|
 |
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Kosovo On The Brink Of War!
CLINTON'S FOLLY: KOSOVO ON THE BRINK OF WAR!
I was talking to some college students at the local Irish pub and they were saying the usual propaganda, "Bush lied about the WMD, he had no plan for the region once the troops got there and he has no exit strategy" they proclaimed using the usual bumper sticker logic. After patiently listening I said, " I agree. Bush turning the war over to the State Department was a tragedy. Why he decided to use the Clinton foreign policy plan is beyond me".
Everyone got quiet. Real quiet.
One spoke up.
"What does Clinton have to do with this?", he asked me.
Well you see, Clinton claimed over 200,000 had been killed by the Serbs. After the war, we found out this was false. Just like the WMD!
I could tell they had never heard this before. Thank you U.S. media.
Then we had no plan what to do when we took control of Kosovo- and the Serbs actually ran out the people we claimed we were trying to protect- because we supported a terror group with ties to the Balkin mob and al Qaeda!
Dead quiet. Other folks at the bar started to listen. A girl in the group just stared at the floor.
And we are STILL in the region, which is about to explode again.
One guy looked up with a "gotcha" look on his face.
"We aren't still in the area, or it would be on the news". I explained the press in this country can only handle one war at a time, which is why you never hear about our advisers in Ethiopia leading the fighting in Somalia. I told them they should come to this website. We've been covering the war since day 1. Our media hasn't. There was no exit strategy, just a vague notion of bringing democracy to the region! Sound familiar?
I continued. "Well at least the left wasn't bamboozled! They had the ethics, morality and courage to stand up to Clinton's war and protest. Risking arrest, being spied on and- oh wait a second. I just remembered. THEY DID NOTHING.", I'm on a role at this point, "In fact they cheered the over 1000 carpet bombing missions we went on."
One guy asked me what was going to happen. I said war like we've never seen before in the region. 2007 is going to be bloody. Yep, Bush should never have followed the Clinton plan." Here is the latest news on the growing crisis, followed by the story the press does not want you to know, what really happened when Clinton launched what he called, the humanitarian war.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor for former Yugoslavia, said Wednesday she was "surprised and disappointed" by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's decision to invite Serbia to join a cooperation program that is a first step toward possible membership.
"The prosecutor is highly surprised because she was not consulted," Del Ponte's spokesman Anton Nikiforov told Serbia's B92 radio. "She is disappointed because it turns out that Serbia was rewarded for its noncooperation with the ( U.N. war crimes) tribunal."
http://www.paulding.net/bin/url.cgi/13492.17
Armed men in masks have been appearing in parts of Kosovo since Western powers said they will postpone a decision on the future of the breakaway Serbian province, residents said yesterday.
Kosovo's 2 million Albanians are growing increasingly impatient and some leaders in the UN-administered province have warned of unrest since Western powers said a decision on the Albanian majority demand for independence will be delayed.
Newspapers have reported a brief gunfight with police, residents said masked men have been stopping cars at night Western Kosovo and the police have confirmed at least one checkpoint was set up by men in black less than 100 km from the capital Pristina.
The men in black, who residents say claim to be part of the outlawed Albanian National Army (ANA) have appeared in the wake of last month's announcement from Western countries and Russia that they would allow an end-2006 deadline to pass. The ANA is a shadowy group labelled terrorists in 2003 by the UN mission running the breakaway Serbian province.
Police confirmed that armed men in black set up a checkpoint this week near the town of Djakovica, 80km west of the capital Pristina, but that it was not clear who they were. "We just know they are armed people wearing masks", regional spokesman Avni Gjevukaj said. Prime Minister Agim Ceku, a former guerrilla leader, said such groups were "damaging the image and security of Kosovo." http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Rest+of+the+World&month=December2006&file=World_News2006120975112.xml
A U.N. envoy scolded the Serbian government in Belgrade for preventing Serbs from integrating into Kosovo's mainly ethnic-Albanian institutions.
Joachim Rucker, chief of the U.N. civil administration mission in Kosovo, said the biggest problem is that Belgrade obstructs Kosovo Serbs from taking part in political and economic life in the province, the Serbian news agency Beta reported Friday.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Rucker said he believes a majority of 100,000 Serbs living in Kosovo would wish to be included in Kosovo's democratic and multinational future.
http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20061208-081028-9864r.htm
The Serbs in Macedonia support Belgrade in its policy to retain Kosovo within Serbia, the Macedonian Makfax informs, citing the Chair of the Democratic party of the Macedonian Serbs and an MP in the Macedonian Parliament Ivan Stojilkovic, who was received by Serbia’s PM Vojislav Kostunica in Belgrade. His party press release reads that “Stojilkovic expressed Macedonian Serbs’ support for the demand of consistent policy in retaining Serbia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n101180
HOW DID WE GET HERE:
Kosovo and the rise of Slobodan Milošević (1986–1990)
In Kosovo growing Albanian nationalism and separatism in response to persecution led to growing ethnic tensions between Serbs and Albanians. An increasingly poisonous atmosphere led to wild rumours being traded and otherwise trivial incidents being blown out of proportion.
