Totally irrelevant to our general themes here, but so bizarre--and short--I had to post.
A shoplifter caused a buzz in a department store restroom and made off with about $60 worth of CDs, perfume, batteries and scissors. The man released a swarm of honeybees in a Kmart restroom, creating a diversion that allowed him to escape, authorities said. Store security spotted the man shoplifting Monday and followed him to the restroom to confront him. When the worker opened the door, about 100 bees buzzed out. "He probably started yelling 'Bees! Bees!' or whatever the case may be, then created that big diversion, then got out," said police Cmdr. John DeGonia. Store employees pulled cans of bug spray off store shelves to kill the bees. No one was stung. I hope this bozo has not just set a precedent for other aspiring morons.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/13/2003 01:19 pm ||
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#1
Boy, will this guy be sorry when PETA and ALF find out! (Or do they care about insect rights? Maybe the need to start a Peti or ILF?)
#2
Ya gotta give him an "A" for ingenuity, though. Sadly, if he had only put this much creativity into something besides petty theft, he probably would have made a hell of a lot more than a lousy 60 bucks.
Here direct from the teat of Australia's ABC is a lovely lovely little example of why they are a disgusting anti-America propaganda machine.
I wonder when they will host a program on : "What the world thinks of Saudi Arabia" starring a brains trust of Daniel Pipes, George W Bush, Ariel Sharon and for balance, Noam Chomsky
At any rate there is a web forum so you can go to the site, look for it and post to your hearts content. Write to them and complain, I did!
What The World Thinks of America, a special 90-minute debate, brings together broadcasters and a range of diverse voices from around the globe to give a multi-national verdict on the United States. Hosted from London, the program will boast a panel of quality thinkers, movers and shakers, including former Palestinian negotiator Dr Saeb Erekat, former cabinet minister Clare Short, US journalist Joe Klein and former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto - a seldom convened brains trust of world views on America's pre-eminence. Clare Short is a member of a 'brains trust'? Gimme a break she was only picked so her anti-US anti-war sentiment could get another public airing
Satellite links will create a sense of global conversation, with input from leading broadcasters around the world. The debate will also reveal the results of a ground-breaking, international survey of attitudes that will capture popular prejudices and convictions about America. There will be a separate poll in the United States testing the grasp of Americans on their public image abroad. These findings will give a truly global perspective on American values, politics, leadership and popular culture. and when is a country OTHER than America going to sit in the judging-dock? I mean it is COMPARATIVE after all, whats say we do a little expose: what the world thinks of Indonesia?
#3
Oh, no! They're gonna say mean things and hurt all our feelings and then we'll have to take Frank J's suggestion and Nuke the Moon (or at least unleash Chomps and Buck the Marine. Rarrr!).
#4
Wow, the ABC forums are rife with venomous anti-American slander. Thankfully, the obvious ignorance of the local posters doesn't reflect well on Australia or ABC. What a bunch of didgeridoo-playing trolls, I say just ignore 'em.
#5
ABC put together a group of rabid freedom-hating has-beens, give them unfettered access to air their views for all the world to see, and it still doesn't amount to the rectal product of one Golden Tamil on a diet. Millions continue to "vote with their feet", and do anything they can to come to the United States. THAT, not anything ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, BBC, French, German, Saudi, or Al Jaserria, television, all the "International" newspapers, or anyone else produces, shows exactly what "the world" thinks of America.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/13/2003 18:11 Comments ||
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#10
Find the most ardent Jihadi, give him a green card, a job, a house, education for his kids, all in the USA, all in exchange for his AK47, and he will atleast think about it.
#11
"Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and reject your name as evil..."
Posted by: Scott ||
06/13/2003 20:19 Comments ||
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#12
I suppose somebody might have paid attention to this stuff, before 9-11. Now it's just peeing in the wind...
Posted by: Fred ||
06/13/2003 23:47 Comments ||
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#13
a seldom(Infrequent; rare) convened(To summon to appear, as before a tribunal) brains(intelligence) trust(A combination of firms or corporations for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices).....verdict away assclowns(A vain, self-important, hypocritical, or aggressively stupid bafoon)
Posted by: Dick Saucer ||
06/13/2003 23:54 Comments ||
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Belgium's foreign minister said Friday the country has already amended its war crimes laws to avoid politically inspired lawsuits against U.S. officials, an issue that has strained relations between the two NATO allies. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld threatened Thursday to withhold money for a new NATO headquarters and ban Americans from attending alliance meetings unless Belgium changes a law under which U.S. Army commander Tommy Franks was charged with war crimes. Speaking on the VRT radio network, Louis Michel said the 1994 legislation â that lets Belgian courts hear genocide charges regardless of where they took place â has already been amended to provide for a referral to courts in the defendants' own country. "I'd like to once again repeat to Mr. Rumsfeld that Belgium has amended the genocide law," Michel said. "We have changed it precisely to meet the fears of our American friends." "Please come back!"
U.S. officials have been outraged by war crimes charges brought against Franks, who commanded American forces in the Iraq war, and others, including U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and former President George Bush for their role in the first Iraq war. The Franks case was filed by a left-wing lawyer on behalf of a group of Iraqis injured or bereaved in the war. Willy Claes, a former deputy Belgian prime minister and NATO secretary general, said Friday it was time for Belgium to mend fences with Washington. "Now is the time to launch a charm offensive to try to end" the divisions within NATO that opened up in the run-up to the Iraq war, he said. They blinked first.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 11:30 am ||
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#1
We have changed it precisely to meet the fears of our American friends.
Get one thing straight, Louie. Nothing BELGIUM does inspires fear in America.
"Now is the time to launch a charm offensive to try to end" the divisions within NATO...
#2
Dude, the first amendment was months ago. This latest statement is Belgium's way of saying they won't change it a second time. This is defiance, not compliance.
The amendment to which Belgium's minister refers is just not good enough. It's full of loopholes, which is why Rumsfeld is calling for them to change it a second, or else. I've always thought Brussels was an incongruous setting for NATO's HQ, anyway. How about Denmark?
#3
Tip for the Belgians: before you charge someone with war crimes, make sure you can get your hands on them. Gen. Franks might be a wee bit out of your reach.
Posted by: (lowercase) matt ||
06/13/2003 12:39 Comments ||
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#4
Let's assume universal jurisdiction over speed limits; and have Congress pass a law making the maximum speed limit in Belgium 15 miles (and I do mean miles) per hour. Any Belgian driving faster than that would be presumed to be engaged in traffic genocide.
Posted by: (uppercase) Matt ||
06/13/2003 12:53 Comments ||
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#5
Those morons can't even prosecute a child-molesting serial killer they caught red-handed.
Zhang, Denmark would have been -way- too vulnerable to being overrun by the Soviets in a hypothetical WWIII.
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
06/13/2003 14:37 Comments ||
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#6
I say that we pass a law the makes it Illegal to speak French. Penalty is Death. Get all of them at once.
#7
The Belgian attitude problem is symptomatic of something that's very, very wrong in Europe - the idea that Europe is the "center of the universe", and the world must listen to anything that spews forth from there. Their attitude is arrogant, ignorant, condescending, and inane. I have not been able to find ONE BIT of evidence to support the allegations made in Brussels regarding these charges. As long as just any person can charge anyone in the world with "war crimes" without posting extensive evidence that such crimes actually took place, and the person charged with those crimes actually had something to do with them, the rest of the world will view Belgium and Europe as a collection of village idiots with access to a news channel.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/13/2003 18:32 Comments ||
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"Gen. Franks might be a wee bit out of your reach."
And should they ever arrest Franks, the SOF-D and SEALs will get the mission of their lifetimes.
So Jacques appears to be just another hack on the public tit? And here we all thought he was some kind of antiwar hero of the oppressed...
A Paris investigating magistrate has overruled the recommendation of a senior public prosecutor and set up a formal inquiry into the £1.4m grocery bill claimed by Jacques Chirac and his wife during eight of the 18 years that the president spent as mayor of the French capital. Judge Philippe Courroye said yesterday that the alleged crimes of fraud and misuse of public funds were not subject to a 10-year statute of limitations, as the chief Paris prosecutor, Yves Bot, had argued, because they may have been committed "by a person in a position of public authority". Hey, it appears he's a thief, too.
While Mr Chirac cannot be prosecuted (or questioned) as long as he remains in office, the decision could affect his wife, Bernadette, who may have to explain how the couple could consume up to £100 of fruit and veg and £37 of tea and coffee a day, mostly paid for in cash and justified with receipts which, in many cases, appear to have been doctored. Ve likes ze froot, ze tea and ze caffee vairy much. Good luck, Bernadette. I vill vait for you. Ontil then...au revouir.
The inquiry follows a complaint filed last year by the current Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, after a damning report by town hall accountants that threw a new light on the Chiracs' spending habits while occupying the mayoral apartments. Because most of the files from the early years of the Chirac tenure were shredded before municipal elections in 2000, the report covers only the years 1987-1995. But the evidence looks strong: during those eight years alone, the Chiracs claimed for, and were reimbursed, £1.45m for their personal food bills. Shredded records? Well, fancy that? Maybe they ate them.
Some £950,000 of the bills, which are entirely separate from the mayor's annual £1m entertainment budget, were paid in cash apparently taken from the proceeds of the town hall's staff bar. The money was reimbursed in exchange for receipts that "in many instances give rise to suspicions of substantial fraud", the report says. The town hall's staff bar? How many politicians would be in jail if we had something like that over here?
One £1,500 bill for foie gras and truffles had plainly been tampered with. "The initial sum appears to have been £500, with the figure 1 added at a later date," the auditors said. Another bill, for £375 in 1994, was reimbursed "four times that year, and then once the following year, on the basis of carbon copies of different colours and a modified date". Yes, but they were the generic store brand truffles and foie gras. It's so simplisme!
The corners of many receipts had been cut off to remove the date, the report adds, while receipts for purchases worth £4,000 from the luxury Paris delicatessen Fauchon "appear purely and simply to be fakes". The president, whose name has been mentioned in half a dozen other scandals ranging from illegal party funding schemes to jobs-for-the-boys scams, has so far declined to comment on the allegations beyond saying that he is confident the police "will do their job properly". If they do, you and the missus'll be sharing a cell. No deliveries from Fauchon in there I'll bet.
Posted by: tu3031 ||
06/13/2003 11:04 am ||
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How much do you want to bet he tries to settle the matter by writing a check drawn on the accounts of the UN Oil-For-Food Program?
Posted by: Mike ||
06/13/2003 12:32 Comments ||
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Subtracting out the internal ag subsidies artificially pumping up the prices of the products, the bill would have been half that.
#3
Speaking of which, Mike, any word on the status of the Oil-for-Palaces Program fund? Or does one need a Q-clearance for access to that Sacred UN Info?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/13/2003 16:30 Comments ||
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A ten-hour siege in the Serbian capital Belgrade has ended with the arrest of a key war crimes suspect. Veselin Sljivancanin was captured at a block of flats after violent battles between armed police and a crowd trying to protect him. Officers scoured the building after finding his apartment empty. They finally caught him after breaking through a steel reinforced door nearby. Sljivancanin, who is wanted for alleged war crimes in Croatia, was taken to Belgrade's central prison. Police used stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to keep his supporters at bay. At one stage there were 1,000 of them inside the apartment block. At least seven were injured. Sljivancanin faces trial at the international court in the Hague for the alleged killings of more than 200 people in eastern Croatia in 1991. He was charged in 1995 but evaded arrest with the help of the government of former President Slobodan Milosevic.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/13/2003 10:13 am ||
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France and the other 14 council members voted unanimously last year to allow the US exemption from the court. But yesterday France and Germany - which was not on the council last year - sent a protest to Washington by abstaining in the vote. Syria also abstained. A security council source said that France was emboldened by having Germany for company this year, but that France also "wanted to send a protest to Washington". Well they sure showed some spine, didn't they, waiting for the Germans.
Britain, though a strong supporter of the court, voted to continue the US exemption. The British government regards the exemption as the least bad option, because it will avoid a repeat of the standoff last year in which the US threatened to block peace keeping operations unless it was given an opt-out. The British government says that it recognises American concerns, but adds that it does not regard the prospect of US soldiers being tried by the court as a realistic one. TGA asked yesterday what the problem was with the ICC for the US. The simple answer: such a court would violate our Constitution. Our Constitution requires that the US Supreme Court is the supreme law judging court of our country and for our citizens. Whatever legislation Congress passed to ratify and implement the ICC would usurp the role of the USSC (it's unavoidable, since one couldn't appeal a verdict of the ICC to the USSC), and that's a no-no -- Congress isn't allowed to diminish the constitutional power of the USSC. To make the ICC constitutional, we'd have to pass an amendment, and that requires 3/4 of the States to affirm.
For the same reason our government won't sign certain arms control agreements that give inspectors powers to examine private property in the US unannounced -- that violates our Bill of Rights which protects citizens against unlawful searches. Congress can't ratify a treaty (or a law) that violates the rights of our citizens. Treaties have the same power as any other law Congress passes, and don't stand above or beside the Constitution.
As you may gather from this, TGA, we Americans are rather fussy when it comes to our Constitution. It's regarded as one of the fundamental, defining characteristics of our country. We'll argue and fight over what each word means, but in the end virtually all of us stand by it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/13/2003 01:07 am ||
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There is another aspect to the ICC which is it part of the fabric of the trans-national super-state so beloved of the Left. Where national sovereignty is subordinate to (easy to hijack and subvert) international institutions.
They look OK on paper, but are corrupt, incompetant and unaccountable in practice. You have to look no further than the UN for proof of this, or the truly disgraceful way WHO refused cooperation with Taiwan over the SARS crisis.
Posted by: Phil B ||
06/13/2003 1:50 Comments ||
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#2
It's interesting and substantial to consider how and why subscribing to such an entity plays out in the legal realm, but I think the absurdity is obvious without it...
The "pending lawsuits" against Gen Tommy Franks, VP Cheney, et al, for "war crimes" clearly demonstrate what a fool's errand it would be to submit ourselves to any "international court" - and make me wonder why countries such as the UK would be foolish enough to have signed on to such a twit idea. This is, indeed, the age of PC-power (a.k.a. mob rule by those without sufficient mental capacity to reason for themselves) - and I guess our poor Brit cousins have become far more gullible than I would have otherwise thought. Sad.
Just like the UN, this is yet another multilateralist notion (definition: a joke dreamed up in a Parisian sidewalk cafe over espressos and croissants, I'd guess...) given substance through mindless repetition by the gullible (read: the PC Press; e.g. CNN - Conjecture, Not News).
There is no moral legitimacy to any organization or body, period.
Legitimacy is, like all grand notions, completely subjective - and doubly meaningless without discriminating among those who would presume to join and the absolute conviction to enforce whatever strictures are agreed upon. This is part of why the UN is a joke and should be given no claim or authority over the policies or actions of the US - or any government acting in concert with the wishes of its citizenry. Just consider that the UN includes every entity which presumes to call itself a nation.
Individual nations must decide INDIVIDUALLY what they do and do not believe in and what actions they must take. All other nations may, then, do what they will about it. I include "Fuck Off" as an option in the list, of course, and offer this as my first choice to Belgium, "Frawnce", Germany, et al.
Simply put, there is no universal body of law, therefore there can be no universal court.
#3
"International Criminal Court" run by the PC-crowd reminds me of the days when the NAZIS ran INTERPOL (circa 1940-45). Scary stuff...then and now...
#4
Ya know there are or were an awfull lot of people running around the ex-Belgian Congo with amputated hands because they did not work hard enough.Guess the Belgian court doesn't consider that a crime aginst humanity.
#5
See this post (http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/001441.html#001441) from L.T. Smash for more explanation of the importance of the U.S. Constitution and our general reluctance to go along with some of these international initiatives. (Hat tip to Instapundit.) I personally would just as soon see special courts convened when particularly egregious instances of war crimes have occurred, so that the whole international community is in agreement on the need. Otherwise, the countries involved need to handle it. The whole standing court idea gives me a creepy feeling. I think Sharon would stand trial long before Arafat.
