Slashdot Mirror

Well,

that was seeking for a pun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (it is a she, in case you don't see the 'R' ... and she is minister for education in saudi arabia). Well, while writing this I realize: She was minister for education.

But she: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/r... is minister for labour and development.

The one I actually was looking for is/was minister of finances/economy I believe ... can't find her now. Anyone has a hint?

In the following article the fire expert in Dubai says: "Mahmoud El-Shahat, a fire expert at the department told this website that most of the fires that break out start due to cigarette butts...":
http://www.emirates247.com/new...

I did not write that it caused fire, but advised to verify security camera footage, as cigarette butts are the main reason of fires in buildings in accordance with the fire experts living in the real world.

Here are some more examples:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/20...
http://uk.businessinsider.com/...

I JE'd about it, and tried to get a Slashdot frontpage submission. Linked stories?

After what you've learned over the past 3-4 months, it's hard to discredit this, outright.

A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each.

These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

The first cut in the undersea Internet cable occurred on January 23, in the Flag Telcoms FALCON submarine cable which was not reported. This has not been repaired yet and the cause remains unknown, explained Jaishanker.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February155.xml&section=theuae

Also worth noting is the pressure coming from the other end; current news includes the King of Saudi Arabia pushing the UN to sanction any country or group "insulting monotheistic religions." I guess it's ok if there are multiple gods, eh? Kali, etc.

The problem with Islam is that it isn't just a religion; it's also a complete political and social structure, and one that insists that it must dominate the world. There's no indication we can fix this; likely we're eventually going to be forced to eliminate it. Unfortunately, it'll probably take a lot more people suffering at the hands of this creed before we get up the collective social strength to just step on them like the cockroaches they are.

The day Islam settles down will probably be the day they pull another terrorist act, and a world leader with courage turns around and nukes Mecca. Until then, you're going to have your crowds of Islamic crazies giving everyone the stinkeye as if it was perfectly ok to do so.

"Act of War" except when such cyber warfare is directed at Iran by a join Israel/U.S. operation. Then it's just ... uh. Definitely not war

So, your thinking is what? That poor, peaceful Iran is being picked on? That the mean old US and Israel started a war on blameless Iran? Apart from the fact that you are speculating about the source of Stuxnet, the outrage is purely imaginary. If anything, Iran is lucky things aren't worse for it given its reckless, murderous behavior.

Israel Seizes Cargo Ship Carrying Tons of Iranian Weapons Bound For Hamas in Gaza

Hezbollah's stockpile bigger, deadlier

In the 2006 war, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into northern Israel. Most were inaccurate, short-range models, but the attacks killed at least 39 civilians and had a profound psychological effect on Israelis....

Hezbollah now has about 27,000 rockets and missiles, more than double its supply before the 2006 war, Israeli officials say. Acquisitions include Iranian missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv, they allege.

"We know without a doubt that the international embargo on the transfer of weapons to Hezbollah has been deliberately violated by the governments of Iran and Syria," said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman.

The U.S. government, which has designated Hezbollah a terrorist group, accuses Iran of providing arms, training and millions of dollars. Syria also has emerged as an arms supplier, not just a conduit for Iranian arms, Israeli officials say.

Iran Builds Rockets to Arm Hezbollah, Deter Sanctions (Update2)

August 4, 2006 06:05 EDT
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Many of the rockets Hezbollah is firing into Israel are made in Iran, demonstrating the Islamic republic's success in copying Chinese and Russian technology to build its own weapons industry.

The Shiite Muslim group's arsenal includes Iranian-built portable Katyusha rockets, Israeli Reserve Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser said. Hezbollah struck an Israeli ship on July 14 with an Iranian-made C802 Noor guided missile. The militia also has Iran's Zelzal rocket, with a range of 120 miles, enough to reach Tel Aviv from south Lebanon, said Yaakov Amidror, a retired major general who ran Israel's National Defense College.

List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2011
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2010
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2009
List of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, 2008

Iran says can cut energy to Europe, hit enemies (Reuters)

28 February 2010
Iran could make European countries suffer by cutting off energy supplies and can target any adversary with its missiles, a senior Iranian military official said on Sunday....

“Iran is standing on 50 percent of the world’s energy and should it so decide Europe will have to spend the winter in cold,” Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, said in a meeting with war veterans and volunteers in Kerman, according to Fars news agency.

“Our missiles are now able to target any spot in which the conspirators are in, and the c

It's quite absurd for you to call Iran dangerous; they haven't been at war for years.

You're joking right?

Longstanding Support for Terrorism

U.S. officials describe the Iranian regime as the world's "central banker of terrorism." Indeed, Tehran has a nine-figure line item in its budget to support terrorism, sending hundreds of millions of dollars to various groups each year; the payments to Hizballah alone are as much as $200 million annually. According to Canadian intelligence, "[I]n February 1999, it was reported that Palestinian police discovered documents that attest to the transfer of $35 million to Hamas from the Iranian Intelligence Service (MOIS), money reportedly meant to finance terrorist activities against Israeli targets." Illustrating how such support is part of official government policy, from 2001 to 2006, Iran transferred $50 million to Hizballah fronts in Lebanon by sending funds from its central bank through Bank Saderat's London subsidiary.