It was against this tense background that sixteen prominent members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU, from its Serbian initials) began work in June 1985 on a draft document that was leaked to the public in September 1986. The SANU Memorandum, as it has become known, was hugely controversial. It focused on the political difficulties facing Serbs in Yugoslavia, pointing to Tito's deliberate hobbling of Serbia's power and the difficulties faced by Serbs outside Serbia proper.
The Memorandum[5] (PDF) paid special attention to Kosovo, arguing, in obvious error, that the province's Serbs were being subjected to "physical, political, legal and cultural genocide" in an "open and total war" that had been ongoing since the spring of 1981. It claimed that Kosovo's status in 1986 was a worse historical defeat for the Serbs than any event since liberation from the Ottomans in 1804, thus ranking it above such catastrophes as the Nazi occupation or the First World War occupation of Serbia by the Austro-Hungarians. The Memorandum's authors claimed that 200,000 Serbs had moved out of the province over the previous twenty years and warned that there would soon be none left "unless things change radically." The remedy, according to the Memorandum, was for "genuine security and unambiguous equality for all peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija [to be] established" and "objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled [Serbian] nation [to be] created." It concluded that "Serbia must not be passive and wait and see what the others will say, as it has done so often in the past."
NATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 11, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships and submarines. The United States was, inevitably, the dominant member of the coalition against Serbia, although all of the NATO members were involved to some degree — even Greece, despite publicly opposing the war. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) it was the first time it had participated in a conflict since World War II. In addition to airpower, one battalion from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to help combat missions. The battalion secured Apache Attack helicopter refueling sites and a small team forward deployed to the Albania/Kosovo border to identify targets for Allied/NATO airstrikes.
The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Serbian troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers in order to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. However, the summary had an unfortunate double meaning which caused NATO considerable embarrassment after the war, when over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities fled or were expelled from the province. It was also suggested that a small victorious war would help give NATO a new role. Propaganda terms "humanitarian bombing" and "humanitarian war" were employed by the politicians.
At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Serbian military convoy, killing around 50 people. NATO admitted its mistake 5 days later, but the Serbs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. NATO claimed they were firing at Yugoslav positions. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA. This was challenged by a joint report from The Observer (UK) and Politiken (Denmark) newspapers [18] which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The bombing strained relations between China and NATO countries and provoked angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing. According to one news source, unnamed high ranking NATO sources confirmed in 2005 that the attack was in fact deliberate: "The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milosevic."
Many on the left of Western politics saw the NATO campaign as US aggression and imperialism, while critics on the right considered it irrelevant to their countries' national security interests. Veteran anti-war campaigners such as Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Justin Raimondo, and Tariq Ali were prominent in opposing the campaign. However, in comparison with the anti-war protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the campaign against the war in Kosovo aroused much less public support.
There was, however, criticism from all parts of the political spectrum for the way that NATO conducted the campaign. NATO officials sought to portray it as a "clean war" using precision weapons. The US Department of Defense claimed that, up to June 2, 99.6% of the 20,000 bombs and missiles used had hit their targets. However, the use of technologies such as depleted uranium ammunition and cluster bombs was highly controversial, as was the bombing of oil refineries and chemical plants, which led to accusations of "environmental warfare". The slow pace of progress during the war was also heavily criticised. Many believed that NATO should have mounted an all-out campaign from the start, rather than starting with a relatively small number of strikes and combat aircraft.
The choice of targets was highly controversial. The destruction of bridges over the Danube greatly disrupted shipping on the river for months afterwards, causing serious economic damage to countries along the length of the river. Industrial facilities were also attacked, damaging the economies of many towns. In fact, as the Serbian opposition later complained, the Serbian military was using civilian factories as weapons plants: the Sloboda vacuum cleaner factory in the town of Čačak also housed a tank repair facility, while the Zastava plant in Kragujevac made both cars and Kalashnikov rifles. In addition only state owned factories were targeted. No private or foreign owned industrial sites were bombed. Perhaps the most controversial deliberate attack of the war was that made against the headquarters of Serbian television on April 23, which killed at least fourteen people. NATO justified the attack on the grounds that the Serbian television headquarters was part of the Milošević regime's "propaganda machine".
Some critics have accused the coalition of leading a war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide.[3] This was, in fact, no pretense at all. President Clinton of the United States, and his administration, were accused of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians.[4] Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, giving a speech, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide."[5] On CBS' Face the Nation Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered."[6] Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing".[7] Later, talking about Serbian elections, Clinton said, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Milošević ordered in Kosovo...They're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed...".[8] Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."[9] Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort."[10] Clinton's State Department also claimed Serbian troops had committed genocide. The New York Times reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Serbian forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest yet in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević."[11] The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. The New York Times reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead."[12]
The Kosovo war had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved — formally it is still part of Serbia, but in practice the Serbian government has no say or practical influence over the affairs of the province, which is run as a UN protectorate under a UN-appointed governor. It remains an issue of considerable controversy with Kosovo Albanians continuing to press for independence, a demand which is now widely expected to become a reality in the immediate future.
