Georgian "Bandits"

TBILISI, Georgia - Georgia on Friday charged four Russian military officers with spying, while Russian government planes evacuated dozens of diplomats and their relatives as the diplomatic dispute worsened between Moscow and the former Soviet republic. Georgian police also maintained their positions around the Russian military headquarters in Tbilisi, hoping to detain another officer accused of spying. Russian Ambassador Vyacheslav Kovalenko said Moscow would not hand him over.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld voiced concern about the growing tensions to his counterpart, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. "The thread of those discussions clearly was for there to be calm, and for those tensions to be eased down in a peaceful way," Rumsfeld said at a briefing. Relations between Moscow and Tbilisi have been increasingly tense since President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power following Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution and pledged to move the country out of Russia's orbit and more toward the West. Ivanov denounced Georgia as a "bandit" state.
Ivanov said the arrests were aimed at pushing Russian troops out of Georgia so the government could seize control of pro-Russian breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abhkazia by force, and he accused unidentified newer NATO members of illegally supplying Georgia with Soviet-made weapons. "It is absolutely clear to us that clear to us that Georgia has chosen the military path, the forceful path, for resolving the conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia," he said after the NATO meeting.
Tbilisi has accused Moscow of backing separatists in the breakaway provinces and making efforts to undermine Saakashvili's government — allegations Russia has denied. The provinces have enjoyed de-facto independence without international recognition since breaking away after bloody wars in the early 1990s.
Tensions in the breakaway provinces have been heightened since the detentions. On Friday, an official in South Ossetia claimed that masked Georgian military or security officers shot out the tires of a car carrying four Russian peacekeepers, a woman and a child the night before, then ordered the men out and beat them. Irina Gagloyeva, spokeswoman for the South Ossetian government, said one of the peacekeepers sustained a fractured skull, and Ivanov said they were "brutally beaten."
The Russian Foreign Ministry has advised all Russians to refrain from traveling to Georgia, and the embassy in Tbilisi stopped issuing visas to Georgian citizens. Two Russian Emergency Situations Ministry planes evacuated 84 diplomats and their family members from Georgia, said ministry spokesman Viktor Beltsov. Russia and Georgia should decide on ways to either replace or complement the Russian peacekeepers, in order to meet Georgia's desire for more of an international presence in Abkhazia without creating a security vacuum.

Save The Internet

this blog will now focus on the ongoing battle for the freedom of internet from government censorship

Keep Internet Free:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

September 20th, 2006 - stories worth checking out

CHAVEZ CALLS BUSH 'THE DEVIL'

- 'THE DEVIL CAME TO THE UN YESTERDAY... It Still Smells of Sulphur here... Bush, I have the feeling you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare... We need a psychologist to analyze Bush... YANKEE IMPERIALISTS GO HOME... Maybe we need to move the United Nations out of USA'

U of T student dies in street racing incident - haha U of T

ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK, Thai Coup Leader Says He'll Be Acting PM

Oil falls to near $60 per barrel

New Judge Throws Saddam Out of Court

Assassin warns Benedict his 'life is in danger' if he visits Turkey

Bush, Iran Leader Spar Over Nuke Standoff

Muslims are angry ... again

Pope Benedict XVI was last night facing angry demands from Muslims that he apologise for a speech in which he appeared to say the concept of jihad was "unreasonable" and quoted a medieval ruler who said Muhammad's innovations were "evil and inhuman". Protests swept across the Islamic world and the furore threatened a scheduled visit by the Pope to Turkey.
The Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, told Vatican Radio: "It was certainly not the intention of the Holy Father to undertake a comprehensive study of the jihad and of Muslim ideas on the subject, still less to offend the sensibilities of the Muslim faithful."
Father Miguel Ayuso Guixot, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, told the Guardian he feared the Pope's words had been "misinterpreted". He added: "The Pope has worked tirelessly for inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue and for tolerance." In Turkey, however, where the Pope is due to visit in November, the deputy leader of the ruling party said Benedict had "a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the middle ages". Salih Kapusuz added: "He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini."
Representatives of the two million Turks in Germany, where the comments were made, also expressed deep annoyance. The head of the Turkish community, Kenan Kolat, said they were "very dangerous" and liable to misunderstanding. In Beirut, Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world's top Shia Muslim clerics, said: "We demand that [the Pope] apologises personally, and not through [Vatican] sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation." An influential Iranian cleric branded his remarks "absurd". Ahmad Khatami told worshippers at Tehran University: "The Pope has insulted Islam."
By last night the protests had not spilled over into the kind of violence seen in February in protest against the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad. But Diaa Rashwan, a Cairo-based analyst of Islamic militancy, warned that the comments were "more dangerous than the cartoons because they come from the most important Christian authority in the world. The cartoons just came from an artist." The row broke out over a lecture given by the Pope on Tuesday at his old university at Regensburg. His central theme was one on which he has touched repeatedly in recent months - the need to reconcile faith and reason.
He quoted from a little-known medieval text recording debates between a Byzantine emperor and an educated Persian. The Pope recalled that the emperor had told his adversary: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Benedict acknowledged the "startling brusqueness" of the remark, but went on to endorse fully the view that "spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable".

