The US government Friday released a long-secret list of some 645 detainees held at Bagram military base in Afghanistan.
The list was just a small part of roughly 2,000 pages of documents that were released related to various lawsuits seeking government papers about detainees.
The identities of the detainees at Bagram air base had been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
What business is it of the American CLU? The International Committee of the Red Cross I could understand, but this group should have their attention focussed on more local concerns.
The list is dated Sept. 22, 2009.
The nationalities as well as the date the inmates were captured have been blacked out in the list.
ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the government should also provide the details of how the inmates were captured and why they are being held. "Hundreds of people have languished at Bagram for years in horrid and abusive conditions, without even being told why they're detained or given a fair chance to argue for release," Goodman said.
"This is completely unprecedented, we've never had access to the list," said Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at City University of New York who represents a Yemeni man, Amin al Bakri, who was captured in Thailand in 2002 and sent to Bagram.
The proper answer to that is, "We only release such information to the appropriate organizations." After all, what other lists have the ACLU been given, and in what detail?
The Afghan government has agreed on a plan to take over responsibility for the prison at Bagram, where there have been allegations of human rights abuses. US and Afghan officials said the hand-over could occur by the end of the year.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai's second attempt to seat a new Cabinet failed Saturday with the parliament rejecting a majority of his selections.
The parliament approved seven ministers out of 17 nominees. They include Karzai's former national security adviser, Zalmai Rasoul, as foreign minister and Amina Afzali, one of three female nominees, as social affairs chief. Nominees for ministries of Justice, Haj and Islamic Affairs, Economics, Counter-Narcotics, and Rural Rehabilitation and Development also were approved.
But the rejection of 10 names does not bode well for Karzai, who is under both international and domestic pressure to stamp out widespread corruption in Afghanistan and establish legitimacy for his administration, tainted by allegations of vote fraud in August. Among those rejected were candidates for higher education, public health and women's affairs. Parliament members have complained that Karzai's nominees are either corrupt or linked to warlords.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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[Asharq al-Aswat] Sudan's First Vice President Salva Kiir will run for president of south Sudan in elections in April, leaving the post of national president to be contested by a lower-ranking northern member of his party.
Kiir's decision is seen as a signal that southern politicians have prioritized running the semi-autonomous south, which is widely expected to secede when it votes in an independence referendum next year.
Having spent little time in Khartoum, Kiir had always been expected to remain as president in the oil-producing south.
The leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), a former southern rebel group, became Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's deputy in 2005 when a north-south peace deal ended two decades of civil war.
The fighting claimed 2 million lives, drove 4 million from their homes and destabilized much of east Africa. The growing fragility of the peace deal has led to fears of renewed conflict.
"The SPLM nominee for the position of President of the Republic is Yasir Saeed Arman and the nominee for the President of Southern Sudan is the Chairman of the SPLM Salva Kiir," SPLM Secretary-General Pagan Amum told Reuters on Friday.
Maggie Fick of the U.S.-based anti-genocide group the Enough Project said the nominations would be seen as a signal that the SPLM's priorities are in the south.
"It is difficult not to read it that way," she said.
Since the SPLM formed a coalition government with their one-time northern foes, the National Congress Party, Arman has been the face of his party in Khartoum, heading the SPLM's parliamentary group and acting as a spokesman.
Kiir has shown little interest in the affairs of the north, intervening only when delays in implementing the peace deal reached crisis level, earning him the title of "vice absent" rather than first vice president.
"We want Kiir to continue being the president of the south to take the people of the south to the referendum ... Yasir Arman is a long term SPLM cadre and a capable leader and our best candidate," the SPLM's Amum added.
Although the 2005 north-south peace deal was signed under the slogan of making unity attractive, little has been implemented with good will, fuelling mistrust among southerners of the northern government they had long accused of oppression.
A Muslim who joined the rebels over disillusionment with a succession of military, corrupt and dictatorial Khartoum governments, Arman will run against fellow Muslim Bashir.
Bashir hopes to legitimize his position after the International Criminal Court last year issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes in Darfur.
The SPLM is thought to have chosen a northerner to run for the presidency as few in the mainly Muslim north would vote for a Christian southerner.
The imposition of Islamic sharia law in 1983 fueled the rebellion by southerners who follow mostly traditional beliefs or Christianity.
With millions of southerners who fled the war to seek refuge in the north and hundreds of thousands of northerners who have shown support for the SPLM, Arman may be a leading candidate for the presidency.
