He's handy with a shot glass and customers travel from far and wide to admire him at work.
The only strange thing about Carl the bartender is that he's not quite human.
The humanoid robot mixes drinks for guests at the Robots Bar and Lounge in Ilmenau, eastern Germany.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suggested in an interview Sunday that Edward Snowden could have given sensitive national security information to Russia and China. Clearly, that's why she's on the Intelligence Committee! Got it in one, did she...
"He went to two big cyber-intruding powers -- China and Russia -- and left China and went to Russia," Feinstein said on CNN's "State of the Union." "You've got to ask, why did he choose those two? You've got to also ask, do the Chinese have all this material? Do the Russians have it?"Asked whether Snowden has shared the information, Feinstein said: "We don't know." And you thought Obama and Kerry were smart? What a stupendous intellect! She is one of the taller dwarves in the circus...
Feinstein has said Snowden is guilty of treason.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/28/2013
14:54 ||
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You've got to also ask, do the Chinese have all this material? Do the Russians have it?"
No you feckless, uninformed moonbat, no one "has to ask". You conduct an immediate damage assessment and properly assume you've been royally buggered compromised. You immediately change tactics and methodology, and move on.
#2
A day late, but not a dollar short. DiFi is a symptom of the real problem, which is the moonbattery of the electorate which puts her in office again and again. We have met the enemy and he is us.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/28/2013 16:03
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Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/28/2013
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Just saw this on Google news. This man was a true hero.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/28/2013 14:57
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Even without his unquestioned heraldic service, being a Swiftboater alone made him a hero as far as I am concerned. Interesting to note, COL Day fought in WWII, Korean, and Vietnam... was awarded the CMH and was still non-select for 07. Nothing more need be said.
Dr. Steve, what is the International Classification of Diseases code for liberalism?. The ICD-9 code is 294.1: Dementia in conditions classified elsewhere...
This iconic picture of firefighters raising the stars and stripes in the rubble of Ground Zero was nearly excluded from the 9/11 Memorial Museum -- because it was "rah-rah" American, a new book says.
Michael Shulan, the museum's creative director, was among staffers who considered the Tom Franklin photograph too kitschy and "rah-rah America," according to "Battle for Ground Zero" (St. Martin's Press) by Elizabeth Greenspan, out next month. Mr. Shulan probably objects to the Iwo Jima flag raising picture for the same reason. How about George Washington crossing the Delaware? Someone should tell this clown that if we want any crap out of him we'll squeeze his head.
"I really believe that the way America will look best, the way we can really do best, is to not be Americans so vigilantly and so vehemently," Shulan said.
Shulan had worked on a popular post-9/11 photography exhibit called "Here is New York" in Soho when he was hired by Alice Greenwald, director of the museum, for his "unique approach."
Eventually, chief curator Jan Ramirez proposed a compromise, Greenspan writes. The Franklin shot was minimized in favor of three different photos via three different angles of the flag-raising scene.
"Several images undercut the myth of 'one iconic moment,' Ramirez said, and suggest instead an event from multiple points of view, like the attacks more broadly," the book says.
"Shulan didn't like three photographs more than he liked one, but he went along with it."
Of course!
In the interview, which was posted online Saturday night,
When nobody was laying attention. That's almost as good as Friday after 5 p.m.
Obama questioned the project's economic benefits, saying "there is no evidence" to the Republican argument that "this would be a big jobs generator." Not nearly as many jobs as Solyandra!
"And my hope would be that any reporter who is looking at the facts would take the time to confirm that the most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline -- which might take a year or two -- and then after that we're talking about somewhere between 50 and 100
He forgot all the support jobs. You know, restaurant and bar servers, gas stations, video rental places, UPS delivery guys -- all the things that an influx of workers with no local ties, plenty of money, and little free time need to make the long hours worth while. The same way it's calculated that every car manufacturing or steel mill union job adds another two or three jobs to the local economy.
[chuckles] jobs in a economy of 150 million working people," Obama added. Don't bother drilling that one well - it won't solve the energy crisis!
He also suggested that the pipeline would not lower gas prices in the U.S., and could actually increase them in the Midwest, an argument buttressed by recent fluctuations in the crude oil market.
The key isn't lowering prices, but 1) keeping them from rising as Chinese and Indian demand increase, and 2) keeping American money from flowing into the pockets of those oil producers who support jihadi groups and the fostering of jihad attitudes (have you seen the kind of religious textbooks the Saudis donate to every mosque willing to accept free stuff?).
"So what we also know is, is that that oil is going to be piped down to the Gulf to be sold on the world oil markets, so it does not bring down gas prices here in the United States," Obama said. "In fact, it might actually cause some gas prices in the Midwest to go up where currently they can't ship some of that oil to world markets." Keep sending your money to my Saudi buddies!
See periwinkle item 2, above.
TransCanada spokesman James Millar challenged the president's assessment in an e-mail to reporters Saturday night, saying both the construction and operating phase would create more jobs that Obama suggested.
He noted that with the southern leg nearly complete, "We will close the books in the coming months on the 4,000 Americans we put to work on the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas. On this leg of the Keystone system alone we employed more Americans than the 2,000 figure the President pointed to."
Oh, snap!
"It is not logical to think a $7.6 billion dollar infrastructure project stretching across the entire breadth of the continental U.S. wouldn't employ thousands of workers both in the manufacturing sector and in constructing the pipeline," he added. But isn't it better to have the gubamint spend money on infrastructure? That way they can carve out pieces for their friends. And the disadvantaged. In his climate address last month Obama established a new litmus test for Keystone XL, saying, "Our national interest will be served only if this pipeline does not significantly exacerbate the climate problem." "The net effects of climate impact will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project will go forward," he added. "It is relevant." Then the rest of the pipeline is doomed.
Until the next president is sworn in, anyway. But that's only a bit more than 1,200 days or so -- President Obama mentioned the number in a recent speech, but as I didn't watch it, I don't know what he said.
Obama did raise the possibility in his New York Times interview that Canada "could potentially be doing more to mitigate carbon release" at the source of the pipeline's source, Alberta's oil sands, and such efforts could influence his administration's final decision. Maybe if you make some more investments to make the eco-freaks happy, I just might approve. Maybe.
"We haven't seen specific ideas or plans," the president added. "But all of that will go into the mix in terms of John Kerry's decision or recommendation on this issue." Great. The two smartest men in the room.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/28/2013
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Washington, DC is an area of concentrated parasites that are drinking up the life blood of this country. The parasites are the main problem, not Al and the Qaedas. We as a country are destroying ourselves.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/28/2013 17:40
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Since the State Department had said in March that the XL decision would be in June...it appears that the trial balloon has been launched by Mr. Soetoro on a quiet Saturday night in July ((while Antney Weiner is in the news) to show he has no idea what Jawn F'n Kerry will decide, but regardless, it will be for the good of the planet. (Not for the USA's stolen section of the globe.)
Anthony Weiner's already limp mayoral campaign suffered another huge blow yesterday, when his campaign manager abandoned the sinking ship. Danny Kedem quit as Weiner's campaign point man following a disastrous week on the trail, the embattled mayoral candidate confirmed this morning.
"Danny has left the campaign. He did a remarkable job," Weiner said.
After all, he covered for you...
"We have an excellent staff. More people have come on frankly. We've gotten more volunteers and more people coming over to help the campaign since the least several days since anytime since the campaign started."
Uh-huh. Sure.
Weiner stood firm despite his travails yesterday, spending much of the day in his apartment in bed shooting a campaign ad.
"I am running for mayor of the city of New York, and I plan on winning," Weiner told The Post in the afternoon -- though it was unclear if he knew at the time that his quarter-back was sacking himself in the wake of unabating blow-back from his extra-marital shenanigans last summer with sext kitten Sydney Leathers.
The Bible Belt bad girl spilled her guts to "Inside Edition" last week, exposing Weiner's love of phone sex and texting x-rated pictures of himself. Even though Leathers said she's "disgusted" by Weiner, pals of the pretty brunette said she doesn't mind attention from financially well-endowed men.
The rest of the story contains lurid details about Ms. Leathers, information that the dear readers of the Burg certainly don't need and will object to even reading about on social and moral grounds but we offer only for the sake of completeness...
Leathers was a gold-digging social climber who trolled Internet "sugar daddy" sites for wealthy men -- and was not above taking a few Benjamins just for "talking," according to her online chats and profiles, as well as school pals.
She went for Weiner, but her friends say cash was her real turn-on.
"She used sugardaddy.com to meet men," said a 27-year-old former girlfriend from Chicago who requested anonymity. "She met a few guys on that site when she was visiting me. She wants the lifestyle without working for it."
Leathers called herself a "22-year-old SugarBaby," according to her profile on the SugarDaddyForMe dating Web site.
Last summer, even as she was sexting the married and already scandal-scarred ex-congressman, Leathers used her friend's condo as her home base for dating wealthy Chicago men, according to her ex-pal, who said Leathers "was actively seeking men out to pay for her."
Then she'd boast about her conquests in texts, said the ex-pal, backing her story with a copy.
Leathers' texts and tweets also revealed that, during the period when she was exchanging nudie pics with Weiner, she was bragging smoking pot and taking Prozac, sleeping pills and Xanax.
"On Facebook, she posted something a few months ago. She said she had some big secret that could ruin someone's life," another high-school classmate, Ryan Hindliter, 23, told The Post. "I guess she might have been talking about Weiner. She always loved attention . . . She was always posting on Facebook and complimenting her own photos.
"I think this was all done to get fame and fortune, and the way she could do this was by throwing him under the bus before the election."
"She got exactly what she wanted -- 15 minutes of fame . . . like this is her big shot," he added.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/28/2013
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"we're running a Leaner Weiner Campaign!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/28/2013 10:35
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#2
Meaner Leaner Weiner fightin' machiner.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/28/2013 14:16
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Leathers' texts and tweets also revealed that, during the period when she was exchanging nudie pics with Weiner, she was bragging smoking pot and taking Pr(drug with oza in the middle)c, sleeping pills and X(drug with ana in the middle)x.
#1
Another interesting story from that day near Menotomy:
A little after 1:30 in the afternoon on April 19, 1775, several hardy residents of Menotomy who were not fit to serve in the militia captured British wagons full of supplies and reinforcements at this intersection.
