Wholesale prices in October experienced the biggest one-month drop on records that go back more than 60 years, illustrating the impact falling energy prices and fears of a prolonged recession can have on inflation.
Wholesale prices dropped by a record 2.8 percent last month, reflecting the fact that energy prices decreased by the largest amount in 22 years. After spending most of the year worrying about surging costs for energy, food and other commodities, analysts found it remarkable that prices could reverse so quickly.
"Inflation is yesterday's problem," said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight. He called the change "a testament to how suddenly the global economy's expansion has turned into recession."
Economists said they did not believe the country would experience outright deflation, which was last faced in the U.S. in the 1930s when the nation suffered through the Great Depression and a long, debilitating bout of falling prices.
"I think deflation concerns will rise over the next three to six months while the economy is at its worst and businesses are scrambling to hold on to sales by cutting prices," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. "But I don't think we will get an actual period of deflation because the Federal Reserve will be working very hard to make sure that doesn't happen."
Many economists believe the economy has fallen into a recession that could be the worst downturn in more than two decades. But they believe that retreating inflation pressures will give the Fed the room to cut interest rates further to combat the economic weakness.
The Fed cut interest rates by a half-point in a coordinated move with other central banks on Oct. 8 when the financial market turmoil was growing in intensity and followed with another half-point reduction on Oct. 29.
The federal funds rate, the target rate for overnight loans between banks, is now at 1 percent, matching a low seen only once before in the last half-century. Many economists are predicting the Fed will cut the funds rate to 0.5 percent at their next meeting on Dec. 16.
"We are facing a recession and it is going to be a pretty bad one," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York. "The Fed is going to keep doing all it can to support the economy."
The 2.8 percent drop in wholesale prices in October followed smaller declines of 0.9 percent in August and 0.4 percent in September. It was bigger than the 1.8 percent decline economists had been expecting, and surpassed the old record fall for a single month, a decline of 1.6 percent in October 2001, the month after the terrorist attacks.
Translation from MP.net. Original French source at link.
"We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing "ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events". Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day ?
Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company.
They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever state they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other.
Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine - they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.
Here we discover America as it is often depicted : their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley. Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that: the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels.
Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location: books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions: the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.
And they are impressive warriors! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark - only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered - everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.
And combat ? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay.
That is one of their tricks : they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the ennemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.
We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is - from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.
To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America's army's deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers".
#6
An honest and heartfelt tribute from a generous man. May he bring as much honour to his own flag as he as he credits to those who stand guard for ours, and may we at home continue to be worthy of them all.
Phil Schiliro has spent his entire working life in Congress, doing every imaginable job from drafting arcane legislation to running for a seat himself. Steeped in the culture and traditions of Capitol Hill, Schiliro seemed to be one of those people who'd never leave voluntarily he'd have to be carted out.
But President-elect Barack Obama changed all that Saturday when he snagged Schiliro to be his White House liaison to Congress. Now Schiliro, 52, is tasked with being the bridge between the new president and the lawmakers who have the power to make or break his agenda.
Schiliro, soft-spoken but intense, has had several months of practice for the job. He was the middleman between the Obama campaign and Congress. Schiliro was the one Obama dispatched to closed-door meetings of House Democrats last month to soothe nerves and count noses on the eve of a vote on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.
Now, when lawmakers want to give the president-elect advice solicited or otherwise on anything from Cabinet appointments to legislative strategy, they turn to Schiliro.
After more than a quarter-century on Capitol Hill crafting major legislation and spearheading investigations, Schiliro now toils in an office in downtown D.C. about halfway between the White House and the Capitol where his job is equal parts lobbyist, ambassador and even sometimes psychologist.
"I give Phil Schiliro a great deal of the credit for the smooth working relationship between Obama and the Congress," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Schiliro's former boss.
"He listens to people, he hears what their concerns are, he's very tactful and diplomatic. ... He knows how things can get done," said Waxman, who chairs the Oversight and Government Reform Committee where Schiliro led probes of everything from the 1984 Bhopal chemical disaster in India to steroid use in Major League Baseball.
Schiliro, who declined to be interviewed for this report, could not be more different in temperament from the other man at the center of Obama's relationship with Congress: the bombastic, cocky and foul-mouthed Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who will become chief of staff in the new White House.
Colleagues and adversaries uniformly describe the media-shy Schiliro instead as quiet and even-keeled though with sharp political instincts and steely persistence when it comes to getting his way.
"He is a ruthless partisan," said Mark Corallo, a Republican strategist who faced off against Schiliro as a top aide on the government reform panel when the GOP controlled the House. "He is the kind of guy who's going to fight tooth and nail for his side, but he's not going to be odious and disagreeable and hateful."
He's not likely to lose, either. Waxman credits his former top aide with killing a Reagan administration clean air bill on a one-vote margin during the 1980s.
Schiliro set up backers of the legislation, including Democratic Rep. John Dingell, to lose a test-vote during a legislative drafting session on the measure in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Waxman said. That changed the dynamics on the issue on Capitol Hill and eventually yielded a compromise bill in 1990.
It's stories like that that have fueled private speculation by some congressional insiders that Schiliro is quietly working for Obama and with the unspoken encouragement of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. to help Waxman, a strong environmentalist, topple Dingell as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The panel will take the lead on climate change legislation that will likely be one of the heaviest lifts of Obama's presidency.
There's no concrete evidence of those efforts, and Obama has taken pains so far to steer clear of intramural party fights about committee chairmanships or policy differences.
But there's little that goes on these days among senior Democrats in Congress that Schiliro a Pelosi favorite isn't intimately involved in, or at least privy to. Last week alone, Schiliro dialed into Democratic leaders' strategy-plotting sessions on a new auto industry bailout, dealt with queries about inauguration tickets and fielded lawmakers' recommendations for whom Obama should tap for his administration.
When Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., had a few picks he wanted to send Obama, he dialed "Phil." Schiliro told him to get the relevant resumes to him and John D. Podesta, who's leading Obama's transition to the presidency.
"I didn't feel the need to go beyond that. I trust his word," Cummings said.
The Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Schiliro studied political science at Hofstra University and landed on Capitol Hill in 1981, fresh out of Lewis and Clark Law School. He took an entry-level job with then-Rep. Tim Wirth, D-Colo., but it wasn't long before he impressed Waxman, who poached him for his own staff. Within a year, Schiliro was Waxman's chief of staff, a position he held for a total of 25 years with a yearlong intermission in 2004 when he became a top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
Schiliro made two unsuccessful bids to become a congressman himself, moving back to his parents' home on New York's Long Island in 1992 and then again in 1994 to run.
Schiliro displayed his willingness to use bare-knuckled tactics in the 1994 bid, when he helped engineer a late move to kick another Democrat off the ballot so he could run.
Even though Schiliro lost, many lawmakers still say they regard him as one of them.
"He's basically a member" of Congress, said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., who says Schiliro has "legislative intuition" that can provide lawmakers with a vital roadmap on how an issue is likely to play out, and affect them politically.
"He knows what's a survivable challenge and not," said Cooper, a centrist from a conservative-leaning state. "Instead of just saying 'Vote for the damn thing,' it's like, 'We'll protect you with everything we've got.' You just put total faith in what Phil says," Cooper said.
"I give Phil Schiliro a great deal of the credit for the smooth working relationship between Obama and the Congress," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Schiliro's former boss.
It's been two weeks, Henry. You chowderheads just got back to Washington. How long has that 'working relationship' been in operation, five minutes?
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/18/2008 20:56
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#3
Aren't you supposed to put up the monuments and enact the holidays AFTER the results are clear? I guess we're all about to learn what happens when the rewards precede the results.
"Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."
--George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama's limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States. For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple... the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job.
On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not. Video at link.
Most of Australia's navy is to be given two months off over Christmas as part of a new strategy to cope with crew shortages, the defence minister says. Joel Fitzgibbon said the extended break was a way of encouraging sailors to stay in the service.
The number of sailors who stay aboard docked ships will be reduced, to make sailors' duties more family-friendly.
Mr Fitzgibbon rejected claims by the opposition that the move would affect national security. The opposition said the venture was an admission that the government had failed to recruit enough sailors.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008
16:05 ||
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NEW YORK (Rooters) - An accused Syrian arms dealer on trial for agreeing to sell weapons to Colombian rebels was driven by greed and was not working with Spanish intelligence as the defense claims, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Monzer al-Kassar, 62, a longtime Spanish resident known as the "prince of Marbella" for his lifestyle in the glitzy seaside town, is accused of conspiring to sell millions of dollars of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
U.S. prosecutors have called him one of the world's most prolific arms dealers and in closing arguments rejected the defense assertion that Kassar was a legitimate arms merchant who, when dealing with two U.S. informants on the FARC deal in 2007, was instead spying on them for Spanish intelligence.
The defense had made that assertion during the two-week trial at a federal court in Manhattan.
Kassar's motivation was purely financial, prosecutor Boyd Johnson told jurors. "The defendants weren't working for Spanish intelligence on this deal, they were working for themselves," Johnson said.
The U.S. government hired undercover operatives to pose as FARC arms buyers and to videotape negotiations in Spain with Kassar and another defendant, Luis Felipe Moreno Godoy, 59. "Monzer al-Kassar and Moreno were obsessed with the money," Johnson said.
Throughout the trial prosecutors played videotapes and showed e-mails and handwritten notes found in Kassar's Marbella home as evidence of the deal. They also showed documents found in Kassar's briefcase when he was arrested at the Madrid airport in June 2007.
Kassar is charged with conspiring to kill U.S. nationals and officers, conspiring to acquire anti-aircraft missiles and providing support to a terrorist organization. "Al-Kassar knew the missiles would be used to hit U.S. helicopters in Colombia," Johnson said. "The defendants thought the weapons were going to be used to kill Americans."
The U.S. Embassy in Madrid said Kassar has been selling weapons since the 1970s to the Palestinian Liberation Front and clients in Nicaragua, Bosnia, Croatia, Iran, Iraq and Somalia.
TEHRAN (Rooters) - Iran is aiming to commission its first nuclear power plant in 2009 after years of delays, the official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday.
Russia has already delivered nuclear fuel under a $1 billion contract to build the Bushehr plant on the Gulf coast in southwest Iran. But the start-up timetable has frequently been put back because of issues such as a row over payments.
Russia agreed to build the plant in 1995 on the site of an earlier project begun in the 1970s by German firm Siemens. The Siemens' project was disrupted by Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
"The commissioning stage of Bushehr nuclear power station has begun and we are hopeful the power station will be commissioned in 2009 as per the agreement we have had with the Russian party," the spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Mohsen Delaviz, was quoted a saying. He did not give a more precise date.
"There is a good environment prevailing in our relations with the Russians and we are hoping they will honor their commitments," he added.
Atomstroyexport, the Russian firm building the plant, said in September the plant was nearing completion and that it would start "technological work" in December 2008 to February 2009 that would put the plant on an "irreversible final" course.
Analysts say Russia has used Bushehr as a lever in relations with Tehran. It had previously said it expected the plant to start up some time this year.
#3
I would go for a Thanksgiving Day bombing of the plant. Just sayin'.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/18/2008 18:14
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ION IRAN, PAKSIATNI DEFENCE FORUM > MUSHARAFF RESIGNATION > MUSHARAF FACED SERIOUS CHARGES OF PERSONAL COMLICITY IN IRAN NUCLEAR CONNECTION [AQ Khan data includ design/blueprint for Chinese Nuclear Warhead]!?
ROLEX/SEIKO-GATE > Britain's MI6 believes that Tehran-based KALAYE ELETRCIC COMPANY, a noted proclaimed manufacturer of WRISTWATCHES, WAS COVERTLY DEV ADVANCED VERSIONS OF P2 NUCLEAR CENTIFUGES FOR IRAN'S NUCPROGS INCL. FOR NUCWEAPDEV???
IMO, RADICAL ISLAM'S JIHAD CAMPAIGN THRU ASIA IS MORE ABOUT PROCURING "STRATEGIC" NUCLEAR-WMD TECHS, NOT MEDIUM, INTERMEDIATE, ABDOR TACTICAL NUCTECHS AS PER AQ KHAN.
#5
ION NUKULAR, WORLD MIL FORUM > HU JINTAO VISIT TO UNCLE FIDEL/CUBA > US MEDIAS: CHINA COULD DEPLOY NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO CUBA IFF A US-CHINA MILITARY CRISIS ARISES OVER TAIWAN + HU JINTAO: CHINA, CUBA TO INCREASE ECONOMIC, INTELLIGENCE [Listening Posts, INTEL Stations]COOPERATION [+ by extens MILITARY COOPER].
Also from WMF Poster > USA, RUSSIA ARE FINISHED:CHINA'S RISE TO WORLD LEADERSHIP IS INEVITABLE. WORLD MUST RECOGNIZE CHINESE-LED ASIAN AND WORLD ORDER.
#2
Yes... but this was particularly awful - and awful because the People's Temple silenced critical news coverage, bullied local politicians into giving them cover and generally silenced critics by screaming "racism!" and threatening protests, lawsuits and general mayhem.
Sound familiar? No, I guess that kind of faux-religious/social/political nuttery hasn't gone out of style at all.
I remember the pictures, in the weekly news-mags... the sprawled and bloated bodies strewn all over the compound. The father of a neighbor of mine in San Antonio was then a senior Army medic, who went down with the mortuary team to collect them all. My friend says her father was particularly affected by the sight of the small children... and the appalling smell hanging over the compound. They didn't get there until about a week afterward, of course.
Militants have over the last 10 days carried out a series of attacks in the northwest against a key airport and military supply route and have killed several tribal chiefs. The attacks may be seen as part of a deliberate bid to prevent the Pakistani military from taking part with NATO in a joint operation to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan's Kunar Valley and in the troubled Bajaur and Mohmand tribal areas on the Afghan border.
Militants have launched 17 rocket and missile attacks this month against the airport in Peshawar, the main town in North West Frontier Province.
The militants blockaded the key Khyber Pass route for fuel tankers and trucks supplying international forces in Afghanistan. The route re-opened on Monday after the government barred the movement of convoys on safety grounds following the hijacking and looting by militants of 12 trucks and two Humvee armoured vehicles last week.
Militants have in recent days killed several key tribal chiefs in Bajaur who were trying to form pro-government lashkars (militias) to fight against the Taliban, and have abducted several others.
On Tuesday a clash between Taliban militants and pro-government tribal elders left at least five people dead, according to official government sources in Bajaur.
The Pakistani government launched a major offensive against militants in Bajaur three months ago and Pakistani troops and tribal militias are continuing to battle Taliban guerrillas there.
Taliban gunmen exchanged fire with tribal leaders holed up in a fortress-like compound in Bajaur for several hours late on Monday. Suspected Taliban militants are also reported to have killed several tribal elders there the same day.
Taliban militants carried out attacks in the Orakzai tribal area a few weeks ago and forced local tribes to stay neutral and abandon all tribal militia activities against the Taliban instigated by the government.
The government's efforts to sow divisions within the militants' rank and file has also proved ineffective.
Taliban commander Abdul Wali chose to keep out of the conflict but refused to support the Pakistani army against the militants in Bajaur. The various small groups previously working under Wali's command however, backed the militants in Bajaur against the army.