CRIMINAL WORKER'S UNION FINALLY DESTROY FORD MOTOR COMPANY

DETROIT - Ford Motor Co. is cutting more than 10,000 additional salaried jobs, offering buyouts to all of its 75,000 U.S. hourly workers and shutting down two more plants in a plan to end financial losses and remake itself into a smaller, more competitive car company. The company said in a news release Friday that it would shutter a stamping plant in Maumee, Ohio, in 2008 and an engine plant in Essex, Ontario, in 2007.

Time to end ALL worker's unions before they destroy our economy.

Montreal Shooter Identified

This is one Kimveer Gill (aged 25, of Laval, Quebec) - the alleged shooter in the September 13, 2006 shooting at Dawson College in Montreal (killing one person and wounded 19 others, 6 critically, before he was slain by police). An online image gallery on Gill's vampirefreaks.com blog contains more than 50 photos depicting the young man in various poses holding a Beretta CX4 Storm semi-automatic rifle and donning a long black trenchcoat and combat boots. "His name is Trench. you will come to know him as the Angel of Death," he wrote on his vampirefreaks.com profile.

Suspect's blog and profile

Kimveer, eh?, sounds like it's not a gun, but rather illegal immigration that is the main issue here - Kimveer - let me guess illegal immigrant from India

Shooting in Dawson College, in Montreal

Reports state that 1 lone gunman dressed in black clothing who had many piercings and a Mohawk style haircut was brought down, although initially witness reports claimed that there were three. Ambulance workers are saying that there are at least 4 dead, and 11 critical injuries as well as several minor injuries. There are reports that gunman had either killed himself or that he has been killed by Police outside the Southern entrance near the Place Alexis Nihon shopping mall.

Shooting went for 35 minutes.

Dawson College is located in the heart of downtown Montreal in a historic building on 12 acres of green space. It is the largest English-language CÉGEP, with a student population of more than 7,000 day students and 3,000 night students enrolled in more than 50 fields of study; however, it is worth noting that John Abbott College along with the MacDonald Campus of McGill University, which owns the land, has well over 11,000 day students, and over 5,000 night students, which would make it the largest in the province.
Dawson College was the first English-language institution in the Quebec network of CÉGEPs when it opened its doors to 1,200 students in the fall of 1969. The College is named for Sir William Dawson, a McGill University principal from 1855 to 1893.
In 1988, Dawson College moved to the former Mother House of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame, full consolidation under one roof only happened in 1997, when the Selby building was finally closed. Extensive renovations rendered the century-old building into an attractive, modern, and well-equipped college, occupying an entire city block between de Maisonneuve Boulevard and Sherbrooke Street and Atwater and Wood Avenues in Westmount.
The College is directly connected to the Atwater metro station.