The story of the wagons capture began earlier that morning, when British Lord Hugh Percy began marching about 1,000 men and two artillery pieces over Boston Neck through Roxbury with the goal of relieving the beleaguered Lt. Col. Francis Smith and his column returning from Concord. Percys reinforcements had been delayed passing through Cambridge at the place of a bridge that had been disassembled by the colonists. Although the British soldiers quickly reassembled the bridge so that infantry could easily cross, it was not strong enough to hold the heavy supply wagons that followed behind the troops. As a result, the convoy of supplies became separated from the main force.
A message was sent to Menotomy to inform the militia and minutemen of the wagon train and its situation. A group numbering twelve - later known as the old men of Menotomy who were up in years and unfit for military duty, met at Coopers Tavern to form a plan for capturing the wagons. They chose David Lamson, a courageous man supposedly of African and Indian descent to lead them in their attack on the convoy. The band hid behind a stonewall to wait for the convoys arrival. As it passed, Lamson and his men jumped up, leveled their muskets and ordered the British troops (one officer; thirteen soldiers) to surrender. When they refused to comply and instead hurried their horses to gallop away, Lamson and his men fired, killing a few horses and wounding some of the soldiers.
Frightened, the British soldiers abandoned their wagons and a number ran to Spy Pond, throwing their weapons in the water so that the colonial militia could not capture and use them and to hopefully avoid being fired upon again as they were unarmed. These soldiers walked around the pond until they met an old woman, Mother Batherick, who was digging dandelion greens so the story goes. They surrendered to her, begging for safety. Mother Batherick led them to the house of Captain Ephraim Frost, saying to her prisoners, If you ever get back, you tell King George that an old woman took six of his Grenadiers prisoner. The men were treated well and returned to British military control.
Later, English critics of the war would remark, If one old Yankee woman can take six Grenadiers prisoner, how many soldiers will it take to conquer the colonies in America?
Since the election, it seems as though a lot of people have suddenly gone off the reservation on Facebook, Twitter and blogs. And some of you are asking yourselves, Why? What happened? Well, todays your lucky day; one of those now-free souls is going to lay it out for you.
We have had ENOUGH of your crap!
For decades now, all you zombies have been berating us in public because we didnt publicly evangelize the party line. For decades now, all you zombies have been telling us how we should think if we want to be part of the club. If you want to be an actor, toe the line or youre blacklisted. If you want to be a writer, toe the line or youre blacklisted. If you want to be promoted at work, toe the line or youre blacklisted. For decades now, all you zombies have been parroting the party line without any thought whatsoever, proclaiming that youre smart and anyone who disagrees with you is obviously wrong without even listening to counter-arguments, while simultaneously claiming that youre open-minded. For decades now, all you zombies have been shouting, If youre not with us, youre against us, with complete disregard to the fact that this country is a melting pot of backgrounds and ideas, which simply cannot be reduced to a black-and-white line of right vs. wrong.
They're no more "Peacefull" Than an Apache attack, and the sooner people realize it, the better. They attack (And kill Muslims)as well as the general public, girls schools, ANY other Religion, and with seeming Impunity.
It's GOOD that others see them as murderous savages, They are.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/28/2013 14:14
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Islam is totten. Its amorally decayed religion that is eaten up with the cancer of internal contradictions overlaid on a diseased Culture.
They hate themselves and each other. We can best serve our own interests by assisting the Moslems in eating each other's guts.
get the Mooks to kill the Goons and make money off the ammo sales. America's biggest threat is not the Moslems..our biggest threat is the Left, our fellow Americans. John Kerry, Hillary, Obama, and Harry Reid are no accident.
Our Values are what make us American. The family , the Judeo-Christian ethos, and our willingness to provide opportunity to men who are willing to work for it.
We WILL win, but we have to keep the cost down and we have to fight smart and understand who our REAL enemies are. A good touchstone: if someone stands up when they play the National Anthem and is respectful of any man who wears the Uniform of the Nation...he's alright.
If he thinks only the stupid put on a uniform he's probably another John Kerry or a what does it matter, like Hillary.
If he's a journalist he probably needs to be castrated and shot. Obama time people. Thrill up your leg people. Walmart asscracks. The braindead democrats. Obama appeals to that sort.
#3
Sorry to disagree but the OWG Globalist concept of "MULTI-POLARITY" = PAR CO-SUPERPOWERS = NUCLEAR ISLAM/ISLAMISM.
The US may not adhere much longer, espec iff after 2015 iff not already, to the Reagan-Bush 41 era of unilateral "PEACE/DIPLOMACY THROUGH STRENGTH", but more by COLLECTIVE ACTION.
IMO this indics or infers that the Muslim World includ Radical Islam stands a very good chance of de facto achieving its OWG [Nuclear] CALIPHATE.
In April, Jordans King Abdullah came to Washington and passionately urged the United States to become captain of the team supporting Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad. Though he got his wish with the Obama administrations June 13 announcement that it will begin providing direct military aid to the Free Syrian Army, the diminutive monarch has a strange understanding of teamwork. When the Los Angeles Times subsequently published an article detailing how CIA instructors were on the ground in Jordan training rebels, the kings prime minister told reporters straight-faced that there is no training whatsoever of Syrian opposition forces in Jordan, and insisted that his government is not interfering in the incidents under way in Syria.
The rebels other major Arab sponsors display similar duplicity. Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been willing to covertly arm and equip Syrian rebels, but unwilling to do so openly, even as they urge Washington to pick up the banner and run with it.
The trend is not new. For decades, Sunni-led Arab governments shied away from openly challenging Tehran and its proxies, while privately pressing the United States to contain and roll back the so-called Shiite crescent stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Though partly attributable to concerns about strong popular sympathies for the Iranian-led resistance axis and restive Shiite minorities at home, the tiered statecraft of Arab leaders also reflected hard-nosed politico-strategic calculations geared more toward leveraging American pressure than adding to it.
The Saudis, for instance, discretely encouraged the Bush administrations high-profile efforts to pull Lebanon out of the Syrian-Iranian orbit from 2004 to 2008, while maintaining courteous diplomatic relations with Tehran (and with Assad, apart from one 18-month interlude) and making low-profile efforts to support their local clients.
Political constraints are even less of a factor for Arab leaders now that the Sunni Arab street has been brought squarely into agreement with them on the perils of Iranian regional ambitions. Concerns about Iranian subversion of Arab Shiites may discourage open participation in a bloody sectarian war, but they dont explain why Arab governments havent been doing everything possible covertly to support the rebels. Given ample resources, a rebel coalition drawing support from Syrias two-thirds Sunni Arab majority is sure to eventually win a war of attrition against pro-regime forces recruited primarily from Alawites comprising one-eighth of the population.
The problem is that they havent been given ample resources least of all money (the most important resource of all in a country with less and less of a gun shortage). Lack of funds is the main reason why the rebels still field substantially fewer combatants than the regime by most estimates, despite their enormous demographic advantage.
The reluctance of Arab regimes to support the rebels full throttle owes much to their anticipation that America will eventually intervene to stem the regional spillover (an expectation entirely consistent with the Obama administrations gradually deepening commitment to the rebel cause over the past two years). Their primary concern is not to accelerate the inevitable collapse of Syrias minoritarian autocracy it is to reap the greatest possible share of the spoils from it, at the least possible expense. This means giving various insurgent factions enough arms and financing under the table to win their respective loyalties and keep them fighting until America steps in, but not enough to enable an outright rebel victory.
Although Arab leaders are telling Washington that a larger American footprint in Syria will facilitate a peaceful solution to the war, their privately expressed faith in the palliative impact of U.S. intervention in the Arab world is disingenuous. Arab leaders arent waiting for Captain America because they think he will save the day. They are waiting because they want someone else to take responsibility for the horrific violence they know will yet be required to decisively defeat their enemy.
A car loaded with explosives rammed into the gates of an office housing Turkish embassy staff in the Somali capital, killing two people, witnesses and police said on Saturday, Reuters reported.
"A suicide car bomb targeted a building housing Turkish embassy workers near k4 (Kilometer Four). So far two people dead," Ahmed Mohamud, police officer told Reuters from the scene of the blast.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the bombing, but in the past, al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels have claimed responsibility for attacks, including one in-mid July that killed eight civilians.
The Turks are hosting peace talks and trying to get the clans to play nice with each other. That makes them a target for the Shaboobs.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/28/2013
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[Ynet] The corpse count from a pair of overnight bombings at a busy market in a Shiite-dominated region of northern Pakistain rose to 57, officials said Saturday.
As many as 167 people were also maimed in Friday's apparent sectarian attacks in the town of Parachinar, which sits in the Kurram tribal area that borders Afghanistan to the west, hospital official Shabir Hussain and Shiite leader Hamid Ali said. Hussain said almost all the dead and maimed were Shiites. There was no claim of responsibility.
[AnNahar] Afghanistan on Saturday expanded the registration of new voters to more insecure rural areas ahead of a landmark presidential election next year.
The registrations, which had already begun in cities, expanded to around 400 centers in all 34 provinces for those who have turned 18, have previously not registered or have lost their voter cards.
"We are going according to our timetable, and today we are launching the second phase of voter registration," Fazel Ahmad Manawi, head of Independent Elections Commission (IEC), told news hounds in Kabul.
"As part of the plan, 399 voter registration centers, mostly in districts and villages, will open today, and this is in addition to 41 already opened in May," he said.
The registration materials have already been sent to the centers both by land and air, he said.
In May, the IEC started registering new voters for the 2014 elections opening 41 centers in primarily urban areas and registering around 130,000 new voters so far.
Four million names are expected to be added to the electoral roll, currently containing 16 million voters, before polls in April 2014, though many Afghans fear that the date could be delayed due to the threat of attack by the Taliban insurgency.
"Although we are optimistic about elections, since Afghanistan's situation is well known to everyone, we do expect problems," Manawi said.
Kaker in Zabul, Nawa in Ghazni, Deshu and Baghran in Helmand ...an Afghan province populated mostly by Pashtuns, adjacent to Injun country in Pak Balochistan... are districts that are not under government control and hence the registration materials have not been sent there, he said.
"If the security does not improve in those districts, we will use adjacent centers to register voters," he said.
