Nine terror suspects, allegedly involved in an al-Qaida-linked plot to carry out chemical and conventional attacks in Jordan, obstructed today's opening of their trial, refusing to acknowledge military judges hearing the case.
Azmi al-Jayousi, allegedly an al-Zarqawi co-conspirator and head of the Jordan-based terror cell, refused to answer the chief military judge when he sought the routine verification of the defendants' identities at the opening of the trial in Amman. "I and the other defendants don't want to speak to you until you heed our demands to permit our families to visit us and allow us to join the cellblocks of political prisoners," al-Jayousi told Colonel Fawaz Buqour, president of the State Security Court.
Buqour responded: "We'll see." Military prosecutors said the defendants were confined to solitary confinement in an undisclosed Jordanian prison.
"Go to hell!," al-Jayousi shouted, sporting a beard and standing in the dock with the eight other defendants, most of them in dark blue prison uniforms and chained at the ankle. Police had removed their handcuffs minutes before the hearing opened.
Buqour adjourned the session until December 22 to allow the defendants to appoint their lawyers. Charges against eight of the men include conspiring to commit terrorism, possessing and manufacturing explosives and affiliation with a banned group.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:55:25 AM ||
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Hmm..I'm sure it will be equally effective when they fail to 'acknowledge' their executioners.
#2
âI and the other defendants donât want to speak to you until you heed our demands to permit our families to visit us and allow us to join the cellblocks of political prisoners,â al-Jayousi told Colonel Fawaz Buqour, president of the State Security Court.
Somehow, this guy just doesn't seem to understand that he's in no position to make demands.
Afghan security forces have captured Taliban leader Mohammad Omar's personal security chief. Naqibullah Khan, who headed Omar's household security, and another Taliban member, Qayoom Angar, were travelling in a van to this southern city when they were stopped. After they were caught, eight more Taliban fighters were arrested here and a cache of remote-control bombs, time bombs, several other explosive devices and radios was seized. Security forces have picked up at least 27 militants, including the brother of a former Taliban governor of Kandahar, since Saturday night. The security official said they were picked up following a tip-off from a Taliban insider. The Taliban's most senior military commander played down the significance of the arrests, suggesting the men might be "ordinary Taliban". But the security official said Khan was a dangerous killer who remained in charge of Omar's security. "During the (October presidential) election this man killed nine government intelligence agents in the Meyansheen district of Kandahar province."
In the story we ran yesterday, the Beeb Taliban watcher said he wasn't a threat...
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:53:42 AM ||
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Afghan security forces captured at least 27 including a couple of high level bad guys, plus a weapons cache, all since Saturday. Well done, gentlemen! I think they are having fun in their new career.
Soon enough they won't need foreign assistance any longer, and Bush will have achieved what he set out to do: a democratic and secure Islamic country providing a flourishing example to the rest of the Ummah, and a clear warning to those who prefer to play with explosives.
Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi and his terrorists in Iraq may be moving around Iraq with impunity because they spend hours in front of the mirror making up their faces, according to intelligence services quoted by the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel. In a story released before publication Tuesday, it said the services claimed the Jordanian Islamist's group were major buyers of rich theatrical make-up, and used the cosmetics to drastically change their appearance. The false appearance would explain why the terrorists were not being recognised, despite widespread wanted posters. The United States has posted a 25-million-dollar reward for his capture. "He is like a phantom," said one intelligence operator quoted by the newspaper. Al-Zarqawi, who this year declared his loyalty to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, is blamed for many of the bombings, hostage-takings and beheadings that have made Iraq unsafe.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:52:22 AM ||
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The makeup is for camoflage... the nylons are to make his legs shapely.
#4
The SOB is limping .... he only has one leg.
Anybody limping should be checked thoroughly.
( I know thats a large majority of people considering the years of violence )
Seven jailed Saudi militants have made a televised appeal to al Qaeda sympathisers in the kingdom to surrender, denying reports of torture in captivity and saying prison guards treated them like family. The apparently repentant militants appeared on state television to persuade the fighters behind an 18-month wave of violence they will not be mistreated if they turn themselves in. Cameras were allowed into a Riyadh prison for the television programme, which aired late Tuesday, to show gleaming corridors, rows of colourful beds and books piled on bedside tables.
"Anyone who has experienced the reality finds a big difference between the many cases of torture we heard about and what we found," prisoner Abdulrahman al-Ahmari said.
"The Swedish meatballs and lingonberry sauce are exceptional. Really first rate."
The dealings with the prison administration, the sympathy for the prisoners' wishes ... I can call it a family connection," Ahmari told the programme.
"The House of Sod Department of Corrections...It's A Family Affair!"
Well, everyone there seems to be related.
Saudi television has previously broadcast footage of jailed militants calling on their former comrades to surrender, but the glowing portrayal of prison marks a new tactic in the state media drive to undermine support for al Qaeda. "We heard about torture, about mistreatment ... I found that al-Hayer (prison) was not like that," said Ahmari, referring to the detention centre near the Saudi capital where he was held.
"Truly, more like a finishing school for wayward hard boyz. And the corrections officers are so friendly, ya know? They really try hard to get to know you...always asking questions 'n' stuff..."
Abdullah al-Silmi said he surrendered after hearing Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz say that militants who gave themselves up would be treated more leniently and those who were just sympathisers had nothing to fear. "If I had known I would have had this reception, by God I would have surrendered a long time ago," he said. "...I advise the wanted brothers who harbour these thoughts to give themselves up". Khaled al-Harbi, who appeared in a videotape with Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden praising the Sept. 2001 attacks on U.S. cities, told the television programme he surrendered after hearing about the June amnesty on the radio. Othman al-Amri, who was number 19 on a list of Saudi Arabia's 26 most wanted militants before he gave himself up in June, praised the treatment he received. "After I came and saw these peoples' situation, I swear to God it's better than our family," he said.
Sounds swell. Has the International Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent Society inspected their cells yet?
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:50:53 AM ||
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I've started, and abandoned, a reply to this story 4 times. There is something in this article that illuminates a fundamental difference between Arab-think and Western-think (at least the rational / logical variety I consider "normal"), but I am having a hell of a time expressing it satisfactorily.
I'll say this: Yagoub Average Saudi will prolly believe what he sees if the context is "right" - i.e. fits with what he would expect to see were it true. The correct staging, hitting the right visual symbolic cues, will, indeed, succeed in bringing some of these guys in. It's a lot like the memes that have driven most of us semi-crazy for the last year. They buy memes in a heartbeat, by the bucket - it's why they're such big fans of conspiracy shit. Create and present your meme well, hitting the right buttons, and the context will fall away presently and they'll follow it anywhere. This is, of course, unacceptable in Western-style logic and rational / critical thinking for the validity depends upon the context of the idea. (Exception: "c" - the speed of light, heh...) Think about how OBL uses "Crusader" or how CP Abdullah can simply blame it on the Jooos, almost utterly devoid of context - because the listener, with his vast cultural store of what-to-think info, not how-to-think tools, will just parrot the pre-digested meme subtext and fill in whatever is needed to justify the meme... and now you can fill in some of the gaps I'm leaving with this perfectly rotten explanation, lol!
I don't want to write a book, so I surrender, lol! Contribute your own explanation, expats, but don't nit-pick - I've already admitted failure and will curse your ancestry for being petty and gutless!
#5
I'm with .com. This is a bit difficult for my western mind to absorb, especially if it works.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 19:18
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Heh, we're terminally suspicious - Madison Ave has been trying to sell us "New!" and "Improved!" for more than a generation, now. That has made many of us (approx 51% in last national polling cycle, heh) very tough-minded tough-sells. This silly sappy shit wouldn't get to first base with any real TV-fed American, lol!
WASHINGTON, Dec 14 (Reuters) - Top U.S. Air Force officials are working on a strategy to put surveillance aircraft in "near space," the no man's land above 65,000 feet but below an outer space orbit, Air Force chief of staff Gen. John Jumper said on Tuesday. Jumper said he would meet next Tuesday with the head of the Air Force Space Command, Gen. Lance Lord, to map out plans to get lighter-than-air vehicles into that region above the earth, where they could play a vital role in surveillance over trouble spots like Iraq. Jumper said the Air Force was working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to develop a stealthy aircraft without metal that could be equipped with special sensors and remain in the air for months at a time, keeping a watchful eye on specific regions of concern.
The fact that they are publicly talking about this program means it's ready to move out of the Black into the open
That would help answer the increasing need for persistent surveillance, which is difficult with current satellites, which circle the earth in orbit at altitudes above 188 miles 300 kilometres. Unlike satellites, the new breed of near-space aircraft could hover for longer periods in one area, and since they are closer to the earth, far fewer would be needed to maintain surveillance of the entire globe, Jumper said. He said this ability could greatly improve the military ability to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in the future.
The U.S. military already has some aerostats, or blimp-like aircraft, in use to raise antennas and provide surveillance over U.S. bases in Iraq. But in near space, such aircraft could carry out radar and imaging missions, carry communications nodes and even potentially relay laser beams from a ground-based source against a wide variety of targets, industry sources said. Jumper gave few details, but said one of the remaining issues was dealing with such aircraft on the ground, where they can be unwieldy.
There have been reported sightings of a vehicle known as a "Big Black Delta" for years. This story appeared in August 2002:
A just released study by the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), based in Las Vegas, Nevada, sheds new light on the dark and mysterious craft. They offer a more down-to-earth hypothesis. NIDS researchers contend that these type vehicles are lighter-than-air, blimp-style craft of the U.S. military's making. Likely powered by "electrokinetic" drive, the lifting body-shaped airships have been skirting the skies from perhaps the early to mid 1980s.
NIDS has followed up on their study of last year that correlated sightings of large triangular or delta-shaped objects with Air Force Materiel Command and Air Mobility Command bases throughout the United States. Matches were made suggesting flight paths in and out of certain base locations. (snip)
To bolster their case about military airships being taken for UFOs, analysts at NIDS make a historical note. Lighter-than-air vehicles held all records for payload, distance, duration, and altitude within the first four decades of the 20th century - even with the advent of the airplane. In fact, save for rocket-powered research aircraft, like the X-15 and the space shuttle, all absolute altitude records are still held by high-altitude scientific balloons.
NIDS makes the case that Big Black Deltas, or BBDs, are U.S. Defense Department airships. They are so large they can carry massive payloads at low altitudes, cruising at speeds three to five times as fast as surface ships.
Among a range of NIDS observations, the group believes the BBDs are powered by electrokinetic/field drives, or airborne nuclear power units. These craft also fly at extreme altitudes, high above conventional aircraft and the pulsing of ground-based traffic control radar. Elecrokinetic propulsion means that no propellers or jets are used. A hybrid lighter-than-air craft would rely on aerostatic, lift gas, like a balloon. No helicopter-like downwash would be produced. Except for a slight humming from high-voltage control equipment -- and in older BBD versions an occasional coronal discharge -- a Big Black Delta makes no noise.
Put the two stories together and they make perfect sense.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
9:48:55 AM ||
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Heh. More Terrible Secrets of Space revealed...
Accused of providing long-term liaison between al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the young man with impeccable JI lineage smiled gently and began his long litany of denials and refusals.
I like the author of this article already. He must read Rantburg.
Abdul Rohim, the youngest son of accused terrorist cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, denied he had ever met convicted Australian terrorist Jack Roche in Pakistan.
"Nope."
He insisted his years in the sprawling Pakistani city of Karachi were spent studying, not working with al-Qaeda.
"Nope."
He told The Australian he did not even recognise the name of the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, let alone serve an apprenticeship under him.
"Nope. Nope."
Khalid, known as "The Brain", was arrested in Pakistan last year in a blaze of publicity."Khalid who?" Abdul Rohim asked, shaking his head.
"That taxi driver who looks like Ron Jeremy on a bad hair day? Nope."
Sidney Jones, the Southeast Asian bureau chief of the International Crisis Group, said it appeared Abdul Rohim had served JI as an intermediary between Karachi and Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. "Kandahar can mean al-Qaeda, it can mean the Taliban, it can mean lots of different things, but he certainly was not playing the innocent role of a teacher in Karachi," she said. Abdul Rohim denied he had been to Kandahar, saying he had never been to Afghanistan.
"Couldn't even find it on a map."
His accusers - from the notorious terrorist Hambali's younger brother Gun-Gun Rusman Gunawan, to Roche - allege Abdul Rohim had played an important role in Pakistan between 1999 and 2002. According to Sally Neighbour's book on JI, In the Shadow of Swords, Roche testified in his Australian trial that Abdul Rohim had been a "go-between between JI and al-Qaeda". The young Indonesian, he said, had picked him up at Karachi airport and had arranged a meeting with Khalid, also known as Mukhtar. But Abdul Rohim said: "I never met an Australian, let alone picked one up at the airport. From the airport I only ever picked up my friends from Indonesia and Malaysia."
"And even then it would be hard to point out which friends, or which airport. Assuming I ever even went."
Strolling through the Islamic boarding school his father founded in Ngruki, in Central Java, he said he was a simple religious teacher.
"And kind to old ladies and baby chicks."
More than 30 accused and convicted JI militants, including some of the Bali bombers, were educated or otherwise have strong links with the school. Yet Abdul Rohim, 26, said the terrorist accusations were a conspiracy to oppress Muslims that had dragged his father into prison and forced him to face the trial that begins again today.
"I'm starting to seethe just thinking about the humiliation of it all."
Abdul Rohim first heard the words Jemaah Islamiah in the media around 2002, he said. "I never heard the name Jemaah Islamiah, or had JI in my ears, from the time I was little and living with my father and my family."
This guy is good.
Testifying at Bashir's trial last week, Rusman Gunawan referred to a study group called al-Ghuraba in Karachi that both he and Abdul Rohim had led at different times. Now in prison for facilitating terrorism, Hambali's younger brother told the court he had replaced Abdul Rohim as leader of the group. Analysts believe al-Ghuraba, which means The Foreigners in Arabic, was intended to train the next generation of JI leaders. Abdul Rohim agreed there had been an al-Ghuraba study group in Karachi, but said he and Gunawan had been members at the same time. They had shared a house in Karachi. "Hambali had heard that I wanted to go to Pakistan to finish my studies, so he wanted his younger brother to be sent there as well." Eventually, he looked after as many as 16 young Malaysians who had come to Pakistan to study. "Malaysians had heard the son of Abu Bakar Bashir was there. They trusted my father. Then they entrusted their sons to me."
He smiled then, and his teeth gleamed white in the dusk.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:48:26 AM ||
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Smiles and Lies, seems to be the trend in Indonesia.
A group of Arab businessmen visiting Afghanistan on a rare bird hunt have been detained by US troops and ordered to leave the country. The men, including at least nine Qataris, were arrested at the town of Spin Boldak near the Pakistani border. They were held for two days by US troops, who released them on Sunday without charge.
The group were visiting Afghanistan to hunt the rare houbara bustard, considered an aphrodisiac in the Gulf. According to a border police official in Spin Boldak, Abdul Raziq, the group was ordered to leave Afghanistan on Monday. US forces found nothing against the men, but told them they would not be allowed to hunt protected species, reports said.
The men had planned to travel to the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan to hunt the houbara bustard with falcons. Falconry is a traditional pursuit for wealthy Arabs, who once set out on horseback for expeditions but now usually travel by off-road vehicle. The houbara bustard has been hunted almost to extinction in the Gulf states.
Iraq's interim defense minister accused neighbors Iran and Syria on Wednesday of aiding al Qaeda Islamist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and former agents of Saddam Hussein to promote a "terrorist" insurgency in Iraq.
Hazim al-Shaalan poured scorn on Iran in a speech to U.S., British, Iraqi and other military officers and derided alleged links to Iran of Hussain al-Shahristani, a senior figure in a Shi'ite bloc expected to do well in next month's Iraqi election.
"Iran runs a major terrorist ring inside Iraq," Shaalan said, repeating accusations frequently made by himself and his ally interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a fellow secular Shi'ite who unveiled a rival electoral list on Wednesday.
"I have already said that this state (Iran) is the prime enemy of Iraq, an enemy of Iraq since before Islam, because it helped the enemies of the Arabs and humanity."
"Syrian, Iranian and former Iraqi intelligence are cooperating with the Zarqawi group," Shaalan said, referring to the Jordanian's al Qaeda in Iraq group, which has claimed some of the bloodiest bombings and kidnappings since the war.
"We want democracy and they want the dictatorship of Islam and clerical rule," he said at the opening of two days of talks on the role of Iraq's new National Guard security force.
Iran and Syria deny any links with Iraq's guerrillas.
"It seems he (Shaalan) has a mission to say such things," Iran's Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari told reporters.
"I have always thought his remarks were because he was young, inexperienced and immature. But now I believe he has been ordered by his masters to say such things," he said.
Shahristani, a nuclear scientist jailed for opposing Saddam, is a leading figure in the United Iraqi Alliance electoral bloc, which has the backing of Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The defense minister described the alliance as "the Iranian list" and made veiled accusations about Shahristani's relationship with Iran.
"Shahristan is a city in Iran," he said. "He went to Iran. Today he returns to become Iraq's prime minister."
Returning to the charge against Iran's clerical leaders, Shaalan said: "They want to liquidate you. This black horde."
Addressing Iraqi officers in the room, he said: "They shall not pass but over our dead bodies. I wish you success -- we want more courage and sacrifice from you."
Speaking to reporters afterwards Shaalan described Iraq's insurgency as a four-way coalition: "We have former Iraqi intelligence, we have Iranian intelligence, we have Syrian intelligence and we have Zarqawi and his followers," he said.
Shaalan himself held senior intelligence posts under Saddam.
Asked whether he was confident the new Iraqi forces could maintain order during the Jan. 30 election, he complained that funding remained tight because other ministers in the coalition were taking too big a share of funds, despite pressure from Allawi to bolster defense spending.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:45:48 AM ||
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I am hoping for some "blasting" in a more literal sense.
A competition held to pay tribute to "generously proportioned" women is going from strength to strength in Burkina Faso. A student weighing 113kg is the lastest winner of Miss Pog Bedre (Large Lady). "I am not at all worried about my size," Amelie Sorgho told the BBC. [snip]
Contrary to the western obsession with tall and thin beauty icons, many men in Africa find fat women attractive. "Thin women are for whites," said Issa, a 47-year-old electrician. "In Africa, if a woman is large, it means her husband is looking after her."
Alain, a student, says he is prefers thinner women. "If I had a large girlfriend, she might break my motor scooter."
The BBC's Mathieu Bonkoungou in Ouagadougou says just like in Miss World, the Miss Pog contestants speak about their belief in worthy causes, such as educating girls, helping those who have suffered domestic violence and fighting Aids, prostitution and divorce. The jury voted for Miss Sorgho after the conestants had paraded in a variety of costumes, including African dresses. The only difference to Miss World is there is no swimwear section. They do wear costumes which show off their curves but little flesh is revealed. Miss Sorgho said she wanted to use her time as Miss Pog to lead a campaign to educate people - men and women - on the dangers of using skin-lightening creams.
Al Qaeda's attack on the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia this month is a sign of the group's "despair" after an 18-month crackdown by security forces, a senior Saudi official said on Monday. "It was unfortunate but expected. It's a form of despair and (militants) want to prove they exist," Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to Britain Prince Turki al-Faisal told the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai. Prince Turki, a former Saudi spy chief, said his country was committed to fighting al Qaeda but the group had not yet been defeated. "It's still not over. Many (people) have been brainwashed...by these evil cults...and are willing to sacrifice their lives for this twisted ideology," he said.
Ya know what? What he's sellin', I ain't buyin'. Prince Turki is no friend of the West, and he was talking to the "Arab Strategy Forum." He's feeling sorry for himself 'cuz the op was botched, with zero dead Merkins and the attackers killed or captured.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:43:47 AM ||
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I just want to be loved! Is that so wrong!
Posted by: Al Qaeda ||
12/15/2004 13:04
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Debka, FWIW, had an article saying it was nothing like the failure portrayed by the Saudis.
Posted by: DO ||
12/15/2004 15:26
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The law enforcing agencies have apprehended six al-Qaeda suspects here Tuesday from Army Stadium area. In a joint raid conducted by CID police and intelligence agencies in the Cantt area, six suspects believed to have links with al-Qaeda outfit were nabbed and were moved to some undisclosed location for further investigation, well informed sources told. The six nabbed persons were holding a meeting when law-enforcing agencies rounded them up.
"Meeting's adjourned, punks. Into the wagon wit'chas and shut yer pieholes."
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
9:40:31 AM ||
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(2004-12-13) -- A California jury today sentenced Scott Peterson to death for the double murder of his wife and unborn son. The sentence sparked outrage from the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).
"We decry the inhumanity of the death penalty for a man who simply exercised his choice to end a pregnancy and to end the woman who was harboring an unwanted fetus," said an unnamed NARAL spokesman. "This emotional jury decision shows no respect for Mr. Peterson's reproductive rights. It's a sad day for America and may have a chilling effect on the hundreds of physicians nationwide engaged in similar work."
In related news, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC announced they would "go on indefinite hiatus due to a lack of meaningful news stories now that the Peterson trial has ended."
Posted by: Steve from Relto ||
12/15/2004
9:38:20 AM ||
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Really. Via Drudge:
LAGOS, Nigeria, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- Insert Nigerian scam e-mail joke here!
The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Kojo, calls the inquiries into Iraq's oil-for-food program a U.S. Republican "witchhunt," CNN said Tuesday. 'Lies! All lies!!'
In a written statement to the network, the 31-year-old said: "I have never participated directly or indirectly in any business related to the United Nations." Would you like to make this statement under oath, Kojo?
The oil-for-food program, administered by the United Nations, was designed to allow Iraq to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy food and medicine to offset the sanctions' impact on the Iraqi people. Slight design flaw, like that tunnel they just built here in Boston.
The younger Annan once worked for Cotecna, a Swiss company that inspects commercial freight shipments. It was hired by the United Nations in 1998 to verify paperwork on imports purchased by Iraq with revenues from its oil exports. There's the first lie - 'indirectly in any business related to the United Nations.' Double or nothing, Kojo?
Both Annans have denied any collusion, favoritism or profit-taking. "I mean, all's I did was cash cheques!"
"I feel the whole issue has been a witchhunt from day one as part of a broader Republican political agenda," the younger Annan said in his statement to CNN. Mr. Rather? Ms. Pelosi? Mr. Schumer? Is anyone missing a playbook?
A group of Republican legislators has called for Kofi Annan to quit his U.N. post, although the Bush administration has expressed support in his leadership of the 191-nation body. I'd say more than a few citizens agree with that sentiment.
From Jihad Unspun
America's troubles in Fallujah and the rest of Iraq continue unabated. Casualties on both sides are reported accurately and honestly by Mafkarat al-Islam and it is time for critics to take off the blindfolds placed on their eyes by America's propaganda machine. At least 400 American soldiers and countless of Iraqi puppets have been killed in the last few days alone in Fallujah and elsewhere.
While the Americans have taken to the skies to transport cargo in an effort to reduce the losses they are incurring in ground transportation of supplies and foodstuffs, the Mujahideen are now becoming expert at shooting down American planes. Several American war planes, including an F-16 were shot down in the past few days and dozens of tanks and armored vehicles have been destroyed.
Try as they might, the America has not found a solution to the fierce resistance they are encountering, not even through their use of chemical weapons. ....
Sources inside the resistance have now confirmed that some Mujahideen were captured by the Americans on 26 Ramadan when Americans used anesthetic gas to knock them unconscious. At that time, Mujahideen were not ready for these kinds of gases however since then, fighters are better prepared to deal with the chemical warheads being spewed by US occupation forces when they encounter stiff resistance.
Mujahideen fired a Sam rocket at an F-16 flying over Al-Shuhadaa neighborhood in Fallujah on Tuesday. The aircraft took a direct hit and fell off the skies. Mujahideen also attacked a food-carrying trailer in Thiraa area, south of Fallujah around 14:30 Tuesday. The trailer was destroyed and 2 Americans on board were killed.
Mujahideen continued to apply their strategy of vacating certain areas to lure Americans inside those areas to fight. The main purpose of this tactic is to neutralize America's air superiority. Mujahideen withdrew from Al-Wahda, Al-Askary, and Al-Industrial neighborhoods but the Americans refused to go into those areas except for Al-Askari, settling for aerial bombardment instead. This action by Americans led the Mujahideen to go back to those areas. The Americans decided to enter Al-Askari area at about 08:00 AM yesterday morning where the Mujahideen lay in wait for them. The Mujahideen used swords, knives, and other atypical weapons to battle Americans on the streets, 19 Americans were killed and 4 Mujahideen were martyred. .....
This tactic of close face to face combat has proven to be very effective in recent battles as it instills a great deal of fear in minds of US soldiers and levels the playing field, with more of this kind of warfare is expected. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
12/15/2004
9:28:59 PM ||
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I wonder what is the 'puter game they are playin'.
#6
That's really one of the best examples of outright lyng in propaganda I've ever read. I'm lost in admiration.
I wish our side had even half of that talent.
#8
SwissTex, it's MS's daily bread. I am not sure why he is posting it, maybe for the entertainment value or, in the case he suffers from some kind of derangement, he actually thinks that it is not a farce originating from an alternate reality.
I don't recall him explaining which one is the case.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as "Chemical Ali", will be the first of Saddam Hussein's top aides to be tried, Iraqi's interim government has said. The trial could begin as early as next week, Defence Minister Hazim al-Shalaan told reporters in Baghdad. Mr al-Majid is accused of some of the worst crimes committed by the regime, including the gassing of Iraqi Kurds. There is no indication of when Saddam Hussein will face trial. He and 11 top regime figures are in US custody.
Starting with Ali because they've got the most evidence against him? After all the bugs are worked out of the trial process, and after elections are over, they'll put Saddam in the dock.
"In the next few days, we will have the trial of Ali Hassan al-Majid, one of the close followers of Saddam Hussein," Mr al-Shalaan said. However, he did not specify exactly when, saying only that it would be held "next week, maybe, or in the middle of next month", Reuters reported. Lawyers representing members of the old regime have said their clients will not recognise the legitimacy of any courts established under US occupation.
Too bad
Saddam Hussein's Jordan-based lawyers say they have not even seen him. "The Iraqi court will be in violation of the basic rights of the defendants, which is to have access to legal counsel while being interrogated and indicted," Ziad al-Khasawneh told the Associated Press.
He hasn't seen a lawyer because they haven't filed the paperwork to represent him.
International legal experts have also voiced concern that the trials are being rushed and that defendants will not get a fair hearing. Mr al-Majid, the Iraqi president's cousin, was a top powerbroker in the Baathist government. He earned his nickname after leading the chemical attack on Kurds in Halabja during an offensive in 1987. He is also accused of masterminding the killing of hundreds of thousands in the wake of the big uprisings against Saddam Hussein in 1991 after the first Gulf War. In April 2003, it was initially thought he had been killed in a coalition air strike in the southern city of Basra, but in August that year he was captured by the US military.
A public trial is much better, followed by a public hanging.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
9:25:46 AM ||
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#1
This one deserves a gas chamber. I'd keep a loaded shotgun aimed at him just in case there's any security breech, but that's just me and it would probably violate his "basic rights" or "international law" or "French sensibilities" or something.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 9:49
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I wonder if they'll recognize the "legitimacy" of the worms that eat him.
#3
Reading a book by Robin Moore(author of"The Green Beret")called "Hunting Down Sadam".It is pretty good,it has a long section featuring our old friend LTC.Steve Russel.Mr.Moore is a impressive guy,78 years old,has Parkinson's disease and was running around doing interviews and reasearch for this book.
#4
fine, does he recognize the Kurds? We'll let them have him...
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/15/2004 10:22
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#5
Or the Marsh Arabs, or the southern Shi'a where he ruled, or... Hell, he has so many "constituencies" it's not fair that all shouldn't get a piece of him... The William Wallace treatment?
Frank, .com, come up with one more properly aggrieved group (how about the Kuwatis?) add 4 ropes and have a tug of war. The winner gets to have their way, in the case of a tie whoever has the biggest piece wins.
#13
They should try him in the Kurd province, in an open place, with no protection. The trial would be over so quickly, it would save public money and take bread and butter from the MSM.
A prominent British lawmaker has triggered an outcry by implying that elderly and very ill people should not only have the right, but the obligation to kill themselves rather than become a nuisance. The furor erupted as British lawmakers prepared to vote on a bill that critics worry could be used to sanction the killing of patients in a vegetative state.
