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spaceyNow Playing: LIBTARD ''TOUGH ON TERROR, PATRIOT'' ALERT
Topic: Lib Loser Stories
Fulbright's Terror SupporterBy Olivier Guitta and Ilan Weinglass A Moroccan Islamist and apparent terrorism supporter has been getting treatment in Washington D.C. that most graduate students can only dream of. Mustafa Khalfi, editor-in-chief of the Moroccan newspaper At-Tajdid (Renewal), is the recipient of a prestigious Fulbright/American Political Science Association (APSA) Congressional Fellowship. This honor has afforded him the honor of working for Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA), taking a course at Johns Hopkins University, and receiving a visiting scholarship at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. At-Tajdid's connection to terrorism:
At-Tajdid's website has a permanent link to the Union of Good, an umbrella organization of Hamas-funding charities. Five of these organizations have been listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities (SDGTs):
♠ The Al-Aqsa Foundation, Belgium and Holland Branches♠ Interpal
♠ Comite' de Benfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (CBSP)
♠ Sanabil al-Aqsa
♠ The Palestinian Relief Society, Switzerland
In addition, two more groups, The World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), have been accused in a lawsuit filed by families of the 9/11 victims[1] of being "connected to Osama bin Laden and two of his top operatives."
The Union of Good was established in October 2000 and is presided over by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi and run by Essam Yussuf, a prominent figure in Interpal, a British Hamas front organization. Even the Palestinian Authority considers the Union of Good as a body supporting Hamas.
Clicking on the link to the Union of Good on the At-Tajdid website gives the reader a choice of English or Arabic. The English site takes the reader to the donations page of Interpal, a British-based charity that is designated by the U.S. as an SDGT. According to U.S. law, this is an indication that Khalfi himself should be designated a SGDT. A check of archived At-Tajdid websites shows this link to be a permanent feature since at least February 2003.
In August 2003, when the U.S. Treasury Department designated Interpal and several other Union of Good charities as SDGTs, it determined that "they provide support to Hamas and form part of its funding network in Europe." In other words, Mustapha Khalfi is the editor of a newspaper that knowingly solicited funds for a SDGT.
Executive order 13224 is very clear about the criteria that the Secretary of the Treasury may use to designate an entity as a SDGT. Anyone determined to "act for or on behalf" of a listed entity or to "provide financial...support for, or financial services to or in support of...entities designated in or under the Order" or "[t]o be otherwise associated with certain individuals or entities designated in or under the Order" may be designated a SDGT. In other words, soliciting funds or even being associated with an SDGT is enough to get someone designated an SDGT.
Given the facts, it strains credulity to assert that Khalfi did not knowingly support funding Interpal or that he was not associated with the Union of Good. There is at least a prima facie case to designate Khalfi as a SDGT. The only possible recourse for a defender of Khalfi is try to exonerate him on a technicality. Khalfi certainly violated the spirit of executive order 13224 if not the letter, and the U.S. Treasury department is currently reviewing a dossier of our findings.
Also, At Tajdid is the official paper of an association called Al Islah Wa Attawhid, also known by its French acronym MUR (Mouvement de l'Unicite' et de la Reforme) which is closely linked to the same SDGTs. The MUR is a constituent organization of the Union of Good, which we described above. In addition, Dr. Abd Ziyad Al-Mughrabi al-Idrisi, who sits on the consultative council of the MUR and the secretariat of the PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Developement), the main Moroccan Islamist party, is also a trustee of the Union of Good.
At-Tajdid and the MUR Islamist propagandaAt-Tajdid was among the first papers in the world to explain last year's horrific tsunami by pointing out that the affected Asian countries were corrupt and that the tsunami was a punishment from God. Later in the piece, At-Tajdid implied that the same punishment might be in the works for Morocco because of the lack of respect Moroccan society shows Islam. When pressed about this line of analysis, Khalfi answered, "Regarding the tsunami, only God knows the truth." A Palestinian journalist, who often writes for At-Tajdid, declared that Hurricane Katrina was a "gift from Heaven." He added, "If the neocons were to see your enthusiasm and determination, they would realize that they will never win against our Ummah." After Hamas victory in the Palestinians elections on January 25, At Tajdid wrote: "The victory of Hamas is the result of God's will" and "is the beginning of the Palestinian people's salvation." The noted researcher and Islamogist Said Elakhal explained to the daily Aujourd'hui Le Maroc that Hamas and the PJD have the exact same ideology. This should not come as a surprise since they both are branches of the Muslim Brotherhood. The MUR website is hosting a who's who of extremists. It displays permanent links to:
♣ Yusuf Qaradawi's website. Qaradawi has been called the "spiritual leader" of the Muslim Brotherhood,[2] and has issued fatwas supporting suicide bombings, wife-beating, and calls for the Muslim conquest of Europe.
