#2
...Without the Ackermonster we wouldn't have had the joy of ray Bradbury. I'd like to think that right now, Ackerman is chatting up Karloff and Lugosi...
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/05/2008 21:25 Comments ||
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U.S.-led troops killed 14 militants in two days of clashes in southern Afghanistan, U.S. military statements said Friday.
Ten militants were killed by mortar fire following an insurgent attack on a military base in Helmand province's Nar Surkh district on Wednesday, a statement said. Troops killed another four militants in the same district on Thursday, after the insurgents fired on a joint U.S.-Afghan patrol, a second statement said. There were no U.S. casualties in the clashes, military said.
Posted by: ed ||
12/05/2008 07:50 ||
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(AKI) - A French aid worker abducted on the streets of Kabul a month ago has been freed, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday. Thirty-two year-old Dany Egreteau who worked for the non-government organisation, Solidarity Laique, was kidnapped by armed men on 3 November while walking in the centre of the Afghan capital.
An Afghan driver was killed as he tried to prevent his colleague's abduction. The French Foreign Ministry said it had been working with Afghan officials to secure Egreteau's freedom.
Egreteau, an education specialist, had arrived in Afghanistan just one week before his abduction. He is expected to return to France on Thursday.
His abduction followed a string of attacks on foreigners in Afghanistan.
In October, a Briton and South African working for the DHL international courier company were shot dead in Kabul and British aid worker, Gayle Williams, was killed in the capital days later.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner thanked French and Afghan authorities for their efforts in obtaining Egreteau's release, and attacked the kidnappers for targeting aid workers.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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(AKI) - Suicide bombers struck two government compounds in Afghanistan's Khost province on Thursday, killing at least two and injuring seven others. The attacks took place in the southeastern city of Khost and targeted a counter-narcotics department as well as the National Directorate of Security, the province's intelligence headquarters.
An explosives-laden car is said to have hit the NDS building. Following the attack, armed militants dressed as Afghan soldiers entered the building, which was later surrounded by Afghan police and army.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, in a phone call to Arab TV network al-Jazeera.
Fears over Afghanistan's stability have risen this year, which has been marked by the worst violence since the Taliban were toppled in 2001.
A resurgent Al-Qaeda backed Taliban has carried out a number of high-profile attacks, including an assassination plot against President Hamid Karzai during a military parade near his palace in the capital, Kabul.
Some members of the security forces helped the insurgents in that incident and in several other major attacks, officials have said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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(AKI)- United Nations-African Union peacekeepers in Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region have dispatched a mission to the southern Hissa Hissa camp after a deadly brawl broke out there between refugees and Arab Janjaweed militiamen. One of the militiamen was severely beaten and later died as a result of the clash, and a refugee was injured. A second militiaman was arrested and taken into custody by Sudanese police, the UN said.
UNAMID reported that at least 10 armed men started shooting at a water pump near Hissa Hissa on Tuesday, and later torched the pump and five generators supplying energy to the camp.
Tensions at Hissa Hissa between refugees and militiamen remain high, and the UNAMID team is continuing to monitor the situation, said the UN.
At least 300,000 people have been killed and 2.7 million others displaced from their homes in fighting across Darfur over the past five years between rebels, Government forces and allied militiamen known as the Janjaweed. The militiamen are accused of widespread human rights abuses in their attacks against civilians.
The UN-AU joint mission has been in place since the start of this year to try to quell the violence and give humanitarian assistance.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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Reporting from Seattle -- Ahmed Ressam, the "millennium bomber" convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, was resentenced to 22 years in prison Wednesday after a federal judge found that solitary confinement and repeated interrogations had helped cause him to stop cooperating in other terrorism prosecutions.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour rejected the government's warning that Ressam, who in 1999 was stopped coming off a ferry from Canada with a carload of explosives, had reverted to Al Qaeda sympathies and would represent a danger if he were ever released. Noting that the case comes "as our nation prepares for a new chapter," Coughenour said Ressam had provided "an unprecedented view of the inner workings [of Al Qaeda] that almost without question prevented . . . future attacks."
The substantial help that the Algerian provided to U.S. officials before his change of heart -- coupled with the relatively shorter sentences handed out in other terrorism cases -- merited no harsher a penalty than the 22-year sentence first imposed in 2005, the judge said.
That he stopped cooperating, after his original sentence was conditioned on cooperation, doesn't seem to have bothered the judge much.