"I couldn't bear hanging on and being such a burden on people," said Baroness Mary Warnock, an 80-year-old medical ethicist, philosopher and member of the upper House of Lords, in a weekend newspaper interview.
"In other contexts, sacrificing oneself for one's family would be considered good," she told the Sunday Times. "I don't see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance."
"If I went into a nursing home, it would be a terrible waste of money that my family could use far better," Warnock added.
Later in the interview she said: "I am not ashamed to say some lives are more worth living than others," before conceding that "if someone else decides your life is not worth living, that is very dangerous."
Warnock was speaking ahead of a House of Commons vote Tuesday on legislation that would give legal status to "living wills" and allow third parties to tell doctors to withdraw treatment -- or even food and water -- from terminally-ill patients.
"Living wills" are documents that set out how ill people want to be treated if they are no longer able to communicate their wishes directly to medical staff.
The Mental Capacity Bill is highly contentious, with some members of the ruling Labor Party opposing it and calling for the right to vote according to conscience...
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
12/15/2004
9:21:11 AM ||
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#1
Richard Lamm, Governor of Colorado 1975-87, made the same arguement.
Posted by: Jim K ||
12/15/2004 9:47
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Yay! Let's start killing pensioners! And while we're about it, why don't we kill all 'nuisance' people - age discrimination's supposed to be a thing of the past anyway. Let's start with the disabled and work our way up to the lazy and bad-breathed. Kids are a damn nuisance most of the time too. Why don't we kill them? Oh, right. We already do.
#3
Add "prominent British lawmakers" to your list, Bulldog.
Actually, we already have "living wills" here in the U.S. I have one -- it's about four pages long and protects me the way I want to be protected. I'll only get "unplugged" under conditions that are satisfactory to me.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 9:56
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Don't let the Democrats hear about this. It could be their solution to the Social Security crisis. Better this then the evils of privatization.
#8
dreadnought
there was a song in the Mikado (a Gilbert and Sullivan musical)
SONG--KO-KO with CHORUS OF MEN.
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list--I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed--who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs--
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs--
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat--
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like _that_--
And all third persons who on spoiling tete-a-tetes insist--
They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed!
CHORUS. He's got 'em on the list--he's got 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed--they'll none of
'em be missed.
There's the banjo serenader, and the others of his race,
And the piano-organist--I've got him on the list!
And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face,
They never would be missed--they never would be missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own;
And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy,
And who "doesn't think she waltzes, but would rather like to
try";
And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist--
I don't think she'd be missed--I'm sure she'd not he missed!
CHORUS. He's got her on the list--he's got her on the list;
And I don't think she'll be missed--I'm sure
she'll not be missed!
And that Nisi Prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife,
The Judicial humorist--I've got him on the list!
All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life--
They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed.
And apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as--What d'ye call him--Thing'em-bob, and
likewise--Never-mind,
And 'St--'st--'st--and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who--
The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you.
But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be
missed!
CHORUS. You may put 'em on the list--you may put 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed--they'll none of
'em be missed!
#10
Oh yes, Gilbert and Sullivan! I'm a lifelong fan. I've been to every Madison Savoyards show since the 1993 production of Utopia, Limited. BTW, there was a Rantburger in their perfomance of Ruddigore this year: Korora. I couldn't tell which one he was, though, having never met him in person.
Nowadays, Gilbert and Sullivan would have more to lampoon than they could do in even a prediluvial lifespan.
Posted by: Steve from Relto ||
12/15/2004 10:53
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i think Sea and I met Korora at the Cosmos..since he wrote up a bit and took some pictures. Perhaps he was the one who asked about art?? But I don't recall him taking a photo. Are you sure Korora is a guy? Care to come out of the closet Korora?
#17
I think she's correct. She's not calling for a Dutch solution where the doctors decide behind your back and then kill you. But she is questioning why people should live in human warehouses that are in may ways like prison camps without the mercy of death. We've now got the ability to overstay our usefulnes. Who better to raise the issue than an able 80 year old?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004 11:38
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...elderly and very ill people should not only have the right, but the obligation to kill themselves rather than become a nuisance.
I don't think that's right, Mrs D. Besides, actions speak louder than words. I won't stand in the way of the Baroness if she wants to give her family the greatest gift of all and shove her head in the oven before it's needed for the turkey. I do object to her suggestion that other old and ill people should feel compelled to do the same, however. If people over a certain age are to be deemed 'surplus to requirements', what's to stop me killing my neighbours' grandparents with impunity? Setting dogs on the incurable and infirm could be the sport to replace foxhunting.
#20
âCall this an unfair generalization if you must, but old people are no good at everything.â --
Moe Syzlak
Wasn't getting rid of old people a side story in "Death Race 2000"? I seem to recall the Race Announcer saying "It's Euthanasia Day down at the old folks home."
Posted by: Tibor ||
12/15/2004 11:52
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#21
Gosh..just think how much sooner you could get your inheritence and how much that would do for the economy. Come' on Granny - do it for the children.
#22
It's unlikely that this silliness will gain any traction in the legislative sphere. But the truly evil aspect of this withered old aristo-c*nt's idiocy is the possibility that the old and infirm, who have a great deal of time to contemplate such things, will find confirmation for their latent fears that they are a "burden" on society.
This will be the pernicious effect of her lame attempt at stimulating some kind of "dialogue" in this manner. Nice work.
#23
What is prompting this outburst of moral idiocy from those whom the British crown gives its highest honors?
First Sir Richard Dawkins explains to Clark County OH voters that Bush's foreign policy is the "law-of-the-jungle" equivalent of self-defense against an intruder in one's home. How barbarous.
Then Sir Nicholas Mollusk-Mickelthwaite of the Intl Red Cross tells us, sadly, that "non-state-organizations" like Zarqawi's neck-sawing brigade and the ba'athist assassins in Iraq do not perceive the Red X as neutral. A pity.
Charles the Dullard urges a new/old doctrine of To each his appointed sphere. And from each a subsidy to maintain a family of inbred congenital morons to the tune of millions per year each.
Now Lady Warlock tells us that old folks need to do the public-spirited thing and move along to the great beyond.
Are English aristocrats born with moral defects? Or is it something in their schooling?
#25
I dont think anyone should kill themselves, but what makes Seniors any different then anyone else ? 15,25,35, or 85 yrs, if a person feels unworthy and kills themselves for that, it is unfortunate either way. And by the way, Usefulness
is not age discriminate. What the writer thinks one way or the other does not matter either way. When your dead, your dead. No rights, no laws, no opinions matter.
#26
Suicide is the cause of an overweening ego. It is the ultimate in selfishness
Suicide takes place when a person with an over sized ego believes that their own life belongs to no one but themselves. They care nothing for others' feelings in the matter of their own lives despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Those who committ suicide should be mourned for those are left behind only. It is the least that can be done for the survivors.
#28
Steve from Relto: I was the man in the yellow shirt in the first act and the ghost in the burgundy shirt with brass buttons in the second. And why didn't you tell me you'd made it?
United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti have launched an operation to take control of one of the most violent slums in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Hundreds of troops moved into the Cite Soleil district by land, sea and air. The UN says they will stay for at least two months before handing control to local police.
After which it will return to being a violent slum.
Cite Soleil is a stronghold of the former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's supporters, and often witnesses factional violence. Dozens of people are said to have been killed since fighting increased in early September in the area, home to 500,000 people. Haiti's interim government has criticised UN forces for failing to do enough to stop the anarchy.
A UN spokesman said peacekeepers would now establish a permanent presence in the troubled quarter. Brazilian, Chilean and Sri Lankan troops took part in the operation, backed by the Chilean air force, as well as Chinese and Jordanian riot police, he said.
Have the Chinese driven a tank over anyone yet?
"This operation will create an environment in which Cite Soleil can open again to humanitarian action," he said. Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, is still in turmoil after Mr Aristide was ousted in February.
Yeah, it was heaven on earth when Aristide was still in power.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
9:13:36 AM ||
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Oopa, sorry, wrong quagmire.
LOL!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/15/2004 12:00
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Wonder if they called it "Operation Prostitute"? ;)
#3
Haiti's interim government has criticised UN forces for failing to do enough to stop the anarchy.
Yeah, we'd do it ourselves, but we're too busy setting up our secret bank accounts and sucking the last dime out of what's left of the economy.
Haiti's the Palestinian Authority of the Western Hemisphere.
The first test in almost two years of the planned multi-billion dollar US anti-missile shield has failed. The Pentagon said an interceptor missile did not take off and was automatically shut down on its launch pad in the central Pacific. A target missile carrying a mock warhead had been fired 16 minutes earlier from Kodiak Island in Alaska. The Pentagon is spending $10bn a year on the missile system, which was meant to be in operation by the end of 2004. The Missile Defence Agency said an "unknown anomaly" was to blame for the system shutting down.
Missile not taking off should be simple to diagnose, bet they'll find a loose wire or something like that. Much better than a failure in flight.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
9:06:57 AM ||
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Best "failure" possible -- the interceptor missile wasn't wasted. This is a work in progress and I'm not concerned about the "failure" -- you learn more from failures than successes.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 9:41
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Beeb's editors are slacking - they left out the "W00t!" that was supposed to go at the end of the headline.
#3
"Best "failure" possible -- the interceptor missile wasn't wasted"
Granted that not "burning" an interceptor is a good thing, but the real reason a ground failure the "best failure" is that you still have the part that failed availible to examine in detail. Bottom line: much will be learned about the new booster from an event that was designed to learn about the new missile booster.
Posted by: Dave ||
12/15/2004 10:56
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#4
Somebody forgot to light the fuse.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/15/2004 13:33
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#5
PS. I have a great picture to go along with this but I can't post pictures. Maybe I could e-mail it to one of you.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/15/2004 13:36
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#6
Dopey me. Forgot the e-mail.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/15/2004 13:39
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DB:
They did light the ACME fuse, but it sputtered out. Their chief failure analyst, a Mr. Coyote, is going out to physically inspect the rocket now.
#8
The government will throw a couple hundred million more at the contractor, the contractor's line worker will walk out with a "Green" flat tip, not the previously used "Red" flat tip screwdriver, turn it a few times, and she's off! Same shite different contract.
#9
Ok, now I can get this off my chest as I am home from work. Unfortunately it is late in the day and no one will ever see this post.
Today's test was a ripping success. It was the test of a very large system, much bigger than most folks realize or dream. In this very large system a very great many things must work. They all did. Well.
They need to in order to come up with a valid firing solution. The system did that, woke up an interceptor missile and told it what to do. The interceptor was just fine with that.
In the second or so before launch the missile detected an internal problem and stood down. That is just what it was supposed to do. Even this was right thing to do. It did not take off and fly improperly; it did not blow up, it stood down. Exactly what it was supposed to do.
The test was a success. I grant you that the out come was not what was hoped but everything worked as expected and as it was supposed to under the circumstances.
You say but we did not shoot down the target.
Consider this.
We have done so in the past so we know we can do it.
If we have a vaild incoming do you think we would task only one missile? No. More than one.
If you get up in the morning and your car does not start do you assume the same for your neighbor's? Or all cars in the world? Of course not.
The second interceptor would have flown the mission.
So lay off the govenment and the contractors and the jokes in piss poor taste. This system is valid and there are a lot of people who have worked really really hard to get it to that point.
Before you declare failure understand what you are talking about.
God willing we will never have to use it, but if we do fall down on you knees and thank the Lord we have it.
Sorry.
Posted by: Michael ||
12/15/2004 20:49
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#10
Work-in-Progress is right - however, MISSLE INTERCEPTORS is only the end game, and NOT even GMD/NMD real asset or focii SPACE-/GROUND-SURFACE BASED HE LASERS and other super hi-tech toys for boyz. * Hyper-tekky toys for, and from, Hyper-power America and our Allies. The Commies know it - and now, boys and girls, you know another reason why the Communist Clintons and their cabal are still around, working to influence and control national politics and to destabilize America for Socialism and OWG!
I listened to about 90 seconds of some NPR reporting droning about the failure this afternoon, before turning off the radio in disgust. Even I knew, before reading this thread, that its much better to test and fix the errors, than hope everything goes right during the first emergency.
A teenage girl with a mental age of eight is facing the death penalty for prostitution in Iran. The trial comes only four months after the hanging of another mentally ill girl for sex before marriage in a case that has prompted a human rights lawyer to prepare a charge of wrongful execution against the presiding judge.
The girl, known as Leyla M, is in prison while the Supreme Court decides on her "acts contrary to chastity", among the most serious charges under Iranian law. Under the penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be executed.
In an interview on a Persian-language website, the 19-year-old says she was forced into prostitution by her mother at the age of eight. Amnesty International refers to reports that say she was repeatedly raped, bore her first child aged nine and was passed from pimp to pimp before having another three children.
She told the website: "The first time I was taken to a man's house by my mum I was eight. It was a horrible night and I cried a lot but then my mum came the next day and took me home. She bought me chocolate and cheese curls."
Iranian press reports say Leyla was charged with controlling a brothel, having sex with blood relatives and bearing an illegitimate child. Amnesty says the court refused to admit social workers' evidence of her young mental age and convicted her on the basis of confessions.
Her prosecution echoes the fate of an even younger girl, Atefeh Rajabi, executed in August. In her case a judge known as Hajj Rezai reportedly put the noose around her neck himself after convicting her on the basis of her confessions for the fourth time in two years. She begged for her life while being led to the gallows, shouting "repentance".
Shadi Sadr, a human rights lawyer representing Atefeh's family, has filed a suit of wrongful execution against the judiciary and is preparing a murder case against Mr Rezai after uncovering new evidence. She has found documents seen by The Independent that prove Atefeh was mentally ill and her confessions should not have been used.
"There is an article in the penal code that if somebody is sentenced to lashing on three separate occasions for the same offence, the fourth conviction incurs the death penalty," Ms Sadr toldThe Independent. "The same judge tried her for each of these past cases but we haven't been allowed to see the files."
A different man was involved in each of Atefeh's convictions. All refused to confess but the judge said it was obvious they had sex with her and sentenced them each to 95 lashes.
After her trial, Atefeh said she had been a victim of sexual assault during spells of mental ill health. After her first conviction in 2001 when 14, she spent time in a state facility for the "socially harmed". Ms Sadr has obtained documents written by officials there backing up her story.
An undated report written by the facility's psychiatrist says she had a history of "chronic sexuality" and was given to "pseudo hallucinations" and seductive behaviour. He diagnosed her with borderline bipolar disorder.
People in Atefeh's neighbourhood wrote two petitions - one before her conviction and one afterwards - affirming that she suffered from mental illness and begging for leniency. Ms Sadr has been unable to locate the defence lawyer in the case.
After the verdict, Atefeh wrote to the High Court, saying: "There are medical documents that prove I have weak nerves and soul. In some minutes of the day and night I lose my sanity. During these attacks any kind of positive or negative actions may be done by me. In a society where an insane person can be serially raped or abused it is no wonder that a person like me is the victim of such an ugly act." Ms Sadr says Atefeh's mental state should have invalidated the case.
The day before the execution Atefeh told her aunt she had written three words to the High Court: "Repentance, repentance, repentance." In Iranian law, somebody who repents their crime is granted the right to appeal against their sentence.
A social worker's report says Atefeh's father and brother were heroin addicts and after her mother's death "she sought affection on the streets".
Ms Sadr says it is impossible to verify lurid claims in dissident websites about an improper relationship between girl and judge. "We will never know what happened between Atefeh and the judge because she is dead, he won't tell and she was tried in a closed court."
This trial is a Big Deal, I think. This guy is bad news.
A man who trained extremists at a Pakistani militant camp plotted a major bomb attack on Sydney, a court has heard. The allegations against Faheem Lodhi, 34, were made yesterday at a Central Local Court committal trial. Lodhi, a Punchbowl architect, is accused of colluding with French terror suspect Willie Brigitte to bomb the city's electricity network and military bases. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of 10 charges under Commonwealth law. The six-day trial before Magistrate Michael Price will hear evidence via satellite from terrorists serving jail sentences in America and Singapore. Commonwealth prosecutor Richard Maidment, SC, told the court Lodhi worked in a "professional capacity" as a paramilitary at the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist group camp in Lahore in October, 2001. Lodhi allegedly worked as a clerk, training groups and individuals who were expected to apply techniques such as "surveillance, invisible ink, dead letter drops and self-defence".
Well sure, you always hire a Pakistani for this. They're the best.
Lodhi is accused of implementing plans to shelter Brigitte in preparation for a terror assault on Sydney's electricity grid or military bases in May 2003. It was claimed Australian Federal Police agents found photographs of these targets dumped in a bin by Lodhi at Lake Gillawarna Reserve on October 25, 2003. Lodhi allegedly met Brigitte at the airport then found him a flat in Wiley Park, later assisting with the Frenchman's plans to marry Australian woman Melanie Brown. In October, Lodhi allegedly used the name M Rasul of Rasul Electrical to purchase maps of the electricity grid in preparation for, "bombing the system". The court heard Lodhi asked an architect colleague where to buy chemicals, explaining he wished to "manufacture jewellery".
"Lissen, Mahmoud, I'm thinkin' about making jewellery. Any idea where I can get some cyanide?"
Just days later, he is accused of duping an employee of Deltrex Chemicals, stating he was starting a detergent business.
"Yeah, I need lots of, um ... cyanide, yeah, that's it, I'm making soap."
Lodhi ordered dangerous chemicals used to produce explosives, the court heard. Mr Maidment said the chemicals matched notes written by Lodhi which revealed instructions for bombs and grenades made of urea nitrate, potassium chlorade and cyanide gas. After Lodhi's arrest in April, Federal agents searched his home and seized four US military images, and 600 files relating to extremist operations.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
12/15/2004
7:34:28 PM ||
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I am constantly amazed to hear how crude many of their efforts were.
"Um, yes, I was wondering if you could tell me where I could purchase large quantities of explosives or cyanide - and a map of the local water plant?"
#2
"Um, yes, I was wondering if you could tell me where I could purchase large quantities of explosives or cyanide - and a map of the local water plant?"
I'm pretty sure if you hung around at the mosque in Lakemba long enough, you'd find what you were looking for. ;)
Oz courts currently hearing evidence on past terror plots...
In late December 2003, police had been monitoring the movements of a group of Islamic men, including known militant Saleh Jamal, believed to be targeting two sites, Pier One Wharf near the Harbour Bridge and the Shell oil terminal at Gore Cove. In the days before the New Year's festivities, telephone taps and listening devices were authorised by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to snoop on the suspects' conversations. Surveillance officers monitored their movements. The group was linked to the Haldon Street prayer room at Lakemba in Sydney's Islamic heartland. On New Year's Eve, Sydney man Saleh Jamal, now jailed in Lebanon on terrorism charges, took to the harbour with several friends in a small boat. They repeatedly cruised past Pier One and the refinery. Operations centres at ASIO, Australian Federal Police headquarters and the Sydney Police Centre were fully staffed by the nation's most senior counter-terrorism officials. State and federal government ministers were briefed. Four months later, Jamal was arrested in Lebanon and charged with preparing terrorist acts along with three other men.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
12/15/2004
7:32:19 PM ||
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Let me just say that Sydney is the most beautiful city I've ever visited and it would be crime if these punk Islamobastards succeeded in an attack.
Iran's former conservative foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, now a top adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has announced he will compete in the presidential elections scheduled for mid-2005, the student news agency ISNA reported yesterday. "I believe it is my duty to enter the electoral competition and the voters can evaluate each candidate's capabilities", Velayati said. "Well-known figures will be competing in the next election and there is no room for the unknown," he added. Late in November, Velayati had said he was "completely ready to run for presidency though (his) candidacy is not finalized yet." Velayati headed the country's diplomacy from 1981 to 1997. He now advises Khamenei on international affairs and is a member of the Expediency Council, the Islamic Republic's top arbitration body.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:44:54 PM ||
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Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Al Hariri yesterday blasted the West for its approach to the Palestinian problem and affirmed that comprehensive peace in the Middle East hinges on Israeli withdrawal from Syrian and Lebanese territories. Addressing the Arab Strategy Forum, Hariri ridiculed what he described as efforts by Western powers to link statehood for Palestinians with "good behavior." "A Palestinian state should not be a prize for good behavior," Hariri told the conference. "A state is not a piece of chocolate or the promise to take a child to picnic if he behaves well. Arabs are ready for a just peace. I hear that the US and Europe are convinced of a Palestinian state. But Palestinians should have a country today and not tomorrow."
If they adhered to the agreements they made, and they weren't in the habit of exploding without warning, they'd have one by now...
Even if the Palestinian problem was addressed, he said, Israel would have to withdraw its army from Lebanese and Syrian territories in order to achieve comprehensive and just peace in the region. Speaking on the theme of "Arab World in 2020," Hariri said that he is provisionally optimistic. The world has to exert efforts and end the Arab-Israeli conflict. "We have to achieve just peace. We have to end Israeli occupation. This is a focal point that will define our future," said Hariri.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:43:43 PM ||
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blah, blah, blah.
We have to end Israeli occupation. This is a focal point that will define our future,â said Hariri. At least he got that right, but probably not in the context he imagines.
#2
Fred, you forgot to mention how Hariri's lips kept falling off with every sentance he spoke.
If Lebanon had any interest in "achieving just peace", they could start by letting local "Palestinian" "refugees" out of the UN camps, and integrating them into society.
Posted by: Sheik Abu Bin Ali Al-Yahood ||
12/15/2004 20:41
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Blasts? Little bit better choice of words there the next time, okay Rafik?
Just months after falling out with the United States and being written off by his rivals as politically washed up, Ahmad Chalabi is back in from the cold. The leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which grouped Saddam Hussein's enemies in exile, has emerged as a power broker in the main election list for the country's Shiite majority, which could dominate the Jan. 30 ballot. Chalabi used his connections with influential Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani to help draw up a mostly Shiite list backed by the Iranian-born scholar, people familiar with the list said. "This list is not about a theocracy or an Islamic Republic of Iraq. It is about democracy and representation of the Iraqi people," Chalabi told Reuters in an interview. Under the postwar election system, Iraq will be treated as a single electoral district. The electorate will vote for lists of candidates. The number of votes received will determine how many people on the list get into the 275-seat National Assembly. Names high on the list therefore have the best chance of being elected. Chalabi is 10th on the Shiite list.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:41:13 PM ||
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The defense team of imprisoned former president Saddam Hussein yesterday denounced as "invalid" plans by Iraq's interim government to start next week trying members of the country's ousted regime. "The interrogation (of detainees) in the absence of their lawyers is invalid and the accusations made against them are also invalid according to legal rules," the spokesman for the Jordan-based team Ziad Khassawhen said. "We have written to international organizations and the concerned parties over the past year-and-a-half but have been unsuccessful so far in meeting president Saddam Hussein or any of his companions," he added. Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said that the "symbols" of Saddam's toppled regime would start going on trial as early as next week. "The trial will begin next week of the symbols of the former regime who will appear in succession to ensure that justice is done in Iraq," Allawi told the interim national assembly in Baghdad. Allawi made it clear that he was referring to Saddam and the 11 top members of his former ruling Baathist regime who are being held in US custody awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:40:15 PM ||
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A cousin of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been captured in the flashpoint city of Fallujah where he was fighting with rebels, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday.
I don't think that little detail came out in the original article...
Ezzeddine Al-Majid was arrested in the city last week, Allawi told the interim National Assembly in Baghdad. "He is now in the hands of Iraqi security forces. There will be an inquiry and he will be judged. "The members of the former regime, especially the hard core around Saddam Hussein, continue to do damage to Iraq and the Iraqis," he added. US-led troops killed hundreds of fighters during a massive assault in Fallujah last month, but have continued to face resistance in the flashpoint city that lies west of Baghdad. Majid, 44, was accused in July by US authorities of helping organize and arm the insurgency in Iraq, according to the New York Times.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:38:55 PM ||
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The Hezbollah-run Lebanese TV station slammed the French order to ban its programs, saying that the decision was politically motivated.
Most countries are run by people who make political decisions.
Al Manar TV officials also promised that they will pursue the case to have their programs broadcasted again. On Monday, the French Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, ordered the French satellite company, Eutelsat, to end the broadcasts by Al Manar TV in France and Europe within 48 hours, claiming that the channel violated a ban on hate speech.
In response, Al Manar TV said Tuesday that the decision was taken under pressures from Israeli and Jewish lobbies.
... thereby proving their point.
Head of news at Al Manar, Hassan Fadlallah, said that it was unfair to halt programs by a channel because of one incident.
Okay, then. What's the cutoff?
In November, one guest at Al Manar said while on air that Israel is trying to spread dangerous diseases such as AIDS in Arab countries, comments that prompted the French court order. "This is a political decision, not a legal decision," Fadlallah said. "How is it possible in a country that proclaims freedom and says its laws and constitution uphold the right to free speech, that they shut a TV station on the basis of one person speaking on the telephone?" he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:34:53 PM ||
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#1
The Hezbollah-run Lebanese TV station slammed the French order to ban its programs, saying that the decision was politically motivated.
#2
Whats more the French are taking this to the Council of Europe to get all broadcasts into Europe blocked.
I guess the French are bad Dhimmi now and will be punished by bombs and seething.
#3
In response, Al Manar TV said Tuesday that the decision was taken under pressures from Israeli and Jewish lobbies.
No. No. No. The correct term is Zionist Entities. Say it with me. "ZZZZZZZZZZZiiiiiiiiiiiiiionist Ennnnnnnnnnnnnnntities".
Bet that gets me in good with the overseers.
At least 1,000 soldiers from the Assam Regiment were withdrawn from Kashmir today, part of the ongoing move to scale down troops in the restive valley. "The soldiers belonged to the counter insurgency operations in the state and are not going to be replaced by paramilitary personnel," said Colonel D.K. Badola. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh vowed last month that India would reduce the number of its troops stationed in its only Muslim-majority. However, Indian authorities have never made it clear how many troops are deployed in Kashmir. Newspapers have put the number in the hundreds of thousands, and may be up to half a million.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:32:03 PM ||
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Hamas has abruptly cancelled plans for an anniversary mass rally at Gaza City fearing possible Israeli strikes, a spokesman for the movement said on Wednesday.
"I mean, we're fond of hopping up and down and making faces and all, but there's no sense in getting ourselves killed. That's what cannon fodder's for!"
Hamas rally was planned to be held on Friday at a large sports stadium in Gaza City.
Home of the Gaza Greensox...
A spokesman said that Hamas feared that Israel might launch an attack targeting the movement leaders.
... as they were strutting their bravery...
Thousands of supporters were expected to take part in Friday rally, marking the 17th anniversary of the movement's formation. "The movement has postponed the festival," spokesman Mushir al-Masri told reporters on Wednesday, adding that the movement hadn't set an alternative date.
"We're thinking sometime in late 2042..."
The mass rally had been delayed "because of the security operation, particularly after the operation led by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas's armed wing) at the Rafah crossing", he said, referring to Sunday attack in which five Israeli soldiers were senselessly killed on the border between Egypt and Gaza. The delay would also "protect the lives of the thousands of people who take part in this rally each year." Hamas rallies are elaborate shows of strength, with march-pasts by masked men and enactments celebrating successful attacks against the Israeli occupation forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:21:23 PM ||
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#1
elaborate shows of strength, with march-pasts by masked men and enactments celebrating successful attacks
#3
I wonder if the paleos have figured out how the Israelis know when a vehicle carries a particular person. It would explain why they decided to cancel what is a major propaganda event for them.
"Feh! An empty vessel, the contents depleted, to be discarded at any time!"
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator said on Wednesday that Tehran doesn't care whether Mohammad ElBaradei remains head of the UN atomic watchdog. Asked whether ElBaradei's re-election would affect Tehran's nuclear file, Hassan Rohani, said, "We are not cooperating with the people of the IAEA but rather we are cooperating with an international agency. It does not matter to us who the secretary-general is." Rohani's statement followed a Washington Post report that the Bush administration has tapped phone calls between ElBaradei and Iranian officials, seeking evidence to remove the IAEA chief. The Post quoted three unidentified U.S. officials as saying; "The intercepted calls have not produced any evidence of nefarious conduct by El Baradei." ElBaradei said that he was planning to stand for re-election next year for a third term as secretary-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is currently investigating Iran's nuclear activities. The Bush administration opposes his winning a third term.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:15:56 PM ||
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#1
Ungrateful bastards!