The elections promise democratic transformation, but with one of the most complex electoral systems in the world and the opposition accusing the ruling NCP of fraud in the registration process, few are optimistic Sudan will see real change.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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Choices, choices: give the scanner operator a quick thrill when he views my middle-aged body, or get blown out of the sky by the next pantibomber. Yeah, I'd go for maintaining privacy, too.
/sarc
Great things are expected of terahertz waves, the radiation that fills the slot in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and the infrared. Terahertz waves pass through non-conducting materials such as clothes , paper, wood and brick and so cameras sensitive to them can peer inside envelopes, into living rooms and "frisk" people at distance.
The way terahertz waves are absorbed and emitted can also be used to determine the chemical composition of a material. And even though they don't travel far inside the body, there is great hope that the waves can be used to spot tumours near the surface of the skin.
With all that potential, it's no wonder that research on terahertz waves has exploded in the last ten years or so.
But what of the health effects of terahertz waves? At first glance, it's easy to dismiss any notion that they can be damaging. Terahertz photons are not energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise atoms or molecules, the chief reasons why higher energy photons such as x-rays and UV rays are so bad for us. But could there be another mechanism at work?
The evidence that terahertz radiation damages biological systems is mixed. "Some studies reported significant genetic damage while others, although similar, showed none," say Boian Alexandrov at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and a few buddies. Now these guys think they know why.
Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That's a jaw dropping conclusion.
And it also explains why the evidence has been so hard to garner. Ordinary resonant effects are not powerful enough to do do this kind of damage but nonlinear resonances can. These nonlinear instabilities are much less likely to form which explains why the character of THz genotoxic
effects are probabilistic rather than deterministic, say the team.
This should set the cat among the pigeons. Of course, terahertz waves are a natural part of environment, just like visible and infrared light. But a new generation of cameras are set to appear that not only record terahertz waves but also bombard us with them. And if our exposure is set to increase, the question that urgently needs answering is what level of terahertz exposure is safe.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294: DNA Breathing Dynamics in the Presence of a Terahertz Field
DOOM preacher Anjem Choudary has warned of a Bosnian-style bloodbath after admitting plans for a new extremist group called Democracy Is Dead.
I think it's time to deport the gentleman, with just the clothes on his back and his entire family.
The cleric forecast that a government ban on his group Islam4UK would stoke hostility between Muslims and white Britons.
He claimed there could be a repeat, on our own streets, of the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica in which Serbs slaughtered 8,000 Bosnian men and boys.
But, despite mounting tensions surrounding his views, he admitted that he is already rebranding outlawed Islam 4UK under the provocative new banner.
He said he planned to "launch a new organisation under the title Democracy Is Dead, adding: "You will have to wait and see."
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Star Sunday, East London-based Choudary, 42, said: "The Government's decision to ban Islam4UK is a very dangerous one as it will only increase the potential for some very nasty conflict."
"You only have to look at what happened between Bosnia and Serbia at Srebrenica. There could be a bloodbath on the streets."
"I don't think the British people want that but, when you start to suppress ideological movements, you push them underground and there is more chance of conflict.'
"The Government has created a tinderbox situation by banning us. We were the ones calming things down."
Islam4UK was banned by Home Secretary Alan Johnson after uproar over Choudary's plans to hold a protest march in the Wiltshire village of Wootton Bassett where the public salute the bodies of soldiers brought back from Afghanistan.
But ex-lawyer Choudary was unrepentant, claiming that white Britons do not understand the strength of feeling of the Muslim population.
He said: "In some cities, one in six of the young people are Muslim. People don't realise that there are actually four to five million Muslims in the UK. Many of them do not register to vote so the Government's figures do not reflect the true size of the Muslim population."
"The Government says there are around one million Muslims in the UK but that is nowhere near accurate. Of course, most will remain silent and not complain but a few could be driven to take the law into their own hands."
"It's a very dangerous situation. You have to consider how, if there is another 7/7, the country would cope. More and more disaffected whites would be driven towards far-right extremist groups such as the British National Party and the English Defence League if there was another attack."
"If Muslims are not allowed to speak out they could be driven to use other tactics. This in turn will increase tensions with the white community. I would expect fresh attacks on Muslims and the Government will not be able to control the situation."
#1
Many of them do not register to vote so the Government's figures do not reflect the true size of the Muslim population."