That sentence effectively was vacated by a federal appeals court ruling on another issue in the case. So prosecutors were able to return to court Wednesday to argue that Coughenour's original sentence was too lenient, given Ressam's failure to live up to his cooperation agreement.
Government lawyers started out the day seeking a 45-year sentence. But as Ressam accused investigators of pressuring him through mental duress into providing unreliable information against Al Qaeda suspects, prosecutors upped the ante to demand life in prison.
Ressam, who was representing himself, did not object. "Sentence me to life in prison, or anything you wish," he told the judge. "I will have no objection to your sentence."
The Ressam case represents a stunning reversal for federal prosecutors who once had relied on the 41-year-old militant for help in a variety of high-level terrorism cases -- some of which were halted in their tracks when he stopped talking in 2003.
Ressam has recanted his testimony in at least three cases, one involving his alleged accomplice in the Los Angeles bombing plot, Mokhtar Haouari. The Montreal shopkeeper was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2001 for conspiring to provide material support by giving Ressam money and a fake Canadian driver's license.
On Wednesday, Ressam told the court he had been pressured into providing testimony in two other high-profile cases -- one involving Abu Doha, identified by U.S. authorities as one of Europe's highest-ranking Al Qaeda figures, and Samir Ait Mohamed, who allegedly helped Ressam in the Los Angeles bombing conspiracy.
"The government attorney and the investigator . . . interpret[ed] some of my statements to suit their interest, and statements . . . were put in my mouth. I said yes because of the extreme mental exhaustion I was going through," Ressam said Wednesday. "I retract all the statements I made in the past and do not want my word counted in the trial. . . . I did not know what I was saying."
Played everyone and got away with it.
Ressam's retreat forced the U.S. to abandon prosecution of Abu Doha and Mohamed, despite the fact that Britain and Canada had held the men in custody at American officials' request. British authorities shifted Abu Doha's detention to house in July.
"Our government was put in a horrible situation," said Mark Bartlett, first assistant U.S. attorney in Seattle. "We had gone to two of our closest allies, Great Britain and Canada, and said . . . arrest these people, keep them in custody, and we promise we will bring them to the United States. . . . We will hold them accountable. And then we have to go back and say we are unable to try them."
Ressam's assertions about the Haouari case in court Wednesday can now be used by the shopkeeper's lawyers to demand a new trial, Bartlett said. "Ressam has provided no indication that he has repudiated the goals of terrorists to inflict harm on the United States. His decision to end cooperation raises the specter that he continues to pose a real and serious threat to the United States," Bartlett wrote in his sentencing memorandum.
Jeffrey Sullivan, the U.S. attorney in Seattle, said after Wednesday's court session that he would seek permission to appeal Ressam's sentence. He argued that Ressam stopped cooperating not because of a mental breakdown, but because he was unhappy with the 22 years he originally had received.
"He told the court today in front of the judge, 'I'm a terrorist, I'm trained as a terrorist, I'm going to do it again when I get out. . . . That's what I heard him say," Sullivan said. "He deserves to stay in jail until he dies."
Tom Hillier, the federal public defender who represented Ressam at trial, said his client received much harsher treatment once he was transferred to New York to help with higher-profile terrorism cases. "There were factors -- in the sense of lengthy, repetitive, demanding, unrelenting interrogations of somebody who's helping, you know? And without a lot of concern for his frame of mind during all of that," Hillier said.
So his complaint is that the interrogators weren't as loving as they should have been ...
"I think a part of the reason for that is that the interrogators came from different organizations, different countries, and so he didn't have a government handler, somebody who was sort of taking care of him, as somebody should have been," Hillier said. "In fact, the folks in New York were somewhat distant from Ahmed, somewhat uncaring, which is not to be unexpected, given that they had recently suffered the trauma of 9/11."
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
These idiotic judges will be the death of our nation.
#5
Hmmm, in my court room, both(judge and defendant)are sentenced to(their choice)one 9mm, one 223 or one 308 powder core round, designed and manufactured by Dynamic Research Technologies.
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan – Pakistani intelligence officials say a suspected U.S. missile strike has killed three people in a militant stronghold near the Afghan border. Three officials told The Associated Press that one missile hit a house in the North Waziristan region after dark on Friday and that another landed in a nearby field.
The identity of the victims was not immediately clear. A local resident said militants quickly cordoned off the scene.
