Europe is its overall timid and temperate participation in Afghanistan and the Sudan’s Darfur an example of its preference for the timidity of impotence or see no evil, hear no evil, and most especially, speak of no evil, narcissism?
European mission gets rocky start
PARIS - Even before its troops got lost and came under fire this week in Sudan, Europe's mission to protect some half-million uprooted people on the borders of conflict-torn Darfur had suffered an inauspicious start.
European nations were slow to contribute troops to the force, with some wary of being dragged by France, the one-time colonial power in the region, into an ill-advised adventure in a dangerous, unstable part of Africa.
Some African leaders were suspicious if not downright hostile to the idea of Europeans policing their backyard. Sudan, in particular, has long resisted international involvement in efforts to bring safety and peace to the people of Darfur, where fighting has killed more than 200,000 people and created 2.5 million refugees since 2003.
It's too early to tell whether contributing European nations are prepared to accept large numbers of casualties among their troops or an extended campaign in the region, as some experts warn. France, which is contributing the bulk of the force, has over the years grown used to seeing its forces sustain casualties in Africa. But other countries may not be so tolerant of troop losses or a long-term commitment.
Europe's military capabilities — in decline since the Cold War's end and already stretched by Afghanistan and Iraq — struggled to meet the call for contributions to the force.
Shortages of helicopters, vital for quickly flying peacekeepers over hostile terrain, contributed to months of delay, as did questions over how the European Union would pay for it all. Initial hopes the deployment would start last November proved wildly overoptimistic.
Now that European boots are finally hitting African soil, the shooting Monday in Sudan of two French peacekeepers — wounding one and leaving the other missing — has shown the force could be headed for a tough time.
The French special forces troops in a jeep crossed inadvertently from Chad into Sudan, where they were fired upon at close range even after they identified themselves, said French Defense Minister Herve Morin. Other French troops later returned to the area to try to find the missing soldier; they were also fired on and fired back, Morin said.
In the border zones where eastern Chad, the northern corner of Central African Republic and Sudan's Darfur region meet, the European force, known as EUFOR, will be operating amid rebellions and rivalries, conflict and geopolitical intrigue. They will be trying to provide security for some half-million uprooted people forced to take shelter in more than 130 refugee camps, villages and makeshift sites, over an area larger than Britain.
The force's mission is not to secure the borders themselves, but to protect civilians, aid workers and U.N. personnel. So far, 14 countries have promised troops. A French diplomat said another two or three countries have also offered to take part.
But the force's neutrality has been called into question by the fact that, of the 3,800 planned troops, 2,100 are coming from France — West Africa's one-time colonial overlord that still calls the shots there, raising African hackles, even though French President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised a less colonialist approach.
France is the key supporter of Chadian President Idriss Deby. It helped Deby fight off rebels who swarmed on his capital in February. Some rebels have warned they regard EUFOR as nothing more than a French-tainted occupying force coming to prop up Deby.
"EUFOR has a very difficult task mainly due to the high proportion of French troops in its ranks," Daniela Kroslak, deputy Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, said in a telephone interview.
That is just one of the complexities facing the force. Chad and France also accuse Sudan of arming anti-Deby rebels. Oil-rich Sudan is in turn backed by energy-hungry China. China is facing pressure internationally ahead of this summer's Beijing Olympics to get Sudan to ease off on Darfur.
An array of potential military, logistical and geopolitical traps lurk for the force's Irish commander, Lt. Gen. Patrick Nash.
There are also basic questions about whether Nash will have enough troops and equipment to get the job done, and whether the one-year timeframe for the mission is realistic. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology research paper in November suggested that closer to 12,500 EUFOR troops would be needed and that the current numbers seem "well below the required force size for the mission."
The expected high financial cost of the mission could also become problematic if it drags on. Even though the force is being sent in the name of the entire 27-nation EU, costs fall unevenly on countries that send the most troops, said a French diplomat who spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
"The more you contribute, the more you pay," he said. "It's very clear that a bundle of countries, including recently the Poles, tell us, 'We are going to take part, that is clear, but we have real worries.'"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080304/ap_on_...mission_to_chad
THAT IS ALL!!
Full Version: ONE VOICE!!
The danger from within is real but inconsequential for the most part. It nexus from this alter-nut-root of inbred evil America mentality, which is becoming more predominate among America’s Majority of minorities in both ideologues and intent, is perhaps, as the bombing of the Times Square Recruiting station, and Uibber-nazism of Berkley indictaes a growing frustratation by the minority within a minority, whose stature of ineffective influence grows more and more irrelavant every day as the news from Iraq and Afghanistant goes against them and their Jihadist friends by proxy.
Ex-sailor convicted in terror case
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - A former Navy sailor was convicted Wednesday of leaking details about ship movements to suspected terrorism supporters, an act that could have endangered his own crewmates.
[
B]Jurors convicted Hassan Abu-Jihaad, 32, of Phoenix of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense information on the second day of deliberations.[/B]
The American-born Muslim convert formerly known as Paul R. Hall faces up to 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced May 23. His attorneys said they were disappointed, and that an appeal was likely.
The leak came amid increased wariness on the part of U.S. Navy commanders whose ships headed to the Persian Gulf in the months after a terrorist ambush in 2000 killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole.
Abu-Jihaad, who was a signalman aboard the USS Benfold, was accused of passing along details that included the makeup of his Navy battle group, its planned movements and a drawing of the group's formation when it was to pass through the dangerous Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf on April 29, 2001.
Abu-Jihaad's attorney said a four-year investigation that spanned two continents failed to turn up proof that Abu-Jihaad leaked details of ship movements and their vulnerability to attack.
Federal prosecutors said he sympathized with the enemy and admitted disclosing military intelligence. But they acknowledged they did not have direct proof that he leaked the ship details.
Authorities said the details of ship movements had to have been leaked by an insider, saying they were not publicly known and contained military jargon. The leaked documents closely matched what Abu-Jihaad would have had access to as a signalman, authorities said.
Dan LaBelle, Abu-Jihaad's attorney, tried to show that many details of ship movements he was accused of leaking to suspected terrorism supporters were publicly available through news reports, press releases and Web sites. He also noted that Navy officials testified that the details were full of errors.
Prosecutors say investigators discovered files on a computer disk recovered from a suspected terrorism supporter's home in London that included the ship movements, as well as the number and type of personnel on each ship and the ships' capabilities. The file ended with instructions to destroy the message, according to testimony.
Abu-Jihaad was charged in the same case that led to the 2004 arrest of Babar Ahmad, a British computer specialist accused of running Web sites to raise money, appeal for fighters and provide equipment such as gas masks and night vision goggles for terrorists. Ahmad, who lived with his parents where the computer file was allegedly found, is to be extradited to the U.S.
Abu-Jihaad, who was honorably discharged in 2002, was prosecuted in New Haven because the investigation
first focused on a Connecticut-based Internet service provider.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080305/ap_on_re_us/navy_terror
Seized laptop shows Chavez's rebel ties ( FARC)
BOGOTA, Colombia - Files in a laptop computer seized from the wreckage of a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador offer new insights into Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's desire to undermine Colombia's U.S.-allied government.
If authentic, the computer files suggest Chavez has been in league with the rebels for more than a decade.
While Chavez is not one of the correspondents, his sentiments are conveyed in numerous messages
exchanged by the rebels.
Venezuela contends the texts are lies and fabrications.
If so, they are expertly done.
Not only do they offer an unprecedented glimpse into the rebels' mind-set, they also reflect deepening rebel contacts with European governments and even representatives of the United States, who have tried to negotiate the release of dozens of hostages.
They are signed electronically by the most powerful men in the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the hemisphere's oldest and most potent rebel movement.
Those signing the documents include Raul Reyes, the FARC's foreign minister and public face, who was killed when Colombian commandos raided his jungle hideout in Ecuador on Saturday. His killing, along with 23 of his comrades, struck a chilling blow to the group.
Others who signed messages include Manuel Marulanda, the rebels' 77-year-old supreme leader; Jorge Briceno, their much-feared field marshal, and Ivan Marquez, the insurgents' apparent go-between with Chavez. Marquez is believed to live in Venezuela.
Copies of 13 documents were sent to reporters Tuesday by Colombia's national police chief, Gen. Oscar Naranjo. He revealed their existence Sunday as his government came under a withering diplomatic attack for violating Ecuador's territory with the raid.
They indicate that Chavez, seeking to raise the FARC's stature and relieve it of its international pariah status, shares their goal of isolating and discrediting Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe.
But do they prove that Venezuela was actually financing the FARC's bid to overthrow a democratically elected government? That's not clear.
Naranjo alleges that the number "300," also called the "dossier" in a Dec. 23 message signed by Marquez, refers to a $300 million gift from Chavez to the rebels.
In a Jan. 14 missive, Briceno discusses what to do with the "dossier."
"Who, where, when and how will we receive the dollars and store them?" he asks fellow members of the FARC's seven-man ruling secretariat.
Uribe has worked as no other Colombian president to defeat the FARC. So it's no surprise that in the Jan. 14 message, Briceno discusses a desire to undermine Uribe by making him cede a safe haven to the rebels for talks on a prisoner swap.
"Uribe will become more isolated, together with his boss from the North," the text says — a clear reference to President Bush, whose government provides Colombia with some $600 million a year in military aid.
In a document dated Feb. 9, Marquez passes along Chavez's thanks for a $150,000 gift when he was imprisoned from 1992-94 for leading a failed coup — and indicates Chavez's desire to smear Uribe.
In it, Marquez says Venezuela wants documentation of damage by Colombia's military to "the civilian population, also images of bombardments in the jungle and its devastation — to use as a denunciation before the world."
In a Feb. 8 letter, Marquez discusses Chavez's plan to try to persuade leading Latin American nations to help get the FARC removed from lists of international terror groups.
And at least three of the documents express Chavez's deep desire to meet with Marulanda, hopefully on Venezuelan soil. Marulanda has reportedly never left Colombia.
Marquez also says Chavez is prepared to offer Venezuelan territory for the FARC's desired prisoner swap, which would be a huge embarrassment for Uribe. The FARC has proposed exchanging some 40 hostages, including three U.S. military contractors, for hundreds of rebels currently in Colombia's jails. The FARC captured the three when their surveillance plane crashed in February 2003.
In the Feb. 9 letter, Marquez also relays Chavez's concern about the 60-year U.S. prison sentence given to FARC commander Ricardo Palmera for conspiring to hold the three Americans hostage. He writes that Chavez "was disposed to hire paid lawyers," presumably for Palmera.
The messages indicate Chavez believes his rebel sympathies may have hurt him politically. One communication said Chavez told a rebel contact that this public support may have contributed to his loss of a Dec. 2 referendum that would have consolidated his power.
Chavez's ally, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, was similarly engaged with the rebels, the documents indicate.
Before Saturday's raid, Correa's official position was that he wouldn't take sides. But in a Jan. 18 message, Reyes says he received Ecuadorean Internal Security Minister Gustavo Larrea and another envoy who expressed Correa's interest "in making official relations with the FARC's leadership."
Correa's government was willing "to change officers in the security forces who have been hostile to communities and civilians" in the border area where the FARC has camps, Reyes said. Ecuador even offered to "give documentation and protection to one of ours," he wrote.
Larrea has acknowledged the meeting but said it was only to press for the hostages' release.
