Over 100 Indian women police officers will soon join United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia to respond to riots and train local police in the volatile West African country. The all-woman unit is comprised of volunteers who have served in Kashmir and north-east India countering insurgencies. According to BBC, this is only the second time that an all-female unit will be used in a peacekeeping mission.
UN advisors offered several reasons for the decision to deploy an all-woman unit. First, it is part of a deliberate effort to incorporate more women in peacekeeping operations; UN police adviser Mark Kroeker told Gulf Times, This decision is extremely important because as we look at our deployment of women in UN police components we still retain an unacceptably small number of 3 or 4 [percent]. Kroeker added that women forces will help the UN access more vulnerable populations that may be intimidated by or respond negatively to male officers. The unit commandant, Seema Dhundia, echoed Kroekers opinion, telling AP, Female police are seen to be much less threatening, although they can be just as tough as men. But in a conflict situation, they are more approachable and it makes women and children feel safer. In Liberia, where girls, boys, and women are often combatants as well as victims, women peacekeepers may provoke a different response.
Finally, an all-woman unit can work to change peoples views on women; Kroeker also told BBC that this decision also sends a message to the post-conflict societies where we work that women officers can have any position and play [any] role in a police organization.
And they can perform .303 vasectomies on rapists, either in the general population or in the male portion of the UN peacekeepers. That should 'send a message' allright ....
Posted by: john ||
09/09/2006 08:33 ||
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More from AP
They are tough women who have served in some of India's most dangerous hot spots, facing down rioters and armed insurgents.
Now, 125 Indian policewomen are being trained to form an all-women team of United Nations peacekeepers the U.N.'s first such peacekeeping group to help bring order to strife-torn Liberia, a west African nation rebuilding after nearly a quarter-century of conflict.
"The situation in Liberia is extremely volatile, but we believe our experience in handling difficult situations in India will come in handy," said Seema Dhundia, the 39-year-old unit commandant, as she put her soldiers through their paces Thursday in a dusty field in northern New Delhi.
India has been a major contributor to U.N. peacekeeping missions for decades, and has sent women as part of earlier contingents. But Indian officials felt it was time for a woman-only unit, picking candidates from the country's paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force. The unit expects to deploy to Liberia by mid-October.
"Women police are crucial in crisis situations, since most of the victims of strife are women," said Kiran Bedi, a senior Indian police official who has served as a U.N. adviser, and who helped initiate the peacekeeping plan. "India is one of those rare countries which has a large contingent of trained women serving in specialized units that have experience in conflicts, riots and civil strife."
Women peacekeepers, said Dhundia, bring something different to conflict zones.
"Women police are seen to be much less threatening, although they can be just as tough as men. But in a conflict situation, they are more approachable and it makes women and children feel safer," she said.
All the peacekeepers have battled insurgencies in India's own trouble spots Islamic militants in Kashmir, separatist guerrillas in the tropical jungles of the northeast, Maoist rebels in central India.
"These soldiers have been hand-picked from hundreds of applicants after stringent physical and mental tests," said Dhundia.
They are now in an intensive six-week training program, working under veterans of earlier peacekeeping operations. At a shouted command during Thursday's session, the women, dressed in blue battle fatigues, fall to the ground and take aim at distant targets. At another command, they set aside their weapons to display their prowess in hand-to-hand combat.
"Given the situation on the ground in Liberia, our training includes civil disorder management, handling crowds, the levels of force to be employed and use of non-lethal and lethal weapons," said Poonam Gupta, a 10-year veteran of the Central Reserve Police Force.
Although battle-scarred, few have worked abroad before.
"Yes, there are apprehensions about the situation we will face. But we are soldiers first. This is part of our training. Once we don the uniform, all our fears disappear," said Lalitha Kaloni.
Kaloni, whose father fought in Europe with the Allied forces during World War II, said her family was thrilled when she was selected for the Liberia mission. "There were no fears. My parents encouraged me, saying a soldier fights for her country anywhere, anytime."
Despite the aura of bravado, many are leaving families behind, and admit to occasional moments of anxiety. The soldiers are hoping phone calls home from their base in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, will ease the homesickness.
They are also being given lessons in yoga and meditation to deal with the stress they will face, said Dhundia.
Eventually, they are likely to be called on to train Liberia's National police, help conduct local elections or assist with prison security as the West African country struggles to return to normalcy.
