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At Least 15 Killed in Sect Attack in North Nigeria
Today's Headlines
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The Grand Turk
Turkey: Israel's participation in NATO not related to Patriots
Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 19:44 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


Africa Subsaharan
Islamists’ Harsh Justice Is on the Rise in North Mali
Moctar Touré was strapped to a chair, blindfolded, his right hand bound tight to the armrest with a rubber tube. A doctor came and administered a shot. Then Mr. Touré’s own brother wielded a knife, the kind used to slaughter sheep, and methodically carried out the sentence.

“I myself cut off my brother’s hand,” said Aliou Touré, a police chief in the Islamist-held north of this divided nation. “We had no choice but to practice the justice of God.”

Such amputations are designed to shock — residents are often summoned to watch — and even as the world makes plans to recapture northern Mali by force, the Islamists who control it show no qualms about carrying them out.

After the United Nations Security Council authorized a military campaign to retake the region last week, Islamists in Gao, Mr. Touré’s town, cut the hands off two more people accused of being thieves the very next day, a leading local official said, describing it as a brazen response to the United Nations resolution. Then the Islamists, undeterred by the international threats against them, warned reporters that eight others “will soon share the same fate.”

This harsh application of Shariah law, with people accused of being thieves sometimes having their feet amputated as well, has occurred at least 14 times since the Islamist takeover last spring, not including the recent vow of more to come, according to Human Rights Watch and independent observers.

But those are just the known cases, and dozens of other residents have been publicly flogged with camel-hair whips or tree branches for offenses like smoking, or even for playing music on the radio. Several were whipped in Gao on Monday for smoking in public, an official said, while others said that anything other than Koranic verses were proscribed as cellphone ringtones. A jaunty tune is punishable by flogging.
Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 19:30 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Ahhh, the modernity and civilization of the RoP and their true believers.

What more needs to be said?
Posted by: AlanC || 12/29/2012 19:50 Comments || Top||


At Least 15 Killed in Sect Attack in North Nigeria
Gunmen suspected to belong to a radical Islamist sect attacked a village in northeast Nigeria, tying up men, women and children before slitting their throats, killing at least 15 in the troubled region's latest attack, witnesses said Saturday.

The assault happened early Friday morning in the village of Musari on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the city where the sect known as Boko Haram first launched its guerrilla campaign of shootings and car bombings against Nigeria's weak central government. The gunmen shouted religious slogans and later ordered those there to be gathered up into a group, said Mshelia Inusa, a primary school teacher in the village.

"We heard some people chanting, 'God is great, God is great' amid sounds of banging on doors of houses at about 1 a.m.," the teacher said. "A voice was heard ordering people to be slaughtered and also voices of children were heard screaming."

Inusa said he and others later saw corpses with their hands tied behind their backs and their throats cut.
Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 19:23 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


India-Pakistan
Pakistan militants kill at least 20 kidnapped troops
Militants in Pakistan have killed at least 20 of the paramilitaries they seized from checkpoints near Peshawar, officials say.

Two men are said to have escaped. One is reportedly in a critical condition.

The troops, from the tribal police force, are reported to have been shot by their captors, who are thought to be from the Pakistani Taliban.

The men were seized following attacks on three checkpoints south of Peshawar, close to the border with Afghanistan.

About 200 armed militants had overrun two of the positions on Thursday, seizing the troops, taking weapons and setting fire to the buildings.

Two tribal police officers were killed in the attacks.

The Pakistani military launched an operation to recover the men and convened a meeting of local tribal elders.

A local government official, Naveed Akbar, said the bodies had been recovered about 4km (3 miles) from where the troops had been abducted.

It is the third attack on targets around Peshawar this month. Suicide bombers launched a raid on the city's airport two weeks ago, killing four people.

Last Saturday a senior politician of the Awami National Party was killed in an attack on a political rally. Seven others died in the blast.
Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 19:18 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


Britain
Revealed: 3 in 4 of Britain's danger doctors are trained abroad
Coming soon to a nationalized health care system near you.
The proportion of international medical graduates in the U.S. today is about 25%...
The vast majority of doctors who have been struck off in the past five years were trained abroad, new figures from the General Medical Council show.

The full extent of the danger presented by foreign doctors working in the health service can be revealed.
Not sure how it is in the UK, but in the U.S. the few studies that have been done show that there is no difference in the overall quality of care delivered by international medical graduates as opposed to American graduates.
New figures from the General Medical Council (GMC) show that the vast majority of doctors who have been struck off were trained abroad.

The revelations will add to concerns that NHS patients are not adequately protected from health professionals from countries where training is less rigorous than in the UK, and from those who are unfamiliar with basic medical practices in this country.

The figures, disclosed for the first time and obtained by The Sunday Telegraph using freedom of information laws, show:

  • Three quarters of doctors struck off the medical register this year were trained abroad.

  • Doctors trained overseas are five times more likely to be struck off than those trained in the UK.

  • The country with the biggest single number of doctors who have been removed or suspended from the medical register, is India, followed by Nigeria and Egypt.

    In total, 669 doctors have been either struck off or suspended by the GMC over the last five years. Of those, only 249 were British (37 per cent) while 420 (63 per cent) were trained abroad -- whereas one-third of doctors on the register were trained abroad, and two-thirds in Britain.

    In recent years, a series of cases have raised concerns about the competence and language skills of overseas doctors.
  • Posted by: lotp || 12/29/2012 16:22 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  this data is raaaacisssttt!!1!!
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 16:47 Comments || Top||

    #2  then you get the docs that drive bombs into Glasgow airport
    Posted by: Beavis || 12/29/2012 17:09 Comments || Top||

    #3  Importing doctors isn't as easy as importing IT guys. It comes down to interaction with the general population and the lack of understanding language, customs and the bureaucracy really add up to patient deaths.
    Posted by: DarthVader || 12/29/2012 17:27 Comments || Top||

    #4  tell Hoogo about those imported Cuban Docs
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 17:52 Comments || Top||

    #5  Tonight, on Danger Doctor...
    "You can't go in there, doc! It's dangerous!"
    "Dammit, I have to! Danger is my midd...first name!"
    Posted by: tu3031 || 12/29/2012 23:31 Comments || Top||


    India-Pakistan
    6 killed, 50 injured in Pak blast
    At least six persons were killed and nearly 50 others injured when a powerful explosion ripped through a bus a short distance from the Pakistan Army chief's official residence in the southern port city of Karachi on Saturday.

    The bus had just left a terminal near the Cantonment Railway Station when the bomb went off, witnesses and police officials said.

    The incident occurred at a spot located less than a kilometre from Army House, the army chief's official residence when he visits Karachi.

    TV news channels reported army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was in Karachi and had stayed at Army House on Friday night.

    Officials at Jinnah Hospital said they had received six bodies, including one which was in pieces, and 48 injured people. Eight of the wounded were in a serious condition. Women and children were among the injured, they said.

    Witnesses said they had seen body parts lying at the site. One man told reporters a young boy was torn in two by the explosion.

    Several police officials claimed soon after the incident that the blast was caused by the CNG cylinders of the bus. However, the cleaner of the bus told the media that the vehicle ran on diesel and had no CNG cylinders.
    There goes that theory!
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 13:12 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Update
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 14:36 Comments || Top||

    #2  instant convertible roof
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 16:09 Comments || Top||

    #3  Kinda like those proverbial London double-deckers, only without the second deck.

    When incidents of this sort happen in the Philippines, it's usually traced to rivalries between bus companies' owners. The Army House story is the most probable reason, but...
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 18:02 Comments || Top||

    #4  at least they have their sovereignty
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 18:21 Comments || Top||

    #5  having that 'the instant the blast occurred' picture makes one think that perhaps the photographer was part of it.....(timing awfully suspiscious[sic])
    Posted by: USN,Ret. || 12/29/2012 18:24 Comments || Top||


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Smugglers Galore: How Iran Arms Its Allies
    An explosion in southern Lebanon last week destroyed what is believed to have been a Hezbollah weapons depot. This latest in a series of mysterious "accidents" in Hezbollah-controlled precincts proved, as one Israeli official wryly remarked, that those who "sleep with rockets and amass large stockpiles of weapons are in a very unsafe place." With the Party of God's overland supply route through Syria choked off by the 22-month-long uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and Israel virtually in total control of the maritime route, Hezbollah's stockpile is being systematically degraded.

    Yet the arsenal of Iran's other regional proxy force, Hamas, is growing. The Israeli Defense Forces' campaign against Hamas last month in Gaza targeted Iranian missiles, including the Fajr-5, capable of reaching Tel Aviv and other points north, and destroyed most of them within the first hours of the conflict. But Hamas is already rearming, and it's not clear that Israel or even Muslim Brotherhood-governed Egypt, which is ostensibly capable of controlling the Sinai tunnel networks through which Hamas receives its arms, can do much about it.

    Israel's next war with Hamas -- a further confrontation is almost inevitable -- may well feature not only Iranian missiles smuggled through Sudan, but NATO-quality small arms and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles that come by way of Hamas's most recent weapons supplier, post-Qaddafi Libya.

    Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense also zeroed in on Hamas commanders, most notably Ahmed al-Jabari, Hamas's chief of staff, responsible for the group's military operations. It was Jabari who replaced Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, assassinated in a Dubai hotel room almost three years ago in an operation usually attributed to Israel. In a sense, then, Pillar of Defense began back in January 2010 in that most profligate of the United Arab Emirates -- which is also a veritable weapons bazaar.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 12:32 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Iran is unlikely to do anything as per the KSA-led GCC States unless SHTF between State-specific Govts + local Shias - it needs Lebanon + Syria [Morsi Egypt?], however, for both non-Suez strategic access to the eastern Med as well defense agz incoming US CVBGS + EBGS in that front. Iran already has soon-to-be-Talibanized BFF Nuke-armed Pakistan to oppose the USN, etc. coming in the eastern Indian Ocean.

    Unless Moud + Tehran Boyz do something royally stupid, this leaves China-vs-Japan/ASEAN as the higher priority threat for the Bammer = USA after January 1st, 2013. A CHINA-VS-JAPAN SHOOTING WAR IN NE ASIA IS LIKELY TO QUICKLY EXPAND THROUGHOUT EAST ASIA + HIMALAYAS AS CHINA ATTEMPTS TO FORCIBLY + PERMANENTLY RESOLVE SEVERAL BORDER + STRATEGIC ACCESS ISSUES AT ROUGHLY THE SAME TIME.
    Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/29/2012 21:11 Comments || Top||


    Syria faces 'hell' if no deal to end crisis - UN envoy
    Syria faces a stark choice between a political solution to end 21 months of bloodshed or "hell", United Nations peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has warned.

    Mr Brahimi, speaking after talks in Moscow, said the conflict had become more militarised and sectarian.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed talks were the only solution.

    But he said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's removal could not be a condition for talks, as demanded by the Syrian opposition.

    Mr Brahimi, who arrived in the Russian capital after talks in Damascus with President Assad, expressed concern at the escalation of the war.

    It risked becoming "a mainly sectarian conflict, with dire consequences for the Syrian people," he said.

    It also risked bringing chaos to the region with neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan overrun by refugees, he said.

    "The only alternative is really hell, or a political process, then we have got all of us to work ceaselessly for the political process," Mr Brahimi said.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 11:49 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Home Front: Politix
    Steyn: Laws Are for Little People
    And not for David Gregory.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 11:37 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  That was well worth the read.
    Posted by: swksvolFF || 12/29/2012 12:27 Comments || Top||

    #2  What else is nice is that people are noticing that perhaps there is a reason for the order of The Bill of Rights, that they were not assigned numbers out of a hat.
    Posted by: swksvolFF || 12/29/2012 12:57 Comments || Top||

    #3  Laws Are for Little People

    Sadly, history says that's largely true. However as compensation, the Place de Concorde is reserved for the ruling class.
    Posted by: P2kontheroad || 12/29/2012 13:10 Comments || Top||


    Israel-Palestine-Jordan
    Premier Haneyya receives Muslim delegations from Australia and Turkey
    Salem was hailed as a moderate when he was appointed grand mufti of the Australian continent last year, but like a dog returning to his vomit, he just can't help himself.
    Palestinian premier Ismail Haneyya received on Wednesday grand mufti of the Australian continent Sheikh Ibrahim Salem and the delegation of the Turkish Felicity Party.

    During his meeting with the delegates, premier Haneyya highlighted that the Muslim nation started to get rid of its era of subordination, humiliation and weakness and move towards a historical shift because of the Arab Spring changes.

    The premier also hailed some Arab and Muslim countries, especially Turkey, for their political and financial support for Gaza people.

    For his part, Sheikh Ibrahim Salem expressed his happiness for being in Gaza, describing it as the land of pride and martyrdom.

    “I am pleased to stand on the land of jihad to learn from its sons and I have the honor to be among the people of Gaza where the weakness always becomes strength, the few becomes many and the humiliation turns into pride,” Sheikh Salem said.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 11:23 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


    India-Pakistan
    Taliban's peace offer viewed as 'posturing'
    The Taliban in Pakistan have said they want to negotiate a ceasefire, in a video statement by their leader, Hakimullah Mehsud.

