The show's guests haven't been disclosed, but Mr Assange has promised to give viewers more of what he's been supplying for years: controversy. The WikiLeaks secret-spilling site saidyesterday that "iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders" would be brought in so that Mr Assange could challenge them on their vision of world affairs and "their ideas on how to secure a brighter future". The world of television talk shows is a new one for the 40-year-old Australian, whose group has orchestrated the biggest mass-disclosures of secret documents in US history. But the statement argued that Assange was uniquely qualified for the role given his past as "a pioneer for a more just world and a victim of political repression". Might be watchable in a trainwreck kind of way.
#3
All the more reason to get one of those weather radios that give off loud alarms (when properly programmed) when severe weather alerts are generated - something loud enough to wake you from sleep & widely available for sale.
This will be quite the bone for Carla del Ponte...
THE HAGUE: International Criminal Court judges on Monday ordered four prominent Kenyans, including two potential presidential candidates, to stand trial for allegedly orchestrating a deadly wave of violence after their countrys disputed 2007 presidential election. Among the four suspects sent for trial were Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and former Education Minister William Ruto, who both are planning to run for the presidency this year.
Kenyatta, 50, is the son of Kenyas founding president, Jomo Kenyatta, and the countrys richest citizen, with a personal fortune of half a billion dollars.
Cheez, Bob in Zimbabwe does much better than that.
Ruto is a former ally of Prime Minister Raila Odinga, but the two had a falling out partly over Rutos insistence on making his own presidential bid this year.
More than 1,000 people were killed in postelection violence in Kenya after police ejected observers from the center where votes were being tallied and the electoral body declared President Mwai Kibaki the winner.
Ruto was ordered to stand trial with radio broadcaster Joshua Arap Sang for crimes against humanity allegedly targeting Kibaki supporters. Another suspect, former Minister of Industrialization Henry Kiprono Kosgey, was cleared of charges.
In a separate case, Kenyatta will stand trial alongside Cabinet Secretary Francis Muthaura for alleged crimes against humanity directed at Odinga supporters. A third suspect in the case, former police commissioner Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hussein Ali, was cleared of the charges.
No date has been set for the trials.
The suspects ordered to stand trial will remain free in Kenya until the case starts,
sometime in about 2024...
but Trendafilova warned them they could face arrest if they attempt to whip up fresh violence.
Prosecutors have said the decision to launch an ICC investigation in Kenya should help ease tensions, but there are fears a decision on prosecuting the suspects could have the opposite effect and spark renewed fighting.
It is our utmost desire that the decisions issued by this chamber today bring peace to the people of the Republic of Kenya and prevent any sort of hostilities, Trendafilova said.
Its unclear whether the case could block Ruto and Kenyattas presidential ambitions, since government officials have issued conflicting statements on whether they will remain eligible to run.
Trendafilova stressed that the decisions do not mean guilty verdicts against the suspects, only that there is sufficient evidence to send them to trial.
Rights groups welcomed the ruling.
According to two recent opinion polls, a majority of Kenyans support the ICC process. Most citizens have little faith in their own judiciary, widely perceived as corrupt and choking on a backlog of cases.
The ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, launched his investigation in 2010 only after Kenyas parliament failed to agree to set up a national tribunal to prosecute perpetrators of postelection violence.
Both Kenyatta and Ruto come from powerful ethnic groups. Kenyatta is Kikuyu, the ethnic group with the highest numbers and the one that has produced two of the countrys three presidents. Ruto is a Kalenjin, the ethnic group that produced Kenyas longest-serving president, Daniel arap Moi, who recruited many of his fellow Kalenjin into the security services.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under:
[Yemen Post] A senior Yemeni official in the Ministry of Oil told Yemen Post that international companies working in the oil and gas sector in Yemen are spending millions of government dollars to government officials on a yearly basis.
The official told the Yemen Post that oil and gas companies spent large sums of money to please President-for-Life Saleh's ... exemplifying the Arab's propensity to combine brutality with incompetence... ruling family and ensured that they received nearly all the sub contracts.
Prices in these contracts were at time triple the average price, therefore, the country would lose billions during the length of their contracts.
The official warmed that such strategies will soon have to come to an end and that ordinary people are more in need of financial benefits.
"We are aware the bigwigs in President Saleh's regime were core seasons in the corruption these companies are participating in. Members of the ruling family gained millions from these companies and we will do everything possible to ensure that comes to an end," the official told Yemen Post.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/24/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under: Arab Spring
#2
Hmmm, read the beginning of the headline Ruling Family Involved in Large Corruption Scandals and immediately thought of someplace somewhat closer than Yemen.
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
01/24/2012 18:18 Comments ||
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Juan Williams and John King approve ... :-)
Newt Gingrich has no interest in being a participant in another debate where the audience isnt allowed to audibly react.
Were going to serve notice on future debates, Gingrich told Fox News this morning. Were just not going to allow that to happen. Thats wrong. The media doesnt control free speech. People ought to be allowed to applaud if they want to.