In January 2006, Contact Group (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia) foreign ministers met in London and issued a statement outlining their vision for Kosovo's future status. Their statement explicitly reiterated that the "Contact Group Guiding Principles of November 2005 make clear that there should be: no return of Kosovo to the pre-1999 situation, no partition of Kosovo, and no union of Kosovo with any or part of another country." The statement also clearly states that "the (status) settlement needs, inter alia, to be acceptable to the people of Kosovo." [26] (PDF) and set a target of achieving a negotiated settlement in the course of 2006.
Milošević survived the immediate aftermath of the war, but the effective loss of Kosovo was a major factor in provoking the popular revolt which overthrew him in 2000. He was subsequently arrested and taken to The Hague, where he died from natural causes in his cell, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity on 10 March 2006.
Despite the successful conclusion of the war, Kosovo exposed gaping weaknesses in NATO. It revealed how dependent the European members had become on the United States military — the vast majority of combat and non-combat operations were dependent on US involvement — and highlighted the lack of precision weapons in European armories. Some right-wing and military critics in the US also blamed the alliance's agreement-by-consensus arrangements for hobbling and slowing down the campaign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War Posted at 10:25 am by Psychomike
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Chavez Wins- Shuts Off TV!
CHAVEZ WINS- SHUTS DOWN INDEPENDENT TV CHANNELS!
CARACAS, Venezuela — Officials identifying themselves as members of a state regulatory agency forced the U.S.-based Spanish-language TV network Telemundo to halt transmission Sunday of its presidential election coverage.
"We're surprised by this," said Pablo Iacub, a member of Telemundo's eight-person team, which arrived last week. "We only want to do our work," he said by telephone.
At least six people who identified themselves as members of the National Commission of Telecommunications (CONATEL), which regulates electronic media in Venezuela, arrived Sunday afternoon at the hotel from which Telemundo had been transmitting since Friday, said Iacub.
The officials said the network needed permission to transmit and lacking such could not, he said. Iacub said he was unaware of such a requirement but that the Telemundo journalists were accredited with Venezuela's national elections council.
Iacub said the Telemundo team asked how they could obtain permission and, after an hour, were told that they would not be able to transmit.
Telephone calls to Conatel offices seeking comment on the incident went unanswered.
Telemundo Communications Group is owned by NBC Universal Inc., which is controlled by General Electric Co. It claims to reach about 93 percent of Hispanic households in the U.S. and also has viewers in Mexico.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4376202.html
Anti-U.S. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claimed victory with a cry of "long live the revolution" as official results showed him heading for a landslide re-election win on Sunday.
Chavez won 61 percent, while Manuel Rosales, a governor of an oil-producing province who united the opposition, trailed with 38 percent after 78 percent of the vote had been counted, the National Electoral Council said.
If the trend continues, Chavez, 52, will have a strong mandate in his next six-year term to press his self-styled socialist revolution and forge an anti-U.S. front in Latin America to counter what he calls the superpower's "imperialism." http://snipurl.com/13zse
-- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez backed the possibility of holding a national referendum, if he's re-elected, on whether to shut down private television stations that he has accused of subversive activities.
Chavez's comments late Thursday came amid rising tensions between the government and the country's largely opposition-aligned private media ahead of Sunday's vote.
Chavez was asked in a televised interview if he would consider asking the nation whether the government should block certain channels from renewing their broadcast licenses next year. (Watch Chavez land a nod as Time magazine's Person of the Year  )
"That is perfectly possible," Chavez said. "It's perfectly possible that the country gives its opinion, including for how long."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/01/chavez.venezuela.election.ap/index.html Posted at 09:06 pm by Psychomike
Rumsfeld Rejuvenates Dems!
One thing that resulted from this New York Times article was a change in tone from the now emboldened Democrats- even if it is from Rumsfeld!
Rumsfeld Memo on Iraq Proposed 'Major' Change
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.
"In my view it is time for a major adjustment," wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. "Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough."
Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.
"Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis," he wrote. "This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not 'lose.' "
"Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist," he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House's sharpest Democratic critics. ( Text of the Memo)
One option Mr. Rumsfeld offered calls for modest troop withdrawals "so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."
Another option calls for redeploying American troops from "vulnerable positions" in Baghdad and other cities to safer areas in Iraq or Kuwait, where they would act as a "quick reaction force." That idea is similar to a plan suggested by Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, a plan that the White House has soundly rebuffed.