♣ www.Islamonline.net - which publishes Qaradawi's fatwas.
♣ www.daawa.net: Apparently a site of the Muslim Brotherhood, with a picture of brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna displayed on every page.
♣ www.islamweb.net, which contains a presentation praising Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin.
Recently, the MUR website published a statement calling for a "world day of protest" of the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Significantly, the statement had a list of signatories, or "supporters" including:
♠ Five individuals openly identified as Muslim Brotherhood leaders
♠ Khaled Mashal of Hamas
♠ Mohammed al-Hamadawi, president of the MUR
♠ Saadine Othmani, general secretary of the PJD, who will visit Washington next month to meet US Congressmen.
At Tajdid and the "Zionists"
The MUR website is replete with statements referring to "the Zionist entity," "glorious Hamas," and complaints about laws prohibiting Holocaust denial.
Here is a chosen excerpt:This decision is a sign of the increasing influence of the Zionist lobby in French domestic policy, as well as an increased French submission to Israeli pressure. This occurred while at the same time France adopts a more balanced foreign policy towards the Arab and Muslim world.(...) France has been taken hostage by the Zionist lobby. The same can be said of the American democracy, hostage of the Christian far right working for Zionist interests. As De Gaulle did when he started the war of liberation of France, the free French must wonder whether it is not time to undertake a similar battle to liberate France from the Zionist blackmail, this new form of Nazism. (...) This lobby exerts all kinds of pressure and blackmail on France's political, cultural and media decision-making centers. Let me remind you for instance the defamation campaign conducted against the French intellectual Roger Garaudy, who had revealed the reality of the founding myths of Zionism. We note that Garaudy is a French convert to Islam who is one of the most notorious Holocaust deniers in the world. At Tajdid also usually speaks of the "Zionist entity" or puts the word "Israel" in scare quotes, indicating that it does not accept Israel's legitimacy as a nation. After the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, At-Tajdid's editorial read:
"Congratulations to the Palestinian resistance for this great victory which announces an even greater victory that of the recovery of Al Quds and all stolen Palestinian territories." In light of this one should not be surprised that At-Tajdid and Khalfi were opposed to any kind of peace process in the between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- and even the normalization of relations between Morocco and Israel. In 1999, during a period of relative quiet between Israelis and Palestinians, the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram ran an article quoting Khalfi: "Mustafa Khalfi, a writer who opposes Arab-Israeli normalization, criticizes this group's (Moroccan Jews) economic power because it "aims to influence decision-making [in Morocco]. As another example, during the recent Danish cartoon controversy, At Tajdid blamed "a Zionist provocation aimed at reviving the conflict between the West and the Muslim nation".
The March 14, 2006 edition reproduces verbatim an entry published on "The Al-Aqsa Organization" website claiming that Israeli President Moshe Katsav declared war against the Al-Aqsa mosque.
At Tajdid and terrorismOn May 16, 2005, the second anniversary of the 2003 terror attacks on Western and Jewish targets in Casablanca, the whole of the Moroccan press -- except At-Tajdid -- commemorated the day. Instead, At-Tajdid went as far as to claim that the attacks were "a conspiracy against the Islamist movement." At-Tajdid has even expressed doubts about the existence of the Salafiya Jihadia, one of the main terrorist organizations behind the 2003 bombings in Morocco, referring to the group cryptically as "what some call the Salafiya Jihadia." Mohamed Brini, the editor of the daily Al Ahdath Al Maghribia and an expert on At-Tajdid, says that At-Tajdid has never fully condemned a terrorist act, and instead often attempts to downplay terrorist incidents while making excuses for the perpetrators. In fact, after the May 2003 terrorist attacks, there was a large consensus to ban the PJD, including Morocco's king Mohammed VI, but the US through its Ambassador pressured him successfully to give up this idea.