He said he regretted that he had not protested when it was announced the audience was to be silent.
I think he took them out of it, Gingrich said of NBC moderator Brian Williams, because the media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what theyve done in every debate.
UPDATE: I called up the Commission on Presidential Debates, which handles the general election debates, and they confirmed that audience participation has not been allowed in the past in debates, and will not be allowed this cycle either. So, if Gingrich is the GOP nominee, hell have to face a silent audience during his debates with the President unless the rules are changed.
UPDATE II: Asked if the Gingrich campaign would ask the Commission to change the rule requiring the audience to be silent if Gingrich became the nominee, Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond e-mails NRO, Yes, we would. If we have learned one thing it is [that] people, not the media-moderators, pick the winner.
#4
When the ovations emphasize loathing for the media I can't really blame the msm. It's not as if they are above censorship and partisanship despite their frequent loud claims of being watchdogs.
#5
...they intentional lie to themselves about the First Amendment protection of a free press. The intent was free flow of information. They have long forfeited the function as a watch dog of republic by becoming the defacto lap dog of one party.
The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association applauds Governor Cuomo's proposal to scrap the Combined Ballistic Identification System (CoBIS). After collecting over 356,000 spent shell casings since March 2001 at an estimated cost of nearly $44 million, not a single crime has been solved because of the program.
"By any rational measure, CoBIS has been a total failure," said NYSRPA President Tom King. "What is astounding is that there are actually elected officials defending it. Only in Albany would you find people who think that a program which has run for more than 10 years without producing a single result is good public policy."
No, but there are a lot of disappointed liberals out there. Disappointed because they don't understand that criminals are the ones with the guns, and they will never in a million years get the guns out of their hands. That's why they call them criminals.
#5
And now, the "ballistics experts" who were employed by the program have to go to other "anything but chasing bad guys" tasks like giving DARE presentations...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/24/2012 15:38 Comments ||
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#2
Other surprises in this decision was that in addition to the Scalia written main decision, there was also a concurring decision written by Alito and joined by three other justices, *and* an individual concurring decision written by Sotomayor.
This latter one, by Sotomayor, had what could be called "foreshadowing". She noted that the police has "usurped" his property, for surveillance purposes, for which there is a lot of 4th Amendment case law.
But then, and this is the zinger, she noted that many searches today, warrant-less electronic searches, should also be called into scrutiny, even though they do not involve the usurpation precedents. But that there is very little case law on the books about many of them.
This is actually a very good sign from this new justice, that her future inclination might be strongly pro-privacy in the face of intrusive government surveillance.
#3
There is a reason that law enforcement requires a warrant and not carte blanche. The issue was not GPS surveillance, but rather that the authorization was needed to do it.
This is a good thing. It is relieving to know that SCOTUS does respect due process in this case.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/24/2012 15:31 Comments ||
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American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.
Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21--or face the consequences including contempt of court. What's the penalty for simply not remembering one's decryption key? Paging Jon Corzine, etc.
#5
They already thought of that. It started with a freeware encryption program called TrueCrypt, some years ago. Using it, you can encrypt your real files with one password, and fake files with a different password, a "duress password".
Thus, if you are compelled to decrypt, all they will see are the fake files.
And such technology never sits still, even for a moment.
#6
"American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.
Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21--or face the consequences including contempt of court."
1. Colorado has amazingly awful judges. Inbred hillbillies would be an improvement.
2. Fifth Amendment says you can't be required to self incriminate. This judgment will never survive appeal.
Thousands of Americans will don a kilt on Wednesday and raise a toast to the bard as they celebrate Burns Night. But how much do they know about modern Scotland? And does it matter?
#4
Not to mention Corsica, and perhaps Normandy, Wales, and Northern Italy. Not that I care, the Europeans can organize themselves however they like as long as its peaceful.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/24/2012 15:13 Comments ||
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#5
The plan of the Scottish nationalists is to exit Britain join the EU and get EU subsidies (good luck with that). Spain does NOT want to set a precedent for regions of a nation seceding & joining the EU (like for instance Catalan & the Basque region) and has pledged to oppose a Scottish bid for EU membership.
Posted by: Cincinnatus Chili ||
01/24/2012 18:22 Comments ||
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#6
TOPIX, CHINA DAILY FORUM > SINN FEIN'S GERRY ADAMS CALLS FOR NORTHERN IRELAND INDEPENDENCE, [Universal = Eire, Northern Ireland]IRISH UNITY | SINN FEIN WANTS NORTH IRELAND INDEPENDENCE, NATIONAL UNITY.
Took him long enough.
Next up is dev potent Irish mil capabilities + econ, unless Eire + North Irish wanna depend on the French???
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
UPDATE: I called up the Commission on Presidential Debates, which handles the general election debates, and they confirmed that audience participation has not been allowed in the past in debates, and will not be allowed this cycle either. So, if Gingrich is the GOP nominee, hell have to face a silent audience during his debates with the President unless the rules are changed. 
