#1
There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.
Agree. Whether or not man-made global warming [MMGW] is important, there is ZERO evidence that anything so far proposed to lessen MMGW will have a beneficial effect sooner than 200 years into the future, while the detrimental economic effects happen IMMEDIATELY, with many national economies already rapidly deteriorating.
Enough of this MMGW crap.
#5
Unfortunately, the SIRIUS + simil major Solar Storm/Flare Events [e.g. QUEBEC] were real - IMO it would be morally + professionally unethical + incompetent for our Resident Mad Solar/Space Scientists to not determine + tell us what is occurring.
MODERN + POST MODERN REPRESENTATIVE/ELECTORAL: DEMOCRACY = come to mean HIDE EVERYTHING, GOOD OR BAD OR MIXED, FROM THE VOTERS OR THE PEOPLE.
Not unlike "Peak Oil" + "Peak Resources/
Everything", iff one believes that our OWG-NWO is also akin to desired future SPACE GOVT-ORDER FOR PURPOSES OF DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION + COLONIZATION, which I do, THEN THESE QUESTIONS + ISSUES, ETC. HAVE TO BE ASKED + ANSWERED TRUTHFULLY.
"Good/Smart Politics" is N-O-T always Good/Proper Leadership, + can be HIGHLY DANGEROUS, EVEN CATASTROPHIC = MORTAL, UNDER THE RIGHT CONDITIONS.
#6
E.g NEWSVINE > WHY THE BP MACONDO BLOWOUT [Gulf of Mexico/Mahico] IS SO DISASTROUS + BEYOND PATCH-UP.
and
* SAME > SCIENTISTS: HAITI, DR [Dominican Repub] MAY BE FACING BIG QUAKE PERIOD. New active cycle of potentially large EQS as per Enriquillo Fault System.
* Lest we fergit, the on-going US national controversy oer "FRACKING".
The above are among the top issues our future OWG-NWO will be steadily hotly debating circa Year 2040-2070, IN MANY WAYS DUE TO THE GOVTS,PERTS CONSENSUS OF NO/LACK OF CONSENSUS THAT WE EXPERIENCING NOW.
Iff things don't change for the better, the US-World may wake up in Year 2040 or so to find out there is suddenly no more Oil or Gas available GLOBALLY for Automobiles, Heavy Industry use.
IMO HERES THE FUN PART - THE US-WORLD IN 2040 WON'T BE ABLE TO CLAIM THEY WEREN'T WARNED MANY YEARS + DECADES BEFORE.
Each day that goes by gives the White House more reason to regret its Libyan adventure. The overthrow of Gaddafi was a good thing, but from both the humanitarian and strategic points of view, nothing has changed. The war continues to look at best like a diversion, at worst as if the US fell for a cynical French ploy to get oil in a way that damaged our long term strategic interests.
Scattered reports of torture in Libyan jails and unrest in Libyan towns are beginning to coalesce into a picture of the exciting new reality created by last years humanitarian war-to-protect. If Amnesty International knows what it is talking about, Libyans are being tortured to death by the people we saved from Gaddafi and installed in power. Surprisingly, the Wilsonian hawks who gave us this inspiring policy havent yet sent a new barrage of airstrikes to stop the new round of brutality and bloodshed.
#1
The Egyptian crackdown on NGOs and the current refusal to allow US citizens connected to them to leave is yet another sign that the NGO world of civic activism is going to face more determined government push back around the world.
About time, too.
#2
"Surprisingly, the Wilsonian hawks who gave us this inspiring policy haven't yet sent a new barrage of airstrikes to stop the new round of brutality and bloodshed."
What's surprising about it?
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/28/2012 6:21 Comments ||
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#3
Like most things on the left, it was about feeling good about yourself not in accomplishing anything meaningful.
#4
The 2 meaningful outcomes of the Duck's replacement were (1) restoration of Libyan energy supplies to Europe and (2) prevention of a invasion of southern Europe by Libya refugees.
