Custom will rule, until rejected by the populace. If you begin to see featured stories of businessmen griping about the slugs foisted upon them, then they'll start to turn the corner. Check back in 50 yrs. No, better make that 5-10, they won't make it another 50 the way they're going.
Labor Minister Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi yesterday warned unemployed Saudis that his ministry would consider only serious job seekers for employment.
"Any Saudi who demands a salary that does not match his qualification and training or refuses to join training courses or shifts from one place to another or rejects any jobs other than government jobs will be considered not serious," he explained. This will come as quite a surprise to those who get jobs through their connections. Pronouncements will not change the dynamics of wasta.
"The ministry will not be responsible for the employment of those who are not serious as it cannot force them to work," he added.
"Last month alone, we have employed 12,104 Saudis in various parts of the country," Gosaibi told the Saudi Press Agency.
They represented 7.8 percent of the total male job seekers (155,579) who registered with the ministry during an employment campaign four months ago. A separate campaign would be organized next month to register female job seekers.
The minister commended those Saudis who enthusiastically responded to the campaign to make use of available opportunities in the private sector.
Gosaibi said his ministry started finding employment for registered job seekers last month after providing them with training. "We have instructed all labor offices to receive applicants, conduct interviews and coordinate with the private sector to employ them."
He hoped the ministry would be able to find jobs for all registered job seekers before the end of this year and thanked private companies for accommodating large number of Saudi job seekers.
A total of 180,443 Saudis registered for jobs at 46 centers during the employment campaign. Of them 24,864 were removed from the list as they were either employed or running their own businesses.
Gosaibi estimated the number unemployed male Saudis at 4.9 percent. Howler of the Day.
Saudis aged between 16 and 25 accounted for 68 percent of the total registered job seekers. Among them 88 percent were unmarried while 57 percent had their education level below secondary. Fourteen percent of the job seekers held bachelor or higher degrees.
Gosaibi warned that the ministry would punish companies which are negligent in implementing Saudization regulations. At least 30 percent of employees at companies having 20 or more workers must be Saudi by the middle of next year. There's the real rub. Forcing employers to take Saudis who consider work beneath them solves nothing as it drags down the economy with lower and lower profitability in this make-work scheme. You can only cut the pay of the imported workers (the money has to come from somewhere) so much before they stop coming. They are who actually make the business successful, both because they do the real work and because they're cheap. But eventually, the burden of the losers will break the business cycle. Then what, Dr G?
He said the ministry would continue to control recruitment abroad to curtail dependence on foreign workers. Last year, recruitment visas for private companies were cut by 17.8 percent to reach 684,201 from 832,244 the year before.
Ahmed Mansour Al-Zamil, deputy minister for labor affairs, said the employment campaign for women would start next month.
"We'll open women's sections at labor offices in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam next month to receive job applications from women," he told Al-Yaum daily.
However, he pointed out that job opportunities for Saudi women were limited compared to men, despite orders from higher authorities to create jobs for women at industrial regions and markets. Duh. Ya think? I guess that's how he got his doctorate.
The Saudization Program is a social scheme which, like all social schemes, costs them at least as much as it saves. More people with jobs does not equal more productivity when a sizable percentage of the people are either untouchable (connected) or infected with the mindset that anything short of upper management is beneath them. Demographics demands changes, to the wasta system, to the Islamic women are child-factories system, to the Royals taking everything for themselves and doling out only a fraction so they can support unbelievable lifestyles - the whole thing is rotten to the core and all of the dynamics are negative. Those customs will die hard, but die they must if there is to be an end to the downward spiral in SA.
Posted by: .com ||
04/16/2005 10:34:49 AM ||
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It would be a mercy to relieve them of their oil stress. The Sauds could then concentrate on the holy sites and live a more islamic lifestyle. It wouldn't hurt their pride much, I understand most of the stress is concentrated in a small narrow strip on the east coast. We need to help these noble lions of islam.
#2
However, he pointed out that job opportunities for Saudi women were limited compared to men, despite orders from higher authorities to create jobs for women at industrial regions and markets.
Anything I might add to it, would be totally superflous.
#7
This half assed "employment program" will not solve their problem with the stupid twits that see themselves as terrorists holy warriors and, the Royals and everyone else as unbelivers and unislamic. The target group are in that age group that are ready recruits for the state supported ministery of hate Imams and "islamic scholars" who forment them into "holy war."
Another jobs program that will not work. Mostly because it's the death/moon god cult religion stupid, not employment that is the problem.
MANAMA — His Majesty King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, has said there will be no turning back from the democratic gains and freedoms in the kingdom.
Until the newly-freed crowd calls for his head, that is.
The king made the statement in response to growing fears of human rights activists and some members of parliament who regarded the anti-terror draft law recently tabled in parliament as a step backward for the general freedom in the country. "The law is reviewable after a few years," the king told chief of the Shura Council, Faisal Al Musawi, Speaker of the parliament Khalifa Al Dhahrani, and some law makers, who called on him on Tuesday. "I want to assure you and everybody in all sincerity that there is no turning back from the constitutional freedoms, the democratic gains that we achieved and agreed upon together and enshrined in the our constitution. It is the responsibility of us all to protect these gains," he said.
So you're going to whack the militants and allow women to vote, Shi'a to hold office and Israelis to vacation in your country?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/16/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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European Union foreign ministers were urged on Saturday to consider the previously taboo idea of dialogue with Islamic opposition groups in the Middle East to encourage a transition to democracy. They also discussed ways to strengthen emerging democracy movements in several Arab states and persuade authoritarian governments to relinquish some power and accept the principle of alternation, diplomats said.
On the second day of an informal brainstorming session at a chateau in Luxembourg, the ministers were presented with a paper that suggested, at least in the form of questions, that the EU should reach out beyond its traditional secular interlocutors. "In the past the EU has preferred to deal with the secular intelligentsia of Arab civil society at the expense of the more representative Islam-inspired organizations," the report said. "Has the time come for the EU to become more engaged with Islamic "faith-based" civil society in these countries?" asked the paper co-authored by EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the bloc's Luxembourg presidency.
They acknowledged that talking to groups with a traditional reading of Islamic Sharia law and very conservative views on the role of women in society would be politically sensitive in some EU states and talked of fixing parameters for such a dialogue.
Diplomats said Britain and Denmark spoke in favor of talking to moderate Muslim activists, and no one opposed it. Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who chaired the session, said ministers agreed on the need to reach out to civil society as well as talking to governments. Rest at link.
Posted by: ed ||
04/16/2005 4:40:18 PM ||
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They acknowledged that talking to groups with a traditional reading of Islamic Sharia law and very conservative views on the role of women in society would be politically sensitive in some EU states
It is 60 years since the full horror of the Nazi Holocaust began to emerge with the liberation of Bergen Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
Belsen was the first death camp entered by the Western allies and first-hand accounts of mass graves, piles of corpses and emaciated, diseased survivors spread quickly around the world.
The BBC's Richard Dimbleby described dead and dying people over an acre of ground, while US radio correspondent Patrick Gordon Walker described the camp as a "hellhole", adding that this was not propaganda but the "plain and simple truth".
