An Egyptian lawmaker has resigned in protest of parliament's agreement with the government to build a steel wall on the border with the Gaza Strip.
Talaat Sadat, a member of the Parliament Committee on Defense and National Security, told Al-Jazeera that the Egyptian government's decision to construct the wall is illegal, because the parliament committee is responsible for deciding on such issues.
The independent lawmaker, a nephew of the late President Anwar Sadat, said that the parliament speaker has ignored the body's responsibilities by siding with the government.
Sadat stated that lawmakers who oppose the decision of the Egyptian government and parliament believe that Cairo should respect its legal, political and ethical responsibilities towards 1.5 million Palestinian people who are in dire conditions.
The wall will be 10-11 kilometers (6-7 miles) long and will extend 18 meters below the surface, blocking the tunnels that Gazans use to bring food and fuel into the coastal sliver. The sliver has long been under an Israeli siege.
US army engineers have designed the wall and the US is supporting Egypt's construction of the wall, the BBC reported.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
The sliver has long been under an Israeli siege.
And like all slivers, it should be carefully removed - with a sterilized needle - and the area thoroughly disinfected.
Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) -- His anguish apparent, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki told CNN that his son is not a member of al Qaeda and is not hiding out with terrorists in southern Yemen. "I am now afraid of what they will do with my son. He's not Osama bin Laden, they want to make something out of him that he's not," said Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, the father of American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
As recently as Sunday, Yemeni officials including provincial governor Al Hasan al-Ahmadi claimed that al-Awlaki was hiding out in the southern mountains of Yemen with al Qaeda.
"He's dead wrong. What do you expect my son to do? There are missiles raining down on the village. He has to hide. But he is not hiding with al Qaeda; our tribe is protecting him right now," insisted al-Awlaki's father in an exclusive interview with CNN. "My son is [a] wanted man, he's cornered, that's the problem I am facing," al-Awlaki said.
The al-Awlaki family comes from the large and powerful Awalek tribe of Southern Yemen. It has many connections to the government of Yemen, including the country's prime minister, who is a relative of the al-Awlaki family.
Recently, Yemeni officials have also claimed that Anwar al-Awlaki had contact with Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab during his stay in Yemen in late 2009. When asked if his son met with the man charged with trying to blow up a U.S.-bound plane on Christmas Day, Nasser al-Awlaki said it's not likely. "I have no idea but I don't believe it," he said.
The elder al-Awlaki is an accomplished academic and had held several positions within the Yemeni government, including minister of agriculture.
So he's the one who presided over the de-waterification of Yemen? With the best of his educated intentions, of course. The poor man.
He first went to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar in the late '60s, and his son Anwar was born there in 1971.
Didn't Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. also come to America on a Fulbright? An unlucky parallel, so don't bruit it about.
Al-Awlaki says he is doing what he can to coax his son out of hiding, but does not want to jeopardize his son's life.
One the other hand, he complains that his hidden son is being threatened with missile attacks, which strikes me as already rather a life-threatening situation.
"I will do my best to convince my son to do this [surrender], to come back, but they are not giving me time, they want to kill my son. How can the American government kill one of their own citizens? This is a legal issue that needs to be answered," he said.
That's certainly one perspective. A tad narrow, but a perspective.
"If they give me time I can have some contact with my son, but the problem is they are not giving me time," he said.
Al-Awlaki acknowledged his son has espoused some controversial views but all of them, he said, would be protected by freedom of speech provisions in the U.S. Constitution.
But only within the U.S. Dr. Al-Awlaki will have noted that he and his son are both in Yemen, where the rules are quite, quite different.
He denied his son has done anything to encourage terrorists to commit violent acts. "He is a preacher. You cannot tie Anwar to acts of terrorism," the elder al-Awlaki said.
But did he encourage them, Father dear? That's the question you avoided answering.
Anwar al-Awlaki's name surfaced in November when U.S. officials revealed he and Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- a U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5 -- had exchanged e-mails. The intercepted e-mails between the two, officials said, had not not set off alarm bells.
A mistake on our part.
The cleric recently told Al Jazeera's Arabic-language Web site that he met Hasan nine years ago while serving as an imam at a mosque in the Washington area. He said he lauded the Fort Hood attack because it was aimed at troops, whom he accused of fighting an unjust war against Islam.
"It is a military target inside America and there is no dispute over that," Anwar al-Awlaki said. "Also, these military personnel are not ordinary; they were trained and ready to fight and kill oppressed Muslims, and commit crimes in Afghanistan."
When asked why his son would praise Hasan, Nasser al-Awlaki said he did not agree with his son's views. "I don't think that's right what he said about Maj. Hasan's actions, but my son has been very upset by the violence against Muslims," Nasser al-Awlaki said.
Nasser Al-Awlaki does concede his son's views seemed more radical after he spent time in a Yemeni prison from 2006 to 2007 on suspicion of having ties to terrorism. He was released for lack of evidence. "They put him in jail for 18 months, and I detected a change after he got out of prison. He began to get away from the mainstream," Nasser al-Awlaki said.
The father also warned that the aggressive hunt for his son and al Qaeda operatives in Yemen using missile strikes will only serve to recruit more members to the organization. "I don't want those American cowboys to destroy Yemen," Nasser al-Awlaki said, before conceding that the hunt for al Qaeda in Yemen is now a global concern.
"He has been wrongly accused, it's unbelievable. He lived his life in America, he's an all-American boy. My son would love to go back to America, he used to have a good life in America. Now he's hiding in the mountains, he doesn't even have safe water to drink," Nasser al-Awlaki said.
#1
My son would love to go back to America, he used to have a good life in America. Now he's hiding in the mountains, he doesn't even have safe water to drink," Nasser al-Awlaki said.
#2
If Anwar al-Awiaki wants the protections of a U.S. citizen, which are extensive, he should pledge allegance to the U.S., and come to live in the U.S. If Anwar al-Awiaki wants to die, he should live in a place where his only contact with the U.S. is a Hellfire missle and he should live with persons dedicated to killing Americans and most other forms of human life. It is simple Anwar, explain things to the Judge or explain things to a Hellfire missle.
#2
Here is a deal. Hunt down and hang all AQ in 30 days or we bomb Sana back to pre-stone age and annex the entire, miserable mess of a country to Oman.
#3
FREEREPUBLIC > YEMENI OFFICIALS ADMIT THEY ARE LOSING THE BATTLE AGZ AL-QAEDA.
Also, TOPIX/WORLD NEWS [old] > seems the USDOD-Navy is now worried over alleged AL QAEDA-Militant "chatter" whose focii is the TARGETTING FOR ATTACK OF USN VESSELS IN THE PERSIAN GULF???
[Al Arabiya Latest] Dozens of al-Qaeda militants are hiding out in a remote mountainous area of Yemen, a senior official said in comments published Sunday, as President Ali Abdullah Saleh urged them to lay down their arms.
Al-Qaeda fighters, among them Saudis and Egyptians, have streamed in from Afghanistan and have joined local members of the jihadist network in lairs carved out in the rugged Kour mountain in southern Shabwa province, said provincial governor Ali Hasan al-Ahmadi.