Still another option calls for consolidating the number of American bases in Iraq to 5 from 55 by July 2007, a considerable shrinking of the American footprint. At the same time, Mr. Rumsfeld all but dismisses the idea of setting a firm date for removing forces from Iraq, listing it as one of the less palatable ideas.
One of the more provocative options would punish provinces that failed to cooperate with the Americans by withdrawing economic assistance and security. "Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Falluja when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior," the option reads. "No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03military.html?ei=5090&en=d370be7c39600e08&ex=1322802000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print Posted at 10:32 am by Psychomike
Friday, December 01, 2006
All Hell Breaks Out: Kosovo, Ethiopia!
CLINTON'S FOLLY: Kosovo Albanians attack UN; police fire teargas
U.N. police in Kosovo fired teargas on Tuesday to disperse ethnic Albanians who smashed the windows of parliament and stoned U.N. headquarters, angry at a delay to their demand for independence from Serbia.
Thousands of protesters converged on the main symbols of authority in the capital, Pristina, throwing red paint on the buildings of the U.N. mission and Kosovo's interim government.
They dispersed after U.N. police fired teargas from inside the U.N. compound, a fortified square on the site of a former Serb military headquarters.
It was the first sign of a violent backlash since Western powers and Russia this month decided to delay a U.N. decision on the Albanian majority's demand for independence until next year. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28197557.htm Hey, someone ask Clinton what the exit strategy was......the sad thing is because liberal don't understand military strategy, they don't know that all Bush has done by taking the running of the war away from Rumsfeld and turning it over to the State Department, we are now following the Clinton doctrine! They will tell you the Serbian leaders were bad men, but wasn't Saddam too?
al-Qaida Said to Be Operating in Somalia
Al-Qaida militants are operating with "great comfort" in Somalia, providing training and assistance to a radical military element loyal to the Islamic group that controls most of southern Somalia, a senior State Department official said Wednesday. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/11/29/national/w142348S51.DTL
U.S. CALLS FOR U.N. TO SOMALIA!
U.S. officials are expected to submit a resolution to the United Nations this week calling for the deployment of international peacekeepers to war-torn Somalia, a move that has divided experts on its effectiveness in creating peace and stability in the country and greater region.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/africa/article_1228031.php/U.S._wants_Somalia_peacekeepers
Ethiopia authorizes action against Somali Islamists
Ethiopia's parliament has authorized "any legal action" against "the clear and present danger" posed by powerful Islamists in neighboring Somalia, ratcheting up fears for war.
Lawmakers adopted a resolution Thursday that calls the Islamists, now on the brink of war with the weak Somali government, a "clear and present danger" to Ethiopia, which is supporting Somalia's transitional administration.
The vote came just hours after the Islamists claimed a new attack on Ethiopian troops outside the seat of the government and a day after the Islamists accused Ethiopia of shelling a Muslim-held town near the border.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061130/ts_afp/somaliaunrestethiopia_061130105022
An Ethiopian military convoy in Somalia has been ambushed by fighters loyal to the powerful Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), witnesses said on Thursday.
It happened on Tuesday 35km south-west of Baidoa, seat of the weak interim government, who deny it took place.
Eyewitness said a truck was blown up and there was an exchange of fire. The UIC claim about 20 Ethiopians died.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6159059.stm
A car bomb has exploded in Baidoa, where Somalia's fragile interim government is based, leaving at least six people dead.
A policeman told the BBC that a female suicide bomber wearing a veil blew herself up at a check-point.
The explosion also destroyed two other cars. "There were flames everywhere," an eye-witness said.
President Abdullahi Yusuf survived a suicide car bomb attack in Baidoa two months ago, which killed his brother.
He blamed that attack on his Islamist rivals, who denied responsibility.
There are fears of widespread conflict breaking out in Somalia between the government and the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which controls most of the south of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6160603.stm
Angola, the largest sub-Saharan oil producer in Africa after Nigeria, said it will apply to join OPEC next month, while the oil cartel's secretary general said Sudan also was poised to join.
OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo, speaking to Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday on the sidelines of a producers' meeting in Egypt, gave no timetable for Angola or Sudan to join the group, which has not welcomed a new member since 1975. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15965843/ Posted at 02:52 pm by Psychomike
Rumsfeld: Threat, Menace Or.....
RUMSFELD: WAS HE A THREAT, MENACE OR VISIONARY?
Some folks have asked me to prove that Rumsfeld, the single man in the White House who wanted us to leave Iraq within 1 year of the invasion, had been bumped by the State Department long ago. Sent out as a sacrificial lamb to the left and libs, he was the only person arguing for us not staying in Iraq, and someday I believe history will beat the rhetoric. Here Juiceman provides me with ammo:
10/6/2003
Rice will manage Iraq's 'new phase'
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — President Bush is giving his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the authority to manage postwar Iraq and the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
Look at this- this is from the first entry and is dated from December 2005:
President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced that the State Department would lead all US post-conflict reconstruction, a move that supersedes the controversial decision to give that task to the Pentagon in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.