Might not be on a voter's list, but they sure are on welfare and benefits lists.
If Muslims are not allowed to speak out they could be driven to use other tactics. This in turn will increase tensions with the white community. I would expect fresh attacks on Muslims and the Government will not be able to control the situation.
He's so close to grasping that "cause and effect" thingy. So close. I can almost smell him from here.
#5
It may take something drastic like turning the UK into Bosnia for the regular citizens to finally say enough is enough. But once that day comes, not even Allah (*spit) will be able to stop the Brits when they get rollin'.
Posted by: Yo Adrian ||
01/17/2010 12:53 Comments ||
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[Kyodo: Korea] North Korea on Friday declared a ''retaliatory holy war'' against South Korea over its plan to take action north of the border in case of an emergency, while at the same time informing the South that it will accept 10,000 tons of corn aid it was offered in October, Yonhap News Agency reported. While accepting the humanitarian aid, North Korea took issue with reports that Seoul recently renewed its so-called Operational Plan 5029 meant to authorize the entry of South Korean and U.S. troops into the North in case of any emergency north of the border.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
And since the South will deliver the food, they deserve to be treated that way.
A group led by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan has protested near the CIA's headquarters and former Vice President Dick Cheney's home in northern Virginia.
They were protesting the use of unmanned drone aircraft to attack al-Qaida and Taliban targets.
The group of about 70 people rallied alongside a highway near the CIA compound Saturday. About half then marched to Cheney's nearby street and stayed for 20 minutes. Police kept them from going down his street.
Sheehan's 21-year-old son Casey was killed in Iraq in April 2004. She staged a prolonged demonstration outside former President George W. Bush's ranch near Crawford, Texas, in 2005.
She says using drones is "cowardly" and "immoral."
#3
she lost her media-whore limelight when she protested the donks and ran against Pelosi. Apparently she's learned her lesson
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/17/2010 10:28 Comments ||
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Cannot frickin' believe what I'm reading... actually taken back by this. I would gladly trade her for an illegal immigrant who speaks no English but out of respect for her son would probably settle for her quiet incarceration in a remote mental health facility.
Posted by: Yo Adrian ||
01/17/2010 13:00 Comments ||
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#5
Send her to Pakistan to protest the "drone-zaps" where they happen. Maybe she'll learn a little about the responsibilities of citizenship, and what happens when you don't have either the rights or the means to exercise both rights and responsibility.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/17/2010 16:10 Comments ||
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Too fucking bad there wasn't an armed unmanned drone in the sky over Sadr City that day in April.
#1
Excellent! Probably the only man running for office who is willing to stand up and call islam what it is. West for President! Allen West in order to save the West.
Posted by: ed ||
01/17/2010 14:57 Comments ||
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#2
I liked the video on his site of the July 4th Tea Party. BTW.. he should use that photo instead of the "proper one" on his website. It definitely makes him an outside the beltway player.
A cursory glance at Pakistani school textbooks - especially the compulsory subjects like Pakistan studies and social studies - gives an idea of how history has been distorted and a garbled version prescribed to build this mindset and attitude.
The objective of Pakistan's education policy has been defined thus in the preface to a Class 6 book: "Social studies have been given special importance in educational policy so that Pakistan's basic ideology assumes the shape of a way of life, its practical enforcement is assured, the concept of social uniformity adopts a practical form and the whole personality of the individual is developed." This statement leaves no doubt that "social uniformity", not national unity, is a part of Pakistan's basic ideology.
The Class 5 book has this original discovery about Hindu help to bring British rule to India: "The British had the objective to take over India and to achieve this, they made Hindus join them and Hindus were very glad to side with the British. After capturing the subcontinent, the British began on the one hand the loot of all things produced in this area, and on the other, in conjunction with Hindus, to greatly suppress the Muslims."
The Std VIII book says, "Their (Muslim saints) teachings dispelled many superstitions of the Hindus and reformed their bad practices. Thereby Hindu religion of the olden times came to an end."
On Indo-Pak wars, the books give detailed descriptions and openly eulogize jihad' and shahadat' and urge students to become mujahids' and martyrs and leave no room for future friendship and cordial relations with India.
According to a Class 5 book, "In 1965, the Pakistani army conquered several areas of India, and when India was on the point of being defeated, she requested the United Nations to arrange a ceasefire. After 1965, India, with the help of Hindus living in East Pakistan, instigated the people living there against the people of West Pakistan, and finally invaded East Pakistan in December 1971. The conspiracy resulted in the separation of East Pakistan from us. All of us should receive military training and be prepared to fight the enemy."
