President Obama's post-election honeymoon is waning in California, while his approval rating nationwide has begun to rise, according to two new polls.

Obama's rating in California dipped to 60 percent in a Field Poll survey of registered voters in the state released today.

so, according to the un, military strikes against our enemies are "executions"? so, the un doesn't want us to retaliate against our enemies until we've put them on trial?

In a court filing, the FBI said Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was an imam, or prayer leader, of a radical group named Ummah whose primary mission is to establish an Islamic state within the United States.

No one was charged with terrorism. But Abdullah was "advocating and encouraging his followers to commit violent acts against the United States," FBI agent Gary Leone said in an affidavit.

"He regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric," Leone said. "Abdullah and his followers have trained regularly in the use of firearms, and continue to train in martial arts and sword fighting."

But if India was to get in a war with Pakistan or Afghanistan, or any other country with a significant Muslim population, it could be seen as a war of Muslim on Muslim.

That bedsheet wearing pacifist, what good did he do?

Later, a commander of the militant group, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, purportedly urged Sunnis to confront the Houthis.

In an audio recording posted on the internet, Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Rashid, denounced what he called the Yemeni rebels' aspirations and incursions against Sunnis.

He said the Shia community and Iran were trying to take over Muslim countries, and that "their threat to Islam and its people is much bigger than that from Jews and Christians".

Rooting out corruption, mismanagement and incompetence in the Afghani government will take decades, or longer.

"The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the last week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan UNTIL Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, said senior U.S. officials."

Well, given that the ambassador was formerly commander of US (and presumably NATO) forces in Afghanistan, chances are that he knows a thing or two about it, and indeed may have some useful perspectives.

That if the US pulled out, cut off the arms, the entangling alliances, the buckets of cash that fuel the corruption, also ending the motivation of all the foreign jihadists who flock to her country to fight us, etc. then grassroots democratic forces would have a chance to grow and real change would flourish.

Study the history of the Taliban, originally they were orphan boys raised in refugee camps in Pakistan, taught in madrasses, that were set up (incidentally) with a significant US funding as part of our anti-Soviet efforts. They flooded in after some years of total civil war and chaos between mujahadden who had not been very powerful until a lot of US arms and money came into the scene. The country was so messed up, the taliban were originally accepted in the chaos as a non-corrupt stabilizing influence. Now apparantly some of these allies of ours are so hooked on the flow of money and so corrupt that they are siphoning some of their weapons over to the taliban to keep the conflict going, and the money flowing and the poppies growing.

I am just pointing out that in arming, and funding corrupt warlords who are only slightly better we are not helping.

Anyone who thinks $40mil per terrorist kill is an effective or sustainable defense of our nation is an idiot.

Anyone who thinks $40mil per terrorist kill is an effective or sustainable defense of our nation is an idiot.

Since it takes only one terrorist to plant a bomb and kill 26 innocent train passengers and live to bomb again, are you so sure of that?

Fattrad: Why Israel doesn't trust Brittain and to a certain extent the US:

US intelligence sources have confirmed Iran's assertions that a document published by a British daily about Tehran's nuclear program is a fabrication.

He added, however, that US intelligence sources mainly suspect Israel of carrying out the forgery, although, they do not rule out the possibility of the British having played a part in it.

I'm with you, we should take Saudi Arabia.

China, Nigeria Discuss Investment in Oil, Electricity

Covert war on Iran's nuclear program reaches into Tehran

DEBKAfile Special Report

January 12, 2010, 12:44 PM (GMT+02:00)
Nuclear physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi

Nuclear physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi

DEBKAfile reports: The covert war against Iran's nuclear program struck deep inside the Islamic Republic with the death Tuesday, Jan. 12 of nuclear physicist professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi, 50, by a remote-controlled exploding motorbike as he left his Tehran home. He was a senior professor at Tehran University which DEBKAfile's Iranian sources say is an important hub of nuclear weapons research.

Those sources stress that his death was unrelated to the political turbulence sweeping Iran since the June elections; state-run Press TV described him as a "staunch supporter" of Iran's 1979 revolution.

