An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Morning Coffee 01/19/08
No Guns founder pleads to gun charges
A former gang member who founded an anti-violence group called No Guns has pleaded no contest to federal weapons charges.
Hector “Big Weasel” Marroquin, 51, and co-defendant Sylvia Arrellano, 25, entered pleas Thursday for three counts of manufacture, distribution and transport for sale of an unlawful assault weapon.
Arrellano also pleaded no contest to machine gun conversion and possessing a silencer and acknowledged that the crime was committed for the benefit of a criminal street gang.
“If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns!”
Hamas says it has foiled Fatah plot to kill leader
A senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip on Saturday accused rival Fatah of plotting to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as he prayed and said the would-be suicide bomber had been arrested and had confessed.
Tension between Islamist Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah faction has increased since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in a brief but bloody civil war in June. Fatah still holds sway in the occupied West Bank.
For some reason, I automatically thought of a plan by Hamas to gain more support with such claims. I really wouldn’t put it past them, they aren’t exactly an honorable bunch.
Teen Suspect Held in Bhutto’s Killing
A teenager who said he was part of a team of assassins sent to kill former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was arrested near the Afghan border, Pakistani officials said Saturday.
The teen also confessed to taking part in a plot to attack Shiites during Ashoura, even as police in Pakistan’s far south said they had foiled suicide attacks planned for the Shiite Muslim festival.
I guess being a teenager in a country like Pakistan is even tougher than it is in the West. Our teens are assaulted on a daily basis with immorality. Their teens are assaulted by fanaticism. I’m having a tough time figuring out which is worse, but perhaps, they are both equally as bad, in very different ways.
DHS to Unveil New Disaster Response Plan
The Bush administration is set to announce an overhaul of the nation’s emergency response blueprint Tuesday, streamlining a chain of command that failed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, sources familiar with the plan said yesterday.
After years of aggressive lobbying by unhappy state governments, the administration chose to restore FEMA’s power to coordinate federal disaster operations. That power was undermined in the administration’s previous plan — used just once, after Katrina — when the secretary of homeland security appointed his own officer to oversee disaster response.
Would it be terribly UJpc of me to suggest that maybe people should be more self reliant, and not expect the gubmint to come in and save their sorry asses?
Hezbollah has Israel ‘body parts’
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah says his armed group has body parts of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon during the 2006 conflict.
He said they had the “heads, the hands, the feet and even a nearly intact cadaver” in a speech marking his first public appearance in more than a year.
And having these rotting ‘body parts’ is going to make him the big man on campus?
No mud, no hoopla — no dissent — in Cuban vote
There is no mudslinging or million-dollar war chest. No party nominations, dirty tricks or battles for key endorsements.
In fact, there’s no campaigning at all — and the most famous candidate, Fidel Castro, hasn’t been seen in public for almost 18 months.
Still, more than 90 percent of voters are expected to turn out Sunday for parliamentary elections viewed as a vital factor in determining whether the ailing, 81-year-old Castro will remain as the communist-ruled island’s head of state.
Maybe these folks like to pretend they are being given a choice? Why do they even bother to show up at the polls to vote. The outcome is already a given. As for the ‘no dirty tricks’? The whole damn thing is a dirty trick….on the people.
Burns, US negotiator on Iran, is latest top diplomat to resign
R. Nicholas Burns, one of the highest-profile diplomats at the State Department and a former Massachusetts resident, is resigning and will be replaced by US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns, the State Department said yesterday.
As undersecretary of state for political affairs, R. Nicholas Burns dealt with many of the most controversial issues facing the Bush administration, including negotiations with India on its nuclear weapons program and the future of Kosovo.
Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
28 charged in trashing of Robert Frost home in Vt.
Twenty-eight people are accused of attending a birthday party and New Year’s celebration that left a farm house where poet Robert Frost once spent his summers in tatters.
They were all charged with trespassing and five of them with unlawful mischief — both misdemeanors — stemming from the Dec. 28 party at the Homer Noble Farm house, authorities said.
The farm house had broken windows, broken antique furniture and tables burned in a fireplace. Vomit and urine stained the carpeting and beer cans, cups and drug paraphernalia were left behind.
The damage was estimated at $10,600. Witnesses said marijuana was used, but no drug charges were filed for lack of evidence, Vermont State Police Sgt. Lee Hodsden said.
Is the concept of right and wrong so completely lost?
Fears about rigging before polls unjustified: Musharraf
President Pervez Musharraf has said the fears of the opposition parties over the possibility of rigging in the upcoming polls may create problems afterwards.
Musharraf stated this while addressing newsmen, editors and writers here on Friday.
Fears about rigging even before polls are unjustified, he said.
In a country where dissent is silenced by trumped up charges and the sentences of said trumped up charges, I wouldn’t put anything past these weasels.
Russia Could Use Nuclear Weapons as Preventive Measure to Thwart Major Threat, Official Says
Russia’s military chief of staff said Saturday that Moscow could use nuclear weapons in preventive strikes in case of a major threat, the latest aggressive remarks from increasingly assertive Russian authorities.
“We have no plans to attack anyone, but we consider it necessary for all our partners in the world community to clearly understand … that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including preventively, including with the use of nuclear weapons,” Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said.
Wouldn’t it be nice for U.S. officials to be able to state the same warning? Instead of whining and kowtowing to the bad guys? No, I do NOT want to see a nuclear confrontation by ANYONE, but in order to be maintained, there must be strength behind it.
The reason Cubans go to the poll is because they are told to. This a nation that has been beaten into submission by its leaders. Besides, even if half the people stayed home in protest, the regime would say it had 99% turn out and nobody in the international media would a) be in a position to challenge it or b) have the desire to challenge it.
Wouldn’t it be nice for folks to actually know what life is like under a dictator? Perhaps they’d stop trying to push the same thing on us.