Some 200,000 Liberians are believed to have been killed in the 1989-2003 civil war, which also displaced half the country's 3 million people. The country founded by freed American slaves in 1847 is still struggling to recover.
Some 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers are providing security in Liberia under a 2003 peace deal that ended fighting.
Posted by: john ||
09/09/2006 10:58 Comments ||
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#2
I see nothing but disaster in this ill thought out idea.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/09/2006 11:23 Comments ||
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#3
Might be interesting to see how they react if they run into any remnants of the "Butt Naked Brigade."
Posted by: mac ||
09/09/2006 12:18 Comments ||
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Nigerian investigators pursuing a U.S. Department of Justice request to look at dealings between U.S. Rep. William Jefferson and leaders of the Western African nation have accused Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar of diverting millions of dollars of public money into private accounts. On Thursday Abubakar, through aides, denied the allegations, which are not directly connected to the U.S. probe of Jefferson, D-New Orleans.
... bribes would have to be paid to the vice president to help the Kentucky firm iGate Inc. win telecommunications contracts in Nigeria...
Abubakar became publicly linked to the Jefferson investigation in August 2005, when FBI agents raided the vice president's Maryland home at the same time they were searching Jefferson's residences in Washington and New Orleans. In an affidavit, the FBI said it expected to find $100,000 in marked bills that Jefferson allegedly had delivered to the vice president. The agents instead reported finding $90,000 of the cash jammed into the freezer of Jefferson's Washington home. The remaining $10,000 was accounted for: half of it was given as a loan to a Jefferson staffer and the rest returned to the government by the congressman's lawyers.
An FBI transcript of secretly recorded conversations between Jefferson and a cooperating witness quotes the congressman as saying that bribes would have to be paid to the vice president to help the Kentucky firm iGate Inc. win telecommunications contracts in Nigeria. Jefferson and Abubakar both have denied that any bribes were paid. Jefferson has not been charged and has said he did nothing wrong.
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Posted by: Fred ||
09/09/2006 00:00 ||
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The Zimbabwean government has built only 3,300 houses for the estimated 700,000 people made homeless by its forced housing demolitions over a year ago, an Amnesty International report said yesterday. It adds to criticism from Zimbabwean groups, which say the demolitions were an abuse of human rights.
President Robert Mugabe's government bulldozed dwellings in Harare, Bulawayo and other cities. Mr Mugabe claimed the destruction was an urban clean-up programme and said his government would be providing new homes for those forced to sleep rough. But Amnesty dismissed the homes constructed as "a wholly inadequate response". It said many were of such poor quality that they were uninhabitable. "Hundreds of thousands of people evicted ... have been left to find their own solutions to their homelessness," said Amnesty's Africa programme director, Kolawole Olaniyan. "The Zimbabwean government has attempted to cover up mass human rights violations with a public relations exercise."
A Zimbabwean-based group, the Solidarity Peace Trust, said the residences destroyed were not slums but "valuable living spaces". The trust, headed by Bulawayo's Catholic archbishop, Pius Ncube, said the government's policies had created a large segment of the population that was "severely impoverished and highly stressed by continual movement. All have lost possessions and many have lost their health. A distressing number have died."
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Posted by: Steve White ||
09/09/2006 00:00 ||
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And Mugi lives in a palace. What a simple Marxist liberator.
KINSHASA - A coalition backing President Joseph Kabila won the largest number of seats in Congos July 30 parliamentary elections but fell short of an overall majority, according to results from electoral authorities on Friday.
Kabilas Alliance for the Presidential Majority (AMP) won around 200 of the 500 parliamentary seats, or roughly 40 percent, but would still need support from independent parties to name a prime minister for the vast central African state. Kabilas rival in a presidential run-off scheduled for Oct. 29, Jean-Pierre Bemba, and his Rally of Congolese Nationalists (RENACO) won more than 80 seats, according to Reuters calculations. Veteran opposition politician Antoine Gizengas PALU party came third in the parliamentary polls, with 34 seats, emerging as a potential kingmaker.