The book prescribed for higher secondary students makes no mention of the uprising in East Pakistan in 1971 or the surrender by more than 90,000 Pakistani soldiers. Instead, it claims, "In the 1971 India-Pakistan war, the Pakistan armed forces created new records of bravery and the Indian forces were defeated everywhere."
The students of Class 3 are taught that "Muhammad Ali (Jinnah) felt that Hindus wanted to make Muslims their slaves and since he hated slavery, he left the Congress". At another place it says, "The Congress was actually a party of Hindus. Muslims felt that after getting freedom, Hindus would make them their slaves."
And this great historic discovery is taught to Std V students, "Previously, India was part of Pakistan."
Posted by: john frum ||
01/17/2010 12:01 Comments ||
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ISLAMABAD : Intelligence agencies on Saturday exposed a hijacking plan which what they said was being sponsored and supported by Indian and Afghan secret agencies. According to the Interior Ministry sources intelligence agencies informed the ministry that terrorists had planned to hijack Pakistan International Airlines plane.
After receiving the information, the ministry announced red alert on all the airports, sources said. They said that Airport Security Force and other law enforcement agencies have been asked to enhance vigilance to frustrate the evil designs of terrorists.
Sources revealed that terrorists had planned to hijack PIA airliner and take it to Kandahar. According to the intelligence report terrorists have links with separatist elements of Balochistan. No Interior Ministry official could be reached for comments.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/17/2010 07:42 ||
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#1
I'm shocked that the CIA and Mossad were not part of these "evil designs"
Posted by: john frum ||
01/17/2010 9:36 Comments ||
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#2
They've delegated to their puppets in the area, John. Just ask anyone in Pakistan.
#4
Afghanistan has a secret intelligence agency? Golly -- who knew the Afghans were better at keeping secrets than the uebermenschen of Land of the Pure?
The US army is training a crack unit to seal off and snatch back Pakistani nuclear weapons in the event that militants, possibly from inside the country's security apparatus, get their hands on a nuclear device or materials that could make one. The specialised unit would be charged with recovering the nuclear materials and securing them.
The move follows growing anti-Americanism in Pakistan's military, a series of attacks on sensitive installations over the past two years, several of which housed nuclear facilities, and rising tension that has seen a series of official complaints by US authorities to Islamabad in the past fortnight.
What you have in Pakistan is nuclear weapons mixed with the highest density of extremists in the world, so we have a right to be concerned,' said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former CIA officer who used to run the US energy department's intelligence unit. There have been attacks on army bases which stored nuclear weapons and there have been breaches and infiltrations by terrorists into military facilities.'
Professor Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan security research unit at Bradford University, has tracked a number of attempted security breaches since 2007. The terrorists are at the gates,' he warned.
In a counterterrorism journal, published by America's West Point military academy, he documented three incidents. The first was an attack in November 2007 at Sargodha in Punjab, where nuclear capable F-16 jet aircraft are thought to be stationed. The following month a suicide bomber struck at Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra in Attock district. In August 2008 a group of suicide bombers blew up the gates to a weapons complex at the Wah cantonment in Punjab, believed to be one of Pakistan's nuclear warhead assembly plants. The attack left 63 people dead.
A further attack followed at Kamra last October. Pakistan denies that the base still has a nuclear role, but Gregory believes it does. A six-man suicide team was arrested in Sargodha last August.
Fears that militants could penetrate a nuclear facility intensified after a brazen attack on army headquarters in Rawalpindi in October when 10 gunmen wearing army uniforms got inside and laid siege for 22 hours. Last month there was an attack on the naval command centre in Islamabad.
Pakistani police said five Americans from Washington who were arrested in Pakistan last month after trying to join the Taliban were carrying a map of Chashma Barrage, a complex in Punjab that includes a nuclear power facility.
The Al-Qaeda leadership has made no secret of its desire to get its hands on weapons for a nuclear 9/11'.
I have no doubt they are hell-bent on acquiring this,' said Mowatt-Larssen. These guys are thinking of nuclear at the highest level and are approaching it in increasingly professional ways.'
Nuclear experts and US officials say the biggest fear is of an inside job amid growing anti-American feeling in Pakistan. Last year 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in terrorist attacks, more than in Afghanistan, yet polls suggest Pakistanis consider the United States to be a greater threat than the Taliban.
