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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/15/2012 10:41:26 AM
	Over 100 militants attack Pakistani police station Associated Press – 3 hrs ago Associated Press/Shakil Adil - Supporters of Pakistani political party Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), attend a rally to condemn the attack on 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, who was shot last Tuesday by the Taliban for speaking out in support of education for women, in Karachi, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 14, 2012. Tens of thousands rallied in Pakistan's largest city Sunday in support of a 14-year-old girl who was shot and critically wounded by the Taliban for promoting girls' education and criticizing the militant group. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil) ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Pakistani official says over 100militants have attacked a police station in the northwest, killing six policemen. Two of the killed policemen were beheaded. Police officer Ishrat Yar says the attack near the main northwest city of Peshawar started late on Sunday night and triggered a gunbattle that lasted for several hours. The militants were armed with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and assault rifles. Yar also says 12 policemen were wounded in the attack in the small town of Matni, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Peshawar. One of the beheaded policemen was a senior official who commanded several police stations in the area. Yar says the militants burned the police station and four police vehicles before they escaped.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/15/2012 10:43:00 AM
	Judge in Sept. 11 trial at Guantanamo asked for rules that would shield torture testimony By Ben Fox, The Associated Press \| Associated Press – 8 hrs ago GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A U.S. military judge is considering broad security rules for the war crimes tribunal of five Guantanamo prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, including measures to prevent the accused from publicly revealing what happened to them in the CIA's secret network of overseas prisons. Prosecutors have asked the judge at a pretrial hearing starting Monday to approve what is known as a protective order that is intended to prevent the release of classified informationduring the eventual trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has portrayed himself as the mastermind of the terror attacks, and four co-defendants. Lawyers for the defendants say the rules, as proposed, will hobble their defence. TheAmerican Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a challenge to the protective order, says the restrictions will prevent the public from learning what happened to Mohammed and his co-defendants during several years of CIA confinement and interrogation. The protective order requires the court to use a 40-second delay during court proceedings so that spectators, who watch behind sound-proof glass, can be prevented from hearing — from officials, lawyers or the defendants themselves — the still-classified details of the CIA's rendition and detention program. "What we are challenging is the censorship of the defendant's testimony based on their personal knowledge of the government's torture and detention of them," said Hina Shamsi, an ACLU attorney who will be arguing against the protective order during the pretrial hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba. The protective order, which is also being challenged by a coalition of media organizations that includes The Associated Press, is overly broad because it would "classify the defendants own knowledge, thoughts and experience," Shamsi said in an interview. "It's a truly extraordinary and chilling proposal that the government is asking the court to accept," she said. Protective orders are standard method in civilian and military trials to set rules for handling evidence for the prosecution and defence. Military prosecutors argue in court papers that the Sept. 11 trial requires additional security because the accused have personal knowledge of classified information such as interrogation techniques and knowledge about which other countries provided assistance in their capture. "Each of the accused is in the unique position of having had access to classified intelligence sources and methods," the prosecution says in court papers. "The government, like the defence, must protect that classified information from disclosure." Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor for the military commissions, said Sunday that the security precautions are necessary to prevent the release information that could harm U.S. intelligence operations or personnel around the world, and not to prevent embarrassing the government or to coverup wrongdoing. "Our government's sources and methods are not an open book," Martins said. The U.S. government has acknowledged that before the defendants were taken to Guantanamo in September 2006 they were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as the simulated drowning method known as water-boarding. Defence attorneys say the treatment will be used to form the basis of their defence but the proposed protective order limits their ability to make that case in court and in public advocacy on behalf of their clients. "It's a way in which the government can hide what it did to these men during the period of detention by the CIA," said Army Capt. Jason Wright, a Pentagon-appointed attorney for Mohammed. "I think we need to bring the truth to the light of day on these issues." The judge's approval of the protective order, which may not happen this week, must occur before the Sept. 11 case can move forward. Defence lawyers cannot begin to review classified evidence against their clients until it is in place. The protective order is the most contentious of about two dozen preliminary motions scheduled to be heard during a pretrial hearing expected to run through Friday. Other matters include whether the defendants can be required to attend court sessions, what clothing they are allowed to wear and defence requests for additional resources for what is considered one of the most significant terrorism prosecutions in U.S. history. The families of people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks have been invited to military installations in the U.S. states of New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland and New York City to watch the pretrial hearings, which are closed to the general public. An earlier round of hearings in May was also transmitted to viewing locations for relatives of the victims, survivors of the attacks, and emergency personnel who responded to the disaster. Mohammed and his four co-defendants are being prosecuted in a special military tribunal for war-time offences known as a military commission. They were arraigned May 5 on charges that include terrorism, conspiracy and 2,976 counts of murder in violation of the law of war, one count for each known victim of the Sept. 11 attacks at the time the charges were filed. They could get the death penalty if convicted. Mohammed, a Pakistani citizen who grew up in Kuwait and attended college in North Carolina, has told military officials that he planned the Sept. 11 attacks "from A to Z" and was involved in about 30 other terrorist plots. He has said, among other things, that he personally beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The other defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh; Walid bin Attash; Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi; and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali. Their arraignment was an unruly, 13-hour proceeding in which the defendants stalled proceedings by refusing the use the court translation system and ignoring the judge. Subsequent hearings to handle pretrial motions were postponed because of scheduling conflicts, the Muslim holy period of Ramadan and Tropical Storm Isaac. Several more pretrial hearings must be held to litigate hundreds of motions before the start of the trial, which is likely at least a year away.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/15/2012 5:24:02 PM
	Landmark mosque in Aleppo burned in fighting By ZEINA KARAM \| Associated Press – 3 hrs ago A member of the Free Syrian Army inspects damaged houses in Bustan al Basha in Aleppo city in northern Syria October 12, 2012. REUTERS/Zain Karam (SYRIA - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS) BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad ordered on Monday immediate repairs to a historic mosque in the city ofAleppo, a move likely aimed at containing Muslim outrage after fierce fighting between rebels and regime forces set parts of the mosque on fire over the weekend. Government troops had been holed up inside the 12th century Umayyad mosque, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in downtown Aleppo for several months before rebels fighting to topple Assad launched a push to liberate it this week. Activist Mohammad al-Hassan said the army had been using the mosque as a base because of its strategic location in the center of the old city of Aleppo. "It's all blackened now," he said of the mosque, speaking by phone from Aleppo The mosque, known in Syria as the Jami al Kabir, or the Great Mosque, is one of the oldest and largest in Syria, built around a vast courtyard and enclosed in a compound adjacent to Aleppo's medieval citadel. In the past few weeks, rebels controlled one entrance to the mosque compound while the army controlled the other. It is unclear how exactly the fire and damage occurred amid the intense clashes but the regime and the rebels are now trading accusations over who is responsible for the fire. Videos posted by activists online show a large fire and black smoke raging inside the mosque on Saturday, and later, its blackened, pockmarked walls. Debris is strewn on the floors where worshippers once prayed on green and gold carpeting. The videos are consistent with AP's own reporting on the incident. "Assad's thugs set the mosque on fire as a punishment for being defeated by the Free Syrian Army," the caption on one video read, referring to the rebels fighting to