G.W. Bush VS. Borat Sagadiev

US President George Bush is to host White House talks on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
Cohen, 35, creator of Ali G, has infuriated the Kazakhstan government with his portrayal of Borat, a bumbling Kazakh TV presenter.
And now a movie of Borat's adventures in the US has caused a diplomatic incident.
The opening scene, which shows Borat lustily kissing his sister goodbye and setting off for America in a car pulled by a horse, had audiences in stitches when it was first shown last week.
But the film, which has just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, has prompted a swift reaction from the Kazakhstan government, which is launching a PR blitz in the States.
Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev is to fly to the US to meet President Bush in the coming weeks and on the agenda will be his country's image.
President Nazarbayev has confirmed his government will buy "educational" TV spots and print advertisements about the "real Kazakhstan" in a bid to save the country's reputation before the film is released in the US in November.
President Nazarbayev will visit the White House and the Bush family compound in Maine when he flies in for talks that will include the fictional character Borat.
But a spokesman for the Kazakhstan Embassy says it is unlikely that President Nazarbayev will find the film funny.
Roman Vassilenko said: "The Government has expressed its displeasure about Borat's representation of our country.
"Our opinion of the character has not changed.
"We understand that the film exposes the hypocrisy that exists both here in the USA and in the UK and understand that Mr Cohen has a right to freedom of speech.
"Nursultan Nazarbayev has taken Mr Bush up on an invitation to visit this country to help build our relationship with the USA.
"I cannot speak for the president himself, only for the government, but I certainly don't think President Nazarbayev and Mr Bush will share a joke about the film.
"The bottom line is we want people to know that he does not represent the true people of Kazakhstan."
The Kazakh government has previously threatened Baron-Cohen with legal action, for allowing Borat to, among other things, make fun of his homeland, demean women, slander gypsies and urge listeners to "Throw the Jew Down the Well."
Anti-Borat hard-liners have pulled the plug on borat.kz, Borat's Kazakhstan-based Website after his frequent displays of anti-Semitism and his portrayal of Kazakh culture.
Nurlan Isin, President of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies took the action after complaints.
He said: "We've done this so he can't badmouth Kazakhstan under the .kz domain name.
"He can go and do whatever he wants at other domains."
The row originally erupted in November 2005, following Borat's hosting of the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon.
The Kazakh Foreign Ministry was furious over Cohen's bad taste representation of the nation.
'No such thing as bad publicity'
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev told a news conference: "We view Mr. Cohen's behaviour at the MTV Europe Music Awards as utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with the ethics and civilized behaviour of Kazakhstan's people.
"We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind."
Baron Cohen responded to Ashykbayev in character by posting a video on the Official Borat website.
In the video, Borat said, "In response to Mr. Ashykbayev's comments, I'd like to state I have no connection with Mr. Cohen and fully support my Government's decision to sue this Jew.
"Since the 2003 Tuleyakiv reforms, Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world.
"Women can now travel on inside of bus, homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats, and age of consent has been raised to eight years old."
His blatant outpouring then prompted the Kazakh government to hire two public relations firms to counter the claims, and ran a four-page advertisement in The New York Times.
The ad carried testimonials about the nation's democracy, education system and the power and influence enjoyed by women. News of President Nazarbayev's upcoming visit has prompted experts to study the character's impact on US culture.
Sean R. Roberts, Central Asian Affairs Fellow at Georgetown University, has been studying the phenomenon.
He said: "I have found that more Americans are aware of Kazakhstan than four years ago when I last lived in the United States.
"The increased knowledge of Kazakhstan, however, is not due to the country's economic successes or its role as a U.S. ally in the war on terror.
"Instead, most Americans who have heard of Kazakhstan have heard of it through a satire of a Kazakh journalist named Borat.
"Borat certainly does not promote an image of Kazakhstan that is in sync with that which the government and its leader would like to promote abroad.
"As the old adage goes, however, 'there is no such thing as bad publicity.'
"If that is true, Borat is bringing much more publicity to Kazakhstan."
Cohen's representatives refused to allow him or his alter ego to respond to the controversy because it's not close enough to the film's release date

September 12, 2006 - Stories Worth Checking Out

Bodyguard Kevin Costner blasts Bush assassination film
Meanwhile Libtard Sean Penn calls Bush a "Beelzebub" and a "dumb one"


Mysterious light streaks across sky in Washington State

No!!! - 'GIRLS GONE WILD' PLEADS GUILTY IN SEXUAL EXPLOITATION CASE, Company pleads guilty for failing to 'create and maintain age and identity documents for performers in sexually explicit films'... Under the agreements, Joseph Francis agrees to plead guilty to offenses and pay fines and restitution totaling $2.1 million

Gas Prices Fall To Lowest Levels In Five Months

"Religion of Peace" strikes yet again - Syrian security forces kill at least 4 Al-Queda connected gunmen attempting to storm U.S. embassy in Damascus

