Chief Justice John Roberts, normally a reliably conservative member of the Supreme Court, stunned quite a number of people when he sided with the four more liberal justices and upheld the entire Affordable Care Act yesterday. On The O'Reilly Factor today, guest host Laura Ingraham gauged the right's reaction to the ruling, and one of her guests went as far to suggest that Roberts should resign from the bench.
Ingraham asked her guests if conservatives are right to feel "mortified" about Roberts being a turncoat. Michael Carvin, a constitutional lawyer opposed to Obamacare who argued before the Supreme Court on this case, boiled Roberts' decision down to "What Congress did... was unconstitutional, so I'm gonna pretend they did something different and make it constitutional." He credited Roberts for being "a terrific lawyer who understands the rule of law," but admitted that unlike Coulter, he did not see a ruling like this coming.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
13:22 ||
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[Fox News] The Justice Department moved Friday to shield Attorney General Eric Stonewall Holder from prosecution after the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.
The contempt vote technically opened the door for the House to call on the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to bring the case before a grand jury. But because U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen works for Holder and because President B.O. has already asserted executive privilege over the documents in question, some expected Holder's Justice Department to balk.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole confirmed in a letter to House Speaker John It is not pronounced 'Boner!' Boehner ... the occasionally weepy leader of House Republicans... that the department in fact would not pursue prosecution. The attorney general's withholding of documents pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious, he wrote, "does not constitute a crime."
"Therefore the department will not bring the congressional contempt citation before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute the attorney general," Cole wrote, in the letter obtained by Fox News.
A department official told Fox News the letter was "pro forma" -- or a formality -- considering that ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 also refused to refer two Bush White House aides to a grand jury after they were held in contempt.
Republicans nevertheless blasted the Justice Department for the move. Frederick Hill, front man for House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, said "it is regrettable that the politicianship of the Justice Department is trying to intervene in an effort to prevent the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia from making an independent decision about whether to prosecute this case."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
13:19 ||
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#1
The DOJ is now a security apparatus for the choom gang, not the United States of America.
#3
and make Obama answer whether he'll pardon Holder when Obama and his corrupt cult's voted out. Every news conference. Every debate. Every time. Let the DOJ and BATFE higher-ups know there's gonna be hell to pay for malfeasance.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/30/2012 18:08
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Being held in contempt of congress may prevent him from a future Supreme Court position. Then again, it may not.
[VOA News] The international envoy charged with bringing peace to Syria is warning world powers they could soon have more blood on their hands.
Former United Nations ...Parkinson's Law on an international scale... Secretary-General Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... spoke to Security Council members in Geneva Saturday as activists said that Syrian government troops had retaken control of a suburb of Damascus ...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti... , leaving dozens dead.
Annan lamented that his six-point cease-fire plan had not been implemented and said the time has come for the international community to do more. If not, he said the mounting corpse count "will be the consequence of not only the acts of killers on the ground but also your inability to bridge the divisions between you."
The talks, including representatives from the United States, Russia, China, Britannia, La Belle France and envoys from Arab countries, are aimed at salvaging Annan's peace plan and finding a political solution to the crisis.
Before the meeting, British Foreign Secretary William Hague was cautiously hopeful.
"And so there is the opportunity for the international community to be much stronger and to act much more robustly but we can only do that with the agreement of the Russians and the Chinese," said Hague.
Russia, a long-time ally of Syria, has said any solution to the crisis must be decided by the Syrians themselves and has spurned calls for Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... to step down. China has taken a similar stance.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
13:15 ||
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#1
WAFF > THE AMERICANS NOW SAY SYRIAN TAKEDOWN OF THE TURKISH F-4[RF-4] WAS A LEGAL HIT | [WSJ.com] DOUBTS CAST ON TURKEY'S STORY OF JET [RF-4 shootdown], US INTELLIGENCE, CONTRADICTING ANKARA, INDICATES AIRCRAFT WAS SHOT DOWN BY SYRIA IN ITS OWN AIRSPACE, OFFICIALS SAY.
SAT RECCE, etc. aside, put another way the shootdown would had to have occurred inside Syrian airspace + via Syrian conventional AD Tube Arty as the USDOD believes Syrian AD Missles, Network is not accurate enough to hit or kill anything that far out???
The Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders will join family and friends in Los Angeles at a public funeral service for Rodney King. Somehow that sounds about right...
Sharpton, who says in a statement that King was "a symbol of civil rights" who "represented the anti-police brutality and anti-racial profiling movement of our time," will deliver the eulogy Saturday at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
13:15 ||
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#1
Ag virphuechssake! The Eulogy I anxiously await is that of Sharpton.
An Afghan and coalition security force conducted an operation, in Watahpur district, Kunar province, ... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country..... yesterday. The target of the operation was Khatab Shafiq, a Lashkar-e-Taiba leader. Khatab Shafiq was the LeT's senior leader in Kunar province. He was responsible for several attacks against Afghan and coalition forces, and provided money, weapons and training to insurgents in the region. Khatab Shafiq also established multiple insurgent training camps in eastern Afghanistan, where insurgents learned how to use mortars, rockets and machine guns. Most recently, he was involved with teaching insurgents how to build and emplace improvised explosive devices. During the operation, the security force positively identified Khatab Shafiq among an armed group of insurgents. After determining there were no civilians in the area, the security force engaged the insurgents with a precision airstrike away from all civilian structures. After the strike, the Afghan and coalition security force conducted a follow-on assessment and confirmed Khatab Shafiq, along with multiple other insurgents, had been killed. The assessment also confirmed the strike had not harmed any civilians or damaged any civilian property. Following the initial airstrike, the security force identified several more armed insurgents in the immediate area and engaged them with a second precision airstrike. A follow-on assessment confirmed the second precision airstrike had killed several insurgents but had not harmed any civilians or damaged any civilian property.
#1
It's both amazing AND disgusting we have to abide by almost impossible rules-of-engagement whilst our enemy is free to fight us in unfettered fashion.
#1
Randy behaved exactly as I expected him to, a son of a bitch who pisses off everyone. Randy does behave quite pretentious, but the performance was important to him.
That's gonna make him popular during his 5-10 years in Czech prison.
#2
I am not by any means a scholar of warfare but sometimes I think we intellectualize and over-think what winning a war means. We get muddled in our concepts as the result and get bogged down in wars for years. Some of what I read in the article mixes Japanese production methods (Kaizen) with warfare. It begins to sound a lot like part of a Power Point presentation. I wonder what Patton would say to such things. I realize Patton was a "big war" general. One of his quotes was: "May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't."
#3
The best way to win is to make them die in droves and don't stop until they come crawling on their hands and knees to the table to surrender. Anything else just prolongs the war and allows them to accept the idea of a few more and a few more dying.
#4
War is ugly. It should be ugly. The more rules we adopt trying to make it less ugly, the more war we'll get. Don't try to pretty it up. Accept that's it's ugly. Then when you go to war you will really mean it, and you'll do what it takes to win and be done with it.
Some liberals were making a 24-hour pivot from praising Roberts' statesmanship to wondering whether the victory for Obama and congressional Democrats was delivered in a Trojan horse. Did anyone notice Karl Rove sneaking into the Court?
In the opinion that stirred this week's controversy, Roberts wrote that it was the duty of the court to avoid rejecting an act of Congress if there is a plausible reason for saving it. "It is well established that if a statute has two possible meanings, one of which violates the Constitution, courts should adopt the meaning that does not do so," Roberts wrote.
So he rejected the government's argument that requiring most Americans to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty was justified under the Constitution's commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.
But, joined by the court's four liberals, he said the penalty operated as a tax, and thus was proper under the taxing clause. Followed by some wild guessing, suggesting Roberts changed at the last minute, looking for clues amongst the differing opinions.
There is nothing improper about a justice changing his or her mind on a case before the decision is delivered. But the insinuation was that Roberts may have been motivated by a desire to spare recriminations from the image of the court's five justices appointed by Republican presidents overturning a landmark bill passed by congressional Democrats and signed by Obama. A silver lining - his decision made it look much less like a political one.
Others thought it unlikely that Roberts had changed his mind. "There are some loose ends in the opinions, to be sure, but it might just be because they were pressed for time," George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy, a Web site on legal issues where much of the speculation found a home.
And it was also clear during the first hour of the lengthy oral arguments that Roberts was exploring the theory he later adopted: that the penalty served as a way to satisfy the government's requirement, making the mandate less of a command. My way or pay is better than my way or die.
Stanford University constitutional law professor Pamela Karlan said liberals should see the decision as strategic. "Is that man clever or what?" she said, adding that Roberts learned a lesson from his predecessor and mentor William H. Rehnquist about when to look for compromise. "He knows he's going to be on the court for years."
While the decision has the immediate effect of saving the health-care law, Karlan said, the opinion contained what could be important and long-lasting principles. The strict reading of the commerce clause is something conservatives have wanted for years. And the court said the law's attempt to force states to expand Medicaid rolls by threatening to withhold federal funds was improperly coercive.
"That truly breaks new ground," said Richard Fallon, a Harvard law professor. "It's the first time since the 1930s that the Supreme Court has invalidated a federal spending statute that gives money to states and attaches strings. A number of other federal spending programs that attach strings will now be attacked as coercive." Job security for the Supremes!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/30/2012
06:21 ||
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#1
He's inserted an constitution-upholding worm into the legal system.
#2
Seems like a torturous stretch to arrive at the conclusion that the mandate is a tax. Obama said that ObamaCare would bring no new taxes for people making $200K or couples making $250K. He said that people could keep their doctors and their insurance. Both are lies. The entire legislation was premised on a lie. It was rammed down our throats and we were told to shut up, you will like it. Nancy Pelosi otherwise known as "Detestable" told us it had to be passed to read it. These people should all be arrested for fraud or impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.
#3
I got a better idea, John - humiliate them. Vote them out of office!
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/30/2012 15:25
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I do not buy all this narrow interpretation stuff. The law forced you to do something or face a fine, in this case, health care. Other things can be added later in the same way, calling it a tax.
Roberts should have struck this POS law down just for that. SCOTUS needed to send a message that this law was unconstitutional and that Congress needed to fix it. It is NOT the job of SCOTUS to rewrite the law. That is up to Congress. They need a good smack down. Writing 2000+ pages of sh*t written by staffers that will cost this country trillions of dollars that the country does not have is unconscionable. And what is worse is that few congress critters read the text in detail.
The issue is rather simple, it is an issue of liberty, but lawyers make the core issue too complicated, thus ducking the issue.
Roberts did not need to pull a fast one. He needed to write his opinion and keep the law or throw it out. He is not in the legislative branch of the US. That's it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/30/2012 15:25
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Dr. Krauthammer had it correct last evening. Roberts actions this week were all about the external "perceptions" of the court, not about jurisprudence. Most of the older members appeared to follow a strict interpretation of the law. The younger and more left leaning members went with the emotion centered egalitarianism which is the hallmark of our education system today.
We are now ruled by mandates set forth by a Dictator formed by infatuation of his third world father and extreme leftist mother. A host of appointed Czars that have replaced Congress and a faltering Judicial Branch that is caving from the top down.
The options are a struggle for the restoration of Liberty or toiling under mandates that run counter to general consensus.
