Hmm just heard that a fireball was seen exploding in the sky over Madrid on thursday---

And this is what a town on lake Geneva looks like these days..

Mubarak Al-Kabeer Shootout:
Security forces attacked a house and chased suspects from one area to another apparently...In Qurain...5 dead.
Up to 10 suspects were chased, five dead and 4 captured...5 security officers were injured and one CIVILIAN again!

11:41am KTV broadcast about it for 1 minute and then goes to the typical show by bearded man, and how you can wash for prayers with yellowish water and tree leaves and if a pig fell into a salt mill and became salt then its ok to eat it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow i am glad that they told me that because thats what we really needed to know in this day and age.


news sources online:
Lt. Col. Adel al-Hashash, an Interior Ministry spokesman, told KUNA that the forces are chasing the "terrorists" from one location to another. CNN

A witness, who lives in the area, said intermittent shots were first heard at 3 a.m. and heavy gunfire broke out four hours later.(Khaleej Times)

One civilian has been killed in a gunbattle between Kuwaiti security forces and suspected militants in a residential area of southern Kuwait, security sources say.(Reuters)

Jackie is in the area, so check in on her...

Iraqi Elections

Today is the day that Iraqis vote...
Just over 13 million are registered to vote . The population is over 45 million...half of which are children..

22 dead in Iraq as people waiting to vote are shot at and polling stations are bombed...

The Guardian has a section just about the Iraq Elections with news and updates...

A Poll in Iraq reveals that 38.4% thought that elections today were for a president, while 38% guessed TNA..


The Daily Outrage has an interesting eco-snippet:

"Out of 146 countries, the US ranks 45th in environmental sustainability, sandwiched between Armenia and Myanmar, and behind such nations as Botswana (34), Bhutan (39), Congo (39) and even Russia (33), that bastion of eco-consciousness. The findings, part of a join project by Yale and Columbia Universities, are based on myriad factors, including air and water quality, biodiversity, acid rain, overfishing and environmental cooperation with neighbors. While the US does surpass Israel (62) and Great Britain (66), lagging twenty spots behind the Central African Republic (25) should be cause for alarm."
(IN CASE YOU'RE CURIOUS: Kuwait is ranked 138th out of 146!!!!! The UAE is 110th, Saudi is 136th, Syria is 117th, Tunis is 55th, Worse than us are Uzbekistan, N.Korea, Haiti, Armenia)

SALMIYA SHOOTOUT UPDATE:

Saw a white helicopter hovering over salmiya at around 8:40 this morning, this must have been what it was about..

"Witnesses and security sources said police commandos had cordoned off a block in the capital’s mainly residential Salmiya district and were firing at two buildings in the area.
“They (police) were shooting at these buildings with M16s and rocket-propelled grenades,” one witness told Reuters. “The shooting is coming from various locations.”
Several police cars cut off access to the block, and a helicopter hovered overhead. Ambulances were seen racing into the area, but there was no immediate word on casualties."Khaleej Times

11:45am:
The shooting seems to have reached Hawalli. This is from people in the area...the news has yet to say anything..whether it is the same group that have reached Hawalli or whether it is a separate incident is unknown.

1pm:
The news ticker says that one suspect dead, one injured and three arrested...as for the security forces, one dead and three or four injured.

1:05 pm
Only on KTV would the reporter on the scene say that the operation has 'tammat bsalam', salam who exactly??..A Bahraini resident of the building was killed in the gunfire...there are shots on KTV of blood spattered walls and blood soaked floors they even showed a shot of a man's body on the steps with his body contorted so that you could not tell where his legs were they were twisted under his torso and his head was bleeding profusely...Why were they shooting from the ground at a residential building? Didn't they think that civilians would get in the way? The building is riddled with gunshots.

2:20
Three suspects dead, one security officer and one civilian also dead.

5:30
Different reports about the number killed..some say 5 others 3.

For all you guys in Salmiya, there has been a gun battle going on for the past two hours...
hope all are ok.

"A gun battle has erupted in Kuwait after police raided a building where militants were believed to be hiding.
Police cordoned off an area of the city, from where gunfire and small explosions were heard, reports say.
Details of the incident remain limited, although one witness told the AFP news agency the shooting began at 0930 (0630 GMT) on a main street.
There has been a spate of violence in Kuwait which some say is linked to militants connected to al-Qaeda."BBC

Residents I know have heard shooting and police and there are very few people out on the road in the area.