Posted by: lkl ||
06/13/2003 7:04 Comments ||
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#6
I can partially undestand the US fears for an international court which isn't backed by political structures they can trust.
However. At the same time we hear news like this here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2986446.stm
where the US puts pressure so that Serbia cooperates with just such an international court. (and I applaud US for so putting pressure - the EU has also done the same.)
So, what's the deal? Doesn't it seem self-contradictory to demand others cooperate with an institution you refuse to cooperate yourself?
#7
Serbia needs international help, and therefore it is important for them to have acceptance by the International Community(tm, which is why it's in there best interest (In the short term anyway)to join almost any international initiative.
It makes no sense for any leading nation to join in with a bunch of second rate countries that can and will do nothing but attempt to drag down great nations to there level.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
06/13/2003 9:19 Comments ||
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#8
Ari, its pretty simple.
We have proven that our government works for us and have no need for external supervision of that sort.
You Continental Europeans, on the other hand, have been killing each other for centruies in large numbers in wars for rather stupid reasons. None of your national goverments is effective in stopping that. Look no further than the Balkans, or the ethnic tribal warfare that bubbles under the surface between Greece and Turkey (Cyprus is a prime example of nationalistic idiocy). Or look back at Hitler, Stalin, etc.
You guys need the short leash to stop your ethnicity-based politics and racist nationalism because your socialist governments are ineffective at doing it themselves, little better than most third world kleptocracies in that regard.
#9
We *continental* Europeans? As if the conflicts of Northern Ireland haven't been as vile as anything you've seen in Cyprus. Or do you think that Ireland belong to continental Europe just because it's not part of Great Britain? If there have been more conflicts in Continental Europe, that's just because there are more people and territory in Continental Europe to have these conflicts in.
Our "socialist governments"? You mean that the right-wing, USA-supported, military dictatorship of Greece that indirectly caused the Cyprus tragedy was a "socialist government"? News to me.
It seems to me that "socialist governments" are thought by you, OldSpook, to be the root cause of all evil everywhere. I assure you that blame goes to right-wingers also.
#10
Two words for the self-important French lap dogs in Antwerp:
Belgian Congo
Now, make me some damn fine chocolate.
Mmmmmm....Chocolate....nectar of the gods, mother of us all...
Posted by: Tongue Boy ||
06/13/2003 10:15 Comments ||
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The defining characteristic of a "socialist government" is not whether they are quote "left" or "right" but the degree to which they control the economy. A government that maintains strict controls is socialist, regardless of which class is running the show.
Posted by: Ben ||
06/13/2003 10:29 Comments ||
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#12
Oh, please stop kissing these Belgian jerks asses. Let 'em institute their court, let 'em try and arrest a US general officer on active duty. Watch, fascinated, as the US Army lands in Brussels, marches to the jail, and blows the fucking doors off.
From the Great-minds-run-in-the-same-channel Department:
The Belgians claim their courts have jurisdiction over our government officials and military officers. Fine. We should simply declare that we do not recognize this law and that any attempt to detain, abduct or arrest an American official -- current or former -- will be seen as an act of piracy and kidnapping and hence tantamount to an act of war. Who cares what laws they pass? If Iran said it has a law that justifies jailing Dick Cheney would we say "Oh, we didn't know that. Can we send him care packages?" No, we'd unload the Arsenal of Democracy on 'em. I don't think we need to declare war on Belgium or anything. But there's no harm in making it clear that if they lay a finger on one of our guys it will spell bad news for the Belgies. Period.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/13/2003 12:30 Comments ||
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#15
If the Belgians want to play this game fine. The street runs both ways. File an indictment against any surviving member of the Belgian government in power at the time of the colomial period. Run a special opps into Brusselspouts and grab them. Including the Queen. Try em and throw their asses in Marion. And give them the biggest, blackest cell mate we can find for them.
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
06/13/2003 12:45 Comments ||
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#16
Steve- German constitution forbade the extradition of German nationals, so we had to change our constitution as well. Sometimes it's a bit easy to hide behind a constitution. You have amended it quite a bit in the last 200 years to meet modern requirements.
The ICC was instituted to deal with the worst crimes against humanity. I doubt that we will ever find an American to qualify. And if we did I suppose America would insist on trying him first. The ICC was created to try war criminals who would walk free otherwise. Fear of bogus political lawsuits? Well everyone can file a lawsuit against anyone. American judges at the ICC could make sure that these will be thrown out immediately. Or we could create an ICC section in the United States that deals with U.S. citizen (they could appeal at the Supreme Court). Lots of ways are possible, it's just the blunt NO that annoys me.
PD- If i understand it right these frivolous lawsuits against Tommy Franks and other Americans have already been thrown out and the Belgians amended the law to avoid exactly these abuses.
Old Spook- With all respect, but your statement sounds rather arrogant. First of all most European governments are not "socialist". Second, if you are looking for "ethnic tribal warfare" look no further than Los Angeles after another Rodney King gets beaten up by police. I might kindly remind you that the US still had racial segregation 40 years ago. "Racist nationalism" isn't an European privilege.
In Nurenberg judges representing a regime that killed millions (Soviets) judged a regime that killed millions (Nazis). And 25 years of forced labor in Siberia waited for witnesses who spoke out against Nazis and Soviets. I certainly have no interest in a court like that. But I do think that abuse of the ICC can be easily prevented. Much more if Americans participate than if they don't.
The ICC will mostly be a symbolic institution. I wish I could have told my torturers in Workuta: "You will never be safe."
#17
True German Ally: some valid points but assumes a US judge would have veto power, as in the Security Council.
And remind me why we should trust an institution which had the Iraq of Saddam Hussein slated to head its disarmament committee (he turned it down) this year?
The UN serves a good purpose in allowing smalling nations to, relatively cheaply, meet with representatives of other nations and interact, both hearing and expressing concerns. I doubt that Tuvalu could afford to have an embassy in every country having UN membership. And some of its subsidiary organizations (eg UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO) do [mostly] good work. But it is far from being even as coherent as the EU, which largely gets along, and in no wise do I regard it as a qualified supra-national government.
Posted by: John Anderson ||
06/13/2003 15:08 Comments ||
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#18
TGA said "I doubt that we will ever find an American to qualify" I take that as a compliment to our people, however I will say this. It's not that we don't have anybody capable of the most horrible acts imaginable, it's that our system prevents them from getting the power they need.
Also, the waffles already have charged Americans, so don't expect this President or any other American President to join. Ever.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
06/13/2003 15:40 Comments ||
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#19
Mike N- They haven't CHARGED any American, some leftist lawyer deposed a "plainte"... and the court threw it out.
You could go to your local court and ask it to prosecute George W. Bush... or the Tooth Fairy. This doesn't discredit your court, it only does if the court (after a good laugh) doesn't throw the case out.
Oh, an American isn't exempt from committing genocide per se but I meant he won't get away with it in the States. I see the ICC as a court that deals with cases that are ignored in the countries where they should be tried.
There is no need to extradite Americans to The Hague if they qualify, just send them back to America if they get caught in a third country to have them tried there. I believe that the ICC could very well live with that. An American court is not worse than the ICC. The important thing is that nobody enjoys immunity anymore.
But now it just looks that Americans are so special that they qualify for immunity. And that puts legitimate cases against non-Americans in jeopardy.
#20
TGA - I think you're assuming that the world NEEDS a permanent war-crimes tribunal, an assumption open to doubt. And even if there was such a need, why the belgians?
In any case, the only provision the US constitution makes for having our citizens tried by other countries involves extradition, both on the federal and (probably) the state level, unless they were apprehended in a foreign country.
We get first crack at 'em, in other words. Belgium wants to wait 50 years or so until they get out of the US prison system, they're certainly welcome to...
#21
The whole concept of the ICC smacks of the old Soviet Union. Well hell, communism doesn't work, so we better start a Party Control Commission. Damn, the Control Commission isn't working too well, so we better boot up the Cheka. There's still corruption and sloth, so how about Rabkrin? Nope, no improvement... maybe a General Secretariat will solve the problem... Likewise, we have the UN, The World Human Rights Commission, the World Court, and now the ICC and still atrocities are being committed, still the weak are preyed upon by the strong. TGA, last night you asked what it would take for Americans to accept an ICC. After a lot of thought, here is my answer: 1. World-wide universal suffrage. 2. World-wide independent judiciaries. 3. World-wide respect for property rights of individuals. 4. >90 percent literacy world-wide.
The first step in finding a solution is defining the problem correctly. The problems are tyranny, corruption, and illiteracy. Fix those and you won't need an ICC. The ICC is just a band aid.
#22
I hope I don't sound obnoxious but this is a matter that concerns me personally (I didn't have a court that would hear my complaints).
An American who commits a crime in Germany and is caught in Germany will be tried there.
An American who commits a crime in Germany and is caught in France will probably be extradited to Germany as Germany has the most legitimate rights to try him.
An American who commits a crime in Germany and is caught in the USA will probably not be extradited to Germany but tried in the USA (he might prefer to be tried in Germany as we have no death penalty).
Follow me? I guess up to now you see no problem, right? That's the procedure.
So let's assume an American commits genocide, he's most likely to do so in a foreign country (if he does it in his own, no need to worry as he will be tried there for sure). Now let's assume he is caught outside the USA and extradited to The Hague (because the country he committed the genocide in has no appropriate fair legal system). The Hague serves in lieu (pardon the French) of the people in the country who suffered the genocide and can't get judicial satisfaction. That's what the ICC is all about.
Now let's assume the USA joins the ICC, formally recognizing that Americans are not immune from prosecution. The ICC picks up the case, assesses it and when it doesn't throw it out but thinks the case has merits it sends the case (and the defendant) to the USA. The United States guarantees that it will prosecute the case, follows the appropriate legal procedures (which can of course end in a conviction or not). And the defendant can appeal at the Supreme Court. No sovereignty gets hurt.
But you never tried to find a compromise. A blunt NO was easier. And no 11A5S, we can't wait until all problems are fixed.
Well some people might still complain about that special treatment but it would silence those who complain that Americans have "immunity" while others are prosecuted.
What's the real message of the ICC. It means that dictators and political mass murderers won't be safe after they lose power. No more safe havens (in France or elsewhere). But only if the Americans join will the ICC have the authority it needs...because NOBODY has immunity.
And nowhere do I see America's sovereignty challenged. After all the United States does accept WTO decisions. Don't these violate "US sovereignty" as well? But you accept them because you favor free trade. Being member of WTO is in America's interest, even if it comes with a certain loss of sovereignty. Being member of the ICC would also be IMHO. America should lead the process of going after the worst criminals in the world, not obstructing it. With the ICC the Belgian law is obsolete. But right now Brussels seems to be the only place people can go if they don't get their right anywhere else. And better a band aid than nothing.
#23
TGA you prove my point. You can't join the WTO until you meet certain criteria, i.e until you've proven yourself "capitalist" enough. Memebership in the EU also comes with preconditions: no capital punishment, public debt less than 3% of GDP, universal adult suffrage, etc. What I'd like to see is an International Criminal Posse. The free nations banding together and shedding their blood and treasure in proportional measure to go get these monsters. I want what's happening in Iraq, not the posing that is going on in the Congo. I believe in revolutionary measures, not bureaucratic ones.
#24
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed."
The International Criminal Court fails on every count. IT is NOT a part of government whose "just powers" are derived from the consent of the governed, but imposed by an international agency. The purpose of the ICC is NOT to "secure the rights" of free men. I could go on for hundreds of pages. In the end, it still comes down to an unaccountable bureaucracy over which the sovereign individual has no power and no authority - in essence, a tyranny.
It would take a lot more than just changing our Constitution to accept the ICC: it would require our complete rejection of the basis on which our entire government is founded. I doubt any significant portion of our population would go along with that. The same reasoning holds true for many of the "declarations" presented by the United Nations: an alien body attempting to impose its rules upon the people of the United States without our consent. We tend to get a bit touchy about things like that - touchy enough to send several million well-armed, well-trained, and dedicated people to change some minds.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/13/2003 20:39 Comments ||
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#25
An alien body? Didn't the United States join... or rather co-found it? Doesn't the United States have veto powers that ensure that the UN can't really do anything against its will?
"WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS
Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found to be in good and due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United Nations."
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Yes I know reality looks different. But the U.S. constitution started as a dream as well. How would a black man (or woman) in Alabama in the 50s have seen the U.S. constitution? A native American 100 years ago?
We need to work together to make these principles of the UN charter a reality, not just a dream. It worked for the U.S. Constitution. But it took more than 50 years.
#26
TGA: for 13 years I've had the opportunity to compare Europe and USA/Canada first-hand. At the end of these 13 years I can conclude that the mentality of the people, and the way things are done in Europe and America, do not converge. (I've had this opinion ever since I tried to open a simple savings account in Poland.)
Just as much as you find the American "isolationist" attitude puzzling, I find the European love affair with bureaucracy incomprehensible. Perhaps if both systems and the mentality were similar, you would find no reluctance on the part of the Americans.
Therefore, the answer to your annoyance and puzzlement is simple: mistrust. And after 13 years I must say I don't blame the Americans. Europeans (some) are great friends, but, you do things your way, and we do things our way.
#27
11A5S> Nitpick: The financial precondition you mentioned had to do with membership in the euro, not the EU. And I think the number's wrong.
But other than that I kinda agree with what you said. Build a Global Council which unlike the UN will admit only free democracies that defend human rights. Have a court to ensure said human rights and punish violations thereof.
*g* But I kinda think that the US would either not be admitted to such a council unless it banned the death penalty, or it would not want to enter it. Or both. :-)
#28
Yes RW, I got the same impression when I moved to the States for a while and applied for a US credit card.
With a guaranteed monthly five digit US income. As a holder of 4 European credit cards (including a Platinum AMEX).
It was refused on the grounds that I never had any debts in America. By American Express as well.
Yes indeed you do things different in America.
#29
"WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED....
And what a damn fine job it does,for example the Balkins,Iraq,N.Kor,Rawanda,Zimbobwi,DCR,Saudi Arab,Cambodia ad infinitum.
Hell the UN refuses(not can't,refuses) to protect thier own peace keepers how in hell can they do anything.
EFL
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has refused to rule out another Kargil-like situation developing in the future. The man identified with the Kargil intrusion in 1999, refused to accept that the war had been against Pakistan's self-interest and was a mistake and perhaps for the first time publicly admitted that Pakistani troops were involved. Nope. Nothing happening on this side of the border.
"Kargil was a decision taken by the mujahideen, and if they decide to use a few nukes, wells thats their choice too
and we got involved because of the action taken by the Indian troops," he said. We expected the Indians to bend over and take it up the ass but for some reason they didn't, dumb infidels.
Refusing to acknowledge last year's election in Kashmir as free and fair, my minions made sure that it was neither fair nor free
he said: "I am very clear on one thing. The people of Kashmir do not want to be part of India." I came to power through a fair and free coup so I know what my bitches citizens want.
Asked if he had any regrets, the general said he regretted the way democracy and parliament had emerged in Pakistan after the elections and said that Pakistan had failed to evolve a functioning democracy. On his own referendum, he admitted it was a mistake. I am the rightful supreme ayatollah of Pakistan and so there's no need for election.
The rehabilitation of the Sipah-e-Sahaba's leader is now complete, all previous killings of Shias has been forgiven and he is not totally on board with the Pak establishment.
Maulana Azam Tariq was the head of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan that spawned most jihadi-sectarian outfits but was banned on by General Musharraf along with three other extremist organisations. Following the ban, Azam Tariq was detained on charges of killing Shias and other serious crimes. He was released after the October 10 elections in which he contested and won a seat from Jhang. His release is widely regarded to have come about as a result of a deal with the government. He reincarnated his party with the changed name of Millat-e-Islamia Party on April 19 in Khairpur and clearly says that his party has no links with the jihadi or sectarian outfits. Presently, he is actively involved in the campaign of his party candidate in the by-election to a Karachi constituency.
