‘It’s got suicide bombers, political kidnaps and intercontinental war. It’s got filthy propaganda, rampant paranoia and secret treaties…
… and the Axis of Evil is a spinner in the middle of the board. You can fight terrorism, you can fund terrorism, you can even be the terrorists. The only thing that matters is global domination – err, liberation.’
‘Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company’s transactions “drug deals” – but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old.’
‘[..] If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy – but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.
As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.’
‘The Taleban in Afghanistan have used a boy of around 12 to behead a man they accused of spying for the US.
Parts of a video of the beheading were broadcast on the Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV network.
The Taleban said the dead man, Ghulam Nabi, had given the US information which led to an air strike in which a senior Taleban commander died.
The video footage shows Mr Nabi being blindfolded with a chequered scarf and making what is said to be a confession.
The boy, wearing a camouflage jacket and wielding a large knife, denounces him as a spy and then cuts off his head.’
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‘Saudi Arabia has agreed to forgive 80 percent of the more than $15 billion that Iraq owes the kingdom, Iraqi and Saudi officials said yesterday, a major step given Saudi reluctance to provide financial assistance to the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad.
But Iraqi Finance Minister Bayan Jabr said in an interview that Russia was holding out on debt forgiveness until talks begin on concessions that Russian oil and gas companies had under Saddam Hussein. Russian Embassy officials in Washington declined to comment late yesterday.’
‘A sidescroller with a difference. In IndestructoTank, your only weapon against the enemy is yourself – launch yourself at the enemy in this nice little physics based game. Hope you have fun!’
‘Three Japanese naval officers who swapped pornography on their computers triggered a scandal over a possible leak of sensitive data linked to Japan’s missile defense system, a newspaper said Thursday.
Police launched a probe last week after a navy officer married to a Chinese woman was found to have taken home a computer disk containing information about the high-tech Aegis radar system, domestic media said.
Aegis is used on Japanese destroyers that are to be fitted with SM-3 missile interceptors from this year as part of the missile defense program.
The officer told police he accidentally copied the confidential data onto his computer’s hard disk when copying porn from a computer belonging to a crew member from another destroyer, the Yomiuri newspaper reported.’
‘When Adolf Hitler was awarded German citizenship, he abruptly brushed off the congratulations: “You should congratulate Germany, not me!”
It was Feb. 25, 1932 and Hitler had just been naturalized after being appointed as a civil servant in the then-free state of Braunschweig — a crucial step for the continuation of his political career.
Three quarters of a century later, Isolde Saalmann, a Social Democratic member of Lower Saxony’s regional parliament, would like nothing better than to rescind this momentous bureaucratic act. [..]’
‘Marine veteran Jonathan Schulze survived the war in Iraq but almost two years after he came home, it ended up killing him, reports The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. [..]
“She asked, ‘Why do you want to be seen?’ and I was standing behind him and he was sitting in a chair, his shoulders were slumped and Jim was standing in the doorway and he said, ‘I feel suicidal,’ ” Marianne Schulze said.
His parents say the VA told Jonathan they couldn’t admit him that day and asked if he would call back the next day. He did but was told he was number 26 on a waiting-list and the VA didn’t have enough beds for him. Four days later he hung himself.’
‘The uncoupling of American evangelism from the administration of George Bush gathered pace yesterday when one of the largest national umbrella groups of socially conservative Christians issued a statement critical of US policy towards detainees and repudiating torture as a tactic in the war on terror.
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which represents about 45,000 churches across America, endorsed a declaration against torture drafted by 17 evangelical scholars. The authors, who call themselves Evangelicals for Human Rights and campaign for “zero tolerance” on torture, say that the US administration has crossed “boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible” in the treatment of detainees.
“Tragically, documented cases of torture and inhumane and cruel behaviour have occurred at various sites in the war on terror, and current law opens procedural loopholes for more to continue,” the NAE said last night.’
‘Close to three-quarters of American youth are ineligible to serve in the Army and patriotism among the country’s recruitable population has been sliding since 2002. [..]
According to Wallace, only 27 percent of youth between the ages of 17 and 24 are eligible for recruiting.
The remaining 73 percent, he said, “are morally, intellectually or physically” unfit for service. “It’s the lowest it’s been in more than 10 years.”