A tribal warlord in the Khyber tribal area bordering Afghanistan, Mangal Bagh, has also made clear to the government that he would rather remain neutral and not take up arms against Taliban militants seeking to hijack NATO convoys in the region and cut off supply routes.
The overwhelming majority of supplies for international forces in Afghanistan are shipped into the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi and cross the border via Balochistan and the Khyber Pass. There are virtually no alternative routes available.
Italian anti-terrorism police have carried out at least 135 raids and are investigating 11 foreigners in various Italian regions who are suspected of links to an alleged Morocco-based Islamist group. The organisation, called 'Al-Adl Wal Ihsan' or Justice and Charity, is being investigated for association to commit international terrorist acts.
Several apartments and cultural centres thought to be linked to the Moroccan movement are being investigated as well as 11 foreigners.
According to investigators, the 'Justice and Charity' movement is a front for a group seeking the restoration of an Islamic caliphate in Morocco and the abolition of the monarchy.
Justice and Charity is believed to be Morocco's largest opposition Islamist movement. However, the group claims it wants to transform Moroccan society through non-violent means and social work.
Justice and Charity is tolerated by the Moroccan government but reportedly has no legal status to organise meetings.
The group has repeatedly accused the government of imprisoning its members and limiting its funding resources.
The anti-terrorism investigations are taking place in the regions of Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Lombardy, Veneto in northern Italy and in the central Emilia Romagna and Marche region.
A Saudi civil court has ordered an Asian immigrant to clean mosques next month during this year's Hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca after religious police caught him skipping Friday prayers several times, Saudi daily al-Watan reports. The man will have to clean five mosques along the highway into Mecca twice daily for eleven days, the court ruled.
The Ministry of Islamic Affairs will be tasked with checking if the immigrant obeys the court order. If he fails to do so, the court has warned that he will be tried before a criminal court.
Instead of handing out custodial sentences, a number of Saudi judges have recently ordered minor offenders to clean buildings and cars, memorise the Koran (the Muslim holy book) or do community work. Earlier this month, a judge ordered a young man to memorise part of the Koran and 40 sayings of the Prophet Mohammed as a punishment for appearing in public with a woman who was not a relative.
This year's Hajj is taking place in the first half of December. Last year, two million Muslim pilgrims attended.
Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question."
I hope this puts to rest the notion that this is all some master stroke of kumbayah, of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.
This is about telling you that you mean nothing. That democracy is a nice word, but it should never threaten the entitlement of the most exclusive club in the world.
No matter what Joe Lieberman does, the people who are protecting him hate you much more than they hate him.
There's that. But there's also disdain for the American electorate that voted in overwhelming numbers for change from the discredited Bush/McCain/Lieberman policies. But in a city known for tone-deafness, there clearly isn't a more tone-deaf group than the Senate Dems.
I'm done with Reid as Senate leader.
If you thought that was venomous and slightly unhinged, you should see the comments! For example, this gem at FireDogLake:
And what the dems be saying six months from now when Holy Joe is finally holding hearings in his committee, investigating Obama people for firing DHS & DOJ people planted by the bushies? Dammit, dems, we gave you the White House & both houses of Congress, could you possibly be persuaded to use it for the good of we the people or will you prove for all time that you only serve the same corporate masters as your opposition?
Posted by: Mike ||
11/18/2008
14:52 ||
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#1
They've got a lot to learn, and if I read my cards correctly, they'll be learning it the hard way from Big O.
#2
In other news, the nutroots are apparently plotting full-out political purges of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. Will this be on the QT or are we to be enjoying the spectacle of full-on show trials?
Five minute hate session, everybody!
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/18/2008 16:20
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Hey, did I tell you the one about the Polish Missionary who... was eaten by Harry Reid?
52% is an automatic recount, with votes to be taken away, for a Republican.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2008 17:48
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#6
Heck, Salvadore Allende of Chile got a narrow plurality over his opponent. From Wiki:
On 4 September 1970, he obtained a narrow plurality of 36.2 percent to 34.9 percent over Jorge Alessandri, a former president, with 27.8 percent going to a third candidate (Radomiro Tomic) of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC).
He took it as a mandate to start his socialist utopia. He nationalized the el Tiniente copper mine without compensation. I worked for Kennecott copper at the time. Kennecott filed suit and injunctions all over the world and tied up all of Allende's copper concentrates. Eventually Allende took a dirt nap because he pi$$ed off the military. A plurality or slight majority does not a mandate make.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/18/2008 20:47
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Writing in his blog, Mr Czarnecki, an MEP, quoted the foreign minister as saying: "Have you heard that Obama may have a Polish connection? His grandfather ate a Polish missionary."
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008
14:36 ||
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Via Gates of Vienna
When Kosovos Albanians celebrated the major Muslim holiday of Bajram, at the end of September, more than a few worshippers were conspicuous for their absence.
A trickle of media articles over the past few months have dealt with the issue of religion in Kosovo from a relatively unreported angle: the curious phenomenon of conversion. Apparently, Albanians in this Muslim-majority statelet have been increasingly returning to the Catholic religion, which their ancestors had forsaken centuries ago. Rest at link
Posted by: ed ||
11/18/2008
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#1
It must be good business for them or they wouldn't be doing it. I suppose it is one way to send money to terrorists without it looking sneaky. Just have them hijack your boats, you pay ransom and you are off the hook for any illegal money transactions. A lot less risky that trying to sneak a few million dollars into one of their bank accounts without a hijacking to use as cover.
#2
Few people realize this is a genuine crisis unfolding. It looks like it will shut down most traffic through the Suez canal and even make the Cape route from the Gulf problematic.
I strongly suspect the Western naval ships have almost no options to use against small high speed boats, except perhaps sinking them (more or less at random) with helicopter gunfire, with all the drowning fluffy duck outrage that will cause.
Trying to board the boats isn't an option - too many casualties from small arms shootouts.
Meanwhile, the pirate revenues will be flowing into bigger weapons, faster boats and 'me too' operations all along the African coast.
I'll leave how this is ideal cover for islamo-terrorist operations for another day.
#3
The solution: Commerical, slow moving Panamanian flagged vessels riding low in the water armed with pop-up MK-15 Phalanx guns and capable operators would severly curb this foolishness.
#4
Besoeker is absolutely right. It would only take 3-4 ships to make this happen. They could be equipped for peanuts. There should be no news cycle because they just let the attacking small boats get close then they blow the shit out of them. No cameras, no press releases...the little boats just never make it back to port. Accidents at sea happen all the time. This would work great until someone leaked it to the NYT. But even they wouldn't provide a silouhette of the vessels in question, so the pirates would be wondering which one is it??? Spincter tightening would ensue.
#5
Besoeker, the Brits tried something similar against UBoats in WW2. Problem was the UBoats quickly learned to recognize the armed ships and avoided them.
The Law of the Sea Convention places limitations on daring action. Under Article 100 of the convention a warship has first to send an officer-led party to board a suspected pirate ship to verify any suspicions.
The warship cannot just open fire. Any inspection has to be carried out "with all possible consideration".
And most of the pirates are based in Puntland. A state no one can officially deal with because the United Nations doesn't recognize its existence.
#10
Wikipedia (for what it's worth) says we signed it but did not ratify it because of some issues with Part XI on mineral rights, but then concludes with:
On May 15, 2007, President Bush announced that he had urged the Senate to approve the UNCLOS.[7] ] On October 31, 2007, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 17-4 to send the treaty to the full U.S. Senate for a vote.[8]
Barack Obama sought to silence his critics during his 2008 campaign. Now, with the ink barely dry on this November's ballots, Obama has begun a war against conservative talk radio.
Obama is on record as saying he does not plan an exhumation of the now-dead "Fairness Doctrine". Instead, Obama's attack on free speech will be far less understood by the general public and accordingly, far more dangerous.
Continued on Page 49
#1
If a few complaints about an FCC licensee is enough to interfere with the renewal of its license, it would be easier to gum up the entire FCC renewal system by submitting a few complaints about each and every FCC licensee across the country. Jujitsu works both ways.
#2
In San Diego we have local conservative talk show hosts. One of them is Rick Roberts who frequently fills in for Michael Savage so he has national experience as well. How are they going to silence him?
This is really scary stuff. Really, really scary. Anti-democratic, dark and evil.
BTW, would it mean they're gonna shut down Clear Channel while they're at it. CC has been the worst thing that ever happened to music on the radio and they desperately need to go away. Or does the One prefer bland, boring music over the seditious strains of genuine rock'n'roll played by real people?
But I think streaming audio over the Internet could provide a remedy...that is until the One figures out what to do about that. As for listening in your car, it's about time we got computers with broadband wireless Internet in our cars and hook them up to the speakers. That would be far more versatile than the current radio/CD players. That's just another case where the geniuses in Detroit have dropped the ball.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2008 13:24
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#3
Will they entertain my complaints about a Prairie Home Companion?
#6
IT sounds similar to the Canadian content law on a microscale. The result of that law was Bob & Doug McKenzie on the end of most episodes of SCTV. I suspect that having one block of local programming would be more than enough to satisfy all but the most obvious partisans when it comes to local content. Either that or one day a week is entirely local content.
If not, I suspect a lot of new and varied conservative voices will fill in the void rather than have stations be silenced.
The UN's highest court will hear a genocide claim lodged against Serbia by neighbouring Croatia for alleged ethnic cleansing committed during the Croatian war of the early 1990s, judges ruled on Tuesday.
A panel of 17 judges dismissed a Serbian challenge to the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) competence to hear Croatia's complaint, a date for which will now be set and may take years to reach finality. "The court ... by ten votes to seven finds that ... the court has the jurisdiction to entertain the application by the Republic of Croatia," said presiding judge Rosalyn Higgins in The Hague.
The ruling paves the way for only the second genocide case to be brought before the ICJ, Serbia also having been the subject of the previous claim filed by Bosnia.
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Congolese rebels said Tuesday they were pulling back their forces to allow talks with the army, whose soldiers were fleeing and even fighting their own allies as any lingering army control in the area disintegrated.
Fighting Tuesday took place around Kanyabayonga, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of the regional capital, Goma. Clashes between fighters loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda on one side and the army and its allied spear-wielding militias on the other exploded in August and have displaced at least 250,000 people.
Nkunda launched a rebellion in 2004, claiming to protect ethnic Tutsis from Hutu militias who fled to Congo after Rwanda's 1994 genocide left more than 500,000 Tutsis and others slaughtered. But critics say Nkunda is more interested in power and Congo's mineral wealth than in protecting his people.
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Malaysian activists have threatened to stage a naked protest over a sudden hike in rental rates for government housing, drawing criticism from Muslim leaders and police Tuesday.
Ramlan Abu Bakar of the Malaysian People's Reform Movement said its members were prepared to strip off outside the offices of the chief minister of Selangor state, after it more than doubled the cost of low-income housing. "Protesting naked is our final act of desperation as the state government is literally stealing the clothes off our backs with this price increase," Ramlan told AFP. "They are not helping the poor people here who barely make enough to afford the present rental of 124 ringgit (34 dollars per month) so how can we afford to pay 250 ringgit?" he said.
The hardline Islamic party PAS, which is part of the opposition alliance, criticised the plans, with its spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat saying only "uncivilised" people would resort to such an act. "Even an animal like a cow which is stark naked, God created a tail to hide its genitals and here we are talking about human beings who have been given a mind," he told state news agency Bernama.
Ramlan said his group would submit a memorandum to opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, whose alliance runs Selangor state, and that if it failed to bring about any change they will push ahead with the nude protest.
State police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said action will be taken against anyone staging an illegal assembly. "We will take firm action against any NGO (non-governmental organisation) that holds a gathering without a permit, and even more so if they are nude," he told Bernama.
#1
Do they mean "nude" as it is commonly understood here in the West, or "nude" as in "that little harlot is parading around without a headcover!" nude?
This isn't a problem. It shows how reasonable we and Karzai are, and it's a no-brainer because Blinky will never accept.
The US administration found itself in an awkward position on Monday after Afghanistan's offer of peace talks with Mullah Mohammad Omar, the fugitive Taliban leader long seen by Washington as an arch-enemy.
US officials spoke cautiously when asked about a possible negotiation with one of the most wanted men in the world, a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offer of reconciliation.
Backing Karzai's proposal would mark an about-face for President George W. Bush's administration, with the Pentagon last month ruling out any reconciliation with a man who has "the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands."
But explicitly rejecting such a move would put the US government at odds with one of its staunch allies, Karzai, at a moment when Afghanistan faces mounting violence.
"We support Hamid Karzai," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, when asked if the administration endorsed Karzai's offer. "What we have seen from the Taliban, however, and from Mullah Omar -- who we haven't heard from in some time -- is an unwillingness to renounce violence."
Karzai said on Sunday he would go to "any length" to protect Omar if the Taliban leader agreed to peace talks, and was willing to risk a rift with his international partners.
The Afghan president has for years pushed for peace talks with the Taliban as a way out of a deadly insurgency in which foreign militants, including those from Al-Qaeda, are said to be playing a part. However he has always insisted that his government would only consider talks with "Afghan Taliban" who do not have ties with Al-Qaeda and agree to lay down their weapons and accept the post-Taliban constitution.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, sidestepped the question of Omar but said that the time would come to hold talks with elements of the Taliban who were willing to reconcile. But the time was not yet right, he said.
Good cop, bad cop ...
Mullen said the same approach was used successfully in Iraq and in counter-insurgency efforts elsewhere, saying that it was "very realistic" to pursue talks with insurgents in Afghanistan.
At the White House, Perino said US officials "are skeptical about what the Taliban's ultimate intentions are." "But we recognize that, at some point, there might be some Taliban that are willing to reconcile and to renounce violence and to be productive members of the Afghanistan society."
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said "it's hard to imagine" any circumstances under which US forces would offer safe passage to senior Taliban leaders.
The Afghan president told reporters he would offer protection to the Taliban leader even if it meant defying Afghanistan's international partners, who could remove him from his job or leave the country in disagreement. "If I hear from him that he is willing to come to Afghanistan or to negotiate for peace ... I, as the president of Afghanistan, will go to any length to provide protection," Karzai said. "If I say I want protection for Mullah Omar, the international community has two choices -- remove me or leave if they disagree," he said.
The Taliban, driven from government in a US-led invasion for sheltering Al-Qaeda after the September 2001 attacks, have said they would only agree to negotiations if international troops helping the government pull out.
But Karzai reiterated Sunday that his government would accept no preconditions from the group.
Saudi Arabia confirmed last month that it had been sponsoring talks between the Afghan government and representatives of the Taliban at the request of Karzai in a bid to restore stability but indicated further talks may be difficult.
Omar, who has a 10-million-dollar bounty on his head, headed the 1996-2001 Taliban regime that sheltered Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and his followers.
#6
Yes, it is clearly time to go. We are dealing with a tribal/strongman society that very very unlikely to ever resemble a modern nation-state with a stable central government. I don't like giving the Talibs/Al Q any type of moral victory, but no one else is stepping up to the plate and helping us out and we can't keep doing this alone...either in blood or treasure. So I say screw em and if there is even a hint of hanky panky from either Afghanistan or FATA, call in OP's B-52's and bounce the rubble.
#7
TOPIX/MIL FORUMS > OBAMA: BIN LADEN HUNT, END TO THREAT OF 2009 NEW TERROR ATTACK AGZ USA WILL BE TOP ON HIS WHITE HOUSE AGENDA [post Jan.2009 POTUS swear-in].
* PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > CHINA WILL HELP MALAYSIA BECOME A MAJOR ISLAMIC [and World] FINANCIAL CENTER + CHINA WILL SEND NUCLEAR-ARMED PLA COMBAT FORCES, WARSHIPS TO NATIONS IN SE ASIA THREATENED BY ISLAMIST MILITANCY [ destabilization and breakup/protection of Chin citizens = ethnics].
#8
Guess we know why DUBYA reportedly OBAMA that PAKISTAN will be Amer's real strategic challenge.
PAKISTAN = NOTSOMUCH PAKIS PER SE, BUT IS SYMBOLIC OF ASIAN "STATUS QUO" = HISTORICAL, POST-COLD WAR, AND FUTURE ASIAN ORDER AS THREATENED BY RADICAL ISLAM, including but not limited to PAN-ISLAMIST NUCLEARIZATION, + US-SPECIFIC ROLE IN PAN-ASIAN, POST-WOT NWO AFFAIRS.
Conservatism isn't simply in political retreat, it is fast travelling beyond the pale, fast becoming anathema in America. And not just "conservatism"--any bumper sticker sentiment that denies due reverence for the precepts of progressivesm as exemplified by the leftward evolving sensibility of the media and cultural mainstream. We had support for McCain-Palin support garner a concussion for a college freshman here; an arrest for a passer-by here; and now general opprobrium and even curses here--and toward a middle schooler!
It is anything that smacks of the traditional that is under assault now in the public sphere, in the cultural mainstream, and sometimes literally.
Look at the reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which amends the California Constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Having seen homosexual marriage fail at the polls by a margin of 52 to 47 percent, Prop 8 opponents are already busy filing lawsuits, hoping to overturn the poll results in the courts, staging protests, and singling out for ridicule and attack at least the weaker elements of the coalition that brought the proposition to victory: namely, the Mormons, who heavily supported the measure. Opponents of the measure are not, notably enough, targeting black voters, who also heavily supported the man-woman marriage measure.
The Los Angeles Times reports generally about what it describes as "an outpouring of demonstrations ranging from quiet vigils to noisy street protests against Proposition 8, including rallies outside churches and the Mormon temple in Westwood as well as boycotts of some businesses that contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign."
#1
Thin end of the wedge and all that. Soon it'll be NAMBLA and man-boy-goat night down at the firehall. And people still insist there's no slippery slope.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/18/2008 11:54
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#2
As I recall, Hitler's Sturmabteilung, from whom we get the term "brownshirts" had a substantial "gay" membership, including its leader.
Posted by: me myself and I ||
11/18/2008 12:04
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#3
As I recall, Hitler's Sturmabteilung, from whom we get the term "brownshirts" had a substantial "gay" membership, including its leader.
#6
Thanks A5089. Maybe I should revise "substantial gay membership" and just say, the SA was a gay military organization. And the Nazi Party too, apparently.
Posted by: me myself and I ||
11/18/2008 15:02
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#8
I wish these people would quit apologizing for their principles. It makes them look weak and waffling, heck, in contrast this restaurant lady should've said:
"oh, I offended you by supporting Prop 8...too fucking bad, get over it. How do you like those enchiladas!?"
The 2008 presidential election ended less than two weeks ago, but the mythmaking machine has already begun to churn. President-elect Barack Obama transformed the face of the electorate! The Republican Party will be a miserable minority in Congress for the next century! Cats and dogs are now living together! Below we explode the five biggest myths that have already sprung up around the election that was.
1. The Republican Party suffered a death blow.
There's no question that losing six Senate seats and 24 House seats (not to mention the White House) wasn't a step forward for the Grand Old Party. But there are two good reasons to believe that Republicans will be back on their feet sooner than many people expect.
First, much of the Republicans' permanent political class has concluded that electing Sen. John McCain as president would have amounted to applying a Band-Aid to a gaping wound. Given the state of the party -- bereft of a signature new idea and without many fresh faces -- plenty of Republican operatives have come to subscribe to what I'd call the Ra's al Ghul theory of rebuilding: Ghul, a villain in the movie "Batman Begins," advocates destroying the city of Gotham to rebuild it from the ground up. "It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die," he says -- a sentiment echoed by many Republicans these days, who argue that hitting rock bottom was the only way to allow new faces and ideas to emerge.
#1
Perhaps a quibble, but the "8 years of the Bush administration" were so bad they produced Bush's re-election and an atypical pick-up in House seats during his first mid-term election. So it wasn't 8 years - it was 1 or 2, maybe 2.5, starting in 2005.
Plus, gotta love this MSMer casually referring to the "poisonous" atmosphere facing the GOP. Gee, guy, who do you think was responsible for a major part of that poison?
For all of Bush's failings (limited, but important), and his utter and inexplicable refusal to defend or explain his policies or, really, engage in politics while in office, it is the outlandish distortion and bias of the media that are the more important and more enduring problem. We're now essentially conducting an experiment on how a modern democratic society operates when it has limited access to accurate information or analysis. First result - the empty suit president-elect.
Aside from all that, the treatment of Bush by the media, and more broadly by the society (and not just the cultural or educational swamps - but the electorate), has been a contemptible and inexcusable thing, and has forever changed my feeling about the country.
And I'd argue you can't separate the casual and despicable slander of Bush by so many public figures from the ease with which our military is slimed and insulted.
#2
Mccain was also not helped by the angst of many Arizona and SW US Voters on the steady rise and influx of illegals into the region, as coupled wid the "virtual border/border fence" fracas = voter-perceived lack of willingness on the part of Public Govt to even try to [seriously]stop the illegals. LOCALS > IFF MCCAIN, RICHARDSON, + OTHER POLS CAN'T RESOLVE SERIOUS PROBS OR ISSUES AFFECTING THEIR OWN AREAS, HOW CAN THEY PER THE NATION AND WORLD? This kind of Voter anger played well to the already anti-Dubya/GOP MSM.
#3
It's the exact same slander, Verlaine, not merely connected: the besliming of those who sacrifice to protect and serve the rest of us instead of choosing to advance only themselves.
The New York Times magazine had a story yesterday by Ron Suskind which reconstructed the time in which Barack Obama decided to run for president. Obama was asked by his wife what he wanted to accomplish, and the answer he came up with was that he simply thought it would be a wonderful thing for everyone if he were in the White House.
[Obama strategist David Axelrod] thought back on what he called the original why question, what got all this started, back in December 2006. Barack, Michelle and eight others were in Axelrods office in downtown Chicago. If Barack was going to run, he had to decide quickly, a point the group made by laying out primary schedules and game plans for fund-raising and building an organization. Insights were offered from around the room.
It was Michelle, Axelrod remembers, who stopped the show. You need to ask yourself, Why do you want to do this? she said directly. What are hoping to uniquely accomplish, Barack?
Obama sat quietly for a moment, and everyone waited. This I know: When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently, he said. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently.
#2
OT: My Belgian wife was reading DeStandaard online today and saw where the diversity visa lottery program has a ten fold increase in applicants in Belgium. Seems, according to the report, a lot of people in Europe want to move to America because they think our social and welfare programs are going to be more liberal than even in Europe. How do you like those red apples?
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
11/18/2008 12:05
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#3
That last paragraph is stunning in its blatant narcissism.
Barack Obama's serious flirtation with his one-time rival, Hillary Clinton, over the post of secretary of State has been welcomed by everyone from Henry Kissinger to Bill Clinton as an effective, grand gesture by the president-elect.
It's not playing quite as well, however, in some precincts of Obamaland. From his supporters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, to campaign aides of the soon-to-be commander-in-chief, there's a sense of ambivalence about giving a top political plum to a woman they spent 18 months hammering as the compromised standard-bearer of an era that deserves to be forgotten.
"These are people who believe in this stuff more than Barack himself does," said a Democrat close to Obama's campaign. "These guys didn't put together a campaign in order to turn the government over to the Clintons."
Posted by: Mike ||
11/18/2008
11:07 ||
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#2
Obama will be a uniter - his whackatoid followers will get to experience the same groaning and head-shaking that we on the right have gone through for 8 years with Bush...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/18/2008 11:23
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#3
Keeping your enemies closer is very Arab, isn't it?
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
11/18/2008 11:36
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#4
I think Hillary would be a very good Secretary of State and it would keep her enough out of his hair and out of the senate so he can try to get his stuff through.
The only mistake is it might give her enough credentials to make a run for the dhimocrats in 2012 when Obama proves to be a worse president than Jimmy Carter.
#5
Considering how he has appeared to be all things to all his believers, there is lotsa room for disappointment when he fails to live up to their hopey/changey dreams.
Extra butter on my popcorn, please. With a dash of garlic salt and parmesan, thanks.
Hillary Clinton is the epitome of the entrenched Washington political establishment that Obama so effectively challenged and so thoroughly disdained. That's what makes her consideration so puzzling. But it's not just her old politics that should immediately disqualify her. With her out-of-control husband freelancing with foreign governments to raise money for his cronies, his foundation, and for speaking fees for himself, the potential for serious conflicts of interest are incalculable and dangerous. We don't know precisely what the former president has been up to; it's all secret. For more than eight years, Bill Clinton has adamantly refused to disclose the fat-cat donors to his library and foundation. Because of a computer error in the Clinton Library, the New York Sun inadvertently learned that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, the U.A.E, Kuwait, and Morocco have chipped in. But what about other governments or businesses?
When crackpot socialism flops, there's always Voodoo Economics as Plan B.
An enterprising Swedish company seeking to hire 20 witches has provided a welcome break in the country's otherwise steady flow of dismal employment news. Häxriket i Norden, based in Åhus in southern Sweden, is currently seeking to place five witches each in four separate locations around the country, the Skånska Dagbladet newspaper reports.
According to the company's advertisement on a listing maintained by Sweden's Public Employment Agency (Arbetsförmedlingen), qualified candidates should be well-versed in "contact with the other side, runes, tarots, crystals, herbs, rituals, exorcism, meditation, personal coaching, and more".
The job also requires having a fixed telephone line and an internet connection, as most of Häxriket's services are delivered online or over the phone at a cost of 19.90 kronor ($2.45) per minute. I guess the peer-to-peer crystal ball network still needs work
The sudden wave of new hires comes following an internal shake up at the company in which a number of Häxriket's former witches were let go for violating the telemarketing ethics code put in place by the Etiska Rådet för Betalteletjänster ('Trade Ethical Council for Telemarketing') -- ERB. Jeez Loueeze, local.se! Don't you think a translated copy of the complaint might be newsworthy? Heck, Drudge would link that in a heartbeat!
ERB was created in 1994 to develop rules governing a variety of telemarketing services and associated fees and includes representatives from Sweden's major telecommunications operators
"We've really cleaned house," said Qinna Blomgren, who refers to herself as the "top witch" and is partial owner of Häxriket, to the newspaper. "In order to work with us you don't only need to have certain skills, but you also have to be serious and prepared to continually develop. We have a responsibility to our customers, and therefore our witches go through an employment exam so that we can see that they really can do what they say they can." Any reports from the neighbors?
Blomgren is quick to dismiss critics who question the legitimacy of Häxriket's operations. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If I like cinnamon buns with cardamom, it doesn't mean that I can claim it's the only correct path," she said. Never mind Sweden - she's a perfect fit for Obama's economic team.
And representatives from Arbetsförmedlingen agree. While the agency reserves the right to refuse to post what it considers to be offensive or inappropriate job announcements, it chose to reserve judgment in the case of Häxriket's witch recruitment drive. "When it comes to the type of activities described in the announcement, with cards, and crystal and the like, it has a lot to do with what each individual believes, and that isn't something about which we can have an opinion, and that'll be $100, please. And no checks. " said Arbetsförmedlingen's Britt-Marie Grahn to the paper.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli tanks forged into the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, drawing mortar fire from Palestinian terrorists militants and intensifying violence that has chipped away at a tenuous cease-fire.
Israel and Hamas have been trading fire for two weeks after nearly five months of relative quiet. The June 19 truce is due to expire next month, and both sides might be trying to dictate more favorable terms in anticipation of the agreement's renewal.
The Israeli military described the activity as "a routine operation to uncover explosive devices near the border fence in the southern Gaza Strip." It said two mortars were fired at troops, causing no injuries or damage.
Terrorist Militant groups said they fired both mortars and rockets.
The tanks, backed by a bulldozer and military jeep, rumbled about a quarter-mile into the tiny seaside strip, residents and Gaza security officials said. Residents said they leveled lands along the border east of the city of Rafah. It was the first ground action in a week. The tanks did not respond to the Palestinian fire.
At least 17 terrorists militants have been killed since the truce began unraveling, and by the military's count, terrorists militants have fired more than 140 rockets and mortars at Israel.
In an effort to squelch the rocket fire, Israel has kept cargo crossings into Gaza clamped shut for the most part, drastically restricting vital supplies.
Both Israel and leaders of Gaza's ruling Islamic terrorist militant Hamas movement have said they hoped the Egyptian-brokered truce could be preserved. But a small, Hamas-allied terrorist group said they consider the truce to have broken down, and Israel has threatened to hit hard if the rocket fire persists.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for the terrorists Hamas-run Interior Ministry accused Israel of subverting the truce. "We call on the Palestinian factions to meet to begin an immediate re-evaluation of the calm," spokesman Ihab al-Ghussein said.
Before the truce was reached, terrorists militants barraged Israel with near-daily rocket attacks, provoking sometimes harsh military retaliation that killed hundreds of Palestinians, including many civilians.
In recent weeks, several dozen foreign foolsrubesdishpits activists have defied the siege, reaching Gaza by boat to try to draw attention to the claimed misery the blockade has caused Gaza's 1.4 million people. On Tuesday, a local anti-blockade activist, Amjad Shawwa, said Israeli seamen boarded a Palestinian fishing boat and arrested one of Gaza's foreign supporters and five Palestinian fishermen. Shawwa identified the foreigner as Andrew Muncie of Scotland.
#1
Israel has threatened to hit hard if the rocket fire persists.
They've been saying that for years. It's like unassertive parents that threaten to spank a misbehaving child, but never do. It doesn't take long for the kid to realize that they never will, and do whatever it wants.
Now, if the Israelis actually do do something the Paleostains won't even remember what its for. Like a dog that has peed on the carpet 2 weeks ago.
OK, I made it about two seconds before I started to snicker.
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister condemned the "outrageous" hijacking of a Saudi oil supertanker by Somali pirates and said Tuesday that his nation would join the international effort to eradicate piracy.
The MV Sirius Star was seized Saturday far off the Kenyan coast and was being taken to the Somali port of Eyl, one of the African country's main pirate ports.
In the Saudi government's first public comments on the attack, Prince Saud Al-Faisal said piracy is a complex problem that requires an international response. "This outrageous act by the pirates, I think, will only reinforce the resolve of the countries of the Red Sea and internationally to fight piracy," he said during a visit to Athens. "Piracy is against everybody. Like terrorism it is a disease that has to be eradicated."
The tanker's owner says the ship is fully loaded with crude -- a cargo worth about $100 million. Its owners say the ship's 25 crew members are safe.
Saud said Saudi Arabia would join an international initiative against piracy in the Red Sea area, where more than 80 pirate attacks have been registered this year. "This is an initiative in which we are going to join and so are many other countries of the Red Sea," Saud said. He did not elaborate.