#3
"and that another landed in a nearby field." Must be Iraqi's or Afghani's practicing, live fire/target aquisition with our shit. ID of victims(?) - jihadis.
A car bomb exploded Friday near a busy market in one of Pakistan's lawless northwest tribal areas, killing at least six people and wounding 12 others, local officials said.
The blast in the mountainous Orakzai tribal district came as shoppers prepared for Eid celebrations, local government official Ahmad Ali told AFP. "Six people were killed and 12 wounded in the blast," a security official told AFP, adding that the bomb appeared to have been detonated remotely. Three people were killed instantly and three more died of their injuries in hospital.
The blast occurred in an area dominated by the minority Shiite Muslim community, the official said, indicating it could be linked to ongoing sectarian unrest in the region. "The bomb was apparently planted in a car parked under a bridge adjoining the market and went off when the place was full of Shiite shoppers. It also destroyed several shops," the official said.
Posted by: ed ||
12/05/2008 08:02 ||
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Unidentified men detonated three bombs planted close to video and CD shops at Al-Noor and China markets near Timergara in Lower Dir on Wednesday night, police said.
A Timeragara police official said the low-intensity improvised explosive devices went off in quick succession after the markets had been closed. The blasts damaged several video and CD shops, however no casualty was reported, he added.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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(AKI/DAWN) - Pakistani security forces on Wednesday took control of an important town in the country's troubled Bajaur tribal region as 21 people, including 14 militants, were killed in an air strike in the adjacent Mohmand tribal region in the country's northwest.
Local officials said that troops backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers secured Nawagai town, some 30 kilometres northwest of Khar near the Afghan border.
Local people reportedly welcomed the troops and hoisted white flags on their rooftops. Residents said militants had already vacated their positions before the Pakistani troops entered Nawagai.
The town which is adjacent to Afghanistan's Kunar province was a militant stronghold, according to the Pakistani military. Forces had secured hilltops and took positions in all sensitive areas.
Officials said authorities had asked the displaced people to return to their homes. Sources said militants had set up a vast network in the town where they had set up detention centres, and constructed tunnels and bunkers.
Nawagai is the second major town in the troubled region which has been fully secured. Forces launched an operation in Bajaur in August to flush out suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants and establish the rule of law.
Officials claimed to have killed over 1,500 militants in recent months in operations along the Afghan border and in the restive Swat valley in which over 1,500 died.
Meanwhile jet fighters and helicopters hit suspected positions in the Lakaro area of Mohmand tribal region on Wednesday inflicting casualties on militants, official sources said.
According to unconfirmed reports, 14 militants and seven civilians were killed in the air strike carried out in Ziarat, Ghaziabad, Bagh Pahar and Karier areas.
Also on Wednesday, a suicide bomber killed four people in an attack on a paramilitary convoy, 32 km west of the capital of North West Frontier Province, Peshawar, near Mohmand, Pakistani daily Dawn reported.
The ongoing military action has triggered an exodus from the region and 168,000 internally displaced persons have sought shelter in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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Security forces on Thursday killed 10 Taliban in Malam Jabba and Matta tehsil in Swat, according to APP, as unidentified assailants killed a former Awami National Party (ANP) candidate for the provincial assembly from Dir in Swat.
"The troops targetted (Taliban) hideouts in Malam Jabba and destroyed a vehicle prepared for a suicide explosion," APP news agency quoted the spokesman of Swat Media Centre as saying. He said that six Taliban fighters were killed in the offensive. In Matta tehsil, the news agency said that troops attacked a Taliban vehicle, killing four fighters.
Meanwhile in Bajaur, troops began patrolling areas captured from the Taliban in Nawagai tehsil. People displaced by a military operation are now being allowed to return to their homes in areas captured from the Taliban. Six killed in Swat: In Swat, assailants killed six people -- including the former ANP candidate for the provincial assembly -- in separate incidents.
Police said the ANP's Shamim Khan was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Mingora. Police suspect Shamim was killed over a personal enmity. In Khwazakhela area of Swat, armed men killed two people on charges of 'spying for the government'. Two more men were killed in Kabal teshil, while assailants killed a man in Taj Chow area of Mingora. Policeman survives assassination bid: In Peshawar, a deputy superintendent of police (DSP) survived a Taliban assassination. Policeman killed: In Miranshah, AFP reported a policeman was killed while three of his colleagues were injured when Taliban fired rockets at the Haveda Police Station in Bannu.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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(AKI) - Thirteen bodies were discovered in a mass grave on Wednesday near the Iraqi city of Baquba, north of Baghdad. A police source told the news agency, Voices of Iraq, the bodies were found in the village of Abu Tomma, in restive Diyala province, a former Al-Qaeda stronghold.