The presidential race slated for April 2014 is seen as a crucial step towards a legitimate government that will take over when 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... relinquishes power.
Karzai is constitutionally barred from running in elections after serving two terms.
The election is also seen as a key test of the success of U.S.-led international military intervention since the Taliban regime fell in 2001.
It also remains a key test for around 350,000 Afghan cops who have recently taken the full security responsibility from NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... , as the force completes its withdrawal next year.
[AnNahar] Saudi authorities have expelled a Lebanese businessman for alleged ties with Hizbullah, a month after Riyadh announced plans to deport Lebanese who authorities accuse of supporting the Iranian-backed Shiite party, al-Akhbar newspaper reported Saturday.
Al-Akhbar said that the man, whom it did not identify, has several companies and factories that employ hundreds of individuals.
He was expelled after a tip off that he sold some properties to people with ties to Hizbullah, the daily added.
The group's backing of the Syrian regime has angered the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs... The Gulf Cooperation Council -- which includes 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 the Soddy national face... , Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the UAE -- has said the bloc would crack down on Hizbullah members as part of a joint effort to limit the group's "financial and business transactions."
Hizbullah says the group has no business interests in the Gulf. However, by candlelight every wench is handsome... there are more than half a million Lebanese working in the Gulf states, including tens of thousands in Saudi Arabia. Many are Shiites.
Syrian government forces captured a historic mosque in the central city of Homs on Saturday, expelling rebel forces who had been in control of the 13th century landmark for more than a year and dealing a symbolic blow to opposition forces, state media said.
State-run news agency SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying that troops took control of the Khalid Ibn Al Walid Mosque in the heavily disputed northern neighborhood of Khaldiyeh.
After capturing the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanon border last month, government troops launched an offensive on rebel-held areas in Homs, Syrias third largest city, late in June. They have been pushing into Khaldiyeh and other neighborhoods in the Old City that have been under opposition control since 2011.
The mosque, famous for its nine domes and two minarets, has been a symbol for rebels in the city that is known as the capital of the revolution. On Monday, government troops shelled the mosque, damaging the tomb of Ibn Al Walid, a revered figure in Islam. Five days later, they took the mosque.
Such piety...
Units of our brave army have fully controlled the area of Khalid Ibn Al Walid mosque in the city of Homs, SANA said, quoting the official.
A Homs-based activist who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Bilal said troops entered the mosque area from the eastern side. He said regime forces now control more than 60 per cent of Khaldiyeh.
There are very fast developments in Khaldiyeh, Abu Bilal told The Associated Press via Skype. He said he has no further details from local rebel commanders about movements on the ground.
On top of its symbolic value, Homs is also a geographic lynchpin in Syria. The main highway from Damascus to the north as well as the coastal region, which is a stronghold of President Bashar Assads Alawite sect, runs through Homs, and both rebels and the regime place a high strategic value on the city.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/28/2013
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TRIPOLI, Libya -- More than 1,000 detainees escaped from a prison near the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi in a massive jailbreak Saturday, as protesters stormed the offices of political parties in Libya's main cities.
That movie sure is getting around...
How soon until the tumbrels start bring bloody aristos to the loving embrace of Madame la Guillotine?
It wasn't immediately clear if the jailbreak at the Koyfiya prison came as part of the protests or if inmates received outside help. Protesters had massed across the country angry over the killing of an activist critical of the country's Muslim Brotherhood group.
Those who escaped either face or were convicted of serious charges, a security official at Koyfiya prison said, confirming the jailbreak.
There also was confusion initially about how many prisoners broke out, with numbers of escapees ranging as high as 1,200. Benghazi's security situation is among the most precarious in post-revolution Libya.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/28/2013
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#1
There also was confusion initially about how many prisoners broke out, with numbers of escapees ranging as high as 1,200
ISLAMABAD: Indian firing killed a Pakistani soldier and wounded another on Saturday in Kashmir, the army said.
Oops. Our bad.
The Indian troops staged an unprovoked attack across the Line of Control (LOC). A soldier embraced martyrdom while another was seriously injured due to unprovoked firing by Indian troops in Rawalakot area at the Line of Control (LoC), the Pakistan Army said in a statement.
A Foreign Office spokesman in a statement said it was unfortunate that such an incident took place at a time when the two governments were making sincere efforts towards improving relations for resolution of all outstanding disputes.
Pakistan calls upon the government of India to carry out a thorough investigation into this grave incident and to ensure that such occurrences do not take place, the spokesman said in the statement.
On the other hand, the Indian army claimed it had fired in a calibrated manner in response to Pakistani firing. Pakistani troops started firing unprovoked in the morning, firing rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machinegun fire and small arms, Indian defence spokesman Colonel RK Palta told AFP.
Our side retaliated in a calibrated manner and there were no casualties on our side, he said, adding he had no comment on Islamabads statement that Indian firing had caused Pakistani casualties.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/28/2013
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Must be, Pappy. According to Dawn, reported without a trace of self-consciousness:
The incident took place on Rawlakots Nezapir sector near the LoC at about 10:30 am on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the Indian army blamed Pakistani troops for violating the ceasefire.
"Pakistani troops have targeted Indian posts by firing rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns along the [Line of Control] in Doda Battalion forward area in Poonch district since 7:30 a.m. local time today," the Press Trust of India quoted an unidentified senior Army officer as saying.
#3
Paks: "Hey! We're the ones that's supposed to do unprovoked attacks! Get it straight!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/28/2013 10:43
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The average Pak soldier is a piss stain. They killed 3million dirty kuffir Hindu civilians in Bangladesh in just 8 months. Hard heavy moslem work against unarmed villagers. And then when the Indian Army went in to stop it the Paks fought ONE DAY and ran tongue out and eyeballs rolling for another week before they collapsed without really standing anywhere for more than a couple of hours. They surrendered the whole country in less than two weeks and then told everyone what heroes they were.
The west-central state of Michoacan has long been a haven for drug traffickers. Its where Mexicos modern drug war began in 2006 when then-president Felipe Calderon sent troops to quell the cartels. The drug war isnt an easy one to win if any war is ever easy. But Michoacans war is hard even by Mexicos standards...
MOGADISHU, Somalia--- A car bomb went off at Mogadishu's Sanca junction leaving one civilian dead and three others wounded according to witnesses on Saturday.
Witnesses added that a Land Cruiser laden with explosive devices detonated the explosion, "I saw the severed dead body of the driver lying on the wreckage, I also saw three bleeding people who were injured and I felt shock," said an eyewitness.
Local reports told that the government forces sealed the roads linking Sanca junction to the other districts shortly after the explosion and officials said investigations are underway.
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Vice-President Mohamed ElBaradei on Saturday strongly condemned the excessive use of force in Egypt after deadly clashes between supporters of ousted president Mohammed Mursi and security forces.
I strongly condemn the excessive use of force and the deaths, and I am working hard and in every direction to end the confrontation in a peaceful way, God protect Egypt and have mercy on the victims, he said on his Twitter account.
Dozens of Mursis supporters were shot dead early Saturday in the deadliest incident in a month as violence erupted after huge rallies for and against the Islamist president who was ousted in a military-led coup on July 3.
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[10NEWS] In a news conference Friday, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner said he plans to take two weeks off for therapy.
"On August 5, I will be entering a counseling clinic to undergo two weeks of intensive therapy," Filner announced.
As soon as he made that remark, a sound system failure occurred and the mayor was unable to continue. He stood at the podium for a couple of minutes and waited to see if the problem could be resolved.
It could not, so Filner left. He returned a few minutes later and told those in attendance that he would restart his statement.
"I must take responsibility," the mayor said, calling his behavior inexcusable. "I apologize to the people of San Diego."
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#1
Cramming for the final, Bob?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/28/2013 14:12
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Intensive Therapy, I guess that's what the kids are calling it these days.
MOGADISHU, Somalia -- The Somali Military Court has executed four federal government soldiers at Mogadishu police academy on Saturday morning, Garowe Online reports.
The four men -- Ali Mohamed Aden, Osman Mohamed Dirie, Ibrahim Mohamed Hussein and Hassan Mohamud Abukar -- were convicted of murder and they were executed by the Somali Federal Government firing squad with court, police and military officials present.
Speaking to the media at the spot, the chairman of Somalia's Military court Col. Liban Ali Yarow said three of the executed soldiers were charged with murder of military official named Afdhere in Mogadishu on 7 July 2009 while the other one was charged with murder of a civilian in May 2012.
Somali Military Court previously carried out similar executions and the government soldiers are always accused of rape and illegal activities mainly targeting internally displaced people.
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A nice discussion by Richard Fernandez AKA Wretchard about the US decline in its military deterrence, and Japanese unique solution to its defense against an aggressive China.
Gawd help the Chinese if Japan ever returns to carrier naval aviation.
From TFA:
"In reality, I doubt the U.S. would actually fight." This represents the collapse of deterrence. It means that in order to convince enemies of American seriousness going forward Washington has to actually fight, which is a whole lot more expensive than simply maintaining a reputation.
When the public thinks of a non-US navy it usually thinks of Britain's or France's. But Japan has twice as many submarines as France and twice as many surface combatants as the Royal Navy. And what its navy actually buys and builds is the best true indicator of what Tokyo actually thinks of Washington.
#3
That is the time remaining in the Obama Presidency.
I think the Chinese are in for a brutal surprise if they decide to take on the JSDF's navy & airforce.
Another typical day at the artificial sand dune separating Yemen from the Magic Kingdom.
[AnNahar] A Saudi border guard was maimed in a shootout with three compatriots who were trying to cross the kingdom's southern frontier illegally into Yemen, authorities said on Saturday.
A border guards statement said Thursday's clash took place when a patrol spotted a vehicle attempting to cross in the Sharoora area in southwestern Najran province.
The patrol came under fire when it chased the vehicle, which hit a sand barrier along the frontier, said the statement carried by SPA state news agency.
The three men were eventually forced to surrender, and were now being questioned by authorities, the SPA report said.
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 the Soddy national face... 's mostly non-existent border with Yemen is frequently crossed by smugglers as well as Islamists seeking to join al-Qaeda snuffies in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation.
[Ynet] Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported Egyptian forces launched an operation, dubbed "Desert Storm", to eradicate terrorism and violence in Sinai. The military action aims to block Death Eaters' bases and end terrorist activity in the region, primarily in northern and central Sinai.