I think those 2 reasons were really behind the "Libyan adventure." Other stated reasons were merely a smokescreen.
[Magharebia] It was a very different Sahel security summit this week for the foreign ministers of Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Niger and guest Nigeria.
The countries confirmed the link between al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Nigerian terrorist organization Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. Currently wearing a false nose and moustache and answering to Jama'atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda'Awati Wal Jihad, or Big Louie... for the first time, pledging Tuesday (January 24th) in Nouakchott to work together against the shared threat to African stability and development.
Four days earlier, Boko Haram (meaning "western education is forbidden") killed more than 200 people in a series of co-ordinated bomb and gun attacks in Kano, Nigeria's second-largest city.
Scores more have died in attacks on churches, hotels and public buildings since the start of the year. Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... says that 550 people were killed last year in 115 separate attacks engineered by Boko Haram, including the UN bombing in Abuja.
"There is a proven connection between AQIM and Boko Haram," Malian Foreign Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga said at the Nouakchott ministerial meeting.
Nigerian foreign minister Mohamed Bazoum said he was concerned about the situation in his country, due to the rise of Boko Haram, whose connections to AQIM were "more than just simple conjecture".
According to the Nigerian diplomat, "the deteriorating situation in Libya in 2011 caused an exceptional increase in the flow of arms and explosives in the region".
"We must stop the networks used by Orcs and similar vermin to get supplies of food and fuel," Bazoum said.
Along with jointly facing the "great challenge posed by AQIM in the Sahel and Boko Haram in Nigeria", Mauritanian Foreign Minister Hamadi Ould Hamadi said the countries intended to partner against organised crime, trafficking in weapons and explosives, and the abduction of Westerners.
The Algiers-based African Centre for Study and Research on Terrorism (CAERT) also attended the Mauritania event. Algeria, home to the Sahel states' joint military and intelligence commands, raised the issue of the AQIM and Boko Haram link months before the ministerial summit.
"We are convinced that there has been some co-ordination between Boko Haram and al-Qaeda," Algerian Minister for Maghreb and African Affairs Abdelkader Messahel said last November during a joint presser with visiting Mauritanian Foreign Minister Hamadi Ould Baba Ould Hamadi.
"The way in which the two organizations operate and reports from intelligence services clearly show that there is co-ordination," Messahel said.
Evidence of the link between AQIM and Boko Haram is also coming from the United Nations ...the Oyster Bay money pit...
According to a UN mission that went to the Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... to report on security fallout from the Libya conflict, Boko Haram gun-hung tough guys from Nigeria are indeed bolstering ties with al-Qaeda, AFP reported on Thursday (January 26th).
Nigeria's vulnerability to terror attacks could jeopardise peace-building, democracy and stability in West Africa, UN Special Envoy for West Africa Said Djinnit told the UN Security Council on January 16th.
In Niger, authorities recently intercepted a convoy carrying 645 kilograms of Semtex and 445 detonators and "alleged that the explosives were meant for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb camps in northern Mali".
"This seizure may indicate that terrorist groups have been acquiring arms, weapons and explosives from Libyan military stockpiles," the report said.
"Some of the weapons may be hidden in the desert and could be sold to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram or other criminal organizations," said the group, which was led by UN Special Envoy for West Africa Said Djinnit.
Mission representatives found that Boko Haram members from Nigeria and Chad had received training in al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb camps in Mali during the summer of 2011.
Seven Boko Haram members were also jugged going through Niger to Mali carrying material on making explosives and contact details of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb members they were to meet.
African security agencies, however, are determined to prevent contacts between the three most dangerous organizations in Africa - Boko Haram in Nigeria, AQIM in the Sahara, and al-Shabaab ... Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahidin aka the Mujahideen Youth Movement. It was originally the youth movement of the Islamic Courts, now pretty much all of what's left of it. They are aligned with al-Qaeda but operate more like the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban... in Somalia.