What do you think of the oppositionâs role in parliament?
What we are seeing in parliament for the last six months or so is unfortunate. The oppositionâs role is negative and will not help the cause of democracy. I have no hesitation in saying that if the present democratic set-up is rolled back and assemblies are dissolved, it is the opposition that will solely be responsible. I warn the MMA leadership to shun such misadventures because they will not gain such a landslide popular mandate again.
You think the MMAâs mandate in elections was coincidental?
Yes. We must be realistic. MMA cashed in on peopleâs sentiments due to Afghanistan and their anti-US stance. Even our candidate in Peshawar won as an independent candidate on the same grounds. He later told me that he never dreamt to turn out to be a winner. It was purely Afghanistan that came to MMAâs help. I must say that such situations do not arise every day. In the next elections, people will vote with their brains rather than their hearts.
Your politics has been based on the apostatisation of the Shia community. What is your stance now on the Shia-Sunni conflict?
Let me clarify one thing. SSP was a non-political religious organisation and its activities had nothing to do with politics. Now, I am talking as the convener of MIP, which is purely a religio-political party. We believe in harmony between Shias and Sunnis. There are obvious ideological differences between the two sects but that does not mean that we should start killing each other.
Do you consider Shias Muslims or not?
I told you there are obvious differences between the two sects, but we should respect each other.
What do you think of Riaz Basra and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi?
Basra left our party in 1991 and formed his own outfit. We had clearly said even then that Basra was solely responsible of his acts, which had nothing to do with the SSP.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/13/2003 01:50 am ||
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Islamic extremists in Bangladesh may be trying to make a radioactive "dirty" bomb. On May 30, Bangladeshi police arrested four suspected members of a militant Islamic group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, at a house in the northern village of Puiya. Officers also seized a football-size package with markings indicating it contained a crude form of uranium manufactured in Kazakhstan. Subsequent tests last week at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission in Dhaka confirmed the 225-gram ball is uranium oxideâenough to make a weapon capable of dispersing radiation across a wide area if strapped to conventional explosives. A scientist at the commission told TIME that 23 pages of documents describing how to make bombs were also seized. So far there is no word on whether the four men were trafficking the uranium, which could fetch about $170,000 on the black market, or intending to make a dirty bomb themselves. "It is too early to say who was behind smuggling [the uranium] and what was the purpose," says a spokesman for Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia. The village of Puiya is known as an area with al-Qaeda sympathies; police recently arrested 17 suspected militants there for distributing posters and tapes featuring Osama bin Laden. "That brings in the global terror angle, and we're too close to all this for comfort," says an Indian intelligence source. He may as well be speaking for the world.
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/13/2003 01:47 am ||
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#1
Uranium oxide, if that is what they have, is raw uranium ore. It's radioactive, but low level.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 8:52 Comments ||
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#2
shit
these people are like the borg, if they area thinking of it in Bangladesh, the other members of the hive will be pursuing it too.
Now why the hell couldn't the Three Gorges Dam be poisd just above mecca?
Registration Required-Edited for length
Link courtesy Instapundit.
HAWR AL HAMMAR, Iraq — It's 100 degrees at noon, the hour when the sky itself seems to melt into chrome-colored lakes—rippling pools that shimmer like mirrors in the vast salt pans of southern Iraq. These days, however, those liquid sheets of light are no mirage. They are real water—and one of the most poignant symbols of liberation since the fall of Saddam Hussein. "This will bring back the fish, the birds and the animals," said Jawad Mutashir, a grizzled Marsh Arab who came to watch, for the pure joy of it, water from the Euphrates River gurgling back into the long-dead swamp that had been his ancestral home. Bands of impoverished villagers upstream had cut the levees that Hussein built expressly to destroy Iraq's sprawling wetlands. Unshackled for the first time in years, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were now refilling thousands of acres of dry marsh. "Thanks be to Allah for giving our water back!" declared grinning old Mutashir, one of thousands of nomads displaced by Hussein's cataclysmic reclamation projects. His dingy robes flapping about him, he hugged himself with his scrawny arms and added, "Thanks be to George Bush!"
More than two months after Baghdad fell to coalition troops, an extraordinary act of cultural defiance is unfolding almost unnoticed on the burning plains of southern Iraq. The last ragged remnants of one of this war-bruised nation's most persecuted minorities, the fabled Marsh Arab nomads, are breaking dams, dikes and levees in a haphazard bid to restore their homeland, a wetlands of global worth. It is a desperate and even wrongheaded effort. Most of the vast Iraqi swamps drained by Hussein for military purposes are gone forever, and uncontrolled flooding could poison those left with soil salts. But the quixotic gesture of the tribesmen isn't completely hopeless, because they enjoy the backing of a powerful if unlikely friend: the Bush administration, which few environmentalists view as an ally. (Envirothugs-"It's allll about the oilll [sounds of projectile vomiting on the Marsh Arabs])
"The destruction of Iraq's marshes involved a genocide," said Emma Nicholson, a British parliamentarian whose group, Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees, has been trumpeting the plight of the region for years. "The best way I could describe it is an open-air Auschwitz." The Iraqi regime's assault on the Mesopotamian Marshes is a well-documented tragedy, and it began with the Shiite rebellion against Hussein that erupted on the heels of the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The Marsh Arabs, a 5,000-year-old tribe of fishermen-hunters who lived on reed islands and paddled swamp waterways in elegant canoes, joined the revolt wholeheartedly, and when it failed they paid a terrible price. Bombed, shot, imprisoned and poisoned by the regime—Iraqi helicopters reportedly dropped pesticides into marshland lakes to kill fish, a tribal staple—the Marsh Arabs' population in Iraq has dwindled from 250,000 to 40,000, human-rights groups say. Tens of thousands of the nomads now languish in Iranian refugee camps. Their vast wetlands, crawling with deserters and rebels, fared no better. According to the UN Environment Program, 7,000 square miles, or a staggering 93 percent, of the Mesopotamian Marshes were bled dry by Hussein's engineers between 1991 and 2000. Gone are the 1 billion migratory birds—flamingoes, storks, cranes—that used to stop over on flights between Asia and Africa. Gone are the 500-pound fish that tribesmen used to haul to market in trucks. Vanished, too, probably, are endangered species such as the smooth-coated otter. So thorough was the destruction, ranked by the UN as "one of the world's greatest environmental disasters," that coalition troops hardly knew they were driving across a former swamp larger than the Everglades when they invaded Iraq from Kuwait in March. For those of you who remember Murat, the Turks are involved in this eco-crime as well
But other researchers question even that modest goal. They say that problems with soil salinity, the erosion of the Marsh Arabs' aquatic traditions, and competition with oil and farming pale against the Mesopotamian Marshes' single biggest enemy after Hussein: Turkey. Turkey controls the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, which supply 100 percent of Iraq's water. In a demonstration of its power, Turkish officials literally shut off the flow of the Euphrates for 29 days in 1990. Today, the government in Ankara is building an even bigger series of dams, called the Southeast Anatolia Project, which threatens to choke off the downstream flow further, skeptics say. "To pour Iraq's precious water on the ground for marshes and tribespeople seems a pretty sentimental impulse in this rough environment," said Robert Giegengack, a Middle Eastern water expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "It's going to be a hard sell."
Posted by: Ernest Brown ||
06/13/2003 04:14 pm ||
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Japan's cabinet is expected to submit legislation to its parliament that would clear the way for Japanese troops to head to Iraq. The bill comes before the Diet with the stipulation that Japanese forces must stay away from any area that might be designated a war zone. War zone, what war zone?
The governing coalition says it reached consensus on the proposal after removing a provision that would have had Japanese soldiers collecting and dismantling any weapons of mass destruction that might be found. That's OK, everyone knows there are no WMD, it was just a story Bush and Blair cooked up to seize the oil.
The coalition had also been split between those who wanted to see the Japanese Self Defence Forces sent to Iraq immediately and those who preferred a more cautious schedule. Japan's pacifist constitution, imposed on it by the U.S. occupation following the Second World War, places restrictions on Japan's military. Sending them to hostile territory is a sensitive political issue. The chief of the defence agency, Shigeru Ishiba, says Japanese forces will go to Iraq with adequate weaponry and will have the authority to use their firepower. The government will not send the troops into combat zones, though, or allow them to refuel or maintain aircraft for combat operations. There's plenty of other jobs to go around.
The current session of the Diet is scheduled to end on Wednesday, but the coalition is expected to push for an extension until late July to get the legislation through. Most likely to go into the Polish run sector with the Spanish forces?
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 03:29 pm ||
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#1
It's a step in the right direction for Japan.
I know it's not "combat", but the line is gonna be damn blurry, and they could use a little experience.(They'll learn from it damn fast too.) Especially if the Noks or the ChiComs get jumpy.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
06/13/2003 15:57 Comments ||
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#3
Hmmm.... Are they sure it is a good idea to deploy troops out of Japan with summer coming up? Doesn't Godzilla prefer to attack when the weather is warmer?
#5
Look, it's a touchy point for the Japanese Government. They have to guard against Godzilla, yet who do you think keeps "Juche" Boy from crossing over the Sea of Japan?
Iraqi officials in U.S. custody have told coalition investigators that Saddam Hussein and his sons survived the March 19 and April 7 airstrikes on residential compounds where the CIA believed they were meeting, and that they are still in Iraq. U.S. military and intelligence officials have been frustrated in their intensive efforts to locate Saddam, his two sons and other top regime officials. Officials say they are relying almost exclusively on tips from Iraqi citizens. Often, those tips are unreliable and generated by people seeking revenge against neighbors by connecting them with the former regime. The failure so far to capture or otherwise account for Saddam has hurt the U.S. occupation effort. "I think it does make a difference because it allows the Baathists to go around in the bazaars and in the villages, which they are doing, saying Saddam is alive and he's going to come back," Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said Thursday. Agreed, we need to show the Iraqi people a body.
In an interview in Iraq earlier this month, Bremer said the longer Saddam's fate is unknown, the more likely it is that former members of the now-dissolved Iraqi army, police, Baath Party and intelligence services will continue attacking U.S. forces. Since May 1, when President Bush declared major hostilities over, 12 U.S. troops have been killed in combat. Ahmad Chalabi, head of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress, said that among the indications Saddam is alive is the appearance of leaflets in Baghdad with the former Iraqi leader's picture and name and a slogan. He said, "If we look for him in an intelligent way ... I think he will be found." When asked to clarify what he meant, Chalabi said U.S. forces should have better cooperation with their Iraqi allies. "More cooperation, more activity, more ways to operationalize intelligence from these Iraqi sources ... is what is called for," he said.
Meanwhile, there is little hard evidence leading to Saddam. U.S. military and intelligence officials say they are pursuing tips about the whereabouts of Saddam and other top Iraqi officials. Most leads come from Iraqis who approach U.S. forces on the street. "There is a lot of intel. There are a lot of reports we follow up on," says Army Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, who commands coalition ground forces in Iraq. "From day one, and it continues today, we're searching for everybody on the blacklist (the U.S. most-wanted list), including his family." The tips are passed to the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, which contact their Arab operatives. These agents blend into the local population and try to confirm the information by going where the men are believed to be hiding. Lately, search teams have been concentrating on the western Baghdad neighborhood of al-Mansour, where several members of Saddam's former regime are known to have lived. U.S. aircraft destroyed a house there April 7 after CIA officials said they believed Saddam and other members of his regime were meeting there. Last week, U.S. troops began excavating a 60-foot crater at the site of the house in hopes of finding human remains. Results of the search, which ended earlier this week, have not been released.
Some tips have led to the capture of lower-level officials. Dozens of suspected Iraqi officials, their family members and sympathizers have been arrested, military officials say. Amir Rashid Muhammad, a former presidential adviser and oil minister, was captured April 28 after U.S. forces on patrol in a Baghdad neighborhood received a tip on his whereabouts, says Sgt. Cynthia Burkhart, of Bethesda, Md. Muhammad and other Iraqi officials who have been apprehended have been taken to one of several detention centers in Baghdad, including a makeshift jail at the city's international airport, where they are being interrogated by CIA and DIA investigators, U.S. military officials here say. Many of the tips turn out to be rumors. On May 18, U.S. troops, backed by Apache helicopters, descended on the home of tribal leader named Mushaan Al-Dulaymi in western Iraq after receiving a tip from Iraqis that he was harboring Saddam. Dulaymi was a longtime friend of the former Iraqi leader. Saddam wasn't there.
Among the many people who claim to know Saddam's whereabouts is a businessman, Marouf Noori, who is the brother-in-law of former Iraqi vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, No. 20 on the Pentagon's list of most-wanted Iraqis. Noori, 49, says Saddam and Qusai, his younger son, are hiding together in a Baghdad suburb. Uday, Saddam's older son, he adds, has taken refuge with a small group of supporters nearby. "Saddam is in Baghdad, gathering his supporters and hoping to make a comeback," Noori says. He says Saddam is "encouraging these attacks against U.S. soldiers." U.S. officials say they can't confirm Noori's allegation. But they have received unconfirmed reports that Saddam has visited Baghdad at night to meet loyalists.
U.S. military and intelligence officials feel pretty sure Saddam, his two sons and other leaders are not hiding in the more than two dozen underground bunkers and tunnels in Iraq. Coalition soldiers have searched the bunkers and tunnels in Baghdad, in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, in the northern city of Baiji and in western Iraq. All were empty. Some contained food wrappers and water bottles. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Saddam hid in several houses in Baghdad neighborhoods, which prevented U.S. troops from finding him, according to Mike Vickers, a Pentagon adviser and former Army Green Beret. Some coalition officials say Saddam may be disguising his appearance to avoid capture. Even before the war, he was known to dress as a truck driver, travel in taxis and ambulances, and sleep in different homes several times a week.
One of the last confirmed sightings of Saddam may have been on Arasat Street in downtown Baghdad on April 5. On April 1, residents say, Iraqi security officials and carpenters arrived at a small house on Arasat Street and began piling bricks in front of its windows, installing extra phone lines and moving in a hospital bed for Uday, Saddam's older son. Uday is believed to be disabled after a 1996 assassination attempt. Some U.S. officials believe Uday may have been injured in one of the recent missile strikes. On April 5, a silver minibus with tinted windows rolled into the courtyard of the house. Three men, dressed in long white robes and wearing kaffiyehs, emerged. Only their eyes were visible. They stayed one night and left before dawn. After they left, neighbors say, Iraqi security officials, who had been guarding the house, conceded that the men were Saddam, Uday and Qusai. U.S. military officials, who last month inspected the house and interviewed its owner, say the account appears to be accurate. The house, which had stood empty for months, contains a fake wall, complete with bookcases. The wall swings open to reveal a passageway to three rooms where Saddam and his two sons are believed to have slept. Each of the rooms was decorated simply with a bed, nightstand and phone. U.S. officials believe there are dozens of other safe houses, where Saddam and his sons may be have stayed â and may be hidden â in Iraq. "Saddam has foregone the pleasures of his palaces and elaborate tunnels for the safety of these houses," says Atheer Al-Bawi, 61, the caretaker of the house. "He'll be back. He has to. He's among us." Need to find them and stick their heads on pikes in the city square.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 10:01 am ||
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Almost 100 Iraqis were killed overnight in two of the bloodiest attacks since the fall of Baghdad. In the first confrontation, US troops were reported to have killed at least 70 people in a raid on a "terrorist" training camp about 90 miles north-west of Baghdad. One US soldier was wounded and an Apache helicopter was lost in the attack — which began early yesterday and was still in progress today, according to a US military source. "It is a large operation. It is ongoing," he said. "It is a large force with special operations troops." The exact location of the alleged terror camp has not been released. A further 27 Iraqi fighters were shot dead today following a failed ambush. US central command said the firefight took place after an "organised group of attackers" fired rocket propelled grenades at a 4th Infantry Division tank patrol in Balad, about 35 miles north of the capital. Run Away!