"There are dozens of Saudi and Egyptian al-Qaeda militants who came to the province," Ahmadi told the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily.
"This is in addition to Yemenis who came from Marib and Abyan (provinces) and a number of militants from Shabwa province itself," he added.
Among them, he added, are the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Nasser al-Wahishi, his number two, Saeed Ali al-Shehri, a Saudi, and radical US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.
The Egyptians and Saudis, Ahmadi said, had travelled to Yemen from Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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Children in Britain as young as seven have been identified by police as being groomed for terrorism, with some already talking about become suicide bombers.
Around 10 primary school pupils, aged between seven and 10, have been referred to a Government scheme to help combat the radicalisation of youngsters. One child was referred to the Channel Project, a national programme run by the police and Government, after shocking his teachers by writing on a school book: I want to be a suicide bomber.'
The Channel Project was set up in the wake of the 7th July terrorist attacks in London.
It is operated by the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers, and works with schools, Muslim communities, youth workers and social workers.
Teachers and parents are asked to look out for warning signs and police officers work alongside Muslim communities to identify impressionable children who are at risk of radicalisation or who have shown an interest in extremist material, either on the internet or in books.
In June 2008 the project had identified 10 children at risk of being turned to violence. By March last year that figure had increased to 200.
Currently around 230 young people, mostly men aged between 15-24, have been identified, many of them by their parents because they suddenly changed from wearing Western clothes to strict Islamic dress, or began expressing devout Islamic views.
Craig Denholm, Deputy Chief Constable of Surrey police, who oversees the project, said: For people to be identified there have to be distinct changes in behaviour and warning signs.
We assess each one on its own merits.' He said there was a very small' number of seven, eight, and nine-year-olds involved.
Tactics used to turn youngsters away from extremism and integrate them into mainstream society include football coaching and outdoor adventure courses.
#3
Isn't this kind of like the pattern used for Lebanon in the 70's? Lebanon, at one time, was decent country (and Beirut the 'Paris of the east') until they allowed the Palieo's in - then it all went to hell in a handbasket.
#4
The TALIBAN repor have madrassas that can support up to 300 child recruits at a time for training in terror operations, espec SUICIDE OPERS. These predomin poverty-stricken, uneducated kiddies are repor told:
* SUICIDE IS PARADISE.
* NO SHORTAGE OF FOOD, DRINK.
* will be VIRGIN WOMEN in Heaven to serve them on a permanent = eternal basis.
* meet, sit, + have permanet honored place next to the PROPHET MOHAMMED.
A radical Islamic group has cancelled plans to hold an anti-war march through a town famous for honouring the UK's servicemen and women killed abroad. Members of Islam4UK had planned to march through Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, to honour Muslims killed in the Afghanistan conflict. The government had been considering outlawing the group, which is said to have extremist links.
Earlier this week, Gordon Brown said plans for the march were "disgusting".
Families of soldiers who died in Afghanistan had condemned the planned march, and MPs signed a motion calling on the home secretary and local authorities to prevent the protest. Wootton Bassett has become the focus of public mourning, with hundreds lining the streets every time hearses carrying the repatriated bodies of killed UK service personnel are driven through the town from nearby RAF Lyneham.
On Sunday, a statement from Islam4UK's leader, Anjem Choudary, said it had "successfully highlighted the plight of Muslims in Afghanistan".
"We at Islam4UK have decided, after consultation with others including our Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, that no more could be achieved even if a procession were to take place in Wootton Bassett," he said. The group denied members had planned to carry 500 empty coffins through the town.
Islam4UK had previously said it had chosen Wootton Bassett to create maximum publicity.
The News of the World reported on Sunday that Home Secretary Alan Johnson would outlaw the group on Monday. The newspaper said comments made by senior members of Islam4UK and on websites breached the Terrorism Act. A Home Office spokesman said the final decision on whether to ban the group rested with Mr Johnson but he would not confirm the plan.
North Wiltshire MP James Gray said he was "extremely glad" Islam4UK had abandoned its plans, and he also condemned Mr Choudary's actions as a "media stunt".
"He was trying to make a political statement, the whole announcement was to get media coverage - he admitted that himself - and he achieved it. He received lots of coverage," he said. Mohammed Shafiq, from the Ramadhan Foundation, said Mr Choudary had been deliberately provocative.
"His attempt to demonstrate at Wootton Bassett was set out to provoke hatred between communities and is not welcomed in the Muslim communities," he said. "He and his cronies have no support in the British Muslim communities."
#1
It was suggested that this was a ruse at the start. However, Islam4UK should pay a price, in that they should be sneered at, and called "not true believers", and cowards for chickening out.
I4UK's bus was stopped in a car park outside Wooton Bassett (i'm guessing the nearby M4 Services), he was arrested ("for his own safety"). There were about 500 "football supporters" waiting for him and loads more arriving ASAP.
[Iran Press TV Latest] One of the two former cabinet ministers who launched a failed leadership coup against British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week has attacked the premier on the unpopular war in Afghanistan.
Former defense secretary Geoff Hoon has returned to the limelight with leaked ministerial letters dated from 2002 to 2004 showing how Brown, who was the finance minister at the time, forestalled his acquisition of battlefield equipment deemed vital for the troops' survival in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hoon and a former health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, emailed a letter to lawmakers from the ruling Labour Party, calling for a secret vote on Brown's leadership to save the "deeply divided" party.
Brown's allies dismissed the two as embittered traitors, but the newly leaked documents could undermine Brown's leadership in the run-up to the general elections due by June.
According to the leaked letters, Brown personally blocked the Ministry of Defense (MoD) from spending extra Treasury cash on helicopters for Iraq and Afghanistan, despite earlier assurances.
The controversy surrounding shortage of life-saving choppers used to mobilize troops in the field of battle sparked outrage among the British public -- which is already unhappy with the UK's involvement in the Afghan conflict.
Brown's actions effectively prevented military chiefs from buying new helicopters, which could now be in service in Afghanistan, the Sunday Times said.
Downing Street played down the revelations, noting that while in office as the defense secretary, Hoon himself had declared he had received an "excellent" deal from the Treasury on MoD funding.
In August 2009, a leaked official dossier allegedly suppressed by lawmakers gave a damning account of MoD's acquisition program over the past 11 years since the last official review.
The author of the secret report, Bernard Gray, a former special adviser to Labour defense ministers, accused the department of "endemic" failures.
"We are at present fighting a tough infantry war of mobile patrolling against insurgents. In this war, more and better helicopters and armoured vehicles are the key to rapid response and reduction in casualties," he wrote.
"Yet, the MoD seems more concerned to find huge funds for two aircraft carriers and a replacement for Trident. This would give priority for expenditure on weapons systems we are unlikely to use rather than the weapon systems we are actually using in combat in Afghanistan," Gray stressed.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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NORTH Korea said today it wants a peace treaty with the United States as a precondition for giving up its nuclear weapons, and called for sanctions to be scrapped before it returns to disarmament talks.
The foreign ministry statement was the first time the North has publicly stated its position on the disarmament negotiations since US envoy Stephen Bosworth visited Pyongyang last month.