#7
notice that it's always the conservatives and centrist (Kennedy) whose votes are in play. Nobody questions the leftwing maggots who vote in lockstep.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/30/2012 16:34
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I still say, it could have been a lot worse. Roberts left only one problem outstanding, properly to be dealt with by the elected branches. What's surprising is not that he joined the left wing of the court, but that they joined him.
#9
Ginsberg did, with bitterness. She should be a replacement project by President Romney. F*&k their "this was a liberal seat, you need to nominate a liberal".
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/30/2012 19:23
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Submitted for your approval, an interesting analysis:
#11
There still may be hope - a variety of Catholic institutions have filed suit based on religious liberty concerns. Obamacare requires all employers, except churches and religious institutions like convents, to cover birth control pills (with no co-pay) for everyone. Catholic colleges and hospitals are not exempt. So they have sued, saying Obamacare forces them to go against their core religious principles.
Of course, it will take years for this to reach the Supreme Court, if it ever does. Hopefully, by then, President Romney and the newly elected Republican majorities in the House and Senate will have repealed this monstrosity.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/30/2012 21:29
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[Al Ahram] Myanmar's authorities have ordered opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to stop calling the country "Burma", state media reported Friday, its colonial-era name widely used to defy the former junta. "And don't call it 'Lower Volta,' neither!"
The old regime changed the country's official name two decades ago to Myanmar, saying the term Burma was a legacy of British colonialism and implied the ethnically diverse land belonged only to the Burman majority.
Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party vigorously opposed the change, decrying it as a symbolic step by the generals towards creating a new country.
Berating her for using the name "Burma" during landmark recent visits to Thailand and Europe, the Election Commission accused Suu Kyi and party members of flouting a constitution they have vowed to uphold.
"As it is prescribed in the constitution that 'The state shall be known as The Republic of the Union of Myanmar', no one has the right to call (the country) Burma," it said in a statement, published in state mouthpiece The New Light of Myanmar.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi called Myanmar 'Burma' in her speech to the World Economic Forum in Thailand on 1 June, 2012," it noted. "Again, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi called Myanmar 'Burma' in her speeches during her Europe tour."
"Daw" is a term of respect in Myanmar.
Global leaders also face a dilemma of what to call the country, which is emerging from decades of army rule under the guidance of reform-minded Prime Minister Thein Sein.
Britannia's David Cameron ... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ... calls it "Burma" while recent speeches by US President Barack Obama They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them... also referred to its colonial name.
But his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as The Woman to Call at 3 a.m. and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Bainbridge Colby ... chose a more diplomatic path on a trip to the nation in December, employing the term Burma but saying it sparingly, generally preferring to dodge controversy by saying "this country."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
00:55 ||
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[Al Ahram] International mediator Kofi Annan ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo... said on Friday he was "optimistic" that ministerial crisis talks on Syria being held on Saturday would produce an acceptable outcome. And I'm optimistic that twenty of the pounds hanging over my belt buckle are gonna melt away...
"I think we are going to have a good meeting tomorrow (Saturday). I am optimistic," Annan told Reuters TV in Geneva after Russia proposed changes to his plan for a national unity government. The talks would end "with an acceptable result", he said.
His spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said: "The talks are on course and the preparatory meeting is going ahead this morning
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
00:53 ||
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[Al Ahram] Gunmen rubbed out four anti-Qaeda Death Eaters in central Iraq on Friday, while a roadside kaboom killed an Iraqi soldier, security and medical officials said.
Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in Khan Bani Saad, south of the city of Baquba, killing four Sahwa Death Eaters and wounding four others, a militia commander said on condition of anonymity, adding that the attackers were able to escape.
And a roadside kaboom against a patrol in the city killed one soldier and maimed another, an army major said. Dr Ahmed Ibrahim of Baquba General Hospital confirmed the tolls. Friday's deaths brought the number of people killed in attacks since June 13 to at least 212 -- an average of more than 12 per day, and a far higher toll than the 132 who were killed in the entire month of May, according to official figures.
A significant amount of the violence has occurred in and around Baquba, capital of confessionally mixed Diyala province, north of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
On Thursday, a car boomwent kaboom! near a Shiite place of worship in Baquba, killing six people and wounding 51, while two people were killed and four maimed in another bombing, and three more maimed in an attack near the city.
On June 18, a jacket wallah killed 22 people in an attack on Shiite mourners in Baquba, and 10 people were killed in a series of attacks in and around the city on June 13.Violence has declined significantly since its peak in 2006 and 2007, but attacks still remain common.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
00:51 ||
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#1
Watch : Kirkuk : And Sadr City : Basra Boomville NATO CONVOY : Small Patrol : Nato : Iraq : Coalition : Shootville RPG Indicators
[Al Ahram] The Taliban have denied that they had obtained permission from Pakistain to send representatives to Qatar to participate in initial talks that U.S. officials had hoped would lead to a peace deal in Afghanistan, saying they had acted independently.
In a statement posted on a Taliban website, the turban group said it made "decisions of its own likings in all matters and affairs in light of Islamic principles and national interests".
"We would like to once categorically state that the representatives of Islamic Emirate did not go to Qatar with the permission of Pakistain," the group said in the statement posted on Thursday, using the term the Taliban use to describe themselves. "The Islamic Emirate is completely free and independent in all of its affairs."
In an interview with Rooters this week, Pakistain's ambassador to Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, said his government supported a possible peace agreement in Afghanistan, and said it had allowed some Taliban to travel to the Gulf for that purpose.
The B.O. regime's hopes for soon establishing peace talks between the Afghan government of President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... and the Taliban faded in March when the reclusive Taliban leadership, believed to be based in Pakistain, suspended their participation in preliminary discussions run by U.S. diplomats.
U.S. officials had hoped their initial meetings with Taliban representatives would set in motion the transfer of former Taliban officials held in Guantanamo Bay military prison to Qatar, the release of a U.S. soldier held by the Taliban, and eventually authentic peace talks among the Afghan parties.
"The preliminary and confidence-building talks done by the representatives of Islamic Emirate with those of the United States of America in Qatar were initiated and then halted under the order of its leader," the Taliban said.
When they announced their suspension, the Taliban blamed the United States for an inconsistent negotiating position.
While the Afghan government says it has held its own, separate meetings with Taliban representatives, the turban group's leadership says it will not engage in negotiations with what it deems an illegitimate, "puppet" regime.
In a separate statement issued on Friday, the Taliban said they had sent a representative to an academic conference on Afghanistan's future in Japan this week, but said the purpose was only to "clarify" its positions.
"As long as the matter with America (talks which are currently suspended) is not addressed, talking with the administration of Karzai is pointless," the group said.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
00:49 ||
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#1
In an interview with Rooters this week, Pakistain's ambassador to Afghanistan, Mohammad Sadiq, said his government supported a possible peace agreement in Afghanistan, and said it had allowed some Taliban to travel to the Gulf for that purpose.
[Al Ahram] Sudanese police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of peaceful protesters outside an opposition party mosque on Friday, the 14th day of anti-regime demonstrations sparked by inflation, a witness said. Protesters had gathered in the capital's Hijra Square beside the mosque of the opposition Umma party.
The witness said demonstrators carried Sudanese flags and banners reading "The people want the regime to fall," a slogan used by protesters during the Arab Spring uprisings against regional strongmen over the past year.
After the tear gas and an unknown number of arrests, demonstrators burned tyres and threw stones at police before running for cover, the witness said. Demonstrators planned major protests for Friday and Saturday, the 23rd anniversary of a coup by President Omar al-Bashir Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to Arabize Darfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it. .
Human rights groups say scores of people have been placed in durance vile ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... since the protests against high food prices began on June 16 at the University of Khartoum.
After Bashir announced austerity measures, including tax hikes and an end to cheap fuel, the protests spread to include a cross-section of people in numerous locations throughout the capital and other parts of Sudan.
Demonstrators, typically in groups of 100 or 200, have burned tyres, thrown stones and blocked roads in a call for regime change which has almost universally been met by police tear gas.
Bashir, suggesting that someone was behind the disturbances, has called them small-scale and not comparable to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere. He maintains that he himself is popular.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
00:47 ||
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#1
... peaceful Sudan protesters tear-gassed
Caught them before they can work themselves up, eh?
[Yemen Post] The Yemeni authorities tossed in the calaboose Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! the terrorist cell behind the suicide kaboom which killed and injured more than 400 soldiers during a parade rehearsal in the capital Sanaa in May, the 26 September weekly reported Thursday, quoting a statement by chief of the national security.
General Ali Muhammad Al-Anesi was quoted as saying "the security authorities tossed in the calaboose Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! the terrorist cell of the Partisans of Sharia Law, Yemen Al-Qaeda's offshoot, which carried out the deadly attack".
Al-Anesi did not give more details, according to the paper.
On May 21, a jacket wallah infiltrated into Al-Sabeen Square in downtown Sanaa where units of military and security were conducting a parade rehearsal and below himself up killing more than one hundred central security forces. More than three hundred others were maimed.
Later, Al-Qaeda grabbed credit for the attack, which coincided with severe blows it was receiving under a US-backed offensive in the southern Abyan ...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an Islamic Emirate after seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues... province.
In association with tribal fighters, the army could drive Al-Qaeda snuffies from Abyan province and nearby areas after hundreds of them including big shots had been killed and injured during the offensive.
In the meantime, Al-Qaeda has vowed to retaliate through attacking US and key Yemeni targets, with several suicide kabooms reported recently including the one killing commander of the southern military region who led the offensive.
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06/30/2012
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European leaders have moved to halt the crisis engulfing Spain and Italy by agreeing a radical bailout package for the single currency's teetering banks.
Amid deep divisions over the debt and currency crisis, and under immense pressure to come up with credible moves, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, softened her hard line on fiscal discipline and debt repayment to hand Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, a summit triumph.
Leaders agreed to set up a supervisory system for eurozone banks that will form the first step towards full banking union, scrapped the requirement that governments get preferential status over private investors in the event of a default and eased the stiff terms for future bailouts.
Markets surged after the deal was agreed, giving European leaders the respite they have been seeking for several months. The German and French stock markets jumped more than 4% while the main market in New York soared in early trading as renewed confidence among investors erased several weeks of losses.
In Madrid and Rome, the deal was hailed as a victory over the all-important bond markets, which have crippled both governments with sky-high interest rates. The interest rate on Spain's 10-year bonds fell the most since August to 6.3% after hitting 7% in recent weeks, a level analysts believe is unaffordable.
There was also relief for prime minister Mario Monti of Italy, below, who spoke of "double satisfaction" following the defeat of Germany in the Euro 2012 football contest.
A two-day summit ran on through Thursday night as brinkmanship from Rome and Madrid pitched the meeting to the brink of collapse. It concluded with some of the more far-reaching political decisions to emerge from 30 months of crisis in the single currency.
Divisions remain, however, and working out the detail and implementation of a "banking union" -- a first step towards establishing a eurozone federation -- will be protracted. The most immediate decisions concerned Spain and its attempts to contain a crisis sparked by bad banks.
Merkel's main concession was to agree to waive so-called preferred creditor status on the mooted 100bn eurozone rescue programme for the banks. This is to take place within weeks, meaning that private investors will not play second fiddle to the eurozone bailout fund if the debt has to be rescheduled. In effect, eurozone taxpayers are at as much risk as private creditors in the Spanish bank bailout, a politically sensitive concession for the German leader. The other big decision was to change the eurozone bailout rules to enable direct recapitalisation of banks without the money going via governments and adding to national debt levels.
