Claudia Rosett
Movies and television teach us that evil comes draped in drama, set to a sinister sound track, often with lots of visible gore. But all too often, especially in matters of tyranny, evil appears in banal ways that blend into the accepted landscape.
For years I have remembered a scene of this kind. It involves a thin Asian man in a shabby coat, standing by a gate in the snow of eastern Russia, wearing sneakers with no laces or socks.
But I am getting ahead of my tale.
What brought this scene again to mind were news reports this week that in Russia's eastern port city of Vladivostok, two North Korean defectors climbed over a wall to enter the South Korean consulate, asking for asylum. South Korean authorities have been refusing to comment. But both South Korea's Yonhap News Agency and China's People's Daily describe these defectors as lumberjacks.
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Kang Chol-hwan
I visited Hamhung many times before defecting to South Korea, and whenever I went I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Hooligans clustering at the railroad station glared at the goods carried by pedestrians and provoked quarrels if they thought you were looking at them. At construction sites in Pyongyang, the word was that Hamhung people were wild. Often there were gang fights at project sites where tens of thousands of youths from different regions had been mobilized, and Hamhung youngsters were always the most violent. The city was home to the greatest number of organized gangs, and even police officers couldn't handle them. Hamhung also has more access to outside world as it is an intermediary place through which all things coming in through the northern border with China pass.
As long as 20 years ago, markets in Hamhung were so active that almost everything was available there. It was here, among other cities, that market traders rioted in the wake of a recent disastrous currency reform since they suffered greater damage due to the bigger size of the markets.
I also got the impression that many young people in Hamhung listened to South Korean broadcasts, and those who didn't know South Korean pop songs were treated as country bumpkins. The people there struck me as more resilient than in any other city, and that may be a reason that the city often sees public executions.
Now, Kim Jong-il showed up in the city to attend a mass rally celebrating the re-dedication of the February 8 Vinalon Complex. Kim has never attended a mass rally in a provincial city. He must have had a very good reason to do so.
Considering what the North needs most urgently at the moment is fertilizer, it would have been natural for Kim to visit the nearby Hungnam fertilizer plant. But instead he went to the vinalon plant, a symbol of the failed socialist planned economy. Vinalon, a synthetic fiber North Korea has developed using carbide extracted from anthracite, is a poor-quality and no longer economically viable. At the same cost, more, better-quality fabric can be imported from China, so no other country in the world produces vinalon for clothing. North Korean founder Kim Il-sung spent no less than US$10 billion on a vinalon plant in Pyongyan Province, which turned in the end into scrap metal. That was a decisive incident that led to the economy's collapse. The February 8 Vinalon Complex was shut down a long time ago.
With the mass rally for its reopening, Kim evidently intended to demonstrate his pathetic determination that nothing will change in North Korea, ever. There will be no reform nor market opening, even if its economy collapses or it is driven into chaos, and although the prime minister apologized for the failed currency reform. It is a clear signal that Kim will go his own way against the current of history and regardless of what outsiders think. Under these circumstances, how likely is it that Kim will make a forward-looking choice in the nuclear issue?
It has been unimaginable for the paranoid leader to go to any mass event in the provinces. That he has chosen to throw caution to the wind and go to one of the most volatile cities in the country suggests he has declared open war against his people and their grievances. I feel this is a bad omen. |
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| What the Brits used to do to those who sought to conquer and enslave. |
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U.S. soldiers will take over security from British troops in the Musa Qala area of southern Afghanistan as Washington builds up its force as part of a new counter-insurgency strategy, Britain said on Thursday. The British government said the move was a first step in a “rebalancing” of forces in the southern province of Helmand to ensure NATO forces are fully effective in countering Taliban insurgents and protecting civilians.
Helmand is the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between U.S. and NATO forces and a resurgent Taliban.
About 500 British troops based in the Musa Qala district, in the northeast of the province, will move in the coming weeks to central Helmand, the most heavily populated part of the province where most British troops are already based. There will be no change to Britain’s overall force of around 9,500 troops in Afghanistan.
Twenty-three British troops have been killed in Musa Qala since British forces first deployed there in 2006. Control of the town of Musa Qala has passed back and forth between British forces and the Taliban in recent years.
The new strategy, designed by U.S. and NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal, puts greater emphasis on securing Afghan population centres and on training Afghan security forces so that they can gradually assume control.
The arrival of U.S. reinforcements “allows us to rebalance all our forces to achieve much improved force densities in central Helmand delivering better protection of the Afghan people,” Major General Nick Carter, the British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, said in a statement. The improving situation in Musa Qala and nearby Now Zad had also made the move possible, he said.
Further changes in how the forces are deployed were likely “in due course”, the government said. |
 SANAA - Yemeni forces launched an attack on Thursday to recapture a government building occupied by rebels in the south of the country, setting off a gun battle in which a passer-by was killed, a local official said.
“Large military forces launched a campaign this morning to retake the municipality building (in a southern province). But gunmen from the southern movement confronted them and the two sides exchanged fire,” the official said.
“One person was killed and a gunman was wounded. Clashes are continuing,” he added. He said a large group of armed separatists had been occupying the municipal headquarters in the southern town of Tor al-Baha for months. |
GAZA - A British journalist arrested by Hamas in the Gaza Strip last month and held for nearly four weeks on suspicion of spying for Israel, was being released on Thursday, his lawyer and Palestinian officials said. Paul Martin was detained on Feb. 14 while on a visit to Hamas-run Gaza to give evidence in a court case involving a local man accused of working with the Israeli security services.
Martin’s lawyer, Sharhabeel al-Zaeem, told Reuters he expected the journalist to be freed without penalty shortly and to be handed over to British and South African consular officials. They would escort him out of Gaza into Israel later in the day, he added.
“Paul Martin will be expelled today,” a senior Palestinian source in the Hamas-run government of Gaza told Reuters.
London-based Martin, who is in his 50s, has reported frequently from Gaza, providing freelance reports for television and newspapers. British officials have said throughout his detention that they were providing consular support. They have made little other public comment on the case.
Human rights groups have criticised both Hamas Islamists and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which rules in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, for detaining journalists and placing other curbs on media freedoms. |
BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in a tight contest to keep his job as he vied with ex-premier Iyad Allawi, initial election results from four of the country’s 18 provinces showed Thursday. Four days after the election, Maliki and Allawi, both Shiite, have emerged nationally as the main candidates for the post of prime minister, with their blocs appearing to have fared best in Sunday’s polls.
The preliminary figures, which were announced once 30 percent of votes had been counted in the southern provinces of Najaf and Babil, put Maliki’s State of Law Alliance first and the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, in second place.
Allawi’s secular Iraqiya alliance was in third place.
The State of Law Alliance held a lead of around 7,000 votes in Najaf and of 14,000 in Babil, the figures showed. An election official later added that Iraqiya was in the lead in Diyala and Salaheddin, two majority Sunni provinces north of Baghdad, with 17 percent of votes counted.
In the Iraqi autonomous region of Kurdistan, meanwhile, Kinaani said the Kurdistania alliance, made up of the region’s two long-dominant parties, was in the lead in Arbil province with 27 percent of votes counted. Kurdistania is made up of regional president Massud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
In second place was the opposition Goran bloc (“Change” in Kurdish), which surprised observers by snaring nearly a quarter of the vote in Kurdish regional elections last year.