Mr Bosworth was trying to persuade the communist state to return to the six-nation talks it abandoned last April, a month before staging a second nuclear test. No clear agreement was reached.
The statement said it was "good to move up the order of action" in light of the failure of the six-party talks.
"The conclusion of the peace treaty will help terminate the hostile relations between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US and positively promote the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula at a rapid tempo," it said.
Six-party agreements reached in 2005 and 2007 envisage talks on a treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, but only in return for full denuclearisation.
North Korea said talks on a peace pact could be held either at a separate forum or in the framework of the six-party talks which group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
"The removal of the barrier of such discrimination and distrust as sanctions may soon lead to the opening of the six-party talks," its statement said.
SEOUL -- Food prices in North Korea have soared this year amid chronic shortages, a Seoul-based welfare group said Sunday, as a world relief agency struggles to raise funds for the impoverished state.
More evidence that the currency 'reform' didn't work, wasn't designed to work, and was meant only to fleece people of the little hard currency they had just to buy food.
Good Friends, citing its own contacts in the reclusive North, said prices for rice and corn doubled last week at markets in the capital Pyongyang and in the eastern port city of Chongjin. Rice prices ranged from 120-150 won per kilogramme (2.2 pounds) in Pyongyang and 110 to 140 won in Chongjin last week -- up from 40 to 50 won reported on December 30, the group said.
Corn also traded higher at 70-75 won last week -- up from 20-25 won on December 30 in the areas, it added. Seoul's unification ministry, handling cross-border issues, could not confirm the data.
The official exchange rate is 135 won to the dollar but the black market rate is between 2,000 and 3,000 won.
The report came as the World Food Programme struggles to raise relief funds for the food shortage-hit North. Major donors -- including South Korea and the United States -- refuse to help in protest at its second nuclear test in May last year. Statistics available at the WFP website display it raised 89.8 million dollars as of late last month, around only 18 percent of its target of 492 million dollars in relief funds for the communist North.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
The fruits of Communism/Socialism. This is what we can look forward to in the USA under Obama. Or simply put, "where did my job go? Any why is everything so expensive?"
The government estimates that North Korea will produce about 5 to 10 percent less food this year than last year. The estimate came as Seoul offered 10,000 tons of corn to North Korea on Monday.
"This year, North Korea has suffered fertilizer shortage and damage from cold weather. North Korea's estimated production of food last year was 4.31 million tons, but that could fall by about 5 to 10 percent to less than 4 million tons this year," a government official said.
The North produced some 4.01 million tons in 2007, when it suffered such serious flood damage that it had to postpone the second inter-Korean summit.
An intelligence officer said the corn did not ripen well due to low temperatures in May, the early growth period, and again due to drought in July and August. "We presume that they also have problems growing rice as the usual South Korean fertilizer aid of 200,000 to 300,000 tons has been suspended for two years."
According to a government official in charge of North Korean affairs, the North needs at least 5 million tons of food to feed people and livestock each year. But the reality is that it produces barely more than 4 million tons and needs to buy or beg at least 1 million tons from abroad.
During the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Mu-hyun administrations, the South Korean government gave the North about 400,000 tons of food aid. China gave 200,000 tons and international humanitarian organizations about 100,000 tons. The remaining shortfall was barely met by illicit trade in the border areas or imports.
The intelligence officer said, "If North Korea's food production falls below 3.5 million tons, there'll be mass defections and starvation. The situation won't be that bad, but with international assistance significantly reduced since its second nuclear test, North Korea will likely suffer a more serious food shortage in 2010 than this year."
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
"We presume that they also have problems growing rice as the usual South Korean fertilizer aid of 200,000 to 300,000 tons has been suspended for two years."
Right, bastard, blame the South Koreans.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/11/2010 0:35 Comments ||
Top||
One does get the sense that a fair number of people in the West are idjits ...
OTTAWA -- Canadians believe climate change poses a significantly bigger threat to the "vital interests" of this country over the next decade than international terrorism, a new poll suggests.
While nearly half of those surveyed said climate change is a "critical threat," only about one in four people said the same about international terrorism. A similar poll conducted in 2004 showed Canadians believed the two threats were about equal.
The results come from a survey commissioned by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute and conducted by the Innovative Research Group, Inc. between Dec. 22, 2009, and Jan. 4, 2010.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2010 12:24 ||
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#4
Canuckistan sniper, unfortunately, you're SOL. The solar minimum is now in progress and you would have to wait for warming to kick in about 2040, give or take a few years.
Editor's note: Charles S. Faddis is a retired CIA operations officer and the former head of the CIA's unit focused on fighting terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. The author of a recently published book about the CIA, "Beyond Repair," Faddis is also president of Orion Strategic Services, a Maryland-based consulting firm.
The nation lost seven valuable intelligence officers in the attack in Khost on December 30, 2009. Those of us "in the business" lost good friends and longtime colleagues.
There are a lot of people in Washington these days claiming to be on the front lines of the war on terror. The men and women who died in Khost really were on those front lines, and, for the majority of them, this was not the first time they had served there.
We owe it to the fallen to remember the sacrifices they made. We owe it to them to pause to consider the pain and anguish their families are experiencing right now. We also owe it to them to ensure that we fully understand how this attack could have been allowed to happen and to do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we made a number of major changes to the intelligence community. Some of these were beneficial. Some of them, I would submit, simply added more process to an already overly stiff and bureaucratic structure.
All of them were directed at addressing the question of why we had not successfully "connected the dots" in advance of the attacks. None of them addressed the more fundamental question of why we had collected so little information and knew so little about the plans and intentions of al Qaeda.
We have been "at war" for eight years now. In all that time, we have done nothing to reform or restructure perhaps the single most important organization in that war, the Central Intelligence Agency. This organization, which more than any other must bear the responsibility for somehow having missed al Qaeda's preparations to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, somehow, paradoxically, remains largely as it was on 9/11.
Within it, large numbers of almost unbelievably dedicated and patriotic individuals work feverishly to protect their fellow citizens from harm. When they succeed, however, increasingly they do so despite the organizational structure in which they serve, not because of it.
No intelligence source in a war zone is brought into a base of any kind without being checked and screened. When your principal adversary uses suicide vests as a standard tactic that is doubly true. No source of any kind, no matter where, needs to be brought into a facility and put in proximity to 13 or 14 officers. Even absent a terrorist threat, the potential compromise of officers' identities and base capabilities is enormous and unwarranted.
That these principles were violated in this case does not lessen the dedication of the victims of this attack. Nor does it make any less reprehensible those who organized and directed this operation against us. It does, however, tell us that there was a major breakdown in tradecraft and security and compel us to ask why.
The truth is that the Central Intelligence Agency is an organization suffering from a host of significant ailments. It has calcified from the risk-taking organization it was in its youth into a rigid bureaucracy in which more emphasis is placed on process than it is on mission accomplishment.
Its most senior officers have virtually no experience in combating the types of targets against which the organization is currently directed. Increasingly, it is dominated at all levels, not by seasoned operators with years of service abroad, but by individuals who have served the bulk of their careers at headquarters.