But, in the 21st Century, as these events recede into history and the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, there are still people who deny these crimes happened - and it is a tendency that some experts say is growing.
"Holocaust revisionism is spreading, and not only among neo-Nazis," Kate Taylor, of the anti-fascist publication Searchlight, told the BBC News website. "As survivors are increasingly dying out it is much easier to hijack history for whatever cause or purpose."
The internet has played a role in this.
While publications peddling Holocaust denial were previously confined to the race-hate paraphernalia of extremist groups, the same material is now readily available on the web.
One of the earliest and most infamous publications denying the Holocaust was a 32-page pseudo-academic booklet entitled Did Six Million Really Die?, first printed in England in 1974.
It dismisses concentration camps as "mythology", rejects the Diary of Anne Frank as a hoax and claims Jews were not exterminated but rather emigrated from Nazi Germany with the help of a benevolent government.
The booklet was widely banned but has resurfaced in electronic form on the internet.
Kay Andrews, of the UK Holocaust Educational Trust, says Holocaust denial sites, subtly questioning the facts, can mislead the young people her group is trying to teach.
"With the internet, you've got to be fairly well-educated to see through what revisionist websites are trying to do," she says. "I think as soon as you look at them closely you can work it out, but part of the problem that we find is teachers will send pupils off to do internet research and not guide them to specific sites.
"So as a result kids put the Holocaust into a search engine, which comes up with all of this stuff, and at 14-years-old they are not mature enough to make that distinction between a denialist site and a more legitimate site."
Denial doomed?
However, the eminent British historian Sir Martin Gilbert believes the tireless gathering of facts about the Holocaust will ultimately consign the deniers to history.
"I don't think Holocaust denial is really a problem because of the incredible state of survivor memoirs," he told the BBC News website. "The number of deniers and the amount of denial literature is miniscule compared with the serious literature, not only the memoirs but the history books, the specialist books, and books which cater for every age group on the Holocaust.
"There is a tremendous range of stuff and some of it is written for young people and teenagers - in that sense the Holocaust deniers have totally lost out."
Over a period of many years, Jerusalem's Yad Vashem museum has documented the lives of more than three million Holocaust victims.
More recently, Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah [Holocaust] Visual History Foundation (VHF) has recorded more than 50,000 videotaped interviews with Holocaust survivors and witnesses.
Turning point
But VHF president Doug Greenberg is less confident about the future than Martin Gilbert.
On the positive side, he notes that in 2000 a British judge rejected a libel case brought by a notorious British revisionist, David Irving, against US historian Deborah Lipstadt who had called him one of the "most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial".
"The most important thing that's happened in terms of Holocaust denial is the David Irving trial," Mr Greenberg told the BBC News website. "Because a British court of law said in effect Holocaust denial is not a valid way to look at the past."
On the other hand, he says, we just cannot tell how far history will be forgotten in years to come. "In 50 years from now, not only will there be no survivors alive, there won't be anybody alive who even knew a survivor, and that is where the real danger lies," he said.
The fear that deniers could gain the upper hand led an SS camp guard, Oskar Groening, to break a lifetime of silence earlier this year in a BBC documentary, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution.
"I saw the gas chambers. I saw the crematoria. I saw the open fires. I was on the ramp when the selections [for the gas chambers] took place," said Mr Groening, now in his 80s.
"I would like you to believe these atrocities happened - because I was there."
Posted by: .com ||
04/16/2005 9:43:03 AM ||
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The centre-right Italian government led by Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister, was on the verge of disintegration on Friday after one of the four parties in his coalition decided to withdraw from his cabinet.
The announcement by the centrist UDC party plunged Italy into its deepest political crisis in four years at a time when its economy is mired in trouble and its public finances are under criticism from the European Commission and financial markets.
The public finance troubles predate Berlusconi - Italy cooked their books to be allowed into the common currency. But this is an example of how the Chinese manipulation of their currency values has ripples throughout the fragile economies of Europe and elsewhere.
Leaders of the centre-left opposition demanded Mr Berlusconi's immediate resignation and said that, if he proved unable to form a new government backed by a confidence vote in parliament, Italy should hold an early general election.
But the prime minister, who has held power since June 2001 at the helm of Italy's longest-serving government since the second world war, suggested he was not yet ready to resign.
"I'm afraid that you're not going to get rid of me that easily," he said. The crisis arose after Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and his allies crashed to defeat two weekends ago in regional elections which saw the opposition win 11 out of 13 contests and sweep the popular vote by 52 per cent to the centre-right's 44.8 per cent.
Marco Follini, the UDC leader and deputy premier, left the government after Mr Berlusconi rejected his demand for a new administration and a change of economic policy.
But Mr Follini said the UDC would offer support for Mr Berlusconi from the backbenches of parliament, indicating that the party had not yet decided to pull the plug on the government and force an early election.
Mr Berlusconi, conscious that a snap election could rout Forza Italia and inflict irreparable damage on his political career, faced the prospect of submitting his resignation to Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italy's head of state, and then trying to cobble together a new government.
But even if he were to take this step and continue as prime minister until May 2006, when the next national elections are due, it seemed certain that he would have to abandon or modify many policies dear to his heart.
These include changes to the judicial system, condemned by opponents as a threat to the Italian judiciary's independence, and an electoral reform proposal that could have boosted his chances in an election.
A question also hangs over a constitutional reform designed to grant more executive power to the prime minister and more autonomy to Italy's regions - a key demand of the populist Northern League, now the only minor party still fully loyal to Mr Berlusconi.
Commentators cautioned against predicting Mr Berlusconi's demise, but some said he had fallen short of the goal he set himself in 2001 to reinvigorate Italy's economy with the entrepreneuralism that made him a billionaire media magnate. He didn't exactly have the support of the socialist apparachniks in that ...
Berlusconi's tenuous political position is one reason he has allowed emotions to run so high over the death in Iraq of their intel guy rescuing whatserface.
Posted by: too true ||
04/16/2005 8:09:20 AM ||
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April 16, 2005: The U.S. Army, halfway through the current fiscal year, is short 3,973 new recruits (out of 80,000 it wants to attract for the year.) All of the shortfalls occurred in the last two months (February and March.) The army is authorized an active duty strength of 512,000. In the short term, it can overcome recruiting shortfalls with higher reenlistment bonuses (which induce more troops to stay in), and calling up more troops from the inactive reserves. The major cause of the recruiting shortfalls have been an improved economy, because the army basically competes with the civilian economy. That's been the pattern for the thirty years the all-volunteer force has been in operation. Anti-war activism and fear of serving in a wartime environment had had a much smaller impact on recruiting. This is because the anti-war activism has largely been directed at schools and communities that traditionally do not contribute many recruits. The fear of injury in wartime is greatly diminished by the fact that casualties in the current war are much lower than in previous wars. For young men inclined to join up for combat jobs, that has proved to be something of a come on. Your chances of getting killed or injured in Iraq are on a par with those encountered in many of the extreme sports that are growing in popularity. Moreover, many recruits for combat jobs are driven by patriotism. In fact, it is the non-combat jobs that recruiters are having a harder time filling.
Posted by: ed ||
04/16/2005 5:39:17 PM ||
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No comments by me - none needed, except to say from NR, .com, :-)
A litany of past failure.