Let's see the vaunted Saoodi Navy in action ...
A NATO flotilla of seven ships -- destroyers from the U.S. and Italy, frigates from Germany, Greece, Turkey and Britain -- and a Russian missile frigate are already fighting piracy around Somalia. NATO, however, says its priority is escorting World Food Program ships that deliver basic rations for 3 million hungry Somalis.
India says it is sending warships to the area, and South Korea is considering dispatching vessels.
Posted by: ed ||
11/18/2008 12:36
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#8
How did those pirates get onto the tanker in the first place? It's not like you can step off of the skiff to the deck. Sounds like someone in the crew may be getting a share.
Three blocks from the White House, on the 10th floor of a sleek glass building, young workers pound at computers, with giant flat-screen TVs overhead. It has the look and feel of a high-tech startup.
In many ways it is. The product is ideas.
Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.
Much as the Heritage Foundation provided intellectual heft for the Republican Party in the 1980s, CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign.
``What CAP has done is recapture the role of ideas as an important political force, something the Republicans had been better at for 25 years,'' said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, a non-partisan policy-research organization in Washington.
CAP's president and founder, John Podesta, 59, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is one of three people running the transition team for president-elect Barack Obama, 47. A squadron of CAP experts is working with them.
Some of the group's recommendations already have been adopted by the president-elect. These include the center's call for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and a buildup of forces in Afghanistan, a plan for universal health coverage through employer plans and proposals to create purchasing pools that allow small businesses to spread the cost among a larger group of workers. Obama has endorsed much of a CAP plan to create ``green jobs'' linked to alleviating global climate change.
CAP also is advocating the creation of a ``National Energy Council'' headed by an official with the stature of the national security adviser and who would be charged with ``transforming the energy base'' of the U.S. In addition, CAP urges the creation of a White House ``office of social entrepreneurship'' to spur new ideas for addressing social problems.
To help promote its ideas, CAP employs 11 full-time bloggers who contribute to two Web sites, ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room; others prepare daily feeds for radio stations. The center's policy briefings are standing-room only, packed with lobbyists, advocacy-group representatives and reporters looking for insights on where the Obama administration is headed.
``The center is the premier progressive think tank in Washington,'' said Mark Green, head of the New Democracy Project, an urban-affairs institute in New York.
Just eight days after the Nov. 4 election, CAP released a 300,000-word volume called ``Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President'' that offers advice on issues such as economic revival and fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Work on the book began almost a year ago.
CAP, which has 180 staffers and a $27 million budget, devotes as much as half of its resources to promoting its ideas through blogs, events, publications and media outreach.
The center's future was far from certain in 2003, when wealthy donors such as Soros and film producer Stephen Bing gave $10 million or more to fill what they believed was an intellectual void in the Democratic Party and create a vehicle to produce an agenda for the party's eventual return to power.
Podesta modeled the center on the Heritage Foundation, which became the go-to policy-research organization in 1981 when newly elected President Ronald Reagan embraced its conservative ideas embodied in a book called ``Mandate for Leadership.'' Heritage was just seven years old.
CAP and Heritage have something else in common. ``Others strive to be objective, we don't,'' said Jennifer Palmieri, CAP's vice president for communications.
Podesta likes to say, ``we're not a think tank, we're an action tank,'' said Dan Weiss, an environmental activist who joined CAP last year.
CAP isn't the only Democratic-leaning research organization in Washington with enhanced cachet after Obama's election. The 92-year-old Brookings Institution, for example, has advisers in Obama's inner circle, including economist Jason Furman and foreign-policy expert Susan Rice. Others are working either part-time or full-time in the Obama transition.
Podesta's center isn't even among the biggest or best- funded. Brookings has a staff of more than 400 and an annual budget of $48 million. Heritage has a staff of 200 and a budget of $60 million. The American Enterprise Institute, which has close ties to the administration of President George W. Bush, has about 140 staffers, including Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and a budget of $28 million.
Yet CAP may be the most influential. In addition to Podesta, at least 10 other CAP experts are advising the incoming administration, including Melody Barnes, the center's executive vice president for policy who co-chairs the agency-review working group and Cassandra Butts, the senior vice president for domestic policy, who is now a senior transition staffer.
``John understood that ideas have power in this town, and he brought in super-bright people whose ideas have become essential reading,'' Isaacson said.
CAP's successes offer a lesson for Republican-leaning groups, said James McGann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who tracks policy groups. ``They've shown that one has to constantly innovate and be responsible to an ever-changing demographics and electorate, and have policies that are responsive to that,'' McGann said. As the NEOCONs had PNAC, the NEOSOCs have CAP.
#1
Yeah, I went to the site and read the article on immigration. Open borders, it's all our fault because we're not nice to the "undocumented immigrants" who break our laws by coming here and we need to be more "welcoming" and "inclusionary."
Yeah, just let them in. See how great a policy that has been for California? We can have the same problems they have there in EVERY state in the Union!
I guess I'm being bitter again. Better go clean my guns and read my Bible.
#2
PNAC - Project for a New American Century died about 2006. Not a single new paper or research project is listed on their website since then.
Posted by: DanNY ||
11/18/2008 8:34
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#3
I think that PNAC wised up and decided to take a lower profile. They might have even quietly reformed somewhere else, which would have been a good idea.
#7
I love how they can't maintain the conceit of being about ideas for the length of a Bloomsberg puff piece. Fifteen paragraphs in, we have Podesta boasting that he's more about action than thought. And all of their "ideas" are shallow policy prescriptions. You'd think that some study of the actual grown-up think-tanks might have clued them into the distinction between writing up a bill and building a proper policy portfolio. At least the Clintons were genuine wonks.
These guys seem to have confused earnest with erudite and plodding with preparation.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/18/2008 16:28
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The FBI has sharpened its scrutiny of some Phoenix-area Muslim leaders because of their links to two controversial incidents and a federal probe into the financing of terrorist groups.
No Arizonan has been accused of supporting terrorist groups or actions. However, a Mesa man was charged with lying to the FBI during the financing investigation.
The events that triggered the stepped-up scrutiny were the federal probe into a Muslim charity accused of funneling money to the Palestinian group Hamas; a target-shooting episode in Phoenix this year involving a large group of Muslim men and boys firing hundreds of rounds from AK-47s and other guns; and the high-profile removal in 2006 of six Arizona-bound imams from a jetliner after passengers and crew complained of their behavior.
Although some Islamic leaders say they understand the scrutiny, they also view it as another sign that innocent Muslims unjustly fall under suspicion because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"Whoever did Sept. 11, go after them and see who they are. I'm not going to pay for them. I'm not going to be guilty," said Marwan Sadeddin, one of the Valley imams who sued US Airways after being removed from a jetliner in Minneapolis. Like the others, he was questioned by FBI agents after the incident, in addition to being questioned about the arrested Mesa man.
The FBI is monitoring the family and community ties among Valley residents involved in the jetliner, shooting and charity probes, said John Lewis, who runs the FBI's Arizona office. "All of these things come on our scope," said Lewis, the agency's former head of counterterrorism operations.
The FBI routinely watches communities and groups that show patterns of radicalism seen in terrorism cases in the U.S. and Europe; those include radical Islamic theology, anti-Western political rhetoric and fundraising tied to terrorist groups. Lewis declined to discuss any details of the agency's monitoring activities.
The only Arizonan arrested by the FBI is Akram Musa Abdallah of Mesa. He was indicted by a grand jury in August on one count of lying to FBI agents. The government contended in court documents that Abdallah falsely told agents he had not raised money in the 1990s for the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity that President Bush shut down in 2001.
Five founders of the Texas-based charity are on trial in Dallas on charges of steering $12 million to Hamas after the U.S. declared it a terrorist group.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and Muslim who founded an organization to counter radical Islamic teachings, said Abdallah's arrest, the target-shooting episode and what he says are the imams' extreme views bear vigilance. "You can't help wonder where this is going," he added.
Shortly before noon on a sunny Sunday in March, two Toyota SUVs rolled to a stop along a dirt road in north Phoenix. About 20 young Muslim males climbed out, armed with assault rifles, a shotgun, a sniper rifle and handguns. The location near Happy Valley Road and 51st Avenue is a desert recreation site for off-road motorists, hikers and bikers, dozens of whom were enjoying the spring-like weather.
For more than an hour, the shooters blasted away at a granite rock and empty cans in front of a hill. Officials estimate the fusillade totaled 500 to 1,000 rounds. Some shooters left before police arrived and detained 10 adults and five boys, including an 11-year-old.
The young men and boys told officers the weapons belonged to their parents. They said they were not aware it was illegal to use firearms in the residential area.
Six were arrested and charged with felony weapons violations in Maricopa County Superior Court. Among them were the 20- and 21-year-old sons of two imams at Phoenix-area mosques, as well as the 20-year-old son of Abdallah. More at link
Posted by: ed ||
11/18/2008
07:11 ||
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#1
How might the FBI "scrutiny" of our friends at ACORN be coming along?
#3
don't worry guys obamama will tell them too leave you alone in a couple of months
Posted by: chris ||
11/18/2008 10:34
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Ariz. Muslim leaders face increased FBI scrutiny
Soon to come to a screeching stop.
This is what Barack Obama said following 9/11:
"In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
Further, Obama sponsors Illinois Senate Bill 750 creating the "Halal Food Act," providing for inspections by the Department of Agriculture to ensure that all food labeled Halal is prepared according to Islamic law.
In addition: "On January 31st, Obama told a French magazine in an interview that if he wins office, he will hold a summit with Muslim countries to better the United States' image in the world।
"Once I'm elected, I want to organize a summit in the Muslim world, with all the heads of state, to have an honest discussion about ways to bridge the gap that grows every day between Muslims and the West"
#5
The FBI + DHS are also reportedly monitoring a major US-BASED MUSLIM MISSIONARY/PROSELYTZING GROUP wid alleged covert or quiet links [read, $$$, Recruits, Weapons] to many mainline Radical Islamist Militia-Terr Groups-Networks.
#7
What The One said when he was running and what he does when he gets in will be two different things. Sorta like Bush. I'll wait to see if he really drops security in the dumper before assuming he will.
I'm trying to remember the name of the head of the nation of Islam, who went to Africa and the leaders wouldn't see him because "He was'nt Black enough". and I'm seeing Obambi treated the same.
The Russian Navy will commission the Nerpa nuclear submarine, on which 20 people recently died, rather than sell or lease it to India, the chief of the General Staff told a Russian daily on Tuesday.
"The sum of $650-780 million, which Rosoboronexport and the Amur Shipbuilding Plant had negotiated over a long period of time with the Indian Ministry of Defense, will now be found in Russia, either within the state weapons procurement program or somewhere else," the Rossiiskaya Gazeta quoted General of the Army Nikolai Makarov as saying.
The construction of the Akula II class Nerpa nuclear attack submarine started in 1991, but was suspended for over a decade due to a lack of funding. Indian media have reported on various occasions that the construction of the submarine was partially financed by the Indian government. India has reportedly paid $650 million for a 10-year lease of the 12,000-ton submarine.
The Navy earlier said the sea trials of the submarine would continue after the investigation into the recent tragedy and certain technical adjustments in the fire safety system.
Nerpa will reportedly join other seven Akula class submarines in Russia's Pacific Fleet. Akula II class vessels are considered the quietest and deadliest of all Russian nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008
05:40 ||
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#1
Don't want to pay the extra $2 billion for the Gorshkov? Well, we'll keep the Nerpa as well....
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008 5:48
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#2
Thanks for all the fish Rupees!
Posted by: ed ||
11/18/2008 7:11
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I need coffee. For a minute I thought it was Nerf submarine.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/18/2008 7:20
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Might as well be, Deacon.
entered the wrong data into the temperature sensor
Huh? Since when do you "enter data" into sensors, aren't they supposed to sense things themselves?
Suspected terrorist separatist rebels shot dead seven people including two women in attacks across southern Thailand, police said on Tuesday, as violence spiralled in the Muslim-majority region.
Two men were shot dead on Tuesday in Pattani, one of three far southern provinces beset by a nearly five-year long insurgency. 'We still don't know their names or their ages yet, as no one dared to go to the scene and investigate for fear of a bomb attack,' a police officer in the district said. Later on Tuesday near the scene of the first attack, a mother and her son were shot dead in a drive-by shooting.
On Monday, a 44-year-old soldier, a 73-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man were killed in separate attacks in Pattani and Narathiwat provinces.
Yaaaassss... because, if there's one thing that islam has produced over and over all through the centuries, it's certainly moral, well-adjusted societies...
#1
Without moral corruption, like would be very, VERY, boring.
I, for one, would like to propose a net INCREASE in moral corruption, to be implemented immediately.
I'm going to go have a beer right now to celebrate this bold new decree.
#1
ION WORLD MIL FORUM > [IIUC] ONE-HALF OR MORE OF CHINA'S POPULATION COULD STARVE TO DEATH IN 70 YEARS DUE TO LACK OF PHOSPHATE-BASED FERTILIZER FOR AGRICULTURE. US Financial Crisis is inducing China to sell large quantities of its non-renewable and scarce strategic phosphorous/
phosphate rock natural resource, and at cheap world prices. China needs same as a major or key component in the phosphorous/phosphate-based fertilizer required for its domestic agriculture = food production, to help feed its 1.3Bilyuhn domestic population. World only has enuff [agricultre]usable natural phosporous/phosphate reserves for roughly 100 years, of which China per se has only enuff domestic deposits [mines]for 70 years.
* IOW, ARTICLE > IN 70-100 YEARS, OR SHORTLY AFTER, IT MAY NOT BE JUST THE CHINESE WHOM WILL STARVE DUE TO LACK OF FOOD???
#3
They print the stuff on one side only. People carry it in sacks. The country now operates largely on foreign currency for travel in and out, major items etc. Difficult to exchange inside the country and no one outside of the Zim will accept the Zim script. You simply cannot exchange it. The wildlife are being slaughtered for food. From all accounts, it is pathetic. This is precisely the Change Ian Smith predicted.
#5
i thought somalia ddn't have money. they just shoot you too get what they need or want don't they
Posted by: chris ||
11/18/2008 10:44
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Why do they have a picture of Indonesia's....whateverthehellitis in place of the Vietnamese Dong? (The currency beloved of goofy teenage boys everywhere.)
The majority of Americans believe Hollywood goes against their religious and moral values, a Marttila Communications Group poll finds. Commissioned by Anti-Defamation League, the 'American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood' poll surveyed 1,000 adults throughout the US.
The results showed that 61% of the participants believe religious values are 'under attack' in America and 59% agreed that 'the people running TV networks and major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans'.
"The belief that religion is under attack underlies the drive to incorporate more religion into American public life. Disturbingly, 43% of Americans believe there is an organized campaign by Hollywood and the national media to weaken the influence of religious values in this country," said ADL national director, Abraham H. Foxman.
Nearly 40% of Americans agree that 'dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries,' and about the same number do not believe that 'censoring books is an old-fashioned idea.'
Some 49% believe that the United States is becoming 'too tolerant in its acceptance of different ideas and lifestyles.'
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
It's a meaningless poll. Unless they have follow up questions specifying the "dangerous" idea. And if Hollywood followed mainstream morality it wouldn't be very interesting.
