The younger rebel almost spat with disgust. “I have been fighting for 37 days!” he shouted. “Nobody can tell me what to do!” nike running shoes online
The outburst midfight — and the ensuing argument between a determined young man who seemed to have almost no understanding of modern war and an older man who wisely counseled caution — underscored a fact that is self-evident almost everywhere on Libya’s eastern front. The rebel military, as it sometimes called, is not really a military at all.
What is visible in battle here is less an organized force than the martial manifestation of a popular uprising.
With throaty cries and weapons they have looted and scrounged, the rebels gather along Libya ‘s main coastal highway each day, ready to fight. Many of them are brave, even extraordinarily so. Some of them are selfless, swept along by a sense of common purpose and brotherhood that accompanies their revolution.
“Freedom!” they shout, as they pair a yearning to unseat Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with appeals for divine help. “God is great!”
But by almost all measures by which a military might be assessed, they are a hapless bunch. They have almost no communication equipment. There is no visible officer or noncommissioned officer corps. Their weapons are a mishmash of hastily acquired arms, which few of them know how to use.
With only weeks of fighting experience, they lack an understanding of the fundamentals of offensive and defensive combat, Buy cheap nike mens acg sandals 2011 or how to organize fire support. They fire recklessly and sometimes accidentally. Most of them have yet to learn how to hold seized ground, or to protect themselves from their battlefield’s persistent rocket and mortar fire, which might be done by simply digging in.
Prone to panic, they often answer to little more than their mood, which changes in a flash. When their morale spikes upward, their attacks tend to be painfully and bloodily frontal — little more than racing columns down the highway, through a gantlet of the Qaddafi forces’ rocket and mortar fire, face forward into the loyalists’ machine guns.
And their numbers are small. Officials in the rebels’ transitional government have provided many different figures, sometimes saying 10,000 or men are under arms in their ranks.
But a small fraction actually appear at the front each day — often only a few hundred. And some of the men appear without guns, or with aged guns that have no magazines or ammunition.
For the nations that have supported the uprising, the state of the rebels’ armed wing — known as the Forces of Free Libya — raises many questions. It seems unlikely that such a force can carry the war westward, through dug-in Qaddafi units toward the stronghold of Surt, much less beyond, toward Tripoli, the Libyan capital. And a sustained war of attrition could quickly bleed their ranks dry.
Unlike many antigovernment militias in other countries, the rebel-armed column has not had the benefit of years of guerrilla fighting, which could have winnowed and seasoned its leaders and given them a skeletal field structure to build on.
Instead, Libya’s rebels have entered the grim work of waging war almost spontaneously, and would need time, training, equipment and leadership to develop into even a reasonably competent force. nike cheap mens acg sandals
For now, their ranks have three elements: a so-called “special forces” detachment of former soldiers and police officers; a main column organized into self-led cells of fighters built around a few weapons and pickup trucks; and a sort of home guard that is undergoing quick training to man checkpoints and serve as a civil defense force.
There is also the “shabab,” milling groups of youngsters who arrive at the front each day hoping to pitch in, but with scant idea of how. Officially, the shabab are not part of the fight.
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The 2,700-passenger Disney Magic ship will anchor at a Manhattan pier starting in May 2012 in a plan heralded as a triumph for city tourism.
Disney will use the Manhattan Cruise Terminal as the portal to 20 destinations in Canada and the Caribbean, ranging from introductory two-night trips out to sea to eight-night sailings to the Bahamas. Five-night cruises up the New England coast will call at Halifax, Nova Scotia, St. John and New Brunswick.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it will require seafood imported from Japan to be checked for nike running shoes online, radiation before it enters the food supply. But even with the new screenings, no one in the U.S. government is saying "stop eating tuna."
"Other food products from this area, including seafood, although not subject to the Import Alert, will be diverted for testing by FDA before they can enter the food supply," the FDA said in a prepared statement. "FDA will also be monitoring and testing food products, including seafood, from other areas of Japan as appropriate."
More specifically, an FDA spokesperson told ABC News that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement "is screening everything from Japan." However, screening does not entail testing all the seafood. all the testing of the seafood. In fact, the FDA inspects less than 2 percent of seafood, according to Winona Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.
"FDA couldn't possibly with existing staff test all of the food that's being imported," Hauter said. "They inspect less than 2 percent of seafood. Their resources are really stretched."
Since screening, the FDA confirmed finding three food products from Japan that contained radioactive isotopes, although they were "all too low to cause adverse events." buy Reebok ZigTech
So far, the FDA said that every piece of seafood that has been imported to the United States is safe.
Offshore from the Fukushima plant, the seawater is now testing at levels off the charts -- 7.5 million times more radioactive than the legal limit.
"I can't go out to fish because of the radiation," one Japanese fisherman told ABC News. "I cannot do anything."
But another fisherman said it was a "bad rumor" that the fish was unsafe to eat.
"The fish are totally fine, I believe," he said.
Because of the elevated levels, the Japanese government also announced on Tuesday that it will, for the first time, enact radiation safety standards for fish. Find brand shoes to
"We're deeply sorry for discharging the radiated water," said Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano on Monday, "but it was necessary to prevent spreading higher radiated water into the ocean."
Radiation Levels in Offshore Fish
Even though radiation levels become diluted in large bodies of water, officials tested a sample of sand lance fish, often used for bait, and found that the species contained nearly double the levels of iodine 131 and cesium 137. The new regulation caps fish radiation levels at the same amount as vegetables—up to 2,000 bequerels of iodine 131 per kilogram.
Edano said that government will strictly monitor the seafood and move forward after officials understand the full impact of the dumping.