Iranian support for terrorism goes well beyond the financial realm, however. Its well-known sponsorship of Palestinian terrorist organizations, for example, has included training and related contributions. Shortly after the second intifada erupted in September 2000, the regime assigned Mughniyeh himself to help Palestinian militant groups. According to a former Clinton administration official, "Mughniyeh got orders from Tehran to work with Hamas"; he was tasked with assisting PIJ as well.

Similarly, according to the U.S. government, Iran's al-Qods Force -- a wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) -- has a "long history" of providing all types of support to Hizballah, including training, guidance, and arms. In addition to running training camps in Lebanon, al-Qods has trained more than 3,000 Hizballah operatives at its own facilities in Iran. The unit also played an important role in rearming Hizballah following the summer 2006 war with Israel. According to the Treasury Department, al-Qods has provided a wide variety of weapons and financial support to the Taliban as well, in support of the group's anti-coalition activity in Afghanistan.

Iran also keeps threatening to cut off the world's oil supply by closing the Straight of Hormuz.

Of course they are concerned that the US may invade since Iran has wealth to extract and won't play along with the US, so they're developing nuclear weapons.

That's a laugh. The US gets the oil it needs from other countries while Japan, China, and other US allies and friends buy Iran's oil. That also doesn't take into account the large oil reserves that the US has that are undeveloped.

No, the Iranian's have a very different outlook.
Ahmadinejad: Destroy Israel, End Crisis
Iran's missiles are ‘ready to destroy Israel’

“If this [an Israeli attack] happens, which, of course, we do not foresee, its ultimate result would be to expedite the last breath of the Zionist regime,” Ahmad Vahidi, the Iranian Defence Minister, said on state television.

Iran says can cut energy to Europe, hit enemies

“Iran is standing on 50 percent of the world’s energy and should it so decide Europe will have to spend the winter in cold,” Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, said in a meeting with war veterans and volunteers in Ker

By my count, we are probably dealing with as many as eight, maybe even nine, unexplained cut or damaged undersea cables within the last week, and not the mere three or four that most mainstream news media outlets in the United States are presently reporting. Given all this cable-cutting mayhem in the last several days, who knows but what there may possibly be other cut and/or damaged cables that have not made it into the news cycle, because they are lost in the general cable-cutting noise by this point. Nevertheless, let me enumerate what I can, and keep in mind, I am not pulling these out of a hat; all of the sources are referenced at the conclusion of the article; you can click through and look at all the evidence that I have. It's there if you care to read through it all 1) one off of Marseille, France 2) two off of Alexandria, Egypt 3) one off of Dubai, in the Persian Gulf 4) one off of Bandar Abbas, Iran in the Persian Gulf 5) one between Qatar and the UAE, in the Persian Gulf 6) one in the Suez, Egypt 7) one near Penang, Malaysia 8) initially unreported cable cut on 23 January 2008 (Persian Gulf?)

The article includes the following links as references to document the above list of believed cuts:

1) http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1202064573279&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
2) http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/business/?id=24186
3) http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February121.xml&section=theuae
4) http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080202132053.iohfg5ob&show_article=1
5) http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/04/2153455.htm
6) http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i03tUdyj8wf2Xa9P4trWEjqAJdyQ
7) http://www.arabianbusiness.com/510132-internet-problems-continue-with-fourth-cable-break?ln=en
8) http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=7980
9) https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean
10) http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/?iref=hpmostpop
11) http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/04/technology/cables.php
12) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
13) http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/31/Cut-cable-disrupts-Internet-in-Middle-East_1.html
14)

A shit didn't cut the egypt lines.

The transport ministry added that footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

'The ministry's maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area,' a statement said.

'The area is also marked on maps as a no-go zone and it is therefore ruled out that the damage to the cables was caused by ships,' the statement added.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theworld&xfile=data/theworld/2008/february/theworld_february77.xml

I am with you on the Iran oil market theory - in fact I would say that would be the primary reason for military action in any case.

Of course, there's increasing evidence that contradicts the "ship's anchor" theory as well.

Just some stuff I have in my bookmarks.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015804.php
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4006289a12.html
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2007/June/theworld_June713.xml&section=theworld
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22663795-601,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21403909-2,00.html?from=public_rss
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21525531-421,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21785791-421,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22286025-661,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,,21359123-661,00.html

Not that small. For example most (75%) Pakistanis who live in Bradford in the UK are married to their own first cousins, and they have a high level of recessive genetic disorders as a result. In response to pressure from Ann Cryer MP, the UK has raised the age at which husbands/wives can be brought into the UK to 21 years, to discourage forced marriages.

First: Diebold changed motherboards in Maryland in 2005, and denies any votes were lost.

