Posted on 07/02/2007 7:27:40 AM PDT by Bahbah
Is that our original green helmet guy?
I wasn’t sure when I saw him.
But the lives of the children of Sderot and Ashkelon have no meaning???
You are quite welcome.
And a little out of Pakistani news.
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40 dead in suicide blast in DSP funeral in Swat
01/03/08 SWAT, At least 40 persons were killed and more than 50 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a funeral procession of slain DSP Lakki Marwat, Javed Iqbal at Government High School No-2 Mingora on Friday night, police and hospital sources said.
The attack in Swat district came days after the military said it had cleared most areas in the mountainous region of militants, who it had been battling there for months, aside from a few pockets of resistance.
“The blast occurred after people had offered prayers and pall bearers were carrying the coffin for a police salute,” said Deputy Superintendent Karamat Shah. He was among more than 500 mourners at the funeral for a senior colleague in Swat district.
The policeman being buried was one of three policemen killed earlier on Friday when their van struck a roadside bomb in another region of North West Frontier Province, where Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are active. Mohammad Khan, the senior doctor at the hospital in Saidu Sharif in Swat, said 34 bodies had been received and more than 50 people were being treated for wounds after the attack.
But intelligence officials said the death toll was at least 38, and Shah said he saw some people carrying bodies of relatives home to prepare them for burial.
The funeral was being held after dusk in accordance with Muslim custom, and Shah said a power cut immediately after the blast added to confusion.
The earlier roadside bomb occurred near Bannu, a town at the gateway to North Waziristan, a tribal region where al Qaeda cells have become entrenched.
“The device targeted the police van, killing three people and critically wounding two,” said Hamza Mehsud, chief of police in Bannu district.
A missile, believed to have been fired by a US pilotless drone, struck a house in North Waziristan on Thursday, killing 13 suspected militants including some believed to be Arabs.
http://www.pakwatan.com/latest_news1.php?id=6473
It resembles him closely- with a haircut and a few less pounds.
I haven’t hear a peep out of Nasrallah since the Cole arrived - hmmmm
And just for a little more heat -in the old USSR- looks like the fellow who was running on the ANTI-CORRUPTION platform has been placed under house arrest.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080301/ts_afp/armeniavoteprotest_080301194019
YEREVAN (AFP) - Authorities in ex-Soviet Armenia imposed a state of emergency Saturday after rising tension over a disputed presidential election erupted into violent clashes between protesters and riot police.
The state of emergency will be in effect in the capital Yerevan until March 20 under a decree signed by President Robert Kocharian, his office said.
“In order to end the threat to order and to defend the law and rights of the people, I declare a state of emergency in Yerevan from March 1 to March 20,” the decree stated, a presidential spokesman told AFP.
Protesters and riot police clashed Saturday in Yerevan with demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails and stones and police firing tear gas and automatic weapons into the air, an AFP reporter saw.
Protesters claim the election was rigged to ensure victory for Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, a close ally of the outgoing president.
Official results gave 52.9 percent of the vote to Sarkisian and 21.5 percent to Ter-Petrosian.
Ter-Petrosian ran on an anti-corruption platform and alleged massive fraud in the election to replace Kocharian.
~snip~
But surely you have heard that the Bush regime is preparing concentration camps for the folks at DU as he shreds the Constitution. Some people are so dumb.
Scores hurt in blast at Pakistan tribal meeting
Reuters via ABC News ^ | Mar 2, 2008 | Kamran Haider
Posted on 03/02/2008 2:49:44 AM CST by james500
Scores of people were injured when a powerful explosion ripped through a tribal meeting in northwestern Pakistan on Sunday, government officials said.
“The blast occurred when tribesmen were holding a meeting to discuss the security situation in Dera Adamkhel,” the official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
“Initial reports say scores of people were wounded and an emergency has been declared at hospitals in neighboring towns,” he said.
Link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979105/posts
Good morning, everyone!!
Business as usual....
U.N. chief condemns Israel after Gaza clash (Surprise, UN blames Israel for not just dying)
Reuters ^ | 3/1/2008 | Nidal al-Mughrabi
Posted on 03/01/2008 10:19:18 PM CST by tobyhill
GAZA (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using “excessive” force in the Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to its offensive after troops killed 61 people on the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s.
Addressing an emergency session of the Security Council in New York after four days of fighting in which 96 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, Ban also called on Gaza’s Islamist militants to stop firing rockets.