Brent Scowcroft predicted on the eve of the Iraqi elections that voting there would increase the risk of civil war. Indeed, he foresaw "a great potential for deepening the conflict." He also once assured us that Iraq "could become a Vietnam in a way that the Vietnam war never did." Did he mean perhaps worse than ten years of war and over 50,000 American dead, with the Cambodian holocaust next door?
Zbigniew Brzezinski feared that we could not do what we are in fact presently doing in Iraq: "I do not think we can stay in Iraq in the fashion we're in nowâŠIf it cannot be changed drastically, it should be terminated." He added ominously that it would take 500,000 troops, $500 billion, and resumption of the military draft to achieve security in Iraq. Did he mean Iraq needed more American troops than did the defense of Europe in the Cold War?
Madeleine Albright, while abroad, summed up the present American foreign policy: "It's difficult to be in France and criticize my government. But I'm doing so because Bush and the people working for him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world." Elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, troops out of Saudi Arabia, democratic demonstrations in Lebanon, West Bank voting, promises of change in Egypt — all that and more is "not good for the world"?
For the last year, such well-meaning former "wise people" have pretty much assured us that the Bush doctrine will not work and that the Arab world is not ready for Western-style democracy, especially when fostered through Western blood and iron.
But too often we discuss the present risky policy without thought of what preceded it or what might have substituted for it. Have we forgotten that the messy business of democracy was the successor, not the precursor, to a litany of other failed prescriptions? Or that there were never perfect solutions for a place like the Middle East — awash as it is in oil, autocracy, fundamentalism, poverty, and tribalism — only choices between awful and even more awful? Or that September 11 was not a sudden impulse on the part of Mohammed Atta, but the logical culmination of a long simmering pathology? Or that the present loudest critics had plenty of chances to leave something better than the mess that confronted the United States on September 12? Or that at a time of war, it is not very ethical to be sorta for, sorta against, kinda supportive, kinda critical of the mission — all depending on the latest sound bite from Iraq?
Policy #1: Realism
Remember realism? Do we recall James Baker's quip that the first Gulf War was about "jobs, jobs, jobs," in line with his later realist fillip about the Balkan genocide: "We don't have a dog in that fight"? Perhaps that was a sober assessment of the natural limitations on American strength; but had Bill Clinton followed the natural logic of such cynicism, Milosevic would still be in power. Imagine the reaction had the non-teflon Bush said that removing Saddam was about "jobs" or staying out of Dafur was about not having a dog in that fight.
In the Middle East, the tenets of the old realism went something like this: These people are either crazy or backward, and usually both. We are interested in them only to the extent they pump oil and deter Communists. So authoritarians get a pass if they don't rock the boat and don't kill too many of their own on television like Saddam or Assad did. Under no circumstances spend American blood or treasure in any pie-in-the-sky project to ameliorate the misery of the Arab people. That will both fail and only earn us disdain as being naïve as well as inept.
Where did this cynical policy lead us? The Saudi royal family — autocratic, corrupt, and unpopular — kept Russians out. Despite embargos and cartels, they mostly pumped overpriced oil. We nodded and stationed troops — and won for our efforts global Wahhabism, whose petrol-fueled mosques and madrassas were the laboratories of thousands of anti-Western terrorists.
The shah, unloved and dictatorial, likewise bought things American. So we kept our nose out of his politics: Khomeini and a quarter century of a nightmarish theocracy ensued. Pakistani dictators, we knew, might hate the Soviets as much as we did, and remind a socialist India to play it straight. Yet American de facto sanction of such strongmen inevitably led to the nuclear conspiracies of Dr. Khan, to the most anti-American and strident Islamists of the Middle East, and to unnecessary tension with the world's largest democracy India. The formula for an Islamic "republic" is prior Western support for an anti-democratic strongman; the antidote for Islamic fascism is consistent promotion of democratic dissidents.
Policy #2: Punitivism
Then there was the cousin of realism, the much ballyhooed "punitive strike" strategy of "knocking heads when they popped up." Remember the logic of all those forgotten hits: We bomb, send a message, and then leave — swatting the hornet's nest and then staying clear when the stingers buzz out from the hive.
So we thwarted the Soviets in Afghanistan and departed happily — allowing in the Taliban and an al Qaeda sanctuary that gave us September 11. Get hit and run from Lebanon and Somalia. Don't go to Baghdad after success in Kuwait, upsetting our Saudi friends and a corrupt U.N. when Saddam at least keeps a lid on even scarier things. And? After 1991, we got tens of thousands of butchered Kurds and Shiites and years of their subsequent distrust, hundreds of thousands of no-fly-zone sorties, General Zinni's Operation Desert Fox — and Gulf War II.
Few ever considered that punitivism embodied the worst of all strategies — just enough muscle to enrage our enemies but not enough to scare them, just about right to earn their lasting scorn without ever solving the problem. Nothing is as dangerous in war as striking but not defeating an enemy, showing contempt without the real ability to humble and humiliate him.
The punitive strike was the embodiment of sober and judicious consensus, but all the same suggested to radical Islamists that the more power the United States brandished, the less likely it was to use it fully. That led to bin Laden's disastrous calculation that George W. Bush was, like many former presidential advisers, someone who worried more about the opinions of the New York Times and the Council on Foreign Relations than about defeating the enemy.
Policy #3: Bribery
Bribery was a third option. We have given somewhere around $57 billion in aggregate aid to Egypt, apparently so that it would be nice or perhaps would keep away from Israel. Forget that the money helped to paper over structural pathologies in the Egyptian economy and empowered corrupt elites. It had even worse results, suggesting to the Cairo Street that a weak country was prevented from fulfilling its destiny of destroying Israel only by American and Zionist machinations — as if an underpowered bantamweight was kept from snatching the heavyweight title crown by devious boxing promoters.
Thus radical Egyptians never quite got it that their government settled for peace of sorts not because of American interference but because had they tried a fourth full-scale war, what was left of the Egyptian military, especially had it not been re-supplied by American arms, would have been ruined. That Mohamed Atta and Dr. Zawahiri came out of Cairo is logical rather than exceptional, as is the frequent murdering by offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood and rumors of illicit weapons programs.
Nor did we dare insist at Oslo that Palestinians should embrace the type of humane institutions found in Israel. So Yasser Arafat met Dennis Ross 500 times. Arafat was said to be the most frequent foreign visitor to the Clinton White House. American money and appeasement followed and we saw kleptocracy, one-vote-one-time, intifadas, and suicide bombings — and the hopes that Mrs. Arafat and her Paris crowd would leave some crumbs for those on the West Bank, who in turn blamed their poverty on the Jews.
Policy #4: "Let Them Be"
And don't forget the policy of indifference and inaction that was predicated on American paternalism and condescension. It is 2005 and few of us know the names of more than a half-dozen dissidents in Egypt, Iran, or Saudi Arabia, who were seen more as potential disruptors of the status quo than as the hopes of a new American foreign policy based on reciprocal notions of justice. Only in Egypt could an autocratic government that received billions in U.S. aid damn America for trying to give a measly million or two to its democratic reformers.