At Tajdid and the USAMustafa Khalfi isn't wild about the United States, either. After President Bush's reelection, in an editorial dated November 5, 2004, Khalfi wrote that the Arab and Muslim world was in for another four years of instability, insecurity, and increasing dominance of the "Zionist Right." He added: "The Arab and Islamic world must prepare for a very difficult stage which demands the strengthening of a common action and the reconciliation between the regimes and their peoples." After the assassination of Lebanon's Rafiq Al Hariri, Khalfi saw another conspiracy in America's "arrogant colonial project." He wrote:
"Despite the difficulty of identifying those who were behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, reactions have demonstrated that the assassination is part of a project that began with the mapping out of Iraqi election results, with the resumption of normalization with the Zionist Entity, the partial European support for the U.S. position vis-a-vis Iran and the threats of NATO military intervention in the Sudan. The assassination has come amidst mounting international pressure against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, thus tightening the noose of arrogant colonial aims in the Middle East."
And for this and other views, Khalfi gets the ear of a Democratic Congressman and one of America's most prestigious scholarships.
[1] http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/burnettba112202acmp.pdf
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1257458,00.html
Front Page Magazine ~ Olivier Guitta and Ilan Weinglass ** Fulbright's Terror Supporter
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 5:18 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, 21 April 2006 5:28 PM EDT
chatty
Origional story... update below
The CIA officer was not in the public affairs office, nor was he someone authorized to talk to the media. The investigation was launched in January by the CIA's security center. It was directed to look at employees who had been exposed to certain intelligence programs. In the course of the investigation, the fired officer admitted discussing classified information including information about classified operations.
The investigation is ongoing.
A Justice Department spokesman said "no comment" on the firing. The spokesman also would not say whether the agency was looking into any criminal action against the officer.
Officer allegedly failed polygraph, admitted giving reporter information
The leak pertained to stories on the CIA's rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.
Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the firing.
CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise confirmed the dismissal. Millerwise said she was unsure whether there had ever been a firing before at the agency for leaking to the media.
Citing the Privacy Act, the CIA would not provide any details about the officer's identity or assignments.
All CIA employees are required to sign a secrecy agreement upon being hired stating they are prohibited from discussing classified information with anyone not cleared to receive the material.
Before going public with her name, NBC News reached McCarthy's husband, Michael. He said he could not confirm that his wife had been fired from her career post. He declined further comment.
Priest said she could not comment on the firing, which she said she learned about from NBC News.
The Washington Post report caused an international uproar, and government officials have said it did significant damage to relationships between the U.S. and allied intelligence agencies.
CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate in February that leaks to the media had damaged national security. Subsequently, Goss ordered an internal investigation on leaks involving classified security data.
The probe led to the fired CIA officer, sources told NBC.
This leak is not linked to the recent scandal in the CIA involving undercover agent Valerie Plame's identity's being revealed, NBC reported.
Separately, the Justice Department is investigating New York Times stories about the National Security Agency's domestic warrantless eavesdropping. Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won a Pulitzer on Monday for their reporting on the issue.
The NSA and other agencies had requested the probe, sources told NBC.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This is a question that no one seems to be asking. And so I've asked it. And here, in essence, is what I think is the answer. (The answer, of course, applies to Ford and Chrysler, as well as to General Motors. I've singled out General Motors because it's still the largest of the three and its problems are the most pronounced.)
First, the company would be without so-called Monday-morning automobiles. That is, automobiles poorly made for no other reason than because they happened to be made on a day when too few workers showed up, or too few showed up sober, to do the jobs they were paid to do. Without the UAW, General Motors would simply have fired such workers and replaced them with ones who would do the jobs they were paid to do. And so, without the UAW, GM would have produced more reliable, higher quality cars, had a better reputation for quality, and correspondingly greater sales volume to go with it. Why didn't they do this? Because with the UAW, such action by GM would merely have provoked work stoppages and strikes, with no prospect that the UAW would be displaced or that anything would be better after the strikes. Federal Law, specifically, The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, long ago made it illegal for companies simply to get rid of unions.
Second, without the UAW, GM would have been free to produce in the most-efficient, lowest cost way and to introduce improvements in efficiency as rapidly as possible. Sometimes this would have meant simply having one or two workers on the spot do a variety of simple jobs that needed doing, without having to call in half a dozen different workers each belonging to a different union job classification and having to pay that much more to get the job done. At other times, it would have meant just going ahead and introducing an advance, such as the use of robots, without protracted negotiations with the UAW resulting in the need to create phony jobs for workers to do (and to be paid for doing) that were simply not necessary.
