A banned Islamic terrorist group funded with cash raised in British mosques is believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks.
Kashmiri separatists Lashkar-e-Taiba, ‘The Army of the Righteous’, which has strong links to Al Qaeda, is accused of previous terrorist outrages in India.
And intercepted telephone and radio communications before and during the latest attacks apparently suggest a link.
Indian officials say at least one of the gunmen captured after the attacks is part of a Lashkar network.
The group last week denied any responsibility and the unknown group Deccan Mujahideen said it was behind the atrocity.
But earlier this year another group, the Indian Mujahideen, which has links to Lashkar-e-Taiba, sent an email to Indian police warning it was planning an attack in Mumbai.
The message read: ‘We are keeping a close eye on you and just waiting for the right time to execute your bloodshed...Let the Indian Mujahideen warn all the people of Mumbai...You are already on our hit list and this time very, very seriously.’
Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for violence throughout India, including the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi and a strike at an amusement park in Hyderabad in 2007.
It is accused of being behind a series of train bombings in Mumbai in 2006, which claimed almost 200 lives.
The group is outlawed in Britain and the US. In 2006, a Coventry man was sentenced to nine years in jail for conspiring to provide funds for its terrorist activities.
Somali pirates have agreed on a ransom for a Ukrainian freighter carrying tanks and other heavy weapons and it could be released within days, a spokesman said Sunday.
Mikhail Voitenko said the MV Faina could be freed with its crew if agreement is reached on how to get the ransom money to the pirates, who seized the ship off the coast of Somalia in late September. He said there were negotiations on Friday.
"The owner has confirmed there is every reason to hope that it will be released in the coming week," said Voitenko, editor of Maritime Bulletin-Sovfrakht, a shipping news Web site.
He said he is acting as spokesman for the Faina's owner, Vadim Alperin. A man who answered the phone at Ukraine-based Tomex Team, the ship's technical manager, confirmed that Voitenko was the owner's spokesman. The man refused to give his name.
Voitenko would not give the amount of the agreed ransom, but suggested it was far lower than the pirates' initial $20 million demand. He said the average ransom for ships hijacked in the region in recent months was $1.5 million to $1.8 million and that the latest public demand he was aware of for the Faina was $3 million.
A successful release of the ship and its cargo and crew would signal to pirates that they cannot expect to sell or receive higher ransoms for valuable cargoes, Voitenko said. Somali pirates seized the Sirius Star, a Saudi tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil, on Nov. 15.
Voitenko said the Faina's hijackers may be seeking a guarantee that they will not be attacked at sea or on shore after releasing the ship. He said a British-based company is conducting the negotiations, but would not reveal its name.
#5
"Faina's hijackers may be seeking a guarantee that they will not be attacked at sea or on shore after releasing the ship. He said a British-based company is conducting the negotiations"
I am hoping that certain special operators are not bound by said negotiations. Pirates must be killed, to a man. Family too if they were involved.
Another descent into chaos
TIJUANA – One of the deadliest waves of violence in the city continued Saturday night and Sunday morning as 11 people were killed in several attacks, raising the weekend death toll in Tijuana to 17, authorities reported.
The dead included the nephew of the state's tourism director. not gonna see that in a brochure
Authorities did however, detain three gunmen who confessed to being part of a cell fighting for control of drug trafficking in the region, said the director of the state police force. think that confession was "under duress"?
Four people were killed in the deadliest of the attacks Saturday night, which occurred in Tijuana's eastside. Municipal police said gunmen arrived at a grocery store in colonia Lomas de la Presa shortly after 9 p.m. and opened fire inside and outside the store. Two children, ages 4 and 13, were among those killed.
The bloodshed continued at 9:40 p.m. when a man was shot to death inside a station wagon parked on 11th Street in downtown Tijuana, municipal police reported.
At midnight, the bodies of three men who had been shot to death, their hands and feet bound, were found in an alley in colonia Alemann on the city's westside.
At nearly the same time, police found the body of a man wrapped in a blanket and blue adhesive tape in an alley in colonia Libertad, adjacent to the border.
About 3:30 a.m. Sunday, a young man was assassinated on avenida Las Ferias, in the upscale neighborhood of Lomas Hipodromo. The Baja California attorney genera'l office identified the victim as Angel Escobedo, nephew of Oscar Escobedo, head of the state's tourism agency, and Maria Escobedo, president of the chamber of commerce.
Meanwhile, about 5:30 a.m. Sunday in Rosarito Beach, local police reported finding the body of a man inside a 1993 Honda Accord parked in front of a taco shop. He appeared to have been tortured, and a message, believed to be from drug traffickers, was found next to him. Police did not reveal the contents of the message.
Earlier Saturday, gunmen carried out four attacks in Tijuana, killing a total of six people and wounding five others.
Three gunmen who fled after one of the Saturday night attacks in Tijuana were chased and intercepted by authorities, said Juan Guillen, director of the state police force. They had seven rifles, several chargers for AK-47s and R-15 rifles, bulletproof vests, helmets and masks, he said.
He identified the three as Jose Ramon Garcia, 33; Saul Arnoldo Jacobi, 30; and Roberto Castañeda, 42. The latter was a state police investigator, Guillen said.
Guillen said the three gunmen confessed to being part of a cell run by Filiberto Parra Ramos, nicknamed “La Perra,” who works for a cell led by Teodoreo Garcia Simental, known as “El Teo.”
Authorities believe Garcia Simental is one of the drug lords fighting for control of the lucrative border region.
Those battles have pushed the death toll in Tijuana to an unprecedented 726 killings this year.
as long as the drug gangs kill each other, no problem. Problem is, they have all the training and accuracy of Paleo gumen (i.e.: nobody's safe)
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/30/2008
17:09 ||
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Faced with criticism for delay in showing respect to slain NSG commando Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, Kerala chief minister V S Achuthanandan on Sunday called on the soldier's family members here, but a depressed father of Sandeep declined to accept his condolences.
The opposition parties in Kerala have accused the state government of having shown disrespect to the Kerala-born soldier, who lost his life while combating terrorists in Mumbai, by not sending any minister to his funeral, attended by a large number of people, including Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa, here on Saturday. ( Watch )
Achutanandan accompanied by Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan rushed to the city on Sunday evening.
As Sandeep's father Unnikrishnan remained firm that no politician should enter his house and refused to meet the dignatories from his own state, police persuaded Dhanalakshmi, mother of the slain commando, to talk to the guests.
Amid continued protests from Unnikrishnan, Balakrishnan gave words of comfort to Dhanalakshmi and Achuthanandan followed him.
Sources close to Unnikrishnan said he even went to the extent of issuing a threat that he would commit suicide if any politician entered his house.
He had told his friends that his son, whose valour was witnessed by the entire country, did not belong to Kerala alone but to the entire nation.
Unnikrishnan refused to allow police sniffer dogs into the house when security personnel came there ahead of the Kerala Chief Minister's visit to perform their duties.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Achuthanandan in Thiruvananthapuram said the political secretary of the chief minister had attended the funeral.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008
15:19 ||
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#1
Apparently the pols were treated to choice Malayalam cusswords from the father, a retired ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) engineer.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 15:30
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Father of an apparently very courageous man shoudl have his say in his house. Period.
WASHINGTON: The United States and India face tactics bordering on blackmail from a militarized Pakistan - where civilian control is still very dodgy - as they coordinate efforts to eliminate terrorism in the region, according to analysts and officials on both sides.
In what is turning out to be an elaborate chess game in the region, Islamabad on Saturday made its "Afghan move" to counter the US-India pincer, telling Washington that it will have to withdraw some 100,000 Pakistani troops posted on its western borders to fight the al-Qaida-Taliban and move them east to the Indian front if New Delhi makes any aggressive moves.
In Washington, Pakistan's ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani said there is no movement of Pakistani troops right now, but if India makes any aggressive moves, "Pakistan will have no choice but to take appropriate measures."
Stripped of complexities, Pakistan is conveying the following message to the US: If you don't get India to back down, Pakistan will stop cooperating with US in the war against terror. Consequently, this also means Pakistan will use US dependence on its cooperation to wage a low-grade, asymmetric, terrorism-backed war against India.
Pakistan's withdrawal of troops from the Afghan front would obviously undermine the US/Nato battle in Afghanistan and allow breathing space for Taliban and al-Qaida. It would also ratchet up confrontation with India, which is at low ebb right now because Islamabad has been forced to engage on its western front and this minimizes Pakistan-backed infiltration into Kashmir, allowing India to tackle the insurgency in the state.
In fact, some experts surmise that the terror strike on Mumbai may have been aimed at precisely this - taking the pressure off Pakistan on its Afghan front, where it is getting a battering from US predators and causing a civilian uprising on its border, and allowing Islamabad to return to its traditional hostile posture against India on its eastern front.
The US-India-Pakistan tangle was the subject of intense debate among analysts on Sunday talk shows, with some analysts like former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin expressing apprehension that al-Qaida could be achieving its objective of getting some relief through such proxy attacks.
Vexed US officials have been in constant communication with their Indian counterparts to deal with the complex situation arising from what both sides privately agree has become a chaotic country dominated by rogue elements from its military and intelligence services.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been speaking with India's External Affairs Minister regularly to get a sense of India's mood and moves, worried that any overtly aggressive response by New Delhi will undermine US effort in Afghanistan.
President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama have also spoken to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to show US support, but also to moderate Indian response. Both Washington and New Delhi are starting to realise that the Pakistani military still calls the shots in Islamabad behind the civilian façade, officials here concede privately.
The weakness of Pakistan's civilian leadership was fully exposed on Saturday when the countryÂ’s army chief once again overruled a civilian government decision - this time to send the Director General of its spy agency ISI to India to coordinate the investigation into the latest terror attack on Mumbai.
PakistanÂ’s President Asif Ali Zardari explained it away saying there was a miscommunication and Islamabad only meant to send a ''Director'' and not Director-General, at Prime Minister Manmohan SinghÂ’s request. But no one was fooled by the ''clarification'' -- the reversal of the earlier decision came after a midnight meeting PakistanÂ’s Army Chief Pervez Kiyani, a former ISI chief himself, had with Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani.
PakistanÂ’s threat about troop withdrawals from the Afghan front also followed the Zardari-Kiyani-Gilani meeting, leaving little doubt about the real power center in Islamabad despite the recent return to democratic rule.
The situation is made even more complex by the transition process in the US where President Bush is winding down from the White House and President-elect Obama is readying to take charge. Both sides have made the Pakistan problem a top priority as they coordinate response, tactics, and communication relating to developments in the region.
The latest attacks on Mumbai also threatens to torpedo Obama's stated objective of promoting good ties between New Delhi and Islamabad, so that Pakistan can focus its energy on the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan that are controlled by Islamic extremists.
But hardliners in Pakistan's military and strategic circles, who resent what they see as the country's civilian government doing Washington's bidding and fighting what they argue is a US war, are against this. The terror strike on Mumbai evidently has several objectives - one of them being to cause a rift between Washington and New Delhi and damage US-India ties.
While Pakistan's fledgling civilian government has made all the right moves and noises about cooperation with India, officials here reckon it is being continuously undermined by the hard-line military whose importance, and lavish funding, depends on keeping up a hostile posture against India.
Even in the political sphere, Pakistan's continued existence as a single entity is premised on enmity with India, the glue which keeps the country together. Some Pakistanis have suggested in recent months that take away animosity against India, then Pakistan's founding itself becomes questionable.
Already, many Pakistanis are starting to question the relevance of a country where more people are killed in intra-religious warfare between Shias and Sunnis than in Hindu-Muslim communal riots in India. Two of Pakistan's four territories are wracked by insurgencies, and the intelligence community's reading is that resurrecting the hostile posture against India is one way the hard-line elements in Pakistan hope to contain this domestic conflagration.
While Pakistan is playing its one desperate Afghan card, both India and US can separately bring Pakistan to its knees in no time. The US and its allies are dependent on Pakistan for supplies to its troops in Afghanistan, but they can also plug the economic plug on the country and cause it to collapse in no time. India controls Pakistan's lifeline and jugular with river waters that originate in India and flow into Pakistan.
But punishing Pakistan with this levers would also throw the country into absolute chaos and bring extremists elements to the fore leading to a Somalia kind of situation -- with nuclear weapons in the mix. This is the fear that Pakistan is exploiting to stay afloat and stave off sanctions from the west and punishment from India.
The solution, analysts say, is to get Pakistan's civilian leadership to exert control over its hard-line military and intelligence which functions on its own existential agenda.
This is easier said than done. America's foremost strategic guru Henry Kissinger told Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on CNN, which devoted an entire hour to the crisis, that Pakistan's civilian government had made good statements vis-Ã -vis ties with India,"but its capacity to implement them is questionable."
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008
15:12 ||
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#1
A brilliant move on India's part would be to coordinate with NATO to fly in a division of Indian army light infantry, to help seal the Afghan border with Pakistan. This would about make every variety of Pakistani about poop themselves.
It would also put the blocks to both the al-Qaeda and Taliban activities, and drug production, which cuts off a lot of the money.
#2
Fact is that Pakistan is a failed state; a failed nuclear armed state. Even if the government had good intentions (which they don't), they can't control either the ISI or the various militant Islamic groups that the ISI supports. This will NOT end well. Biden talked about an international test of Obama - this is the first one. Then Iran, then Russia.
1) if the Paks withdraw troops from the border region, it will have less ability to respond when various bad guys in the area get Predatored. They'll complain still, but we can step up the drone attacks, the occasional over the border artillery, etc., to make our point.
2) India and the US must now recognize that they need each other, and that they need to get past the squeamish of the Left in both countries. Share intel, share training, let the Indians get a good price on US-made weapons, etc. The Paks have always been convinced that they're surrounded. This time it should be true.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/30/2008 16:30
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Henry Kissinger from an interview today...
...We should have a very serious conversation with Pakistan. Pakistan has been a traditional friend. We have cooperated with Pakistan. They helped us in the opening to China in an indispensable way. And they were cooperative in many phases of the war on terror. But they have to understand that they cannot -- that it is an ultimate threat to their own security if they permit conditions to exist on their territory, where it simultaneously threatens all the major neighboring countries. And where Pakistan has a right to be told that we respect its territorial integrity, that we discourage attacks on its territorial integrity, but that in the end, it has to be a good citizen in its neighborhood, especially with respect to the threat that is now becoming paramount simultaneously in Afghanistan and significant in India. And it has to understand, in my view, that its biggest security threat now are the entities that it is permitting
or tolerating on its own territory. We should act here as a friend, but we should make clear what our understanding of the situation is.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 16:56
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#6
China is our friend as well, according to Henry
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/30/2008 18:08
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#7
Note Kissinger's barely veiled threat to dismember Pakistan if they don't get with the program.
#8
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > ONE HUNDRED TERROR GROUPS AT WAR AGZ INDIA; + BANGLADESH SECULAR DEMOCRACY STRUGGLING WITH VIOLENT RADICAL ISLAMISM. JAMAAT-E-ISLAM is an UMBRELLA/COVER ORGANIZATION for approxim 100 ISLAMIST POLITICAL-MILITANT [Sub]GROUPS IN BANGLA [only 4 - up to 2 had been Banned] - up to 2.5Milyuhn indigenous ethnic tribal members are facing serious, even malicious, competitive pressures from repatriated Bengali Muslims imported by Bangla's Govt to help wid local dev of their tribal regions. SAUDI ARABIA [$$$ for Pro-Radicalist Temples, Madrassas]+ PAKISTAN [Islamist Militant-Anarchist Breeding Ground]BELIEVED TO SUPPOR/FEEDING THE STEADY OR "CREEPING" ISLAMIZATION/TALIBANIZATIN OF
BANGLADESH.