...but look at the other entries here, they're all dated from 2003 and say the same thing:
She already had authority, Bush waited 2 years to make it official.
Bush shafted Rumsfeld. Thanks Juiceman!
Rumsfeld found out he was replaced by the State Department, when he read it in a newspaper!
Liberals never understood what he was saying, and preferred to paint him as a Goebbels to Bush's Hitler. They lied. Or are fools. You don't force out the one guy who agrees with you- unless your hatred is so strong you really have no idea what is going on.
I also get asked if I really believe Rangel wanted to waste hundreds of thousands on a study of the military makeup, millions to reman draft boards, hundreds of millions to clothe, arm new troops and billions to send overseas more men. Read the next article, and weep: (By the way, Bush has made a terrible error, one of many, by saying he would send 20,000 new troops in. He should have let the Dems continue to argue for more troops so that over these two years people understood the Dems would want to escalate the crisis by throwing money and troops into the region. Now the issue is grey. I have had so many liberals write me and tell me a few hundred thousand troops more would end the civil war that I fear Bush is now re-inforcing this rubbish in people's minds. Rumsfeld wanted troops on ships to guard the area and off the ground, a smaller and sleeker military force to respond to terror, more reliance on corporations than government in National Security and if a civil war happened, at least it would keep the various factions away from us. I believe history will prove he was right.)
Rangel Adopts the Logic of Kerry's 'Joke'
Rep. Charles Rangel has adopted Senator Kerry's "botched joke" about unsuccessful young people ending up in the military — only Mr. Rangel is not joking.
"If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career, or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq," Mr. Rangel, a Democrat representing Manhattan and Queens, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"If there's anyone who believes these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No bright young individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment," the congressman said.
Mr. Rangel was responding to a question about a study by a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, which found that those enlisting in the military tend to be better educated than the general public and that military recruiting seems to be more successful in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods than in poor ones.
"He's really, indirectly, insulting the troops," the study's author, Timothy Kane, told The New York Sun. "He doesn't want to admit the fact that thousands and tens of thousands of young men and women are willing to make these sacrifices. More and more troops are saying duty and honor are motivating them, not college money."
Mr. Kane, a former Air Force intelligence officer, said his study found that 97% of military enlistees were high school graduates, as compared with about 80% of Americans in general, and that the average reading level of military personnel is a full grade level higher than that of the general populace.
Mr. Kane acknowledged that in 2005 the Army, which was falling short of recruitment goals, began accepting more high school dropouts and more recruits with lower scores on intelligence tests. "It's not a huge surge," he said, noting that the increase amounted to a few percent at most.
Mr. Rangel is a long-standing advocate of reinstating the draft, but Mr. Kane said conscription would wreak havoc by drawing more undereducated and unintelligent people into the force. "A draft would almost certainly be a disaster," the analyst said.
Mr. Rangel has said that his draft proposal has little chance of becoming law. However, he rejected the Heritage findings and insisted yesterday that a formal Congressional examination of the military's demographics will prove him right.
"Once we are able to get hearings on this, everyone will see what they already know, and that is that those who have the least opportunities at this age find themselves in the military, as I did when I was 18 years old," the congressman said. http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=44138
People have asked why I am so concerned about the spy poisining case - I have a feeling we should start checking Russian planes that arrive here as the UK is. My fear? They have been using the planes to transport and sell nuclear materials! FOR YEARS NOW.
Posted at 04:55 am by Psychomike
Thursday, November 30, 2006
33,000 Under Radiation Alert!
Thousands of British Airways passengers were caught in a radiation scare last night after traces of a substance, thought to be the same that killed the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, were found on two planes.
Around 33,000 passengers are believed to have flown on 221 flights across Europe since the traces were found earlier in the month.
The Government grounded one plane on Tuesday and another yesterday. A third is in Moscow awaiting tests.
Police are focusing on flights from Moscow to Heathrow Airport on Oct 25 and 31 and in the other direction on Oct 28 and Nov 3. Since then, the planes, all Boeing 767s, have flown to Barcelona, Dusseldorf, Athens, Larnaka, Madrid, Vienna, Istanbul, Frankfurt and Stockholm.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=WV43222W314OLQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/11/30/npoison30.xml Posted at 02:17 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Iraq Panel Calls For "Fallback"
GERRY ADAMS THREATENED, UN TROOPS ENGAGING IN CHILD PROSTITUTION, CHAVEZ PREPARES FOR CIVIL WAR!
Passengers have been asked to come forward for possible testing, after radiation traces were found on two BA planes linked to the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
The BA 767 planes operate on routes within Europe and up to 800 passengers on four flights may have been affected.
A statement from the airline said: "BA has been advised that three of its Boeing 767 short haul aircraft have been identified by the UK Government as part of the investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.
"The airline was contacted last night by the Government. It has taken the three B767s out of service to enable forensic examination to be carried out.