Complete results are expected to be announced on March 18 and the final ones — after any appeals are dealt with — will come at the end of the month.
Analysts have predicted protracted coalition building, as no single grouping is expected to win the 163 seats necessary to form a government on its own.
Several blocs called on Thursday for individual polling station tally sheets to be published online, expressing concerns the nationwide vote would not be in line with the total from individual stations. Were the polling station tally sheets posted online, political blocs could check to see if their sum corresponded with the nationwide results tabulated by the election commission. |
JERUSALEM - Israeli police said they would bar Muslim men under the age of 50 from prayers on Friday at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites, fearing clashes. The move comes after violent clashes at the disputed holy site at last week’s prayers and fresh tensions over Israeli plans to build 1,600 houses in mostly Arab east Jerusalem.
More cause and effect ...
Men under the age of 50 would be barred from the Friday prayers, while women of all ages would be permitted, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, adding that police would bolster their forces.
“We are stepping up security in east Jerusalem after getting information of plans to cause disturbances,” he said.
The compound containing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock is Islam’s third-holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is Judaism’s holiest site, known as the Temple Mount.
Last week riot police stormed the hilltop enclosure when the Muslim protestors threw stones after the main weekly prayers. The police fired tear gas and threw stun grenades to disperse the protestors, before skirmishes continued in the lanes and alleys of the Old City outside the compound.
Several dozen people were wounded, including about 15 police, before the confrontation ended with the Israeli forces leaving the compound after negotiating with Muslim authorities there. |
ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan will not allow the use of its soil by India for a proxy war with Pakistan or for any such war between any other countries, said Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday.
They'll all be 'Ruritanians' ...
| And everyone knows the Ruritanians don't do things like that, so if it looks like they are, you are mistaken. |
Addressing a joint press conference, Karzai and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said peace in their countries depended on the situation on either side of the border, and vowed to improve bilateral ties. Karzai called Pakistan and Afghanistan "conjoined twins" with "linked destinies", and said his country would not allow its territory to be used against any of its neighbours, especially Pakistan.
| That'll make the generals happy. To them it'll sound like he's promising to be Pakistan's hinterland, which is why they sent in the Taliban in the first place. |
He said Pakistan had offered providing training and the sale of arms and ammunitions to the Afghan Army. He said he had accepted the offer for the sale of arms and ammunition, while he would make a decision on training for the army after deliberations. He admitted that Pakistan was playing a vital role to facilitate his government's efforts for reconciliation with the Taliban.
The two leaders earlier held a one-on-one meeting and delegation-level talks.
Replying to a question about the extradition of arrested Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Baradar, Gilani said his government would make a decision after consulting its legal experts. However, he said courts in Pakistan were fully functional. Addressing a luncheon reception in Karzai's honour earlier, the prime minister said Pakistan supported Karzai's reintegration plan for the Taliban.
Diplomatic sources told Daily Times that Afghanistan had formally asked Pakistan to hand over Baradar for a trial in Afghanistan. The request was made by Afghan security officials accompanying Karzai. The Afghan president told a group of journalists over breakfast that his government was eager to get hold of all Taliban leaders, including Baradar, as they were Afghan nationals and should be tried there.
He said he was unaware of a "formal extradition request", but would discuss the matter Pakistani leaders.
Karzai confirmed his government is in contact with senior Taliban, and said Afghanistan was ready to talk to all Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar. "We have contacts [with the Taliban] as high as you wish to go. We are ready to talk to them, including Mullah Omar," he said. The AP news agency quoted him as saying that he was dedicated to pursuing the process despite lukewarm enthusiasm from the US.
Karzai said India was a very close friend, but Pakistan was like a brother.
| Cain and Abel were brothers. I don't imagine they show up in the Koranic version of history. |
"We, in Afghanistan, are fully aware ... that without Pakistan ... Afghanistan cannot be stable or peaceful," he was quoted as saying by the Reuters news agency.
| Truer words were likely never spoken at that meeting. |
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[Bangla Daily Star] Sri Lanka's military yesterday announced court martial proceedings against its former chief Sarath Fonseka for engaging in politics while in uniform and violating military procurement laws.
Valentinian III killed Aetius with his own hand, once Attila was out of the way. Of course, Valentinian was murdered within a year, and 20 years later there was no Western Empire.
Army spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe made no mention of the more serious conspiracy and assassination plot charges that | Fonseka and Rajapakse were allies in the crushing of Tamil Tiger separatist rebels last May, which ended their 37-year struggle that left up to 100,000 people dead according to a UN estimate. Fonseka later fell out with Rajapakse over who should claim credit for the victory. |
some in the ruling party had levelled at Fonseka after his defeat in presidential elections in January.
The highly decorated ex-army commander will be charged on seven counts of breaking army rules, Samarasinghe said, adding that a court martial would start hearing the case on Tuesday at the navy headquarters in Colombo. "There is no time frame to end the court martial proceedings," Samarasinghe said, adding that Fonseka, who is under military custody at a naval detention centre, could appeal to a civilian court after the military verdict.
Supporters of Fonseka say the court martial is an attempt to stop the 59-year-old campaigning in parliamentary elections due next month.
President Mahinda Rajapakse has been accused by rights groups and other critics of cracking down on the opposition and dissent since he defeated Fonseka, a former ally and now bitter enemy, in a poll in January.
Fonseka was arrested by the military on February 8, two weeks after he lost the presidential election. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is the president's younger brother, had said that the government had clear evidence of Fonseka plotting a coup and planning to assassinate the president.
The defence secretary had speculated that the hearing against Fonseka could go on for at least six months and on conviction he could be sentenced to five years in prison.
Ruling party politicians had also accused Fonseka of planning to overthrow the government and had labelled him a "traitor" for standing against his former commander-in-chief at the presidential polls.
Spokesman Samarasinghe said he was unaware of "conspiracy charges" against Fonseka, but said an investigation was being carried out by the police Criminal Investigations Department too. "The CID is doing a separate investigation on General Fonseka," Samarasinghe said. "It might be related to charges to overthrow the government. That is a civil matter. The military will limit itself to violations of the Army Act."
Samarsinghe said Fonseka said the seven counts related to two charges -- engaging in politics and wrongdoing in military procurements. Fonseka is accused of "conduct unbecoming" an officer, as well as maintaining contacts with opposition politicians while being head of the army and unfairly granting an arms contract to a company run by his son-in-law.
The police have already mounted a search for Fonseka's son-in-law, whose bank accounts have been frozen by the authorities.
Fonseka has challenged his arrest in the Supreme Court, which has fixed a hearing for April 26.
Fonseka and Rajapakse were allies in the crushing of Tamil Tiger separatist rebels last May, which ended their 37-year struggle that left up to 100,000 people dead according to a UN estimate. Fonseka later fell out with Rajapakse over who should claim credit for the victory.
Despite his detention, he still intends to contest the April 8 parliamentary elections, which Rajapakse is expected to win. |
[Iran Press TV Latest] Two female aid workers with the Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in quake-ravaged Haiti, who have been adducted last week, were freed Thursday and are "safe and sound."
For security reasons and in a bid not to "complicate" negotiations to free the women, the Friday kidnapping had been kept secret.