Counterterrorist operations are all too often limited to the conduct of meetings with friendly liaison services, who actually run the sources and collect the information. Operations officers who have really run terrorist sources on the street and operated outside the wire in dangerous areas are in short supply.
Frequently, to fill posts abroad and to maintain a mandated level of staffing, individuals are being sent abroad to frontline posts who have no significant operational experience and may not even be fully trained to function as ops officers. Those that have been trained are likely brand new and without any real world experience.
In the reality of operations in the Pakistan-Afghan theater, this is a prescription for disaster.
None of this is news to anyone "on the inside." None of this has somehow escaped the attention of the top levels of CIA management. This situation did not develop overnight; it has been years in the making. Nonetheless, these deficiencies remain uncorrected. Out in the war zones, the rank and file continue to struggle to accomplish the mission handicapped by the limitations of an organization in need of immediate reform.
What is required is an organization with significantly higher standards, stronger leadership and much more rigorous training. What we need is an outfit focused on mission accomplishment and built around operators not bureaucrats.
It needs to be an entity purpose-built for the task at hand, to grapple with dangerous, violent enemies and to defeat them. To make that happen is going to require the involvement of both the White House and the Congress. It will not be easy, and it will not be quick, but, it must be done. We owe it to the fallen. Translation for those who don't get it: People are dying because of your childish behavior. How would you like to these people laying on your desk while you explain to their family the real reason they died? There are people who try to get ahead by pulling those around them down, and there are people who try to get ahead by lifting up society. I prefer the latter.
How a Jordanian jihadist turned CIA operativeand back again.
By Mark Hosenball, Sami Yousafzai and Adem Demir
Published Jan 9, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Jan 18, 2010
At the CIA training facility in Virginia known as "The Farm," one of the standard courses is called "High Threat Meetings." All aspiring case officers spend the three-week class learning how to arrange a get-together with potentially dangerous informants. When meeting with such agents, "security is everything," recalls one graduate. "I remember being told very forcefully, 'It doesn't matter what you might get from an informant if you wind up dead.' " There are very rigorous protocols for such meetings, says another former agent who once taught the course: all informants should be searched carefully, the rendezvous location should be staked out ahead of time, and when the mole arrives, only one or two CIA officers should be present. "The protocol is for a case officer to meet an informant one-on-one, or maybe twoalways, always, always," adds Robert Baer, a former CIA officer who spent years tracking terrorists in the Mideast. "The one thing you never do is meet an informant with a committee."
#3
"THE FARM" IS SSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOO COLD WAR > Nowadays "the Farm" is more properly "the Farms/Collective/Combine"; whilst "the Company" should be "the Corporation/Conglomerate".
D *** NG IT, MULTI-TASKING MULTI-NATIONALS ALL ARE WE!
#4
The CIA-INTEL wants to make it absolutely positively categorically undeniably unequivocally.....@etc., FTLG-DON'T-FORCE-US-TO TELL-BILL-TO-POINT-HIS-FINGER clear to the American = Amerikan People that at Penn State we watched VALERIE PLAME, ETC, LIKE A HAWK, WID "THE EAGLE/SNAKE EYES" + "STARLITE STARBRIGHT" SCOPE, THUS OF COURSE WE DON'T KNOW WHOM WAS WORKING WITH OR NEXT TO HER!
AND D *** NG IT, DON'T YOU FERGIT WHAT WE NEVER TOLD YOU!
#2
I wonder are some in Zeros team going "It's the coldest winter in decades, why didn't you at least say this in summer?". But then I remember AGW is a core part of their faith now.
#3
Global warmism is the preferred religion of 0's constituency, so this isn't really news. The warmists believe that billions will die in the sweet bye-and-bye unless the world converts to, and pays for, their view of things. And in that view, the WOT is merely a distraction for the sheeple, a tool for the military-industrial complex to have its way.
#4
More from the Eisenhower speech that so many invoke about the military industrial complex -
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
#5
we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite I think the current situation of the USA is its capture by special interests/elites with no one in power particularly interested in promoting "the general Welfare."
Picture at site
U.S Navy; issued December 18, 2009 -- The Navy officially accepted delivery of the future USS Independence (LCS 2) Dec. 18 during a short ceremony in Mobile, Ala. Independence is the second littoral combat ship delivered to the Navy, and the first LCS of the General Dynamics variant. LCS is a new breed of U.S. Navy warship with versatile warfighting capabilities, capable of open-ocean operation, but optimized for littoral, or coastal, missions.
"Today marks a critical milestone in the life of the LCS 2," said Rear Adm. James Murdoch, the LCS program manager in the Navy's Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. "The Navy and our industry partners have worked diligently to deliver a much-needed capability."
Prior to delivery, the Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) conducted Acceptance Trials aboard LCS 2 on Nov. 13-19, and found the ship's propulsion plant, sea-keeping and self-defense performance to be "commendable," and recommended that the chief of naval operations authorize delivery of the ship following the correction or waiver of cited material deficiencies.
Between now and sail away in February 2010, the contractor will correct most of the trial cards received during trials. Any remaining cards will be corrected during scheduled post-delivery maintenance availabilities including the post-shakedown availability scheduled for completion in 2011.
Delivery is the last shipbuilding milestone before commissioning, scheduled for Jan. 16 in Mobile, Ala.
Would feel good leaving that on a RHIB, looking back knowing my butt is covered.
Posted by: Oscar ||
01/11/2010 3:53 Comments ||
Top||
#2
As per MSM-Net News that the USN wants BMD capabilities on its select future warship classes,
To wit,
CHINESE MIL FORUM > [Xinhua Artic] CHINESE ABM CAN NOW SHOOTDOWN US MINUTEMEN-III ICBMS | CHINA SAYS MISSLE DEFENSE SYSTEM TEST SUCCESSFUL| DAYS OF YANKEE NUCLEAR MISSLE INVULNERABILITY ARE OVER.
Also from CMF > [Sorcha Faal] RUSSIA REPORTS THOUSANDS [approxi 4500-5000] CHINESE TROOPS HAVE "GONE MISSING" INSIDE THE USA???
* PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > PLA SECOND ARTILLERY CORPS TO CREATE NEW "UNDERGROUND GREAT WALL" [deep Mountain Tunplexes?]TO DEFEND AGZ ANTI-EARTH PENETRATING NUCLEAR BOMBS [read, the USA]. However, the same may induce a SINO-US, etc. "ARMS RACE" as per such devices becuz it takes Scores, 00's, or perhaps 000's to effec destroy these underground -plexes.
#3
Lest we fergit, "SINK THE TIRPITZ, SINK THE TIRPITZ" [Bismarck]; + "THE GORGEBUSTERS" [Dambusters = Three Gorges].
* ION WMF > US WALKING THE DEEP "RED LINE" AGZ CHINA WITH RAYTHEON PATRIOT-III MISSLE SALES TO TAIWAN. FOSTER RISE OF HATE IN CHINA AGZ USA.
* SAME WMF > RUSSIAN R & D: TUPOLEV'S NEW "IRIS" UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE CAN KILL THE US AIRCRAFT CARRIER; + CHINA'S NEW SHORE-TO-SHIP KILLER MISSLE TO DEFEND NORTH KOREA AGZ JAPAN AND THE US AIRCRAFT CARRIER.
