of the shooter, but initial reports indicate the shooter was an Iraqi soldier, the military said in a statement. The gunman was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire.
An Interior Ministry official said an Iraqi soldier in a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol opened fire on a group of U.S. soldiers in the same convoy after one of the American troops slapped an Iraqi soldier.
The shooting occurred in the al-Zanjili area of Mosul, about 261 miles (420 kilometers) north of Baghdad, the ministry official said. The incident occurred about 5:30 p.m., officials said. The ministry official said four U.S. soldiers were killed and three were wounded.
The incident is under investigation, the U.S. military said, but did not confirm any details of a reported altercation.
Earlier Wednesday, a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in central Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 14 others, an Interior Ministry official said. The attack took place in Naser Square around 9:40 a.m.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb exploded near a car in a Shiite section of northeastern Baghdad, wounding seven civilians. A car bomb also exploded in the al-Shaab neighborhood of northeastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 10, an Interior Ministry official said.
Tom Scott conducted the interview. WELI killed it. Now you can hear it.
Scott, one of Connecticut's leading conservative voices of the past three decades, was the last local on-air voice at WELI-AM, once a fully-staffed Greater New Haven news station . Scott hosted a weekday 5 to 7 p.m. drive-time talk show until Oct. 29. That was the day he taped a combative interview with U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut.
Watching the TV news monitors in the WELI newsroom, Tom Scott (pictured), a former state senator and Congressional and gubernatorial candidate, had grown frustrated that reporters seemed to be going easy on Dodd. So he savored the chance to push Dodd on why, for instance, he won't release the documents connected to his personal Countrywide loans.
The result was riveting radio. But WELI's listeners never got to hear it.
Click here to hear the interview that never aired.
Asked why the interview never ran, Todd Thomas, Clear Channel's regional operations manager, said, "That's something that happened behind closed doors." He declined to comment further.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/12/2008
12:24 ||
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#1
Bad link. Accident or design?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/12/2008 14:02
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#2
It worked for me - clicked on the link to the article and then on the audio link.
I do think the interview was pretty unfair. Scott stated a number of provocative premises which were probably not well-founded, and then asked Dodd to release his mortgage papers. Dodd handled it pretty well. His position was that the loan was not a special deal, and things are under investigation, anyway. The argument was repeated several times.
Dulaim, Iraq - Dulaim is an Iraqi village transformed. Where masked gunmen from Al Qaeda in Iraq once imposed their will with killings and even stole irrigation pumps, today numerous Iraqi Army, police, and local Sunni militia checkpoints attest to new levels of security.
The change has been dramatic. It is the result of this farming hamlet deciding last January to change sides, reluctantly turning away from Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and toward US and Iraqi forces.
But despite recently paying a high price for that shift, this village is determined not to turn back.
AQI struck in late September, killing 22 in the most lethal attack in a year in troubled eastern Diyala Province.
Instead of fear or failure, however, the unexpected response has been a recommitment to fight.
Among the dead was Sheikh Thamir Hassan Ali, the man who last year was forced by AQI to flee this village. He was then brought back in January by US Army helicopter in a predawn operation that the Monitor joined.
Sheikh Thamir's death highlights the challenges that persist across Iraq in trying to snuff out AQI and in maintaining the morale of the Sons of Iraq (SOI), also known as Awakening guards. The US-supported Sunni militias have fought AQI, but face continued violence and an uncertain future as the government, this week, takes over paying their salaries.
The Shiite-led government was to make its first payments on Tuesday in Baghdad to more than 50,000 members of the SOI, many of them former Sunni insurgents stood up and paid for by US forces. But for months, concern has grown among Sunnis and US officers alike that the government long opposed to the SOI concept would renege. Some US units, worried about a resurgence of AQI attacks if the SOI were to be disbanded or not paid, have set aside cash to fill any initial gaps.
The saga of Dulaim is playing out against an overall uptick of violence. A female suicide bomber killed five on Monday in the provincial capital, Baquba. In Baghdad, three died in explosions on Tuesday; 28 were killed the day before, when three successive blasts ripped through a market.
"We will finish and kill Al Qaeda. The key thing we need is support of the coalition," says Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, whose father and younger brother were key SOI leaders in the Dulaim area killed in the Sept. 24 ambush with Sheikh Thamir.
"I will take my father's job to protect [my village] from bad guys and fight against [AQI]," says Sheikh Hussein of the district 20 miles northeast of Baghdad. "Now Al Qaeda is very weak in this area, but there are snipers and incidents."
Sheikh Thamir once held such optimism, though Diyala Province had long been an AQI stronghold. In 2006 and 2007, no US or Iraqi troops made it along roads laced with bombs to this remote village of 300 Sunnis. AQI operated with impunity, publicly killing one man who opposed them, imposing strict new social rules, and forcing villagers into a pact to reject any US or Iraqi military presence.
#5
Madeline Halfbright making a comeback as well eh? (just heard it on Fox over the tely) We can't be far now, please let me know when he reaches the bottom of the barrel.
#9
Another change-of-the-day -- he isn't going to that big world leaders meeting this weekend in DC, "cause we have only one president at a time."
And yesterday, I read, he wasn't even sending a representative.
Today's change-of-the-day ---
The transition office also announced that Mr. Obama will be represented at the global economic summit this weekend by former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and by former Republican congressman Jim Leach, of Iowa.
The U.S. military in Iraq is abandoning -- deliberately and with little public notice -- a centerpiece of the widely acclaimed strategy it adopted nearly two years ago to turn the tide against the insurgency. It is moving American troops farther from the people they are trying to protect.
Starting in early 2007, with Iraq on the brink of all-out civil war, the troops were pushed into the cities and villages as part of a change in strategy that included President Bush's decision to send more combat forces. The bigger U.S. presence on the streets was credited by many with allowing the Americans and their Iraqi security partners to build trust among the populace, thus undermining the extremists' tactics of intimidation, reducing levels of violence and giving new hope to resolving the country's underlying political conflicts.
Now the Americans are reversing direction, consolidating in larger bases outside the cities and leaving security in the hands of the Iraqis while remaining within reach to respond as the Iraqi forces require.
The U.S. is on track to complete its shift out of all Iraqi cities by June 2009. That is one of the milestones in a political-military campaign plan devised in 2007 by Gen. David Petraeus, when he was the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and his political partner in Baghdad, Ambassador Ryan Crocker. The goal also is in a preliminary security pact with the Iraqi government on the future U.S. military presence.
The shift is not explicitly linked to U.S. plans for increasing its military presence in Afghanistan, but there is an important connection: The logistical resources needed to house and supply a larger and more distributed U.S. force in Afghanistan have been tied up in Iraq. To some extent that will be relieved with the consolidation of U.S. forces in Iraq onto larger, outlying bases that are easier to maintain.
These moves coincide with priorities expressed by President-elect Obama during his campaign: reducing the U.S. military commitment in Iraq and putting more resources into Afghanistan. It also fits with Petraeus' view that a more robust counterinsurgency approach is needed in Afghanistan, meaning not only a larger number of troops but also getting them spread out into more villages.
It's also part of the plan Bush and Petreaus developed, but you can see how Josh Marshall at TPM is already trying to give Obama credit for something he didn't do.
But it also points up a major gamble in Iraq -- namely, that the Iraqis are ready to handle the insurgency themselves.
Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and an occasional adviser to Petraeus, is among those who worry about the consequences of excluding U.S. forces from the cities. "It gets us out of the way" should Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki decide to use Iraqi security forces to crush the U.S.-allied Sunni neighborhood militia groups who have been instrumental in attacking extremist elements of the insurgency, Biddle said in an e-mail exchange. Al-Maliki sees those militiamen, whom the U.S. has dubbed "Sons of Iraq," as an internal threat to Shiite political predominance.
Biddle said that on balance he believes the risks are more likely to outweigh the benefits of sticking to the June goal.
Retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor, who served as Petraeus' right-hand man in Baghdad during the U.S. troop buildup and has written a book, "Baghdad at Sunrise," about the counterinsurgency effort, also has misgivings. He said in an e-mail exchange Tuesday that his main concern is sectarian violence. "Without U.S. forces in the cities, the Shiite and Sunni militias could once again take to fighting each other without an honest broker to keep the peace," he said. "The Iraqi army is not ready to play this role, in my view -- not yet, anyway."
Ready or not, U.S. commanders are marching steadily in that direction -- and not just in Baghdad.
Brig. Gen. Martin Post, deputy commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq, where the Sunni insurgency has sharply abated -- if not almost disappeared -- since 2007, said Monday his outfit is shutting down the U.S. base at Fallujah. The U.S. headquarters elements there are moving to al-Asad air base, a large but remote facility in the vast desert halfway between Fallujah and the Syrian border. "There's been a big effort to move all the Marine forces out of the cities," Post said in a videoconference with reporters at the Pentagon. "And so as you go throughout, from Fallujah all the way up the Euphrates River Valley, up to al-Qaim -- where we used to have Marines actually living in the cities -- we've pulled them all out."
#1
The dems and the media have been calling for the Iraqi government to stand up for a few years now. Well, we are giving them the chance. They have the capability, the question is do they have the will.
#2
I think the change was initiated last spring in Basra, when Maliki confronted the Shia thugs without our concurrence (supposedly) and before we thought the government forces were ready - and they handled the job pretty well (for an Arab army). To me that was like taking the training wheels off the bike and just running along with a hand on the back of the seat - there will be some spills but they're riding the bike themselves now.
#1
What's happening in Alaska undoubtedly is happening throughout rural America. Gun sales are brisk, particularly for military-style weapons, because people are concerned about stricter gun laws after Barack Obama becomes president and Congress begins leaning more to the left.
Way I understand it is that sales are up everywhere, rural and urban; gun sex in Hyde Park for example.
#2
There is no gun sex in Hyde Park. Hyde Park is actually one of the safer neighborhoods in Chicago. And liberals wouldn't know which end of a trigger to pull.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/12/2008 13:06
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#3
Plenty of gun sex in other parts of Chicago though, including some adjacent to Hyde Park.
#4
I'm confused about this gun sex business. Do you penatrate the gun, a big bore one, I hope? Or does the gun penetrate you? Sounds lethal to me. Not my kind of fun.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/12/2008 14:11
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#5
Thought that was where people were discharging firearms into the ground, thats all.
#6
I believe the term "gun sex" finds it's roots in the Islamic community. Sort of a take-off on the tribal or bedouin era. Events like weddings pour out onto the streets with trumpets blaring, and guns blazing into the night sky. Everone is jubilant and getting off on the moment...so to speak. One must see it all, to really gain an appreciation. Throwing a few handfuls of rice is much cheaper and definately safer.
IRAQI and US forces have arrested the "number one butcher" responsible for beheadings in the volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad.
"Iraqi forces received intelligence on a very dangerous terrorist known as the number one butcher who was responsible for a beheading squad that slaughtered innocent people," Major General Mohammed al-Askari said. The suspect, Riyad Wahab Hassan Falih, "also supervised the training of terrorists specialising in beheading Iraqis", he said.
The arrest came amid a series of operations across the province in which Iraqi army troops backed by local tribes apprehended 65 people in 72 hours. In an operation early today, troops arrested nine local al-Qaeda leaders who had been hiding in an underground bunker used for torturing and beheading captives.
In another raid in the north of Diyala, Iraqi security forces shot dead five fighters when they raided a weapons cache, the ministry said.
#2
Falih: That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me.
al-Askari: It won't be the last. To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose.
Falih: And then my tongue I suppose, I killed you too quickly the last time. A mistake I don't mean to duplicate tonight.
al-Askari: I wasn't finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right.
Falih: And then my ears, I understand let's get on with it.
al-Askari: WRONG. Your ears you keep and I'll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, "Dear God! What is that thing," will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.
#1
People might then choose either to stop voting, or to throw their support behind politically extreme movements seeking to exploit the situation, the minister said.
Geez, you're tellin me.
Nice secondary link tipper. J. Goldberg is a clear writer on this subject as well IMHO.
#2
I found 'Liberal Fascism' thought-provoking and unusually well-documented for a mass-market political book. His writing style was not the most invigorating though, and the book would have benefited from another round of editing. Still, if you haven't read it, do (but you can't have my copy 'cuz I already passed it along to my nephew to read.)
#2
HMMMMM, so MTV + VH1, etc. are till leaving the playing of music videos to YOUTUBE and the like???
E.g. PLAYBOY CHANNEL > risque programs are starting to be shown in the just-after-dinner hours [8-10PM]. EVEN WID SCREEN BLOCKS/BARS, THESE BARELY QUALIFY AS SO-CALLED "SFW" [read, You-Betcha-Still-Too-Revealing/Might-As-Well-Go/Be-Fully-Naked-On-Primetime-Family/Kids-TV].
Why bail out Wall Street and not GM, demand many people. Why do we care about bankers and not ordinary folks?
I think this misses the point of the financial bailout. Whether or not it works--and I sure hope it will--I don't think very many people wanted to bail out the financial industry because we were so moved by the plight of those plucky traders on the mortgage desk. We bailed them out not because they deserved it--they didn't--but because if we didn't, there was a very big risk that they would take us down with them.
This is not generalizeable to other industries. Money is weird. Finance is weird. There is no other industry that is, first, so tightly coupled, and second, severely affects every other industry in the country. Moreover, there are few other industries that are so vulnerable to panic. Strategic injections of capital can actually salvage operations that are otherwise sound.