"We confirm that there was a kidnapping," spokesman Michel Peremans told AFP on Thursday. The two women "were freed today."
According to Peremans, the kidnapping of foreign aid workers was the first such incident in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti that took the lives of more than 220,000 people and left 1.3 million people homeless.
"We will see how we can keep working," Peremans said, adding that providing security for workers was of high importance to the group.
The organization maintains 400 foreign employees along with 3,000 Haitians who work in the Central American nation.
"It's very important for us. We want to keep working in Haiti," said the spokesman.
It is believed that the prisoners, who following the quake broke out of their jails, are responsible for the criminal acts underway in the quake-ravaged country.
Most of these criminals have sought refuge in Cite Soleil, a city slum ruined by the quake, where police and UN peacekeepers struggle to impose the law. |
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Israel that initiating a new military conflict in the Middle East would not save it from downfall.
Speaking in the southern Iranian Province of Hormozagan on Thursday, Ahmadinejad said that Israel was a Western prodigy that had now "reached the end of its road."
"See what has become of Israel. They [the West] gathered the most criminal people in the world and stationed them in our region with lies and fabricated scenarios. They waged wars, committed massive aggression... and made millions of people homeless," he told a crowd of supporters in the provincial capital, Bandar-Abbas.
"Today, it is clear that Israel is the most hated regime in the world... It is not useful for its masters [the West] anymore. They are in doubt now. They wonder whether to continue spending money on this regime or not," said Ahmadinejad.
"But whether they want it or not, with god's grace, this regime will be annihilated and Palestinians and other regional nations will be rid of its bad omen," he added.
The top Iranian executive official pointed out that he did not believe that "even a new military conflict" could save the Israeli regime.
"They think in their underdeveloped minds that if they launch another war against Lebanon or Syria it might help them survive a little longer. I am telling them that you are in a situation now that more aggressions or wars will not save you."
Ahmadinejad also advised the US and its allies to pull their troops out of the Middle East and stop "making mischief."
"What are you doing in our region? Why are you deploying military forces here," he asked.
"If you think military deployment will help you seize the oil in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf, I must tell you that the young generation of the Middle East will cut your hands off from the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf," he added.
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[Iran Press TV Latest] Several Palestinians have been injured as Israeli aircraft bomb two sites in southern Gaza Strip early Friday, the army and witnesses said.
The Israeli military said it blew up a metal workshop in Khan Yunis in the early hours of Friday, injuring several people.
The condition of the injured was not immediately clear, witnesses said.
Minutes later, a second strike targeted a tunnel in the border town of Rafah, the Israeli military said.
The army claims that the two strikes were in retaliation to a Thursday rocket attack that hit an empty workshop on a kibbutz in southern Israel, but caused no casualties. |
 [Dawn] In yet another incident of target killing, also sectarian in nature, the son of the Ahl-e-Sunnat Chief, Maulana Ghafoor has been shot dead in Nazimabad, Karachi on Thursday, police officials said. Maulana Ghafoor himself is also said to be in critical condition.
Maulana Ghafoor was on his way to the court in the morning when two pillion riders approached his car and opened indiscriminate fire on him, reports DawnNews. Maulana was near the A.O. Clinic in Nazimabad when his car came under attack.
Maulana Ghafoor's son was killed in the incident, while Maulana himself is in critical condition at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. Maulana Ghafoor has been affiliated with the banned sectarian organization Sipah-e-Sahaba. |
 WASHINGTON, March 11 (Reuters) - The average cost of Lockheed Martin Corp's (LMT.N) F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon's costliest arms purchase yet, will soar more than 50 percent above what was projected when its development began nine years ago, the Pentagon's top arms buyer told Congress.
We wrote off the F-22 for this?
The U.S. Air Force is set to formally notify Congress that the program has crashed through a key cost-containment threshold that will force a thorough review, Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, said on Thursday.
But the net impact of such a notification may be minimal since the program is widely said by U.S. officials to be too big to fail. Washington has no other way to replace aging warplanes like Lockheed's F-16 and the program is a linchpin of fighter modernization for several U.S. allies.
The cost blowout has occurred despite a restructuring announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in February to keep the program on track, including adding 13 months and $2.8 billion to the development phase.
"The JSF program has fallen short on performance over the past several years," Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the Defense Department planned to aggressively manage it over coming years as it goes from development and testing toward full production.
Affordability was supposed to be a hallmark of the F-35, which is being built in three versions for the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps; eight overseas co-development partners; and other projected foreign buyers.
Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the committee, said the cost growth could have significant implications for the rest of the Pentagon's multibillion-dollar acquisition programs and for its budget as a whole. The United States alone is scheduled to buy more than 2,400 F-35s, the backbone of its air combat fleet for coming decades.
"People should not conclude that we will be willing to continue... strong support without regard to increased costs coming from poor program management or from lack of focus on affordability," the Michigan Democrat said.
Carter said he expected Air Force Secretary Michael Donley to notify Congress of the cost-containment breach formally under a law known as Nunn-McCurdy within days. If unit-cost growth tops 25 percent, Nunn-McCurdy requires the Pentagon to justify continuing the program based on three main criteria: its importance to U.S. national security; the lack of a viable alternative; and evidence that the problems that led to the cost growth are under control.
In 2001, when the development began, the F-35 procurement cost had been projected to be $50.2 million per aircraft in base-year 2002 dollars. Pentagon estimators, based on a projected procurement of 2,443 aircraft, including all variants, now expect the average price to range from $80 million to $95 million in 2002 dollars, said Christine Fox, director of cost assessment and program evaluation for Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The eight U.S. co-development partners are Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway. Israel has begun a process that could lead it to buy 75 F-35s. Singapore is also mulling a purchase, but cost growth could eat into overseas sales, to the benefit of rival fighters from Europe, Russia and China.
Completing development and approving full-rate production is now expected in April 2016, about 2-1/2 years later than planned in the baseline program approved in 2007, congressional auditors told the committee. Carter said initial operational capability was now set for 2012 for the U.S. Marine Corps version and 2016 for the Air Force and Navy models.
Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by sales, said F-35 production trends showed significant improvement, indicating aircraft deliveries will be back on schedule in 2011. The three most recent aircraft loaded into production tooling are now on schedule, said Jeffery Adams, a company spokesman. "We are committed to delivering our airplanes on time." |
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 [Dawn] A suicide bomber who stumbled and blew up his vest of explosives prematurely on the outskirts of Pakistan's city of Peshawar killed three civilians, police said.
"Three people were killed and nine wounded. All are civilians. The dead include a small child and two men," police official Fazal Maula.
The bomber intended to target a convoy of paramilitary Frontier Corps about 10 kilometers outside central Peshawar, police said.
"The suicide bomber wanted to hit an FC convoy. It was a small bazaar outside Peshawar. He was wearing a suicide jacket, he fell down and it exploded prematurely. He could not reach the target," said Maula. |
NEW DELHI, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Six years ago, New Delhi signed a deal worth almost one billion U.S. dollars with Moscow to pull out an abandoned aircraft carrier from the Russian junkyard and arm it with some of the most modern MiGs: the Mig29Ks.
Russia delivered the first four of the 16 combat jets recently but there is no sign yet of the carrier.
With Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arriving here for a one-day visit on Friday, the two countries are expected to definitely settle the aircraft issue with a possible signing of agreement, said Indian official sources. India recently has agreed to shell out 2.34 billion U.S. dollars for the aircraft.
According to highly placed sources in the Indian Defense Ministry, a price row between India and Russia had delayed the delivery of the carrier, which was originally named after the legendry Soviet Admiral Sergei Gorshkov and now rechristened by India as INS Vikramaditya, an ancient Hindu king.
Russia has told India that it cannot build the ship at the cost offered in 2004 and added a new price tag of 2.9 billion U.S. dollars.
Going back in time, the price of military equipment had never become an issue in India-Russia military relations which are an extension of the Cold War legacy, when such irritants were often overlooked in the name of friendship. But the economics of military ties between India and Russia have changed rapidly with time and the emergence of new players on the scene.
According to Defense Ministry sources, as recently as 15 years ago, India would not have imagined buying military equipment from countries like Israel and the United States, who are now its fastest growing arms partners. So in that sense, the entire dynamics of India-Russia relationship is undergoing a silent change.
The delay in the delivery of Gorshkov-Vikramaditya has already derailed Indian navy's ambitious plans to operate three aircraft carriers to play the dominant role of a sea power in the Indian Ocean.
The carrier will be inducted in 2013 though it was intended to enter the Indian navy fleet by 2008.
Indian navy's sole power projector -- Royal Navy's Hermes which is known as Viraat, or the majestic, in its Indian avatar -- is running on borrowed time. The ship would have been decommissioned by now but its life has been extended after several rounds of overhauling.
"Ideally speaking, the Vikramaditya would have joined the force by now. But the current estimate is that even if the price issue is settled this year, the ship would not be ready to be delivered by the end of 2013," the sources said.
According to the contract signed in January 2004, Russia's Rosoboronexport was to deliver the 44,570-ton aircraft carrier to India in 2008. The 1.5 billion U.S. dollar contract earmarked 964 million U.S. dollars for Gorshkov refurbishment and 536 million U.S. dollar for the complement of 16 MiG-29K fighter aircraft on board.
Indian Navy does own the responsibility for the price hike and the resultant delay in the delivery of the Gorshkov carrier. Recently in response to an Right to Information (RTI) application, Indian Navy admitted that it placed the 1.5 billion U. S. dollar Gorshkov order without visual inspection.
"As per the contract signed in January 2004, the original package was drawn up based on visual examination in as-is condition wherein it was found that the majority of the equipment, systems could be repaired while the electronic equipment could be renewed," Vice-Admiral S. P. S. Cheema with the Integrated Headquarters, Ministry of Defense (Navy), wrote in his RTI response.
"On opening up the equipment for a detailed examination and survey of the state of the hull structures, systems, cabling, etc, it emerged that these could not be repaired and hence would have to be replaced with new ones. These additionalities have resulted in the increase in project costs," Cheema said.
Interestingly, India is building another aircraft carrier, known as the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier (IAC) at home and this would not be ready before 2015. But The ship is still on the drawing board. |
[Straits Times] SUSPICION is mounting that the fugitive militant Umar Patek may be in Aceh, after word spread on Wednesday that the Indonesian counter-terrorism force was hot on his trail.
Umar was a key leader of the regional terror network Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Indonesia until he fled to the southern Philippines in 2003.
He is thought to have returned to Indonesia last year with another fugitive JI member, Dulmatin, the 40-year-old bomb-maker who was shot dead on Tuesday in West Jakarta.
Security experts predicted yesterday that it would not be long before Umar, 40, was caught if he was in Indonesia.
Security analyst Ken Conboy, referring to Indonesia's crack anti-terror squad, said: 'With only 10 days to go before Obama gets here, you can be sure Densus 88 (Detachment 88) is working overtime to follow up on any leads they have.'
United States President Barack Obama is scheduled to make an official visit to Jakarta and Bali next weekend. |
 [Al Arabiya Latest] Dubai's Police Chief ordered foreign spies operating in the Gulf emirate to leave within a week or risk being hunted down by security forces, according to press reports on Thursday.
"They (foreign spies) better leave or they will face extreme measures," Police chief Dahi Khalfan told UAE. newspaper al-Khaleej.
Khalfan added that the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency Meir Dagan opened Pandora's Box executing the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel. "His audacity was unprecedented when he made his operatives use European passports."
Assuming it was Mossad. Somebody's trying real hard to get us all to believe it was Mossad when in fact it has yet to be proven. Khalfan pro'ly sells used camels on the side ...
| Very beautiful she-camels they appear, too, until one gets close. |
Dagan's actions, Khalfan explained, were extremely daring and yet he still had the arrogance to assume that the operation would go unnoticed. "Unraveling the mystery of Mabhouh's case was a serious blow that he had never anticipated."
Khalfan announced that the Dubai Police now has the DNA of four Mossad agents
| or not-Mossad agents -- without an actual subject to compare the found DNA to, it's awfully hard to say, unless all four were males with the last name of Cohen. |
involved in the murder. "As a policeman, I've learned that having the DNA of suspects means there is hope that we can arrest them," Khalfan told the UAE newspaper al-Ittihad Wednesday.
Khalfan reiterated that Mabhouh was betrayed by a Hamas member since the suspects arrived in Dubai 10 or 12 hours before him. "It must have been someone very close to him who leaked information about his movements," he told the paper.
Khalfan blamed Hamas for not sending one of their operatives to escort Mabhouh and said that the crime might not have taken place had the victim been escorted by a guard. "The crime wouldn't have been that easy to commit, the culprits wouldn't have been able to hunt him down that easily."
Maybe Hamas didn't protect him because they were the ones who whacked him ...
| Hamas 'protection' follows the ancient tradition. |
Khalfan denied reports that Mabhouh booked his ticket to Dubai over the internet or that he called his family from Syria to tell them he was travelling. His travel plans were shrouded in secrecy and his passport did not even have his last name.
"His passport name was Abdul Raaouf Mohamed."
Regarding the Palestinian detainees, Khalfan said that one of them booked a room for the culprits to stay in. "At first he denied then later confessed to meeting them. The second Palestinian detainee was in contact with the culprits and we have found out that he is sentenced to death by a Palestinian faction."
Khalfan denied that detaining those Palestinians implies incriminating Hamas itself,
since the detainees are traitors. He also denied reports that two of the assassins fled from Dubai to Abu Dhabi on the plane of the Israeli Minister of Environment, who was taking part in a conference in the country.
| But isn't it a wonderful rumour! |
"All members of the assassination team came to the country from Dubai Airport and left from Dubai Airport. Surveillance cameras detected them both at the airport and in the hotel."
The issue of the passports, Khalfan added, is still unresolved since there is a possibility that not all of them are fake. "We are not sure yet. Two of the suspects traveled to the United States on Feb. 14 and 21. I find it very hard to believe that airport security did not discover that the passports were fake. They could have had dual nationalities"
Khalfan is, however, certain beyond all doubt it that it is Mossad that assassinated Mabhouh. "When the assassination took place in January, I was 99% sure Mossad was behind it, now I am 100% sure."
| "And I continue not to care a fig what the piles of evidence may say." |
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Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Thursday warned of "global calamity" if nuclear weapons proliferate due to North Korea's nuclear program.