The 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into the blockaded, 45 km (30-mile) sliver of coast, enjoyed a relative respite early on Sunday from Israeli air strikes and raids. Two Israeli soldiers died in a ground assault on Saturday. An Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket in a border town on Wednesday.
“While recognising Israel’s right to defend itself, I condemn the disproportionate and excessive use of force that has killed and injured so many civilians, including children ... I call on Israel to cease such attacks,” said Ban.
“I condemn Palestinian rocket attacks and call for the immediate cessation of such acts of terrorism,” he said.
But with public anger boiling in Israel, there was no sign the government was ready to call off an offensive that took troops deeper into Gaza on Saturday and in larger numbers than at any time since Israel ended a 38-year occupation in 2005.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979061/posts
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No word, yet - as far as I can find - about the outcome of the vote of the “emergy session” of the UNSC... Specifically how the US voted.....
“emergy session” should be “emergency session”....
More coffee desperately needed......
Well.. Isn’t that special??
US trainers to help Pakistani paramilitaries
dawn ^ | 03/02/2008 | dawn
Posted on 03/01/2008 10:45:19 PM CST by milwguy
US trainers to help Pakistani paramilitaries WASHINGTON, March 2 (AFP) - The Pentagon is planning to send about 100 US military trainers to Pakistan to assist a paramilitary force that is operating along the border with Afghanistan targeting Al-Qaeda, The New York Times reported on its website late Saturday. Citing unnamed US military officials, the newspaper said that small teams of US special operations soldiers have already been sent to Pakistan to train Pakistani counterterrorism troops. But a classified plan now under review at the US Central Command would increase the contingent of US trainers to about 100, the report pointed out. These specialists will help train the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 85,000 members recruited from ethnic groups living on the Pakistani northwest frontier. “The US trainers will be primarily focused on assisting the Pakistan cadre who will do the actual training of the Frontier Corps troops.” A senior US military official said the trainers initially would be restricted to Pakistani bases, but could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions “to the point of contact” with militants, the paper noted. Britain is considering a similar training mission, according to the report. (Posted @ 09:25 PST)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979068/posts
Ummmmmmmm...
Huh??
Israel: We may have to reoccupy Gaza, although we don’t want to
Haaretz.com ^ | 06:04 02/03/2008 | By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
Posted on 03/02/2008 12:01:28 AM CST by Perdogg
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and top defense officials will meet Sunday to discuss their next moves in Gaza, though the Israel Defense Forces policy is not expected to change. Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are said to support more actions like the ones over the weekend.
Israel on Saturday began delivering messages to senior officials in the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations that it did not intend to reoccupy Gaza, though continued terror might give it no choice
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979083/posts
Well, they’ve got all those holes in the border fence, anyway, to run the transmission lines through....
Egypt plans to provide Gaza Strip with electricity
ynetnews ^ | 2/28/2008
Posted on 03/02/2008 1:07:38 AM CST by bruinbirdman
Saudi bank pledges $32 million to fund Cairo plan to wean Gaza off dependence on Israeli power
Egypt is working on a plan with the Palestinians to supply all the besieged Gaza Strip’s electricity needs and wean off its reliance on Israel for power, an Egyptian energy official said Thursday.
Under the plan, Egypt - which already supplies a small part of Gaza’s electricity - would increase the number of power lines linking it to Gaza and provide Palestinians with some 250 megawatts, said Izzat Ibrahim, a senior official of Sinai’s National Electricity Power Co.
‘’This capacity is considered as an alternative power for that Israel used to supply,’’ Ibrahim said.
He said Egypt’s Electricity Ministry is preparing a study with President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority on financing the project and providing equipment to Gaza. The project would take at least six months to implement, he said, though he could not say when it would start.
An official at the ministry confirmed that Egypt was exploring means of providing all of Gaza’s electricity needs. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, would not give a timeframe for the project.
Gaza, controlled since June by Abbas’ rival a Hamas militant group, currently receives most of its power from Israel. Its dependence has been highlighted by fuel and power restrictions imposed by Israel last month to put economic pressure on Hamas. The sanctions are a response to repeated rocket attacks launched by Gaza militants.
Ten of the 17 power lines supplying Gaza currently come from Israel, five from a local power plant and two from Egypt. Gaza’s consumption increases by about 10 percent a year, and the strip currently needs about 240 megawatts.