(Unbelievably, at its assembly plant in Oklahoma City, GM is actually obliged by its UAW contract to pay 2,300 workers full salary and benefits for doing absolutely nothing. 
Third, without the UAW, GM would have an average unit cost per automobile close to that of non-union Toyota. Toyota makes a profit of about $2,000 per vehicle, while GM suffers a loss of about $1,200 per vehicle, a difference of $3,200 per unit. And the far greater part of that difference is the result of nothing but GM's being forced to deal with the UAW. (Over a year ago, 
Fifth, as a result of UAW coercion and extortion, GM has lost billions upon billions of dollars. For 2005 alone, it reported a loss in excess of $10 billion. Its bonds are now rated as "junk," that is, below, investment grade. Without the UAW, GM would not have lost these billions.
Sixth, without the UAW, GM would not now be in process of attempting to pay a ransom to its UAW workers of up to $140,000 per man, just to get them to quit and take their hands out of its pockets. (It believes that $140,000 is less than what they will steal if they remain.)
Seventh, without the UAW, GM would not now have healthcare obligations that account for more than $1,600 of the cost of every vehicle it produces.
Eighth, without the UAW, GM would not now have pension obligations which, if entered on its balance sheet in accordance with the rule now being proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, will leave it with a net worth of minus $16 billion.
What the UAW has done, on the foundation of coercive, interventionist labor legislation, is bring a once-great company to its knees. It has done this by a process of forcing one obligation after another upon the company, while at the same time, through its work rules, featherbedding practices, hostility to labor-saving advances, and outlandish pay scales, doing practically everything in its power to make it impossible for the company to meet those obligations.
Ninth, without the UAW tens of thousands of workers - its own members - would not now be faced with the loss of pension and healthcare benefits that it is impossible for GM or any of the other auto companies to provide, and never was possible for them to provide. The UAW, the whole labor-union movement, and the left-"liberal" intellectual establishment, which is their father and mother, are responsible for foisting on the public and on the average working man and woman a fantasy land of imaginary Demons (big business and the rich) and of saintly Good Fairies (politicians, government officials, and union leaders). In this fantasy-land, the Good Fairies supposedly have the power to wring unlimited free benefits from the Demons.
Tenth, Without the UAW and its fantasy-land mentality, autoworkers would have been motivated to save out of wages actually paid to them, and to provide for their future by means of by and large reasonable investments of those savings - investments with some measure of diversification. Instead, like small children, lured by the prospect of free candy from a stranger, they have been led to a very bad end. They thought they would receive endless free golden eggs from a goose they were doing everything possible to maim and finally kill, and now they're about to learn that the eggs just aren't there.
It's very sad to watch an innocent human being suffer. It's dreadful to contemplate anyone's life being ruined. It's dreadful to contemplate even an imbecile's falling off a cliff or down a well. But the union members, their union leaders, the politicians who catered to them, the journalists, the writers, and the professors who provided the intellectual and cultural environment in which this calamity could take place - none of them were imbeciles. They all could have and should have known better.
What is happening is cruel justice, imposed by a reality that willfully ignorant people thought they could choose to ignore as long as it suited them: the reality that prosperity comes from the making of goods, not the making of work; that it comes from the doing of work, not from the shirking of it; that it comes from machines and methods of production that save labor, not the combating of those machines and methods; that it comes from the earning and reinvestment of profits not from seizure of those profits for the benefit of idlers, who do all they can to prevent the profits from being earned in the first place.
In sum, without the UAW, General Motors would not be faced with extinction. Instead, it would almost certainly be a vastly larger, far more prosperous company, producing more and better motor vehicles than ever before, at far lower costs of production and prices than it does today, and providing employment to hundreds of thousands more workers than it does today.
Few things are more obvious than that the role of the UAW in relation to General Motors has been that of a swarm of bloodsucking leeches, a swarm that will not stop until its prey exists no more.
It is difficult to believe that people who have been neither lobotomized nor castrated would not rise up and demand that these leeches finally be pulled off!
Perhaps the American people do not rise up because they have never seen General Motors, or any other major American business, rise up and dare to assert the philosophical principle of private property rights and individual freedom and proceed to pull the leeches off in the name of that principle.