#2
the American market votes with their wallets. Check out all the anti-Iraq war ticket sales. All sucked.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/18/2008 7:57
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In the other medium which is still growing, Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare racked up one nice ROI. Guess the media moguls are incapable of taking a hint. Of course they'll turn some crappy products out based upon vid games [showing a total lack of any skill or understanding of the product or audience]. They just can't tell stories anymore from within the LA bowl like they used to. Fortunately, in one, two or three more computer generations, we won't need Hollyweird. Hollyweird meet GM.
#4
Proc, Howard Veit has been saying exactly the same thing you did for years. He knows that business (movies) and says they're getting worse financially and morally with every passing year. He also is calling the end of Hollyweird and its replacement by video games.
It can't come soon enough for me. The last movie I saw was "300." It was pretty good for a comic book. I think the last before that was LOTR 2. They make damned little there I'm willing to see and the more expensive it gets to see them, the less willing I am to support them. It's already a PITA to go to a movie theatre because of the rude behavior of many of the patrons, so there's almost no incentive to go. If there ever arises another even roughly equivalent dating locale, movie theatres are toast.
#7
Hell, if you're so inclined, you don't even have to wait till the stupid things come out on Netflix to watch 'em if you're not too picky about screen quality. There's plenty of sites on the net to choose from.
#9
I prefer my Gramscian damage to come with a Japanese soundtrack & limited animation. The ironic distancing of subtitles makes it feel more like anthropology than a night at the movies.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/18/2008 15:42
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#10
They still make Movies in Hollywood?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/18/2008 19:31
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#11
check out Appaloosa?
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/18/2008 19:37
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but what about Valkyrie w/Tom Cruise as a German patriot wearing an eye patch and trying to kill Hitler?? Hahaha, that trailer looks like something from a SNL skit...
#13
I can't speak to teenagers in general, but both trailing daughter #2 and formerly temporary daughter prefer to stay home and watch videos or otherwise cocoon, because going to the movies is too expensive for the value.
(AKI) - Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday that 250 Palestinian prisoners would be released at the beginning of December. Olmert made the remarks following a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who he met in Jerusalem to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the Gaza Strip.
The prisoner release is seen as a goodwill gesture from Olmert to the moderate Palestinian leader. There was no mention of which prisoners would be released.
A resolution by the European Parliament on the situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails said in September that more than 11,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, are being held in Israeli prisons and detention centres. The European Parliament resolution said that most of those detainees were arrested in the Palestinian territories. It noted that the practice of holding Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in jails inside Israel contravenes the Jewish state's obligations under international law and urged it to uphold these.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
olmert is a fool, sorry just personal opinion right as the truce is about too end and Israel is talking tough about going into Gaza again tand giving them 250 more fighters
Posted by: chris ||
11/18/2008 10:37
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Trial of the August 21 grenade attack cases began at a Dhaka court yesterday with deposition of the complainant. Judge Mohammad Masdar Hossain of the Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 recorded the statement of the complainant, Sub-Inspector Sharif Faruque Ahmed. Later, Advocate Aminul Goni Titu, counsel for one of the accused, cross-examined the complainant.
Following a time petition on behalf of accused Arif Hassan Sumon, the court fixed November 23 for next hearing of the case. On that day, the complainant will be cross-examined again.
During yesterday's hearing, 14 out of 22 accused, including detained former deputy minister Abdus Salam Pintu and Harkatul Jihad (Huji) chief Mufti Abdul Hannan, were produced before the court. Two cases were filed for launching grenade attack on the rally on August 21, 2004 that left 24 people dead and scores injured.
In his deposition, Faruque told the court that he was on duty on Bangabandhu Avenue on August 21, 2004. AL chief Sheikh Hasina and other party leaders joined a rally there. When Hasina was about to get down from a truck after delivering her speech at about 5:00pm, a grenade exploded in front of the truck. In the grenade attack, he said, several AL leaders and activists were injured and Hasina left the scene with the help of AL men and police personnel. After a while, seven to eight grenades exploded, leaving more than a hundred people injured.
The complainant went on that he along with others took immediate steps for sending the injured to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH). Another patrol police team came to the spot and found a grenade in front of Ramna Petrol Pump at about 9:20pm.
In the meantime, Faruque said that he came to know that 10 people succumbed to their injuries at DMCH while three at Orthopaedic Hospital.
He said the then officer-in-charge (OC) of Motijheel Police Station directed him to prepare inquest reports on the dead. "As per the directive, I went to DMCH and made inquest reports on four identified and nine unidentified bodies, which were later sent to the hospital morgue for post mortem examinations".
He further said that no cases in connection with the grenade attacks were filed with the police station concerned as of 9:00am of the following day. So, he filed a case with Motijheel Police Station. "After filing of the case, I came to know that AL leader Ivy Rahman succumbed to her injuries," Faruque said.
On June 11 this year, senior assistant superintendent of police (ASP) of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) Fazlul Kabir, also the investigation officer of the cases, submitted two charge sheets to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court, Dhaka, showing 412 people as prosecution witnesses.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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To kiss or not to kiss. That is the question the Egyptian scholar who condoned kissing between unmarried couples is seeking to answer in his new book of Islamic interpretation. Islamic intellectual Gamal al-Banna became embroiled in controversy after he issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, sanctioning kissing between unmarried males and females and has written a new book to set the record straight.
Al-Azhar scholars accused Banna of promoting vice last March when, in an interview with the Egyptian al-Saa channel, he issued a fatwa permitting unmarried people to kiss.
Later Banna appeared on Al-Arabiya and backpedaled, saying that Islam does not permit unmarried kissing but that it is not one of its grave sins.
" If I say kisses are a reaction, this doesn't mean I am allowing them "
Gamal al-Banna, author
The 254-page book, entitled The Issue of Kisses and Other Interpretations, tackles more than just the intricacies of smooching, delving into modern relationships and the problems facing marriage in modern times.
Banna, brother to Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, said kissing is a reaction to parents' inflexibility with suitors, which inevitably leads to committing even greater sins. "If I say kisses are a reaction, this doesn't mean I am allowing them," Banna told AlArabiya.net. "But it is a minor sin that results from instinctive human weakness and that can be redressed by good deeds."
Banna added that he based his research on the Quran and the theories of prominent scholars about the concept of minor sins. He also explained that if redemption atones for major sins then the same applies to minor ones. He offered the example of fornication, noting that whatever happens prior to the act of intercourse is considered a minor sin.
In the book Banna, criticizes the way Muslim societies belittle feelings of love and beauty and how Muslims are portrayed as devoid of emotions. "The book provides a religious analysis of kissing and deals with it as a human frailty, nothing more," Banna said.
" He talks about human nature and instincts, but these should be controlled by God's laws. Otherwise, what is the use of religion in our lives "
Abdul-Fattah al-Sheikh, Former president of al-Azhar University
Former president of al-Azhar University Abdul-Fattah al-Sheikh rejected Banna's argument. "He talks about human nature and instincts, but these should be controlled by God's laws. Otherwise, what is the use of religion in our lives," he told AlArabiya.net.
Sheikh accused Banna of giving youth the green light to have open relationships and argued that they would not stop at kisses. "This could lead to fornication and possibly pregnancy. Parentages will be mixed and society will have no rules," he said.
Sheikh argued that kisses cannot be considered minor sins since they could develop to major ones. "Then we will regret it when it is too late" he added.
This article starring:
Hassan al-Banna
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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The 254-page book, entitled The Issue of Kisses and Other Interpretations
The mind boogles. Really, most of what I've read about islma, and the little I understood from it, leads me to think this is not a religion, meaning there's no transcendence, no faith per se... but it's rather a LAW, a set of rules aiming at controlling the very least of human behavior (with a marked insistance on mictions, bodily fluids, bodily functions), and all of this is absolutely involutive, spiralling down into an ever more encompassing and absurd set of LAW... until there is nothing more left of the thinking, human mind. Truly satanic.
1) Shativah: Proclam that Muhammad was the nicest, smartest and prettiest.
2) Prayer: Five times a day proclaim that Muhammad was the nicest, smartest and prettiest
3) Ramadan: Fast for the sake of it. BTW, even in South of Finland there is ever enough daylight to read during teh summer. And too much for a Mulim being allowed to eat and drink if Ramadan is in summer.
4) Hadj: Fill the pockets of the master race (and in his times, of the master tribe) even if you are a Bangladeshi.
5) Zakat: That is the only one who could e deemed as "positive" but notice that charity is limited. Give 3% of your money to the poor, if you can afford it.
And then there is what some Muslim scholars call the Sixth Pillar, the unofficial one: Jihad. Make war on ten infidels so the rich can get new sex toys and the master race can get more money through the Hadj.
Notice that between those five pillars there is nothing like "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou sall not lift false testimony". Nothing, except for the quite limited precept of Zakat contributing to a better world. And no "difficult" precept like the Christian precept of putting the other cheek when you are slapped.
While we are at it, notice that official (that is saducean judaism) was more about rites than moral. The moral dimension was not in the Bible in the oral tradition that sadduceans rejected (in fact they rejected everything in the Bible buit the first five books) but that the pharisian movement (later to become rabiinc judaism) vindicated.
NEW DELHI: Even as the UN Security Council moves towards pumping in more peace-keeping troops into war-ravaged Congo, India has for now virtually ruled out sending additional soldiers to the Central African nation. India is already the largest troop contributor to the UN peace-keeping mission in Congo (MONUC) with 4,700 soldiers, followed by Pakistan with 3,551 soldiers. With a total of 17,000 troops, MONUC is currently the largest and most expensive UN peace-keeping mission around the globe. But the blue-helmeted soldiers, primarily Indians, deployed in the eastern province of North Kivu in Congo, are increasingly getting sucked directly into the raging conflict between government and rebels forces in the region.
After defence minister A K Antony recently expressed "serious concern'' over the developments in Congo, sources said his ministry has now told the external affairs ministry that there is no need to rush additional troops to Congo unless it is felt that it would "serve some major strategic or politico-economic interest'' of India.
This came even as a battalion of 3rd Gorkha Rifles left for Congo on Friday as part of the "routine turnover'' of Indian battalions deployed in MONUC. "The planes taking them to Congo will return with a Sikh Light Infantry battalion completing its tenure there. With European and other countries reluctant to strengthen MONUC, our troops should not become cannon-fodder,'' said a defence ministry source.
As it is, there is mounting pressure on Indian troops in Congo to undertake "unilateral armed action'' for any breach of peace against both the rapidly-advancing rebel forces led by Tutsi warlord General Laurent Nkunda as well as the poorly-trained and ill-disciplined Congo government forces "increasing running amok'' with raping and looting sprees.
"But UNSC will have to revise the existing mandate to allow unilateral action. Even if it is done, the defence ministry is not in favour of sending more troops,'' said the source.
The Indian reading of the situation is that western powers are playing their "own games'' in the mineral-rich Congo, with a few even "sympathetic'' to Rwanda's support to rebel groups like Nkunda's CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People).
With European countries unwilling to send troops to the vastly over-stretched MONUC, Indian and other troops have established COBs (company-operating bases) and MOBs (mobile-operating bases) in the "hot zones'' in the North Kivu province, the epicentre of the conflict.
Except for a few incidents, which led to an Indian Lt-Col and a couple of others being injured recently, apart from a few rockets being fired on UN armoured personnel carriers, the warring groups have refrained from directly attacking the peace-keepers till now.
But there is the distinct possibility of the peace-keepers getting caught in the cross-fire since government forces now often use the cover of COBs and MOBs of MONUC to fire rocket and mortar shells at rebel forces.
With the January 2008 ceasefire agreement between all warring groups shredded to tatters by the escalating battle, estimates suggest over 250,000 people have been displaced in the North Kivu province since August.
After overrunning several important towns and villages in the region, the rebel forces are now threatening to take over North Kivu's capital of Goma, which has a population of around 500,000.
There is also the fear that the conflict will spill over into other countries since Congo borders as many as nine other African nations, in what will be a repeat of the continent's five-year war which touched all of them before it ended in 2003.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008
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The trial of three men allegedly involved in the murder of the campaigning Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya will be held in open court, a judge ruled yesterday. The unusual move, by the military court in Moscow, stunned Politkovskaya's family and lawyers, who had asked for the trial to be open to the public. Prosecutors wanted the case to be heard behind closed doors, and the ruling paves the way for details of the much-criticised investigation to be made public.
The evidence in Russia's most high-profile journalistic killing will be laid out in a small, overcrowded Moscow courtroom. Three of the men accused of acting as accomplices in her murder appeared there yesterday, inside a cage. They include two brothers from Chechnya - Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makmudov - and a former police officer, Sergei Khadzhikurbanov. A fourth defendant, Pavel Ryaguzov, an officer with Russia's secret FSB intelligence agency, sat next to them, although he appears in a related case.
Politkovskaya, a remorseless Kremlin critic, was shot dead two years ago outside her Moscow apartment block. Russian investigators have so far failed to catch her killer, who was seen on CCTV slipping into her building wearing a baseball cap. They have also been unable to identify who ordered her murder.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2008
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(SomaliNet) An Italian naval destroyer responding to a merchant vessel's distress signal prevented a likely pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia, NATO says.
In a statement, the military alliance says that the Panama-flagged merchant ship Kirti was sailing toward Suez on Saturday afternoon when it reported two skiffs attempting to approach it at high speed. The Italian destroyer Luigi Durand de la Penne was patrolling nearby as part of NATO's anti-piracy operation and immediately scrambled its helicopter. NATO says the skiffs changed course and left after seeing the helicopter.
Somalia has become a world piracy hotspot, with at least 85 attacks on ships this year. Twelve vessels remain in the hands of pirates along with more than 200 crew.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
would have been nice it the Italians had given chase and sunk them...
too much to hope for i know, but such measures would reduce recidivism.
Posted by: Abu do you love ||
11/18/2008 0:30
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#2
Could have been worse; could have been that the pirate would have chazed the italians and seized the ship.
#4
I remember you that the before last time Somali pirates who tried to take French hostges were killed and the last time the litlle khat etaing surrendering monkeys surrndered.
And now let's take bets about when America (whose next CinC will be Obama) surrenders. My bet is on January 21.
#5
Good point. How long until France surrenders to the pirates?
OT : what has always cracked me up is that the french see the italians exactly as the english (and hence the americans) see the french, down to the leacherous and surrender stereotypes and the stripped maillot and the thin mustaches; we may see italians as more crooked/chaotic, though... this actually downed on me quite some years ago, watching the Monty Pythons. I guess one is always somebody's else swarthy latin.
Anyway, joke aside, italian navy probably has good quality sailors, this was tongue-in-cheek, and more aimed at NATO in general.
#6
Give the French credit. They were the only ones (until the Brits killed some a few days ago) who have taken any action against the pirates. And they did it twice.
BTW, anyone know if the Russian ships made it to Somalia or did they need a tow to Sevastapol?
Posted by: ed ||
11/18/2008 18:03
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At least three troops were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into a security checkpost in Swat's Khawazakhela area on Monday, the military said. Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the attack, adding attacks against security forces would continue if the military operation in Swat continued.
Also on Monday, a Taliban commander was reported dead after security forces pounded hideouts in Kabal tehsil. But negotiations between a local peace jirga and rebel cleric Fazlullah ended on a positive note, sources privy to the talks said. He told the jirga that he would stop armed activities if the government was serious in a ceasefire. The jirga will now talk to the NWFP government in Peshawar.