News

Well well, the scientists are at it again...this time "tinkering" with the smallpox virus...trying to genetically modify it...supposedly in order to counter a bio-threat..except that the expert who worked on eliminating smallpox says they are playing a deadly game, since they might actually produce a strain more ..well...um..deadly.

Eighteen robot soldiers are heading for Iraq to fight insurgents in Iraq...yup that's what tax money is for people...

The marine centered diet of the people of the arctic circle has made them the healthiest on the planet..but thanks to the world's out of control pollution, they have to now give up their traditional foods or risk being poisoned. "The Arctic has been transformed into the planet's chemical trash can, the final destination for toxic waste that originates thousands of miles away."

Iraqi Elections (January 30):

"There will be an 8pm-6am curfew in many parts of the country, a three-day holiday, no travel between provinces and a ban on the use of most cars. Baghdad international airport will be closed for two days, and civilians will be forbidden from carrying weapons. Anyone caught breaking the rules will be detained, a statement said." (Independent)
Isn't freedom wonderful..and fair elections must be a hoot..can't wait till we get to vote like that..
Not to mention the old news that "A study published by the Lancet says the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the US-led invasion" (BBC) and also " a new US intelligence estimate foresees the elections being followed by more violence and possible civil war. " (Nation)
Overseas voter registration had to be extended, due to poor voter turnout Less than one in 10!... And further news is that Zarqawi has declared war on the elections..that's all this brutal farce needed.
"The violence in Iraq means that its elections will be the first among dozens of transitional elections over the past two decades -- since democracy began to sweep through eastern Europe, the old Soviet Union, Latin America and Africa -- that will not have an international observer force touring polling stations to assess the vote's credibility, election experts say"(Wash. Post)

To listen to a talk about the elections by Juan Cole (professor at U. of Michigan and also the blogger of Informed Comment) go here.

Tsunami Update:
The death toll looks to exceed the latest figure of 225,000, thanks to the war torn regions' contributions...the deaths in those areas had not been counted---Christian aid group in Tsunami hit village in Tamil Nadu refuses to help Hindus who will not convert! WOW!--- The Indonesian government has broken the cease-fire agreed to with rebels and is boasting that it has killed 150 of them. The cease-fire was supposed to have been a time to focus on aiding Tsunami victims.

Finally, the news mix:
There are Arabic superheroes out there, and they sound pretty interesting---A man was found in caves after having been missing for over 30 days. He survived by eating wood and clay--- Massachusets, Rhode Island and New Jersey have declared emergencies due to extreme weather conditions. Stay inside or you freeze, apparently---teenage girls and women still jailed in Afghanistan for running away from fixed marriages to old men.. Too bad freedom and democracy are just the new names for the old Taliban lifestyle--- You can see a photo slide show of the inauguration protests that got thousands out onto the cold streets .

http://www.commondreams.org/

That's it for today, and it's more than enough.

News

Condi Rice should be struggling to get that big foot out of her mouth after calling the Tsunami a "wonderful opportunity" for the US to show off its soft side...its compassion...and she added :"I think it has paid great dividends for us" ...the compassionate side should be especially convincing after that compassionate remark...even a disaster can have that bunch gloating about how rosy it will be for them...nothing new.

US TV networks are pixillating rear ends on a cartoon show, are censoring film scenes of a nude woman being deactivated after radiation exposure and are generally starting to behave like KTV..The FCC has been fining networks for 'indecency'...

If you are in the mood to vomit, here are new pictures of Abu Ghraib torture...this time by the British troops..

Article 5 (UDHR)
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.(Convention against Torture)


This deserves to be quoted in full:

A "SEX bomb" that would make enemy soldiers irresistible to each other was considered by the US military.Declassified documents reveal the Pentagon toyed with the idea of an aphrodisiac chemical weapon in 1994.
The gas would have made enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. The weapon's developers said homosexual behaviour among troops would deal a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.
The plans, unearthed from a US air force laboratory in Ohio, were published in New Scientist magazine.