I warn you! Because of this, your next reprimand will be extremely stern! Feel my wrath!
Posted by: Mohammad ElBaradei ||
12/15/2004 21:39
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No worse friend, no better enemy.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/15/2004 21:53
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Great grandstanding by politicians with neither accountability nor responsibility
The European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution on Wednesday in Strasbourg of France, urging the European Union (EU) to start accession negotiations with Turkey "without undue delay." The non-binding resolution, passed by 407 votes in favor, 262 against and 29 abstentions in a secret ballot, said Turkey has made impressive progress in respecting the political criteria, enough for negotiations on EU membership to start. Nevertheless, the EP acknowledged that problems continue to exist, such as regarding minority rights, religious freedoms, trade union rights, women's rights, the role of the army, Cyprus and the relations with Armenia.
 On the same day, addressing the EP European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso made the similar call. "It is now time for the European Council to honor its commitment to Turkey and announce the opening of accession negotiations. A clear date should be indicated," he said. "We accept that the accession process is open-ended and its outcome cannot be guaranteed beforehand," Barroso added. The upcoming EU summit, or the European Council in the EU's jargon, to be held in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, is expectedto make a decision on whether to open the talks and set the date. Turkey's intention to join the EU dated back to 1963, and it was not until 1999 that Turkey finally sealed the candidacy for the EU membership. However, due to considerable political, economic and cultural gap with the EU, Turkey has faced an uphill battle for starting the accession talks, a decisive step before joining the 25-member bloc. In October this year, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, submitted a proposal to start the accession talks with Turkey, but it did not notify a date for opening the talks. Xinhua cheesecake: Kylie Minogue pops up for Christmas
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004
6:14:50 PM ||
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The chief AU mediator said Wednesday that the Sudanese government agreed to stop its military offensive in the western region of Darfur, in a move that could make the two main rebel groups return to the AU suspended peace talks. "The government of Sudan has given an undertaking that it has agreed to stop the current military attack (in Darfur) and we have indicated to them that we shall try to verify that information so that we can resume the talks in the full session," Sam Ibok said. "If we verify the information and we find out that it is accurate, then it should pave the way for full discussion on the political issue," he said after his team met with Sudan's delegation at the talks.
Uhuh. I'll be holding my breath.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:13:18 PM ||
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Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' political leader, said on Tuesday that the movement is having contacts with the United States and the European Union.
"Yeah, we sent 'em Christmas cards. We're expecting one back any time now..."
Meshaal said in an interview with the BBC's Newsnight program that the "The European Union, which puts Hamas on a list of terrorist organizations, is still continuing communications and meetings." He added that Europe "recognize[s] Hamas' authority and that there can be no understanding or stability in Palestine without talks with Hamas."
Sounds like the position the Euros would take.
Meshaal also said that the U.S. had contacted the group in recent months. "The American authorities, who have also put us on a list of terrorist organizations and criticize us, have also contacted us in recent months." He said. Meshaal added that "The Arab countries are continuing meetings with Hamas despite pressure from the American administration."
So the Merkin contacts weren't what you'd call friendly, eh?
On other hand, Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, denied Meshaal's statements and said that there were no contacts between the EU and Hamas.
"No, no! Certainly not!"
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:07:42 PM ||
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I am in favor of more contacts between U.S. and Hamass people. But only if those contacts involve us contacting them with a missile or bomb. Don't even try to put lipstick on this pig, we learned our lesson with Arafart. Maybe we 'contact' them when they hold a joint meeting with the Hezbullshit people? He is trying to gain some legitimacy for his terrorists organization.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI), a U.S.-funded nonprofit organization that works to improve democracy worldwide, will oversee the upcoming Palestinian presidential election, planned for January 9, a spokeswoman for the group said. "We are going to be observing," said NDI spokeswoman, Jean Freedberg, adding that NDI was "working on putting together a delegation" and deciding on methods of how the organization will observe the voting process. The group is expected to release a formal announcement next week about its planned activities, including a list of monitors. NDI has observed over 50 elections,
... but never one like this is gonna be...
including the recent elections in Ukraine, where it reported several irregularities. NDI, which is funded by the U.S. government through the National Endowment for Democracy, already operates in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip through its political party development program, a long-term mission that aims at creating awareness of the role and duties of political factions in the democratic political process.
It'd prob'ly make more sense for the RNC and the DNC to open offices there. The Paleodefinition of "political party" isn't quite what we're used to...
Also, a team of 260 European Union election monitors will be observing the PA elections. A task force led by the former French Prime Minister, Michel Rocard, who is a European Parliament member, has already arrived in the occupied territories to oversee preparations for the poll.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
6:03:43 PM ||
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The Arabic-language newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, reported Wednesday that Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei will replace six cabinet ministers who were considered close aides to the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
"Pack it up and move on, guyz. And leave the washroom keys!"
The London-based daily reported that Qurei is planning to replace the foreign minister and the interior minister, as well as the ministers of finance, civil affairs, communications and social affairs portfolios. The newspaper said that Arafat's nephew, Nasser Al Kidwa, who is currently the PLO representative in the United Nations, will replace Nabil Shaath, the current foreign minister.
See you around, Nabil. Careful about starting your car, now!
The secretary-general of the Fatah Central Committee, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, might also be appointed as Qurei's deputy and Mohammad Dahlan, the former security chief, could be a national security adviser, the daily said. The newspaper also suggested that General Nasser Yusuf is a possible candidate to lead the Interior Ministry and that the former information minister Nabil Amr, who lost a leg in a recent attack on his home, will also lead an important ministry.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
5:59:12 PM ||
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Political factions in Iraq started their official campaign for the upcoming national elections, planned for January 30. Voters will elect a 275-member assembly that will select a government and formulate the country's constitution. Election officials said that about 80 blocs have registered to participate in the elections, including Sunni Muslim groups who have previously threatened to boycott the poll. There are strong fears that the voting process might be disrupted by the ongoing violence in the war-torn country. Many Iraqis also fear that the campaigning period will be targeted by rebels opposed to the polls.
I'd call that a pretty realistic expectation...
Up to 230 parties and groups, gathered into about 80 blocs or alliances must start campaigning amid the current chaos and the electoral authorities must establish voting centers across the country, including areas where violence is extremely high.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004
5:47:14 PM ||
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#1
..." including areas where violence is extremely high"
Also including areas where violence is pretty much non-existant. But that is unlikely to be mentioned.
Leading Hamas preacher warns of clash with Islamic Jihad A growing rift between Hamas and Islamic Jihad has led to a break in cooperation between the two groups, and is threatening to lead to an all-out clash between them, according to a leading Hamas preacher who recently slammed Jihad for trying to outmuscle Hamas. Mahmoud, remember the good old days when we competed for how many Joos we could kill?
"There was a time when there were more Islamic Jihadists than us, but now we are more than them, but nonetheless they have managed to take over the media and to get ahead of us, and are now intensively competing with us," said Fathi Hamad, a member of the Sura Council, the supreme Hamas religious body in Gaza responsible for the the organization's communications system in Gaza. "An Islamic Jihad takeover would means the Shi'ites take over, and if that happens you will all be turned into heretics .... We must fight and clash with all those who are not Sunni and guarantee our faith remains pure."
"Kill the infidels!"
"Who're youse callin' an infidel, apostate?"
Hamad gave his speech a couple of months ago before a few dozen Hamas activists working in the organization's Communications Councils, whose job is to promote Hamas in the Palestinian, Arab and international press. Hamad believed that he was speaking in a private closed forum, but the session was filmed and then distributed - a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz - sparking a dispute between the two groups. They have now cut off ties between them and have ceased cooperation, and the clash between the two Islamic fundamentalist groups is shaking up both organizations. For years they worked side by side, more or less in harmony. During the intifada they even began cooperating militarily and claimed joint responsibility for many attacks in Gaza. But Hamad is now hinting that Islamic Jihad wants to take Hamas' place, and is citing Iraq as an example. "Wherever Jihad fighters fought, Muslims, meaning Sunni Muslims like Hamas showed up, and then the hypocritical Sh'iites came and sat down on the chairs that became available. This is an American, Zionist, Arab Shiite plot," he said. Amerijoooshia deeply-laid-plot.
Hamad was saying that Islamic Jihad is financed and run by Hezbollah and Iran, the Shiite heretics according to Sunni Islam. He said the Islamic Jihad has no right to operate in the Palestinian street on ideological grounds, and pointed out that despite the Hamas' hegemony in the street, the Jihad had managed to take over "the agenda" and the media by putting its people in key jobs in the press. He called for a "media jihad," meaning getting into important Arab and Palestinian media outlets. The MSM?
Hamad's talk forced an apology from senior Hamas activists to the Arab press working in Gaza, whom Hamad had accused of serving the Jihad and the Palestinian Authority. Hamad's speech on tape opens a rare window into the balance of power inside the Gaza Strip, including Hamas relations with the PA and how it motivates its activists in the street. But more than anything, the tape shows how frustrated Hamas is that despite being by far a larger organization than Islamic Jihad, in the press, at least, they are presented as equally important.
... and being important is what's most essential.
Hamad opened his lecture with "the media is the decisive weapon," and then delivered a series of examples from the life of Mohammed the Prophet and how his sermons to his warriors determined battles. But the Hamad speech quickly turned to the subject of the Islamic Jihad. Mohammed dealt with the Media?
"We outnumber them, we have many more mosques, and much more commitment, but they are ahead of us in the satellite TV stations, and their Web sites are much bigger than the group itself. They are stealing attacks from Hamas, exaggerate the number of their killed, and inflate the numbers of their street demonstrations as if they are a domestic group, even though they are supported by Hezbollah. The media has turned them into the equals of the Muslim Brotherhood," Hamad complains in the tape. They take credit for what we do! Waaaaaaa
He labels specific Palestinian reporters working in Gaza, saying an Al Jazeera correspondent in Gaza, Wa'al Dahduah, is a Jihad supporter, as is Imad Eid, the Hezbollah TV correspondent in Gaza. Hamad said that Walid Alomri, the senior Al Jazeera correspondent in the territories, is a Fatah man "with a burning hatred for Hamas, and he reports tendentiously in favor of the PA." Uh-oh. Named names, boys. Better scatter!
Hamad says on tape that Hamas man Faiz Abu Smala works for the BBC, "and that way he writes the story in favor of the Islam and Muslims." Beyond the issue of the media, there is an ideological abyss between Hamas and Islamic Jihad. While Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, believes in social activity to educate society and create an Islamic rule, the Islamic Jihad has always believed in a violent campaign to take over power centers, and its social activities were marginal. But in the last year the Islamic Jihad changed direction and began undertaking social activities in Gaza. We do GOOD stuff too, but all PIJ does is kill!
Three months ago, armed Islamic Jihad men took over Al Qassam mosque, a Hamas stronghold, by force, and the takeover led to armed clashes between men from both groups. Thus, Hamad complains in the tape, "the Islamic Jihad ignited our spirit of resistance when it took away our mosque, and there is a danger they will try to take over others." I give it a 5. Needs more Juche. Wot a bunch of crybabies.
The general manager of Jakarta's Hilton Hotel says he believes there is no need to pass an Australian terrorism warning on to his guests. Australians are being warned to avoid international hotels in Indonesia, particularly the Hilton chain, with intelligence pointing to a imminent terrorist attack. Australia's ambassador to Indonesia, David Ritchie, delivered the travel advice to the Hilton chain within minutes of its release yesterday.
He then sought the names of Australians among the Jakarta Hilton's 1,000 guests so the embassy could contact them. But the hotel's general manager says there is no need to panic guests with a warning which he says is lacking in specific detail. Security officials in Jakarta have also played down the Australian warning, saying there is no intelligence to back the claim. Indonesian police say they have not received any information about an attack on a Hilton hotel, nor any other specific target, although government officials say there is always a danger as extremists blamed for previous strikes remain at large. Australian embassy staff are also contacting other hotels based on fears that any planned attack could be switched to another target. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says Australians in Indonesia should avoid all international hotels and other places where foreigners gather. "Terrorists can move targets very quickly," Mr Downer said.
Mr Downer says the information is based on credible intelligence. "We have had advice of a possible terrorist attack on Hilton hotels or possibly other Western hotels so we would urge Australians over the next period to keep well clear of these sorts of establishments," he said. "We wouldn't be passing it on if we weren't particularly concerned about the information." Defence Minister Robert Hill has not changed his plans to visit Jakarta from today. He plans to stay in a hotel in the capital. The Government warns Australians to avoid non-essential travel to Indonesia and says those already there who are concerned for their safety should consider leaving. The British Foreign Office has also warned Britons travelling to Indonesia over Christmas and the new year that they face a heightened risk of terrorist attacks. A Foreign Office spokeswoman says attacks could occur at any time anywhere in Indonesia and could be directed against locations frequented by tourists. Japan's Foreign Ministry also issued a warning to Japanese nationals planning to visit or stay in Indonesia, saying it has obtained information a foreign hotel has become a likely terrorism target. The Ministry has urged Japanese tourists to keep away from American and European hotels, or facilities where many people gather. US embassy spokesman Max Kwak says the mission in Jakarta has issued no warning of a possible attack.
Posted by: God Save The World ||
12/15/2004
4:53:36 PM ||
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From East Asia Intel, subscription required
SEOUL — The only son of one of North Korea's top generals has defected with his family and is in the hands of U.S. intelligence officials, according to secret reports from the Japan Defense Agency. The elite see the handwriting on the wall in North Korea so they are abandoning ship.
A Japan Defense Agency operative in the North Korean industrial port of Chongjin reportedly saw Oh Se-Uk, who holds the rank of brigadier general, board a speedboat with a group of Koreans of Japanese ancestry who had earned the trust of North Korean authorities. Planing hull, don't fail me now!
According to the report from the Japan Defense Agency, Oh, his wife and other family members were transferred in international waters to another boat that took them to the huge U.S. Navy base at Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, the center of U.S. naval activity in Asia. We're outa here. Don't look back, or you'll turn into a pillar of salt.
The report was corroborated by contacts at Chosen Soren, the organization controlled by North Korea that represents Koreans living in Japan.
Korean sources say Oh, 43, was spirited out of North Korea at the end of last year. It was not clear, however, if he remained at Yokosuka, was installed in a CIA "safe house" in Japan or was sent to the United States.
Japanese sources say Oh may have been sent the U.S. for interrogation by CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials. Japanese officials, however, have been hunting for Oh near Yokohama amid reports that he may be living in a safe house run by the CIA's Unit 500.
"The Japanese police now are looking for everything," said a source with close ties to the North Koreans. "The Americans are not cooperating. They are silent about him." ***silence***
Both the State Department and the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Chris Hill, have denied any knowledge of Oh's defection. "We don't know nuthin'."
Oh, whose 73-year-old father, Gen. Oh Keuk-Ryul, is head of the operations department of the Korea Workers' Party, had risen to the rank of brigadier general before deciding to defect. He had been investigating the internal affairs of the North Korean armed forces and may have encountered severe opposition from within the military establishment, the center of power.
His defection assumes heightened significance in view of his family's background. His father was an important official in the Workers' Party inside South Korea after World War II and graduated in 1949 from the Soviet Air Force.
Oh Keuk-Ryul escaped a purge in the 1980s of graduates of the Soviet Air Force Academy after it was discovered that the KGB had bribed some of them to serve as spies. Oh Keuk-Ryul lost out to Oh Jin-U for the top post of minister of the People's Armed Forces. But he recovered from that blow and was given other top posts.
Oh Keuk-Ryul owes his high standing in the North Korean power structure in part to the role of his legendary uncle, Oh Joong-Heup, a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese in Manchuria. Oh's unit was said to have rescued Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il's father, on a number of occasions.
Analysts here view the younger Oh's defection as a sign of the gradual weakening of Kim Jong-Il's regime. Sons and other relatives of Kim Jong-Il have been engaged in a power struggle in which relatives have reportedly been purged. Faster, please. The sooner the NORK regime falls, the sooner the general populace can be saved.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/15/2004
4:49:30 PM ||
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#1
From yesterday:
We do not know such a word as "defection".
You might want to have Kimmie invent one then, and most chop-chop.
#3
This may be another round of purges and the younger O wanted to avoid a dirt nap. I donât think the Norks have a retirement plan for anybody unless they are ready for burial. At first I thought this was the son of O Chin U, and that would have been a HUGE defection. This guy is the son of a ârevolutionary heroâ who lost the struggle for the top military job. That makes the son an adversary and if he has no political power, he probably wouldnât survive if his father is no longer of this world. Given that reality, it would be smart to grab a boat and head for the nearest U.S. base.
#5
It was a speedboat, Shipman, and I wanted to say, "Evinrude, don't fail me now." My best guess that the speedboat was an inboard motor. So that is the basis of my statement.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/15/2004 17:56
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Oh, whose 73-year-old father, Gen. Oh Keuk-Ryul, iswas head of the operations department of the Korea Workersâ Party
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004 18:04
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My best guess that the speedboat was an inboard motor.
Still in that case you could have said "OMC inboard don't fail me now". But you didn't. You can see why I'm suspicious.
#8
North Korea loses a brigadier general; America gains a small business.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 19:46
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Time to leave a'fore the Party turns you and the kiddies into PC Meats for the masses, ala SOLYENT GREEN. It may no longer be cats, dogs, monkeys, assorted birds, andor insects, etc. in your NK Commie Socialist kimchee and stews. Since Bill Clinton hates California-based BIG BOY restaurant burgers/food, as oppos to the USA, lets ask the NorKors to send Billary some proper NK cuisine and see if they'll eat it, and lets ask CASTRO to send over some CUBAN salsa!? AFter all. famine/hunger-struck NK cadavers > just "LONG PIGS/COWS", as 1930 headhunters from New Guinea used to say.
Counterterrorism officials are beefing up security at Los Angeles International Airport to protect jetliners from terrorists armed with shoulder-launched missiles.
There is no immediate threat to aircraft, according to authorities, who said they were prompted to step up security because of recent overseas strikes against airliners, coupled with the availability of such weapons on the black market.
"The threat is real," said John Miller, head of the Los Angeles Police Department's counterterrorism bureau. "With about 20,000 of these available on the black market, for $2,000 to $3,000 each, there is no indication it will not be tried again."
Among the new measures are expanded helicopter surveillance, new perimeter fencing, stepped-up police patrols and additional training to help authorities identify such weapons.
While shoulder-launched missiles haven't been used against airliners in the United States, terrorists have fired missiles weighing less than 40 pounds at some two dozen commercial aircraft around the world.
Last year, terrorists armed with a shoulder-launched missile struck a DHL cargo jet taking off from Baghdad International Airport, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing. In November 2002, two shoulder-launched missiles nearly missed a jet carrying 271 people.
A study conducted by the Rand Corp. concluded earlier this year that Los Angeles International Airport is "a particularly attractive target" for terrorists. Increased patrols and the use of such technology as powerful laser beams to intercept missiles could make the airport safer, Rand said.
According to security experts, the airport has been targeted in five attacks or attempted attacks by terrorists over the last three decades. One of the best known was an attempt to detonate a suitcase bomb at the airport on New Year's Eve 1999. The plot was foiled when an Algerian man was caught attempting to sneak the explosives into the United States from Canada.
To guard against shoulder-fired missiles, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has proposed equipping commercial planes with lasers that destroy the infrared guidance sensors on portable missiles.
The laser defense would cost about $1 million for each jetliner. C-17 military transport jets are already using such technology.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004
4:14:35 PM ||
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Heh heh, the LAPD has a lot of ground to cover if they want to be able to be an effective deterrent. The area under the LAX approach path is very large, heavily populated, and not always the best of neighborhoods.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004 17:46
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"The SA-18 has a slant range of about three miles and a maximum altitude of more than 11,000 feet. Its infrared (IR) guidance system is claimed to offer better protection against electro-optical jammers."
So,get on a three engine aircraft and hope the missile does not hit the wing.
A Sydney magistrate has granted an application by the Commonwealth Government to hear some evidence against an alleged terrorism suspect in a closed court. Sydney's Central Local Court is holding a committal hearing for 34-year-old Faheem Khalid Lodhi, who is charged with nine terrorism related offences. He is alleged to have planned attacks on the electricity grid and some Sydney defence sites, along with French terrorism suspect Willie Brigitte. The Commonwealth Government applied to have some of the expected evidence in the case heard in a closed court, arguing that if it was made public it would be contrary to national security. After almost two days of argument, Magistrate Michael Price has granted the application. He says the closed court would not damage Lodhi's defence, but would protect the wider community.
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Edited for brevity.
South and North Korea commemorated a production milestone at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex... located just north of the border dividing the two sides. The first products to roll off an assembly line in the special zone were kitchenware... which were quickly delivered across the border to reach South Korean consumers. At around 2 p.m, Wednesday... 1-thousand sets of pots were transported across the heavily fortified border... to be put on shelves at a department store in downtown Seoul. The 'Made in Gaeseong' kitchenware came with a reasonable pricetag of around 19-thousand won... or about 19 U.S. dollars... which is 40 to 50 percent cheaper than South Korean rival products. But consumers say... it's not the price or quality that's making them line up. [Says one customer:] "I'm not purchasing this product for its quality, but because it's meaningful that we can get products here in the South that were made earlier today in the North. I'm really emotional, because I think we have taken a step closer to reunification." How about letting the South export some goods to the Workers' Paradise in return, like cell phones, radios, and TVs? Or is undercutting free labor with grass-and-bark-eating slave labor the whole purpose?
Posted by: Dar ||
12/15/2004
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Yesterday, France suggested Turkey should apologize for the Armenian Genocide prior to gaining EU membership (might have been an empty threat, maybe a bargaining position, maybe serious - Today, Turkey answered)
-------------------------
December 15, 2004
Turkey will not apologise for Armenian genocide
By Anthony Browne, Brussels Correspondent
TURKEY has reacted angrily to a demand by France that it accept responsibility for a "genocide" against Armenians nearly 80 years ago, which is thought to have influenced the Nazi Holocaust [the theory here is that the Germans realized that if the Turks could get away with it the Germans could to] ....
Historians believe that Turkish authorities orchestrated the killing of 1.5 million Armenian Christians, who were indigenous inhabitants of Turkey, in a brutal attempt to make an ethnically pure nation....
However, a Turkish government spokesman said: "There was no such genocide, so there is no question of recognising a genocide that did not happen."
#3
I had a boss once, actually a pretty good guy who was Turkish ancestry. He maintained that the 1.5 million people died as a result of 'uncoordinated massacres'. Seemed to me a pretty thin distinction but obviously it meant a lot to him.
A company of 150 soldiers from Niger has brought the war on terrorism to a new frontier, carrying out a three-week hunt for armed bandits linked to an Algerian terror group in the inhospitable terrain of the Sahara desert and the Sahel region. "It was tough," said Major Moussa Salaou Barmou, whose unit was the first US-trained group to go out on a mission in the arid region. "We managed to get a couple of them, but the rest escaped into Algeria. As soon as we got close, they just moved on -- we couldn't keep pace."
They can't outrun an airplane, and I think we ought to teach the Niger air force how to do this; a few leftover Skyraiders would do nicely.
The tally from the three skirmishes last month around Mount Tamgak, about 600 miles northeast of Niamey, Niger's capital, was relatively modest: seven bandits killed, two Niger soldiers lightly injured, according to Moussa. But senior US military officials say the message sent by the mission is critical in West Africa. For the first time, the armed forces of four nations -- Niger, Mali, Chad, and Mauritania -- will patrol what had been a 3,000-mile wide no-man's land as vast as the continental United States.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
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#1
If the US has some soldiers to spare, why do not they send them to Iraq to control the chaos there?
#2
That's not chaos, that's post-invasion mopping up. Go read the Iraqi bloggers to find out what's really going on, rather than demonstrate your ignorance.
#3
Aside from that, Goher, they're not US troops, they're US trained troops. And just because we're in Iraq doesn't mean we need to suck our resources out of the rest of the world and put them all in Iraq. Come back when you can read and think.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 8:22
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#4
...they're not US troops, they're US trained troops.
Yeah. What's up with the misleading title, Dan? The Globe's headline was correct.
#5
Angie is being sarcastic?
USA trains folks all over the place...
the concept (us-trained = american) does not really make sense.. though I kinda wish it was that easy to instill our values :-p
#6
No, Dcreeper, the title originally read "US troops patrolling the Sahara". That would have been Biggish News to me. Then I read the article and found that they were only US-trained troops, which for me is Not News, though others might find it interesting. Title's been fixed now.
#7
only chaos if you consider the sunni areas being iraq in total - the rest of the country (80%) is progressing along.. Goher - need to stop taking the msm line as gospel...
Posted by: Dan ||
12/15/2004 13:48
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#8
TW - did you actually read the last couple of posts on Healing Iraq?
the country may not be in chaos (as Dan said, the Shia and Kurd areas are ok) but Baghdad is seriously snafued, or at least the part that Healing Iraq lives in.
#9
Actually, I haven't LH, but that's the one Fred has a link to. Still, its got to be more accurate than anything Mr. Goher is getting his news from, and the blogger has links to many of the other Iraqi sites. My latest news comes from a Kurdish aquaintance -- Saturday evening over dinner we discussed what his family back home has been saying recently. (His brother is so excited by the opportunities that he is becoming a collector of cars, his sister enjoys not fearing the late night knock on the door, but worries about terrorists who occasionally toss a grenade into the market where she shops. Both are eager to vote in January, and know young men who've joined the Iraqi police or National Guard.)
Attackers raided a regional branch of the Federal Drug Control Service in the Kabardino-Balkaria republic [NB: this is just north of North Ossetia and east of Georgia, see area #5 on this map. AoS] before dawn Tuesday, shot and killed four employees, looted an arsenal and set the office ablaze, police said.
The assailants stole 36 Kalashnikov automatic rifles, 136 pistols and 1,500 rifle cartridges, said Alexei Polyansky, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry's branch in Rostov-on-Don. Six to 10 attackers were involved in the raid on the drug service building in Nalchik, the republic's capital, according to a preliminary investigation. It was not immediately clear who they were.
We have to get tough with those Esquimaux.
Interfax quoted Natalya Marshenkulova, spokeswoman for the drug agency's regional office, as saying the attackers handcuffed the four employees -- three officers and a driver -- and led them into a basement, where they shot them.
The m.o. sounds rather suspiciously like the Lions of Islam, doesn't it?
Polyansky said it was unclear how the attackers had gained entry to the building, which they apparently entered without firing a shot.
Carded the door latch with a Pakistani passport?
The first that law enforcement agencies heard of the attack was a telephone call around 5 a.m. from a man who reported he saw smoke pouring out of the drug agency office's windows, Itar-Tass reported.
Investigators were considering two motives for the attack: revenge by a drug baron or a hunt for weapons. State television said the agency had interrupted a key drug route through Kabardino-Balkaria in the last month, but officials played down that version. "According to a preliminary scenario, the reason for the attack was an attempt to seize a large cache of weapons. In my opinion, such an amount was seized not for sale but for arming some bands," said Alexander Mikhailov, spokesman for the Federal Drug Control Service. "I don't rule out the possibility that some former employees took part [in the raid] or that those who were inside the building knew someone among the attackers."
Itar-Tass quoted unidentified Federal Security Service officers in Kabardino-Balkaria as saying the attackers could be members of Yarmuk, a radical Islamic group loyal to Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, which has been targeted by law enforcement agencies in the republic.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
3:39:39 AM ||
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I couldn't call it "Russian Roulette" so I made up my own term.
A man has been charged with involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting his friend through a protective vest on an apparent dare, police said. Alexander Joseph Swandic, 20, died of a gunshot wound to the heart Monday after donning a protective vest and asking David John Hueth, 30, to shoot him, police said. Hueth initially told police that Swandic's wound was self-inflicted, but later admitted to the shooting. The two had apparently tested the vest by propping it against a dirt bank and shooting it twice, police said. Just in time for Christmas--"He's propping a vest, shooting it twice, gonna find out who's gonna be iced."
Police said the vest was designed to protect against grenade fragments, not bullets. Swandic was pronounced dead at a local hospital following the shooting. Hueth faces a preliminary hearing on Dec. 27. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. "Too bad we wuz fresh outta grenades. Alex'd still be with us."
Posted by: Dar ||
12/15/2004
3:38:25 PM ||
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#1
"Bush blamed for not providing proper body armor, news at 11."