The rebels have released six hostages — all Colombian politicians — since Uribe tried to end Chavez's mediation role with the FARC in November, accusing the Venezuelan president of overstepping his mandate.
The most recent to be freed said last week that hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who also holds French citizenship, is extremely ill.
Betancourt has become a cause celebre in France. French contacts with Reyes are mentioned in several documents, including a request that the French envoy, identified only as "Noe," be granted a meeting with Marulanda.
References to U.S. diplomatic overtures are scintillating, if vague.
In a Dec. 11 message to the secretariat, Marquez writes: "If you are in agreement, I can receive Jim and Tucker to hear the proposal of the gringos."
Writing two days before his death, Reyes tells his comrades that "the gringos," working through Ecuador's government, are interested "in talking to us on various issues."
"They say the new president of their country will be (Barack) Obama," he writes, saying Obama rejects both the Bush administration's free trade agreement with Colombia and the current military aid program.
Reyes writes that his response to the Americans was that the United States would have to publicly express these positions
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080305/ap_on_...bia_farc_laptop
That is All!!
Ex-sailor convicted in terror case
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - A former Navy sailor was convicted Wednesday of leaking details about ship movements to suspected terrorism supporters, an act that could have endangered his own crewmates.
[
B]Jurors convicted Hassan Abu-Jihaad, 32, of Phoenix of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing classified national defense information on the second day of deliberations.[/B]
The American-born Muslim convert formerly known as Paul R. Hall faces up to 25 years in federal prison when he is sentenced May 23. His attorneys said they were disappointed, and that an appeal was likely.
The leak came amid increased wariness on the part of U.S. Navy commanders whose ships headed to the Persian Gulf in the months after a terrorist ambush in 2000 killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole.
Abu-Jihaad, who was a signalman aboard the USS Benfold, was accused of passing along details that included the makeup of his Navy battle group, its planned movements and a drawing of the group's formation when it was to pass through the dangerous Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf on April 29, 2001.
Abu-Jihaad's attorney said a four-year investigation that spanned two continents failed to turn up proof that Abu-Jihaad leaked details of ship movements and their vulnerability to attack.
Federal prosecutors said he sympathized with the enemy and admitted disclosing military intelligence. But they acknowledged they did not have direct proof that he leaked the ship details.
Authorities said the details of ship movements had to have been leaked by an insider, saying they were not publicly known and contained military jargon. The leaked documents closely matched what Abu-Jihaad would have had access to as a signalman, authorities said.
Dan LaBelle, Abu-Jihaad's attorney, tried to show that many details of ship movements he was accused of leaking to suspected terrorism supporters were publicly available through news reports, press releases and Web sites. He also noted that Navy officials testified that the details were full of errors.
Prosecutors say investigators discovered files on a computer disk recovered from a suspected terrorism supporter's home in London that included the ship movements, as well as the number and type of personnel on each ship and the ships' capabilities. The file ended with instructions to destroy the message, according to testimony.
Abu-Jihaad was charged in the same case that led to the 2004 arrest of Babar Ahmad, a British computer specialist accused of running Web sites to raise money, appeal for fighters and provide equipment such as gas masks and night vision goggles for terrorists. Ahmad, who lived with his parents where the computer file was allegedly found, is to be extradited to the U.S.
Abu-Jihaad, who was honorably discharged in 2002, was prosecuted in New Haven because the investigation
first focused on a Connecticut-based Internet service provider.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080305/ap_on_re_us/navy_terror
Seized laptop shows Chavez's rebel ties ( FARC)
BOGOTA, Colombia - Files in a laptop computer seized from the wreckage of a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador offer new insights into Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's desire to undermine Colombia's U.S.-allied government.
If authentic, the computer files suggest Chavez has been in league with the rebels for more than a decade.
While Chavez is not one of the correspondents, his sentiments are conveyed in numerous messages
exchanged by the rebels.
Venezuela contends the texts are lies and fabrications.
If so, they are expertly done.
Not only do they offer an unprecedented glimpse into the rebels' mind-set, they also reflect deepening rebel contacts with European governments and even representatives of the United States, who have tried to negotiate the release of dozens of hostages.
They are signed electronically by the most powerful men in the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the hemisphere's oldest and most potent rebel movement.
Those signing the documents include Raul Reyes, the FARC's foreign minister and public face, who was killed when Colombian commandos raided his jungle hideout in Ecuador on Saturday. His killing, along with 23 of his comrades, struck a chilling blow to the group.
Others who signed messages include Manuel Marulanda, the rebels' 77-year-old supreme leader; Jorge Briceno, their much-feared field marshal, and Ivan Marquez, the insurgents' apparent go-between with Chavez. Marquez is believed to live in Venezuela.
Copies of 13 documents were sent to reporters Tuesday by Colombia's national police chief, Gen. Oscar Naranjo. He revealed their existence Sunday as his government came under a withering diplomatic attack for violating Ecuador's territory with the raid.
They indicate that Chavez, seeking to raise the FARC's stature and relieve it of its international pariah status, shares their goal of isolating and discrediting Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe.
But do they prove that Venezuela was actually financing the FARC's bid to overthrow a democratically elected government? That's not clear.
Naranjo alleges that the number "300," also called the "dossier" in a Dec. 23 message signed by Marquez, refers to a $300 million gift from Chavez to the rebels.
In a Jan. 14 missive, Briceno discusses what to do with the "dossier."
"Who, where, when and how will we receive the dollars and store them?" he asks fellow members of the FARC's seven-man ruling secretariat.
Uribe has worked as no other Colombian president to defeat the FARC. So it's no surprise that in the Jan. 14 message, Briceno discusses a desire to undermine Uribe by making him cede a safe haven to the rebels for talks on a prisoner swap.
"Uribe will become more isolated, together with his boss from the North," the text says — a clear reference to President Bush, whose government provides Colombia with some $600 million a year in military aid.
In a document dated Feb. 9, Marquez passes along Chavez's thanks for a $150,000 gift when he was imprisoned from 1992-94 for leading a failed coup — and indicates Chavez's desire to smear Uribe.
In it, Marquez says Venezuela wants documentation of damage by Colombia's military to "the civilian population, also images of bombardments in the jungle and its devastation — to use as a denunciation before the world."
In a Feb. 8 letter, Marquez discusses Chavez's plan to try to persuade leading Latin American nations to help get the FARC removed from lists of international terror groups.
And at least three of the documents express Chavez's deep desire to meet with Marulanda, hopefully on Venezuelan soil. Marulanda has reportedly never left Colombia.
Marquez also says Chavez is prepared to offer Venezuelan territory for the FARC's desired prisoner swap, which would be a huge embarrassment for Uribe. The FARC has proposed exchanging some 40 hostages, including three U.S. military contractors, for hundreds of rebels currently in Colombia's jails. The FARC captured the three when their surveillance plane crashed in February 2003.
In the Feb. 9 letter, Marquez also relays Chavez's concern about the 60-year U.S. prison sentence given to FARC commander Ricardo Palmera for conspiring to hold the three Americans hostage. He writes that Chavez "was disposed to hire paid lawyers," presumably for Palmera.
The messages indicate Chavez believes his rebel sympathies may have hurt him politically. One communication said Chavez told a rebel contact that this public support may have contributed to his loss of a Dec. 2 referendum that would have consolidated his power.
Chavez's ally, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, was similarly engaged with the rebels, the documents indicate.
Before Saturday's raid, Correa's official position was that he wouldn't take sides. But in a Jan. 18 message, Reyes says he received Ecuadorean Internal Security Minister Gustavo Larrea and another envoy who expressed Correa's interest "in making official relations with the FARC's leadership."
Correa's government was willing "to change officers in the security forces who have been hostile to communities and civilians" in the border area where the FARC has camps, Reyes said. Ecuador even offered to "give documentation and protection to one of ours," he wrote.
Larrea has acknowledged the meeting but said it was only to press for the hostages' release.
The rebels have released six hostages — all Colombian politicians — since Uribe tried to end Chavez's mediation role with the FARC in November, accusing the Venezuelan president of overstepping his mandate.
The most recent to be freed said last week that hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who also holds French citizenship, is extremely ill.
Betancourt has become a cause celebre in France. French contacts with Reyes are mentioned in several documents, including a request that the French envoy, identified only as "Noe," be granted a meeting with Marulanda.
References to U.S. diplomatic overtures are scintillating, if vague.
In a Dec. 11 message to the secretariat, Marquez writes: "If you are in agreement, I can receive Jim and Tucker to hear the proposal of the gringos."
Writing two days before his death, Reyes tells his comrades that "the gringos," working through Ecuador's government, are interested "in talking to us on various issues."
"They say the new president of their country will be (Barack) Obama," he writes, saying Obama rejects both the Bush administration's free trade agreement with Colombia and the current military aid program.
Reyes writes that his response to the Americans was that the United States would have to publicly express these positions
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080305/ap_on_...bia_farc_laptop
That is All!!
ONE VOICE!
Obama-nation the myth of legends, mystified?
Shout victory, then count, victories won by a minority within a minority in both impact and context.
Of Obama’s 14 victories so well acclaimed from Berkley to Paris is a fact that 10 (71.43%) of those victories, which were at best pseudo-victories, by party design, where oddly and mysteriously within that minority within a minority of the few venue of caucuses.
(1)Maine- 59.76% (2,079 to 1,397 total votes) 15 to Clintons 9 delegates (+6)
(2)DC- 75.0% (85,340 to 27,626 total votes) 11 to 3 Clintons delegates (+8)
(3)Kansas- 73.99% (27,172 to 9,462 total votes) 23 to 9 Clintons delegates (+14)
(4)Iowa- 37.63% (940 to 737 total votes) 16 to 15 Clintons delegates (+1)
(5)Washington- 68.4% (21,629 to 9.992 total votes) 53 to 25 Clintons delegates (+28)
(6)Colorado- 73.99% (79,344 to 38,587 total votes) 33 to 13 Clintons delegates (+20)
(7)Idaho- 79.0% (16,880 to 3,655 total votes) 15 to 3 Clintons delegates (+12)
(8)N. Dakota 61.0% (11,625 to 6,946 total votes) 8 to 5 Clintons delegates (+3)
(9)Nebraska 61.0% (26,126 to 12,445 total votes) 16 to 8 Clintons delegates (+8)
(10)Wyoming 61.0% (5,378 to 3,381 total votes) 7 to 4 Clintons delegates (+3)
Obama Caucuses total votes 276, 513; Total Delegates; 197 (+103 delegates over Clinton)
CNN count
Obama 1,328 Pledged by vote + 199 super-delegates alleged total 1,527 (+99)
Clinton 1,190 Pledged by vote + 238 super-delegates alleged Total 1,428 (-99)
Difference in delegate votes 99
** (103 (74.64%) were attained by a minority within a minority of the few in the venue of caucuses where the selective few decide for all the masses.
By in large, is this caucus venue of the few, merited in a Democratic or Socialist principle?
Popular vote count with Florida and Michigan; Obama – 13,582,274 Clinton 13,614,381 (+32,107 Clinton)
Popular vote count WITHOUT Florida and Michigan; Obama – 13,006,033 Clinton 12,415,086 (+508,328 Obama)
Look at the numbers, Obama got 14.83% of all his voted for delegates in 10 caucuses , with only 2.04% of his total votes, and less than 1 % of all Democratic primary votes to date.
"change," "unity," and the "audacity of hope."
Why I changed from decades and generates of being a Democrat, to being a strict independent?