    The video, delivered to Reuters in Pakistan on Friday, is the latest in a recent series of statements claiming that the group wants a peace deal, though it refuses to disarm.

    Military and civilian authorities in Pakistan have repeatedly reached agreements with militants, most of which were shortlived. Experts dismissed the latest statements as ''posturing''.

    Imtiaz Gul, an Islamabad-based author and expert, said the Taliban were mounting an ''orchestrated campaign to improve [their] image'' following three high-profile attacks in Peshawar. This month several suicide bombers struck at the northern city's airport, a senior provincial politician was killed in a bombing, and on Thursday 22 paramilitary forces were kidnapped.

    ''They feel they have the upper hand. They have been trying to improve their image for some time through less indiscriminate attacks on ordinary people and more targeted assassinations or attacks on the police, paramilitary [forces] or politicians,'' Mr Gul said.

    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 11:20 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
    California gun sales jump; gun injuries, deaths fall
    Posted by: DarthVader || 12/29/2012 10:26 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [2 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Welcome to Kennesaw Georgia

    The Gun Law

    Kennesaw once again was in the news on May 1, 1982, when the city unanimously passed a law requiring "every head of household to maintain a firearm together with ammunition." After passage of the law, the burglary rate in Kennesaw declined and even today, the City has the lowest crime rate in Cobb County.
    Posted by: Besoeker || 12/29/2012 10:45 Comments || Top||

    #2  Most of the drop in firearm-related injuries and deaths can be explained by a well-documented, nationwide drop in violent crime.

    Granted, year to year crime stats, at best, show a correlation to gun ownership. Even the decade trend in violent crime doesn’t necessarily prove causation. But it certainly reveals the folly in the argument that increased firearms ownership makes for a more dangerous society.
    Posted by: DepotGuy || 12/29/2012 11:56 Comments || Top||

    #3  Fox Butterfield to the white courtesy phone, please...
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 14:59 Comments || Top||


    Europe
    French court rejects 75 percent millionaires' tax
    France's Constitutional Council on Saturday rejected a 75 percent upper income tax rate to be introduced in 2013 in a setback to Socialist President Francois Hollande's push to make the rich contribute more to cutting the public deficit.

    The Council ruled that the planned 75 percent tax on annual income above 1 million euros ($1.32 million) - a flagship measure of Hollande's election campaign - was unfair in the way it would be applied to different households.

    Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the government would redraft the upper tax rate proposal to answer the Council's concerns and resubmit it in a new budget law, meaning Saturday's decision could only amount to a temporary political blow.

    While the tax plan was largely symbolic and would only have affected a few thousand people, it has infuriated high earners in France, prompting some such as actor Gerard Depardieu to flee abroad. The message it sent also shocked entrepreneurs and foreign investors, who accuse Hollande of being anti-business.
    All of which is true.
    Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said the rejection of the 75 percent tax and other minor measures could cut up to 500 million euros in forecast tax revenues but would not hurt efforts to slash the public deficit to below a European Union ceiling of 3 percent of economic output next year.

    "The rejected measures represent 300 to 500 million euros. Our deficit-cutting path will not be affected," Moscovici told BFM television. He too said the government would resubmit a proposal to raise taxes on high incomes in 2013 and 2014.
    You ain't gonna get that either when all the high income earners flee. Lemme see, 75% of nothin'... is nothin'.... carry the 10 and add... nothin'...
    The Council, made up of nine judges and three former presidents, is concerned the tax would hit a married couple where one partner earned above a million euros but it would not affect a couple where each earned just under a million euros.

    UMP member Gilles Carrez, chairman of the National Assembly's finance commission, told BFM television, however, that the Council's so-called wise men also felt the 75 percent tax was excessive and too much based on ideology.
    Wow. Sanity in the EU... Who would have thought?
    Posted by: DarthVader || 12/29/2012 10:19 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  What, no executive order, no judge to call it a fee? Com'on France
    Posted by: swksvolFF || 12/29/2012 12:51 Comments || Top||

    #2  One of the arguments of the Court is that this 75pc tax is base on the earning of individual income, not on the earning of married couples.

    If the wife and husband make 900k each=no special 75pc tax
    If the wife make 950k and the husband 60k = 75pc tax
    Posted by: Willy || 12/29/2012 15:18 Comments || Top||


    Afghanistan
    US army officer embraces Islam
    An American military officer has embraced Islam in the Watapur district of eastern Kunar province, the newly-converted Christian said on Saturday.
    James Grant, from the American state of Tennessee, said he converted after reading books on Islam for the last seven months at a coalition camp in the town.
    The US service-member, who changed his name to Mohammad Asif, formally announced his decision on Friday, insisting he found the religion true.

    He said he had consulted his wife before the conversion. "She did not oppose my conversion. I would preach Islam to my family first, and then to others," the father of two children said.

    Grant proclaimed "Kalma-i-Shahadat in front of a crowd of Afghan and foreign military officers through an imam with the Afghan military named Hamidullah.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 09:41 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Congratulations Jim, now get that piece of shi* off of your fat head while you are in uniform. You want to wear a diaper and cowboy hat, fine .... but NOT in while in uniform. The 5k "Fun Run" is tomorrow at 0630. We're forming up in front of the motor pool.... BE THERE!
    Posted by: Besoeker || 12/29/2012 10:33 Comments || Top||

    #2  Deacon? This sure sounds familiar.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 12:00 Comments || Top||

    #3  James Grant? I'm sorry, that sounds so Manufactured I doubt the validity of this report.
    Posted by: Charles || 12/29/2012 12:02 Comments || Top||

    #4  wife just said: "fine"?


    hmmmmmmm
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 13:35 Comments || Top||

    #5  Doesn't it, Shipman. There are nutballs everywhere.
    Posted by: Deacon Blues || 12/29/2012 15:38 Comments || Top||

    #6  Well, I sure hope it works out - because it is a one-way trip into a "roach motel" religion. You can check in, but you can NEVER check out.

    'Hope they explained that little 'catch' about apostasy being fatal.
    Posted by: Lone Ranger || 12/29/2012 19:36 Comments || Top||

    #7  Maybe he found love there and realized he could have up to 4 wives if he converted.
    Posted by: Rambler In Virginia || 12/29/2012 20:28 Comments || Top||

    #8  They used to call this "going Asiatic"..
    Posted by: tu3031 || 12/29/2012 23:36 Comments || Top||


    India-Pakistan
    Paintings outrage Islamic hard-liners in Pakistan
    Pakistan's leading arts college has pushed boundaries before in this conservative nation. But when a series of paintings depicting Muslim clerics in scenes with strong homosexual overtones sparked an uproar and threats of violence by Islamic extremists, it was too much.
    Hypocrisy being the tribute that vice pays to virtue...
    Officials at the National College of Arts in the eastern city of Lahore shut down its academic journal, which published the paintings, pulled all its issues out of bookstores and dissolved its editorial board. Still, a court is currently considering whether the paintings' artist, the journal's board and the school's head can be charged with blasphemy.

    The college's decision to cave to Islamist pressure underscores how space for progressive thought is shrinking in Pakistan as hardline interpretations of Islam gain ground. It was also a marked change for an institution that has long been one of the leading defenders of liberal views in the country.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 03:04 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  The artist paintings depicted the clerics not the religion. These clerics seem to see homosexuality everywhere. Next, they will be seeing gayness in their naan. Probably don't like being outed and their hypocrisy shown.
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 9:11 Comments || Top||


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Iranian naval drill kicks off
    The Islamic Republic of Iran has started a six-day naval drill, dubbed Velayat 91, or Guardianship 91, to display its defensive capabilities and to test the equipment they have in arsenal. Ships have been warned through Iran’s state TV to stay away from the drill's site.

    “Among the aims of the drill is to display the capabilities of Iran’s Armed Forces and the Navy to defend our country’s water borders and interests in line with establishing durable security in the region and conveying the message of peace and friendship to the neighboring states,” the country’s naval commander Habibollah Sayyari was quoted by a local TV channel.

    The drills are being staged across an area of about 1 million square kilometers in the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman and northern parts of the Indian Ocean, local media have reported.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 02:53 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Can't get to much practice manning them life boats.
    Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 12/29/2012 14:44 Comments || Top||

    #2  With the carrier fleet in dock for uparming, plus transit time, should we consider Feb/13 as a likely time for the clash?
    Posted by: Skidmark || 12/29/2012 23:41 Comments || Top||


    Home Front: Culture Wars
    Martin Amis: Islam and the Limits of Permissible Thought
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 02:18 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  If you're going to post a story behind a paywall, you might consider including a snippet that justifies the payment.
    Posted by: Ulairt the Anonymous2733 || 12/29/2012 8:04 Comments || Top||

    #2  screw paywalls...useless post by tipper
    Posted by: dan || 12/29/2012 8:43 Comments || Top||

    #3  If you're going to post a story behind a paywall, you might consider including a snippet that justifies the payment.
    Sorry Dan, didn't realize, just post the headline in Google, you should get straight through.
    Excellent article from a pointy head.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 9:22 Comments || Top||

    #4  just post the headline in Google, you should get straight through.

    That method doesn't seem to work for me any longer, tipper. Quite possibly I've crossed some numerical limit for the technique.
    Posted by: trailing wife || 12/29/2012 11:37 Comments || Top||

    #5  tipper --> still hits the paywall....would like to read the article..but refuse to pay to read it

    from the title i can ascertain the jest - at least i believe i do. we see the limits of thought that is being hoisted on free loving citizens everywhere

    oliver stone said it best --> we are in a orwellian society - if the constitution is abused by what we can say or think i am fully in agreement with mr. stone
    Posted by: dan || 12/29/2012 11:47 Comments || Top||

    #6  If all else fails try Google News TW.
    It works for me. I can post the article, if you like but it is long.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 13:08 Comments || Top||

    #7  He seems to have trouble making up his mind:

    Sally Amis, whom the author has described as "pathologically promiscuous", died aged 46 after periods of depression and alcoholism. Her brother believes that the structure of Islam might have saved her life. "She was such an uncontrollable girl that there was even talk of her joining the army when she was 17 or 18 because we all sensed that she needed a really tight structure, an ésprit de corps of shared belief," he told The National. "Islam in its way gives you that, a collectivity that she could have been a part of, which incidentally forbade alcohol and premarital sex. She might have had a chance. She would have had to embrace it earlier than she embraced Catholicism.
    Posted by: KBK || 12/29/2012 13:30 Comments || Top||

    #8  By MIRA SETHI

    Modern Britain might have been the expected focus of conversation with Martin Amis following the publication of his latest novel, "Lionel Asbo." After all, the book comes with the subtitle "State of England," and the state of the place, in his eyes, rather differs from the country on glorious display during the Summer Olympics and, months before that, in the queen's Diamond Jubilee. The England in Mr. Amis's withering portrait is a cultural dystopia where an irredeemable thug is catapulted to national prominence after winning the lottery. Thus does modern Britain reward lethal criminality and proud ignorance with unearned riches.

    But when Mr. Amis, one of the most celebrated and pilloried British novelists of recent decades, sits for an interview in his Brooklyn brownstone—he is a recent émigré from the land he so relishes anatomizing—the buzz about all things British has long faded in the news, supplanted by the autumn miseries of the Middle East. After the Arab Spring washed through the region, he says, "I was talking to my younger son. He speaks Arabic." A hint of paternal pride passes over his face. "He's about to do a third degree—the first one was history at Oxford, the second one was on the Muslim Brotherhood. He's lived in Jordan as well as in Egypt.

    "I said to him, it seems like Islamism doesn't look like a ubiquitous threat anymore. But he said, 'Ah, their hour will come. They're in government now. That's what's happened now. Some clever people have realized you can't stay out of the system.' "

    Is Mr. Amis skeptical now of the "clever people" emerging from the shadows of the Arab Spring?

    "Well," he says, looking lost in thought. "There's Tunisia"—where a moderate government is establishing itself—"but it does seem the weight of the past is enormous. Egypt is 4,500 years old. It's unbelievably ancient. And Egypt has never had democracy. Would that you could, with a snap of the finger say, 'This is better,' and everyone agrees it is better. But it's going to be difficult."

    He continues: "We gave a dinner party. We had Israeli friends over—everyone at the dinner table except my wife and I was called Cohen. And a right-wing Israeli—who is very right-wing—he said, 'I don't think they're ready for democracy.' And a guest at the table said, 'I find that very offensive.' When people say that—that they're offended—they're not really arguing with their head. They're arguing with the blood. But I yearn for the people of the Middle East to benefit. I yearn for it."

    Readers who have followed Mr. Amis's career will recall the infamous "race row," as the newspapers called it, between the author and Terry Eagleton, a Marxist English professor at the University of Manchester.

    In August 2006, the British police foiled a plot to detonate explosives on 10 trans-Atlantic planes. A short time later, Mr. Amis said to an interviewer: "There's a definite urge—don't you have it?—to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not let them travel. Deportation, further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East and Pakistan. . . . Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children."

    For a writer given to nuances, this was a striking statement. The comment went largely unremarked until Mr. Eagleton alighted upon it and denounced Mr. Amis.

