Monthly Archives: May 2008

Bomb Threat Against Washington Oil Refinery

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From King5.com:

ANACORTES, Wash. – A threatening message was posted on the Shell refinery’s Web site Friday evening.

The company did not reveal the contents of the threat, but authorities didn’t take any chances and they were searching the premises for any sign of a bomb.

The U.S. Coast Guard set up a marine safety zone 200 yards from the facility.

U.S. Coast Guard boats were patrolling the area Friday night, and the Skagit County Sheriff’s Department also was searching the premises, but so far there has been no sign of anything suspicious.

No evacuations have been ordered.

Shell has been the target of criticism by environmentalists, and a little over a year ago were told by the Washington Department of Ecology that their Anacortes refinery needed repair. In that report three oil spills from the refinery were preventable had the company kept the pipelines in better repair.

Shell has long been a target of radical environmentalists and anti-capitalists, it is likely the bomb threat came from a zealot from one of these movements.

h/t N.T.A.

Chavez Claims to Have Arrested D.E.A. Agent

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If true, this is obviously Chavez’s attempt to provoke Bush into conflict. But like most things he says it’s probably false. From N.T.A.:

There has been no confirmation of this story from U.S. sources.

Venezuela said on Thursday it arrested a man who identified himself as a U.S. anti-drugs agent, which if confirmed could inflame tensions between the United States and one of its biggest oil suppliers.

President Hugo Chavez in 2005 ended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying the agency was spying on him. The United States denied the charge and says Chavez does too little to stop trafficking from neighboring Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine exporter.

Gen. Gabriel Oviedo said the man was acting suspicious when he was detained close to the border with Colombia while bearing Canadian and French passports and a Venezuelan identity card.

“The official at the scene proceeded to interrogate him and he said he was a DEA agent,” Oviedo told state television.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas said it had no knowledge of the arrest.

Relations have deteriorated since a failed 2002 coup against Chavez that Washington initially welcomed.

So far there hasn’t been much on this, I’ll keep digging.

Update: More details from ABC:

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela said on Thursday it arrested a man who identified himself as a U.S. anti-drugs agent, which if confirmed could inflame tensions between the United States and one of its biggest oil suppliers.

President Hugo Chavez in 2005 ended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying the agency was spying on him. The United States denied the charge and says Chavez does too little to stop trafficking from neighboring Colombia, the world’s largest cocaine exporter.

Gen. Gabriel Oviedo said the man was acting suspicious when he was detained close to the border with Colombia while bearing Canadian and French passports and a Venezuelan identity card.

“The official at the scene proceeded to interrogate him and he said he was a DEA agent,” Oviedo told state television.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas said it had no knowledge of the arrest.

Relations have deteriorated since a failed 2002 coup against Chavez that Washington initially welcomed.

Tensions increased this month. The United States said new evidence of Chavez’s ties to Colombian rebels was troubling, while the leftist charged a U.S. military jet that entered Venezuelan airspace was spying on the OPEC nation.

The story doesn’t sound quite right to me.

Joe Lieberman Victorious Over YouTube

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Take that Al-Qaeda apologists! Supposed “free speech” advocates, who don’t seem tot understand that foreign nationals aren’t covered by the First Amendment, hoped Google would summon their inner Ron Paul and fight for free speech in the face of Lieberman’s polite request they stop airing enemy propaganda. But we’re talking about Google here, the people who sell out dissidents to China.

Like the loathsome Ned Lamont, YouTube was thoroughly punked by Red Alerts favorite Democrat. From the Daily News:

Close-range executions of hostages. Assassinations of U.S. soldiers through snipers’ cross hairs. American tanks blowing sky-high. These are some of the gruesome images that violent Islamist terror organizations like Al Qaeda use to recruit, train and indoctrinate impressionable young followers. They can also be accessed easily on YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing Web site.

An investigation by the staff of our Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs into the threat of homegrown terrorism inspired by violent Islamist extremism has found that the abundance of videos like these posted on the Internet has increased the likelihood that individuals within the United States will become radicalized and engage in terrorist acts.

For this reason, I have asked Google, the parent company of YouTube, to remove from its Web site videos designed to incite violence against America and Americans or that show graphic violence against American troops and others, in violation of YouTube’s own community guidelines.

YouTube removed 80 videos at my request but has refused to take down many more.

The use of the Internet by Islamist terrorists represents a marked change in the threat America faces from this hateful ideology. The threat no longer emanates only from abroad. The threat now comes from within our borders as well, from new followers who blindly adhere to terrorists’ perversion of the Islamic faith to incite attacks against the United States and who learn their trade through Web-posted videos that offer everything from extremist indoctrination to bomb-making instructions.

Our terrorist enemies have harnessed the power of the Internet as a force multiplier, rapidly distributing their propaganda around the world to inspire self-initiated attacks from abroad and within our country.

Terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda are able to use the Web toconnect directly to those who are more likely to succumb to their destructive ideology. Once this initial introduction has been made, the Internet facilitates and accelerates the entire radicalization process. New followers of the ideology use the Internet to seek out the like-minded, who join what violent Islamist groups prize as a growing online insurgency. Once fully indoctrinated, a follower of the ideology may take the final step – planning and execution of a homegrown terror attack, alone or with other Internet-inspired terrorists.

A strong intelligence and law enforcement response is necessary to prevent future attacks from outside the United States or from within, but more must also be done to counter the Internet propaganda that inspires attacks in the first place.