So for all the mess of trying to insist on democracy in the Middle East and fostering consensual government in the place of strongmen, at least muscular idealism is an improvement on what preceded it. September 11 was the wage of decades of American appeasement and neglect — a pathological Middle East left alone to blame others for its own self-induced mess, kept "in its box" by American money, a few missiles, and soft talk — like a spoiled child allowed to act up because it was incapable of serious mature behavior and because the ensuing tantrums were not worth the messy efforts at remediation.
Policy #5: The New Americanism
We've seen some very strange things since this war started on September 11. But nothing is quite as odd as the past architects of failure weighing in on the dangers of "neoWilsonianism," "neoconservative ideologues," and veiled references to Israeli machinations, as the Bush administration finally sets right three decades these people's flawed policies and tries to promote a new Americanism based on our own universal values and aspirations.
If the American public has to hear another sermon from a Brent Scowcroft — "Sharon just has him [President Bush] wrapped around his little finger. I think the president is mesmerized" — or Madeline Albright — "Do you suppose that the Bush administration has Osama bin Laden hidden away somewhere and will bring him out before the election?" — about what we are now doing wrong in the Middle East, I think it will collectively heave.
The past ostracism of Arafat and the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, followed by democratic engagement, will bring eventual stability to the Middle East and enhance the security of the United States. After the failures of all our present critics, this new policy of promoting American values is our last, best hope. And the president will be rewarded long after he leaves office by the verdict of history for nobly sticking to it when few others, friend or foe, would.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/16/2005 1:59:46 PM ||
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Thank you, Frank. History decides, not WaPo, or NYT, and certainly not either one of the Clowntons .... uhhhh... Clintons.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/16/2005 22:42 Comments ||
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Security at U.S. airports is no better under federal control than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks, a key House member says two government reports will conclude.
Lemme see here... We went from contractors to civil servants, non-union to unionized. Anybody surprised?
The Government Accountability Office -- the investigative arm of Congress -- and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general are expected to soon release their findings on the performance of Transportation Security Administration screeners. "A lot of people will be shocked at the billions of dollars we've spent and the results they're going to see, which confirm previous examinations of the Soviet-style screening system we've put in place," Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., told The Associated Press on Friday. Mica chairs the House aviation subcommittee and was briefed on the reports.
I don't know that I'd go so far as to call the system "Soviet-style." We had a system with weaknesses, so in the wake of 9-11 we threw the whole thing away and replaced it with another system with weaknesses.
The TSA won't comment on the specifics of the reports until they are released, spokesman Mark Hatfield Jr. said.
I wonder if that'd be Mark O. Hatfield, Jr.? Anybody see a problem here?
But, he said: "When the political posturing is over, rational people will see that American screeners today are the best we have ever had and that they are limited only by current technology and security procedures that are significantly influenced by privacy demands."
We could have had incremental improvements, but we went for a shiny new system. Now we can improve it incrementally.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/16/2005 10:39:45 AM ||
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American screeners... are limited only by current technology and security procedures that are significantly influenced by privacy demands.
Not to mention policies that search old ladies and five year olds on a more-strict basis than 18-45 year old males of Middle-Eastern origin....
Patrick Haab, the Army reservist arrested on suspicion of holding seven undocumented immigrants at gunpoint at an Arizona rest stop, said he is overwhelmed and encouraged by an outpouring of legal, financial and moral support.
On Thursday night, a Cave Creek locksmith put up $10,000 to free Haab on bail from a Maricopa County jail, where he had been held since Sunday on seven felony counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Offers of money, room and board, free legal assistance and pledges of solidarity are coming from sources who are not only upset about illegal immigration but others who say Haab acted in self-defense and are angry that authorities want to prosecute him.
"I think he is getting a raw deal," said Bisbee resident Ronald Stone, a retired Army chief warrant officer and Vietnam veteran. "I want to do all I can for him . . . As far as I am concerned, he was defending his country."
Haab's arrest comes as tensions build along the Arizona-Mexico border between law enforcement and residents who say the government isn't doing enough to stop illegal immigration.
Haab, who turned 24 this month, said Friday that he was not trying to make any statements about illegal immigration when he ordered seven men out of their vehicle and told them to lie face down on the ground at the Sentinel rest stop on Interstate 8.
He said his military training took over when the seven men "rushed" him out of the darkness at the rest area, where he had stopped to relieve his dog. He explained this week that the men climbed inside a Chevrolet Suburban when they saw his gun and he followed them to the SUV, took the vehicle keys and forced them out. Haab said he called 911 as soon as he had the situation under control and a dispatcher told him to do what he thought was best until authorities arrived.
"I have put out the real story," he said, adding that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has made this out to be a case of vigilante justice. "I was acting in self defense."
Arpaio has said repeatedly that Haab's story doesn't make sense and has noted several contradictions. Among those: Haab's claim that he was being attacked even though none of the men made aggressive moves; Haab's claim that he was afraid for his life even though he followed the men to their car; Haab's claim that he did not know the men were undocumented immigrants though he later said he believed they thought he was a Border Patrol agent.
Arpaio has said Haab's actions were illegal and dangerous and he had no right to take the law into his own hands.
All seven immigrants, who were being held at a detention facility in Yuma, asked to press charges against Haab. The driver has also been charged with human smuggling.
Bill Weingard, a locksmith at Cave Creek Lock, said he felt compelled to help Haab and waited for hours at the jail Thursday to post his bail. He believed Haab was a scapegoat and said he didn't want authorities to make an example of him because of the border issues.
"I really appreciate it," said Haab, an Iraq war veteran assigned to the 415th Civil Affairs Battalion from Kalamazoo, Mich. "It makes me feel better about this country."
Haab, who has lived in Arizona since January, was only weeks away from a volunteer tour of duty in Afghanistan when he was arrested. Now, he said the military has put his deployment on hold.
He faces 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
Haab's father, Dave, of New Paris, Ind., said he was torn between hiring a lawyer and bailing his son out of jail. He said he is grateful for the support.
"I think he has been maligned," the elder Haab said. "There is a lot of stuff in (news) reports about Patrick being a vigilante. He's not. He was trying to do what is right."
Dave said his son, who has acknowledged taking drugs to fight depression since the death of a friend in a bombing, acted with a clear head and did not use excessive force.
He said the family is building a Web site to keep supporters informed about the case and provide details for donations to Haab's defense. The address is www. k9mc.com.
"We've had offers of support from D.C. to Los Angeles," Dave said. "And if there is any money left over, we're not going to keep it. . . . It is going to go to another person caught in a similar situation."
Posted by: .com ||
04/16/2005 9:19:07 AM ||
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Shut the f*&king border
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/16/2005 10:44 Comments ||
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#2
This is one of those borderline (pun intended) situations where it sounds like, with the info available, that it could go either way. That he was right, in the end, to detain them doesn't explain everything.
At sum, however, Frank nails it: If there wasn't such a HUGE problem because our borders are wide open and the laws of the land are not being enforced, this event would not have happened.
Having been a border state Governor must be what's behind Bush's attitude regards illegals - the economics and politics are byzantine. It's the only thing that really explains it. The fact that the Congress won't address this squarely either, just makes it more ominous and frustrating. There will be a different price to pay, someday... not votes and not filling unfilled labor needs.