Sahel countries -- in co-ordination with the government of Nigeria -- aim to keep al-Qaeda and Boko Haram from forging a closer alliance.
After the success of the Arab Spring, these violent organizations were faced with a difficult situation. They had to may turn to new, poorer regions of Africa to revive their silent cells.
"There is continuous thinking about preventing this terrorist network, which tries to extend from eastern to central Africa, from communicating," a Mauritanian Foreign Ministry official confirmed to Magharebia.
Boko Haram may already have penetrated state agencies in Nigeria. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan ... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau... said he believes that there are sympathisers in his government and security agencies with Boko Haram.
"Some of them are in the executive arm of government, some are in the parliamentary arm of government, while some of them are even in the judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies," the president said on January 8th.
"During the civil war, we knew and we could even predict where the enemy was coming from," Jonathan said, "but the challenge we have today is more complicated.
There have long been claims of political links to Boko Haram, but it was the first time Jonathan made the case publicly in such strong terms.
In a televised speech after the Kano attacks, the president said that the defence ministry had been tasked with forming a new anti-terrorism force.
He described the Islamist turban Boko Haram as a "cancerous" movement that aimed to destroy the country but which would eventually fail.
The Nigerian government's new war on Boko Haram will be a real blow to al-Qaeda.
Sahel countries have recently disrupted al-Qaeda supply lines. This new development, combined with defections by young jihadists, has forced AQIM to use Boko Haram as a rear base and supply source for weapons and young recruits.
According to Algeria's Ennahar daily, "Battalion of the Masked" leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, alias Laaouar, used cigarette smugglers to establish contacts with African fighters. Security agencies, however, thwarted an operation to bring scores of youths to Laaouar's headquarters.
Given the impediments to recruiting and supply routes, Laaouar's recent remarks about suspending Mauritania activity are not unexpected.
In November, Laaouar told the Akhbar Nouakchott daily that he was open to the idea of ending operations in Mauritania.
That Mauritania could be off the table means just one thing: that the leaders of the terrorist organization are starting to feel pressure from the Sahel countries' expanded counter-terrorism partnership.
And now that security agencies from five countries are determined to sever al-Qaeda's connection to Boko Haram and Nigeria, the terror group will be forced to look elsewhere for help.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
01/28/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
Gee, anything to do with the positioning of the US comando ship in the region?
#3
Must be a racist - bringing facts into the picture... After all most entitlement abusers are black - so this must be some sort of codeword...
Really? Welfare fraud statistics are notoriously difficult to gather and interpret. Perhaps you could document your statement. Or, you could withdraw it. Or, you could recognize that laying it out there like that, without documentation, exposes you to some rather hard-to-answer charges about your beliefs in skin pigmentation.
#4
SS recipients are retired persons who paid in for years. They are not abusers or leaches. SSI recipients may or may not be leaches. Medicaid has its legitimate uses, but is probably much more prone to abuse. Food stamps are the same, good, but overdone. We need to choke a few million people off the teat. Nothing short of a case by case review will weed out the bums. Expensive, but worth it.
#7
bigjim, Social Security recipients have been promised a lot more than could actuarily be paid from their 'contributions' (taxes); they've been scammed. Of course the same can be said for most defined benefit pension plans as well.
#8
CrazyFool, I suspect people get sensitive about even sarcastic comments about race because the 'general perception', fed by the MSM, is that conservatives and fellow travelers are all racist, and they prefer not to fill the MSM etc. tar bucket for them.
#9
CF, when you decide to say something like that again, don't use the "/sarc" tab - use "/off liberals 'thinking.'"
It's accurate, and leaves no doubt. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/28/2012 19:31 Comments ||
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#10
Medicaid has its legitimate uses, but is probably much more prone to abuse. Food stamps are the same, good, but overdone. We need to choke a few million people off the teat. Nothing short of a case by case review will weed out the bums. Expensive, but worth it.