The chief of Abbas’ Palestinian Energy Authority said Tuesday that the Palestinian Authority hoped to connect more areas of the Gaza Strip to the Egyptian grid. The official, Omar Qattaneh, said the authority has secured financing from the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia for the $32 million project. He said bids would be published in the coming days, and the project could be completed in 12 to 18 months.
The proposal would bolster Abbas’ claim to represent Gaza. Abbas now rules from the West Bank and wields little control over the Hamas-held Gaza.
Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu also praised the plan, despite the lingering tensions with Abbas’ government. ‘’We welcome any project that links us to our Arab brothers and ends our relations with the occupation,’’ he said, referring to Israel. Hamas officials had also raised the idea of boosting power supplies to Gaza with Egypt, he said.
On Wednesday, Jordan began supplying electricity to the town of Jericho in the West Bank for the first time since Israel seized control of the territory during the 1967 Middle East War. Israel has provided power to the West Bank since then
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1979093/posts
Good morning Uncle Ike.
I’m is IV coffee mode trying to catch up.
Hiya, Workerbee!!
I know that feeling — I’ve finally got a long-awaited day-off, and I’m trying to get enough coffee in me to be safe to drive on a desperately needed Wally-world run....
(The Ike Cave larder is so depleted that I’ve been surviving on Ramen for the past three days....)
Without comment.
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Israel pledges to press on with Gaza offensive
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
20 minutes ago
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel vowed on Sunday to press on with a Gaza offensive and curb rocket strikes, threatening even stronger action despite U.N. condemnation of assaults that have killed more than 100 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
“Israel has no intention of stopping the fight against the terrorist organizations even for a minute,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet, facing the new challenge of long-range rockets hitting the major southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for using “excessive” force in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and demanded a halt to air and ground attacks that killed 61 people on Saturday, the bloodiest day for Palestinians since the 1980s.
In the latest fighting, two Palestinian militants were killed in the northern Gaza Strip, medical officials said. The bodies of two girls were found on Sunday in the rubble of a house in Gaza City hit by Israeli forces a day earlier.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas designated Sunday a day of mourning. But he refrained from declaring dead a revived U.S.-backed peace process with Israel opposed by Hamas Islamists who seized the Gaza Strip from his Fatah faction in June.
Olmert said striking at Hamas only advanced the cause of peace, and “the Palestinian leadership — the one with which we wish to make peace — understands this.”
But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: “If Israeli aggression continues, it will bury the peace process.”
After five days of fighting in which medical officials said more than 100 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, Ban also called at an emergency U.N. Security Council session for a halt to rocket fire by Gaza’s Islamists militants.
In a statement, the Security Council said it was deeply concerned about the loss of civilian life in southern Israel and the Gaza Strip and urged a cessation of violence.
One Israeli has been killed by a rocket launched from Gaza since the current surge in bloodshed began. Hamas has said such salvoes would stop if Israel abandoned operations in the Gaza Strip and raids against militants in the occupied West Bank.
“We are acting to hit the Hamas infrastructure ... the final target is to bring an end to the firing of Qassams,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak said about the crude rockets.
“This will not be achieved in the next two days, but we will continue the activity with all our strength. And we need to prepare for escalation, because the big ground operation is real and tangible,” Barak said.
PRESSURE
Olmert has been under pressure from some of his cabinet members to launch a broader offensive in the Gaza Strip, especially after militants began firing longer-range Katyusha rockets at Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people.
But Israeli officials have spoken publicly of the heavy loss of life such a campaign could cause on both sides.
Israeli commentators have also questioned whether military action could completely end rocket fire from the densely populated territory of 1.5 million Palestinians.
“I hear calls to wipe out entire (Gaza) neighborhoods. I won’t be involved in causing harm which in the short term can be beneficial but in the long term can be harmful,” an official quoted Olmert as telling members of his Kadima party.
The offensive has taken Israeli troops deeper into the Gaza Strip and in larger numbers than at any time since Israel pulled troops and settlers out of the territory in 2005, 38 years after its capture.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting with Gaza militants on Saturday.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to meet Abbas and Olmert this week to try to accelerate faltering negotiations which President George W. Bush hopes can forge a peace deal before he leaves office in January.
Abbas’s chief peace negotiator Ahmed Qurie called off a meeting scheduled for Monday with his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Israeli officials said.