The paper cited senior sources claiming the operation will last for two days. According to the same sources, the Egyptian army is strictly monitoring roads leading from Sinai to Delta and Cairo. According to preliminary estimates, the number of Death Eaters in the area does not exceed 500.
MARKA, Somalia -- Somali government troops fought each other along clan loyalties last week in Lower Shabelle region, and the federal government has dispatched a ministerial delegation to resolve the violent dispute over regional influence, Garowe Online reports.
Brilliant -- build a 'national' army out of competing clans, each of whom will canoodle with the Shaboobs, and station units composed of different clans in territory that both clans claim as their own. What could possibly go wrong?
Fighting erupted on July 24 in the outskirts of Marka, provincial capital of Lower Shabelle region, between Somali government troops belonging to Biyamal and Habar Gedir clans. Local reports said at least three soldiers were killed.
The fighting erupted after one group of government soldiers attacked another group of government soldiers at El Warego village near Marka. Renewed fighting occurred on July 25 in Janale area, local reports said.
On July 26, Lower Shabelle Governor Abdulkadir Mohamed Nur Sidi accused unnamed groups in Mogadishu of "fuelling" the conflict in Lower Shabelle region.
"Clan fighting among government troops is unfortunate. The fighting is fuelled from Mogadishu by select groups who are responsible for it," said Governor Sidi.
"Unfortunate" is such a loaded word...
Also on July 26, Somali government dispatched a ministerial delegation led by Interior and National Security Minister Abdikarim Hussein Guled, along with a number of federal parliamentarians to try and diffuse tensions.
Speaking to reports later that day, Minister Guled declared that a "ceasefire" had been reached and that government troops and AMISOM forces were now in control of areas where the fighting occurred. Minister Guled said the government officials had meetings with traditional elders to try and diffuse clan tensions in the region.
Local reports say political tensions have been heightened in Lower Shabelle region in recent months, as the Biyamal clan the native residents of Lower Shabelle region clashed with Habar Gedir clan members, who settled in Lower Shabelle region since the outbreak of Somali civil war in 1991.
According to a new report from the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, the 3rd Brigade of the Somali National Army (SNA) controls the Afgoye-Marka area of Lower Shabelle region.
"The 3rd Brigade is principally drawn from the Hawiye / Habar Gedir / Ayr clan. It consists of approximately 840 men...General Mohamed Roble Jimale 'Gobale' (Hawiye / Habar Gedir / Ayr), a close associate of Indha'adde, officially controls the 3rd Brigade", according to the UN report.
The report alleged that areas under the control of the 3rd Brigade have been "heavily infiltrated by Al Shabaab" and that 3rd Brigade troops have "repeatedly been involved in setting up illegal checkpoints and harassing civilians, including raping women", the UN report noted.
Citing military intelligence sources, the UN report stated: "During the course of 2012, 3rd Brigade has engaged in skirmishes with at least one other SNA brigade (6th Brigade)."
Who are likely no better behaved than the 3rd Brigade...
Yusuf Mohamed Indha'adde, the former warlord of Lower Shabelle region, is known to have used Habar Gedir clan militia to subjugate local populations in the 2000s in Lower Shabelle region -- including Biyamal clan -- and Indha'adde remains deeply unpopular in Lower Shabelle region among native clans.
Gobale, a former warlord in Kismayo and now government military officer, commands Indha'adde's clan militia aiming to exert Habar Gedir clan influence and domination in Lower Shabelle region and thereby exacerbating clan tensions in Lower Shabelle region.
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[AnNahar] They're lightweight, easy to assemble and have covers that are supposed to keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The U.N. refugee agency wants to test these individual housing units with an eye toward using them as shelter for Syrians fleeing their country's civil war.
But the plan is meeting stiff resistance from Lebanese officials, who fear that elevating living conditions for Syrian refugees ever so slightly will discourage them from returning home once the fighting ends. That frustrates aid organizations who are desperately trying to manage the massive refugee presence across the country.
So the Egyptians don't like them, and the Jordanians don't like them, and the Turks don't like them, and now we find out that the Lebanese don't like them. Syrians: the new Palestinians...
Leb's refusal to set up any kind of organized accommodation for tens of thousands of Syrians -- including refugee camps or government-sanctioned tent sites -- is a reflection of its own civil war demons. It underlines the nation's deep seated fear of a repeat of the 1975-1990 war, for which many Lebanese at least partly blame Paleostinian refugees.
Many regard the Syrians with suspicion and are worried that the refugees, most of them Sunni Mohammedans, would stay in the country permanently, upsetting Leb's delicate sectarian balance and re-igniting the country's explosive mix of Christian and Mohammedan sects.
"It's the fear of everything permanent, or semi-permanent, because of the Paleostinian experience in Leb," said Makram Maleeb, a program manager for a Syrian refugee crisis unit at Leb's Ministry for Social Affairs.
"Any move toward a camp situation is quite worrisome because it suggests a permanent situation for the refugees," he told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
Paleostinians living in Arab countries -- including the 450,000 in Leb -- are descendants of the hundreds of thousands who fled or were driven from their homes in the war that followed Israel's creation in 1948. They remain in Leb's 12 refugee camps because Israel and the Paleostinians have never reached a deal that would enable them to return to their homes that are now in Israel.
The civil war in Syria, now in its third year, has killed more than 100,000 people and uprooted millions from their homes. Many fled to Iraq, Turkey, Jordan and Leb, a short drive away from the capital, Damascus.
On any given day in Leb, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of refugees arrive in cars loaded with children and belongings. Their presence has swelled the country's population of 4.5 million by a fifth. It's an astounding statistic for the tiny country and represents the highest number of refugees per capita of any country in the region.
Officials say an estimated 1.2 million Syrians are now in Leb -- including some 620,000 registered refugees. Most arrived over the past eight months.
With the government providing none of the facilities and land that authorities in Turkey, Jordan and Iraq have allocated for the refugees, many Syrians in Leb live in appalling conditions, finding shelter in slums, tents and tin shacks strung with laundry lines and wedged between farm lands outside towns and cities.
On a casual walk in Beirut, one finds Syrians sheltering in underground parking lots, under bridges and old construction sites with no running water, sanitation, electricity or protection from Leb's sizzling summers and its freezing winters.
"The kids get sick all the time here," said Raghda, a 48-year-old mother of eight, living in an abandoned cop shoppe in the eastern Lebanese town of Majdal Anjar, along with 21 other relatives. They are crammed into three rooms without proper sanitation or clean water.
About 10 percent of the refugees are accommodated in unfinished private houses, and others live in garages, shops and collective shelters, according to the UNHCR. Most of them -- over 80 percent -- rent accommodation that costs more than $200 a month on average.
Lebanese officials say they are aware of the magnitude of the crisis, the health risks involved and the possibility that deepening resentment of refugees among the hosting population could turn into an armed conflict inside Leb as the civil war drags on in Syria.
Still, they insist the government will not approve any plans for setting up refugee camps or sanction erecting any kind of structure specifically designed to accommodate refugee families on Lebanese soil no matter who designs it and who pays for it.
"It's distressing and everyone is feeling anxious, wondering if they will ever go back as the fighting goes on and on and on," Maleeb said.
Still, he said it was unlikely the housing unit would be approved.
Ninette Kelley, UNHCR representative in Leb, said the refugees "desperately want to return home." But having people live in appalling conditions will not force them out of Leb before the fighting stops in Syria, she said.
"'There is this psychological worry that if people are put in a semi-permanent structure, they will never leave," Kelley told the AP. They will leave, she said, adding that one of the greatest impediments of going home after the fighting ends is not having a place to live in Syria.
The 17.5-square-meter (yard) refugee housing unit would offer a family of five a "more dignified life in exile," said Kamel Deriche, UNHCR's operations manager in Leb, and enables refugees to dismantle it, pack it and carry it home to reuse as a temporary accommodation until their family home is rebuilt.
Compared to a tent, which has to be replaced every three to four years, the unit's life span is expected to be up to seven years. And the price of about $1,000 per unit makes it more economical, Deriche said.
"It's not a permanent structure and we are not establishing camps by any stretch of the imagination," Kelley said, adding that the unit would be only one of several shelter options for the agency to use.
A prototype of the prefabricated house designed by the Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA has been sitting in the front yard of UNHCR's Beirut headquarters for a month.
The agency has been lobbying Lebanese officials for permission to try out 15 units over a period of six months before they can be deployed, but so far to no avail. UNHCR also intends to test the units in climate conditions of northern Iraq and in Æthiopia, Deriche said.
Lebanese officials say the historic connotation of a tent for refugees, let alone a housing unit, weighs heavy on the nation that is still reeling from the devastating 15-year civil war. The Syrian fighting has frequently spilled over into Leb over the past two years, deepening tensions between pro- and anti-Syrian politicians, who have been unable to form a new government since the prime minister resigned in March.
"There will be no camps and family shelters, wooden or pre-fabricated, whatsoever in Leb," said Maleeb, the government official.
Anything to do with the Syrian refugees, he added, is "a big political decision, and one that cannot be taken by a caretaker government."
[AnNahar] Fighting in the past two days between rival tribes in Sudan's Darfur region has killed 94 people, despite a peace deal between them, a tribal leader said on Saturday.
"Since yesterday there has been a clash between us and the Salamat after they tried to attack us," Ahmed Khiri, who described himself as a leader of fighters from the Misseriya tribe, told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"We lost eight of our men and killed 86 from the other side."
Gunmen attacked a coastguard checkpost in southwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing seven officials and wounding seven others, officials said. The incident happened in the Suntsar area of Gwadar district, 1,420 kilometres southwest of Quetta, the capital of the oil and gas rich Baluchistan province that borders Iran and Afghanistan.
Around 24 gunmen armed with rockets and heavy weapons, attacked the checkpost and killed seven coastguard officials, provincial home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani told AFP.
He said at least seven coastguard officials were also injured in the early morning attack.
A local tribal police official Muhammad Ali also confirmed the attack and casualties and said the identity of the attackers was not immediately known.
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Cairo (CNN) -- Egypt's interim interior minister blamed supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy for violence Saturday that left dozens dead and hundreds more wounded. The statement appears to signal a rapidly waning tolerance of Morsy's Muslim Brotherhood by the military-backed government.