Sooner, rather than later, the economics and politics will have to give way to security. Dead Americans, unfortunately, seem to be the missing ingredient to foment real action by the Govt - which never seems to get off the damned dime until forced by events. That just sucks. See that, Bush, Senators, Congressmen? That's an oncoming train, fools.
Recall the Serbian Cleansing of Bosnia:
Day 1 - 10, 6 people die each day on average in Sarajevo. Almost no coverage in the MSM.
Day 11 - 60 people die in mortar attack that hits a market. The NEXT DAY, Peter Jennings, et al, are hosting the evening news, in their Roland Hedley safari jackets, from that market. Almost no violence for the next 2 weeks because of bad PR for the Serbs.
Now what's idfferent about 60 dead spread over 10 days, at 6 avg per day, versus 60 dead in one day of 10 where 60 is the total for the period?
That quirk of human nature and MSM marketing approach is my answer to your post. If 1,000 Americans die in a terr hit from a border-crossing jihadi, shit will start happening. Per my pervious comment, nothing will happen otherwise.
#7
It's time to educate Arizonans on the concept of 'jury nullification'. Legal scholars seem to hold that jurists may only rule on guilt or innocence, not on justness of the law, but simpletons like me disagree. Why even bother with a jury of 'peers' if they were not to provide a last line of defence against tyranny of government?
#8
This issue is the next "firebell in the night."
If the Repubs don't get serious about this, then I can easily see the southwest and Rocky Mtn swing states sliding into blue territory in 2008, if only because so many enraged conservative voters in those states will stay home in November.
Who will step up and address the complete travesty that our immigration policy has become? NOt Vincente Fox's buddy in teh White House. Not the clueless Dems.
If Hillary can figure out how to play this one, then she'll be a strong contender in '08, and the Repubs will have only themselves to blame for pissing away what should be a natural winner for them.
A Swiss judge is investigating possible bribery charges involving a $50 million contract to renovate the headquarters of a Geneva-based United Nations agency, according to government documents and Swiss and American officials.
Jean-Bernard Schmid, the Geneva-based judge who has led the criminal inquiry, said in a telephone interview on Friday that his investigation was focusing on Michael Wilson, who was a consultant to the company that won the renovation contract at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Mr. Wilson, a Ghanaian businessman, has been identified by investigators as a business associate of Kojo Annan, the son of Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general. The judge said Kojo Annan was not a target of the investigation.
Investigators said the judge was trying to determine if Mr. Wilson had bribed a senior official at the United Nations agency to win the renovation contract. Edward Kwakwa, the agency's legal counsel, said Khamis Suedi, a top official at the intellectual property agency, acknowledged having received 325,000 Swiss francs, about $270,000, from Mr. Wilson, but said the money was from a private business venture that had no connection to the agency's construction contract. In an interview, Mr. Suedi said he had had nothing to do with the awarding of the contract.
Mr. Kwakwa said the agency's internal regulations, which are under review, permitted agency employees to have outside business interests as long as they were reported to the agency, approved by the agency's director and did not involve intellectual property. Mr. Suedi recently informed the agency that he was leaving in late April to pursue other activities, Mr. Kwakwa said, adding that he was not aware that Mr. Suedi had violated any rules of the agency, which registers and protects intellectual property.
Mr. Wilson did not return repeated phone messages seeking comment.
The criminal investigation was first reported Friday by Le Temps, a Geneva-based newspaper. Judge Schmid confirmed information published in the article, but declined to elaborate on details of his inquiry.
Mr. Wilson's relationship with Kojo Annan was cited in a recent report issued by the United Nations commission investigating its oil-for-food program in Iraq. According to the commission, Mr. Wilson was a vice president at Cotecna Inspection S.A., a company that worked for the oil-for-food program, and Mr. Wilson helped get Mr. Annan a job at the company.
After both men left Cotecna, they became partners in a consulting business in Africa, according to investigators in the United States and Europe. Kojo Annan's lawyer, Clarissa Amato, declined comment for publication.
The Swiss investigation concerns Mr. Wilson's activities in Geneva. Mr. Kwakwa said Mr. Wilson had been an intern at the intellectual property agency "decades ago" when his father was posted in Geneva as an ambassador from Ghana. Mr. Kwakwa said that more recently Mr. Suedi told officials there that he and Mr. Wilson had been doing work that involved "benevolent, nongovernmental organizations." Mr. Kwakwa said the outside work had been approved by the agency.
In a March interview, Mr. Suedi said that he and Mr. Wilson had done some consulting work in connection with the prospective purchase and management of hotels in Tanzania, but that it "hadn't worked out."
The agency is one of several United Nations agencies and affiliated organizations whose management practices have recently been criticized by internal and outside reviews. A review published in February by United Nations officials in New York recommended substantial changes in the agency's budgeting and personnel policies.
"The inspectors believe a headquarters review and needs assessment should be undertaken urgently," says the review, a copy of which is posted on the agency's Web site. harder to shred there
Posted by: too true ||
04/16/2005 9:37:40 AM ||
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#1
How delightfully amusing: schadenfreude without guilt! A picture of roosting chickens, or dominoes, would do very nicely here.
THE United Nations needs to be overhauled "to survive as a vital force", US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in the strongest criticism yet from a senior US official amid a debate on UN reform.
I dunno. Does a new engine and drive train come under the heading of "overhaul" or "rebuild"?
Ms Rice said John Bolton, a longtime critic of the United Nations, had been chosen as UN ambassador because Washington needed to lead changes to fix an institution dogged by scandals over corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food program and sexual abuse by peacekeepers. "It is no secret to anyone that the United Nations cannot survive as a vital force in international politics if it does not reform - if it doesn't reform its organisations, if it doesn't reform its secretariat, if it doesn't reform its management practices," she told a newspaper editors' conference yesterday.
Bush is giving the UN a last chance to make the changes it needs to make. Next step will be to ignore it completely, like he did Yasser. Kofi didn't help matters yesterday when he tried blaming the Oil-for-Palaces program on us.
Last month, Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed the most wide-ranging overhaul of the United Nations since its creation in 1945. He recommended the expansion of the UN Security Council, a radical program to combat poverty, a new human rights body and a condemnation of all forms of terrorism and a series of management and watchdog reforms.
The "radical programs to combat poverty" will constitute a raid on the West's checkbook. Expanding the Security Council, especially with new veto power members, is a nice way to deadlock it further. See Parkinson, C. Northcote. Don't expect the "new" human rights body to be much different from the old human rights body, and expect to see the definition of human rights shift away from things like the right not to be sold into slavery or the right to practice your own religion without being slaughtered, and toward things like having a right to a job or to marry your brother. And after almost four years, we've still got the scimitar and turban set refusing to agree to a definition of terrorism that includes them.
"As important an institution as it is, one has to say that there are some things that are not so great about the United Nations right now. And everybody recognises that. And we've got to fix it," Ms Rice said.
Yeah. "Not so great." She's being a mistress of understatement there. How about "rotten at the core"?
President George W. Bush has had strained relations with the United Nations.