That's better than the headline. We can handle the Norks if they keep nukes; the problem is that they're spreading them around to Pakistan, Iran and perhaps others.
| There were a number of North Korean scientists at that site in Syria when the Israelis levelled it, as I recall... |
He was giving a lecture at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, an independent think tank in Seoul. "We have very little fear from North Korea's nuclear capability. The kind of weapons that North Korea can produce we can surely handle with whatever defensive system we have," Kissinger said. "But the real danger is, if North Korea, a state which has no significant resources, by starving its population can create nuclear capability, the temptation for other countries to follow that road would be overwhelming."
| So it would appear. Former head of the IAEA El Baradai is running for president in Egypt -- and he won't win based on his charm and rugged good looks. |
He expressed support for a combined strategy of sanctions and dialogue pursued by the current U.S. administration.
| Because sanctions and dialogue have worked so well thus far to prevent North Korea from proliferating their nuclear technology. (See Syria, above.) |
North Korea's nuclear weapons program is not just a problem for the U.S., but a problem for all countries that are affected by it, he said.
Kissinger said if North Korea really wants to solve the problem through negotiations, it must demonstrate that by returning to the six-party talks without preconditions. "My general view is that unless all parties are equally interested in the outcome, you can't make them interested by paying them a price for entering the negotiations," he said.
| I'd want them to demonstrate seriousness by agreeing to the removal of their nuclear program, and then actually following through. Anything else would be an act unmentionable in a family blog. |
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A U.S. unit specializing in the removal of weapons of mass destruction from North Korea in the event of a war is taking part in this year's South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises known as "Key Resolve," according to U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Walter Sharp.
Sharp told reporters at the Combined Forces Command headquarters in Seoul the North's WMD threat is a "shared responsibility" between South Korea and the U.S. The allies will closely cooperate to locate, secure, and eliminate WMDs.
The crack team "are here for this exercise and if we ever went to war, they would naturally come also," he said. That will continue once full operational control of South Korean troops is transferred to Seoul, he added.
This year is the second year the crack team has been dispatched to participate in the exercises. It is part of the Combined Joint Task Force for the Elimination of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the U.S. Army 20th Support Command based in Maryland, according to a military source.
Sharp dismissed calls by some Koreans and Americans to delay the transfer of the wartime operational control, saying the transfer will happen in 2012 and the bilateral alliance will be further consolidated in the process.
He also shrugged off North Korea's denunciation of the joint exercises as aimed at a "pre-emptive strike," saying they are normal exercises aimed at preparing for a war like those conducted by armies anywhere else in the world.
The Norks always sound off like that. |
The decision by the U.S. to hand full operational control of Korean troops to Seoul by 2012 needs to be reconsidered, said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the conservative Brookings Institution.
In an article for the Los Angeles Times headlined "Divide, and be conquered," O'Hanlon on Wednesday points out that once wartime operational control is handed over to Seoul in April 2012 as scheduled, the two countries will have separate command systems. "If the plan is implemented, the long-standing system whereby a U.S. general would command both countries' armed forces in any wartime scenario against North Korea is to be dissolved. Instead, a new approach would have each country in effect command its own military units," he said. "But to my mind, the basic concept of dividing command never made sense and perhaps should even be repudiated."
| A better solution is to hand over command to the ROK senior general and to remove US ground forces. They aren't needed anymore. The Norks can't and won't invade; and the ROK understands that it just has to wait until the Norks implode. We have better uses for our ground forces elsewhere. We can leave an air screen if needed but even there the ROK can fly F16s as well as our guys, and that's all they need to stop the Norks. |
| What about the Chinese when they get rambunctious? |
He suggested the decision was made from political rather than sound military considerations. "The main drivers included secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. The motives of both men were less than sound," O'Hanlon wrote.
"Frustrated by South Korea's resistance to various U.S. diplomatic ideas of the time, as well as the difficulty in deploying U.S. forces in Korea elsewhere in a manner that would help with his concept of a more flexible American global military system, Rumsfeld may have seen the idea as a way to weaken and downplay the U.S.-South Korea alliance," he said. "For his part, Roh was anxious to assert Korean prerogatives, especially against a U.S. administration with which he often clashed. So he liked the idea of a plan that would seem to advance South Korean sovereign rights."
But he said now presidents Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama "have established a reasonably solid relationship." "As such, any consideration of a delay in [the handover] -- or even a fundamental rethinking of it -- should be seen as a sign of confidence and maturity in the alliance rather than the opposite," he concluded.
Meanwhile, in an article for the Asia Foundation's Center for U.S.-Korea Policy, Bruce Bechtol, a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, also called for a delay of the handover. "It is extremely important to note that while the South Korean military is highly capable of combating a traditional conventional forces threat from North Korea, it is still heavily dependent on the capabilities of the U.S. military to deter and defeat the highly evolved North Korean asymmetric threat," he said.
The "asymmetric threat" refers to the North's putative nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
| Nonsense. The only promise the ROK needs is the one that says we'll back them up if the Norks uses such weapons. If the world doesn't believe that then it doesn't matter who is in command. The Chinese need to understand that if the Norks use a nuke, so will we. That's all that needs to be said. |
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| Posted by: OldSpook|| 2010-03-12 00:22 ||Comments
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| Posted by: SteveS|| 2010-03-12 02:32 ||Comments
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 [Al Arabiya Latest] The death toll from two days of fighting in Somalia's capital between government forces and al-Shabaab rebels has risen to 54, ambulance services said on Thursday as clashes subsided with both sides claiming successes.
The government urged residents to vacate the areas where fighting had taken place as it planned to take on the rebels again, but said it had not yet started a long-awaited offensive to dislodge the insurgents from Mogadishu once and for all.
"The government was just counter-attacking the rebels. We are going to fight the rebels as planned, let civilians around those areas vacate," Abdul Rasaq Mohammed Nur, Mogadishu's mayor, told reporters.
Insurgents have fought the government since the start of 2007 and the Western-backed administration has been hemmed into a few blocks of the capital since a rebel offensive last May.
"We have carried 54 dead people and 140 others injured yesterday and today," Ali Muse, coordinator of ambulance services, told Reuters.
Earlier in the day the Elman human rights group had put the death toll at 38 and 104 wounded.
"The death toll may rise because the shelling was terrible. Hundreds of families have been displaced from at least four districts of Mogadishu," Ali Yasin Gedi, vice chairman of the group, told Reuters. |
[Al Arabiya Latest] The European Union says it will send 130 future hostages observers to make sure Sudan's general elections in April are free and fair.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Thursday the April 11-18 vote will be "an important milestone" in bringing lasting peace to a country wracked by decades of fighting.
Veronique De Keyser, a member of the European Parliament, will lead more than 130 future hostages observers from 22 countries to assess the presidential and legislative elections in April. "If the people don't understand really what is the meaning of the vote this could be for me at least the major trap, the major pitfall," she told reporters in Khartoum. "And it's difficult because ... some people have never voted," she said, stressing this was not deliberate and that the EU has pledged money for voter education.
"So at the beginning of the process we have to admit that it will not be perfect but we have to pay attention to that," she said, adding the road to democracy was long.
A 2005 peace deal ended a north-south conflict that killed 2 million people, but by then the western Darfur region was at war. The election will be a test run for a 2011 independence referendum in southern Sudan.