GM's operations are not otherwise sound. They have been headed for this moment since 1973. Conservatives blame legacy costs, and liberals blame management. They're both right. GM's legacy costs are crazy. So is the UAW leadership, which, goaded by the retirees, is knowingly driving the company into bankruptcy rather than negotiate clearly unsustainable deals. Those legacy costs would probably not be supportable by any company in a competitive environment; the UAW's expectations were created in an era of comfortable oligopoly, when all costs could be directly passed on to the consumer. And the poor quality control on American cars is, from all reports, the responsibility of the union, which maintains downright silly work rules that not even the most ardent liberal could defend in both the Big Three and their various parts suppliers. My favorite was the supplier plant that was forced to work in english measurement even though they had to sell parts in metric. But the examples are legion.
But too, management doesn't seem to be trying much harder to keep themselves out of bankruptcy court. The company could have limped on for longer if it had, y'know, made cars anyone wanted to buy. That's not the UAW's fault. GM's management seems to have a positive genius for making horrible cars, as if they'd deliberately sat down and asked themselves how they could best combine ugly, inconvenient, and unreliable into one expensive package.
What is government money going to fix? Will GM's management be so grateful to America that they decide to make an attractive, reliable vehicle as a thank-you gift? Will the unions realize that they owe the taxpayers a little more flexibility at collective bargaining time? Oh, hear that hollow laugh.
Merging with Chrysler doesn't solve anything. It's like two alcoholics deciding that they could maybe quit drinking if they got married. Everything that's wrong with GM is wrong with Chrysler, in spades. Adding the chaos and expense of a merger will not improve the toxic rot of horrible labor relations and muddled management. They can't even save money in the traditional way, by streamlining operations, because it costs them so much to lay anyone off. They'll save on steel and electricity from cutting car lines. But they can cut those car lines right now. And steel and electricity are no longer the major costs of auto manufacturing.
GM can't be saved. It needs to go into bankruptcy, which is the only possible way I can see to adjust its legacy labor problems, and possibly provide sufficient shock to the corporate culture to allow the company to make a competent car. Even that may not work. And it's going to involve a whole bunch of pain for everyone.
But unless we're willing to essentially nationalize three auto companies, that pain is going to come, sooner or later. And if we want to keep auto workers from feeling pain, then we should just up and give them money. There's no reason to waste steel on a lot of crappy cars.
#1
I bought a Saturn in 1998, wanting to buy American. It was mechanically reliable, but after less than 10 years, the roof liner started to detach and sag down in the passenger area -- just like every other GM car my family had ever owned. The Saturn dealership refused to fix it, even for pay! "We don't do interior upholstery work" they said. My new car is a Mazda, and I'll never buy another American car.
I say let 'em sink! Bankruptcy is the best thing for them. Let the Koreans or Japanese buy their idle plants for pennies on the dollar, and start making decent cars.
#2
It's shameful that you toss aside supporting American-made products simply for your headliner.
Did you know that the #1 cause of headliner failure is temperature, i.e., parking in the sun, and that it does not matter what brand your vehicle is? Go to the wrecking yard and see for yourself. Dealers don't do upholstery...never have, dude.
You park in the sun, you tossed aside a 'mechanically reliable' vehicle and bought a foreign car because the Saturn was a POS?
With your story & comments, I nominate YOU for 'idiot of the day'.
#3
I had the same problem with the headliner on my old Chevy. The dealer wouldn't fix it but they recommended an upholstery shop that did the work for a reasonable price. It's kinda hit and miss whenever you buy a car. But that old Chevy had 247,000 miles on it when I finally had it scrapped. It was still running strong but it had failed a smog test and the state of California had a program going where they were paying $1000 to owners of these old "gross polluters" to get them off the road and I figured that was the best deal I was ever gonna get from it. I almost cried when I turned it over to the wrecker.
I have mixed feelings about this. I never thought GM cars were all that bad and I never believed that German and Japanese cars were all that great. The Pontiac I drive these days is reliable and comfortable. But I'm extremely uncomfortable with all these people begging for bailouts. This ain't no video game, kids. In real life there are consequences.
#4
My parents wouldn't buy anything made by anyone else but Chevrolet until my mother bought a brand-new Caprice. It was in the shop eight times in the first year she owned it. After four years and dozens of problems she finally sold it at a loss and bought a Nissan. She owned that until she lost her drivers' license due to medical reasons - eleven or twelve years. It was in the shop twice - to replace the radiator after she hit a vulture, and to have the distributor replaced.
If US car manufacturers want to remain in business, they HAVE to greatly increase quality control and cut costs. If UNIONS want to continue to exist, they'll have to learn NOT to kill the industries that support them. Unionized labor has killed quite a few national industries, and still can't seem to understand that they're part of the problem.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/12/2008 12:13
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#5
This editorial is right on the money. How is giving these companies money going to change anything? You know the dems won't put the squeeze on the unions to change. You know the management won't make the hard choices needed on their end. It is only kicking the can down the road a little bit. A total waste.
That said, I have no big angst about the quality of American cars. I've had American, German and Japanese cars and they all had about the same quality level (the worst were German). The syling on American cars is not the greatest.
I put more of the blame on the UAW. They are stuck in 1959.
#6
Owned Hondas for a while. Then I decided to help America, and I owned a Saturn for nine years. The first seven years were great. Had I known what was coming in the last two I would have sold it.
Then owned a Rendevous. Stunk. Comfortable, nice enough, always in the shop. Always. Now I own an Enclave. Best car I've ever owned, period. Comfy, reliable, smart, decent power, looks great, and the best fit and finish I've ever had on a car, any car.
GM is capable of making a decent car, but it seems like the people who make the final decisions don't understand the markets at all. The workers are capable of working hard and well but the union isn't capable of understanding how the world works now.
Too bad. I'm hoping I hang on to that Enclave for a while.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/12/2008 13:11
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#7
"to replace the radiator after she hit a vulture"
Dang, OP - your family has all the fun! ;-p
Posted by: Va. Gal ||
11/12/2008 13:20
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#8
Oops. Forgot to change back. :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/12/2008 13:21
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#9
Did you know that the #1 cause of headliner failure is temperature, i.e., parking in the sun, and that it does not matter what brand your vehicle is?
Yeah, sure. I'll get my boss to install a roof over the parking lot.
I've had one headliner failure. Chevy S-10. My daughter has had one headliner failure. Saturn.
High temperature resistant glue isn't rocket science. Nor is building decent cars.
#10
"I put more of the blame on the UAW. They are stuck in 1959."
I would say 1954. But your point is correct.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/12/2008 13:55
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#11
The basis of GM's claim is essentially that they are too big or too important to fail due to their massive labor force. But how massive is their labor force relative to other American companies? It may be surprising that the following companies employ a larger number of workers than GM: Target, AT&T, GE, IBM, McDonalds, Citigroup, Kroger, Sears, and Wal-Mart. It is also worth noting that Home Depot, United Technologies, and Verizon all employ nearly as many workers as GM.
The question must be posed: Should the government bail out all 12 of these companies and, if so, at what cost? I doubt that if Wal-Mart, with their 2.1 million employees, went to the government or the American people and demanded a bailout that they would receive much sympathy, let alone money. But if we are going to base worthiness of bailout on number of employees alone, then Wal-Mart is almost 7 times more worthy than GM.
(I have largely neglected Ford, whose executives are also demanding a bailout. I believe that it is enough to simply state that Abercrombie & Fitch employs almost 7,000 more workers than does Ford. Would the failure of Abercrombie & Fitch's threaten the economy? I think not.)
#12
Auto workers are a privileged group. They have been for a long time. This is not a rescue of the Auto companies. There are plenty of auto companies in the US besides the Big 3, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan come to mind. What will be done for their employees if they go belly up?
No, this is a bail out of the UAW. And no entity more deserves to go belly up. F^*k em.
#13
--- There is an analogy between the auto industry and the finance industry.
--- There are a great many suppliers and their employees who depend on the auto industry. Minimal if any media coverage of the size of this vulnerability, rough figure I found was 4x the employment, 17 states who would have major damage from a hit on their auto suppliers, much more than from a failure of any one the "Big" 3.
---- Also, there is a liability for the federal pension guaranty program, to pay for the existing pensioners of the Big 3. Big money there. Again, no media coverage of the total amounts at risk.
---- I notice our esteemed representatives are gearing up to do another rush-rush, no consultation, railroading of a massive package through Congress. This will likely work as well as the Mother of All Bailouts passed a few weeks ago.
#14
In my experience the dealers are the primary thing that drives customers to the imports. The import dealer contracts give the manufacturers more leeway in enforcing their rules. The domestic makers have to jump through a lot of hoops to discipline a dealer. The imports can do it much easier.
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
11/12/2008 14:27
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#15
I have a 94 F-150 that I bought new, going on 200K and the 300 cid straight six still runs great, air even works still. The body is going to rot away to nothing, but the motor will still be running. Some cars are good ones when they roll off the line, some are lemons.
#17
For years, I've been making the argument that one should buy a big three vehicle to support US industry.
But lately, I'm taking the opposite tack. Don't support something that should be allowed to die. Buy a car made by one of the other manufacturers which has a plant in the USA.
#18
People act like these companies are just going to vanish if they go into bankruptcy. They'll keep lurching along as they are now. Job loses, even including suppliers, etc, aren't going to be any different whether they are in Ch11 or just idling 1/2 their work force. The only difference is in CH11 they will be able to shed the burden of the damn UAW and they will be forced to reorganize. Let them go under and let the UAW take care of those who lose their jobs!
#19
Sure go ahead with this, and buy the Anheuser-Busch stock so I can draw my political cartoon of palosi sitting in the back of a recalled '08 silverado pick'mup truck with a case of beer mumbling something about how nobody will give her a loan and the value of a dollar ain't what it used to be.
#20
If GM was allowed to go bankrupt and then reorganized, minus the UAW and half its dealer network, there would be a good opportunity for a really competitive auto maker to emerge. Until then there's really no hope.
#21
It's a free market - you buy what car best for you. Period. I've owed a 1985 Fiero - piece of shit. A 1985 Toyota Tercel - awesome car. A 1997 Ford Escort - good car. A 1999 Plymouth grand voyager - excellent van and a 2003 Dodge Ram - excellent truck. I'd love to be able to buy only American products. My dad worked for GM for 30 yrs. However, as a free market capitalist I say let them sink or swim on their own merit. Everytime you buy a big 3 car you support the UAW and by substitution the Democratic party. So why don't these latte sipping liberal Obama backers buy a big 3 car if they care so damn much? A lot of the obamaphants I see are driving Volvos and Prius'.
I've had enough of the unions. This is just another vote buying scheme from the democrats. The auto industry is in trouble and it's their own fault. Fuck'em. If they get a bailout watch for the airline industry to get in line next. I won't hold my breath, W is no conservative, he'll cave.
#23
My 1995 Voyager has been great - I'd buy another if they still made that model. My 1995 Prizm (alias Toyota Corolla) has been great - but I tried the 2000 Chevy version & it was more like the Cavalier. Tried a Saturn - not bad but expensive to fix and my daughter kept wrecking it. Escort - real good for 80,000 then expensive stuff kept breaking. 72 Datsun pickup - fantastic. 73 Corona - sucked, but never left me stranded. 84 Marquis - solid but had this nasty intermittent electric problem. 68 Rambler - basic, but really practical and cheap and easy to maintain. I don't sense a strong pattern relative to national origin.
#24
DILEMMA > WAR POWERS + "WORST CASE" NATIONAL CONTINGENCY > in case of major war, Washington Pols and the USDOD expect and plan for US AUTOMAKERS, etc. US-BASED INDUSTRIES TO BE ABLE TO QUICKLY PRODUCE ARMAMENTS FOR US MILFORS.
US-based, US-owned Automakers = US ARMY-MARINE AFVS, USAF PLANES, + USN COMBAT SHIPS, including support, the "GUNS" OF POLITICAL "GUNS-AND-BUTTER" ISSUES.
* E.g PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > US SECDEF GATES FAVORS EXPANSION OF SCOPE OF US PREEMPTIVE WAR DOCTRINE TO INCLUDE OPTIONS FOR UNILATERAL US PREEMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES. Against both GOVT-NATIONS as well as NON-STATE ENTITIES [Terror Groups], ETC. AS PERTINENT/NECESSARY.
Also, SAME > THE MAPS OF THE MUSLIM WORLD, ASIA, AND AFRICA IS BEING QUIETLY REDRAWN DUE TO THE US-ISLAMIST WAR ON TERROR.
A mosque asking that Canadian workplaces respect a strict Muslim dress code is at the same time disseminating slurs against Jews and Western societies, and warning members against social integration.
The Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque near Kipling Ave. and Rexdale Blvd. serves as the religious authority for eight Somali women complaining to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that UPS Canada Ltd. violated their religious rights at a sorting plant. The mosque, founded in 1990 and serving upwards of 10,000 people, preaches strict adherence to sharia, or Islamic law, and no compromise with the West.
Teachings on the mosque's website, khalidmosque.com, refer to non-Muslim Westerners as "wicked," "corrupt" and "our clear enemies."
Sometimes Jews are singled out. "Is it permissible for women to wear high-heeled shoes?" begins one posting in question-and-answer format. "That is not permissible," comes the reply. "It involves resembling the Disbelieving Women or the wicked women. It has its origin among the Jewish women."
Modern pastimes are condemned. "What is the ruling on subscribing to sports channels?" another question begins. "Watching some of the female spectators, when the camera focuses on them time after time" stirs "evil inclinations," the lesson reads. "Some (players) may not even believe in Allaah."
Mosque leaders refused repeated requests for an interview. A disclaimer on the website says questions and answers do not necessarily reflect the mosque's views. But the About Us page says: "All questions and answers on this site (are) prepared, approved and supervised by (the mosque's imam) Bashir Yusuf Shiil."