1.) Liberalism of the extreme to the exclusion of those of moderations and the expulsion of conservatism.
2.) Lost Ideology of JFK’s greater good for the country and all Americans, to the ideology of minority within minorities special interests, often as not, at the exclusion and often detriment of the greater good of for the country and ALL Americans, ever progressive to the few and the fewer.
3.) Pro-Unionization’s proven ineffectiveness and the zealotry for anti-capitalist socialism’s embrace of big brother governance.
4.) Democratic growth of disunity and threats of disunity as no better example than has been seen by current Democratic politics of race and gender, built on the foundations of a Politburo power structures, where the few and elite in “super delegates” are by design, always the ultimate deciders. Coupled with now open threats of riots and rebellion made in this new Democratic party to the extent that if one person losses, its racism, and if another losses, its gender bias, thus reason to riot and protest to democratize the thief’s, cheats and lairs, in yet another prime examples of faux conspiracy in the audacity of hope, unity and change.
5.) Has become the party of a million faults and failures finger pointed at others, few to self, and fewer yet in solutions focus of not what is wrong, but what and how they are going to fix it all if they are right in these examples of failed, misguided, illegal, treasonous and mistaken policies, so aptly noted always in few solutions, if any. A party of political expediency over national expediency, yet in few effective alternative policies and views that would really differentiate them as the true agents of change, hope and unity.
6.) Far to prone to buy votes by running amuck giving everyone a fish while rarely ever seeking a venue where everyone, who can, is made able to get his on daily fish and be less dependent and more independent on governance.
Why I am not a Republican?
(1) Far to imbed with the core principals of religiosity which at its core is against all that started and sustained this great country, that principal of absolute separation of Church and State.
(2)Proven, when in power, these last 50 years, to be more as a false guardians of small governance and less spending, in a parity of equals in that regard as their Democratic brethren.
(3)Far to pro-business at the unbalanced expense, often as not, of Joe and Mary America, in a lost balance of once incorporated moderate Libertarian ideologies of small governance and balanced budgets that met a need for national defense security balance.
(4)Often exclusionary of those of moderations for those of more conservative special interests, often at the expense of what is best for America, over party and special interests, mostly in venues of pro-business government subsidies and taxation.
(5)The party is less socially balanced in sensitive to providing a balanced need for a helping hand principal of safety nets. Far too prone to not give everyone a fish, while mostly seeking a venue where everyone, who can, must be able, in preference for private over public assistance, to get his on daily fish and thus be more independent and less dependent on governance to the point of imbalance, often as not.
IMHO, America needs an American Self Sufficiency Party, one where compromise is the absolute rule, where impasse and disunity is not acceptable, where public venues of official accountability are far more immediate than two, four and six years of impossible political stagnation, disunity and ineffective governance. Where budgets are sacrosanct, where trade is fair and balanced, not to the free will of the market exclusively, but to the market of free wills, where dependency’s imbalance is unacceptable and interdependence is founded in the bedrock of self reliance and independence in all matters of individual and national interest, first and foremost. Where Americans once again understand at their narcissistic core the truism once uttered as a voice of all Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask, FRIST and LAST, what you can do for your country.
Where is that America, America!
That is all!!
Obama-nation the myth of legends, mystified?
Shout victory, then count, victories won by a minority within a minority in both impact and context.
Of Obama’s 14 victories so well acclaimed from Berkley to Paris is a fact that 10 (71.43%) of those victories, which were at best pseudo-victories, by party design, where oddly and mysteriously within that minority within a minority of the few venue of caucuses.
(1)Maine- 59.76% (2,079 to 1,397 total votes) 15 to Clintons 9 delegates (+6)
(2)DC- 75.0% (85,340 to 27,626 total votes) 11 to 3 Clintons delegates (+8)
(3)Kansas- 73.99% (27,172 to 9,462 total votes) 23 to 9 Clintons delegates (+14)
(4)Iowa- 37.63% (940 to 737 total votes) 16 to 15 Clintons delegates (+1)
(5)Washington- 68.4% (21,629 to 9.992 total votes) 53 to 25 Clintons delegates (+28)
(6)Colorado- 73.99% (79,344 to 38,587 total votes) 33 to 13 Clintons delegates (+20)
(7)Idaho- 79.0% (16,880 to 3,655 total votes) 15 to 3 Clintons delegates (+12)
(8)N. Dakota 61.0% (11,625 to 6,946 total votes) 8 to 5 Clintons delegates (+3)
(9)Nebraska 61.0% (26,126 to 12,445 total votes) 16 to 8 Clintons delegates (+8)
(10)Wyoming 61.0% (5,378 to 3,381 total votes) 7 to 4 Clintons delegates (+3)
Obama Caucuses total votes 276, 513; Total Delegates; 197 (+103 delegates over Clinton)
CNN count
Obama 1,328 Pledged by vote + 199 super-delegates alleged total 1,527 (+99)
Clinton 1,190 Pledged by vote + 238 super-delegates alleged Total 1,428 (-99)
Difference in delegate votes 99
** (103 (74.64%) were attained by a minority within a minority of the few in the venue of caucuses where the selective few decide for all the masses.
By in large, is this caucus venue of the few, merited in a Democratic or Socialist principle?
Popular vote count with Florida and Michigan; Obama – 13,582,274 Clinton 13,614,381 (+32,107 Clinton)
Popular vote count WITHOUT Florida and Michigan; Obama – 13,006,033 Clinton 12,415,086 (+508,328 Obama)
Look at the numbers, Obama got 14.83% of all his voted for delegates in 10 caucuses , with only 2.04% of his total votes, and less than 1 % of all Democratic primary votes to date.
"change," "unity," and the "audacity of hope."
QUOTE
All words do not translate into deeds. All change is not growth; all progressiveness is not forward; all unity is not unifying; all hope does eliminate hopelessness, all gloominess is not advantageous, and all fortitude is not measured in mere hope alone." -- Trader
Why I changed from decades and generates of being a Democrat, to being a strict independent?
1.) Liberalism of the extreme to the exclusion of those of moderations and the expulsion of conservatism.
2.) Lost Ideology of JFK’s greater good for the country and all Americans, to the ideology of minority within minorities special interests, often as not, at the exclusion and often detriment of the greater good of for the country and ALL Americans, ever progressive to the few and the fewer.
3.) Pro-Unionization’s proven ineffectiveness and the zealotry for anti-capitalist socialism’s embrace of big brother governance.
4.) Democratic growth of disunity and threats of disunity as no better example than has been seen by current Democratic politics of race and gender, built on the foundations of a Politburo power structures, where the few and elite in “super delegates” are by design, always the ultimate deciders. Coupled with now open threats of riots and rebellion made in this new Democratic party to the extent that if one person losses, its racism, and if another losses, its gender bias, thus reason to riot and protest to democratize the thief’s, cheats and lairs, in yet another prime examples of faux conspiracy in the audacity of hope, unity and change.
5.) Has become the party of a million faults and failures finger pointed at others, few to self, and fewer yet in solutions focus of not what is wrong, but what and how they are going to fix it all if they are right in these examples of failed, misguided, illegal, treasonous and mistaken policies, so aptly noted always in few solutions, if any. A party of political expediency over national expediency, yet in few effective alternative policies and views that would really differentiate them as the true agents of change, hope and unity.
6.) Far to prone to buy votes by running amuck giving everyone a fish while rarely ever seeking a venue where everyone, who can, is made able to get his on daily fish and be less dependent and more independent on governance.
Why I am not a Republican?
(1) Far to imbed with the core principals of religiosity which at its core is against all that started and sustained this great country, that principal of absolute separation of Church and State.
(2)Proven, when in power, these last 50 years, to be more as a false guardians of small governance and less spending, in a parity of equals in that regard as their Democratic brethren.
(3)Far to pro-business at the unbalanced expense, often as not, of Joe and Mary America, in a lost balance of once incorporated moderate Libertarian ideologies of small governance and balanced budgets that met a need for national defense security balance.
(4)Often exclusionary of those of moderations for those of more conservative special interests, often at the expense of what is best for America, over party and special interests, mostly in venues of pro-business government subsidies and taxation.
(5)The party is less socially balanced in sensitive to providing a balanced need for a helping hand principal of safety nets. Far too prone to not give everyone a fish, while mostly seeking a venue where everyone, who can, must be able, in preference for private over public assistance, to get his on daily fish and thus be more independent and less dependent on governance to the point of imbalance, often as not.
IMHO, America needs an American Self Sufficiency Party, one where compromise is the absolute rule, where impasse and disunity is not acceptable, where public venues of official accountability are far more immediate than two, four and six years of impossible political stagnation, disunity and ineffective governance. Where budgets are sacrosanct, where trade is fair and balanced, not to the free will of the market exclusively, but to the market of free wills, where dependency’s imbalance is unacceptable and interdependence is founded in the bedrock of self reliance and independence in all matters of individual and national interest, first and foremost. Where Americans once again understand at their narcissistic core the truism once uttered as a voice of all Americans, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask, FRIST and LAST, what you can do for your country.
Where is that America, America!
That is all!!
MEDIC STATIONED IN AFGHANISTAN BECOMES 2ND WOMAN TO BE AWARDED SILVER STAR
CAMP SALERNO, Afghanistan — A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor.
Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.
After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.
"I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there," Brown told The Associated Press on Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost.
Brown, of Lake Jackson, Texas, is scheduled to receive the Silver Star later this month. She was part of a four-vehicle convoy patrolling near Jani Kheil in the eastern province of Paktia on April 25, 2007, when a bomb struck one of the Humvees.
"We stopped the convoy. I opened up my door and grabbed my aid bag," Brown said.
She started running toward the burning vehicle as insurgents opened fire. All five wounded soldiers had scrambled out.
"I assessed the patients to see how bad they were. We tried to move them to a safer location because we were still receiving incoming fire," Brown said.
Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in front-line combat roles — in the infantry, armor or artillery, for example. But the nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no real front lines, has seen women soldiers take part in close-quarters combat more than previous conflicts.
Four Army nurses in World War II were the first women to receive the Silver Star, though three nurses serving in World War I were awarded the medal posthumously last year, according to the Army's Web site.
Brown, of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions. She said they were sitting in a dangerous spot.
"So we dragged them for 100 or 200 meters, got them away from the Humvee a little bit," she said. "I was in a kind of a robot-mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of."
For Brown, who knew all five wounded soldiers, it became a race to get them all to a safer location. Eventually, they moved the wounded some 500 yards away and treated them on site before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation.
"I did not really have time to be scared," Brown said. "Running back to the vehicle, I was nervous (since) I did not know how badly the guys were injured. That was scary."
The military said Brown's "bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat."
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, of Nashville, Tenn., received the Silver Star in 2005 for gallantry during an insurgent ambush on a convoy in Iraq. Two men from her unit, the 617th Military Police Company of Richmond, Ky., also received the Silver Star for their roles in the same action
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080309/ap_on_...han_silver_star
You Go Girl, That is all!!
CAMP SALERNO, Afghanistan — A 19-year-old medic from Texas will become the first woman in Afghanistan and only the second female soldier since World War II to receive the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor.
Army Spc. Monica Lin Brown saved the lives of fellow soldiers after a roadside bomb tore through a convoy of Humvees in the eastern Paktia province in April 2007, the military said.
After the explosion, which wounded five soldiers in her unit, Brown ran through insurgent gunfire and used her body to shield wounded comrades as mortars fell less than 100 yards away, the military said.