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004 15:42
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Five Russian soldiers and three rebels were killed in Chechnya, either in fighting or by exploding landmines Monday and Tuesday, a military source said. Three soldiers were killed Tuesday in fighting near southeastern Shali that also claimed the lives of three rebels, a Russian military official based in Chechnya told AFP on condition of anonymity. Another six soldiers were wounded. One soldier was killed Tuesday near southern Shatoy when the military truck he was riding in struck a mine. Another three were wounded. On Monday a soldier was killed by a mine in southeastern Vedeno, while another was wounded. Elsewhere, a pro-Russian Chechen police officer was killed in a gunfight on Monday after his patrol was attacked in the Chechen capital Grozny. Two of his colleagues were wounded.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
3:36:40 AM ||
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The United Nations is taking the first baby steps to expand its presence in Iraq outside Baghdad to the cities of Basra and Irbil but is planning to have only about 25 electoral experts in the entire country ahead of the scheduled Jan. 30 elections, a U.N. spokesman said Wednesday. The announcement came on the eve of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's meeting in Washington with outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
The two U.S. officials and the Iraqi government have been pressing the United Nations to expand its electoral team and its presence in the country. While deploying just 25 U.N. election experts is unlikely to satisfy the Iraqis or Americans, U.S. Ambassador John Danforth said Monday the United Nations was "moving in the right direction" and expressed hope it would put personnel in northern and southern Iraq.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Wednesday that Annan "intends to proceed with further expansion" of the U.N. mission in Iraq and that a first step was sending security experts to the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra and the mainly Kurdish northern city of Irbil. They will assess security conditions in order to establish U.N. offices "as soon as practicable," Eckhard said. Both cities have been relatively quiet, with British troops headquartered in Basra and 3,600 South Korean troops deployed in Irbil.
The security experts' mission will coincide with the arrival in Iraq of about 130 Fijian troops who will provide close protection for U.N. international staffers. The U.S.-led multinational force, in cooperation with the United Nations, is currently recruiting a special contingent to protect U.N. facilities and U.N. staff traveling outside the heavily guarded Green Zone in Baghdad. "The Fijians are completing a training exercise and are in the process of being deployed," Eckhard said. In August, the secretary-general allowed a small U.N. contingent to return to Baghdad and imposed a ceiling of 35 international staffers. The upper limit was recently raised to 59 and Eckhard said Wednesday the number of staffers currently in Iraq is "in that neighborhood." With the arrival of the Fijians, who will be on the U.N. payroll, the ceiling will rise to about 200, Eckhard said. This would allow for a small increase in the international staff, presumably to staff new offices in Basra and Irbil.
Iran acknowledged for the first time Sunday it has convicted some Iranian nationals of supporting al-Qaida, saying the number was fewer than five. "A few pro-al-Qaida Iranian nationals have been tried and convicted," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters at his weekly press briefing.
Note that "Iranian nationals" is stressed. To me that means locals who they suspected were more loyal to al-Qaida than to Iran. Or just anti-Black Turban types they are pretending are al-Qaida. Plus, all of the senior al-Qaida members suspected of being in Iran are Sunni Arab, rather than Iranian Shiite.
Their number, he said, is less than "the fingers on one's hand," he was quoted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency as saying. He did not say when they were convicted, what sentences they had received, what sort of support they had provided Osama bin Laden's terror network or give any other details.
"I can say no more"
Asefi said cases of foreign nationals in Iran with alleged links to al-Qaida are still under investigation and no trial dates have been set, IRNA reported.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
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Terrorism analysts here are examining the biography and teachings of a Palestinian religious figure as a factor in the simultaneous Oct. 7 bombings of a hotel in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and two other resorts farther south on the peninsula's Red Sea coast.
They suspect the attacks marked the start of an effort to extend al Qaeda's operations to this part of the Middle East, and ultimately to Israeli territory.
The most credible claim of responsibility came from a group calling itself the Brigades of the Martyr Abdullah Azzam.
The name offers a hint of the group's motivation and goals.
Abdullah Azzam, who grew up in a village on the West Bank of the Jordan River now occupied by Israel, was a leading al Qaeda theorist, said Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer in the Arabic Department of Israel's Bar-Ilan University.
The two groups suspected of perpetrating the Sinai attacks are Egyptian extremists opposed to the government of President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and Bedouin Arab allies in the Sinai inspired by Azzam's teachings. They are believed to have been recruited by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.
The consensus in Israel's intelligence establishment is that al Qaeda is intensifying its campaign against Arab states that have close ties to the United States. Al Qaeda's long-term goal, according to the intelligence establishment, is to rid the Middle East of perceived Western implants, including the Jewish state.
Bin Laden confirmed that view 21 months ago.
Accusing the moderate Arab regimes of backing the Bush administration in the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, he described them as "Jahiliya" heathens — the Arabic term for paganism practiced on the Arabian peninsula before the advent of Islam.
In March 2003, Al Jazeera television and some Arabic Web sites carried bin Laden's "will," in which he said that "getting rid of the Arab regimes is an Islamic commandment because they are heretical and cooperate with America."
In fact, the "will" was a speech he recorded two years earlier. Arab reports called it his "will" because it was delivered while he was besieged by U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan.
Israel's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, contended five days after the Sinai bombings killed 34 persons, a third of them Israelis, that "we regard international terrorism as a threat to Israelis abroad as well as at home." Gen. Yaalon said al Qaeda had made several unsuccessful attempts to infiltrate the West Bank and Gaza Strip but that its personnel were intercepted by Israeli troops.
"We are deployed in such a way as to deal with al Qaeda's threat, and this matter requires international cooperation," he said. Military intelligence officers refused to elaborate, but well-informed sources said the incidents occurred over the past six years.
The deputy head of the research branch of Israeli military intelligence, Col. Zohar Alfi, said Worldwide Jihad, the group that sponsored the Sinai bombings, comprises separate cells in dozens of countries whose epicenter is al Qaeda. One of the cells is named after Azzam, who was born 63 years ago in a West Bank village near Jenin. He is regarded by Palestinians as a national hero, said Maher al-Alami, a senior editor of the daily al-Quds (Jerusalem).
Mr. Kedar and Reuven Paz, director of Project for the Research of Islamic Movements, agree al Qaeda's main objective is to overthrow all Arab regimes that are linked to the West.
This view is supported in an article by Abu Abbas al Aedhi, a Saudi scholar whose writing has appeared in several online outlets. In a piece titled "From Riyadh/East to Sinai," a reference to the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Mr. al Aedhi wrote: "The blessed attack in Sinai had long-term dimensions, the same as the attack in Riyadh. Egyptians carried out the Sinai attack, but with the support and experience of their brothers in [Saudi] Arabia and elsewhere."
In February, Mr. Paz said bin Laden preferred to let Palestinian militants engage the Israelis while his disciples fought the United States. The Sinai attacks led him to revise this assessment.
"The return of al Qaeda to the Arab homeland," he wrote in a newly published article, "ended a seven-year-long hiatus in terrorist operations on Egyptian soil." The term "Arab homeland" includes Israel and extends south to the Sinai Peninsula and west to the Nile Delta.
Mr. al Alami, the editor at al-Quds, also cited the overthrow of Egypt's pro-Western regime as one of al Qaeda's primary objectives. "It relies on Egyptian dissidents to topple Mubarak and end the Cairo regime's alignment with the West, and especially the U.S.," he said.
Cairo's effort to counter the idea that Egyptians linked to al Qaeda were responsible for the Sinai bombings was echoed by Al-Gumhuriya (the Republic), a pro-government daily.
Its columnist Adli Barhum wrote: "The U.S. is the main culprit in all acts of violence. It takes advantage of the call to fight terrorism in order to conceal what it is doing — terrorism from a powerful country by means of invasion, economics and brainwashing."
Responsibility for the Sinai bombings was claimed by the brigades, whose members detonated l,000 pounds of explosives at the Taba Hilton. The explosives were obtained by Sinai Bedouin. They announced their involvement on their Internet outlet.
Azzam's slogan, "The Way to Liberate Jerusalem Passes Through Cairo," implies that the downfall of Egypt's pro-U.S. regime will lead to Israel's elimination from the Middle East.
"His writings brim with hatred of the West and the Jews, ideas which still motivate al Qaeda," Roni Shaked wrote in the daily Yediot Ahronot. Azzam was killed by an explosion that went off as he headed for a mosque on Nov. 24, 1989.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004
3:33:02 AM ||
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#1
Mr. Kedar and Reuven Paz, director of Project for the Research of Islamic Movements, agree al Qaedaâs main objective is to overthrow all Arab regimes that are linked to the West.
US is tough, so now they want to go back to eating their own. Divide and conquer doesn't work when the parts are massively greater than your whole. Wanting to overthrow Arab regimes will, however, divide and conquer Arab support, so it seems a poor strategy for Al Qaeda to me.
Long-term exposure to American culture may be hazardous to immigrants' health. A new study found that obesity is relatively rare in the foreign-born until they have lived in the United States — the land of drive-throughs, remote controls and double cheeseburgers — for more than 10 years. The study, published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, shows the flip side of the American dream of finding a better life in the land of plenty. "Part of the American dream and sort of life of leisure is that you also have some of the negative effects, and obesity is one of the major side effects of the success of technology and just having a life of leisure," said co-author Dr. Christina Wee of Harvard Medical School. "It's a double-edged sword." ... "Trends in obesity among immigrants may reflect acculturation and adoption of the U.S. lifestyle, such as increased sedentary behavior and poor dietary patterns," [said the report]. "They may also be a response to the physical environment of the United States, with increased availability of calorically dense foods and higher reliance on labor-saving technologies." The results are worrisome, particularly since immigrants often face a language barrier and other obstacles to good health care, the researchers said.
So all you Euro- and Southern Hemispheric-Rantburgers can just forget about moving here. You'll work hard, enjoy the fruits of your labor, raise your kids in freedom, and turn into lazy lardballs like the rest of us cowboys and be too dumb to find out how to see a doctor. Oy.
#1
Contrary to what the media would have you believe, Americans are not the world's fattest people. The average Australian woman is an astonishing 8kg (nearly 20lbs) heavier than the average american woman.
#3
Doesn't matter. You move to America, you adopt evil capitalist ways, with "calorically dense foods" and "labor-saving technologies", and you get fat and die. Why even bother? You should just stay home and starve, and let the NGO's whine that the US isn't sending enough aid.
The Bush family continues to surprise me. Considering their connections, Jenna could get any "job" she wanted. But the fact that she's even considering taking on a job in one of the worst public school systems in the country, shows she's got moxie and class.
Jenna Bush, one of President Bush's two daughters, has applied for a teaching position at a public school in Washington, D.C., according to a report in the Washington Post. The president's daughter wants to teach at Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School in the Mount Pleasant/Columbia Heights neighborhood of the capital. The school serves low-income children and has 250 pupils enrolled in kindergarten through sixth grade. Ninety percent of the pupils come from low-income homes. The White House has not released details of the job, but Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for first lady Laura Bush, told the newspaper that Jenna Bush "will live in Washington and will go to work at a public school."
Linda Moore, the school's founder and executive director, wouldn't confirm she has hired one of the president's twin daughters, telling the Washington Post in an interview that it doesn't discuss the relationship between a prospective employee and the school until there is a "formal agreement."
Jenna Bush, who is 22, holds a degree in English from the University of Texas. She has talked publicly of her desire to teach at a charter school, and last summer news reports focused on her interest in teaching in a public school in Harlem. But she deferred a decision until the conclusion of her father's campaign for president.
The kids will learn what "Don't mess with Texas" means...
#1
Anyone care to speculate on the increase in security at the Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School? ( Geez, any kid that goes there should graduate with honors if they just remember the name of the freakin' place)
#2
Good for her! I really wanted to be a teacher when I retired from the service but the pay wasn't good enough. About the only way you can make it as a teacher, is to start out as one and work your way up the pay chart. I agree with Alan on the name think, where did they dream that one up?
A village chief and two other Buddhists were shot dead in southern Thailand in one of the bloodiest days of violence in recent weeks in the Muslim-dominated region, police said. The deaths, all in isolated attacks in Narathiwat province, came as security sources said they had arrested a prime suspect in the Islamist separatist insurgency which flared to life in January. Village headman Kliang Jankong, 52, was shot three times by unknown attackers in Bacho district after seeing his daughter off to school, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. "Police are convinced the killing was part of the ongoing violence in the southern provinces," Bacho police superintendent Colonel Somchai Sawasdisak said in a report. Somporn Nasanit, a 65-year-old retired headmaster, was gunned down in a village near Tak Bai town after attackers entered his convenience store posing as customers, police said. A third person, vendor Tan Khanchompoo, was shot dead while pushing his ice cream cart in Sungai Padi district, police said. Thai security sources said Wednesday that a prime suspect behind the violence, identified as Waeyuso Waedoramae, was arrested Tuesday night and was under interrogation at a military camp in Pattani. Thailand has made little headway in arresting the masterminds of the violence. The latest killings also came as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced that a soldier was now the main suspect in the accidental shooting death of a senior official in the south.
Senior officials being killed by accident, now that's big news
Private Barney Fife Theradech Pongpetch has been charged with negligence resulting in the death of the deputy governor of Pattani province in a November shooting, an army official said. Officials originally thought deputy governor Soonthorn Litpakdi had been the target of an assassination attempt but later determined that the gun of a security official was fired by accident.
"accidently" killed the deputy governor, huh?
A defense volunteer was earlier arrested for the shooting but has since been cleared. Theradech has pleaded innocent, an army official told AFP.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
2:16:55 PM ||
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Finished sweeping up the origami guano, getting back to bidness...
Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party's central committee apparently has decided to confiscate all remaining farms still owned by white farmers, reported the Zimbabwean website, Zimonline, on Monday. About 500 farms out of the initial 4,500 are still in white hands.
And we can't have that, can we?
The first farm to fall prey to this decision is that of well-known cricketer Dennis Streak, father of Heath, the former cricket captain. This decision, which is discussed in a secret report of the Zanu-PF's central committee, clashes with a statement by President Robert Mugabe and his cabinet that the land-reform process in Zimbabwe has been completed. The report reads: "The resolution, which sources in the party's inner circles believe will definitely be implemented in the next couple of months, will mean the 500 white farmers who have managed to retain their land until now will definitely lose it."
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
2:10:09 PM ||
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#1
Good luck with that famine, guys. Shall we go ahead and put you down for a few hundred thousand pounds of relief grain?
#2
Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party's central committee apparently has decided to confiscate all remaining farms still owned by white farmers, reported the Zimbabwean website, Zimonline, on Monday.
#3
AESOP FABLE -- WOLF, meeting with a Lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the Lamb the Wolf's right to eat him. He thus addressed him: "Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me." "Indeed," bleated the Lamb in a mournful tone of voice, "I was not then born." Then said the Wolf, "You feed in my pasture." "No, good sir," replied the Lamb, "I have not yet tasted grass." Again said the Wolf, "You drink of my well." "No," exclaimed the Lamb, "I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me." Upon which the Wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, "Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations." The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.(And sheep are deeply offended by the violence inherent in non-P.C. fables.)
Posted by: Bob Mugabe ||
12/15/2004 16:50
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#6
They've also been confiscating farms from blacks who were settled on farms that were originally confiscated from whites.
All your farms are belong to us!
#1
A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just concluded in five of the southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing foreign observers, who have described as "spectacular" the massive display of high-tech, mobile operations
No doubt mesmerized by the spectacle of seeing untrained boys march into minefields as human sweepers.
#2
DN - Lol! Prolly the sparkling rainbow glitter effect as the blood mist fell - backlit by the setting sun and secondaries. Almost brings tears to my eyes...
#4
The ruse of power, however, is that it is often blind to the opposite momentum that it generates, as has been the case of the Cuban people's half a century of heroics vis-a-vis a ruthless regime of economic blockade, Algerian nationalists fighting against French colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s, and, at present, the Iranian people finding themselves in the unenviable situation of contemplating how to survive against the coming avalanche of a US power led entirely by hawkish politicians donning the costumes of multilateralism on Iran's nuclear program. Yet few inside Iran actually believe that this is more than pseudo-multilateralism geared to satisfy the United States' unilateralist militarism down the road. One hopes that the road will not wind down any time soon, but just in case, the "Third World" Iranians are doing what they can to prepare for the nightmare scenario.
The whole situation calls for prudent crisis management and security confidence-building by both sides, and, hopefully, the ugly experience of repeated warfare in the oil-rich region can itself act as adeterrent.
Tipper, you been getting tips from Mikey?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004 17:58
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#5
This is from Scrappleface, right?
"Almost all the Arab states possess one or another kind of advanced missile system, eg, . . . Iraq's Frog-7."
The Frog-7 is sophisticated? Amazingly funny stuff.
Posted by: Tibor ||
12/15/2004 18:05
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#6
This professor either:
A) Smokes some good pot
B) Was in the half of the class that made the top
half possible.
C) Both A and B.
#9
They're using Atlantic Monthly for strategy -- good enough to beat the French, but we're not the French.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 20:06
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#10
IRAQ = IRAN = NORKOR = CUBA....... etc. it'll be ASYMMETRIC WARFARE, more popularly known as INSURGENCY, GUERILLA WAR, or PEOPLE'S WAR, be these Conventional or Nuclearized. The US- and International Lefts know America's concepts of maintaining absolute BATTLEPSACE/MILTECH DOMINANCE > America's enemies need GROUPS-MASSES of nations, societies, regions and governments just to attain military-specific warfighting parity or sufficiency of scale ags US or US-led Allied milfors. It is a major rationale for the anti-USA agendists working to induce the world community and UNO against alleged, "illegal" or "immoral", American and only American
"imperialism" and "international
aggression(s)", etc. The Failed Left in reality will NOT accept or tolerate America NOT warring for new global empire!
#11
The Lefts have to do something ags America, to rsetrict or stop her or destroy her before America/Western democracies starts deploying DEATH STAR(S), BATTLESTAR(S) GALACTICAS, WAR PLANETS or MOON BASES, et al.
#13
Okay, Schwarzkopf had a damned hard time searching the scud box, with next to nothing to show for it. But that was then--how many scuds did Saddam launch in 2003? How many FROGs? Planes? Anything? We've been tracking Iran's mobile target sets for a looonnnggg time, all I can say is that they'll be gone in about the same amount of time it took us to take out all of Saddam's mobile missiles.
Posted by: Dar ||
12/15/2004
15:57 ||
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#1
That's fascinating. Some how I expect the government of Russia to object to the jurisdiction of the U. S. Bankruptcy Court. Also, based on direct experience, I would say the Bankruptcy Court is the most corrupt court in the Federal judiciary. Yukos must think they've bought themselves an oil judge. And they may be right.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004 16:09
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#2
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Majority govt-owned Gazprom is Putin's vehicle for pushing a geopolitical strategy based on energy exports, and Gazprom will swallow up Yukos' assets. Now's a good time to sell any Russian holdings.
#3
Investment Banker Chris Weafer's one of the shrewdest analysts in Moscow. His take on what's happening: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#4
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#5
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#6
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#7
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#8
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#9
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#10
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#11
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#12
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
#13
It's meaningless. Yukos is finished. Their assets are effectively being nationalized and will form part of the majority government-owned energy behemoth, Gazprom. Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank, one of the best analysts on the scene in Moscow, correctly describes Gazprom as a crucial lever in Putin's global strategy:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/15/006.html
United Nations peacekeepers have fired on troops trying to enter the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from Rwanda, the UN-funded radio station Radio Okapi reported on Wednesday. The last weeks have seen accusations flying between the Congolese and Rwandan capitals, with Kinshasa claiming Rwanda has sent troops into Congo, and Kigali denying it, but sticking to an earlier declaration that they intend to disarm Rwandan Hutu rebels in the eastern part of the DRC. According to Radio Okapi, UN peacekeepers early on Wednesday morning encountered a number of soldiers in canoes trying to cross the Ruzizi river between the two countries. Quoting UN military sources, Radio Okapi said the troops in the canoes coming from the Rwandan side of the river had opened fire on the peacekeepers, who returned fire, making the intruders turn back. When contacted by Deutsche Presse Agentur, Monuc, the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, declined to comment on the incident.
Meanwhile, reports say fighting has restarted near the town of Kanyabayonga, also in eastern DRC, between regular Congolese army troops and dissident forces. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday that an estimated 35 000 people have fled the town and surrounding area after fighting broke out over the weekend. The dissident Congolese forces that now control Kanyabayonga have said they used to receive assistance from Rwanda, but are now fighting independently.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
1:43:30 PM ||
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An unusually smooth and swiftly growing lava dome within the crater of Washington state's Mount St. Helens volcano is an extraordinary and perplexing event with an unknown outcome, geologists said Tuesday.
I'll take eruption for $500, Alex
The dome has been building at a steady clip for about two months now as molten rock boils up from deep below.
Imagine Barry Bond's head on steroids
While no major eruptions are expected in the near term, the dome's construction can be likened to a runaway freight train in terms of the steady forces involved, scientists said. "There's a truckload of hot rock coming out of the mountain every second," said Dan Dzurisin of the U.S. Geological Survey. "We're scratching our heads about it."
Uh, Dan? That's what volcanos do before they go boom.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
1:36:15 PM ||
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#1
Take cover, eggheads, me thinks Miss Helens is gonna let fly once more.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
12/15/2004 13:48
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#2
"There's a truckload of hot rock coming out of the mountain every second," said Dan Dzurisin of the U.S. Geological Survey. "We're scratching our heads about it."
They got a spot open for this genius over at the UN? Maybe he could be a Weapons Inspector.
#3
We know how to prevent An Earth-shattering Kaboom. The only problem is finding the virgin grad students to "go collect some samples".
Posted by: N Guard ||
12/15/2004 14:02
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#4
I majored in Geology in college, but never used my degree in that field.
Seems to me Dan Dzurisin isn't using his either.
However, despite my never using that knowledge for the past 35 years, I do remember some things, and one of those things is that a growing lava dome is caused by lava rising to the surface.
Here's a clue, Danny-boy: Expect an eruption. If you're very lucky, you'll get the Hawaiian kind instead of the Mount Pinatubo (or Mt. St. Helens) kind. But I wouldn't depend on it.
The worst possible thing that could happen is for the lava dome to rise but not erupt (or flow out), cooling in place. That would plug the natural vents for the magma below. The magma might subside now, but it will eventually rise again, and put so much pressure on the mountain that it will either blow out somewhere else or blow the plug off the top.
I'll be glad I live on the East Coast if/when that occurs.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/15/2004 14:07
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#5
I wonder if there's any way we could convince the moonbats its all a Bush-Halliburton plot and get them to start protesting on top of the thing.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
12/15/2004 15:03
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#6
I have a good friend who's a retired vulcanologist for the USGS. He studied Mt. St. Helens after the earlier eruption. His comment to me: Don't move anywhere within 500 miles of the place, it's going to be the next Mt. Mazama. If you don't know what that means, do a Google search, then check out Crater Lake National Park. He also predicted that Mt. Hood and Mt. Rainier, as well as a couple of other peaks, could "go active" in the next 50-75 years. Not a good time to buy Oregon or Washington real estate...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/15/2004 15:21
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#7
I majored in Geology as well but never used it. Trend? Anyway it will not be a Hawaiian style eruption. In Hawaii the basaltic magma is not rich enough in water to be explosive so it just oozes out. The andesitic magma in the Cascade Range is. I agree the volcanoes are not extinct just dormant. Mt. Ranier is the big kahuna. Here's a webcam site for Mt. St Helens
#8
tu: I suspect the reporter didn't understand what was puzzling the geologists, so he left that part out. A clue might be the "unusually smooth" part of the article. Maybe they were expecting more earthquakes?
Posted by: James ||
12/15/2004 16:10
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#9
Warthog - Trend? Looks like it. I barely used my geology degree. Now I sit in a cube farm in a computer company.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
12/15/2004 16:31
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#10
I think James is right. MSH type volcanos normally have sticky lumpy magma with explosive eruptions. The smooth dome may indicate an imminent non-viscous lava flow, i.e. non-explosive..
A GREEK public bus with about 27 people aboard was hijacked today and shots were fired at police who surrounded it on the outskirts of Athens, police and bus company officials said.
Police did not say how many passengers were aboard the vehicle, but a bus company official said about 27 people were believed to be in the vehicle, which was surrounded by patrol cars and ambulances at a stop 17km from the city centre on the outskirts of eastern Athens.
Initial reports said that at least two people apparently armed with shotguns apparently took control of the bus just before dawn. The bus driver managed to escape, according to officials.
Reporters on the scene heard what sounded like two shotgun blasts about an hour after the bus was taken over about 6:00am (01500 AEDT) outside a nightclub.
At least two shots had been fired at police who arrived at the scene shortly after the takeover.
"The demand of the perpetrators is for us to give them a bus driver. We are letting police deal with this," Nikos Koutsogeorgas, president of the public bus company, told Athens' Skai radio. "It seems the bus driver's action to abandon the bus was positive."
The bus was on a route from the town of Marathon, east of Athens, to the city centre when it was hijacked just before dawn at a stop in the suburb of Geraka.
The bus stop was on a highway that was renovated for the Olympic Games and used for the Marathon race, the 42km course from ancient Marathon to central Athens.
Posted by: tipper ||
12/15/2004
12:55:34 AM ||
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#1
There was a Greek captain who abandoned his sinking ship off the coast of South Africa I think in the late nineties. He was lifted off the deck by helicopter well before many of his passengers and crew. There was quite a stink over it. I don't remember the name of the ship.
What point am I trying to make? I'm not sure. Maybe the Greeks have drifted a bit from the heroism of Ancient Greece.
#2
At least two shots had been fired at police who arrived at the scene shortly after the takeover.
"The demand of the perpetrators is for us to give them a bus driver.
Note to self, when hijacking a bus, don't shoot the bus driver if you can't drive a bus.
#3
At least one hijacker's Russian, according to the Beeb.
Good for the driver for escaping. So long as he didn't push back any kiddies or old ladies in doing so. One passenger and the ticket collector got away too. Quick thinkers. Losing the driver puts the hostage takers at a distinct disadvantage and buys time for the police - after all, they'd probably have arrived at the airport by now if he hadn't scarpered. The police can also have one of their own do their driving. Could help a lot.
#4
"Losing the driver puts the hostage takers at a distinct disadvantage and buys time for the police."
Yes, it's distinctly different from a captain abandoning his sinking ship before all the passengers and crew are safely off.
#6
From reports it seems there's a high chance that the hijackers are Albanian muslims, and have guns and explosives onboard the bus. They are apparently now demanding a 1 million euro ransom, whether this is in addition or in place of the trip to Russia is not clear at the moment.
#8
So, do these particular idiots want to be driven to the usual destination (Cuba)? Seriously, good luck to the Greeks that they resolve this quickly.
#9
I believe the ship was the unfortunate Achille Lauro.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
12/15/2004 8:26
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UPDATE: Gunmen who seized 26 people on a Greek bus have explosives and want to fly to Russia, a hostage on board has told Greek television. Two foreign men, thought to be Albanian or Russian, hijacked the bus shortly before dawn on its route from the town of Marathon into central Athens.
A total of seven hostages have now been freed, after two emerged at 1240 GMT.
---------------------------
Seems like this is a repeat
Five years ago, Greece witnessed two bus hijackings within two months. In both cases, an Albanian man took control of the vehicle, demanding money and safe passage to Albania.
Both hijackers were shot dead by security forces. In one of the incidents, a passenger was also killed.
Good luck, guys.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004 9:25
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#11
Fox reports that they want one million Euros and a trip to Russia. Looks like the Chechnyans are organizing a fundraiser. Where's Jerry Lewis when you need him?
#12
The driver didn't just escape, he also took the keys of the bus with him -- the news mentioned that this was exactly what the bus drivers had been trained to do, when they prepared them for the Olympics.
I generally agree with Kistrol's positions but, given his affinity for General McCain, it was only a matter of time for him to pile on.
You might know he published his commentary in the Washington Post.
Actually, we have a pretty terrific Army. It's performed a lot better in this war than the secretary of defense has.
President Bush has nonetheless decided to stick for now with the defense secretary we have, perhaps because he doesn't want to make a change until after the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections. But surely Don Rumsfeld is not the defense secretary Bush should want to have for the remainder of his second term.
Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld. Begin with the rest of his answer to Spec. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard:
"Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment. I can assure you that General Schoomaker and the leadership in the Army and certainly General Whitcomb are sensitive to the fact that not every vehicle has the degree of armor that would be desirable for it to have, but that they're working at it at a good clip."