The mosque's stand on the UPS case also appears contradictory. In September, a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal heard two weeks of testimony from eight mosque members alleging "Islamophobia" at the company's west Toronto plant. Three final days of testimony are scheduled for next week.
The eight women, who lost their jobs at UPS, say Islam dictates that they wear a full-length skirt for modesty. The courier company insists that any skirt be knee-length for safety, as workers climb ladders up to 6 metres high. Under their skirt, the women wear full-length trousers but say they do not want the lower part showing in case the shape of the calf can be discerned.
The complaint originally centred on the company's use of temporary workers and uneven enforcement of its safety rules.
But the key question remains: Is UPS insisting on shorter hems for safety or is it violating religious rights by denying the women permanent jobs unless they conform?
So far, no Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque representative has attended the sessions, but the women cited the mosque as their place of worship and religious authority, and tabled a letter from its administration. "This is to certify that the religion of Islam requires all Muslim women to cover her entire body inclusive of the legs, arms, head, ears and neck," the letter reads. "As such, (the women) would not be able to wear pants as an outfit."
On the other hand, the mosque's website teachings forbid women to work outside the home in the first place. "It is known that when women go to work in the workplaces of men, this leads to mixing with men," one such posting says. "This is a very dangerous matter," it reads. "It is in clear opposition to the texts of the Shariah that order the women to remain in their houses and to fulfill the type of work that is particular for her ...
"We ask Allah to protect our land and the lands of all Muslims from the plots and machinations of their enemies."
Two of the women making the complaint -- Dales Yusuf, 46, and Nadifo Yusuf (no relation), 36 -- said in an interview that they live in Canada now, and are free to pick and choose from Islamic law.
"We must work," said Dales Yusuf. "I'm a single parent raising my kids." Jacquie Chic, a lawyer with the Workers' Action Centre representing the women at the hearings, said neither she nor her clients were aware of the mosque's posted teachings. "I, the Workers' Centre and these women are concerned enormously about any expression of anti-Semitism or any other form of racism," she said.
Questions to the mosque about its teachings were met with evasiveness over three weeks. Mosque chairman Osman Mohamed three times agreed to an interview and three times cancelled at last minute. Imam Shiil was said to be in Saudi Arabia and unreachable. Mosque administrator Abukar Mohamed confused matters further by appearing to agree with UPS, saying: "The Quran says women must be covered -- it doesn't give you the specific clothes. But I am not a religious authority."
#1
Thanks to Fat Albert and his Global Warming, another brutally cold winter is about to hit Montreal. A little more heat would surely be welcome in these circumstances.
#2
Cripes, these people are freaks. These women should be told to stay at home or adhere to the UPS clothing guidelines. UPS should not have to adhere to their nutso religion that is so contradictory it can't be adhered to.
Or if they insist on wearing their full length dresses, give them the job of janitor and have them clean the mens shitters. At significantly reduced pay.
Today, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has successfully reached its intended operational orbit at a height of about 100 km from the lunar surface. This followed a series of three orbit reduction manoeuvres conducted during the past three days by repeatedly firing the spacecrafts 440 Newton Liquid Engine. As part of these manoeuvres, the engine was fired for a cumulative duration of about sixteen minutes. As a result of these manoeuvres, the farthest point of Chandrayaan-1s orbit (aposelene) from the moons surface was first reduced from 7,502 km to 255 km and finally to 100 km while the nearest point (periselene) was reduced from 200 km to 182 km and finally to 100 km.
With this, the carefully planned complex sequence of operations to carry Chandrayaan-1 from its initial Earth orbit to its intended operational lunar orbit with the use of its liquid engine has been successfully completed. During these operations, Chandrayaan-1s liquid engine built by Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Thiruvananthapuram, has been fired a total of ten times successfully. In its present operational orbit, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft takes about two hours to go round the moon once.
From this operational circular orbit of about 100 km height passing over the polar regions of the moon, it is intended to conduct chemical, mineralogical and photo geological mapping of the moon with Chandrayaan-1s 11 scientific instruments (payloads). Two of those 11 payloads Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) have already been successfully switched ON. TMC has successfully taken the pictures of Earth and moon.
The next major event of Chandrayaan-1 mission planned in the coming days is the release of Moon Impact Probe (MIP) from the spacecraft and its eventual hitting of the moons surface.
It may be recalled that after its successful launch by PSLV-C11 on October 22 into an initial Earth orbit, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft proceeded towards moon and successfully entered into an elliptical orbit around that celestial body on November 8, 2008. Since its launch, the spacecrafts health and orbit have been continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) with critical support from antennas of Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/12/2008
10:13 ||
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#1
Nice job there, India!
Posted by: Mike ||
11/12/2008 10:48
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#3
WAFF.com > CHINA FEARS INDIA-JAPAN SPACE ALLIANCE.
OTOH, WORLD MIL FORUM > Chinese Posters are intensively debating wid each other whether the US NASA-JPL is interested in the datums India collects from this mission, as per future Manned-Unmanned Space Missions BEYOND MARS [e.g. SATURN]???
#4
The NASA miniSAR on the Indian probe will be used along with NASA's own LRO lunar probe. With both probes in orbit at the same time, one instrument will transmit and the other will receive. This will allow "the study the radar backscatter characteristics as a function of phase angle. This would represent another independent method to look for ice".
The Indian impact probe will slam into the rim of the Shackleton crater where NASA proposes to build a lunar base.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/12/2008 19:07
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#5
A lunar base? Wonderful, indeed.
JosephM, it sounds like thinking people in China may be starting to consider that their conquest of the world is not inevitable. I wonder what repercussions that thought will have?
Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows. Amen! Preach it, Sister Camille!
Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.
I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.
As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.
The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan -- nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/12/2008
09:46 ||
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#1
Yeah, right, whatever. The notion that any level of outrageous or indefensible behavior by any Democrat - or even trunk who's defaming the right politician, soldier, or victim of terrorism, etc. - would result in a "hangover" or any other consequences is cute, and delusional.
2008 was, more than anything else, about the end of serious elections and the disappearance of accountability. And the bigoty and idiocy she properly denounces is very widespread, and completely acceptable, outside red-state America.
Bush was subjected to a vile tsunami of nonsense and idiocy for his entire term. It only got worse the more serious the issues became. The MSM rules supreme, comically inept and unfit candidates like Obama can walk to victory in the first contested election in their lives, and you can call Pennsyltuckians racist, redneck, gun-obsessed religious nuts and get their votes.
Come on, Camille. Focus on important things, like tickets to inaugural balls, or the associated orgy of craptacular self-congratulation and arrogant preening that awaits in January. Don't cling to bitter hopes that an America that has disgraced itself for years will suffer remorse and get a clue.
#2
remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.
Camille Paglia is also delusional if she thinks Barrack Obama is going to be re-elected. The entire world is going to learn the hard way that OBambi is an empty suit with no character, no strength, and no wisdom.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/12/2008 15:02
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#3
With such a solid win the democrats have no need to scrape off the radical nuts that have hijacked a good part of their party. Sadly, I fear that the only way to fight fire will be with fire and that will make for a much less civil society. But when it comes right down to it I don't mind rolling up my sleeves and kicking some hippies.
#4
Paglia is a disciple of Marshall McLuhan, and thus, a believer in some seriously heavy-duty witch-doctory bullshit. Don't expect anything too excessively rational from Camille. She specializes in fuzzy-headed, pugnaciously gender-bent vagino-swagger. Her inevitable girl-crush on Palin was overdetermined, but it won't turn her into a Republican. She just likes to play pretend, especially when it helps her pick up chicks in dyke bars.
She's sort of like Guiliani that way.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/12/2008 15:18
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#5
Camille Paglia is also delusional if she thinks Barrack Obama is going to be re-elected.
We can only hope that he even aspires to be re-elected. I fear an actual election won't be of concern by then.
#6
ION IRNA > US STRATEGIST [Simon Rosenberg] HIGHLIGHTS IRREVOCABLE SHIFT IN US POLICIES.
"Irrevocable" meaning the US DEMOLEFT could dominate US Politics for at least A GENERATION, espec as per US National Policies on GLOBAL WARMING, IMMIGRATION, + FINANCIAL CRISIS.
IN 30 YEARS [circa 2038 = 2040-50 r.o.] > US MAY NO LONGER HAVE A WHITE MAJORITY.
#7
PAKSITANI DEFENCE FORUM Thread > PSST, DID YOU HEAR, OBAMA IS NOT A SECRET MUSLIM - HE'S A [pseudo]BUDDHIST!? Despite formal membership in the UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST + early/original childhood MUSLIM UPBRINGING, MANY OF BIG O's PERSONAL OR PREMIER BELIEFS ARE VERY CLOSELY IN LINE WID BUDDHISM [hence, CHINA-ASIA]???
Anyhoo, also from PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > FISCAL WOES COULD [protractively]DELAY CLIMATE CHANGE FUNDING, RESULTS. NOT very much in the near- or short-term but likely in the long-term as wealthier nations cut back on $$$ support to combat MMGW = Climate Change, espec as per assistance to econ/cash-strapped smaller nations.
Now Bishop Robinson intends to make the Catholic Church his new mission field for this crusade. In a report first confirmed by the Associated Press and later confirmed in numerous Press and Media venues, Bishop Robinson has acknowledged that he led a "confidential retreat" of 75 Roman Catholic Priests in 2005 at which he encouraged their open dissent from the teaching of the Church and their overt disobedience to their vowed celibacy.
His intention now seems to be to take his self styled libertine revolution into the Catholic Church.
He somehow misses that the Catholic Church has had 2,000 years of experience in dealing with heretics ...
The retreat occurred with no approval from any Bishop or religious superior of the men who attended. Among the many suggestions and instructions he gave to the priests in attendance was to tell them, "It's too dangerous for you to come out as gay to your superiors, but I believe that if you work for the ordination of women in your church, you will go a long way toward opening the door for the acceptance of gay priests."
#1
He's probably lying. Even though there are 50,000 priests in this country, having 75 of them dissappear for a week for a "secret" conference seems had to pull off.
#2
I'd suspect it would be easy enough if they all just happened to vacation at the same time in the same place, Carbon Monoxide, or held some sort of 'reunion'...
Don't bishops serve at the pleasure of the Vatican? I'm sure that the College of Cardinals could find seventy-five rather amusing little assignments, eg each in a single-roomed hermitage at the tops of isolated mountain tops in need of hourly prayer for the salvation of the souls of humanity. There have been libertines and dissenters in the Church since it began. We know of some of the dissenters... but somehow very few of the libertines are known of outside the walls of the Vatican.
The retreat took place three years ago. I wonder how much longer dear Bishop Robinson will rule as a prince of the Church?
#4
"Bishop" Robinson is a "Bishop" only in the eyes of a few thousand Episcopalians. He is not a prince of the Church. He is not a validly ordained Bishop of the Universal Church.
I imagine most of these supposedly gay priests are probably quite old and will not be around much longer.
#5
He somehow misses that the Catholic Church has had 2,000 years of experience in dealing with heretics ...
Well, in the good old days we used to burn them at the stake, but then Martin Luther came along and spoiled all that...
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
11/12/2008 17:22
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#6
That's what I getting for taking a few days off: I completely missed the Episcopal bit in the headline. :-( Hopefully I'll be smarter tomorrow.
#1
I think we can agree that the questioner is a simpleton of rare dimension. In short, a total ass. What I get from this from Emanuel, knowing he spent some period of his life in Israel, is something similar to the common service required from Israeli residents. If 3 months were spent on studying the Constitution and general civics, coupled with some service, such as preparing and delivering meals to elderly, or picking up trash in urban areas, erasing graffiti, etc., I could see it. Nearly all American youth expect everything be handed to them on a platter. Some period of national service is entirely reasonable and may reconnect them to reality and to the nation at large. I get no sense he is talking about a military contingent. Hussein, on the other hand, seems to be proposing a Black Panther force writ large. That ain't going to fly far. Something for the common good could be accepted; anything militarily related is DOA.
#2
I want to know when they will start drafting the geezers over fifty. Older people have been included in the early talk of this Civil Defense Corps. Can I get a 4-F deferment? Will Canada open it's borders to us slackers? Will honary status be given to draft dodgers from the 60's? If not, why not?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/12/2008 11:27
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#3
Required national service is not reasonable. Military draft is only reasonable in times of war.
In peace time all citizens should be free. The government is supposed to work for us, not us for the government.
#5
I read this in the comments section of a related and recent post and I think it is worth repeating here:
"It matters not that the purpose is for "the common good." The good that a man decides to do, or not do, should be an issue between himself and (if he recognizes one) his God. Any other source makes that source the master and the man a slave."
#7
Regarding the 13th Amendment, if a military draft was able to be imposed legally I suspect this will also.
When you consider the number of Boomers that will be heading into old age homes in the coming decades I imagine the system will be unable to handle the numbers and all the volunteers (voluntary or government forced) we can get will be helpful.
Having said that the government still has to pay them, and at the same time those elderly are no longer paying into the kitty, so we're screwed.
#9
If this old geezer is conscripted, can I ask for reparations too?
So if you are a teacher, doctor, policeman, community volunteer, mental health worker, pro bono lawyer, etc., does this count as service? Or does the work you provide have to be provide gratis? If it does, this sounds a lot like involuntary servitude.
#10
Now that I am retired I think I'll volunteer for the draft conscription. Grow a beard, let my trousers hang down, smile a lot and go to all the meetings wired. Maybe establish an underground railway and help conscipted young people escape to Oklahoma.
#11
A "common experience" for impressionable young people under the influence of loony liberals like Rahm Emanuel? I don't think so. High school is bad enough. And besides that, who's gonna pay for it after we get done bailing out all the crooks, bankers and union goons?