On the infrequent occasions when I've had dealings with crooks and jailbirds, con men and thugs, I've had strained relations with them, too.
In his first term, he challenged it to avoid becoming irrelevant and ordered the invasion of Iraq without explicit UN approval before increasingly turning to the organisation for support after the war. Mr Bolton, a hardline conservative who once said the United States should only make the United Nations work to benefit US interests, has pledged to work to improve UN accountability and complained of overlapping programs and mandates. "He is going to be a force for what is always needed in the United Nations: American leadership to update and reform and strengthen this great institution," Ms Rice said.
"And if that doesn't work, in five or ten years it can quietly wither away."
In a related development, a Congressional-mandated task force on UN reform visited the UN headquarters in New York yesterday, led by Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, and George Mitchell, former Democrat Senate leader. Both praised the meetings with Mr Annan and his senior staff as "candid" and "informative".
Meetings are "candid" when the conversation starts out "Lookee here, buster..."
Their report, to be completed in June, is expected to have an impact on Congressional calls to cut US payments to the United Nations. Mr Gingrich, often a critic of the world body, told reporters there was "no argument" [there are] some systems that "just don't work" and "patterns that just aren't acceptable".
He means other than the commissary system and the travel booking office...
"I know of no occasion that we have had a secretary-general as open and as direct as Kofi Annan has been in the last two months about the need for reform," Mr Gingrich told reporters.
That's because a couple months ago he had visions of tar and feathers presented to him...
Mr Gingrich, who stressed his mission was to produce a US and not a UN report, said: "This was a far less contentious and far more informative session than I would have guessed three months ago.
That thought of going from being Mr. Secretary General to being one of the Beagle Boys does seem to have had an effect, though my guess is that it'll be temporary.
"This could be - not guaranteed - a remarkable moment to get some significant things done that will give the world a more transparent, a more accountable United Nations," he said.
Posted by: tipper ||
04/16/2005 2:30:00 AM ||
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#1
"I know of no occasion that we have had a secretary-general as open and as direct as Kofi Annan"
#3
Secretary-General Trump will reinvigorate this old but well placed property. The Secretariat Casino will make it self-sustaining financially within 5 years.
Iran said it had not seen enough incentives from the European Union to pave the way for a deal over its controversial nuclear activities, ahead of a new round of talks next week.
Senior negotiator Cyrus Nasseri warned that Tehran would pull out of the talks with the so-called EU3 without tangible progress, but said nevertheless that the negotiations were on the right track. He told the IRNA news agency that the European offers in the negotiations, aimed at allaying international concerns Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb, were not enough.
Britain, France and Germany have been trying to secure "objective guarantees" that Iran will not use its atomic energy ambitions to acquire weapons, and in exchange they are offering a package of trade, security, diplomatic and technology benefits Iran calls "firm guarantees." "We don't have much time for reaching a solution, time is limited and we will halt (negotiations) as soon as we feel we are not making tangible progress," Nasseri said ahead of a new round of discussions on April 19. However "the negotiations are on the right track ... leading to a wise, logical and balanced solution satisfactory to both sides," he added.
Iran agreed in November to suspend enrichment activities as a goodwill gesture for a maximum of six months, but the Europeans want the suspension to become permanent, a demand the Iranians have termed "absurd".
The United States in particular suspects archfoe Tehran of seeking to use its nuclear program to produce atomic weapons, for which enrichment is a vital component, and has not ruled out the possibility of military action. However Washington announced it would help the EU put together the incentives by dropping objections to Iran's membership of the World Trade Organization and allowing it access to spare parts for civilian aircraft.
Nasseri said he did not see "any need" for a US role in the negotiations. But "it seems that Americans have wised up that there is no way of confronting Iran and if they do, the danger of them getting hurt is very high."
Posted by: ed ||
04/16/2005 5:10:25 PM ||
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#1
Iran said it had not seen enough incentives from the European Union to pave the way for a deal over its controversial nuclear activities,..
And they never will. This is all just a big stall for time, while work continues in various locations...
Squealing like a little beturbanned piggy, isn't he?
Senior Shiite Cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah urged the Lebanese people to work for their country's independence, sovereignty and freedom, warning them of the United States' plan to corrupt the country and stir civil strife. The statements of Fadlallah were made in the presence of several religious, political and social figures during his Friday sermon at al-Imamayn al-Hassanayn mosque in Haret Hreik. Fadlallah said: "The American plan was initiated to meddle in Lebanese affairs, to destroy the resistance and create chaos in the region, and was supported by Europe, particularly the French." Fadlallah added that "the American political game" wanted to divide the country and agitate sensitivities. He further said: "We urge the new generation to open up to freedom, sovereignty, independence, honesty and loyalty to their country." He also said: "Everyone must take responsibility for saving the country by overcoming all obstacles and setting up a reform program."
Posted by: Fred ||
04/16/2005 11:25:26 AM ||
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PARIS - Lebanon's Druze leader and key opposition figure Walid Jumblatt on Friday urged fellow opposition parties to join a government so that crucial elections planned for next month could take place. "The opposition must name someone to join the government. We must play the game and someone from the opposition must join the government," Jumblatt told AFP ahead of a meeting with French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier. "The aim right now is the elections."
"And make it snappy!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/16/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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BEIRUT - Lebanon's president appointed moderate ally of Syria Najib Mikati as prime minister-designate on Friday after the anti-Syrian opposition unexpectedly backed him to lead the country into a general election set for May. Mikati won the nomination of the country's 128-member parliament as a compromise candidate in a close race with outgoing Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad, a staunch ally of Damascus.
Ah, the lesser of two weevils won out.
Prime Minister Omar Karami stepped down on Wednesday after he failed to agree a cabinet, first with the anti-Syrian opposition and then with pro-Syrian allies.
'I hope I can survive embody national unity,' Mikati told reporters after being appointed by President Emile Lahoud. He said he could begin consultations to form a government on Saturday. 'We are facing an important stage ... the return of democracy,' said Mikati, a wealthy 49-year-old businessman and a friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Does Babyface have any 'friends'?
The political crisis has threatened to delay the elections, much to the ire of anti-Syrian opposition lawmakers who believe the polls would give them a majority in a chamber now dominated by allies of Damascus. But Mikati's appointment with the backing of the opposition could revive hopes of the polls being held on time.
Unlike veteran politician Karami, Mikati does not hail from one of Lebanon's political dynasties and so carries less political clout baggage, rendering him a compromise choice palatable to both anti-Syrian opposition figures and pro-Syrian loyalists.
'We welcome the naming of a prime minister. We expect to see both an expeditious formation of a Lebanese cabinet as well as parliamentary elections being held by the end of May without delays,' said State Department spokesman Tom Casey. 'Lebanon must be allowed to determine its own future free of intimidation and all foreign interference.'
Mikati must quickly form a government, win a confidence vote in parliament, draft an election law and get it passed by the assembly all in under two weeks to have any chance of holding the polls before the end of May. He said his priorities were survival holding the polls, keeping his head attached to his neck cooperating fully with an international inquiry into Hariri's killing and returning to his wife and kids alive confidence to an economy shaken by his death.