HAMPTON, Va. -- As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up.
Air Force drones collected nearly three times as much video over Afghanistan and Iraq last year as they did in 2007 -- about 24 years' worth if watched continuously. That volume is expected to multiply in the coming years as drones are added to the fleet and as some start using multiple cameras to shoot in many directions. A group of young analysts already watch every second of the footage live as it is streamed to Langley Air Force Base here and to other intelligence centers, and they quickly pass warnings about insurgents and roadside bombs to troops in the field.
But military officials also see much potential in using the archives of video collected by the drones for later analysis, like searching for patterns of insurgent activity over time. To date, only a small fraction of the stored video has been retrieved for such intelligence purposes.
Government agencies are still having trouble making sense of the flood of data they collect for intelligence purposes, a point underscored by the 9/11 Commission and, more recently, by President Obama after the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound passenger flight on Christmas Day.
Mindful of those lapses, the Air Force and other military units are trying to prevent becoming overloaded with video collected by the drones, and they are turning to the television industry to learn how to quickly share video clips and display a mix of data in ways that make analysis faster and easier. They are even testing some of the splashier techniques used by broadcasters, like the telestrator that John Madden popularized for scrawling football plays. It could be used to warn troops about a threatening vehicle or circle a compound that a drone should attack.
"Imagine you are tuning into a football game without all the graphics," said Lucius Stone, an executive as Harris Broadcast Communications, a provider of commercial technology that is working with the military. "You don't know what the score is. You don't know what the down is. It's just raw video. And that's how the guys in the military have been using it."
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Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
The military has ways of winnowing down what they need to but they might not realize it. Maybe they need two systems working together, the first is the filter and the second then looks at what the first system finds interesting.
Imagine an unmanned JSTARS type of system operating pretty much 24x7 over the area. That would be one way to approach things.
Only take video of "interesting" targets. Use the other system to select what might be "interesting".
#2
Mindful of those lapses, the Air Force and other military units are trying to prevent becoming overloaded with video collected by the drones,
They are not flown for the phuech of it, these are "requirements based" platforms. Submit your requirements, timeline, and named area of interest (NAI) to the collection manager and stand-by for vid coverage. If it is not what you need, notifiy the collection manager and change it! This is aerial collection, but it is not rocket science. Telling an analyst he is getting too much streaming vid of his requested NAI is like telling him he's getting too much se*.
[Al Arabiya Latest] CIA Director Leon Panetta, in an article published Sunday, revealed that a Jordanian doctor who killed seven agency operatives was about to be searched before he blew himself up at a US military base in Afghanistan.
"This was not a question of trusting a potential intelligence asset, even one who had provided information that we could verify independently. It is never that simple, and no one ignored the hazards," Panetta wrote in The Washington Post.
Though Leon can be quite a weasel in his political forays, I'd like to think that in running CIA he has a modicum of professionalism and can be trusted with this account. But I'd also like confirmation.
"The individual was about to be searched by our security officers -- a distance away from other intelligence personnel -- when he set off his explosives."
" The individual was about to be searched by our security officers -- a distance away from other intelligence personnel -- when he set off his explosives "
CIA Director Leon Panetta
The Post said the Central Intelligence Agency had been planning to speak with the suicide bomber about ways to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two leader, a top U.S. target who remains at large.
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin who is said to have been a triple agent, blew himself up at a U.S. military base in Khost near the Pakistani border on December 30, in the deadliest attack against the spy agency since 1983.
In addition to the agents, Balawi also killed his Jordanian handler -- a top intelligence officer and member of the royal family.
Nearly everyone within sight of the bomber died instantly when thousands of steel pellets exploded from the device.
That's a Palestinian-style device, not really surprising from a Jordanian. We'll probably not be told whether or not the pellets were coated with rat poison, also Palestinian-style, which prevents the victims blood from coagulating and results in more deaths and debilitation than the initial wounds would indicate.
According to The Post, the victims included a top CIA expert on al-Qaeda, a 45-year-old woman with three children who had spent nearly 10 years in the agency's counterterrorism center and had several brief tours in Afghanistan.
At least six other people, including the CIA's second-in-command in Afghanistan, were wounded, the paper said, citing U.S. officials briefed on the incident.
Let us wish them speedy healing and revenge on the killer's entire line of management.
This article starring:
Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#2
A very weak and curt response, but in the classic Obama administration style of autocratic denial. It fails to address the obvious question of why an intelligence asset would not be met 'off-site' by one or two of our people. An asset I might add, who had a rather colourful if not questionable past. If anyone believes this to be an unfair question than I would ask them to examine the new, improved, post-incident procedures for conducting personal meets. Oh, those new procedures are now classified above our need-to-know. Well I would hope so.
The statement by Director Panetta, "The individual was about to be searched by our security officers - a distance away from the other ingelligence personnel..." A "safe distance" from the anxious greeting line?..obviously not. Behind blast proof Hesco barriers? Obviously not. Was the event video taped? For good reason, no one is saying. The bomber knew how many and possibly who he was going to meet and it was more than just the 1-2 man security team, probably Xe employees. Unless waved through, getting past them would be impossible, so he packed enough homemade Claymores to cover a wide area. By the way, precisely what did the bomber know, and how did he know it?
Again, it will never see the light of day, but I would certaily like to read the agency AAR and recommended corrective action(s). I suspect they contain a recommendation for all future PM's to be conducted off-site utilizing VTC or video taped sessions.
Tragic as it was, this was a well planned and executed strike and hit which specifically targeted the heart of the killer Drone's Laire and planning cell. It utilized a killing technique widely employed in the region.
Director Panetta, you are quite obviously a tool, and a poor one at that. Not properly 'schooled' in this type of work? The pain of meeting families of the dead and putting stars on a wall not what you signed up for you say? Then if no one will relieve you, RESIGN!
Dozens of released Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield, US Senator Dianne Feinstein said on Sunday, as she urged the Barack Obama administration not to release more inmates from the war-on-terror prison camp. What happened to the line that all (or most) of the inmates were just innocent Moose limbs, who were in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Feinstein said this while talking on a television programme. She said a third of former inmates at the US naval base have returned to fight against US interests. She added they hailed from Yemen, which is the new focal point in the US fight against terrorism.
"I think at least 24 or 28 are confirmed returned to the battlefield in Yemen, and a number are suspected ... If you combine the suspected and the confirmed, the number I have is 74 detainees who have gone back into the fight," said Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Not rehabilitation: "I think the Gitmo experience is not one that leads to rehabilitation," she added.
Her views were seconded by Congressman Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
"These people are released and a number of them go back to the battlefield. They form the corps of people who want to attack the United States. It's a national security, homeland security issue," he said.
These remarks came just days after a Pentagon spokesman confirmed that an increasing number of former detainees from the US prison in Guantanamo have forged links to terrorist groups after their release. But he had said last week that the figure remained "classified". However, he added that according to a report by the Defence Department, 14 percent of the detainees were suspected of having forged ties with terrorists.
The issue has taken on heightened importance after a failed attack on a US airliner on Christmas Day was tied to Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen, where two former Guantanamo detainees were believed to be acting as senior leaders.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday suspended transfers of Guantanamo detainees to Yemen following the Christmas Day incident.