* INDIAN DEFENCE FORUM > TERROR GROUPS MAY USE NUCLEAR AND BIOLOGICAL [CBRN/NBC]DEVICES, to include advanced = complex mechanical and psychological devices, and in addition to sophisticated MILITARY-STYLE TACTICS; + MAJILIS-E-ITTEHADUL MUSLIMEEN [MIM] POLITICAL AND MILITANT GROUP WANTS A SEPARATE URDU STATE.
#9
Boittom line: if Pakistan wants to be a sovereign nation, then they need to act as one, including cintrilling internal areas and cross-borders banditry.
MUMBAI: If there has been one inexplicable angle in the terror plot it has been the two blasts in taxis at Wadi Bunder and at Vile Parle on Wednesday night. The two powerful blasts which reduced the two cabs to merely axle and wheel did not tie in with the terrorist operations which were limited to major hubs in south Mumbai.
Now it appears that the explosive-laden taxis were not meant to carry death to other parts of Mumbai, rather the terrorists wanted to eliminate any trail that might lead the investigators to them early on. In this case it meant the hapless taxi drivers who ferried two batches of terrorists from near Badhwar Park to various destinations.
Just as these men killed everyone they met on their way from Porbander to Mumbai, including a fisherman on the boat Kuber which they had hijacked, the taxi drivers were the other men who could identify them.
"We suspect that the terrorists had planted bombs in the taxis in anticipation that those taximen may leak their plans and may identify them later. We are cross checking these details," said Joint Commissioner of Police (crime), Rakesh Maria.
According to crime branch officials, a batch of ten terrorists landed at Machchimar Nagar at Cuffe Parade at around 8.30 pm on Wednesday in dinghies. From there, as reported by us earlier, they split in four groups. Four of them went toward the Taj, two to CST, two to the Trident and the final two to Nariman House. In all, these men hired four taxis. Crime Branch officers now suspect that possibly explosive devices were left in these cabs both of which went off within 15 minutes of each other and seem otherwise unrelated to the main terror operation.
Investigators said they were trying to locate all taxis that the terrorists may have used from Badhwar Park.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008
15:11 ||
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Any possibility the taxis blew up because their drivers strenuously objected to being used in that manner?
They said that just one look at the bodies of the dead hostages as well as terrorists showed it was a battle of attrition that was fought over three days at the Oberoi and the Taj hotels in Mumbai.
Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.
"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.
Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.
The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.
The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. "Their faces were beyond recognition."
There was no way of identifying them," he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: "The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists," he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.
An intelligence agency source added: "One of the terrorists was shot through either eye." Jack Bauer? Check the knee caps.
A senior National Security Guard officer, who had earlier explained the operation in detail to rediff.com, said the commandos went all out after they ascertained that there were no more hostages left. When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?" They got one thing right. I think we should give the lead in the WOT to the Indians.
#2
When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"
How about for questioning? If the hostages are dead, it's not like there's any need to kill the terrorists to prevent harm to the hostages. These people are extremely unprofessional. (And I'm not saying this because I'm some kind of great humanitarian. Once they get everything they can out of the terrorists, they can always bury them alive. Or tie them up as animal feed in some tiger preserve).
#3
The term "torture of hostages" is misleading. As far as the Indian government and the MSM were concerned, the captives were "hostages." As far as the terrorists were concerned, the captives were "playthings." The terrorists were out to inflict maximum pain on their victims and on the society they attacked. This needs much more publicity. Maybe the next set of would-be "playthings" will rush their attackers and either go down fighting, or overcome them.
#4
these terrs were well trained and the Indians had already captured one alive. No need to take any others alive, they all knew the same things, it would just have been redundant and taken the fun out of killing the rest. The info taken from the live one can be verified by other sources later.
#5
these terrs were well trained and the Indians had already captured one alive. No need to take any others alive, they all knew the same things, it would just have been redundant and taken the fun out of killing the rest. The info taken from the live one can be verified by other sources later.
Actually, it's better to have multiple live prisoners because discrepancies can be discovered within minutes, instead of having to deal with "other sources". Note that prisoners can always be killed at leisure after the interrogations are complete.
#7
mhw - how do you know they don't? 10 only? Convenient
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/30/2008 18:07
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Afzal Guru, sentenced to death for the attack on the Indian Parliament is still alive because the Indian Government is wary of offending Muslim sentiment. His sentence will probably be commuted.
Said Sheik and Maulana Afzar were both captured by Indian troops. Both were freed during the Indian Airlines hijacking in Kandahar.
So you can understand why Indian forces have an unstated no capture policy...
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 19:29
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#9
And they probably do have a few. One or two of those declared dead may be getting the third degree in some undisclosed location from which they will never return.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 19:31
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The first wave of baby boomer retirees will soon turn 66 and get their first Social Security check. But they won't get Medicare without signing up, soon. That's one Medicare requirement worth knowing. Here's another: Opting out of Medicare is possible -- if you don't mind losing your Social Security, too.
Three seniors have sued to change that. They want to pay their own medical costs, and they would abandon the Medicare taxes they've long paid. They don't want, however, to abandon Social Security. Their suit would sunder the two programs, allowing seniors to cover their own medical care without losing Social Security.
That, say the three plaintiffs, would ensure the privacy of their medical records and spare them bureaucrats' second-guessing whether every lab test and office visit are "medically necessary." If not, Medicare doesn't pay and the physician, by law, can't bill the patient. Don't wonder why many elderly have difficulty finding a doctor.
No law mandates participation in both programs or none. The Clinton administration instituted that regulation, buttressed by Congress' ban on seniors venturing outside Medicare for any service it provides. I didn't know this. It seems there are elements in our Government who really do want to control every aspect of our lives. I would think the 3 Seniors who are suing would win, but ya never know.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/30/2008
13:18 ||
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#1
Odds strongly favor that both SS and Medicare are going to have to be severely means tested within just a year or two. No real choice in the matter. Medicaid will be turned over to the States. Figure that all three will join Defense with about 25% cutbacks, in the first one or two years.
#2
Moose is absolutely correct. I've got another decade and some change before I'd be eligible and I'm already assuming there will be no SS payments in my future.
I can already see the argument: "Sorry, sir, you're not eligible for Social Security. You have too much money and too many assets."
"What about the promise you made me when I was paying this money in for all these years?"
"Again, we're sorry but there isn't enough money to meet those obligations so we have to restrict payments to those who REALLY need them. That's NOT you, as our records show."
"That's not what you promise or what I agreed."
"I know. You'll just have to accept that you received your benefits in the form of lower taxes in your earlier years."
In reality, that is the only way it can go. The money simply isn't there and there's no way to put it there without hyperinflation totally destroying the value of the currency.
It comes from having a stupid electorate. Look at the number of idiots who voted for Bama, a lying pol who promised them both huge amounts of new benefits AND a tax cut. How in the Hell people could believe such a thing was possible is beyond me. Barnum was right, except conservative in his estimate. There's MORE than one born every minute, at least in America.
#3
No promise was made, nor contract given. It's a tax. Just another damn tax, that's all it's ever been. There is a chance that the Feds might at some point in your lifespan give you some monies, but it is from the good of their cold, cold heart only.
#4
Moose, is right. The current crisis means all forms of welfare will have to be slashed in all developed countries in as little as a year. The money won't be there to pay for them even as demand for things like unemployment benefits increases. I reckon government revenues will fall by 15% to 20% next year. Revenue from taxes on business profits will collapse by at least 50%.
It will get ugly, especially where immigrants form a high proportion of welfare recipients, Ie most of Europe.
#5
Social Security will continue to be paid, in full, to everyone eligible under current requirements. To make this possible, private pension plans and IRAs and 401(k)s etc. will be 'merged' into Social Security. And the payouts will be far 'fairer' than those private plans for the evil rich would have been. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs - er, voting numbers.
#6
taxation without representation got us our first revolution. This might be our second
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/30/2008 19:06
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Swiping 401k's would certainly justify it. Apart from there being no mechanism to do it, there would be some fairly stiff resistance from a lot of people in the form of lawsuits, riots, etc.
Azam Amir, the terrorist who was held by the Mumbai Police, has made some striking revelations regarding the Mumbai terror attacks.
Azam has disclosed that the Pakistan Navy had trained the terrorists in boating and swimming to carry out the attacks in Mumbai. Azam was arrested on Wednesday from Girgaum Chowpatty in an encounter with the police. Ismail Khan, an accomplice of Amir, reportedly died in the gunbattle.
Sources say Azam has also revealed that people from gangster Dawood Ibrahim's gang helped the terrorists from Karachi in organising the attacks.
Reports suggest that the planning for the terror attacks in Mumbai had begun almost a year ago in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. Azam has reportedly told the police that around 20 Pakistan nationals were trained in PoK to carry out the attacks. The training in PoK went on for almost five-and-half months, during which the terrorist were taught the use of sophisticated arms and ammunition.
At the end of the five months training, all terrorists were given a months leave and were ordered to gather in Karachi after the break for training in boating, rowing and swimming by the Pakistan Navy.
They were then handed over some CDs and maps of the Taj and Oberoi hotels. The CDs and maps also had pictures of important rail stations like VT. At the end of this training a batch of 10 terrorists was set off for India via the Indian sea route.
Mumbai Police expects more details will come out during the course of their investigations.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008
10:19 ||
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#1
The ISI is a cancer. Our CIA must go "direct action" and start killing these roaches. In large numbers.
#2
Easier said than done, OS. Most of the ISI is in Pakistain, and our CIA doesn't have the penetration (as far as I know, and they don't talk to me) in that country that would allow us to hunt the ISI.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/30/2008 11:10
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#3
well, we should be making a list, so when President Obama orders the invasion...
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/30/2008 11:48
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#6
This isn't ISI if it is Dawood Ibrahim's gang. He might have paid for some training by ISI but ISI wouldn't have planned this.
Ibrahim is the same guy that did the bombings in 1993. He is Indian and he has a terrorist organization that includes both Hindus and Muslims. Now the early killings of the primary anti-terrorist officials in Mumbai makes sense.
This was a terrorist operation with an embedded hit squad.
His organization is based in Mumbai and he lives in Karachi. Read the Wikipedia entry on this guy.
He is believed to be provided protection by ISI but that would be mainly because he is a thorn in India's side. He may just have become a major thorn in the side of Pakistan.
This attack makes no sense as an ISI operation but it makes perfect sense as a D-Company (his Mumbai gang) operation.
#7
Dawood and the ISI have been collaborating for decades.
The timers used in the 1993 Bombay blasts were of US military origin from stocks provided to the Pakistani army. The ISI provided these to Dawood Ibrahim and D company.
The ATS officials got killed because they rushed to the scene in the same car and did not expect trained gunmen.
The ISI has been seeking an outrage that would force India to issue threats and thus allow the Pak army to redeploy away from the Afghan border.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 13:10
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#8
I do not doubt that ISI has been supporting / protecting "Dagwood" for years as any enemy of India would be a friend to ISI in some way or another. But this time I believe they went too far. If ISI approved this plan then it speaks of desperation. It would be an "all or nothing" gambit.
This operation would have been counter to any long range plans of the ISI unless they simply don't have a long range strategy at this point and are lashing out in a "last gasp" which I don't believe to be the case.
In other words, I believe "Dagwood" used the ISI more than the ISI used "Dagwood". In any case, it is now time to reach out and touch that bastard and to strongly encourage Pakistan to consider a different primary export. Their current export of murder is not sustainable.
#9
Maybe someone could enlighten us as to what a gangster like "Dagwood" has to gain from this. Seems to me it'd be bad for business as far as he's concerned. Maybe it's not so much him using the ISI as it is ISI using him. I liked the theory someone posted yesterday about AQ wanting to get the Pak army redeployed away from Afghanistan back to the Indian border, even though I still don't believe India is ready to invade Pakistan. Paks are just paranoid enough to believe they might. But if the Pak army redeploys, that area is opened up for US special ops and AQ certainly doesn't want that. Maybe that's what ISI wants, to get rid of a thorn in their side. Involvement of the Pak navy is interesting but it could be Azam is to the point of saying anything he thinks will get the interrogators to stop. Anything he says would have to be carefully corroborated. Rogue elements of the Pak navy? So many possibilities...
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/30/2008 15:13
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#10
If the Pak army withdraws, the Pakiban take over everything. That means a safe haven inside cities, towns and villages. It means that US/NATO supply lines through Pakistan are cut. No amount of special ops will be able to clear out the nest if a third of Pak territory is taken over.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 15:18
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#11
This whole Mumbai incident proves to me that the Civil Govt has no control over the military/ISI.Hardliners dont want peace with India for whatever reason????
ISI fund our enemies in afghan and terrorist groups like Le T attacking India.I think their paranoia of US/India breaking up Pakistan keeps the extremist in a job!!!!!
#14
We can use bombardent to ruin the bridge and road infrastructure in the western part of the country - cut off the pakiban from the army units that just headed off east - then reduce the western region via crop destruction, water source and electricity production destruction. Round this off with the introduction of cholera, plague, hemoragic fevers and a few other genetically altered pathogens. Call me evil all you want-but these people have been telling us over and over that conventional means won't deter them. I say it's time to cull the herd - and hard!
#1
I would go further, especially about India. Bush was the only person in Washington who thought there was a reason to open India. Everyone else looked at him like he had lost his mind. His timing was also perfect, in that the Indians right then had the best government they had ever had.
The importance of busting up the Khan nuclear proliferation ring was also a huge victory. Little will ever be said about the US sinking two Nork ships carrying nuclear materials, however.
For its part, unlike Vietnam, Bush let the military do what it wanted to, and it did it well, except for time tabling recovery too quickly at one point. Another error was not giving Afghanistan as thorough a reconstruction as Iraq.
Bush also did a lot to turn Pakistan from being nothing but a terrorist training ground, to more of a unified state. A Sisyphean and unappreciated effort if there ever was one. Decades more work to cleaning up that viper's nest.
He directed Rumsfeld to modernize the US military, which was bitterly opposed by many top military leaders, and only grudgingly got acceptance by winning the day in Iraq. The Navy modernization still remains.
Last but not least, he is still quietly pushing very hard to stave off as much of the economic collapse as he can, and to mitigate what cannot be saved.
#1
People like this author have a prejudice that fighting terrorism can only incite other terrorism and allegedly give the terrorists what they want. This author, and those like him, confuse passivity and weakness with enlightenment. They ignore the rapid advances of the terrorists when the US followed their advice and largely ignored the first attack on the WTC, the bombing of our African embassies, etc. etc. This passivity in the face of danger led directly to the terrorist success of 9/11, not the dimuition of violence this author would predict. And yet .. the nonsense continues.
#2
The author is perfectly willing to give up _our_ freedoms (not to mention our sons and daughters) to attain the 'peace' of slavery and Dhimmitude.
After all - if we would only bow down and worship their moon god five times a day and allow some self-proclaimed Iman to dictate every aspect of our lives; or pay the Jitza(sp?) tax in humililation; or simply be put to the sword; everything would be 'just fine'. Oh and don't worry about those camps or those being led to them with stars on their clothing... *you* won't have anything to worry about....[yet]
#1
For those not around in the old days when in South Africa a white apartheid political system was in place, but the had a blood determination separating whites from blacks. The apartheid bureaucracy devised complex (and often arbitrary) criteria at the time that the Population Registration Act was implemented to determine who was 'Colored'. Minor officials would administer tests to determine if someone should be categorized either 'Colored' or Black, or if another person should be categorized either 'Colored' or White. Different members of the same family found themselves in different race groups.