    The professor accused him of recommending "punitive measures against all Muslims, guilty or innocent." Mr. Amis responded by insisting that the remarks were not "advocating anything." They were, he said, "a thought experiment," only "conversationally describing an urge—an urge that soon wore off."

    In a letter to a Muslim columnist who had accused him of being "with the beasts," Mr. Amis argued that "the extremists, for now, have the monopoly of violence, intimidation, and self-righteousness." But, he said, "I don't want to strip-search you . . . or do anything else that would trouble or even momentarily surprise your dignity, or that of any other irenic Muslim."

    Reflecting on the episode half a dozen years later, he has a simpler explanation: "I said something stupid. I was in a rage."

    But then he crosses his legs, and with the change of position offers an explanation that sounds suspiciously like a justification. "But to contextualize it—to use a Terry Eagleton kind of word—it was the day the plot to blow up 10 airlines was exposed. The next day, the lady journalist came from London"—to interview him in the Hamptons on New York's Long Island—and "on the flight that day, the lady journalist told me, you weren't allowed to take books. I was demoralized. I was thinking: We're going to lose this. It seemed to be such a terrible symbolic victory . . . to deprive trans-Atlantic passengers of reading for a long flight." He pauses. "I thought only one book, the holy book, is winning."

    In "The Second Plane," a collection of nonfiction published in 2008, Mr. Amis noted that he is an "Islamismophobe," not an Islamophobe. The events of Sept. 11 left him bereft and angry and in desperate search of distinctions. "Let us make the position clear," he wrote in an essay titled "Terror and Boredom." "We can begin by saying, not only that we respect Muhammad, but that no serious person could fail to respect Muhammad. . . . But we do not respect Muhammad Atta."

    Nowadays, in the wake of the change that has convulsed the Middle East, Mr. Amis sees, cautiously, much promise for the secular and moderate and religious Middle Eastern men and women who yearn for change as they weigh the Islamists' promise of welfare and economic growth. "In most ways, Islamism has quickly become political rather than terroristic. But how is it done? We all want it. What matters to me, in my own life, is not prosperity beyond a certain point. It's freedom of speech. Democracies can't work without that. It takes all my powers of empathy to imagine what it must feel like to not be able to say what you think. It's a huge hurdle."

    The mention of freedom of speech brings to mind how the late Christopher Hitchens rushed in to defend his friend when the debate with Mr. Eagleton erupted in 2006. "The harshness Amis was canvassing was not in the least a recommendation," Hitchens wrote, "but rather an experiment in the limits of permissible thought."

    Though Mr. Amis says that he moved to the U.S. early this year for family reasons—his wife, Isabel Fonseca, is an American, and they have two teenage daughters—the impulse to make the move from Britain had come two years earlier, after "Hitch" fell ill with esophageal cancer. "When he was diagnosed, that's when we started talking about coming here. He might have lived another five or 10 years." Hitchens died in December last year.

    Mr. Amis had watched with fascination the arc of Hitchens's career after he moved to the U.S. in the early 1980s. How did Mr. Amis account for his friend's success as that rare character in the modern world, a public intellectual? "British journalists are more forthright, and disrespectful, in a good way," he says. "And Hitch was an old Trotskyist at heart. So that made him a bit fierce. Writers were always subliminally valued because America was uncertain about what it was and these writers would help tell America what it was. But it would also define them and give them nationhood." He laughs: "You don't need to tell an Englishman who he is."

    Then again, even though Mr. Amis stayed behind in Britain, he was every bit as fascinated by America as his friend had been. Mr. Amis's first wife, Antonia Phillips, is an American, and his most celebrated novel, "Money" (1984), is set in New York. His literary hero: an American, Saul Bellow, who was also something of a father figure. Mr. Amis had a complex and not entirely satisfactory relationship with his own father, writer Kingsley Amis, who was none too encouraging of his son's decision to follow him into the writing game.

    The game has changed dramatically in the time since Mr. Amis joined the family business in 1973 with "The Rachel Papers," his debut novel. "There's definitely pressure on the novel. It's to do with the world speeding up. What a lyric poem does is stop the clock—things aren't going to move forward—but the novel has adapted to that. I'm much more conscious now of the fact that the arrow of development has to be sharper. The static novel is dead."

    What fiction does he read, in these straitened days for literature? "I read my friends—[Ian] McEwan, Julian Barnes, Salman"—Rushdie. Among younger novelists, only Will Self and Zadie Smith pop up. "But otherwise, I read people who are all dead. There's only one value judgment in literature: time. If someone has been read for 50 years, then they're probably very . . . rewarding. You can't say that about the latest sensation by a 28-year-old—I was once that," he says, and folds his arms, smiling.

    To be precise, he "was once that" 35 years ago. Now Mr. Amis is at an age, 63, when biographers start to take a writer's measure, as with Richard Bradford's "Martin Amis: The Biography," published in the U.S. a few weeks ago. Mr. Amis is hardly ready to follow Philip Roth's recent lead and retire from writing fiction, but he is reflective about his career.

    "When you're coming to an end, you don't take any comfort in your achievements. What matters is how it went with women and how it went with children. That's what becomes important," he says. "The terrible symmetry is that men don't tend to blame themselves—it's always someone else's fault. And women tend to blame themselves. But, then, at the very end, it's the men who start blaming themselves and the women stop blaming themselves. And that's why they're happier."

    'Lionel Asbo" does not seem to be the work of a happy man, even if Mr. Amis does clearly take a perverse pleasure in delineating the horrors of modern Britain. Was he watching the Olympics this summer, with their presentation of a bright and shiny alternate British reality?

    "Following it, but not watching," he says. The family was in the countryside during the summer. The Games looked "pretty marvelous," he says, "but I'm ashamed to say I was defeated by the TV we had. When my daughters were around, they could get it going. But then they left. And I couldn't switch on the TV."

    Ms. Sethi, a former assistant books editor at the Journal, is a writer living in Pakistan.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 14:29 Comments || Top||

    #9  ... no serious person could fail to respect Muhammad.
    Well, I'm serious, and I see no reason to respect him.

    He laughs: "You don't need to tell an Englishman who he is.
    LOL. Someone should tell the Archdruid. Or Prince Charles. Or Amis should look in mirror and repeat that.
    Posted by: KBK || 12/29/2012 15:23 Comments || Top||


    Africa North
    Muslim Brotherhood official: Jews have right to return to Egypt
    The Egyptian president's advisor, Issam al-Arian, who serves as vice chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, has said Jews have the right to return to Egypt and reclaim their property.

    In an interview to Dream TV, al-Arian said "every Egyptian has the right to come back, especially if it gives Palestinian the right to return to their lands." He stated that the Jews "are more worthy of Egypt than of Israel."
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 02:13 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Moses might tell us to file under "diseases of Egypt" and go about our business.
    Posted by: Besoeker || 12/29/2012 3:04 Comments || Top||

    #2  And bring yur geld!
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 4:01 Comments || Top||

    #3  Where they will be killed.
    Posted by: Hupert Omuque5563 || 12/29/2012 7:49 Comments || Top||

    #4  Whom is he trying to insult?
    Posted by: Ulairt the Anonymous2733 || 12/29/2012 7:53 Comments || Top||

    #5  What does 2500 years of compound interest work out to?
    Posted by: AlanC || 12/29/2012 8:41 Comments || Top||

    #6  A heap.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 11:53 Comments || Top||

    #7  "Get out you filthy...wait, money, garbage everywhere, scapegoats? Wait, come back!"
    Posted by: Charles || 12/29/2012 12:00 Comments || Top||

    #8  especially if it gives Palestinian the right to return to their lands

    sure, return to "Palestine". Just not in Israel
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 13:36 Comments || Top||

    #9  Somebody's gotta do the dirty work.
    Posted by: Bobby || 12/29/2012 14:57 Comments || Top||

    #10  Come back and bring your money with ya!
    Posted by: DarthVader || 12/29/2012 15:04 Comments || Top||

    #11  A very smart tactical PR decision on the part of the Muslim Brotherhood, put out there for consumption by the rubes.
    Posted by: Secret Master || 12/29/2012 15:09 Comments || Top||

    #12  Come back and spend years in the Egyptian court system for the reclaim process, while Hamas takes yer house and land. Then the Muslim Brotherhood-backed judge decides you don't have a case.

    Diaspora by another name.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 18:06 Comments || Top||

    #13  A key question is if they will have the right to return FROM Egypt (alive)
    Posted by: Rambler In Virginia || 12/29/2012 20:25 Comments || Top||


    Home Front: Culture Wars
    Former Al Qaeda in Mali Member Accuses Terrorist Group of Racism
    Killing thousands of Americans didn't convince the left to turn against Arab Islamic terrorism, maybe something more serious like racism will do it?

    "Racism is one of the main factors that motivate many young Africans from non-Arab to defect and resume their normal lives in their country of origin.

    ...One of the main jihadist have defected in terrorist groups in the Sahel due to racism was Hisham Bilal. Bilal was the only Black commanding a brigade in the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), the group that controls the city of Gao.

    He left the movement in early November and returned to Niger, the country of origin. In an interview with AFP in Niamey at the time, he spoke about racism in the ranks of jihadist groups in Mali.

    "These fools of MUJAO are not children of God, they are drug traffickers. They are all that is contrary to Islam, and for them, a Black man is less than an Arab or a white man," he had said.

    This is a serious subject and if Islamic terrorists fail to take immediate action they risk losing the support of the left which could impact the number of pro bono lawyers available to them and the number of media columnists willing to write flattering profiles of them and urge an immediate surrender by Israel and America to their demands.

    Diversity training is the first step. Every terrorist cell must have a member who is responsible for diversity enhancement to create a terrorist group that is as diverse as the world.

    Sensitivity training is also important. The Muslim world is rather racist, but there are acceptable and unacceptable forms of racism. Anti-Jewish racism is acceptable because Jews generally do not join Al Qaeda. However if Al Qaeda wants to fully tap into African Islamic terrorist groups it will need to be more open.

    America has a black man in the White House. Why not have a black man as the next leader of Al Qaeda? That will properly impress the left.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 02:08 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  That will properly impress the left.

    Never was concerned about the lack of blacks in high positions in the Cuban government. Why start now? It's about power. All the other stuff are simply tools to demonize their opponents.
    Posted by: P2Kontheroad || 12/29/2012 8:43 Comments || Top||


    Europe
    Silvio Berlusconi 'to pay ex-wife 36m euros a year'
    Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has agreed to pay 36m euros (£30m) a year to his ex-wife Veronica Lario, reports say. Berlusconi will keep the £60m villa where the couple lived with their three children, as part of a divorce deal reportedly filed on Christmas Day.

    Ms Lario left Berlusconi in 2009 after he was seen at the 18th birthday party of an aspiring model, Noemi Letizia.

    US magazine Forbes estimated his wealth at almost $6bn (£3.7bn) in March.

    The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that Ms Lario, 56, had initially asked for £35m a year. Her 76-year-old ex-husband reportedly offered her about £3.1m.

    The couple met in a dressing room in 1980 after Berlusconi saw Ms Lario perform in a Milan theatre. Noemi Letizia Silvio Berlusconi gave a necklace to Noemi Letizia on her 18th birthday. They were married in 1990.

    He has two other children from his first marriage and is currently engaged to 28-year-old Francesca Pascale.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 01:51 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  I understand Silvio's diet includes copious amounts of broccoli raab, arugula, and amaranth. He also enjoys fine red wines, an occasional lamb shank, but he shies away from most red meats and poultry.
    Posted by: Besoeker || 12/29/2012 2:54 Comments || Top||

    #2  Nice work whatever, if you can get it...
    Posted by: M. Murcek || 12/29/2012 4:23 Comments || Top||

    #3  D *** NG IT, Silvio, didn't Clan Patriarch Frank Barone from TV's EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND'S teach you anything - iff you have a prob wid your woman, don't go to another woman, then you have two problems includ now being out EU$36.0Milyuhn a year!

    AND THE BABES + THEIR LAWYERS AREN'T DONE WID YOU YET!
    Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/29/2012 21:20 Comments || Top||


    Home Front: Politix
    US Soldier Suicides Outnumber Combat Deaths In 2012
    American soldier suicides continue to outnumber combat-related deaths in 2012, and the trajectory for soldier suicides continues to get worse.

    Statistics released by the Department of the Army show that through November potentially 303 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard soldiers committed suicide. As of Dec. 7, Stars and Stripes reports that 212 soldiers have died in combat-related deaths in Afghanistan.

    The Army set a grim new record of 177 potential active-duty cases with 2012 coming to a close on Tuesday – 64 of these cases remain under investigation, 113 have been confirmed.

    In June of this year, The Pentagon reported there had been at least 154 suicides among active-duty troops – a rate of nearly one each day. The number of suicides continues to increase despite numerous new training and awareness programs put into effect in the past few years.
    Posted by: tipper || 12/29/2012 01:41 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  How does this compare with the same civilian cohort of same sex/age?
    Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 12/29/2012 7:37 Comments || Top||

    #2  Suicide notes are often left. What did the notes say? What do toxicology reports reveal? Who was his or her "battle buddy" and what did they report? Lap top e-mails? Sites visited? Statistics do nothing. Results of investigations and recommendations might point to common contributing factors and enable mitigation measures.