We lack only a very few votes to assemble a parliamentary majority, senior AMP member Lambert Mende told U.N. radio Okapi. We are working actively to make contact with the new deputies, both political parties and individuals.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
09/09/2006 00:00 ||
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Riot police indiscriminately clubbed senior opposition leaders, lawmakers and the activists of Awami League (AL)-led 14-party opposition coalition to thwart their attempt to lay siege to the Election Commission (EC) Secretariat in the capital yesterday, injuring around 100 including Saber Hossain Chowdhury. Every single attempt by the opposition leaders and activists to approach the vicinity of the EC Secretariat was met by police firing teargas shells and charging batons indiscriminately that left Leader of the Opposition Sheikh Hasina's Political Secretary Saber Hossain Chowdhury critically injured.
... opposition leaders and activists were met by police firing teargas shells and charging batons indiscriminately...
A road march of a newly formed opposition alliance of several political parties, National Unity Front (NUF), towards the EC Secretariat, was also intercepted by police near Bangla Motor intersection where leaders of the alliance announced a seven-day ultimatum to CEC MA Aziz and three other election commissioners to resign from their posts.
The 14-party coalition yesterday announced a countrywide dawn to dusk hartal scheduled for Sunday and countrywide demonstrations today protesting the police atrocities. As several thousand opposition activists reached a police barricade on Mirpur Road near Road No 27 intersection in Dhanmondi and tried to defy the government's ban on any gathering near the EC Secretariat area yesterday,
...the law enforcers all of a sudden began clubbing the marchers indiscriminately...
the law enforcers all of a sudden began clubbing the marchers indiscriminately although State Minister For Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar on Tuesday had asked the law enforcers and the opposition to restrain themselves. Saber, also an organising secretary of AL, had been admitted to Bangladesh Medical College Hospital first, where doctors declared his condition as critical, but later was shifted to Apollo Hospital. AL sources said he might be taken abroad soon for better treatment.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/09/2006 00:00 ||
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Okay, scorecard needed here. Is this:
A) Government beating Islamists.
B) Government Islamists beating non-Islamists. or,
C) Government Islamists beating non-government Islamists?
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Opponents of President Evo Morales stayed home from work and blocked key streets in four cities Friday to protest the governing party's handling of an assembly that is rewriting the Bolivian constitution.
Scattered street clashes between strikers and unions aligned with Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party took place in Santa Cruz, Bolivia's largest city and the center of opposition to the socialist leader, as well as in the southern city of Tarija. Opponents argue Morales' party is trying to expand the president's power without recognizing the four eastern states' demands for greater autonomy.
Government officials said members of the radical Crucena Youth Union hurled two homemade firebombs at government television station offices in Santa Cruz. The bombs crashed against a concrete wall and the building's front gate, doing only minor damage, the officials said.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
09/09/2006 00:00 ||
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I'm navel gazing...oh, another despot dictator in S. America
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/09/2006 2:01 Comments ||
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That pic works wonders on the male crowd here at the Burg, which is why I always ask Fred to let me do the Bolivia stories ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/09/2006 10:38 Comments ||
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MARADYKOVSKY, Russia (AP) - Engineers covered in head-to-toe protective gear inserted a neutralizing solution Friday into bombs filled with a nerve agent, officially starting the work of Russia's first plant for destroying the deadly chemicals.
The opening of the Maradykovsky plant accelerates Russia's campaign to eliminate the world's largest arsenal of the toxins. The plant, 450 miles northeast of Moscow, holds 6,900 tons of nerve agents stored in aerial bombs and missile warheads - more than 17 percent of Russia's stockpile. The destruction facility, on the site of one of Russia's seven former chemical weapons production plants, will become a focal point of the push to meet an April 2007 target for Russia to destroy 20 percent of its stockpile. To date, Russia has eliminated just 3 percent, as opposed to 39 percent destroyed by the United States, which is home to the second-largest stockpile.
Besides the Maradykovsky plant, Russia has two other chemical weapon destruction facilities, both built with generous foreign funding. The Maradykovsky plant is the only one for destroying nerve agents as opposed to blister agents. Construction of another plant that was to have been the biggest - Shchuchye, with chemical weapons stored in millions of artillery shells - has bogged down in disputes between Russia and the United States, the main funder.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
09/09/2006 00:00 ||
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What? capacity filled in Iran? Iraq out of business?
Posted by: Captain America ||
09/09/2006 2:03 Comments ||
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Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) warned Republicans to either accept the Senate's version of immigration reform - which includes amnesty for illegal aliens - or risk losing Congress to Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections.