THIS BLOGGER AND THE WORLD MOURNS TODAY

September 10, 2001 - Stories worth checking out

As the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is approaching, check out these stories:

CLINTOON SENDS "LEGAL EAGLES" ON ABC; * LETTER: YANK 'DESPICABLE' FILM * CAST'S ON-SET TURMOIL REVEALED

Toronto Film Fest got some issues

Michael Moore Unveils New Fictional Film, 'Sicko'

PAPER: Bin Laden Trail Is 'Stone Cold'

More Muslims Arrive in USA, After 9/11 Dip

NOONAN: The sounds of 9/11, beyond the metallic roar

9/11 ATTACK WAS INSIDE JOB

I KNOW THAT FOR A FACT because Elvis came down in a UFO from Area 51 and met with me on that grassy knoll where the 2nd Kennedy assassin was!He (the alien Elvis) told me that he had an insider who worked for the WTC! It was Bigfoot! And Bigfoot told Alien Elvis that he PERSONALLY witnessed GW Bush planting EXPLOSIVES in the World Trade Center!Then Bigfoot (who happens to be Jewish) CALLED 6000 OF HIS JEWISH FRIENDS AND TOLD THEM NOT TO SHOW UP FOR WORK THAT DAY!Meanwhile, black helicopters with cloaking devices, flew the estimated 40 TONS of dynamite onto the roof of the Trade Center.Then, with the Jewish Hollywood elite's help, Bush made a video of planes hitting the WTC just like Hollywood did FOR THE MOON LANDINGS!It's all true! I READ IT ON THE INTERNET!

Bush invites more Saudi "students" into U.S. ?!

Marwan Al-Kadi, left, watches a volleyball game with Saudi students at the recreation center at Kansas State University Saturday, April 5, 2006, in Manhattan, Kan. This school year thousands of students from Saudi Arabia are enrolling on college campuses across the United States under a new educational exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah.
As American jobs are getting outsourced and lost - Bush invites more Muslim foreigners?! Ironically this comes just a day before fifth anniversary of the event where 19 terrorists, out of whom 15 were SAUDI highjacked for commercial airlines and crashed them into symbols of American economy and power.
I would approve of that if all Bush wanted is to help colleges to scam foreign aliens from money, and then send them home packing (the American way) - but this is just not the case; shame on Bush, another blunder.

September 06, 2006 - Stories worse checking

Curse of 9/11 widows:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=403840&in_page_id=1879&in_a_source=

U.S. Acknowledges Secret CIA Prisons

Iranian president issues veiled threat to Bush

U.S. warplanes accidentally kill 1 and wound 30 Canadian soldiers

Pte. Dave Partridge of Whitby, Ont., left, Sgt. Chad Garton, center, and Pte. Chris Brooks of Brampton, Ont., wait for orders in Panjwaii, Afghanistan, Monday, Sept 4, 2006, after hearing that one of their comrades died in a friendly fire incident nearby. Two U.S. warplanes accidentally strafed their own forces in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing one Canadian soldier and seriously wounding thirty others in southern Afghanistan, NATO and the U.S. military said.

2 YEARS AFTER, WORLD REMEMBERS BESLAN TRAGEDY, RUSSIAN 9/11

School No. 1, the site of Russia's worst terrorist attack by Chechen Islamic separatist scum, at a ceremony to remember the 333 people killed in the ordeal, Sunday, Sept. 3, 2006. The third day of remembrance ceremonies in Beslan coincided with the official Day of Solidarity in the Struggle against Terrorism, created by President Vladimir Putin and lawmakers last year. Events were organized to mark the day in cities nationwide.

AS A CANADIAN I LOVE G.W. BUSH

DESPITE RECENT EVENTS, I JUST HAD A REALIZATION OF WHERE THE WORLD IS HEADING POLITICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY, AND ALLOW THIS BLOG TO RE-STATE WHAT IT STANDS FOR:

GOD BLESS AMERICA, GOD BLESS CONSERVATIVE CANADA, GOD BLESS CONSERVATIVE PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER, GOD BLESS THE COALITION TROOPS, AND GOD BLESS GLORIOUS AND COURAGEOUS LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD G.W.BUSH WHO WILL LEAD US ALL TO VICTORY AGAINST ISLAMIC FASCISM