The comments by Minister Mohamed Ibrahim followed clashes overnight between Morsy's supporters and those opposed to his rule that left dozens dead, an escalation of violence that has raised concerns among Western leaders about the stability of a key ally in the region.
Ibrahim did not outright disavow claims by Muslim Brotherhood protesters that police fired on them. But interim Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei condemned the "excessive use of force" that resulted in deaths, state-run EGYNews reported.
Tensions between the sides were likely to be further inflamed after Ibrahim told reporters in a televised news conference that Morsy would probably be moved to the same prison where ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak is being held. The decision, according to Ibrahim, will be made by an investigative judge. Morsy has been ordered jailed by a judge for 15 days on allegations, predating his election, that he had collaborated with the Palestinian group Hamas, according to state media.
Morsy has not been seen publicly since he was forced from office. But an attorney who has visited with Morsy's former chief of staff, who also is being detained, told CNN that the former president is being "treated with the utmost respect."
"He is treated like a statesman," Nasser Amin said after meeting with Refa'a al-Tahtawi. But the problem, Amin said, is that Morsy and others who are being held "can't contact the outside world or lawyers."
Morsy has been interrogated twice, once on July 17 and again on July 24, according to al-Tahtawi, Amin said. Egyptian law does not require an attorney be present for initial interrogations.
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#1
Interior Minister to Mursi supporters: you're gonna get it and soon
Plainly hidden message there.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/28/2013 9:26
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[AnNahar] Unknown assailants vandalized on Friday two billboards with writings in support of Syria's rebel al-Nusra Front, reported the National News Agency.
The vandals wrote the term "al-Nusra Front" on two billboards on the Iaat-Deir al-Ahmar road in the Bekaa.
They also wrote "the al-Nusra Front is coming" on a wall at a square in the town of Shlifa.
On June 10, a bomb was found in the Hay al-Sellom area in Beirut's southern suburbs allegedly signed by the al-Nusra Front and directed against Hizbullah.
Later in April, social media websites circulated a photograph of an SUV brandishing the flag of the rebel group.
The vehicle was photographed as it was passing through the northern Lebanese region of Zgharta.
Syrian authorities have repeatedly warned that al-Nusra Front members could be heading to Leb.
The army had jugged Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try! a number of individuals who belong to the group.
[AnNahar] Hizbullah's armed wing wired almost $100,000 (75,000 euros) to two men wanted over a kaboom that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, a newspaper report said Friday.
According to the 24 Hours daily, the money was to help organize the blast at Burgas airport on the Black Sea on July 18, 2012, and to carry out reconnaissance in other countries.
The attack on the tourist bus also killed the vehicle's Bulgarian driver -- a Mohammedan -- and left 35 people injured. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis abroad since 2004.
Israel immediately blamed Hizbullah but it took until February for Sofia to make the "justified conclusion" that it agreed.
This contributed to the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... 's decision on Monday to blacklist the group's military wing.
The actual bomber died in the attack and has still not been identified.
But Bulgaria this week named his two suspected accomplices as Australian passport-holder Maliad Farah, 32, and Canadian citizen Hassan El Hajj Hassan, 25, both Lebanese-born.
According to 24 Hours, which cited foreign intelligence services and international banks for its report, the money was wired to their Canadian and Australian bank accounts.
The Presa newspaper reported meanwhile that fake U.S. driver's licences used by the men were made on a printer at Beirut's Lebanese International University, where they studied engineering.
The men had undergone military training in Leb in late 2010 and early 2011, Presa added, citing Sherlocks.
Neither the interior ministry nor prosecutors would comment on the reports.
[AnNahar] At least 29 people, including 19 children, died in a missile strike by regime forces on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, a watchdog said Saturday, revising an earlier toll.
Uncounted duckies, kittens and fluffy puppies piled on the side to be dealt with later.
"At least 29 people, including 19 children and four women, were killed in Aleppo's Bab Nairab neighborhood in a surface-to-surface missile strike by regime forces" on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britannia-based watchdog, which relies on a wide network of medics and activists on the ground, had earlier given a toll of 18 dead, including three children.
A hard boy group said the toll could rise as rescue operations were still underway on Saturday.
The Observatory said the army was aiming at rebel headquarters, including a base of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), in Bab Nairab, in the south of Aleppo city.
"But the missile fell dozens of meters (yards) away," the Observatory said.
An earlier report suggested that more than one missile had been fired.
"My whole family was wiped out, my whole family," a boy in tears said near the rubble of his home, in a video posted by the Observatory.
War stinks, and only the Americans and Israelis can be trusted to even try to be accurate.
The hard boy Syrian Revolution General Commission said in a statement that the corpse count could rise as rescuers were still trying to pull people from under the rubble.
At least two paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers were killed and 25 others wounded in an attack on their checkpost on Saturday in the northwestern town of Tal that borders the restive North Waziristan tribal region.
"Around 50 militants attacked an FC checkpost and exchanged fire with the soldiers for over two hours, which killed two FC soldiers and wounded 25 others," a local intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.
Another intelligence official also confirmed the incident and said that the attack was repulsed after FC troops retaliated. He added that 18 militants were killed in retaliatory fire by the FC .
The northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is on the frontline of a seven-year Taleban insurgency and abuts the semi-autonomous tribal belt, where US drone strikes target Taleban and Al Qaeda operatives.
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HANGU/PESHAWAR: At least six terrorists were killed during a clash with security forces at a check post in Hangu. According to details, the terrorists attacked the check post in Speen Tal area near Hangu late on Friday. Security forces retaliated, killing six attackers. According to Frontier Constabulary (FC), four FC officials were also injured in the attack. Both sides used heavy weapons during the fighting which lasted for more than four hours. Security forces cordoned off the area after the incident and launched a search operation.
Separately, terrorists also attacked a joint check post of security forces and police in Matni area of Peshawar on Friday night. The attackers fled the scene when law enforcement agencies returned fire. A civilian was killed and four others sustained injuries when a mortar shell hit a house during the fight.
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Fiskable material from the land of the Browns and Indians.
In 2002, Michael Green extracted a single promise from me during the year I spent reporting about his life after he spent 13 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.
Green, who is African-American, knew I'd be giving a lot of speeches about his story, including at high schools in Cleveland. He saw an opportunity to save lives.
"Tell the boys," he said to me over and over. "Tell the boys this comes from me: If the police stop you, don't ever run. Take your hands out of your pockets. Immediately. Put your hands over your head. Immediately. Stand perfectly still, and keep your opinions to yourself." Experience is a hard master...
"You have to promise," he said. "You have to warn them." Aaand they probably won't listen...
I've written about this promise a number of times over the years. I do that because I want to keep my word and share the warning in as large a forum as possible. If I'm honest with myself, though, I have to admit I also do it because I want to feel a little less guilty about my unearned privilege as a white woman. As a white mother, to be precise. My worries never rival those of most African-American mothers. Most days, I'd rather not think about that. Again, such privilege. If you'd rather not think about it, why'd you publish this piece? Sometimes more can be gained by reflecting in silence than trying to 'splain yourself to a racist mob.
A decade ago, neither Green nor I knew to warn about the likes of George Zimmerman. He was no cop, despite his fancy notions of himself as a civilian enforcer. Instead, he was empowered by a law cooked up by the National Rifle Association and a certainty in his right to pursue an unarmed teenager who fit his description of a suspect. Some warned that this could happen, but we all should have seen it coming. Unarmed teenager my ass. Trayvon Martin was built like a high school defensive lineman, who can do incredible damage from a dead sprint. As long as drug addled, brain damaged teens in hoodies, black or white, are out late at night, this WILL happen again. And if the 19 million who live in Florida want to remove self defense laws, the NRA can't stop them. Stop lying and making this about anything other than right and wrong.
Earlier this month, in a speech to the NAACP, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder described a family ritual all too familiar to many in the audience. His father sat him down. The talk his father gave, Holder said, was "about how, as a young black man, I should interact with the police, what to say and how to conduct myself if I was ever stopped or confronted in a way that I thought was unwarranted. Now, I'm sure my father felt certain at that time that my parents' generation would be the last that had to worry about such things for their children." Probably good advice regardless of race. My father sat me down at 14 as well. But I'm not black, white privilege, don't you know...
Some family traditions just won't die in this country. After Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, Holder sat his own 15-year-old son down.
"This was a father-son tradition I hoped would not need to be handed down," he said. "But as a father who loves his son and who is more knowing in the ways of the world, I had to do this to protect my boy. I am his father, and it is my responsibility not to burden him with the baggage of eras long gone but to make him aware of the world that he must still confront. This is a sad reality in a nation that is changing for the better in so many ways."
Ever since the verdict was announced and Zimmerman walked free, I've been trying to write this column. How can I not have something to say about this?
Yet every approach feels wrong. Maybe because your whole premise is wrong. Maybe this has more to do with right and wrong, rather than race.
I feel conspicuously white -- and defensive -- embarrassingly eager to talk about how I raised my children to be better than their parents and their grandparents before them, how they never see race before face, how they never think to describe their friends by the color of their skin. If you feel white, lady you are racist, plain and simple, and don't lie about it.
Just saying that out loud makes me wince. Oh, great. Another obnoxious white liberal celebrating her own good intentions. Obnoxious in any race.
I keep fighting the urge to explain myself to my black friends, to offer evidence of how I could have turned out worse than this clumsy version of me. Sane black folks thinks a white person who says these things is crazy anyway, the non racists ones that is.
There are many, many times when I miss my father, but this week isn't one of them. I'm glad not to have that conversation that rips open old wounds and launches another round of estrangement. He once grounded me for an entire summer after he found out about my seventh-grade crush on a black boy.
"We don't mix," he yelled, eyes bulging, fists flexing at his side. I look back on that summer as the first time I realized my beloved father was wrong, just wrong, and I no longer wanted to be just like him. Daddy drinks coz you're a liberal, honey, not just coz of your taste in men.
After more than a decade as a columnist, I know what's coming. Just telling that story will trigger another round of angry emails. Some white readers will demand to know what kind of daughter says such things about her father. Hint: A liberal who is wrong on just about everything. And if black readers fail to condemn you about your racist hatred for your father, then that just about sums up the whole problem for blacks, and what got Trayvon Martin killed. His father was a racist gangbanger, whom Trayvon Martin emulated. He listened to his father.