So the Army is in charge. "They" are working at it. Rumsfeld? He happens to hang out in the same building: "I've talked a great deal about this with a team of people who've been working on it hard at the Pentagon. . . . And that is what the Army has been working on." Not "that is what we have been working on." Rather, "that is what the Army has been working on." The buck stops with the Army.
Anyone know Kistrol's military rank?
Posted by: Capt America ||
12/15/2004
12:50:20 AM ||
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#1
CA,according to progressive radio talk show host Ed Shultz's list of prominent politican's military service, Bill Kristol did not serve.
#2
Who has any use for Kristol? For a pundit, he's insanely hung up on being a politician: embarassing at best. Too bad, since some of the staff at his magazine do interesting stuff.
#4
Someone else said we need Patton back to slap a bunch of civilians. I agree, but think poor Patton would probably break his hand slapping so many people with thick skulls.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
12/15/2004 9:22
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#5
Kristol's been in love with McCain for years....
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/15/2004 10:34
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#6
Simmer down, y'all. No one will ever accuse Rumsfeld of an excess of tact. Or respect for his co-workers. Or humility and a willingness to subordinate his ambitions to the needs and interests of his bosses (just ask Nixon and Ford).
The truth is that Rummy's record is a mixed bag: outstanding in some areas (the brilliant war plan executed last year), very good in others (the long overdue force restructuring-- not original but good for him for making it happen), and downright shitty in other areas too obvious to mention. So whether you think this precocious and arrogant pupil deserves a B+ or a B- or a C+, he certainly does not deserve an A. Fair-minded friends of the Bush admin are perfectly justified in criticizing his overall performance.
Who's more important, Rummy or the C-in-C?
Do you think Truman was wrong to rein in MacArthur?
Rummy's time and usefulness are nearing their end. It would be counter-productive to sack him now, but my bet is that Bush will let Rummy go quietly sometime late next year or in early '06 after the Iraqi government has been constituted.
#7
The truth is that Rummy's record is a mixed bag
And what about the record of Rummy's neocon advisors in the DOD? I'd say F when it comes to Iraq.
Don't kid yourself. Kristol is a political animal and he is not so much enamored with McCain as he is with his neocon friends. Kristol sees the writing on the WH walls. The Prez almost lost the election over Iraq. Someone is going to pay because the Boss is obviously and rightly PO'd. Kristol and his bureaucrat pals are positioning Rumsfeld to take the fall so they are not the ones to get the axe and lose their positions of influence in the WH.
Angash-Joker: Kristol doesn't work in the White House. He's never been part of Bush's circle, in fact has not held an executive branch or other government post in 12 years, and has little to no influence on the Bush admin.
#12
Kristol doesn't work in the White House. He's never been part of Bush's circle, in fact has not held an executive branch or other government post in 12 years, and has little to no influence on the Bush admin.
I never said Kristol worked in the WH or held a gov't post. Read before you lather and blather a response. Describing Kristol as a political animal does not mean I thought he ran for a political office. Get a dictionary.
Here's a head's up in case you have not heard this bit of info before, lex, William Kristol is editor of the Weekly Standard a rather important conservative publication. Kristol is a highly visible proponent of the neocon Wilsonian philosophy, which had as its centerpiece the idea that bringing democracy to countries in the ME starting with Iraq will bring about peace in the ME. Iraq has not been a ringing endorsement of the idea that all men/women want freedom and liberty, so rather than have the neocon philosophy discredited and have plans for future interventions in Syria and Iran go up in smoke the neocons need to find a fall guy for what's happening in Iraq. You can call my observation trollism, if it hurts your inner sensibilities to face the reality of political games within the GOP, but that's whats happening with the recent public dumping on Rumsfeld by high profile Republicans like McCain and Kristol. William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review, opposes the kind of "Wilsonian interventionism" advocated by leading neoconservatives. "The kind of Wilsonianism that Bill Kristol advocates, I think, is wrong [because] it over-stretches our power [and] takes insufficient account of the institutional requirements for genuine reform, to simply impose a constitution on Iraq or anybody else," Mr. Buckley recently told Human Events, a conservative weekly. "Philosophically, either [Mr. Buckley] was right that building an American world empire was against conservative principles, or Bill Kristol, Max Boot and Paul Johnson â with some National Review and Wall Street Journal support â were correct that a new American colonialism was required to bring peace and democracy to the world," Mr. Devine says. "Even President Bush had said: 'America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish' â but neoconservatives were still trying to push him there anyway."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030520-102249-1923r.htm
#13
Your information's as lame as your logorrheic style. Kristol is not an insider in this admin. He's no more influential than Pat Buchanan or David Gergen.
W's camp consists of, in descending order of influence, 1) his long-time advisors he brought with him from Texas: Rove, Card, Hughes; 2) the national security team he assembled during the campaign in early 2000, centered on Condi and Wolfowitz; 3) the cabinet he assembled after the election; and 4) prominent academics and mideast experts such as Bernard Lewis, Fouad Ajami, Amir Taheri et al.
In none of these circles do you find ANY of the Weekly Standard editors or contributors. Kristol and Kagan and their ilk are peripheral figures who have never written a single speech, as far as I'm aware, or met with any white house official, let alone Bush, for this admin.
Please do run along now. Sarcastic 1,000 word regurgitations don't cut it on Rantburg.
#14
I hope the outrage keeps building. I can not understand how anyone is able to defend Donald "MacNamara" Rumsfeld, the Architect of Quagmire. His re-appointment makes me extremely pessimistic that the Bush Administration will ever make the kinds of strategic modifications that are needed to start making progress in the Iraq campaign.
Posted by: waiting for sanity in DC ||
12/15/2004 15:18
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#15
Waiting, Angash-
What should have been done differently in Iraq (please remember to consider how your suggestions for better alternatives may introduce additional problems that didn't happen because of the way he did it).
What strategic modifications do you suggest that Rummy would oppose?
#16
Again, Rumsfeld's record is mixed, as is every DefSec's, but on the most important issues-- restructuring and realigning our footprint, toppling Saddam's regime-- he's done a good job. There's no reason to ditch him hefore the Iraqis have a new government and that government has its sea legs. Once that occurs, then it may make sense to bring in someone who's more diplomatic and less of an ass-kicking SOB, someone who can continue to drive the restructuring process Rummy launched.
#17
"Waiting for Sanity" seems to be hyperventilating. In 18 months, me thinks, the quagmire he/she refers to will be primarily Iranian. Our esteemed ayatollah brethren will face two functioning, Islamic-populated, representative governments, one on either side; a empowered Shiite competitor and a restive population predominately under 35. Oh yeah, thereâs also Syria, the fading remnant and last rat-hole of Baathist fascism.
#18
Waiting, Angash-
What should have been done differently in Iraq
I never said anything should be done differently in Iraq. Don't you read before you post?
Here's what I am saying to make it easier for those who are abstract thinking challenged. GWB almost lost the election due to Iraq. GWB has an MBA for good reason-he possesses a businessman's mind. He delegates authority and he relies on info from managers in his corporation. Iraq was presented to him as an easy first domino country to embrace democracy in the ME. The main proponents of this theory were the neocon wing of the GOP. Iraqis have not embraced freedom and democracy as was forecast to GWB. So no doubt GWB is PO'd with the managers who sold him the bill of goods about Iraq. Someone's got to pay the consequences for the screw up.
And while it's true that Kristol is not a neocon working in the current Administration he is in the vanguard of the neocon approach to foreign policy and there are a number of neocons with influence in the Admin as well as in the GOP.
And it looks like Rumsfeld is going to be the sacrificial lamb. Whether anything would be different in Iraq whether Rumsfeld had 250,000 instead of 150,000 is questionable. Maybe Iraqis themselves are not good democracy material.But rather than allow GWB consider various reasons for the situation in Iraq that almost cost him the Oval Office, I think neocons like McCain and Kristol are doing the pre-emptive thing which is to dump the mess on Rumsfeld's shoulders and suggest that everything would be way different and wonderful in Iraq were it not for Rumsfeld's miscalculations, as opposed to the neocons miscalculations.
Do you get it now? It's called infighting within the GOP.
Your information's as lame as your logorrheic style. Kristol is not an insider in this admin
And you are thick. Consider thinking beyond your tired and old mantras and seeing the big picture for a change.
#19
Rather than being obsessed about what "almost lost the election", you should be concerned about your own survival in the WoT. Most anti-war folks that visit this site seem to imagine that their pristine mental scenarios of positive outcomes would happen, if only America would be more diplomatic with its allies. That is delusion. You have a poor understanding of motivations of various players in this world and of human nature generally, much worse than Rumsfeld's. Of course, with magical thinking, all you have to do is have strong communications skills, a greasy palm when it comes to Europe, and and all the bad people in the world will go away. Right?
I asked you in all seriousness what your alternative was to going to war in Iraq. You don't have one-you just want to throw flames. You need to learn how to argue without being insulting, and incidentally, when you argue, you need to offer AN ALTERNATIVE. You do not persuade.
#20
[bedtime story]
Once upon a now, there is a mighty team...
Bush is the Head Coach. He just got tipped for a 4 year no-cut contract by The Fans. The PEST / BDS sufferers are in a serious tizzy.
Rummy's the Offensive & Defensive Coordinator, a very full plate indeed, who serves solely at the pleasure of the HC. Right now he's designing and installing a new offensive scheme - the Pro Set.
The HC can shuffle staff in or out almost as he pleases - and has just done so, for example replaceing Tenet, the Chief Scout, with Goss. He could easily do the same with Rummy, if he bought into the armchair BS he gets in fan mail every day. Apparently he doesn't. I would like to see him get rid of the Bus Driver, Mineta, but he hasn't seen fit to agree. I'll survive it. He did ax the Publicist, Powell, and replaced him with Dr Rice - who has a great record of her own and actually believes in the team - which I applauded.
Many fans have lost control of their faculties and bodily functions from advanced BDS and seek ways to wound the HC, since they can't get him fired by the Fans At Large. Some honestly think the OC/DC has failed in his job. When the HC agrees, he'll be gone.
One priceless aspect of Rummy's performance is his handling of post-game press conferences. No one, in my lifetime, has done it so deftly and with such aplomb. Talking waaay down to a hostile Lilliputian illiterati of self-declared Messengers of God, Rummy has demonstrated how to bitch-slap them from a great height, send them reeling, have them clamor for more, and get away pretty clean. It is just about the best entertainment available for those of us who see the Fifth Column for what it is: a tool of the competition. For this howlingly funny ego assassination, he will never be forgiven by some until he is brought low. Such is the state of what passes for journalism, today.
Meanwhile, he and the HC are busily viewing film, hammering out the next game plan, and learning from past mistakes. The hard lesson here is that every game is The Sudden Death Super Bowl. It's a Single Elimination Tournament. Lose and it's all over - no next game and no next season.
The HC "gets it" far better than the ankle-biters who would love to tell him how to run things, but would be correctly terrified of the responsibility. Let him handle his staff - his record is, since he's still there and we're still here, damned good.
[/bedtime story]
#22
You don't have one-you just want to throw flames
I don't throw flames others do which you curiously overlook.
In case you hadn't realized it the subject being discussed is Kristol dumping on Rumsfeld and some RB'ers disappointment in Kristol's article. I offered a possible explanation for why Kristol (and Mccain) are enaging in the "its all Rummys fault" line. I believe that they are dumping on Rumsfeld's so called military mismanagement in Iraq because it diffuses blaming their political wing of the GOP for miscalculations as to the lack of consistent support from the majority of Iraqis after Saddam was removed.
Now your taking this thread in an entirely different direction, implying that I am anti-war, that I am the one too lame to see the need for a WOT. What's your problem? I never said I was anti-war or anti-WOT. I never said I had better suggestions for Iraq. All I suggested is that Rumsfeld is being painted unfairly perhaps as the reason for problems in Iraq. And to deny that the Iraq situation was GWB's achilles heel in the election makes me wonder what planet you are living on. Of course it almost cost GWB the election. What did Kerry and the Dems zero in on time after time after time? What issue did pre-election polls show voters most concerned about re: GWB if not the Iraq War?
Personally I think Rumsfeld is a good DOD minister. He has done as good a job as anyone could do in Iraq considering the limited choices he had and the unpredicatable situation he faced. Choosing to have a more limited number of military in Iraq would be the way I'd go if I were in his position because American troops are resented by 2/3 of the Iraqis no matter how much good they would do in that country because they are American. Having 250,000 troops there would have increased the Iraqis resentment and drive more of them to join the insurgency.
I think McCain is grandstanding because he's hoping to get Rummys job to get a higher profile for the 2008 GOP prez candidacy and because he's a neocon just like Kristol is and neither want any changes in GWB's foreign policy approach to the ME. Rumsfeld is not a neocon so he's expendable in their eyes. Also they need to get a neocon as head of the DOD now that Cond Rice is head of state and has gained more influence over GWB regarding foreign policy in the ME. Rice is not a neocon either.
You and Andrew Sullivan are deluding yourselves that the parties remain powerful entities independent of the president and his inner circle. That organizational model that was discredited and discarded by both major parties over a decade ago. As both Clinton and Bush43 have shown, today, when your party wins the White House, it's the president who utterly dominates the party-- especially in the foreign policy sphere-- not the other way around. In fact the party doesn't even have much influence on the president's priorities or behavior. This was so for the Dems under Clinton and it's so for the Repubs under Bush.
If Bush wants Rumsfeld to stay, then Rumsfeld stays. What McCain or anyone else outside Bush's circle says in the NYT or WaPo or on CNN is of little consequence.
#24
Kristol's influence is greatest on the MSM bloviators. Neither he nor Sully nor Gergen nor Buchanan nor any of the other media-politicos will influence Bush's priorities or major decisions. He's no more influential than the major bloggers.
#25
Jules 187 - Lol! Did you eat your choco-mint and then brush your teeth? If you did it the other way around, get your heinie back in there and brush! Tell you what - tomorrow we'll go to one of the ritzy hotels and have brunch - won't that be fun?
#26
Angash-Is that what McCain and Kristol are doing-"it's all Rummy's fault"?
I don't doubt that there are politicians in this world happy to let others take the fall for them.
But I just don't see the problems in Iraq as something "blamable". It's a miracle that Iraq went as well as it did, considering the caustic coverage in the international media and the incredible odds against the coalition. A lot of this argument sounds like Monday-morning quarterbacking to me. I could be wrong-maybe he could have done something differently, better. I just wonder what that would have been.
#27
Folks, he who dare lead incurs the arrows. In the wise words of The Joker (really Jack Nicholson for those of you who thought he was for real), this town (US miliary) needs an enema.
This fact is never more evident than with the former generals who pontificate for the MSM, who were opposed to Iraq (and Afganistan for that matter). Like trained monkeys, these former generals tell the MSM talking heads what they want their audience to hear -- that Rumsfeld is a shithead idiot.
Comparing Rumsfeld to McNamara is really condescending. Vietnam was run by Johnson; the generals in theatre are running the Iraq and Afganistan conflicts. I don't see Generals McCain or Kristol in service, do you?
Posted by: Capt America ||
12/15/2004 17:45
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#28
By popular demand:
Top Ten Things That Should Have Been Done Differently in Iraq.
10. Securing the weapons and ammunition.
9. Maintaining civil order.
8. Guarding the oil pipelines.
7. Patrolling the borders.
6. Preventing the use of cities as sanctuaries.
5. Training, protecting, and establishing a credible Iraqi police force.
4. Taking the blame for mistakes, instead of blaming the military.
3. Increasing the production of armor kits.
2. Planning for any contingencies other than a rose parade.
Drum roll, please...
1. SENDING ENOUGH TROOPS TO DO THE JOB.
Posted by: waiting for sanity in DC ||
12/15/2004 19:07
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#29
It's all becoming clearer, now... More meds for the terminally insane convinced they are magikally prescient and would've done sooo much better - at everything!
Oh yeah, next time we'll look to you for all our Military needs.
You could kick it off with a detailed plan for Iran. The usual workup of options, resource reqs, etc. will be fine. Obviously, this will be a slam dunk for someone of your talents, expertise, and infallibility. Knock yerself out. No, really, use the hammer provided.
#33
Yeah, and we should have figured out about the hedgerows in Normandy, should have gone with a heavier tank than the Sherman, should have had better intelligence on the Ardennes, shouldn't have attacked through the Huertgen Forest -- damn, didn't we lose WW2?
Posted by: Matt ||
12/15/2004 20:34
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#34
Oh, and above all, Halsey should not have turned north. What was the dude thinking?
Posted by: Matt ||
12/15/2004 20:40
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#36
For 10 years the size of the military had been downsized. The sanctions against Iraq were not doing diddly squat, the UN was stalling with the help of France, Germany, and Russia. Iraq was a nexus of terrorists and money. We could not wait. the 4ID got screwed out of a Turkey transit, so weeks were lost on a Northern Front. Shit happens. Rummy pushed and made it happen.
Look at McClellan in the Civil War. Trained and trained and drilled and drilled. Never used the Army. Lincoln wanted to borrow it since Little Mac did not really use it. Lincoln made it happen eventually. He was hated for it. He stepped on toes and made personnel changes until things went his way on his mission.
Rummy is fighting the established military and conducting a war on Islamofascism. He has a three front war when he is dealing with the dogpile from Congress. McCain should be ashamed of himself. He may have disagreements with troop strength with Rummy. He does not have to air out his laundry in public. Rummy has to work with what he has in resources now.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/15/2004 22:32
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A small nit: McCain is no neocon. He is awf'ly noisy, though.
Oh, and the issue Kerry was really pushing was fighting the War on Terror, of which Iraq is only the second major battle.
Remember all the "War is not the answer" people? They said the same thing about Afghanistan. They'll chant it again when our kids with things that go boom and bang head toward Syria (the most likely scenario: we've been reading lately about Assad training insurgents, then sending them across the border). And they'll continue to chant it unless we roll onto our backs with our paws up in the air and beg to be raped like good little dhimmis. Which Bush and Rumsfeld aren't ever going to do, thanks be to the Powers on high.
#2
Buck up, be of good cheer, there is always voter fraud allegations, Jesse Jackson, every vote didn't count....all the other distortions to glum onto.
Posted by: Capt America ||
12/15/2004 1:01
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#3
Yes, Moonbats, you had a dream.....
.....then the basement lights came on and your mom told you to get your ass up and look for a job.
#9
After reflection, that vid + comments there and at the JuliusBlog where it was created, are actually very disturbing. This is wholesale dementia. They don't some hand-holding therapist and a Daily Soma, they need a size 12 boot up their collective ass. Wow, a significant fraction of America is insane...
#17
The best medecine. I came back from hospital last night and was'nt feeling so well this morniing. I laughed so much, all of a sudden I felt better. Thank you Atomic Conspiracy.
#18
I'm sitting here at work watching this, and about a 1/3 of the way in you get to picture of the bored looking woman holding the "We Love Kerry" sign and I nearly snorted coffee through my nose!
The Republicans need to re-cycle this video 4 years from now and play it at the start of the campaign season. As it fades out an announcer would come on and say: "Remember how crummy it felt to lose last time? Give up now and spare yourself the pain"
#20
Hysterical! This is a superb illustration of the vanity, silliness, the sheer triviality of today's dem activists. If the defeat of a turkey like Kerry moves you to tears, how the hell can anyone expect you to be a stalwart in the war against islamist fascism?
#22
D'ya remember how John Kerry showed real class by going out in the cold Boston rain on Election Night to thank all his supporters for their hard work?
#23
I feel your pain... and it tickles! Bwahahahahahahahahaha!
Posted by: Dar ||
12/15/2004 11:23
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#24
I'm going to have to remember that one, Dar.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
12/15/2004 11:34
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#25
Comments have disappeared on her site.
This morning I suggested that they had more important things to do than wish away reality (Darfur, Zimbabwe, that kind of thing), in contrast to all the bwahahahaha's some others posted, and I guess she didn't like any of it.
#27
Some random comments:
1) I would have preferred Barber's Adagio for Strings (MP3)
2) Nice flip-flops!
3) Some good pics of Edwards, which brings to mind:
Where is Thumbkin?
Where is Thumbkin?
Here I am.
Here I am...
(Thanks to Laura Ingraham for that association...)
#29
#3 Yes, Moonbats, you had a dream..... .....then the basement lights came on and your mom told you to get your ass up and look for a job.
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-12-15 1:11:37 AM
#32
The site is down. They've now exceeded their traffic allotment for the month. Poor darlings! I'm positively ashamed of my Schadenfreude, really I am.
The Rantburg School of Engineering is now open, EFL:
The stunningly beautiful Millau Viaduct, opened by President Jacques Chirac yesterday, is a bridge to the future. Built in only three years, using construction and design techniques and materials which did not exist a decade ago, it is the highest and the heaviest bridge ever built. Seen from a distance, and even from the foot of one of its colossal split, curving piers, it has a deceptive fragility.
It's a beautiful bridge, the BASE jumpers must be drooling at the thought.
The bridge, in the southern Massif Central, designed by the British architect Lord Foster, and constructed by French engineers, has pioneered techniques which will open the way to even bigger structures. The first may be a span across the straits of Messina from Calabria in southern Italy to Sicily. Lord Foster and French engineers believe the Millau Viaduct - 2.4 km long (1.5 miles) and 270m (885 ft) above the river Tarn at its highest point, and several metres taller than the Eiffel Tower - will mark the beginning of a new era in mankind's 2,000-year-old love affair with bridge building. In the Millau Viaduct, computer-design methods, global satellite positioning and high-tech steels and concretes have come together with an aesthetic overall plan conceived by an architect, not an engineer. The result is a bridge of enormous beauty, built in record time, for a relatively cheap â¬400m (£275m), entirely financed by private investment, which will be refunded by tolls over 75 years.
"Higher, heavier, faster, cheap, pioneering techniques", I think I'll avoid getting anywhere near this bridge.
The gently curving deck of the bridge - on which the four-lane road rests - has been constructed from a new high grade of steel, rather than the more usual concrete. The French construction company Eiffage devised a method for pre-constructing the 32m-wide road-deck in 2,000 pieces at its factory in Alsace. They were welded together on the hills on either side of the valley and then shoved out like giant planks over the abyss, 60cms at a time. Satellite positioning technology was used to ensure the curving road connected correctly.
Let's hope they did a better job than they did on the Paris airport.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
12:41:21 PM ||
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Well, I guess it's okay... as long as they didn't use any nuclear technology.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004 14:56
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#10
Jackal
I presume they designed resonance dampers in; however, swaying may reduce the fatigue life of some of the bridge members.
Even though the article says it was a privately financed project, you can bet the farm there are govt subsidies of various kinds. This is, after all, France.
From The Council on Foreign Relations, an interview with Laith Kubba, an Iraqi-American who is a specialist on Iraqi politics at the National Endowment for Democracy.
There has been considerable publicity about the so-called Shiite slate of candidates. Are there similar major slates representing Kurds and Sunnis?
The slate which is known as the Shiite slate is actually a national slate. But it has a Shiite identity because it has been fashioned, defined, and the candidates selected, more or less, by a committee exclusively of predominantly religious Shiites. That slate [also] has on it Christians, Sunnis, and Kurds. But the identity of the slate is Shiite.
There is another slate that has been put forward by the two main Kurdish parties in northern Iraq. It is not a national list. It has only Kurds, and that slate is a Kurdish slate aimed at winning every single Kurdish vote in the country and increasing the number of Kurdish delegates in the parliament. There are likely to be other ethnic-based slates. [The Iraqi Islamic Party, made up of religious Sunnis, quietly submitted a slate of 275 candidates on December 9.]
Considering the continuing violence and turmoil in the largely Sunni area of central Iraq, will any significant Sunni personalities stand for election?
There are Sunni personalities participating in other slates. The biggest question that faces the middle [of the country], broadly speaking, is whether to include not only Sunnis, but also nationalists and other secular currents in the country. Can they put forward a slate that would have an overall identity that would represent the middle, Baghdad, as well as convey a national outlook?
Amongst the figures who can draw such slates are the [interim] president of Iraq, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, [interim] Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, [former Foreign Minister] Adnan Pachachi, and others. They are Shiites and Sunnis. They have among them religious and secular elements. They have people from rural and urban areas. And, more or else, they have the same outlook. They have failed to put themselves together so far in one slate, and I think they will miss out in giving the country an option that the country needs badly.
Pachachi has registered a party, but is that different from forming a slate?
All the people I named have registered parties. They are political entities entitled either to stand by themselves and put forward their own slates, or collectively agree to form one slate, as the Kurd and the Shiite Islamic parties have done. They have not done that so far, so we are still waiting. If it is not done today, they have to run separately. [Iraq on December 10 extended the registration deadline to December 15.] What that means is that while they will still capture votes, they will capture far fewer votes because the country does not have a clear third alternative. Many Shiites would be happy to vote for that third slate if it were offered to them in a cohesive way. If it is offered them in a scattered way, most likely they will vote for the Shiite slate. ....
Many Sunnis met recently and debated extensively [whether] to put forward a predominantly Sunni slate. The overall majority are refusing to play the ethnic game and prefer to be integrated into a national slate. That leaves the door very much open for a national figure or group to unify these scattered voices and present them to the country. .....
If you had to guess, who would you say will be the next president?
I will not be surprised if he is going to be a person agreed upon by the Shiite slate. [Perhaps] Hussein Shahrastani, a nuclear scientist who was initially suggested by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, to be prime minister of the interim government. He was pushed aside and the interim government decided to appoint Ayad Allawi instead. ....
He, I assume, would be well-received by the more secular population. He is a religious person, but with a democratic and secular outlook, so to speak.
The real politics will start after delegates get together after the elections at the end of January. There will be a lot of horse trading. Many candidates will shift their positions depending on the issue. Deals will emerge. And post-election politics will be just as important as pre-election politics. ....
Will Prime Minister Allawi run for office?
He has registered a party, and I was told last week, "Wait until the last hour before you speak." I am speaking now before the last week, but we should know by the end of the day. I don't expect one slate representing the middle, but at least two or three. But even those two or three are important.
A few months ago, leading Sunni religious leaders called for a boycott of the elections. Has that boycott idea been moderated?
It's slightly moderated, but, in effect, there will be a low Sunni turnout for a combination of reasons. The impact of this low turnout on a national constitutional assembly will be dramatic. This assembly is meant to negotiate a new social contract for the country. It is possible it will have been negotiated with the absence of one of the strongest communities in Iraq. If this issue is not contained politically by the forthcoming national assembly, then it will feed strongly into political violence and ultimately it might lead to the breakdown of the country. ....
Should the elections be postponed?
There is a way of heading it off. Not through postponing the elections. What needs to be done is to amend the electoral system in a way that will preserve the relative weight of each province in the country to the national assembly. Currently, provinces that have significant populations but low turnout will be under-represented in the assembly. Provinces that have security and perhaps political parties in charge of the ballot boxes will have 120 percent turnout and will be over-represented in the assembly. In particular, this is relevant to the Kurds and, of course, to the Shiites and will lead to the under-representation of the Sunni provinces.
The way to fix this is not to put seats aside for Sunnis, not to institutionalize these ethnic differences, but to acknowledge that the elective population weight in these provinces must be preserved in the national assembly. That way, at least, you would send a message to the Sunnis that, although there was a low turnout in their areas, their overall representation in the assembly has been preserved.
The whole battle has been about ethnicity in Iraq because people do not know the actual percentages. But people do know the population in provinces, in a quite accurate way. For instance, we do know how many people are in Mosul, but we don't know the actual percentages of Arabs and Kurds. The 20 or 25 seats for Mosul should be preserved, even if there is a low turnout. ....
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
12/15/2004
12:37:19 AM ||
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then it will feed strongly into political violence and ultimately it might lead to the breakdown of the country
I agree it might lead to frustration by not feeling represented, and thus violence might ensue, but that's a big step from breakdown of the country. It would be better if the Sunnis got it together and participated, but ultimately it will be their loss if they don't.
#2
this womans comments are insightful and helpful, but oddly, she, or her transcriber, confused the offices of President and Prime Minister. Allawi did NOT push Sharistani aside for President, but for PM. Yawer is the President.
#3
Very sensible; excellent analysis and suggestions. Much better to provide geographic weighting than ethnic weighting (ie reserve 20% for the sunnis), as that jackass Juan Cole keeps proposing.