#12
Regarding the 13th Amendment, if a military draft was able to be imposed legally I suspect this will also.
FYI, the draft is a misnomer. It's the selective activation of the federal militia which the Constitution gives the Legislative Brand the authority to form and embody under Article I, Section 8.
"To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;"
They implement that power through Title X, United States Code, subsection 311, note well para (b)(2) -
"311. Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia areâ
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia."
So, by the powers of the Constitution, all males 17 to 45 are already in the militia whether they understand it or not. Notice that it also authorizes - "To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;". No where else is there such an authorization to form a "Civil Defense Corps". However, that was all before it became what ever they could get away with a 'living Constitution', i.e. we make this up as we go along.
#13
To be honest the constitution is but a piece of paper much like any other unless people actively refuse follow government orders that break it's tenets.
Forced Labour breaks the 13th Amendment (but then so does the Federal income tax).
Unsure if this was photoshopped
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said it test-fired a new generation of surface-to-surface missile Wednesday and that the Islamic Republic was ready to defend itself against any attacker.
Iran's latest missile test followed persistent speculation in recent months of possible U.S. or Israeli strikes against its nuclear facilities, which the West suspects form part of a covert weapons program, a charge Tehran denies. U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, like outgoing U.S. President George W. Bush, has not ruled out military action although he has criticized the Bush administration for not pursuing more diplomacy and engagement with Tehran.
Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the Iranian-made surface-to-surface Sejil missile had "extremely high capabilities" and was only intended for defensive purposes. He said it had a range of close to 2,000 km (1,200 miles), almost as much as another Iranian missile called Shahab 3. That would enable it to reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf.
"This missile test is in the framework of Iran's deterrent doctrine," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying. "It will only land on the heads of those enemies ... who want to make an aggression and invade the Islamic Republic," said Najjar, who did not mention any country by name.
Iran's English-language Press TV said the Sejil missile had two stages and was of a type that used combined solid fuel. A missile was shown soaring from a platform in desert-like terrain, leaving a long vapour trail.
It came a day after media said the Revolutionary Guards had test-fired another missile called Samen near the Iraqi border. "They do it all the time. It's Iranian machismo," said Tim Ripley, an analyst at Jane's Defense Weekly.
Two stages could increase a missile's range, he said, noting that Iran had in the past borrowed technology from North Korea although he said he could not say if that was true this time.
#3
ION WORLD MIL FORUM Poster > IFF RUSSIA IS UNABLE TO STOP HER DEMOGRAPHIC/POPULATION DECLINE, SOONER OR LATER SHE WILL BE DISMEMBERED AS A NATION. Pervasive, perennial, unchecked loss of identity + socio-cultural beliefs will inevitably result in loss of physical territories.
* IIRC, ARISTOTLE? or twas it HERODOTUS > TOLERANCE/DIVERSITY IS THE BELIEF OF A WEAK AND DYING NATION, or words to that effect.
Gunmen shot and killed an American aid worker as he traveled to work Wednesday in northwestern Pakistan, the latest in a spate of attacks on foreigners in the militancy-wracked country.
Police did not speculate on the identity of the assailants, who also killed the man's driver. But similar attacks against Pakistani security forces and foreigners have been blamed on al-Qaida- and Taliban-linked fighters, who are increasingly active in the region, which borders Afghanistan.
The shooting occurred in University Town, an upscale area of the main northwestern city of Peshawar where a top U.S. diplomat was attacked just a few months ago, police official Arshad Khan said.
Police identified the dead American as Stephen Vance, and officials said he was involved in U.S.-government funded development projects in the tribal areas next to the border.
So how much of the US economy, the home of free enterprise, will end up being nationalised or bailed out by the state during the current economic crisis?
So far we've seen banks, mortgage companies, and a mighty insurer all being propped up and bossed around by the federal government. And now it's the real economy, manufacturing, that US taxpayers are set to rescue.
Last night, for example, the Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, urged Congress to provide emergency financial help for the crippled US automotive industry.
What's being requested by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler is $50bn in loans, on top of the $25bn in low-interest borrowing approved by Congress in September for retooling plants.
As cash-strapped US consumers continue to feel this is not the best time to buy a car, and are purchasing fewer vehicles than at any time since the early 1990s, most at risk of collapse is General Motors, the largest US carmaker.
Pelosi made clear that she felt the big automakers had to be kept out of bankruptcy at all costs, because of the danger that its failure would lead to massive damage to suppliers and connected businesses, with the possible loss of millions of jobs. A recent study by the Center for Automotive Research concluded that the failure of just one carmaker would lead to 2.5m job losses.
The scale of what's at stake was captured chillingly in a quote from a bankruptcy lawyer at White & Case, Alan Gover, who is quoted on Bloomberg: "Trying to reorganise the auto industry in bankruptcy would be as close to reorganising the whole US economy as you could get," he said. "The vast supply chain involves thousands of businesses, millions of existing jobs and just as many retirees, as well as whole communities and states".
But here's what some may see as ironic, even - in a dark way - slightly amusing. The fundamental cause of America's woes (and ours too) is that its consumers, businesses and government all borrowed too much in the good years, especially from China.
China's semi-nationalised, heavily state-controlled economy generated huge financial surpluses through its massive trade in manufactured goods with America. And those financial surpluses were recycled back to America in the form of loans, so that US consumers and businesses could buy even more from China's factories and workshops.
These massive trade and financial imbalances were unsustainable - and are now being brought closer to equilibrium in a painful way.
Because US financial institutions both borrowed and lent too much, and because many other mighty companies took on far too much debt, they have been facing collapse. And where they are perceived as too big too fail (where the collateral damage were they to fall over would be devastating), the US government is stepping in with financial succour from taxpayers.
For years the great trend in the world was the embracement of free enterprise in China. But now, in America's darkest hour for generations, the US is embracing a form of state-control and intervention that looks remarkably Chinese.
#1
If we put the exact same tax on imported goods that their country of origin puts on American goods, I suspect we'd be out of the woods in a very short time.
Free trade and globalism advocates have been busting their collective sack explaining the virtues of the global economy for the last 20 years at least, as things steadily went down the toilet. Now we've hit rock bottom, almost, so where's the great benefit in the global economy now? I know, I know, cheap shit at Wal-Mart, yada, yada, yada. But if we've lost millions of jobs, doubled our national debt, became beholden to other countries for our energy, and have to kiss china's ass to keep them from dumping their US bonds and crashing our bond market, what HAVE we gotten out of this deal? I think its a fair question.
#4
Gloabalism didn't cause people to spend more than they make. Globalism didn't force the UAW to create ridiculous work rules and unsustainable cost demands on its employers. Globalism didn't force our government to create huge entitlement programs (also unsustainable). Globalism is about competition and enabling different countries to specialize. Globalism is about Honda, Toyota, BMW and Mercedes building plants in the US and employing non-union workers at those plants and paying them a very good wage. You want a far worse recession, then erect trade barriers. That sure worked like a dream the last time around.
#5
You are right too, remoteman. But during the Republican presidential primaries my guy Duncan Hunter said his policy on tariffs would be like a mirror - whatever tariffs they put on our products would be the same tariffs he would put on theirs. That made sense to me but it's not what happens, is it? Not only that but the Chicoms don't protect their workers or their environment like we do. How about a level playing field?
#6
EU did you boy Duncan spend his time reading Tom Clancey novels?
This mirror idea is a perfect example of the maxim that things should be as simple as possible AND NO SIMPLER.
Global trade is way to complex for sound-bite answers from anyone. If you want to know what really caused the depression look into REPUBLICAN idiocy known as Smoot-Hawley. FDR just came along and kept pushing the ball down hill till WWII bailed us all out.
#7
I think you are all right, but do you not see globalist policies as a goodly part of this problem?
I wonder how many people do or don't. It has certainly been a godsend for big business, but for the American worker? It seems to have brought few of the promised benefits.
#8
ION FREEREPUBLIC > BARNEY FRANK WANTS TO NATIONALIZE THE US AUTO INDUSTRY.
HMMMM, ala the USSR the Bolsheviks + Soviets lasted from 1917 thru 1989 or 1991 > WID US POLITICOS + GLOBALISTS, ETC WAFFLING BWTN THE WORLD-DOMIN/CONQUERING USSA, versus WEAK ANTI-SOVEREIGN OWG USR of Amerika, IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN HOW LONG US-CENTRIC SOCIALIST ORDER WILL LAST.
At last check the Islamists are still a'rampagin thru CENTRAL- AND SOUTH/SE ASIA [desired FUTURE NUCLEARIZED ISLAMIST ASIA].
#9
WORLD MIL FORUM [paraph = Google Chinglish translation] > CHINA AND TURKEY HAVE THE LARGEST "BEST" WORLD ECONOMIES, for the USA to heavily interact with in order to resolve its on-going Financial Crisis and related.
Also from SAME > PROLONGED US FINANCIAL CRISIS CAN RESHAPE THE MAP OF ISLAM, ASIA AS SUPERPOWER USA DECLINES BUT GROWS MORE ECONOMICALLY DEPENDENT ON FOREIGN STATES.
There have been layoffs at Current Media, the cable network co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.
A statement from Current put the number of layoffs at about 60 positions, with 30 more to be refilled, the company said in a statement. That's less of a hard hit than the 20 percent cuts that a source close to Current hinted to CNET News on Tuesday. The statement read: "Approximately 60 positions have been eliminated in the company's three U.S. offices, and approximately 30 new positions created," the statement read.
The source also said additional layoffs would be coming in January, which a Current representative denied
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/12/2008
07:59 ||
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#1
So no layoffs in the Tehran office yet, that's a relief.
Approached outside the company's San Francisco headquarters, one laid-off Current employee said that she hadn't seen it coming.
"Not only was this uncalled for, but there was continuous deliberation during the last two or three months," the former employee said. "Every meeting we've had with the VP of our department has been a lot of 'Don't worry, your positions are secure.' And that has been repeated for the last two to three months."
#1
Robert Zubrin has a good point. The financial markets of the last few months have been and are continuing to be absolutely insane. I can't make any sense of it at all. Zubrin is right. Forget about risky mortgage loans, greedy Wall Street moguls, and all the rest of the bogey men being paraded out as the reason for our woes. More than doubling the price of oil in a short time was enough to bring our prosperity crashing down. His flex fuel mandate is the panacea we all crave, except for one thing. Noone in government or business is pushing for it. Why, I ask, aren't we seeing this and some other simple solutions to a part of the problem being pushed by someone who could actually get something done? At times, it almost seems like a conspiracy between the radical left and the big money right. But then I shake off my natural fur cloak of paranoia and ask myself who is benefiting from this rolling crises? And just as important, who is getting creamed? Besides the poor, that is, they always get hit the hardest. Agressive countries fueled by oil such as Russia, Iran, and Venezuela are hurting much worse than we are. As the revenues drop below costs in OPEC countries, those with the most agressive outreach programs and least functional governments are most in danger of collapse. Then, could this, in part, be advancing a major new front in the War on Terror? But who would be the big winner? Like Warren Buffet, the US is rich in irreducible resources that retain value even when currency fails. The history books in 2100 A.D. will be filled with the answers and they will seem so simple and straight forward that only an idiot could have missed it. Well, this idiot missed it completely. Can anyone explain it to me?
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
11/12/2008 11:15
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#2
It's too bad the author took a good article & argument to close with supporting ethanol-based fuel technologies...
#3
RofO:
I think you're mistaken. Government is pushing ethanol BIG TIME. Forcing the automakers into flex fuel will make all of us shareholders (if we aren't already by next week).
We cannot survive a transition from oil to corn-based fuels without a significant trade-off that, I believe, no one is willing to make (and everyone is already grumbling about the initial effects, while at the same time arguing about what caused them. Reminder: If food cost inflation was due to transportation costs, the cost of food should come down at the same rate as transportation costs (oil/gasoline). Otherwise, 'ethanol inflation' is absolutely correct. It's only been 2 weeks...the jury's still out, though factoring in the effect of the domino failure of ethanol-producing firms and the consequent adjustment to corn futures & inventories will be a complicating factor)
#4
The current problemn is not due to energy. It's due to excessive borrowing and spending by governments, organizations and individuals worldwide.
The price of energy reflects this. As the spending bubble grew, prices rose. As the spending bubble contracts, prices are falling. In boom times ethanol was a feel good luxury. Now its a white elephant.
#5
Using food for fuel when we have so many alternatives is just nuts. There are other ways to kill OPEC (nuclear, nat gas, thermal, solar, wind, etc.). Ethanol is a sop to ADM and Cargill.
#6
Flexifuel provides options. It doesn't force us into ethonal, methonal or gas but lets the market decide. I like letting the market decide that sort of thing.
Ethanol can be made from non-foodstuffs but we'll never reall know until we dump farm subsidies for corn and other crops and before we make non-oil options a serious possibility.
#7
We have a rendering plant in my county that makes biodiesel from animal whatnot. It sells locally, but has to be mixed with a little diesel to work well, say 70/30.
#8
Mixing with diesel is required in low temperature places as well as the other types of oil tend to freeze up more than petrolium products. Still a little diesel is better than all oil and no solution is 100% perfect.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/12/2008 17:23
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#10
Anyone knows what is ethanol? Alcohol from The kind there is in wine, whisky, beer. I could think of other uses for ethano that burning it in car engines.
#11
Henry Kissinger did much to promote OPEC parasitism. As advisor to President Nixon, he told the Shah of Iran to raise oil prices, as means for purchasing advanced US weapons systems. And he did that during an recession. After the failed Arab attack on Israel, Arab members of OPEC placed an oil embargo. Kissinger called a favor from the Shah and he helped undermine the Arab subversion. After that incident, the Nixon regime indulged Shah greed. Then Iranians took notice of same and accepted the most depraved regime on earth.