You have 8,000-12,000 [people] in Pakistan with some type of role in nuclear missiles whether as part of an assembly team or security,' said Gregory. It's a very large number and there is a real possibility that among those people are sympathisers of terrorist or jihadist groups who may facilitate some kind of attack.'
Pakistan is thought to possess about 80 nuclear warheads. Although the weapons are well guarded, the fear is that materials or processes to enrich uranium could fall into the wrong hands.
All it needs is someone in Pakistan within the nuclear establishment and in a position of key access to become radicalised,' said MowattLarssen. This is not just theoretical. It did happen Pakistan has had inside problems before.'
Bashir Mahmood, the former head of Pakistan's plutonium reactor, formed the Islamic charity Ummah Tameer-e-Nau in March 2000 after resigning from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. He was arrested in Islamabad on October 23, 2001, with his associate Abdul Majeed for alleged links to Osama Bin Laden.
Pakistan's military leadership, which controls the nuclear programme, has always bristled at the suggestion that its nuclear facilities are at risk. The generals insist that storing components in different sites keeps them secure.
US officials refused to speak on the record about American safety plans, well aware of how this would be seen in Islamabad. However, one official admitted that the United States does not know where all of Pakistan's storage sites are located. Don't assume the US knows everything,' he said.
Although Washington has provided $100m worth of technical assistance to Islamabad under its nuclear protection programme, US personnel have been denied access to most Pakistani nuclear sites.
In the past fortnight the US has made unprecedented formal protests to Pakistan's national security apparatus, warning it about fanning virulent anti-American sentiment in the media.
Concerns about hostility towards America within elements of the Pakistani armed forces first surfaced in 2007. At a meeting of military commanders staged at Kurram, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, a Pakistani major drew his pistol and shot an American. The incident was hushed up as a gunfight.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Isn't it easier ro snatch them back when you know where they are, now?
#2
These people have been watching too many movies. It ain't so simple. I doubt we could get even the majority of them out. We'd probably have destroy them in place, if we could find them. Sounds like a suicide mission to me.
"Chemical Ali" was sentenced to death today for ordering the greatest crime committed during the reign of Saddam Hussein.
The cousin of the former dictator earned his nickname in 1988 when he ordered an airborne poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja, killing more than 5,000 people, including many women and children.
Ali Hassan al-Majid is to be hanged for what is believed to be the single biggest gassing of civilians in history. It is his fourth death sentence for crimes committed as Saddam's defence minister, interior minister, intelligence chief and governor of occupied Kuwait.
"I am so happy today," said Nazik Tawfiq, 45, a Kurdish woman who lost six of her relatives in the attack. She came to court alone to hear the sentence, and fell to her knees and began to pray upon hearing the verdict. "Now the souls of our victims will rest in peace."
Saddam himself was never tried for the Halabja massacre, something many Kurds regret. He was executed three years ago by the ruling Shia government for massacring Shias in the south of Iraq.
"This judgment is a victory for all Iraqis, humanity and the Kurds because Halabja is the biggest crime of modern times," said Majid Hamad Amin, minister of the martyrs and displaced in the Kurdish regional government. "Halabja is not only a Kurdish case but it is an issue for all Iraqis and the rest of the world."
On March 16, 1988, Iraqi jets swooped over the small town and for five hours sprayed it with a deadly cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX. International outrage meant that al-Majid did not dare leave Iraq for the following 15 years. Only as war with the US looked increasingly likely in early 2003 did he visit Syria and Lebanon in a bid to whip up regional support for Iraq.
Soon though he became the King of Spades in the pack of cards of most wanted Iraqis issued by the US military during the invasion and was arrested in August of that year. Initially it was thought he had been killed by coalition bombing of his villa in Basra, but US officials were later forced to admit that he was still alive.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iraq's former pro-Western prime minister Iyad Allawi on Saturday unveiled a broad secular alliance of candidates to contest the country's general election on March 7.
Allawi, a Shiite politician who in exile mounted an opposition movement against Saddam Hussein, was provisionally appointed by Washington as Iraq's first premier after the dictator's ouster in the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. He held the post for just under a year.
" We are a national political entity, committed to serving all Iraqis and we call on them to join us "
Rafa al-Essawi
His public profile and influence has since slipped -- he currently has no ministers in the war-torn nation's government -- but he is a sworn foe of current Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom he aims to unseat.