#5
I'm impressed how many liberals are coming to that conclusion. I wonder when NPR will.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
12/15/2004 11:39
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#6
Appalling that that shithead is president-elect of the Middle East Studies Assn.
Not to hijack the thread but I've been stirring the shit with my alma mater over juanito's latest act of idiocy, his ludicrous libel of the Iraq The Model brothers as "Pentagon trolls". No response yet (except from one of the regents, who happens to be a woman, a law prof and an Army reserve captain) from the exec officers, dean, provost, chair of U-M History Dept.
Here are their addresses, if you're interested:
taylorsm@umich.edu, marysuec@umich.edu, omaynard@umich.edu, richner@umich.edu, rjscott@umich.edu, rmcgowan@umich.edu, kewhite@wayne.edu
Also editors at the Detroit News:
nfinley@detnews.com, rfrench@detnews.com
Dutch police are investigating a possible Belgian link to the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, it was reported on Tuesday. Two Belgian newspapers said the Dutch inquiries are focused on a Belgian-Moroccan, identified as Abdelkader Hakimi. A delegation of Dutch police officers travelled to Brussels on Tuesday.
"Woohoo, Hans! We're going to Belgium. First round of waffles on me!"
"Thanks, Willem. I like mine with Nutella."
Hakimi is alleged to have had the telephone number of Ismael A. in his address book, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported. A. was arrested with another terror suspect after a 14-hour stand-off in The Hague on 10 November. The Amsterdam Moroccan is accused of planning to murder Dutch MPs Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders. He was also in contact with Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed B., the man suspected of killing Van Gogh. Besides Mohammed B., six other men are currently being detained in connection with Van Gogh's murder last month. They have all been linked to the suspected terror network, Hofstadgroep (Main City Group). In total 12 people have been arrested as investigations into the network continue.
Is that the same as the GSPC, Salifist Group for Preaching and Combat?
No, but it's an easy mistake to make.
The terrorist group is believed to have links to al-Qaeda and is suspected of being involved in the Casablanca and Madrid bombings. Hakimi was sentenced to death in absentia in Morocco in 1985. After returning from Afghanistan, he has worked in a snack bar in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek in Belgium. He was arrested in Belgium in March on terrorism charges.
Posted by: Seafarious ||
12/15/2004
12:30:05 AM ||
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The Moroccan Islamist Combatant Group (GICM) is an off-shoot of Salafi Jihad, the Moroccan analogue to the Algerian GSPC. They're all very closely inter-linked and coordinated through al-Qaeda though, so it's quite easy to make a mistake between the two.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
12/15/2004 3:44
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#2
Well, pahdnah, the Rantburg Group for Kvetching and Snarking, "EATME" after translation into, er, something, will take 'em on!
#3
I remember Holland: I got lost there one night while driving back to Belgium from Germany. It took me an extra 20 minutes to get home. Actually, I found living in Brussels to be a strange experience: we were informed that by law, residents were only required to allow the police in M-F 9:00-17:00. It was explained that the police were so corrupt that they weren't to be trusted outside those hours. Certainly they were not effective at stopping the child abduction rings (it was strongly suspected that those were being run out of the Security dept. for the pleasure of Dutch pedophiles and pornographers). I kept my children always within arm's reach in those days. Lots of strange things occurred behind closed doors in that country, without the neighbors or the police paying any attention. Not to mention the regular theft of unknown numbers of blank Belgian passports from village registration offices.
From Foreign Affairs magazine, an article by Selig S. Harrison, Director of the Asia Program, Chairman of the Task Force on U.S. Korea Policy at the Center for International Policy, Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the author of Korean Endgame. On October 4, 2002, the United States suddenly confronted North Korea with a damning accusation: that it was secretly developing a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade, in violation of the 1994 agreement that Pyongyang had signed with Washington to freeze its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Since North Korea had cheated, the Bush administration declared, the United States was no longer bound by its side of the deal. Accordingly, on November 14, 2002, the United States and its allies suspended the oil shipments they had been providing North Korea under the 1994 agreement. Pyongyang retaliated by expelling international inspectors and resuming the reprocessing of plutonium, which it had stopped under the 1994 accord (known as the Agreed Framework). The confrontation between North Korea and the United States once more reached a crisis level.
Much has been written about the North Korean nuclear danger, but one crucial issue has been ignored: just how much credible evidence is there to back up Washington's uranium accusation? Although it is now widely recognized that the Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence data it used to justify the invasion of Iraq, most observers have accepted at face value the assessments the administration has used to reverse the previously established U.S. policy toward North Korea.
But what if those assessments were exaggerated and blurred the important distinction between weapons-grade uranium enrichment (which would clearly violate the 1994 Agreed Framework) and lower levels of enrichment (which were technically forbidden by the 1994 accord but are permitted by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT] and do not produce uranium suitable for nuclear weapons)?
A review of the available evidence suggests that this is just what happened. Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did on Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons. This failure to distinguish between civilian and military uranium-enrichment capabilities has greatly complicated what would, in any case, have been difficult negotiations to end all existing North Korean nuclear weapons programs and to prevent any future efforts through rigorous inspection. On June 24, 2004, the United States proposed a new, detailed denuclearization agreement with North Korea at six-party negotiations (including the United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and North Korea) in Beijing. Before discussions could even start, however, the Bush administration insisted that North Korea first admit to the existence of the alleged uranium-enrichment facilities and specify where they are located. Pyongyang has so far refused to confirm or deny whether it has such facilities; predictably, the U.S. precondition has precluded any new talks.
If it turns out that North Korea did not cheat after all, the prospects for a new denuclearization agreement would improve, because the Bush administration could no longer argue that Pyongyang is an inherently untrustworthy negotiating partner. At any rate, to break the diplomatic deadlock, the United States urgently needs a new strategy. Washington should deal first with the very real and immediate threat posed by the extant stockpile of weapons-usable plutonium that Pyongyang has reprocessed since the breakdown of the Agreed Framework. Measures to locate and eliminate any enrichment facilities that can produce weapons-grade uranium are essential but should come in the final stages of a step-by-step denuclearization process. Above all, Washington must not once more become embroiled in a military conflict on the basis of a worst-case assessment built on limited, inconclusive intelligence. There is a real danger that military and other pressures on North Korea, designed to bolster a failing diplomatic process, could escalate into a full-scale war that none of North Korea's neighbors would support. The article continues at great length.
Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
12/15/2004
12:27:05 AM ||
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Point of order - North Korea was discovered violating the Pyongyang agreement long before 2002, and by the Clinton admins, NOT Dubya's, and the only thing the NorKor Commies want, as Commies thoughout the Cold War did, is accomodation and appeasement. Goes to show, AGAIN, that the Clintons, Commies, and the BETTY CROCKER-CRATS of America, i.e. the anti-USA = Saving the USA Dems, are not to blamed for anything and everything, even when they themselves admit or infer to doing wrong.
#2
NKOR is another fine country that is systematically starving its people, threatening its neighbors, firing missiles over the Japanese main Islands, working a deal that Jimmy Carter penned - of course, they're not cheating. It is just business as usual.
Hello? Wake up does it take a mushroom cloud in LA?
"...how much credible evidence is there to back up Washingtonâs uranium accusation?..."
"But what if those assessments were exaggerated..."
"If it turns out that North Korea did not cheat..."
Bring us some news next time, not just devil's advocate speculation.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 8:41
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#4
Mikey's picture is in the dictionary under "gullible".
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
12/15/2004 9:30
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Bring us some news next time, not just devil's advocate speculation.
#6
Foreign Affairs used to be a solid, balanced, magazine. Sometime after the war in Iraq I noticed a shift in the number of conservative vs liberal pieces the magazine covered. Not sure why the shift occured but the lack of balance made the magazine unreadable to me.
The main competition, Foreign Policy slants left as well, always has as far as I can tell. They have more pretty pictures but less depth to their articles.
#7
Right on, rjs. Back in the distant past, when trees died for me, I used to subscribe to FA - excellent stuff, just damned expensive... Now - not a chance, heh.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/15/2004 13:24
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But what if those assessments were exaggerated and blurred the important distinction between weapons-grade uranium enrichment (which would clearly violate the 1994 Agreed Framework) and lower levels of enrichment (which were technically forbidden by the 1994 accord but are permitted by the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT] and do not produce uranium suitable for nuclear weapons)?
seems hes admitting that they DID cheat on the Agreed Framework. Thats the point, I thought.
#12
Iraq fell scaring Libya into rolling on their WMD program equipped by AQKhan of Pakistan who was caught 'red-handed' in the nuclear proliferation business.
He says North Korea developed 5 Nukes DURING the Clinton(D) administration's American-taxpayer-subsidized program that provided unranium 'lite'...
Which, when consumed, provides weapons grade plutonium.
So Clinton/Carter/Albright provided the means, AQKhan/Pakistan provided the technology and NorthKorea now has nukes.
#14
There are three or four different ways you can verify uranium enrichment and plutonium extraction from aerial surveillance. I can't go into details, but the evidence is concrete. There is NO way to confuse low-grade and high-grade uranium extraction - they rely on different processes. While low-grade enrichment is the first step toward high-grade enrichment, the extra steps for the latter are discenrible and concrete. Plutonium extraction can ONLY be done in a specific facility designed for that process, and that process alone. There are no intelligence mistakes. The NORKS are cheating, as all communist governments (and islamofascists, for that matter) cheat. Making deals with the other side is a well-used and commonly-abused process that has a long track record in communist states. You cannot trust people to keep an agreement when their very philosophy expresses the use of agreements as just another tactic to be used in the war of conquest.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/15/2004 16:13
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Exactly, Doc. Shouldn't the bear be seated in a stall, perhaps perusing L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO?
The chief executive of the British Red Thingy Cross has warned that the international movement's neutrality is fast becoming a casualty of the global "war on terror".
Sir Nicholas Young told the Guardian that the US-led coalition's defiance of international law in Iraq threatened to obliterate the capacity of the Red Thingy Cross and Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent movement to operate in areas of conflict. In an interview in today's Society Guardian, he says: "The respect the Red Thingy Cross relied on, the sense that when we're wearing our emblem and doing our work we are protected, we are sacrosanct, is under threat.
"We are able to work across the frontline for only as long as we are seen as neutral. The moment that sense of impartiality is lost, our mission is lost.
"We might as well pack up and go home. We'll be seen as part of the war machine and we'll be unable to operate."
I recall we at Rantburg have been making this very point to you for quite a while now.
Driving through the streets of Baghdad in a clearly marked Red Thingy Cross vehicle last year, Sir Nicholas says, he was acutely aware that local people did not recognise the agency's neutrality. "I had a very strong sense that we were regarded as Saddam's collaborators the occupying powers," he says. "And this was something I hadn't felt before."
He adds that the Red Thingy's Cross's mission was severely jeopardised when Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, called humanitarian aid "an important part of our combat force" in Iraq. "The humanitarian space that we operate in has been narrowed; on one side by the sense that the white guys in the white Land Rover must be part of the coalition force because we seem to be doing the same kind of job as them; on the other by the sense that the non-state groups don't understand international humanitarian law, don't understand the role of NGOs in the region."
Last month the US forces breached international law when they publicly snubbed the Iraqi Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent by denying it access to Falluja after weeks of heavy bombardment. It was a "hugely significant" gesture, Sir Nicholas says. "It sets a dangerous precedent. The Red Thingy Cross had a mandate [under the Geneva convention] to meet the needs of the local population facing a huge crisis and, given their neutrality, they should have been allowed to meet those needs."
The Moon-Shaped Thingy guys have a credibility problem. Something about ambulances in Paleostine.
The International Federation of Red Thingy Cross and Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent Societies incorporates national societies in more than 180 countries, with almost 300,000 staff.
The worst prospect for the Red Thingy Cross is having to pull out of an increasing number of conflict zones round the world, Sir Nicholas says. "We pride ourselves on building a more civilised world, yet are we doing that if we allow this sense of help to people in vulnerable situations to just disappear? "It's an incredibly dangerous situation for the Red Thingy Cross Red Moon-Shaped Thingy Crescent to be in."
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/15/2004
12:26:31 AM ||
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#1
..."neutrality is fast becoming a casualty of the global "war on terror."
That assumes there was neutrality before -- I suggest there wasn't.
Posted by: Capt America ||
12/15/2004 0:52
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#2
(1)Start packing.
(2)Loading guns and rpgs into ambulances and leaving wounded and dieing. Facilitating the movement of terrorists they have "shattered the image of nutrality."
(3)When civilization and societies are the victims to terrorism the Red Cross Sides with the terrorists. How many hostages has the Red Cross visited and insured the saftey of? Have they once demanded it? They demand access to prisoners held by the US every day then violate the confidentality they are supposed to maintain after they do.
#3
First, I'm not sure there isn't a jurisdictional problem here. While all humanitarian organizations need to be regarded as neutral in combat zones, it's the ICRC, not a national federation like that in Iraq, that's specially connected to the Geneva Conventions. Local Red Thingy/Moon-shaped Thingy types probably don't even have training in the Conventions or laws of war.
How ironic, though, that this guy would lament the loss of neutrality, and how that will gut the Red Thingy's mission. Actually, the abandonment of key principles by the ICRC over the last several years has been one of the most shocking elements of A World Gone Stupid With Anti-Americanism (TM). The ICRC has conspicuously violated its own principle of discretion in several high-profile instances involving the US, both times leaking confidential reports or parts thereof (pertaining to Camp X-Ray and Iraqi detention centers) and then TALKING ABOUT IT on the record. Amazing. (same stuff you're talking about, Sock Puppet)
Having worked with the ICRC in some grim places and seen their professionalism, the spread of anti-US insanity to Geneva shocked me (not easy to do, especially since 9/11). But it's probably just a version of the instinctual anti-Americanism one finds in most (not all) humanitarian NGOs and their personnel. All so fitting, since in so many cases they rely on US financial support and -- of course -- US military logistics support or security to perform their missions.
The IFRC is of most interest for 'burgers because of their refusal to recognize the Israeli chapter's symbol (Red Star of David). Especially nice, that -- an organization snubbing an exemplary chapter at the behest of chapters often beset by corruption and gross violation of humanitarian and neutrality principles (others have referred to those above).
#5
SPo'D - Make sure the Red Thingy you whack is the International Red Thingy - The American Red Cross is totally independent and does not share funds nor do they coordinate. I have no direct experience with the Int'l version, but the American org does exactly what it's always done, just not as cost-effectively as we'd like, I'm sure - although you can specify what your donation is to be used for - and they apparently honor it.
#6
But it's probably just a version of the instinctual anti-Americanism one finds in most (not all) humanitarian NGOs and their personnel. All so fitting, since in so many cases they rely on US financial support and -- of course -- US military logistics support or security to perform their missions.
we need to seriously rethink how we do things.
Such a shame too. One of the biggest casualties in this war has been the loss of confidence over contributing to charities...all charities world wide. Too often they fund the creation of the victims they then support.
#7
"...Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, called humanitarian aid "an important part of our combat force" in Iraq. "The humanitarian space that we operate in has been narrowed; on one side by the sense that the white guys in the white Land Rover must be part of the coalition force because we seem to be doing the same kind of job as them;..."
Sounds to me like he complaining about the competition coming from U.S. cov humanitarian aid.
#9
neutrality is fast becoming a casualty of the global "war on terror".
Neutrality? What neutrality? There are no neutrals in this war.
Posted by: Steve from Relto ||
12/15/2004 9:16
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#10
Let's see. Representatives of the US Gov drive around in white SUVs, handing out food and aid. Representatives of the ICRC drive around in white SUVs, handing out food and aid. So, which is his beef?
1) The Iraqis can't tell the good food givers (the ICRC) from the evil food givers (US gov), and so attack the good food givers?
2) The Iraqis can't be allowed to think that the US government is not 100% evil?
3) The "Iraqi" "insurgents", who want Iraq to turn into a giant shithole, don't understand the role of humanitarian aid in furthering their goal, and so attack the ICRC?
4) The Thingy on the side of our trucks offends the local nutzis?
#11
complaining about the competition coming from U.S. cov humanitarian aid.
good point! That, combined, with their ties to terrorism and their propensity to focus on rough treatment (rather than torture) by the US, has had to put a massive dent in their fundraising efforts. I'm sure they were hoping for massive refugees and starvation in order to increase their coffers. It's just not happening. Looks like they are begininng to understand the consequences of their actions. Tough luck guys. I hear they are hiring in the jungles of Africa.
#12
on one side by the sense that the white guys in the white Land Rover must be part of the coalition force because we seem to be doing the same kind of job as them; on the other by the sense that the non-state groups don't understand international humanitarian law, don't understand the role of NGOs in the region."
Ok Red Cross, the real problem is the latter, blame the insurgents instead, not the US military, dipsh*ts!
Posted by: GI JOE ||
12/15/2004 11:00
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what the red thingy havent figgered out yet is that non-muslims who are not actively siding with the house of war (dat's us!) are Dhimmis! Either they genuinely don't undersand the implications of what they are doing, or haven't glommed on to the fact there is NO neutrality unless BOTH sides agree on it.
And guess who declared first that there is no neutrality (it wasn't the U.S.).
Posted by: N Guard ||
12/15/2004 11:05
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#14
They're pissed since we are encroaching on their business. What, 5 or 6 million refugees have returned home just from Afghanistan and Iraq. Stats like that and they will soon be out of business. Then how will Swedish and Belgian ner-do-wells ride around in SUVs like the Great White Hunters of yore and whore around with the underage natives.
Posted by: ed ||
12/15/2004 11:11
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#15
the non-state groups don't understand international humanitarian law, don't understand the role of NGOs in the region
"Non-state groups" - LOL.
Care to be a bit more precise, St Nick? Surely you mean the fascist neck-sawers and ba'athist assassins, right? They understand perfectly well your role. They're trying to crush you and your role, the same way they're trying to destroy every other humane and liberal value in Iraq.
Wake up, fool: There is no moral equivalence between us and the fascists. Yes, the Red Cross must choose a side here. If you can't do so then the people of Iraq are better off without you.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/15/2004 13:02
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#18
I've been reading Townhall, National Review, and a dozen papers today, and everything I read makes me want to reach for an axehandle. The world is full of idiots that have no idea what's going on, but want their fair share of opportunity to expound upon every subject known to man. A lot of these nutcases need a full cup of STFU, followed by an axehandle firmly emplanted between the eyes with as much force as a human being can muster. These idiots are taking up valuable space, consuming resources best left to others, and spewing idiocy that just makes it harder to get the job done. As the Lord High Executioner said, "I've got a little list...", only mine is reaching unmanageable proportions. I need to trim it down a bit. Can someone lend me a nuke or three? Mine are all in the shop, being upgraded.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/15/2004 15:53
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The UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Terje Roed-Larsen, will take on an additional task of monitoring the implementation of a resolution that calls on Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, a spokesman said yesterday. Roed-Larsen was appointed a United Nations undersecretary-general by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to monitor the implementation of Resolution 1559 adopted by the United Nations Security Council in October to demand the Syrian withdrawal, said Fred Eckhard. Roed-Larsen will begin his work on January 3.Â
Yeah, great. Good luck and file those per diem reimbursements on time, y'hear?
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/15/2004
12:25:03 AM ||
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The UN listening post in Cyprus is nice this time of year.
#2
That would be Terje Roed-Larsen the antisemite, famous for administrating the Palestinian refugee camps for the U.N.? The one who objected to the IDF inspecting his ambulances, and sees no problem with acknowledged Hamas operatives working in his offices? Yes indeedy, he'll def'nitely be an unbiased observer.
#3
Why do I either giggle or spit my coffee out when I start laughing when I read the words "UN to do (insert something here)".
Posted by: Jim K ||
12/15/2004 8:25
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"UN monitoring". Maybe that's how the UN hopes to eventually install an international tax to support the UN. They'll start with taxes on smuggling. First "Oil for food", and now whatever smugglers in Syria and Lebanon want to smuggle.
CAIRO — The Egyptian government's human rights body has recommended to President Hosni Mubarak that he scrap emergency laws that have limited civil rights here for more than two decades, one of the council's members said yesterday.
Hafez Abu Saada, council member and director of the independent Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, said in an interview that after lengthy study and discussion, members of the National Council for Human Rights were able to agree that the emergency laws be ended. "This was one of the main recommendations sent to the president" in early December, Abu Saada said. The council has not made its recommendations to Mubarak public, but was to issue a report on its activities in its first year in February.
The government has long argued that it needs emergency laws to fight terrorism. The laws have been widely condemned by local and international human rights groups, including Abu Saada's organisation. In an indication of the sensitivities surrounding the issue, the council's spokesman and deputy head had said earlier yesterday that members agreed that the emergency laws should be ended, but had refused to say whether such a recommendation had been made to Mubarak.
"The council believes that, taking dangers into account, we want to end the state of emergency," spokesman Ahmed Kamal Abou El-Magd told reporters. Abou El Magd was quick to add that his National Council for Human Rights was only an advisory body with no power to enforce its opinions.Â
"Please don't kill me!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/15/2004
12:21:21 AM ||
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I'm sure something will happen. Call me when it does.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2004 18:31
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The Cassini spacecraft completed a successful rendezvous with Saturn's moon Titan Monday. This was the last pass before the European Space Agency's Huygens probe is sprung loose from Cassini on Christmas Eve. Information gathered during this flyby will provide an opportunity to compare images from Cassini's first close Titan encounter on Oct. 26.
NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station in Madrid, Spain, acquired a signal at about 4:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time). As anticipated, the spacecraft came within 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) of Titan's surface. As with the last flyby, a major goal of this flyby is to measure the thickness of Titan's atmosphere. This information will help determine whether Cassini can safely get closer to Titan on subsequent flybys, and will also be used to verify that Huygens atmosphere models are correct.
Titan is a prime target of the Cassini-Huygens mission because it is the only moon in our solar system with a thick smoggy atmosphere. The Huygens probe, built and operated by the European Space Agency, is attached to Cassini. After its Christmas Eve release, it will descend through Titan's atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005, as it collects atmospheric data down to the surface.
Tuesday morning, Cassini flew by Saturn's icy moon Dione at a distance of 72,500 kilometers (45,000 miles). Images and science results from both flybys will be presented at a news conference that will take place on Thursday, Dec. 16, at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco. Cassini Homepage at JPL
Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy ||
12/15/2004
12:16:54 AM ||
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Kewl!
Now we need to get private enterprise involved in getting people into space.
I still hope for the day when...
" The chair now recognizes the Gentelman/Gentlewoman from Planitia Utopia..." or Tharsis, or Noctis Labryntius, or where ever we go and settle.
Posted by: N Guard ||
12/15/2004 13:58
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SEOUL - North Korea warned on Wednesday that it would regard any sanctions imposed on it by Japan as a declaration of war and would hit back with an "effective physical" response.
That's all? No sea of fire? I think the previous KCNA guy starved to death and was eaten by others.
It also said it would reconsider its participation in six-nation talks aimed at ending the nuclear stand-off if a "provocative campaign" under way in Japan against the country continued, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
The insane outburst came after Japan said it would halt aid shipments to the impoverished Stalinist state in a dispute over the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents during the Cold war. "If sanctions are applied against the DPRK (North Korea)..., we will regard it as a declaration of war against our country and promptly react to the action by an effective physical method," the unidentified spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Koran Central News Agency news agency.
"Yeah! We'll murderlize youse!"
More than two-thirds of Japanese support sanctions against the Stalinist state, according to a newspaper poll, after Pyongyang provided the wrong ashes to Japan to support its claim that two Japanese whom it kidnapped during the Cold War had since died. The finding reignited anger in Japan against North Korea and Tokyo froze shipments of food aid to the destitute country. However, the North Korean foreign ministry spokesman insisted that the human remains were those of Yokota and said Pyongyang suspected the test results were "cooked up" to serve a political purpose.
Yum. Freshly cooked test results. Bet they go great with a cup of pine needle tea.
The remains had been handed to Japanese authorities by Yokota's husband and it was "unimaginable" he would give them the ashes of anyone else, the North Korean spokesman said.
Unless of course he was hungry as hell and had a gun to his head, and those of his children.
Instead, elements in Japan were trying to revive a long-standing row over the abductions "because they needed a subterfuge to justify Japan's militarisation, hold in check any improvement in the bilateral relations and step up their political and military interference in regional issues," he said. He accused the United States of supporting this because it wanted to provoke a war on the Korean Peninsula.
We're the Great Satan, donchaknow? We don't need to provoke anything. Just ask the Taliban.
A Japanese official said Tuesday the United States had warned Japan to be cautious about imposing sanctions on North Korea because the unpredictable regime could "out-manoeuvre" such a move.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/15/2004
12:12:55 AM ||
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Message to Kim:
Don't threaten to nuke the Japanese. They've been down that road before. Have you?
#2
Another declaration of war - must be the 4th one this year! NORKOR will be a SOLYENT GREEN-state soon enough, with CUBA following right behind it. WAR(S) is coming, as the power-mad Failed Left >if the USA doe NOT attack or wage war, the US will be attacked and warred against. Hillary will not run for per se POTUS unless these various Internat Rogue crises are resolved or mostly resolved by the time she does - she, as did Bill, want easy street with little to no hard work or controversy. For the time being, until 2020, the Left prefers US-destabilizing CONVENTIONAL LIMITED WAR(S), or NWT REGION-SPECIFIC LIMITED NUCLEAR WAR(S) - just for bonus, they are calling for investigations into Dubya's and the GOP's role in 9-11 and 2004 elex fraud, ...et al. where controversial resignation = pol assassination!? THE FAILED LEFT WILL NOT TOLERATE THE USA NOT WARRING FOR, OR BEING WARRED AGAINST, FOR GLOBAL EMPIRE!
#5
This is no fun -- where's the North Korean version of this news? We need some Jueche today!
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 8:34
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The interesting thing about this is that the Norks are equating stopping aid shipments with sanctions. In other words, it's a shakedown. Pay us off or we'll whack you! Can anyone doubt that Kimmie and co. are just gangsters? Let's see, drug running, check; prostitution, check; extortion, check. Hey, what about gambling? Do you know who's running your internet gambling site?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/15/2004 8:45
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#8
Yawn.
Today is threaten Japan day. Tomorrow's threaten South Korea day. Friday is threaten the US day. Saturday is Amazing New DPRK Invention day. Sunday's an off day. Monday is Kim Jong Il Visit's NKPA Unit day. Tuesday is Floral Gift to Kim Jong Il Day.
Rinse and repeat.
#20
No, we don't want them to do it. At least, not until we feel reasonably good about our ABMs in the Sea of Japan. The only "effective physical" means the Norks have to harm Japan are missiles and smuggled nukes.
Our readers demanded it (see comment #8), so here you go. DPRK Stand on Japanese Ultra Right Forces-Proposed Sanctions against DPRK Clarified
Pyongyang, December 14 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the ultra-right forces of Japan for kicking up a racket against the DPRK. As we have already declared, we will seriously reconsider the issue of taking part in the six-party talks together with Japan as long as such premeditated and provocative campaign of the ultra-right forces against the DPRK goes on, the statement said, and continued: If sanctions are applied against the DPRK due to the moves of the ultra-right forces, we will regard it as a declaration of war against our country and promptly react to the action by an effective physical method.
Then the ultra-right forces of Japan will be held entirely responsible for the catastrophic impact it will have on the DPRK-Japan relations and the regional situation. On Dec. 8 the chief cabinet secretary of Japan announced that a DNA examination of the remains of Japanese woman Megumi Yokota confirmed they were "bones of two others different from hers." Ultra-right forces from ruling and opposition parties and anti-communist organizations of Japan, as if they had been waiting for the chance to occur, cried out for immediately applying economic sanctions against the DPRK and are now busy with the renewed campaign against it. It was against this background that the Japanese government officially clarified the stand of freezing the humanitarian aid including food upon which it had agreed with us.
As far as the remains of Megumi Yokota are concerned, her husband directly handed them to the head of the delegation of the Japanese government, which came to Pyongyang for the DPRK-Japan inter-governmental working contact held in November last, free from the interference from the third party at the repeated earnest request of the Japanese side. It is unimaginable that her husband handed the remains of other persons to the Japanese side. Let's suppose he handed the remains of other person to the Japanese side, as claimed by it, then what did he expect from doing so? The "results of the examination" announced by Japan, in the final analysis, make us suspect that they were cooked up according to the political script carefully prearranged to serve a particular purpose.
