18 Thursday Apr 2013
Posted in Uncategorized
“Accumulating reports indicate that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been sent to Syria to support the Assad regime in the war in Syria.
It should be mentioned that during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) the Iranian regime provided its soldiers – including young teenagers – with “Keys to Heaven”.
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
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PESHAWAR: Two children, a journalist and six police officials among 16 people killed and dozens others including women and children were injured in a blast at a political rally of Awami National Party (ANP) in Peshawar on Wednesday, DawnNews reported.
The bomb blast took place in Yakatoot, a congested neighbourhood of Peshawar, just after the arrival of senior ANP leader Ghulam Ahmed Bilour.
It was the fourth deadly attack on politicians or political parties in three days as the country prepares to hold historic polls on May 11.
http://dawn.com/2013/04/16/blast-at-anp-rally-kills-two-injures-ten-in-peshawar/
Thanks to Pakistani politician Akbaruddin Owaisi’s Facebook fan page for the tip.
Police had booked cases in Nirmal in Adilabad and Nizamabad districts against the legislator after he allegedly used inflammatory and derogatory language against a community during his public speeches in December last year.
http://www.indiatvnews.com/news/india/hyderabad-court-issues-non-bailable-warrant-against-owaisi-21985.html (April 16, 2013)
I wonder what that’s all about . . . .
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
Tags
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
My search terms were “April 2013 Country bombing / terror”.
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban militants stormed an Afghan army outpost on Friday, killing more than a dozen soldiers in an area that is a major infiltration route for insurgents crossing the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-attack-kills-13-afghan-soldiers-100211189.html
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Twelve members of a pro-government militia group have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack in south Yemen.
A member of the Popular Committees said their offices in the city of Lawdar, in Abyan province, were targeted.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21658863
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The Arabian peninsula state, which relies on crude exports to replenish its reserves and finance up to 70 percent of budget spending, has suffered from frequent bombings of its main oil pipeline since political turmoil started in 2011.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/14/yemen-cbank-reserves-idUSL5N0D107D20130414
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At least three soldiers from Chad have been killed by a suicide bomber in northern Mali. It comes days after France started withdrawing its troops from the country, three months after it began a military intervention.
The attack happened in the northern city of Kidal, with civilians believed to be among the injured. It is not clear how many suicide bombers struck – one humanitarian worker said that there appeared to be two.
http://www.dw.de/suicide-bombing-in-mali-kills-chad-soldiers/a-16741309
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At least 20 people have been killed in a series of bomb and gun attacks in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
More than 16 people are believed to have died after gunmen stormed the city’s main court buildings, shooting and setting off explosions.
The Islamist militant group al-Shabab is suspected of carrying it out, reports the BBC.
http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/14th-apr-2013-deadly-attack-on-somali-courthouse/144907/ Continue reading
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
Tags
bombing, Boston, investigation, political, politics, psychology, Putin, Russia, Syria
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered his country’s assistance in investigating bombings in Boston that killed 3 and injured more than 140 people.
Putin said in a condolences note published on the Kremlin’s website Tuesday that the international community should come together to fight terrorism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/boston-bombings-investigation-russia_n_3091560.html
Take Putin seriously.
The Colonel President has been squeezed westward by U.S. – Saudi – Sunni opposition in Syria, that old Russian client state the Kremlin seemed to have forgotten or neglected or sustained, lol, at the end of the Cold War Era. In fact, Syria seemed to have been left to squat as it had been shaped by the Soviet experience. Continuing state-to-state contracts and relationships probably seemed okey dokey all the way to the “Arab Spring.”
Today, Syria is not so “okey dokey” and it’s more Russia’s role than NATO’s to pick up the slack. I think that’s why the politics look so upside-down from the American right side perspective: Obama has spun out some reverse psychology Over There, putting the U.S. in the old socialist’s position and casting the post-Soviet socialist and KGB-experienced scion as a defender of “domestic tranquility” and other slogans of the western faith.
Ah, the curse of living in “interesting times” — it is ours.
