The New Saturday Evening Post
A Cyberspace Magazine by Sir Jeremiah O. Kennedy
A. Isreal attacks Gaza days after Arab Summit.
Just days after the Arab Summit, Hamas in Gaza starts to fire rockets once again.
A top Hamas commander was killed and another 11 Gazans were wounded late on Friday night by an Israeli air strike that came in response to a Katyusha attack on Ashkelon earlier in the day.
Palestinians continued firing rockets over the weekend Late Saturday evening, a Kassam rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip toward the western Negev. The rocket landed outside of Sderot, hitting a public building that was empty at the time. There were no reports of casualties, but the building’s roof and three rooms inside it were damaged.
Hamas officials in Gaza identified the dead man as Issa Batran, 42, a commander of the group’s Izzadin Kassam military wing in central Gaza and a senior rocket maker.
B. India slams Pakistan over WikiLeaks charges
NEW DELHI — India has slammed Pakistan over reported links between Islamabad's premier intelligence agency and the Afghan Taliban that were revealed in the recent leak of secret Pentagon files.
Reams of material leaked to Internet whistleblower site WikiLeaks accuse Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) -- the nation's most powerful spy service -- of secretly helping the Afghan insurgency.
"Sponsorship of terrorism, as an instrument of policy, is wholly condemnable and must cease forthwith," an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said late Tuesday.
India has long accused Pakistan of failing to take credible steps to crack down on Islamic militant groups operating on its soil such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai which left 166 people dead.
"The utilization of territory under Pakistan's control to provide sanctuaries for recruiting and sustaining terrorist groups, and to direct terrorist activity against neighbours, must stop," the spokesman said.
Pakistan must not allow its territory to be used as a base for militancy "if our region is to attain its full potential for peaceful development", he added.
The leaks, published in newspapers on Sunday, have fuelled accusations that the ISI since 2004 armed, trained and financed the Taliban. Pakistan has called the documents "skewed" and out of step with reality on the ground.
C. US trying to deport illegals without anyone knowing.
Over the past 4 years in Europe, Italy and France have been a round-up of illegals and the were deported. Now I guess it will start hear.
According to an internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo going the rounds of Capitol Hill and obtained by National Review, the agency is considering ways in which it could enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action” — that is, without the consent of the American people through a vote in Congress.
“This memorandum offers administrative relief options to . . . reduce the threat of removal for certain individuals present in the United States without authorization,” it reads.
Also: “In the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of Notices to Appear (NTA), and adopting significant process improvements.”
In recent weeks, Sen. Chuck Grassley and others in Congress have been pressing the administration to disavow rumors that a de facto amnesty is in the works, including in a letter to Department of Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano. “Since the senators first wrote to the president more than a month ago, we have not been reassured that the plans are just rumors, and we have every reason to believe that the memo is legitimate,” a Grassley spokesman tells NR. (NR contacted DHS, but a spokesman did not have a comment on the record.)
D. Afgan War dead climb as surge begins - Summer 2010
Six American soldiers have been killed in separate attacks in southern Afghanistan, making July the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nine-year war.
The casualties bring the number of U.S. soldiers killed this month to 66, surpassing June's record as the deadliest month for American troops since 2001. U.S. and NATO commanders have warned of an increase in violence as international and Afghan forces work to clear the south of Taliban insurgents.
E. UN extends Darfur force mandate The UN Security Council extended Unamid's mandate until July 31, 2011 [EPA] The United Nations Security Council has extended its peacekeeping mission in Sudan's western Darfur region for another year. The 15-nation council agreed unanimously on Friday to the mission's extension, telling Unamid, the joint African Union/UN peacekeeping force, to focus primarily on protecting civilians and aid deliveries. It also condemned a recent surge of violence in Darfur and called on the Sudanese government to stop hindering the work of Unamid. The peacekeeping force, which stands at about 21,700 troops and police, has been struggling for three years with the Darfur crisis, which erupted when mostly non-Arab fighters took up arms in early 2003, accusing the Sudanese government of neglect. The government responded by mobilising mostly Arab fighters accused of a campaign of rape, murder and looting that created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. UN officials say that up to 300,000 people have died in the fighting, although the Sudanese government says that number is actually 10,000. |
F. AQ head out with new video issuing threats of attack in US.
Al Qaeda's second in command Ayman Al-Zawahiri has surfaced again, this time threatening more attacks against the U.S. and the West.
Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, top left, is heard in a new audio message posted
"Oh American people…We offered you a peace plan, and mutual benefit; but your governments were proud and haughty, and so the attacks against you followed one after another, everywhere – from Indonesia to Times Square, by way of Madrid and London. And the attacks are ongoing, and more will come one after another," said Zawahiri, according to a transcript provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute, based in Washington, DC.Zawahiri also continued his promise of near victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other issues.
Former White House national security official Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, said that up until this point, there haven't been any correlations between Zawahiri's past threats and any attacks actually occurring.
"U.S. government and counterterrorism officials are not going to increase their alert based on Zawahiri's statement, because of his previous track record," Clarke said. "But they're on relatively high alert already because of the increase in homegrown terrorist threats related to al Qaeda."
G.Venezuela sends troops to border with Colombia
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Venezuela's president says he has deployed troops to the border with Colombia, as tensions rise between the two South American countries.
Hugo Chavez said Friday he believed the outgoing government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe could be planning to attack Venezuela.
The move follows Colombia's accusations last week that Venezuela is harboring leftist Colombian rebels.
Mr. Chavez, denying the charge, had harsh words for Mr. Uribe. In a phone call to a Venezuelan television show Friday, Mr. Chavez said the Colombian President should see a psychologist, saying he sees peace as a "little trap."
Colombia's president-elect, Juan Manuel Santos, has promised to continue Mr. Uribe's security policies.
The head of Colombia's largest leftist rebel group Friday proposed talks with the incoming government to resolve the country's internal conflict.
Alfonso Cano, who commands the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, issued the proposal in a video message. There was no immediate response from President-elect Santos.
On Thursday, Colombia and Venezuela brought their grievances to a group of South American foreign ministers meeting in Ecuador.. But members of the Union of South American Nations, or UNASUR, were unable to resolve the crisis.
The Venezuelan president severed ties with Colombia last week after Colombia went before the Organization of American States' permanent council in Washington to present photographs, maps, coordinates and videos it said show 1,500 guerrillas hiding inside Venezuela.
Venezuela said the items did not provide any solid evidence of a guerrilla presence there.
H. Google is blocked in China, first time since March incident.
Google said Thursday that its search engine was “fully blocked” in China, along with Google ads and mobile search.
This is the first time that Google has been blocked since March, when it closed its search service in China and began automatically redirecting users to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong after a standoff over censorship. Although it has been fairly common since then for the search engine to be partially blocked, which Google describes as between 10 percent and 66 percent blocked, it has not been fully blocked, or 67 percent to 100 percent blocked.
I. Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky get Married in Upstate New York
Congratz to the Happy couple and 2 The Clinton’s.