On and on it goes. Which is a shame, not that liberals understand the concept...
I was raised by a conservative father & mother who actually treated the world in a race neutral manner. I learned the lessons well to judge people by their character not their color. Yet, today, that makes me a racist according to fools like this and the whole PC mob.
#9
"Tell the boys," he said to me over and over. "Tell the boys this comes from me: If the police stop you, don't ever run. Take your hands out of your pockets. Immediately. Put your hands over your head. Immediately. Stand perfectly still, and keep your opinions to yourself."
Hmmm. KEEP YOUR OPINONS TO YOURSELF.
Or you're dead.
That seems to be a major problem with Blacks.
SHUT YOUR MOUTH.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/28/2013 9:19
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#10
I thought it was a cogent, well written article.
#11
Actually it's a perch of mainstream black-cultural inferiority. Which only continues and worsens because of subsidy (mainly from working white folks).
#14
Nice perspective, P2K (#7). It's all about perspective! The perch has a very narrow perspective, and likes it that way.
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/28/2013 12:37
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#15
My worries never rival those of most African-American mothers.
A few days ago someone made a point that in the days between Travon Martin's death and Zimmerman's acquittal,13,500 Blacks had been murdered. 12,500 of them had been killed by other Blacks and 1,000 had been killed by other races. In fact, White murderers account for only 7% of the murders of Blacks.
So yes - Black fathers and mothers should be worried when their son goes out for some Skittles. They should be worried their son will be a victim of gang violence. Being killed by a White is far down the list. Getting killed by the cops is even further down the list. Something like 90 Blacks are shot by the police each year (in the entire US). In fact cops are twice as likely to be shot by Black as to shoot a sweet little boy like Trayvon.
White mothers have less to worry about because White boys are much less likely to commit murder.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
07/28/2013 13:30
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#16
"White Privilege" is the new "code word" for reparations, affirmitine action, revenge, class envy and extortion. I am sure our country will take it, hook, line and sinker.
#17
I am reminded, for some reason, of the musical West Side Story. I loved it when I was young, but when I saw it a few months ago, I cried all the way through. Then I enjoyed the music and the dancing, and of course the romantic play on Romeo and Juliet. This time I saw the horror of gang violence (ethnic white vs. hispanic, in the story), and the refusal of the community to allow anyone to escape. Our writer has perhaps not seen the musical, or the various other Broadway musicals based on Romeo and Juliet, amd therefore cannot conceive that any but African-Americans might endure violence and assumptions from society at large.
One might say, those who do not know history are unaware of repeating it.
#18
From a wide front porch under slowing turning fans, afternoon nap finished, iced tea at the ready, watching the many species of lovely Georgia song birds attending the feeder..... 'white privileged' and proud.
#19
These are the same Lefties(tm) who cried "Black Majority rule for South Africa" who somehow have a serious internal and intellectual problems with white majority rule in America. Thus the use of the term 'privilege' to cover their need to dictate and rule lord regardless of the lack of basic principles.
#20
I read once that white guys are taught that when pulled over you try to get your wallet out and put it on the dashboard and keep your hands visible and make no quick movies or talk crap because anytging you do increasea your chance of getting that ticket.
Blacks tend to be offended because they were pulled over for driving while black and give attitude.
These two factors explain why preportionally both are stopped the same amount but more blacks take the step from oulled over to arrested.
Egypt's deposed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who has been accused of murder and other crimes, is likely to be transferred to the same Cairo prison where former leader Hosni Mubarak is now held, the interior minister said on Saturday.
Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said a decision on where to hold Morsi, whose current location has not been announced, would be up to the investigating judge. When pressed by journalists about where Morsi would be taken, he said "mostly likely to Torah" prison.
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[AnNahar] Kuwait on Saturday awaited the results of its second parliamentary election in eight months, after day-long voting and early indications showing a higher turnout despite an opposition boycott.
No official figures were released when polling stations closed at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT) but state-run Kuwait television broadcast partial figures indicating a higher turnout from December's record-low 40 percent.
The first results for the 50-seat parliament in the oil-rich emirate were expected to trickle in after midnight (2100 GMT), as ballot papers are still counted manually in Kuwait.
At some of the 100 polling centers, specially in tribal areas which boycotted the previous polls, voting was brisk while the pace was slow elsewhere amid scorching temperatures.
Information Minister Sheikh Salman Humoud al-Sabah said after visiting a polling station earlier in the day in Jahra, west of Kuwait City, that turnout was high.
Besides opposition calls for a boycott, the sweltering heat of around 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), combined with the Ramadan dawn-to-dusk Mohammedan fast, also affected turnout.
It was the second time the opposition had called for a boycott in protest at an electoral law that it alleges enables the ruling al-Sabah family-controlled government to manipulate the outcome.
The law was ruled legal in June by the constitutional court, even though it dissolved parliament on procedural flaws, and ordered Saturday's election.
"I just hope this parliament completes its (four-year) term," said civil aviation employee Bassam Eid, after voting in al-Qadsia.
"We are frustrated at the repeated dissolution of the house," Eid told Agence La Belle France Presse.
The last two parliaments were dissolved by the constitutional court on procedural grounds, while previous parliaments were dissolved by the emir.
"I am really concerned at the turn of events in the country as there will be no development without political stability, which we hope will be achieved after this election," Dr. Jawad Abulhassan told AFP.
It was Kuwait's third general polls since February 2006 and the sixth in the past seven years.
Some groups that boycotted the last election -- notably the liberal National Democratic Alliance and some of the emirate's powerful tribes -- did take part on Saturday.
But only a few opposition members were among the 300 hopeful candidates.
They included eight women, the lowest number since Kuwaiti women won political rights in 2005.
Around 30 Arab election observers visited polling stations and were assisted by monitors from the Kuwait Transparency Society.
The opposition failed to mirror the support it mobilized ahead of the last election, but has remained adamant that it will not take part in a "corrupted" political system.
Just days before polling day, the authorities tossed in the clink Please don't kill me! at least four candidates and dozens of their campaign staff on suspicion of attempted vote-buying.
Although Kuwait has the Gulf's oldest elected parliament, all key government posts are held by members of the al-Sabah dynasty which has ruled the country unchallenged for more than 250 years.
Analysts see little hope the election will bring political stability to the emirate, which has been rocked by lingering disputes since mid-2006 -- when about a dozen cabinets were formed and voters went to the ballot five times -- stalling development despite an abundance of petrodollars.
"I think the root of the problem is the unwillingness of some sections of the al-Sabah ruling family to see an elected parliament," analyst Anwar al-Rasheed said ahead of the polls.
Of Kuwait's population of 3.9 million, just 31 percent are citizens and of that 1.23 million only 440,000, aged 21 and over, are eligible to vote.
The OPEC member says it sits on 10 percent of global crude reserves and pumps around 3.0 million barrels of oil per day. It has amassed around $400 billion in assets over the past decade.
[BREITBART] San Diego Mayor Bob Filner's own political party called for the leader of the nation's eighth-largest city to resign as four more women identified themselves as targets of his sexual harassment, bringing to seven the number of women who have offered detailed accounts that include unwanted touching.
The mayor called a news conference for nnon Friday, a day after the latest accusers came forward, including a retired Navy rear admiral and a dean at San Diego State University.
Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman called Filner's alleged behavior "reprehensible and indefensible" and urged him to step down.
The San Diego County Democratic Party Central Committee voted 34-6 Thursday night to urge the city's first Democratic leader in 20 years to quit. The move came one week after the committee deadlocked 24-24 on the question, but that vote was before any woman had publicly identified themselves as a target.
"We are not here to determine guilt or innocence. However, it was a brave man who first ate an oyster... in the best interest of the city, the San Diego County Democratic Party has voted to ask Mayor Filner to step down, seek the personal help that he needs, and allow San Diego to move forward," said Francine Busby, the county party chairwoman.
Political consultant Laura Fink, who alleges that Filner patted her buttocks at a 2005 fundraiser when she was deputy campaign manager for the then-congressman, welcomed the party's position but expressed doubt that Filner would resign.
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"We are not here to determine guilt or innocence"
[Dawn] A Pakistain army soldier was killed and another was maimed in "unprovoked" firing by Indian troops from across the Line of Control (LoC) in the disputed region of Kashmire, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said.
The incident took place on Rawlakot's Nezapir sector near the LoC at about 10:30 am on Saturday.
Soldier Asim Iqbal was killed in the firing and soldier Naik Mohammad Khan was critically maimed.
The Pak foreign office strongly condemned the shooting, saying it was "unfortunate that such an incident should have taken place at a time when the two governments are making sincere efforts towards improving relations."
"Pakistain calls upon the Government of India to carry out a thorough investigation into this grave incident and to ensure that such occurrences do not take place," said the foreign office in a statement.
Meanwhile, ...back at the palazzo, Count Guido had been cornered by the banditti... the Indian army blamed Pak troops for violating the ceasefire.
"Pak troops have targeted Indian posts by firing rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns along the [Line of Control] in Doda Battalion forward area in Poonch district since 7:30 a.m. local time today," the Press Trust of India quoted an unidentified senior Army officer as saying.
Kashmire is divided between Pakistain and India along the UN-monitored, Line of Control, but both countries claim the region in full and have fought two of their three wars over it.
India and Pakistain regularly accuse each other of violating a ceasefire along the LoC, which has largely held since 2003.
Tensions spiked between New Delhi and Islamabad early this year when a total of six soldiers were killed in exchanges along the de facto border in Kashmire.
Four of the soldiers killed were from Pakistain while two were from India.
One of the Indians was beheaded allegedly by Paks, a charge rejected by Islamabad.
[Dawn] Wonder Woman and Supergirl now have a Pak counterpart in the pantheon of female superheroes -- one who shows a lot less skin.
Meet Burka Avenger: a mild-mannered teacher with secret martial arts skills who uses a flowing black burka to hide her identity as she fights local thugs seeking to shut down the girls' school where she works.
Sadly, it's a battle Paks are all too familiar with in the real world.
Continued on Page 49
[AnNahar] The U.N. refugee agency is negotiating with Leb over the country's plan to enforce new border controls that could affect the flow of Syrian refugees, a U.N. official said Friday.
