rebootied

"I was extremely shocked [by the U.S. decision to remove North Korea from the blacklist], as Japan would never agree to such a move," Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said in Washington on Saturday.

Nakagawa's remark came during talks Saturday with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Seven finance ministers and central bank heads, who had convened to address the global financial market crisis.

According to Nakagawa's close aides who accompanied him on his U.S. trip, the minister was keen to voice strong unease over the decision on behalf of the Japanese families whose relatives were abducted by North Korea.

Takeo Hiranuma, an independent who previously served as economy, trade and industry minister and currently heads a suprapartisan Diet members league to seek a resolution to the abductions, said to reporters in Honjo, Saitama Prefecture, on Sunday, "[The government] must resolutely pass on its message [to the United States]."

U.S. Attorney General Seeks Custody of Paris Hilton, Intends to Confine Her at Gitmo

Hilton appeal offers 'doing 45 days behind bar' instead of jail
Paris Hilton Walks Oddly From Jail
President Bush Pardons Paris Hilton

The United States can't win a war on terrorism, any more than it could win a war against armed robbery or tornadoes. What it can do is contain the threat to the nation caused by a specific group of terrorists: Islamist radicals.

To do so, it must strive to understand Al Qaeda and its ilk, and try to isolate them from communities which now give them tacit support. And it needs to have patience: Terrorist groups, even damaged ones, don't wither away quickly.

In brief, these are among the main conclusions of Louise Richardson's concise and illuminating new book What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat. If you think the application of academic terrorism research to today's policy problems sounds interesting, this volume could be for you.

Not that Richardson is dispassionate. The Bush administration might even call her partisan. She considers both the overt declaration of war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq to be disasters in the context of fighting Osama bin Laden.

"Governments are invariably placed under enormous pressure to react forcibly and fast in the wake of a terrorist attack," she writes. "This response is not likely to be most conducive to long-term success against terrorists."

Richardson is one of the relative handful of experts who have been studying the history and practice of terrorism since the cold war.

Born in Ireland to Catholic parents, she experienced the seductive nature of terrorist groups at an early age. From the society she grew up in, she learned a remembered history of Ireland's long struggle with England that was full of heroes and villains, and was oversimplified to motivate the next generation. The facts didn't seem to matter so much.

After the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972, in which 26 Irish protesters were shot by British troops in Derry, Northern Ireland, Richardson would have joined the IRA "in a heartbeat," she writes.

But she was only 14, and as she attended university and learned the real story behind some of her childhood myths, she became more interested in understanding terrorism than in joining it.

WASHINGTON - If his cell were at Guantanamo Bay, the prisoner would be just one of hundreds of suspected terrorists detained offshore, where the U.S. says the Constitution does not apply.
ADVERTISEMENT

But Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is a U.S. resident being held in a South Carolina military brig; he is the only enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. That makes his case very different.

Al-Marri's capture six years ago might be the Bush administration's biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al-Qaida sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.

( To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president's wartime powers... )

Viktor Anatolyevich Bout (born January 13, 1967) is a Russian former KGB major and arms dealer [1], nicknamed "the Merchant of Death".[2] According to Lee S. Wolosky, he is "the most powerful player in the trafficking of illegal arms" [1]. He is the subject of a book by that name written by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun[3] (Bout is not the first to bear the title: it appeared in a premature obituary of Alfred Nobel, which ultimately inspired him to create the Nobel Prizes).

Recent reports suggest Research: Media reports, he is also operating in Iraq using front companies and Cargo Airlifts (Airline Transport, Air West, Aerocom and TransAvia Export). Bout came to officials' attention in the 1990s, when he was accused of supplying arms to rebels in West Africa after a cease-fire agreement had been brokered. At that time he owned or was using many airlines, including Air Cess and Centrafrican, which were later forced to shut down by authorities. He also supplied arms to the deposed regime of Charles Taylor in Liberia.

In May 2006, when 200,000 AK-47 assault rifles allegedly went missing in transit from Bosnia to Iraq, one of Bout's airlines was the carrier.[4] Bout's business partner is Hasan Čengić, the former Deputy Prime Minister of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to Slobodna Bosna and Douglas Farah.[5][6]

Yuri Orlov, Nicolas Cage's character in the 2005 film Lord of War is said[7][8][9] to be partially based on Viktor Bout.

super_nyanko

The man, who is quarantined at an Atlanta, Georgia, hospital, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that Fulton County health officials had said they "preferred" he not travel, but knew about his plans for an overseas wedding and honeymoon.