topple Assad. The government on Monday said it pushed back the rebels from the mosque after the weekend fighting, though activists are giving conflicting reports on who controls it. In another video, a rebel inside the mosque holds up a torn copy of the Muslim holy book, or Quran, saying: "These are our Qurans, this is our religion, our history." Rebels and activists had complained earlier that soldiers and pro-government militiamen wrote offensive graffiti on the mosque walls and drank alcohol — banned in Islam — while inside. The rebel in the video is seen holding up an empty bottle, saying it was alcohol. The mosque is the latest victim of the violence plaguing Syria. On Sept. 29, a fire caused by the fighting swept through Aleppo's covered market, burning more than 500 shops in the narrow, vaulted passageways. Some of the country's most significant historical sites have been turned into bases for soldiers and rebels, including historic citadels and Turkish bath houses. In a possible effort to contain the fallout from the damage at the mosque, Assad on Monday issued a presidential decree to form a committee to repair the mosque by the end of 2013. "He burns down the country and its heritage, and then he says he will rebuild it. Why do you destroy it to begin with?" said al-Hassan, the activist. Rami Martini, chief of Aleppo's Chamber of Tourism, blamed the rebels for targeting Aleppo's monuments and archeological treasures to try to frame the government. He said the losses were impossible to estimate because of the fighting around the area. He said that despite the fire, the structure of the mosque appears to be intact though one of the entrances of the mosque that leads to the ancient market was burnt, as well as another, in the courtyard. The platform inside the mosque, or minbar, and the prayer niche were also damaged by the fire, Martini said. He added that the wooden minbar, is identical to the one burnt in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969. Martini said valuables were also stolen from the mosque's library, including a transparent box that contained a strand purported to be hair of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as centuries-old handwritten copies of the Quran. "This could be the most serious damage since the 1830s, when an earthquake damaged the mosque," said Martini, who is specialized in repairing archeological sites and monuments. The mosque's last renovation began about 20 years ago and was official inaugurated in 2006 when Aleppo was chosen that year as the Capital of Islamic Culture. Aleppo has been the scene of intense fighting, particularly since rebels launched a new offensive more than two weeks ago to try to dislodge regime troops. The fighting has devastated large areas of the city of 3 million, Syria's former business capital. Also on Monday, Turkey forced a plane from Armenia bound for Syria to land to search the cargo for weapons. Foreign ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said Turkey granted the plane carrying aid for Aleppo permission to fly over its airspace only on condition it can search its cargo for possible military equipment. After the search, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said the plane would be allowed to continue on to Syria. He said the cargo contained humanitarian aid as stated. Turkey forced a Syrian passenger plane flying from Moscow to Damascus to land in Ankara last week. Turkey said the Syrian Air plane was carrying military gear while Russia said that the equipment was spare parts for radar systems. Syria and Turkey barred each other's aircraft from flying over their territory over the weekend after a week of exchanging fire across their volatile border. The Turkish government said the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey surpassed the 100,000 mark on Monday, and that about 7,000 more were waiting at the Turkish border to get in. The New York-based Human Rights Watch watchdog said Sunday that over 10,000 Syrians fleeing the violence were stuck on the borders with Iraq and Turkey and called on both neighboring countries to keep their borders "open at all times to people fleeing threats to their lives and other forms of persecution." A Turkish government official insisted Turkey had not closed its borders to refugees but said stricter controls were slowing down their admission. The U.N. peace envoy to Syria called on Iran to help achieve a cease-fire in Syria during the upcoming Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, which starts next week. Lakhdar Brahimi's remarks Monday came at the end of his visit to Iran where he met Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a major backer of Syria's Bashar Assad. Brahimi is touring the region for talks on ways to resolve the Syrian crisis. His appeal for a cease-fire for Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, is unlikely to resonate in Syria where activists say more than 32,000 people have been killed in the past 19 months. Previous calls for a cease-fire have largely been ignored. ___ Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Suzan Fraser in Ankara and Frank Jordans in Istanbul.