Of course this was roundly denounced by the western liberal and leftist communities who sought and got a embargo established against the racist South African government.
Today, however, the same leftest and liberals [which is now redundant] use the same type of 'measure' to determine whether a person is white or black. Leftist Apartheid is now in play.
...on the other hand,
Bill Clinton claimed to be the first black president of the 20th Century, which is working out as it appears Obama is becoming the Bill Clinton president of the 21st Century.
#3
He's black based on our own country's history. Our South used the 'one-drop' rule for a long time. Barack Obama is as black as Tiger Woods.
The author of this piece is swimming uphill. It's a fine, academic argument, one that can be made in the nicer parlors and dinner tables, but our country traditionally hasn't labeled multi-racial people as such.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/30/2008 11:18
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#4
Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black.
We call him that -- he calls himself that -- because we use dated language and logic
No - you called him that - and he called himself that - because it played well as a campaign weapon.
#5
Never known of any actually black Americans. Compare "African-Americans" side-to-side with actual Africans and they all all are merely shades of brown in comparison. See Colin Powell together with Bush -- they're about the same hue. And yet he's supposedly "black".
But I'm not sure what this "There exist hardly any actual black people in America" supposedly leads to. Obama is just as black as Jesse Jackson or Rice and much more black than Powell.
But it also played well to call Condi Rice or Powell "black", I guess.
Posted by: S. ||
11/30/2008 11:48
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#6
Who cares. He's an ultra-leftist and he's about to screw up the country a whole lot more.
#7
I predicted that after the inauguration we'd start hearing whispering campaigns deniably originating from the like of Jesse Jackson et al, claiming that Obama isn't "black enough" to "get" the America Black Experience. (Accept no substitutes for "authentic black leadership!") I wasn't expecting anything this early.
Posted by: James ||
11/30/2008 15:44
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#9
ION FREEREPUBLIC > RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS: CRISIS [US-Global Financial/Banking] WILL HELP US REGAIN POWER.
Unless I've missed something, the RELABELING/REDEFINITION OF COMMUNISM AS "LIMITED FASCISM/LIMITED LEFIST-SOCIALISM" and related has nothing to do it.
* INTERESTING > last nite's HISTORY CHANNEL program on "SPUTNIK" >= late 1950's Bigwig Amer Politician describes COMMUNISTS AS "RED FASCISTS" [Nazis]. OTHER > THE "SPUTNIK SCARE" IN EISENHOWER-ERA AMERICA INDUCED HUBERT HUMPHREY TO PROCLAIM THAT ITS MORE IMPORTANT POST-SPUTNIK FOR AMERICA TO HAVE AN EFFECTIVE BALANCE OF POWER IN THE WORLD VEE THE SOVIETS/USSR, as "SPUTNIK LAUNCH INFERRED TO MANY US PERTS THAT THE SOVIETS HAD DEV LR ICBMS, THAN FOR AMER TO HAVE A BALANCED BUDGET???
Thus was born the Cold War US-USSR MISSLE RACE, DR. STRANGELOVE, + US GOVT. DEFICIT SPENDING/BUDGETING [Curr US-Global Crisis]???
Manmohan Singh promises to inflict ‘costs’ upon Pakistan. But diplomatic obfuscation, writes G Parthasarathy, has already let Islamabad off the hook. And politics has defanged India’s capacity to undertake covert, ‘seek and destroy’ ops across the border
The carnage in Mumbai inevitably raises the query yet again about whether India is a “soft state”. Mumbai and its law and order machinery are not new to terrorist attacks, starting with the bombings of 1993 that were masterminded by Dawood Ibrahim and his Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) sponsors. Yet the trial process of those accused of that heinous crime still drags on, and the mastermind lives in comfort in a spacious villa in Karachi, travelling around the world on Pakistani passports.
With at least one of the Pakistani perpetrators of the past weekÂ’s terrorist attacks in custody, there is going to be no difficulty in establishing the involvement of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, now functioning under the name of the Jamat-ud-Dawa. Its leader, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, had openly boasted of how he had organised the attack on DelhiÂ’s Red Fort in January 2001.
Yet, instead of taking note of his actions, the Indian Government chose to invite Pakistan’s then “Chief Executive” Pervez Musharraf for a summit meeting in Agra a few months later. This was a farcical event that preceded an attack on India’s Parliament by yet another Pakistani jihadi group, the Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The Mumbai attack has particular international significance because Pakistan-based terrorists have targeted not only Indians but also nationals of the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. Hafiz Saeed has often come out with proclamations that “Christians, Jews and Hindus are enemies of Islam”. After boasting that his followers had hoisted the flag of Islam at the Red Fort, Saeed proclaimed he would ensure that the green banner of Islam would fly over New Delhi, Washington and Jerusalem.
He has claimed Pakistani sovereignty over not only Kashmir but also “Hyderabad Deccan” and Junagadh in Gujarat, and vowed to “liberate” the Muslims of India. Hence, he has chosen to name the new front that claimed credit for the Mumbai outrage as the “Deccan Mujahideen”.
New Delhi has an opportunity to corner Pakistan. Media coverage across the world has focused attention on how foreign tourists have been systematically and meticulously targeted. The attack on the Jewish Centre in Mumbai is going to enrage public opinion in Israel, which has many supporters in the United States.
But this effort has necessarily to be tempered with realism, particularly in countries like the United Kingdom. They depend on the ISI for their presence in Afghanistan and to deal with terrorism perpetrated by Pakistani immigrants.
The United States was undoubtedly helpful in exposing the ISI role in the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul. But one wonders if a Barack Obama Administration will extend the same measure of cooperation in addressing terrorism directed against India. After all, the Bill Clinton Administration did precious little despite substantial evidence of ISI involvement in the 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai. It is important to move expeditiously on this issue while President George W Bush is still in office.
To a large extent, India will have to use its own resources to make it clear to Pakistan that supporting jihadi terrorist outfits on its soil will have its consequences. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke of “external linkages” and warned that neighbouring countries that perpetrated such acts would have to bear the “costs”, he has left himself with hardly any leverage to inflict “costs” on Pakistan.
He is after all on record as saying that the dialogue process with Pakistan was “irreversible” and even shed copious tears insisting that Pakistan, like India, was a “victim of terrorism”. During his entire tenure in office, the aggressive manner in which Pakistan’s links with terrorism directed against India used to be exposed was discarded.
Instead, senior Government officials spoke of groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba being “freelance terrorists”. During the recent Home Secretaries’ dialogue, the Pakistani side refused to acknowledge Dawood Ibrahim lives in Pakistan. Do note that the role of the Mumbai don in the recent attacks cannot be precluded.
Saeed is well funded, runs Islamic educational institutions and has cadre in Arab Gulf countries. Politically he has been close to former Prime Minister Nawaz SharifÂ’s family. Following American pressure, the Lashkar was declared an international terrorist organisation by the United Nations, requiring its assets to be seized and its cadre forbidden from foreign travel.
General Musharraf and the ISI responded by getting the Lashkar to function under the name of its parent organisation, the Jamat-ud-Dawa. Subsequent American efforts to get the Jamat too declared an international terrorist organisation failed in the face of Chinese and Pakistani opposition.
It would be naive to assume that Pakistan will accept any evidence India provides to act against the Lashkar. It, therefore, defies comprehension precisely what Manmohan Singh wishes to achieve by inviting the ISI chief to give him evidence of Lashkar involvement. The ISI chief (or his representative) will promise to look into the facts and then return to Pakistan and change the situation on the ground, enabling him to refute Indian evidence and stall progress.
The proper course would have been to publicise and make the evidence available to countries whose citizens have been targeted or killed in the Mumbai carnage. This would compel powerful countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Japan and Italy to demand action by Pakistan.
Sadly, the Prime Minister has shown a remarkable lack of realism. He has let Pakistan off the hook. By equating India and Pakistan, Manmohan Singh appeared to forget that terrorism in India was perpetrated by groups from Pakistan with ISI support, whereas terrorism in Pakistan was the product of differences between the ISI and the Government on the one hand and jihadi groups used by the ISI against India and Afghanistan in the past.
The strategy to raise “costs” for Pakistan can hardly be successful by mere diplomatic obfuscation. An iron will and measures other than diplomatic are also required, including targeted strikes at Lashkar centres and leadership if the Prime Minister’s stated objective is to be achieved and not frustrated by Pakistani stalling and doublespeak.
The terrorist carnage in Mumbai has exposed deficiencies in both the Coast Guard and Customs, whose officials need to be hauled up for inefficiency and worse. While it is all too easy to blame the intelligence agencies, the fact remains that their efficiency has been impaired by political interference or inaction.
It is no secret that the Intelligence Bureau (IB) spends a huge amount of resources collecting information on opposition parties and politicians to ingratiate its officers with the ruling dispensation. Every Government in India has misused the IB for internal political snooping.
The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), responsible for external intelligence, has been effectively defanged by successive Prime Ministers having illusions that they will go down in history and get a Nobel Prize for making friends with Pakistan. The net result off such illusions and delusions is that New Delhi’s capabilities to inflict “costs” on errant neighbours, through covert action, are virtually non-existent.
Finally, our ill-paid and ill-equipped police forces have inevitably been affected by the corruption, criminalisation and communalisation that have afflicted our body politic. We can thwart terrorist plots only when these issues are addressed.
But when the Prime Minister fails to announce tough action against separatists and instead threatens and demoralises security forces with talk of “zero tolerance for human rights violations” during a visit to Jammu & Kashmir, his actions can hardly inspire confidence either with security forces or intelligence agencies. Even more than Mumbai, that is India’s tragedy.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008
08:50 ||
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#1
<i>But one wonders if a Barack Obama Administration will extend the same
measure of cooperation in addressing terrorism directed against India.
After all, the Bill Clinton Administration did precious little despite
substantial evidence of ISI involvement in the 1993 bomb blasts in
Mumbai.</i>
Apparently the only ones the upcoming 'Clinton 3' administration' is comforting are the markets and the bankers.
#2
The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), responsible for external intelligence, has been effectively defanged by successive Prime Ministers having illusions that they will go down in history and get a Nobel Prize for making friends with Pakistan.
One PM, IK Gujral, reportedly handed over a list of RAW assets in Karachi (all soon killed) and disbanded the RAW unit responsible for black operations. This was part of his "Gujral Doctrine" which promised brotherly love to smaller neighbors.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 11:56
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Residents delivered more bodies to the main mosque in the central Nigerian city of Jos on Sunday, bringing the death toll from two days of clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs to around 400 people.
Rival ethnic and religious mobs have burned homes, shops, mosques and churches in fighting triggered by a disputed local election in a city at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and Christian south. It is the country's worst unrest for years.
Murtala Sani Hashim, who has been registering the dead as they are brought to the city's main mosque, told Reuters he had listed 367 bodies and more were arriving. Ten corpses wrapped in blankets, two of them infants, lay behind him.
A doctor at one of the city's main hospitals said he had received 25 corpses and 154 injured since the unrest began. "Gunshot wounds, machete injuries, those are the two main types," Dr Aboi Madaki, director of clinical services at Jos University Teaching Hospital, told Reuters.
The overall toll was expected to be higher, with some victims already buried and others taken to other clinics. The violence appeared to die down on Sunday. Soldiers patrolled on foot and in jeeps to enforce a 24-hour curfew imposed on the worst-hit areas. People who ventured out walked with their hands in the air to show they were unarmed. ...
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008
08:47 ||
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I'm sure the violence is not the fault of the Muslims (a predator is looking for a meal, not a fight).
The widow of Veerappan, India's most notorious bandit, has been arrested in the southern state of Karnataka on a number of charges, including murder. Police said Muthulakshmi Veerappan had been "evading capture for a long time".
Her husband was shot dead by police in 2004. He had eluded them for 15 years and was accused of 100 killings and a massive amount of ivory smuggling. After his death his widow tried to use his Robin Hood image in an unsuccessful campaign to win local elections.
The cases against Muthulakshmi Veerappan include the alleged murder of a forestry official, involvement in an attack on a police station and a bomb explosion that killed 20 policemen on patrol in 1992.
She was detained close to the border with Tamil Nadu along with three other associates of Veerappan, officials said. Police said the arrest was delayed as they required time to assess her involvement in Veerappan's actions.
In her election campaign in Tamil Nadu in 2006, Muthulakshmi Veerappan was unapologetic about Veerappan's legacy. "Veerappan helped the tribals and poor. I too will fight for your rights," she said at the time.
She said she had been detained illegally for a month when police carried out operations to hunt her husband down.
The Indian government had offered a 50m rupee ($1m) reward for any information leading to Veerappan's arrest. He was caught in an undercover sting operation and was lured to a location to meet an ambulance that would treat his asthma. Police lying in wait ordered him to surrender but he opened fire, they said.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008
08:41 ||
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Attackers set off explosions at anti-government protest sites Sunday, wounding 51 people and raising fears of widening confrontations in Thailand's worst political crisis that has strangled its economy and shut down its main airports.
The first blast occurred inside Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat's office compound, which protesters seized in August and have held ever since. Suriyasai Katasiya, a spokesman for the protest group, said a grenade landed on the roof of a tent where protesters were resting, rolled down to the ground and exploded.
At least 49 people were injured, said Surachet Sathitniramai at the Narenthorn Medical Center. He said nine were hospitalized, including four in serious condition. Twenty-minutes after that attack, two more blasts rocked an anti-government television station but there were no injuries, Suriyasai said.
In another pre-dawn strike, an explosive device detonated on the road near the main entrance to Bangkok's Don Muang domestic airport. Surachet and an Associated Press television cameraman said two people were wounded. No one claimed responsibility for the blasts but Suriyasai blamed the government.
Tensions were rising as a pro-government group prepared to hold a rally in the heart of Bangkok later Sunday to express its support for Somchai, who is operating out of the northern city of Chiang Mai.
Government spokesman Nattawut Sai-Kua denied rumors that Somchai had left the country, saying he was definitely in Chiang Mai and had no plans to go abroad in the near future.
The prime minister has been reluctant to use force to evict the demonstrators from the People's Alliance for Democracy, who on Tuesday night overran Suvarnabhumi airport, the country's main international gateway.
The alliance seized Bangkok's domestic airport a day later, severing the capital from all commercial air traffic and virtually paralyzing the government.
National police deputy chief Lt. Gen. Pongpat Pongjaroen said police have begun negotiations with the protesters to end the standoff, but alliance leader Chamlong Srimuang denied it.
The alliance says it will not give up until Somchai resigns, accusing him of being a puppet of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the alliance's original target. Thaksin, who is Somchai's brother-in-law, was deposed in a 2006 military coup and has fled the country to escape corruption charges. ...
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008
07:42 ||
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A "field" of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-storey house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes.
I guess they don't teach economics at university any more. Every square meter is an added cost, triply so underwater. Here is what a 100MW combined power and heat plant looks like.
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008 7:57
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#2
Once again, it helps explain an old Dream/Vision of mine as per offshore [future?]Guam.
#2
I'm a liberal by the standards of the Burg and this to me smells of agenda peddling.
I'll point out the main error of his position.
What matters is results from interogations - I agree 100%.
Some interogation techniques are counter productive - I agree, but which in what circumstances.
His error is to assume his opinion about what is moral and what is effective constitutes evidence, and never mind proof. But then that pretty much defines a Liberal.