The tanks returned fire, killing four of the attackers, and forcing the remainder to flee. Tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles supported by Apache helicopters pursued them, killing a further 23 men, according to a statement issued by central command. Ahhh The "sidewalk of death"
The latest clashes - on the same day as three smaller ambushes in which no one was hurt - are the latest signs of the problems facing troops as they try to contain violent, anti-US factions. In the last week three American troops and many Iraqis have been killed in skirmishes. The increase in attacks against occupying forces comes despite - or possibly because of - a massive US operation aimed at eliminating what central command describes as "Baath party loyalists, paramilitary groups and other subversive elements". Almost 400 people have been seized in the first three days of Operation Peninsular Strike, in which more than 4,000 soldiers poured into the towns of Duluiya and Balad. Meanwhile, 74 "suspected Al-Qaeda sympathisers" were seized last night in a raid by the 173d Airborne Brigade near Kirkuk, according to central command. Troops also seized a "sizeable" weapons cache in a raid on a police station in Khaneqin and arrested two suspected weapons dealers in Bayji. Central command said the men "may have information pertaining to a June 5 attack on US forces". In another operation, Iraqi police and members of the 4th Marine Regiment detained six people in a joint raid on suspected Ba'ath party members in al-Hillah. And yes, Chuck "Not Taylor", you can always find news on Iraq at Centcom ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 09:58 am ||
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#1
I wonder if the al Qaida guys are really Ansar? Right neighborhood for them, I think.
Guardian forgot the column of blacked-out vehicles stopped by the Marines headed for Iran.
#3
"The increase in attacks against occupying forces comes despite - or possibly because of - a massive US operation aimed at eliminating what central command describes as "Ba'ath party loyalists"
The implication being if we had NOT gone looking for them they would have stayed at home playing parcheesi? I thought the whole point of this exercise was to find and eliminate these elements, in which case it would seem to be proceeding rather well.
#4
The increase in attacks against occupying forces comes despite - or possibly because of - a massive US operation aimed at eliminating what central command describes as "Ba'ath party loyalists
You have to remember that this is an article in Al Guardian, one of the left-wing rags in the UK. Most Guardian reporters are anti-American, and all have zero knowledge of military operations. The Guardian's military coverage makes the NYT or WSJ coverage look professional, and neither (outside of the editorial pages) is particularly insightful.
Just check out the Guardians coverage of both the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns for a good laugh. The Economist, the know-it-all and self-important British news magazine recently published an article about how the war in Iraq isn't over yet.
That's like saying the WWII did not end with the German and Japanese surrenders. Of course there was mopping up to do among die-hards. Bands of Japanese soldiers cut off in isolated outposts continued attacking allied troops for years. German sniping continued for a while - the allies hunted down and secretly killed Nazi bitter-enders for years.
Thai police, tipped off by U.S. customs agents, said on Friday they had arrested a Thai national with 66 lb of radioactive caesium-137, possibly intended for use in militant attacks, perhaps in the form of a dirty bomb. Officials said the suspect had confessed to smuggling the cesium, a common radioactive substance, from neighboring Laos. They said it was believed to have originated in Russia.
Story from the Guardian, 25 June 2002: A large number of mobile irradiation units, each containing a deadly amount of radioactive dust, are feared missing in the former Soviet Union, according to atomic security experts. The units, built by the Soviet government in the 1970s to stop maize germinating, hold eight to 10 thin tubes of the highly radioactive caesium-137. US officials fear terrorists could create a dirty bomb using a radioactive material such as caesium-137 in combination with conventional explosives. The resulting explosion could cover a large area with radioactive dust and contaminate thousands of people.
"It could be deadly if it got into the hands of terrorists. We have heard reports that terrorists were planning attacks on embassies in Thailand," Deputy National Police Chief Sombat Amornvivat told reporters. Narong Penanam, 47, was arrested in a sting operation in a Bangkok hotel parking lot and charged with illegal possession of a radioactive substance, police said.
The arrest comes after Cambodia charged a fourth suspected Muslim militant on Thursday and police in Thailand said they were hunting for a man they believe to be the bomb-maker for a cell of Muslim militants plotting attacks on embassies and beach resorts. Another Thai police officer said: "The cesium is normally used in industrial work, but could be used in a dirty bomb." A dirty bomb is essentially made of conventional explosive and salted with radioactive isotopes so as to spew the nuclear material over a wide area and contaminate it. Such bombs are easier to build than nuclear bombs. A U.S. customs official in Bangkok told reporters undercover agents had tipped off U.S. authorities that there would be sales of radioactive material in Thailand to militants. "It is obvious that this person wanted to sell the substance to terrorists for sabotage in Thailand," an embassy translator quoted him as saying.
"This substance alone could be combined with other substances to create an explosion and it could spread radioactivity."
Police Colonel Chatchai Liamsanguan told Reuters, "U.S. Customs officials have asked the Thai police to investigate possible uranium trading in Thailand. "They were afraid that uranium, which could be used in making nuclear bombs, would be sold to terrorist groups in Iraq or North Korea." Thai police responsible for Friday's sting had expected to find uranium, but found cesium instead. That's two captures of radioactive material in one day. We have been lucky so far, but I'm afraid it's only a matter of time.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 09:02 am ||
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#1
Such bombs are easier to build than nuclear bombs.
You don't say. The poor man's nuclear weapon. The good thing is, these things are easy to detect. I hope.
#2
'...TWO CAPTURES OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL IN ONE DAY...'
It's time to start the trials in Guantanamo, it's time to show that we will get all of them and that we will be nasty.
#3
At the memorial service a the National Catherdral following Sepember 11, Rev. Billy Graham was asked if he thought there would be a war. He answered that yes he did and we should take what ever means to bring it to a swift conclusion. Even if that meant using Weapons of Mass distruction. If these morons step over the line Mecca should be toast and warn them before hand. Put the ball squarely in their corner. Any attack with WMD and it will happen. No ifs, no ands, no buts. It's long past time to stop f***ing around
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
06/13/2003 12:35 Comments ||
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#4
More details from Bangkok Post: Thai and US officials yesterday arrested a suspected illegal arms dealer in Bangkok with 30 kilogrammes of a radioactive material that could be used to make a ``dirty bomb''. They acted on a tip from an unidentified Thai spy working for the US embassy that the suspect, Narong Penanam, a Surin native, had offered to sell him uranium-235 and uranium-238 for 10 million baht for use in building bombs. The substance turned out to be cesium-137, a radioactive substance normally used in industries. However, it could be combined with some other materials to make a ``dirty bomb'' or with uranium to build an atomic bomb. Deputy police chief Sombat Amornvivat said the suspect was caught by a team of Crime Suppression police and US customs officers from the US embassy at the Royal Pacific hotel on Rama IX road around noon, allegedly while delivering the material to the spy. The team seized from him a metal box containing radioactive cesium-137, seven bank passbooks and a name card of a retired senior army commander. During police interrogation made in the presence of Gary Phillips, the US embassy's assistant customs attache, the suspect said the material was taken out of Russia to be kept in Laos. He acted as a broker for its owner, Theerasak Wattanakrai, said to be a close aide of a retired general identified only as Lt-Gen Chanak. The suspect said he was told the box contained 30kg of uranium, and he would be paid 1% of the 10 million baht. He said there was still an unknown amount of similar substance kept in Laos. The Thai spy said a group of soldiers of unknown nationality had stolen cesium-137 and several other radioactive materials during the fall of the Soviet Union and kept them at a military camp about 20km from the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge in Laos. He was told that the group still had 11 pieces of radioactive material weighing around 30kg-40kg each, and that one of them was uranium weighing 90 kg and priced at tens of million of baht. The spy said Mr Narong was part of a network of arms dealers who had tried to contact some terrorist groups to sell radioactive materials in its possession. A sting operation planned by the United States led to the shipment of cesium-137 into Thailand and the arrest of Mr Narong, said the spy. Mr Phillips said the suspect made it clear during the police interrogation that he wanted to sell the substance to a terrorist group for use in attacks on targets in Thailand. Manoon Aramrattana, deputy secretary-general of the Office of Atomic Energy for Peace, said the impounded cesium-137 was in the form of metal powder and contained in a double-layered metal case big enough to hold 10 cans of beer. This radioactive powder, which emits highly-penetrating gamma ray, is variously used in industries, such as in detecting iron density. Cesium-137, with higher intensity, could be used for cancer treatment but physicians now prefer cobalt-60 as cesium-137 powder could easily spread into the environment. Mr Manoon said the intensity of the impounded cesium-137 was measured at 75 millicuries, or around 10,000 times less than that of the cobalt-60 leakage in Samut Prakan province a few years ago. The isotope, with the half life of 30 years, could be used to make ``dirty bombs''. ``The impounded cesium-137 is not lethal to people exposed to it, but it can cause panic among the public,'' Mr Manoon said, adding that there could be more health risks from long-term exposure.
I think a little trip to Laos is in order, although these guys have most likely bugged out by now.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 15:19 Comments ||
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#5
The Borg are trying to build a nuke
red alert
all hands to battlestations
serious, as soon as I saw the article about the Bangladeshi Islamofascists with the uranium, I knew they'd all be trying to do it. They have a hive mind I tell ya.
I'm doing a lot of behind-the-scenes programming on the site, so if you connect and things look goofy — or don't work — give it a minute or so and try again. Some of these ideas work okay on the development server and then flop as soon as I upload them. Right now I'm trying to make the main screen load faster — it's okay in the morning, but as the comments build up, it slows down pretty drastically.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
06/13/2003 07:19 pm ||
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JPost - Reg Req'd
Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a Kassam missile warehouse in Gaza City just minutes ago, a military source told the Jerusalem Post. This was the second IDF anti-terror air operation to hit terrorist targets in Gaza this evening. The missiles destroyed a building a block away from the home of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, witnesses said. He's blind, but I bet he heard that one
The building caught fire, and firefighters were trying to douse the flames. Palestinian terrorists have launched Kassam missiles from the northern Gaza strip targeting the Israeli Negev desert town of Sderot and other Jewish civilian populations. The IDF operations in Gaza take place just hours after Hamas has called for the death of "every Israeli man, woman and child."
Just a bundle of good will, aren't they?
Israel TV reported that Dov Weisglass, a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was flying to Washington for talks with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has said he won't use force against Hamas and other terrorists and needs time to persuade them to lay down arms. Egypt is mediating, and talks might be held next week between militant leaders and Egypt's intelligence chief. Hamas broke off truce talks with Abbas last week, prompting Israel to activate a contingency plan for hunting down Hamas leaders, including Yassin. On Thursday the US put direct responsibilty on Hamas rather than Israel for the recent upsurge in violence. "The issue are these relatively small but deadly groups of terrorists who are trying to stop Israel and the Palestinian Authority from coming together at a time when they are, indeed, coming together," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "That's why they strike now. They strike now because they see peace on the horizon, and Hamas is an enemy to peace." Latest word is that cause/effect may be sinking in — Hamas is meeting with the PA to talk — offers to stop attacks on Israelis (no word which Israelis: civilians, settlers, soldiers, etc. they're referring to) IF Israel stops targetted assassinations against Hamas bigs. Guess the courage of the martyr is only for the fodder, huh?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 09:36 pm ||
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With any luck, the IDF will get all the Hamas biggies before their "talks" with the PA amount to anything
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
06/13/2003 22:13 Comments ||
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Long and absolutely horrifying and infuriating.
BUNIA - For six days, two terrified United Nations military observers phoned their superiors — as many as four times a day — begging to be evacuated from their remote outpost in northeastern Congo. "Anyone pick up?
"No, I got that damn 'Monster Mash' answering machine message again."
They were receiving death threats, they said. They were alone and unarmed in Mongbwalu, a former gold-mining town ruled by the cannibalistic Lendu tribal militias. Why is this starting to sound like a really bad horror movie?
A U.N. helicopter from the town of Bunia could have retrieved them in 35 minutes. Past tense...
But the United Nations, handcuffed by its own rules and bureaucracy, never sent a chopper. On May 18, 10 days after the two peacekeepers made their first distress call, the United Nations finally flew some armed peacekeepers to Mongbwalu. They found the mutilated bodies of Maj. Safwat al-Oran, 37, of Jordan, and Capt. Siddon Davis Banda, 29, of Malawi. Their decomposed corpses had been tossed into a canal and covered with dirt, according to those who saw the bodies. They were shot in the eyes. Their stomachs were split open and their hearts and livers were missing. One man's brain was gone. What can you say to something like this? Thirty-five minutes.
Thirty-'effin-five minutes, and these two could have been out of that that hellhole.
The murders laid bare the challenge of bringing peace to one of the world's complex and resilient wars and exposed the limits of the United Nation's efforts to do so. These weren't murders. They were abominations. They didn't expose the limits of UN effors, they exposed the utter disregard for human life so often exhibited by the UN
The U.N. mission in Congo (MONUC) has been criticized by many, including some in its own rank-and-file, for being disorganized and naive. Now, its critics charge, it's also partly responsible for the deaths of the two observers.
"Why didn't they rescue them? They had armed troops here, who could have saved them," said one U.N. observer in Bunia, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Good question.
Anyone?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Koffi?
"They killed them." No argument here.
Col. Daniel Vollot, the MONUC sector commander in Bunia, said all U.N. employees here work in dangerous, unpredictable conditions and that MONUC isn't responsible for the deaths of Banda and Oran. Well, the Grand Poobah of the sector is about to speak. Prepare for his wisdom...
"We can't feel guilty," said Vollot. "Certainly, if we had arrived two or three days before, they would be alive. It's difficult, but I don't feel guilty about that." You bastard. Words cannot describe how inappropriate you unabashed arrogance is. You're a hateful little man, and I hope you die just as these two did: agonizingly, knowing that help is only a half-hour away.
The murders were a serious setback to U.N. operations in Congo's Ituri province, where some 50,000 people have died in fighting between Hema and Lendu tribal armies since 1999. After the killings, the United Nations pulled out all its military observers and sent them to Bunia, Ituri's largest town. Now little is known about what happens even a few miles outside Bunia. Aid workers and human rights observers fear that vast human rights abuses are taking place across Ituri province. You don't say... Human rights abuses like, oh, I don't know, ethnic cleansing and CANNABALISM? Or does mentioning these "practices" performed by an "alternative ethnic culture" make me an "ethnocentric Anglo-Saxon racist"?
MONUC is "a long, bad story," said Francois Grignon, the Central Africa director for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research agency. Details of the killings in Mongbwalu — one of the most horrific acts of violence against U.N. employees in the international body's 58-year history — are still emerging. The U.N. is investigating what happened. Your tax dollars at work.
But in separate interviews with Knight Ridder, five U.N. military observers with knowledge of what happened to Oran and Banda said their murders could have been avoided. In fact, they said, only luck prevented tribal fighters from butchering more helpless military observers trapped in other remote areas.
All five spoke on condition of anonymity because they worried about the repercussions they could face from the United Nations and their own countries. I thought the UN was a huggy, lovey, peaceful organization. They wouldn't sanction these persons for telling the TRUTH would they? Oh, yeah, it IS the UN. Did I mention TRUTH in the same room as UN? Sorry truth.
Vollot acknowledged that Oran and Banda for several days had asked U.N. officials in Kisangani to be pulled out of Mongbwalu. When asked why U.N. troops weren't sent to pick up the two observers, Vollot said his command's Russian-made Mi-26 helicopters were piloted by civilians. The Russian and Ukrainian pilots were afraid to fly there, and the United Nations didn't want to put their lives at risk, Vollot said. And under U.N. rules, the ruling Lendu militia had to give permission to land a helicopter in Mongbwalu. It also was unclear which Lendu militia was in charge of the town, he said. No pilots. The cannibals have to give you permission to land if you have pilots. And not sure who is in charge... And if Walter Conkrite, Hillary, Bill, Pelosi, and ANSWER get their way, these morons will be running your army. TAAA DAAAA!