"I did not really think about anything except for getting the guys to a safer location and getting them taken care of and getting them out of there," Brown told The Associated Press on Saturday at a U.S. base in the eastern province of Khost.
Brown, of Lake Jackson, Texas, is scheduled to receive the Silver Star later this month. She was part of a four-vehicle convoy patrolling near Jani Kheil in the eastern province of Paktia on April 25, 2007, when a bomb struck one of the Humvees.
"We stopped the convoy. I opened up my door and grabbed my aid bag," Brown said.
She started running toward the burning vehicle as insurgents opened fire. All five wounded soldiers had scrambled out.
"I assessed the patients to see how bad they were. We tried to move them to a safer location because we were still receiving incoming fire," Brown said.
Pentagon policy prohibits women from serving in front-line combat roles — in the infantry, armor or artillery, for example. But the nature of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with no real front lines, has seen women soldiers take part in close-quarters combat more than previous conflicts.
Four Army nurses in World War II were the first women to receive the Silver Star, though three nurses serving in World War I were awarded the medal posthumously last year, according to the Army's Web site.
Brown, of the 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, said ammunition going off inside the burning Humvee was sending shrapnel in all directions. She said they were sitting in a dangerous spot.
"So we dragged them for 100 or 200 meters, got them away from the Humvee a little bit," she said. "I was in a kind of a robot-mode, did not think about much but getting the guys taken care of."
For Brown, who knew all five wounded soldiers, it became a race to get them all to a safer location. Eventually, they moved the wounded some 500 yards away and treated them on site before putting them on a helicopter for evacuation.
"I did not really have time to be scared," Brown said. "Running back to the vehicle, I was nervous (since) I did not know how badly the guys were injured. That was scary."
The military said Brown's "bravery, unselfish actions and medical aid rendered under fire saved the lives of her comrades and represents the finest traditions of heroism in combat."
Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, of Nashville, Tenn., received the Silver Star in 2005 for gallantry during an insurgent ambush on a convoy in Iraq. Two men from her unit, the 617th Military Police Company of Richmond, Ky., also received the Silver Star for their roles in the same action
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080309/ap_on_...han_silver_star
You Go Girl, That is all!!
AL QAEDA ONLINE SUPPORTERS LASH OUT AT TALIBAN FOR NOT REMAINING LOYAL TO THE GLOBAL JIHAD[b]
CAIRO, Egypt — Al Qaeda supporters on the Web have unleashed an unprecedented flood of criticism of Afghanistan's Taliban, once seen by extremists as the model of an Islamic state.
Now extremists accuse the Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad after its leader Mullah Omar issued a statement saying he seeks good relations with the world and even sympathizes with Shiite Iran.
In February, the Taliban announced it wanted to maintain good and "legitimate" relations with neighboring countries. Then, last week online militants were outraged when the movement expressed solidarity with Iran, condemning the latest round of sanctions imposed on Tehran by the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear enrichment.
The Shiite Islamic state of Iran is viewed as anathema by the Sunni militants of the Al Qaeda and other extremist movements.
"This is the worst statement I have ever read ... the disaster of defending the (Iranian) regime is on par with the Crusaders in Afghanistan and Iraq," wrote poster Miskeen, whose name translates literally as "the wretched" and who is labeled as one of the more influential writers on an Al Qaeda linked Web site.
While anyone with a password can comment on these militant Islamist forums, the Al Qaeda-linked forum moderators single out certain individuals as particularly important. It's not clear, however, whether the resentment among Al Qaeda supporters reflects a rift between the Taliban and Al Qaeda's leadership.
The Taliban hosted Osama bin Laden until the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 toppled the movement, and since then the Taliban and Al Qaeda are believed to have worked closely in the Afghan-Pakistan border area.
"The Taliban seeks to be a respected political movement that can at the same time govern Afghanistan and be at limited peace with its neighbors," said Rita Katz, the director of the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group which monitors militant Web traffic.
But she cautioned that the "Taliban's surprising call to support Iran in the face of new U.N. sanctions does not mean that the group is suddenly offering unequivocal support to Iran," though it shows readiness to coexist with the neighbor.
Cairo-based expert on Islamic movements Diaa Rashwan linked the Taliban's quest for international legitimacy to possible future negotiations with the Afghan government.
"Mullah Omar's statement about good relations are in response to accusations from the West that the Taliban is radical and does not accept dialogue or negotiations with others," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in September he was ready to negotiate with the Taliban, including Mullah Omar himself, to put an end to the insurgency, while U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood said in December he would support reconciliation talks, with some conditions.
"The only problem about an eventual compromise with the Taliban is the fate of Al Qaeda, whether it will be expelled from Afghanistan or commit itself to the Afghan government," Rashwan said.
The Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and created a society run according to the strictest interpretation of Islamic law that has since been seen as a model for conservative Muslim militants the world over.
However, it's pursuit of practical policies that involve working together with entities that have different ideologies counters the beliefs of the global jihadist trend represented by Al Qaeda.
"I am afraid that a nationalist ... trend is penetrating Taliban regime," Miskeen said.
"Sheiks Osama (bin Laden) and (Ayman) al-Zawahri should censure Taliban for these statements," said another poster, by the name al-Zarqawiya, an allusion to Al Qaeda leaders.
Katz, however, noted that "Bin Laden and Zawahri understand the need for diplomacy" and may well understand that the Taliban wants to walk a fine line between being part of the international global jihad while still positioning itself to one day rule Afghanistan.
"The Taliban is not necessarily moving away from its model of an Islamic state, but instead seeking a path that will enable the Taliban to achieve its concept of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan while at the same time attaining the respect of at least some members of the international community," she said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336491,00.html
When AL QAEDA ONLINE Speaks, Berkley and San Francisco, listen!
That is All!!
CAIRO, Egypt — Al Qaeda supporters on the Web have unleashed an unprecedented flood of criticism of Afghanistan's Taliban, once seen by extremists as the model of an Islamic state.
Now extremists accuse the Taliban of straying from the path of global jihad after its leader Mullah Omar issued a statement saying he seeks good relations with the world and even sympathizes with Shiite Iran.
In February, the Taliban announced it wanted to maintain good and "legitimate" relations with neighboring countries. Then, last week online militants were outraged when the movement expressed solidarity with Iran, condemning the latest round of sanctions imposed on Tehran by the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear enrichment.
The Shiite Islamic state of Iran is viewed as anathema by the Sunni militants of the Al Qaeda and other extremist movements.
"This is the worst statement I have ever read ... the disaster of defending the (Iranian) regime is on par with the Crusaders in Afghanistan and Iraq," wrote poster Miskeen, whose name translates literally as "the wretched" and who is labeled as one of the more influential writers on an Al Qaeda linked Web site.
While anyone with a password can comment on these militant Islamist forums, the Al Qaeda-linked forum moderators single out certain individuals as particularly important. It's not clear, however, whether the resentment among Al Qaeda supporters reflects a rift between the Taliban and Al Qaeda's leadership.
The Taliban hosted Osama bin Laden until the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 toppled the movement, and since then the Taliban and Al Qaeda are believed to have worked closely in the Afghan-Pakistan border area.
"The Taliban seeks to be a respected political movement that can at the same time govern Afghanistan and be at limited peace with its neighbors," said Rita Katz, the director of the Washington-based SITE Intelligence Group which monitors militant Web traffic.
But she cautioned that the "Taliban's surprising call to support Iran in the face of new U.N. sanctions does not mean that the group is suddenly offering unequivocal support to Iran," though it shows readiness to coexist with the neighbor.
Cairo-based expert on Islamic movements Diaa Rashwan linked the Taliban's quest for international legitimacy to possible future negotiations with the Afghan government.
"Mullah Omar's statement about good relations are in response to accusations from the West that the Taliban is radical and does not accept dialogue or negotiations with others," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in September he was ready to negotiate with the Taliban, including Mullah Omar himself, to put an end to the insurgency, while U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood said in December he would support reconciliation talks, with some conditions.
"The only problem about an eventual compromise with the Taliban is the fate of Al Qaeda, whether it will be expelled from Afghanistan or commit itself to the Afghan government," Rashwan said.
The Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and created a society run according to the strictest interpretation of Islamic law that has since been seen as a model for conservative Muslim militants the world over.
However, it's pursuit of practical policies that involve working together with entities that have different ideologies counters the beliefs of the global jihadist trend represented by Al Qaeda.
"I am afraid that a nationalist ... trend is penetrating Taliban regime," Miskeen said.
"Sheiks Osama (bin Laden) and (Ayman) al-Zawahri should censure Taliban for these statements," said another poster, by the name al-Zarqawiya, an allusion to Al Qaeda leaders.
Katz, however, noted that "Bin Laden and Zawahri understand the need for diplomacy" and may well understand that the Taliban wants to walk a fine line between being part of the international global jihad while still positioning itself to one day rule Afghanistan.
"The Taliban is not necessarily moving away from its model of an Islamic state, but instead seeking a path that will enable the Taliban to achieve its concept of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan while at the same time attaining the respect of at least some members of the international community," she said.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,336491,00.html
When AL QAEDA ONLINE Speaks, Berkley and San Francisco, listen!
That is All!!
March 9, 2008
British soldier awarded the Military Cross for fighting off 150 Taliban
Military Cross for hero of ambush
A BRITISH soldier who almost single-handedly took on 150 Taliban after he and his 50-man convoy were ambushed in Afghanistan has been awarded the Military Cross.
Fusilier Damien Hields used his grenade machinegun to destroy seven Taliban positions before his ambushers realised he was their main threat. After peppering his vehicle with bullets, they hit the 24-year-old soldier. He had to be dragged off for treatment by his driver after he tried to continue fighting.
“Fusilier Hields showed extraordinary courage under intense fire,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Huw James, his commanding officer. “I was astonished at the state of his vehicle. There were so many holes in it, it was like a teabag. The Taliban did everything in their power to neutralise [him] and Fusilier Hields was having none of it. His actions allowed his patrol to come out of the ambush in which they were outnumbered by three or four to one and probably saved a lot of lives.”
Hields was awarded not only the Military Cross, the third highest award for gallantry, but also the Nato Meritorious Service Medal for his actions, which were part of a Nato operation.
However, he will not be allowed to wear the Nato award because army rules do not permit soldiers to wear non-British medals - an anomaly that has upset his commanding officer. “We think he has earned this decoration for gallantry and that it is only right that he should be allowed to wear it,” James said.
Hields was one of 28 Military Crosses announced last week. There were also five Conspicuous Gallantry Crosses, the second highest award after the Victoria Cross.
From Denby in north Wales, he joined the army at 16 and is married with a four-year-old son. Last summer he was posted with the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. One mission, 100 miles north in Uruzgan province, was to help Dutch troops disrupt the movement of Taliban fighters and drugs smugglers.
They were on their way back to Kandahar on June 3, driving south in a valley, when the Taliban attacked. One of the Land Rovers hit a landmine and was flipped upside down by the blast. “There were Taliban dug in all around and they started hitting us with AK47s and mortars. We could not see where they were at first.”
Hields followed the trail of RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades coming towards him and started firing grenades one at a time, trying to home in. “Then I switched to automatic fire,” he said. A grenade machine gun has a box with 32 grenade rounds. “I emptied a box onto that position and you could see all the dust and smoke flying about where they hit.
“After that no fire came back from that position and I moved on to the next one. One or two rounds until I got onto the target, and switch to automatic and empty the box.”