Seafarious is right: it's food for thought. There is one major point in this that rings true: that for some captured opponents, at least, getting into their heads, understanding how they think, and then using that as leverage to get information will work better than waterboarding or outright torture.
I don't claim any expertise whatsoever in this. I don't claim to know when one should use what methods. I have the same discomfort about borderline tactics and rough handling of prisoners that any other sensible person has. Mr. Alexander lays out a cogent case. If there is someone here who can point out the problems with his thesis, than by all means, fisk away.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/30/2008 11:26
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#8
And I am shocked! SHOCKED I SAY! To find out that he's selling a book.....
Seems to me that different prisoners might require different methods. For some waterboarding will turn the trick (and save lives...) while with others a 'softer' approach might be more effective. The trick is the know which is which.
#10
I think when we take options off the table and the enemy knows it then that is wrong. Each enemy combatant is an individual at the end of the and one must take the approach necessary to ween info. If that means giving them a sub sandwich and coffee to get info - then do it. If that means pulling out the waterboard - then do it. I don't think there is a one size fits all approach to gaining info, and therefore I disagree w/him in parts. However, I disagree w/anyone saying that we have to take certain options off the table. His plug at the end for Obama lost me - probably a big reason this got put into print - besides openly lambasting his senior leadership. His talk about foreign fighters coming to iraq after abu ghraib is non-sense - those assholes were there way before abu g. The beginning of his article talks about local sunni insurgents, I agree to a point, but then again understanding the motivations of the tribe was always the key. I agree in a sense that a lot of our sr leaders never grasped that, I was frustrated often w/the ignorance some of our field grades and flag officers showed to pegging this concept. I remember one of my CO's (thankfully now retired) openly disdainful of the iraqi cultural training package prior to us going there. I remember thinking, I can't wait to see this guy dealing w/the local strongmen. He'll set back relations 10 yrs. Bottomline is - anyway you can get them to playball, do so.
Posted by: Clererong Oppressor of the Algonquins aka Broadhead6 ||
11/30/2008 11:59
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#11
Steve, I agree food for thought if tyhe same shit hadn't been recycled through the MSM since 2005. The guy is obviously selling a book so I question his motivations. So I searched on a couple of his highlights and there are alomst word-for-word of other published articles. Check it out yourself.
#12
This article is something of a red herring. There were several strands in the Sunni "insurgency" (ex-Saddam, holy warriors, Sunnis insulted by individual Americans, etc), and each needed a different interrogation method.
The fact that some had legitimate grievences and could be "bargained with" to turn on Al Qaeda is something our generals were aware of, and is the origin of the Sons of Iraq.
On the other hand, some "insurgents" were nothing but a bunch of serial killers masquerading as defenders of Islam. These guys can't be bargained with.
A "one size fits all" approach will not work in Iraq or anyplace else.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/30/2008 14:26
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#13
This phrase got me, "showing cultural understanding". How the hell do you show "cultural understanding" to people whose only reason for being is to murder and torture? I know one person who is still tortured by what he saw over there and it wasn't anything US troops did.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/30/2008 18:04
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A top aide says India's home minister has offered to resign in the wake of the deadly Mumbai attacks. R.K. Kumar says the minister, Shivraj Patil, sent his resignation to the prime minister to take responsibility for the attacks. The prime minister has yet to respond. Patil, who has long been unpopular in India, is in charge of much of India's internal security services.
#1
National Security Adviser (NSA) M K Narayanan resigned on Sunday following the Mumbai terror attacks but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected his resignation, official sources said. ( Watch )
"He (Narayanan) will not be stepping down as the NSA," said a home ministry official.
Sources in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had earlier said the NSA had submitted his resignation to Manmohan Singh.
An aide to the prime minister said "more senior members of the government are likely to be shown the door" in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.
The government sources said home secretary, Intelligence Bureau chief and head of the Coast Guard were likely to be sacked.
Earlier in the day, Home minister Shivraj Patil, under tremendous criticism over a spate of terrorist attacks in the country since last year, has resigned in the wake of the Mumbai terror strikes. Patil has said that he felt obliged to take "moral responsibility" for the brutal attacks in Mumbai, an official government source said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has accepted resignation of Home minister Shivraj Patil and has forwarded it to the President.
Finance minister P Chidambaram will take over as the new home minister and the finance ministry will now be under the direct charge of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The CWC, which met here on Saturday night, gave the marching orders to Shivraj Patil.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 8:26
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Sounds like a cross between a Keystone Cops movie and Indian bureaucracy at its finest. Not very confidence inspiring.
The terrorists strike Mumbai at 9.30pm. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh is in Kerala. He is briefed about the attack on the cityÂ’s prime locations. By the time Deshmukh grasps the enormity of the situation, 90 minutes have gone by.
He rings Union home minister Shivraj Patil at 11pm and asks for NSG commandos. "How many men?" Patil asks. "200," says the CM. Patil calls NSG chief J K Dutt and tells him to send 200 battle-ready commandos to Mumbai.
Most of the NSG men have to be roused from sleep. They don their uniforms, strap on safety gear, collect ammo and firearms. It is discovered that the only plane that can take 200 men, the IL 76, is not in Delhi but Chandigarh. Precious minutes are ticking by.
The IL 76 pilot is woken, the plane refuelled. It reaches Delhi at 2am. By the time the commandos get in and the plane takes off, four-and-a-half hours have elapsed. Experts say that unless a response is mounted within 30 minutes of an attack, the enemy can assume key defensive positions.
It takes the aircraft almost three hours to land at Mumbai airport. Unlike the Boeing and Airbus, IL 76 is a slow plane. By the time the NSG commandos board the waiting buses it is 5.25am.
The buses take another 40 minutes to reach the designated place in south Mumbai where the commandos are briefed, divided into different groups and sent out on their mission.
By the time they start their operation, it is 7am — in other words, nine-and-a-half hours after the terror strike.
Many lives might have been saved had this delay not happened. The obvious question is why is the NSG stationed only in Delhi. When Indian cities are vulnerable to terror attacks, why is there no commando force like the NSG, or its units, in every city?
#1
Hindsight runs into reality. a. There are only so many troops trained to the top level. b. India is a BIG country. Our response on a federal level may have been quicker but not by much. That's why we have local SWAT teams with support agreements with other local and federal teams (similar to fire fighters).
#4
Don't forget that the top 3 police officials in Mumbai were all killed at the start of the attack. Then the assailants neutralized the downtown police station.
I'm sure this paralized the police and kept them from reacting faster or communicating with higher headquarters.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/30/2008 14:40
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Correct there Ali. I didn't take that into the consideration.
#6
And the NSG took hours to arrive by Il-76 transport.
The terrorists probably factored all of this in their planning.
However Bombay is also the HQ of the Indian Navy's Western command and the location of the Abhimanyu Marine Naval Station, home of the Marine Commando Force.
Were it not for the MARCOS, many more people may have died.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 19:37
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All very strange. Did all or most of the terrorists case the city first? If so why was there a need to leave and launch a seaborne assault?
Did some Mumbai locals provide support to the Pakistani terrorists? Azam Amir Kasab, the only Pakistani terrorist nabbed alive, has revealed names and addresses of at least five people from the city who helped the terror operation.
Sources said that help like, providing shelter, taking them around and showing places, passing information on police stations and nakabandhis were given by these locals. Joint commissioner of police (crime) Rakesh Maria said,"We suspect there could be local assistants but it is subject to verification. It will be very premature to comment on this at this stage as our investigations is going on.''
Kasab has told police that they were sent with a specific mission of targeting Israelis to avenge atrocities on Palestinians. This was why they targetted Nariman House, a complex meant for Israelis. Sources said Kasab's colleagues killed in the operation had stayed in Nariman House earlier.
"They have stayed in Nariman house on rental basis identifying themselves as Malaysian students.'' said a source. Police are trying to find out how Nariman House rooms were given to non-Jews. Police has taken all the records books of for verification. The second target was the CST railway station because casualties would be high.
Crime branch has also recovered several fake identity and credit cards from the belongings of dead terrorists. "All the cards are in different names and of different banks. Now we are at least trying to figure out how they procured credit cards from various banks.'' said Maria. The recovery of so many cards with different names have led Mumbai police to suspect the involvement of ISI.
Though Maria maintained only 10 terrorists had sneaked in, the two blasts in taxis in Wadi Bunder and Vile Parle have led the police to believe there could be possibility of the presence of another two or more terrorists in the city.
#1
Yes, if this was an operation by Dawood Ibrahim's "D-Company", they would have had a lot of local help. The gang is based in Mumbai and Dawood lives in Karachi.
The city crime branch probing the terror attack on Saturday confirmed that only 10 terrorists had entered the city just an hour before the hostage drama unfolded on November 26.
While nine of them were killed in encounter, a 21-year-old was captured alive. Arms and ammunition brought in by the terrorists was enough to kill around 5,000 people, said police.
Cops officially put toll at 162, including 18 foreign nationals. The arrested terrorist, Ajmal Mohammed Amir Kasab, resident of Faridkot village in Pakistani Punjab's Ukada district, told investigators all the terrorists had come from Karachi, police said.
They had come in a ship and used a boat to come to the shore, said the police. "Four Indians were already on the boat and the terrorists killed three of them while they used one, Amar Narayan, to handle the boat. When the boat was just three nautical miles away from shore, they slit Narayan's throat and dumped his body in the trawler. They then used their own skill to come to shore."
"After landing at Fish Market at Cuffe Parade near Colaba, they formed four groups and hired taxis to reach to their destinations. A group of two young terrorists entered Hotel Oberoi, four into Hotel Taj Mahal, two stormed into Nariman House while the rest entered the CST railway station from its mail trains' gate. Their plan was just to cause maximum damage and return with hostages protecting themselves," said Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner of police, crime branch.
As the hostage drama began at around 9.30pm, Kasab along with his accomplice, Ismail Khan, started random firing at CST railway station while the three other teams had began firing at Oberoi, Taj and Nariman House. Kasab, who sustained a bullet injury in his hand during an encounter with the police near Cama Hospital, was captured near Girgaum Chowpatty while Ismail was gunned down. Police recovered a satphone, a GPS tracker, and Indian currency of Rs 6,200. The satphone contains a dozen international numbers.
Kasab, cops said, had come to Mumbai for the first time. Cops are still probing if the same terrorists had planted bombs in two taxis that exploded at Byculla and Vile Parle.
The terrorists, said police, wanted to launch an attack which would have international ripples. "They were to return after completing their plan," said Maria.
He said they all were trained in the same batch in a terror camp. "We have recovered 10 AK-56 rifles, 10 9mm pistols, two explosive devices of eight kg each etc. Kasab and Ismail had fired at Leopold before coming to CST. They all are highly-trained terrorists but it would be difficult to say which terror group they belonged to. We have also recovered 10 fake ID cards of some Indian colleges from the terrorists," said Maria.
He said the terrorists had packed huge quantities of dates, almonds and raisins, which they ate during the three-day gun battle.
True, but he's surprisingly spilling beans and linked them to Pakistan and given some of the operation details. They must have applied some 3rd world torture techniques early on.
Posted by: Grolush Darling of the Hatfields3195 ||
11/30/2008 10:54
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#5
It is called the "Indian Police Beating" (as seen in Bollywood movies).
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 11:18
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#6
THey are not so bound by leftist vision of "proper" interrogation techniques as we are -- and expediency is important due to the possibility of quick followups.
#7
And unlike the USAF interrogator who is axe grinding in another article here, claiming torture is used by the US, there is no time to play mind games and "befriend" him.
"After landing at Fish Market at Cuffe Parade near Colaba, they formed four groups and hired taxis to reach to their destinations. A group of two young terrorists entered Hotel Oberoi, four into Hotel Taj Mahal, two stormed into Nariman House while the rest entered the CST railway station from its mail trains' gate
Weren't there 10 incidents, with 3 of the terrorists gone in the car bombing at the airport?
And then the attacks at the police station and the hospital.
Then you have to figure there was a support network in Mumbai
#9
The numbers have come down. Also the two captured British Pakistanis are no longer mentioned.
Either fog of war or the Indian intelligence has a future planned for them that does not include due process in a court of law.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 13:13
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#10
Did they really apply third world torture to break this guy is my question. Sure, they could have, but by now he HAS to know that he's a goner. Rantburg has been suggesting using pigs and such "evil rascist" techniques to get info for years, maybe the Indian government just offered to bury him in a hog farm if he didn't cough up the goods.
Posted by: Charles ||
11/30/2008 13:29
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#11
They did. But not to him. I suspect examples were made of others and he was given to understand that he was in a strictly binary situation. New article regarding torture, all around, just posted. Might even have made Jack Bauer nauseous.
Takfiri jihadis are allowed to eat pork and drink alcohol, consort with strippers and whores, so that they may deceive the enemies of Allah.
Ordinary Muslims are allowed to eat pork if that saves them from starvation.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 15:35
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#15
Charles, do you really think a stone cold Muzz kook is afraid of a hog farm? It's like saying American Forces are afraid of burd flu.
I suspect it depends on whether he's still alive when his delimbed torso is thrown to the pigs.
All this argument about whether "torture" works is besides the point, in a lot of ways. I doubt the North Vietnamese ever really got tactically or strategically important information from any of the prisoners they tortured. BUT: The North won their war. The kids of the torturers own factories where the kids of the guys in the South (those that didn't come to the US) work for $ 2/week making Nikes. At some level or another it worked.
#17
Look, you were the one who wanted to argue about whether brutality "worked." Well, look out at the planet, those governments that really are brutal seem to control a very large fraction of the human population.
#3
PLEASE READ THIS MAIL THRICE
Angels of distruction will hit the killers,conspirators and all the
hidden cowards behind the kiling of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his
wife, Rivka Holtzberg. They are damned wherever they go. Their soul
will instantly leave their body...and they will not survive a month.
Dark will be their path and God's angel will chase them. A disaster
they have never experienced will beget each one of them and all curses
known in the Torah will apply to him. I deliver to you, the angels of
wrath and ire, The angels will smother them and the specter of him,
and cast him into hed, and dry up his wealth, and plague their
thoughts, and scatter their mind that they may be steadily diminished
until they reach heir death. Put to death the cursed murderes of Rabbi
Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka Holtzberg . May they be damned,
damned, damned!"
AFTER READING IT THRICE
PLEASE FORWARD IT TO THREE FRIENDS WITHIN THREE SECONDS.
#4
PAKSITANI DEFENCE FORUM > SIGNS OF AN ATTEMPTED COUP IN NEW DELHI. Core group comprised mainly of Right-Wing Secular Ideologues and Hindu Nationalists, etc. are believed to strongly oppose the Govt of P.M. Manhoman Singh, and are in favor of India emerging as a regional Superpower in close alliance wid the USA???
Also, RENSE > GLOBAL RESEARCH -US IS FOSTERING THE RIFT BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN.
IOW, the USA vee Radical Islamist proxies covertly desires the breakup of RUSSIA, CHINA, + INDIA = PAN-ASIAN GEOPOL-NUCLEAR ORDER???
#3
Just slightly off topic - I was showing my apartment to some folks about a month ago. Four of them pull up in a BMW 325i that might have been two years old. We do the walkthrough, they think the place is wonderful, etc.
Then they ask me if I take Section 8 voucher. Four able-bodied fuckin' people asked me this question (for the Boston area locals, yes, they were from Dorchester). I politely said no and showed them the door.
Not that I'm holding my breath, but adequate oversight into this program would make me pretty happy.
#4
Fix? Like the same government bureaucrats who haven't figured out that by liquidating pirates you end piracy. Oh, there's got to be another way /sarcasm off.