The vote will be Sudan's first multiparty election in 24 years. |
[Al Arabiya Latest] Yemeni forces launched an attack on Thursday to recapture a government building occupied by separatists in the south of the country, setting off a gunfight, a local official and witnesses said.
Three protesters were shot dead as security forces tried to quash a separatist demonstration in another southern province. Elsewhere in Yemen, thousands gathered for demonstrations to demand an easing of the crackdown on the south.
Under international pressure to quell domestic unrest and focus its sights on al-Qaeda, Yemen earlier this week offered to hold talks with southern separatists and hear their grievances.
The offer by President Ali Abdullah Saleh followed an escalation of violence on both sides in south Yemen which left a trail of dead and wounded in recent weeks while insurgent violence elsewhere in the country has faded.
Demonstrations were being held in several cities, with crowds calling for the military to withdraw from southern cities and for the government to halt a sweeping campaign of arrests.
In the southern town of Tor al-Baha, Yemeni forces launched an attack to recapture a government building occupied by armed tribesmen, sparking a gun battle in which two people, including a passer-by, were killed, a local official said.
Tribal gunmen closed off all roads leading to the center of the town and surrounded security forces, witnesses told Reuters.
"Large military forces launched a campaign this morning to retake the municipality building (in a southern province). But gunmen from the southern movement confronted them and the two sides exchanged fire," the local official said.
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in a tight contest to keep his job as he vied with ex-premier Iyad Allawi, initial election results from four of the country's 18 provinces showed Thursday.
Four days after the election, Maliki and Allawi, both Shiite, have emerged nationally as the main candidates for the post of prime minister, with their blocs appearing to have fared best in Sunday's polls.
The preliminary figures, which were announced once 30 percent of votes had been counted in the southern provinces of Najaf and Babil, put Maliki's State of Law Alliance first and the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), a coalition led by Shiite religious groups, in second place.
Allawi's secular Iraqiya alliance was in third place.
State of Law Alliance
The State of Law Alliance held a lead of around 7,000 votes in Najaf and of 14,000 in Babil, the figures showed.
An election official later added that Iraqiya was in the lead in Diyala and Salaheddin, two majority Sunni provinces north of Baghdad, with 17 percent of votes counted.
"Allawi is in the lead in Diyala and Salaheddin," Iyad al-Kinaani, an official in Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) said.
In the Iraqi autonomous region of Kurdistan, meanwhile, Kinaani said the Kurdistania alliance, made up of the region's two long-dominant parties, was in the lead in Arbil province with 27 percent of votes counted.
Kurdistania is made up of regional president Massud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
In second place was the opposition Goran bloc ("Change" in Kurdish), which surprised observers by snaring nearly a quarter of the vote in Kurdish regional elections last year.
Complete results are expected to be announced on March 18 and the final ones -- after any appeals are dealt with -- will come at the end of the month.
Analysts have predicted protracted coalition building, as no single grouping is expected to win the 163 seats necessary to form a government on its own.
Several blocs called on Thursday for individual polling station tally sheets to be published online, expressing concerns the nationwide vote would not be in line with the total from individual stations. |
| The President ended up giving it all away to charity, including a chunk to the Fisher House, a national non-profit organization that provides housing for families of patients receiving medical care at major military and VA medical centers. |
| Credit where due, although I wonder if we'd approve of the rest of his donations. |
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 The House GOP caucus has agreed to call for a 1-year moratorium on all earmarks, Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., confirmed to IBD's David Hogberg. Republicans appear to be raising the stakes a day after House Democratic leaders announced a ban on corporate earmarks. That followed a rash of ethics troubles for House Democrats, which forced Charlie Rangel to step down as Ways and Means chairman and Eric Massa to resign.
Come on, Dems. Are you really going to let Republicans get the upper hand on this issue in an election year? How about a 10-year halt to earmarks?
How about a permanent ban on earmarks and turning the lot of them out of office? They're obviously not getting the message.
| Alinsky rules. First raise the issue, then polarize the issue, then freeze those who object, then turn them out of office. |
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 More than two dozen Democrats are expected to vote against the healthcare reform bill that will hit the House floor in the coming weeks.
"You want me to put my testicles on the table?"
At least 25 House Democrats will reject the healthcare reform legislation, according to a survey by The Hill, a review of other media reports and interviews with lawmakers, aides and lobbyists. Dozens of House Democrats are undecided or won't comment on their position on the measure.
"... while you're holding a claw hammer?"
The 25 opposed include firm "no" votes and members who are likely "no" votes. Most Democrats on The Hill's whip list are definitely going to vote no, but others, such as Reps. Lincoln Davis (Tenn.) and Harry Teague (N.M.), could vote yes.
"Well, I guess I could vote yes. I'm sure my constituents will understand."
However, The Hill has not yet put Democrats who are insisting on Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) language on abortion in the "no" category. Stupak has said there are 12 Democrats who supported the House bill in November who will vote no unless his anti-abortion-rights measure is melded into the final bill.
"Steney, what can we do to buy off those abortion nitwits?"
"How much money do we have to throw at them, Nancy?"
"All the money in the country. And more we can borrow until the international rubes catch on."
"There's your answer."
If leadership doesn't make changes to the abortion language and Stupak does indeed have 12 votes in his pocket, it will be very difficult to pass a bill.
"You want to give me several billion dollars? But Nancy, why?"
"'Cause you gotta honest face, Bart."
Yet if they do change the provisions, supporters of abortion rights in the House will threaten to vote no.
"How come he can have several billion and we can't? We're voting 'no'!"
The Hill's list does not include members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who are threatening to vote no unless changes are made to the bill's immigration-related provisions.
"And we want the entire bill written in Spanish!"
Most on Capitol Hill believe that language will not be changed and that most members of the CHC will still back the final measure.
"You don't vote with us, no boodle for you. Understand, Pablo?"
With all Republicans expected to reject the bill, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) needs to minimize defections. Thirty-nine Democrats voted against the House healthcare bill that passed 220-215 last November. |
 A top priority of the Obama presidency has been to restore the image of the United States in the world; in image allegedly left in tatters by the Bush administration. Unfortunately for the president, however, Americans by a wide margin now believe that that the United States standing in the world has not improved, but actually declined since President Obama took office.
I'd really care about that if I wasn't caught up in this indescribable malaise...
According to a poll conducted in late February and released this week by Democracy Corps-Third Way, Americans by a 10-point margin think that the standing of the United States has dropped under Obama -- by a whopping 51 percent to 41 percent. On the question of national security, Democrats now trail Republicans by 17 percent, and on the "right-track, wrong track," question just 31 feel the country is headed in the right directions, with a massive 62 percent registering discontent.
I'm holding my breath, waiting for another debacle in the Iranian desert.
Reported in The Washington Times, though not much in evidence in other "mainstream media," the poll is far from the product of a hopeful conservative imagination. Democracy Corps-Third Way is a Democratic polling group headed by former Clinton adviser James Carville and Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg. Their purpose is to warn Democrats of the electoral turbulence ahead. "We would not want the election to be held today, with this poll, Greenberg told the newspaper. "If the election were held today, this would be a 'change election.'"
