Connections

Abdulmutallab was on the US Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) security watch list, which includes about 550,000 people.
However, the Nigerian was not on the smaller Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB) and was not flagged for mandatory extra airport security screening or included on the "no fly" list.
US authorities told The Associated Press news agency that the suspect came to the attention of intelligence officials in November when his father went to the
US embassy in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to express concerns about his son.
al Jazeera

Credible enough for the man of the Nobel to send few thousands troops to Yemenistan to kill couple of civilians .
How comes Sha Rukh Khan was on list A ?

Radical Islamists have claimed responsibility for the murder of an Orthodox priest in Moscow last month via an extremist website. Father Daniil Sysoyev was shot dead in his church on November 20. RT

More than a month to claim responsibility, that's too long .

a 4 degree rise in temperature in the Sultanate of Oman or Saudi Arabia would change it from really hot to really hot. Telegraph

The article is the evidence that every Tom, Dick and Harry can be a blogger and write on a newspaper, rejecting any responsibility for what he wrote cause he received an email by a guest contributor .
In 1970, shortly after Sultan Qaboos came to the throne, Oman had probably just finalised agreements with BP and Shell and the participation in CRU set up, was one of them .
4 degrees does make a difference also for hot countries and considering that Oman depends on fishery products, it's even more important .

Golden words

Always working for peace in the Middle of the East .

The geologist and the others at Cop15

"Any measures that might affect oil demand should be accompanied by a counter-measure that minimises their effects on oil producing countries,"
"Our objective ... is to protect our interests,"
"the world must develop and that is not possible without energy,"
"I am a geologist and I know that such views are baseless."
Afp via petrolio blogosfere

In Italy when someone states something very very gross but very much, we say he has the face like his butt .

I had understood this climate thing is getting big when I forgot to put the AC on, a couple of hours before going to sleep, to prepare the room cause I get sick if I leave it on during the night : I had to change T-shirt three times in 5 hours last week .
As far as I remember, December has never been so hot here .
Another hint of the gravity of this issue was Obama speech : it was not sugar coated as usual .
He said he was there for action [finally, I thought] .
He held talks with the new kids on the block [China, Russia and India] and ignored completely Euros and 3rd world countries .
And we saw the results .
While Jonah Hull in Cop15 was commenting with the same serenity with which he jumps between a war in Georgia and a bomb in Kabul [I don't how he can always smile like a happy boy], al Jizz, to highlight the fact that this is about rich vs poors, set up a live broadcast from Africa where children are starving [so we all felt more guilty] and South America where effects are already tangible : the journalist showed a dry potato, saying that this would happen also in the rest of the world very soon .
At this point, I was collapsing .
After pizza, fries are my favourite food .
Don't know what will happen to me .
The Chinese [the new masters of the world in case anybody noticed] were hard like iron .
They didn't grant more than what would go beyond their interests [and remembering Bejing smog in August 2008, their attitude makes sense ] . They are the Saudis of Asia, after all .
The only credible chap was Lula : half shouting half crying as if he was asking for another Olympic, he tried his best but didn't succeed .
In the end, the Sudani representative [Lumumba or something similar] said that the draft was immoral and coming from a UN sponsored conference, that was a shocking result [not sure he followed UN endeavour in the last 10-20 years] while Ed [one of the Millivanilli brothers] declared that if not really a success, Cop15 was at least not as bad as it seems .

All well that ends well .

Farmlife

Yes, I love Mafia movies, but no I don’t want to be part of them. Yes, I like hot chocolates, but no I don’t want a virtual one. Yes, I’d love to cook and have my own restaurant/cafe - but not online. I know I have a big brain, so what's the deal?
Faith

I just adopted a bull and keep collecting eggs and wool, while planting rice and poinsettia .
I have also a pet and a coffee shop .
As long as it remains virtual, they're relatively easy to manage .
But I remember the farmers in my village telling me about their life starting at 3am to collect vegetables and going to market to sell them . Must have been pretty different .
The Zynga games introduced on Fb are a mirror of our desires .
There's no smell of poop when we play there .
That's why we like it so much I assume .