It drives me nuts to remember how many people I worked with at a local loan company here in SC who had NO income other than SSA and were driving new and fully tricked-out Escalades.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
11/30/2008 11:07
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#6
"NO legal income other than SSA"
Fixed it.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/30/2008 13:09
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#7
Ima do #2 auditoring on deh skool lunch programs. It makes me sad. It's not even so much the tax rip-off, it's the lessons passed along to yoofs there-in involved.....
#8
Tried to tell my LLL bro-in-law about this the other night but he blames Bush and doesn't want to hear any other side of the story. You start asking 'em about Bawney Fwank and they go ballistic. I got shushed for being a bad, bad, right-wing conservative.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
11/30/2008 15:28
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#9
Sounds to me like it's time to tell the LLL bro-in-law that when he gets a clue you'll see him again. Until then, he needn't bother to darken your doorstep with his shadow.
#10
As usual, IBD cuts through the crap and spells it out in simple, plain English. Ever since the house of cards that the housing market was built on starting coming down, I've been telling people to research the CRA. If there is one piece of regulation, or lack thereof as Frank and Dodd would have us believe, that can be faulted for this whole mess, the CRA deserves a large portion of the blame. It all starts there. Everything that followed is nothing but noise that fails to address the root cause. The plain reality is that the CRA was the root cause, as IBD makes clear here.
Unlike conservatives, I would argue that the problem with liberals is that they have arrived at their conclusions based not on the facts or merit of an argument, but on how that conclusion supports their ideological position. In this case, that position was that banks were deliberately discrimating against loan-seekers on the basis of race, primarily. This fulfilled their misbegotten belief that banks and other financial entities controlled by the "man" were racist institutions determined to keep minorities suppressed economically. It never occurred to them that it had nothing to do with race but everything to do with the loan-applicants projected ability to pay back the loan.
They failed to see, as they always do, that their politically correct ideology is really to blame for this mess, or at least for starting it. Just giving money away to people, which is essentially what the CRA legislated as far as home mortgages are concerned, in the naive hope that they will do the right thing with it, is a recipe for disaster.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) froze its oil output quota on Saturday after emergency talks in Cairo but vowed to take any action necessary to balance the market next month. According OPEC president Chakib Khelil, Ministers chose not to change oil production quotas. My guess, having neither any money nor any detailed knowledge of the commodities market, is that the guys who were bidding oil out of sight are now in fairly dire financial straits themselves, which is allowing prices to fall back to where they would have been under normal circumstances. I'd also guess, both caveats remaining in place, that the prices we're at now are still higher than they should be.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#1
(Rubbing hands and gigling madly)
NOW YOU HURT A FEW YEARS, BASTARDS.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/30/2008 12:51
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United Jihad Council (UJC) chief Sayed Salahuddin has called the killing of civilians in the Mumbai terrorist attacks 'reprehensible', and denied that any member of his alliance was involved. The UJC is an umbrella organisation banding together around a dozen militant groups in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). "Let me be very clear once again that the United Jihad Council does not approve of civilian killings and under its code of conduct such an act is reprehensible," Salahuddin said. "I can say with utmost certainty that none of the Kashmiri jihadi groups has any involvement with the events in Mumbai," he told Reuters by telephone. Suspicion has fallen on a non-member, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LT). Though it fights for the Kashmiri cause, the LT was founded in Punjab and mainly recruits Punjabis to its ranks. Salahuddin, whose own group is Harkatul Mujahideen, said the attacks in Mumbai were probably carried out by an Indian group in response to the oppression of minorities, including Muslims. AJK Legislative Assembly Speaker Shah Ghulam Qadir condemned India for levelling accusations before fully investigating, and said it endangered peace talks begun in 2004. "Blaming Pakistan even before holding preliminary investigations is condemnable," Qadir said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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A senior leader of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Saturday accused the Indian government of 'using the Mumbai attacks' as a pretext to defame Pakistan. "Neither Pakistan nor the mujahideen are involved in the attacks in Mumbai, and India should not use the occasion to blame us for something which we have not done," TTP deputy chief Maulana Faqeer Muhammad said. New Delhi has pointed fingers at Islamabad for Wednesday's attacks in Mumbai. Faqeer told reporters over telephone that the Indian government 'staged the attacks' to defame Pakistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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Security forces brought a three-day assault on India's financial and cultural capital to an end Saturday morning, killing the last remaining gunmen holed up in one of the city's luxury hotels after freeing hostages and recovering bodies from two hotels and a Jewish center Friday.
Pakistani officials, responding to charges by Indian leaders that the attack was carried out by an organization with ties to Pakistan, said a senior intelligence officer would travel to India, in an apparent attempt to ease tensions between the two nuclear-armed states.
Indian officials said they now believe that at least 15 gunmen carried out the operation after reaching Mumbai by sea. After an interrogation of one of the attackers, Indian intelligence officials said they suspected that a Pakistani Islamist group, Lashkar-i-Taiba, was responsible. An Indian intelligence document from 2006 obtained by The Washington Post said members of the group had been trained in maritime assault.
Authorities said that the death toll had risen to 195 as more bodies were discovered and that 295 people were wounded, the Associated Press reported, in attacks on the hotels, the Jewish center and several other sites in Mumbai. Among the dead were two Americans from Virginia; the American rabbi who ran the city's Chabad-Lubavitch center and his Israeli wife; and three of their visitors, including an American man, an Israeli woman and a man with U.S. and Israeli citizenship. In all, 16 non-Indians have been reported killed.
Explosions from fighting at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel could be heard outside the hotel early Saturday morning, and flames and thick, inky-black smoke were seen pouring from the first floor.
Every crisis has its defining images. In Mumbai's massacre, it was the elegant Taj engulfed in flames. "It hurts my heart. It's like India itself is on fire," said Sanjay Jadhu, 43, a firefighter at the landmark hotel who was covered in soot.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#1
Shot, burnt, maimed: Terrorists died violently
Shibu Thomas & Rajiv Sharma I TNN
Mumbai: Bodies of eight of the terrorists, who wreaked havoc in south Mumbai, bore not only bullet wounds but also severe burn injuries, said officials from the post-mortem centre at JJ Hospital in Byculla on Saturday.
Two fingers of a terrorist, who was slain by security forces at Oberoi Hotel in Nariman Point, were severed. “He may have been shot on his fingers or lost them in an explosion,’’ an official told TOI reporters. The second terrorist, also brought dead from Oberoi, had been shot in both eyes.
Severely charred bodies of three terrorists were brought from Taj Hotel on Saturday evening to the post-mortem centre, said police officials. All the eight terrorists were young, fair and of South Asian origin. “The Oberoi terrorists would be between 20 and 25 years of age,’’ said officials, who didn’t wish to be named.
An official from the postmortem centre said, “We have preserved the terrorists’ hair, long bones, deep muscles, blood and teeth samples to find out about their DNA type.’’ These samples will help the investigating agencies to establish their identities.
A preliminary examination has revealed that the terrorists had multiple bullet wounds as well as burn injuries. “This means that they were also injured in the explosions,’’ said an official. “While four of them were stockily-built, one was lean,’’ he added.
DNA samples of some of the foreigners who were killed in the attack have also been preserved. Underlining the importance of conducting a post-mortem on every body, a senior doctor said, “Each case is different and it is important to carry out an autopsy.’’ This will help investigators understand the nature of the explosives used by the terrorists.
Police surgeon Dr S M Patil said doctors from all other postmortem centers have been deputed at JJ Hospital. “We have requested the police to bring in the bodies at the earliest to prevent further decomposition,’’ he said.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/30/2008 8:56
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President Felipe Calderon and his government defended their fight against public corruption and drug trafficking Friday, asking for greater powers to go after organized crime. They conceded that most Mexicans feel unsafe and that many police are unqualified to do their jobs.
That's why we call it Messico.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#1
Hope the low oil price hurts those bastards plenty! Oops, wrong cartel ...
The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world's authorities to take steps that had never been tried before. This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.
"They are throwing the kitchen sink at this," said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank's chief technical strategist. "The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock.
"Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don't think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes," he said.
"This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised."
"What happens if there is a meltdown in a country like Pakistan, which is a nuclear power. People react when they have their backs to the wall. We're already seeing doubts emerge about the sovereign debts of developed AAA-rated countries, which is not something you can ignore," he said.
Gold traders are playing close attention to reports from Beijing that the China is thinking of boosting its gold reserves from 600 tonnes to nearer 4,000 tonnes to diversify away from paper currencies. "If true, this is a very material change," he said.
Mr Fitzpatrick said Britain had made a mistake selling off half its gold at the bottom of the market between 1999 to 2002. "People have started to question the value of government debt," he said.
Citigroup said the blast-off was likely to occur within two years, and possibly as soon as 2009. Gold was trading yesterday at $812 an ounce. It is well off its all-time peak of $1,030 in February but has held up much better than other commodities over the last few months -- reverting to is historical role as a safe-haven store of value and a de facto currency. Gold has tripled in value over the last seven years, vastly outperforming Wall Street and European bourses.
#1
I wonder if it ever crossed Topjobs mind that we could get both.
The crappy nation states get civil disorder due to depression and the western nations get a combination of deflation from the weak economy being offset by the inflationary actions of central banks. Disinflation?
Whatever we want to call it, for the near future, durable goods will most likely deflate and consumables will most likely inflate.
Either way, Citigroup needs to stop making headlines. Get some competent management, you clowns. Without it, your bank will only be known for credit card offers.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
11/30/2008 0:27
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#2
Inflation by definition is an excess of money and credit, a condition we had just before the dotcom crash and continuing into August 2007, when the first of the LIBOR seizures took place.
The most likely outcome is still the definition of inflation, except that price increases are more likely to be demand/supply events, not an actual reaction to inflation.
Everyone thinks of Weimar Germany without realizing the Fed is likely to slam on the breaks when Treasury bill rates skyrocket with a humongous interest rate increase.
I think what the Smart Guys™ are worried about is that the Fed will be unable to print enough money to cover all the bets they made in the last few years and because of that neglected fact, they are now currently in the glide path of an Honest to Goodness Come-to-Jesus moment, which will eventually include an all expenses paid trip to a federal prison for most of the perpetrators
#3
'print money'. How much of the economy is now off the paper and on the computers? Cards and automated accounting continues to displace cash in a magnitude that those who weren't around 40 years ago can't understand. A lot of the value that disappeared in the last year between mortgages and speculation has largely been accounting not printing. The use and demand for paper is largely unchanged because of that displacement. It will change if and when the banks stop authorizing individual consumer credit either based upon potential (credit cards) or actual (debit cards). From my reading, the small and medium size institutions are doing just fine to an extent that they actually did adhere to the principles and regulations put in place after the last fiasco with the Savings and Loan debacle of the 80s.
#4
There is also a strong possibility of "leveraged money" hyperinflation at the same time as "cash money" deflation.
That is, in effect, we have two currencies. Cash money is backed either with paper or real goods and services; leveraged money is *based* on leverage alone. (Like taking out a $1M loan, then using that $1M as collateral to take out a $10M loan. An irrational fantasy that cannot continue.)
By distinguishing between the two economies, the cash or "real" money economy can be protected, while at the same time the leveraged economy can fail.
Actually, the leveraged economy *must* fail.
Until the leveraged economy collapses, it consumes the vitality of the real economy to try and support itself, almost like a tumor. You have to get rid of it first, before the real economy can recover.
The way to separate the two economies is for the BEP to issue very high denomination paper currency, from $100k to $10M bills. But currency that can only be transferred with US Treasury permission and can only be used by institutions, real economy corporations, not leveraged corporations or individuals.
Such bills would be sold to real economy corporations in exchange for a percentage of their liquidity large enough to prevent them from going out of business even if all the rest of their money has been looted. It would also serve the dual purpose of providing 100%+ collateral for loans, again only with Treasury permission.
This means that no matter what happens, either by their own mistakes, or the efforts of hostile outsiders, a real economy corporation cannot go out of business.
Even if their business drops to zero sales, their operations will just be suspended, not bankrupt. So when it picks up again, they can resume full production with minimum delay.
The government might even require "unemployment in place", that employees continue to go to work and do other tasks like maintenance while being paid unemployment.
#9
This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.
I'd reached the same conclusion and for the first time in my life become a gold bull.
'Print money' is a figure of speech. It doesn't mean literally printing paper money. It means increasing the supply of money in all its forms.
BTW, a quote I heard from someone at the US Fed stuck in my mind.
It was along the lines of,
Pointing at a bank of computers in the Fed's data center, he said, "The only real money is ones and zeros in those computers."
#10
One other observation. While the Fed and other central banks can and do control the supply of money, the velocity of money is beyond their control and it appears to have slowed abruptly.
#11
Deleveraging is inevitable - thats what cause dthe crash - deleveraging the financial markets in the mortgage sector.
Same thing with the petroleim prices - no cheap loans to back insane money on futures alone, without regard to supply and demand of the actual underlying commodity.
An Iraqi court has overturned a decision by parliament to strip Sunni MP Mithal Alusi of his immunity for visiting Israel earlier this year, Alusi's aide said on Saturday. Alusi, the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation's sole lawmaker, "will be back in parliament" when it convenes in December to discuss the budget, Adel al-Juburi told AFP.
"The constitutional court rejected a request by parliament to postpone by six months a hearing and quickly issued its verdict" to allow Alusi to resume his parliamentary duties, Juburi added.
On September 14, parliament lifted Alusi's immunity for visiting Israel earlier that month to attend an international conference on terrorism, and also voted to ban him from attending parliamentary sessions or traveling abroad. Parliament also asked prosecutors to press charges against Alusi for visiting the Jewish state, with which Iraq has no diplomatic ties. Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab countries to have peace treaties with Israel.
At the time, Shiite MP Ali al-Adeeb, who has close ties with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said Iraqi law bans trips to Israel.
But Alusi's lawyer, Tareq Harb, told AFP the constitutional court overruled parliament's decision and that its verdict was without appeal.
Alusi also visited Israel in September 2004 when he was a member of the Iraqi National Congress, the party led by former Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi. He was expelled from that party for making the visit and set up his own party.
Alusi has survived several assassination attempts in recent years. Two sons and a bodyguard were killed in one attempt on his life in February 2005.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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An Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on Saturday formally indicted a juvenile suspect and recorded testimony of a prosecution witness in proceedings concerning the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.
Bhutto was assassinated in a gunshot and bomb attack on December 27, 2007 in a public park in Rawalpindi when she was leaving the place after addressing an election rally. The court is trying five suspects - Rafaqat Hussain, Hussnain Gull, Sher Zaman, Abdul Rasheed and juvenile Atizaz Shah - in a jail trial for their alleged involvement in the incident. Five other accused, including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud, are still at large and have been declared proclaimed offenders by the court. The court framed charges against Atizaz Shah and recorded the statement of a prosecution witness Kashif Bashir, a police official. The court adjourned further proceedings till December 6.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#3
Converting to Islam is one thing, but giving up beer is the closest thing to blasphemy I can imagine that the Americans could ever do. We do find your fanatical religious beliefs a bit too looney for our tastes, and we would advise giving us our space, or we can go ape*shit at times.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/30/2008 0:26
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#4
"Beer is proof that Allan loves us and wants us to be happy."
#8
I once carried a case of Anchor Steam Beer as my hand luggage on a flight from SF to NY. In the single 'movie moment' of my life, the case of beer got me noticed by and invited into first class by an attractive woman. The rest of the story isn't suitable for a family audience.
#9
I guess it will take a cocaine fatwa before our bicoastal retards wake from their stupor.