Realising that Hields was the main threat to them, the remaining Taliban fighters homed in on him with their RPG7s, Dushka heavy machineguns and Kalash-nikov rifles. Hields was undaunted and continued firing.
“I got through six boxes in about 15 minutes and we were winning the fight,” he said. “They started it. We were going to finish it.”
One of the Taliban rounds finally hit home as he was bending down to reload. “I felt a sharp punch in the kidneys on my right side,” he said. “It knocked me into the bottom of the [Land-Rover]. I looked down and saw a hole in my body armour and a bit of blood.”
Hields was dragged out of the Taliban fire and back about 20 yards where Lance-Corporal Carley Williams, the female medic attached to the troops, had dashed through enemy fire to set up a first aid position.
“The lads were screaming at me to get into cover,” said Williams, 23, from Llanelli. They saw one round actually pass between my legs.” She was awarded the Joint Commanders’ Commendation for her bravery.
Hields said: “It turned out the bullet had smashed a rib and gone out of me again without touching any internal organs which was very lucky. It was just a flesh wound really.”
He and the other wounded were evacuated by helicopter. After treatment and recuperation, Hields was back taking part in operations in Afghanistan in July. “Obviously I’m extremely proud but I’ve got friends still recovering from injuries and it’s them I’m more worried about.”
Unquestionably done in the absolute finest tradition and spirit of a British warrior, we all should be humbled such men stand as described below;
-I will never accept defeat = Numquam cladem accipiam
-I will never quit = Numquam signa deseram
-I will never leave a fallen comrade =Numquam mortuum commilitonem relinquam
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/a...?Submitted=true
British soldier awarded the Military Cross for fighting off 150 Taliban
Military Cross for hero of ambush
A BRITISH soldier who almost single-handedly took on 150 Taliban after he and his 50-man convoy were ambushed in Afghanistan has been awarded the Military Cross.
Fusilier Damien Hields used his grenade machinegun to destroy seven Taliban positions before his ambushers realised he was their main threat. After peppering his vehicle with bullets, they hit the 24-year-old soldier. He had to be dragged off for treatment by his driver after he tried to continue fighting.
“Fusilier Hields showed extraordinary courage under intense fire,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Huw James, his commanding officer. “I was astonished at the state of his vehicle. There were so many holes in it, it was like a teabag. The Taliban did everything in their power to neutralise [him] and Fusilier Hields was having none of it. His actions allowed his patrol to come out of the ambush in which they were outnumbered by three or four to one and probably saved a lot of lives.”
Hields was awarded not only the Military Cross, the third highest award for gallantry, but also the Nato Meritorious Service Medal for his actions, which were part of a Nato operation.
However, he will not be allowed to wear the Nato award because army rules do not permit soldiers to wear non-British medals - an anomaly that has upset his commanding officer. “We think he has earned this decoration for gallantry and that it is only right that he should be allowed to wear it,” James said.
Hields was one of 28 Military Crosses announced last week. There were also five Conspicuous Gallantry Crosses, the second highest award after the Victoria Cross.
From Denby in north Wales, he joined the army at 16 and is married with a four-year-old son. Last summer he was posted with the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. One mission, 100 miles north in Uruzgan province, was to help Dutch troops disrupt the movement of Taliban fighters and drugs smugglers.
They were on their way back to Kandahar on June 3, driving south in a valley, when the Taliban attacked. One of the Land Rovers hit a landmine and was flipped upside down by the blast. “There were Taliban dug in all around and they started hitting us with AK47s and mortars. We could not see where they were at first.”
Hields followed the trail of RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades coming towards him and started firing grenades one at a time, trying to home in. “Then I switched to automatic fire,” he said. A grenade machine gun has a box with 32 grenade rounds. “I emptied a box onto that position and you could see all the dust and smoke flying about where they hit.
“After that no fire came back from that position and I moved on to the next one. One or two rounds until I got onto the target, and switch to automatic and empty the box.”
Realising that Hields was the main threat to them, the remaining Taliban fighters homed in on him with their RPG7s, Dushka heavy machineguns and Kalash-nikov rifles. Hields was undaunted and continued firing.
“I got through six boxes in about 15 minutes and we were winning the fight,” he said. “They started it. We were going to finish it.”
One of the Taliban rounds finally hit home as he was bending down to reload. “I felt a sharp punch in the kidneys on my right side,” he said. “It knocked me into the bottom of the [Land-Rover]. I looked down and saw a hole in my body armour and a bit of blood.”
Hields was dragged out of the Taliban fire and back about 20 yards where Lance-Corporal Carley Williams, the female medic attached to the troops, had dashed through enemy fire to set up a first aid position.
“The lads were screaming at me to get into cover,” said Williams, 23, from Llanelli. They saw one round actually pass between my legs.” She was awarded the Joint Commanders’ Commendation for her bravery.
Hields said: “It turned out the bullet had smashed a rib and gone out of me again without touching any internal organs which was very lucky. It was just a flesh wound really.”
He and the other wounded were evacuated by helicopter. After treatment and recuperation, Hields was back taking part in operations in Afghanistan in July. “Obviously I’m extremely proud but I’ve got friends still recovering from injuries and it’s them I’m more worried about.”
Unquestionably done in the absolute finest tradition and spirit of a British warrior, we all should be humbled such men stand as described below;
QUOTE
We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the (day and) night to visit violence on those who would do us harm – George Orwell.
-I will never accept defeat = Numquam cladem accipiam
-I will never quit = Numquam signa deseram
-I will never leave a fallen comrade =Numquam mortuum commilitonem relinquam
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/a...?Submitted=true
QUOTE
We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the (day and) night to visit violence on those who would do us harm – George Orwell
WWI veteran's death leaves just nine
PARIS: The last French veteran of World War I, an Italian immigrant who lied about his age to join the Foreign Legion, has died aged 110.
Lazare Ponticelli, the last of more than eight million men who fought under French colours in the 1914-18 war that tore Europe apart, died at the home he shared with his daughter in Paris.
Reflecting on his wartime experiences, he once said: “You shoot at men who are fathers: war is completely stupid.”
President Nicolas Sarkozy led tributes to the last “poilu,” the affectionate nickname meaning hairy or tough given to French foot soldiers since Napoleonic times.
“Today, I express the nation's deep emotion and infinite sadness,” he said.
“I salute the Italian boy who came to Paris to earn his living and chose to become French, first in August 1914, when he lied about his age to sign up at 16 for the Foreign Legion to defend his adopted homeland. Then a second time in 1921, when he decided to remain here for good.
Ponticelli's death came less than two months after that of the penultimate French survivor of the 1914-18 war, Louis de Cazenave, who was also 110 years old.
Germany's last veteran from World War I also died in January this year.
Now there are just nine living veterans worldwide of the conflict. They are:
- Henry Allingham of Britain, aged 111. The only survivor to have served from beginning to end of the conflict, he started in the Royal Navy and then ended in the Air Force, seeing action at the Somme.
- Yakup Satar of Turkey, aged 109. Signed up in 1915 for the Ottoman Army, worked with the Germans, notably on gas weapons, and was captured in 1917 in what is now Iraq.
- Harry Patch of Britain, 109. Called up in 1917 and saw action in the trenches of the Belgian front, including during the murderous 3rd Battle of Ypres. Injured by a shell in the same year.
- Delfino Borroni of Italy, 109. Joined an elite unit in 1917 and notably fought against Austro-Hungarian forces in the Tyrol.
- Francesco Chiarello, also of Italy, 109. Called up in 1918 and saw action in his country's final battles of the war.
- Frank Buckles, United States, 107. Joined up by lying about his age when his country entered the war in 1917 and served as an ambulance driver in England and France.
- John Babcock of Canada, aged 107. Was sent to Britain as a junior soldier with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1917, but did not see action because he was too young.
- Franz Kuenstler of Germany, aged 107. Joined a Hungarian artillery unit in February 1918, and served in Italy. Only survivor of the Austro-Hungarian forces.
- Claude Choules of Britain, aged 106. Joined the Royal Navy in 1916 and served in the North Sea while only a teenager
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story...17-2703,00.html
That is All!!
A Crude Case For War?
By Steven Mufson
Sunday, March 16, 2008; Page B01
It's hard to miss the point of the "Blood for Oil" Web site. It features one poster of an American flag with "Blood for oil?" in white block letters where the stars should be and two dripping red handprints across the stripes. Another shows a photo of President Bush with a thin black line on his upper lip. "Got oil?" the headline asks wryly.
Five years after the United States invaded Iraq, plenty of people believe that the war was waged chiefly to secure U.S. petroleum supplies and to make Iraq safe -- and lucrative -- for the U.S. oil industry.
We may not know the real motivations behind the Iraq war for years, but it remains difficult to distill oil from all the possibilities. That's because our society and economy have been nursed on cheap oil, and the idea that oil security is a right as well as a necessity has become part of our foreign policy DNA, handed down from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter to George H.W. Bush. And the war and its untidy aftermath have, in fact, swelled the coffers of the world's biggest oil companies.
But it hasn't happened in the way anyone might have imagined.
Instead of making Iraq an open economy fueled by a thriving oil sector, the war has failed to boost the flow of oil from Iraq's giant well-mapped reservoirs, which oil experts say could rival Saudi Arabia's and produce 6 million barrels a day, if not more. Thanks to insurgents' sabotage of pipelines and pumping stations, and foreign companies' fears about safety and contract risks in Iraq, the country is still struggling in vain to raise oil output to its prewar levels of about 2.5 million barrels a day.
As it turns out, that has kept oil off the international market at just the moment when the world desperately needs a cushion of supplies to keep prices down.
Demand from China is booming, and political strife has limited oil production in Nigeria and Venezuela.
In the absence of Iraqi supplies, prices have soared three-and-a-half-fold since the U.S. invasion on March 20, 2003. (Last week, they shattered all previous records, even after adjusting for inflation.) The profits of the five biggest Western oil companies have jumped from $40 billion to $121 billion over the same period. While the United States has rid itself of Saddam Hussein and whatever threat he might have posed, oil revenues have filled the treasuries of petro-autocrats in Iran, Venezuela and Russia, emboldening those regimes and complicating U.S. diplomacy in new ways.
American consumers are paying for this turmoil at the pump. If the overthrow of Hussein was supposed to be a silver bullet for the American consumer, it turned out to be one that ricocheted and tore a hole through his wallet.
"If we went to war for oil, we did it as clumsily as anyone could do. And we spent more on the war than we could ever conceivably have gotten out of Iraq's oil fields even if we had particular control over them," says Anthony Cordesman, an expert on U.S. strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who rejects the idea that the war was designed on behalf of oil companies.
But that doesn't mean that oil had nothing to do with the invasion. In his recent memoir, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil."
Says Cordesman: "To say that we would have taken the same steps against a dictator in Africa or Burma as we took in Iraq is to ignore the strategic realities that drove American behavior
Page 2 of 3
A Crude Case For War
There is no single conspiracy theory about why the Bush administration allegedly waged this "war for oil." Here are two.
Version one: Bush, former Texas oilman, and Vice President Cheney, former chief executive of the contracting and oil-services firm Halliburton, wanted to help their friends in the oil world. They sought to install a pro-Western government that would invite the major oil companies back into Iraq. "Exxon was in the kitchen with Dick Cheney when the Iraq war was being cooked up," says the Web site of a group called Consumers for Peace.