In Bajaur, the Barmang, Utmankhel and Arang tribes handed over 38 men suspected of links with Taliban to the political administration. Tribal elder Malik Jumadar Khan, who was kidnapped on Sunday, was found dead in Mamoond. A tribal elder was injured in a gunfight between Taliban and a tribal lashkar in the Inayat village in Khar tehsil. Several houses were destroyed in the clash. The Salarzai and Mamoond tribes asked the government to continue the ongoing military operation until Taliban were eliminated.
In the Shabqadar rural area of Charsadda, 12 Taliban were killed and eight arrested in an overnight operation. Helicopter gunships also pounded suspected Taliban hideouts in the area.
In Peshawar, two suspected Taliban from Adezai area of the city surrendered to the police and swore not to pick up arms again, but later denied in a press conference they were Taliban.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's controversial former prime minister, has divorced his wife Potjaman after 32 years of marriage.
The divorce comes at a time when Thaksin, who became a billionaire in the telecommunications industry, and his wife are effectively stateless. They both face jail sentences if they return to Thailand -- he on charges of breaching conflict-of-interest laws and she for tax evasion. Thaksin has said the charges and convictions are politically motivated.
Britain, where the two have spent most of their time since he lost his office in a military coup in 2006, recently revoked their visas, citing their criminal convictions. Thaksin's current whereabouts are unclear, although the divorce was finalized in the Thai consulate in Hong Kong last week.
There has been speculation in the Thai media that the divorce was a charade motivated by financial considerations -- that because many of their seized assets are in Potjaman's name, they would have greater access now that they are divorced. A spokesman denied this was the case.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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(SomaliNet) Islamist fighters now control almost all of Somalia, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed says. The Somali leader was speaking in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where both he and the Somali parliament now reside.
Mr. Yusuf says the Islamists have now reached the suburbs of both the Somali capital Mogadishu and the normal seat of the country's parliament, Baidoa. Mogadishu and Baidoa are the only Somali cities still in government hands.
Mr. Yusuf's announcement comes a day after the news that the talks intended to lead to a new Somali government had failed. The parties involved cannot agree about the members of a new cabinet.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
I think he means Somalia ex Somaliland and Puntland. Incidentally recognition by the 'official' Somali government that the country is now 3 states.
#3
Are we done with pretending this pack of half-wits are a government?
I say burn out the ports every six months, and hang the crew of every boat out of a Somali port which can't produce third-country documentation. And let Ethiopia do any goddamn thing it pleases, or cares to do.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
11/18/2008 15:21
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The US banking giant, Citigroup Inc., is reportedly planning to cut more than 50,000 jobs as the global financial crisis deepens.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
Knowledge-Based and tech Economies running out of steam? Let's try something really innovative, really old-time American, like....manufacturing something that people need.
#6
Firing people is HARD work, I think I'll give myself a large bonus.
Posted by: CEO ||
11/18/2008 21:31
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Done properly, firing people is indeed hard work. Hopefully, those freed from Citigroup's current struggles will quickly find ways to employ their skills and and company-paid training in ventures more appreciative of what they have to offer. In the current financial climate Mr. Wife's company feels compelled to focus more closely on those efforts most likely to be profitable, which sadly means some very good people are being downsized out of jobs there. But there is no doubt that those companies out there clever enough to pick them up will get a very good return on their investment, painful as the interim is for all involved.
On 7 November, American military aircraft once again violated Pakistani airspace to launch another missile attack on civilian targets in northern Pakistan. This was the 20th attack since August in which many civilians have been made shaheed.
Furthermore in September, American Special forces launched a raid on Angoor Adda killing 20 civilians in Pakistan after secret orders were given to them by President Bush to launch land attacks. Since the fighting in FATA over 700,000 people have been displaced from their homes and are now facing the harsh winter in the northern areas.
Americas undeclared war on Pakistan
While America, fearful of fighting a country with the worlds sixth largest army, has not formally declared war on Pakistan, it is carrying out regular military incursions on Pakistani soil. President Bush has given orders for 13,000 additional troops to be sent to the Afghan border and Barack Obama during his campaign speeches pledged he will move two battalions to the border. Furthermore, he went to state we must get off the wrong battlefield in Iraq and get on the right one in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has openly declared that if Pakistan is not prepared to kill the so-called militants operating in the northern regions, then America will unilaterally attack targets in Pakistan. It is now a daily occurrence that the American military is violating Pakistans sovereignty. Are these not the statements and policies of war?
The war on terror
The state of affairs in Afghanistan today is not due to terrorism; rather it is the result of the American invasion. The people of Afghanistan have retaliated by fighting these occupiers using hit and run tactics. Have we not seen how the Americans created a similar situation in Iraq? Did we not witness how they took what was one of the most developed Arab nations at the time, imposed on it harsh sanctions before dividing it into three weak states which they control through a puppet government in Baghdad. Now the Americans have turned their attention to the most powerful Muslim country, Pakistan.
Pakistan the next Iraq
By accusing it of harbouring terrorists and the military of being terrorist sympathisers the Americans are following the same path as in Iraq. The famous 45 minute lie was used to create panic in the West so that there would be justification for attacks. Today, the media is reporting that Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons, is a failed state and out of control in order to justify its attack. By forcing the Pakistani army to attack the people in FATA, the Americans have created civil conflict in Pakistan and are using the same tactics to suggest that Pakistan is out of control. Some of the American policy think-tanks are openly suggesting that Pakistan should be divided into smaller states and have part of the land annexed to Afghanistan and Iran. The Indian government and the Mayor of Kabul, the American agent Karzai, have been the most vocal in supporting the American propaganda.
Pakistans puppet democracy is the problem
Todays democratically elected farcical and corrupt government has continued the same policy by helping the Americans in their attacks. Despite the half hearted protests against the attacks the Zardari-Gilani government continues to allow supplies for American forces to be sent through Karachi. They have given open support to the American attacks and supported the American media lies to suggest that Pakistan is facing an internal insurgency. They have betrayed the people of Kashmir by moving troops from Kashmir to the FATA to support American troops, which has also assisted the Americans to strengthen the hand of their new allies, the Indian occupiers, in Kashmir.
Pakistans economic crisis
Decades of Western economic solutions and adherence to the IMF have brought Pakistan to the brink of disaster. Despite Pakistan having abundant agricultural and mineral resources and even being able to manufacture its own heavy weapons the economy was built on the imitation of weak western solutions by corrupt democratic and dictatorial governments alike. Now the IMF is being used as a political tool to further weaken the country by demanding cuts in defence spending before the Zardari government will be permitted to line their pockets. The people of Pakistan already facing great hardship and are now faced with up to 10 hours of load shedding and huge price hikes for basic foodstuff.
Only Khilafah can address the needs of Pakistan
Only the Khilafah will establish a sovereign government that is not a puppet to Western colonialist nations where democracy and dictatorship have established subservience. It will be obliged to establish unity and defend the blood and honour of the people against foreign aggression. It will establish a stable economy with gold backed currency and utilise the resources to provide for people, not privatise to provide profits for foreign companies and corrupt parliamentarians.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008
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#1
OTOH, PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > MOSCOW'S UNDECLARED WAR IN INGUSHETIA/UNREPORTED, UNDECLARED, RUSSIA SPREADS ITS WAR TO INGUSHETIA, ANOTHER CHECHNYA!?
#3
Yeah, that guy is right! Caliphate & Sharia-based Economy! That's ticket to make pakiland a Superpower that shall humble and dominate India - next stop, the world.
One is supposed to cheerfully welcome any scientific or technological advancement achieved by a close or remote nation, especially if this advancement has nothing to do with an aggressive military project or a hegemonic scheme. Yet, I must admit that I was overtaken by frustration and envy when the news agencies circulated the story of the Indian probe. The India Space Research Organization announced that a tiny probe no bigger than a small TV set has landed on the moon as part of the first Indian unmanned lunar mission. The probe split from the satellite Chandrayaan-1 (which stands for lunar vehicle) on its way on a two-year mission to capture three dimensional images of the lunar surface, particularly in the two dark poles, in addition to searching for water or snow on that same surface and identifying the chemical structure of some rocks. This mission crowns the efforts by the India Space Research Organization that was established 45 years ago.
This event can be understood in light of the Indian-Chinese competition. Mao Zedong's nation no longer accepts to sit in the back seat whether in terms of economic or technological development. It no longer accepts American or Russian leadership in challenging fields, and Chinese scientists are currently busy with the preparations for sending a Chinese to the moon.
I felt envious. Had India followed our path, it would now been an ocean of the starving and unemployed. Instead, it chose a different path. It is true that hundreds of millions are still living at or below the poverty line, but it is also true that this nation, which has secured its position in the nuclear club, has also achieved massive progress in the computer and chip industries. With the scenarios predicting the rise of Asia in the coming phase, many states have already started building commercial, scientific and technological relations with the Indian giant. This is attributed to two reasons: India's success in rehabilitating itself to play a major role, and the desire of several states to keep the Chinese giant in check by formulating an alliance with the Indian giant.
My preoccupation with the Indian probe did not prevent me from following Arab news, which is always sweet and reassuring. Arab League Secretary General broke startling news to al-Mutanabbi's descendants when he announced that the Arab world's population of illiterates has now reached 100 million. This means that the illiterate in the Arab world easily constitute a population bigger than that of Germany - without counting the semi-illiterate and the technologically illiterate.
I was about to forget the story of the 100 million illiterates when I found myself facing other news. The First Arab Report on Cultural Development revealed that reading is not among the established habits of Arabs. The report noted that published books in the various fields of science and knowledge represent no more than 15% of all books published in the Arab world last year. It also noted that one book is published for every 12,000 Arabs versus one book for every 500 Britons and 900 Germans. In other words, the reading average in the Arab world is almost 4% of that in Britain.
I was taken by a sense of defeat that was doubled as I read about an incentive plan by the German government aiming at attracting brilliant researchers from all over the world. The plan offers deserving and willing researchers the opportunity to finance their projects on German territory with expected great returns, including the opportunity to restore German universities to the top ranks among the best universities in the world.
It is no secret that the future is made today, in schools, universities, research centers and technological institutes. Evidently we are losing the battle for the future. We are not asking for sending an Arab probe to the moon. We demand probing the Arab mind itself to find out how it has frozen and discover how we can bring its comatose state to an end. The largest party in the Arab world is the party of illiterates. The loudest voice in the Arab world is that of the semi-illiterate. This is horrific. The probe has to dig deep inside the Arab mind before it can find out what went wrong. We neither write nor read, and if we write, it is ancient language that we produce. This is why we have lost our status and this is why we envy the Indian probe. We have lost the space too and won nothing but the enjoyment of a pleasurable nap in front of TV screens.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008
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#1
Also the following quote from an Arab author: the circulation of a mediocrely successful book in Israel is greater than the one of a very successful one in the entire Arab world.
#5
And that, my friends, is the difference between the Arab mind and the Western one. They say,"Someone must find out why this is so." We say, "We currently have 100 million illiterates, that is X% of the population. What must we do to reduce that to 20% of adults and 5% of school children?"
(AKI) - Iran will not obstruct Turkey's mediation between the US and Iran, according to an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hassan Qashqavi. Reacting to remarks made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday to a US daily that Turkey was ready to mediate between both countries, Qashqavi said: "We think the comments ... stem from Turkish goodwill and good and growing neighbourly ties between Iran and Turkey, so we will certainly not raise any obstacles."
"But the reality is that the issue and problems between Iran and the United states go beyond the usual political problems between two countries," warned Qashqavi.
Washington has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when university students loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini took over the US embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Since that time, the relationship between the two countries remains strained.
United States president-elect Barack Obama has said that direct talks are possible between both countries. However, the administration of outgoing US President George W. Bush has correctly called Iran part of the so-called 'Axis of evil' and has not ruled out military action.
Turkey's offer of mediating between the US and Iran is the latest in a series of diplomatic efforts by Ankara to bring peace to the region. Recently, Turkey has played a key role in mediating four rounds of indirect talks between Israel and Syria since May.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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New Delhi: "Pay up $2 billion more for the aircraft carrier Gorshkov, or else we call off the deal" - that was the Russian threat on Friday. But if the Russians had expected the Indians to whimper and comply, they were sadly mistaken.
Former Indian Navy chief, admiral (Retd) Arun Prakash said, "This is nothing but sheer, bare-faced blackmail."
Russia suddenly upped the price three years after it signed a $750 million contract for supplying the refurbished Admiral Gorshkov to India. However, the Navy Chief gave enough indication that India's patience with Russia was running thin.
Indian Navy Chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta said, "I don't think that there is anything like they taking advantage of us, because we can also put our foot down and say it's a government to government contract."
Under pressure, India snubbed its tough talking Navy Chief last year and agreed to renegotiate the price. But with Russia now serving an ultimatum, opinion in India is building up against the deal.
Admiral Arun Prakash says, "The long-term price that we pay for 25 years of mischief, of twisting our arm will be much more than what we pay now."
But India urgently needs a replacement for its only aircraft carrier, the ageing Viraat. The indigenous carrier is still many years away. So, can India do without the Gorshkov?
Admiral Arun Prakash says, "I don't think there will be a catastrophe if we don't get the Gorshkov. India can do without carrier for a year or two.
India is building the first of its new Vikrant class carriers at a Cochin, Kerala shipyard. It should be ready by 2012
There is a doctrine built around carrier battle groups, but a void can be managed for sometime by other strategic measures."
During the Kargil war, the Vikrant (ex-HMS Hercules) had just been decommissioned and the Viraat (ex-HMS Hermes) was undergoing refit. The Indian Navy operated their Sea Harriers from the decks of merchant ships. With their new Israeli built AWACS and their Il-78 airborne tankers, the land based Indian SU-30 Flankers should be able to provide a CAP over their fleet
'Call the bluff and draw the line' - that's the Navy's message for the Government at the moment.
Kitty Hawk is available. Just saying ...
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008
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#1
ION, CHINA > Officio hints that any future Chin PLAN Carrier will be for regional "defensive purposes" only, NOT FOR "GLOBAL REACH" SCOPES.
As for INDIA, considering how many times Russia's hardware had failed to meet their requirements + now reportedly killed a number of Indian citizens ala NERPA fire, METHINKS SAFE TO SAY INDIA'S NAVY WOULD PROB BE BETTER OFF WID A CERTAIN "HAVE PROPELLERS, WILL LOSE" FRENCH CV, AS THE USN LIKES SINKING THEIR AMPHIB CV'S FOR FLORIDA REEFS???
#2
In addition to the Hawk, so is the Independence (CV-62), Constellation (CV-64), and Ranger (CV-61) all sitting quietly up here at Bremerton Naval Shipyard. BO sould take the 2 billion bribe money, sell at least one of them to India and modernize their fleet, as well as remove the overhead that we incur to keep them in 'reserve.'
Throw in a handful of F-4's, S-3's , A/KA-6's, H-3's and Hummers from Davis Mothan and you have a turn key battle group.
My understanding is that of all those ships, only Kitty Hawk is in any condition at all to be used again. I know Indy has gotten almost no maintenance or upkeep, and Ranger is missing one or both rudders.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/18/2008 7:02
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#5
Ranger is missing one or both rudders.