For phil_b, queue a heavy base line and a "Oh yeah" from Duffman.
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008 7:22
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#10
You'd be surprised how many things seem to make sense after repeatedly bashing your head against the floor every day for most of your life. Just wait until he starts demanding that America breed millions of "Love Camels", because they are virtuous, unlike women.
#12
I guess we shouldn't tell the turbans that anything fermented with sugar has alcohol, like bread. Or maybe we should.
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008 8:54
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#13
I lost patience with a jihadist type on the net yesterday. We ended up with him screaming about religion so I posted the following for him:
Christians and Buddhists and Animists etc...
Don't go waging jihad on everybody else.
You've trashed them all so let's return the favor.
1) mo was born a barbarian tribal
2) mo's first decent gig was as a boy toy to an older widow.
3) mo didn't really like being a boy toy all that much so moved into trading
4) Somewhere along the line - maybe a whack on the head or something - mo got epilepsy
5) When he got the seizures he claimed to get messages from the big cheese. Sometimes folks believed him and sometimes they didn't. For some reason all the messages were to the benefit of the epileptic boy toy.
6) He used his position as the boy toy trader with epileptic visions to become the bandit chief with booty and a creed of pillage to become the messenger warchief bandit godlet of the rampaging tribes. Something that presaged the cults of the 20th Century with Lenin Stalin Trotsky Mao Che Ho Hitler Emp H. Castro and Kimmy.... A real bloodsucking prototype for future b*stards.
7) He then turned holy war into an art and rape and sacking into harem and sharia justice.
Sounds about right but I likely missed some points...
Tribal, banditry gone holy.
Then he went apesh*t assuming more about what I believed so I wrote (wanting stop his attack on any religion I might or might not claim): As to my base religious nature Goel - it ran more toward "The Merry Pranksters" as so well described by Mr. Wolfe in some Koolaid test or other...
A roomie from those days still enjoys Burning Man.
Of all the religions the most dangerous to thinking men is the sharia of death one.
It is a Meme of entropy.
Then I sat back and watched as he went totally bonkers on everything and everybody...
Bugs would have loved me... a true elmer fudd moment...
#15
First it was the West getting out of the Saudi Apartheid Islamic Republic, then Israel, giving up Jello, then Indonesia, then Philippines, (fill in the blanks for several 100s of other things), now beer. Shit Ayman, aren't you busy enough managing your honor by dictating what happens between the thighs of Muslim mothers, sisters and wives? Come on, stay out of my womb (oops, that's been take and copyrighted by NOW) I mean frig!
Sri Lanka's air force carried out a series of attacks against Tamil Tiger rebel targets, including a heavy gun position and a guerrilla training camp, while a separate infantry clash killed four guerrillas, the military said Saturday.
It said jets bombed the gun position in the rebel headquarters of Kilinochchi on Friday and the training camp in Visvamadu village on Saturday. Also Saturday, helicopters bombed a group of rebels who were trying to stop soldiers from reaching Paranthan, a strategic crossroads north of Kilinochchi, it said in a statement. Pilots claimed success in all the attacks, the military said, without giving casualty details.
Meanwhile, military spokesman Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara said soldiers captured Otiyamalai village in the northeastern Mullaitivu district Saturday in a move that could make several other rebel bases unstable and prove crucial for the military's march deeper into rebel territory. Soldiers also killed four guerrillas and beat back a counterattack in Mullaitivu district, he said.
Rebel officials could not be reached for comment. It is difficult to verify battlefield reports because most reporters are barred from the war zone. The government has vowed to crush the rebels to end their decades-old separatist war. It says its forces are closing in on Kilinochchi, the rebels' de facto capital, while other troops are advancing toward the rebel stronghold of Mullaitivu on the northeastern coast. The rebels have been forced to give up large swathes of territory in heavy battles over the past several months.
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The Iranian Air Force will be the 'ultimate bulwark' against foreign threats in the event of war, says a senior military commander. "Today our Air Force is carefully guarding national interests and is capable of defending the country in the face of foreign threats," said the Chief Commander of Iran's Air Force, Hassan Shah-Safi on Saturday.
Brigadier General Shah-Safi said the Iranian Air Force has concentrated efforts to upgrade its defense capabilities following calls by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
Iran's military developments come at a time when the Israeli Air Force is reportedly devising contingency plans for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Recent reports of Israeli military preparations have fueled speculation that Tel Aviv intends to stage its third attack on Middle Eastern countries over nuclear allegations. Israel had earlier attacked Iraq and Syria, claiming that they sought to attain nuclear weapons technology.
The Hurriyet quoted US political strategist Charles Krauthammer as saying that Israel would strike the Islamic Republic in the same manner it bombed Syria in September 2007. "The Israelis would not attack (Iran) over Iraq. The way to go is through Turkey...When Israel attacked the reactor in Syria, it went up the Mediterranean and through Turkish air space," Krauthammer said.
The Iranian armed forces have repeatedly warned that any attempted violation of Iran's territorial integrity would be a 'suicidal folly'. "After failure in its 33-day-war on Lebanon, Israel has realized that any effort or movement against Iran would have devastating consequences," the top Iranian military commander Yahya Rahim-Safavi said in November.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#3
IIRC, the Russians were reportedly interested in dev a new advanced version of their venerable MIG21???
Again, IRAN had warned that any ISRAELI attck on IRAN would be interpreted as a US strike on Iran and VICE VERSA, and thus would justify either a formal IRANIAN MIL RESPONSE ANDOR AN IRAN-SPONSORED "THIRD-PARTY/PROXY" = TERROR RESPONSE AGZ US-ISRAELI INTERESTS IN REGION AND AROUND THE WORLD.
IOW, any MIL STRIKE AGZ IRAN WOULD SIGNAL A GENERAL WAR WID IRAN + PRO-IRAN ISLAMIST TERROR GROUPS. As before, and regardless of ISRAELI FORMALLY JOINING NATO, THE EU, ANDOR THE PROPOSED MEDITERRANEIAN UNION, ETC. THE BEST SCENARIO FOR ISRAEL REMAINS TO LET THE USA ATTACK AND INVADE IRAN SINCE IRAN WOULD CONSIDER ANY ISRAELI-ONLY STRIKE AS A US STRIKE ANYWAY [ + vice versa].
* E.g. IRANIAN.WS/OTHER > Iran desires to have as many as 50,000 centrifuges [NUCENERGY?] running in FIVE YEARS [NLT 2012-2013]???
Two people were killed in a bomb blast early on Saturday. The victims were identified as Wahidullah from Sadu Khel and Shafiullah from Wali Khel. A government official told Daily Times that the deceased might have been carrying explosives which exploded before they had used it. A resident said the nearby truck stand might have been their target because trucks carrying American consignments to Afghanistan used the stand. A Khasadar official said the administration would investigate the blast.
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Iran has sentenced to death three men convicted of a mosque bombing which left 14 people dead in the southern city of Shiraz in April, Kayhan newspaper reported on Saturday.
Prosecutor Ali Akbar Heidari-Far said Mohsen Eslamian, 21, and Ali Asghar Pashtar, 20 - both university students - and Rouzbeh Yahyazadeh, 32, would be hanged in Shiraz once the sentence was confirmed by the supreme court. "A revolutionary court in Tehran has found the three main accused of the case to be 'mohareb' (enemies of God) and 'corrupt on the earth'," he said, without disclosing when the verdict was issued.
The three men were tried over the bombing of a packed mosque during evening prayers in Shiraz and also faced charges of "belonging to a terrorist group," co-operating with hostile armed groups, seeking to overthrow the Islamic system and planning to launch other attacks. "This verdict has been sent to the supreme court for validation and as soon the confirmation of the sentence returns they are going to be hanged in Shiraz," Heidari-Far added.
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Egypt is willing to intervene militarily against piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the Somali coast, alone or as part of an international force, a minister said in remarks published on Saturday.
"Egypt is prepared for military intervention if necessary, to protect shipping and tackle the pirates, who can be fought under international law," state newspaper Al-Ahram quoted Moufid Shehab, minister of state for legal and parliamentary affairs, as saying.
Egypt is also ready to take part in an international force, he added.
The Somali-based pirates threaten to cut into Egypt's Suez Canal revenue by pushing ships into using the Cape of Good Hope route around Africa instead of using the canal to travel between Asia and Europe or America. At least three major shipping companies have said in the past few days that their ships would avoid the canal, fearing pirates would capture their ships and hold them for ransom.
Many countries have sent warships to the Gulf of Aden to deter piracy but the area is vast and they cannot prevent every attack. Once the pirates take a ship and hold the crew hostage, any rescue attempt endangers the lives of the crew. Shehab's remarks was the first official sign that Egypt is considering a military response. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said that tackling piracy is the responsibility of the "international community". Naval experts say the Egyptian navy has enough suitable ships to make an effective contribution to an anti-piracy operation.
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11/30/2008
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#1
Hmm. An Egyptian ship armed with the equivalent of 50-cals has the balls to volunteer for this, but western governments are too scared to get involved at much more than a symbolic level unless shamed into action. Hmm.
#2
"Hmm. An Egyptian ship ...has the balls..."
they also have a vested interest in seeing traffic through the canal, something that Western powers don't. as long as the good reach port, someway, it is easier passing on the higher costs to the consumer, rather than actually doing anything about the problem. i personally expect Bambi to pull any USN 'anti-pirate' assets out and deploy elsewhere.
#3
The Baltic Dry Weight shipping index has dropped by an eye-popping 90% this year. Leased ships are cheap at the moment. Increased insurance rates for the Suez route make the Cape route economic.
#4
An Egyptian ship armed with the equivalent of 50-cals has the balls to volunteer for this, but western governments are too scared to get involved at much more than a symbolic level unless shamed into action.
More like the Egyptians see a severe monetary loss, due to decreased Suez Canal traffic. 'Balls' have nothing to do with it.
At this point, proportionally few 'Western' ships have been taken and 'Western' traffic has not been seriously impaired.. Q.E.D., few Western governments see the need to get involved at anything more than a symbolic level.
Insurance rates will rise, just as they did in Southest Asia. The 'Western' nations have alternatives. The Mid-East and Eastern Africa do not. Just as in Southeast Asia, the regional nations are going to have to take matters into their own hands.
#5
BTW, this almost an exclusively a European problem and their trading partners in the ME and Asia. Little US trade goes through the Suez Canal and that which does can more easily take the Cape route than Euro trade.
Anti-government protesters tightened their grip on Bangkok's international airport on Saturday, attacking police checkpoints aimed at stopping more people from joining the blockade.
In the latest clash, about 150 riot police fled their checkpoint near Suvarnabhumi airport after they were assaulted by protesters hurling iron rods and firecrackers from speeding cars.
The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) movement, which invaded the airport four days ago, then stationed guards on the expressway exit to prevent the police returning.
The protests, aimed at forcing out Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, have paralyzed flights, stranded thousands of passengers and sparked rumors of a military coup, even though the army chief has said he will not seize control.
Earlier, about 2,000 PAD members forced riot police to abandon another checkpoint near the airport. There was no violence, but one police officer was detained by PAD "security guards", the Nation newspaper reported on its website.
The PAD's occupation of Suvarnabhumi, and a second older airport in Bangkok, is a dramatic escalation of their six-month street campaign against Somchai.
The airport closures have crippled the tourism industry during the peak end-of-year season. Somchai, who has refused to quit, imposed emergency rule at the airports two days ago but police have made no moves to evict the thousands of protesters.
Somchai, who is running the government from its political stronghold in the northern city of Chiang Mai, demoted his national police chief on Friday. While no official reason was given, Thai newspapers said he had been sacked for refusing to send riot police in to end the protest.
"Shoot them back"
The PAD, a coalition of royalist businessmen, activists and academics who accuse Somchai of being a puppet of his brother-in-law, ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, seized the airports in a "final battle" to unseat the government.
At Suvarnabhumi, PAD youths armed with iron stakes and wearing police riot helmets manned barricades, scanning with binoculars for signs of police or pro-government gangs. "If they come, we'll not open the door. If they shoot us, we'll shoot them back. We'll die if that makes the country better," PAD leader Sondhi Limthongul told supporters, the most explicit admission yet by the movement that they are armed.
His co-leader, retired general Chamlong Srimuang, said the PAD had not held talks with authorities, but was open to meet "with people directly involved in the situation such as Somchai".
The crisis has reached an apparent stalemate, with the government seeking a peaceful solution but also under pressure to tackle opponents who have already cost Southeast Asia's second-biggest economy billions of dollars.
Pressure is building on the army to oust the prime minister, as they did Thaksin in 2006, after Somchai rejected military calls to quit this week.
But army chief Anupong Paochinda has said he would not take over, arguing the military cannot heal fundamental political rifts between the Bangkok elite and middle classes, who despise Thaksin, and the poor rural and urban majority who love him.
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#1
...arguing the military cannot heal fundamental political rifts between the Bangkok elite and middle classes, who despise Thaksin, and the poor rural and urban majority who love him.
Sounds like a bunch of bible thumping, gun totting red necks to me. So, them citified folk are blues, and them rural folks are reds? /sarcasm off
President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday went all out to deny any Pakistani role in the Mumbai attacks and pledged action against any group found to be involved, while advising New Delhi not to 'over-react'.
"Whoever is responsible for the brutal and crude act against the Indian people and India are looking for reaction," Zardari said in an interview with Indian CNN-IBN television. "We have to rise above them and make sure ourselves, yourself and world community guard against over-reaction," he said according to an interview transcript issued by the Press Trust of India.
Zardari promised that he would take immediate and strong measures if proof of Pakistani involvement was provided. "Let me assure you that if any evidence points to any individual or any group in this part of the world, I shall take the strictest of action in the light of this evidence and in front of the world," he said. Zardari argued that reducing the Mumbai attacks to an India-Pakistan problem was counter-productive.
"This is a world threat and all the more reason we have to stand up against this threat together," he said. Zardari said there was miscommunication with India over sending the ISI director general to India. "We had announced that a director will come from my side. That is what was requested by the [Indian] prime minister and that is what we agreed," he said.
"It is too early for the director generals to meet at the moment. Let the evidence come to light, let the investigation take its course. Then perhaps there is a position where the directors general could meet," Zardari said. "The DG is too senior a person to get into the investigation. He is a person who overall looks into the investigation," the president said.
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#2
Step 2: Musharraf Zardari "flips" to the Indian side.
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008 7:24
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#3
I'm writing an opinion piece that points out that the credit cards, IDs, GPS's with saved location is a deliberately left trail of clues pointing back to Pakistan.
The reason such a trail would be left is to ensure Pakistan gets the blame and India is justified (in the eyes of the world) in harsher actions against Pakistan.
The elements in Pakistan behind this clearly want a rift with India and the West. I also think they want a return to a pre-9/11 world when Afghanistan was the ISI's plaything.
CAMP SPEICHER, Iraq -- Al Qaeda and other extremist groups aren't the only enemy facing U.S. troops stationed at this massive base in central Iraq. The Americans also are engaged in the mother of all battles -- against gaining weight.
You've heard of the freshman 15. How about the Iraq 20?
Forget the K-rations of World War II and the chewy, tasteless MREs -- "Meals, Ready-to-Eat" -- that sustained U.S. Soldiers in more recent conflicts. With most of America's 150,000 troops in Iraq living on large bases, the combat ration has given way to a smorgasbord of food that has some Soldiers bingeing and others in fits.