"We are a national political entity, committed to serving all Iraqis and we call on them to join us," Rafa al-Essawi, the country's Sunni deputy prime minister, told hundreds of people at a glitzy Baghdad ceremony.
Allawi did not speak at the gathering where candidates for his Al-Iraqiya Alliance were unveiled but he was flanked by Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi who fired an opening verbal salvo at Maliki.
"He (Maliki) has failed to create a state of citizens to replace a state of (religious) communities," Hashemi told candidates and onlookers at the launch ceremony held at Al-Rasheed Hotel.
The prominent Sunni lawmaker Saleh al-Mutlak, who has been banned from competing in the March poll for alleged links to Saddam's former regime, is also a member of Allawi's alliance and was present at the ceremony.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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[Ma'an] Egypt is building a small sea port for patrol boats monitoring the country's border with Gaza in an effort to further block the Palestinian enclave's access to smuggling routes, Reuters reported Friday.
"The new anchorage will enhance the work of the Egyptian patrol boats on the sea border with Gaza and prevent any attempts of smuggling by sea," Reuters quoted an Egyptian security source in North Sinai as saying.
The anchorage, according to the report, will be 10 meters deep and 25 meters long, and used to moor border patrol boats charged with ensuring Palestinian fishing boats stay in Gazan coastal waters. Egypt has said it believes the boats are being used to carry out smuggling operations, though there have never been reports of such incidents.
"It is to secure the area. It will be used to direct fishing boats in the area to ensure they do not cross the Israeli sea border and risk getting fired at," the security sources told Reuters.
The anchorage likely means stepped up sea presence by Egypt, and comes as the country nears completion of a 10 kilometer underground wall along the Rafah border, which is says is designed to stop smuggling.
The tunnels are the only way Gazans can bring thousands of goods into the Strip. Israel has maintained a tight blockade of the area, letting in only 36 types of goods for the past three years.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Palestinians---you gotta have an Ivy League (or European equivalent) degree to appreciate their good points.
Officials and teachers in the deep South yesterday mourned the loss of 124 teachers killed in insurgency-related attacks over the past six years, to mark Teacher's Day yesterday. Deputy Interior Minister Thaworn Senneam joined them in a ceremony at Narasikalai school in Narathiwat's Muang district.
At Yala Rajabhat University in Yala's Muang district, 35 monks were invited to conduct a merit-making ceremony for the victims. The 124 dead comprised teachers and education officials killed in militant attacks since 2004, said the Office of Strategy Management and Educational Integration.
The tally of attacks include 325 arson attacks in 287 schools in Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and four districts of Songkhla province. "We go to work for the future of the children," Prasit Torsuan, director of Ban Khao Tanyong School in Narathiwat's Muang district, said. "We do our best, but we could not imagine that this would happen to us."
UNITED NATIONS Six major powers agreed Saturday that the Iranian response to proposals to altering its nuclear development program had been inadequate and that it warranted consideration of further measures by the United Nations Security Council.
China, however, which sent a low-level diplomat to the meeting, maintained its position that it opposed new sanctions now. The five permanent members of the Security Council the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France along with Germany have been pursuing a dual track' policy under which they would seek a negotiated settlement, but if that effort stalled, further sanctions would be imposed.
We talked mostly about the second track, but it doesn't mean we should abandon the first one,' said Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's representative. It is inconclusive in the sense that we didn't make any decisions right away.'
Western officials tried to cast a positive light on the meeting by suggesting that all six were at least moving in the same direction, even if it was unclear that China remained committed to the idea of a second track.
The credible threat of further pressure does create some leverage over the Iranian system,' said one Western diplomat engaged in the talks. The senior diplomats agreed to consult again by telephone before the end of the month on the next step.
Most countries were represented on the level of senior diplomats, the political directors' of their foreign ministries, but China virtually snubbed the gathering by dispatching a counselor from its United Nations mission. He Yafei, the former vice minister of foreign affairs, has now been appointed the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva and it is unclear who will eventually replace him in the talks.
The meeting Saturday was held in the New York offices of the European Union, whose representative said that there was at least consensus' among the six nations to focus on the next step.
We will continue to seek a negotiated solution, but consideration of appropriate further measures has also begun,' said Robert Cooper, a senior European Union official.
Both China and Russia voted in the Security Council for three previous rounds of sanctions, but only China has been outspoken in its recent opposition. Russia was upset that its offer to further enrich Iranian uranium at its facilities was rebuffed and that the Iranians did not seem serious about entering negotiations.