Version two: As laid out in an April 2003 article in Le Monde Diplomatique, "The war against Saddam is about guaranteeing American hegemony rather than about increasing the profits of Exxon." Yahya Sadowski, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut, argues that "the neo-conservative cabal" had a "grand plan" to ramp up Iraqi production, "flood the world market with Iraqi oil" and drive the price down to $15 a barrel. That would stimulate the U.S. economy, "finally destroy" OPEC, wreck the economies of "rogue states" such as Iran and Venezuela, and "create more opportunities for 'regime change.' "
There are historical roots for all this suspicion. After World War I, the Western powers carved up oil-producing interests in the Middle East. In Iraq, the French were given about a quarter of the national consortium, and the U.S. government pressured its allies to turn over an equal share to a handful of American companies.
Even now, the fate of Iraq's concessions is laden with politics. Russia's Lukoil hopes to regain access to a giant field. China is seeking new fields. The big U.S. firms are angling to return to fields they ran before sanctions barred them during the 1990s. Smaller U.S., Turkish, European and Korean firms are gambling on new exploration deals with the autonomous Kurdish regional authority despite threats from Baghdad.
"One can imagine Iraq's oil fields as a pimple waiting to be pricked," says Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time." She notes that the Bush administration put former oil executives on the reconstruction team, hired the Virginia consulting firm BearingPoint to write a framework for Iraq's oil industry, picked the Iraqis who took key oil ministry posts and has pressured Iraq to adopt a petroleum law favorable to international companies.
The petroleum law has become a rallying point for critics who say that the war was about oil. It would allow long-term production-sharing agreements, which Juhasz says are only used in 12 percent of the world "and only where the country needs to entice the companies to come." Defenders of the law, including exiled Iraqi oil experts, say that it provides for different types of contracts; how generous they are will depend on how well they are negotiated, but the law sets minimum conditions.
Greg Muttitt, another widely quoted war critic, who works for Platform London, a group of British environmentalists, human rights campaigners, artists and activists, says that an occupied country can't negotiate freely. What ended up in the proposed petroleum law, he says, was "pretty close" to what was in papers drafted by the State Department before the invasion. "Perhaps not surprising," he adds, given lobbying by U.S. officials and the role of former oil company executives in the reconstruction hierarchy.
That's the theory. The problem is: The petroleum law has not been adopted.
* * *
The idea that the Bush administration was in the tank for the oil industry glosses over a story of conflicting views before the U.S. invasion and the bungled execution of plans afterwards. There were two rival interagency policy groups before the war, one led by the Pentagon and one by the State Department. Some key differences were never resolved. Some Pentagon planners wanted Iraq to maximize oil output, while State worried that a flood of Iraqi oil could threaten Saudi interests and market share.
The notion of an oil war also conjures up an image of a swashbuckling, string-pulling oil industry that no longer reflects a business that in many ways has become cautious and fearful of political turmoil. Western oil interests did encourage the overthrow of Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in the early 1950s and the war in Suez in 1956. But generally oil companies are content to forge alliances of convenience with leaders as diverse as Saudi kings, Angolan communists and Indonesia's late, long-time autocrat Suharto as long as they're predictable. On those leaders' politics, human rights record, ethnicity or religion, oil giants are agnostic
Page 3 of 3
A Crude Case For War?
"Companies don't like and won't make investments where there's uncertainty, and war is the biggest uncertainty of all," said Rob McKee, the former number two executive at ConocoPhillips and a former top U.S. official overseeing Iraq's oil sector. "On the other hand, companies were hoping that Iraq would open up, and as long as Saddam was there, Iraq couldn't. . . . From that point of view, maybe they were happy that there would be a change."
Still, the big firms had trepidations. In a conversation with an adviser shortly before the invasion, the chief executive of one of the five major oil companies described what he would say if asked to invest billions of dollars in Iraq after the war: Tell me about the contract system, arbitration, physical security and social cohesion, then we'll decide.
Five years later, they still haven't decided, and physical security is so tenuous that the oil giants are still declining Iraqi invitations to send their employees to inspect existing fields.
This wasn't what Bush administration planners had expected.
Leading administration officials expected a postwar Iraq to reclaim its former position among oil exporters. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress just after the invasion, predicting that oil would generate $50 billion to $100 billion in revenues within two to three years. Ironically, Iraq might approach that figure this year because of high prices, not higher production.
Prewar planning settled who would oversee Iraq's oil sector. The Pentagon picked Phil Carroll, a well-respected former top executive at Royal Dutch Shell, who was succeeded by McKee. War critics point to such industry ties as evidence of nefarious influence, but former administration members say the choices were made on the basis of expertise. "If you wanted to get someone to help run an oil industry, who would you choose?" asked one person involved in selecting Carroll. "A broker on an exchange? An environmental expert? Or the head of an oil company?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8031403677.html
That is all!!
By Steven Mufson
Sunday, March 16, 2008; Page B01
It's hard to miss the point of the "Blood for Oil" Web site. It features one poster of an American flag with "Blood for oil?" in white block letters where the stars should be and two dripping red handprints across the stripes. Another shows a photo of President Bush with a thin black line on his upper lip. "Got oil?" the headline asks wryly.
Five years after the United States invaded Iraq, plenty of people believe that the war was waged chiefly to secure U.S. petroleum supplies and to make Iraq safe -- and lucrative -- for the U.S. oil industry.
We may not know the real motivations behind the Iraq war for years, but it remains difficult to distill oil from all the possibilities. That's because our society and economy have been nursed on cheap oil, and the idea that oil security is a right as well as a necessity has become part of our foreign policy DNA, handed down from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter to George H.W. Bush. And the war and its untidy aftermath have, in fact, swelled the coffers of the world's biggest oil companies.
But it hasn't happened in the way anyone might have imagined.
Instead of making Iraq an open economy fueled by a thriving oil sector, the war has failed to boost the flow of oil from Iraq's giant well-mapped reservoirs, which oil experts say could rival Saudi Arabia's and produce 6 million barrels a day, if not more. Thanks to insurgents' sabotage of pipelines and pumping stations, and foreign companies' fears about safety and contract risks in Iraq, the country is still struggling in vain to raise oil output to its prewar levels of about 2.5 million barrels a day.
As it turns out, that has kept oil off the international market at just the moment when the world desperately needs a cushion of supplies to keep prices down.
Demand from China is booming, and political strife has limited oil production in Nigeria and Venezuela.
In the absence of Iraqi supplies, prices have soared three-and-a-half-fold since the U.S. invasion on March 20, 2003. (Last week, they shattered all previous records, even after adjusting for inflation.) The profits of the five biggest Western oil companies have jumped from $40 billion to $121 billion over the same period. While the United States has rid itself of Saddam Hussein and whatever threat he might have posed, oil revenues have filled the treasuries of petro-autocrats in Iran, Venezuela and Russia, emboldening those regimes and complicating U.S. diplomacy in new ways.
American consumers are paying for this turmoil at the pump. If the overthrow of Hussein was supposed to be a silver bullet for the American consumer, it turned out to be one that ricocheted and tore a hole through his wallet.
"If we went to war for oil, we did it as clumsily as anyone could do. And we spent more on the war than we could ever conceivably have gotten out of Iraq's oil fields even if we had particular control over them," says Anthony Cordesman, an expert on U.S. strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who rejects the idea that the war was designed on behalf of oil companies.
But that doesn't mean that oil had nothing to do with the invasion. In his recent memoir, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil."
Says Cordesman: "To say that we would have taken the same steps against a dictator in Africa or Burma as we took in Iraq is to ignore the strategic realities that drove American behavior
Page 2 of 3
A Crude Case For War
There is no single conspiracy theory about why the Bush administration allegedly waged this "war for oil." Here are two.
Version one: Bush, former Texas oilman, and Vice President Cheney, former chief executive of the contracting and oil-services firm Halliburton, wanted to help their friends in the oil world. They sought to install a pro-Western government that would invite the major oil companies back into Iraq. "Exxon was in the kitchen with Dick Cheney when the Iraq war was being cooked up," says the Web site of a group called Consumers for Peace.
Version two: As laid out in an April 2003 article in Le Monde Diplomatique, "The war against Saddam is about guaranteeing American hegemony rather than about increasing the profits of Exxon." Yahya Sadowski, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut, argues that "the neo-conservative cabal" had a "grand plan" to ramp up Iraqi production, "flood the world market with Iraqi oil" and drive the price down to $15 a barrel. That would stimulate the U.S. economy, "finally destroy" OPEC, wreck the economies of "rogue states" such as Iran and Venezuela, and "create more opportunities for 'regime change.' "
There are historical roots for all this suspicion. After World War I, the Western powers carved up oil-producing interests in the Middle East. In Iraq, the French were given about a quarter of the national consortium, and the U.S. government pressured its allies to turn over an equal share to a handful of American companies.
Even now, the fate of Iraq's concessions is laden with politics. Russia's Lukoil hopes to regain access to a giant field. China is seeking new fields. The big U.S. firms are angling to return to fields they ran before sanctions barred them during the 1990s. Smaller U.S., Turkish, European and Korean firms are gambling on new exploration deals with the autonomous Kurdish regional authority despite threats from Baghdad.
"One can imagine Iraq's oil fields as a pimple waiting to be pricked," says Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time." She notes that the Bush administration put former oil executives on the reconstruction team, hired the Virginia consulting firm BearingPoint to write a framework for Iraq's oil industry, picked the Iraqis who took key oil ministry posts and has pressured Iraq to adopt a petroleum law favorable to international companies.
The petroleum law has become a rallying point for critics who say that the war was about oil. It would allow long-term production-sharing agreements, which Juhasz says are only used in 12 percent of the world "and only where the country needs to entice the companies to come." Defenders of the law, including exiled Iraqi oil experts, say that it provides for different types of contracts; how generous they are will depend on how well they are negotiated, but the law sets minimum conditions.
Greg Muttitt, another widely quoted war critic, who works for Platform London, a group of British environmentalists, human rights campaigners, artists and activists, says that an occupied country can't negotiate freely. What ended up in the proposed petroleum law, he says, was "pretty close" to what was in papers drafted by the State Department before the invasion. "Perhaps not surprising," he adds, given lobbying by U.S. officials and the role of former oil company executives in the reconstruction hierarchy.
That's the theory. The problem is: The petroleum law has not been adopted.
* * *
The idea that the Bush administration was in the tank for the oil industry glosses over a story of conflicting views before the U.S. invasion and the bungled execution of plans afterwards. There were two rival interagency policy groups before the war, one led by the Pentagon and one by the State Department. Some key differences were never resolved. Some Pentagon planners wanted Iraq to maximize oil output, while State worried that a flood of Iraqi oil could threaten Saudi interests and market share.
The notion of an oil war also conjures up an image of a swashbuckling, string-pulling oil industry that no longer reflects a business that in many ways has become cautious and fearful of political turmoil. Western oil interests did encourage the overthrow of Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in the early 1950s and the war in Suez in 1956. But generally oil companies are content to forge alliances of convenience with leaders as diverse as Saudi kings, Angolan communists and Indonesia's late, long-time autocrat Suharto as long as they're predictable. On those leaders' politics, human rights record, ethnicity or religion, oil giants are agnostic
Page 3 of 3
A Crude Case For War?