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#1
The fried chicken, and the garlic bread at the pasta bar, and the late-night ("mid-rats") onion rings were my main enemies, and I think the result was a stand-off. I might have gained a pound or two, at most. If work had been a little less insane - and I had been more disciplined - I'd have easily burned off the extra at the palace gym, or Liberty pool (I left before the days of suddenly competent, er .... Iranian-led and trained .... mortar attacks on the IZ, so the pool was open).
There was actually quite a bit of fruit available (and salads, either fresh or 3-bean sort, depending), so one could do the right thing if one had the will or inclination. By the second year there were even dates harvested from the palace grounds, which had a "library" of date trees (I think the best/biggest in Iraq).
The food the employees brought in was usually stellar, either home-cooked or commercial (oh, the baklava from the several famous bakeries in Mansour .... mmmmmmm).
Amidst this paradoxical culinary plenty, and in a building that was a 24-hour military HQ as well as an embassy and much else, the enduring mystery: lousy coffee. A Green Beans coffee bar opened in the palace ballroom, offering a quality alternative (and great "gift cards" good only in Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, etc.), and many offices/individuals had beans they ground and brewed on their own. But KBR's failure on coffee was striking, given the tremendous job they did (IMHO) on food in general.
Another amusing detail: the Iraqi employees who helped themselves to plenty of bacon at breakfast time. Man, do I love bacon (like most), and I've never had it available every day of the week. I recall before going over, wondering if there'd be pork at all ..... !!!
And I still recall the pulled-pork sandwiches that were offered now and then the second year. In the heart of the ancient caliphate, a foreign invader amidst the dust, heat, and mostly dud mortars and rockets - and the pulled-pork sandwich was damn close to something you'd get at Parker's in Wilson, NC, just to pick a great one at random .... THAT is American power on display.
#4
Food in Vietnam was ok but not sensational. Some of the food downtown was strange, but pretty good. And MREs are WAY better than K-rats or C-rats. The best chow hall food I've ever had was at the chow hall at Bolling AFB, in DC. The worst was at a transit lounge on Okinawa. Most food, at most bases, was at least edible, and some of it was well above average.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/30/2008 12:56
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#5
"Good Food" > HERESY, HERESY I SAY! How are soldiers going to defeat an enemy army iff they're happy with their food - ITS JUST NOT DONE, PEOPLE, LIKE HAVING JOHN WAYNE PLAY "HAMLET" OR "ROMEO", OR GODZILLA NOT STOMP TOKYO!?
* "OHH Juliet, my Juliet, wherefor art thou, PIL-G-RI-I-I-M"!
#6
Has Gawd as My Witness, Ima start playing the lotto. It's the only chance I got for a sudden outbreak of serious monies.
gOTTeM huuuuge desire suddenly to rent a 747 and make about 12 stops.... before the run from San Diego to Guam... an then we will have the clarity, the understanding we need to continue during time of the 2nd Seventies.
Iraqi authorities have uncovered several shallow graves north of Baghdad containing the bodies of 33 people believed to have been executed by Al-Qaeda earlier this year, officials said on Saturday. Police, health officials and local residents unearthed the bodies, many of which had been blindfolded and handcuffed, at the village of Abu Toama in the Diyala province north of Baghdad, one of the deadliest regions in the country.
Dr Ahmed Fuad, director of the morgue at the main hospital in the provincial capital of Baquba, confirmed he had received the bodies but had not yet determined their time of death.
One of the corpses had a woman's long hair and another appeared to be a child, according to an AFP photographer.
The bodies appeared to be around a year old, meaning they would have been killed in the months after Al-Qaeda seized control of the area in late 2007, district police chief Major General Ibrahim al-Anbaki said.
Residents said Al-Qaeda drove everyone out of the village in early 2008 and transformed it into a "courthouse" where they tried and executed people from surrounding areas according to a radical interpretation of Islamic law. The killings took place over several months, with small groups of bodies buried together at different times, Anbaki said.
When US and Iraqi security forces drove Al-Qaeda out of the area earlier this year, returning villagers were tipped off to the shallow graves by the smell of decay and an abundance of stray dogs in the area, Anbaki said. "We expect to find other graves in the orchards of this village," he added.
The ethnically and religiously mixed Diyala province, once famous for its verdant orchards, has seen scores of attacks and sectarian killings in recent years and remains dangerous despite US and Iraqi security crackdowns.
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Indian officials said Saturday that they had killed or captured 10 gunmen responsible for the three-day assault on India's financial and cultural capital. Nearly 200 people died in the attacks that began Wednesday.
The violence ended Saturday morning when government security forces, methodically searching the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel here, killed the last four gunmen.
The violence ended Saturday morning when government security forces, methodically searching the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel here, killed the last four gunmen. Officials said that around the city, nine gunmen had died and one was captured. The commandos recovered 22 bodies at the Taj Mahal hotel Saturday. Clean-up operations at the hotel continued through the day.
"Many unexploded hand grenades were lying on the corridors, we want to defuse them and only then wanted to declare the building safe," said J. K. Dutt, the chief of the National Security Guard, India's specialized commando troops. "We checked the rooms to see if there are any small bombs, near the air conditioners or any other corner."
Authorities said that the death toll had risen to 195 as more bodies were discovered and that 295 people were wounded, in the attacks on two luxury hotels, the Jewish center and several other sites in Mumbai. Among the dead were two Americans from Virginia; the American rabbi who ran the city's Chabad-Lubavitch center and his Israeli wife; and three of their visitors, including an American man, an Israeli woman and a man with U.S. and Israeli citizenship. In all, at least 16 non-Indians have been reported killed.
The government used 350 security forces and 400 police officers to capture or kill the gunmen, officials announced at a news conference Saturday. On the basis of preliminary inquiry, we know that there were a total of 10 terrorists. Nine have been eliminated, one is caught," said Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. "They split into teams of two for action, and there were four at the Taj."
In Washington, President Bush pledged U.S. aid to India as it investigates the attacks and said U.S. officials are working to ensure the safety of Americans in India.
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Earlier this week, for example, Pakistan President Assif Ali Zardari announced his readiness to settle the dispute with India over Kashmir, promising an end to a conflict that has led to four wars and countless terrorist campaigns over the past 50 years. This plus the desire to disband ISI's Political Wing probably precipitated this assault.
On Wednesday, terror organizations that do not wish the Kashmir problem to be solved offered their opinion of such a shift.
The attacks in Bombay likely were carried out by Hindi-speaking Islamists with possible links to elements within the Pakistani intelligence community who have built their careers and personal fortunes around the Kashmir issue. These elements are serving notice that they would resist Zardari's dramatic departure from a long-established policy of enmity against India.
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Posted by: Frozen Al ||
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#1
Taheri's opinion piece in the Telegraph is much better as he lays out the islamic justifications for terror, torture, etc.
Scores of western sleuths are arriving in India to collaborate on the investigations of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, fast becoming a global issue. Sources here said the US, the UK, and Israel were collaborating with India in the investigations and sending experts to interrogate the lone apprehended terrorist, and a team of Afghanistan-based CIA operatives, Foreign Ministry officials from Israel, and intelligence officials from the UK will arrive in Mumbai on Monday, sources said. An FBI team is also on its way to Mumbai to join the investigation.
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The United Nations' special envoy to Congo chided Congo's main rebel leader during a second round of peace talks Saturday for breaking a cease-fire, according to video footage taken inside the closed-door meeting. The footage, taken by the U.N. and made available to journalists, shows an angry mediator, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, berating rebel leader Laurent Nkunda for starting an offensive along the border with Uganda last week, thus breaking a cease-fire in the middle of peace talks.
Since the first round of peace talks on Nov. 16, Nkunda's forces have clashed with the army several times, and rebels captured two border posts and a town last week.
"You are making me a laughingstock," Obasanjo told a seated Nkunda as the Nigerian paced angrily. "What has happened in the last 14 days has not made me happy," Obasanjo said, adding, "If there is anything that will make you make a move against a self-imposed cease-fire by you, you should let me know. When I finished my first round of talks, I reported to you. You haven't built the same confidence in me and I feel disappointed.'
But Nkunda claims the cease-fire was only meant to apply to the Congolese army. He declared a unilateral cease-fire in late October, when his forces reached the edge of the eastern Congolese provincial capital of Goma. "We agreed for a cease-fire with government forces, not with negative and foreign forces," he said. He said he will continue on his primary mission of protecting ethnic Tutsis from Hutu fighters who fled to Congo from Rwanda after that country's 1994 genocide.
"They are not allowed to be here. No," he said. "And I have to fight them wherever I can."
The insurgents began an offensive Nov. 22 in the town of Ishasha in an effort to push some 1,500 Hutu militiamen, many of whom are believed to be Rwandan exiles, out of Congo. More than 10,000 people have fled to neighboring Uganda because of the violence.
Obasanjo and Nkunda met for more than an hour Saturday in the rebel-held town of Jomba near the Ugandan border. Nkunda said the former president told him the government "accepted the principle" of a face-to-face meeting with Congolese officials but did not agree on where to hold the talks. Obasanjo met with President Joseph Kabila earlier this week.
Nkunda added that if the government refuses to negotiate, "they will be choosing the way of fighting. And I know they do not have any capacity to fight."
The rebels and government soldiers all are accused of grave atrocities against civilians.
Nkunda, a former general, quit Congo's army in 2004 to launch a rebellion. Critics, however, say Nkunda is more interested in power and the country's mineral wealth.
No, reeeeeeally?
Obasanjo last met Nkunda earlier this month, when the rebel leader promised to support a cease-fire.
Some refugees already have fled three or four times since years of low-level fighting in eastern Congo intensified with a rebel offensive launched Aug. 28. More than 250,000 people have abandoned their homes since then.
On Friday, the U.N.'s top human rights official called for urgent action to stop the killing, rape and looting in eastern Congo. The U.N. Security Council also has agreed to reinforce its mission in Congo with 3,000 more soldiers and police because the current mission of 17,000 is spread too thin.
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The banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LT) denied its involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks even as US media and intelligence speculated about the group's possible role in the attacks that left over 200 people, including several foreigners, dead in India's financial capital, Mumbai.
The New York Times reported on its website there was mounting evidence implicating the Kashmir-based LT.
Citing unnamed intelligence and counterterrorism officials, the newspaper said US intelligence agencies had not so far reached any firm conclusions about the perpetrators of the attacks. However, they said evidence gathered in the past two days pointed to LT or possibly another group based in Kashmir, the Jaish-e-Muhammad, according to the report.
A US counterterrorism official told AFP the LT might have been responsible.
"Some of the things that have been learnt thus far do point in the direction of a Kashmiri connection," the counter-terrorism official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But it's still too early for definitive conclusions. That does go beyond the fact that some of the features of the attacks are consistent with the sorts of things that we have seen from Kashmiri groups in the past," the official said.
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I'm no fan of salon.com, but this article raises questions surrounding a widely-viewed video on liveleak & youtube.
Editor's note: On Oct. 14, 2008, Salon published an article about the deaths of Army Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Roger Suarez. The Army attributed their deaths in Iraq in 2006 to enemy action; Salon's investigation, which included graphic battle video and eyewitness testimony, indicated that their deaths were likely due to friendly fire.
After Salon published Benjamin's Oct. 14 report, the Army ordered soldiers to shred documents about the men. As proof that they were ordered to destroy the paperwork, a soldier saved some examples and provided them to Salon.
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#1
The Army attributed their deaths in Iraq in 2006 to enemy action; Salon's investigation, which included graphic battle video and eyewitness testimony, indicated that their deaths were likely due to friendly fire.
That is not inconsistent. You wouldn't have 'fire' enemy or friendly if there wasn't "enemy action" [at least we expect that discipline to be such that our troops didn't engage the weapons without the enemy present]. That does not preclude the fatal wounds were not inflicted just by enemy fire.
Now this will lead to a full investigation. Everyone had better lawyer up because several violations of the UCMJ have occurred whether or not all the facts are valid in the article. Both sides are subject to various Articles of the UCMJ.
Art. 78. Accessory after the fact
Art. 92. Failure to obey order or regulation
Art. 98. Noncompliance with procedural rules
Art. 107. False official statements
Art. 131. Perjury
for any commissioned officer
Art. 133. Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman
and if the lads did believe they were ordered to do an illegal act they also could have gone with -
"Art. 138. Complaints of wrongs
Any member of the armed forces who believes himself wronged by his commanding officer, and who, upon due application to that commanding officer, is refused redress, may complain to any superior commissioned officer, who shall forward the complaint to the officer exercising general court-martial jurisdiction over the officer against whom it is made. The officer exercising general court-martial jurisdiction shall examine into the complaint and take proper measures for redressing the wrong complained of; and he shall, as soon as possible, send to the Secretary concerned a true statement of that complaint, with the proceedings had thereon."
which is pretty much a nuke handgrenade, but considering where they are now, not much different.
#2
"two who were present in Ramadi during the friendly fire incident, one of them just feet from where Nelson and Suarez died -- were ordered to shred two boxes full of documents"
This doesn't pass the smell test unless they are using combat infantry as file clerks up at higher HQ.
#4
-- were ordered to shred two boxes full of documents"
Thinking more on that - two boxes? Hell of a lot of witness statements to be two boxes. Personnel records went digital and minimal well before then. So two boxes of what paper? Which, if anyone has done staff work would understand, would be multiple copies of various drafts sent to applicable offices for comments and reviews on work at hand. And the second and third rewrites because someone wants 'shall' rewritten to 'will'. Originals would normally be kept, but staffing copies would be destroyed rather than just trashed because of privacy requirements.
The federal cabinet has decided to co-operate with India to investigate the Mumbai terror attacks, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday. "It is in the interest of Pakistan and India to co-operate to defeat terrorists," he told reporters after an in-camera cabinet meeting.
Qureshi said Pakistan and all state institutions stood united against terrorism and would give full moral and material support to India. He said terrorism was a common threat and Pakistan was standing shoulder to shoulder with India to combat terrorism.
Qureshi said Pakistan attached the highest importance to its relations with India and recognised good relations were vital for peace and stability of the region. He asked the media to help lower the tension by playing a positive role in the crisis.
Action: To a question, he said India suspected that some of the terrorists came from Pakistan and the government would take action against any element or group found involved in the Mumbai tragedy.
Dialogue: The foreign minister admitted that the on-going composite dialogue would be affected by the latest terrorists activities.
"It is serious and I am concerned about it, as our relations were improving and India was warming up for further engagements with Pakistan," he said. He said finger pointing or coming to hasty conclusions was like playing in the hands of common enemies.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#1
Great pic, Fred! LOL!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/30/2008 0:21
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Pakistan has demanded evidence for Indian charges it was involved in the Mumbai attacks and reversed its decision to send its spy chief to India.
Pakistan's government on Saturday reinforced its pledge to help India identify and apprehend those behind the attacks, which left more than 190 people dead in the financial hub of Mumbai. "We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Indian people to defeat this common enemy," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a news conference in Islamabad.
However, Qureshi insisted that Pakistani authorities - including intelligence agencies that New Delhi has long accused of sponsoring terrorism - were not behind the carnage. "If they have evidence they should share it with us," Qureshi said. "Our hands are clean."
His government also backed off a pledge made on Friday to send the chief of its Inter Services Intelligence agency in person. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari blamed the about-face on a "miscommunication" with India. Zardari said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had asked in a telephone call on Friday only that a "director" of the agency not the chief go to India.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#2
Like you couldn't see that one coming. IIRC the Foreign Minister was the one who announced he was coming.
Then a General announces he's not coming after all. This is like the 3rd time the military has publically slapped down the Foreign Minister in a week.