So his soldiers had to wait for clearance from the Lendu chief, and only MONUC headquarters in Kinshasa, the capital, could authorize a rescue operation. "These are the rules of the United Nations," said Vollot. And we all know how the Socialists despise free thinking and creative problem solving that might break the rules
The question in many minds is this: Why were the observers sent in the first place? I was thinking the same thing.
For years, Mongbwalu was a volatile, violent place in the most volatile, violent province of Congo. Six Red Cross workers were brutally murdered in Ituri in 2001. Neither Oran nor Banda spoke French, Swahili or any local language. There were no armed U.N. peacekeepers in the area, and the observers were sent with no weapons. It was Oran's first mission. He had little experience in Africa, let alone in a complex conflict such as Congo where military allegiances often switch day to day, said those who knew him. "They were so at risk. It was not prudent for two milobs (military observers) to be sent with no force protection to a place which was known to be violent for years," said Nigel Pearson, the medical coordinator in Bunia for Medair, a relief agency. "It was naive of MONUC. They weren't fully aware of the complexities of the situation."
I'd call it incompetent, myself...
The U.N. military observers agree. Several were sent in teams of four to other remote parts of Ituri at the same time as Oran and Banda in April. They were urged to go quickly with little preparation, they said. And after they arrived they received little attention from MONUC officials, they said. "After we got there, they forgot us. Nobody told us what we had to do there," said another U.N. military observer. "I didn't even know which group was Hema and which was Lendu." Just keeping up appearances, boys. The UN only has to LOOK like it's doing something.
At the time, MONUC needed to have a strong presence in Ituri, said the observers. The Ugandan army, which occupied the province, was leaving in accordance with a multinational peace pact. MONUC was expected to fill the security vacuum. "The U.N. was very pressured to find a solution to the Congo war," said a third U.N. military observer. "They sent observers too soon to a situation where we can't do our work." On May 8, that became clear. With the Ugandans gone, clashes between Hema and Lendu militias had broken out all over the province. Oran and Banda called MONUC's offices in Kisangani asking to be evacuated, said a fourth U.N. military observer. But it was unclear who was responsible for the observers. For the next four days, phone calls were exchanged among Kisangani, Bunia and Kinshasa about getting clearance to evacuate Oran and Banda. "There was a lot of confusion," said the U.N. military observer. Disregard for the lives in their and bureacratic bullshit is more likely... Par for the course.
Meanwhile, other U.N. military observers in other parts of Ituri also wanted to be evacuated. Many had to wait several days, too. Some ended up escaping on their own across the Ugandan border. Lendu militias intimidated other observers for days and accused them of spying for the Hemas. In one instance, an observer had a gun pointed at his head. Armed fighters surrounded other observers, threatening to kill them. "What happened to the two observers could have happened to me," said one observer, shaking his head. The last telephone call from Oran and Banda was on May 13. That was the day the United Nations believes they were killed. Really? Wow, a bunch of rocket scientist them thar UN critters are, Maw!
"Everyone is to blame, starting from the guy who planned the operation," said the fourth U.N. military observer. On Wednesday, MONUC held a memorial service for Oran and Banda in Kinshasa. Senior representatives of all 15 members of the U.N. Security Council, who are here on a fact-finding mission, attended the ceremony. How anyone can still say that the UN has credibility is beyond me. This is the body politic that the Leftist Lackwit Boot-licking Appeasement Monkeys⢠want to turn our sovreignty over to.
God, I shudder at the thought...
#5
"It's difficult, but I don't feel guilty about that."
Congratulations Mr. Vollot. You have just made the history books. We don't need to wish you a slow, hideous and torturous death. The utterance of those words reverberating in your brain (as well as the history books) has assured it.
from: Algemeiner Journal, August 19, 1994.
The Moslem "claim" to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran, which although Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, nevertheless talks (in Sura 17:1) of the "Furthest Mosque": "Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque." But is there any foundation to the Moslem argument that this "Furthest Mosque" (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever.
In the days of Mohammed, who died in 632 of the Common Era, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem was captured by Khalif Omar only in 638, six years after Mohammed's death. Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on the Temple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style.
The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name "Omar Mosque" is therefore false. In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik's son, Abd El-Wahd - who ruled from 705-715 - reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine "basilica" structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.
Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the "Sacred Mosque," and the mosque in Medina as the "Furthest Mosque." So much for the Moslem claim based on the Aksa Mosque.
With this understood, it is no wonder that Mohammed issued a strict prohibition against facing Jerusalem in prayer, a practice that had been tolerated only for some months in order to lure Jews to convert to Islam. When that effort failed, Mohammed put an abrupt stop to it on February 12, 624. Jerusalem simply never held any sanctity for the Moslems themselves, but only for the Jews in their domain.
#1
Heck, I'm for tearing it down just out of spite! I mean, irate as most Muslims already are, can you imagine the outrage that would cause? I bet it would be a sight to see.
GAZA CITY â Israeli helicopter gunships fired three missiles at a car in Gaza City Friday night, killing a Hamas militant riding inside. Mideastern version of a driveby
Palestinian sources told Fox News that Fuad Lidawi, a member of the military wing of Hamas, was killed. The sources said Lidawi's lifeless body arrived at a local hospital soon after the attack. good
Doctors said 22 others were wounded, including seven children. what about the baby ducks?
Soon after the Israeli attack, Yasser Arafat called a meeting with Palestinian Authority officials in his Ramallahmeaning he was planning more attacks
Witnesses said there were four people in the car when the missiles hit and that a charred body was pulled from the burning wreckage. Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, director of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, initially said two people were killed, but then revised the death toll to one. So they bagged the right one? Nice shooting
Israel TV's Channel Two said the missiles were aimed at a car carrying Palestinian militants who fired homemade rockets toward Israel earlier in the day. cause/effect demonstration...
The report said troops followed the militants and then called in the helicopters. Israel has targeted Hamas leaders and members of the Islamic group's military wing in five missile attacks this week. Israel has decided to target top Hamas leaders, including founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Israeli officials and media said Friday, confirming a policy change likely to speed up a deadly cycle of attack and revenge. The Israeli Defense Forces said Yassin was not a target in Friday night's attack.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 03:04 pm ||
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Yay! Keep the pressure on them, and don't let up.
#2
The next 'drive-by' needs to snuff Arafat and the entire leadership of ALL the "security agencies" he heads. The body should then be thrown into the middle of Al Aksa mosque, and burned. Erect a huge obelisk in front of the mosque with the words "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword" in front of it. I doubt the paleolithic morons of the Arab "Intifada" will get the message until it's been repeated a dozen or so times.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/13/2003 22:31 Comments ||
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EFL
After leading a march of hundreds of thousands of people outside the Spanish Embassy, Fidel Castro continued his criticisms of the European Union in a televised speech that stretched into the early hours of Friday. Don't they all, or does it just seem like it?
Speaking to an international cultural conference Thursday evening, Castro said the 15-nation European bloc should stop being "tugged along by the United States" when it comes to Cuba. Castro's willingness to alienate Cuba's most important source of trade and tourism alarmed some of the island's dissidents, who warned that the Caribbean nation is growing more isolated than ever from the international community. The European Union on Friday repeated its demand for democratic reforms in Cuba. In Brussels, spokesman Diego de Ojeda said the EU wants closer economic and political relations with the communist government but only if Cuba becomes more democratic. During his Thursday evening address, Castro said President Bush is ignorant about Europe and was using EU members for his political agenda. "He just realized that Europe exists, and that it exists to obey," said Castro. "He does not understand any other concept of Europe." I didn't realize Fidel was trying for the Democratic nomination.
Earlier in the day, Castro led hundreds of thousands of people in a march outside the Spanish Embassy to protest European support of U.S. policies aimed at nurturing pro-democracy activism in Cuba. His brother and designated successor, Defense Minister Gen. Raul Castro, led a similar march outside the Italian mission. "March or Die!"
In Rome, Italy's Foreign Ministry on Thursday summoned the Cuban ambassador to express indignation over Castro's personal criticism of Premier Silvio Berlusconi and the rally outside the Italian Embassy. A senior Italian Foreign Ministry official expressed to Cuban Ambassador Maria de los Angeles Florez Prida "the deep indignation caused by offensive expressions used by President Fidel Castro regarding the Italian premier," said a ministry statement. During an impromptu talk on state television Wednesday night, Castro mockingly referred several times to the Italian premier as "Burlesconi," essentially likening him to clown. On signs carried by marchers Thursday, the Italian leader was portrayed as a marionette and compared to fascist leader Benito Mussolini. In Madrid, the Spanish government declined to comment further on the protests, during which Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar was mocked as a "little Fuhrer." Instead, Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy expressed his government's "solidarity and closeness with the Cuban people, with whom we feel united." Cuba's protests come a week after the EU announced it was reviewing its policies toward Cuba following the sentencing of 75 dissidents to long prison terms and the firing-squad executions of three men who hijacked a ferry. The European Union said in last week's statement it was "deeply concerned about the continuing flagrant violation of human rights and of fundamental freedoms of members of the Cuban opposition and of independent journalists." EU members unanimously agreed to reduce high-level governmental visits and participation in cultural events on the island. Question, will the Hollywood left join the EU in condemming Cuba, accuse them of being Bush puppets, or ignore the whole issue?
The European nations also agreed to invite dissidents to national holiday celebrations at their embassies in Havana as a sign of support for the island's internal opposition. I think old Fidel is getting senile, he's going out of his way to piss off the countries that have continued to trade with him for years.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 02:54 pm ||
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Christ, Cubans vs. the EU??? Who the hell am I supposed to be rooting for in this one?
Not really WOT, but I CAN'T HELP IT!!!
Dear Hillary,
In your new book, Living History, you correctly note that when you asked me to help you and Bill avert defeat in the congressional election of 1994 I was reluctant to do so. But then you assert, incorrectly, that my reluctance stemmed from difficulties in working with your staff. You even misquote me as telling you: "I don't like the way I was treated, Hillary. People were so mean to me." Yeah.... that sounds like Dick Morris. Sure it does.
As you know, I never said anything of the sort. I had, in fact, no experience in dealing with either your staff or the President's at that point, and had not yet met Leon Panetta or George Stephanopoulos. My prior dealing with Harold Ickes had been twenty five years earlier. The real reason I was reluctant was that Bill Clinton had tried to beat me up in May of 1990 as he, you, Gloria Cabe, and I were together in the Arkansas governor's mansion. At the time, Bill was worried that he was falling behind his democratic primary opponent and verbally assaulted me for not giving his campaign the time he felt it deserved. Offended by his harsh tone, I turned and stalked out of the room. It couldn't, of course, have been Slick Willy's fault. That's unthinkable as it would require him to take responsiblity for his own actions.
Bill ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the floor of the kitchen in the mansion and cocked his fist back to punch me. You grabbed his arm and, yelling at him to stop and get control of himself, pulled him off me. Then you walked me around the grounds of the mansion in the minutes after, with your arm around me, saying, "He only does that to people he loves." Sure, just ask Juanita Broaddrick. You've got to hand it Clinton, though, he got the feminist vote. That's like the chickens voting for the fox.
I continued to work for Bill since I felt a responsibility to do so until Election Day in 1990. But our relationship was never close and never the same. After the 1990 campaign we parted ways as a direct result of the altercation. When the story threatened to surface during the 1992 campaign, you told me to "say it never happened." That, and not the invented conversation in your memoir, was the reason that I was reluctant to work for Bill again.
Yours,
Dick Morris
â Dick Morris, an adviser to Bill Clinton for 20 years The Man from Hope.... I just hope he never gets his hands on me!
Rantburg readers remember this one:
Western investigators are seeking a Boeing 727 passenger aircraft that disappeared May 25th under mysterious circumstances from the airport at Luanda, the coastal capital of Angola, Maariv reports. There is concern that terrorist organiations will use the aircraft in a September 11th-style attack. LGF picked up on the story today, and the reader comments led me to the Professional Pilots Rumor Network . They have a whole thread going with comments by people who know the plane in question. Here are some quotes:
It happened on Sunday night, and we were waiting for the international press to get hold of this one. The 727 is an ex AA one that has been here for a year now. Story from the guys on the ramp is that it fired up and taxied, no lights, no calls (not that that tower answers you on a good day anyway) and made for 23 in the dark. As it happens a ruski of some type was finals for 05 so they did a quick turn in the run up bay and back tracked 25 as what was described as very quick and then departed 25 dissapearing into the dark We laughed well after that, I wonder if there flight had been dispatched. So if anyone else in West Africa sees a Sliver 727 with Blue and White stripes. Take cash for gas and wave as they depart.
It seems that the 727 was a tanker conversion, long range fuel tanks installed.
Like I said previously folks, If that was a US registered X American Airlines B-727 reg.#N844AA , and it was converted to a fuel tanker last year. It has ten 500 gallon aluminum tanks bolted to the floor with 4 inch valves on each tank joined together by 4 inch high pressure hoses leading to the aft where refueling is accomplished. There is also a very unique vent system which allows almost zero fumes into the aircraft. The tanks are held to the seat tracks in four corners buy half inch bolts.(I would hate to see where the tanks would end up if a few G's were pulled) The aircraft was delivered to Luanda by a South African THEIF known as Keith Irwin. Sorry I had to repeat the theifs name again.
No one on the forum has much use for the former owner, he owes many of them money. I still think repo job.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 02:29 pm ||
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Several companies in Alaska have tankers for air delivery of gasoline, heating fuel and Jet A-50 that deliver fuel to communities, mines, and military sites not accessible by road or barge. The fuel lines for the tanks are manifolded to a main line on the deck, and each tank is baffled (anti-slosh) and vented to a manifold that vents outside the plane. They are purple-heart boxes if they do anything more than have a gear collapse and run off the runway. One must have a special attitude toward life to fly them around to gravel strips in some God-awful places year after year.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/13/2003 16:02 Comments ||
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Oh man..this is worse than I thought. 33,000 lbs of JP-8 (6.7 lbs per gallon) plus whatever is in the wing and body tanks is going to make one hell of a fire if this thing crashes into something. And it was the fire that brought down the WTC.
Dam Watch continues, more details on the concrete pouring. EFL
Eighty cracks have been revealed in China's colossal Three Gorges Dam, just days after engineers closed the dam's sluice gates and began filling a 640 kilometre long reservoir. Pan Jiazhong, head of the dam's inspection group, said: "If water enters these cracks there could be negative effects, so we are fixing them very carefully. However, he denied that the cracks, up to 10 metres long, mean that the dam is seriously damaged. Experts contacted by New Scientist agree, saying a catastrophic failure is unlikely. "It's a statistical fact that most dam failures occur on first filling. But the Chinese are very competent engineers, so I would not be overly concerned," says Richard Cox, a dam supervising engineer for the UK Environment Agency. Cracks in the dam were first revealed in March 2002. Engineers sealed these but some of the fissures have since re-opened. The cracks are almost certainly the result of uneven cooling in the concrete structure of the dam, says one expert who has visited the project. Rodney Bridle, an engineer on the governing committee of the British Dam Society, explains that when concrete sets, it generates significant amounts of heat. The surface then cools - and shrinks - faster than the core. "In effect the interior is bigger than exterior," he told New Scientist. "This generates long vertical cracks in the middle of the dam. They are normally just grouted up. The problems with the Three Gorges Dam sound normal to me."
The project's engineers went to extraordinary lengths during the dam's construction to ensure even cooling. The cement component of concrete is responsible for generating the heat when it solidifies, so almost half of the cement in the concrete was replaced with fly ash. The concrete was blasted with air at -5°C during mixing and then cooled to 12°C prior to pouring. The dam was also criss-crossed with a network of cooling pipes. And finally, the engineers shrouded in the entire dam in artificial fog to shield it from sunlight. Hope they're right for everyone downstream.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 01:39 pm ||
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I wonder if, in a good Stalinesque way, the Reds wouldn't force the design team, contractors, and other senior members of the construction team along with their families to relocate downstream of the dam during--and for some time after--construction. If I were dictator in the classic spirit of Uncle Joe, I'd do it (along with mandating everyone call me "O Illustrious One").