Reminder: the Soviet factor - they had allies in the Middle East - enabled Arab belligerence in the seventies and eighties. Currently, there is absolutely NOTHING to stop an American regime from imposing its will on those headless chickens, who have long posed as human. That is NOTHING except the lack of will to tell pro-Saud lobbyists to go to hell, and dictate terms to Middle East savages. Anyone who defends the set up of America's finest soldiers for sniper attacks and IED massacres, is a wild animal. If that shoe fits, you wear it in disgust.
Hmmm...will this post induce specious, myopic, deferential (to oil patch parasites), and infantile reply? Spew the vomit, starting...now!
#14
Well, the statement "oil patch parasites" tells me all I need to know about you. You know, we used to be able to produce our own OIL, like the 80's, where we produced 60% of what we used, instead of 40%. Those of us in the actual industry aren't the ones who decided it was more important to shut down offshore oil drilling anywhere besides Texas and Louisiana; it's about time the rest of you stopped blaming US for the consequences of y'all's decision to export more or less the entire industry to the middle east.
#15
While I'm at it... you know Brazil? Usually touted as the leader in biological substitutes for oil? The example for the rest of us to follow?
They currently own or have on lease some 70% of the WORLD'S deep water drilling rigs. In spite of having the Amazon River Basin available for deforestation.
Maybe it's because Petrobras is state-owned and they don't see any point in demonizing themselves.
India today (November 12) successfully test fired 'Shaurya', a medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile, to be used by its Army. With a 600-km range, the missile is capable of hitting targets deep inside Pakistan and China.
The indigenous missile was launched from an underground facility with an in-built canister at 11.25 am from Complex-3 of the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur, DRDO sources said in Balasore, Orissa. The sleek missile, with a flight duration of 485 seconds, roared into the sky leaving behind a thick yellow and white smoke on a clear sunny day, they added.
The sophisticated tactical missile is capable of carrying conventional warheads with a payload of about one tonne.
"With longer shelf-life, as it is stored in a canister just like the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, the Shaurya is easily transportable and user-friendly. This is a technology development project," DRDO sources told news agencies in New Delhi.
Though there was speculation that the missile was a land version of the under development K-15 submarine launched ballistic missile, DRDO sources said the surface-to-surface missile had nothing to do with K-15 'Sagarika' project. "The missile was test fired from a 30-40 feet deep pit with in-built canister specially designed for the purpose. There was no water in the pit," the sources said.
"The test was conducted to check some of the vital parameters of Shaurya missile," the DRDO sources said.
The solid propellant, two-staged missile is little over 10 metres in length and about half-a-metre in width, they said.
As a precautionary measure, the district administration of Balasore temporarily evacuated 364 families residing within two km radius of the launch site and took them to safety at a nearby shelter before the missile test.
The launch of Shaurya has come nearly nine months after India had successfully tested the 'Sagarika' missile under the K-15 project this February off the coast of Visakhapatnam from a pontoon simulating the conditions of a submarine.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/12/2008
05:36 ||
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Ten Iraqi insurgent groups have agreed to escalate attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces to derail the proposed U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, an Internet monitoring service said Tuesday. The declaration against "the agreement of disgrace" was announced Nov. 4 in an audio speech by Sheik Abu Wael, a top leader of the Sunni militant Ansar al-Sunnah, who invited other insurgent groups to join, the SITE Intelligence Group said. The security agreement would keep U.S. soldiers in Iraq until 2012.
"Such kinds of agreements are not negated by mere statements of condemnation and denunciation," the sheik said. "Rather, there is necessity for work, jihad, fighting those forces the enemy and those who are loyal to them to recant this agreement"
In his speech, the sheik invited over 15 factions to join. Most of them posted statements accepting the invitation, SITE said. Those groups also include the Jihad and Change Front, Islamic Army in Iraq, Hamas-Iraq, and the Mujahedeen Army in Iraq, SITE said.
Parliament must approve the security deal by the end of the year when the U.N. mandate authorizing the U.S. presence expires. But the proposed agreement has drawn sharp criticism, especially within the majority Shiite community. Without an agreement or a new mandate, the U.S. military would have to cease operations in Iraq.
Suspected terrorists militants have shot and killed four civilians including an elderly woman in Thailand's south, police said, as an analyst warned violence in the region was intensifying.
The 79-year-old woman and her 49-year-old son were shot dead in Pattani province on Tuesday evening while returning home from work, police said. The same evening a 33-year-old rubber tapper died in a drive-by shooting in Yala province, while elsewhere in the province a 28-year-old man was shot and killed, they said.
Srisompob Jitpiromsri, director of the Pattani-based group Deep South Watch, said although the violence had fallen to its lowest level in five years in early October, it was now intensifying. On November 4 suspected militants detonated two bombs in a busy marketplace in Yala, wounding 74 people in one of the biggest assaults on civilians since early 2004, police said.
"In the past the government has focused on its military operation and managed to suppress the terrorists militants. So now they (the terrorists militants) have tried to adopt new tactics to achieve large-scale destruction," Mr Srisompob said.
Cosmetic surgery addict injected cooking oil into her face
A WOMAN addicted to cosmetic surgery is unrecognisable after injecting cooking oil into her face. The Daily Telegraph in London reports Korean woman Hang Mioku, 48, had her first cosmetic surgery procedure at 28 and was hooked, moving to Japan for more.
Eventually surgeons refused to carry out any more work and she returned home, where her face had changed so much her family didn't recognise her.
Ms Hang's parents took her for treatment for her addiction, but it didn't last. She soon found a doctor who would give her silicone injections and he even gave her a syringe and silicone so she could self-inject, the paper said. When her supply ran out, she used cooking oil.
Her face became so large compared to her small body that local children called her "standing fan", the newspaper reported. After appearing on Korean TV, viewers sent donations so she could have surgery to reduce the size of her face. The first of several operations removed 60g of oil from her face and 200g from her neck.
Her face has been left scarred and disfigured, and Ms Hang said she would like her old looks back.
A Sudan government-sponsored initiative on Darfur will urge a ceasefire in the ravaged region and call on both sides to prepare for talks, according to draft recommendations seen by AFP on Tuesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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#1
Darfur may be a near term test for BHO.
Suppose terrorist groups, supported by Sudan carry out an early genocidal raid and the deaths are obvious. Will BHO emit platitudes and moral equivalence (or maybe the question will be 'how many platitudes and how much moral equivalence')?
(AKI) - Israel's Defence Minister, Ehud Barak has agreed to partially lift Israel's suspension of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip's sole power plant, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.
The move followed an appeal by Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair. Most of Gaza City was plunged into darkness late on Monday.
Israeli authorities blocked the shipment of food, fuel and gas supplies to Gaza after renewed clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces over the past week broke an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire in place since June.
Gaza's border crossing will remain sealed for all other purposes, the Israeli authorities said.
The Gaza City plant provides about a quarter of the Gaza Strip's electricity and more than half the electricity used by the city itself.
The rest of the territory's power supplies come directly from Israel via power lines. The United Nations has described the fuel shortages as "real and serious".
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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Police charged batons at a rally of Jamaat-e-Islami at the north gate of Baitul Mukarram Mosque in the capital, leaving at least 30 Jamaat workers injured. Witnesses said police resorted to baton charge when Jamaat and Shibir activists tried to come out of the mosque premises after completing their rally ignoring police request and breaking the Emergency Power Rules (EPR) at about 4:30pm.
Around five thousands of Jamaat workers gathered on the mosque premises around 4:00pm as part of the party's countrywide protest programme demanding release of detained Jamaat leaders Matiur Rahman Nizami and Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojahid and BNP leader M Saifur Rahman.
The road from Paltan crossing to Dainik Bangla was blocked for about an hour causing huge sufferings to the commuters.
However, Jamaat publicity secretary Tasnim Alam claimed that around 100 activists were injured in police beating at the rally that was organised by Jamaat Dhaka city unit.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police for Motijheel area AKM Nahidul Islam told reporters that some unruly activists tried to occupy the road illegally and police just charged batons to disperse them.
Meanwhile, a press release of police headquarters said lifting ban on political meeting and procession by the government was misinterpreted and the political parties were violating the EPR unexpectedly. The release urged all to obey the law and refrain from such political programmes.
Jamaat Dhaka city unit secretary Hamidur Rahman Azad told reporters that they were holding the rally peacefully to protest the arrest of BNP and Jamaat leaders and to demand their release but police attacked them without any provocation. Speaking at the meeting, Jamaat leaders alleged that the arrest of BNP and Jamaat leaders was a plot to keep the four-party out of the upcoming polls. Jamaat Assistant Secretary General Mohammad Kamaruzzaman was the chief guest at the rally, which was presided over by Jamaat Dhaka city unit Ameer Rafiqul Islam Khan.
Meanwhile, our correspondents from Chittagong, Khulna, Sylhet and Pabna reported that Jamaat and Shibir activists held rallies demanding release of the detained BNP and Jamaat leaders.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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Margaret Thatcher used to talk about the "ratchet effect." When the Left gets power, she said, they drive everything Left; when the Right gets power, they slow the Leftward drive, perhaps even halt it for a spell; but nothing ever gets moved to the Right. U.S. politics in the 21st century so far bears out this dismal analysis. What does the Right have to show for eight years of a Republican presidency? I supported George W. Bush in 2000 because I thought he had a conservative bone in his body somewhere. I supported him in 2004 because I thought him the lesser of two evils. At this point, I wouldn't let the fool park his car in my driveway. Bruce Bartlett was right, every damn word.
I see that some of my NRO colleagues are scratching around for shards of optimism -- of Hope! -- in the general wreckage. Good luck to them. I see nothing for conservatives to hope for in an Obama administration. We just have to stick it out. This shallow, ignorant, self-obsessed man, who held an actual job for just one year of his charmed life (low-grade editing for an obscure newsletter -- he felt, he tells us in Dreams, "like a spy behind enemy lines," the enemy of course being capitalism), this red-diaper baby and his wife, will be our First Couple for the next four years and some weeks. It'll be interesting. Interesting.
I have a simple message for Mr. Derbyshire: stuff it.
I'm tired of reading about how every smart Republican on the planet had it in for George Bush, never liked the man, never agreed with his policies, never agreed with his appointments, and in general was the Cassandra proclaiming how we were doomed.
If we'd only listened to Derb. Well, nuts to that.
You try running an administration, big boy, and then tell the rest of us plebians how it's done. You try balancing the different constituencies, the Democrats trying to gnaw your legs off, the hundred Senators each of whom thinks that he or she would be a better president, the feckless allies, the dishonorable media, the thousand demands for more and more dollars, and the various events that just pop up out of nowhere, and then you can castigate the man who did it for eight years.
I won't explain in great detail that we haven't had a successful attack on our country since 9/11. That housing prices are still higher than they were in 2000. That George Bush saw the mortgage meltdown coming and tried to fix Fannie and Freddie. That Bush fixed his biggest mistake, the strategy that was failing the reconstruction of Iraq, and got the new strategy and people right even as everyone at home hammered him. Derb should know all that.
But he thinks Bush is a 'fool'. Must be nice being right all the time. Clearly has a touch of Buckley in him. With that kind of track record, Derb chould write for the New York Times. Or run for President.
#2
Leaving aside his criticism of Bush, who IMHO will be treated far kinder by history than most suspect, he has a very important and salient point: the question over most of the past century has not been, "Move left or more right?" but instead, "How quickly to move left?" Until and unless the right learns to act as decisively as the left has for a very long time now the eventual outcome will never be in doubt.
#3
I don't think Bush was ever a real conservative. That said, I don't think he would have moved as far left as he has if there had not been an ongoing war. I think he realized, particularly after the second election, that things were not going to go his way for much longer and prioritization was going to be absolutely critical. His priority was supporting our troops and winning the war. Everything else came second. If giving in to the Dems' domestic agenda was what it took to keep them from pulling the rug out from under our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, so be it.
For me, the bottom line is this: every military man or woman I know admires and respects George W. Bush. They do so because they know he admires and respects THEM and did everything he could to help them win. Woulda, coulda, shoulda doesn't matter now. We won in Iraq and didn't let the left sell our troops out again, and the credit for that mostly belongs to President Bush. He did the best he could with the tools he had in the situation he faced. You can't ask for more than that.
I suspect it will be considerably more than his successor will do.
#5
Not only HIS agenda, Badanov, but the greater agenda of America.
This was certainly W's greatest flaw, one he shared in no small part with his father, who also lacked the ability to communicate the ideas of the center and right in a way that connected with people. This is the reason that the left continually makes advances; even though their ideas have failed each time they've been tried, and always will, they are able to find individuals who present them in a way which seems to be inspiring, caring, even sexy, to the general public.
I believe it was Arnold Kling (SP?) who said that conservatism and libertarianism have an innate weakness when competing against leftism in the arena of ideas, because leftism has a more romantic narrative, and the center and right tend to be very cut and dried, and less inspiring, at least on the surface.
When someone comes along who can articulate ideas counter to the left in an inspired fashion, they connect and do well, Reagan being the most obvious example. I think W was basically a decent person who latched onto the Iraq venture as his defining event. Effective Presidents in the age of mass media cannot afford to do that. Job one will always have to be communication. It's unfortunate that we live in times when that is so, but it is true, nonetheless. The era of throwing out ideas and letting their inherent greatness speak for itself are long gone, folks. The unfortunate truth is that for the foreseeable future a good salesman is required as well. W was never that, regardless of how authentically conservative he is or isn't.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
11/12/2008 6:07
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#6
Derby is mostly right. Bush is a "compassionate conservative", fiscal restrain was never one of his priorities.