This can only take place once the new bank supervisory system is up and running -- that could take two years -- but at that point the Spanish government would be allowed to erase the borrowing from its books. "I'm quite pleased with the outcome," said Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, who has been a fierce critic of political leaders' failure to get to grips with the crisis. He confirmed the new supervisory powers would be vested in the ECB.
While Rajoy emerged as the main beneficiary of the summit, Monti also claimed success from a vaguely worded decision enabling the eurozone bailout funds to buy up government bonds, a move he hopes will reduce the cost of Italy's borrowing. While the statement said that the funds could be used more "flexibly", Draghi and Merkel emphasised continuing "conditionality" or strict terms for any country seeking help.
President François Hollande of France mentioned Italy as a possible beneficiary and said: "We agreed to fully use [these] tools without additional requirements from these countries."
Monti and Rajoy ambushed the summit on Thursday evening, blocking any progress on an overall deal until they were guaranteed specific decisions aimed at bringing down their soaring borrowing costs. That meant that the 17 leaders of the eurozone held their own summit for several hours until four in the morning and hammered out the accord.
Tempers were frayed. North European diplomats spoke of brinksmanship from Monti. "Because of the crazy demands of Spain and Italy, the end result is not satisfactory," said one.
With acute divisions remaining, there will be plenty of argument in the months ahead. "They will be quite difficult negotiations because we are in a new area," said Merkel. The Germans want the new banking regime to cover only the eurozone's "systemic banks," but Hollande said all eurozone banks should be included. "If any are left out, then we will be back to the Spanish situation."
And while the German parliament moved to pass Merkel's new euro rulebook, the fiscal pact, Hollande tied ratification in France to several other elements on the eurozone fiscal and economic agenda and a much slower schedule. Despite the concessions from Germany, Merkel also emphasised that she retained the power to block too liberal a use of the bailout funds. Banks could only be recapitalised directly once the new supervisory system was in place "in the medium-term" and she would be able to veto any such decisions. The decision to waive the preferential treatment for the bailout fund on the Spanish rescue was a one-off that would not be repeated in any further programmes, Merkel said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/30/2012
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#1
Yep, Europe's screwed, we knew that already.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/30/2012 6:27
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#2
Good. You have to destroy what they have now completely before something worthwhile (or, at least, not a threat to the rest of the World) can be put in its place.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
06/30/2012 6:43
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#4
This is a very biased view. From what I've read all they did is kick the can down the road again. Nothing is going to happen according to this until next year and then only if they can agree on a formal banking supervision formula run by the ECB.
That last one is the real sticker because that's the one that Merkel has said no easy money. AND that's probably going to require a change to the German constitution to pass.
This announcement is nothing more than propaganda for the masses to take some pressure off Rajoy and Monti.
#9
I had to google to find out what you meant by Bitter Clingers. Now I get the point.
The fact is that the Maastricht Treaty EXPLICITLY forbids a transfer union. Each state is required to mind (and mend) its own finances.
Today German parliament gave away its budget sovereignty to some undemocratic unelected body people cannot even spell out. We are witnessing a power grab of Eu bureaucrats which is simply unconstitutional and illegal. You could call it high treason, too, but those words sound so old-fashioned.
In a few years we'll pay by a currency cut. I will prepare accordingly.
Posted by: American at Heart (aka European Conservative) ||
06/30/2012 18:50
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BEIRUT/ISKENDERUN, Turkey: Rebel forces attacked Syrias main court in central Damascus yesterday, state television said. There was a loud explosion and a column of black smoke rose over Damascus, an Assad stronghold that until the last few days had seemed largely beyond the reach of rebels. State television described it as a terrorist explosion in the court car park.
The car park is used by lawyers and judges working at the Palace, Syrias highest court. It was unclear if there were casualties in the attack on a potent symbol of Assads authority.
The FSA has been rapidly escalating pressure on Damascus in recent weeks, culminating apparently in Thursdays attack on the court building.
On Wednesday, rebels stormed a pro-Assad Syrian television channel and militants have targeted police and security personnel barracks. In April militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the Central Bank building.
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Stolen Kremlin records show how the Soviets, including Gorbachev, created many of today's Middle East conflicts
A taste from a four-page long article. No doubt you, dear Reader, knew some of the facts presented therein, but it's lovely to have it confirmed from the Kremlin's own archives.
The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes the depredations visited upon the region by European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests--in oil, above all--above the dignity and self-determination of the region's inhabitants. Thus did botched decolonization result in endless instability. The most intractable of the regional conflicts to which this gave rise, that between the Arabs and Israelis, is attributed in this narrative to Israel's unwillingness to accede to Paleostinian national aspirations. Thus did the region become a breeding ground for radicalism, intensified by Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, who replaced the European colonizers as the region's meddling overlords. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev--a Westernizing reformer. At last, the Cold War was over. A new world order was at hand.
What if this conventional wisdom is nonsense? Russian exile Pavel Stroilov argues just this in his forthcoming book, Behind the Desert Storm. "Not a word of it is true," he writes. "It was the Soviet Empire--not the British Empire--that was responsible for the instability in the Middle East."
Stroilov, a historian now living in London, fled Russia in 2003 after stealing 50,000 top-secret Kremlin documents from the Gorbachev Foundation archives, where he was working as a researcher. He was given access to the archive in 1999, but Gorbachev refused him permission to copy its most significant documents. Having observed the network administrator entering the password into the system, Stroilov reproduced the archive and sent it to secure locations around the world.
Stroilov's cache includes hundreds of transcripts of discussions between Gorbachev and foreign leaders, politicians, and diplomats. (The originals are still sealed under Kremlin pressure.) There are notes from Politburo and other top decision-making meetings, notes written by Gorbachev's aides Anatoly Chernyaev and Georgy Shakhnazarov and by Politburo member Vadim Medvedev. None were ever available to independent researchers, although some were published by the Gorbachev Foundation in a heavily censored version. Stroilov also stole the 1972-1986 diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, deputy chief of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union International Department and Gorbachev's principal aide on international affairs from 1986 to 1991. He stole reports dating from the 1960s by Vadim Zagladin, who was deputy chief of the International Department until 1987 and Gorbachev's adviser from 1987 to 1991. (Stroilov also draws upon Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky's vast, stolen collection of documents, as well as the Mitrokhin Archive, a collection of notes taken secretly by the defector Vasili Mitrokhin during his 30 years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate.)
Stroilov's book about these documents, many only now translated into English, challenges the conventional wisdom that Western colonialists are to blame for the chaos in the region. All of its major conflicts, he argues, were caused by Soviet expansionism. Terrorism and the rabid anti-Israeli animus of the Arab world were Soviet inspirations. And the revolutions we are seeing now were inevitable, for the Soviet client states were socialist regimes, and sooner or later socialism exhausts economies and thus the patience of the people who live in them.
#1
I would go one further and say it was Arab's fault. The European empires and the Turks before them kept the peace. The Soviets might have armed different factions but the motivations come from deep within Arab culture and its near total failure in the modern world.
#4
The Russians always had a huge advantage over Westerners when dealing with Arabs---they have no self-imposed illusions as to what it is they're dealing with.
BEIRUT/ISKENDERUN, Turkey: A senior opposition official [in the Free Syrian Army, FSA] said Syrian opposition groups would reject a political transition plan proposed by peace envoy Kofi Annan unless it explicitly required Assad to step down before a unity government is formed.
Since Pencilneck is even more adept than a certain President in Yemen in staying in power...
Diplomatic sources at the United Nations said Annan's proposal did not stipulate Assad's resignation although it does say the unity government could not include figures who jeopardize stability.
"The proposal is still murky to us but I can tell you that if it does not clearly state that Assad must step down, it will be unacceptable to us," said Samir Nashar, an executive member of the international Syrian National Council.
Annan's transition proposal is one of the main topics that Russia, the other four permanent UN Security Council members and key players in the Middle East will discuss at a meeting in Geneva on Saturday, according to United Nations diplomats.
Rebel fighters locked in the war to topple Assad said there was no part of the plan they could accept, and they had lost patience with UN envoy Annan's peace-making efforts.
"This is just a new labyrinth. It is new silliness for us to get lost in and haggle over who can participate and who can't," said Ahmed, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighter in Homs, epicenter of the revolt against four decades of Assad family rule in which the more than 10,000 people have been killed, by a UN count.
A member of the rebel group in Damascus suburb was also dismissive. "I'll be direct. The FSA is doing its work, and it is not looking to the outside world. We don't want a transitional government unless it is the one formed by rebel military councils. The world is conspiring against the Syrian revolution," he said.
In April, Annan tried to implement a cease-fire to quell violence before embarking on peace talks. But the truce failed to take hold. Diplomatic sources at the United Nations said the plan Annan will now pitch on Saturday aims to start the political process without waiting for a cease-fire.
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Korea has requested a last-minute postponement of the signing of an unprecedented agreement with Japan allowing the sharing of classified military data. The delay was caused by political sensitivities in Korea.
The pact to exchange military intelligence would be the first between Seoul and Tokyo since Japan's occupation of Korea. The two neighbors, long wary of each other, share increasing defense concerns about North Korea and China.
The signing by Japan's foreign minister and Korea's ambassador had been expected to take place in Tokyo Friday afternoon. But shortly before pens were to be put to paper, came word that Seoul had requested a delay so the agreement could be explained to worried governing party and angry opposition members of the National Assembly.
The politicians object to what they term "a lack of transparency" this week by the Korean government in approving the pact, as well as lingering but strong anti-Japanese sentiment among citizens. Korean civic groups and opposition politicians have denounced the military agreement, with some alleging it gives Japan a de facto pardon for its wartime atrocities.
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#1
ION CHINA DAILY FORUM > CHINA ASKS JAPAN TO STOP CAUSING DISTURBANCES OVER DAOYUS ISLANDS, + instead focii on preserving harmonious bilateral relations.
* SAME > CHINA PLEDGES TO PROTECT ITS WATERS | ... MARITIME SOVEREIGNTY.
* CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > CHINA STARTS "COMBAT READY" PATROLS IN SOUTH CHINA SEA.
* SAME > CHINA SEEKS DOMINANCE OF THE SOUTH CHINA SEA WITH NEW "SANSHA" ["Sanshi"] CITY.
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > CHINA TO SET UP MILITARY BASE IN SOUTH CHINA SEA, vee its new "Sansha" City.
* RELATED SAME > [China Defence ...] MINISTRY: CHINA WILL REACT TO PROVOCATIONS.
* IIRC SAME > PHILIPPINES TO SEARCH FOR OIL ALONG CHINESE COASTS.
ARTICS above specifically mentioned or inferred Vietnam most of the time, but methinks its safe to say China's warning also applies to the Philippines, etal.
Wid its new "Sansha/Sanshi" City, China is indirectly warning its ASEAN neighbors that it will defend its SCS claims wid Military Force iff necessary.
From now on???