"Companies don't like and won't make investments where there's uncertainty, and war is the biggest uncertainty of all," said Rob McKee, the former number two executive at ConocoPhillips and a former top U.S. official overseeing Iraq's oil sector. "On the other hand, companies were hoping that Iraq would open up, and as long as Saddam was there, Iraq couldn't. . . . From that point of view, maybe they were happy that there would be a change."
Still, the big firms had trepidations. In a conversation with an adviser shortly before the invasion, the chief executive of one of the five major oil companies described what he would say if asked to invest billions of dollars in Iraq after the war: Tell me about the contract system, arbitration, physical security and social cohesion, then we'll decide.
Five years later, they still haven't decided, and physical security is so tenuous that the oil giants are still declining Iraqi invitations to send their employees to inspect existing fields.
This wasn't what Bush administration planners had expected.
Leading administration officials expected a postwar Iraq to reclaim its former position among oil exporters. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress just after the invasion, predicting that oil would generate $50 billion to $100 billion in revenues within two to three years. Ironically, Iraq might approach that figure this year because of high prices, not higher production.
Prewar planning settled who would oversee Iraq's oil sector. The Pentagon picked Phil Carroll, a well-respected former top executive at Royal Dutch Shell, who was succeeded by McKee. War critics point to such industry ties as evidence of nefarious influence, but former administration members say the choices were made on the basis of expertise. "If you wanted to get someone to help run an oil industry, who would you choose?" asked one person involved in selecting Carroll. "A broker on an exchange? An environmental expert? Or the head of an oil company?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8031403677.html
That is all!!
Hamas Admits it uses women and children as Human Shields
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pag...d=1205420714950
Possible HACK!! Ask for ID & password.
When changing pages in this section a security window pops up asking for your ID and password liking to http://secularcaniranik.blogs.com/
I havew scanned fro virus and trojans, found none, Emoties Cache and alll, tempoary Internet Files. I think it is on the Bearpit Server??
DNS server handling your query: localhost
DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: secularcaniranik.blogs.com
Address: 204.9.178.171
204.9.178.171 has address 204.9.178.171
Found 663 websites with the IP 204.9.178.171
http://www.sixapart.com/about/ourblogs
dmca@sixapart.com
blogs.sixapart.com (204.9.178.171)
204.9.176.0 - 204.9.183.255
SIX APART LTD
548 Fourth St
San Francisco, CA
US
Wohlers, Peter B.
pwohlers@sixapart.com
+1-415-344-0056
When changing pages in this section a security window pops up asking for your ID and password liking to http://secularcaniranik.blogs.com/
I havew scanned fro virus and trojans, found none, Emoties Cache and alll, tempoary Internet Files. I think it is on the Bearpit Server??
DNS server handling your query: localhost
DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: secularcaniranik.blogs.com
Address: 204.9.178.171
204.9.178.171 has address 204.9.178.171
Found 663 websites with the IP 204.9.178.171
http://www.sixapart.com/about/ourblogs
dmca@sixapart.com
blogs.sixapart.com (204.9.178.171)
204.9.176.0 - 204.9.183.255
SIX APART LTD
548 Fourth St
San Francisco, CA
US
Wohlers, Peter B.
pwohlers@sixapart.com
+1-415-344-0056
QUOTE (ustrader @ Mar 22 2008, 02:44 PM) 
Possible HACK!! Ask for ID & password.
When changing pages, PARTICULARLY IN & OUT OF page 2 in this section a security window pops up asking for your ID and password linking to http://secularcaniranik.blogs.com/
I have scanned fro virus and trojans, found none, Emoties Cache and alll, tempoary Internet Files. I think it is on the Bearpit Server??
DNS server handling your query: localhost
DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: secularcaniranik.blogs.com
Address: 204.9.178.171
204.9.178.171 has address 204.9.178.171
Found 663 websites with the IP 204.9.178.171
http://www.sixapart.com/about/ourblogs
dmca@sixapart.com
blogs.sixapart.com (204.9.178.171)
204.9.176.0 - 204.9.183.255
SIX APART LTD
548 Fourth St
San Francisco, CA
US
Wohlers, Peter B.
pwohlers@sixapart.com
+1-415-344-0056
When changing pages, PARTICULARLY IN & OUT OF page 2 in this section a security window pops up asking for your ID and password linking to http://secularcaniranik.blogs.com/
I have scanned fro virus and trojans, found none, Emoties Cache and alll, tempoary Internet Files. I think it is on the Bearpit Server??
DNS server handling your query: localhost
DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: secularcaniranik.blogs.com
Address: 204.9.178.171
204.9.178.171 has address 204.9.178.171
Found 663 websites with the IP 204.9.178.171
http://www.sixapart.com/about/ourblogs
dmca@sixapart.com
blogs.sixapart.com (204.9.178.171)
204.9.176.0 - 204.9.183.255
SIX APART LTD
548 Fourth St
San Francisco, CA
US
Wohlers, Peter B.
pwohlers@sixapart.com
+1-415-344-0056
IRAQ war based on Lies you say, distortions of interpretations you say, Bush and Cheney in Plans of demonic domination for oil you say?
Perhaps, but is that all there is to it, you should be saying?
A German perspective 5 years on, I wonder why, now under this new German Government and not under its previous Anti-American Government, when it was all fresh, if indded as implied and stated below German Intelligence informatiom helped make American Intelligence flawed and faulty, would they not disclose this clearly to the possibility of making the Iraq Invasion preventable in a clear openness to the world. What was the true motivation of these clearly Anti-American regimes in Germany and France, which could have shown the world what they knew instead of making it appear otherwise?
Did they have something to prove to ignorant cowboy perhaps?
US Officials Accuse German Intelligence of Pre-Iraq War Failures
Five years ago, US troops marched into Iraq, convinced they would find weapons of mass destruction. One threat seemed particularly palpable -- biological weapons produced in mobile facilities. US officials now say the assumption originated in part from bad intelligence out of Germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542708,00.html
How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq
By Erich Follath, John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542840,00.html
'The Germans Share in the Responsibility'
As Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson helped the former US Secretary of State make the case for the invasion of Iraq. But much of that case was based on false information. SPIEGEL spoke with Wilkerson about Germany's share of the guilt and the failures of the CIA
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542881,00.html
German Intelligence Was 'Dishonest, Unprofessional and Irresponsible'
David Kay was charged by the Bush administration with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. Instead of finding weapons, though, he found what he told SPIEGEL was 'the biggest intelligence fiasco of my lifetime
SPIEGEL: As head of the Iraq Survey Group, you led the effort to follow up on the claims made by 'Curveball,' the asylum seeker from Iraq who told German intelligence that Saddam Hussein was building mobile biological weapons laboratories. Do you remember the first time you began to doubt his story?
Kay: The real shock was that the CIA had never spoken to him directly. To this day, I still don’t understand. How can you hang the most dramatic part of a case for war on an individual no American agent has ever directly debriefed? I realized right away, we needed to follow up in Baghdad on whatever leads we had concerning 'Curveball.'
SPIEGEL: Were you briefed by the BND, the German foreign intelligence agency, before you went to Iraq?
Kay: No way. This is part of how toxic and how horrible the relationship was between the BND and the CIA. The Germans never gave us 'Curveball’s' real name which once lead to minor disaster in Germany.
SPIEGEL: What happened?
Kay: Members of the CIA based in Munich thought they had his name and went out and found someone in Germany with a very similar name. They found him -- a young Iraqi -- and knocked on his door without approval by the German authorities. But it was the wrong guy, and he ended up calling the police on the intruders.
SPIEGEL: The argument made by the Germans for not providing access to 'Curveball' was not totally illogical. He claimed to hate Americans. It would have been a breach of trust if they had turned him over to the CIA.
Kay: We know today, of course, that it was all nonsense. First of all, we have people who speak 100 percent fluent German or Arabic. After the war, armed with the name from the British, we sought out his family. His mother and brother were very cooperative. They told us that he spoke English -- the language of instruction at his university was English. They also said he had plans to emigrate to the United States. My men saw his room and there were posters on the wall of American pop stars.
SPIEGEL: It sounds as though you were the first one who really had the chance to cross-check what 'Curveball' said…
Kay: … which is simply unbelievable. He was a defector for God’s sake and the BND was convinced that his information was so valuable that they distributed over 100 reports on 'Curveball' to their allies. I stand by my criticism of the BND to this day: To not have checked up on the exile Iraqis in Germany who knew him, not to have made all the appropriate efforts to validate the source, is a level of irresponsibility that is awfully hard to imagine in a service like the BND. And then, the fact that they failed to provide direct access to him remains one of the most striking things. It was a blockade that made it impossible for any other service to validate his information. The German service did not live up to their responsibilities or to the level of integrity you would expect from such a service.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation as to why this happened?
Kay: I first thought it was because the two governments had anything but a congenial relationship with each other. I thought maybe the BND was under political pressure and couldn’t cooperate for political reasons. If the Germans had just said to the CIA, ‘We can’t do this because of Schröder,’ I would have said, 'OK, I understand.' But to tell us this stuff which was demonstrably untrue, like he hates America and doesn’t speak English -- that was dishonest, unprofessional and irresponsible.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that German intelligence knowingly deceived the United States about 'Curveball?' Within the BND, at least, it seems that many actually believed him.
Kay: It was mysterious to me. I’ve thought about it for a long time and I have an explanation. If there is an intelligence service which has had experience with defectors, then it is the BND. They had so many Soviet defectors. But exactly those people who specialize in defectors and how to deal with them -- the people from the clandestine or operative side -- had nothing to do with 'Curveball.' He was primarily run by people from the analytical and technology side of the BND who don’t know that the first thing you do when someone walks through the door is you find out who he is, who knows him, who his real name is and what his real story is. But also there was a desire to believe. Fabricators work best when there is a desire to believe.
SPIEGEL: When you were in Iraq, your team found out that 'Curveball’s' story had nothing to do with the truth. How did CIA leadership react to your findings?
Kay: With resistance and denial. It was an absolute refusal to face reality. I just kept on hearing, 'don’t stop now. Keep working. You must be wrong. You will find it. Keep looking.'
SPIEGEL: But nothing was ever found…
Kay: No and my e-mails became less and less friendly. There was a war going on in Baghdad, the members of my team were risking their lives every day, and the Germans kept on refusing us access to the source. When we finally got permission, it was even worse.
SPIEGEL: How so?
Kay: I sent two of my best people over to Germany -- they were gone for a total of two weeks. But they were not allowed to interrogate him. They were allowed to provide some initial questions and then watch it all on video from another room. But they were not allowed to submit follow up questions that could be immediately asked, which is the very essence of an interrogation. They were mad and I was mad. Yet what they watched on video was enough to convince them that 'Curveball' was a fabricator.
SPIEGEL: Would it really have made a difference if 'Curveball' had been exposed as a fraud before the war? The Bush administration wanted to go to war no matter what.
Kay: Sure, the administration had that position. But don’t underestimate the importance that the link to al-Qaida, the weapons of mass destruction and, specifically, the biological weapons labs played in Congress. You can be pretty certain it would have changed the congressional vote, the authorization. Let me just say, I do not believe it would have been easy to take this nation to war if you had not had the intelligence.
SPIEGEL: What can we all learn from the 'Curveball' disaster?
Kay: I feel disillusioned. I think that 'Curveball' was the biggest and most consequential intelligence fiasco of my lifetime. It shows how important effective civilian control of the intelligence services is, because non-transparency is extraordinarily dangerous for democracy. In an intelligence service, people who don’t make waves are rewarded. I am worried that the same mistakes could be repeated all over again.