"If we can't get this Congress to pass fair immigration before now, we'll elect a new Congress in November that will pass it," said Kennedy to a cheering crowd at a rally supporting amnesty for illegal aliens on the National Mall. "We will pass an immigration bill in Congress that is worthy of America."
Thousands of people gathered to hear Kennedy speak in support of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (S. 2611), one of two bills currently under consideration by Congress. The turnout was significantly less than the hundreds of thousands predicted by rally organizers.
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#4
The problem, teddy, is that most Americans are against amnesty - the figure is 65% or so, IIRC. Your push for amnesty may COST your party anywhere from three to twelve seats. You need to sit down and shut up. Better still, retire, you worthless piece of bloated protoplasm.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/09/2006 4:43 Comments ||
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#5
Kennedy also used the opportunity to rally for something closer to home when he spotted some of his constituents from Massachusetts.
#6
nice Ted pics - is that the same facial expression Papa Joe made when fellating Nazis?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/09/2006 10:33 Comments ||
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Simply listen carefuly, then do the exact opposite of Fat Teddy's wishes.
And we'll all be OK.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/09/2006 11:32 Comments ||
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He may (for once) be right - immigration very well could cost the Republicans control of the House and/or Senate. Many of those Republicans who are AWOL on controlling our border may find themselves out on their butts, as their voters either stay home or vote third party out of utter disgust.
Can we clone Tancredo (& on the other big issue, Coburn?)
French naval export company Armaris on Aug. 28 made a formal offer of three Marlin diesel-electric patrol submarines to Pakistan, a deal that would include MBDA Exocet SM39 missiles, a Pakistani official said Sept. 8.
The French government granted approval for Armaris to offer the Marlin SSK in May, after long hesitation for fear of upsetting India, which recently bought six French Scorpene submarines, also armed with Exocet anti-ship weapons. MBDA declined comment. Armaris officials were not immediately available.
Complicating the sale for France is the Pakistan Navys preference for the Boeing Harpoon missile. The U.S. government has authorized the sale of 30 submarine-launched versions of the Harpoon to Islamabad. Acquisition of the Harpoon would be a first for Pakistan, as its forces have only operated the air-launched and surface ship versions so far. The Pakistan Navy operates the French DCN-designed Agosta 90B Khalid boat, armed with Exocets.
French business daily La Tribune reported Sept. 8 that Spanish and Germany industry were working on their offers to Pakistan. The Marlin would be an updated, all-French version of the Franco-Spanish Scorpene boat and include air-independent propulsion. The sub deal is likely to be worth $1 billion to $1.2 billion. Armaris is a DCN-Thales joint venture.
Posted by: john ||
09/09/2006 14:38 ||
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Really put Pakiwackiland's shorts in a bunch by offering India a half-dozen of the older 688-class subs as they reach the end of their service life in OUR navy. Far better than anything the Paks (or the French) have.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
09/09/2006 16:52 Comments ||
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Let'em get French subs. Yeah, that's the ticket. The French submarines have got to be very good, high-quality stuff with a long history of successful combat. Heh.
Successful operators of Submarines:
US Navy,
Royal Nacy, and
German Navy. Period.
End-of-list. Heh.
These guys can't operate a few lousy greenhouses, let alone a submarine.
What makes anybody think these things would be anything more than floating tombs for what could laughingly be caled Paleostinian sailors - or barring that - semi-sunk rustbuckets sitting in a dock somewhere along the Gaza coastline?
Heck, even the Russians can't figure out how to keep most of their navy afloat these days. Running a submarine is expensive.
#9
These guys can't operate a few lousy greenhouses, let alone a submarine.
FOTSGreg, you may be slightly confused on the subject matter here. The French submarines are going to Pakistan. The inability to preserve, operate or even appreciate greenhouses is a hallmark of the Palestinians.
I know, starts with a capital "P" and ends with a consonant, so you were close.
KARACHI: The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) staged demonstrations outside city mosques after Friday prayers and criticised the government for amendments in the controversial Hudood Ordinance.
The audience came prepared with placards and banners inscribed with the slogans against President General Pervez Musharraf.
MMA leaders gathered outside Pathan Masjid after prayers in a main demonstration during which members of the national and Sindh assemblies addressed worshippers and criticised the government for promoting "anti-Islamic" activities in Pakistan.