"The initial results of the forensic tests, which was confirmed late this afternoon, has shown very low traces of a radioactive substance onboard two of the three aircraft.
"British Airways has been advised that this investigation is confined solely to these three B767 aircraft, which will remain out of service until further notice.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=419497&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 — The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.
The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.
A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”
The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/world/middleeast/30policy.html?ei=5094&en=1b8f934bb873891b&hp=&ex=1164862800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Thousands of armed Venezuelans are preparing to ensure that President Hugo Chavez is re-elected on Sunday and will "shed their blood" for the cause if necessary.
Paranoid about the prospect of a coup or losing the presidential election fair and square, the firebrand leader of anti-American sentiment in Latin America has spent his eight years in office filling government jobs with acting and retired army officers.
With Mr Chavez hoping to win another six years in power, the opposition fears that even if it wins at the ballot box it will never be able to take power.
After purging the armed forces of elements opposed to his populist Left-wing rule, Mr Chavez has ensured that a new reserve force is outside the normal military command chain, answering only to him.
The former paratrooper colonel, who led a failed coup in 1992, has military men in most ministries, in politics, and even on the Supreme Court.
"What we have now is a form of Praetorian government," said Domingo Irwin, a defence analyst at the Pedagogical University in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
One proud member of Venezuela's new military reserve is Edgar Fajardo. He does not know much about handling guns, but he does know who he will vote for in the election: Hugo Chavez.
"I was unemployed until 'El Comandante' [Mr Chavez] gave me this chance to serve my country," said Mr Fajardo 54, who irons his uniform every morning before acting as a sentry at government installations in the capital's poor neighbourhood of Catia.
He said: "Now I am ready to shed my blood for him and the Bolivarian Revolution."
That socio-economic "revolution", as Mr Chavez likes to call it, is inspired by his hero Simón Bolívar, the 19th century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader. For it to continue, Mr Chavez, 52, will have to defeat the veteran politician Manuel Rosales to secure another term.
By distributing his oil-rich country's wealth, Mr Chavez has made many friends who should help him to achieve his goal. He has doubled the number of state sector jobs to more than two million in a population of 26 million.
The United States and alarmed neighbours have accused Mr Chavez of using his oil windfall to spark an arms race in the region.
He has acquired 100,000 Russian Kalashnikov rifles, SU30 fighter jets and more than 50 helicopters.
But it is more about political control than national defence.
For Alberto Garrido, a leading political analyst in Caracas, the president is building up and arming his support base, should he lose elections or be removed from power by other means.
"He believes in the revolutionary principle of a people in arms, and he believes that he can never be beaten should his people be armed," said Mr Garrido.
Disembowelled, then torn apart: The price of daring to teach girls
The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.
The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.
Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has revealed he was warned by police of another threat to his life.
The party said members would "take precautions to minimise risks" but would continue to do the work they "were elected to do".
Earlier this month, Mr Adams said dissident republicans were behind threats to him and other party members.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6195510.stm
UN Troops Face Child Abuse, Prostitution Charges
(RTTNews) - An investigation by a leading news organization has revealed that children have been subjected to rape and prostitution for food or money by United Nations troops in Haiti and Liberia. Girls have told of regular encounters with soldiers where sex is demanded in return for food or money, a BBC investigation has found.
The UN has faced several scandals involving its troops in recent years, including a DR Congo pedophile ring and prostitute trafficking in Kosovo.
Meanwhile the assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations acknowledges that sexual abuse is widespread.
"We've had a problem probably since the inception of peacekeeping - problems of this kind of exploitation of vulnerable populations," Jane Holl Lute told the BBC.
"My operating presumption is that this is either a problem or a potential problem in every single one of our missions." (RTTNews)
Posted at 11:15 pm by Psychomike
Litvinenko Smuggled Nuclear Materials!
Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.
Mario Scaramella, who flew into London yesterday to be interviewed by Scotland Yard officers investigating Mr Litvinenko's death, said Mr Litvinenko told him about the operation for the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB.
Police said that Mr Scaramella, who met Mr Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on 1 November to discuss a death threat aimed at both of them, was a potential witness. He was being interviewed at a "secure location" in London but was not in custody.
In an interview with The Independent shortly after the poisoning became public, Mr Scaramella said that Mr Litvinenko, a friend and professional contact since 2001, told him he had masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material to Zurich in 2000. There have long been concerns that turmoil in Russia and other former Soviet states after the fall of Communism created an international black market in radioactive substances.
The operation would have been one of the last carried out by Mr Litvinenko while still an FSB officer, in a unit tackling organised crime and smuggling. He fled Russia for London that year after the FSB began investigating him for corruption - charges which he claimed were invented as revenge for his decision to expose an FSB plot to assassinate the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2023856.ece
An Italian academic who met former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko the day he became ill from radiation poisoning is under police protection in London and undergoing medical tests, a legal source said on Tuesday.