From now on we should disregard anything Qureshi says on military matters.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/30/2008 15:06
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#3
Pakistan had better take this seriously. I don't think any country is in a mood to take any more of Pakistan's lame excuses. For years they have been telling us that they have no idea where bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Dawood Ibrahim are and that they aren't in Pakistan when the entire world knows that the opposite is true.
Practically any major terror event in the world is traceable to Pakistan.
Pakistan had better change their attitude concerning this stuff. If the government can not control what goes on, then maybe it is time to install a government that can control what goes on.
The Palestinian group Hamas has claimed responsibility for Friday's shelling of an Israeli military base along Israel's frontier with the Gaza Strip where six soldiers were wounded. "In response to the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades attacked the Nahal Oz military base," Hamas's armed wing said on Saturday, referring to the border kibbutz that has a military garrison. Three mortar bombs landed in Nahal Oz on Friday, hours after an Israeli air strike wounded two Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#2
Funny story. Several years back my then 8 year old son asked me, "dad what's heroin?" We were at dinner and all the diners near us immediately stopped what they were doing and leaned in to hear how I would respond. It was like the old E F Hutton commercials.
I stammered a bit looking around the room and finally said, "son it is a horrible drug."
He said, "no dad, my teacher said Amelia Erhart is a Heroine what are you talking about?"
Palestinian pilgrims bound for Mecca were prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip via Egypt on Saturday as the enclave's Hamas rulers and the rival PA leadership in the West Bank traded blame for the hold-up. The pilgrims hope to reach Saudi Arabia next week for the annual hajj pilgrimage.
"They started it!"
"Did not!"
"Did, too!"
"Not!"
"Did"
"Liar!"
"You're the liar!"
"Liar liar pants on fire!"
"Neener neener neener! He ain't go no wiener!"
"Mom!"
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#1
John Bunion meets John Barleycorn in Pilgrims Progress - The Next Generation
Indian troops shot dead seven militants, including two alleged Pakistanis, in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) ahead of another round of voting in state elections, police said on Saturday. "The militants were killed in two separate gunbattles in Pulwama and Bandipora districts," a police statement said. Two of the militants were Pakistani nationals and 'both were members of Lashkar-e-Tayba' militant group, the statement alleged. The fighting came ahead of Sunday's third round of voting in Kupwara district, considered 'sensitive' by election officials because it borders Azad Kashmir. Indian troops have ringed all 448 voting stations to provide 'foolproof security' to voters in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, a police officer said.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Barely a couple of weeks ago my stepsister, Shalaka, got married at the Taj hotel in Mumbai. Last Wednesday night my stepfather, Ajit, called to pay the bill. When he arrived home 10 minutes later he realised he had left his mobile phone charger behind, so he called Mandira, the Taj banquet manager.
"I can't speak now, sir," she said. "We're under attack."
Ajit lives in a building next door to Mumbai's other big hotel, the Oberoi. Within a few moments, he heard gunshots from there too.
In the 48 hours that followed, his neighbourhood was sealed off and his building came under attack. In the windows of the Oberoi he saw deserted rooms, half-drawn curtains, fires, brown smoke and gunmen moving from floor to floor.
By Friday, he knew that three chefs who had worked at his daughter's wedding and the family of the Taj's general manager were dead. Friends of his sisters had also been killed. As terrorist attacks went -- and Mumbai has known several in the past few years -- it didn't come much closer to home than this.
My stepfather's reaction came in the form of a text message the next day. It read: "Pardon Afzal [Muhammad Afzal, accused of attacking the Indian parliament in 2001], hang Sadhvi [a woman accused of participating in the only act of Hindu terrorism in a Muslim neighbourhood], Ban the Bajrang Dal [a Hindu extremist organisation], talk to Simi [a Muslim student organisation of which the Indian mujaheddin, responsible for a string of attacks in Indian cities, is said to be a part], restrict the Amarnath pilgrimage [a Hindu pilgrimage that led to upheavals in the Kashmir valley last summer] fund the Haj. Wow! Truly, my India is great! Fwd 2all Hindus."
This message, steeped in irony, read like a roll call of the issues and violence that have divided Hindu and Muslim India over the past year. Almost a call to arms, it contained the great, twofold rage that has grown in Hindu India: the feeling that Islamic terrorism seeks to destroy the vigorous "new India" and the suspicion that the state is either unable or unwilling to defend itself -- for cynical reasons, such as shoring up the Muslim vote for the government.
The attacks on Mumbai -- a city that, in its prosperity, its hybridity and openness to the world, stands as a symbol of the new and energised India -- confirmed to many what they had long feared.
Within hours of the attacks, groups gathered in the streets of Mumbai, chanting "Bharat Mata ki Jai" (Victory to Mother India) and singing "Vande Mataram" (Bow to you Mother), a patriotic song that Muslims had objected to as the choice for the national anthem because it implied obeisance to gods other than Allah.
Many British commentators have asked in surprise why India is being targeted. There is no confusion among Indians themselves. When the terrorists say on their websites that they seek to break up India and reclaim it for Islam, they speak a language many Hindu Indians understand. And India has proved to be the softest of soft targets.
More than 4,000 Indians have died in terrorist attacks -- the country is the second biggest victim of terror after Iraq and virtually every one of its big cities has faced a terrorist attack. Yet the government has no centralised terrorist database, its intelligence is abysmal and there is little evidence that the state knows who it is fighting.
In dragging its feet, the Indian state does nobody a greater disservice than Indian Muslims. When there are no real suspects, arrests or trials, everyone becomes a suspect. Already an underclass, with low literacy rates, low incomes and poor representation in government jobs, Indian Muslims are increasingly alienated. There is also great pressure on them.
Nobody wants to listen to genuine grievances about poverty, illiteracy and unemployment in the face of a real threat to the country. Many Hindus want Muslims to come clean on the issue of the jihad and to make clear whose side they're on.
Far from responding positively to this pressure, some Indian Muslims are simply beginning to see their grievances as part of a global conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim.
India's position in this is unique. It has the largest Muslim minority population in the world (13.4% of the population, or about 150m) but unlike Muslims in western Europe, they are not immigrants.
They have been part of India for centuries.
This is why all Indians -- Muslims and Hindu alike -- know that the deepening divide threatens the country's existence.
Many years ago, a divide like this re-energised the Hindu nationalist BJP. Today who knows who it might throw up? The hour of men like Narendra Modi, who oversaw a pogrom of Indian Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, might have come at last.
Aatish Taseer is the author of Stranger to History: A Son's Journey through Islamic Lands, to be published in March by Canongate.
#2
I'm surprised that no one has made the simple formula.
When Muslims are above a percentage of a nation's population, they start to cause trouble. So what is that percentage? And is it graduated?
For example, at 3%, they start demanding the right to have their own schools. At 5%, they start demanding the right for Sharia courts for their community.
At 7% they insist that punishing the bad behavior of Muslims is persecution, and that they are being victimized. At 8%, they demand maximum government services while contributing nothing, and start engaging in lawfare.
At 10%, again for example, they start to demand that non-Muslims come under Muslim restrictions, out of "fairness", yet systematically start to persecute and attack other religions and peoples. etc.
At least three people were killed and two injured in a missile attack by a suspected United States drone in Chashma village in North Waziristan Agency, local sources said on Saturday.
They said that the attack targeted the house of a local tribesman Taj Muhammad, around two kilometres south of Miranshah. There was no immediate information about the identity of those killed.
However, official sources denied reports of the suspected drone attack on North Waziristan Agency, APP reported.
"The news of a missile strike on North Waziristan is incorrect," the official sources said. US drone attacks on Pakistani territories continue despite the government's repeated condemnations of unilateral action. The government maintains that such attacks thwart local peace efforts.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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#1
Dronezap just doesn't have the same ring to it as Helizap. Sigh! I guess you can't have everything.
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008 7:33
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#7
"The government maintains that such attacks thwart local peace efforts."
Yes, if America would just stand down in FATA and the tribal areas of NWP, the taliban, and their alqaeda allies would be talking peace with the Paki-wakkies. Pakiwakkie-talibunnie peace means something totally different from the Western concept of peace.
Tensions with India would force Pakistan to pull nearly 100,000 troops from its western borders, Defence sources said on Saturday.
The officials said Pakistan had already made it clear to the US and NATO that in case of mounting escalation with India, Pakistan's priority on the war on terror would shift and it would to take care of the more immediate threat to its security.
Events in Mumbai do seem a bit .. convenient ...
They said Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee threatened Pakistan and its leadership and that forced Pakistan to adopt a tougher line. India had already put its air force on high alert, they said, adding Pakistan would take measures to ensure its security and safeguard its interests.
They said India had not given any evidence of the alleged involvement of groups or individuals from Pakistan in the Mumbai attacks, and Pakistan would take action against such elements if there was credible evidence.
"I can say with my authority under my command that there's no involvement of any Pakistani institution in any manner," Reuters quoted a high-ranking officer as telling reporters at a briefing. "It's not an ideal situation for a country to go to war. Coercion is there and it's going up and it needs to be neutralised."They said that instead of blaming Pakistan, India should try to find the real culprits.
According to a private TV channel, the defence officials said the next 48 hours would be crucial. "They'll have clarity of thought and we'll have clarity of the situation in next 24-48 hours," Reuters quoted officials as saying.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#1
They said India had not given any evidence of the alleged involvement of groups or individuals from Pakistan in the Mumbai attacks, and Pakistan would take action against such elements if there was credible evidence.
I guess the Smile Test has yet to make it to Pakistan.
Senior Somali opposition leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed says they are going to have more seats in the evolving parliament.
Sharif announced the likelihood of greater opposition say in the future parliament which, he claimed, is going to be comprised of 550 seats, the Press TV correspondent in Somalia reported. He also raised the possibility of constitutional reforms.
The opposition and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) have been holding talks aimed at formation of a national-unity government. The negotiations recently yielded a power-sharing pact.
The opposition faction based in Asmara, Eritrea, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), however, opposes the idea vowing to resist compromise.
Posted by: Fred ||
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#4
MMBtu = 1 Million BTUs
Oil = 5.8 MMBtu
So your $6 Nat gas is oil equiv is $34.80.
Looking at 11/28 NYMEX Nat gas futures price at $6.51/MMBtu, the oil equiv is $37.76 and WTI crude is $54.43.
One other note, oil is easy to transport and export for the highest price. Nat gas only goes where there are pipelines, except for a small portion exported as LNG.
There is a lot of new nat gas wells coming on line in the US, so the price differential will increase. A few years ago in my state, even though we are a major nat gas producer, prices got so high that it was cheaper to run industrial processes with coal fired electricity. A startling revelation if you consider all the capital required to generate electricity.
Posted by: ed ||
11/30/2008 7:15
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$75/barrel is high enough to encourage 2nd generation biofuels, shale, deep drilling and oil sand development but low enough to badly hurt the Persian economy (which needs about $90/barrel to balance the national budget)
#8
From what little I know about "supply and demand" of oil, the average price of oil should be between $50 and $60 a barrel. That would result in gasoline selling for about $1.75/gallon. That's high enough to encourage domestic drilling, and still low enough that the nation doesn't suffer from high transportation costs.
There's an area in southern Colorado that used to produce tons and tons of coal, but mining coal there is no longer feasible. The coal has a high sulfur content that requires tons of special equipment when burned. The area has now been opened for natural gas development, and production is high. Most of the natural gas comes from the coal-bearing strata, but is much easier to scrub than the coal. I'm sure there are other regions in the US where this is true.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
11/30/2008 13:50
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#9
Almost all the growth in oil demand was in China, India, etc. If oil demand is now declining then the economic growth numbers coming out of China and India, 5%+ are BS.
Following a barrage of mortar shells and Qassam rockets that wounded 8 Israel Defense Forces soldiers near the border with the Gaza Strip on Friday, a Likud MK proposed using Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners as human shields to deter future rocket attacks.
MK Gilad Erdan suggested Israel build an open-air, unprotected detention facility in the Western Negev, where the majority of rockets and mortars from Gaza land, and fill it with militants currently held in Israeli jails.
Also on Saturday, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said that Israel is "very close to a large-scale operation in the Gaza Strip."
"We have to find the right time, but these actions give us no choice and therefore, a large-scale operation is closer than ever," Vilnai said. "The truce is important for us, and also for them, because we control the border crossings and the other side is worried about the strength of the IDF."
In regard to abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, Vilnai said "we must do all we can in order to return him, either by way of a military operation, or through negotiations and the release of hundreds of prisoners.
Head of the Yisrael Beitenu party MK Avigdor Lieberman issued a criticism of Defense Minister Ehud Barak following Friday's barrage, saying "a Defense Minister who is not capable of dealing with the issue of terrorism, or of giving a response to attacks on IDF personnel, and continues to plead with Hamas for a 24-hour ceasefire, has turned over the security of the state of Israel to the hands of Hamas, and not the IDF."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/30/2008
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) froze its oil output quota on Saturday after emergency talks in Cairo but vowed to take any action necessary to balance the market next month. According OPEC president Chakib Khelil, Ministers chose not to change oil production quotas.
United Jihad Council (UJC) chief Sayed Salahuddin has called the killing of civilians in the Mumbai terrorist attacks 'reprehensible', and denied that any member of his alliance was involved. The UJC is an umbrella organisation banding together around a dozen militant groups in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). "Let me be very clear once again that the United Jihad Council does not approve of civilian killings and under its code of conduct such an act is reprehensible," Salahuddin said. "I can say with utmost certainty that none of the Kashmiri jihadi groups has any involvement with the events in Mumbai," he told Reuters by telephone. Suspicion has fallen on a non-member, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LT). Though it fights for the Kashmiri cause, the LT was founded in Punjab and mainly recruits Punjabis to its ranks. Salahuddin, whose own group is Harkatul Mujahideen, said the attacks in Mumbai were probably carried out by an Indian group in response to the oppression of minorities, including Muslims. AJK Legislative Assembly Speaker Shah Ghulam Qadir condemned India for levelling accusations before fully investigating, and said it endangered peace talks begun in 2004. "Blaming Pakistan even before holding preliminary investigations is condemnable," Qadir said.
Security forces brought a three-day assault on India's financial and cultural capital to an end Saturday morning, killing the last remaining gunmen holed up in one of the city's luxury hotels after freeing hostages and recovering bodies from two hotels and a Jewish center Friday. 
The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world's authorities to take steps that had never been tried before. This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.
The Iranian Air Force will be the 'ultimate bulwark' against foreign threats in the event of war, says a senior military commander. "Today our Air Force is carefully guarding national interests and is capable of defending the country in the face of foreign threats," said the Chief Commander of Iran's Air Force, Hassan Shah-Safi on Saturday. 
Ready Alert! 
Egypt is willing to intervene militarily against piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the Somali coast, alone or as part of an international force, a minister said in remarks published on Saturday. 
Anti-government protesters tightened their grip on Bangkok's international airport on Saturday, attacking police checkpoints aimed at stopping more people from joining the blockade.
The federal cabinet has decided to co-operate with India to investigate the Mumbai terror attacks, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday. "It is in the interest of Pakistan and India to co-operate to defeat terrorists," he told reporters after an in-camera cabinet meeting.
Formal Evening Wear for Amelia? 
Palestinian pilgrims bound for Mecca were prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip via Egypt on Saturday as the enclave's Hamas rulers and the rival PA leadership in the West Bank traded blame for the hold-up. The pilgrims hope to reach Saudi Arabia next week for the annual hajj pilgrimage.
Senior Somali opposition leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed says they are going to have more seats in the evolving parliament. 