The targeting of the scientists in the heart of Tehran by a remote-controlled explosion shows that the covert agencies working to sabotage Iran's controversial nuclear program have managed to plant death squads in the Iranian capital like those operating in Damascus. Shadowy inside elements are therefore threatening the military nuclear projects of both these allies.

Before launching their investigation, Iranian officials laid the incident at the door of the Israel Mossad or the Paris-based Mujaheddin Khalq dissidents, which Tehran believes are sponsored by the CIA and the Mossad.

Iranian authorities see Mohammadi's death as ramping up the Western effort to recruit, intimidate or liquidate the brains behind Iran's nuclear progress and a warning. They are already keeping these scientists closely quarantined and forbidden overseas travel, their movements and correspondence closely monitored. But they failed to guard Prof. Mohammadi, just as last year two nuclear scientists managed to escape and apparently defected to the US: Shahram Amiri went missing while on a pilgrimage Saudi Arabia and a man known as "Ardebili" was allegedly arrested in Georgia and not seen since.

In Jan. 2007, a leading nuclear scientist Ardeshir Hassanbpour, professor at Shiraz University died of gas suffocation at his home in mysterious circumstances. And one more or more car accidents fall into the same unexplained category.

But subcontracting American national security to Israel is an appalling notion, and we cannot assume that an Israeli action would not provoke a wider regional conflict into which the U.S. would be drawn.

WASHINGTON: Half of India's population today wasn't born when she died in 1986 in a hail of gunfire on a hijacked plane after courageously
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saving scores of passengers, a feat for which she was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra in India, Tamgha-e-Insaniyat in Pakistan and the Justice for Crimes Award in the US. Earlier this week, some 24 years after her heroism, one of her killers died a dog's death in the badlands of Pakistan, reportedly shot to pieces in a US drone attack.

The saga of Neerja Bhanot transfixed India at a time where there was no 24-hour news television and it had little to do with the fact that her father was a New Delhi journalist. She was a flight attendant on Pan Am Flight 73 as it headed out of Mumbai to Karachi en route to Frankfurt and onward to New York City. Four armed men dressed as airport security guards stormed the plane in Karachi. The cabin crew managed to alert the pilots, who decamped, effectively grounding the flight.

In the hours-long ordeal that followed, Neerja showed exemplary courage, attested by some 350 passengers who survived the nightmare, although some 20 died and 120 were wounded after hijackers opened fire on them when Pakistani commandos prepared to storm the plane. Among her acts of courage was her refusal to collect US passports and hiding some of them as the hijackers sought to isolate Americans and Indians. She knew they meant business when one of the hijackers pulled Rajesh Kumar, a 29-year-old Indian American California resident to the front of the aircraft, asked him to kneel at the door, and shot him in the head when their demand for a new flight crew was not met.

Neerja died shielding three children from gunfire as a bloody massacre erupted on the plane. The hijackers, who were said to be from the Abu Nidal Organisation, were eventually captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in 1988. But in a Pakistan that became increasingly permissive about terrorism, the sentences were later commuted to life in prison.

In 2001, Zayd Hassan Abd Al-Latif Masud Al Safarini, the hijacker who shot Rajesh Kumar among others, was captured by the FBI in Bangkok after he was released in Pakistan and was on his way back to Jordan. He was taken to the US where he was sentenced to a 160-year prison term he is now serving in Colorado. Four others who were in Pakistan's Adiala jail were freed in January 2008 even as the US fumed about Islamabad's action. The FBI announced a $5 million bounty on their head, pretty much ensuring their days are numbered.

Earlier this week, Pakistani intelligence officials announced that a January 9 missile strike in the North Waziristan tribal region killed Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, one of the hijackers. His affiliation is disputed. The FBI's web site lists him as a Palestinian with possible Lebanese citizenship. The Pakistani officials called him an al-Qaida member, but the FBI site says he was a member of the Abu Nidal Palestinian terrorist group.

There are no doubts about Neerja's affiliation though. She belongs to India's Hall of Courage.