Gilles W. Burger, chairman of the State Board of Elections, said this week that he and fellow members were initially told that Diebold was performing a "technical refresher" of the voting machines during July and August last year. He later learned that the refresher was really the repair of a flaw discovered by Diebold about three years earlier but not disclosed to him and other board members. The "motherboard" of each unit - the main circuit board that holds all of the machine's critical parts - had a glitch that could cause the machines to freeze.

Second:

"The government should know who owns our voting machines; that is a national security concern," said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, who asked the Bush administration in May to review the Sequoia takeover.

Third, about those "responsible" for decision making re: national security:

The US Constitution established Congress as America's premier arm of government. George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their neoconservative allies used 9/11 to turn Congress into a rubber stamp like the old Supreme Soviet. Look at the embarrassing Republican leaders in Congress, the world's greatest legislature, and the heir to the great Roman Senate:

The shambling Senate leader, Dennis Hastert, was a wrestling coach. The once feared House leader, Tom Delay, was a cockroach exterminator before going to Congress. They were barely worthy of political office in Dogpatch, Texas, never mind Washington.

Both Republicans and Democrats are steeped in Washington's endemic corruption and influence peddling due to the constant need to raise campaign funds by kow-towing to special interests. Members of both parties voted like clapping seals for the Iraq War. But Republicans took the lead in promoting and sustaining that totally unnecessary conflict, now estimated to likely cost upwards of $1 trillion before it is lost.

Q--Now, if fighting supposed terrorism, is so damn important, why the hell even bother w/Chavex?

Q--How do Bush, Cheney and their cronies make their money?

A--OIL

Since the Reuters article doesn't talk about the relation of this software to the Counter-Strike, and was confused myself by an article by the german magazine Der Spiegel, which states that there is no connection. However, having searched Google News and some other search engines, it seems that this Iranian software is in fact a map or mod to Counter-Strike (the Half-Life mod). The best evidence for this I could find was an article supposedly quoting Ahmadreza Nouri, who is apparently one of the designers. I also found some other pages supporting this view.

They want to stop someone in particular from looking at nude beaches. Too much of a temptation, I guess.

Seriously. Even wanting to bitch about piracy there and now is disgraceful when there are more important things at hand.

I have yet to hear the Ayatollahs (let alone one of them) denounce the violence.

You just proved his point - they've been doing that from the very beginning. Maybe you should ask yourself if your news sources are trustworthy?

(While doing some quick googling to find sources in English on what I've already read in my native language, I'm a bit amazed as to how extremely US centric Google News is. I've never noticed this before - or it's part of the propaganda machine this thread is all about)

http://www.arabamericannews.com/newsarticle.php?ar ticleid=4475

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfi le=data/theuae/2006/February/theuae_February319.xm l&section=theuae

http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&stor y_id=65780

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/13/news/cartoo n.php

http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=8873

Forgive me for posting this URL here:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4361260.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4660796.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1 558612
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfi le=data/theuae/2006/January/theuae_January687.xml& section=theuae&col=

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=danish+cart oons+upset+muslims&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Forgive me for posting this URL here:

http://www.di2.nu/files/Muhammed_Cartoons_Jyllands _Posten.html

The site is apparantly run by idiots, judging by some of the racist sites it links to, but they are one of the few places online that I've seen the actual cartoons referred to on an almost daily basis now on sites such as:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4361260.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4660796.stm
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1 558612
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfi le=data/theuae/2006/January/theuae_January687.xml& section=theuae&col=

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=danish+cart oons+upset+muslims&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

What has that to do with freedom of speech on the internet?

"Because, the amount of Americans bitching on Europe clearly shows they have: 1) never been in Europe 2) never read a European newspaper or internet site! I suggest to all those to visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/ [bbc.co.uk] for some news from and about Europe!"

Says who? You? I've been to Europe multiple times and have relatives there. I also read the Economist. Allow me to laugh at the BBC. Whilst it is a better-than-usual source for news it is far from without its liberal bias. Please google "BBC bias".

"This whole internet thing is not about the technology, neither about some fucked up dictators hooking up with Europe or vice versa [...] Europe stands on the same ground as the USA concerning freedom of speech and democracy."

Well considering the Anti-American sentiment from the German outgoing chancellor, a powerhouse in the EU, I would say you are wrong.

"dictators in Latin America, Middle East, South Asia and Africa who are installed by the USA!"

As opposed to the colonial conquests and rape of nations by most the EU nations from eras gone by? You see the problem with today's left-leaning Anti-American mindset is that they are stuck in historical context. Yes the US has done some underhanded things but which nation hasn't in the past? Does that give them a free pass? No. But it just shows how "now-centered", and without historical context, the left are and how vehement they are in their hatred to a modern phenomenon and administration. Nothing is ever going to change you know. There will always be progressives raging against the system full of hate to whatever dominant power is out there at the time. Stop thinking you are special and that somehow the US is the most evil nation to have ever lived. It's pathetic and without historical context.