#7
Bush was an atrocious communicator and champion of ideas. He was right on lots of things and history will think better of him than the present, but he failed to meet too many of the the challenges he faced and left the way open to The Chosen One.
#8
Little more "W" or anyone else can do with the Failure Factory as Gertz calls it. Gov't bureaucrats and an uncooperative congress will frustrate any move for change, at least conservative change. We used to call them "B Co." bunch, (Be there when you get there. Be there when you leave) They just laugh at you. Quietly frustrate your every good effort, and await your departure.
#9
Bush started his term doing what he said he would do in his first campaign - restoring the dignity of the office and reaching across the aisle (No Child Left Behind, etc.) Of course it was for nothing, because he was an 'illegitimate' president, having 'stolen' the election.
A few months later he was 'tested' by the Chinese (spy plane downing), and probably played it as well as it could have been.
Then came 9-11 and everything changed. To him, as to me, it was akin to Pearl Harbor. Sadly, to many Americans (in name only) it was more like Gulf of Tonkin. While he could certainly have been a more effective communicator I don't think HE was the problem; Winston Churchill could not have persuaded the blind fools and the media (but I repeat myself) that they were wrong.
Considering the whole situation (poorly configured military for this war, economic weakness, entrenched & infighting bureaucracies, ill-informed & naive populace) I am amazed that the war has gone as well as it has, that the economy chugged right along (until someone kicked it over recently), and that no other terrorist attacks hit us.
Yeah, I don't like the refusal to veto the Incumbant Protection Act (McCain-Feingold), the lip-service (at best) treatment of illegal immigration, his tolerance for unacceptable treatment of veterans, and the ridiculous escalation of spending - but you have to choose your battles, and he fought the important ones.
One thing that continuously impressed me throughout his tenure was how genuinely 'decent' he was - never used people for personal photo ops (truly 'felt their pain' but off-camera - only public when the other party chose to make it so.) The 'elite' ridicule him for his religious convictions, but I am convinced that was what sustained him in what was the most challenging presidency since FDR, if not Lincoln. Sadly, history will not write kindly of him, for he did not 'win' and he will not write it.
#10
IMHO Bush was TOOO nice to his enemies. He should have fired EVERYONE that weas connected to the Clintons or the DNC. He should have pushed more for his Judges to be confirmed. He shoul have not brought Prisoners here for prosecution but allowed the countries in which they were caught to try them. He was too nice for the job but I am sure I will miss him in about three months. P.S. Conservatives are too nice in general. Look at the Minn Senate race and the one in Washington where votes "magically" appear in Donks precincts. Why are ther not loud condemnations for this?
#11
Bush...will be treated far kinder by history than most suspect
I think we're already seeing the beginnings of that. The echo chamber of television news were lock step in lauding Bush's "graciousness" this past week.
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
11/12/2008 9:04
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#12
Y'know, earlier this century, the Republicans spent a much longer time in the political wilderness until they got a decent shot at the presidency, when the Truman presidency more or less collapsed because of nothing he could control...
Who did they pick?
They found a polymath genius who could sit down at a desk and simultaneously translate something into greek with one hand and into latin in the other, and whose record included managing a half million man amphibious operation in World War 2.
---------------------------------------------
That's who the Republicans picked when they got the Perfect Storm and half a chance to get back out of the wilderness.
#13
Bush is not a fool but he certainly isnt a leader. He was elected as a Compassionate Conservative A misnomer if there ever was one. Bush ran his domestic agenda as the Country Club Pub that he is. With that said I dont care what anybody says the world is much safer today without Saddam Hussein and his two sociopathic sons in power. Not to mention the smack-down of the entire Sunni Syndicate was long over due.
#14
I think Bush leaned conservative, but did not have any strong desire to move the country in a convservative direction.
I also don't think he had any overarching theme or objectives for his presidency. He seemed to address problems as they arose, but not anticipate them. He did a good job on some of them, not so good on others.
#15
I quit reading Derbyshire about two years ago, when he seemed to become infected with dementia and went on rampage after rampage.
The last eight years have been spent building an infrastructure and system for countering radical Islamism. Just about everything else was considered by the administration as being secondary, and not important. Some of the failures being heaped upon George Bush are deserved, but the majority of them are just sour grapes, or being misdirected at the President when the true guilty parties are members of Congress (think Ted Stevens & the bridge to nowhere, Larry Craig, et. cetera). Both the Rethuglycons and the Dummycrats need leadership, but all they have is a bunch of greedy, self-centered morons who have no desire to do anything that might spoil their cushy lifestyle.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/12/2008 12:27
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#16
"all they have is a bunch of greedy, self-centered morons who have no desire to do anything that might spoil their cushy lifestyle"
Like Gov. LePetomaine, they've got to protect their phoney-baloney jobs.
Harumph!
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
11/12/2008 13:33
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#17
When the Trunks were running Congress, they did exactly what the Donks do when they run Congress: build and maintain personal power, feed at the public trough, go along to get along. Thing is, with the press firmly in the Dem camp, they have a lot less room for error than the Dems. (Example: Larry Craig deservedly got the bum's rush for cruising the bathrooms, but Barney Frank suffered no consequences for his boyfriend running a gay brothel out of his townhouse!)
As for Derbyshire, he lost me when he started shilling for Michael Schiavo. In the last eelction cycle, he was a Ron Paul supporter. 'Nuff said.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/12/2008 13:53
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#18
How to judge Bush: base it on the state of the wives of Egyptian Cabinet Ministers. Pre 2001, a photo was taken of same, revealing all garbed in Western outfits and wearing makeup and hair perms. After 5 years of Bush' moves to include Islamofascist animals within pseudo democratic processes, in the name of a fool's concept of "freedom," another photo shows the ladies in Islamic shawls.
I won't define "unintended consequences" here, because there are barriers of comprehension. Its takes depthless depravity to defend plain and obvious subsidization of Islamofascism, manifest in the indulgence of Wahabi genocide advocacy in Saud' mosques on US soil, facilitation of an Iraqi parliament composed of those of the same mentality as the 9-11 pigs, infantile triumphalism whenever a single jihadi is killed (as if there are not millions behind those wastes of flesh and blood), see no evil approach to the hundreds of millions that Taliban/al-Qaeda gets from Afghanistan's pre-napalmed Heroin industry, perverse indifference to the loss of NATO life from the Bush Heroin sanction, etc ad nauseum.
Stop celebrating failure, and start supporting initiatives to do to Islamofascism what we did to Nazism. (Soviet and Chinese Communism succumbed to different pressure; Bush did ZERO to avenge the 9-11 atrocity, and his foreign and military policy has given aid and comfort to those animals)
Posted by: Bob Chetch7999 ||
11/12/2008 17:58
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#19
Derb is at his best when he talks about China, especially the old days when he lived in China. Everywhere less he's hit and miss.
#20
As before, RADICAL ISLAMISTS + "SAVING THE JIHAD" > iff there is any ISLAMIST HIDDEN-IMMAM/MAHDI, He can't have any better or opportune LOCAL-GLOBAL/GEOPOL CONDITIONS TO MAKE HIS [DIVINE] APPEARANCE.
EVEN MORESO GIVEN POTUS OBAMA > as "JOHN KENNEDY 2", ala KRUSCHEVIAN-CASTRO-STYLE "NEW GUY" + ANTI-AMER CRITICISM + GEOPOL CONFRONTATIONISM [Vienna, Berlin, Cuba]; + "JIMMY CARTER II" = EFFEC EXPANSION + PROLIFERAT OF GLOBAL ANTI-AMERICANISM [US Policy naivete vee SE Asia, Lower Americas, Afghanistan]; + not to mention US HOLLYWEIRD'S HISTORICAL CINEMATIC RACIAL STEREOTYPES.
D *** NG IT, MORIARITY, WHOM SAYS THERE IS NO GOD, ANDOR GUAM TAOTAMONAS!
#21
Bob Chetch says" GWB did absolutely nothing to avenge 9/11.Of the ones involved we got them all starting with Khalid Sheik Mohammed who was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the COO of the whole op.OBin Laden was the financier and hes been lying under a pile of bricks n Tora Bora for seven years.The Taliban was removed from power in Afghanistan and a democratic regime installed.In record time.No new attacks in seven years on US soil or interests. Saddam deposed and executed.Khadaffi scared a pale shade of white.The nuclear expert of the Arab world in jail n Pakistan.Really the list is a lot longer but this should be enough.Do try to pay attention.
Posted by: john Morrissey ||
11/12/2008 22:29
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(SomaliNet) Kenyan security forces confirmed the two nuns abducted in Mandera district Monday by armed bandits are in Somalia. The forces say that they were pursuing the kidnappers but said no progress had been made. A top police official told AFP that they were collaborating with village elders in Somalia to negotiate with the bandits to release them.
The nuns were captured in Elwak in an early morning attack that saw the bandits make away with three vehicles, two of them belonging to the government and the other belonging to a school.
The nuns now confirmed as members of the little sisters of Jesus order were Identified as Caterina Giruado, 67, and Maria Teresa Oliviero, 61, both natives of Italy.
Elwak is one of the several frontier hotspots where two rival Somali clans have been fighting for years over access to water and pasture prompting the government to launch a crackdown.
In recent months, armed Somali gangs have carried out scores of kidnappings, targeting either foreigners or Somalis working with international organizations to demand ransom. At least 24 aid workers, 20 of them Somalis had been killed so far in Somalia, with more than 100 attacks against Aid agencies, aid groups said.
Tension is reported to be high in the area following the attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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The Russian president has asked lawmakers to extend the presidential term from the current four years to six but to make the rule only applicable to his successors. Why not just bump it up to 60 years?
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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#1
Why not for life, which can be long or conveniently short?
(AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - A senior minister from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province's government, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, is believed to have been the main target in a suicide bombing that killed at least three people on Tuesday. Several others were wounded in the attack in which a suicide bomber blew himself up outside Qayyum Stadium after the closing ceremony of the inter-provincial games in Peshawar.
Bilour, the senior leader of the Pushtun sub-national Awami National Party, had left the stadium minutes before the powerful blast struck the stadium.
NWFP Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani, who also attended the closing ceremony, had also left the stadium minutes before the attack.
Although the Senior Provincial Minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour left the Stadium, the main target being the senior leader of Pushtun sub-national Awami National Party, a powerful blast rocked the Qayyum Stadium, Peshawar at the closing ceremony of the Inter-provincial games on Tuesday evening.
"Two main reasons could be behind the blast. One the attendance of high level government officials in the event and second the participation of women athletes in the event in Peshawar," a source said.
"This is a suicide attack. We ensured foolproof security arrangements but given it was a sports event we could not restrict the movement of people," said NWFP's Inspector General Malik Naveed.
No one had claimed responsibility for the attack on Tuesday in Peshawar but several attacks in recent months have been blamed on Al-Qaeda or Taliban factions. "It will be premature to put the blame on any group," Malik Naveed told Adnkronos International (AKI).
Earlier, three-day 3rd Inter Provincial Games started with a colourful ceremony at the Qayyum Stadium Peshawar on Sunday. More than 1200 athletes and officials, under the banner of the Pakistan Olympic Association (POA), participated in 18 different events at the games that included eight women's events.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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#1
Denied outward expression, the crazies turn inward.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni distanced herself on Tuesday from comments by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calling for Israel to give up most of the Arab territories it has occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem, if it wants peace.
In an interview with army radio, Livni, who will lead Olmert's centrist Kadima party into a snap February election, said she was not bound by his policies.
"I am bound by the Kadima platform that I drafted and in which I laid down principles for negotiations with the Palestinians that the whole world can support," said Livni, who is Israel's lead negotiator in the peace talks. "It is possible to conduct the negotiations in my own way without having to arrive at the outcome raised by the outgoing prime minister," Livni said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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#1
Olmert must have Alzheimers Disease. The arabs will NEVER give Israel any peace as long as it exists. Livni is right to distance herself from this senile old fool.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/12/2008 11:47
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#2
Livni is right to distance herself from this senile old fool.
(AKI) - Five men described as devout Muslims possessed extremist material advocating violent jihad and showing images of ritual beheadings, an Australian court was told on Tuesday. The men are accused of conspiring with others to prepare a terrorist act. Crown prosecutor Richard Maidment, said they had allegedly obtained explosives and firearms.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald daily Maidment said the men possessed material "which supported indiscriminate killing, mass murder and martyrdom in the pursuit of violent jihad."
But the jury members have been told they must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that all five agreed to the preparation of a violent act motivated by religion, politics or ideology and aimed to intimidate or coerce governments or the public. "This is a circumstantial case," Supreme Court Justice Anthony Whealy told the jury.
The government's prosecutor alleged the material found in the homes of the accused - Mohamed Elomar, Abdul Rhakib Hassan, Khaled Cheikho, Mostafa Cheikho and Mohammed Omar Jamal - showed they believed Islam was under attack and violent jihad was their religious obligation. The men, all Muslims, have pleaded not guilty.
The trial started in Sydney on Tuesday and is expected to run for nine months. "The Muslim religion is not on trial here," stressed Justice Whealy. "We Australians are very fortunate because we live in a very tolerant and open-minded society."
He instructed the jury to judge the case impartially and only on the evidence presented.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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(SomaliNet) After the conservative opposition and the ruling Sandinistas both declared themselves winners of the local elections, mass rioting broke out in the Nicaraguan capital Managua.
Witnesses say thousands of supporters from the two parties attacked each other with clubs and stones.
Shots were reportedly fired. Several people were injured in the violence and some sources even say there were fatalities. During the election earlier today, two people were injured in violent incidents and more than 30 people were arrested.