The audience came prepared with placards and banners inscribed with the slogans against President General Pervez Musharraf. The speakers claimed that the government's women's emancipation bill was "anti-Islamic" and religious parties would not allow them to have it passed by parliament.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/09/2006 00:00 ||
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It's the false positives that are the problem in de-mining. Optimally, I imagine they want a laser that can be mounted on a helicopter.
First you would pop a few blasting cap explosives charges next to say, a square acre you believed was a minefield. The subsurface sound reflections could be discriminated by computer to show all objects larger than say, a grapefruit. Most of these would just be rocks. Anything too large or small would be ignored.
But that narrows it down enough so that the chopper could hover above, zapping each and every target, and igniting all the land mines.
If they really wanted to be good guys, I think they have developed some hybrid plants that readily uptake the toxic chemicals in the soil after a land mine detonates or burns.
It sounds like something out of a comic book, or Lord of the Rings, I know. But there's a chance that invisibility â real-life, honest-to-God invisibility â may actually be possible, some day.
The technology doesnât come from some dubious unknown inventor, but from Professor Sir John Pendry, the legendary theoretical physicist, I write in this monthâs BBC Focus magazine â âthe world's best science and technology monthly.â Pendry has developed the concept of metamaterials, which have properties determined by their structure rather than their composition. This can give them 'impossible' properties, such as a negative refractive index. Initially, there was some debate about whether this could ever be achieved. But the proof came last year with the demonstration of a superlens capable of beating any lens made of normal material.
By utilizing metamaterials, it should be possible, in theory, to create what Pendry calls an invisibility cloak -- although invisibility shell might be more accurate as it will need to be rigid. Such a cloak would divert any incident light around its surface and release it on the same path on the other side: to any observer the wearer is invisible.
Interestingly, Pendryâs work on metamaterials started when he was working for Marconi. He was looking at the application of carbon fiber for a stealth coating when he realized that its interaction with radar was determined by the length of the fibers â it was effectively acting as an array of tiny aerials â and that the same effect could have many other applications.
Invisibility in the optical spectrum will be challenging because metamaterials will need to be constructed on a scale corresponding to the wavelengths of visible light, which is just a few hundred nanometres. That technology will not be around for at least five years.
But radar invisibility is much easier because radar wavelengths are in the centimeter range. Pendryâs colleague, Dr. David R. Smith at Duke University, is already working on a microwave metamaterial. Results are expected within eighteen months.
Unlike existing stealth techniques, a metamaterial should in principle be able to make an aircraft (or missile) literally invisible to any radar from any aspect.
There are likely to be other metamaterials along later. As Pendry explained, they can have all sorts of mechanical or acoustic properties as well as affecting light or other radiation. But for the mean time, we are likely to have out hands full just thinking of applications for invisibility.
The biggest question is likely to be the width of spectrum that any given material can handle. According to Pendry, a sufficiently deep metamaterial should be able to cope with a very wide spectrum. This might include all visible wavelengths plus a chunk of infra-red and UV. However, itâs clear that even very limited invisibility could be a major military asset.
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.
The Zimbabwean government has built only 3,300 houses for the estimated 700,000 people made homeless by its forced housing demolitions over a year ago, an Amnesty International report said yesterday. It adds to criticism from Zimbabwean groups, which say the demolitions were an abuse of human rights.
KINSHASA - A coalition backing President 
Riot police indiscriminately clubbed senior opposition leaders, lawmakers and the activists of Awami League (AL)-led 14-party opposition coalition to thwart their attempt to lay siege to the Election Commission (EC) Secretariat in the capital yesterday, injuring around 100 including Saber Hossain Chowdhury. Every single attempt by the opposition leaders and activists to approach the vicinity of the EC Secretariat was met by police firing teargas shells and charging batons indiscriminately that left Leader of the Opposition Sheikh Hasina's Political Secretary Saber Hossain Chowdhury critically injured. 
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - Opponents of President Evo Morales stayed home from work and blocked key streets in four cities Friday to protest the governing party's handling of an assembly that is rewriting the Bolivian constitution.
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) warned Republicans to either accept the Senate's version of immigration reform - which includes amnesty for illegal aliens - or risk losing Congress to Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections.
KARACHI: The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) staged demonstrations outside city mosques after Friday prayers and criticised the government for amendments in the controversial Hudood Ordinance. 