The Obama administration remains under intense pressure however from domestic critics not to release any of the remaining 198 detainees at Guantanamo, which include includes an estimated 91 Yemenis, amid rising fear in the United States regarding terrorism.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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Follow-up of this story, and rolled over to Monday. One of the most important legal decisions in the past year. See the Volokh Conspiracy opinion piece for more.
A powerful federal court, ruling on broad issues, has brushed aside international law and the laws of war, saying only domestic law restricts the president's power to hold an enemy combatant.
Even viewed in isolation, the decision has considerable weight.
The 2-1 ruling was handed down in the case of a Guantanamo detainee seeking release through a constitutional, or habeas, review of his case. But instead of being a paean to the power of the writ of habeas corpus, language in the opinions supporting the ruling may instead serve as a rallying cry for those who say it is time for the president and Congress to face reality and recognize the old rules no longer apply.
U.S. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote the majority opinion, and a separate concurrent opinion agreeing with the majority document. In that second opinion, in a highly unusual departure from judicial custom, Brown sets out a chilling vision of the stakes and new tactics in the war against terror.
"War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust," Brown wrote. "It must recognize that the old wine skins of international law, domestic criminal procedure or other prior frameworks are ill-suited to the bitter wine of this new warfare. We can no longer afford diffidence. This war has placed us not just at, but already past the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. Falling back on the comfort of prior practices supplies only illusory comfort."
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is sometimes called the second highest court in the land. It reviews all cases arising from Guantanamo claims, and its decisions in that venue must be followed by the other U.S. circuit courts of appeal.
The decision brought a response from Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project.
"After eight years, the continued detention of prisoners without charge is an affront to the Constitution," Hafetz said in a statement. "Today's court opinion is a setback to justice and the rule of law. The unnecessary endorsement of excessive military detention power and the suggestion that America is free to defy international law flouts all precedent and, if actually adopted, would jeopardize America's security as well as its values."
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/10/2010 18:54 Comments ||
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The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
Under the Geneva Convention, these mooks can be given a drumhead court martial and then executed. They are not soldiers. They are not civilians. They are illegal combatants.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/10/2010 19:40 Comments ||
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America is not a signator to the Geneva convention, nor any UN war conventinons, or any of that. We only answer to the constitution, and for good reason. Any country that wants to impose its will on the United Stated will be met with total destruction.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
01/10/2010 20:45 Comments ||
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And now we see why the lefties stalled Judge Brown's nomination for years. If the Trunks ever manage to nominate and elect a rational President again she should be atop that person's short list for appointment to the Supreme Court.
#7
I wasn't sure whether it was good news or not, at the beginning of the article. When I saw the ACLU's take, I knew it was really good news.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/11/2010 6:43 Comments ||
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I might add that such a forceful decision moves U.S. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown to the head of the list as a SCOTUS nominee. Ironically, in her youth she was a rabid leftist, "almost Maoist" in her own words, but she has now become a confirmed constitutionalist conservative.
She *was* a W. Bush nominee, who the Democrats stonewalled for two years. Otherwise she has a similar biography to Condoleeza Rice. One heck of a biography.
#10
Hah, so it doesn't take a "wise Latino woman" to make a good decision?
"War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust," Brown wrote. "It must recognize that the old wine skins of international law, domestic criminal procedure or other prior frameworks are ill-suited to the bitter wine of this new warfare. We can no longer afford diffidence. This war has placed us not just at, but already past the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. Falling back on the comfort of prior practices supplies only illusory comfort."
There is hope coming from the Judicial Branch.
Our founding fathers were indeed wise and inspired in the creation of the basis for our country.
#11
We're not a signatory of some of the Geneva Conventions, 49 Pan? Really? You want to make that case?
Now, we've not signed on to the crazier Seventies-era extensions which legalized non-uniformed combatants and all that Gramscian rubbish, but the old Geneva set is still very much the law of the land.
I sympathize with Judge Brown, but I suspect as long as that addlepated middle-of-the-road simpleton Kennedy is on the Supreme bench, this sort of "screw international law we ain't signed on to" thinking isn't going to make it past SCOTUS.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
01/11/2010 11:50 Comments ||
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JohnQC: Comparing the rise of Condoleeza Rice and Janice Brown to "close to the apex" of non-elective power in the US, makes you wonder if there are more black girls and women out there like this. Talk about role models!
Rice's father was a reverend who personally guarded his house from racists with a gun, while his daughter practiced her piano indoors. He firmly told her that she would have to be twice as good as a white person to overcome discrimination. She put that into practice.
Judge Brown is also from Alabama. The two were born only five years apart.
[Iran Press TV Latest] A former Pakistani intelligence chief confirms that the infamous US security contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services LLC) is involved in the US missile attacks on northwestern Pakistan.
"They certainly have had a role to play," said Asad Durani, former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in an interview with Press TV on Sunday.
He was commenting on the missile raids that the United States carries out on the Pakistani tribal region using unmanned aerial vehicles.
"I learned somewhere that these people are employed certainly for...the logistic support at the drone bases. That is understandable," Durani said. "They may not be directing in that sense the drone attacks," he said, claiming that the fire is directed by, among others, "people who can merge with the background who go to certain areas, carry out or find out where the possible targets are."
OMG! It sounds like he is talking about *gasp* spies!!
The security firm won notoriety for its killing of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in September 2007. The firm later on changed its name to Xe Services LLC.
Two former Blackwater mercenaries have also been charged with the 2009 murder of two Afghan civilians in Kabul.
Pakistan's Wattan Party's Punjab President Hashim Shaukat Khan has accused the country's Interior Ministry of buckling "under American pressure" by letting 200 Blackwater staffers enter Pakistan without clearing the customs.
The former ISI chief implicated the contractor in festering violence across Pakistan, saying "the main role of these security agencies in the deteriorating situation is their presence in the country amongst other things to provide security to the US personnel, but very importantly also for espionage."
"They are looking for what they call the remnants of al-Qaeda and some sympathizers of Taliban," Durani added, referring to the US excuse for taking the border areas under relentless missile attacks.
The attacks, launched by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in cooperation with the Pentagon, reportedly killed more than 700 civilians in Pakistan in 2009.
Taliban and Al Qaeda civilians and similar riff-raff, and their civilian hosts. Those civilians.
More than 50 such raids in 2008 left hundreds of mostly civilian mortalities.
See comment above.
Washington has escalated the attacks this year, which has so far witnessed at least six raids US drones. Latest attacks, mostly targeting villages in North Waziristan, have killed at least 30 people, which the US claims were mostly militants.
The Long War Journal, a US website tracking the strikes, however, says the assaults have killed mostly civilians and have failed to target top militant leaders.
Here's the Long War Journal website. Check for yourself, dear reader.
"It is quite thinkable that these people, since they have been employed by the CIA for certain purposes, so in the overall game, they become an important player and also then become the targets of not only some retaliatory measures but also the anger of the Pakistani people," the former ISI chief concluded.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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[Quqnoos] Pakistan has offered to supply ammunition to foreign troops fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistani Foreign Minister said on Saturday.