Preliminary election results put left-wing President Ortega's ruling party in the lead. A number of sources spoke of electoral fraud, but these reports are impossible to verify, as the Nicaraguan government decided not to admit observers.
The local elections are seen as a test of Mr Ortega's popularity, who, according to critics, is becoming increasingly authoritarian.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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President-elect Barack Obama's incoming administration is considering a regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan that could include talks with Iran, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The newspaper, citing unnamed Obama national security advisers, also said the incoming officials support talks between the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and "reconcilable" members of the Taliban.
Do American newspapers ever again intend to name a source?
Once he takes over as president of the United States on Jan. 20, Obama intends to renew the U.S. focus on hunting down Osama bin Laden, responsible for the deadly Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., the Obama advisers told the Post. They said this will be a priority for the new administration and that the president-elect believes President Bush has played down after years of failing to apprehend the al-Qaeda leader.
The newspaper reported that several Obama advisors and senior military strategists share the opinion that the administration of George W. Bush "has been hampered by ideological and diplomatic constraints and an unrealistic commitment to the goal of building a modern democracy" in Afghanistan.
A more realistic goal would be to help build a stable Afghanistan that rejects Islamist extremism and does not threaten U.S. interests, the officials told the Post. None of the Obama advisers or the military strategists would speak openly, "citing sensitivities surrounding the presidential transition and the war itself," the Post said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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#1
A chance to send Secretary of State John F Kerry to Kabul. No doubt his charm will pacify all the violent elements in Iran and Pakistan.
#2
George W. Bush "has been hampered by ideological and diplomatic constraints and an unrealistic commitment to the goal of building a modern democracy" in Afghanistan
Gee. That's funny. I heard W mention as soon as all this started and on several occasions afterwards that the intention was to install a democracy, but that we shouldn't expect it to look like what we're used to. I guess I don't understand English as well as I thought.
#4
This "regional strategy" stuff sounds sophisticated, but it's really, really stupid, especially the "talking with Iran" part. Besides, I've seen it all before - newly elected Democrat presidents coming up with some lame policy just to contrast themselves with the former Repub president.
Posted by: me myself and I ||
11/12/2008 6:32
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#5
several Obama advisors and senior military strategists share the opinion that the administration of George W. Bush "has been hampered by ideological and diplomatic constraints and an unrealistic commitment to the goal of building a modern democracy" in Afghanistan.
The Party is much more comfortable with dictators than democracies. Ignorant third world serfs need to be led by their betters.
Barack Obama will keep his distance from this weekend's G20 summit and will not meet with any of the world leaders attending the event, it emerged yesterday.
John Podesta, part of the troika overseeing Obama's transition to the White House, told reporters the president-elect would meet none of the leaders coming to the summit in Washington. "It is not appropriate for two people to show up at this meeting," he said. "The president-elect will respect the fact that we have one president at a time."
Oh he will, will he ...
The Obama camp cast his decision to stay away from the summit as a sign of respect for George Bush's authority as president. It could also be politically convenient for Bush to maintain sole ownership of the crisis and the increasingly controversial $700bn (£445bn) rescue package for the banking insurance and mortgage industries.
Obama's spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, said he would send no observers to the event. "It's the president's meeting," Pfeiffer said. Obama's advisers would meet visiting leaders, but the president-elect planned to remain in Chicago while the summit takes place.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/12/2008
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#4
STFU zebulon. Snark is the price of success without qualification or vetting or achievement. We can and will expose each and every cheap move he makes and there's not a goddamn thing you or his minions can do about it. Get over it. We had to, right?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/12/2008 7:31
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#5
Anyone seen liberalhawk recently? Or anyone know if he has a blog of his own or such? I miss his POV.
#9
the troika overseeing Obama's transition
Great way to describe it, Guardian.
Actually the reason he's not there is that he's here, moving into an office across the street from me (in Chicago).
#10
Is there a need to be snarky everytime that Obama shows?
We snarked Rummy (R), George (R), John (R), et al. Why the hell should the 'One' be exempted? It's called equal opportunity [or are those hollow words just used to manipulate the gullible into blind submission?] Here's some advice from another Donk - If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Harry S. Truman (D)
#11
I am not a donk, i am not even an American. Anyway you can only be effective if you can attack with full power when he makes leftist moves. If you set up your side to atack everytime, you loose efficiency and clear message.
You are in minority so you must think what is the best way to bring to your side those that voted Obama.
#12
Zeb S - Actually we don't have to "think" too much about what is the best way to bring Obama voters to our "side". One of the beauties of the founders is they did a lot of that thinking long ago, and rather convincingly decided that 4 years of observation is a simply fabulous way to convince voters.
That, and the whole checks and balances thing, various sections of the Bill of Rights, the impeachment clause, and so forth.
#14
It could also be politically convenient for Bush to maintain sole ownership of the crisis and the increasingly controversial $700bn (£445bn) rescue package for the banking insurance and mortgage industries.
The one 90% of democrats, including THE ZERO, voted for?
#15
OK, what was the turnout? pewcenteronthestates puts the elegable voter turnout at just over 30%. To say that the Rebulicans hold the minority in Federal Government is true. To say that represents the overall feeling of Americans is erroneous.
Doesn't mean there isn't going to be an after-hours party; that is if someone were to look at his record of meeting foreign officials even before the election was held or the bullcrap leaking of the private conversation with President Bush.
And snark is what this site is *for*, Zeb. Pay attention!
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/12/2008 10:40
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#17
It sounds like Obama and his team have not yet figured out how they want to approach this problem and don't want to be put on the spot.
I think its a good move. The other 19 participants are either going to make proposals and want commitments from the U.S., or just bitch about the U.S. Bush will not be in a position to make any promises, and Obama will not be there.
#19
The opposition to Obama has learned its lesson and takes its tone from 8 years of glorious setting of example by previous opposition to W. Set snark phasers to maximum. Use flux capacitors if necessary.
#21
The Obama camp cast his decision to stay away from the summit as a sign of respect for George Bush's authority as president. It could also be politically convenient for Bush to maintain sole ownership of the crisis and the increasingly controversial $700bn (£445bn) rescue package for the banking insurance and mortgage industries.
I'd say the 'blame my predecessor gambit' is the more likely reason.
#23
As snarky as we wanna be - thank God for the 1st Amendment (while we still have it - & same goes for the 2nd which is the only one that really ensures the others). BTW - as no one here (that I know of) is an elected official - it really doesn't matter what we say - as if our clowning on Obama is going to move some voter left or right.
#24
Mocking our elected officials is a long-standing American tradition, Zebulon Spase1139 dear. The only one we all ever treated with respect was President George Washington. I agree that we don't want to appear ravening maniacs to others, but I promise solemnly to keep an eye on them, and prescribe chamomile tea as necessary. ;-) We aren't anywhere near as uptight as we were on Election Day. It is very kind of you to be concerned, truly; I hope we will continue to inspire such friendship over the next four years.
Posted by: Bob Phavise6306 ||
11/12/2008 20:38
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#25
Bob, you sound suspiciously like our Trailing Wife.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/12/2008 21:37
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Frank G -- I agree ---
But - Bambi isn't ducking the summit......
The transition office also announced that Mr. Obama will be represented at the global economic summit this weekend by former Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and by former Republican congressman Jim Leach, of Iowa.
(SomaliNet) Nigeria's most prominent militant group threatened on Monday to renew attacks on the oil sector if soldiers stormed its hideouts; however, a military spokesman denied such plans.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it believed the military was planning to launch an assault on two of its camps in Delta and Bayelsa states in southern Nigeria. "This will be a big mistake as it will lead to another oil war where we are sure of a landslide victory," it said in an e-mailed statement.
Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Musa, spokesman for the military task force in Bayelsa, denied any plan to attack militant camps. "It is always a media war. They are just trying to hype the tension," he said.
MEND staged what it called a six-day "oil war," In September attacking oil installations and forcing Royal Dutch Shell to warn it might not be able to meet all its export commitments from Nigeria. The group has since declared a ceasefire and repeatedly accused the military of trying to provoke it into confrontation.
Attacks by MEND have cut Nigeria's oil output by around a fifth since early 2006. The country is currently pumping just under 2 million barrels per day, well below its capacity of around 3 million bpd, because of the insecurity and chronic funding shortfalls.
The militant group said on Sunday it would continue to hold two Britons hostage until the British government dropped plans to train Nigerian soldiers in the delta, the heart of the OPEC member's oil sector. The two captives were among 27 oil workers kidnapped by gunmen in early September.
At least 21 of the hostages have been released and MEND said it freed four others late on Sunday. But a military spokesman on Monday could not confirm the release of the four hostages.-
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11/12/2008
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(SomaliNet) Philippine officials said on Tuesday, citing radio intercepts that troops killed at least 10 Muslim rebels in six hours of intense fighting in the troubled south of the country. I've noticed over the years that they never seem to kill anybody in the placid west, or the untroubled north, or even in the blissful east. It's always the troubled south that gets it. I dunno why that is.
15 rogue members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) were also wounded in the clash on Monday in mountains near Wao town in the Mindanao region, army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Romeo Brawner Jr said.
"We did not suffer any casualty in this encounter," Brawner told reporters, adding the rebels suffered heavy losses due to air strikes and artillery fire.
"We could not confirm the actual casualty count, but, based on communications intercepts and our own intelligence, the rebels lost 10 fighters and 15 others were seriously wounded in air and ground attacks."
Last week, the military ordered troops to scale down offensives against rogue MILF units to help hundreds of thousands of displaced people return to their homes and farms before the Christmas holidays.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/12/2008
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EL-ARISH, EGYPT - Armed Bedouin tribesmen on Tuesday briefly kidnapped a truckload of 25 Egyptian policemen in northern Sinai in protest at the killing of one of their number, a security official said.
The kidnapping was part of a wave of protests by Bedouin, who frequently complain of marginalisation and police abuse, following the death of an alleged Bedouin drug smuggler in a shoot-out with police on Monday. "The Bedouin freed them in a mountainous area near the Israeli border," the official said of the 25 policemen, requesting anonymity.
Their release came around two hours after the police were seized by three pick-ups of armed Bedouin as they were heading for the Israeli border.
Monday's killing sparked protests around the northern Sinai desert, including the besieging of a police station in the small town of Madfouna on the Israeli border. At least 12 people were wounded in the protests. Four policemen, including an officer, and four protesters were hurt in the Madfouna protest, an interior ministry statement said, with the situation reportedly calm on Tuesday evening.
The Bedouin have been protesting in Madfouna since police killed the tribesman in Monday's shoot-out. Hundreds turned out to protest the shooting, firing guns into the air and burning tyres. One policeman and three Bedouin were wounded in a shoot-out following another protest on Tuesday in Wadi al-Azareq, also in north Sinai, a security official said.
Bedouin say police routinely carry out arrests in north Sinai and that they feel under threat of having their car licences confiscated or homes searched at any time. In July, the detention of one of their number in the Sinai without charge saw hundreds of Bedouin burn tyres and block roads in protest.
A spate of bombings that hit popular tourist destinations in Sinai between 2004 and 2006 led to massive sweeps of the peninsula with thousands of Bedouin arrested.
It was either the Bedouin or the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Bedouin were easier to thump ...
The Egyptian government has regularly promised to pump money into the impoverished north Sinai and there have been several attempts in recent months at a rapprochement between authorities and the Bedouin.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Claims that traces of uranium were found at the site of an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor which was bombed by Israel last year prompted a row about politically-motivated leaks yesterday. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the UN body was taking very seriously allegations that Syria has a hidden atomic programme. But he declined to confirm that uranium had been detected.
And he'll twist himself into a pretzel to keep from confirming it.
Unnamed diplomats said on Monday that samples taken by UN inspectors from Kibar in northern Syria contained traces of uranium combined with other elements. The uranium was processed, suggesting some kind of nuclear link.
The Israelis didn't flatten it because it was a baby-milk factory ...
"It isn't enough to conclude or prove what the Syrians were doing, but the IAEA has concluded this requires further investigation," said a diplomat with links to the Vienna-based watchdog.
Melissa Fleming, an IAEA spokeswoman, said the agency was drafting its first ever report on Syria and had put it on the agenda of the agency's governors meeting at the end of this month. But she added that the IAEA's evaluation of findings from the June visit to the site was not finished and that a public verdict was unwarranted until then. "We regret that people are trying to prejudge the IAEA's technical assessment," she said. "We are, however, accustomed to these kinds of efforts to hype and undermine the process before every meeting of the IAEA board."
These folks could give Carla del Ponte lessons in obfuscating an investigation ...
The IAEA did not challenge the substance of Monday's revelations about the uranium traces. The concern is that the leak of confidential information could jeopardise future Syrian cooperation.
They've been so forthcoming so far, haven't they ...
Syria has repeatedly denied being involved in any illicit nuclear activity. But Damascus fuelled suspicions immediately after last September's Israeli air strike by razing the remains of the bombed structure it described as a military facility and then stonewalling before reluctantly allowing UN inspectors to visit it.
The US says the site, close to the Euphrates river and the Iraqi border, was a secret nuclear reactor that was almost completed before it was attacked. Israel has never publicly acknowledged carrying out the raid but Israeli officials say privately that the attack helped restore its deterrent capability.
The mystery was compounded in August when the Syrian official charged with liaising with the IAEA, General Muhammad Suleiman, was assassinated by a sniper - a killing which remains unexplained and has fuelled speculation that he was murdered to prevent him being questioned about the nuclear issue.
This is going to make it tougher for Bambi to listen to Malley about how reasonable the Ba'athists thugs are in Damascus.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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This particular time??? El Baradei has headed up this feckless organization for at least a decade. That would be the same decade that the Iranians have developed a uranium enrichment capability. He is a turd.