Here’s where Google and other Internet providers come in. Most of these videos of attacks against American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that serve to incite people to violence against all Americans are produced by groups the U.S. government has designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, such as Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda in Iraq. The videos are branded with a distinguishing logo that makes them easy to identify and therefore easy to remove.

Google’s defense is that it is protecting free speech. But, in my opinion, videos produced by terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda that are committed to attacking America and killing Americans are not protected by the First Amendment and should not be tolerated.

80 down about 1000 or so to go. Good work, Joe!

h/t Trench, who has some great analysis at ViceTube

Oregon Activists Fighting for Right of Medical Marijuana Users to Carry Concealed Firearms

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What could go wrong?

Washington County plans to appeal a judge’s decision ordering Sheriff Rob Gordon to grant concealed weapons permits to three men who lost them because they are medical marijuana users.

Sheriff’s officials say they need clarification on whether federal law prohibiting illegal drug users from possessing handguns trumps state law, which allows Oregonians to legally smoke marijuana to treat pain.

The county also wants to make sure it won’t be liable if a medical marijuana user receives a weapons permit and then commits a crime with the weapon.

“We’re trying to get a ruling from the courts to tell us what to do on this,” Cmdr. Willie Bose said.

Leland Berger, an attorney for the men who prevailed in a May 15 decision, said the law is clear on the issue.

“Why is the sheriff only discriminating against sick and dying people?” Berger said. “What the heck is that?”

Why indeed. It isn’t as if pot smokers are known to be violent or irrational is it? Just ask Shannon Currence, or Snoop Dogg. Pot smokers are no more likely to misuse a firearm than anyone else, right? Just ask the next carload of gangbangers you see if they’re more likely to shoot someone while stoned.

Let’s get real. We don’t let people drive while drunk in this country, but there’s a question as to whether we’ll let people get high and carry around a handgun? This is absolutely asinine.

Violent Maoists Take Over Nepal

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The centuries old Monarchy of God-Kings that ruled Nepal were a poor bulwark between the freedom loving people of Nepal and a decades old Maoist insurgency which is directly responsible for the death of thousands of Nepal’s people.

A coalition of parties, including the Maoists, led weeks of deadly protests which ultimately toppled the Royal regime. Now the Maoists have won a third of the seats in the new government, setting the stage for a U.N. back slaughter of non-communist:

In an unprecedented vote capping a peace accord between Maoists and mainstream parties, a new constitutional assembly voted just before midnight on Wednesday to abolish the 240-year-old monarchy and establish a republic.

On Thursday morning, the flag of the Shah dynasty was taken down from the main palace in Kathmandu, which will now be turned into a national museum.

“The royal flag was replaced by Nepal’s national flag inside the palace,” a palace official said on condition of anonymity.

“The flag has been changed as part of the government decision to implement a republic.”

Thursday and Friday were declared national holidays in the new republic, where supporters sang and danced on Kathmandu’s streets after waiting all day for the vote.

The Maoists, clear winners of last month’s elections, waged a decade of war to overthrow what they view as a backward, caste-ridden structure that kept most of Nepal’s 29 million people living in dire poverty.

They have repeatedly warned King Gyanendra he faces “strong punishment” if he refuses to bow out gracefully.

“The Nepalese people have been freed from centuries of feudal tradition and the doors have now opened for a radical social and economic transformation,” Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara told AFP after the vote.

The country’s press hailed the republic.

“Turning Nepal into a republic is the biggest achievement of the people in the history of this country,” wrote Kathmandu Post editor Prateek Pradhan in a letter to readers.

Many ordinary Nepalese are delighted to see the back of the dour, unpopular king as well as his son and would-be heir, Crown Prince Paras — notorious for his playboy lifestyle.

“There was no development under the monarchy,” said Prakash Karki, 26, a businessman, as he bought a newspaper. “There will be now that the people will run the country.”

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon welcomed the vote, saying Nepalese “have clearly spoken for peace and change.”

The United States, which continues to list the former rebels as a foreign “terrorist” organisation, urged “forward political developments” in Nepal, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington.

The vote in the 601-member assembly saw just four lawmakers oppose the declaration transforming Nepal into a secular republic.

The hope for positive change under a communist government is bound to be shattered by the violence and blood thirst inherent in Marxism. All Communist regimes commit democide against the very people who seat them in power. Even the Nepalese people who helped sweep away the monarchy are leery:

The ultra-left Maoists won over a third of the seats in the assembly and are set to lead the new government, although many remain sceptical of a movement whose loyalists are regularly accused of using violence and intimidation.

And the ex-rebels face a difficult task improving life for a people weary of civil strife.

“Whenever I go out there’s a bomb blast, a strike or a demonstration. These are the daily worries,” said Seema Pradhan, 25, at her family’s neighbourhood shop.

In Nepal the car bombs are set by Maoists. The same Maoists that that is listed as a terror group by the United States because of their violent campaign are now in power. Like the Chinese Communists, the Nepalese “Maoists” is a personality cult centered around a radical and sinister figure. There’s a profile of their glorious leader here and their official website is here. Spend some time with the second link, it basically tells you they’re planning on another Stalinist/Maoist genocide.

The The Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist is thought to have ties to Pakistani Intelligence and several other terror groups including the Tamil Tigers. Using what meager wealth Nepal has look for the CPN-M to start funding their fellow terrorists to bring about the world wide revolution communists wish for.