Syrian security forces killed at least four people and wounded dozens when they opened fire on protesters on Friday while hundredsnike running shoes online of thousands of Yemenis held what appeared to be the largest demonstrations in more than a month of protests and the Bahraini government detained several people in crackdowns across the nation.
Thousands of Syrians arched on Friday in the southern city of Daraa, which has become the epicentre of an extraordinary protest movement, as security forces deployed across the country, said witnesses.
Activists dubbed Friday a “Day of Martyrs” and called for mass demonstrations to honour more than 70 people killed during two weeks of protests.
President Bashar Assad dashed expectations he would announce sweeping reforms this week and instead blamed the popular fury that has gripped Syria on a foreign conspiracy.
Huge marches in YemenHundreds of thousands of Yemenis packed a square in Sana'a and marched in villages and cities across the nation on Friday in what appeared to be the largest demonstrations in more than a month of demands the country's long-time ruler step down. nike cheap mens acg sandals black
Many mosques in the capital shut down — a move unprecedented for Friday, the Muslim day of prayer.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh escalated his confrontation with the rapidly expanding uprising a week ago, taking on emergency powers that give him a freer hand to quell protests. He has been hit by a wave of defections by military commanders, ruling party members and others. The Sana'a crowd was supported by soldiers with anti-aircraft guns and rifles to prevent intrusions by the President's loyalists.
Arrests in BahrainBahrain released a prominent blogger but detained several people, including a pro-opposition doctor, the latest in a series of arrests since the kingdom's crackdown on street protests, opposition sources said on Friday. cheap nike mens sandals
The tiny island's Sunni rulers have stepped up arrests of cyber activists and Shias, with more than 300 detained and dozens missing since the crackdown on pro-democracy protests earlier this month.
Activists dubbed Friday a “Day of Martyrs” and called for mass demonstrations to honour more than 70 people killed during two weeks of protests. nike running shoes online,
President Bashar Assad dashed expectations he would announce sweeping reforms this week and instead blamed the popular fury that has gripped Syria on a foreign conspiracy.
Huge marches in YemenHundreds of thousands of Yemenis packed a square in Sana'a and marched in villages and cities across the nation on Friday in what appeared to be the largest demonstrations in more than a month of demands the country's long-time ruler step down.
Many mosques in the capital shut down — a move unprecedented for Friday, the Muslim day of prayer.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh escalated his confrontation with the rapidly expanding uprising a week ago, taking on emergency powers that give him a freer hand to quell protests. He has been hit by a wave of defections by military commanders, ruling party members and others. cheap nike mens acg sandals 2011 The Sana'a crowd was supported by soldiers with anti-aircraft guns and rifles to prevent intrusions by the President's loyalists.
Arrests in BahrainBahrain released a prominent blogger but detained several people, including a pro-opposition doctor, the latest in a series of arrests since the kingdom's crackdown on street protests, opposition sources said on Friday.
The tiny island's Sunni rulers have stepped up arrests of cyber activists and Shias, with more than 300 detained and dozensbuy Reebok ZigTech missing since the crackdown on pro-democracy protests earlier this month.
Torrential rains, floods, mudslides and rough seas swamped seaside villages in the past week nike running shoes onlineand trapped local and foreign tourists on islands in the region, a prime resort area. One official said that about a million people had been affected.
Until the rains began to ease Thursday, storms and rising waters had forced the closing of three airports and cut off road and rail links in the region. Islands in the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea were inaccessible as ferries were canceled.
Flights were resuming at airports on Thursday, and the weather bureau forecast that the rain would stop this weekend. Flights to the island of Koh Samui were reported to be operating normally and clearing up a backlog of stranded passengers.
The government reported that the aircraft carrier had rescued about 800 people on Thursday, more than half of them foreigners, from the islands of Koh Tao and Koh Phangan.
“There are roughly one million people affected in many provinces,” Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said Wednesday. “At first we thought the flood would last a day or two, but now it has already been one week.”
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva visited the region on Wednesday morning and said that the bad weather could not have been predicted.
“If you ask people who are familiar, they would tell you they never expected this could happen,” he said. “We cannot use the past experience as a guideline because many things have changed. Buy nike cheap mens acg sandalsTherefore, I’d like everyone to think of safety first in the risky areas, and we will facilitate the evacuation in the necessary areas.”
Although the weather is unseasonable, floods and droughts are not uncommon in Thailand. Heavy flooding across the country late last year left more than 220 people dead and damaged the homes or livelihoods of an estimated 8.6 million people in 51 of the country’s 76 provinces.
The toll of death and damage from the storms appeared likely to rise as rescuers reached the hardest-hit areas and dug through the debris. The Thai Navy said more ships were heading to isolated islands in the Gulf of Thailand.
The Nation newspaper reported Thursday that a landslide had swallowed up an entire village of about 100 households on Wednesday in the Khao Phanom district of Krabi Province, leaving 10 people dead and many missing.
It quoted radio bulletins as estimating that 100 villagers had disappeared. Rescue efforts were blocked by currents and debris; electricity, running water and telephone services were cut off.
One Canadian traveler who escaped Koh Phangan before it was cut off March 24 described a terrifying journey by boat through rain and heavy waves to Koh Samui during which passengers were crying and one crew member began to pray.
“He put his arms in the prayer position and closed his eyes, and he had his hands pressed together up against his forehead,”Find brand shoes to said the traveler, Marion Young, a massage therapist from Victoria, British Columbia. “That’s when I knew it was probably pretty bad.”
She arrived, soaked but safe, after an hour’s crossing. But many others on the island remained stranded for several days.