Having pretty much been forced to participate in this system (Medicaid) on behalf of my daughter with Down syndrome, I strongly second what Big Jim just said: there are maybe two leeches in the Medicaid trough for every one person who should really be getting it. This includes all sorts of drug addicts, people pretending to be permanently injured and/or sick, and obvious illegals - though the last category have at least had the initiative to better themselves by sneaking into the country to run a scam.
[Dawn] THOUGH the prospect of violence is never distant in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... , over the last year it seems that lawyers are being targeted in calculated hits. In the latest incident, three lawyers were bumped off on Wednesday in the city's busy Pakistain Chowk area. This appears to have been a sectarian attack as senior lawyer Badar Munir Jafri, along with his son and nephew, were all members of the Shia Lawyers' Forum. On Tuesday the legal adviser of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat was murdered in the city and there are suggestions Wednesday's attack may have been a Dire Revenge™ killing. Given the dismal performance of our law-enforcement agencies, reports that three coppers in a vehicle nearby did nothing to confront the attackers are hardly surprising. It is this attitude that has contributed to criminals having no fear of the police.
Around 20 lawyers were killed in Sindh last year -- 15 in Bloody Karachi -- while in this month alone seven lawyers have been bumped off. Many, though not all, of the lawyers killed were defending suspects with links to sectarian and political groups. In the past Bloody Karachi has witnessed the assassinations of doctors, businessmen and professionals belonging to the Shia community. But here we must ask whether lawyers are being eliminated to make the legal fraternity think twice before taking up the brief of suspects accused in sectarian cases. This series of events does not bode well for sectarian harmony in Bloody Karachi. If this disturbing trend is not checked now, it may spark much larger communal strife. There is no reason why law-enforcement agencies cannot crack down on the sectarian outfits believed to be behind the violence. Police claims that a 'third party' is responsible for the killings do not cut much ice and amount to denying the actual problem -- that of armed sectarian militias. Police authorities have reportedly sought to work out a 'decisive strategy' to stop the killings. The most decisive moves in this regard would be to dismantle sectarian groups, put suspects on trial and punish those found guilty. But does the state have the political will to take these bold steps?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/28/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11132 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
As a lawyer, I have had death threats, some very viable. I say, let lawyers carry weapons. Of course we would bill extra for the security service for our clients.
#2
I know many lawyers who carry for protection. In TN I believe judges can have firearms at the bench.
Maybe Pakistain is just following the admonition of Shakespeare: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". - (King Henry VI, Act IV, Scene II).
#7
Thanks - I actually stole it from a Star Trek movie, where the line was "in the original Klingon"
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/28/2012 19:58 Comments ||
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#8
I've read a few too many "was seriously beaten by a group of esteemed 'pure' Pak lawyers" stories here to not welcome a few consequences. Unfortunately these seem to be anti-shia more than anti-Pak lawyer
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/28/2012 20:06 Comments ||
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Money quote
...the choice has always been for the West, between either democracy with the rise of Islam or autocracy. As I said before when you are democratic you vote for whom you want and they obviously want Islam.
#3
"When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until its too late." Bene Gesserit proverb
"Dune", "Part III: The Prophet", by Frank Herbert
Posted by: Mike Ramsey ||
01/28/2012 11:34 Comments ||
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#4
More people have camera cell phones than in 2009 and the cameras are smaller so we might get some good footage of fraud in action, beatings of voters, etc.
back in 2009, the evidence of fraud was indirect (e.g., premature announcements of result, vote tallies inconsistent with population estimates, etc.)
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
01/28/2012 19:34 Comments ||
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#5
Mike - there was another quote from Dune (II) Muab'dib. Something like "We will not allow our people to suffer the tynranny of a democracy".
When I first heard it I thought 'WTF?' - my public school education. But now, thanks in large part to Rantburg U - I know what it means.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Goodluck Jonathan
[Dawn] THOUGH the prospect of violence is never distant in 