We sent Japanese abductees and their children to Japan and formed a state fact-finding committee to confirm the whereabouts of those persons whose fate the Japanese side claimed unknown, according to the agreement reached at the DPRK-Japan summit. Since then an earnest investigation has been under way.
We arranged meetings with many witnesses and handed the discovered materials, the articles left by the deceased and their remains to the Japanese side as they were with a view to testifying to the fact that those persons whose fate are unknown died.
Japan abducted at least 8.4 million Koreans, massacred more than one million others and violated the chastity of 200,000 Korean women in the past but it has not yet made any moral and material compensation for these crimes. This has lashed our servicepersons and people into towering national hatred for Japan. It was hard to organize such a thing under this situation. We, however, have approached everything with utmost patience from the stand of respecting the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration.
But such ultra-right forces of Japan as acting Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party Abe behaved otherwise. They have long taken a double-faced approach towards us. In quest of the top post in state power they cited the issue of abduction to perform a "feat." When their intention proved futile, they came out to malignantly slander the DPRK in a bid to completely hamstring the implementation of the agreement reached at the summit.
They are making so desperate efforts to renew the row over the issue of abduction which has already found a solution because they needed a subterfuge to justify Japan's militarization, hold in check any improvement in the bilateral relations and step up their political and military interference in regional issues.
It is none other than the present Bush administration that supports and encourages these forces behind the scene because it is keen to provoke a new war on the Korean Peninsula and maintain its permanent supremacy in the region on the basis of the U.S.-Japan alliance.
No sooner had the "results of the examination" of the remains been made public than the U.S. declared through a deputy spokesman for the State Department that it fully supports Japan's stand and will use every opportunity and means to help Japan find a solution to such crucial human rights issue as abduction.
Whether the ultra-right forces of Japan decide on the sanctions against us and whether the Japanese government suspends its food aid to us under the U.S. manipulation, this will be nothing surprising for us.
There are also "people's sentiment" and option for us and we will do what we should do, when necessary.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
12:04:45 PM ||
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Knock off that racket, Japan, or I'm calling the cops!
Posted by: Kim Jong Il ||
12/15/2004 12:36
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Lol. Engrish never had it so goodbadgoodbadgoodbad... aw hell, lol!
#5
The moptops in Korea have short, selective memories. They should find someone in their late 80's, early 90's, who can still remember what life was like under the Japanese, and how the Japanese behaved back then. The Koreans do NOT want to force the Japanese into becoming physically agressive again. The DPRK needs to do some hard thinking - do they want to act as a legitimate member of world society, or do they want to continue to starve, live on grass and tree bark, and work 16 hours a day for a small cup of rice beer? We need to move forward with the plan to distribute radios and palm-pockets to the NORK population, so they can learn just how far from the "mainstream" their government and nation actually are. In the meantime, can we distribute a few hundred pounds of exlax to the NORK government? It sounds like they need it.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/15/2004 16:03
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A bomb exploded near the offices of a senior Shi'ite cleric in the Iraqi holy city of Kerbala on Wednesday, killing eight people and wounding 32, police and doctors said. One of the wounded was Sheikh Abdul Mehdi al-Karbalai, a cleric regarded as close to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shi'ite leader. Hospital sources said he had been hit in the legs and was receiving treatment. Wednesday's attack came on the day campaigning began for Iraq's first post-Saddam elections. One of the groups contesting the poll is a list of mainly Shi'ite candidates backed by Sistani, but it was not immediately clear if there was any political motive for the bombing.
Not to Rooters, at any rate
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. At least four of those killed worked as guards in Karbalai's office, hospital sources said. The wounded were mostly office staff and passers-by. The office is in the center of Kerbala, close to the shrine of Imam Hussein, one of the holiest sites in Shi'ite Islam. Sites near Kerbala's shrines were previously attacked in March this year when suicide bombers blew themselves up during an important religious festival, killing more than 70 pilgrims. That attack coincided with a blast at a Shi'ite shrine in Baghdad, which killed more than 50 people. The coordinated blasts were blamed on Jordanian Sunni Muslim militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and seen as an attempt to sow sectarian discord.
Yeah, this sounds like his handywork
Sistani, an elderly Iranian-born cleric who has a huge following in Iraq, lives in Najaf, another holy city southeast of Kerbala. He has representatives who follow his religious teachings in Kerbala, 70 miles southwest of Baghdad. A blast at the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf in August last year killed scores of people, including Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most revered clerics. Hakim was the brother of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, an influential Shi'ite leader who number one on the Sistani-backed alliance set to stand in the Jan. 30 elections. Shi'ites form a 60-percent majority in Iraq and the voting is expected to shift power to them, away from Saddam Hussein's long-dominant Sunni Muslim minority. Most Arabs are Sunnis, while Shi'ites are the main sect in non-Arab Iran.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
11:58:25 AM ||
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Like, Bush is stepping on like, science, man! And, oh yeah, science, man...he's holding back, like, science!
AMHERST - Lyle E. Craker's plans to grow marijuana in his University of Massachusetts laboratory to be used for medicinal studies have been put on indefinite hold by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Another proud alma mater moment...
Craker filed an application with DEA in June 2001 to establish a facility on the Amherst campus to produce marijuana for U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved research. A more appropriate place, I cannot think of...
Last July, he and two other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit demanding that the DEA respond to his request. Like, c'mon, government Doods! Can we like start our dope farms, man!
On Friday, he got his answer in a six-page "order to show cause" from the DEA denying his request. Doods, like, it's for important scientific... stuff.
"What we're attempting to do is to test this plant to see if it actually has any clinical benefit," said Craker, director of the medicinal plant program and member of the department of plant, soil, and insect sciences at UMass, yesterday. "Many people may be suffering from medical problems who we may be able to help." It may take hundreds of years of research and we'll have a willing student body to... ummmmmmm... assist us in our...ummmmmm... research.
He said he plans to seek a hearing at which he will show cause why the DEA should not deny his application. Under his plan, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies would fund the UMass cultivation. WOO-HOO!!! We called it "the dorms" when I was up there.
The association and Craker were plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in July. Currently, the National Institute on Drug Abuse is the only agency allowed to oversee the cultivation of research-grade marijuana on behalf of the government. But many scientists have questioned the quality and quantity of the marijuana produced at the University of Mississippi for the institute. Enter "the professionals" from UMASS Amherst. They can solve any and all of your weed problems.
In its order, the DEA said it found that the laboratory is producing a "sufficient quantity and quality" of marijuana to meet research needs. No problem. No problem at all. All you want, when you want. If we can't grow it, we know where to find it.
"What this decision does is effectively close the doors on any foreseeable prospect of the Federal Drug Administration considering marijuana as medicine," said Bruce E. Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project based in Washington, D.C. ...and has set back bong technology for... who knows how long.
The order also says that an additional facility is not needed because marijuana research has not progressed to Phase 2 of clinical trials because "current research must utilize smoked marijuana, which ultimately cannot be the permitted delivery system for any potential marijuana medication due to the deleterious effects and the difficulty in monitoring the efficaciousness of smoked marijuana." Like, this weed is "efficacious", man. And I know Phase 2 has started yet, but could we put our names in early?
Rick E. Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, said the DEA is performing Phase 2 trials with marijuana. Oh, damn! We missed it, dood! We missed it!
He said his group wants to study the medicinal benefits of marijuana in two forms, smoked and by vaporizer. "We want to develop marijuana into a prescription medicine, or have research that says it's too risky," Doblin said. "Our broader goal is to say we have a public health issue that is being addressed as a criminal justice issue." I'll take that risk, man! I'll be the Christopher Columbus of dope!
The DEA would not comment on the order to show cause, and said Craker has 30 days from receipt of the letter in which to respond and have a hearing date scheduled. Like 30 days? Better write it down and put it on your fridge so you don't forget, doc...
Posted by: tu3031 ||
12/15/2004
11:53:39 AM ||
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I see things haven't changed in Amherst since I left the area.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004 12:18
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Was that Cracker or Craker ?
Didnt think they had Crackers in Mass.
#5
"What this decision does is effectively close the doors on any foreseeable prospect of the Federal Drug Administration considering marijuana as medicine," said Bruce E. Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project based in Washington, D.C.
Well I for one hope they are allowed to carry on doing research (but not sat on their asses all day smoking bongs/vapourizers). Three people i know have MS and a couple others have arthritis . Cannabis is about the only thing that helps them out that doesnt have any serious long term side effects . And yes yes yes I expect to be picked up on the long term side effects :P /yawn..
#6
Many years ago, an author friend tested his hypothesis that many drugs are illegal solely for moral, rather than medical reasons. He explained that there is a large public faction that abhors things that "give pleasure without commensurate pain", because they are inherently immoral. To test his theory, he created an imaginary drug, "perfectly harmless, yet perfectly immoral." It had only two major effects: it radically increased your sex drive (this was before Viagra); and it eliminated your inhibitions. You would have sex with anyone, and repeatedly, but be undamaged and feel great afterwards, guiltless. Sexual orientation, gender and monogamy didn't matter. For several days you would be a sex machine. Shortly after he published this fantasy, written as an "expose" of a new street drug, tongue in cheek, a large number of evil looking undercover police came looking, not for him, but for "the drug", at any price. They menaced a whole neighborhood trying to obtain samples of this new 'threat to America's youth', offering bribes and intimidation with deadly seriousness. And, as he surmised, they found the drug to be deeply, morally offensive.
#7
MacNails... have any of your friends with MS or arthritis tried flaxseed oil? I've read stuff about it helping with MS, and it seems to help with my arthritis a lot.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
12/15/2004 15:34
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Hey, I've been on chemo. I've smoked dope when I was on it. It helped me.
It's just that when I read UMASS-Amherst and pot in the same sentence, "research" is the last thing that pop's into my mind.
The Spanish court system continues to connect the dots...
The Madrid bombing suspect known as "Mohammed the Egyptian" was identified in an identification parade as one of the people who frequented the farm house where the bombs used in Spain's worst terrorist attacks were made. The line-up procedure - the results of which were called "very important" by court sources - took place before Rabei Osman El Sayed, the alleged mastermind behind the attacks, began testifying before Judge Juan del Olmo.
El Sayed "may have occupied a pre-eminent position within a top nucleus of the suspects" in the 11 March train bombings in the Spanish capital that killed 191 people, Del Olmo said in a court document released last week. The magistrate said investigations had uncovered "a level of interpersonal relationship" among El Sayed (Mohammed the Egyptian) and Serhane Ben Abdelmajid, Fouad El Morabit, Basel Ghalyoun and Khaled Zeimi Pardo.
Abdelmajid, also known as "The Tunisian," was one of the suspected terrorists who killed themselves in the Madrid suburb of Leganes as police were closing in on them on 3 April. Zeimi Pardo is at largehas been arrested, but the other two suspects are in custody.
"During the time he was in Spain, Rabei Osman, a suspected member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a part of the Al Qaeda network, took over the leadership of a group of followers of extremist Islamic ideology, supporters of the Jihad and of Osama bin Laden," the judge added. El Sayed was flown to Spain last week from Milan, where he was arrested last June. The Interior Ministry said El Sayed would be tried in Spain, but then returned to Italy, where a trial on other terrorism charges is pending. Spain's request for El Sayed was based on Italian police phone taps in which he is allegedly heard to say that he planned and organised the Madrid attacks, which also wounded some 1,500 people.
The Milan phone taps, still providing intel and evidence.
According to one of the transcribed conversations included in the brief, El Sayed said: "The attack in Madrid was my project and those who died martyrs are my dearest friends".
With a friend like this, who needs enemies?
Found also on a computer seized from El Sayed were pictures of mobile-phone-activated bombs similar to those used on 11 March.
A woman translator, 43, tried to sell to China the manuals for electronics that control all the weapons aboard Germany's crack new Type 212A submarines, a court heard on Wednesday. She was caught when a Canadian counter-espionage agent posed as a Chinese buyer and met her in a bar. Because the official secrets will be presented at the trial, the public was excluded from the courtroom in the western city of Koblenz after charges were read. Michaela T., who was born in Germany but has been a naturalised US citizen since 1983, has been in custody since she was arrested while visiting her German parents in September. Her full name has been withheld in line with German journalistic ethics guidelines. The trial is expected to hear how the German manufacturers of the sophisticated weaponry, hoping for export sales, saw no risk in hiring a freelance translator living in Canada to work up an English version of the operating instructions.
Somebody go hit them aside the head with a cluebat, please?
T. has been indicted for attempted treason in October 2003. Prosecutors say she telephoned the Chinese embassy in Ottawa, offering to sell the documents, but the Canadian authorities were aware of the approach.
Got the embassies phones bugged, do you?
The undercover agent, pretending to be Chinese, made contact and met her on two separate occasions.
Exactly how does a Canadian secret agent pretend to be Chinese? Does he tape back the corners of his eyes like those old "Charlie Chan" movies?
Senior prosecutor Wolf-Dieter Dietrich told the state superior court she had been willing to compromise Germany's external security for the sake of money. He told the court she had been short of money and had got into an argument with her German client over fees. After the call to the embassy, the undercover man met her in a bar in Canada and she agreed to sell him the manuals for CAD 105,000 (EUR 64,000), the indictment said.
Bad girl, go directly to jail.
The torpedo-armed 212A, designed by shipyard HDW, is the world's first series submarine with a fuel-cell propulsion system, said to have all the benefits of nuclear power with none of the disadvantages. It enables the vessel to operate submerged for several weeks at a time, with no noise or heat from exhaust fumes that could give it away to sub-hunters.
Plus no reactor cooling pumps, wonder if this is the type the Israelies are going to purchase?
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
11:31:38 AM ||
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Article: It enables the vessel to operate submerged for several weeks at a time, with no noise or heat from exhaust fumes that could give it away to sub-hunters.
Nuclear subs can stay submerged until they need to come up for food.
#2
fuel-cell propulsion system, said to have all the benefits of nuclear power with none of the disadvantages A laughable claim. Fuel cells are just better batteries.
#3
Phil, they are using the fuel-cell to charge the batteries, details on the 212 here:The outstanding feature of this new type of submarine is its air-independent propulsion system using a silent hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell system which not only makes the submarine more difficult to detect, but also increases the time it can stay submerged. The class 212 submarine is the first in the world to be equipped with this rovolutionary propulsion system. Its performance has already been successfully tested on a German Navy submarine.
Its hybrid diesel-electric and air-independent fuel-cell propulsion system will meet the vital requirement for low detectability. A noiseless propeller will be driven by a low-noise, high-performance, permanent-magnet motor. The reactants for the fuel cell (hydrogen and oxygen) will be stored in the after part of the boat between the pressure hull and an outer, free-flooding hull. The low-detection-probability requirement will be met also by reducing the boat's acoustic, magnetic, radar, and visual signatures and by minimizing the sonar target strength (against active detection) and sonar target level (against passive detection). The pressure hull, made of high-strength nonmagnetic steel, is optimized for hydrodynamic properties and maneuverability.
A submarine that uses fuel cells rather than a diesel engine to recharge its batteries produces much less sound while doing so, and consequently the effective detection range of many of the current passive acoustic sonobuoys is reduced.
The drive system is appropriate for speed and continuous operations without snorkel times. The gas cell makes possible submerged operations of up to one month, without the necessity once to snorkels. The boat form is very hydrodynamically clean, which suggests a high speed (> 20kn). Using the X-helm for the first time for the German navy also improves the agility of the new submarine. New stainless and a-magnetic steel for the pressure hull could make over approximately 300m for submerged depths possible.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004 16:02
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#4
I bet it won't go over 20 kt submerged for more than 24 hours. That submerged for a mounth deal is for station keeping speed, say 3 kts. If you see 'em without the diesel, then you may have something. Still a dang good submarine tho.
Police in Portugal believe a major counterfeit ring had sold fake Portuguese passports to at least two suspects held in Spain after the 11 March train bombings. Portuguese police reached the conclusion after comparing notes with Spanish police investigating the attacks, the Portuguese daily Jornal de Noticias reported. After the bombings, Spanish police detained dozens of suspects, mostly of north African origin. Two of them were found with fake Portuguese passports.
Color me surprized.
Some 150 Portuguese police seized thousands of high quality forged documents - plus counterfeiting equipment - from 29 private homes in Lisbon last week and detained 14 people of various nationalities. Passports, driving licences, cheques and credit cards were among the forged documents seized in the raids which followed an 11-month investigation. Police said the suspects, aged 28 to 78, had "the ability to legalise anyone they wanted for whatever purpose they wanted". Most of those detained had criminal records. In recent months, Spanish and British police have also apprehended fake Portuguese passports. Portugal is a member of the European Union and holders of a Portuguese passport enjoy freedom of movement across the 25-nation bloc.
Four suspected Islamic terrorists have been arrested in raids across Spain, police said on Tuesday. Spanish police said three of those arrested were linked to a new cell of radical Islamic terrorists. The fourth man is thought to be linked to an existing cell led by Mustapha El Maymouni, who played a part in the bombings in Madrid in which 191 people were killed in March. The raids were the latest stage of an operation - codenamed Nova - targeted against Islamic terrorism in Spain.
Police named those arrested as Abdelkader Lebik, 31, an Algerian, who was arrested in Vitoria. He is wanted in connection with four international arrest warrants and is accused of murder, belonging to an armed terrorist group and possessing weapons and explosives. The second man is Abdallah Ibn Moutalib Kaddouri, 30, who is also Algerian and was arrested in Vitoria. He is accused of making false documents used by the group. Both men lived together with others in a rented apartment in Vitoria. Neighbours said they were well educated and had never caused any problems.
Quiet, kept to themselves, you know the drill.
The third suspect was identified as Brahim Amman, 38, an Algerian, whose nickname is "the beheader".
Nice nick you got there, Brahim.
He was arrested in Alcañiz in north-east Spain. He is wanted in his native country for terrorism offences. Amman worked in a local cement company and rented an apartment. These three belonged to an alleged Islamic cell which was broken up in a police operation in Barcelona in 2003. The cell, which has links to the Salafist movement of Algeria, had allegedly planned an attack on the Russian embassy in Paris in co-operation with another group.
The fourth suspect is Khalid Zeimi Pardo, 27, a Moroccan, who was detained in Madrid. Zeimi is said to have been linked to extremist Islamic groups active in Spain since the 1990s. He is said to have known Amer El Azizi, who is wanted for both the 9/11 attacks in the US and the Madrid bombings. He is also said to have been linked to Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid (nicknamed "The Tunisian"), Basel Ghalyoun, Said Berraj and Fouad El Morabit El Anghar, who were involved in the Madrid bombings. Zeimi was arrested earlier in connection with the Madrid attacks but subsequently released. Maymouni is the brother of the wife of Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid. He is in custody in Morocco for his alleged involvement in the bombing of Casablanca last year in which 45 people were killed.
This is just a newsflash.
David Blunkett has quit as home secretary following a string of newspaper claims that he fast-tracked a visa for his ex-lover's nanny. Mr Blunkett denies the claims but has faced increasing pressure in recent days from members of his own party. His position became more uncertain after he criticised a string of Cabinet colleagues in a new biography. The BBC's Mark Mardell said the withdrawal of support by Labour colleagues delivered the final blow.
#1
at least he wont get to see the glee in the eyes of the usual snakes in our government .
Wonder if Tony will put Gordon Brown in the newly available position .... or some other inept fool ..
#2
Isn't Blunkett the main mover behind the "hate" speech laws that are plaguing Britain now, and making any one who disses Allan and the Koranimals a criminal?
I think Mr. Bean had a word or two on the subject.
#4
Blunkett is an arrogant SOB, but I don't think you can rightly call him a snob. An old school class warrior with authoritarianism in his blood. That's where the passion for unnecessary ID cards and Big Brother hate speech / thought control laws came from. I'm glad he's gone but his likely successor, Charles Clarke, doesn't inspire confidence.
Which is the best war movie ever released? That will stir always up heated debate. But before the arguing begins, one must ask what makes a good war movie?
The first thing is getting the basic things right. These basics involve respect for the soldiers portrayed, and for the right tone (war isn't to be celebrated, but it shouldn't be flinched from either). Second, does it tell the basic story right? Then, one can go into more subjective areas. For instance, is the story one that has been told multiple times before (like D-Day), or does it focus on an area that has been ignored (say, codebreaking in the Pacific theater)? Does it get preachy, or does it focus on telling the story? Does it get little details right (say everything looks like it should for the timeframe), or does it mess things up? Does something from the film stick with the viewer? Below are ten war movies that make the grade, in no particular order.
The Gallant Hours (1960): This is a film that does well in several areas: It tells a largely ignored story (the Guadalcanal campaign), it does so from a unique angle (there are no battles, instead, it focuses more on the burdens of command), and it tells the story of William F. Halsey. The story is generally right (the only real discrepancy is fast-forwarding the takedown of Yamamoto to about the time of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal). The scene between a fictional Roy Webb and Halsey says everything about commanding forces in battle.
Gettysburg (1993): The model for any war film. Accuracy was a premium (thanks to the assistance of thousands of re-enactors). Both sides are portrayed with respect, and this film boasts one of the more memorable lines in this author's opinion ("There are times when a corps commander's life does not count.") No love story clutters it up (unlike Gods and Generals). When I go to see a war movie, I don't like having the story of the battle interrupted by mush.
Black Hawk Down (2002): This is almost up there with Gettysburg in what a war movie should be. A real bonus here is Black Hawk Down pulled no punches in showing the Battle of Mogadishu. Again, the film had a scene that stuck out (Shughart and Gordon volunteering to rescue Durant).
Midway (1976): This film is uneven. It gets points for telling a widely-ignored story (the codebreakers, led by Joe Rochefort) and for getting things mostly right (while there were some Corsairs and Helldivers that showed up in place of SBD Dauntlesses, it was outweighed in getting the basic elements of Midway correct). Bonus points for the accurate portrayals of Spruance (the calm, unflappable CO of Task Force 16) and Fletcher (the CO of Task Force 17 who was arguably in over his head). The preachiness about the internment of Japanese-American citizens cancels out the bonus points, though.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970): The best portrayal of the attack on Pearl Harbor in cinema today. No love story to clutter things up, no expanded coverage. Just the facts about the events leading up to and on the Day of Infamy. Had Pearl Harbor (2001) simply been a remake of this film, the special effects would have placed it in the company of Black Hawk Down and Gettysburg.
Operation Pacific (1951): Another one of the ignored stories is that of the American submariners in the Pacific. John Wayne stars as XO (and later CO) of a fictional submarine, the USS Thunderfish. The basic story is correct — showing not only the wide variety of operations (evacuation of non-combatants from occupied islands to lifeguard duty to putting Japanese ships on the bottom), but also the many torpedo problems. It helped that Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood was technical advisor.
DC 9/11 (2003): This film is probably the Tora! Tora! Tora! of the war on terror. This is a "just the facts" film that relied heavily on interviews with many of those involved. The research is impeccable, and it would have been a runaway blockbuster had it been released in theaters. If anyone wants to know why we fight, that film is a good place to start.
We Were Soldiers (2002): Mel Gibson broke the mold by doing a Vietnam War film that "got it right". Based on the book by Lieutenant General Hal Moore, this film is what should have been done all along for the men who fought in Vietnam. No punches are pulled, and it also covered the home front. Nothing in particular stick out about the film — but that is because it is so superb from start to finish.
Windtalkers (2002): This film again focuses on the oft-neglected story of codes in the Pacific War. Here, it is the Navajo codetalkers. While the characters are fictional, the film still shines — if only due to the neglected story that finally gets the attention it deserves. Japan's failure to protect its codes came back to bite them in the rear. The briefing given to Sergeant Joe Enders about his mission ("You are to protect the CODE.") stands in stark contrast.
Sink the Bismarck (1960): One of the greatest wartime naval chases is here. While the characters of Captain Shepard and Anne Davis are fictional, the basic story is accurate. This is a film crying out for James Cameron to do a remake of — and hopefully, he will just do a straight remake and not repeat the mistake Jerry Bruckheimer made with Pearl Harbor by adding a gratuitous love-triangle sub-plot.
Honorable Mention: The Longest Day (1962), Patton (1975), In Harm's Way (1965), Flight of the Intruder (1991), BAT 21 (1988), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Back to Bataan (1945), Go For Broke! (1951), The Desert Rats (1953), Master and Commander (2003). Also: Zulu!, The Enemy Below, Das Boot, Band of Brothers (HBO), Light Horsemen.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
10:48:33 AM ||
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Anything with the Duke. We need another Duke.
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
12/15/2004 11:20
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#2
I don't care if it's not technically a "movie"--"Band of Brothers" is the best damn production about men at war EVER.
Posted by: Dar ||
12/15/2004 11:25
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Posted by: Roy Williams ||
12/15/2004 11:44
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#6
I agree with you Dar (with the qualifier that I haven't seen every war movie) about BoB. I have the boxed set, but I still watch every time it's on The History Channel. (I also love the fact that Dick Winters endorsed GWB and recorded some phone messages for him.) Although it was pretty lame as a movie, "To Hell and Back" (about Audie Murphy) was great because of Murphy's amazing service. I also like "A Bridge Too Far." Finally, the LOTR movies are great movies about the war between good and evil and, indirectly, about the WoT.
Lex, I think you mean "Enemy at the Gates." "Barbarians at the Gate" was about a hostile takeover in the '80s.
Posted by: Tibor ||
12/15/2004 11:45
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#7
Band of Brothers was the best war miniseries or movie I've ever seen. Lots of scenes stand out, but the toppling of those 88s in the 2nd? episode has stuck most. The series was accurate, focused on an ignored area (episode dedicated to the medic - Doc Roe).
#11
AE3775--Thanks for mentioning "Master & Commander"--That is another excellent work! I completely forgot about that, and that reminds me of the wonderful A&E "Horatio Hornblower" series. Truly great works that deserve mention.
Mason--Those 88s turned out to be 105mm guns that would likely have caused hundreds of casualties on Utah if Lt. Winters and Easy hadn't taken them out. An interesting note: According to the BoB book, that battle, which appears to take 5-10 minutes in the TV series, actually took nearly THREE HOURS.
Posted by: Dar ||
12/15/2004 12:04
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#12
What about "Bridge Over the River Kwai"? (Alec Guinness as the quintessential British military officer....)
#14
I found moments in 84 Charlie MoPic and The Thin Red Line that were superb. It seems every film wastes time on stereotypes and subplots that have only passing interest or value (duh, I'm no critic or expert on cine verite'), but there are moments in which you know that someone who was there got the point across to the director here and here. Those two movies contained such moments, IMHO.
#15
Go Tell the Spartans (1978)
A great movie about Vietnam in 1964, before large numbers of American ground troops were committed. The Americans were still in an "advisory" and support role, although they were already fighting and dying. Burt Lancaster is at his best as the dead-ended but still professional Major Asa Barker.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004 12:32
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#16
I also forgot one of the best war films ever made: Pork Chop Hill
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
12/15/2004 12:59
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#20
Platoon. Apocalypse Now. We need to be reminded that, as Sherman said, "War is Hell. There is no way to refine it." Not only is it hell, but it can be lunacy at the same time. As Lincoln said: "Each side believes that God is on it's side. We cannot both be right, and may both be wrong."
Posted by: Weird Al ||
12/15/2004 13:07
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#21
I love "The Light Horseman". Wonderful ending with the last successful cavalry charge in history.
#22
What about the Big Red one, 12 o-clock high, Flying Tigers, or the Battle of Britain? Lest we forget the classics. I also enjoyed Enemy at the Gates, a pretty good story of the Russian defense of Stalingrad.
#23
In In Harm's Way Peter Lawford plays a Congressman who resigns to enlist in the Navy. He figures it'll do his career good when the war's over, though naturally he doesn't intend to do any fighting, but instead spend the war as an admiral's PR flack. His plans get changed when the admiral sends him forward to spy on John Wayne. When I learned the details about Kerry's Swift Boat service, I wondered if it was something like that, or if that was unfair to Kerry.
#24
Windtalkers did a disservice to the Navajos. It was too hollywood. It sucked.
Das boot. What about Das Boot.
As far as Band of Brothers, the fifth episode was by far the best. That is the one where Winters went to Paris. Breaking Point, where Spears takes over Easy Company was my second favorite.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/15/2004 13:57
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#26
Hey, guys -- what about "All Quiet on the Western Front?"
Posted by: Infidel Bob ||
12/15/2004 13:57
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#27
"Cross of Iron" was great--the German movie "Stalingrad" is also a good one to rent (or buy) on DVD!