Mario Scaramella, who has advised an Italian parliamentary commission on Soviet-era
espionage, is being checked to find out if he too has been contaminated. Litvinenko
died on Thursday.
"He went to London and is under British protection. He is undergoing medical tests to
determine his possible contamination," said the Rome-based source, who asked
Posted at 12:44 pm by Psychomike
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
New Poisoning Rocks Russia!
Yegor Gaidar, Russia’s former prime minister and the architect of the country’s market reforms, last week suffered a sudden, unexplained and violent illness on a visit to Ireland, a day after Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB spy, died in London from an apparent radiation poisoning.
Mr Gaidar is now in a stable condition at an undisclosed Moscow hospital, undergoing tests. In a telephone interview with the FT, Mr Gaidar said the doctors had so far been unable to identify the cause of the violent vomiting and bleeding that he suffered during a conference in Ireland.
Anatoly Chubais, his former associate and the head of Russia’s electricity monopoly, said he suspected Mr Gaidar may have been poisoned.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1bc23f9c-7f21-11db-b193-0000779e2340.html
The Kremlin mounted a concerted campaign yesterday to point the finger of suspicion at the billionaire businessman Boris Berezovsky over the death of his friend, Alexander Litvinenko, after traces of radioactive polonium-210 were found at the London offices of the exiled Russian oligarch.
Senior figures in the Russian establishment lined up to implicate Mr Berezovsky, who employed and funded the former KGB spy.
The billionaire, who has been granted asylum in Britain, last night issued a statement mourning Mr Litvinenko’s death and saying that he had “complete faith” that Scotland Yard would conduct a “thorough and professional investigation”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2477277,00.html#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=World
The poisoning of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko would have required considerable scientific know-how, according to experts.
Mr Litvinenko's death on 23 November was linked to a "major dose" of radioactive polonium-210 found in his body.
Traces of radiation have since been found at five locations around London, including a sushi restaurant and hotel visited by the deceased.
But the radioactive substance implicated is as difficult to obtain as it can be to detect.
Polonium-210 occurs naturally in the environment and in people at low concentrations. But acquiring enough of it to kill would require individuals with expertise and powerful connections. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6190144.stm Posted at 09:39 pm by Psychomike
Catholics To Return To Latin Mass
RICE TO MEET WITH PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT, BRUSSELS TALKS BACK FULL UK/ ULSTER COLLABORATION INVESTIGATION, POPE CALLS FOR TOLERANCE, INSIDE TERROR FUNDING!
US President George W. Bush accused Iran and Syria of undermining the government in Lebanon on Tuesday. "That government is being undermined, in my opinion, by extremist forces encouraged out of Syria and Iran," Bush said during a stopover in Estonia before heading to a NATO summit in neighboring Latvia.
He added that a democratic Lebanon "will be a major defeat for those who articulate extremist point of views."
Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem accused the US and France Tuesday of interference over Lebanon and rejected similar accusations leveled by Paris on Damascus.
Moallem branded as "nonsense" US and French allegations surrounding Syria's role in the killings of Lebanese political figures.
"We know who's interfering, the Americans and the French," he said, speaking on the sidelines of a Euromed summit of EU and Mediterranean foreign ministers held in Tampere, Finland. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=77244
TEHRAN: Iran said on Tuesday it would let the UN nuclear watchdog take further environmental sampling of materials related to an academic centre, where Washington fears work to make atomic bombs was conducted.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said it has questions about Iran's nuclear programme before it can declare that Tehran's aims are peaceful. The West accuses Iran of trying to make atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3882568a12,00.html
Tony Blair vowed today that "no diplomatic or political barrier" would be allowed to hamper the police investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy who died of radiation poisoning last week.
Speaking in Copenhagen, before he travelled to Riga, Latvia, for a NATO summit, the Prime Minister described the case as "very serious". If necessary, he said that he would take up the matter with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I have not spoken to President Putin but I will do so at any time that is appropriate," said Blair."There is no diplomatic or political barrier in the way of (the) investigation going wherever it needs to go." http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=9426
U.N.-backed government forces battled renegade troops loyal to a local warlord in a fourth day of fighting Tuesday in eastern Congo, where a U.N. helicopter strafed hills as hundreds of people fled the area.
Ending such violence in the country's lawless east is a major challenge for President Joseph Kabila, who was declared official winner of Congo's landmark presidential ballot a day earlier by the Supreme Court. http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/11/28/congo.ap/index.html
Relatives of six men murdered when loyalists sprayed a Northern Ireland bar with bullets have told MEPs that British security forces colluded in the atrocity.
Ulster Volunteer Force killers carried out the massacre at Loughinisland’s Heights Bar and the families have claimed they were aided by British State agents.
They were in Brussels today meeting leaders of all the major parties, many of whom pledged support.
Patrick McCreanor, whose family lost two generations in the attack, said he was delighted by the all-party support.
“If things were right at home we should not have to do this. If the police had tried to investigate this properly we would not be here,” he said.