But Abbas, who echoed widespread Palestinian outrage at Israel’s tactics by calling it “more than a holocaust,” had taken no decision to abandon the peace process, aides said.
Palestinian officials said Saturday’s bloodshed was the worst since an “intifada” or uprising against Israeli occupation broke out in 2000, halting an earlier peace process.
(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah, Louis Charbonneau in New York, Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald, Editing by Janet Lawrence)
7 Qassam rockets land in Sderot, western Negev; none injured
Published:
03.02.08, 12:31 / Israel News
Seven Qassam rockets landed in Sderot and within the Sdot Negev and Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Councils Sunday. No injuries or damage were reported.
Since the morning hours Sunday, 18 Qassam rockets landed in the western Negev. One woman was lightly injured by shrapnel, and at least 12 people were treated for shock. (Shmulik Hadad)
Mar 2, 2008 8:11 | Updated Mar 2, 2008 10:45
Ahmadinejad’s arrives in Iraq for talks
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived Sunday in Baghdad for the first-ever trip by an Iranian president to Iraq, walking a red carpet past Iraqi troops in dress uniform to meet the president of a country that was once Iran’s bitter enemy.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani greeted Ahmadinejad at his car and the two kissed four times in the traditional fashion. A military honor guard saluted the two and a band played the two countries’ national anthems as they walked slowly down the red carpet at Talabani’s residency.
The visit gives Ahmadinejad a chance to highlight the relationship his nation has with post-Saddam Hussein Iraq - both countries are led by Shi’ite Muslims - while also serving as an act of defiance toward the United States, which accuses Iran of training and giving weapons to Shi’ite extremists.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Associated Press that Ahmadinejad plans to leave Monday morning.
Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet not only with Talabani but also Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, both of whom have made official visits to Iran since taking office. Talabani’s headquarters are located right across the Tigris River from the mammoth new US Embassy in the fortified Green Zone, an area that has been repeatedly hit by mortar attacks, with the US blaming Shi’ite militants.
The US has said it will have no involvement in Ahmadinejad’s visit.
Ahmadinejad arrived in Iraq a day after Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came to Baghdad on an unannounced visit with commanders and Iraqi officials.
Ahmadinejad sought to reassure Iraqis ahead of the trip that Iran is not fueling violence in Iraq and wanted to promote peace.
“This visit will be benefiting for all sides.
Anybody who seeks peace and stability in the region will benefit from this trip,” Ahmadinejad said before departing from Teheran Sunday, according to the Iranian state-run news agency, IRNA.
Despite the hopeful talk, Iran and Iraq have not always had rosy relations. The two countries were hostile to each other throughout Saddam’s regime and fought a destructive eight-year war after Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. About 1 million people died in the conflict.
But when Saddam’s Sunni-dominated regime fell and Iraq’s Shi’ite majority took power after the US-led invasion, long-standing ties between the Shi’ites of both countries flourished again, though the two neighbors have yet to sign a peace treaty.
Many of Iran’s Shi’ite leaders lived in exile in Iran during Saddam’s rule, and Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, speaks fluent Farsi.
With the trip, Ahmadinejad also may be trying to bolster his support back home ahead of parliamentary elections later this month. They are seen as referendum on the Iranian president, who has come under criticism from all sides in his country for spending too much time on anti-Western rhetoric and not enough on economic problems plaguing the country.
Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the visit sends a “clear message to Iraqis that the Iranian influence in the country is significant and enduring.”
But at the same time, “he doesn’t want to threaten the Iraqis. He doesn’t want to threaten Gulf states who fear that Iraq will be an Iranian satellite. He has a thin line to walk,” he said.
The US has tried to downplay Ahmadinejad’s visit, saying it welcomed Iran’s stated policy of promoting stability but that its actions have doing just the opposite.
US President George W. Bush denied that Ahmadinejad’s visit undermined US efforts to isolate Teheran but had some advice for what al-Maliki should say to the Iranian leader.
“He’s a neighbor. And the message needs to be, quit sending in sophisticated equipment that’s killing our citizens,” Bush told reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
In Teheran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, criticized Bush’s comments.
“His remarks are an intervention in the friendly, brotherly and sincere relations between Iran and Iraq. Americans do not want the relations to grow,” Hosseini told reporters Sunday after Ahmadinejad left Iran.
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