We're not yet at the 'get a rope' stage, but the tar's starting to bubble and that squawking you hear is the chickens being plucked. |
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| Posted by: OldSpook|| 2010-03-12 00:40 ||Comments
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| Posted by: lex|| 2010-03-12 01:14 ||Comments
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 The Energy Department worked closely with the wind industry lobby to discredit a Spanish report that criticized wind power as a job killer, internal DOE e-mails reveal.
The e-mails obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request show how, starting last April, lobbyists at the American Wind Energy Association became alarmed that lawmakers were citing a study by Spain's King Juan Carlos University. The study found that Spain's massive investments in wind power cost 2.2 jobs for every "green" job created.
The study came out in early 2009 just as the wind lobby was building up its presence in Washington, hoping it could score big in an energy bill then being debated in Congress. Industry lobbyists feared the Spanish study would halt momentum for pro-wind legislation.
Study Fanned Wind's Fears
The e-mails show the wind lobbyists shared their concerns with DOE employees, who agreed the study needed to be refuted. In August, DOE produced a white paper specifically attacking the study.
For example, e-mails show the lobbyists requesting to know when the report would come out and DOE employees hustling to get it published because it was late.
"Is it okay if we send out our response (paper) to colleagues at AWEA and CAP? We promised it to them many weeks ago. It will soon be irrelevant," said energy analyst Suzanne Tegen, co-author of the DOE paper, in a July 29 e-mail to colleagues. CAP refers to the liberal Center for American Progress, which has pushed for renewable energy subsidies and has close ties to the Democratic Party.
CAP Senior Fellow Dan Weiss told IBD the center wasn't involved in drafting or editing the report, though it did promote it on its Web site.
The conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute obtained the e-mails via a Freedom of Information Act request and shared them with IBD. Many of the messages were redacted.
The e-mails are mainly between employees at DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. |
 China wants to crack down on press freedom and introduce a new training system that requires journalists to train in Marxist and communist theories of news.
"It's 'running dog lackies'? I always thought it was 'running lackie dogs'!"
"Wang, shoot him!"
Li Dongdong, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, told the South China Morning Post that some mainland reporters were giving Chinese journalism a bad name because they were not properly trained. Under communist theories of journalism, media should support the leadership rather than operate as a watchdog.
"Woof! Woof! Arf! Bark!"
[BEAT! BEAT! BEAT!]
"Yipe! Yipe! Yipe!... [LICK! LICK! LICK!]"
"Good boys!"
The initiative seems to be aimed at mainland journalists only.
Hong Kong journalists get to watch.
Chinese officials already routinely censor journalists, but Chinese media has become less restricted in recent years as they have gained more revenue from independent sources via advertising. |
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| Posted by: gromky|| 2010-03-12 00:29 ||Comments
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| Posted by: badanov|| 2010-03-12 00:53 ||Comments
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| Posted by: Procopius2k|| 2010-03-12 00:57 ||Comments
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 University of Alabama in Huntsville officials have fired professor Amy Bishop, who's accused of shooting and killing three colleagues last month.
I'm sure she'll appeal.
A one-paragraph letter dated Feb. 26 was mailed to Bishop informing her the university had terminated her employment effective Feb. 12, said UAH spokesman Ray Garner.
If we're all lucky she'll have a job for the rest of her life.
Bishop was suspended without pay retroactively on the day of the attack, Garner said. Bishop has been charged with capital murder in a shooting that also injured three others in a faculty meeting on Feb. 12. She has been also charged with three counts of attempted murder. |
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| Posted by: SteveS|| 2010-03-12 02:35 ||Comments
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In a number of places around the world, it is open season on Christians. We read of Christians burned out of their homes and slaughtered in Pakistan. Most recently, at least 500 Christians were murdered in Nigeria. The attackers in all cases are Muslims.
"We have over 500 killed in three villages and the survivors are busy burying their dead," said state information commissioner Gregory Yenlong. "People were attacked with axes, daggers and cutlasses -- many of them children, the aged and pregnant women."
I don't know what denomination those Nigerian Christians were, but Lutherans are the most numerous Christian denomination in Africa. I'm a Lutheran, but I have never heard a single word from any church source, local or national, about the mass murder of African Christians. No one
he means, I think, no one in the Lutheran Church hierarchy
seems to care.
No doubt readers can refer us to some Christian sources--evangelical, most likely--who have tried to draw attention to the plight of Christians in Africa, the Middle East and Asia who are being exterminated. But any such effort has wholly failed to gain traction in the "mainstream" Christian community
similarly the historic arab slave trade never seems to be noticed by blacks, the anti homosexual pronouncements of various Imans never seems to be noticed by gays, the misogynist actions in the Umma never seem to be protested by women.
Why? I can't explain it. Maybe "mainstream" Christianity is dead, except as an appendage of secular liberal opinion. Maybe, as the world's largest religion, Christianity has become so diffused that New World Christians don't much relate to their co-religionists in Africa and Asia. I don't know. What I do know is that it is much more dangerous to publish a cartoon of Mohammed than to slice apart a Christian with a machete. |
Gov. Chris Christie today will create a commission to privatize as many as 2,000 state jobs beginning next January, officials said Wednesday night.
As he grapples with an $11 billion deficit in the budget he will present on Tuesday, Christie is also considering invoking the Disaster Control Act to suspend Civil Service rules to make it easier for him to lay off higher-paid workers, according to two administration officials.
Privatizing jobs would require layoffs. By beginning them in January, Christie would not be subject to a deal between former Gov. Jon Corzine and state worker unions that would require the state to pay millions in raises to remaining workers if he orders layoffs before then.
Privatizing also has the benefit of slowing the drain on the public employee pensions.
Suspending civil service would allow Christie to order layoffs of higher-paid unionized state employees with many years of service, rather than the usual practice of layoffs that affect lower-paid new employees first, the officials said. Currently, workers with more seniority can "bump" less-experienced workers from their jobs.
The privatization effort deals a blow to state worker unions just 48 hours after Christie publicly acknowledged he is bound by the agreement struck by Corzine where state workers would get two 3.5 percent raises in the coming fiscal year -- one in July and one in January. They deferred one raise and took 10 unpaid furlough days last year in exchange for the no-layoff pledge.
This guy is doing what needs to be done. |
HAMBALI, the alleged Bali bomb mastermind who is suspected of links to Al-Qaeda, has filed a petition seeking his release from Guantanamo where he has been detained for more than three years.
Um, no ...
Considered the operational chief of Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) until his capture in Thailand in 2003, Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, filed a habeas petition with the US District Court in Washington.
Hambali, accused of plotting the October 2002 attack in Bali that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists, was held for three years in secret CIA prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006.
In addition to the Bali bombing he is thought to have raised funds from Al-Qaeda, with whom he has denied any links, for the 2003 attack on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta that left 12 people dead.
JI has long been suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, which was behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States that killed close to 3,000 people, most in New York.
Hambali allegedly headed JI until late 2002. He was arrested in Thailand in August 2003 and handed over to US authorities, who are currently detaining him at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The US also accuses Hambali of orchestrating and funding an attack on an Indonesian church on Christmas Eve 2000 that left 18 dead, and of plotting attacks on the embassies of the US, Britain and Australia in Singapore.