College, he said, is now the preferred post-high school activity and youths surveyed said they perceived the Army as “ordinary.” [..]
Referring to the Army’s four-month-old “Army strong” recruiting ad campaign, Wallace said the study showed that 80 percent of youths don’t watch commercials [..]’
‘Halliburton, the big energy services company, said today that it would open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai and move its chairman and chief executive, David J. Lesar, there.
The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its incorporation in the United States. [..]
The announcement about the Dubai move, which Halliburton made at a regional energy conference in Bahrain, comes at a time when the company is being investigated by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegations of improper dealings in Iraq, Kuwait and Nigeria. Halliburton has also paid out billions in settlements in asbestos litigation.’
‘An elite group of Native American trackers is joining the hunt for terrorists crossing Afghanistan’s borders.
The unit, the Shadow Wolves, was recruited from several tribes, including the Navajo, Sioux, Lakota and Apache. It is being sent to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to pass on ancestral sign-reading skills to local border units.
In recent years, members of the Shadow Wolves have mainly tracked smugglers along the US border with Mexico.
But the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan and the US military’s failure to hunt down Osama bin Laden – still at large on his 50th birthday on Saturday – has prompted the Pentagon to requisition them.
US Defence Secretary Robert M.Gates said last month: “If I were Osama bin Laden, I’d keep looking over my shoulder.”‘
‘The Israeli army is investigating whether its troops used two Palestinian children as human shields during a house search operation in the West Bank, after claims by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.
The use of human shields to deter gunmen from opening fire on soldiers has been banned by the Israeli supreme court and forbidden by the army. However, the practice, in which soldiers force Palestinians to approach, enter and search buildings where they believe a gunman may be hiding, remains common. [..]
Mr Amira’s cousin, 15-year-old Amid Amira, told B’Tselem that soldiers also forced him to search three houses, making him enter rooms, empty cupboards and open windows. And an 11-year-old girl, Jihan Dadush, told B’Tselem that soldiers took her from her home three days later, on February 28, forcing her to go into a neighbouring apartment ahead of them. [..]’
‘Tony Lagouranis doesn’t fit the profile of a person likely to go wrong by following orders. He’s lived a footloose life unconstrained by a desire for professional advancement, for the approval of superiors, even for a comfortable home. A freethinker, he read the great works of Western civilization in college and mastered classical languages. It was his desire to learn Arabic as well that took him to Iraq.
And there, as an army interrogator, he tortured detainees for information he admits they rarely had. Since leaving Iraq he’s taken this story public, doing battle on national television against the war’s architects for giving him the orders he regrets he obeyed.’
‘Joshua Key, 28, was a poor, uneducated Oklahoma country boy who saw the U.S. army and its promised benefits — from free health care to career training — as the ticket to a better life. In 2002, not yet 24 but already married and the father of two , Key enlisted. He says his recruiting officer promised he’d never be deployed abroad, but a year later he was in Iraq. Only 24 hours after arriving, as Key recounts in The Deserter’s Tale (Anansi), he experienced his first doubts about what he and his fellow soldiers were doing there [..]’
‘Invocon, Inc., one of dozens of companies expected to showcase their wares at the forum, says it’ll be there to display its “non-lethal, stand-off weapon for military and law enforcement personnel that could ultimately work through walls and other non-metallic structures.” [..]
Wow! Through the walls? That even beats the Active Denial System — the pain ray that Noah wrote about the other day. Invocon even touts its device as a “Star Trek hand-held Phaser Weapon set on ‘Stun’.”
However, rather than causing intense pain, like the Active Denial System, Invocon is advertising a weapon that boasts the ability to go through walls and incapacitate everyone in a room by making them lose their balance. “Second order effects would be extreme motion sickness,” the company notes.’
‘The Bush administration selected a design Friday for a new generation of atomic warheads, taking a major step toward building the first new nuclear weapon since the end of the Cold War nearly two decades ago.
The military and the Energy Department selected a design developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California over a competing design by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
The decision to move ahead with the warhead, which eventually would replace the existing arsenal of weapons, has been criticized as sending the wrong signal to the world at a time when the United States is assailing attempts at nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran and striving to contain them.’
‘What began as a routine training exercise for some Swiss soldiers almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident, when the troops got lost at night and mistakenly marched into neighbouring Liechtenstein.