    Posted by: Besoeker || 12/29/2012 8:16 Comments || Top||

    #3  How does this compare with the same civilian cohort of same sex/age?

    Come on, the MSM Ministry of Truth isn't really interested in that aspect of relativity any more than the life expectancy of a young black male in the service versus one in Chicago.
    Posted by: P2Kontheroad || 12/29/2012 8:39 Comments || Top||

    #4  Another fact necessary to understand this item is the previously calculated incidences of suicide among active-duty Reserve and NG soldiers, expressed as # suicides/total population.
    Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 12/29/2012 8:57 Comments || Top||

    #5  Some stuff on suicides for whatever it is worth: Suicide rates by country and U.S. suicide rates. I wondered if the rate for active duty military and Reserve and National Guard soldiers was higher than the civilian population. A concern is that the active duty military rates seem to be increasing from year to year.
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 9:58 Comments || Top||

    #6  First thought is that combat deaths are way down. Second thought is impossible ROE's causing problems.
    Posted by: Iblis || 12/29/2012 11:22 Comments || Top||

    #7  Whoever wrote this article needs to retake basic math:
    212 US KIA this year
    177 potential suicides this year.
    Iblis is on to something. Casualties are way down.

    Apparently has nothing to do with combat:
    About 53 percent of those who died by suicide in the military in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available, had no history of deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, according to the Defense Department. And nearly 85 percent of military members who took their lives had no direct combat history, meaning they may have been deployed but not seen action.
    Posted by: Frozen Al || 12/29/2012 11:49 Comments || Top||

    #8  According to Wiki for 2010, the US is tenth in gun-related deaths but 60% of those are suicides. Guess the UN should address this--a rash of self-induced murders is sweeping Mexico and Brazil....
    Posted by: Kojo Wholuse5660 || 12/29/2012 11:49 Comments || Top||

    #9  An Inquiry
    Posted by: newc || 12/29/2012 16:17 Comments || Top||


    India-Pakistan
    Same weapons being used in 'tit-for-tat sectarian killings'
    [Dawn] As the city descends into fear amid a renewed wave of killings, the police authorities see one or more organised groups behind what was earlier being called 'tit-for-tat sectarian attacks' as forensic investigations into nearly 90 cases found that same weapons had been used in targeting people from different sects and political parties, it emerged on Thursday.

    A top police official confirmed to Dawn that under forensic findings it seemed 'crystal clear' that the recent wave of killings had nothing to do with sectarian rivalry rather it was an attempt to 'destabilise the city peace' to achieve 'certain targets'.

    However,
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


    Suspension of mobile phone service foiled terrorists' designs: Malik
    [Dawn] Federal Minister for Interior Rehman Malik
    Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship.
    has said that mobile phone services were suspended in Bloody Karachi
    ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
    on Friday morning due to terrorism threat and security concerns.

    He said a meeting was held in this regard with all the stakeholders, adding that nefarious designs of hard boyz were foiled as not a single incident of murders took place on Friday.

    The minister also appreciated performance of the law enforcement agencies in this regard.

    Cellular services were suspended from 11 am to 6 pm in Pakistain's commercial capital.

    Militants in Pakistain often detonate bombs using cellular phones and the government has implemented similar service suspensions in the past.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Syrian warplanes raid Damascus
    Always a good idea to have your air force bomb your capital...
    Syrian warplanes launched air raids in Damascus province on Friday after overnight bombardments and clashes across the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said.

    “The air force for the first time attacked the Assal Al Ward area in the Kalamun region, killing one civilian, wounding dozens and destroying several homes,” the Britain-based group said in a statement. It said the military on Thursday withdrew from several areas in the province but that further air raids were expected as regime forces sought to take back areas they had lost after rebel attacks on military checkpoints.

    The Observatory said several rockets hit the Qaboon district in the northeast of the city and that clashes between rebels and the army erupted in the southern neighbourhood of Qadam, which was also bombarded.

    Fighting also took place in southern Damascus in Daraya, which President Bashar Al Assad’s forces have been trying to retake for weeks, the watchdog said. There were also clashes in Yalda in the south and Douma in the northeast, as well as an attack on a military position northeast of Damascus between the provincial town of Irbin and the suburb of Harasta.

    Elsewhere, a sniper shot dead a man in a Palestinian refugee camp in Daraa in the south, and fighting was also reported in areas near the border with Jordan, the watchdog said.

    In the north, clashes took place in several neighbourhoods of the country’s second city Aleppo, including around a military compound besieged by rebels, and several districts of Deir Ezzor city in the east were bombarded.

    Overnight shelling was also reported in the central provinces of Hama and Homs.

    On Thursday at least 142 people were killed in violence across Syria, said the Observatory which has reported a death toll of more than 45,000 since protests against Assad that erupted in mid-March 2011 became an armed rebellion.
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


    Southeast Asia
    Experts speculate about Abu Sayyaf hostage video
    Posted by: ryuge || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Africa North
    Mauritania braces for war next door
    [Magharebia] Mauritania, like many of its Maghreb neighbours, has decided to reinforce the protection of its borders in light of recent developments in Mali.

    Residents of Mauritanian border towns with Mali are growing increasingly apprehensive.

    Following bitter fighting against the Movement for the National Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Din took control at the end of November of the Malian city of Lere, only 70 kilometres from the strategic Mauritanian town of Fassala Nere.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa


    Mubarak to stay in army hospital as health worsens
    CAIRO - Egypt’s deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, who is serving a life sentence for his role in killing protesters during a 2011 revolt, will stay in an army hospital for at least two weeks after his health deteriorated, his lawyer said on Friday.

    On Thursday evening, the 84-year-old former leader was transferred to an army hospital from his prison clinic after fracturing a rib in a recent fall.

    “He will stay in the hospital for about 15 days,” Mohamed Abdel Razek, his lawyer, told Reuters. “The president’s health is stable, thank God. He underwent X-rays on his body and now he will get proper treatment in the hospital for all his bone problems he has been suffering from.”
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


    India-Pakistan
    Five killed in North Waziristan drone strike: officials
    [Dawn] At least five people were killed Friday in a suspected US drone strike in North Wazoo tribal region, intelligence officials said.

    According to the intelligence sources, the US predator targeted a compound in Gurbaz village of North Waziristan's Shawal district, close to the border of South Waziristan agency, firing two missiles and killing five suspected cut-throats inside.

    Shawal district of North Waziristan region is considered a bastion of Taliban and al Qaeda-linked bad turbans.

    North Waziristan, which is close to the Pakistain-Afghanistan border, is one of the seven regions in Pakistain's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), governed by tribal laws. An orc insurgency led by the Pak Taliban plagues the region while the area is known to be infested with bad turbans, including the al Qaeda, Taliban and other armed orc organizations.

    Attacks by unmanned US aircraft are deeply unpopular in Pakistain, which says they violate its illusory sovereignty and fan anti-US sentiment, but US officials are said to believe the attacks are too important to give up.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    121 Dead across Syria as Rebels Attack Key Army Base and Protesters Slam Brahimi
    [An Nahar] Syrian rebels attacked a key army base in the northwest province of Idlib on Friday, the last regime bastion in the region, and regime warplanes launched air raids in Damascus
    ...The capital of Iran's Syrian satrapy...
    province, a watchdog said.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said several rebel groups pounded Wadi Deif amid violent festivities on the ground while regime warplanes launched air strikes around the army base.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria


    -Lurid Crime Tales-
    Prison term for ex-Argentine economy minister
    [Daily Nation (Kenya)] A court in Argentina sentenced former economy minister Felisa Miceli to four years in prison Thursday on corruption charges related to a stash of $64,000 found in her office bathroom in 2007.
    "Ummm... What's that, Yer Excellency?"
    "Toilet paper. What's it look like?"
    "Ahhh... That's the $64,000 question, ain't it?"

    Late president Nestor Kirchner chose Miceli, 60, as the first woman ever to lead Argentina's economy ministry in 2005, but she was forced to resign in disgrace less than two years later over the high-profile scandal.
    "Stick 'em up, Yer Excellency!"
    Miceli was "sentenced to four years imprisonment and disqualification from public office for eight years for crimes of concealment aggravated by her status as a public official," judges said in a unanimous decision.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  64K? Hell Ron Brown would have made many laughs.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 11:58 Comments || Top||


    Arabia
    2 Militants Killed, Suspicious Ship Seized in Yemen
    [Yemen Post] Two Al-Qaeda hard boyz were killed in an Arclight airstrike in Yemen's Hadramout
    ...the formerly independent Qu'aiti state and sultanate, annexed by Communist South Yemen in 1968, encompassing a region along the Gulf of Aden, extending eastwards to the borders of the Dhofar region of Oman. The people are called Hadhramis and speak Hadhrami Arabic. The city Tarimis estimated to contain the highest concentration of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (PTUI) anywhere in the world, approximately seven in every square yard...
    province where several hard boyz have been killed by US drones in the past few days, state media reported on Friday.

    The hard boyz were targeted while on their cycle of violences in Alshihr city, it said, adding that the two were targeted in separate attacks.

    "Their bodies which were completely burned and taken to forensic experts to identify the Death Eaters," the website quoted local sources as saying.

    In the past few days, several AQAP hard boyz have been killed in Hadramout by US drones and Yemeni warplanes as the authorities are continuing a massive hunt for hard boyz across the republic.

    This year, Al-Qaeda has received severe blows since the army drove its operatives out of their strongholds which were seized last year in Abyan
    ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
    and Shabwa provinces.

    Separately, the border guard seized a suspicious ship off the Midi port in Hajja province, the website said.

    "15 Syrian and 2 armed Somali sailors were onboard the ship, which was carrying 4 tonnes of coal," it quoted a statement by the local security authorities. "The ship was en route to the Saudi port of Jazan coming from Somalia," it added.

    A panel has been formed to check the cargo onboard the ship.

    In recent months, Yemen has seized several arms cargoes, mainly Turkish pistols, at the Hodeida and Aden ports.

    The seizures come amid alarming security disorder affecting the West-backed power-transition.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia

    #1  Coal = charcoal.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 12:29 Comments || Top||


    Gunman killed in clash with Saudi police in Qatif
    Saudi authorities said Friday that an insurgent had been killed in an exchange of fire with security forces in Qatif, a restive Shiite-majority province in the east of the kingdom, dpa reported.

    A Saudi security official said that the man was among "other rioters" who fired on a police patrol in the region late Thursday. The alleged attacker was injured in the clash and died on arrival at a local hospital, according to the official.

    The official did not identify the man whom websites said was an 18-year-old local protester.

    His death raises to 12 the number of people killed since last year when Shiites started protests in Qatif demanding political reforms from Saudi Arabia's Sunni rulers, according to activists.

    Saudi authorities said in September that a policeman had been killed by unidentified gunmen in Qatif, which is an oil-rich region.
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    The Grand Turk
    Turkey furthering US-Israeli agenda in Mideast
    [Iran Press TV] America's policy has been clear, keep Israel flanked with phony "Islamist" states, shackled by corrupt governments, fully penetrated by a military that is fully integrated with Israel and making all the right noises meant to maintain sectarian divides across the Islamic world.

    The wars Israel never fought

    Not only was the 1973 war fought by American planes, and American pilots, carefully repainted to seem "Israeli" but the majority of sorties flown during the 1967 war were also American pilots flying American planes
    Who could blame them. Recent revelations, documents "leaked" which put history in real perspective now show that, not only was the 1973 war fought by American planes, and American pilots, carefully repainted to seem "Israeli" but the majority of sorties flown during the 1967 war were also American pilots flying American planes.

    When America calls Israel its "aircraft carrier in the Middle East," it isn't kidding. The only thing that has changed is that America used to actually use Israel to attack others.

    A plan is afoot

    Now, Israel uses America. We are seeing it in Syria, we saw it in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are seeing it in Turkey and, we are now told, we will see the war "re-expand" to Iraq, then to Armenia and points beyond.

    A plan is afoot, Israel, America and Turkey.

    America is involved in a multi-faceted plan to maintain regional hegemony across the Caspian Basin. To do so, it is necessary for it to destabilize the current government in Iraq, bring about the collapse of Syria, destabilize and collapse Armenia and build Azerbaijan as the Israeli/American outpost against Iran and to help support drug trafficking from a continued occupation of Afghanistan.

    Azerbaijan has long been chosen to be the new strategic "American aircraft carrier" in Central Asia, not just another layover stop for drug pilots as it has been for the past ten years.

    The UN, designed to fail

    Key to the process is the avoidance of any durable settlement of any kind in the Middle East. This means that Washington has "green lighted" Israel's settlements in the West Bank, despite UN, EU and even ICC condemnations as being inexorable.

    The permanent "toothless" United Nations
    ...the Oyster Bay money pit...
    , crippled by a Security Council, which was, at one time, actually subject to veto by the island of Formosa (Republic of China), is not just a sign of anachronism but one of permanent colonial overlordship.