On Sunday 38 bodies were recovered from a mass grave in the village. CNN reported that the bodies, all of adult men, showed signs of torture, with some blindfolded and some decapitated. Some of the bodies were reportedly wearing uniforms of the Iraqi Security Forces, but most are believed to be civilians kidnapped while trying to pass false checkpoints.
Officials said it wasn't clear how long the bodies have been in the graves, but some estimated they had been buried at different times in the past two years.
Diyala province extends north of Baghdad as far as the Iranian border.
In January 2008 Operation Phantom Phoenix was launched in an attempt to eradicate remnants of Al-Qaeda network .
Iraqi authorities imposed a brief curfew in Baquba in August, after a suicide bomb attack targeted a convoy carrying the provincial governor, Governor Raad Rasheed. Rasheed escaped unhurt but at least one civilian died when the attacker detonated an explosives vest in Diyala's provincial capital.
Iraqi and US forces conducted a major offensive against insurgents in the province in August.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Sudden thought, the bodies were aparently buried over a two-year period, that means they've been coming back.
Bury a very large mine for the returning grave diggers to "Find".
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
12/05/2008 12:24 Comments ||
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#2
13 hardly qualifies as mass. 38, we're getting close to that descriptor.
Mining/boobytrapping the site? Great idea, all for that.
(AKI) - At least 13 people were killed and another 50 injured in twin bomb attacks carried out in the Iraqi city of Fallujah on Thursday. According to early media reports, the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers who targeted police at two checkpoints in the city.
"The first blast was carried out by a car bomb targeting a checkpoint in the al-Sakaniya region in western Falluja, while no information was available on the second blast," an eyewitness told the news agency, Voices of Iraq.
The number of victims was expected to rise because many of the victims were trapped in the ruins after the blast.
Fallujah is one of the main cities in the western province of Anbar, which was at the centre of the Sunni-led rebellion against US forces after the 2003 invasion.
On Tuesday three bombs killed at least 14 people across Iraq, officials said.
A bomb hidden in a cart exploded outside a school in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday, killing four people, including two children and wounding 12 others, police said.
A suicide car bomber killed at least five people and wounded 25 near a checkpoint in Tal Afar in northern Iraq and a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi army convoy in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing five Iraqi soldiers.
The spate of attacks followed the Iraqi Parliament's approval last week of a new security pact that provides for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.
Many attacks are believed to be aimed at reigniting violence between minority Sunni Arabs and the majority Shia population ahead of provincial elections in January.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Need to step up the killing of bomb maker trainers.
Israeli soldiers hauled Jewish settlers out of a disputed house in the West Bank city of Hebron Thursday, firing tear gas and stun grenades to subdue the extremists who pelted them with rocks, eggs and chemicals. Rioting by settlers quickly spread to other parts of the Palestinian territory.
Settlers set fires around two Palestinian homes, attacked motorists and burned tires to protest the eviction in Hebron. Others blocked the main road to Jerusalem, and scuffled with police who tried to disperse them. Palestinians reported one person injured by settler gunfire.
The army declared the entire Hebron region a "closed military zone," barring nonresidents from entering.
Hebron, a city of 170,000 Palestinians with about 500 of the most extreme Jewish settlers living in their midst, has for decades been a focal point of Israeli-Arab violence. The biblical city is the traditional burial site of Abraham, the shared patriarch of both Jews and Muslims, and that shrine is a major source of friction in Hebron.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
"Israeli soldiers hauled Jewish settlers out of a disputed house................." That'd be an order I'd be hard pressed to follow. Send the 170K Jordanian/Syrians home FIRST, then we'll talk about the 500. Enough to piss off a Saint.
(AKI) - Israel on Thursday reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing to allow urgent aid to flow through to Gaza. Israeli Defense Forces allowed 40 truckloads of food, medicine, agriculture supplies and chlorine for water treatment were allowed through the crossing, according to Palestinian media reports.
Also on Wednesday, Palestinian MP Jamal Al-Khudary said a delegation of Qatari dignitaries would travel on another ship with two million dollars worth of medical supplies that will attempt to enter Gaza waters. The ship is due to arrive in Gaza during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha next week.