Back to real life and animals, I was reading about a shoal of seven sperm whales gotten ashore in Peschici [Puglia region, Italy] .
In the stomach of four of them, they found everything which we the humans usually throw in the sea, plastic in particular [bags and boxes], that according to experts, they probably swallowed because it looks like squids, the only species they can eat .
The other three were just following, since these animals rely a lot on the group, and died together with the rest .
Definitely not something we should be proud of .


Pictures and video, courtesy of Cautillo, Corriere della Sera .

To join or not to join

A statement released Wednesday, said to be from the wife of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's Egyptian deputy and second-in-command, encouraged Muslim women to join jihad as an "obligation." NBC

"Fighting is not easy for women, because she needs a male guardian at her side," Hassan purportedly said. independentonline

The wife of al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has appealed to Muslim women not to join the jehad themselves, but to support their menfolk in holy war, US monitoring groups said on Thursday. In a letter released by al-Qaeda’s media arm As-Sahab entitled ‘A Message to the Muslim Sisters’, Omayma Hassan Ahmed Mohammed Hassan called on the female faithful to support their husbands and male mujahideen, and properly rear their children. agencies

I can't join .
I am a sheep by nature .

The reason why the people of the land of chocolates and cows voted against the minarets, and there's a huge chance that more will follow, is not because churches must be allowed in Muslim territories [specially in the Kingdom of Ssssssss] as many commentators tried to let us believe, but mainly because they do not understand these hysterical statements and most probably because the Muslim community there, is not much integrated .

Jihad does not mean holy war but striving in the way of Allah against our weaknesses and for our faith .
And even if there was a holy war, that's not the case of Chechenya, Palestine and Iraq .
Like it or not, sister Omayma and her hubby must understand that those places have their elected governments and those who are calling for jihad, are not part of an Islamic state which is at war against another country : they are minorities that must fight for their rights in an Islamic way, that is, through dialogue and respect of the institutions .
They must call for their rights as citizens .
They are not representative of the Muslim nation : we, the so called moderate Muslims [this innovation in vocabulary is another gift from their unIslamic behaviour] are tired of their violence, tired to have to explain that they're running a distorted interpretation of militant Islam .

Children never held me in much sympathy and I must confess the issue has always been mutual, probably because I was a sad child so I don't have good memories of that period .
So please if you go for jihad or however you call it, don't leave me your kids cause I'll make them sad .

Hassan also urged Muslims to turn to the "media of the mujahideen, because the western media only reports half the truth."

Some months ago Press TV reported about prince Bandar Bin Sultan being first under house arrest and then escaping to Morocco .
Few weeks later, according to Saudi media, he was reconfirmed as commander in chief of national security .
You can read all the sources you like, but using brain .
That's the secret .

Common interests

"Let me say one thing very clearly as NATO Secretary General: NATO will never attack Russia. Never. And we do not think Russia will attack NATO. We have stopped worrying about that and Russia should stop worrying about that as well."
NATO

"We need to look at what more we can do together to train the Afghans to secure their own country; to provide them the equipment they need to fight; to stem the flow of drugs into our schools and back-alleys; and to support the UN-mandated, NATO-led mission." Reuters

"I have proposed that Russia provide a helicopter package," he told CNN. "I hope the Russians will consider my proposal positively." CNN

This is the same guy who never accepted to apologise to Muslims after the cartoons controversy, while he was Prime Minister .
Fogh sounds more like the name of a pet but maybe is normal up there in the north .

So he spent three days in Moscow begging for military equipment and Afghan police to train in Russia[those were the days for the Soviets] and at the same time, he told them clearly that NATO still hopes to give a ride to Georgia&friends and has no intention to support the Euro security pact sketched by Pres. Medvedev [definitely odd] .
After this premises, he reassured them that NATO has nothing against Russia [how not to believe him ?] and is puzzled by the fact that Russians are suspicious about the West .
At the end of the trip he's still hopeful for a positive response .

Doubts :

can you understand why we're still fighting in Paki-Afghan mud with such refined brains ?

If Chrissie&Obama plan is so perfect and all NATO members are so happy to send more coffins over there, why should we need also Vodka ?