Again, China desired to establish PLA Milbases + other throughout the "First Island Chain", + ITS NOT GETTING IT. IMO, in China's view, continued US arms sales to TAIWAN only serves to delay its formal integartion + ultimately re-unification wid the Mainland. CHINA IS THUS FRUSTRATED WID THE "STATUS QUO" IN EAST ASIA-WESPAC, + NOW DESIRES TO BEGIN ASSERTING ITS RIGHTS VIA THE PLA.
Blood money spills more blood
Reported in Jinnah the in-laws of Faizan who was killed by a CIA contractor in Lahore and whose family and wife received diyat or blood money for letting off the killer fell victim to another tragedy - that of who will get the money. Faizan's wife and her mother wanted her to remarry which the head of the family Shahzad Butt did not want. He killed both with his pistol. The police said he killed because he wanted to keep the crores of rupees received as blood money. Fahim was killed along with Faizan. His wife had earlier did away with himself.
Beautiful Downtown Peshawar without writ of state
Quoted in Jinnah chief justice of the Peshawar High Court stated that the writ of the Peshawar government did not run beyond 10 km and the people relied on courts to provide what the government could not provide: law and order.
Which courts cannot provide without the power of the government to enforce it, a neat dilemma for the philosophical.
'Osama bricks' sold for $10
Reported in Nawa-e-Waqt Osama was so dearly beloved of the people of Pakistain that the bricks of his abandoned house in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... - razed to the ground recently - were being sold for $10 apiece by visitors from all over Pakistain.
Like relics of the saints in Christendom, it is highly likely that a few of the bricks are indeed exactly what is claimed. The rest, as is traditional, acquire their holiness from the belief of the faithful.
Maulana Zahid goes back on his word
Writing in Express Nusrat Javeed referred to JUIS holy man Maulana Zahid who attended the parliamentary security committee formulating the foreign policy of Pakistain but later announced that contrary to the recommendations he accepted in the committee he would not allow the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization.... supplies to pass through Pakistain. Columnist reminds him that he should have abstained from going to the Raza Rabbani Committee if he had those convictions.
Nawab Sharif's flight to Soddy Arabia
Columnist Nusrat Javeed stated in Express that Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... should recall that under Musharraf he was not convicted by a military court but a civil court after which he left the country with the help of Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... and Lebanese prime minister Hariri and went and lived in a hotel suit in Saudi Arabia. He came back when the movement to restore the Supreme Court was raging under Musharraf who was forced to restore it. But he took care first to ask the Court if he could return. The Court told him he could. But on his return Prince Muqran arrived from Saudi Arabia saying Nawaz Sharif had vowed to stay away for ten years and took him back to his Sarwar suite in Saudi Arabia.
What Hamid Gul told Gilani
Columnist Hamid Mir wrote in Jang that Prime Minister Gilani became the strongest prime minister of Pakistain after President Zardari surrendered all the presidential powers to him through 18th, 19th and 20th amendments of the Constitution. But it was an irony that as he got more powerful his family became more and more embroiled in controversies. In 1989 ISI boss Hamid Gul The nutty former head of Pakistain's ISI, now Godfather to Mullah Omar's Talibs and good buddy and consultant to al-Qaeda's high command... told him that if had not decided to join the PPP the powers-that-be had decided to make him the prime minister in place of Nawaz Sharif.
Gilani nearly Musharraf's PM
According to Hamid Mir in Jang Musharraf sent his favoured politicians Humayun Akhtar to meet Yousaf Raza Gilani who was serving his sentence in jail after being convicted for malpractices as speaker of National assembly to ask him to leave PPP in order to become free again. But he refused as he refused the advances of a friend of Musharraf and adviser, Tariq Aziz.
Jamali PM by one vote
Daily Jang had Hamid Mir relate that one Arbab Raheem was sent to meet Gilani in jail to ask him to deliver his nephew Asad Murtaza MNA's vote so that he could be freed. After Gilani refused Arbab Raheem got someone else to change the loyalty of Gilani's nephew to gain the majority by one vote that made Zafrullah Jamali the prime minister of Pakistain by a single vote in the National Assembly.
'Courts favour despots, punish politicians'
Quoted in Mashriq human rights ...which are usually entirely different from personal liberty... lawyer Asma Jahangir stated that the courts in Pakistain generally favoured despots while targeting politicians. She said PM Gilani was being congratulated for being convicted by the Court and this was a not a good sign. She said the judges should think about the reputation of the country. Mashriq also quoted attorney general Irfan Qadir that the punishment meted out to Gilani was contrary to the Constitution and that there was no contempt law existing in the country. He said the government will obey only if the decisions of the Court that were lawful.
Dr Sher Afgan on Supreme Court verdict
Talking to Jinnah legal eagle politician Dr Sher Afgan stated that even if the National Assembly was dissolved PM Gilani could go on being PM for six months. He said there was a rule of issuing short order in a criminal cases wherein testimonies are recorded, which did not happen in the contempt case against PM Gilani who was punished unheard. No court can punish a person outside the framework of its indictment. He said he could not find the Article under which Mr Gilani could be disqualified for five years.
Nawaz Sharif's blunder
Writing in Jang Hamid Mir stated that PMLN lost the last election in Multan because its leader had given the ticket to a turncoat who was swinging like a pendulum between PPP and Tehrik Insaf. The PMLN ignored its faithfuls and issued the ticket to a turncoat feudal who did not even hold any big rallies before defeated by the PPP candidate.
Afia Siddiqi betrayed by Al Qaeda
Daily Jang reported that Afia Siddiqi was not betrayed by Pakistain but by the Al Qaeda leader Khaled Sheikh Muhammad from his captivity at Guantanamo Bay to the Americans to save his own skin. Afia Siddiqi was claimed as a terrorist working for Al Qaeda while being married to a nephew of Khaled Sheikh Muhammad after separating from her first husband.
What does Pakistain want?
Columnist Saleem Safi wrote in Jang that Pakistain did not know what it wanted. Did it want an apology from the US? Yet when after Salala incident the Americans were willing to apologise Pakistain told them to hold on. Later the US was no longer willing to apologise. And now Pakistain had linked NATO supply route to an apology. Pakistain was doing all this while at the same time saying that delay in negotiations with America will be damaging to Pakistain's forthcoming budget and may throw Pak people into more suffering.
Don't give land to US embassy!
Chief Editor of Jinnah Khushnood Ali Khan stated that government had done a great disservice to Pakistain to give 148 additional acres to the US embassy in Islamabad so that the Americans could make their plans to kill more Paks while hiding in this new acreage. The US had employed 200 men to construct this new structure and they are suspect because most of them including a superintendent were Qadianis
...a Pakistani term of insult used by Sunnis against Ahmadiyyas...
which proved that the Americans were using Qadianis as their tools to harm Pakistain.
#1
'Osama bricks' sold for $10
Reported in Nawa-e-Waqt Osama was so dearly beloved of the people of Pakistain that the bricks of his abandoned house in Abbottabad
Afghanistan is not the problem Pakistan is Mr Obama
[Yemen Post] Tribal tensions erupted on Thursday between Khwalan and Sanhan tribes following the abduction of a high-ranking military commander, Murad Al-Awbali, by soldiers from Khawlan, local sources said.
The sources said that the Sanhan that Al-Awbli is originally from it kidnapped a number of persons who are from Khwlan in an attempt to put pressures on the kidnappers to release Al-Awbali.
Al-Awbali who commands the 62nd Republican Guard Brigade was kidnapped in protest at not giving the soldiers their salaries after they declared their support to Yemen's peaceful revolution.
The sources said the soldiers staged an set-in two days ago, demanding to release their suspended salaries and their demands were not met.
The soldiers had declared their support to the Yemeni peaceful revolution after they refused to take part in the crackdown conducted against the uprising that overthrew the former president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... last year.
Military sources said the soldiers had been ordered to return to the brigade to receive their salaries, and they had refused to do so while Saleh's son, Ahmed, remained in charge for fear of disciplinary action.
Meanwhile, ...back at the the conspirators' cleverly concealed hideout the long-awaited message arrived. They quickly got to work with their decoder rings... well-informed sources said that the commander of the Republican Guard Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh gave an ultimatum of 24 hours to release Al-Awbli and that he will behave on his own way if Al-Awbali is not released.
They said that the soldiers joined the revolution after they refused to take part in the crackdown conducted against the peaceful youth revolution last year.
Al-Awbali is accused of committing crimes against protesters in the southern province of Taiz. Taiz protesters demonstrated repeatedly, demanding to hold al-Awbali accountable.
Posted by: Fred ||
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Germany's intelligence service has found itself at the center of a widening scandal after it was confirmed yesterday that its agents had destroyed files containing vital information about a neo-Nazi terrorist gang hours before the material was supposed to be handed to federal prosecutors.
The case involves the National Socialist Underground, a neo-Nazi group responsible for Germany's worst acts of far-right violence since World War Two. Its members murdered a policewoman, gunned down nine immigrants, carried out two bomb attacks and robbed 14 banks to finance their operations.
Police discovered the bodies of the gang's two ringleaders, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, in a burned-out caravan last November. Investigators established that they had committed suicide after robbing a bank. A third member of the gang, Beate Zschäpe, was caught and arrested. She is still being questioned.
Details of the scandal were leaked yesterday, prompting German Interior Ministry officials to admit that domestic intelligence agents, who had been keeping the terrorists under surveillance for more than a decade, had destroyed files containing information about the group.
They revealed to a parliamentary inquiry that the agents had shredded the documents on November 11 -- the day they were due to be handed to Germany's Federal Prosecutor, who had taken over the investigation.
ANTAKYA (Turkey) Helicopter gunships bombarded a strategic town in northern Syria overnight and tanks moved close to the commercial hub of Aleppo, rebels said, but kept well clear of new Turkish air defences installed to curb Syrian action near its frontiers.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 190 people, including 125 civilians, were killed on Thursday. General Mustafa Al Sheikh, head of the Higher Military Council, a grouping of senior officers who defected from Syrian forces, said around 170 Syrian tanks had assembled at an infantry school near the village of Musalmieh northeast of the city of Aleppo, just 30km from the Turkish border.
Theyre either preparing to move to the border to counter the Turkish deployment or attack the rebellious (Syrian) towns and villages in and around the border zone north of Aleppo, Sheikh said by telephone from the border.
Omar Abdallah, an activist in Idlib coordinating with the Free Syrian Army, said: After taking hits in rural Aleppo and Idlib, the army is re-grouping ... There is speculation that these forces intend to ring Aleppo, starting July 1.
Rebel sources in Turkeys Hatay region said Syrian helicopters attacked Saraqeb, a strategic town deep in Idlib province, but kept away from the area directly along the Turkish border in the rural regions of Idlib and Aleppo provinces.
Rebels sources said they saw two Syrian attack helicopters on Friday, flying about 4km from the Turkish border in Idlib province and landing at an army base at Bab Al Hawa, close to Reyhanli, one of the places where Turkey has stationed anti-aircraft defences.
It was the first time aircraft had been spotted close to the border and appeared to test Turkeys new rules of engagement.
The Syrians might accept a very narrow zone along the border. Syria will remain very reluctant to get involved in any conflict with Turkey. They would be up against a very serious military foe, said Malcolm Chalmers, research director at Britains Royal United Services Institute.
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NEW DELHI: Blaming Pakistan for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram called on Pakistan on Friday to acknowledge that an arrested suspect had helped coordinate the assault from a command post in Karachi.