Posted by: Dar ||
06/13/2003 14:15 Comments ||
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For those Engineers out there - 50% replacement with Flyash is extreme. Caltrans specs (90-4 Admixtures) allow up to 15% max replacement of cementitious materials with flyash..... usually such a large substitution is due more to cutting costs (pocketing the difference) than trying to reduce the heat of hydration, since flyash is a cheap byproduct of blast furnace operations ... Can anyone say "massive corruption"?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 14:27 Comments ||
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Frank---It sounds like the basic engineering may be good. It is not everyone that designs huge dams. It is like tramways, only a couple of them around make and design them (and they are Swiss). But messing with the concrete mix design is scary. Hell, I don't even live there and I worry.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/13/2003 15:54 Comments ||
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Frank G: That's what I was going to say. It may set cooler, but it's going to be a hell of a lot weaker. I wonder if there is more information available so we could compute a strength: sacks of cement per cu yd, agregates used, water per cu yd. Cracks plus crappy concrete equals...
Found courtesy of the Brothers Judd. Metallica are particularly unhappy about certain actions the U.S. military has taken in Iraq. Not the ones that resulted in the collapse of Saddam Hussein's empire â the ones in which the band's music was played to extract information from terrified Iraqi prisoners who'd never been exposed to heavy metal. Speaking to the press in Europe, drummer Lars Ulrich told the World Entertainment News Network that he strongly objects to the use of "Enter Sandman" as a device of coercion. "I feel horrible about this," he said. "No one in Iraq has ever done anything to hurt me, and I don't understand why we have to be implicated in that bullsh--." I never did anything to you either, Lars, and that didn't stop you from releasing "Enter Sandman" as a single in the North American radio market.
Ulrich added that if the Army is intent on using loud music to break Saddam's supporters, they should find something really grating on the ears. "What about firing up some Venom or some of those Norwegian death metal bands?" And yet nothing, I mean nothing, not even "Norwegian death metal," if such a thing is possible, could be as horiffic as . . . gulp . . . "The Chicken Dance."
Posted by: Mike ||
06/13/2003 01:31 pm ||
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The Chicken Dance is great after many pitchers of good German beer during Octoberfest in Munich.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 13:53 Comments ||
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Siddown and shaddup, Lars. Count some money or somethin', huh?
#3
Tell him the military downloaded the song for free from Napster and watch Lars really twist his panties in a knot.
Posted by: Dar ||
06/13/2003 14:09 Comments ||
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I'm not sure if you have seen Billy Wilder's great Berlin movie ONE, TWO, THREE (1961), in which James Cagney is an executive for Coca-Cola in Berlin, who has to deal with the commies on one hand, and an out-of-control bosses daughter on the other. The East German police uses the same methods: They play "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini" until the accused confesses to be a CIA spy and working for Wall Street. Maybe the music method isn't that reliable.
Unfortunately they had methods in the East that worked better.
#7
tu3031, those are fightin' words, what's wrong, afraid of hot dancin' babes. When I catch your butt I'm going to make you watch Korean music videos....boy bands....Bwahahaha
Posted by: Dick Saucer ||
06/13/2003 17:00 Comments ||
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tu3031 is dead wrong about saucy Bollywood videos. (Perhaps they're an acquired taste).
Dick Saucer is almost right about K-pop vids...except the romantic ballads are more mind-wrecking than the boy bands can dream of being.
#9
Pink & Fluffy,
You are right about the romantic ballads being worse(big time), but as an American I was abiding Article [VIII.] of the constitution in regards to cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (unless it was dropped when TGA amended the constitution to get us into the ICC). The ballads are so horrid the performers can't get through them without committing suicide, hell, now they start with morbid deaths so you can revel in all the misery without any fear of happiness....ever. And what's up with the choreography, crimes against humanity indeed. Someone please, hit them with a joy stick.
Posted by: Dick ||
06/13/2003 18:46 Comments ||
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TGA, thanks for the memory. That movie's name I just couldn't remember. If I remember right, the bad guys even played the record off-center. Please, people, don't try this at home.
More details coming out:
A third night of student protests outside Tehran University's dormitories exploded early on Friday into the surrounding middle-class neighborhoods, with large gangs of students fighting running street battles against vigilantes armed with sticks and chains. At one major intersection, demonstrators hurled bricks at trucks of riot policemen who were rushing to lift barricades and douse fires that protesters had ignited in the streets. The protesters chanted "Death to Khamenei" a slogan that can bring a jail term in this country, where Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader, goes unquestioned. "I've been lashed, jailed for having a satellite dish," said one student, underscoring the simmering social frustrations behind the riots. "It's time to stand up for what we want." In a nationally televised speech on Thursday, Khamenei accused the United States of trying to foment disorder here and warned protesters that the government would be merciless against those acting in the interests of foreign powers. Referring to the United States, he said: "If it sees that disgruntled people and adventurers want to cause trouble, and if it can turn them into mercenaries, it will not hesitate in giving them its support."
The protests are erupting as a nervous government is trying to forge a policy toward the United States in the face of renewed pressure from Washington. The fact that they are being fueled by calls to pour into the streets from opposition-run Persian-language television stations in the United States adds to the unease. "Leaders do not have the right to have any pity whatsoever for the mercenaries of the enemy," Khamanei said, addressing a crowd in the southern city of Varamin.
The public ignored the admonishment, participating in the largest street demonstrations to erupt in this capital in four years. Joining the students were some older government workers and even traditional women dressed in the sweeping black cloaks favored in poorer neighborhoods. Given the difficulty of moving about a city beset by traffic jams and violent clashes, it was impossible to get an accurate count of the number of demonstrators. But the demonstrations stretched at least five kilometers, or three miles, from the dormitories where the first quiet protests began on Tuesday, so the protesters appeared to be in the thousands. It was a far wider display than on two previous nights. Control of key intersections switched back and forth between protesters and the often black-clad vigilantes, paramilitary thugs believed to be linked to the government. Vigilantes on motorcycles in many cases ditched their vehicles and attack private homes. Sometimes the students would get their revenge, and at one point they separated a lone vigilante, wrestled him off his motorcycle, pummeled him and then torched the vehicle. Witnesses reported similar scenes of beatings up and down a major road leading to the dormitories. Civilians limped away after being beaten, although one woman extracted an apology from an assailant by screaming, "Hitting a woman! Aren't you ashamed?" People from heavily Westernized northern Tehran tried to drive into the downtown area to the scene of the riots, creating enormous traffic jams. "We want more freedom," said one 34-year-old government worker, Mahmoud. Nevertheless, he said he doubted the demonstrations would bring down the regime, because the riots were too random and lacked any organized backing. Seems to be getting bigger, it needs to spread to other areas of the country before it reaches a tipping point.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 01:26 pm ||
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I'm willing to bet that most of the "vigilantes" are Palistinians and Syrians imported by the mullahs more for a willingness to crack heads than for their piety.
RealClearPolitics.com. Author: J. McIntyre
Pasted in its entirety because it I think this approach is the most viable alternative to achieve a Palestinian state. I don't think it will bring "peace", but perhaps a "peace" by Mideast standards is achievable.
MIDDLE EAST PEACE: I'm a big believer in the KISS principle. For those who don't know, KISS stands for "Keep It Simple Stupid." Now, I am not under any illusions that the problems that bedevil the Mideast are easy to resolve, they aren't. Let's face it, the Israeli-Palestinian issue has a million reasons why it is not going to be settled any time soon, but here is my 'road map' to give peace a chance.
I was watching Hannity & Colmes on Wednesday night where they had George Mitchell and Lawrence Eagleburger discussing the Mideast. Hannity began with a diatribe attacking Ari Fleischer, Colin Powell and President Bush for coming down on Ariel Sharon and the Israelis. His point in a nutshell was: terror is terror, and there will be no peace until Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad etc. are wiped out. He also made the point that if the U.S. were being attacked in the same fashion as Israel we would certainly be responding and striking back, so why condemn Israel for pursuing the equivalent of the 'Bush Doctrine'?
One side of me finds this argument very compelling, but the other side sees it for what it probably is: a proscription for more violence. President Bush was right when he suggested that Sharon's attack on the Hamas leader Rantissi did not help Israeli security. The attack might have been perfectly justified, it might have made many in Israel feel good, but it didn't make Israel more secure. There won't be peace in the Mideast until the terror practitioners are crushed, but as long as it is Israel doing the crushing there is no chance of success. Given this assumption, the solution is for the Palestinians to eliminate the terror machine of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad. And to be fair, this is one of the core tenets of the road map today.
The problem is Prime Minister Abbas and the moderate Palestinians don't have the ability alone to win this Palestinian Civil War. This leaves two general possibilities:
First, we could just wait until the moderate Palestinians triumph over the radicals. The problem with this approach is it could take decades, even centuries for this to happen. This would let the violence fester and continue unabated in a world where weapons of mass destruction are only going to become more common. Not a great long-term plan.
The second option is to have outside forces join with Abbas and the moderate Palestinians and wipe out the terrorists together. No cease fires, no discussions. I'm talking about a very simple policy: If you engage in terrorism you will be hunted down and killed. If the world community, and more specifically; France, Russia, the EU, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan really want peace, they need to put together an armed coalition that will go in with Abbas and eliminate these terrorists by hunting them down door to door in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel's role would be to step back and not retaliate for any terrorist attacks that occur during this war to eliminate the terrorists. The U.S.'s job would be to put pressure on Israel to make sure they don't retaliate. The U.S. could also pump money into the West Bank and Gaza to build schools, hospitals, roads, etc... After the terrorists and their organizations are crushed, then the two sides can sit down and hammer out a compromise to settle this intractable problem. At least at that point peace will have a chance.
Today it seems we are still caught in that cycle of violence. The moderate Palestinians either do not have the will or the means to eliminate terrorism and every time Israel takes action to eliminate the terrorists all they do is make Hamas and the terror groups more popular, while delegitimizing the very moderate Palestinians they want to strengthen. I am in total agreement with the author on this intractable paradox. As in Iraq, the status quo needs to be changed. The "game", as it were, needs to be changed.
Let's keep this simple. First, the world community needs to get rid of the terrorists in the Palestinian territories. Let's send in French, Russian, German, Turkish and Egyptian commandos and destroy Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, etc. Arafat then needs to be removed, jailed or killed. With the terrorists crushed, Prime Minister Abbas and the moderates can establish the beginnings of a functioning state and THEN we might be on the road map to Mideast peace. Bottom line, the Palestinian terrorists have to be crushed, but they can't be crushed by Israel or the U.S. This is the only option I see giving Mideast peace any type of chance in the near future.
"Three cheers for John McCain, who in an interview yesterday with MSNBC's Chris Matthews put the matter plainly:"
If anyone came to my hometown in Phoenix, Ariz., and set off a bomb on a bus and killed 18 people and injured 100 of them, my citizens would expect us to respond. . . . Do you want to call that a cycle of violence? You can call it what you want, but these acts of terror, these organizations, funded by the Saudis, at least encouraged by Yasser Arafat, are inexcusable in their tactics--and their results are horrendous."
Indeed. The only way to stop the "cycle of violence" is to kill or incapacitate the instigators. If Abbas cannot or will not do so, how can anyone fault Israel for acting in its own defense?"
#2
And why would the French, Russians, Germans et al. want to risk their lives to protect Jews? Their governments cannot even bring themselves to call the indiscriminate mass murder of Israelis terrorism. The international soldiers would have the choice of standing aside or becoming targets for the likes of Hamas and Islamic Jihad themselves. The practical effect would be to provide a shield to any Israeli military response while doing little to discourage terrorism.
Remember Srebernica. The UN made security promises it lacked the will or capacity to enforce. The UN also had a "peacekeeping" force in the Sinai in 1967. They left as soon as the Egyptians told them to go. The track record of international security forces (without a heavy US presence)is not encouraging; they are rather, like Abba Eban said, like firemen who run away at the smell of smoke.
The Israelis and the Palestinians have to, in the end, solve this one themselves. They are the ones who will have to live together or die together. No outside force can make them live together, see Yugoslavia, and most of Africa for examples.
Terrorism has never, ever won a cause. It has always failed. Some bright Palestinian is going to come to understand this, and tacitly allow or encourage the Israelis to make a few more martyrs to the cause. When the terrorists are dead and buried, he can then proclaim peace and a national state, lauding them for their sacrifices.
Is Abbas that guy? Don't know. Arafat is not.
No one controls all the groups. I believe the elimination of Hamas and Arafat's pet goons will be the solution. Hezb is ineffectual in Israel, and will become even more isolated when its buddies are wacked. Kill the terrorist leaders, cut off their money, and let a Palestinian leader proclaim victory.
#4
The EU and UN using force? Like they are in Bunia? Loudspaekers vs Kalashnikovs...
Or Afghanistan: before the recent [partial] capitulation, when there was a real chance of northern civil war, the UN said it was there only to protect the government in Kabul - not to interfere in internal affairs. Huh?
Posted by: John Anderson ||
06/13/2003 15:25 Comments ||
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I disagree.
The best way Sharon can support Abbas is to crush Abbas's rival power centers - Hamas, Hezbollah... Arafat.
And Sharon's far better qualified to do it than some "cobbled-together" group of outsiders.
#6
GKarp: I agree with you that having international UN type troops hunting HAMAS, IsJihad, etc. is impossible. Egypt and Jordan acting together could however to so.
If the UN wanted to do some good - a big if -- they could dispatch several hundred people to ride around in Israeli buses and eat at Israeli restaurants. Taking bus rides and eating is about all the UN really is capable of anyway.
(1) Build a huge wall around Gaza, withdraw all settlements in Gaza, and allow no transit between Isreal and Gaza. Let them fester and hate and grow poorer. (2) Sweep into West Bank and kill or round up known terrorists and thugs. Deport them to Gaza. (3) Set up an East Palistine Government in West Bank with the intent of self-rule along a specific timeline. This government should be a liberal democracy even if we have to import Germans or French to help them. Clean up the media and remove the thugocracy so the West Bank Pals have a chance. Allow economic contact between West Bank and Isreal but keep the wall Israel is building and control over border points all around to prevent infiltration. Allow Right of Return into select West Bank towns, if Pals won't accept it the term can be inversed against them.
It won't be long before the success of those living in the West Bank starts to sink into those living in Gaza. Control of the media in East Palistine can have a very powerful affect as well.
#8
Longer term.... If a free Iraq does what other Arab states should have done 50 years ago-- namely, allow Palestinian Arabs to immigrate, integrate into society and lead normal lives-- won't that tend to dissolve the "Palestinian problem"?
#9
Yank: I admit that my preferred solution would be more drastic; it being the one referred to as "Removal" in the Israeli political lexicon. However, I can see some logic to what you suggest, with one glaring exception. "This government should be a liberal democracy even if we have to import Germans or French to help them." I grant that the French and Germans have gotten the art of taking liberalism to the Socialist extreme, but they don't seem to have the concept of Democracy down yet. The greatest political initiative the two countries are attempting is the European Union. In all the 337 pages of the EU constitution [counting preamble] I don't see any power at all in the only elected branch, the European Parliament. It cannot originate law, pass law, repeal law, or reject anything the unelected European Commission or the European President wants. All in all, it sounds like the kind of government set up that Arafat or Osama bin Laden would love. If we must send them missionaries for liberty, send in a few brigades of Libertarians instead.
#10
It is rather amazing how Americans blame Europe for being "undemocratic" because European nations don't give up their sovereignty fast enough. A sovereignty that is so dear to America.
If the European Parliament had the powers Subotai is claiming, it would basically abridge the powers of the national parliaments. It would mean that smaller nations would basically be overwhelmed by the French and German "masses". This is what makes the creation of Europe so difficult. This is why we have to go in small steps, slowly building up the trust it takes to achieve a true union which may still be half a century away. We will get there, I believe.