Rights group Amnesty International said recently that 80 percent of Gazans now depend on international aid, compared to 10 percent a decade ago. Israel claims the blockade, imposed after the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the Gaza Strip, is to counter indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli cities by Palestinian militants.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Israellis ae Idiots.
Posted by: Rednek Jim ||
12/05/2008 12:13 Comments ||
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Nine people have been killed in Thailand's far south in a bloody outbreak of shootings and a bomb attack by terrorists suspected separatist insurgents, according to police and the army.
Five villagers were killed when a bomb exploded at a shop near a petrol station on Friday morning in Narathiwat, one of three southern provinces beset by a violent jihad insurgency which erupted in January 2004. Twelve people were also wounded in the attack, with two policemen and one civilian still in a critical condition.
A provincial police official said that a terrorist militant disguised as a vegetable seller walked into the grocery shop and knocked the owner unconscious, before planting the explosives and fleeing. "It is likely that militants wanted to retaliate for the detention of bomb suspects ... early last month," said Major General Thirayuth Saengrod, deputy army commander in Narathiwat.
Also Friday, a 30-year-old man was shot dead in Yala province and a 22-year-old man was killed in a similar attack in nearby Pattani province. In Pattani province on Thursday evening, a 60-year-old man and a 32-year-old policeman were killed in separate drive-by shootings.
Last month, two bombs in Yala province wounded 74 people in one of the biggest attacks in the region, but there had been a lull in the bloodshed in the last couple of weeks.
Philippine prosecutors said on Thursday that they were looking into the alleged terrorist links of a Bangladeshi man arrested in the restive southern Mindanao island on suspicion he was plotting bomb attacks on government targets.
Muhammad Alpariz, 48, earlier erroneously reported by the police as a Pakistani, was arrested by security forces in Mindanao on Sunday. He is alleged to have ties with a Muslim separatist group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and a crime gang that extorted money from businessmen in the south of the country.
Alpariz denied the charges, but signed a waiver to remain in police custody while the investigation was being carried out. "Pending the completion of the preliminary investigation proceedings, I agree to remain under police custody," he said in a document he signed before the state prosecutor at the Justice Department. His lawyer said that at the moment Alpariz could only be charged with illegal possession of explosives, for which he could post bail. The authorities allege three mortar shell rounds were found at a telephone repair shop that the suspect owned. Intelligence officials linked Alpariz to the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an Indonesian group acknowledged by the intelligence community as the Southeast Asia arm of Al Qaeda. They said Alpariz had planned bombings in Mindanao to divert military attention from the MILF, which has been engaged in intense combat with troops since August. The military has said that dozens of JI militants remain in Mindanao and are helping the MILF to carry out attacks.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/05/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
He was probably born a Pakistani, given that he is 48 years old.
Iranian state radio says police are confirming that a militant group active in Iran has killed all 16 police officers it abducted in June. The Friday report quotes deputy police chief, Gen. Hossein Sajedinia, as saying the kidnapped troops have all "been martyred two weeks after their abduction." Gen. Sajedinia says the killings took place at different times.
Shortly after the abduction, the Sunni Muslim Jundallah group said it had executed two of the officers and threatened to kill the remaining 14 unless imprisoned members of the group were released.
Jundallah, or God's Soldiers, is active in southeastern Iran. It has been blamed for past attacks on Iranian troops there. Iranian authorities say it has links to al-Qaida.
Posted by: ed ||
12/05/2008 07:53 ||
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#1
Killing hostages isn't exactly change we can believe in but it is violence we can believe in.
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.
Security forces on Thursday killed 10 Taliban in Malam Jabba and Matta tehsil in Swat, according to APP, as unidentified assailants killed a former Awami National Party (ANP) candidate for the provincial assembly from Dir in Swat. 
(AKI) - Israel on Thursday reopened the Kerem Shalom border crossing to allow urgent aid to flow through to Gaza. Israeli Defense Forces allowed 40 truckloads of food, medicine, agriculture supplies and chlorine for water treatment were allowed through the crossing, according to Palestinian media reports.
Nine people have been killed in Thailand's far south in a bloody outbreak of shootings and a bomb attack by 
Philippine prosecutors said on Thursday that they were looking into the alleged terrorist links of a Bangladeshi man arrested in the restive southern Mindanao island on suspicion he was plotting bomb attacks on government targets.