The Sunni Muslim former transport minister did not say whether he expected the elections to take place on time.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/16/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
All the justice loving people should demand that Shia Muslims of Lebanon should be given their due share in any future government.According to all accounts,Shias are majority but are given the post of Speaker of the Parliament, whereas Christians and Sunni Muslims are given the post of President and Prime Minister,respectively .
This would surely be in line with President Bush's aim of spreading democracy in the Muslim world.
Posted by: muslim for peace ||
04/16/2005 11:45 Comments ||
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Observations...
Spreading democracy is non-sectarian.
If you consider Bush's own beliefs, then you must accept that as fact, for he is not promoting Christianity.
When there is freedom, you can believe anything you wish - and no one should care, except where your beliefs infringe upon another's freedom, or vice-versa.
Remove religion, which should be a personal and private matter and choice, from the equation and we all make a vast leap forward. Freedom is the point of democracy. What one does with it is secondary.
#3
Sometimes when democratic outcome is not according to our liking , we are prone to follow non democratic methods. This was evidenced in the case of overthrow of Iranian Premier Mussadagh , annulment of unpalatable election results in Algeria, etc.
Posted by: muslim for peace ||
04/16/2005 14:26 Comments ||
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Harare: President Robert Mugabe's government had acquired six fighter jets "to deal with any challenges", state radio reported yesterday. It did not disclose the supplier or the price tag, but the report first named them as the "K-8" and then the "K-fighter".
The aircraft appeared to be the K-8 advanced jet trainer, a Chinese copy of the British Aerospace BAE Hawk, said Michael Quintana, former editor of Africa Defence Journal. The Hawk was supplied to Zimbabwe by then Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher soon after independence in 1980. But Tony Blair's Labour Party slapped an embargo on spare parts in 2000 to protest against human rights abuses.
Quintana said Egypt had bought K-8 trainers from China for $20 million (R120 million) each...
The radio broadcast quoted the Air Force Acting Director of Operations, Group Captain Builtin Chingoto, as saying the new fighters were meant to keep up with fast-changing technology.
"They will go a long way to improve the operations of our air force in order to defend the country's air space and territorial integrity," he said. "They will enable the force to deal with any challenges."...
About 70% of Zimbabweans live in absolute poverty, with 5 million of its 11.6 million people dependent last year on international food aid. Hospitals lack medicines and food, while schools lack desks, books and writing materials.
Official figures showed Zimbabwe's inflation rate fell to 123.7% in March, down 3.5% from February, the government-controlled Daily Herald said. - Sapa-AP
#1
Official figures showed Zimbabweâs inflation rate fell to 123.7% in March, down 3.5% from February, the government-controlled Daily Herald said. How can they tell?
And I have to assume China sold the jets on credit -- isn't all of what's left of Zimbabwe's reserves in the private off-shore accounts of Bob and his buddies? Another straw for the camel's back that is the Chinese economy, yes?
#2
China has also been flooding Zimbabwean markets with cheap goods, signed 'leases' on several farms, and is likely providing training to the armed forces beyond that of operating the jets. Most likely there are Chinese support personnel for the aircraft.
The bodies of 41 Kuwaitis believed killed during the first Gulf War have been unearthed in southern Iraq, one of 295 mass graves containing thousands of Saddam Hussein's victims uncovered in the two years since U.S.-led forces invaded and ousted the dictator, Iraq's Human Rights Minister said Saturday.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Bakhtiar Amin said he informed the Kuwaiti government of the discovery three days ago. The bodies were found in a mass grave in the city of Amarah, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad. The discovery was another step in documenting what happened to 605 Kuwaitis who have been missing since the 1991 Gulf War. The bodies of only 190 other Kuwaitis have been identified.
The difficult security situation in Iraq is hampering the work of investigators as authorities find or are alerted to the discovery of mass graves, which will provide evidence in war crimes cases the Iraqi Special Tribunal is building against Saddam and his top ministers, Amin said.
Cases already have been brought to court against Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, one of Saddam's half brothers, former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali" for his part in chemical weapons gassing of Kurds in the north of the country. "The list of crimes that these people committed is long, and the trials will start as soon as possible," Amin said, adding that a start-date was still not known.
He said some graves contained the remains of dozens of people, while other had thousands, with victims ranging from the Kuwaitis to minority Kurds, who were systematically killed during Saddam's rule. "Iraq is a land of mass graves due to the genocide policy of Saddam Hussein," he said. "We have hundreds of thousands of people missing."
Since January, two mass graves were discovered in Kirkuk, two were found in Sulaymaniyah, and one in Halabja — all containing Kurdish victims, Amin said. Investigators also traveled to Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, this week to inspect a site that locals had begun digging up after a farmer plowing in his field discovered about 20 bodies. It was not known where the bodies came from. "We're calling on our citizens. No one should open the mass graves. They should inform the authorities and the human rights people. It needs to be done properly, scientifically, respectfully," Amin said.
It was difficult to estimate how many people were buried in the different sites, since some graves had several layers that have yet to be uncovered, Amin said, recalling one particular location in Hatra in northern Iraq. "In Hatra, we went looking for one and we found 11. It's difficult to say. It could be more, it could be less. The number of missing is calculated to be about 1 million in Iraq," he said.
Some 2,000 bodies were found recently in the area of Samawah in northern Iraq. The entire site is believed to hold members of Massoud Barzani's clan. Some 8,000 relatives of Barzani, who heads the Kurdish Democratic Party, were taken from a camp in the northern city of Irbil in the summer of 1983 and never heard from again.
Amin said hundreds of thousands of Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south were killed and remained missing after rising up against Saddam's regime during the first Gulf War. "We are in the beginning of this search for truth. More than half the Iraqi population has a loved one who is missing, disappeared," he said.
The Iraqi Human Rights Ministry so far has files on 150,000 people missing from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the first and second Gulf Wars. Files sent from the International Committee of the Red Cross on missing persons altogether weighed about 130 pounds, Amin said.
He said the ministry hoped to open three centers in the north, south and center of the country to create rehabilitation programs for the families of victims. "We have had unfortunately this terrible legacy of wars and families left behind in pain," Amin said. "Saddam has caused pain and suffering to these people and its neighbors because of his aggressive policies. The healing process is going to take time, the tender wounds are still fresh."
Posted by: ed ||
04/16/2005 5:05:02 PM ||
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Thirteen cargo handlers at San Francisco International Airport were charged Friday with stealing $200,000 worth of computers, cameras and other goods from mail bound for U.S. soldiers stationed in Japan, authorities said.
The 13 defendants, employees of cargo staffing company Aeroground, were arrested Thursday and early Friday and arraigned in federal court on charges of stealing and conspiring to steal U.S. mail, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco.
"We will not tolerate abuse of our mail system, and we will make every effort to ensure that postal customers and our postal system are protected and not compromised," said U.S. Attorney Kevin V. Ryan.
Attorneys for the defendants could not immediately be reached for comment Friday. The 13 men, who range in age from 19 to 52, did not enter pleas during their brief court appearance, said Cynthia Caporizzo, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco.
The defendants handled mail at SFO for an airline contracted by the U.S. military to deliver mail to Okinawa, Japan. San Francisco-based Aeroground would not comment about their status with the company, said spokeswoman Jordan Goldstein.