Sayed Zabiuddin, an Indian-born member of the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, was detained at Delhi international airport on June 21 when he arrived from the Middle East.
Wonder what he was planning to do in Delhi that day...
Indian police say Zabiuddin, who also goes under the names Abu Hamza and Abu Jundal, has confessed to being a key handler for the 10 terrorists who attacked Indias financial capital in 2008, killing 166 people. According to police, he admitted being present in the control room in Karachi from where the attack was monitored and coordinated.
Muhammed Kasab, the lone surviving gunman from the attack, is currently on death row in a Mumbai prison.
Zabiuddin had found a very safe haven in Pakistan, Chidambaram told reporters. Pakistan should admit that (he) did go to Pakistan, that he was part of the group which prepared Kasab and nine others, that (he) was in the control room among one of the handlers and masterminds of the attack. Just as we admit facts, Pakistan should also admit facts, the minister said.
Pakistan has asked India to share information on Zabiuddin and urged New Delhi to refrain from blaming Islamabad. India should supply details... enabling us to take action, adviser on interior affairs Rehman Malik said on Wednesday. Let us end the blame game... We have to fight terrorism together, Malik added.
And ensure that the Paks cover their tracks with the information India gives them...
Pakistan has indicted seven people for their alleged role in the Mumbai attacks but their trial, which began in 2009, has been beset by delays.
It's almost as slow as it would be if Carla del Ponte were in charge...
The United States has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the conviction of Lashkar founder Hafiz Saeed, who lives openly in Pakistan and is accused of masterminding the attacks.
Can't we just drone-zap him?
The leader of the Pakistan-based group may have been present in a Pakistani control room where the attacks were coordinated, Indian officials said.
Although Islamabad did not react to the charges on Friday, it previously has rejected Indian allegations of any involvement and said it has acted against the members of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba accused of mounting the raid.
"Lies! All lies!"
The Indian home minister told reporters that questioning of an Indian man suspected of helping plot the operation had revealed the existence of the control room and suggested it had state support.
Yes, others were also present and we think one of them was Hafiz Saeed, he said.
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Obama to Soldiers: Pay Up Threatens to veto bill unless it hikes health care fees for service members
The Obama administration on Friday threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill in part because it does not include higher health care fees for members of the military.
#3
as ex air force officer, I would ask how much more they want the military to put up. I reckon a E6 and above could come up with a morsel of a few bucks if only for the co-pay. I don't know if there is even one with tricare. It was really nice having free health care, back in the day, with children, if you could get through being on hold on the phone forever back in the 80's
#4
Covering the medical costs of the less than one percent of the most physically fit Americans who volunteer to serve their country should not have a huge financial impact. However, opening the door for the enlistment of alternative lifestyles and HIV high risk groups has long term consequences.
Obama, who has never pulled on a pair of boots, is well aware that his popularity among military member is not strong, particularly those who have made the military their career. This is yet another disincentive or penalty tax for those not fully on board the Obama Train. He "knows who they are and he will not forget."
#6
Do you suppose this is a run up to screwing up the overseas military voting again?
What an utter and complete ass. Hells bells, even my name sake who at times seemed to loathe the military would have never proposed such a thing.
Even Hildabeast, when she and Ira Magaziner were writing their healthcare monster did not consider this. AND back then Ms. Hillary had no love at all for the military.
I just want this nightmare to end. I want to wake up in the morning and realize it is all a very bad dream.
We were warned. The evidence of who he was and what he was, was there all the time. The independents and the centrists who were not true believers of either side of the aisle, could have tipped a different direction.
Could John McCain have straightened out the economy, I don't know, I do know the president is violating every common sense rule of monetary policy and is driving our economy into the ground.
I do know, under McCain, we would not have Obamacare (duh) nor would we have had those nauseating bailouts of the auto unions. I also have no doubt we would be drilling for oil, hell bent for election everywhere right now and maybe the economy would be up in a nursing unit instead of on life support down in the economic ICU.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
06/30/2012 12:40
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#7
This is just a part of a systematic process in taking down the military by the O admin.
The borders and illegals are part of the plan to dismantle the country piece by piece.
We have an enemy more dangerous than al Q and co.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/30/2012 15:12
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#8
Absolutely, Alaska Paul. These are very bad guys. And the bad guys have taken over the high ground in the United States of America and they are going to use every effort, criminal and dirty to keep the high ground.
#9
Do civilian government employees have to pay more? If not, why not?
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
06/30/2012 21:32
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#10
Do civilian government employees have to pay more? If not, why not?
Civil service employees pick from an array of medical and dental plans, with varying co-pays and 'benefits'. They pay for the plans themselves out of pocket; the government doesn't kick in anything.
TriCare is a bit different in that the DoD is the primary payer; members/dependents co-pay.
Airline passengers helped foil an attempt to hijack a plane in the western region of Xinjiang, according to Chinese state media. Passengers and aircrew subdued six people who tried to take over a flight 10 minutes after it took off from the remote desert city of Hotan, a heavily ethnic Uighur area that has been hit by recent bouts of violence, Xinhua news agency said.
The Tianjin Airlines plane was flying to the regional capital, Urumqi, on Friday when the attackers were overpowered, Xinhua quoted police sources as saying.The aircraft then returned to Hotan where six people were taken into custody.
Two guards on board the plane were seriously injured during the incident, while the senior flight attendant and seven passengers were slightly injured, the agency added.
Xinjiang is home to the mainly Muslim Uighur people who speak a Turkic language, and there is discontent among many at Chinese government controls on their culture and religion. In March 2008, Chinese officials said they had foiled a plan by an ethnic Uighur woman to bring down a flight from Xinjiang.
The government, wary of instability and the threat to the Communist party's grip on power, often blames what it calls violent separatist groups and religious extremists in Xinjiang for attacks on police and other government targets.
In September, courts in Xinjiang sentenced four people to death for violence in two cities last year in which 32 people were killed. The government blamed the incidents in Kashgar and Hotan both in the majority Uighur southern part of Xinjiang on Muslim hardliners who want to establish an independent state, East Turkestan.
In January, authorities said seven people killed by police in Xinjiang had been trying to leave the country to wage "holy war".
China is also concerned about Uighur activists linking up with Islamist militants over the border in Pakistan.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/30/2012
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Have The Arab League And The Prime Minister Of Qatar With Jabril Run Syria And The Islamic Brotherhood And The Islamic Jihad With Hamas And UN Observers With The Red Crescent Society And The International Red Cross Together Have Assad Live With Rightful Gains And Rightful Means The Monies And Properties Secured With Gweneral Amnesty For : ALL : Arabiya : Syria : For Palestine Statehood ! ALLAH O AKBAR !!!
Here's a story where the best outcome is a bloody tie...
KABUL: Hundreds of thousands of Afghans face the threat of deportation back to their war-torn country from Pakistan once a deadline expires today, but Kabul is crying foul over the move.
Pakistan is home to 1.7 million refugees and hundreds of thousands more unregistered migrants from its neighbour, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). But Islamabad says it cannot be expected to tolerate illegal migrants, and 400,000 undocumented Afghans in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the bulk of the Afghan community live, face the imminent prospect of removal.
The UNHCR describes the situation of Afghans in Pakistan as the largest and most protracted refugee crisis in the world and warned that the question of how to deal with it was becoming increasingly politicised. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said law enforcement agencies had been told to compile lists of illegal Afghans and once the June 30 deadline passed, orders would be issued for their arrest, appearance in court and subsequent deportation to Afghanistan. No country allows illegal immigrants, how it is possible to legalise something which is illegal? Hussain said. We have been accommodating Afghan immigrants for 32 years. The provincial government cannot take their burden any more. They should go back to their country.
But Afghans are nervous about welcoming home so many jobless, impoverished people to a country where returnees have in the past struggled to find work and roofs over their heads. The government in Kabul denied the expulsions would take place. Afghan refugee ministry spokesman Islamuddin Jurat conceded there was a small problem in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but said the two sides had agreed to solve the issue and give the Afghans some legal status to stay there.
The Afghan-Pakistani border is notoriously porous and even if the deportations were to go into effect there would be little to stop returnees coming back to Pakistan.
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Ruben Navarrra's Pashtun doppleganger was unavailable for comment.
Yemen faces a new crisis: a potentially crippling food shortage that's threatening the economic survival of the Arab world's poorest state.
UNICEF says malnutrition and food shortages, largely the result of chronic under-development and a worsening water crisis, is acute.
"It's an emergency very much comparable to the Horn of Africa and the Sahel in North Africa, but it's not getting as much attention," said Geert Cappelaere, the UNICEF chief in Yemen.
With 58 percent of children under the age of 5 stunted by malnutrition, Yemen has the second highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world, behind Afghanistan, he noted.
The lack of access to water is a key factor in the growing food crisis, he said."Close to 60 percent of Yemenis have difficulty in getting drinking water," he said.
Sanaa, Yemen's ancient capital with a population of 2 million, looks like being dry by 2025, the first metropolis in the world to run out of water
"Unless urgent humanitarian action is taken, Yemen will be plunged into a hunger crisis of catastrophic proportions,"
Growing water scarcity, with highland aquifers shrinking 10-20 feet a year, is threatening agriculture in Yemen whose population, the World Bank says, is exploding at an estimated 8 percent a year.
Yemenis use 40 percent of their available water to grow qat, a mildly narcotic plant that's the country's largest cash crop and highly prized across the Arabian Peninsula. That's far more than they allocate to grow food.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
06/30/2012
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Yemenis use 40 percent of their available water to grow qat, a mildly narcotic plant that's the country's largest cash crop and highly prized across the Arabian Peninsula. That's far more than they allocate to grow food.
Sounds like a self inflicted problem and a self correcting issue.
According to my HP 48SX, handy-dandy engineering calculator, that's over 5 inches long!
A doctor in India has pulled a live 13 centimetre-long worm from the eye of an elderly patient who was complaining of persistent pain in an operation reminiscent of a far-fetched alien movie plot.
When Dr V. Seetharaman examined 75-year-old patient P.K. Krishnamurthy at Mumbai's Fortis Hospital this week, the eye expert was shocked by the highly unusual sight of the writhing parasite and had to operate speedily to remove it before serious damage was caused.
"It was wriggling there under the conjunctiva," Seetharaman told AFP, referring to the thin membrane lining the eye. "It was the first time in my career of 30 years that I had seen such a case." I'ma wonderin' how come Mr. Krishnamurthy didn't *feel* the thing. The other side of my mind boggles at how it got in his eye...
Krishnamurthy had been suffering for more than two weeks with redness and irritation before the doctor pin-pointed the threadlike creature under a microscope on Wednesday.
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Algerian jihadists arrived in Gao on Friday to reinforce Islamist fighters in the northern Mali city after they chased Tuareg rebels from the town they had jointly occupied for three months, sources said.
"About 30 Algerian jihadists arrived in Gao on Friday to assist in securing the town and hunting down rebels" from the Tuaregs' National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a regional security source said.
He said they had come to join Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who is currently in Gao.
The Islamist group which drove out the Tuareg in fighting that caused 20 deaths, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), along with AQIM and Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) have taken firm control of Mali's vast north.
Two other witnesses reported seeing Algerian jihadists in Gao, who have much lighter skin than their Malian counterparts, and Afghan clothing.
