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Till 2004, Pakistan was a peaceful country and suicide bombing was unheard of. The figure of terrorism-afflicted casualties began to rise from 2005 onwards and by 2007 the number rose to 3599 killed. The death toll has now jumped to 35000. While the total fatalities of ISAF in Afghanistan from 2001 till 30 September were 2670, which includes 1800 US soldiers, Pak Army alone has suffered 3500 deaths and injuries to 10,000 soldiers. Wear and tear of weapons, tanks, APCs, helicopters, guns and vehicles is substantial. Given the acute resource constraints, it is very difficult for Pak Army to replace...

Ah, the Summer of '05! William Rivers Pitt was the Pied Piper of DUmmieland, prolix prog blogger supreme, leading an army of psychophants enthralled with the Pitt and the Ponderous. True, a chink had emerged in his armor through the Andyscam scandal, but Pied Piper Pitt had recovered nicely and was back to leading the anti-Bush hatefest at the DUmp. Yes, it was a young, vigorous, 33-year-old William Rivers Pitt back then, a rising star in the ranks of the barking moonbats. And William had his eye set on higher things still: talking headness, punditry, a paid position on...

A new camp has been opened in western Ethiopia as deadly fighting continues to displace tens of thousands of people in Sudan's Blue Nile, which lies on the border with the newly-independent nation of South Sudan, the United Nations said on Saturday. The new camp is located in the town of Tongo, from the border areas of Kurmuk, Bamza and Almahal. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards said 533 refugees have already been moved to the new camp. The camp has a capacity for 3,000 people and has the possibility of being expanded if necessary. Over...

Sudan is a kind of diabolical Groundhog Day. In the film by that name, Phil Connors (Bill Murray) re-lives the same day over and over again until he learns the lessons needed to change his life and save the lives of others. In Sudan today, people of the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile State are re-living the horrific nightmare from which they thought they had finally awakened after the signing of Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. But in this case, it is the United States government that has failed to learn the lessons needed to change conditions and save the...

Biowarfare : Another “Sverdlosk Incident” in Russia ? I’ve been looking at two recent (and ongoing) outbreaks of Tularemia in Russia: (Source: ProMed : Archives # 20050824.2503; # 20050822.2467; # 20050718.2066 ) 1. 96 people –66 from Dzerzhinsk region; 30 from Nizhniy Novogorod. 2. 56 people – all from the Ryazan area , which borders on Nizhniy Novogorod and Vladimir. What makes it notable is that Tularemia is a fairly rare disease: the Ryazan area had only 4 known cases in 2004. (No historic stats were furnished on the Nizhniy Novgoros area or Dzerzhinsk , but the number of cases...

Smallpox is an acute, highly contagious and often fatal disease caused by the variola virus. The virus is so dangerous and potentially deadly that one confirmed case of smallpox is considered to be a public health emergency. Oh .. and there is no proven treatment for the disease once a person falls ill. You just administer fluids and antibiotics to handle any secondary infections, and hope that the patent is one of the 70%. The other 30% will die. In case you don't already know, Smallpox has been eradicated worldwide. The eradication is so complete that we don't even vaccinate...

The Obama administration finally highlights Iran’s key role in supporting al Qaeda On July 28, the Treasury Department designated six al Qaeda operatives involved in shipping money and men from the Persian Gulf to senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The move targets a node of the global terror network that is critical to its overall strength, freezing any of its financial assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting any transactions with the operatives. Of the many conduits for al Qaeda funds and personnel across the world, the U.S. government believes this one is the most important. “This network...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) announced Thursday that he would pull out of a regional climate pact by the end of the year, delivering a political setback to the fledging effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. In a news conference, Christie said the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a 2005 accord in which 10 states agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants 10 percent by 2018, would not be able to meet its goals. The program requires plants in the region that burn fossil fuels to buy pollution allowances for the carbon they...

Apparently, the key to the whole operation was finding and tracking Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, a process that took years — and involved info given by Guantanamo detainees: Sunday afternoon’s raid by U.S. forces that killed Osama bin Laden was the “culmination of years of careful and highly advanced intelligence work,” senior administration officials said in a conference call, describing the genesis of an operation that sounded like it was right out of a “Mission Impossible” movie. Some time after Sept. 11, detainees held by the U.S. told interrogators about a man believed to work as a courier for...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Extradited Hacker Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison for Masterminding First-Ever Hack Into Internet Phone Networks Defendant Also Ordered to Pay Over $1 Million in Restitution NEWARK, NJ—The first individual ever charged with hacking into the networks of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers and reselling hacked VoIP services for a profit was sentenced today to 120 months in prison, United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced. Edwin Andres Pena, 27, transmitted over 10 million minutes of unauthorized telephone calls over the victims' networks. Pena, a Venezuelan citizen, fled the United States...