It is easy to say, and also largely true, that General Motors and American business in general have not behaved in this way for several generations because they no longer have any principles. Indeed, they would project contempt at the very thought of acting on any kind of moral or political principle.
Any business firm today that tried to make a principled stand on such a matter as throwing out a legally recognized labor union would have to do so in the knowledge that its action was a futile gesture that would serve only to cost it dearly. And a corporation that did this would undoubtedly also be embroiled in endless lawsuits by many of its stockholders blaming it for the losses the government imposed on it.
But none of this should stop anyone else from speaking up and making known his outrage at what the UAW has done to General Motors.
cheeky
Iraqi Infrastructure Attacks Down 60 Percent in Last Three Months
Decrease due to presence of 250,000 Iraqi security forces, U.S. general says
Washington -- Attacks against Iraq's vital infrastructure have decreased by 60 percent over the past three months, the spokesman for Multi-National Force-Iraq said April 13.
Army Major General Rick Lynch, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon via teleconference from Baghdad, said the decrease is directly due to the presence of 250,000 trained and equipped Iraqi security forces operating all across the country, conducting important missions.
To emphasize the effect of this increased Iraq-wide security presence, Lynch gave examples of recent operations in three different regions.
In the northern city of Tarmia, local officials came to the coalition forces and asked them to get rid of the terrorist insurgents there. On March 25 Iraqi forces, assisted by coalition troops, cordoned off the city, established two checkpoints, and then "worked through the city" to eliminate the terrorists, Lynch said.
On March 27, coalition forces set up a medical clinic, which treated 375 citizens on its first day. City leaders then called for volunteers to join the Iraqi police force to give the city a permanent security presence. Two thousand Iraqis volunteered, Lynch said, and 225 of those were selected to be trained and equipped a police academy in Jordan.
In the west, insurgent attacks in al-Anbar province have decreased from an average of 27 per day in October 2005 to about 18 a day now. The residents continue to volunteer for police and army service, Lynch said. Since October 28, 2005, weapons caches have been found, he added.
In Baghdad, because the enemy considers it to be the most important target, security force patrols have risen from 12,000 in February to 20,000 in March -- a 45 percent increase, Lynch said.
On March 27, a raid near the Abu Ghraib area resulted in the death of a high-ranking al-Qaida leader in Iraq: Abu Omar al-Kurdi. According to Multi-National Force-Iraq officials, his real name was Rafid Ibrahim Fattah, and his ties to al-Qaida dated to 1999, including personal contact with Osama bin Laden. He was called "ambassador" in al-Qaida circles, and he established liaison between terrorist networks, and also became an operations officer in Iraq, Lynch said.
For additional information, see 
silly
Sen. Joe Biden: 'No One Believes the President'
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., says President Bush has no credibility among leaders of foreign nations when it comes to discussions of foreign policy.
Biden, appearing on MSNBC's "Imus in the Morning" show, said Bush lost credibility when weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq and his reluctance to apologize for "coming clean on Iraq" is hurting the nation's reputation abroad.
"The president has yet to be straight with the American people on what the deal in Iraq is," Biden said. "All the way back since Abu Ghraib, the president has yet to be straight about the mistakes he has made ... He has no credibility. No one believes the president of the United States on matters of foreign policy."
On the recent White House personnel moves, Biden doesn't think the changes will do much to change policy, unless Bush does something "big," like fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"It's about the fact that no one has faith in the United States of America as long as Rumsfeld is running the show," Biden said. "Look where we are now: Nobody in the world is prepared to trust the president of the United States, led by Donald Rumsfeld leading the military to use military force against Iran.
"We can't sustain this lack of credibility for the next 2 1/2 years," Biden said.
Biden said it would be a big mistake for the U.S. to launch a military strike against Iran, especially since he believes Iran is 5-10 years away from being able to launch nuclear missiles of their own.
"There are 70 million people in Iran," Biden said. "These guys are not Iraq. They have ways in which they can make it very painful for the United States."
d'oh
Census: Americans Are Fleeing Big Cities
WASHINGTON -- Americans are leaving the nation's big cities in search of cheaper homes and open spaces farther out.
Nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004, with a few exceptions in the South and Southwest, according to a report being released Thursday by the Census Bureau.