Ansar Dine leader Iyad Ag Ghaly arrived in the town on Thursday, after the fighting a day earlier erupted between the Tuareg and Islamists resulted in the desert nomads being dislodged from all key positions in the city.
According to witnesses at least 20 people were killed and scores injured in the festivities as the simmering tensions erupted between the two groups which captured Gao three months ago with vastly different intents.
The Tuareg, who had kickstarted the rebellion with an eye for independence of northern Mali, or Azawad, did not agree with the Islamists who wanted a state based on strict Islamic law, which they have already enforced.
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[Yemen Post] Minister of Foreign Affairs Abu Bakr Al-Qirbi has affirmed that Yemen lost $150 million in 2011 due to sea piracy, pointing out that pirates constantly attack Yemeni ships.
In a speech delivered in the conference of sea piracy held in Dubai in the period from 27-28 June, Al-Qirbi said that Yemen is a key partner in counter-piracy, stressing that piracy in the Gulf of Aden affected on thousands of Yemeni fishermen and deprived them from their living income.
He further explained that piracy led to the abduction of scores of Yemeni commercial and fishing ships and that 15 Yemeni fishers were killed by pirates.
He expressed deep concerns about that increase of piracy, indicting that it endanger safety and security of navigation.
"Though the maritime forces existed in the international water off the Somali coasts contributed in reducing piracy recently, it posed a main reason behind the obstructions of fishing in the region," he added.
He affirmed that Yemeni fishermen are always subjected to the fires of the International forces and security teams who are existed on the board of fat merchantmen with the aim of protecting them.
Piracy acts in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea affect on fishermen and led to the decline of fish products and harm the international navigation line and fish production.
Media sources stated that 57 ships were hijacked in the Yemeni territorial waters with 225 failed hijacking attempts in 2010 alone. Seaborne gangs have been exploiting political turmoil in Yemen to smuggle fuel, and possibly other supplies including food.
Posted by: Fred ||
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So quit whining and turn The Mighty Yemen Navy loose, ya moron.....
[Daily Nation (Kenya)] The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday urged Rwanda to stop fuelling conflict in the east, after a UN report found that Kigali officers had assisted a mutiny there.
"We demand that the Rwandan authorities prevent their officers from continuing to fuel the war in Congo," government front man Lambert Mende said.
"We ask them to unconditionally dismantle networks, stop recruitment and supplies feeding the nefarious forces in Congo," the front man said at a presser.
Kigali has vehemently denied accusations it had been helping a mutiny in the eastern DRC by former Congolese Tutsi rebels who had been integrated into the army but defected again this year.
The UN released a report on Tuesday whose annex, as yet unpublished but a copy of which was obtained by AFP, said senior Rwandan Defence Forces officers "in their official capacities, have been backstopping the rebels through providing weapons, military supplies, and new recruits."
The eastern DRC has been rocked by an uprising by mutineers who have formed themselves into a group called M23, led by Bosco Ntaganda, a renegade general wanted by the International Criminal Court ... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
"Over the course of its investigation since late 2011, the group has found substantial evidence attesting to support from Rwandan officials to gangs operating in the eastern DRC," the annex said.
The annex said Rwandan military officers had given "direct assistance" in the creation of M23 by providing weapons and soldiers, as well as helping to recruit Rwandan youths and Congolese refugees and mobilising Congolese political and financial support.
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Armed security agents on Friday raided the AFP bureau in Khartoum and arrested a part-time correspondent who had taken pictures of an anti-regime protest.
The two agents from the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), one of them wielding a pistol, seized Talal Saad, a local journalist who had just begun work as a temporary correspondent for the agency, at about 1550 GMT.
They claimed he would come back in two hours.
The raid took place shortly after Saad arrived at the AFP office with pictures he had taken of an anti-regime protest in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman.
The NISS refused to let the AFP staff correspondent make a telephone call, and threatened to seize every computer in the bureau unless the pictures were deleted. AFP complied with the request.
Saad is a Sudanese journalist with the local newspaper Al Tayar.
National Security agents last week held AFP correspondent Simon Martelli for more than 12 hours without charge after he talked to students and took pictures at the University of Khartoum, where protests sparked by inflation began two weeks ago.
A correspondent for international news wire Bloomberg, Salma El Wardany, an Egyptian, was deported by Sudan on Tuesday, after also being detained while trying to cover the country's widening protest movement.
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RAIPUR, India: At least 21 Maoist rebels were killed in a series of violent clashes with security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh, a hotbed of left-wing extremism, police said yesterday.
In one attack, 17 guerrillas were killed in a night-time gun battle with security forces in a thickly forested area of Chhattisgarhs Bastar region, about 295 kilometers (184 miles) south of the state capital Raipur. Four more were shot dead in two separate incidents in the same region.
A large number of forces are searching the forest to capture more Maoists sheltering there, district police superintendent Prashant Agrawal told AFP by phone. A further 19 rebels were captured and taken into custody, Agrawal said.
It was a rare success for the security forces who have struggled to strike back at the rebels since the launch of a counter-insurgency drive known as Operation Greenhunt in 2009. The guerrillas meanwhile have carried out repeated attacks on police and paramilitary targets, inflicting heavy casualties.
In New Delhi, Home Minister P. Chidambaram praised the courage and great skill of the police units involved in the overnight shootouts.
Chhattisgarh is one of several states where Maoist guerrillas, who say they are fighting for the rights of poor tribals and farmers, have waged a decades-long battle to overthrow state and national authorities. The government describes the guerrillas as the countrys most serious internal security threat.
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Tigers : Slain : For Fur Trade : Poaching Next : MAZED GROUP BEHIND : WATCH : ALLAH O AKBAR
Chimpanzees at an animal sanctuary in South Africa have left an American researcher in critical condition, after bitting him severely and dragging him nearly half a mile (0.8km).
Human .. it's what's for dinner...
The man was giving a lecture at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden on Thursday when two chimpanzees grabbed his feet and pulled him into their enclosure, said emergency worker Jeffrey Wicks.
"We'll grab his feet, you guys bite him!"
He was in intensive care on Friday after undergoing surgery at the Mediclinic hospital in Nelspruit, 180 miles (290km) from Johannesburg, hospital officials said.
The man has "multiple and severe bite wounds", Wicks said.
Edwin Jay, chairman of the Jane Goodall Institute South Africa, said the two chimpanzees involved were part of a group that had been rescued from Angola and brought to South Africa more than a decade ago.
Ingrates...
He said sanctuary officials were investigating the attack.
"So Pieter, what happened?"
"Looks like the chimps bit 'im, sir."
"Yes, that happens with chimps, eh?"
The man lost part of an ear and parts of his fingers in the attack, according to the South African newspaper Beeld.
Wonder if the chimps had a chianti to go with that...
It said reported that the sanctuary's director fired into the air to scare the chimps away, then chased them away.
Wait til next time, the chimps will have a plan for that...
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[Saudi Gazette] Three Pakistani men allegedly arrested by security forces when they disappeared a year ago were found dead Thursday after authorities ordered that they be produced alive in court, police said.
The case spotlights the plight of the "missing" in Pakistan, where judges are seeking to bring the powerful military and intelligence agencies to book over mass arrests of alleged terror suspects, who are never seen again.
According to a preliminary autopsy report, the three men aged 30 to 35 were recently killed -- first poisoned, then their necks were broken.
Their bodies were discovered in the district of Haripur, part of the northwest where the army has been fighting to put down a Taliban insurgency. "The dead bodies were recovered from three different places," Mohammad Ali Gandapur, district police chief, said.
He said police were investigating who killed them and why.
Relatives of one of the victims told police he was arrested by security forces and had been missing for 11 months, Gandapur said.
Footage broadcast by private TV channel Geo showed the bodies being taken away by ambulance, accompanied by relatives and rescue workers. A senior police official, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the victims had been arrested by intelligence agencies.
An unnamed relative told Geo that the victims were three of 170 missing people ordered to be produced court by judges in the northwestern capital Peshawar. --
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were recently killed -- first poisoned, then their necks were broken.
then hung, set on fire, electrocuted, beheaded, then hung again. The last part was not very easy
Posted by: Frank G ||
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The Copts and other non-believers, of course, won't be considered 'Egyptian'...
CAIRO: Muhammad Mursi paid tribute on Friday to Egypt's Muslims and Christians alike and symbolically swore himself in as the country's first elected civilian president before a huge crowd at Tahrir Square.
Mursi, who won a run-off election earlier this month, was received with applause by the tens of thousands of people gathered in the birthplace of the revolt that overthrew his predecessor Hosni Mubarak last year. He promised a "civilian state" and praised "the square of the revolution, the square of freedom," in what he called an address to "the free world, Arabs, Muslims... the Muslims of Egypt, Christians of Egypt."
Mursi symbolically swore himself in before the crowd, saying: "I swear to preserve the republican system... and to preserve the independence" of Egypt.
In his speech Mursi, whose election has raised concerns among Egypt's sizeable Coptic Christian community, served the United States with advance warning that his politics will be markedly different from those of his ousted predecessor.
No, really?
He told the Tahrir crowd he would work to secure freedom for Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed for life over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
"I will do everything in my power to secure freedom for... detainees, including Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman," Mursi said in his address to the throng packing the hub of the 2011 revolution.
Champ would lose New York in November if he did that, so don't look for it .. until December.
Abdul Rahman was convicted in 1995 for his role in the World Trade Center bombing, plotting to bomb other New York targets including the United Nations, and a plan to assassinate Mubarak.
After taking the oath, Mursi will have to contend with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, headed by Mubarak's longtime defense minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, that will retain broad powers after it formally transfers power. The liberal Wafd newspaper reported that Tantawi will remain defense minister in the new government.
And that's the real power...
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Every president when he takes power now days vows to be president for all.
[Yemen Post] Dozens of angry soldiers from the Republican Guard and Central Security Forces in an area located on the northern outskirts of the Yemeni capital of Sana'a kidnapped on Thursday a high-ranking elite republican guard commander in protest over the continuation of suspending their salaries, al-Sahwa news mobile service reported.
The soldiers' salaries were reportedly suspended in part of their refusal to take part in the crackdown conducted against the peaceful youth revolution last year.
Angry that their suspended salaries were not released, the soldiers kidnapped the 62 Brigade's commander Murad al-Awbali and took him to an unknown location, said the news service which belongs to the Islah Party.
Al-Awbali was kidnapped in Jahana Market of Khawlan, a few kilometers northern Sana'a city, according to al-Sahwa.
After he led a fierce crackdown on the peaceful protesters calling for change in 2011 in the southern province of Taiz, the protesters kept taking to streets calling for holding al-Awbali accountable for the crimes committed against them by forces under him command.
This prompted Saleh's son--the chief of the Elite Republican Guards, the best equipped and trained military troops in Yemen--to transfer al-Awbali from Taiz to the 62 brigade located in al-Sama area, some 30 kilometers northern Sana'a.
In the meantime, dozens of soldiers were reported to have cut off the road leading to Taiz provincial security headquarters building, a move that aims to show their protest and refusal to the decision stating the soldiers who joined the youth revolution must return to their barracks.
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KHARTOUM: Sudanese police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of peaceful protesters outside an opposition party mosque yesterday, the 14th day of anti-regime demonstrations sparked by inflation, a witness said.