    US policy is not just dependent on settlements but continued bombardment of the civilian population of Gazoo and by permanent political upheaval in Egypt as well.
    ... and continues in this vein for another couple pages. High density vitriol at its best.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [2 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iran

    #1  It's was the 1st MAF that crossed the Suez back in '73, the Israelis don't understand water, rly, you can look it up on the interwebs.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 4:09 Comments || Top||

    #2  Dear President Erdogan isn't getting much for his investment in the relationship, poor man.
    Posted by: trailing wife || 12/29/2012 7:29 Comments || Top||

    #3  "1st MAF that crossed the Suez ..." > D *** NG, I KNEW IT!

    lol.
    Posted by: JosephMendiola || 12/29/2012 21:14 Comments || Top||


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    3 Syria-based Diplomats Left Damascus Via Beirut Airport
    [An Nahar] Three Ambassadors left Syria via Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport on Thursday, Leb's state-run National News Agency reported.

    It said Romania's envoy traveled to Bucharest via Istanbul and Russia's diplomat headed to Moscow through a stopover at Dubai airport.

    The Indian ambassador also headed to his home country via Dubai, NNA added.

    Instead of flying in and out of the Damascus
    ...Home to a staggering array of terrorist organizations...
    International Airport, brass hats are driving overland from and to the Lebanese capital because of fighting near the Damascus airport.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria


    Science & Technology
    Apple to drop patent claims against new Samsung phone
    [Al Ahram] Apple Inc has agreed to withdraw patent claims against a new Samsung phone with a high-end display after Samsung said it was not offering to sell the product in the crucial U.S. market
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  ..maybe because Apple has lost its 'chic' in China and Samsung has been picking up that future 'crucial' market. Giving the action an appearance of Big Old West vs Fledgling East probably is not good marketing among that market.
    Posted by: P2Kontheroad || 12/29/2012 8:50 Comments || Top||


    Caribbean-Latin America
    100 bodies in Durango mass grave identified since January

    For a map click here For a map of Durango state, click here

    By Chris Covert
    Rantburg.com

    Fewer than 30 percent of the victims found in Durango's mass graves have been identified, according to Mexican news accounts.

    A news report posted on the website of El Siglo de Durango news daily, Durango state Fiscalia General del Estado, Sonia Yadira de la Garza Fragoso released information that since the final report on the mass graves in Durango state in March, 2012, 100 bodies have been identified by family members, and then returned to them.

    Starting in mid 2011, a total of 331 dead were found in a series of mass graves discovered in Durango state, primarily in Durango city, the capital. Other sites were found as far away as Gomez Palacio in the extreme western part of the state around the La Laguna area and in Santiago Papasquiaro municipality in the north.

    In late July another nine dead were found in the Cristobal Colon sector of Durango city, bringing the total to 340 dead.

    Many of the victims were killed as far back as 2007, and 77 percent of those had been strangled or asphyxiated, mainly by being buried alive.

    According to de la Garza Fragoso, relatives such as grandparents and cousins provided DNA samples to help with identification, a much less accurate means of determining the identity of the victims. Some remains, however, are so decomposed that DNA samples are impossible to obtain, so according to de la Garza Fragoso other means are being used.

    The mass graves in Durango are cumulatively the worst mass grave find in the Mexican Drug War to date. That said, those murders occurred over a six year period. The mass murders and graves in San Fernando municipality in Tamaulipas state are by far the worst mass grave in the Mexican Drug War to date, standing at 193 dead. Those deaths took place between August 2010 and May 2011.

    Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com.
    Posted by: badanov || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Iraq
    Iraqis hold demonstrations against Prime Minister
    Tens of thousands of Iraqis hold mass demonstrations against the country's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Al Jazeera reported on Friday. Protesters demand release of political prisoners and provision of freedoms and rights of the Sunni population of the country.

    It is reported that demonstrations are held in major provinces of the country, particularly in Anbar and Samara. The demonstrators gathered on central squares of provinces after Friday prayers.

    These demonstrations are already the second within the week. Earlier demonstrations were held in Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi cities.
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    India-Pakistan
    PML-N demands early polls announcement to counter conspiracies
    [Dawn] Pakistain Mohammedan League-Nawaz (PML-N) Secretary Information Ahsan Iqbal Friday urged the government to announce date of next general elections at earliest as, according to him, it is imperative to counter various conspiracies being hatched in the country.

    Addressing a presser, Ahsan Iqbal criticised Tehrik Minhaj-ul-Koran chief Dr Tahirul Qadri for trying to sabotage the election process by demanding reforms in the constitutional system of the country.

    Flanked by former Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaf
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Two more generals defect from Syria
    Two Syrian air force generals have defected from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and joined opposition forces in Turkey, a diplomat said on Friday. The generals, commanders of the Regional Air Force, have crossed the border and arrived in the town of Reylanli in southern Turkey, the Turkish diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

    The generals and dozens of lower-ranking officers and their families were taken to a separate camp where army defectors take refuge.

    Turkish officials refuse to give an exact number of Syrian generals currently on Turkish soil as some are returning to Syria to join the active fighters inside the conflict-wracked country.

    Already on Wednesday, General Abdel Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, commander of the Syrian military police, crossed into Turkey via the Cilvegozu border crossing in the town of Reyhanli.
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  I'm liking the Ol'Snagglepuss revival. Perhaps he is also think Coupe deh Grass, Coupe deh Grass. It's the airforce that often gets the Coup-Ball rolling. One of these days a Yak is going to go after the presidential hide-out/palace.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 4:00 Comments || Top||


    Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
    Kyrgyz clerics declare fatwa against New Year's celebrations
    In Kyrgyzstan, Muslim clerics have issued a fatwa against New Year celebrations since they are not related to Islam and are too expensive.

    The chief Muslim authority of the country has called for a ban, urging Muslims to ignore the holiday altogether. Ravshan Eratov, head of the Kyrgyz Muslims’ Religious Administration said, “This New Year is not a religious holiday. It is not related to Muslims at all."

    He also said that Eid Al Fitr, Eid Al Adha and Friday prayers are the only holidays in Islam. He said, “Only those are our holidays. The rest is not about Islam."

    Eratov said that the money spent celebrating the New Year could be put to better use such as helping children and the poor.

    Some citizens in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek don't agree with the idea of banning New Year celebrations. Svetlana Ibrayeva, a teacher, said, “They think people will eat non-Muslim food, or go out to the street to light fireworks and cause harm to each other. They see only bad things about the New year. But I think you can find a lot of good things about the New Year and make a very happy New Year celebration.”

    However, some younger people are more willing to consider the advice from Muslim clerics. Ramil, 23, said, “No, if they said it is not allowed according to Sharia then it is not allowed. It is not even up for the discussion. If it’s the case, we’d better oblige the sharia law."

    New Year remains an official public holiday in Kyrgyzstan despite the fatwa.
    Posted by: ryuge || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  I declare a Fatwa against any more Fatwas.
    Posted by: DarthVader || 12/29/2012 1:17 Comments || Top||

    #2  Party poopers.
    Posted by: AlanC || 12/29/2012 8:44 Comments || Top||

    #3  Just don't consider it a New Year's celebration, more like a big Thanksgiving for being among the survivors of the Mayan Apocalypse.
    Posted by: P2Kontheroad || 12/29/2012 23:14 Comments || Top||

    #4  They got one against vowels?
    Posted by: tu3031 || 12/29/2012 23:39 Comments || Top||


    Britain
    Doctors Call for Ban on Kitchen Knives
    Late add: I was going to note that this was from 2005 at the beginning of the article, but forgot. The point of posting it was to show up a particular British commenter who sniffed to the effect that 'gun murders don't happen' in Albion. Apparently forgotten is that humans will find other methods.
    A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings. They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon. The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

    They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen. None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.
    Chefs said that they didn't need .. chefs knives?
    Y'gotta pick the chefs you ask, of course...
    Did they ask them at knifepoint?
    They don't need 'em down at the Burger King. They got a machine to slice the onions.
    It is true that the point of a small paring knife is best for pointy work. But the blade of a longer knife is much, much better for slicing and chopping and cutting up large pieces of meat. Possibly these particular chefs are looking for more customers for their various expensive restaurants.
    The researchers said a short pointed knife may cause a substantial superficial wound if used in an assault - but is unlikely to penetrate to inner organs.

    The study found links between easy access to domestic knives and violent assault are long established. French laws in the 17th century decreed that the tips of table and street knives be ground smooth. A century later, forks and blunt-ended table knives were introduced in the UK in an effort to reduce injuries during arguments in public eating houses. The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

    The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime.

    [A] Home Office spokesperson said there were already extensive restrictions in place to control the sale and possession of knives. A spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers said: "ACPO supports any move to reduce the number of knife related incidents, however, it is important to consider the practicalities of enforcing such changes."
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [2 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  I went to the link to see the rest of the Onion. Is there an alternate fools-day in the UK maybe? This can't be real.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 4:06 Comments || Top||

    #2  Group punishment for all because the establishment cannot be bothered to solve the problem (by seperating the anti-social).
    Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 12/29/2012 7:34 Comments || Top||

    #3  Last argument I had in a kitchen was a very long time ago...
    Posted by: Solomon Protector of the Texans5923 || 12/29/2012 7:49 Comments || Top||

    #4  Don't know about the stats in the UK, but around 100,000 patients die every year from preventable causes in hospitals. That dwarfs killings and auto deaths, but somehow doesn't seem to make the front page or first five minutes of the propaganda broadcast. Doctor, heal thyself.
    Posted by: P2Kontheroad || 12/29/2012 8:46 Comments || Top||

    #5  but there are no murders in the british utopia...they have strict gun laws (sniff)
    Posted by: dan || 12/29/2012 8:49 Comments || Top||

    #6  Anyone ever try to chop a large onion with a square ended knife?

    Possible, yes. Easy, no. You use the point of the chefs knife to start the cut that runs from close to the root end. Make 4 or so cuts that way, slice across and then chop.

    Much easier than any other knife.
    Posted by: AlanC || 12/29/2012 8:49 Comments || Top||

    #7  Kitchen knives? More like kitchen knaves. Give me a break. I recall when Michael Skakel, a Kennedy, was convicted in the beating of a teenage girl to death with a golf club in Belle Haven, Connecticut, in 1975. Good thing Skakel didn't head to a school with a full set of golf clubs.
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 9:33 Comments || Top||

    #8  This was a running joke for a while on the 'burg that next they would ban knives since they had banned guns. Looks like we were prophets. Next they'll ban cricket bats, bricks, pipes, wood and rocks.
    Posted by: DarthVader || 12/29/2012 10:19 Comments || Top||


    #10  ... there was a 57 per cent increase in deaths caused by punching and kicking.

    Bringing a new chilling meaning to the irrational concept of 'to disarm' the public.
    Posted by: P2kontheroad || 12/29/2012 10:55 Comments || Top||

    #11  No problem P2 - simply lop off arms and legs at birth (and remove teeth later on). As a bonus the person will then also be totally dependent on the government - guaranteed vote!

    What's not to like?
    Posted by: CrazyFool || 12/29/2012 11:12 Comments || Top||

    #12  Once again...check the date:
    Thursday, 26 May, 2005
    Posted by: tu3031 || 12/29/2012 12:14 Comments || Top||

    #13  Offensive weapons are defined as any weapon designed or adapted to cause injury, or intended by the person possessing them to do so.

    IOW, if someone intended to cause injury with say, a spork, it could be considered an "Offensive Weapon". It sorta makes sense when you consider that any object that can't cause injury makes a pretty shitty weapon - offensive or otherwise.
    Posted by: DepotGuy || 12/29/2012 12:21 Comments || Top||

    #14  Are you kidding me, I could turn a plastic bucket into a lethel weapon, nevermind someone just fashioning a shiv.

    And I think there was talk about banning baseball bats. Something about the familiarity of a cricket bat, at less weight, and more portable.

    Knives are illegal in prisons, yet people still manage to have blades. Its almost like bad people figure out ways to hurt people no matter what.
    Posted by: swksvolFF || 12/29/2012 12:37 Comments || Top||

    #15  Once again...check the date:

    I was going to note that at the beginning of the article, but forgot. The point of posting it was to show up a particular British commenter who sniffed to the effect that 'gun murders don't happen' in Albion.

    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 12:56 Comments || Top||

    #16  If they come for my Zwillings, there'll be h*ll to pay.
    Posted by: Mullah Richard || 12/29/2012 13:02 Comments || Top||

    #17  Death by Slap Choppy!

    ban Vince Shlomi!
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 13:40 Comments || Top||

    #18  Sharpened pencils, threat or menace?
    Posted by: tu3031 || 12/29/2012 23:43 Comments || Top||


    Africa North
    Egyptian Islamist leader says Sharia should be spared political conflicts
    [Al Ahram] Nageh Ibrahim, co-founder of hard-line Islamist group Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya, said religion should not be part of any political disputes between Egypt's rival factions.

    In an interview with Soddy Arabia
    ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face...
    n newspaper Al-Yaum on Friday, Ibrahim said the involvement of Sharia in the ongoing political rows is unacceptable in Islamic doctrines.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Salafists


    Tunisia sells off Ben Ali assets
    [Magharebia] Tunisia on Saturday (December 22nd) kicked off a month-long public auction of ousted President-for-Life Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's
    ...who departed by popular demand in January, 2011, precipitating the Arab Spring...
    assets.