“The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response” Committee on Homeland Security - US House of Representatives March 10, 2011 Thank you very much for allowing me to come here and tell the country what happened to my son. This hearing today is extremely important to begin the discussion about the issue of Islamic radicalization in America and my hope is that this Committee can somehow address this issue in a meaningful, productive way. First, I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the family of Private William Long, and to the wounded soldier,...

Judge bows out of DeLay associates' trialReason for removing self remains secret; trial set for April is likely to be postponed. By Laylan Copelin AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Updated: 10:26 p.m. Thursday, March 10, 2011 The judge who sentenced former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to three years in prison removed himself Thursday from the upcoming trial of two DeLay associates, John Colyandro of Austin and James Ellis of Washington. A few hours later, Senior District Judge Pat Priest denied DeLay's motion for a new trial, kicking off DeLay's appeal of his felony conviction. In those two separate actions, Priest apparently...

Will it be the same ol', same ol' in the UK....? Extremist cleric puts terror laws to the test By Philip Johnston, George Jones and John Steele (Filed: 19/07/2005) A planned visit to Britain next month by a Muslim cleric who has praised suicide bombings against Israel will become the first test of the Government's promised clampdown on extremist preachers after the London terrorist attackss. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 79, who is due to speak at a conference in Manchester, is banned from visiting America because of his links with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. But although Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has...

NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus. The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 178 kilometers (111 miles). Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also accumulated 468 kilobytes of data about the dust in its coma, the cloud that is a comet's atmosphere. The craft is on its second mission of exploration called Stardust-NExT,...

America's biggest strategic problem in the Balkans is the role of Turkey, through its pawn, Haris Silajdzic is trying to compete with neootomannic position in the Balkans and the Middle East - said in a dispatch of the U.S. ambassador in Ankara since January this year, which was sent to the State Department called " Ankara87 ", published on page Wikiliks. Comparing the Turkish efforts as "ambition" Rolls-Royce ', but with the resources of' Rover ', "the ambassador wrote that, being aware that they have their own resources for this policy, they must find" your own errand boy in the...

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president, has claimed a reinvigorated mandate for constitutional reform after a partial count of Sunday’s recall referendum showed he had won more than 60 per cent of a national vote of confidence in his government. The president is expected to move swiftly to seek approval for a draft constitution that would redistribute wealth from the hydrocarbons industry, intro­duce land reform and open his way to run for a second term. Addressing supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace on Sunday, Mr Morales said the vote had “deepened democracy”. “We are convinced that it is important to...

Throughout the Middle East, reformers have been driven away by autocratic rulers. We Westerners are desperate to see the political systems in the Middle East evolve from authoritarian theocratic or oligarchical models to some variation of representative government. That desire suffered another setback on Saturday when former Egyptian presidential candidate Ayman Nour, 41, was sentenced to five years in prison for (what outside observers insist are trumped-up charges of) forgery. Up and down the region - Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority - the Western pluralist model of representative democracy has failed because broadminded, Western-oriented reformers have been...

CASABLANCA, Morocco (AP) -- A man with explosives hidden on his body blew himself up in an Internet cafe after the owners prevented him from looking at terror Web sites, the Interior Ministry said Monday. The man was killed and four people were injured in the Sunday night blast in a Casablanca slum, said ministry spokesman Abderrahman Achour. One of the wounded was the dead man's companion, who was hospitalized with burns and a throat injury. Both men were carrying explosives. But officials believe the cybercafe may not have been their target and that the explosion was an accident, Mokhtar...

A Swiss bank that used its Cayman Islands’ branch to engage in what a US federal judge has branded “predatory lending practices” is being investigated by the US authorities. Senior officials of Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, are facing claims that they pocketed millions of dollars by dishing out loans that were impossible to repay. On Tuesday, 15 September, 31 of the bank’s officials received subpoenas demanding that they hand over internal documents that explain why they loaned $375 million to the now bankrupt Yellowstone Club in 2005. The Yellowstone Club, founded by American tycoon Tim Blixseth, was once...

Chinese troops in Bhutan raising concernBy UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Published December 28, 2005 NEW DELHI -- The presence of Chinese soldiers in Bhutan has set off alarm bells in Thimphu and New Delhi.          Chinese soldiers are building roads and bridges deep inside Bhutan, The Hindustan Times newspaper said Wednesday. More than 200 Chinese troops crossed into Bhutan in mid-November.          "Relations between the two countries have been on the edge since then," said the report.          Bhutanese Foreign Minister Khandu Wangchuk took up the matter with Chinese authorities after the issue was raised in Bhutanese parliament.          "They (Chinese) told them (Bhutanese)...