After 225 years the different US states still insist on their "sovereignty" when it comes to elect the president. Thats why the American people still can't elect their president by "popular majority". We know that small things make big impacts sometimes.
And you are blaming Europe not to be fast enough when after 225 years the 50 US states still elect their president by electors and not direct votes?
I rather see Europe succeed in small steps than fail in big ones.
#11
TGA: Sorry I did not not check back again for a reply last night, I got busy. "If the European Parliament had the powers Subotai is claiming, it would basically abridge the powers of the national parliaments." In fact, the same EU Constitution already takes away the national sovereignty. Without creating a post so long as to overwhelm the site, I cannot quote the relevant passages, but basically anything the unelected EU Commission arrogates unto itself, preempts national parliaments totally. The EU Commission has claimed jurisdiction over literally everything, foreign and domestic. Therefore, the member states have already yielded sovereignty in toto. The end of national sovereignty is a [pardon the French] a fait accompli, as is the abolition of any input by citizens into the government. That is why I say that Arafat and Osama would love the type of system the Germans and the French would impose. Given the lack of enthusiasm the French have for stopping the murder of civilians [Ivory Coast, Congo] Hamas would feel right at home with it too. Europeans have already yielded sovereignty and are doing their best to abandon any pretense of democratic control over the institutions that have power over them. Those of an historical bent will remember the three Reich's ; the Holy Roman Empire, Wilhelmine Germany, and the National Socialist regime. To an outside observer, the EU seems bent on becoming a combination of the three. None of the three featured peace, individual liberty, or democratic control of the government.
Hundreds of protesters called for the death of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei as thousands of onlookers watched early Friday, the third day of demonstrations in the capital despite threats by the hard-line regime to crack down to end the disturbances. Brave kids
The three nights of demonstrations have produced the largest outpouring of public opposition against Iran's leadership in months, involving hundreds of young Iranians, some still teenagers. They shouted chants including, "Khamenei the traitor must be hanged," "Guns and tanks and fireworks, the mullahs must be killed," and "student prisoners must be freed," witnesses said. The demonstrators concentrated in two areas, around Tehran University and near the Intercontinental Hotel, though the protesters had left the university area late Thursday night. Before they dispersed, police had prevented some two dozen pro-Khamenei vigilantes on motorcycles — at times chanting "oh the exalted leader, we are ready to follow your instructions," — from confronting the students. I guess the Iranian police are a bit more even handed than the old Iraqi ones.
The local Hezbollah, on the other hand, is fond of shouting "O, Saddam Khamenei! We will defend you with our blood!"
Thousands of people looked on, sometimes clapping with the protesters and taking up their chants. Residents near the university hospital left their doors open so that demonstrators could find quick shelter if the authorities cracked down. Similar scenes were evident near the hotel, where about 500 hard-liners on motorcycles chased down protesters, beating them with cattle prods and circling around, gunning their engines, witnesses said. Some onlookers struck back at the vigilantes, hitting them with their fists. Near the hotel, two motorcycles were set aflame. Allah's Angels?
#4
And a quick side-step to the left and a double handed swing of a club(most people swing a chain/club with the right hand)will put a serious hurt on a motorcycle rider.
An e-mail claiming to be from a son of Saddam Hussein and asking for help in accessing $45m funds, is one of a flood of scams targeted at people in the UK. Police said a businessman in Edinburgh received a bogus appeal by e-mail which claimed to be from Uday Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator's favoured son. Damm, I haven't got one of these yet! Anyone?
BANK OF COMMERCE AND STATECRAFT
LAGOS, NIGERIA
ESTEEMED SIR OR MADAM,
YOU ARE PROBABLY WONDERING HOW I GOT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. I HAVE CONTACTS WITH MANY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND ALL RECOMMENDED YOU. I AM BOB HUSSEIN, SON OF THE FORMER DICTATOR OF IRAQ. I HAVE NEED OF HONEST BROKER TO ASSIST ME IN SPIRITING THE SUM OF $1.62 BILLION FROM MY COUNTRY TO THE NETHERLANDS WHERE I AM NOW RESIDING...
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 11:53 am ||
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Easy. Just replace "wife of Abacha" with "son of Saddam" and you have it!
#5
Every time I develop a spam-blocker for this crap, they come up with something new. It'd be amusing if it wasn't so annoying.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/13/2003 22:33 Comments ||
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If only one guy out of a million falls for this crap it won't stop. And the scam is still successful obviously. Because it speculates on the only thing that makes people lose their common sense faster than sex: greed.
The American Muslim community, which was influential in President George W. Bush's electoral victory in 2000, is threatening to desert him next year. The issue which most riles Muslims and Arab-Americans is a registration programme that was introduced after the Sept 11 attacks and seen as discriminatory. The programme requires immigrants from 25 countries to register with the authorities. All the countries involved, with the exception of North Korea, are Islamic. Now I wonder why that is?
'The programme just targets Muslim countries,' said American Muslim Council communications director Faiz Rehman. The official rationale for the programme is to correct visa irregularities but it is seen as stereotyping Arab and Muslim immigrants as potential terrorists. 'It is causing anxiety because we believe it is a selective prosecution of the law,' said Mr Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. 'It defies the American tradition of treating people equally before the law.'
But compared to procedures in most Islamic countries it's no big thing...
To make matters worse, immigrants who came forward voluntarily to register under the programme thought it was a formality. Those days are over, pal.
A staggering 82,000 trooped in, many of them proud to cooperate in the battle against terrorism. But 13,000 were shocked when told they faced deportation because of visa irregularities. 'They thought that because they were abiding by the law, they would be treated leniently. Now they feel they were duped,' said Mr Faiz. Mr Nihad added: 'Muslims and Arabs feel they are being singled out. It's not healthy.' The US authorities contend that the crackdown is necessary because illegal immigrants pose a high security risk, pointing out that several of the 9/11 terrorists were in America illegally at the time of the attacks. We noticed
But US Muslims are not appeased by such logic and that could be dangerous for Mr Bush in next year's presidential elections. Muslim voters can play a crucial role in 'swing' states such as Florida, where the President's Republican Party is uncertain of victory. There are an estimated six million Muslims in America. About 30 per cent are from South Asia, 30 per cent are Afro-American Muslims and the rest are predominantly from the Arab world. Black Muslims traditionally vote for the Democrats; the others are divided equally between the two main parties. In the last election, Muslim voters swung heavily to Mr Bush and his party - a trend most evident in states with Muslim concentrations such as Michigan, California, Texas, Florida and New York. Mr Bush had worked for the support. He met Muslim leaders in key states and impressed them with the way he condemned racial and religious profiling and affirmed the right to pray. He still feels the same way, wonder what else has happened to change their minds?
But now, the perceived anti-Muslim slant of the registration programme, coupled with opposition to the war in Iraq and a widespread belief that the US favours Israel over Palestine, has alienated Mr Bush from American Muslims. 'Next year is going to be a different story,' said Mr Faiz. 'There's no chance Muslims are going to vote for Mr Bush.' I'm sure you can find a Dummycrat willing to pander for your vote. Feel free to come out and openly support one. I'm sure it will be a big help.
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 10:40 am ||
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Karl Rove put them up to this, didn't he?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 11:05 Comments ||
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Yeah, boo hoo for the Republicans, right? wrong.
Think about it for a moment. If you were, say, a democrat, and in the next election your party won the presidency (heaven forbid) by a slim margin. How would you feel, hearing Dan Rather on the post - election roundup saying,
"Well, the democrats are back in the white house, due in no small part to an overwhelming Muslim vote"
#3
So they'll flock to the Democrats, thereby making it the the pro illegal alien, pro terrorist party? I'm sure the Dems look forward to that support. They don't have enough problems?
Maybe the "More Evil Then Bush" Rove did put them up to it.
#4
It just might help Bush break the stranglehold on the Jewish (and maybe even middle-class black) vote. Caving to Muslim demands is political poison to those of us with memories good enough to remember 9-11. I have nothing against Muslim individuals, but selfish group whining about how THEY (sniff, sniff) are inconvenienced, when they saddled the rest of us with massive life-changing inconveniences, massive increased spending (taxes) to pay for all of the security we need against Arab fanatics and over 3,000 deaths.
To all the Muslim whiners who come here for freedom and then complain that it's not good enough for you....don't let the screen door at INS hit you on your way out.
#5
I respectfully disagree with all the jokes. These nice Arab Muslims are just beginning to do in here what they are finishing in France: silent invasion, multiplication...in the end nobody can do anything without their permission.
They do not mix, the second generation will be more fanatic than the first, the third more...There is a problem here, a big one. And if we don't find a solution that is in line with the Constitution and democracy they will find a (final) solution for us. Take a trip in the areas around Paris...have a look...
#6
I'll be really impressed when these folks block vote for Lieberman.
Posted by: Matt ||
06/13/2003 11:49 Comments ||
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#7
I agree with Matt, but the Libs agenda only helps the really radical Muslims. But their miles apart when it come to ideology. Picture a Democratic Muslim at a convention in San Francisco? Their head would explode! Of course, that might happen anyway.
#8
Wonder if the AMC and CAIR consulted with Iraqui-Americans or Iranian-Americans like the ones I know. I think they will be shocked to find their "bloc" is not a monolithic as they believe it is...
I seriously doubt that much of the Muslim vote is going anywhere other than for Bush, especially if we can make some progress in making Iraq functional over the next year. If Bush can point to a halfway prosperous, semi-democratic Iraq, he will have done more for the Middle East than any other president in US history. Plus the Republicans are going to be able to put together one heck of a testimonial commercial from liberated Iraqis. "I'll never forget the day the Marines came to the children's prison. Thank you, Boosh."
Posted by: Matt ||
06/13/2003 14:04 Comments ||
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Did the author if this article see the people from Detroit celebrating the liberation of Iraq? Did he/she watch the celebrations in other key cities where Iraqi dissidents live after fleeing Saddam's Iraq? This whole thing is just another attempt by the looney left whiners to try to fracture the Bush message. The people complaining are those who want to live in the United States, but demand to be treated as if they were the upper class of their home nation, on vacation in this country. If they want to be treated as equals, they need to act as equals, not spoiled brats. That includes obeying the laws of this nation. There are no exceptions for any citizen, regardles of race, creed, color, nationality, sex, or ethnicity. If these whiners can't accept that, they don't belong here anyway.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/13/2003 21:14 Comments ||
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Still have not heard a loud,public condemnation of terrorist and thier suppoters out CAIR,&AMC.
If they object to regestration there is a simple solution activly and publiclly help law enforcement root-out and destroy terrorist orginazations and thier supporters.Boot-out,ostricize and publiclly condemn the Imams,Mullahs,etc.who use Mosques to preach hate and violence.Untill they take the actions I propose they are part and parcle of the problem.
Followup to other stories here today and yesterday, and EFL
Ragged children sang and an elderly woman beamed toothlessly for the cameras as a convoy of French special forces rolled slowly through the Bunia suburb of Nyakasanza, the sun sparkling on their submachine guns. The joy was not feigned. A massacre took place in Nyakasanza last month when the tribal war in Ituri province in north-east Congo spread into the town. Militiamen of the Lendu tribe swept through the suburb looking for members of the smaller rival tribe, the Hema, to kill. Sixteen people, including two priests, were hiding in a Catholic church. They were led outside and hacked to pieces in the road. In such scenes, painfully redolent of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 500 people were butchered in Bunia last month, under the noses of 700 Uruguayan UN peacekeepers. With 55,000 dead in the three years of fighting in Ituri, the UN war crimes prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, said the slaughter could constitute genocide. Thanks Carla, we would never have figured this out.
It was this, supposedly, that the French arrived in Bunia last week to end, leading a 1,400-strong force mandated by the UN and put together by the EU, including fewer than 100 British personnel. As the French rolled back to their barracks 12 miles down the road from Nyakasanza less joyful scenes were apparent. The village of Katoto was smouldering, and one house still burning, after the reported massacre of 121 people on Saturday during the latest Lendu attack. Bloodied mattresses lay scattered outside a looted mud hut. Throughout the attack the French troops stayed in their barracks. Their mandate did not permit them to venture outside Bunia, their commander said, nor to intervene in battles between armed groups. "Of course we cannot intervene! We are here to keep peace!"
One week after the first French troops arrived the first rapid reaction intervention by the EU alone is in danger of being a toothless failure, observers say. If it is not allowed to leave Bunia it will hardly see the slaughter in the province, much less stop it. If unable to intervene in fighting it will not prevent the civilian massacres that invariably follow. "Bunia is just a tiny part of Ituri," Anneke Van Woudenberg, of Human Rights Watch, said yesterday. "We hear of massacres taking place outside Bunia that the French will be utterly unable to stop. If the force is going to protect Ituri's civilians, it will have to interpret its mandate very courageously. But it doesn't look like this will be allowed." Even if allowed, would the French want to?
To allow the safe flow of aid in Bunia, the UN wants the Hema militia expelled from town, but its peacekeeping unit has no mandate to use force. The intervention force has a mandate to fire but not to demilitarise the town. Its commander, Colonel Daniel Vollot, said yesterday: "The international force will chase the fighters from the town. It will impose a city without weapons." Moments later its spokesman, Colonel Gerard Dubois, said: "There is no confusion: it's not in our mandate to demilitarise the city." That was downright Orwellian. Thomas Lubanga, the Hema warlord in control of Bunia, agreed. "We are for peace ... but we will not disarm, and will not leave the city we have fought for and won."
"We're for peace and we'll kill anybody that gets in our way. And eat them..."
During their brief visit to Bunia yesterday the security council's 15 ambassadors must have regretted this. They were preceded by three Mirage-2000 fighters screaming low overhead, but the Hema gunmen were unbowed. Their continued presence was felt at the UN compound, where 12 refugees fainted with fright, and in the town's market, the scene of a stampede by several hundred terrified shoppers. As a UN convoy passed along the main street under heavy French guard a mob of militiamen and civilians ran behind, waving submachine guns in the air and shouting: "The white men will run, we have the city". They certainly have it figured out.
By the roadside 10-year-old Robert "Rambo" said, "We're dancing for joy because our leader is here", snapping bullets into an AK-47 magazine. The French UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la SabliÚre, denied that the intervention force's mandate reflected western indifference to Ituri or Congo's wider civil war. "There is no military solution to the war in Ituri, only a political one," he said.
"These black folk," he said, shrugging Gallically. "What can you do? They're not like us. They don't feel pain like we do..."
Of course, if you started whacking every Hema and Lendu dolt carrying a rifle, it would be easier to implement a political solution.
The UN has negotiated countless agreements to end the war but without a neutral force to hold the the internal factions and neighbouring countries which have taken sides to their word, most of them have already failed. The latest initiative is the Ituri Pacification Commission (IPC), elected by the tribes, which agreed to be separated and disarmed while a provincial government was set up. The UN promised to enforce it, but without allowing its peacekeepers to fight, and most of its members are now refugees in the UN compound. The UN peacekeeping mission in Congo costs more than £400m a year but its achievements, Ms Van Woudenberg says, are minimal. "The UN is hopelessly incapable of protecting Congolese civilians. Unless it gets a serious mandate their huts will continue to burn." Sad thing is, the ambassadors know this, as does Kofi. It's all for show so they can tell the leftie crowd at home that they're trying to "do something."
Sitting in the bathroom exploring your sexuality is "doing something," too...
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/13/2003 10:35 am ||
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#1
This just in: French UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sablière has announced the complete surrender of French troops. Developing...
#2
"There is no military solution to the war in Ituri, only a political one."
Wait until all but one group is dead, declare peace, go home...
But then, the French (and Kofi) thought the "serious consequences" of 1441 should be the lifting of sanctions and a round of congratulations on the success of spending millions on inspections for over twelve years.
Posted by: John Anderson ||
06/13/2003 14:31 Comments ||
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#3
I am truly embarassed and ashamed that my country is associated with this farce.
The death of the UN cannot come quickly enough.
Faster please...