According to the Swiss newspaper Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than 1.5-kilometres across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday, but they soon realized their mistake and turned back.
A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story, but said there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.
Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident, with Interior Ministry spokesman Markus Amman saying nobody in his country had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition.’
‘Opium production in Afghanistan reached record levels last year, the United States has said.
The US State Department’s annual report on narcotics also said the flourishing drugs trade was undermining the fight against the Taleban.
It warned of a possible increase in heroin overdoses in Europe and the Middle East as a result.’
‘Significant new capabilities have been added to the US Air Force’s latest superfighter, the F-22 “Raptor”. The USAF’s Raptors cost more than $300m each, and are generally thought to be the most advanced combat jets in service worldwide. However, until recently they were unable to cross the international date line owing to a software bug in their navigation systems.
A group of F-22s heading across the Pacific for exercises in Japan earlier this month suffered simultaneous total nav-console crashes as their longitude shifted from 180 degrees West to 180 East.
Luckily, the superjets were accompanied by tanker planes, whose navigation kit was somewhat less bleeding-edge and remained functional. The tanker drivers were able to guide the lost top-guns back to Hawaii and the exercises were postponed.’
‘A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at the her local market found a live grenade among the spuds.
“I found a bomb in the potatoes,” Olga Mauriello said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
“I went to the market to buy some potatoes and that’s where the bomb was. But this bomb was covered in dirt, and I put it in water and got all dirt off. And then I realized ‘It’s a bomb’!”‘
‘The U.N. human rights chief expressed concern Wednesday at recent U.S. legislative and judicial actions that she said leave hundreds of detainees without any way to challenge their indefinite imprisonment. [..]
“I am very concerned that we continue to see detention without trial and with, in my opinion, insufficient judicial supervision,” Arbour told a news conference after meeting with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
“I thought there had been progress in that direction. There’s been a legislative setback now recently in my view, a judicial decision,” she said. These people have “no credible mechanism to ascertain the validity of these … suspicious or allegations.”‘
‘The highest U.N. court cleared Serbia on Monday of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war, but said Belgrade had violated its obligation to prevent and punish the mass killing.
Bosnia had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on whether Serbia committed genocide through the killing, rape and ethnic cleansing that ravaged Bosnia during the war, in one of the court’s biggest cases in its 60-year history.
It was the first time a state had been tried for genocide, outlawed in a U.N. convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust.’
‘Three Arab states in the Persian Gulf would be willing to allow the Israel Air force to enter their airspace in order to reach Iran in case of an attack on its nuclear facilities, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa reported on Sunday.
According to the report, a diplomat from one of the gulf states visiting Washington on Saturday said the three states, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, have told the United States that they would not object to Israel using their airspace, despite their fear of an Iranian response.’
‘The Ministry of Defence funded a secret study to ascertain whether people with psychic powers could help protect the nation, it emerged last night.
The MoD arranged the tests to discover whether volunteers were able to use psychic powers to “remotely view” hidden objects. The studyinvolved blindfolding test subjects and asking them to “see” the contents of sealed brown envelopes containing pictures of random objects and public figures.
Defence experts tried to recruit 12 “known” psychics who advertised their abilities on the internet, but when they all refused they were forced to use “novice” volunteers.
The MoD last night defended the cost of the experiment, carried out in 2002, in which commercial researchers were contracted at a cost of £18,000 to test them to see if psychic ability existed in case it could be used in defence [..]’
This guy is showing off, and it almost ends badly. Pretty cool tho. 🙂
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‘The United States is stepping up covert operations in Iran in a new strategy that risks sparking an “open confrontation” and benefits Sunni radicals, a US magazine reported Sunday.
In The New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh reports that US military and special-operations teams have increased their activities inside Iran, entering from Iraq to gather intelligence and to pursue Iranian operatives.’
‘On 17 July 1962, a caravan of scientists, military men, and dignitaries crossed the remote desert of southern Nevada to witness a historic event. Among the crowd were VIPs such as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and presidential adviser General Maxwell D. Taylor who had come to observe the “Little Feller I” test shot, the final phase of Operation Sunbeam. The main attraction was a secret device which was bolted to the roof of an armored personnel carrier, a contraption called the The Davy Crockett Weapon System.’
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