AND TO HELL WITH YOU LIBTARDED TERRORIST SYMPATHIZERS, AND LIBTURD ASS BANDITS - YOU LIBSURGENTS ARE WHAT IS WRONG WITH NORTH AMERICA

Four Canadian Hero soldiers killed in the Afghanistan firefights of Operation Medusa

It was a deadly day for Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan after four troops were killed in action. The deaths happened Sunday during the second day of a military push in the Panjwayi district dubbed Operation Medusa that involved heavy air stirkes and artillery barrages. Nine Canadian soldiers were also wounded in a battle in which 200 Taliban militants were killed according to Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser. "It's going well, but there have been a number of International Security Assistance Force casualties," NATO International Security Assistance Force spokesman Maj. Scott Lundy said. "We recognize this kind of difficult or challenging operation can't be completed without having some number of casualties."
British and American troops are also taking part in the mission that is aimed at clearing the area near Kandahar of Taliban fighters. NATO hopes the Afghan government can take control of the insurgent stronghold and wants to ensure it doesn't slip back into the hands of the Taliban. Sunday's casualties came a day after a NATO plane crashed killing 14 British troops. Officials said the craft was experiencing technical problems and that the crash was not caused by enemy fire.

Semper Fi, libtards.

Afghanistan - a growing opium drug empire since invasion, I wonder if CIA's involved

Since being largely outlawed, the production of opium has significantly decreased around the world, despite an increasing demand. Opium is still being produced today legally for medicine. Afghanistan is currently the number one producer of the drug.
It appears that during Taliban rule, the production of opium significantly decreased to 74 metric tons per year, but after the toppling of the Taliban by the Northern Alliance with foreign support in 2001, production has increased again. Opium exports make up a very large portion of Afghanistan's GDP, alongside natural gas and agriculture. According to DEA statistics, Afghanistan's production of oven-dried opium increased to 1,278 metric tons in 2002 shortly after the U.S. led invasion.
Recent DEA statistics say that production more than doubled by 2003, and nearly doubled again during 2004. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime predicted a 6,100 tonne harvest of opium in year 2006 alone, and consideres Afghanistan accountable for 92% [1] of the world's opium supply. In late 2004, the CIA estimated that 206,000 hectares were under poppy cultivation and that the new crop would generate 7 billion dollars worth of heroin. "There is no other country in the world that has 206,000 hectares under cultivation of any drug," said King Charles.
Afghanistan's world-leading opium cultivation rose a "staggering" 59 percent this year, the U.N. anti-drugs chief announced Saturday in urging the government to crack down on big traffickers and remove corrupt officials and police. The record crop yielded 6,100 tons of opium, or enough to make 610 tons of heroin — outstripping the demand of the world's heroin users by a third, according to U.N. figures. Officials warned that the illicit trade is undermining the Afghan government, which is under attack by Islamic militants that a U.S.-led offensive helped drive from power in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida bases.
"The news is very bad. On the opium front today in some of the provinces of Afghanistan, we face a state of emergency," Antonio Maria Costa, chief of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said at a news conference. "In the southern provinces, the situation is out of control." He talked with reporters after presenting results of the U.N. survey to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who voiced "disappointment" over the figures. "Our efforts to fight narcotics have proved inadequate," Karzai said in a statement.
With the economy struggling, there are not enough jobs and many Afghans say they have to grow opium poppies to feed their families. The trade already accounts for at least 35 percent of Afghanistan's economy, financing warlords and insurgents. The top U.S. narcotics official here said the opium trade is a threat to the country's fledgling democracy. "This country could be taken down by this whole drugs problem," Doug Wankel told reporters. "We have seen what can come from Afghanistan, if you go back to 9/11. Obviously the U.S. does not want to see that again."
The bulk of the opium increase was in lawless Helmand province, where cultivation rose 162 percent and accounted for 42 percent of the Afghan crop. The province has been wracked by the surge in attacks by Taliban-led militants that has produced the worst fighting in five years.
Opium-growing increased despite the injection of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to fight the drug over the past two years. Costa criticized the international effort and said foreign aid was "plagued by huge overhead costs" in its administration.Costa said Afghanistan's insecurity is fueling the opium boom, saying he has pleaded with the NATO force that took over military operations in the south a month ago to take a "stronger role" in fighting drugs. NATO says it has no mandate for direct involvement in the anti-drug campaign.
"We need much stronger, forceful measures to improve security or otherwise I'm afraid we are going to face a dramatic situation of failed regions, districts and even perhaps even provinces in the near future," Costa said. The U.N. report, based on satellite imagery and ground surveys, said the area under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reached 407,700 acres in 2006, up 59 percent from 257,000 acres in 2005. The previous high was 323,700 acres in 2004. The estimated yield of 6,100 tons of opium resin — described by Costa as "staggering" — is up 49 percent from 4,100 tons last year, and exceeds the previous high for total global output of 5,764 tons recorded in 1999. Last year, about 450 tons of heroin was consumed worldwide, 90 percent of it from Afghanistan, according to the U.N.
The report will increase pressure on the beleaguered Afghan president. Karzai has often talked tough on drugs, even declaring a "holy war" against the trade, but he is increasingly criticized for appointing and failing to sack corrupt provincial governors and police. Costa urged the arrest of "serious drug traffickers" to fill a new high-security wing for narcotics convicts at Kabul's Policharki prison. "It has 100 beds. We want these beds to be taken up in the next few months," he said. At the same news conference, the Afghan counternarcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, said the government had the will to make arrests, but lacked the capacity to gather evidence to prosecute "the big fish." Yet he maintained that with its newly unveiled national anti-drugs strategy, Afghanistan could "control" drug production within five years.
Costa was less upbeat. "It's going to take possibly 20 years to get rid of the problem," he said, citing the experience of former opium producers like Thailand, Turkey and Pakistan.
In an indication of the alarming extent of official complicity in the trade, a Western counternarcotics official said about 25,000 to 30,000 acres of government land in Helmand was used to cultivate opium poppies this year.
The official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said police and government officials are involved in cultivating poppies, providing protection for growers or taking bribes to ensure the crops aren't destroyed. He said the Taliban — which managed to nearly eradicate Afghanistan's poppy crop in 2001, just before their ouster for giving refuge to Osama bin Laden — now profit from the trade. In some instances, drug traffickers have provided vehicles and money to the Taliban to carry out terrorist attacks, he said. But added that the ties seem to be local and that there is no evidence of coordination between drug lords and the Taliban leadership.
Does anyone even doubt who is behind this huge operation, which body of authority can act as a catalyst in this? as some eone pointed out on Yahoo message boards - it might as well be called Cocaine Importing Agency.