Beeb monitoring of Arab news outlets
Apparently because Sharon won't let his people be murdered, he's to blame for fighting back.
Newspapers across the Middle East believe there is now little hope for the peace process following the recent upsurge in violence.
Unusually, Israel's Haaretz daily agrees with Arabic papers in blaming the Israeli Government's assassination attempt on Hamas political leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi for the deteriorating situation.
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It is clear that Israel does not want peace. It is clear that it has ripped apart the Aqaba document. It is clear that Israel will not allow Palestinians to have a state of their own.
What happened is only urging Palestinians to go back to their guns. A gun is the only means capable of safeguarding Palestinian rights in the face of Israeli violence
Indeed it is a US-Zionist war against the Palestinians and the Arabs from the Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean. The statements made by Bush and his general responsible for foreign affairs, Colin Powell, inciting the world against Hamas and Jihad are part of this war.
Al-Rantissi did not represent an 'impending danger' to Israel, but Israel knows very well that, by targeting one of Hamas's leaders, it would cause the rage of Hamas and push it into a retaliation, and this is exactly what happened.
Al-Watan - Saudi Arabia
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After foiling the peace initiative, Israel is now talking about an intolerant war against terrorism, while Israel is the number one terrorist. Any statements trying to absolve Israel from the crimes it has perpetrated in the last two days will only encourage this terrorist entity to commit more crimes.
Al-Jazirah - Saudi Arabia
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Where is the roadmap? Or better - where is the road? Where is the peace which was promised? Were the participants in the Aqaba summit expecting this dangerous development?
Ukaz - Saudi Arabia
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The escalated exchange of violent operations after great hopes brought about by the Aqaba and Sharm el-Sheikh summits is now carrying pessimism and despair.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat - UK
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[Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon thinks that the escalation of aggression and the persistence in implementing the policy of killing are the only means to drown the roadmap in a sea of blood. This is the truth and it is about time the USA and the West realise that.
A poor decision by Sharon - to attack Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi - contributed to the escalation. The timing and method of the operation reinvigorated doubts regarding Sharon's sincerity and commitment to Bush's vision for the Middle East and its implementation.
Haaretz - Israel
Neville Chamberlain writing Haaretz' editorials now? Ignore 'em, and target the bad guys with overwhelming force and accuracy. A society that won't defend itself doesn't deserve to survive - Sharon et al seem to have reached the point where it's do or die, and they don't intend to die
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 10:03 am ||
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#1
Don't worry Haaretz staff. If they take over and come to town someday, they won't ask you to get on the cattle cars with everybody else. Of course they won't.
EFL
Up to 400 people have been killed in recent fighting around the capital, Monrovia, Liberia's health minister has said. Peter Coleman said that 150 bodies had been found in New Kroo Town, scene of fierce fighting between rebels and government troops. Fighting has quietened down since both sides agreed to a truce on Wednesday but President Charles Taylor's Kiss FM radio station urged residents of the north-western districts not to return home yet as government troops were "mopping up" rebel forces. KISS FM, 7.62 on your radio dial, Music to kill by.
Earlier, the United Nations-backed war crimes court told BBC News Online that Mr Taylor must still be arrested. He warned on Thursday that there would no peace in Liberia unless his indictment was lifted. There won't be peace until he's dead.
Peace talks between the government and rebels are expected to continue in Ghana on Friday. Both sides have agreed to a truce while the talks continue and West African mediators say they are hopeful that a deal can be agreed this week. But rebel forces, who control some two-thirds of Liberia and have been on the outskirts of Monrovia for the past week, are still refusing to talk to President Taylor or his delegation. Last week, on the day the talks first opened, the Special Court for Sierra Leone released an indictment against Mr Taylor and issued an international arrest warrant. "Our previous statements still stand regarding the indictment of Charles Taylor," Tom Perriello, acting spokesperson for the prosecutor's office, told BBC News Online on Friday. "All war crimes indictees must be delivered to the Special Court, including Charles Taylor." Mr Taylor has offered to resign if that would bring peace to Liberia but appears to be holding out for immunity from arrest. "If there is any unceremonial departure, there will be a bloodbath here," he warned. "And I'm just the guy to do it"
Posted by: Steve ||
06/13/2003 09:21 am ||
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#1
I'd read that Taylor was asking for armed UN troops to monitor the ceasefire. Was wondering how the international arrest warrant would be honored by the blue helmets? Read him his rights via bullhorn from behind a concertina-surrounded compound?
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 10:26 Comments ||
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#2
Except for any of the victims killed by edged weapons I wonder if the ones killed by gunfire are victims of 7.62 x 39mm rounds. And where are the rebels getting their AK-47s and the amunition?
Posted by: Someone who did NOT vote for William Proxmire ||
06/13/2003 12:25 Comments ||
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#3
Taylor has accused neighbouring countries like Guinea of supporting the rebels, and they have accused Taylor of sponsoring rebel groups in their country.
Although I don't think it is to hard to find AK's in that part of the world, there are probably almost as many as there are people (now).
Posted by: Paul Moloney ||
06/13/2003 20:08 Comments ||
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EFL and New news
JERUSALEM - Israel pledged on Friday a "war to the bitter end" against Hamas but an opinion poll showed a majority of Israelis oppose the stepped-up attacks on leaders of the militant Islamic group. If the JPost asked their readers I bet you'd get a different attitude
With his peace "road map" threatened by Israeli-Palestinian violence that has killed 38 people in two days, President Bush planned to send a veteran U.S. diplomat to Israel this weekend to try to stem the bloodshed.
In the latest violence, gunmen fired at an Israeli car near the Jewish settlement of Neve Tzuf in the West Bank, wounding two women, one of them seriously. "As a government responsible for the security of its citizens, we must wage a war to the bitter end (against Hamas) because no one else, at least at this stage, will do it," Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim told Army Radio. Pretty much clear on the concept
But a poll in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily found 67 percent of Israelis wanted what the survey termed the "assassination policy" to stop, at least temporarily, to give new Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas a chance to grow stronger. Keeping up pressure on Hamas, which opposes the existence of the Jewish state, Israel launched a helicopter missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Thursday that killed seven people, including senior militant Yasser Taha, his wife and one-year-old daughter. At their funeral processions on Friday, gunmen fired in the air and a Hamas loudspeaker blared: "God's revenge is coming soon and the Zionists will pay the price of their crimes."
"We pledge Dire Revenge™..."
The army issued a statement expressing "sorrow over the death" of Taha's family.
But not over Taha...
In separate incidents near the West Bank city of Jenin, gunmen killed an Israeli civilian buying charcoal in a Palestinian village and soldiers shot dead two militants. Hamas' armed wing claimed responsibility for the Israeli's death. On Wednesday, helicopter gunships killed four militants and seven bystanders in Gaza, after a Hamas suicide bomber killed 17 on a Jerusalem bus, an attack that followed the wounding of senior Hamas figure Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi in a missile strike. In what it called a message to "terrorists and their accomplices," the army demolished the family house of the Jerusalem bus bomber, Abdel-Mua'ti Shabana, 18, in the West Bank city of Hebron, leaving nine people homeless. The army also destroyed another militant's home in the West Bank village of Dura.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 08:34 am ||
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no title? Que pasa? posting too early in the AM?
should've read: "Israel Vows War on Hamas, Poll Sees Public Opposed "
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 8:40 Comments ||
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#2
I'm so happ;y the gloves are off, now Israel just has to NOT CARE about the court of world opinion and crush the Jihadis into the dust once and for all. I'm sick of all the years of this conflict being a raggedy arse running sore.
last night i couldn't log onto rantburg for hours, so i guess there must be many excited rantburgers just waiting for more news of hamas being ground to a bloody pulp
#3
(How come there's no headline/link to this article up top?)
Reuters is known for doing bogus polls. Makes me wonder about the accuracy of the financial news services that are their bread and butter.
If the majority of Israelis are truly opposed to taking out the enemy, all I've got to say is that we can't do it for them. They've got to do it for themselves. We can't give them the green light or send our guys to do it. It's more a case of do what you've got do, don't tell us about it beforehand, and we'll make a big stink in public afterwards, but we'll still be friends.
#4
First, the word 'leaders' in the poll probably caused all kinds of confusion. For example, is Arafat a terrorist leader (most Israelis are against killing him)? The science of 'fixing' polls is almost as well developed in Israel as in the US.
Secondly, we are all waiting to hear what Mubarak, etc. have to say about the possibility of taking out Yassin. If they say nothing publically and they say 'OK' privately, then Yassin is a goner.
#5
At their funeral processions on Friday, gunmen fired in the air and a Hamas loudspeaker blared: "allah's revenge is coming soon and the Zionists will pay the price of their crimes."
Firing guns at funerals, slicing heads open to let the blood run out to commemorate martyrs, beating people to a pulp and showing their victorious bloody hands to a cheering crowd, publicly lynching one of their own - just on the suspicion that he was an informant ...
Compare this to Israel, who jails for life, rather than puts to death, the man who actually killed the nations' Prime minister.
Let's imagine for the moment that as of tomorrow, Israel and palestinian arabs sign a treaty and a state is created for said Arabs. Would this new statehood suddenly transform this culture into civilized human beings, someone anyone would want to be neighbors with? the Arab states created the "palestinian people" They kept them in refugee camps rather than absorb their "poor brothers and sisters" into their own countries.
Again, contrast this to Israel, who somehow managed to absorb millions of refugees after WW2 and create a productive civilized society, only a few years after it's founding.
By the way, do any of the people polled remember that these terrorists targeted and assasinated a few government officials of their own? A U.S. ambassador, An Israeli MK, A U.S. agency operative in Jordan? Where was the outrage and indignation back then?
#6
To Dripping Sarcasm: the points you make are legit; the sad thing is that until very recently virtually no one in the US was willing to face the facts (many people are still not willing to do so). Many thanks are do to Fred Pruit, LGF etc. who have made the unhappy truth accessible to people who would otherwise have been forced to get their news from CNN, NPR etc.
#9
MANY THANKS FRED MHW is right. Without this site i'd still be sucking on the teat of the free-to-air commercial media in Australia and would have no idea.
Rantburg really changed my view around.
Pre-S11, pre-Rantburg, I was as pro-Paleo as any other brainwashed western young person.
Now though I see the propaganda spin quite obviously, like when the curtain was whipped away from the "wizard" of Oz - you can see the levers and pullies after rantburg
#10
Fred, You absolutely have to put that last quote from Anon1 on your site somewhere. It's genius, pure genius.
"...like when the curtain was whipped away from the Wizard of Oz-you can see the levers and pullies after Rantburg."
I knew I liked the Australians.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
06/13/2003 16:08 Comments ||
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BRUSSELS - The French commander of a European Union peacekeeping operation in Congo conceded on Friday that the force would not be able to stop ethnic bloodshed if it happened outside its limited area of operation. Responding to an appeal from the United Nations, the EU will deploy a force of around 1,400 to the eastern town of Bunia — where hundreds of people have been massacred in tribal clashes — in what will be its first military operation outside Europe. Analysts say that one of the main risks is that ethnic violence may simply shift to other areas, leaving the EU peacekeeping operation looking irrelevant. NO! Say it ain't so, Jacques!
When asked if the EU force would be able to intervene and stop massacres happening outside Bunia, French General Bruno Neveux, the operation commander of the force, said action outside the town was not part of the EU's mission. "At this point in time, that is not within our mandate, the mission which has been set for us. (The mission)...is clearly confined to Bunia city and airport and the two refugee camps near the airport," he told reporters. But Neveux also said he believed the security provided by the presence of an EU force, despite its limited mandate, would spread to other areas. Why do I hear Roy Orbison in the background singing "In Dreams"?
"The security which we can ensure in this city, we believe this will have a wider effect in other parts of the country," he said. Neveux added that plans for air surveillance of areas with fighting outside Bunia would have a clear deterrent effect on the fighting between Lendu and Hema tribes. France, which dispatched its first troops to the region last week, will provide the bulk of the force with about 900 soldiers, with contributions from several other EU and non-EU states, including Britain, Sweden, Canada and South Africa. Codenamed Artemis, the EU mission is empowered to use force if needed to protect civilians. It is due to end on September 1, when a reinforced U.N. peacekeeping mission is set to take over.
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/13/2003 08:30 am ||
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"Neveux added that plans for air surveillance of areas with fighting outside Bunia would have a clear deterrent effect on the fighting between Lendu and Hema tribes."
So this General believes that child-killing, mutilating and raping, mass-murdering cannibals will shame-facedly slink off back to their camps, because a couple of unarmed white men in an aeroplane high above might catch a glimpse of them going about their crimes...
#4
Let's hope these folks continue going on their useless little EU/ French run, UN sponsored field trips. Sooner or later the rest of the world might finally catch on to how full of shit they really are. It'd be funny, if it weren't so sad.
HARARE - Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sought release from jail Thursday with his defense lawyers arguing that treason charges he faces are a ploy to stop his political activities. Tsvangirai, a leading opponent of increasingly authoritarian President Robert Mugabe, was jailed June 6 after a week of protests that all but shut down the economy. "Due to the efforts of liberation movements, detention without trial has been taken off the statute books," Defense lawyer George Bizoshe said during the bail hearing, referring to the laws that favored whites in power until after Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain more than 20 years ago. Mighty convenient that Bob dusted this one off.
The treason charges against Tsvangirai center on two political rallies last month at which the state claims he urged supporters to take to the streets to oust Mugabe and the Zimbabwean government. Bizos showed a video tape of one of the opposition rallies cited in the charges that he said proved Tsvangirai told supporters to demonstrate peacefully. "Since time immemorial, kings and presidents have yearned to silence opponents preferably occupying a cold and uncomfortable prison cell," Bizos told Judge Susan Mavangira on the second day of the High Court bail hearing. "It is too convenient a tool against political opponents to keep them in jail on unproved allegations." State prosecutors said they will oppose Tsvangirai's bail application on Friday and he was returned to jail for a seventh night Thursday.
The opposition says Mugabe is responsible for the country's worst political and economic crisis since independence in 1980. Foreign aid, investment and loans have dried up amid political violence, state-orchestrated human rights abuses, the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms and the disputed presidential election. Last week's anti-government protests and strikes spurred a massive riot crackdown by security thugs forces. Tsvangirai, a trade unionist-turned politician, has been increasingly vocal and defiant in his criticism of Mugabe's 23-year rule. He lost to Mugabe in a crooked disputed presidential election last year that Western governments have called deeply flawed, and is challenging the election in court. The opposition has promised to hold more anti-government protests. International food aid has averted mass starvation, but Zimbabwe still faces nearly 300 percent annual inflation, 70 percent unemployment and acute shortages of gasoline, medicines and other essential imports. Life in Bob's paradise.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/13/2003 01:34 am ||
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BALTIMORE - A jubilant crowd waved ``Welcome Home'' signs and U.S. flags as the USNS Comfort returned to its home port Thursday, more than five months after it left for the Persian Gulf to support the war in Iraq. About 320 military medical and support personnel - most from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda - and about 60 civil service mariners from the Navy's Military Sealift Command arrived on the vessel. ``We need to celebrate everyone on this ship. Every one of the men and women standing on those rails saved lives,'' said Adm. Donald Arthur, commander of the National Naval Medical Center.
First off the ship was Hospital Corpsman Paul Manansala, 21, who greeted his 24-year-old wife, Amanda, and, for the first time, his 2-week-old daughter, Sophia. ``When we saw the coastline, I've just never felt better in my life,'' Manansala said, holding his daughter and smiling. ``I'm just shaking right now. It's overwhelming. I just can't wait to get home.''
The Comfort, a tanker converted to a 1,000-bed hospital with 12 operating rooms, left Baltimore on Jan. 6. During its deployment, more than 650 patients were treated on board, including about 200 Iraqi prisoners of war and Iraqi civilians. In March, about 1,100 personnel were aboard. By early May, more than half had left the Comfort for Bahrain before returning to the United States. Great job, guys, and welcome home!
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/13/2003 01:21 am ||
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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.