Since November 2003, soldiers based in Okinawa reported more than 570 incidents of not receiving mail or getting mail missing items such as laptop computers, digital cameras, DVD players and videogame consoles, according to the complaint. The winter holiday season saw the highest number of reported losses.
After hearing about the reports, U.S. Postal Service inspectors, assisted by military investigators, conducted surveillance at an SFO loading facility where they allegedly observed workers hiding items under their clothes and taking them to a nearby parking lot. They also noticed the cargo handlers carefully reading customs declaration forms that detailed each package's contents and value.
After taking out the goods, the cargo handlers would tape up the packages and send them on to Japan, where soldiers would discover items missing, according to the complaint. Some packages never arrived.
Many of the stolen items were then sold, sometimes at flea markets. One undercover postal investigator bought 15 items from one of the defendants, Caporizzo said.
After appearing in court Friday, the defendants were released on $50,000 bonds and required to hand over their passports. They were scheduled to return to court for a preliminary hearing on April 29. If convicted, they could face up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Aeroground, which employs 1,100 workers at 25 cargo terminals at nine international airports, has cooperated in the federal investigation, according to Goldstein.
"This has never happened in the history of Aeroground," Goldstein said. "Aeroground takes these allegations very seriously, and that's why we're cooperating with the investigation."
The people named as defendants by the U.S. Attorney's Office are: Arthur Chester Orogo Balmes, 24, of Hayward; Leonardo Ugalde Briosos, 51, of Daly City; Rodolfo Ugalde Briosos, 52, of Daly City; Francis Arnel Ronas Maroto, 25, of Sacramento; Rafael Martinez, 24, of San Bruno; Douglas Quintana Meehleib, 40, of Daly City; Gabriel Jose Navarrette, 19, of Pacifica; Jesus Jose Navarro, 22, of Burlingame; Arnel Tabangcura Salaver, 46, of South San Francisco; Fetongi Mamahi Sanft, 20, of East Palo Alto; Vaea Tangitau Sanft, 19, of East Palo Alto; Sosaia Toviko Tauelangi, 20, of East Palo Alto; Segundo Bendo Tiongco, Jr., 40, of San Francisco. Hang 'em.
Posted by: .com ||
04/16/2005 9:23:00 AM ||
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#3
They probably don't know that most of our postal crime laws were written in the 19th Century. And still have the same penalties. That is, of course, in addition to any added penalties from stealing from soldiers in wartime. Oh gee. This could get ugly.
#5
"They also noticed the cargo handlers carefully reading customs declaration forms that detailed each packageâs contents and value."
While my son was in Iraq, this was a constant source of worry: having the contents of the packages I sent him listed right on the outside was an open invitation to theft. Fortunately I never had to send anything really valuable to him.
In a civilized country, these people would be publicly hanged. But we're not civilized: we've become OVER-civilized, and very likely only a few of these people will be convicted, and most of those who are will only get probation or a few months in jail.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/16/2005 11:34 Comments ||
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This is San Francisco - I should think the cargo handlers would be regarded as heroic opponenents of the war machine.
#7
I had such experiences in Saudi. Outbound parcels made it about 25% of the time. None of the good stuff made it, like the great gold craftsmanship you do find in UAE, for example. Inbound only marginally better results, maybe 30% got through. Easily fenced stuff, such as software, never got through. I got some cookies, once... they had been broken up into crumbs - the entire box. Prolly looking for hidden crucifixes or similar contraband. It was, I thought, just another price I paid for being out of the civilized world. Seems that, today, SFO is not part of the civilized world.
#13
Post the photographs of these perps on the web after their termination of employment. There is no fouler crime than stealing from a servicemember. These people should have their lives ruined for this behavior. Ruin their credit ratings, confiscate their property and set them adrift in a society that shuns them.
CAIRO — Egypt's pro-reform "Kefaya" (Enough) movement intends to hold 13 simultaneous demonstrations across the country on April 27, reports said. The demonstrations will go ahead despite fears that authorities will use Cairo bomb attack — in which three foreign nationals died — as an excuse to crack down on marches.
If not that then something else.
"Of course the government will use this to stop people from going out on the streets to demonstrate," said political analyst Hassan Abu Taleb on Wednesday. A wave of protests by university students, Kefaya and the banned Muslim Brotherhood group have been held in the past month. Demonstrators are demanding greater political freedom ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for this fall. Attempts to hold marches outside the country's parliament have however been thwarted by the interior ministry, who maintain that gatherings without prior permission will not be tolerated. Meanwhile, Secretary-General of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party, Safwat Al Sherif, said yesterday that the party will nominate President Hosni Mubarak for a fifth term even though he has not yet signalled his intent to contest. Â
Victor Davis Hansen noted yesterday that we've given Egypt $57 billion to be nice. Isn't it time to cut the cord?
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/16/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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BAGHDAD - Ukraine will pull out nearly 40 percent of its some 1,400 soldiers from Iraq by mid-May, according to Polish forces which oversee the sector where the Ukrainians are deployed. "Today, the rotation of Ukrainian contingent is starting. The rotation will be last from April 15 to May 12," said a statement from the Polish forces. "The Ukrainian contingent consists of 1,462 soldiers now. After the rotation it will comprise 900 people."
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko signed a decree on Wednesday formalising the planned withdrawal of his country's troops from Iraq by year's end. The first batch of troops returned to Ukraine on March 15.
Adding to the pressure on the US-led forces in Iraq, Poland plans to withdraw its 1,700-strong contingent by the end of the year and Bulgaria is considering doing the same with its 462 soldiers, while Italy may cut its troop level in September.
Pressure? These troops are vacating the parts of Iraq that are among the most secure; they'll be replaced by improving Iraqi troops and police, and last and certainly not least, they did the job they came to do. They stayed longer than they originally planned, and they leave with their heads held high. Troops: thank you!
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/16/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
They sure as heck are not being run out by the terrorists unlike the chicken shit Spanish socialist government of Zappy the clown.
The governments have stated what they would do and have done it. They are leaving in an orderly fashion under pressure from no one in Iraq or the US to stay or leave.
Good on you guys that have served in Iraq and thank you.
#3
Waitaminute....are you SURE the Ukranians are not just RUNNING AWAY when most of the news is GOOD? The fight is nearly over; the war nearly won, but these guys are caving in because the war is ....ummmmm.... lost. BOY! Am *I* confused!
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/16/2005 22:52 Comments ||
Top||
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.
MANAMA — His Majesty King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, has said there will be no turning back from the democratic gains and freedoms in the kingdom.
Security at U.S. airports is no better under federal control than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks, a key House member says two government reports will conclude. 
THE United Nations needs to be overhauled "to survive as a vital force", US Secretary of State 
PARIS - Lebanon's Druze leader and key opposition figure 
BEIRUT - Lebanon's president appointed moderate ally of Syria Najib Mikati as prime minister-designate on Friday after the anti-Syrian opposition unexpectedly backed him to lead the country into a general election set for May. Mikati won the nomination of the country's 128-member parliament as a compromise candidate in a close race with outgoing Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad, a staunch ally of Damascus.