Canadian troops join-in NATO offensive in Eastern Afghanistan

Canadian troops launched a major offensive against the Taliban on Saturday morning in an effort to take control of the districts of Zhari and Panjwai in southern Afghanistan. The campaign, dubbed Operation Medusa, began at 5 a.m. local time about 30 kilometres west of Kandahar, military officials told CBC News.
Afghan and NATO troops, including most of the combat units among Canada's 2,200-strong contingent in Afghanistan, plan to secure the area and offer humanitarian assistance for anyone displaced by the offensive. Over the past several weeks, coalition and Afghan forces battle militants from the region and pull back, allowing the Taliban to return.

Yay, looks like the offensive continues - finally, people realized that politics of stagnation fail in that region; it is time to deal with the Islamic terrorists in the effective way - attack and destroy.

Axis of Evil, You Got a Problem!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military shot down a target ballistic missile over the Pacific on Friday in the widest test of its emerging antimissile shield in 18 months, the Defense Department announced. The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said it had successfully completed an important exercise involving the launch of an improved ground-based interceptor missile designed to protect the United States against a limited long-range ballistic missile attack.
The test results will help improve the performance of a multibillion-dollar shield against the type of long-range ballistic missile that could be used to attack a U.S. city with a weapon of mass destruction, the agency said in a statement. Officially, the $85 million test was designed to collect data rather than shoot down the target. It was the first involving a live target since interceptor rockets failed to leave their silos during tests in December 2004 and February 2005.
It was also the first since the ground-based system, which is part of a layered shield that includes naval and aerial components, was activated to guard against ballistic missiles test-fired on July 4 and 5 by North Korea. Boeing Co. is prime contractor for the ground-based mid-course defense. Major subcontractors include Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co.. In the exercise, a target missile was launched from Kodiak, Alaska. And for the first time, the ground-based interceptor missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California. Previous launches have been from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Iran, North Korea, China - considered yourself warned!