"We understand from the government that they are now exerting stricter scrutiny at the border," said Ninette Kelley, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Beirut.
"We will continue to engage with (the authorities) to ensure that refugees in need of protection will have access to Leb but also that the legitimate security concerns of the government are respected and observed," she added.
The statement comes three days after the government announced new entry controls, in a bid to reduce friction between the local population and Syrian refugees.
At least 645,000 Syrian refugees are already in Leb -- though the real number is believed to be much higher.
Leb hosts the largest portion of the 1.8 million Syrian refugees who have fled to neighboring countries to escape a conflict now in its third year.
The country's ministers insisted earlier this week that the new rules would not close the border to refugees fleeing Syria.
But they said that in the future they would recognize as refugees only those fleeing parts of Syria that have been wracked by violence.
But General Security insisted no new restrictions were being imposed, and the new policy was simply to implement existing rules more uniformly.
"The rules are the same," a General Security source told Agence La Belle France Presse on condition of anonymity.
"But in order not to allow people with terrorist ties or other security problems to take advantage of the humanitarian situation, we are now being stricter and ensuring that only people with a valid ID or passport are allowed in," he said.
The source added that Syrians must have a valid address in Leb.
Some 15,000 Syrians enter and leave Leb every day, in approximately equal proportions, he added.
Leb is the only one of Syria's neighbors that has so far kept an open-door policy to refugees, but the country has struggled to keep up with the pace of arrivals.
Officials have warned of the security consequences of the influx, and a shortfall in funding to assist both refugees and the people hosting them.
The U.N. has received only 26 percent of the $1.6 billion needed to adequately fund their response plan for the region, Kelley told news hounds at a presser.
The U.N. Development Programme's Luca Renda also warned of a range of problems in communities in Leb that are hosting refugees.
"Competition for jobs, crowding of services, scarcity of drinking water, pressure on waste collection, issues of sanitation (and) increasing tensions between communities," he said.
Renda reiterated calls for support, citing Leb's "extraordinary solidarity... We should not let Leb carry this responsibility by itself".
The CIA has begun closing clandestine bases in Afghanistan, marking the start of a drawdown from a region that transformed the agency from an intelligence service struggling to emerge from the Cold War to a counterterrorism force with its own prisons, paramilitary teams and armed Predator drones.
The pullback represents a turning point for the CIA as it shifts resources to other trouble spots. The closures were described by U.S officials as preliminary steps in a plan to reduce the number of CIA installations in Afghanistan from a dozen to as few as six over the next two years a consolidation to coincide with the withdrawal of most U.S. military forces from the country by the end of 2014.
Senior U.S. intelligence and administration officials said the reductions are overdue in a region where U.S. espionage efforts are now seen as out of proportion to the threat posed by al-Qaedas diminished core leadership in Pakistan.
Sure. al-Qaeda, and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, can only destabilize both countries, serve as a staging ground for terror, upset India to the point of war, and export terror throughout the Middle East. No threat at all...
The CIA faces an array of new challenges beyond al-Qaeda, such as monitoring developments in the Middle East and delivering weapons to rebels in Syria.
Oh, did we agree to do that last week?
John O. Brennan, the recently installed CIA director, has also signaled a desire to restore the agencys focus on traditional espionage.
When we look at post-2014, how does the threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan measure against the threat in North Africa and Yemen? said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss government deliberations. Shouldnt our resources reflect that?
U.S. officials stressed that the CIA is expected to maintain a significant footprint even after the pullback, with a station in Kabul that will remain among the agencys largest in the world, as well as a fleet of armed drones that will continue to patrol Pakistans tribal belt.
Drones aren't any good if the intel isn't there to guide who, when and where to zap.
The timing and scope of the CIAs pullback are still being determined and depend to some extent on how many U.S. troops President Obama decides to keep in the country after 2014. The administration is expected to reduce the number from 63,000 now to about 10,000 after next year but recently signaled that it is also considering a zero option, in part because of mounting frustration with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
And because Champ thinks the military is ucky...
The CIA may be in a unique position to negotiate with Karzai, who has publicly acknowledged accepting bags of money from the agency for years. The CIA also has provided much of the budget and training for the Afghan intelligence service. The agency wants to maintain the strength of those ties.
Karzai would prefer not to be hanged upside down on a meat hook in Kabul. You might want to mention that to him...
Even so, a full withdrawal of U.S. troops would probably trigger a deeper retrenchment by the CIA, which has relied on U.S. and allied military installations across the country to serve as bases for agency operatives and cover for their spying operations. The CIAs armed drones are flown from a heavily fortified airstrip near the Pakistan border in Jalalabad.
The CIAs presence in the country has already dropped well below the peak levels of several years ago, when more than 1,000 case officers, analysts and other employees had been deployed to support the war effort and hunt al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden.
Some of the bases being closed served as important intelligence-gathering nodes during the escalation of the agencys drone campaign, raising the risk that U.S. counterterrorism capabilities could deteriorate and perhaps allow remnants of al-Qaeda to regenerate.
You can't zap what you can't see.
U.S. officials played down that danger. Theres an inherent imbalance, the administration official said. The effectiveness of our operations has reduced the threat to the point that its entirely appropriate that we have a smaller counterterrorism footprint.
White House officials have been weighing a shift of some of those resources to other regions, including Yemen and North Africa, where al-Qaeda affiliates are now seen as more dangerous than the networks base. The White House discussions have been part of the overall deliberations over U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan.
The CIA drawdown coincides with Afghanistan-related personnel moves. The agency recently appointed a new station chief in Kabul, a selection that raised eyebrows among some because the veteran officer is known mainly for his tours in Latin America and had not previously served in Afghanistan.
The top military post at CIA headquarters is also changing hands. U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Tony Thomas, who was in charge of Special Operations units in Afghanistan, is set to begin serving as associate CIA director for military support in September, replacing an Air Force general with drone expertise.
Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the agencys plans said they call for pulling most agency personnel back to the CIAs main station in Kabul, plus a group of large regional bases known as the big five in Bagram, Kandahar, Mazar-e Sharif, Jalalabad and Herat.
The footprint being designed involves six bases and some satellite [locations] out of those, said a former senior CIA officer who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. The agency may also rely on mobile stations in which a small number of operatives move temporarily into remote locations where they trust the tribal network, the former officer said. Protection issues are going to be critical.
The base closures involve compounds along the Pakistan border, part of a constellation used by CIA operatives and analysts to identify drone targets in Pakistan. The bases, including locations in the provinces of Zabul, Paktika and Khost, have relied heavily on U.S. military and medical evacuation capabilities and were often near larger military outposts.
Administration deliberations over troop levels could also determine where the agency operates its drones. During the early years of the campaign, the aircraft were flown from Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan, but the agency moved most of its fleet to Jalalabad as public opposition to strikes mounted in Pakistan and relations with the government broke down.
The tempo of the CIAs drone campaign has already tapered off. The 17 strikes this year in Pakistan are far off the peak pace of 2010, when there were 117 strikes, according to the Long War Journal, a Web site that tracks drone attacks. Over the past decade, the campaign has killed as many as 3,000 militants and dozens if not hundreds of civilians, according to independent estimates.
U.S. officials said that preferred troop-level options would allow U.S. forces to remain at Jalalabad, in part so that the CIAs flights could continue. But officials said the drones could also be shifted to airstrips at Bagram or Kandahar. The latter has already served as a base for stealth drones used to conduct secret surveillance flights during the bin Laden raid and over Iran.
This year, President Obama approved new counterterrorism guidelines that call for the military to take on a larger role in targeted killing operations, reducing the involvement of the CIA. But the guidelines included carve-outs that gave the agency wide latitude to continue armed Predator flights across the border and did not ban a controversial practice known as signature strikes, in which the agency can launch missiles at targets based on patterns of suspicious behavior without knowing the identities of those who would be killed.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/28/2013
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#1
The agency may also rely on "mobile stations" in which a small number of operatives move temporarily into remote locations "where they trust the tribal network," the former officer said. "Protection issues are going to be critical."
"Where they trust the local network".... good luck with that kak you dreamy losers. [statement must have come from a Mclean, VA cable traffic. Nobody in theater would have penned anything that stupid]
"Protection issues are going to be critical."
..... Drone Zapping is fun, if you have a nice warm CHU and private OGA mess hall with a Marine or US Army Brigade near by to come home to. Absent that, fok this place, lets get outta here.
You can Drone Zap half the population, but if you don't occupy and hold the terrain, you'll never win the war. Despicable Klingon rats, FOAD! Save the purchase of OBL from the Paks, you've accomplished SQUAT ! Just my rant and humble opinion.
#6
"Not sure why the Obama regime never fully partnered with Rashid Dostun. Perhaps someone here has insights."
Bambi doesn't want the U.S. to win anything.
Posted by: Barbara ||
07/28/2013 11:50
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#7
Not sure why the Obama regime never fully partnered with Rashid Dostun. Perhaps someone here has insights.
Because re-animating the corpse of the Cold War has its limits. The "he's a murdering bastard, but he's our murdering bastard" approach, while proven effective, seems to be rather outside those limits for the past two admins.
#8
I believe "W" supported the Northern Alliance, but you're correct. Champ would much rather throw in with the murdering cannibals of the MB Syrian rebel resistance. They've got more of a.... sub-Saharan cooking pot way about them.
[AnNahar] The bodyguard of Salafist holy man Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir, who was placed in durance vile Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! two-days ago while trying to flee via Beirut Airport, has presented valuable confessions over the last month's festivities in the town of Abra.
According to As Safir newspaper published on Saturday, 30-year-old Paleostinian Ali Abdul Wahad informed the Lebanese Army intelligence on his personal role in the battles in Abra near the southern city of Sidon.
He also revealed information on several people wanted by the Army, including Asir and singer turned Salafist Fadel Shaker.
Abdul Wahad had exposed in his confessions the side that provided him with the necessary money and helped him to flee outside Leb through Bairut's Rafik Hariri International airport.
A security source told As Safir that the arrest of Abdul Wahad is an important accomplishment regarding his relation with Asir and his wide knowledge about the holy man's financial and security status.
The source pointed out that the interrogations with Abdul Wahad focus on the goal behind his attempt to travel to Nigeria.