Mike
After November 4th, feeling a bit rudderless myself.
#6
Oh, all of those ships could be rehabbed. It's a question of how much it would cost. And for $2 billion, one could (I'm guessing) get a fair ways down the road refitting Ranger, Independence or Constellation. What's missing here is a little imagination and will.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2008 8:11
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#7
signed a $750 million contract for supplying the refurbished Admiral Gorshkov to India
"Kon-drrrract? Vot kon-drrract?"
Personally, I don't have any faith in BO's foreign policy, and would assert he won't intervene to 'prevent any slight to China'.
#8
Ranger and Indy are the same class as is the Hawk and Connie; even if one were cannabalized to make the other operational, there is still a lot of life in them, even for oil burners.
and for half mts comments: since the lawn dart Mafia took over NAVAIR's tac air fixed wing assets, anything that ain't got an '-18' painted on the grille gets parked in the desert. putting aside my personal affection for the lawn dart (NOT!) the Hoover would have been an excellent tanker, but we sold out to the USAF in the name of 'joint ops.' and at the same time gave up long range sea-based ASW to the VP community, relying on their 'P-8A' promise. Organic ASW is now limited to the various H-60 variants and even they are being reconfigured to a 'one size fits most' vertical truck role.
it would be an interesting discussion to have regarding the CV and the Chinese sub last year if the Vikings had still been in the airwing mix...
#9
CHINESE MIL FORUM > REPORT: CHINA SECRETLY SUBVERTING INDIA, IS NOW TOP SUPPLER OF REBELS [India's NE]; + PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > INDIA FALLS BEHIND ITS NEIGHBORS IN VARIOUS IMPORTANT HEALTH, SOCIAL INDICATORS,
ALso from PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > HINDU AL-QAEDA: ASIAS NEW TERROR CENTRAL? US "Wag the Dog" MSM is all but ignoring the rise of INDIA + INDIAN-HINDI RELIGIOUS TERROR ORGS AS A SPONSOR AND PROLIFERATOR OF REGIONAL-GLOBAL TERROR!?
#7
"Lynne Stewart, from our series: Women who don't bathe"
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/18/2008 7:36
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#8
Oh good Lord Frank, now I need a brillo pad to scrub my occipital lobe ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2008 8:03
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#9
Help me, Rhonda, help help me, Rhonda,
Help me get you out of the tub.
Posted by: Mike ||
11/18/2008 9:47
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#10
Hi there!
My first post at this great blog!
I wanna show u my dayly updated blog:I'm a friggin' asstard
Have a nice day!
BB!
P.S. if you don't want to see this message please write me to no.ads08@gmail.com with subject "NO ADS" and URL of your forum
Thank you for cooperation!
A Taliban militant leader rejected Monday an offer from Afghan President Hamid Karzai of safe passage for insurgent leaders who wanted to talk peace. Karzai, back from a trip to Britain and the United States, said Sunday he would guarantee the safety of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar if he was prepared to negotiate.
With the Taliban insurgency intensifying seven years after the hardline Islamists were forced from power, the possibility of talks with more moderate Taliban leaders is increasingly being considered, both in Afghanistan and among its allies. The Afghan government says it is willing to talk to anyone who recognizes the constitution.
The Taliban have ruled out any talks as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. Karzai said Sunday that condition was unacceptable.
Mullah Brother, deputy leader of the Taliban, rejected Karzai's offer of safe passage and again said foreign troops had to leave before negotiations could start. "As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren't ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won't bear fruit ... The problems in Afghanistan are because of them," Brother said. "We are safe in Afghanistan and we have no need for Hamid Karzai's offer of safety," he told Reuters by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location, adding that the Taliban jihad, or holy war, would go on.
Violence in Afghanistan has surged over the past two years, raising doubts about prospects for the country and Western efforts to establish peace and build a stable state. Some 70,000 foreign troops, around half of them American, are struggling against the Taliban, whose influence, and attacks, are spreading in the south, east and west.
The prospect of a bloody, drawn-out stalemate has focused attention on the possibility of talks. Negotiations with insurgents in Iraq are seen as having contributed to an improvement in security there.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
good keep killing them then
Posted by: chris ||
11/18/2008 10:35
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(SomaliNet) Calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde, around 6,000 Icelanders took to the streets in protest against the effects of the financial crisis. The demonstrators threw eggs, tomatoes and toilet paper at the parliamentary building.
The state of Iceland may go bankrupt now that the country's three largest banks have collapsed. The state treasury can only be rescued by money from the International Monetary Fund.
Inflation has increased 15 percent and unemployment has rocketed. The turnout of 6,000 people was high as Iceland only has 320,000 residents.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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Iceland reportedly invited Russia to take over a former NATO airbase, but Russ declined.
#2
I'm not interested in the IMF bailing them out. Let them go bankrupt. Maybe they'll re-write themselves a constitution that let's them have make money instead of friends.
What I would be interested in however, is buying it. Let's see if they all want to become millionaires and we can snap it up and stop Russia cold for a cool 320 billion.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/18/2008 0:52
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What I would be interested in however, is buying it.
Or at least the fairer half of the population. I'll throw in some extra money for the scenery and the aurora borealis , etc.
Little Known But True Fact: The Icelanders dislike Americans. I spent a year there one night, arriving just after the curfew they imposed on us (the only one of our 'allies' to do so, BTW) .
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/18/2008 7:08
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Text: REYKJAVIK: Iceland jacked up its key interest rate to 18 percent and announced a request for help from the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve in twin moves on Tuesday to stave off national bankruptcy. "Iceland's central bank sent a request to the ECB, the Fed and the Nordic banks on Friday," Icelandic Prime Minister Geir Haarde told reporters in Helsinki where Nordic leaders were meeting.
Haarde claims he only needs $ 6B to recover, but he can't get a loan. An interest rate of 18%. Can the Carter years be far behind?
#7
Little Known But True Fact: The Icelanders dislike Americans.
My experience (much less than a year-long night lol!) was that they are in the main no more xenophobic than any monoethnic island race with high state-coherence. FWIW
It used to be verboden for black airmen to leave the base.
A stupid, patently racist rule put in place in the 1950s. There was a lot of stupid racism back then. Again, FWIW.
#11
Frank, I was thinking this same thing over the last week. What would we do if they just decided to elect some senators and send them to DC for the bailout $$$. There's 3 times as many people living there speaking English than in Wyoming. It would be hard to say no.
The revelation of Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh's (JMB) explosives cache sends a chill down the investigators' spine that the outlawed militant outfit has developed expertise to manufacture powerful grenades and explosives using materials available in the local market.
Some investigators say they were stunned to see JMB could produce such explosives again even in the heart of the country and without smuggling in materials from abroad. "We had information regarding JMB regrouping and recruitment moves through dawat [invitation] activities. But after the latest operation, we learned they have gone further as they stockpiled explosives too," Col Gulzar Uddin Ahmed, Rab additional director general, told The Daily Star yesterday.
During the August 17, 2005 countrywide synchronised bombing, JMB collected from the local market some materials including battery, wire, capacitor, resistor, switch and electric circuit but smuggled in detonators, power gel and other explosives materials from abroad, sources say.
On Saturday, Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) seized 70kg of explosives in the capital following information revealed by Hanif, a JMB ehsar (full-time member), arrested the same day in Mirpur. The elite force also recovered 40kg of nitric acid, 150 cases of improvised grenades, a large quantity of bomb-making materials, and over 2,000 Jihad-related books raiding two houses in Mirpur and another house in Shanir Akhra in Dhaka.
Speaking anonymously, a Rab official said a local in Mirpur, being suspicious about the activities of the Mirpur house, gave the information to Rab.
Momtazur Rahman, a deputy director of Rab Bomb Squad, said the seized explosives are a bit less powerful than TNT (trinitrotoluene). "If TNT's devastation capacity is measured at 1, JMB's explosives would be 0.8," he added.
Admitting their failure to obtain information regarding JMB's specific targets, another Rab official seeking anonymity said the outfit was preparing for fresh attacks.
Officials involved in the Rab operation said Hanif claimed during Rab interrogation that he did not know where the explosives would be used as the outfit works very covertly. A Rab official said they came to know primarily that Hanif got involved with JMB one and a half years ago and was working with its 'dawat' wing. But he was placed on JMB's military wing at least 15 days before his arrest.
Primary painful interrogation reveals that one Shahid trained Hanif on manufacturing explosives and two others were involved in manufacturing grenades, said a Rab official. He added they have information that JMB's explosive expert 'Boma' Mizan, absconding since the blasts in 2005, was in India but recently returned to the country.
Col Gulzar said they may know the plans behind storing explosives if they can arrest Mizan, Mawlana Sayeed and Sayem (names disclosed by Hanif) and JMB's incumbent chief Saidur Rahman.
A Rab official who took part in Saturday's operation said Saidur narrowly escaped arrest during the raid in Mirpur. Saidur is leading the outfit as its ameer since execution of its former ameer Abdur Rahman and infamous Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai, says a source.
The Rab officials said it was beyond their imagination that JMB was collecting explosives in rented houses in the capital, exactly what they did earlier before the 2005 blasts.
Col Gulzar said they have formed special cells in all the 12 Rab battalions to prevent militants and the cells have started functioning this month.
A Rab source said the elite force had information that Saidur Rahman held a meeting in Badda in Dhaka after Eid-ul-Fitr. But they got the information a few days after the meeting.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
Nitric acid, nitrate fertilizer, ammonia, cotton balls and lots of courage = gun cotton - that stuff's about as stable as Pakistani politics. If you do it right (pressure, temp, flow rates, etc.), you get an explosive that is actually a little MORE powerful than TNT.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/18/2008 11:40
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(AKI) -- In a statement released on Monday, the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) called on the government to hold talks with its armed wing for the safe release of an army official captured after recent clashes, Lt. Vicente Cammayo. But the Philippines army has rejected the offer and said that it will keep launching operations against the rebels.
Cammayo was snatched by rebels from the CPP's armed wing, The New's People Army, following clashes in the Compostela Valley last week. He is reported to be badly wounded.
The CPP called the officer a "prisoner of war" and stated that he was being properly treated. The rebel group added that the only way for the government to achieve his release was through negotiations. "We assure the family and friends of Lieutenant Cammayo that he is being accorded rights and considerate treatment due him as a prisoner of war."
"The safe and orderly release of Lieutenant Cammayo can only be achieved through negotiations and on condition that the Army's military operations in the area and vicinity are stopped."
Army spokesman Romeo Brawner welcomed the news that Cammayo is alive - something confirmed by the NPA on Sunday. But Brawner added: "The Army will continue to launch military operations not just to rescue Cammayo but also to bring to justice his captors."
Brawner did not responde to the CPP's invitation to negotiate over Cammayo's release.
The 5,000-strong NPA is an avowedly Maoist group that has been fighting since 1969 to overthrow the government through protracted guerrilla warfare. Although primarily a rural-based guerrilla group, the NPA is also active in cities. It primarily targets Philippine security forces, politicians, judges, government informers and former rebels who wish to leave the NPA, rival splinter groups, and alleged criminals.
The NPA also oppose the US military presence in the Philippines, has attacked US military interests, and before the US base closures in 1992, killed US service personnel. The group obtains most of its funding from the contributions of supporters and from the so-called "revolutionary taxes," which critics say are extorted from local businesses.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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It primarily targets Philippine security forces, politicians, judges, government informers and former rebels who wish to leave the NPA, rival splinter groups, and alleged criminals.
A convoy supplying Nato forces in Afghanistan drove through the Khyber Pass yesterday as Pakistan reopened the crossing for the first time since militants hijacked and looted 13 lorries last week. About 50 vehicles carrying oil, food and military hardware made its way to the frontier from the northwestern city of Peshawar, escorted by 100 Pakistani soldiers and paramilitaries in vehicles mounted with heavy machineguns. The escorts had orders to shoot on sight.
Helicopter gunships patrolled overhead and 100 security personnel were deployed along the route through Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, where armed forces are fighting al-Qaeda and Taleban militants.
Another 450 lorries were stranded in Peshawar, where they have been waiting since last week, as Pakistani authorities reviewed security on the road to Afghanistan. We're happy about the armed escort, but we have to get the other trucks moving, Shakirullah Afridi, the head of the PakAfghan Goods Transport Association, told The Times. People are losing money.
Nato and US forces in landlocked Afghanistan have to import about 70 per cent of military and civilian supplies through Pakistan - one of the reasons it is a key ally in the War on Terror.
This is why we can't just bitch-slap the Paks ...
After being shipped into the port of Karachi, some supplies are taken by lorry through the Chaman border post between the Pakistani province of Baluchistan and southern Afghanistan. Because of the strong Taleban presence in southern Afghanistan, most supplies are driven across Pakistan, over the Khyber Pass and through the border town of Torkham to Kabul, the Afghan capital. The supply line has come under attack on both sides of the border this year, raising fears that the Taleban are mimicking tactics used against the British in 1841 and Soviet forces two decades ago.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2008
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#1
Sounds like bait on wheels to me. Why troll when they can be attracted to the hook.
#2
"... raising fears that the Taleban are mimicking tactics used against the British in 1841 and Soviet forces two decades ago."
duh ... if this is just "raising fears" in someone's mind, then "someone" needs to head to their playpen, for nap time.
Afghanistan is a no-win situation, and we need to get the f%#k out. Recruit and hire the toughest of the bad guys, pay them well, and have them exercise dictatorship over the rest of the Afghans. Tell them that if any hint emerges anywhere in the world of a violent act that traces back to Afghanistan, we will cut off all payments, obliterate all the poppy fields, saturate all mountain passes with scatterable mines, destroy all telecom and air transport links in and out of the country - and leave them to go back to the stone age.
There is nothing more ludicrous that placing precious military forces into a landlocked, remote, isolated mountain environment - in winter - in an extreme part of the world - and try to sustain them indefinitely, while they chase locals around the mountainsides. There is nothing worth protecting in the entire country.
Or - create the walled city of Kabul - surrounding by a moat, and then a one km wide sanitized area, level as a billiard table, devoid of vegetation, covered by miniguns. Strip search everyone entering or leaving. Call that city Afghanistan - and the rest of the country a tribal area. Cut the tribal area off from everything.
The entire US Armed Forces combined - all on the ground in Afghanistan at the same time - couldn't convert it into a permanently changed place. The bad guys live according to stone age time schedules - they can last five years, ten years, a hundred years - they have nowhere else to go, no big ambitions, and treat fighting - among themselves, or against outsiders - as routine sport and entertainment. What our troops see as a wasteland shit-hole - they see as as "the neighborhood".
#3
Sounds like the ISI just wanted the Taliban resupplied first, and then NATO would get what was left.
Visions of that German train that was designed to be bait for fighter plane attacks jump into my mind as a countermeasure. Everything looked normal until all kinds of guns would pop out of the train and blow away anything that approached from the air.
#4
The entire US Armed Forces combined - all on the ground in Afghanistan at the same time - couldn't convert it into a permanently changed place. The bad guys live according to stone age time schedules - they can last five years, ten years, a hundred years - they have nowhere else to go, no big ambitions, and treat fighting - among themselves, or against outsiders - as routine sport and entertainment. What our troops see as a wasteland shit-hole - they see as as "the neighborhood".
Then push the bad guys out into the margins and give the rest something to protect.