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
“I instantly thought of my friend who ran the Marathon upon learning of the explosions. However, concern for loved ones was superseded by a distinctly Arab and Muslim-American psychosis: “Please do not let the culprit be Arab or Muslim.”
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201341681629153634.html
I picked up on this theme with Facebookers reporting similar statements on Twitter.
Take it is a great sign.
From The Awesome Conversation —
“Please don’t be a Muslim” is a good statement. It tells that the “heat” is on Islam, put there by news of the same stupid things — assassinations and bombings — daily across a host of Muslim-majority states, and this time some — the general targets of the anti-Jihad — are begging out. Want the next step, e.g., joining the ranks of helpful volunteers (that’s probably already happening, I’m not sure anyone’s looking), make them welcome in their repudiation of Islamic motivation as regards this sweeping class of related political crime.
America’s governments will try to slow the pace on the Boston Marathon Massacre, but they have been handed a big wrench for dividing Muslims who no longer wish to be “those Muslims” from Muslims who would — and do — plan and execute such crimes.
Sura 9:29 will go, sooner or later, and much too congruent with it, and this expression — “may it not be one associated with me” — seems a first step on the path to it.
We all know the culprits might be beer guzzling loons with a jones for the jogging set; angry taxpayers making a statement on the due date; black powder gun nuts getting a little attention.
Maybe.
But those have not been making the news daily, weekly, along the arcs of the Islamic Small Wars from Afghanistan to Somalia.
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted in Journalism
I hope I am not alone among bloggers who have been through something like this in earlier days: we could contact, credit, probably not pay, but at least we would know who took the picture (or, often enough, the video) if it had been posted online with its IPTC metadata intact!
I’ve noticed downloads of my own pictures, more peaceful, carry at least my name (and a copyright notice).
Minor nit, isn’t it?
Wars produce an immense iconography, but always one or two stand signal, and that above with so much blood, a woman knocked on her butt and dazed, a man down and attended to by another in a red jacket, the shrapnel details evident, the direction and effects of the blast seen in reverse, is the one I would choose.
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Do you watch the news, make the news, comment on the news, share the news?
Many years ago, I heard the prediction that the world in cyberspace would come to look an awful lot like the one in real space.
So it has come to pass.
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I don’t like the sidelines.
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Someone took that picture.
Sometimes we desktop Mitty journos do want to vet an element’s authenticity, e.g., does the video represent the riot under way or one that took place months ago?
There’s no question about the day and approximate time of the image posted here, but who was inside the lines to take it? Where is the caption?
So who took the picture?
Who is in it?
What has happened to them?
15 Monday Apr 2013
Tags
The Obama administration has quietly rewarded the Middle Eastern country that produced most of the 9/11 hijackers with a special travel privilege that allows its nationals to bypass normal passport security controls at major U.S. airports.
Only a handful of U.S. allies—including Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands—currently enjoy the perk while other American partners like Germany and France are still excluded. Incredibly, the Obama administration has cut a deal with Saudi Arabia, which produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 2001 terrorist attacks, to enjoy the privilege under a program called Global Entry.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2013/03/u-s-lets-saudis-bypass-regular-airport-security/
I’ve been on this bandwagon, and I have been off of it, and I would rather be off it.
Nonetheless, as predicted just a little earlier, Islamic exceptionalism is in for exceptional scrutiny no matter how the story of the Boston Marathon Bombing plays out.
The Facebook buddy who posted the March 2013 item from Judicial Watch also has on his page inside-the-line documentary photos of the bombing, and they are horrific.
I won’t re-post.
CNN reported about 30 minutes ago that the explosives used involved black powder, ball bearings, and other shrapnel moving out of the blast at about 7,000 feet per second.
With that in mind, watch the now famous first footage again.
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“Expedited clearance” was on my mind by 11 a.m. on 9/11, so I’m not surprised by the appearance of the method and technology, but now in light of this latest attack, it doesn’t look good, does it? One face, two signals — one cooperating, the other treacherous — is how that’s going to be interpreted for years to come.
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