Lord Kitchener to the red courtesy phone, please...
Protesters had gathered in the capitals Hijra Square beside the mosque of the opposition Umma party. The witness said demonstrators carried Sudanese flags and banners reading The people want the regime to fall, a slogan used by protesters during the Arab Spring uprisings against regional strongmen over the past year.
After the tear gas and an unknown number of arrests, demonstrators burned tires and threw stones at police before running for cover, the witness said.
Demonstrators planned major protests for yesterday and today, the 23rd anniversary of a coup by Thug-in-Chief President Omar Bashir. Human rights groups say scores of people have been detained since the protests against high food prices began on June 16 at the University of Khartoum.
After Bashir announced austerity measures, including tax hikes and an end to cheap fuel, the protests spread to include a cross-section of people in numerous locations throughout the capital and other parts of Sudan. Demonstrators, typically in groups of 100 or 200, have burned tires, thrown stones and blocked roads in a call for regime change which has almost universally been met by police tear gas.
Bashir, suggesting that someone was behind the disturbances, has called them small-scale and not comparable to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere. He maintains that he himself is popular.
Sure you are, Omar, everybody loves ya baby...
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[Bangla Daily Star] Mob beat up a man to death and injured two others suspecting them to be robbers at Char Sahabhikhari village in Sonagazi upazila of the district Thursday night.
According to locals and police, a gang of armed robbers tried to force enter the house of one Mosharraf of the village after breaking the outer collapsible gate. Sensing their presence, My spider sense! It's tingling again! To arms! Aux barricades! the household informed neighbours of the incident over the mobile phone.
The neighbours then announced the news through the loudspeaker of a local mosque. At this, villagers chased the robbers with sticks and managed to capture three of them.
The man killed in the beating following the capture was identified as Azad, 35, of Musapur village under Companyganj upazila of Noakhali district. Police sent his body to Feni sadar hospital morgue for an appointment with Dr. Quincy.
Injured Nurul Alam, 32, and Selim, 35, both of Dagonbhuiyan upazila in Feni, were handed over to police in a critical condition. They were admitted to the sadar hospital.
Nabir Hossain, officer-in-charge of Sonagazi Police Station, confirmed the incident.
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[Saudi Gazette] The Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (Hai'a) has officially inaugurated its new control room which will enable it to monitor the movements of its field staff, Al-Watan Arabic daily reported.
The control room which was officially opened at its headquarters in Riyadh and will enable officials to track field staff Kingdomwide. The new system will also enable the Hai'a to distribute its patrols according to geographic location. The system is designed to alert the control officer if a commission member leaves his designated area.
Earlier, the Hai'a had signed an agreement with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) to develop a satellite tracking system. This led to the creation of the control room.
The agreement also stipulates that KACST shall provide the Hai'a with digital maps and aerial photos, which will help the latter establish a geographic database.
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They do lolcats in the Kindom? Hai'a! I can haz Virtue?
DUBAI: Iran expects to equip its ships in the Strait of Hormuz soon with shorter-range missiles, a Revolutionary Guards commander was quoted as saying, in the latest apparent warning to the West not to attack it over its disputed nuclear program.
The Islamic Republic has threatened to shut the Strait, the conduit out of the Gulf for 40 percent of the worlds seaborne oil trade, if Western sanctions aimed at curbing its nuclear works block its own crude exports.
The European Union plans to impose a total embargo on Iranian oil from tomorrow and has told Tehran that more punitive steps could follow if it keeps defying UN demands for limits nuclear activity that could be of use in developing bombs.
We have already equipped our vessels with missiles with a range of 220 km and we hope to introduce missiles with a range of over 300 km soon, Ali Fadavi said, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported yesterday. We could target from our shores all areas in the Gulf region, the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman.
Iran is about 225 km at its nearest point from Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is based, and about 1,000 km from its arch-enemy Israel. Tehrans longest-range missile, the Sajjil-2, can fly up to 2,400 km. Irans military and security establishment often asserts its strength in the region, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz, the worlds most important oil transit channel carrying supplies from Gulf producers to the West.
But it has increasingly flexed its military muscle in the face of US and Israeli warnings that last-resort military action against Iran cannot be ruled out if diplomacy and sanctions fail to resolve the nuclear dispute. In January, Tehran said it had successfully test-fired what it called two long-range missiles. Earlier this month, the Iranian Navy announced plans to build more warships and increase its presence in international waters such as the Gulf of Aden and northern Indian Ocean.
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See also WAFF > CLINTON: IRAN WANTS TO BE ATATCKED, in order to legitimize the Mullah Regime + unify disgruntled elements widin Iranian Govt-Society.
and
* WORLD NEWS > IRAN MAY USE STRAITS OF HORMUZ AS "LEVER" IFF INTERESTS IN DANGER: COMMANDER.
* TOPIX. WORLD NEWS > IRAN PROTESTS US SUPPORT FOR UAE ON DISPUTED GULF ISLAND.
#3
If un-fired, they're just a gift to the "Pirates".
If you can't guarantee they're used as needed (Fired AT the pirate), that's just a huge waste.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/30/2012 6:41
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FREEREPUBLIC, DRUDGEREPORT > [Deputy Chief of IRGC Gen. Hossein Salami] IRAN: THERE WILL BE WAR [very] SOON ... AND [by Allah]WE WILL WIN.
ARTIC > Gen. Salami also sezzes ...
> Iran has "complete control" of all its Enemies' interests around the World, + is a path to reach equivalency wid World Powers.
HHHHHMMMMM - iff true, gotta wonder how Iran pulled it off?
> Iran's defense inventory is so great that at times the IRGC are restricted only by the "limitations of Space".
Vewry Intehwesting comments.
The USDOD is expanding the USN Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain, which IMO infers that, in the absence of anti-US Regime Change in same, they are aware that Bahrain will Target #1 during a US-Iran shooting war in the Persian Gulf per se. DITTO AS PER USDOD MULLING FOR THE US PRESENCE IN KUWAIT [MilTechs/MilSys, notsomuch Troops], WID KUWAIT AKA TARGET #2 IN THE PERSIAN GULF THEATER. In addition, Iran appears to be overly confident they can close the Strait of Hormuz + limit the US CVNS, Gator Boyz + Allied to the Sea of Oman/Arabian Gulf + beyond.
* TOPIX > COMBINED MARITIME FORCES: US's GLOBAL NAVAL FORCE IN THE ARABIAN GULF. All but one are either US-NATO per se, or else Partner or in working Mutual Cooperation wid NATO.
Iran's gotta know they may be shooting at Muslim Navies, not just the US-NATO.
North Korea has been experiencing unusually dry weather since late April and the Souths Korea Meteorological Administration expects the dry spell on the peninsula to continue until the end of this month.
The state-run Korea Rural Economic Institute here expects the Norths barley and wheat production yields to drop 20 percent this year, with overall crop production down around 15 percent. The institute added that if the drought continues, the regime may face a severe food shortage.
Local experts believe the drought, the worst seen in the Stalinist state in half a century, is putting it on the brink of widespread famine as the situation is expected to deteriorate when food production is affected.
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Both NOKOR + SOKOR are repor scrambling to protect their crops, to include early collection of same.
BAJAUR AGENCY: Terrorists blew up another girls school with explosive material in Bajaur Agency on Friday.
According to local political authorities, terrorists had planted explosive devices in a girls school situated in the Mata Shah area of Salarzai tehsil, which exploded early on Friday morning, badly damaging the building. No causality was reported in the incident.
More than 100 schools have been targeted in the agency so far.
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Is blowing up a girls school an easy way of making your bones in the islamic gangs?
Posted by: Water Modem ||
06/30/2012 8:07
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#2
but, but, but, it happens EVERYwhere...look at Tim McVeigh!! This has nothing to do with Islam!!!!
#3
John Walsh : Potomac River Rapist : Santa Monica - 1996 - Promenade Scene : = Los Angeles : La Brea : La Canada Region : Also AMW Watch : Richie His Name
WASHINGTON: The United States named two Afghanistan-Pakistan money changers as helping Taliban manage and move funds, setting sanctions against both that aim to hinder their business.
The US Treasury said the two hawalas, or money exchange businesses - the Haji Khairullah Haji Sattar Money Exchange (HKHS) and the Roshan Money Exchange have been used by Taliban to facilitate money transfers in support of Talibans narcotics trade and terrorist operations.
Up through last year, HKHS services were a preferred method for Taliban leadership to transfer money to Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, the Treasury said. HKHS has 16 branches in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Dubai, while Roslan operates 11 branches in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/30/2012
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So 2 dudes represent what, .001% of Kabul/Karachi/Kerala hawala dealers?
Posted by: American Delight ||
06/30/2012 7:34
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[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Republican White House challenger Mitt Romney renewed his campaign pledge Thursday to seek to repeal health care reforms from his first day in office if he wins the November elections.
Speaking just hours after the US Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama's signature reforms, Romney said: "What the court did not do on the last day in session, I will do on my first day if elected president of the United States, and that is that I will act to repeal 'Obamacare.'"
In a hastily called address, Romney argued that despite the court's ruling they "did not... say that Obama care is good law or that it is good policy.
Obama care was bad policy yesterday. It's bad policy today.
"Obama care was bad law yesterday. It is bad law today," he said arguing that the Affordable Care Act would raise taxes, cause the national deficit to balloon and make up to 20 million Americans lose the insurance they already had.
Some 75 percent of businesses surveyed had also said that the requirement to provide health insurance would force them to scale back hiring, he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
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Re the falsehoods of OC: "If your mother tells you the tooth fairly will leave $0.25 under your pillow doesn't make it true. Just because someone says something is true doesn't make it true."
[ObammerCare and costs] "...is like throwing gasoline on a fire and then having to get a bigger fire extinguisher."
Amen. However, there are many Americans who think Obamacare is paid for with Obama Dollars--that is it is free.
So has anyone read the 2700 pages of this albatross? No one knows the cost of this turkey is because of the poison pills in the bill. Moreover, ObamaCare seems to be whatever Sebelius, H&HS deems it to be in the future. If entitlements are out of control now, wait until the full effects of this monster hits.
QUETTA: A shutter-down strike was observed in the city on Friday against the suicide attack on a bus in Hazar Ganji a day earlier, as the death toll from the bombing rose to 15.
The call for a strike had been given by the Hazara Democratic Party with the support of Tahfuz-e-Izadari Council, Tehreek Nifaz-i-Jaffaria, Balochistan Shia Conference, trader unions and other major political parties.
All business centres within the commercial district of Quetta remained closed. Traffic was thin on roads as people preferred to stay indoors. There was also a thin attendance in government offices while most of the banks also remained closed in response to the strike call. A large number of personnel from Frontier Crops (FC), police, Balochistan Constabulary (BC) and Anti-terrorist Force (ATF) were deployed in the city to thwart any untoward incident.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/30/2012
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Horse-Barn door.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/30/2012 6:55
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Not sure exactly where to file.
HAIFA, Israel (AP) -- Grinning and waving, 14 women who survived the horrors of World War II paraded Thursday in an unusual pageant, vying for the honor of being crowned Israel's first "Miss Holocaust Survivor."
Billed by organizers as a celebration of life, the event also stirred controversy. In a country where millions have been touched by the Holocaust, many argued that judging aging women who had suffered so much on physical appearance was inappropriate, and even offensive.