“Although I have no reason to believe the Police Ombudsman will not do her job properly, we want to make sure there’s no slippage and no stone left unturned.
“There’s not a day goes by that you don’t think of your loved ones at all but it is important to remember that there were also survivors and we are fighting for them as well.”
Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan is holding an inquiry into the police investigation.
http://www.eecho.ie/news/bstory.asp?j=86680040&p=8668x34z&n=86680420
Responding to rumors that Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) will soon issue a motu proprio encouraging broader use of the pre-conciliar liturgy, the Archdiocese of Genoa, Italy, has posted a detailed notice assuring the faithful that the traditional liturgy was not abolished by the Second Vatican Council.
The notice, published on the web site of the Genoa archdiocese on November 27, does not specifically confirm the widespread reports that a motu proprio is imminent. However, after saying that "misleading comments that are in circulation" call for a response, the statement emphasizes that the Pope has the authority to issue new liturgical norms. In order to preserve full communion within the Church, all Catholics should follow those norms, the statement adds.
Regarding the traditional liturgy, the Genoa archdiocese states: "The Second Vatican Council did not abolish or ask for the abolition of the Mass of Pius V." Rather, the Council sought a reform of that liturgy. http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=47887
Senior U.S. and North Korean officials plan to meet in Beijing on Wednesday as they try to prepare for fresh multilateral talks on ending Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear arms, the U.S. State Department said on Tuesday.
The meeting between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and North Korean senior envoy Kim Kye-gwan would be their second in two days following a round of talks in Beijing on Tuesday.
Those discussions largely focused on what the United States wants North Korea to do to demonstrate its commitment to giving up its nuclear weapons programs, said a senior State Department official who spoke on condition that he not be identified. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15938614/
Many college students go through a spiritual crisis but rarely does it turn out as it did for Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a Jew who converted to Islam and went to work in a small town in Oregon for a charity that has since been linked to Al Qaeda.
Gartenstein-Ross, 30, has now changed tacks again, converting to Christianity and using his background as a former Islamist insider to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation crack down on Islamist terror networks in the United States.
A rising star in the counterterrorism community, he testified before Congress in September about the dangers of radical Islamist indoctrination in U.S. prisons and the recruitment of potential terrorists among inmates. Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut praised him as a key player in the government's efforts against the U.S. arm of the Haramain Islamic Foundation, a large Saudi charity, that was shut down in 2004 by the U.S. authorities after the U.S. Treasury Department designated it a terrorist-supporting entity with ties to Al Qaeda.
Gartenstein-Ross describes his unusual journey in "My Year Inside Radical Islam," a memoir of the nine months he spent with Al Haramain to be published in February.
Adopting Wahhabism, the Saudi rigorist interpretation of Islam, he stopped shaking hands with women, listening to music, wearing shorts, and playing computer games. He grew a full beard, endorsed the gay-bashing and conspiracy theories of his mentors, and found himself praying for the victory of mujahedeen, or Muslim holy warriors, around the world. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/27/news/memoir.php
| Pope, in Turkey, Appeals for Religious Tolerance |
By Sabina Castelfranco
Istanbul
28 November 2006
|
| Castelfranco report (Real Audio) - Download 235K 
Listen to Castelfranco report (Real Audio)
Pope Benedict XVI ended the first day of his visit to Turkey urging all religious leaders to "utterly refuse" to support any form of violence in the name of faith. He also spoke of his concern for increasing conflict and acts of terrorism in the Middle East. Sabina Castelfranco reports for VOA from Istanbul.
 |
|
Pope Benedict XVI adresses diplomats gathered at the Vatican Embassy in Ankara, 28 Nov. 2006
BREAKING NEWS:
The U.S. State Department has confirmed that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank Thursday to try to build momentum in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. U.S. officials are encouraged by this week's Gaza cease-fire and conciliatory speech by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
Rice will be meeting Thursday at a Jordanian Dead Sea resort with foreign ministers from moderate Arab states and the G-8 industrialized countries.
Thus, she'll only have a few kilometers to travel for the session with Mr. Abbas, to be held in the West Bank town of Jericho near the Jordanian border.
That meeting comes against a background of hopeful news for the first time in months on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
That includes a largely effective cease-fire in Gaza, and an address by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Monday offering peace talks and concessions if a Palestinian government is formed that accepts Israel and renounces violence. http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-11-28-voa65.cfm |
Pope Benedict's last public meeting on his first day in Turkey was an address to diplomats at the apostolic mission in Ankara.
The pope expressed concern that conflict and acts of terrorism are growing in the Middle East.
"I am particularly thinking of the conflict in the Middle East," the pope said, "which continues in a disturbing way to weigh heavily on the whole of international life."
The pope spoke of his concern about the risk of peripheral conflicts multiplying and terrorist actions spreading.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-11-28-voa63.cfm Posted at 03:50 pm by Psychomike
|
|
|