Asir's supporters opened fire on an army checkpoint, late last month, leaving around 18 soldiers and more than 20 gunnies dead.
The gunbattles concentrated in the area of Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque and nearby buildings in Abra.
Asir, a 45-year-old holy man who supports the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Horror of Homs... , is no where to be found along with Shaker.
Asir teamed up with Shaker, a onetime prominent singer, when around two years ago he began agitating for Hizbullah to disarm.
On Saturday hundreds gathered in the [Libyan] capital Tripoli after dawn prayers, denouncing the Friday shooting death of Abdul-Salam Al-Musmari. They set fire to tires in the street and demanded the dissolution of Islamist parties. Protesters appeared to be inspired by events in neighboring Egypt, where millions took to the streets Friday to answer a call from the army chief, who said he wanted a mandate to stop "potential terrorism" by supporters of the country's ousted president, Mohammed Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood.
"We don't want the Brotherhood, we want the army and the police," Libyan protesters chanted, repeating a slogan also used in Egypt. Libya's nascent security forces are struggling to control the country's militias, most of whom have roots in the rebel groups that overthrew Qaddafi in 2011.
Al-Musmari, who used to publicly criticize the Brotherhood, was killed by unknown assailants in a drive-by shooting in Benghazi.
Some protesters stormed the headquarters of a Brotherhood-affiliated political party and another Islamist-allied party in the capital, destroying furniture. Witnesses say a Brotherhood party office was also stormed in the eastern city of Benghazi.
Protesters angry with the Libya's weak central government also targeted the liberal National Forces Alliance (NFA), ransacking its headquarters. The party came on top in Libya's first free parliamentary elections last year.
Security forces in Libya have been unable to impose their authority on the country since Qaddafi's ouster. Militias, many made up of former rebels who fought in the civil war that toppled Qaddafi, have grown in the strength and in many areas rival the security forces in their firepower and reach. The armed forces also rely on militias for help securing the country in some cases.
In a press conference Saturday, Prime Minister Ali Zidan said that an investigation was launched into the circumstances around al-Musmari. He said a foreign criminal investigation team will join Libyan investigators in Tripoli and Benghazi on Monday. He did not offer further details about the investigation.
Libya's top religious figure, Grand Mufti Sheikh Sadeq al-Ghariani, warned his countrymen earlier in the week against copying Egypt and bringing down the Libyan government. Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, was ousted by the military on July 3 after millions took to the streets demanding his removal. Al-Ghariani's warning was posted Wednesday on his official website against unspecified parties "trying to create crises in electricity and gas, and those taking advantage of tribal loyalties to the ousted dictator Muammar Qaddafi."
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[AnNahar] Thousands of Tunisians erupted into the streets Saturday for the funeral of an opposition leader assassinated with the same weapon that killed a colleague, as tensions soared after anti-government protests.
After the funeral youths demanding "the fall of the government today!" marched to the National Assembly and hurled rocks and other projectiles at anti-riot police who responded with tear gas.
Draped in the red and white Tunisian flag, Mohammed Brahmi's coffin was saluted by soldiers as the cortege left his home in the Tunis neighborhood of Ariana for El-Jellaz cemetery.
Emotions ran high as supporters of Brahmi, who included members of his family, lifted the coffin to their shoulders before placing it on a military vehicle given an armed escort.
A military helicopter overflew the capital as a sea of flags fluttered among the crowd waiting for the funeral procession along Habib Bourguiba Avenue, epicenter of the 2011 Arab Spring.
Slogans vowing they will "avenge" Brahmi rose from the sea of mourners.
Police deployed reinforcements for the funeral which was attended by some 10,000 mourners, according to police estimates. Journalists gave a higher number of 15,000-20,000.
"holy shit! Allahu akbar! (God is greatest). There is no God but Allah and martyrdom is his friend," mourners cried out at El-Jellaz cemetery.
"The people want the fall of the regime," and "Ennahda terrorist gang," the crowd shouted, before falling silent for the national anthem.
The coffin was then lowered into a grave in the "deaders" sector of the cemetery next to that of leftist politician Chokri Belaid, in accordance with his wishes.
Brahmi, 58, was rubbed out outside his home on Thursday with the same weapon used to gun down Belaid in February, Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou said.
Hours before the funeral got under way, a bomb went kaboom! near a police post in the port of Tunis on Saturday, damaging a police jeep but causing no injuries, the interior ministry said.
A resident said the blast, the first known attack of its kind against a military vehicle in Tunisia, slightly maimed a policeman and caused panic among some residents of La Goulette district.
The bombing comes a day after a general strike called by the powerful General Union of Tunisian Labour (UGTT) and an anti-government demonstration during which one person was killed.
Brahmi was an MP with the leftist and nationalist Popular Movement but on July 7 quit the party he founded, saying it had been infiltrated by Islamists.
The state prosecutor's office said an autopsy found Brahmi had been hit by 14 bullets and authorities blamed bully boyz with links to al-Qaeda.
[AnNahar] Sudanese rebels clashed with government forces on Saturday for the second time this week in the strategic South-North Kordofan region, the snuffies said.
The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a Darfur-based group which is part of a wider rebel alliance seeking to topple the government, said it ambushed a convoy north of Dilling town.
The army front man could not be reached for comment.
There has been an upsurge of rebel activity since April in the South-North Kordofan boundary region, through which passes the main road link to the national capital Khartoum.
Dilling is on the route linking the South Kordofan state capital Kadugli with El Obeid, North Kordofan's capital which is home to an air force base and an oil refinery.
Residents of Dilling said they heard gunfire and kabooms coming from north of the town.
"Authorities ordered buses traveling to El Obeid to cancel their trips," one resident said, asking for anonymity because of the situation.
On Wednesday, both the JEM and the army said they had fought at Sidrah, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) northeast of Dilling in North Kordofan.
That attack ended weeks of relative calm in the area.
It came as the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... and East Africa's regional bloc, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), launched a panel to probe allegations by Sudan and South Sudan that each is supporting rebels operating on the other's territory.
Because of the allegations, Khartoum has threatened to close an economically vital pipeline carrying South Sudanese oil for export.
JEM front man Gibril Adam Bilal said that after the ambush, surviving government troops fled towards Dilling where fighting continued on the town's outskirts.
He said six government troops were killed, but analysts say casualty figures from either side in the war should be treated with caution.
The rebels also took some prisoners, Bilal said.
The JEM and two factions of the Sudan Liberation Army in Darfur belong to the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an alliance with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), a group which has been fighting for two years in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states.
SPLM-N front man Arnu Ngutulu Lodi said his forces were in the Dilling area but he could not immediately confirm that they joined Saturday's fighting.
The latest incident is a follow-up to the Sidrah battle earlier in the week as rebels seek to sever key logistical routes in the area, a regional analyst said.
Those routes include the road to Kadugli and the stretch from El Obeid to Kosti, a key point on the way to Khartoum.
The SRF rebel alliance staged its first joint operation in April, sweeping through a previously peaceful part of North Kordofan near Sidrah as part of coordinated attacks in the region.
Analysts said those rebel strikes humiliated the authorities, who took a month to retake one of the seized areas, Abu Kershola.
[Ynet] Syrian rebels, Lebanese news website report IAF activity in Baalbek area, over Quneitra, claim Hezbollah-bound weapons convoy bombed
Another Israeli strike in Syria? Arab media outlets reported Israeli Air Force activity in the Beqaa Valley in east Leb and in the Golan Heights on Saturday.
Meanwhile, ...back at the abandoned silver mine, the water was up to Jack's neck and still rising. And then he smelled the smoke... the Military Revolutionary Council in Golan Quneitra, a rebel group, claimed that aircraft also bombed a missile convoy making its way to Leb from Syria. The reports could not be confirmed by any Western source.
According to the Quneitra rebels, the sound of aircraft could clearly be heard as they circled over the city. Earlier, the council said in its Facebook page that Israeli jets had bombed Syrian army posts. The IAF aircraft flew at low altitude over Baalbek, according to the Lebanese El-Nashra website.
The past several months have seen separate reports about alleged IDF attacks in Syria, the most recent of which referred to a base in the port city of Latakia where Yakhont missiles were apparently stored.
Two months earlier, in early May, it was claimed that Israel carried out strikes in a Damascus suburb and in the Lebanese border targeting missile caches and Hezbollah -bound weapons shipments.
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.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suggested in an interview Sunday that Edward Snowden could have given sensitive national security information to Russia and China.
"So what we also know is, is that that oil is going to be piped down to the Gulf to be sold on the world oil markets, so it does not bring down gas prices here in the United States," Obama said. "In fact, it might actually cause some gas prices in the Midwest to go up where currently they can't ship some of that oil to world markets."
In his climate address last month Obama established a new litmus test for Keystone XL, saying, "Our national interest will be served only if this pipeline does not significantly exacerbate the climate problem." "The net effects of climate impact will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project will go forward," he added. "It is relevant."
Anthony Weiner's already limp mayoral campaign suffered another huge blow yesterday, when his campaign manager abandoned the sinking ship. Danny Kedem quit as Weiner's campaign point man following a disastrous week on the trail, the embattled mayoral candidate confirmed this morning.
A car loaded with explosives rammed into the gates of an office housing Turkish embassy staff in the Somali capital, killing two people, witnesses and police said on Saturday, Reuters reported.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
[AnNahar] They're lightweight, easy to assemble and have covers that are supposed to keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The U.N. refugee agency wants to test these individual housing units with an eye toward using them as shelter for Syrians fleeing their country's civil war.
Cairo (CNN) -- Egypt's interim interior minister blamed supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy for violence Saturday that left dozens dead and hundreds more wounded. The statement appears to signal a rapidly waning tolerance of Morsy's Muslim Brotherhood by the military-backed government.
[AnNahar] Hizbullah's armed wing wired almost $100,000 (75,000 euros) to two men wanted over a 
[AnNahar] Kuwait on Saturday awaited the results of its second parliamentary election in eight months, after day-long voting and early indications showing a higher turnout despite an opposition boycott.
[BREITBART] San Diego Mayor Bob Filner's own political party called for the leader of the nation's eighth-largest city to resign as four more women identified themselves as targets of his sexual harassment, bringing to seven the number of women who have offered detailed accounts that include unwanted touching.
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