In a major setback for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled in June 2008 that detainees being held without charge at Guantanamo enjoy the constitutional right of habeas corpus, which allows them to challenge their detention. |
| Ay Pee. The key point is that they aren't to come back under another name, unlike in New York and California. |
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Excerpt: The deadly drone could find and dispatch single-person targets, with "very low collateral damage"
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| Posted by: OldSpook|| 2010-03-12 00:07 ||Comments
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Civilian Bloggers Warn of Others Like 'Jane' on the 'Net Who Are More Dangerous
While the rest of America was stunned to hear that a suburban Pennsylvania woman allegedly used the Internet identity of Jihad Jane and tried to join militant jihadists, for a group of 'Net vigilantes it was old news. In fact, at least one of the Web sleuths claims to have alerted the feds to Colleen LaRose's alleged efforts to raise money and recruit fighters for Islamic terrorists and to carry out her own jihad.
Groups like JawaReport, Quoth the Raven and the YouTube Smackdown Corps claim they had been monitoring LaRose's growing militancy for three years, and watched as the Internet -- particularly YouTube -- fed her fervor. They also said "Jihad Jane" is not the only one on the Internet that the groups are monitoring. "There are certainly many others out there who are more eloquent and appear to be more dangerous from the way they talk," a man calling himself Rusty Shackleford told ABC News. |
by Steve White
Moderator, Rantburg Defender-Scimitar & Times-Picayune
March 11, 2010, 1430 CT
Mark this date on your calendars. This is the day that Nancy Pelosi's term as Speaker of the House began to end.
Sometimes the end of a politician's career is indistinct. Scandal sometimes unfolds over weeks and months, and it isn't clear exactly when a politician's peers and the public reach the conclusion that said politician just isn't worth it.
But this one is clear.
As reported in the Corner this afternoon, the House voted 402-1 today to open an investigation of the House Democratic leaders and their handling of ethical allegations concerning former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY). The question is a simple one: what did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it?
The issue isn't just Mr. Massa's behavior and whether he violated House rules. That's bad enough for Speaker Pelosi and it conjures up images of the Mark Foley affair in 2006, which blew away whatever pretense the Republicans had then that they were fit to continue to govern.
The Corner notes the comparison to the Foley affair in 2006, but this is worse: apparently Rep. Massa had hired young gay men, underpaid them, and required them to live in his home. As the article says:
In hindsight, Democratic insiders wondered about activities that before had just seemed odd. They said Massa hired a surprisingly large percentage of young gay men, and paid them so little that staffers were forced to live in the house with him.
"Its not the gay part thats a problem, its the abuse, if its true," said one Hill source.
Nor has the last shoe dropped. While the national media has soft-pedaled Mr. Massa's problems, newspapers are starting to jump on the story. Today's big article is in the New York Daily News, and editors around the country are texting their political reporters demanding that they 'match' the story. A feeding frenzy will start; it is one of the things the media is good at, and once started it will continue until the story, and the people behind the story, have been devoured.
It is becoming clear that Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer and other key members of the Democratic leadership in the House were aware, at least to some extent, of Mr. Massa's problems and did nothing about it. Did they know about Mr. Massa's 'massages'? Did they know of his living arrangements? Did they know about his payroll and who was on it, and why? Did any of the staffers complain and if so, did that news reach the leadership? If so, what did they do about it?
We don't know what they knew and didn't know, and so far other than the usual denials, no one is talking.
That's the problem, and that's why today marks the first day of the end for Speaker Pelosi. The last day will come whenever the Speaker, and perhaps others in the Democratic Leadership, decide to put the House above their party and principle above politics, and resign their leadership positions. This will be painful for them and it will cost their party heavily in the midterm election, just as the Foley affair cost Republicans in 2006.
More than just a sex scandal, the current affair puts into focus what is wrong with the House today, as surely as the Foley affair did in 2006. Greed. Corruption. Abuse of power. Abuse of process. These are age-old problems and too many times such stories are buried as just politics as usual, as 'inside baseball' for Washington. Sometimes it takes a sex scandal to make clear just how corrupt the current leaders are.
This is such a time.
Speaker Pelosi should resign now. She should make clear what she knew, how she failed her responsibilities, and step aside so that new leadership in her party can step forward and begin to fix the many problems in the House.
The alternative is the water torture of the 24 hour news cycle, as drip, drip, drip the details will come out. That will be the end for her party.
It will also be a warning to the other party should it win power. Politicians being who they are, the Republicans likely won't learn from the experience. Pity. |
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Posted by: eLarson|| 2010-03-11 19:37
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Posted by: Anonymoose|| 2010-03-11 20:00
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Posted by: Steve White|| 2010-03-11 20:38
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Posted by: Frank G|| 2010-03-11 20:51
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Posted by: trailing wife|| 2010-03-11 22:11
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Posted by: Sherry|| 2010-03-11 22:25
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detailing federal investigations into the alleged corrupt activities of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The documents reference serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by ACORN as well as the Obama administration's decision to shut down a criminal investigation without filing criminal charges.
The documents include background information on two specific complaints filed in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively, during the 2008 election season.
According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State's office. Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of "duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses," which "put a tremendous strain on our office staff and caused endless work hours at taxpayers' expense." Corelli claimed the total cost of the extra work caused by ACORN corruption was $20,000. Likewise, Borges contended that: "The organization ACORN during the summer of 2008 conducted a registration drive which has produced over 100 rejections due to incomplete forms and individuals who are not citizens..." Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old.
The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in "questionable hiring and training practices," closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws.
By contrast, the documents also include records related to a federal investigation of ACORN corruption in St. Louis, Missouri, involving 1,492 allegedly fraudulent voter registration cards submitted by Project Vote, a liberal non-profit organization affiliated with ACORN on voter registration drives, during the 2006 election season. Assistant United States Attorney Hal Goldsmith initiated the investigation with "concurrence" from the Department of Justice and the participation of the FBI. According to a Justice Department memo, Goldsmith "advised he would prosecute any individual responsible for submitting fraudulent voter registration cards." Goldsmith identified the statute for prosecution: Title 42, USC 1973 (gg), which provides for criminal penalties for fraudulent voter registrations. In April 2008, eight former ACORN employees from the St. Louis office pled guilty to voter registration fraud.
Other documents show that the Bush Justice Department failed to prosecute ACORN voter registration fraud of non-citizens in Phoenix, Arizona in 2007 because the allegations that led to the opening of the investigation were "unverifiable." Notably, the FBI document detailing this questionable decision reveals that a "draft Intelligence Bulletin... concludes that ACORN's employment practices perpetuate fraudulent voter registration."
The ACORN documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include internal FBI memoranda, signed affidavits, subpoenas, fraudulent voter registration cards, and publications describing ACORN's policies and practices. The documents also include details regarding numerous allegations of corruption extending beyond voter registration fraud, to include attempts by ACORN employees to coerce workers to participate in campaign activities on behalf of Democratic candidates.
"These documents reflect systematic voter registration fraud by ACORN," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "It is a scandal that there has been no comprehensive criminal investigation and prosecution by the Justice Department into this evident criminal conduct. Given President Obama's close connections to ACORN, including his campaign's hiring of the ACORN's Project Vote organization, it seems rather obvious why Attorney General Holder has failed to seriously investigate these and other alleged ACORN criminal activities."
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