Northeasterners are moving South and West. West Coast residents are moving inland. Midwesterners are chasing better job markets. And just about everywhere, people are escaping to the outer suburbs, also known as exurbs.
"It's a case of middle class flight, a flight for housing affordability," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "But it's not just white middle class flight, it's Hispanics and blacks, too."
The Census Bureau measured domestic migration - people moving within the United States - from 1990 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2004. The report provides the number of people moving into and out of each state and the 25 largest metropolitan areas.
The states that attracted the most new residents: Florida, Arizona and Nevada. The states that lost the most: New York, California and Illinois.
Among the 25 largest metropolitan areas, 18 had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - the three biggest metropolitan areas - lost the most residents to domestic moves. The New York metropolitan area had a net loss of more than 210,000 residents a year from 2000 to 2004.
Richard Florida, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, said smaller, wealthier households are replacing larger families in many big metropolitan areas.
That drives up housing prices even as the population shrinks, chasing away even more members of the middle class.
"Because they are bidding up prices, they are forcing some people out to the exurbs and the fringe," Florida said. "Other people are forced to make moves in response to that. I don't have any sense of this abating."
The metropolitan area that attracted the most new residents was Riverside, Calif., which has been siphoning residents from Los Angeles for years. The Riverside area, which includes San Bernardino and Ontario, had a net gain of 81,000 people a year from 2000 to 2004.
Riverside has grown to become the 13th largest metropolitan area in the nation. It's a short drive to several mountain ranges, and it's within driving distance of the beach. Locally, it is known as the Inland Empire.
"When you look at housing prices in Southern California, along the beaches and coastlines, you're able to obtain a very large home for a much lower price" in Riverside, said Cindy Roth, president and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.
Homes in Riverside aren't cheap. The median price - the point at which half cost more and half cost less - was $374,200 in 2005. But they are less expensive than Los Angeles, where the median price was $529,000.
Other areas that attracted a lot of new residents also have relatively inexpensive homes, even if they are not the cheapest in the country. Phoenix, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth round out the top five metropolitan areas.
On The Net: 
celebratory
Libtards all over America are suffering in silent mourning...
Taliban commander shot in night raid
QALAT, Afghanistan (April 18) -- A Taliban senior commander has been killed and two other militants have been captured during a raid by police in the southeastern Afghan province of Zabul.
The police, having received a tip that the militants were planning an attack on Qalat, the provincial capital, surrounded the band Monday night, shooting Mohamad Haleem and arresting two of his accomplices, China's Xinhua news agency reported
.
Local authorities said Haleem and his men were responsible for many attacks on government officials and schools in the province.
Zabul province, which borders Pakistan, has been the site of numerous attacks in recent months and even now has many Taliban supporters. Mullah Abdul Salim "Rocketi," a notorious Taliban commander, ran and won a seat in Parliament from Zabul province
.
Popular Nonsense
An unfair and ill-conceived attempt to ditch the Electoral College.
Opponents of the Electoral College have conjured up yet another scheme by which they hope to undermine America's unique system of electing presidents. If they are successful, the Electoral College could essentially be eliminated at the behest of a handful of states, without the bother of a constitutional amendment.
As Ronald Reagan might say, "There they go again!"
This latest anti-Electoral College effort, the 
NPV touts the ease of this change as one of the plan's best features. Electoral College opponents have tried and failed many times in their efforts to obtain a constitutional amendment. Such a process requires the consent of two thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. It's much easier to obtain the consent of a mere eleven states. And if eleven states get to change the rules of the presidential-election game, without so much as a nod to the remaining thirty-nine states, then why should NPV supporters care? After all, presidential elections can already be won with the votes of only eleven states. So any unfairness in the NPV plan merely reflects the inherent unfairness of the Electoral College system.
It is true that America's presidential-election system technically could allow the eleven largest states to pick the president. But the incentives inherent in the Electoral College work in the opposite direction, making such an outcome extremely unlikely. The Electoral College encourages presidential candidates to build national coalitions of voters. The compromises that a presidential candidate would have to make to obtain the votes of, say, California and Texas, guarantee that any candidate who manages to obtain the votes of the eleven largest states will also obtain the votes of a majority of states. The last presidential candidate to accomplish this feat was Reagan in 1984, and he obtained the votes of every state except Minnesota. (He also lost the District of Columbia.)