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/15/2012 5:26:54 PM
	Accusations mount of Hezbollah fighting in Syria If hard evidence emerges of the Shiite militant group's involvement, it would increase tensions in Lebanon where armed partisans on opposite sides live in close proximity. By Nicholas Blanford \| Christian Science Monitor – 3 hrs ago Beside the arrow-straight road between the northernLebanon town of Qaa and the border with Syria stands a small, bland mosque decorated with the yellow flags of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah. The mosque is the lone Hezbollah bastion amid a flat agricultural landscape populated mainly by Sunni Lebanese and used as a safe haven by Lebanese and Syrian members of the Free Syrian Army. But parked discreetly – and incongruously – in the shade of a tree beside the mosque is an ambulance waiting to transport wounded Hezbollah fighters returning from fighting against the FSA over the border, says Syrian fighter Hussein, a former irrigation engineer who today heads a small unit of the FSA’s Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade, named after the nearby Syrian border village. Accusations of Hezbollah involvement in Syria have strengthened in recent weeks amid reports of fighters killed in combat being returned to Lebanon for quiet burial. Hezbollah, along with its patron Iran, are key allies of the Assad regime, together forming an “axis of resistance” to confront Israel and Western ambitions for the Middle East that spans the region. RELATED – Hezbollah 101: Who is the militant group, and what does it want? If hard confirmation arises that Hezbollah is playing a role in Syria it will increase tensions in Lebanon, which is already attempting to distance itself as much as possible from the reverberations of the bloody conflict roiling its larger neighbor. The Lebanese government – which is dominated by allies of Hezbollah – formally follows a policy of disassociation from the Syria crisis, although it has merely averted its eyes as Syrian rebel fighters turn parts of the territory along the border into a de facto safe haven from the fighting. GROWING EVIDENCE In response to intensifying speculation over Hezbollah’s alleged activities in Syria, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s leader, said last week that the Assad regime had not asked him for military assistance. He acknowledged, however, that the were more than two dozen villages and farms located just inside Syria, north of the border with Lebanon, that are home to around 30,000 Lebanese, many of whom are Shiites and members of Hezbollah. Mr. Nasrallah said that they had been coming under threat from “armed groups” and had chosen to defend themselves. “Some of them decided to flee the area, but most of them stayed in their towns and started to arm themselves,” he said. “The residents of these towns took the decision to stay and defend themselves against armed groups and did not engage in battle between the regime and the opposition,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech. Nearly two weeks ago, Hezbollah held a prominent funeral for Ali Nassif, a senior commander who died “while performing his jihadi duties”, a standard phrase used by the group when announcing deaths of fighters in circumstances other than direct combat with Israel, such as training accidents. The Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade militants claim that Nassif was killed in the border village of Rableh and was deliberately targeted for assassination. “We waited for him to emerge from a school which they use as a command post. When we saw a black Grand Cherokee with tinted windows leave the school, we guessed it was him and hit it with an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade],” says Hussein. Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz. He and other members of the Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade interviewed over a 24-hour period while resting in Masharih al-Qaa claim that their most formidable foes across the border in Syria are not Syrian Army soldiers, but battle-hardened veteran Hezbollah fighters. They say the Hezbollah men are helping the Assad regime regain control of a cluster of villages and towns in the vicinity of the Syrian town of Qusayr, five miles north of the border. “The regime’s soldiers are cowards against us. But we fear the Hezbollah men,” says Hussein. He added that he had encountered some Hezbollah fighters on the road beside the border in Jusiyah and had approached them with bottles of water, pretending to be a supportive civilian. “None of them were under 35 years old. They were very professional and tough fighters. You can tell they are superior fighters from the way they move in battle and how they fight,” he says. SELF-DEFENSE Accusations of Hezbollah involvement in Syria have been aired by opponents of the Assad regime since protests erupted in March last year. Many of the early accounts were less than convincing. Similarly, YouTube videos purporting to show Hezbollah fighters in Syria were inconclusive and often posted by people politically opposed to the party. But in recent months there have been persistent reports of Hezbollah assisting the Assad regime with combat advice and passing on the group’s formidable guerrilla skills to the pro-regime Shabiha militia, with the goal of turning them into an effective paramilitary force. Hezbollah views the conflict in Syria as a confrontation with strategic consequences for the region. The collapse of the Assad regime and its replacement with a Sunni-dominated regime moderate in its foreign policy and more closely aligned with Turkey and Saudi Arabia would tear out the geo-strategic heart of the “axis of resistance.” “Hezbollah has no choice but to be there,” says a prominent member of a Shiite clan in theBekaa Valley who is close to Hezbollah. “The opposition has fighters from Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia helping them, so why shouldn’t the Assad regime receive the help of Hezbollah?” Furthermore, Hezbollah is not the only Lebanese entity accused of partisan involvement in Syria. Several hundred Lebanese Sunnis have volunteered for the Free Syrian Army, joining other Arab nationals drawn to the conflict, according to Lebanese supporters of the Syrian opposition. Others provide shelter for the FSA in north Lebanon, allowing militants to rest, regroup, and plan. There have been several media reports – the latest in yesterday's edition of the British newspaper The Guardian – that Okab Saqr, a Lebanese parliamentarian allied to former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, is in Turkey organizing the transfer of Saudi-funded arms to the Syrian opposition. A Washington-based analyst who recently visited the Turkish border area with Syria said that Saqr’s name “is all over the place.” Nowhere is the divergence between Hezbollah support for the Assad regime and Lebanese Sunni backing for the Syrian opposition more starkly illustrated than in the northern Bekaa Valley. The western flank of the valley is a Hezbollah stronghold and allows access for fighters to the Shiite-populated villages just over the border in Syria. The eastern flank, including Masharih al-Qaa, contains a sizeable Sunni population – some of whom are FSA volunteers and almost all of whom are sympathetic to the Syrian opposition. That has created an unusual situation: Just north of the border, Hezbollah fighters and Syrian troops battle Lebanese and Syrian FSA militants, while just south of the frontier, the two foes eye each other warily, but peacefully, from their respective corners of the northern Bekaa. Even the lone Hezbollah mosque, despite being surrounded by hostile FSA elements, has been left untouched. Similarly, Hezbollah has made no effort to engage the FSA in Masharih al-Qaa. “If Hezbollah decided to come after us here, it would start a civil war,” says Ismael, a Lebanese resident of Masharih al-Qaa who serves with the Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade. “And nobody wants that.” IN PICTURES: Reaching a critical juncture in Syria Related stories Hezbollah 101: Who is the militant group, and what does it want? Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz. Syrian rebels fight to keep route to safe havens in Lebanon Read this story at csmonitor.com
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 10/15/2012 5:44:57 PM
	Sooner or later, U.S. help to Arab allies could prove costly in many ways Our Allies May Be Arming the Next Osama bin Laden By John Hudson \| The Atlantic Wire – 3 hrs ago For months, the U.S. has been helping Arab allies coordinate arms shipments to rebel fighters in Syria. Unfortunately, most of those weapons are going to radical Islamists instead of secular opposition groups. According to a classified government report uncovered by The New York Times' David Sanger, the flood of Saudi and Qatari weapons into Syria is strengthening the hand of extremist groups in the country, including those with ties to Al Qaeda. “The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” a U.S. official says. Not only is there the fear that the weapons could bolster anti-American insurgent groups, but these extremist groups could hold sway in a future Syrian government should President Bashar al-Assad be removed. “The longer this goes on, the more likely those groups will gain strength,” a Middle East diplomat tells the Times. RELATED: Will the U.S. Take On Syria Next? It's the sort of dark irony reminiscent of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, in which an influx of foreign militants and weaponry to the mujahideen gave rise to blowback, and even provided a springboard for more ambitious extremists like Osama bin Laden. As it stands, the U.S. is not sending arms directly to Syrian opposition groups, it's reportedly just helping Saudi Arabia and Qatar do it with lighter weapons like rifles and grenades. But this latest assessment, which Sanger says has been delivered to President Obama, calls into question the White House strategy of indirect intervention. RELATED: Seattle Cops on Twitter, Skulls, and Hunting That's not to say that the alternatives are great. So far, 25,000 Syrians have been killed in the conflict, the borders of NATO ally Turkey have been threatened and the opposition has been badly outgunned. But no one can say with any certainty whether giving more sophisticated weaponry to the opposition would allow rebels to overthrow the regime or simply increase the bloodshed. RELATED: Would It Be Cheaper to Bribe the Taliban? While the Obama administration's handling of the Syrian civil war has become an issue in the presidential campaign, it's not clear what Mitt Romney would do differently if elected. Last Monday, he told an audience at the Virginia Military Institute that he would give the rebels who "share our values" the weapons they need to "defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets,” which suggests he may approve the transfer of antiaircraft and antitank systems. RELATED: Karzai Picks Fight with Petraeus Over War Strategy Obviously, no one thinks these Islamist groups "share our values," but it's proven extremely difficult to ensure that fundamentalists don't get their hands on these weapons. It's not clear exactly how many foreign jihadists have entered the fray, but last month, the United Nations' International Commission of Inquiry said it believed there was "an increasing presence of foreign elements, including Jihadist militants, in Syria" who have been radicalizing the rebels. Others say the influx of foreign militants has been marginal. Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNN "They are realistically about 2,000-3,000 in number. Foreign fighter does not equate with jihadi. Not everyone is driven by jihadi ideology."
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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