"It sounds totally macabre to me," said Colette Avital, chairwoman of Israel's leading Holocaust survivors' umbrella group. "I am in favor of enriching lives, but a one-time pageant masquerading (survivors) with beautiful clothes is not what is going to make their lives more meaningful." There's a whiner in every group.
Pageant organizer Shimon Sabag rejected the criticism, saying the winners were chosen based on their personal stories of survival and rebuilding their lives after the war, and physical beauty was only a tiny part of the competition.
.....
Nearly 200,000 aging survivors live in Israel today, and the country's annual Holocaust Day is one of the most solemn occasions on the calendar. Restaurants and cinemas close, and the country comes to a standstill as sirens wail for two minutes. Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, frequently make references to the Holocaust when discussing the threat they believe a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to the Jewish state.
Thursday's contest was among the many unconventional beauty pageants that have sprouted up over the years. The war-torn countries of Angola and Cambodia have held "Miss Landmine" contests for survivors of land mine explosions, Star Trek fans enjoy the "Miss Klingon Empire" contest in Atlanta, and plus-sized women in Thailand compete for the honor of "Miss Jumbo Queen." There are also a senior citizens' pageants in the U.S. Jeebus, the mind boggles at some of these other pageants....
Posted by: BA ||
06/30/2012
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Star Trek fans enjoy the "Miss Klingon Empire" contest in Atlanta
[Saudi Gazette] A member of a clan that is accused in the Philippines' worst political massacre was murdered as prosecutors urged him to testify against his relatives, police said Thursday.
Alijol Ampatuan was rubbed out in February as state prosecutors tried to put him on the stand, local police chief Marcelo Pintac said, adding that it was the sixth murder of somebody connected to the case.
"He (was) not a witness yet. I was told that they (prosecutors) were speaking to him about turning state witness," Superintendent Pintac told AFP by telephone.
He said the dead man was a distant relative of powerful political leader Andal Ampatuan Sr., one of 64 people standing trial in Manila over the massacre, and had worked as a security guard for the clan.
The Ampatuans are accused of massacring 57 people in the southern province of Maguindanao in Nov. 2009, allegedly to prevent a political rival from challenging a clan member in 2010 elections for provincial governor.
The family had ruled Maguindanao for a decade, armed by the previous government of then-president Gloria Arroyo, who used the clan's private army as a buffer against Mohammedan guerrillas.
Meanwhile, ...back at the Esquimeau village our hero was receiving a quick lesson in aeronautics......
...back at the pool hall, Peoria Slim had found another sucker...
a Philippine provincial governor says his political rival tried to kill him and his brother months before a 2009 election-related massacre.
Esmael Mangudadatu, governor of southern Maguindanao province, testified at the trial Thursday that the main suspect in the 2009 killings had sent hundreds of government soldiers, police and civilian militia to attack his brother's residence on the pretext that a rebel was hiding there.
Mangudadatu said he prevented the attack at his brother's residence by persuading gunnies to withdraw.
The massacre victims included the Ampatuan rival's relatives as well as 32 journalists and media workers, whose bodies were all found shot to death and buried in a shallow pit.
Pintac said the true identity of the latest murder victim took months to emerge because local police had initially identified Alijol Ampatuan's corpse as that of another person.
Prosecutors this month said the body of another man who has already testified against the Ampatuans, clan driver Esmael Amil Enog, was found "chain-sawed to pieces" and stuffed in a sack.
A third witness, a member of the clan's private army, was killed in 2010, while three relatives of other witnesses have also been murdered in separate incidents.
Carlos Conde, Philippine researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... , called on the government to boost its witness protection program to enable the state to send the massacre suspects to jail.
"This is meant to silence the witnesses and terrify those still thinking of testifying," he said. --
Posted by: Fred ||
06/30/2012
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Sounds like the Hatfield's and Coys?
(no, not the fictional Mc Coys)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/30/2012 6:25
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You can read her story at the link. Time for western journalists to pull the plug on Cairo (except for CNN which always makes deals with dictators, like Saddam, Pencilneck and Pudgy).
Egypt is lost.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/30/2012
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Ghastly, horrible, but entirely predictable.
Awaiting NOW comments in 10.....9......8......
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
06/30/2012 0:30
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Are you telling me the lefties and Islamoapologists are rationalizing sexual assault because it occurs other places. I thought violence against women was a human rights issue and a cause for alarm in any civilized society. Or so says our feminazi friends over at NOW, or at least as long as those darlings of the left, the Moslem faithful are not involved.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
06/30/2012 14:43
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North Koreans despise the Chinese even though China is the Stalinist country's sole ally, a former British ambassador to North Korea says. John Everard was promoting a book about his experience in North Korea titled "Only Beautiful, Please" at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Monday.
He said it North Korean hate the Chinese although or because they rely on massive economic assistance from China. Economic cooperation between the two countries keeps growing, but the belief that Chinese are arrogant as well as a deep-rooted North Korean sense of racial purity seems to be at play, he said.
He recalled that while numerous signs and billboards in North Korea display hostile slogans aimed at U.S. imperialism, ordinary North Koreans did not feel much animosity toward America. Not many North Koreans believed the U.S. would attack their country and very few of them thought that South Korea would attack since they consider South Korea a puppet state of the U.S., Everard added.
Everard said the opening of the British Embassy in Pyongyang in July 2001 met with significant opposition in the U.K. because of the cost and doubts over the influence London would actually be able to wield. But he claimed diplomatic missions run by the U.K. as well as Germany and Sweden in Pyongyang were able to take a huge amount of influence in the North.
Posted by: Steve White ||
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Massive econ assistance which is barely enough for ordinary Norkies, + by most accounts is not getting any better, + scores of 000's of PLA Security forces in NOKOR [150-300,000?] to protect the Kims + Regime.
Speaking of massive econ assistance by China,
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > THE [normal = regular]SCOPE OF CHINESE AID TO NORTH KOREA IS DISCERNED/DETERMINED BY CHINA.
90-100,000 TONS OF FOOD, 500,000 TONS OF FUEL OIL, approxi 20.0Milyuhn in Goods per Annum.
* SAME > GREAT WALL ESTIMATE ANGERS SOUTH KOREANS.
ARTIC > SOKORS = China should NOT be claiming as part of its historial "Great Wall" fortifications + other complexes which were contructed by the Govts-People of the ancient Korean States of GOGURYEO + BOHAI; nor to also claim those located in current NOKOR territory.
* WORLD NEWS > NORTH KOREA TESTS THE PATIENCE OF CHINA | .... ITS CLOSEST ALLY.
#3
Corrected Headline, "North Korean LEADERS despise China".
How dare they be successfull, the nerve?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/30/2012 6:47
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Jim, given that the Chinese have inflicted North Korea's current leadership on its people, I suspect it's a safe bet that its people don't like them either.
Border Patrol agents in Arizona are blasting their bosses for telling them, along with all other Department of Homeland Security employees, to run and hide if they encounter an "active shooter."
#1
If you are outmanned, outgunned and less experienced than your opponent, it is probably best to run/hide. But it should not end there - what should happen is a radio call and an appropriately armed re-enforcement (AH-64 Apache?) should eliminate the threat. Permanently.
Hey! Anybody! Everybody! All you need is a popgun and you can blast your way into the United States of America! Because we need your votes and we need your drugs and we need your diseases! C'mon! Everybody! Hurry, hurry, hurry!!! Offer ends January 2013!
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
06/30/2012 11:33
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#7
Zetas are now coming across to do hits. Armed by the Choom Gang in charge of Washington DC and now given the green light to expand across the border.
National parks are already no mans land because of the lame excuse that Border Patrol vehicles are not allowed to mess up the pristine parks. But now the cartels need access to the population to do hits on rivals or deserters, or anyone.
They carried out a execution of 5 people in Pima county, were spotted by the Border Patrol but got away and carried out the hit. Pima county requested help from the DOJ and the DOJ now says, leave the hit men alone. Plain and simple. MSM will not report this, there are other sources of these state side encrouchments by the Zetas and the paid off DOJ officials.
#8
I'd still like to see the night use of napalm, just once. Or a Spectre gunship. Something to give the invaders pause. And a nuke on Mexico City when the president bitches. I do pray that President Romney will take the gloves off, but I won't hold my breath.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/30/2012 19:09
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#9
Instruction or ROE coming a bit too late for Agent Brian Terry.
I wonder what our fearless regime will do about the Mexicans who are still dying daily because of these guns.
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.
Chief Justice John Roberts, normally a reliably conservative member of the Supreme Court, stunned quite a number of people when he sided with the four more liberal justices and upheld the entire Affordable Care Act yesterday. On The O'Reilly Factor today, guest host Laura Ingraham gauged the right's reaction to the ruling, and one of her guests went as far to suggest that Roberts should resign from the bench.
The Justice Department moved Friday to shield Attorney General 
Deputy Attorney General James Cole confirmed in a letter to House Speaker 
The international envoy charged with bringing peace to Syria is warning world powers they could soon have more blood on their hands. 
The Rev. Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders will join family and friends in Los Angeles at a public funeral service for Rodney King.
An Afghan and coalition security force conducted an operation, in Watahpur district, 
David Cameron
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
Sudanese police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of peaceful protesters outside an opposition party mosque on Friday, the 14th day of anti-regime demonstrations sparked by inflation, a witness said. Protesters had gathered in the capital's Hijra Square beside the mosque of the opposition Umma party.
[Yemen Post] The Yemeni authorities 
European leaders have moved to halt the crisis engulfing Spain and Italy by agreeing a radical bailout package for the single currency's teetering banks.
BEIRUT/ISKENDERUN, Turkey: Rebel forces attacked Syrias main court in central Damascus yesterday, state television said. There was a loud explosion and a column of black smoke rose over Damascus, an Assad stronghold that until the last few days had seemed largely beyond the reach of rebels. State television described it as a terrorist explosion in the court car park.
Nawaz Sharif
Hamid Gul
Tribal tensions erupted on Thursday between Khwalan and Sanhan tribes following the abduction of a high-ranking military commander, Murad Al-Awbali, by soldiers from Khawlan, local sources said. 
Germany's intelligence service has found itself at the center of a widening scandal after it was confirmed yesterday that its agents had destroyed files containing vital information about a neo-Nazi terrorist gang hours before the material was supposed to be handed to federal prosecutors.
International Criminal Court
Armed security agents on Friday raided the AFP bureau in Khartoum and arrested a part-time correspondent who had taken pictures of an anti-regime protest.
Three Pakistani men allegedly arrested by security forces when they disappeared a year ago were found dead Thursday after authorities ordered that they be produced alive in court, police said.
[Yemen Post] Dozens of angry soldiers from the Republican Guard and Central Security Forces in an area located on the northern outskirts of the Yemeni capital of Sana'a kidnapped on Thursday a high-ranking 
Mob beat up a man to death and injured two others suspecting them to be robbers at Char Sahabhikhari village in Sonagazi upazila of the district Thursday night.
North Korea has been experiencing unusually dry weather since late April and the Souths Korea Meteorological Administration expects the dry spell on the peninsula to continue until the end of this month.
BAJAUR AGENCY: Terrorists blew up another girls school with explosive material in Bajaur Agency on Friday. 