Posted by: Dar ||
12/15/2004 14:00
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#28
Full Metal Jacket was so close to greatness it hurts. Mathew Modine's narration was limp but seeing the battle of Hue was amazing. Add that to the first section of Apocolypse now and you've got an incredible Vietnam film.
Still I like Kelly's Heros because its fun, and mostly accurate, and produced at the height of the hippy anti-war haze.
#30
I second Das Boot (director's cut).
I would also kill to see a modern spec-fx remake of A Bridge Too Far (though Sean Connery was a perfect Urquhart), make it about six hours long.
Posted by: (lowercase) matt ||
12/15/2004 14:32
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#32
#26 Hey, guys -- what about "All Quiet on the Western Front?"
Posted by: Infidel Bob 2004-12-15 1:57:21 PM
Yup , that has to be by far and away the best war movie ever , even though its anti war hehe . case rested . Any of the other bollox is just eerr , bollox ..
#33
I'd also throw in (as an honorable mention) the 4th Season of BlackAdder - Blackadder Goes Forth which took place during WW1 and had a pretty powerful final scene.
#34
.com - When I saw Blair Witch Project for the first time I knew nothing about it (especially the filming method). 30 seconds into it I knew exactly how it was going to end because the only other movie I'd seen filmed like that was 84 CharlieMoPic.
Posted by: Laurence of the Rats ||
12/15/2004 15:24
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#35
rjschwarz: Mathew Modine's narration was limp but seeing the battle of Hue was amazing.
The gunbattle with the sniper made little sense to me. I've read that the traditional approach in these situations (still used today) is to knock down suspect buildings down with artillery. But the movie itself was wonderful, even if much of it was filmed in the UK.
#36
Cross of Iron...very good Deacon. Midway is a so-so on the list. The story is important but as a movie, it wasn't all that good. Bad acting and too much footage lifted from Tora Tora Tora...which I think is the best of the bunch. What about Gallipoli?
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
12/15/2004 15:29
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#37
"Battle of Britain" There is a very academic love story who nearly spoils the movie but there are many scenes with Spittfires and it is about those so few we own so much so watching it is a patriotic duty for any Rantburger except TGA
"The longest day" Still more impressive after visiting Omaha Beach. They landed at low tide and the beach is a very flat one, meaning they had no cover for hundreds of yards and there are steep hills at about one or two hundred yards of the beach. Nearly impossible to climb for an unencumbered man. Only one narrow breach in the hill range to leave the beach. A perfect deathtrap. You should watch the movie just before the visit, rewatch it just after and think.
"The Big Red One" by Samuel Fuller. It has the flavor of a movie made by someone who had a been real soldier.
"Pork Chop Hill"
"Saving Private Ryan"
"We were soldiers"
"Objective Burma" of Raoul Walsh. There is French movie, I think it is by Truffaut, where two friends, about 18 to twenty years old, discuss about movies: "Have you seen the last Antonioni movie" "That is the cinema of impotent (he uses the french word about erectile problems) pretention, Raoul Walsh that is the real greatness" And he leads his friend to a projection of Obejective Burma.
A movie honoring Marines in Okinawa or was it at Iwo Jima where they have to disamentle a rocket base. Dodn't remember the title.
"Alexander Nevski" Greatest propaganda movie in history
"Mash". In order to enlighten the atmosphere. It made me a football fan.
#40
Does Ron Artest's and Steve Smith's battle with Detroit basketball fans count?
Posted by: Capt America ||
12/15/2004 17:49
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#41
LotR - I didn't see BW, but since the style of 84CMP was so distinctive - I follow your drift. Sorry it ruined BW for you, however, lol! The stumbling across / overrun of the Japanese camp in The Thin Red Line really hit home with a couple of scenes. The chaotic firefight where two forces become mixed and everyone is shooting in every direction - or trying to suddenly get flatter than a water buffalo patty, heh, is classic reality.
#42
Gotta love Kelly's Heros. "Burning bridges lost forever more." Find my self humming it at the oddest times.
Posted by: Weird Al ||
12/15/2004 18:06
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#43
lets not forget
Macarthur - kinda slow but accruate
and
U-571
Posted by: Dan ||
12/15/2004 18:11
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#44
lets not forget
Macarthur - kinda slow but accruate
and
U-571
Posted by: Dan ||
12/15/2004 18:12
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#45
Zhang Fei, the book shorttimers (which the movie was based on) has two seperate sniper scenes. One in Hue where the tank blasts building after building trying to get the sniper while infantry are crawling in and around trying to smoke him out before the tank blows them up; and a second in the jungle (where Joker has to shoot his friend Cowboy who is wounded to stop the marines going in one after another trying to save him and getting shot up). The movie merged the two scenes which probably led to your confusion.
#46
I'd throw in the Halls of Montezuma with Richard Widmark- compare his character to Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan.
Good to see the mention of Gallant Hours and The Longest Day. For me the Longest Day has always been the war movie.
Posted by: Matt ||
12/15/2004 20:26
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#47
Angie
>In In Harm's Way Peter Lawford plays a Congressman who resigns to enlist in the Navy. He figures it'll do his career good when the war's over, though naturally he doesn't intend to do any fighting, but instead spend the war as an admiral's PR flack. His plans get changed when the admiral sends him forward to spy on John Wayne.<
It was Patrick Neal not Peter Lawford. But still a great movie.
#48
I would include a forgotten but excellent Vietnam movie, Jump into Hell, about French paras at Dien Bien Phu.
The recent History Channel production Ike was in much the same vein as The Gallant Hours (though very different in style),with Tom Selleck doing a remarkable job in the title role.
Another TV production, TNT's Roughriders, also deserves mention. It made a hash of history in some respects: German advisors fighting at San Juan Hill is a multiply debunked WW1 conspiracy theory and Sam Elliott's portrayal of Bucky O'Neill is laughable for anyone who knows anything about the real O'Neill.
OTOH, the accuracy of the visuals; uniforms, weapons, equipment and sets; is remarkable. John Milius directed so the weapons in particular would have to be accurate.
Tom Berenger's portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt was trashed by some ignorant critics, but astonishingly convincing for anyone who knows about the real TR. It was probably as good as Martin Landau's Oscar-winning and near-legendary portrayal of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood.
The montage of the Roughriders traveling across the country by train perfectly captures the patriotic fervor of the time, and the full vocal rendition of "Garryowen" is a great rarity.
A much ignored aspect of the Spanish-American War, its role in the final reconciliation of North and South, gets quite a bit of play. Gary Busey was a lot of fun as ex-Confederate General Joe Wheeler, though not much like the real Wheeler.
#49
Das Boot should have been there in place of Bismarck.
And Saving Private Ryan should have been in there in the top ten too, well ahead of Windtalkers - the first scene is as close to real combat sights and sounds of a stand-up firefight that you will ever see on the screen.
#50
They Were Expendable, directed by John Ford, starring Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed. Now, we don't really know how effective the PT boats really were, but it's a great movie.
Run Silent, Run Deep, directed by Robert Wise, with Clark Gable and Bert Lancaster. Has any sub film made after this not stolen its plot?
The Man Who Would be King and Gunga Din. Do you like Kipling?
Henry V. Sir Larry, not Kenneth Branagh.
Gallipoli. Why do you think Mel Gibson dislikes the British?
Ran, directed by Kurosawa.
Wings, winner of the first Oscar for Best Picture.
Let's add non-battle films, such as The Americanization of Emily, Stalag 17, and Von Ryan's Express. If you have kids around, pair The Great Escape with Chicken Run. :-)
And, finally, The Best Years of Our Lives and Casablanca.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
12/15/2004 23:21
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#51
The Cruel Sea
A story of the Battle of the Atlantic, C 1953, based upon a novel by Nicolas Montserrat. Some mush, but great story about men and the sea in wartime. Great line: something like this: "You learned how to strain your eyes in the fog at night, how to endure incredible fatigue, and how to die without wasting other people's time."
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/15/2004 23:26
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#52
Let's see. WW1: Paths of Glory (proving the French have always been assholes).
WW2: Battleground, Saving Private Ryan, Attack (Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin. Rare, but if you see it listed, watch it.) The Story of G.I. Joe, To Hell and Back. Run Silent,Run Deep. Lot's more I can't think of right now. Band of Brothers was outstanding.
Korea: Pork Chop Hill, MASH.
Vietnam: Full Metal Jacket, Hamburger Hill. Platoon, if you ignore Ollie's agenda.
Others: Blackhawk Down. I'll remember about a hundred more after I hit the button.
#54
Das Boot should have been there in place of Bismarck.
And Saving Private Ryan should have been in there in the top ten too, well ahead of Windtalkers - the first scene is as close to real combat sights and sounds of a stand-up firefight that you will ever see on the screen.
#55
Das Boot should have been there in place of Bismarck.
And Saving Private Ryan should have been in there in the top ten too, well ahead of Windtalkers - the first scene is as close to real combat sights and sounds of a stand-up firefight that you will ever see on the screen.
Some folks like to take their time on the can. Not Paul Stender. When the 43-year-old former pit mechanic feels the need for speed, he straps himself into his jet-engine-equipped toilet and roars off, trailing flame. Stender was running superfast snowmobiles on the drag-racing circuit when he saw his first jet-driven funny car. He liked it so much he bought one, and started building his own outlandishly overpowered vehicles: a jet motorcycle, a jet pickup, a jet school bus. Then one day at a show in Texas, he saw a windstorm blow portable toilets across the tarmac, and it was Newton's apple all over again.
Powered by a 50-year-old, 750-pound Boeing jet turbine that Stender bought for $5,000, the "Port-O-Jet" can top 46 mph with a tailwind. "It's not real aerodynamic," he allows. That said, he's beaten buddy Tim Arfons's jet barstool two of the four times they've raced.On Stender's blackboard is a jet-powered beer truck with a 24,000-horsepower F-16 engine. His advice to wannabe jet-engine hobbyists: Be careful. "So many things can go wrong," he says. "You suck in a piece of garbage, it's going to explode—and you're going to go with it."
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004
10:43:12 AM ||
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#1
Does jet toilet have an ejection seat? That could be fun...
#4
They aren't real Buffalo Chicken Wings unless you make them like they do at Frank&Theresa's Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY: jointed, deep-fried wings tossed in Frank's Louisiana Red Hot [cayenne pepper] Sauce and a little Tabasco for extra heat. Of course, if you have flying buffalos in your part of the world, Raj, I withdraw my objections of course!
...Weren't we told again and again that hopes for freedom in that war-ravaged country ranged from little to none? To begin with, the war in Afghanistan wasn't going to be won without a massive infusion of American ground troops. In the U.S. Senate, John McCain said the combination of American air power and a few Special Forces, plus Northern Alliance foot soldiers, wouldn't be enough. It was time to dispatch whole divisions to Afghanistan.
The estimable Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post seconded the motion, and so did the boys at The Weekly Standard. Boots on the ground! That was the only way to win this war.
If it could be won at all. "This is a war in trouble," warned Daniel Schorr - and just about everybody else one heard on NPR.
Ditto, said Veteran Reporter R.W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times, who was comparing Afghanistan to, of course, Vietnam. Quagmire!
Nothing that was actually happening on the ground could affect the pundits' predetermined line. Maureen Dowd, the Times' well-known gossip columnist and military analyst, summed up the whole geopolitical crux of the matter in her own scholarly way:
Now, like the British and Russians before him, (George W. Bush) is facing the most brutish, corrupt, wily and patient warriors in the world...
In short, there was only one viable option: Give up, Americans!
By mid-November of 2001, just as the most brutish, corrupt, wily and patient warriors in the world were about to fall apart, Jacob Heilbrun of the Los Angeles Times scanned the horizon and saw no hope: "There does not appear to be a political force capable of replacing the Taliban," he warned the week before Mazar-e-Sharif fell to the advancing Northern Alliance. "The United States is not headed into a quagmire," he concluded, "it is already in one."
Others were just as pessimistic. "Of all the proxies the United States has enlisted over the past half-century, the Northern Alliance may be least prepared to attain America's battlefield objectives." - The New Republic, Nov. 19, 2001. By the time my copy of that issue arrived in the mail, Kabul had already fallen to the woefully unprepared Northern Alliance...
[100% Grade A US Opinion]
While this is an extremely involved article chock full of interesting goodies, it is still a Turk shit sandwich piece lecturing the US on its Foreign Policy and, of course, detailing the myriad US "mistakes" made in dealing with these uber-sensitive creatures from Venus. It concludes, after setting the stage for something a tad more rational, with the irrational: "the onus" is on the US to prove it's good intentions toward the Turks despite the fact that the US has been their stalwart friend and biggest EU booster. This song has already received incessant play, there and elsewhere. Turkey's sensitivities are over the top in the string section, while Turkey's substantive reply has been for the US to fuck off cuz they're Euros, now.
Heh, not quite - in spite of faithful efforts by the US to help them. And regards that show of faith, the balance is heavily tilted the other way, when substance is tossed on the tray. The author posits that we can have an astounding level of influence - with the right tone of hand-holding and symbolic support, yet that would only take us back to the point we were when Turkey tossed out the baby and became an Islamic state and proceeded to stab us in the back over Iraq. What value is there in teasing Turkey back to the "staunch ally" status (I think we differ somewhat regards the meaning of that phrase, lol!) he believes (hopes) we desperately long for? Beats the shit outta me. The desperation is either overplayed / overwrought in his mind - or it's on the other side. The payoff? Stability in Northern Iraqi Kurdistan for Turkish investors, perhaps?
Gee, thanks. But no thanks. In the end, he's asking the US to willingly position itself such that Turkey can play us off against the EU, and vice versa... while pretending, for their sake, that the inconvenient events of the last 2 years didn't happen. Wow - what a deal. All's not forgiven and this guy's got his thumb on the balance. Hey, the US = bad mean bully simplisme cowboy crowd is gonna love this shit. Personally, I think it needs to simmer for awhile longer. Say a century or two -- or at least as long as is necessary for our starkly differing dictionaries to come back into synch.
But hey, that's just me.
[/100% Grade A US Opinion]
The Turks are obviously innocents here and we've gone and muddied the waters and hurt their feelings.
In Yoda-speak: Wronged them, we did. Fix it, we must.
#2
Who cares about US letting it simmer a while longer or not. We are not hurt in feeling, we are hurt in our pockets. The stupid cowboy in the west things he can fuck up the middle east and Turks should follow them like sheep, well the answer is: fuck you Yoda.
The crazy mad cowboy thinks: hey let's pull up embargo's against three of Turkeys neighbours and better invade one of them, unleash a genocide there while still expecting full support of Turkey because US is supposedly a stallwart friend!
Well with such friends we can flush our economy directly through the toilet.
Let see how "friend" America works:
1974 - 1981 US trade embargo against Turkey
1980 - 2004 US trade embargo against Iran
1990 - 2003 US trade embargo + 2 times wasting the country called Iraq
1978 - 2004 US embargo against Syria
And you wonder why the Turkish economy suffers? Don't call us friends, it sucks.
Posted by: Murat ||
12/15/2004 9:51
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#3
You have some difficulty comprehending the meaning of the word genocide, don't you, Murat?
#5
I don't wonder why the Turkish economy suffers - you do. So the thingy about Turkish investments in N. Iraq hit home, huh? Wow. Whaddya know. So you just want a little pocket money and you'll be a "staunch ally"? Lol! Right.
You stew, we'll move on. You can seethe for us, if it makes you feel better.
#6
"...refusing to open a northern front, the AKP majority in parliament effectively forced the United States to become dependent on Iraqi Kurdish militias. The Kurds now demand a reward for their participation, and Washington appears willing to oblige."
And so it should be.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 10:05
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Throwing around the "G-word" provides great sport, no doubt, but also cheapens it and waters it down from its true horrible meaning. Consult Turkey's eradication of the Armenian population for a true example, one so hideously efficient that it inspired Hitler's holocaust. For a Turk to use it against the US's kid-glove handling of the Iraq occupation is beyond pitiful. More contemptible, really.
"Don't call us friends, it sucks."
I don't think you'll have to worry about us calling you friends for a long time, 'Rat.
#10
Murat, I'll apologize for my country's treatment of your country......the minute you acknowledge that your country slaughtered Armenians, and would love to do the same to the Kurds and the Greeks if they could get away with it.
Until then, enjoy getting reamed by the EU, which, incidentally, will never accept you as a full member.
#11
Don't get to upset by all this America-bashing. It's a requirement written into The Capitulations. It's a pre-req, if you will, to being allowed to become a French colony. Enjoy your New and Improved Capitulations, Murat. They were soooooo tasty the first time around, weren't they.
#12
1974 - 1981 US trade embargo against Turkey:reason for embargo invasion of Cyprus.
Yeap,as usual Murat does the half-truth thingy.I think history has shown the Turks aren't particullarly nice folks.
#13
Murat, it is freaking hilarious when a Turk thows out a 'genocide' verbal attack against the USA when TURKEY is one of the few countries who have actually commited a Genocide.
As for the US mistreating Turkey, all I can offer is ROTFLMAO. Whudda moonbat.
#15
gosh...most of my comments were covered already. Great #1 post, .com.
To put my schendenfraud (sp?) aside, it does seem in Turkey's interests to pursue colonization by the French. Big gains for Turkey and a huge drain on the EU.
Bottom line is that EU membership isn't going to happen while any of it's current supporters are alive. And Iraq is not going to descend into chaos. That's what happens when you heed the elite's left to "Elect me! Suffer today so that utopia will be mine today and yours, um, tomorrow." The Turks picked a lose/lose combination.
#17
Everyone (understandably) puts so much energy into fighting accusations against America. Surely, in the case of Turkey's genocide, as well as in the case of Saddam's genocide, there is photo documentation galore. I cannot understand why we are letting anti-American scapegoaters in the international community go unchallenged when they make wild accusations with no proof. We need to take some folks back to school apparently to learn to distinguish between an accusation and evidence of the act.
Our current method of rebuttal is ineffective and is allowing anti-American PR to gain strength. Let the documentation out-show the photos and let anti-American ranters scramble to argue their pitiful positions in the face of the evidence. Are we too PC to challenge accusers with gory evidence? Are we too PC to stand up for ourselves with distasteful BUT FACTUAL evidence?
#19
I think an independent Kurdistan comprising eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and western Iran is proper payment for the Kurds' support. Screw the Turks and the camel they rode in on.
#23
Oh how great heartedly you Americans are, always in for help to the surpressed ha? In the meantime let the Indians rot in their reservates, since they are the secondclass psuedo Americans huh? Great people you are bringing democracy everywhere even if you have to exterminate the population of that country :)
How about agent orange (worked in Vietnam) could fasten your genocide in Iraq.
Posted by: Murat ||
12/15/2004 18:05
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#24
Turkey doesn't need the U.S., they have the full support of France. Lots of luck with that, guys.
#25
Here's a little English lesson for you, Murat:
There are no "reservates" -- they're "reservations". And Indians have been free to leave them for a long, long time. Considering your desire to contain Kurds, you shouldn't talk. [And, by the way, some Indians on reservations are getting quite rich operating casino gambling since they are not subject to state laws.]
If you want to speed something up, you don't "fasten" it. "Hasten" it, maybe, but not "fasten". You "fasten" buttons and snaps and such to connect things.
Agent Orange is a herbicide (vegetation killer), not a great tool for genocide. You should consult the Kurds on genocide. They'll tell you that Saddam wasn't using Agent Orange.
And in what country did we "exterminate the population"? Iraq has 25 million people. How many have died? Armenia, Murat, Armenia. I don't care if you are in denial or just lacking freedonm of speech -- either is pathetic and unworthy of EU membership. More Arab than European.
Posted by: Tom ||
12/15/2004 19:41
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#26
Murat, we wish you all the best with France. Be sure and let us know if they let you in ok... as it won't make the front page and we might not notice. Good luck to you.
#27
I saw Turkey below the fold once, some Joooo killing thing a year or so back, or was it that Cyprus thing. I never can remember. Are they still the Sick Boy of Europe? Threatening to set off the Powder Puff?
#1
If I knew where to find the hard detail underlying this article, I'd do a set of maps - as I fully expected him to do by the end. Sheesh. It does report what we would logically expect to find in red / blue states in regards to white voting patterns. The on factoid he tossed out that actually surprised me was this: "Whites remain the 800-pound gorilla of ethnic electoral groups, accounting for over three out of every four votes."
Majority, yes, 75%, no - I didn't expect it to be that high.
#2
Difference in turnout rates, esp vs hispanics, but also age. The white demographic is much older than the hispanic and afr-american ones. And the great "youth vote" never materializes.
#1
Oh baby! Another prescient home run by Crichton, methinks. He has the knack for picking the technological wheat out from the chaff - very selectively and far ahead of the madding crowd. And, often enough to make you wonder, he anticipates the social ramifications with amazing accuracy. Moonbatism may, indeed, become a permanent state with a core of professional agitprop thugs who will keep the frenzy going well beyond the debunking.
Of course, I'll have to buy the book, now that I've read this, lol!
#2
I'd like to ask RBers for their opinion on novels that rely on wacky conspiracies for their plot. I have a specific reason for asking, because I wrote a novel in a similar vein called The Year Without A Summer where the villian is a pair of volcanos that plunge the world into abrupt global cooling. It was comprehensively knocked back by publishers with comments like 'unbelievable plot'. As a reader I hate novels whose plot is based around a conspiracy. I find them implausable and avoid them. Yet as Michael Crichton shows they sell. I'm wondering whether I should rewrite and add a similar conspiracy. TIA for any comments.
#3
I'd suggest doing something so outrageous that you make the national news....best if it has some tie in with your plot. Perhaps the claim that you have evidence to show that Mt. St. Helens isn't really erupting, but, rather, it is the result of a terrorist attack on a CIA base located underneath the volcano. If that doesn't work, try biting your dog or holding your baby over the balcony :-)
#4
Phil, you've probably heard the story that a frustrated author copied a novel by Jerzy Koszinski which had done quite well. He shopped it around and, 1, the agents and publishers had no idea it was a hoax, and 2, said it would never sell.
You know somebody turned down Tom Clancy.
There was a year without a summer, when Krakatoa went up in the early nineteeth century. Maybe you should include a bit of basic knowledge available to everybody but the publishing scene.
Posted by: Richard Aubrey ||
12/15/2004 8:31
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#5
Kraktoa was a wet firecracker compared to Toba. Toba caldera produced the largest eruption in the last 2 million years. The caldera is 18 x 60 miles (30 by 100 km) and has a total relief of 5,100 feet (1700 m). Large eruptions occurred 840,000, about 700,000, and 75,000 years ago. There is substantial evidence to show that within the time of the super volcano Toba's eruption in the Indonesian Pacific, the world's population of homo sapiens decreased from over one hundred thousand to less than two thousand, basically because global temperatures dropped five degrees for many years. Now that's a disaster!
Posted by: Steve ||
12/15/2004 8:53
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#6
Richard Aubrey, that was Mount Tambora, in 1815, that caused the year without a summer.
#7
Discovery Chanel has a great show about Yellow Stone National Park.Did you know Yellow Stone is what is called a Super valcano?If that puppy blows agin(according to Discovery)it will make Krkatoa look like a wet baby fart.
#8
Yup, I remember reading that yellowstone is the world's largest volcano and last time it blew the entire north american continent was inches deep in ash and everything within a few hundred miles was pretty much destroyed.
#9
Author C. Clarke began his book Hammer of God (about an asteroid threatening to destroy the Earth) with a chapter about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. He slipped in little chapters throughout the book about different asteroid hits throughout the ages. This sort of brought out a sense of, it can happen again. That's the way the movie Armageddon started as well. You might consider taking the volcanoes listed by the posters above and doing something similar.
Did anyone know that an asteroid skipped off the atmosphere over the Pacific during Gulf War 1. That the impact created a Hiroshima level explosion that caused US defense to go on alert until they figured out what it was. Didn't make the papers but Bob Zubrin wrote about it in his Case for Space.
#10
The plot is a Tambora scale eruption that causes major disruptions to agriculture, massive population moves, etc., then ends with a Toba scale eruption, whose consequences have been eluded to during the book.
Thanks for the advice, but I'm still worrying the conspiracy angle. I watched Mercury Rising last night, which is not a bad movie once you get past the plot that even my 12 yo daughter mocked as unbelievable (9 yo kid cracks secret government code. Evil businessman starts killing people to coverup). Much as I dislike conspiracies as a cheap plot device, audiences seem to have been conditioned to expect them as a way to explain what happens in the world.
#12
Screw the publishing houses. Go directly to the web. Use a Creative Commons License to let people link to but not alter your work. Provide a central site where they can read free teasers and then submit micropayments for additional chapters. Take in ad revenues from booksellers who offer fare similar to yours.
#14
it's really tough to get published if you aren't already famous or are sleeping with someone in the publishing business. Tom Clancy went with Naval Institute Press for his first book and when it was a hit, the MSM stole him out from under them.
If you make it accurate and educational with a plot, it might be possible to get a scientific publishing house to take a chance.
Things are changing with internet access...but basically what sells books are famous or infamous names. Also you can piggyback on ideas that indy publishers want to promote.
#15
2b, a poorly served market is fiction around scientific themes (outside science fiction), possibly for the teen market. Fictionalized versions of real events often of scientific significance are popular. Why not scientifically accurate portrayals of fictional events. Similar to the work Hoyle and Sagan used to write but in the geo and earth sciences.
#1
Whoa - a jerk-off betwixt jerks sans shame or a grasp of reality. This time, tipper, I don't care which one "wins" since they're both so off-target and irrelevant as to be laughable wankers making no difference whatsoever, lol! Strawman BS.
#2
Isn't this the same magazine that had the piece yesterday, with a few holes in it" proposing 7 steps leaps from Atta to Anthrax? It did have some interesting ideas in it though, including possible reasons why Dim Senators might have been targeted by Islamics.
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.
Afghan security forces have captured Taliban leader Mohammad Omar's personal security chief. 
Seven jailed Saudi militants have made a televised appeal to al Qaeda sympathisers in the kingdom to surrender, denying reports of torture in captivity and saying prison guards treated them like family. The apparently repentant militants appeared on state television to persuade the fighters behind an 18-month wave of violence they will not be mistreated if they turn themselves in. Cameras were allowed into a Riyadh prison for the television programme, which aired late Tuesday, to show gleaming corridors, rows of colourful beds and books piled on bedside tables.
Al Qaeda's 
The law enforcing agencies have apprehended six al-Qaeda suspects here Tuesday from Army Stadium area. In a joint raid conducted by CID police and intelligence agencies in the Cantt area, six suspects believed to have links with al-Qaeda outfit were nabbed and were moved to some undisclosed location for further investigation, well informed sources told. The six nabbed persons were holding a meeting when law-enforcing agencies rounded them up.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator said on Wednesday that Tehran doesn't care whether 
The Arabic-language newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, reported Wednesday that Prime Minister 
A growing rift between 
A Sydney magistrate has granted an application by the Commonwealth Government to hear some evidence against an alleged terrorism suspect in a closed court. Sydney's Central Local Court is holding a committal hearing for 34-year-old Faheem Khalid Lodhi, who is charged with nine terrorism related offences. He is alleged to have planned attacks on the electricity grid and some Sydney defence sites, along with French terrorism suspect Willie Brigitte. The Commonwealth Government applied to have some of the expected evidence in the case heard in a closed court, arguing that if it was made public it would be contrary to national security. After almost two days of argument, Magistrate Michael Price has granted the application. He says the closed court would not damage Lodhi's defence, but would protect the wider community.
Meanwhile, Belgian police suspect Hakimi is the European leader of the militant 
On October 4, 2002, the United States suddenly confronted North Korea with a damning accusation: that it was secretly developing a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade, in violation of the 1994 agreement that Pyongyang had signed with Washington to freeze its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Since North Korea had cheated, the Bush administration declared, the United States was no longer bound by its side of the deal. Accordingly, on November 14, 2002, the United States and its allies suspended the oil shipments they had been providing North Korea under the 1994 agreement. Pyongyang retaliated by expelling international inspectors and resuming the reprocessing of plutonium, which it had stopped under the 1994 accord (known as the Agreed Framework). The confrontation between North Korea and the United States once more reached a crisis level.
Four suspected Islamic terrorists have been arrested in raids across Spain, police said on Tuesday. Spanish police said three of those arrested were linked to a new cell of radical Islamic terrorists. The fourth man is thought to be linked to an existing cell led by 