NPV's legislation, on the other hand, does not ensure national coalition building. To the contrary, the proposal gives the eleven largest states incentives to work against the remaining states: Getting rid of the Electoral College would allow presidential candidates to win with positions that are not at all in the interest of less populous states. To be sure, and as NPV points out, candidates now focus largely on battleground states, but the only reason other states aren't battlegrounds is because they are, by and large, happy with one of the candidates positions. Moreover, so-called "safe" and "swing" states change constantly. As recently as 1988, California voted consistently Republican. Texas was a safe Democrat state until it began voting Republican in 1980.
Proponents of national presidential elections point out that the president almost always wins the popular vote anyway. But the question is how these votes were won. Changing the system would change the way in which presidential candidates campaign. NPV proponents make much of their slogan "Every Vote Equal." It's a nice sounding slogan which appeals to a sense of fairness. But if every vote counted exactly the same, the system would end up being quite unfair to the less populous states. The true question here is whether the nation should vote in a state-by-state presidential election or a national presidential election. Changing from one process to the other would have significant ramifications.
John F. Kennedy once stated that America's presidential election system is like a solar system of governmental power. If one aspect of the solar system is changed, others will inevitably be impacted. If the gravitational pull of the sun is changed, then the Earth will be pulled out of its orbit. In the same way, if the Electoral College is removed from the nation's system of electing presidents, then other aspects of the political system will inevitably change. For example, the two-party political system will likely be seriously undermined. Also, presidential candidates will have less incentive to build national coalitions, and they will instead campaign primarily in high population areas.
If NPV succeeds in passing its legislation, citizens living in a majority of states will likely have been denied the opportunity to have a say in the decision about whether America will live in this political solar system or a new one. If getting rid of the Electoral College is such a great idea, then why do its proponents seem to want to bypass the people in enacting it? If it is such a great idea, and one that will serve our interests, why not go national with their case? Apparently they're not so into voting after all.
Tara Ross is the author of 
chillin'
USA records largest drop in annual deaths in at least 60 years
ATLANTA - In a powerful testament to U.S. health improvements, the annual number of deaths in the country dropped by about 50,000 in 2004 - the largest such decline in more than 60 years.
Drops in the death rates for heart disease, cancer and stroke accounted for most of the surprising development, health officials said.
Overall, age-adjusted death rates fell to a record low of 801 deaths per 100,000 population in 2004, down from almost 833 deaths per 100,000 in 2003.
"These are preliminary data," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Atlanta's Emory University. "But if it holds up, it's obviously very good news."
The government also said Wednesday that U.S. life expectancy had inched up again, to a record high of 77.9 years.
The total number of U.S. deaths recorded for 2004 was 2,398,343, according to preliminary mortality data released by the National Center for Health Statistics.
That represents a 2% decline from the 2,448,288 recorded for 2003. The last decline in annual deaths occurred in 1997, a modest drop of 445 deaths from 1996, said Arialdi Mini Ino, the statistician who is lead author of the report.
The last drop in deaths of this magnitude occurred in 1944, when the number of deaths dropped about 48,000 from the previous year, he said.
"We were surprised by the sharpness of the decrease (in 2004). It's kind of historical," Mini Ino said.
Whatever the case, 
Apparently, Garofalo either didn't understand or didn't care about the often-reported links between the privately-funded "New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project" touted on her Friday night show and Scientology.
CultNews began reporting about the Scientology-linked project more than two years ago and the story was later picked up by the New York Times and Associated Press.
The so-called "Purification Rundown," which is a Scientology religious ritual, is at the heart of the program. Hubbard invented the process, which includes large dosing of niacin, sweating in a sauna and ingesting cooking oil.
Apparently, Janeane's not alone:
Scientology frequently uses its celebrities to get media time for essentially what can be seen as an infomercial promoting its programs, services, and of course its founder the late L. Ron Hubbard.
CultNews previously reported how TV talk show host Montel Williams was beguiled by Scientology celebs Juliette Lewis, Anne Archer, Catherine Bell and Kelly Preston (Mrs. John Travolta). Williams consumed two of his hour-long program slots promoting celebrity Scientology-linked projects.
But of all people has the seemingly cynical Janeanne Garofalo now been bitten by the celeb bug and followed in Montel's footsteps?
Could I Hate Myself Productions, the name of her company, provide a key clue? Garofalo, a notoriously unhappy person, would seem an easy target for these groups.