    Items once belonging to Ben Ali and 114 of his relatives are on display in Gammarth, where Tunisians and foreign collectors can bid on the items. Seized property valued at less than 10,000 dinars (5,000 euros) will be sold at a fixed price, with more expensive items are open for bidding.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


    Islamist-led Tunisia to raise alcohol duty
    [Daily Nation (Kenya)] The Islamist-led ruling coalition in Tunisia raised alcohol duty on Wednesday in a bid to bolster state coffers despite criticism from rival Islamists that it was wrong to profit from an activity prohibited by the faith.

    The Constituent Assembly approved the budget measure aimed at raising 170 million dinars (85 million euros), acting finance minister Slim Besbes told the state TAP news agency.

    MPs from the moderate Islamist Ennahda party that leads the government voted in favour but an MP from a rival Islamist outfit slammed the move as un-Islamic.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Russia pressing Syria leadership to talk to opposition: Lavrov
    [Al Ahram] Russia, a strong ally of the Syrian regime, calls President Bashar Al-Assad to open dialogue with opposition and implement the agreements reached in Geneva
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria


    China-Japan-Koreas
    Photos of Youthful Pudgy Revealed
    North Korea on Wednesday filled another gap in the photographic history of leader Fat Boy Kim Jong-un, whom few people had laid eyes on until late in 2010.

    The official Rodong Sinmun carried six photos of late leader Kim Jong-il and his son Pudgy Jong-un visiting major military units, one of which was a previously unseen picture from 2009. Kim junior has a less striking hairstyle and is slimmer than now.
    He really was the only person in North Korea who was a size 'XL' back then. Now I think he's an 'LS' (large short).
    A Unification Ministry official said, "It seems they were observing an artillery drill on Feb. 12, 2009, considering Kim senior's suit and the ambient backdrop."
    The 'ambient backdrop' in the photo includes a camera and, apparently, a microscope...
    The visit took place right after Suet Face Kim junior was designated heir to the throne on Jan. 8 the same year.

    Kim junior made his first public appearance with his current look at a party congress on Sept. 28, 2010.

    "When Kim Jong-un made his first public appearance, even rumors circulated in the North that he was the reincarnation of nation founder Kim Il-sung," a South Korean security official said. "This shows how hard the regime tried to manipulate his images to make him look more like Kim Il-sung."
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Pudgy must be getting most of the food in Norkland.
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 9:00 Comments || Top||

    #2  He is known as 영 주의자

    Vaguely translated as the young eater, or fast vacuum of milk-meat from the older.

    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 11:56 Comments || Top||

    #3  Nickname - 후버 청소기로 청소하다
    Posted by: Mullah Richard || 12/29/2012 13:06 Comments || Top||


    Africa North
    Egypt's 'civil servants' told not to criticise president Morsi
    [Al Ahram] Some Egyptian diplomats and media personnel have complained that they are being pressured by their bosses into refraining from criticising Egypt president Mohamed Morsi.

    Opposition forces have frequently accused Morsi of attempting to curb freedoms since the influential Moslem Brüderbund group propelled him into office in Egypt's first freely contested elections earlier this year.

    "I was summoned into the office of the assistant (foreign) minister; he said we were all partners in making the (January) Revolution a success and now we should be sensible to help the president deliver the hopes and dreams of the Revolution," said a young diplomat about what he considered as an explicit warning by his boss.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [3 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring

    #1  To be fair, there is a limitation on US Govt uniformed and civilian employees (during performance of duties). Then again, that tends to depend on the President and party affiliation.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 12:51 Comments || Top||


    Arabia
    Gunmen Attack Yemen Oil Pipeline after Repairs
    [An Nahar] Gunmen attacked a key oil pipeline in Yemen's eastern province of Marib on Friday just hours after technicians repaired damage from previous sabotage, tribal sources and an engineer said.

    "A team of technicians had managed to repair the oil pipeline in the afternoon, following mediation by tribal chiefs that allowed them access to the site," an engineer said, speaking on condition of anonymity
    ... for fear of being murdered...

    Just hours later, gunnies attacked the pipeline, which links eastern oil fields with a floating export terminal on the Red Sea, causing fresh damage, tribal sources said.

    On Tuesday, the Yemeni army launched an offensive against rustics suspected of repeatedly sabotaging the pipeline, sparking festivities which left 17 people dead, tribal sources said.

    Marib is a major al-Qaeda stronghold.

    Attacks on oil and gas pipelines by al-Qaeda gunnies or by rustics seeking to extract concessions from the central government are common in Yemen -- an impoverished country that produces about 300,000 barrels of oil a day, mostly for export.

    A tribal source told AFP that the offensive was targeting prominent figure Salah bin Hussein al-Dammaj, who has allegedly blown up the pipeline several times to pressure the authorities to pay him 100 million riyals ($480,000) in compensation for land he claims was taken from him in Sanaa.

    The 320-kilometer (200-mile) pipeline carries oil from Safer oilfields in Marib to an export terminal on the Red Sea. It carries around 180,000 barrels per day.

    According to official figures, lost production because of attacks on pipelines in the east cost the government more than $1 billion dollars in 2012, while oil exports fell by 4.5 percent.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia


    Africa North
    Libya: Yarmouk massacre trials to open
    [Magharebia] Trials related to the 2011 Yarmouk detention camp massacre will begin next month in Tripoli
    ...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn...
    , Libya Herald reported on Thursday (December 27th).

    Nine defendants are accused of torturing and executing more than 100 prisoners near the Yarmouk Military Base in Salahaddin, south of Tripoli. Officer Hamza Mabrouk Muftah El-Harizi will be tried separately by a military tribunal.

    Human Rights Watch
    ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world...
    has investigated what it calls "the summary execution of detainees in the final days of the Qadaffy government's control of Tripoli".

    The Tripoli prison was the home of the "Khamis Brigade". The youngest of Moamer Qadaffy's sons, 28-year-old Khamis was known by rebels as "The Butcher".
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


    India-Pakistan
    PPP turns Benazir's anniversary into electioneering
    [Dawn] With political parties gearing up for the forthcoming elections, the Pakistain People's Party (PPP) held a big public gathering at Liaquat Road on the fifth death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto
    ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
    on Thursday.

    The PPP leaders on the occasion asked the party workers and supporters to once again take Dire Revenge™ for the liquidation of Ms Bhutto by defeating her political opponents in the elections.

    Unlike the four anniversaries since Ms Bhutto was killed at Liaquat Bagh in 2007, this year's public gathering here was the biggest.

    Amid heightened security, a large number of PPP supporters, women activists and local leaders attended the event.

    The participants were chanting slogans like 'Benazir, we are ashamed because your killers are still alive.'

    With the general elections round the corner, the speakers took oath from the PPP supporters present on the occasion to vote for all those candidates who were recommended by President Asif Ali Ten Percent Zardari
    ... husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, who has been singularly lacking in curiosity about who done her in ...

    "Today, I want to take oath from the PPP workers that they would vote the candidate who is given ticket by President Zardari. I take this oath from you so that you are united and once again take Dire Revenge™ of Benazir's liquidation through the ballot, not the bullet," said Amir Fida Paracha, the PPP city president. Mr Paracha was the candidate for a National Assembly seat in the 2008 elections.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

    #1  Unlike Senator Wellstone, at least the PPP waited five years to turn the death into political fodder.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 12:43 Comments || Top||


    Seven injured in Charsadda blast
    [Dawn] Seven persons were maimed, two among them critically, when an bomb went off in Omarzai area in Charsadda on Thursday.

    Local sources said that the bomb was planted along a road leading to Hajiabad locality in Omarzai area. Two real brothers were among the injured, they added.

    The injured were identified as Anwar Shah, Sajjad Ali and his brother Nowsher Ali, Aizaz, Fazl Rabi, Syed Mudassar Shah and Mohammad.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Africa North
    Libyan policeman killed near Benghazi
    [Magharebia] An unknown gunman on Thursday (December 27th) killed a Libyan police officer in Al-Abiar, 50km east of Benghazi, Libya Herald reported.

    Lieutenant Awad Mohamed Al-Fakhri, 35, was rubbed out in his home. His mother was injured in the attack. The slain officer was reportedly one of the first people to defect from Moamer Qadaffy's security forces to join the revolution.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring

    #1  Someone was settling old scores?
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 8:53 Comments || Top||

    #2  Or cleansing the 'impure'.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 12:26 Comments || Top||


    Morocco activist jailed over drugs charges: NGO
    [Al Ahram] A Moroccan court has sentenced a political activist to a year in prison for drug trafficking and possession, a human rights
    ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty...
    group in the kingdom said on Friday.

    Driss Bouterrada of the "February 20" movement that demands social justice and political reforms was also handed a fine of 5,000 dirhams ($630, 480 euros) by the court in Rabat, said the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH). Bouterrada, a street vendor in his 30s, is in prison in Rabat's twin city of Sale after being tossed in the slammer
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


    Israel-Palestine-Jordan
    Israeli troops grab Palestinian cop in W.Bank: security
    [Al Ahram] Israeli troops Friday incarcerated
    Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
    a Paleostinian policeman as he tried to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, a Paleostinian security source told AFP.

    He said that soldiers tossed in the calaboose
    Drop the rosco, Muggsy, or you're one with the ages!
    Firas Abu Aziz, 27, as he was on his way home to the village of Yata, near the southern city of Hebron. The Israeli army could not confirm or deny the report.

    Israeli troops had been looking for Abu Aziz and a previous attempt to arrest him earlier this month was aborted when Paleostinians hurled stones at the Israeli force, which withdrew in what the army later said was to avoid civilian casualties, sparking a tirade of criticism in Israeli media.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Palestinian Authority


    India-Pakistan
    British girl missing for three years in Pakistan on way home
    [Dawn] A six-year-old girl is on her way home to Britannia more than three years after she was kidnapped by her father and taken to Pakistain, police said on Friday.

    Atiya Anjum-Wilkinson disappeared in November 2009 after going to stay with her father, Razwan Ali Anjum.

    The former insurance salesman told the girl's mother, Gemma Wilkinson, that he was taking Atiya to Southport in northwest England but instead took her to Lahore.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  is her arranged-marriage husband coming too?
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 14:06 Comments || Top||


    Africa North
    Egypt's SCoAF (Military) Stops Paleo/Qatar Scheme in Sinai
    From AhRam (aka Al Ahram, the Pyramids) english version
    A recent decree issued by Minister of Defence Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi restricting the right to buy property in Sinai to second-generation Egyptian citizens had come against the wish of the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to a military source.

    The decree, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity, was issued after the minister became aware of a Palestinian-Qatari scheme to buy territory in Sinai "supposedly for tourism related projects."

    The source added that the minister "informed" the president before taking he took the decision "with unprecedented support from within the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the wider military community.

    "Many of us [officers and soldiers] died to retrieve this land; we did so not knowing that Morsi would one day compromise the country's right to Sinai - for whatever reason. Whatever the reason, Sinai is a red line. We will support our Palestinian brothers in every way possible but Sinai is not for sale," the source said.

    This decision by El-Sissi, who was appointed in August following Morsi's decision to remove his predecessor Hussein Tantawi along with the second in command Sami Anan, is more or less unprecedented.
    Posted by: lord garth || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Saniora: We'll Return to Dialogue once Nasrallah Agrees to Discussing Hizbullah's Arms
    [An Nahar] Mustaqbal
    ... the Future Movement, political party led by Saad Hariri...
    bloc head MP Fouad Saniora stressed on Friday that the March 14-led opposition had presented "serious and acceptable" proposals over the national dialogue "contrary to what the other camp is claiming."

    He said: "The March 14 camp will return to the national dialogue once Hizbullah chief His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Hezbollah


    Good morning
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  Birthday Gam Shot 12/27

    Alison Brie [Filmography](age 30)



    Posted by: GolfBravoUSMC || 12/29/2012 1:28 Comments || Top||

    #2  I believe I missed all of her films. Now, if she had used her name as born, nee Alison Schermerhorn, I might have noticed. She took her middle name which is a cheese?
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 8:52 Comments || Top||

    #3  LOL. Gouda thing I was out of Tang.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 11:50 Comments || Top||

    #4  Go to your room, Shipman. LOL
    Posted by: lotp || 12/29/2012 14:42 Comments || Top||


    -Lurid Crime Tales-
    Indian gang-rape victim dies in Singapore hospital
    [Iran Press TV] The young Indian woman who was gang-raped and severely beaten on a bus in New Delhi on December 16 has died in a hospital in Singapore.
    If they won't hang the bastards for rape, maybe they'll hang them for murder.
    Remind the Indians that civilized countries execute rapist-murderers, whereas Pakistan doesn't...
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    India-Pakistan
    Video dispels reports of rift among Pakistani Taliban ranks
    [Dawn] A video released on Friday, showing Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP) chief , Hakimullah Mehsud sitting with his deputy Waliur Rehman, dispells recent reports of a depeening rift between the two powerful cut-thoat commanders.

    "There is no divide in TTP. I and Maulvi Waliur Rehman are one, and look, we are sitting together. The propaganda of a rift in Taliban ranks is totally untrue," says Mehsud pointing to Rehman in the 45-minute Pashto language video, a copy of which has been received by Dawn.com.