------------------------------------

IRAQ ELECTIONS NEWS:

Iraq Elections: Farce of the Century by Felicity Arbuthnot
"the election is not alone fatally flawed, it is illegal.... far from 'free and fair' and heralding Iraqi 'democracy' they are entirely engineered by Bush's man"...
..."names of those standing for election are not widely publicized, many names are indeed unknown and little or no manifestos have been published. However, what is publicized are the names and addresses of all who register to vote, they are displayed - in Iraq and all voting centers abroad - at all polling centers. This is simply and purely 'intimidation' .... disclosing names and addresses is highly dangerous, no one will be safe within or without polling stations, now or later,"
"Where the external votes will be counted and by whom and under what independent monitoring body is unannounced and unknown"

New Intelligence Reports Raise Questions About U.S. Mission in Iraq
by Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott
Instead of stabilizing the country, national elections Jan. 30 are likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA and other intelligence agencies predict, according to senior officials who've seen the classified reports

----------------------------------------------------

Kuwait News:

Weapons found in Dha7yat Abdullah Salem, including 9 bombs --- 20 to 25 Kuwaiti and Saudi men are in custody---"Kuwait's banks rake in record earnings for 2004 Gulf bank posts $255 million profit, kuwait financial house hits $254 million"

News Mix:

Red meat dramatically increases the risk of cancer---A fish with a human face found in Korea---Arabic is now the fastest growing foreign language studied in the US and parts of Europe..

Enjoy the cloudy day, and a safe 3eid to you all..

I was at the bank and there was a woman, fully covered in black, having an argument with the very patient and polite bank employees who were dealing with her. She was refusing to comply with certain laws that they needed to follow in order to deal with her request and she was using pretty unecessary language to try and get them to do it anyway. They kept telling her that they couldn't carry out her request concerning the account of her 'dependent' without certain documents she should provide and she was getting really angry..they finally convinced her there was nothing they could do and she left mumbling racial insults at the woman employee who was Egyptian..apparently religion in this case only requires that you walk around completely covered, as though your sexiness would be too much for humans otherwise..it does not however require you to follow simple official rules, or to be polite, or to understand when people are calmly explaining facts to you and it also does not stop you from being a racist, arrogant fully grown brat.

Also, at the same unfortunate bank, a queue had formed... people waiting for the teller booths...it was mostly men, but there was a woman in the line..she was keeping a fair distance between herself and the man in front of her, and the man behind her was at a safe distance..when she got to the teller, the man behind her started loudly complaining that they should have numbers instead of standing in line..and he repeated over and over again 'ya3ni ryayeel u 7areem wagfeen ib nafs il saf' ???? As though that was the drama of the day..he stood a mile away from a woman in line! So bloody what? Are they going to jump each other and commit untold sins because they stood in a line?? Get over it for God's sake, and find a more important thing to worry about..the sexualisation of every single thing in this country is the reason we have so many guys flashing people on every corner, so much perversion (by which i do not mean anything that consenting adults get up to, i mean things that hurt others or oneself) so much idiocy masquerading as faith..enough already..there are serious problems in the world and there is nothing positive that an obsession with 'mathahir' and bastardised morality can contribute..

News

The destruction of Babylon:
LONDON: As the US prepared to hand back the ancient ruins of Babylon to Iraqi authorities at the weekend, a leading British archaeologist claimed US-led troops had "irrevocably contaminated" a site that dates to the dawn of history (Australian)

"About 300,000 square metres of the surface of the site has been flattened and covered with compacted gravel and sometimes chemically treated," he said.
"This will contaminate the archaeological record of the site." (BBC)

"We should be angry but not surprised at the destruction of Babylon. Despite the requirements of the Hague convention, aggressors throughout history have targeted the cultural treasures of occupied territories in order to undermine their opponents' national esteem and sense of cultural identity."Dr Mike HeyworthDirector, Council for British Archaeology (Guardian)

For more than 1,000 years, Babylon was one of the world's premier cities, where King Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
-------------------
Iraqi Elections:
On the 30th of January--
Not Even Saddam Could Achieve the Divisions This Election Will Bring/ By Robert Fisk
"As of January 31, a crisis will, officially, start; for it exists now but its parties are delaying admitting it." / Abdulwahab Badrakhan
A MAN OF THE SHADOWS Can Iyad Allawi hold Iraq together/by JON LEE ANDERSON

Kuwait:
Kuwait boosts security after busting militant cell(Daily Star) --- The government said the militants planned to carry out attacks on vital installations (SBS)---Kuwait arrests at least 10 after clashes with militants (Khaleej Times)

News mix:
Women who breathe air polluted with smoke and exhaust fumes are up to four times more likely to have children who develop cancer, a study shows --- a school working to a radical and experimental curriculum is quietly changing the dynamic between Arab and Jewish neighbours--- Moammar Gadhafi is now being immortalized by a leading London-based opera company. The English National Opera (ENO) --- Representation of Arabs improves on silver screen..

And finally, some Daily Outrage...Have a nice day.