He promises it will be cheaper than their current suppliers... although there may come to be questions about quality and reliability of delivery after payment is made. Much like the current situation with fuel deliveries.
Pakistan can provide quality ammunition to British and other coalition troops in Afghanistan, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmud Qureshi told at a joint news conference with his British counterpart.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband is in an official tour to Pakistan, discussing bilateral issues with the Pakistani officials, including its role in the Western counter-terrorism campaign in the region.
Miliband said peace and security in Afghanistan depends on security and stability in Pakistan.
Security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan depends on security, stability and prosperity in Pakistan, he said.
He said the main objective of his visit, the sixth since he took over, was to take Pakistan into confidence about the London Conference on Afghanistan on January 28.
Britain is going to host an international summit later month in London on aiding war-weary Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Reject this "Offer" it's entirely too easy to "Mischarge" rounds with TNT, Ship all ammo from "Friendlies" or from Home. (USA)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
01/11/2010 0:44 Comments ||
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The Pakistan Army may be considering a move into the militant stronghold of North Waziristan, US Senator Joe Lieberman said on Sunday. For all their hyperconcern about our violations of their sovreignty with dronezaps, the Paks are pretty cavalier about a large chunk of their country being controlled by Arabs and their local puppets.
They're tribals, not real people like the Punjabis, after all.
Appearing on CNN along with Senator John McCain, Lieberman said the Pakistani military is on the move and there was a possibility the US would see activity in that volatile region.
Alert: The two senators -- who met COAS General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani during their recent visit to Pakistan -- went on to say that the US is "ahead of the game" in its fight against extremists, but it must remain alert and pursue its enemies to new battlefields in Yemen and elsewhere.
"We have chased some of the Al Qaeda enemy to Yemen, but the fact is that in the last year, there have been more than a dozen known attempted terrorist attacks on the United States. Three of them broke through our defences " Lieberman said.
"America is safer since 9/11, but not safe for sure. We have a long way to go, but I think we have made significant progress. I think we have shown that Al Qaeda can land almost anywhere. Where there is fertile ground, they are going to breed," McCain said.
"Now, the latest [front], of course, is Yemen, where there certainly is a significant challenge," he added.
Yemen, yes, but plotting and training have not stopped in Pakistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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People across Iraq have taken to streets to protest a Saudi cleric's comments regarding the country's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
Leading Wahhabi cleric Mohammad al-Ureifi in a Friday sermon had termed the Shia cleric an "atheist and debauched."
He also launched an attack on Iraq's Shias, accusing 65 percent of the country's population of conspiring with Yemen's Houthis against Saudi Arabia.
During demonstrations condemning the remarks, protestors called on the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take a tough stance on the remarks.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has responded to the verbal attack on the Grand Ayatollah, who has played an increasingly prominent role in Iraq since 2003, when the US in led an invasion of the country.
Talabani has appealed directly to the Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz to intervene and stop insults against Iraq's revered Shia scholar.
"Insult to Sistani causes division and quarrels that spark the flames in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries," he wrote in a letter to the monarch.
Holding considerable influence over Iraqi political developments, the Grand Ayatollah is consulted on major political matters within the country.
Prime Minister al-Maliki last week traveled to the holy city of Najaf to discuss preparations for the March parliamentary elections with Grand Ayatollah.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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[Ma'an] President Mahmoud Abbas received an official invitation to Damascus from Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat announced on Sunday during an interview on Ma'an radio.
Abbas will leave for Syria in the coming days, Erekat said, where he will discuss recent developments in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Middle East peace process.
Erekat refuted what he termed rumors about a possible meeting between Abbas and senior-most Hamas leader Khalid Mash'al during his forthcoming visit, insisting that "there will not be any meetings between Mash'al and Abbas' aides."
Erekat further said that he had traveled to Syria two weeks ago to meet with Syrian officials and denied allegations that the visit was related to secret negotiations to complete the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal.
Abbas began a tour of the Middle East last Sunday in Jordan where he met with King Abdullah II, following which he traveled to Egypt to meet with President Hosni Mubarak where he reiterated the PLO's position that Israel must stop expanding West Bank settlements before Palestinians would be willing to renew peace talks.
"We are not imposing conditions; this is clear. But we have previously stated and will repeat that as soon as settlement construction stops we will resume negotiations immediately," he told journalists after a meeting with Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm Ash-Sheikh.
The tour, including Qatar and Kuwait, was intended to discuss the renewal of peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, in a bit to pressure Israel into making concessions in negotiations with Palestinians, US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell announced on American PBS on Saturday that the US was prepared to withhold loan guarantees, which in turn prompted an irate response from Israeli officials, including the prime minister.
"Everyone realizes that the Palestinian Authority refuses to renew peace talks, while Israel took significant steps to advance the process," a statement issued by the Israeli prime minister's office asserted.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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British lawmaker George Galloway has slammed Egypt for its support of the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip, hailing Turkey's support for the Palestinian people.
Galloway, who headed the Viva Palestina aid convoy for the Gazans, was deported from Egypt.
"I wish that Egypt and Britain had leaders like [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan," Turkey's Yenisafak quoted Galloway as saying on Saturday. He hailed the Turkish government's support for the humanitarian convoy.
The member of the Respect Party noted that he will never visit Egypt again, stressing that the Egyptian people are different from the "dictatorship" running the country and said that he will miss them.
Galloway said that he is discussing a new plan with Turkish officials to carry humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip directly from Turkey via the Mediterranean Sea.
Somehow invisibly under the noses of the Israeli Navy. A fiendishly clever plan, that. I think the syphilis has gone to his brain.
Two Betz cells held together by a spirochete, as we used to say at the County ...
He said that such a move is expected to take place in March.
Despite restrictions imposed by the Egyptian authorities, the Viva Palestina convoy of around 200 vehicles managed to break the Israeli siege of Gaza on Wednesday. Fifty-nine vehicles were not allowed into the strip but the supplies were unloaded and taken through by the activists.
The activists entered Gaza through Rafah border crossing.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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First off, you leo(re)tarded dink, you are barred from Eypt. It's not like it's a choice for you. And congrats on your "breaking the seige" antics. Due to your group, and you particularly, Rafah is now closed.
#2
This will probably embarrass Erdogan. High praise from a sniveling traitor is far worse than faint praise from a superior. I imagine Turks still typically envision the English as sort of "girly-men".
[Asharq al-Aswat] The mayor of a provincial town in Jordan said Sunday he had dropped plans to name a new neighborhood there after Iraq's late dictator Saddam Hussein at the request of the central government.
Mohammed Sarayrah says several hundred residents of Mazar in southwestern Jordan had applied to name the neighborhood on the edge of the town after Saddam. The number was large enough to grant the request, he said.
But Sarayrah said Jordan's central government, under pressure from Kuwait and Iraq, demanded that he drops the plans to name the area after Saddam, who was executed by hanging in 2006.
Saddam, who ordered the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, was toppled by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. His 23-year rule was defined by a ruinous, eight-year war with neighboring Iran and the persecution of Iraq's Shiite majority and the Kurdish minority.