    According to reports published earlier this month, Pak military officials had said that the two top TTP commanders were at loggerheads with each other, with Mehsud having lost operational control of the Pak Taliban and the moderate deputy leader Rehman set to take over the reins of the feared cut-thoat group.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [2 views] Top|| File under: TTP


    -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
    Uganda: Farmers to sue govt over animal attacks
    [Monitor.CO.UG] More than 1,000 farmers in Adjumani District have vowed to drag the government to court over the continuous destruction of their crops by about 50 elephants.

    Farmers from Dazipi and Arinyapi sub-counties said the animals from Nimule National Park have destroyed hundreds of acres of food crops, leading to fears of possible outbreak of hunger next year.

    Mr George Uzzi, who spoke on behalf of the farmers, some of whom are beneficiaries of the Naads programme, said most of the affected are those who were displaced by the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency. "All of us have agreed to contribute Shs10,000 to hire the services of a law firm to allow us battle the matter in courts since the government has abandoned us," Mr Uzzi said.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:


    Africa North
    Benghazi rejects Islamist violence
    [Magharebia] Benghazi citizens have had enough of the violence in their city.

    One week after armed Islamists laid siege to the Benghazi security directorate, civil society organizations are demonstrating against gangs.

    Held under the title "Benghazi Rescue Friday Is Not Dead", the rally on Friday (December 28th) aims to remind Libyans that no one is safe unless gangs disband and surrender their weapons.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in North Africa

    #1  "A group that doesn't want to see stability in Libya and wants to rule the country in an bully boy way is responsible for killing Abdel Fattah Younes and US ambassador Chris Stevens

    This isn't over yet. We haven't heard the fat lady sing.
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 8:57 Comments || Top||


    -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-
    200 Utah Teachers Get Gun Training
    Posted by: Omaviger Elmeack7805 || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  This probably makes liberals seethe and rage. However, this just might work. Most of the mass murders choose places that are gun free zones to attack.
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 9:35 Comments || Top||

    #2  mass murders murderers
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 9:36 Comments || Top||

    #3  Harden the target and you reduce the risk. You can't eliminate it, but you can reduce the risk.
    Posted by: Besoeker || 12/29/2012 10:23 Comments || Top||

    #4  But was it voluntary? Did the gov't get to pick who would be allowed to defend themselves?

    That's the only way that this could go down that even has half a chance of passing muster with the Michael Bloombergs and Diane Feinsteins of this world.
    Posted by: AlanC || 12/29/2012 11:21 Comments || Top||

    #5  "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" Ben Franklin. One of the problems that seems to get ignored is that you can never prevent every eventuality. There are too many people that really believe that the gov't can and should solve or prevent all problems and this simply just can not and should not be so. First of all it is not possible and secondly, under our Constitution, it is not the government's place.
    Posted by: warthogswife || 12/29/2012 14:12 Comments || Top||


    Africa North
    Mali PM urges military intervention
    [Magharebia] Malian Prime Minister Diango Cissoko on Thursday (December 27th) pleaded for African military intervention "as soon as possible" to help his country oust gangs, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Le Monde reported.
    "Hurry up! They want to kill me!"
    He was speaking at a presser after a meeting with Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara
    ...the current president-for-life of Ivory Coast. He actually beat his predecessor in an election before having to eject him from the presidential palazzo....
    , who also chairs the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS).

    Cissoko began a regional tour Wednesday in Ouagadougou, where he met with ECOWAS mediator and Burkina Faso
    ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office during the Reagan administration...
    President Blaise Compaoré. He will also visit Benin and Senegal
    ... a nation of about 14 million on the west coast of Africa bordering Mauretania to the north, Mali to the east, and a pair of Guineas to the south, one of them Bissau. It is 90 percent Mohammedan and has more than 80 political parties. Its primary purpose seems to be absorbing refugees...

    Last week, the United Nations
    ...an international organization whose stated aims of facilitating interational security involves making sure that nobody with live ammo is offended unless it's a civilized country...
    decided to back the ECOWAS proposal to send 3,300 troops to the region.

    The Security Council gave an initial one year authorisation to the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) to use "all necessary measures" to help Malian authorities retake land held by "terrorist, turban and gangs".
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Ansar Dine


    Arabia
    U.S. Drone Strike Kills two Qaida Militants
    [An Nahar] A U.S. drone strike in the Yemeni town of Shehr in the eastern province of Hadramawt killed two suspected members of al-Qaeda on Friday, a local official said.
    This is the same strike generically described as "an airstrike" in the Yemen Post article...
    "Two members of al-Qaeda on a cycle of violence was struck down in his prime when targeted by a missile fired by a U.S. drone," the official said on condition of anonymity.

    On Monday, four other members of al-Qaeda were killed and another maimed by three missiles fired at cycle of violences in the same town.

    Those missiles were also fired by an "American drone" in the center of Shehr, a town east of the lovely provincial capital Mukalla, an official had said.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Arabia

    #1  "Two members of al-Qaeda on a cycle of violence was struck down in his prime when targeted by a missile fired by a U.S. drone," the official said on condition of anonymity.

    Hiding out from his grammar teacher. Two members ... was struck down in his prime. What's up with that?
    Posted by: Mike Ramsey || 12/29/2012 14:43 Comments || Top||

    #2  It's the auto-substitute function; a preventative measure to try to thwart copyright-trolls.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 17:56 Comments || Top||


    Africa North
    Hundreds protest Egypt's constitution in Alexandria in absence of Islamists
    [Al Ahram] Hundreds of ant-Morsi protesters, who reject the newly approved constitution, demonstrated peacefully at the Qaed Ibrahim mosque after the prayer on Friday, following two violent festivities between supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi at the mosque, one of the main protest sites in the coastal city of Alexandria.

    Member of Islamist parties and groups seemed to have avoided praying in Qaed Ibrahim mosque to prevent a third violent incident.

    "The Brotherhood would be facing the same destiny as Mubarak's if it continued to walk down his path," said Hussein Gomaa, coordinator of the Left Youth Movement, which participated in the protest.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


    India-Pakistan
    A trial without an end
    [Dawn] Repeated and unending investigations, indifferent lawyers, a chaotic judicial system and a government that really didn't care have all ensured that Benazir Bhutto
    ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
    murder trial is going nowhere.

    Five different judges have headed the trial and the prosecution has filed eight separate challans since the proceeding started on February 29, 2008, which have also added to the delay as have the investigations by two different investigation teams.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


    Ready to negotiate but not disarm: Taleban
    The head of Pakistan’s Taleban said his militia is willing to negotiate with the government but not disarm, a message delivered in a video given to Reuters on Friday. The release of the 40-minute video follows three high-profile Taleban attacks in the northern city of Peshawar this month: an attack by multiple suicide bombers on the airport, the killing of a senior politician and eight others in a bombing and the kidnap of 22 paramilitary forces on Thursday.

    “We believe in dialogue but it should not be frivolous,” Hakimullah Mehsud said. “Asking us to lay down arms is a joke.”

    In the video, Mehsud sits cradling a rifle next to his deputy, Waliur Rehman. Military officials say there has been a split between the two men but Mehsud said that was propaganda.

    “Waliur Rehman is sitting with me here and we will be together until death,” said Mehsud, pointing at his companion.
    Give us the coordinates and it won't be long now...
    The Taleban said in a letter released on Thursday that they wanted Pakistan to rewrite its laws and constitution to conform with Sharia, break its alliance with the United States and stop interfering in the war in Afghanistan and focus on India instead.
    In other words, give them everything they want and they'll then agree to behave. They sound like Paleostinians. Or Soviets...
    Mehsud referred to the killing of the senior politician in his speech and said the political party, the largely Pashtun Awami National Party, would continue to be a target along with other politicians.

    “We are against the democratic system because it is un-Islamic,” Mehsud said. “Our war isn’t against any party. It is against the non-Islamic system and anyone who supports it.”
    "If you ain't fer us, you against us!"
    Mehsud said in his interview that although he was open to dialogue, the government was to blame for the violence because it broke previous, unspecified deals.
    Unless you disagree with him in which case he'll kill you...
    “In the past, it is the Pakistani government that broke peace agreements,” he said. “A slave of the US can’t make independent agreements; it breaks agreements according to US dictates.”

    Mehsud said that the Pakistan Taleban would follow the lead of the Afghan Taleban when it came to forming policy after most Nato troops withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

    “We are Afghan Taleban and Afghan Taleban are us,” he said. “We are with them and Al Qaeda. We are even willing to get our heads cut off for Al Qaeda.”
    There's an invitation...
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  In other words, give them everything they want and they'll then agree to behave. They sound like Paleostinians. Or Soviets...

    Or Senate Democrats.
    Posted by: USN,Ret. || 12/29/2012 11:11 Comments || Top||


    Africa Subsaharan
    Nigerian troops kill five suspected Bokeaux
    [Africa Review] Nigerian troops killed five suspected Islamists and recovered arms and explosives in a raid in the restive northern city of Kaduna, the military said Friday.

    Army front man in Kaduna Colonel Sani Usman said two suspected Boko Haram
    ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
    members were also maimed during the operation, a raid on a bomb-making factory in Rigasa area of the city on Thursday.

    "On approaching the factory, some suspected faceless myrmidons opened fire and also threw already primed IED (improvised bomb) at the troops.

    "The exchange of fire that ensued resulted in the death of five terrorists, while two that sustained various degrees of injuries are being treated." he said.

    Soldiers destroyed the bomb factory and recovered several guns, rifles and other bomb-making chemicals, he added.

    Kaduna is considered a stronghold of Boko Haram, which has repeatedly targeted the security services and churches as part of its violent campaign across northern and central Nigeria.

    Nigerian troops have carried out a series of raids on suspected Boko Haram hideouts in recent months as violence linked to the sect's insurgency is believed to have left some 3,000 people dead in Nigeria since 2009, including killings by the security forces.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Boko Haram


    India-Pakistan
    Indian soldiers kill two rebels in Kashmir
    [Dawn] Indian forces on Friday killed two suspected rebels in a gunbattle and injured seven civilians separately during anti-India protests in southern Kashmire, police said.

    Two army officers and one policeman were maimed in the fighting in Chandigam, a village 45 kilometres south of Srinagar, the main city in the Indian portion of Kashmire, said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to news hounds.

    A police statement said those killed were Kashmiri cadres of Lashkar-e-Taiba
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Lashkar e-Taiba


    Africa Subsaharan
    Central Africa leader appeals for help to halt rebel advance
    [Daily Nation (Kenya)] Central African Republic's embattled President Francois Bozize appealed Thursday for French and US help, as thousands of his supporters demonstrated against the rebels who have seized large swathes of the mineral-rich country.

    Former colonial power La Belle France however, vowed it would not intervene in the country, which has a chequered history of coups and brutal rule.

    The United Nations
    ...an organization whose definition of human rights is interesting, to say the least...
    is pulling out its staff and the United States has warned its citizens to leave in the face of the deteriorating security situation, as rebel fighters close in on Bangui, creating alarm among residents.

    "We ask our French cousins and the United States of America, the great powers, to help us to push back the rebels... to allow for dialogue in Libreville to resolve the current crisis," Bozize told thousands of supporters at a rally in Bangui.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Syria Opposition Chief Rejects Moscow Talks Invite
    [An Nahar] The head of Syria's mainstream opposition National Coalition on Friday rejected an invitation by Moscow for talks to find a solution to the 21-month-old conflict, accusing Russia of interference.

    "We have said frankly that we will not go to Moscow," Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib told al-Jazeera television.

    Khatib said Russia should apologize for "interfering" in Syrian affairs, condemn "massacres" committed by the regime and issue a "clear call for the departure of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad."
    Terror of Aleppo

    If these conditions are met, he said, talks could be held with the Russians in an Arab country.

    Earlier Russia, which has not joined much of the West in recognizing the National Coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people, invited Khatib for talks in Moscow or a regional capital.
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Syria


    India-Pakistan
    Policeman killed, bank heist foiled
    [Dawn] A police constable was killed and another policeman was maimed in an exchange of fire with half a dozen armed bandidos while foiling a bank heist in Orangi Town on Thursday.

    With the latest killing, the number of coppers bumped off in the city during the current year has reached 121.

    Also maimed in the firing was one of the bandidos whose accomplices took him away along with the weapons they had snatched from a private bank guard and the maimed policeman, the police said.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: TTP


    FIA finds Gilani guilty in Haj scam case
    ISLAMABAD - The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has found former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani guilty of corruption in the 2009 and 2010 Haj operations, The Express Tribune reported on Thursday.

    Citing sources, the paper said the investigation agency has referred Gilani’s case to the Special Judge (Central), Rawalpindi, under Section 175 of the Pakistan Penal Code so that he may be declared a proclaimed offender. According to legal procedure, the special judge will summon the former premier before the court and ask him to surrender himself for further investigation in the case.