#5
I really don't understand this need for us to do the majority fighting for one side of the continuing Afghan civil war. All we care about is that islamists don't retake power and use it to launch another attack on us. It was shown in 2001 that a few hundred US forces and air power were enough to overthrow islamist rule and install any faction we want. Very little footprint or cost.
Posted by: ed ||
11/18/2008 7:57
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#6
Yeah, we gotta get out of the Nation Building business. We kinda suck at it, but we're hell on wheels in the Nation Breaking dept.
We should stick to what we're good at.
#7
I always wanted to see nation-building in a place like Afghanistan done in the following manner:
1) lay out lots and lots of gravel roads (not paved) in a hexagonal grid across the want-a-be nation.
2) have said grid of gravel roads trickle down to nothing about 10 miles from the border.
3) Do not build highways and other critical infrastructure. A nation with an insurgency should not have critical infrastructure rather self-sufficient distributed nodes.
Why?
i)Old coots are revered elders in remote backwards areas. If the youngsters can drift elsewhere then the old coots are just old coots and not revered elders.
ii) Highway type rectilinear road systems are easy to block. There is one major intersection everywhere that can be blocked to keep the youngsters on the farm (opium plantation?). With a hex grid of gravel roads you can always take a root-mean-square curve from anywhere to anywhere... and to block them in a town you have to mine/invest six intersections.....
iii) a side effect of increased mobility of the young is a sense of nation over tribe and family. This makes a nation out of a jumble of tribes and weakens more old coots powers.
iv) If the roads dribble off before boarders it makes it tougher for neighbors like say Pakiwakiland to have controlling interest in the development of a sense of nationhood. In addition, it makes it a bit harder for them to slip stuff in...
v) While at it .. if the space was Afghanistan ... mine the hell out of the border with Pakistan.
It makes it hard for the ISI to bring Taliban in and hard for heroin smugglers to bring stuff out.
vi) The nice gravel road network of hexs makes it easy to bring troops from the interior to border flashpoints. The increased number of paths to said flashpoints require more mine teams to knock them out so more men and expense for groups like the ISI/Talibunnies.
Oh and only give them decentralized type aid. Local wind generators and such. That way there is no strategic infrastructure to protect. (Powerlines... pipelines etc... ) If they let somebody into a village and they destroy the local decentralized infrastructure - why that community learns a valuable lesson. That being... Don't let people wreck your stuff or you have nothing... so better defend it yourself if it means something to you. With the gravel road system others will quickly hear what happens. Either the communities will get smart or live in the stone age...Darwin at work!
#9
Places like Afghanistan can be easily subdued, but it needs will. Use only mercenary forces with no ROE constraints.
Pay them by the number of testicles lodged after each operation.
As Nixon said "When you've got their balls, their hearts and minds follow"
#10
OK. Go ahead and get out. But arclight the tribal areas in Pakistan first. Arclight 'em good and then make no further aid payments to anyone in Pakistan. Leave them to understand that we can bomb the crap out of them again whenever we feel the need.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2008 12:48
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#12
OP - wouldn't a treatment of BZ gas accomplish essentially the same thing as an Arc Light with no violence and destruction and deaths to upset the squeamish?
#13
No, NS. Abu Uluque is a mock nom de guerre for Ebbang Uluque6305. I came up with it when I was posting from a different computer that didn't have the Ebbang cookie. I couldn't remember that whole nym at the time and didn't know what else to do. Hope the mods don't mind too much. Hope OP doesn't mind that I used his term. My understanding is that it means heavy bombing from B-52s. Correct me if I'm wrong. I just think it'd be a good idea, if we're gonna pull out of Afghanistan, to take a few parting shots in hopes of getting lucky and actually hitting OBL. You never know when you might get lucky.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/18/2008 16:13
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#14
Just kidding, Abu.
You're right about the ARCLIGHT definition, but I think you are both wrong about its value in this situation. If we had any idea where Binny is, he'd have a Hellfire up his butt with a much higher kill probability than with an ARCLIGHT.
That's why we'll probably never see one again. They're great against massed forces, but a great reason not to mass forces. The effect on troops subjected to the bombardment was truly devastating. I often wonder which was worse, ARCLIGHT or a WWI artillery bombardment.
#15
Even I picked up that Abu Uluque and Ebban Uluque are the same person, and Nimble Spemble is ever so much cleverer about such things than I, dear X Uluque. After all, I never twigged that NS = Rantburg's beloved Mrs. Davis -- he had to actually tell me, in words of less than one syllable.
Oh, and pop over to the O Club. We apparently have to have a drink any time Arc lights or Q ships are mentioned. ;-)
#16
Whoops! I almost forgot the comment I intended to make: I heard an interview on NPR today, a recently retired US lieutenant colonel, who said the Afghan army is up to 70,000 troops currently fighting alongside the internationals, and hopes to double that. He stated in no uncertain terms that we are capable of doing in Afghanistan what we did in Iraq via the Surge, and practically begged us not to prevent that from happening by bringing the troops home too soon.
(SomaliNet) Three police officers have been killed and a fourth seriously injured in a shooting assumed to have been carried out by the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement in southern Peru.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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bring back Fujimori
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2008 7:29
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(AKI) - Two Afghan police and one civilian were killed on Monday when a suicide bomber disguised as a police officer detonated his explosives at the police headquarters in the southern province of Kandahar. The suicide bomber attempted to enter the headquarters but detonated his explosives as he was stopped by security guards, said a spokesperson for the provincial government.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb aimed at Afghan soldiers killed four civilians in the Panjwai district in Kandahar. Eight other civilians were wounded in the attack.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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The U.S. military has barred Iraqi interpreters working with American troops in Baghdad from wearing ski masks to disguise themselves, prompting some to resign and others to bare their faces even though they fear it could get them killed
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#2
Maybe trying to lead by example? Might give the population more confidence in the situation if they see that the folks they trust (like the interpreters) are willing to forego the masks?
A Dhaka court yesterday placed Mohammad Hanif alias Kamal, an ehsar of banned Islamist outfit Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), on a 10-day remand.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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In his first major post-election interview, with CBS program "60 Minutes," President-elect Barack Obama vowed to pull troops out of Iraq, crush al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and shut down the Guantanamo Bay camp as part of a dramatic foreign policy break with George W. Bush.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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#1
What do you do with the Gitmo inmates when their nations either don't want them, or are likely to torture them to death? I'm not sure Obama has thought it through.
On the bright side as least the media and left will give him a pass on whatever happens.
#3
Are any of these guys really in a position to be a problem anymore? It might be better to either deport them to a place where the natives will take good care of them, like Beslan, or just put them back in Pakistan where they will do something stupid and get killed five minutes after they are released. Or maybe Antarctica. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems they would do more damage to our intelligence collection methods if they were tried in civilian courts than if someone just put a gun in their hands and released them in a kindergarten in their hometowns.
#8
There's a host of things Obama cannot do. This is one he CAN. Rest assured, he'll close GITMO and bask in the headlines. What he'll do with these buggers is anyone's guess.
#12
Obama will release the Gitmo prisoners in Chicago. He'll extract an agreement whereby they must promise to behave and to vote Democrat. Bill Ayers will put up a bunch of them at his house. He'll find they share a common view of the USA.
#13
Send them back to their respective countries. That would be a far worse fate for them than anything we could do. Many have been cleared, but no country will accept them.
#14
"What do you do with the Gitmo inmates when their nations either don't want them, or are likely to torture them to death?"
I'd tell you what I would do with them RJ, but there would be certain whiners here that would lash out. A permanent solution to these scumbags is the only real solution.
#15
send them home whether they want them or not , their citizens their problem and just maybe they will get the justice they deserve
Posted by: chris ||
11/18/2008 10:40
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#16
He'll first have his staff label them as lobbyists in their field of endeavor, then hire them to work his administration on the premise that they won't 'lobby' for 2 years...
#20
We can't send many of them back to their home country because many have death sentences waiting for them there - so say the same leftards who are braying to shut down gitmo.
Way to go NOOBama.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
11/18/2008 12:46
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#21
Catch and Release, yes Rahm and friends are definately on board!
Abdallah Saleh Ali Al Ajmi (b. August 2, 1978 April 26, 2008) was a Kuwaiti citizen, who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo detainee ID is 220. Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts reports that he was born on August 2, 1978, in Almadi, Kuwait.
On September 2, 2003 attorneys Thomas Wilner, Neil H. Koslowe, Kristine A. Huskey, and Heather Lamberg Kafele filed a Petition for writ of Certiorari on behalf of Al Ajmi and eleven other Guantanamo detainees.
In March of 2008, following his release, Al Ajmi took part in three suicide bomb attacks in Iraq. He was reported to have been killed in one of these or a subsequent bombing. In April 2008 Al Ajmi was reported to have conducted a suicide attack in Iraq
Neil H. Koslowe
Harvard University, Law School, J.D. 1969
Yeshiva University, B.A., 1966, magna cum laude
SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- Indian police clashed with separatist groups as voters went to the polls in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday. Muslim separatist groups blocked polling stations and shouted anti-election slogans as they protested Indian rule and alleged voter intimidation.
So separatists blocked the polls alleging voter intimidation. Boggle ...
Police dispersed the angry demonstrators with batons in North Kashmir's Bandipore district, one of the areas where the first phase of voting is taking place.
I'm hoping Mukkarjee got the kinks out of his baton swing ...
The state elections began after months of violent protests, both by anti-Indian groups, fearful state elections will firm up Indian control of the Muslim majority state, and by Indian nationalists, fearful that separatist groups will gain control over the Himalayan state.
"We are voting to elect our local representative to take care of our local needs of roads, water and power supply. Our vote cannot resolve the Kashmir problem," said local resident Mohammed Afzal.
Despite the violence, long lines of voters wrapped around polling stations in Bandipore early Monday morning. Forty-four percent of Bandipore district residents voted Monday, according to chief election officer B.R. Sharma. Voter turnout in the seven other constituencies where voting opened without major protests Monday was around 55 percent, Sharma said.
Indian-controlled Kashmir will have a seven-phase polling process leading to a newly elected government by the new year.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2008
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#1
Whoa, so CHEETAH THE CHIMP[Tarzan] + BIGFOOT + KING KONG must by definition be also related to RALPH/ROY THE 'ROO, thus explaining why Humans + Simians have no belly pouch nor 'Roo-type legs.
#3
If by "closely" you mean breathes air, bears live young and has eyes, a backbone, and more thane one cell, yeah. Considering that the line that kangaroos came from split out 80 million years before the mouse and the human diverged, I wouldn't exactly call it "closely" related. Sure it will have some of the same genes ... it grows lungs just like we do and has a brain. But "closely" related?
#14
And 75% of their genetic material with cabbage. CABBAGE, n.
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
The cabbage is so called from Cabagius, a prince who on ascending the throne issued a decree appointing a High Council of Empire consisting of the members of his predecessor's Ministry and the cabbages in the royal garden. When any of his Majesty's measures of state policy miscarried conspicuously it was gravely announced that several members of the High Council had been beheaded, and his murmuring subjects were appeased.
A son of the king of Bahrain is suing U.S. pop star Michael Jackson for backtracking on an agreement to record a new album and write an autobiography as repayment for the million-dollar loans he received from the prince, press reported Monday.
"Sheikh Abdullah began to support Mr. Jackson financially after 2005 when it became clear that Mr. Jackson was in very serious financial difficulties, much to Sheikh Abdullah's surprise," Khalifa's lawyer, Bankim Thanki, told London's High Court.
" Sheikh Abdullah began to support Mr. Jackson financially after 2005 when it became clear that Mr. Jackson was in very serious financial difficulties, much to Sheikh Abdullah's surprise. "
Lawyer Thanki
The two men had a "close personal relationship,"
Sheik, you actually paid a lawyer to say this in open court?
and even discussed the possibility of Jackson moving to Bahrain after his 2005 child sexual molestation trial, Thanki said.
The court heard that the sheikh forked out $35,000 to pay utility bills at Jackson's Neverland Ranch and also gave him one million dollars in April 2005 after Jackson asked for the money through an assistant. "Sheikh Abdulla made many more payments on his behalf or to others," including Jackson's $2.2 million legal bill for his criminal trial, he said.
The early financial support coincided with Jackson's 2005 trial on child molestation charges. Despite his acquittal, the case left the 50-year-old performer's reputation and financial status in tatters.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/18/2008
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Wel-l-l, methinks its safe to say none of the Prince's Milyuhns and Zilyuhns and Tilyuhns went for "the Nose"???
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
NEW YORK (Rooters) - An accused Syrian arms dealer on trial for agreeing to sell weapons to Colombian rebels was driven by greed and was not working with Spanish intelligence as the defense claims, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
TEHRAN (Rooters) - Iran is aiming to commission its first nuclear power plant in 2009 after years of delays, the official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday.
Militants have over the last 10 days carried out a series of attacks in the northwest against a key airport and military supply route and have killed several tribal chiefs. The attacks may be seen as part of a deliberate bid to prevent the Pakistani military from taking part with NATO in a joint operation to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan's Kunar Valley and in the troubled Bajaur and Mohmand tribal areas on the Afghan border.
Italian anti-terrorism police have carried out at least 135 raids and are investigating 11 foreigners in various Italian regions who are suspected of links to an alleged Morocco-based Islamist group. The organisation, called 'Al-Adl Wal Ihsan' or Justice and Charity, is being investigated for association to commit international terrorist acts. 
"Kos" @ "Daily Kos"
By Jim Boulet, Jr.
Congolese rebels said Tuesday they were pulling back their forces to allow talks with the army, whose soldiers were fleeing and even fighting their own allies as any lingering army control in the area disintegrated. 
Malaysian activists have threatened to stage a naked protest over a sudden hike in rental rates for government housing, drawing criticism from Muslim leaders and police Tuesday. 
[Byron York]
It's not playing quite as well, however, in some precincts of Obamaland. From his supporters on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, to campaign aides of the soon-to-be commander-in-chief, there's a sense of ambivalence about giving a top political plum to a woman they spent 18 months hammering as the compromised standard-bearer of an era that deserves to be forgotten.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli tanks forged into the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, drawing mortar fire from Palestinian 
(AKI) - Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday that 250 Palestinian prisoners would be released at the beginning of December. Olmert made the remarks following a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who he met in Jerusalem to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the Gaza Strip.
(SomaliNet) An Italian naval destroyer responding to a merchant vessel's distress signal prevented a likely pirate attack in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia, NATO says. 
At least three troops were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden vehicle into a security checkpost in Swat's Khawazakhela area on Monday, the military said. Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the attack, adding attacks against security forces would continue if the military operation in Swat continued.
(SomaliNet) Islamist fighters now control almost all of Somalia, Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed says. The Somali leader was speaking in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where both he and the Somali parliament now reside. 
A convoy supplying Nato forces in Afghanistan drove through the Khyber Pass yesterday as Pakistan reopened the crossing for the first time since militants hijacked and looted 13 lorries last week. About 50 vehicles carrying oil, food and military hardware made its way to the frontier from the northwestern city of Peshawar, escorted by 100 Pakistani soldiers and paramilitaries in vehicles mounted with heavy machineguns. The escorts had orders to shoot on sight.
A son of the king of Bahrain is suing U.S. pop star Michael Jackson for backtracking on an agreement to record a new album and write an autobiography as repayment for the million-dollar loans he received from the prince, press reported Monday.