#5
google up Amman terror bombing trucks.
The amount of stuff involved, including modified trucks and poison gas, is astonishing, as are estimates of potential casualties. There has been remarkably little followup as to where the stuff came from. I mean in public.
See, poison gas is illegal and there have never been allegations the Jordan had any.
Where did it come from?
The lack of reporting is the dog that didn't bark.
Mucho curiouso
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
11/12/2008 15:01
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remoteman is right, except that Dr. El-Baradei is an Egyptian. If I recall correctly, he headed that country's program seeking a nuclear bomb before becoming a UN bureaucrat.
(AKI) - The Islamist Hamas movement on Tuesday stopped Fatah supporters from staging marches to mark the fourth anniversary of the death of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Hamas banned the marches by declaring a state of alert and thus effectively preventing Fatah supporters from commemorating his death.
Meanwhile in the Fatah-ruled West Bank, several thousand Palestinians were planning to march in memory of Arafat.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Arafat and other important Palestinian 'martyrs' should be remembered regardless of their faction.
"We must work with honesty to preserve all that Yasser Arafat and all Palestinian martyrs such as Ahmed Yassin have done, and we will remember them even though they do not want us to," said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas referring to Hamas.
In March 2004, Hamas leader Abdelaziz al-Rantisi and Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin were assassinated by Israeli Air Forces.
Arafat, (photo) the former head of the Palestine Liberation Organization died in Paris on 11 November 2004 of unknown causes.
His tomb is located in the West Bank's administrative capital of Ramallah, inside the Presidential compound known as the Muqata. The Palestinian Authority has held several memorial services in the West Bank for Arafat in the past few days.
In 2007, hundreds of thousands of supporters took to the streets of Gaza to commemorate Arafat's death. Five people were killed and another 100 wounded after gunfire was exchanged between Fatah and Hamas supporters.
Since his death Palestinian politics has been divided with the most dramatic and often violent differences between the secular nationalist Fatah party and the radical Islamist group Hamas.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
"unknown cause". Heh. All marchers in the Arafat parade will wear just a keffiyeh, buttless leather chaps, and carrying a red binder and babywipes
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/12/2008 7:15
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#2
I celebrated the 4th anniversary of that Bastard's demise, too.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/12/2008 7:29
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I completely forgot about him. He's worm food - he can't screw Israel any more. The sooner the memory of this POS disappears from the minds of men and is TOTALLY forgotten, the better the world will be. There's nothing quite as devastating as being totally forgotten by your own "people".
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/12/2008 11:35
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#4
So what happened to all the unaccounted money flowing through Arafish during his prime? We are talking millions if not billions. Gotta be more than Souee the widow got herself.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/12/2008 14:34
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My guess is that money is sitting unclaimed in a Swiss bank. If that's the case I'm sure the Swiss don't mind at all.
BUDAPEST - Hungary's Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany will meet his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico this weekend in a bid to ease nationalist tensions after recent violence over a football match, officials said Tuesday.
Ten days ago Slovak and Hungarian fans clashed during a Slovak premier soccer league match in southern Slovakia. About 50 people were injured, including fans who came to the match from Hungary. The police action against the troublemakers prompted anti-Slovak protests by ultra-nationalists in Budapest.
The Hungarian government said the police response was inadequate and asked for an investigation, while Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic backed the police.
After talking to members of the Hungarian minority party in Slovakia, Gyurcsany "called on Slovakia's head of government to agree to a meeting," said Hungarian government spokesman David Daroczi.
"It is important that the two leaders make it very clear that they reject any radicalism or nationalist extremism," Daroczi added.
Fico spokewoman Silvia Glendova told AFP the two prime ministers will meet Saturday in the Slovak-Hungarian border town of Komarno, which is called Komarom in Hungarian. The town is split by the Danube River about 70 kilometres (43 miles) from Budapest. It has around 37,000 residents in the Slovak part and 20,000 on the Hungarian side.
Slovakia's foreign minister, Jan Kubis, already met Monday in Brussels with his Hungarian counterpart Kinga Goncz, said Glendova, adding that it was an "important step" ahead of the prime ministers' meeting.
The historically tense relations between the neighbours soured after the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) joined the left-dominated government coalition in 2006. Its leader Jan Slota is famous for his inflammatory rhetoric against Romas or Hungarians. Relations worsened in September after the publication of Slovak geography textbooks for Hungarian children, which do not include the Hungarian versions of geographical names.
The Slovak and Hungarian prime ministers planned official meetings many times, only to postpone them later. The cabinet heads of both countries last met in Budapest in 2001, according to the Slovak government office.
Careful or the EU will send in the Fighting 515th Belgian Heavy Barbers as peacekeepers ...
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I could be wrong, but my reading of various local Net forums > SEEMS MANY HUNGARIANS AND SLOVAKS ARE FEARFING THAT INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION OF MUSLIM KOSOVA, + KOSOVA'S REPORETD DESIRE TO EXPAND ITS TERRITORY will lead to uncontrolled influxes of MUSLIM EMIGRES TO SAME.
* PROB > DON'T TRUST THE MAIN HUNGARIAN OR SLOVAK GOVTS TO STOP OR DO ANYTHING AGZ MUSLIM KOSOVA, hence Hungarian and Slovak violence agz each other.
IMO THE FOOTBALL MATCH WAS JUST PCORRECT COVER/CATALYST FOR DEEPER MULTI-ETHNIC REGIONAL TENSIONS-FEARS.
(SomaliNet) A pro-government Libyan newspaper said in a rare report of a security breach in the country that gunbattles broke out between two tribes in southeastern Libya last week and six people were killed. Libyan government officials have made no comment on the incident in the remote oasis town of Kufrah, the subject of varying accounts in some Arab newspapers in recent days.
Libyan newspaper al Watan said in its online edition monitored from Rabat: "Skirmishes between youths from al Toubou and Zawia tribes evolved into bigger battles in which several cars and houses were burned."
The al Watan article, dated November 7 and not subsequently updated, added that five young members of the Zawia tribe were killed and a young man from the Toubou tribe was shot dead.
Government security forces in Kufrah about 1,400 km (875 miles) southeast of Tripoli only intervened when authorities rushed reinforcements from the Libyan capital to end what al Watan called the "battles and confrontations".
Al Watan said fighters from both sides used illegally owned weapons but gave no further details.
Toubous, dark-skinned non-Arab Libyans, are estimated to account for a fifth of the oil-producing nation's more than 5 million people. Toubou rights activists accuse the Tripoli government of marginalising the population, including reportedly depriving many of identity papers and education. The Libyan government denies the accusations.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Sounds like they need an Abe Lincoln. The carrier, I mean.
(SomaliNet) In what brings the total number of attacks in waters off the African nation this year to 83, pirates hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew near Somalia, a maritime official said Tuesday.
Noel Choong, head of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur said the tanker was heading to Asia when it was seized Monday in the Gulf of Aden by pirates armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Choong said there was an attempted attack the same day on a refrigerated cargo ship in eastern Somalia, but the vessel managed to escape with evasive maneuvering. The ship flies a Saudi flag but is operated out of Britain.
The bureau has issued an urgent warning to ships to take extra measures to deter pirates even while sailing in a corridor of the gulf patrolled by a multinational naval force. "The corridor is protected, but safe passage is not 100 percent guaranteed. The patrol boats cannot be everywhere at the same time. The ship master must maintain a strict radar watch for pirates," Choong said.
Many ships have managed to fend off pirate attacks after seeking help from the coalition forces, he added.
NATO has sent three ships to the Gulf of Aden - one of the world's busiest shipping lanes - to help the U.S. Navy in anti-piracy patrols and to escort cargo vessels. The European Union has said at least four warships backed by aircraft will begin policing the dangerous waters in December. The EU flotilla will eventually take over the NATO patrols.
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Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe indicated Monday that he would move quickly to form a government, despite the collapse one day earlier of a new round of power-sharing talks that have stalled over the allocation of ministries.
Posted by: Fred ||
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A woman died on the way to a cemetery when a traffic accident hurled her husband's coffin against the back of her neck.
Police say 67-year old Marciana Silva Barcelos was in the front passenger seat of the hearse when the accident occurred on Monday in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Mrs Barcelos died instantly.
The driver of hearse and Mrs Barcelos's son suffered minor injuries.
Her 76-year-old husband, Josi Silveira Coimbra, died on Sunday of a heart attack while dancing at a party.
Coincidentally, that's my second choice for the way I'd like to go. The first involves Patty Ann Brown and the Motel 6, but I won't go into details.
Posted by: john frum ||
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'Flying coffin' kills widow on way to husband's funeral
GUWAHATI - Twelve days after the wave of bombings in Assam that killed 83 people and wounded 300 more, police on Tuesday said evidence suggests the involvement of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) in triggering the explosions, rejecting earlier theories of Islamist terror groups being directly involved in the attacks.
Police and officials of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the serial bombings of October 30 claim to have almost reached the final stage of the investigations with all evidences pointing towards the NDFB, in a ceasefire with New Delhi since 2005. The sequence of events before and after the explosions in Guwahati (three blasts), Kokrajhar, Barpeta, and Bongaigaon are sensational.
Investigators have found that three Maruti cars used in the Guwahati bombings were all purchased by NDFB cadres, while a motorbike used in the Bongaigaon blast was also owned by a NDFB rebel. No police official, however, would like to come on record. According to investigators, plans for executing the serial blasts were chalked out by NDFB chairman Ranjan Daimary, believed to be based in Bangladesh. Daimary was apparently unhappy over the slow progress of the peace talks with New Delhi and did the planning with the support of the Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI).
The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) had a minimal role in the blasts, officials said. The NDFB masterminded the bombings with the ULFA giving a helping hand to the terror strike with support from the HuJI. But it was the NDFB that is primarily responsible, a police official said, requesting not to be named.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Bodo? For a minute there I was thinking "Norway", where the only Bodo I know exists.
India needs to break a few "liberation groups". Begin in Bangladesh, where the money and the ideology comes from.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/12/2008 11:45
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. - A California couple recently had an unexpected reunion with an old housemate: their pet cat who went missing more than 13 years ago. 
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem suggested Wednesday that Israeli bombs may be the source of uranium traces that diplomats at the UN nuclear agency said were found at a suspected nuclear site. 
Palestinians fired two Kassam rockets at Israeli communities in the Western Negev on Wednesday evening, several hours after clashes between IDF troops and Hamas gunnies in the Gaza Strip killed four Paleostinians. No one was hurt in the attack and the rockets did not cause damage. 
BURBANK, California (Reuters) - Former U.S. presidential candidate John McCain on Tuesday shrugged off criticism leveled at his running mate, Sarah Palin, saying he expects her "to play a big role in the future of this country." The Republican senator from Arizona rallied to the defense of his vice presidential pick in an appearance on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," his first television interview since losing his White House bid to Democrat Barack Obama a week earlier.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An individual in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on U.S. troops in Nineveh province Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding six others, a U.S. military spokesman said.
Tom Scott conducted the interview. WELI killed it. Now you can hear it.
Dulaim, Iraq - Dulaim is an Iraqi village transformed. Where masked gunmen from Al Qaeda in Iraq once imposed their will with killings and even stole irrigation pumps, today numerous Iraqi Army, police, and local Sunni militia checkpoints attest to new levels of security. 
A mosque asking that Canadian workplaces respect a strict Muslim dress code is at the same time disseminating slurs against Jews and Western societies, and warning members against social integration.
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.
Cosmetic surgery addict injected cooking oil into her face
Police charged batons at a rally of Jamaat-e-Islami at the north gate of Baitul Mukarram Mosque in the capital, leaving at least 30 Jamaat workers injured. Witnesses said police resorted to baton charge when Jamaat and Shibir activists tried to come out of the mosque premises after completing their rally ignoring police request and breaking the Emergency Power Rules (EPR) at about 4:30pm.
(AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - A senior minister from Pakistan's North West Frontier Province's government, Bashir Ahmed Bilour, is believed to have been the main target in a suicide bombing that killed at least three people on Tuesday. Several others were wounded in the attack in which a suicide bomber blew himself up outside Qayyum Stadium after the closing ceremony of the inter-provincial games in Peshawar.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni distanced herself on Tuesday from comments by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert calling for Israel to give up most of the Arab territories it has occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem, if it wants peace.
(AKI) - Five men described as devout Muslims possessed extremist material advocating violent jihad and showing images of ritual beheadings, an Australian court was told on Tuesday. The men are accused of conspiring with others to prepare a terrorist act. Crown prosecutor Richard Maidment, said they had allegedly obtained explosives and firearms.
President-elect Barack Obama's incoming administration is considering a regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan that could include talks with Iran, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. 
(SomaliNet) Philippine officials said on Tuesday, citing radio intercepts that troops killed at least 10 Muslim rebels in six hours of intense fighting in the troubled south of the country. 
(AKI) - The Islamist Hamas movement on Tuesday stopped Fatah supporters from staging marches to mark the fourth anniversary of the death of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Hamas banned the marches by declaring a state of alert and thus effectively preventing Fatah supporters from commemorating his death.
(SomaliNet) A pro-government Libyan newspaper said in a rare report of a security breach in the country that gunbattles broke out between two tribes in southeastern Libya last week and six people were killed. Libyan government officials have made no comment on the incident in the remote oasis town of Kufrah, the subject of varying accounts in some Arab newspapers in recent days. 
(SomaliNet) In what brings the total number of attacks in waters off the African nation this year to 83, pirates hijacked a Philippines chemical tanker with 23 crew near Somalia, a maritime official said Tuesday. 