Jordan, a close U.S. ally, is an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country, but Mazar is home to several religious sites revered by followers of Islam's rival Shiite sect.
Mazar lies in an area where some political activists have had links to Saddam's now-outlawed Baath party.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Instead they will name all their babies after him.
[ADN Kronos] Sri Lanka has strongly rejected United Nations' calls for an inquiry into possible war crimes committed during its conflict with Tamil separatists. An independent UN human rights expert said there were strong indications that a video of alleged extrajudicial executions by Sri Lankan soldiers that aired last August on British television was authentic.
Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, commissioned three experts in forensic pathology, forensic video analysis, and firearm evidence to examine the video, after concluding that investigations carried out by the government had not been thorough or impartial.
"The conclusion clearly is that the video is authentic," he told a news conference in New York on Thursday.
"I have therefore called on the government of Sri Lanka to respond to these allegations."
On Friday the government described the UN inquiry into the video's authenticity as "highly subjective and biased". It also said that the footage was "fabricated".
The government last year declared victory over the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) after years of conflict.
It has categorically denied the allegations raised by the video, which purportedly depicts the extrajudicial execution of two naked and helpless Tamil men by the Sri Lankan military and the presumed prior executions of others.
It had commissioned four separate investigations which concluded that the video was a fake.
However, Alston said that two of the government's experts looking into the matter were members of the Sri Lankan Army, the body whose actions have been called into question.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. has a contingency plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear program if diplomacy and sanctions fail, General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the region, said in an interview to be aired today on CNN.
It would be almost literally irresponsible if Centcom were not to have been thinking about the various what ifs' and to make plans for a whole variety of different contingencies,' Petraeus said in comments posted on CNN's Web Site. The general, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, is head of U.S. Central Command, or Centcom.
President Barack Obama's administration launched last year a diplomatic drive to reach a deal with Iran that would allay suspicions its developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. is now considering fresh sanctions after Iran failed to accept a United Nations-brokered agreement on sending abroad most of its stockpile of low enriched uranium that would have paved the way for wider negotiations.
Petraeus declined to comment on the likelihood of a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities by Israel, which hasn't ruled out such a step, CNN said. The U.S. commander said the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, now strengthened against attack with enhanced underground tunnels, wasn't fully protected.
Well, they certainly can be bombed,' CNN quoted Petraeus as saying. The level of effect would vary with who it is that carries it out, what ordnance they have and what capability they can bring to bear.'
Obama's administration has maintained his predecessor George W. Bush's policy of not ruling out a military strike on Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Nov. 9 in Berlin that every option is on the table.'
Iran won't give in to Western pressure to halt its nuclear program, and isn't concerned by further UN Security Council sanctions, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday, the state-run Mehr news agency reported. Iran has ignored UN demands that it suspend uranium enrichment, which the U.S. and many of its allies suspect is part of a weapons program. Highly-enriched uranium can be used to fuel power stations or to make a nuclear warhead.
Iran will have the technology to build a nuclear weapon by early next year, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Dec. 28. Barak told a parliamentary committee that once Iran had the technological ability it could decide whether to build a nuclear weapon, for which it would have to enrich large amounts of uranium.
There is still time for diplomacy, said Petraeus. There's a period of time, certainly, before all this might come to a head,' he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
ION PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM > BBC: US "IRAN ATTACK PLANS" REVEALED;
and
WMF > YEMENI TERRORISTS WARY, FURIOUS AT US ASSEMBLY OF TWO NUCLEAR AIRCRAFT CARRIERS FOR IRAN ATTACK [andor for YEMEN MilStrike].
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran said on Saturday members of the outlawed Baha'i group arrested in connection with anti-government protests would soon face trial, as a spokeswoman for the group rejected charges they had weapons in their homes.
"The Baha'is' trial will be this week in a revolutionary court in Tehran," Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying.
He repeated comments he made on Friday that "they were arrested because they played a role in organizing the Ashura protests and for having sent abroad pictures of the unrest."
He added that "they were not arrested because they are Bahais... Arms and ammunition were seized in some of their homes."
But Diane Alai, the Bahai International Community's U.N. representative in Geneva, said the charges against the 10 Bahais were entirely unfounded.
"Without doubt, these are baseless fabrications devised by the government to further create an atmosphere of prejudice and hatred against the Iranian Baha'i community," Alai said in a statement.
"Baha'is are... committed to absolute non-violence, and any charge that there might have been weapons or 'live rounds' in their homes is simply and completely unbelievable," she added.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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[4 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi has highlighted the deterrence capability of Iran's ballistic missiles and warned enemies against taking any military action against the Islamic Republic.
In an address to a group of commanders and personnel of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps in Tehran on Sunday, Vahidi said Iran's deterrent power, in terms of missile capabilities, is beyond what the enemy can imagine.
*snicker*
"Despite the smear campaign and the poisonous propaganda atmosphere that the enemies seek to create to influence public opinion, Iran's deterrent power is intended to guarantee national and regional security and also to repulse any possible attack by the arch-foes of the Islamic system," Vahidi stated.
I don't doubt that is the intention.
Iran has acquired expertise in missile production at a rapid pace over the past few years, and thus conducts frequent exercises to test-fire the latest prototypes.
Which have been watched. And counters planned.
Iran successfully tested the second generation of the Sejjil missile and brought it into mass production in December. The solid-fuel, two-stage Sejjil-2 missile has a longer range than the Shahab-3 missile, which can reach targets 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) away.
That's a separate issue, I think.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/11/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi isnt really on this planet .
Posted by: Oscar ||
01/11/2010 8:16 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Oh sure he is. Just a quite small and ill-informed one. His faith no doubt suffices not only to move mountains but to see beyond them.
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.
[Iran Press TV Latest] One of the two former cabinet ministers who launched a failed leadership coup against British Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week has attacked the premier on the unpopular war in Afghanistan. 
Editor's note: Charles S. Faddis is a retired CIA operations officer and the former head of the CIA's unit focused on fighting terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction. The author of a recently published book about the CIA, "Beyond Repair," Faddis is also president of Orion Strategic Services, a Maryland-based consulting firm.
HAMPTON, Va. -- As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up.
[Al Arabiya Latest] CIA Director Leon Panetta, in an article published Sunday, revealed that a Jordanian doctor who killed seven agency operatives was about to be searched before he blew himself up at a US military base in Afghanistan.
Dozens of released Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield, US Senator Dianne Feinstein said on Sunday, as she urged the Barack Obama administration not to release more inmates from the war-on-terror prison camp.
[Iran Press TV Latest] A former Pakistani intelligence chief confirms that the infamous US security contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services LLC) is involved in the US missile attacks on northwestern Pakistan. 
The Pakistan Army may be considering a move into the militant stronghold of North Waziristan, US Senator Joe Lieberman said on Sunday.
People across Iraq have taken to streets to protest a Saudi cleric's comments regarding the country's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. 
British lawmaker George Galloway has slammed Egypt for its support of the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip, hailing Turkey's support for the Palestinian people. 
Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. has a contingency plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear program if diplomacy and sanctions fail, General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the region, said in an interview to be aired today on CNN.