The Obama administration has also been dismayed that Iran has been dismissive of a yearlong effort to engage it. Iran maintains that its desire to enrich uranium is only for peaceful civilian purposes, but Western powers accuse it of using that as a smokescreen to develop nuclear weapons.
There is a sense of urgency about the matter, as there are concerns that Iran will develop the capacity to enrich uranium at the levels required for weapons, while negotiations drag on. In addition, the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is due for a review conference in May, and the Western powers want any new sanctions against Iran to be in place so as not to complicate any talks over the future of the treaty.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Diplomats from six major powers meet on Saturday to discuss whether Iran should face new U.N. sanctions for refusing to halt sensitive nuclear work, but Western envoys said China's decision to send a low-level official ruled out a quick deal.
Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States are sending top officials of their respective foreign ministries at the meeting hosted by the European Union.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Monday that the six would explore "the kind and degree of sanctions that we should be pursuing" as Iran doggedly refused to comply with U.N. demands to halt uranium enrichment.
Diplomats said Western members of the group of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany were likely to present their Russian and Chinese colleagues with a range of new and tougher sanctions.
The goal is to crank up the pressure on Iran to accept a U.N.-brokered deal aimed at allaying suspicions about the nature of its nuclear program by shipping most of its low enriched uranium (LEU) stockpile abroad to be further enriched into reactor fuel.
But Tehran has ignored a U.S.-set Dec. 31 deadline to back the offer, drawn up by the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, and countered with its own proposal of a simultaneous and staged swap of LEU with reactor fuel.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/17/2010 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
TIMBUKTU, Mali -- In early 2008, an official at the US Department of Homeland Security sent a report to his superiors detailing what he called "the most significant development in the criminal exploitation of aircraft since 9/11."
The document warned that a growing fleet of rogue jet aircraft was regularly crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean. On one end of the air route, it said, are cocaine-producing areas in the Andes controlled by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. On the other are some of West Africa's most unstable countries.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, was ignored, and the problem has since escalated into what security officials in several countries describe as a global security threat.
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The US official who wrote the report for the The official is a counter-narcotics aviation expert who asked to remain anonymous as he is not authorized to speak on the record. He said he was dismayed by the lack of attention to the matter since he wrote the report.
The answer to this may lie, in part, later in the article:
Just days later, US Drug Enforcement Administration officials arrested three West African men following a sting operation in Ghana. The men, all from Mali, were extradited to New York on December 16 on drug trafficking and terrorism charges.
That operation was likely the American response to the DHS analyst's report. FARC has been extensively penetrated, perhaps fatally, by DEA and the Colombian security services. This should have been obvious to anyone with a brain after the spectacular FARC hostage rescue in mid-2008.
The DHS analyst wrote his report in early 2008, so at the time it might have seemed a good idea to use the FARC penetration to attack the African side, but it seems that AQIM was reading the newspapers. I guess DEA finally tired of being jerked around, and closed the thing down, arresting these three guys who I pretty much guarantee don't know anything.
#5
That operation was likely the American response to the DHS analyst's report. FARC has been extensively penetrated, perhaps fatally, by DEA and the Colombian security services. This should have been obvious to anyone with a brain after the spectacular FARC hostage rescue in mid-2008.
I'm afraid I generally need it explained in very small words before I realize things like this, Pstanley. I read Rantburg because there is always someone who will do so, eventually. This time it's you I can thank for elucidating. :-)
#1
Hell, the snake-oil salesman even looks like The Mighty O. I mean, just change the zoot suit for a nice gray Hart, Schaffner and Marx number and get rid of the cheesy mustache, this thing turns into a freaking documentary.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
01/17/2010 22:17 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai's second attempt to seat a new Cabinet failed Saturday with the parliament rejecting a majority of his selections. 
DOOM preacher Anjem Choudary has warned of a Bosnian-style bloodbath after admitting plans for a new extremist group called Democracy Is Dead.
"Chemical Ali" was sentenced to death today for ordering the greatest crime committed during the reign of Saddam Hussein.
Officials and teachers in the deep South yesterday mourned the loss of 124 teachers killed in insurgency-related attacks over the past six years, to mark Teacher's Day yesterday. Deputy Interior Minister Thaworn Senneam joined them in a ceremony at Narasikalai school in Narathiwat's Muang district.