    FIA uncovered Gilani’s involvement in the Haj scam while investigating other suspects in the case, sources said. According to them, the former premier misused his authority during his tenure on two counts — to allocate a huge quota to several undeserving Haj operators and to appoint Zain Sukhera as a grade 21 officer in the information technology (IT) ministry.
    Posted by: Steve White || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under:


    Syria-Lebanon-Iran
    Al-Nusra Front Accuses U.S. of Keeping Assad in Power
    [An Nahar] Syrian jihadist group the al-Nusra Front, blacklisted by Washington as a terror outfit, has accused the United States of seeking to keep Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
    Terror of Aleppo...
    in power.

    "The continued U.S. and international support for prolonging the regime's lifespan by giving extensions (for a political transition), sending observers and trying to negotiate peace is clear to everyone," the group's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, said in a voice recording posted online.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: al-Nusra


    Africa North
    Egypt opposition says Islamists trying to stifle dissent
    [Al Ahram] Egypt's opposition accused President Mohamed Morsi's Islamist allies of trying to muzzle dissent on Friday after prosecutors decided to investigate whether prominent government critics were guilty of sedition.

    The probe, which comes a month after Morsi replaced the chief prosecutor, further sours the political climate as the leader and his opponents face off over a new constitution that became law on Wednesday.

    Critics of the new charter say it uses vague language, fails to enshrine the rights of women and minorities and does little to champion the rights of Egyptians who rose up last year to overthrow army-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [3 views] Top|| File under: Arab Spring


    India-Pakistan
    Benazir murder trial
    [Dawn] THE post-death conspiracy is no less painful. Everyone has chipped in to ensure that the killers of Benazir Bhutto
    ... 11th Prime Minister of Pakistain in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996. She was the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistain People's Party, who was murdered at the instigation of General Ayub Khan. She was murdered in her turn by person or persons unknown while campaigning in late 2007. Suspects include, to note just a few, Baitullah Mehsud, General Pervez Musharraf, the ISI, al-Qaeda in Pakistain, and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who shows remarkably little curiosity about who done her in...
    have remained practically untried five years after her liquidation. The government has juggled with challans and suspects. No less than five trial judges have heard the case. Defence lawyers have been too busy in other work and their cause has been helped by the prosecution itself seeking adjournments. Amid all this, the PPP government has been subjected to criticism over its inability to deliver on its promise of bringing Ms Bhutto's murderers to justice. Its efforts to find the killers have certainly been sluggish. The party's current minders have been too keen promoting the grand ideal of democracy to focus fully on the murder case. Instead, the party has been exploring the political mileage to be gained from the contrast between not trying Ms Bhutto's murderers and a 'trial of her grave' -- a reference to the reopening of the Swiss cases.

    In his speech on the fifth death anniversary of Ms Bhutto, PPP chairman Bilawal Baby Bhutto Zardari
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan


    Caribbean-Latin America
    Chavez still not dead
    [El Universal] Venezuelan Vice-President Nicolas Maduro read over on Friday a greeting message to the National Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB). The message was sent by Venezuelan His Excellency President-for-Life, Caudillo of the Bolivarians Hugo Chavez from Havana, Cuba, where he is recovering from a cancer surgery.

    Joined by the high military command and top leaders of ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Maduro claimed to be fully subordinate to the Venezuelan supremo and proceeded to read out the message. In there, Chavez appreciates the army loyalty "at this very complex and difficult time."
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Commies

    #1  Darn.
    Posted by: Rambler In Virginia || 12/29/2012 20:29 Comments || Top||


    Iraq
    Iraq-Kurdish Relations Go from Bad to Worse
    Day after day, the belief strengthens that the possibility for a peaceful resolution (or at least containment) of the crisis between the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have grown remote, if not altogether vanished. The signs pointing to escalation outnumber those pointing to a truce or cooling down. Regardless of whether the ongoing escalation will lead to an all-out armed confrontation between the two sides or not, the vanishing of opportunities for a peaceful resolution may be attributed to a number of reasons. Here we highlight four of them.

    Firstly and principally: the complete breakdown of trust between the two sides at the very highest levels, namely, Prime Minister and head of the ‘State of Law’ coalition Nouri al-Maliki, and the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Massoud Barzani. Trust has broken down not least because of the direct accusations and blunt statements to be hurled by both sides, whether from the leaders themselves or from their close associates.

    In a recent statement, Maliki expressed the view that current events in Iraq’s various regions and the nature of the statements coming out of KRG officials do not signal a sincere desire to resolve the nation’s difficulties through dialogue. In a semi-official statement by the "State of Law" coalition released roughly the same time, one finds a string of accusations directed against Barzani. The statement claims that Barzani violated the constitution and “all Iraqi laws” when he sheltered Tariq al-Hashemi, a criminal wanted on charges of terrorism.

    As for the regions under the control of the KRG, the leadership of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) led by Barzani said that Maliki is encouraging an ethnic conflict between Arabs and Kurds, and accused him of being the first Iraqi prime minister preparing the army for war and internal conflict. Further emphasizing the total, or near-total, breakdown in trust is the ongoing military buildup by both sides in the disputed territories — or what the Kurds have taken to calling the “regions cut off from the KRG,” while the central government refers to them as “the mixed regions.”

    Another reason lies in the sharp polarization and new alignments. Talabani who, along with his party had been sympathetic to Maliki and closely allied with him, suddenly lined up with Barzani. So too did the Kurdish Movement for Change, under the leadership of Nawshirwan Mustafa, along with the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Islamic Union. As a result, Barzani can now legitimately claim to speak on behalf of the Kurdish consensus. One might add to the above groups various political centers of power and Turkmen tribes in Kirkuk as well as in other regions that have adopted a KRG-friendly position. In contrast, Maliki was able to draw social and political forces from outside his parliamentary bloc and its partisan satellites. They encouraged him to adopt a more extreme and unyielding position toward the Kurds. The latter are viewed in many circles — both Arab and non-Arab — as having endless demands and limitless ambitions.

    Money began to flow from some parties to others in order to secure the necessary military and logistic capabilities, as well as to win more supporters in the political sphere, the media, and the public. The outside parties did not intervene in order to reach a resolution, but to support one of the two parties in this crisis and weaken the other. Their goal is to weaken the effectiveness and diminish the influence of those parties that desire to find a peaceful resolution and realistic settlement with minimum loss and strife. Since the Iraqi government has adopted positions that seemed supportive of the Syrian regime and in line with Iran’s own stance, regional and international actors began to incite against the current government and support its rivals in order to weaken it. Indeed, perhaps the recurring political and media leaks about Ankara and Doha’s intervention in the crisis between Baghdad and Erbil are both plausible and rational. The further the crisis in Syria deepens and heads in the direction of grave deterioration, so too does the political polarization in Iraq, intensified by external factors and influences.

    The final reason for the diminishing or collapsing opportunities to resolve the latest lies in the unfortunate reality that this crisis is not, in fact, the first of its kind. Rather, it is the product of a number of crises that have cumulatively built up over the last ten years. Indeed, some of those prior crises have roots extending back decades. This is to say nothing of the intricate problems and crises stemming from the legitimate differences of opinion concerning the administration of the state, how its policies are determined and its order of priorities enumerated.

    Even if the proximate cause were defused, this would not lead to the defusing of other crises. And even if this were achieved, it would only hold for a short period of time.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Iraq


    Caribbean-Latin America
    Northern Zacatecas scene of thefts, shootings and kidnappings

    For a map, click here. For a map of Zacatecas state click here

    By Chris Covert
    Rantburg.com

    Despite public promises by authorities to reinforce security in northern municipalities of Zacatecas state, several security incidents have taken place, including the kidnapping of a relative of a Chihuahua state politician Christmas eve, according to Mexican news accounts.

    A news story published on the website of El Siglo de Durango news daily Friday reported that three members of the family of Camargo, Chihuahua mayor Arthus Zubia Ordaz died in a carjacking incident near Fresnillo, Zacatecas.

    According to the report, at around 1200 hrs the family was bound for Chihuahua state when the victims were intercepted by armed suspects, then driven some distance only crash at a location about 24 kilometers outside of Fresnillo.

    Killed in the crash were Yolanda Zubia Fernandez, a former government official from Guanajuato state and Zubia Ordaz's sister, and Brenda Ordaz Zubia, 34. and her son Luis Alfredo Ordaz Zubia, 14.

    Three months ago Chihuahua state politician Alex LaBaron claimed that in September in Fresnillo his brother Max LeBaron and two women were taken hostage and driven to a warehouse in Cuencame municipality in Durango.  There Max Lebaron was beaten. Three hours later the trio were released near Fresnillo.

    The last incident probably explains why the Secretaria de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA), the controlling agency for the Mexican Army had announced plans in November to reinforce the northern border areas in Zacatecas, especially near the borders of Durango and Coahuila states.

    Since that announcement, more than 50 individuals have been killed, mostly in intergang fighting and executions.

    Incidents have taken place on or near Mexico Federal Highway 54, and have included 13 killed in or around Fresnillo between November 12th and December 16th. Included in that time frame was a counter-kidnapping operation by units with the Mexican 11th Military Zone, which led to the capture of four kidnapping suspects. Other killings have occurred in that time frame in Jerez and Calera municipalities as well as in Guadalupe and Tabasco municipalities.

    According to a news item posted on the website of El Sol de Zacatecas news daily, intense fighting between armed gang members has been taking place since Christmas. Locations in Fresnillo include firefights on Calle Miguel Hidalgo, near Zona Centro and near the Palacio Municipio or city hall. Fighting continued in Zapata colony, on Avenida Huicotand and near Chedraui store.

    Reports were also received from the sectors Lomas de Plateros and Fovissste, which are near roads leading to Valparaiso municipality.

    According to the report fighting continued Thursday in Esparza colony, near the Secundaria Tecnica 2 school and in Paseo del Mineral colony near roads that lead to Valparaiso.

    No one was reported killed or wounded in the multiple gunfights.

    It is worth noting that a comment appearing on the El Siglo de Durango article charged that federal and state police forces in the area were charging tolls at checkpoints in northern Zacatecas. That comment was removed a few minutes later. The original remark in Spanish can be seen here.

    Criminal gangs also have been known to don military uniforms to appear as legitimate security elements, disguising their presence in public.

    Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com.
    Posted by: badanov || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [1 views] Top|| File under:

    #1  my next vacation...after Yemen
    Posted by: Frank G || 12/29/2012 0:10 Comments || Top||

    #2  my next vacation...after Yemen
    So that's where you're planning to have your body shipped?
    Posted by: Glenmore || 12/29/2012 9:35 Comments || Top||

    #3  I find it odd that no German tourists have been rubbed out or kidnapped in Mexico. Or have they and I missed it? Germans are crazy stupid during vacation, which they have a lot of, thanks to Greece and Luther.
    Posted by: Shipman || 12/29/2012 11:52 Comments || Top||


    India-Pakistan
    Fresh polio case in Peshawar
    [Dawn] Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
    ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
    on Thursday recorded a new polio
    ...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
    case amid the World Health Organisation's concerns about poor vaccination campaigns and the missing of immunisation targets.
    Continued on Page 49
    Posted by: Fred || 12/29/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || E-Mail|| [0 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

    #1  These Pakis don't seem to grasp the concept of cause and effect. Maybe they also think it is a Western conspiracy that causes shriveling.
    Posted by: JohnQC || 12/29/2012 9:17 Comments || Top||

    #2  Or it's an encouraged deep-seated paranoia that all polio inoculation workers are in the pay of the CIA (think of the doctor who helped find Bin Ladin and who is now in a Pak prison).
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 13:05 Comments || Top||

    #3  If those particular details hadn't come out... then again, if wishes were horses...

    Hmm, maybe:

    If they'd exercised as much security over the search for Bin Laden as they did over Fast and Furious, or Benghazi...
    Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain || 12/29/2012 13:34 Comments || Top||

    #4  Not their collective backsides in the sling, Snowy.
    Posted by: Pappy || 12/29/2012 18:10 Comments || Top||



    Who's in the News
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    On Sale now!


    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.
    Click here for more information

    Meet the Mods
    In no particular order...
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    Two weeks of WOT
    Sat 2012-12-29
      At Least 15 Killed in Sect Attack in North Nigeria
    Fri 2012-12-28
      Militants kill two, kidnap 22 Pakistani soldiers
    Thu 2012-12-27
      Somalia sets 100 days for Al Shabab militants to surrender
    Wed 2012-12-26
      6 Killed in Attack on Nigerian Church
    Tue 2012-12-25
      Drone Strikes Kill Six Qaida Suspects in Yemen
    Mon 2012-12-24
      Tunisia arrests 16 al-Qaeda suspects
    Sun 2012-12-23
      Egypt vice-president resigns on final day of referendum
    Sat 2012-12-22
      Scuds pummel Syrian rebel positions
    Fri 2012-12-21
      U.N. Security Council Approves Mali Intervention Force
    Thu 2012-12-20
      Yemeni President Restructures Army, Removes Saleh Cronies
    Wed 2012-12-19
      Three more polio workers shot in Pakistan; eight dead in 48 hours
    Tue 2012-12-18
      Syrian rebels take control of Damascus Palestinian camp
    Mon 2012-12-17
      Rebel Offensive In Hama
    Sun 2012-12-16
      Rockets Fired on Peshawar Airport, Five Dead, Dozens Injured
    Sat 2012-12-15
      Tunisian Salafists attack bar, call drinkers 'infidels'

    Better than the average link...



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