Interview conducted by John Goetz and Marcel Rosenbach
David Kay, 68, was the head of the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged by the CIA and the Pentagon with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the US invasion in the spring of 2003. At the beginning of 2004, he resigned his post after admitting that he was unable to find any WMDs in Iraq. Kay is from Texas and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York. As well as being a weapons inspector in Iraq in the early 1990s, Kay has also worked for UNESCO in Paris and for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542888,00.html
THAT IS ALL!!
Perhaps, but is that all there is to it, you should be saying?
A German perspective 5 years on, I wonder why, now under this new German Government and not under its previous Anti-American Government, when it was all fresh, if indded as implied and stated below German Intelligence informatiom helped make American Intelligence flawed and faulty, would they not disclose this clearly to the possibility of making the Iraq Invasion preventable in a clear openness to the world. What was the true motivation of these clearly Anti-American regimes in Germany and France, which could have shown the world what they knew instead of making it appear otherwise?
Did they have something to prove to ignorant cowboy perhaps?
US Officials Accuse German Intelligence of Pre-Iraq War Failures
Five years ago, US troops marched into Iraq, convinced they would find weapons of mass destruction. One threat seemed particularly palpable -- biological weapons produced in mobile facilities. US officials now say the assumption originated in part from bad intelligence out of Germany.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542708,00.html
How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq
By Erich Follath, John Goetz, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542840,00.html
'The Germans Share in the Responsibility'
As Colin Powell's chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson helped the former US Secretary of State make the case for the invasion of Iraq. But much of that case was based on false information. SPIEGEL spoke with Wilkerson about Germany's share of the guilt and the failures of the CIA
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542881,00.html
German Intelligence Was 'Dishonest, Unprofessional and Irresponsible'
David Kay was charged by the Bush administration with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. Instead of finding weapons, though, he found what he told SPIEGEL was 'the biggest intelligence fiasco of my lifetime
SPIEGEL: As head of the Iraq Survey Group, you led the effort to follow up on the claims made by 'Curveball,' the asylum seeker from Iraq who told German intelligence that Saddam Hussein was building mobile biological weapons laboratories. Do you remember the first time you began to doubt his story?
Kay: The real shock was that the CIA had never spoken to him directly. To this day, I still don’t understand. How can you hang the most dramatic part of a case for war on an individual no American agent has ever directly debriefed? I realized right away, we needed to follow up in Baghdad on whatever leads we had concerning 'Curveball.'
SPIEGEL: Were you briefed by the BND, the German foreign intelligence agency, before you went to Iraq?
Kay: No way. This is part of how toxic and how horrible the relationship was between the BND and the CIA. The Germans never gave us 'Curveball’s' real name which once lead to minor disaster in Germany.
SPIEGEL: What happened?
Kay: Members of the CIA based in Munich thought they had his name and went out and found someone in Germany with a very similar name. They found him -- a young Iraqi -- and knocked on his door without approval by the German authorities. But it was the wrong guy, and he ended up calling the police on the intruders.
SPIEGEL: The argument made by the Germans for not providing access to 'Curveball' was not totally illogical. He claimed to hate Americans. It would have been a breach of trust if they had turned him over to the CIA.
Kay: We know today, of course, that it was all nonsense. First of all, we have people who speak 100 percent fluent German or Arabic. After the war, armed with the name from the British, we sought out his family. His mother and brother were very cooperative. They told us that he spoke English -- the language of instruction at his university was English. They also said he had plans to emigrate to the United States. My men saw his room and there were posters on the wall of American pop stars.
SPIEGEL: It sounds as though you were the first one who really had the chance to cross-check what 'Curveball' said…
Kay: … which is simply unbelievable. He was a defector for God’s sake and the BND was convinced that his information was so valuable that they distributed over 100 reports on 'Curveball' to their allies. I stand by my criticism of the BND to this day: To not have checked up on the exile Iraqis in Germany who knew him, not to have made all the appropriate efforts to validate the source, is a level of irresponsibility that is awfully hard to imagine in a service like the BND. And then, the fact that they failed to provide direct access to him remains one of the most striking things. It was a blockade that made it impossible for any other service to validate his information. The German service did not live up to their responsibilities or to the level of integrity you would expect from such a service.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation as to why this happened?
Kay: I first thought it was because the two governments had anything but a congenial relationship with each other. I thought maybe the BND was under political pressure and couldn’t cooperate for political reasons. If the Germans had just said to the CIA, ‘We can’t do this because of Schröder,’ I would have said, 'OK, I understand.' But to tell us this stuff which was demonstrably untrue, like he hates America and doesn’t speak English -- that was dishonest, unprofessional and irresponsible.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that German intelligence knowingly deceived the United States about 'Curveball?' Within the BND, at least, it seems that many actually believed him.
Kay: It was mysterious to me. I’ve thought about it for a long time and I have an explanation. If there is an intelligence service which has had experience with defectors, then it is the BND. They had so many Soviet defectors. But exactly those people who specialize in defectors and how to deal with them -- the people from the clandestine or operative side -- had nothing to do with 'Curveball.' He was primarily run by people from the analytical and technology side of the BND who don’t know that the first thing you do when someone walks through the door is you find out who he is, who knows him, who his real name is and what his real story is. But also there was a desire to believe. Fabricators work best when there is a desire to believe.
SPIEGEL: When you were in Iraq, your team found out that 'Curveball’s' story had nothing to do with the truth. How did CIA leadership react to your findings?
Kay: With resistance and denial. It was an absolute refusal to face reality. I just kept on hearing, 'don’t stop now. Keep working. You must be wrong. You will find it. Keep looking.'
SPIEGEL: But nothing was ever found…
Kay: No and my e-mails became less and less friendly. There was a war going on in Baghdad, the members of my team were risking their lives every day, and the Germans kept on refusing us access to the source. When we finally got permission, it was even worse.
SPIEGEL: How so?
Kay: I sent two of my best people over to Germany -- they were gone for a total of two weeks. But they were not allowed to interrogate him. They were allowed to provide some initial questions and then watch it all on video from another room. But they were not allowed to submit follow up questions that could be immediately asked, which is the very essence of an interrogation. They were mad and I was mad. Yet what they watched on video was enough to convince them that 'Curveball' was a fabricator.
SPIEGEL: Would it really have made a difference if 'Curveball' had been exposed as a fraud before the war? The Bush administration wanted to go to war no matter what.
Kay: Sure, the administration had that position. But don’t underestimate the importance that the link to al-Qaida, the weapons of mass destruction and, specifically, the biological weapons labs played in Congress. You can be pretty certain it would have changed the congressional vote, the authorization. Let me just say, I do not believe it would have been easy to take this nation to war if you had not had the intelligence.
SPIEGEL: What can we all learn from the 'Curveball' disaster?
Kay: I feel disillusioned. I think that 'Curveball' was the biggest and most consequential intelligence fiasco of my lifetime. It shows how important effective civilian control of the intelligence services is, because non-transparency is extraordinarily dangerous for democracy. In an intelligence service, people who don’t make waves are rewarded. I am worried that the same mistakes could be repeated all over again.
Interview conducted by John Goetz and Marcel Rosenbach
David Kay, 68, was the head of the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged by the CIA and the Pentagon with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the US invasion in the spring of 2003. At the beginning of 2004, he resigned his post after admitting that he was unable to find any WMDs in Iraq. Kay is from Texas and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in New York. As well as being a weapons inspector in Iraq in the early 1990s, Kay has also worked for UNESCO in Paris and for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/...,542888,00.html
THAT IS ALL!!
who are you talking to? You board everyone by post 3. Are you lonely and nothing better to do then rant (by your self)
QUOTE (Bushisacoward @ Mar 31 2008, 05:25 AM)
who are you talking to? You board everyone by post 3. Are you lonely and nothing better to do then rant (by your self)
Why are you here? Are you lonely and nothing better to do than show up and rant?
QUOTE (Bushisacoward @ Mar 31 2008, 07:25 PM)
who are you talking to? You board everyone by post 3. Are you lonely and nothing better to do then rant (by your self)
OUCH!!
Your zealotry in oblivious liberal fascism, my friend, show us, in intelligibility, the blatancy of your moral fiber, and your being as a person of sagacity, more than you know.
Hey FITS, is this one of your loons, "off the reservation" being correct and anally precise in that deity of correctness, like you?
I presume if your clairvoyant “state of mentality” is correct that my inadequacies of capabilities such as "(“than”) rant (by “yourself”)" are the root cause that has gotten the 5,150 hits or nearly 50 BOARD looks per post here. Then, in that measure, you must be correct.
Ya think, someone else out there, besides Looney fascists like you, are perhaps "board" too, like you, comrade Noam?
QUOTE
To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are knowing who you are, is better than being someone else, for in that, you are what you want to be.”
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
No, Comrade Noam?
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
No, Comrade Noam?That is all!!
World views US 'more positively'
Attitudes to the United States are improving, an opinion poll carried out for the BBC World Service suggests.
The average percentage of people saying that the US has a positive influence has risen to 35% from 31% a year ago, according to the survey.
Those saying the US has a negative influence fell five percentage points to 47%.
The poll, part of a regular survey of world opinion, interviewed more than 17,000 people in 34 countries.
The survey period was the three months up to the end of January 2008.
However, the poll finds that views of US influence in the world are still mainly negative, though they improved in 11 out of the 23 countries also polled a year ago.
Perceptions of the US worsened in three - Canada, Lebanon and Egypt.
The World Service poll has been canvassing opinions about the influence of countries since 2005.
Of the 17 countries surveyed every year since 2005, positive views of the US have recovered for the first time this year to 32% after showing a steady decline over the previous three years.
Reacting to the poll results, senior US state department official Kurt Volker acknowledged perceptions had been negative in recent years, but said 2003 and 2004 had been an "anomaly" because of the Iraq war.
"I would say public opinion is a lagging indicator of what we are doing, working together with European governments and other elites," he said in a BBC interview.
"Everyone wants to be loved," he said.
But he added: "We are a superpower. We have tremendous responsibility, a large economy, large diplomatic reach and military reach, so naturally the world looks at the US with much greater attention than any other country in the world."
Most negative
Of other countries rated, Iran and Israel are viewed most negatively.
Negative views of Iran's influence remained at 54%. But Israel's negative rating went down from 57% to 52%.
Pakistan was the third most poorly rated country.
Germany, included in the ratings for the first time, is viewed most positively, with a 56% positive score to 18% negative.
Japan comes in a close second, with 56% positive to 21% negative. But a majority of those surveyed in neighbouring China and South Korea expressed negative views of Japan.
Russia showed the greatest improvement, with positive views rising on average among the countries surveyed from 29% to 37%.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44530000/gif/_44530224_us_influe_226gr.gif
The survey was carried out by the international polling firm GlobeScan with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.
PIPA director Steven Kull said the improved rating of the United States could be linked to the forthcoming presidential election.
"It may be that as the US approaches a new presidential election, views of the US are being mitigated by hope that a new administration will move away from the foreign policies that have been so unpopular in the world," he said.
People were asked to rate Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the US and the European Union as having positive or negative influence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7324337.stm
Noting The BBC World Service Poll has been tracking opinions about country influence in the world since 2005 mainly instructive to gain a world Consensus of view as to the US visa via originally the IRAQ War.
US views of other Countries:
** OTHER NATIONS Most negative highest to the lowest **
Note US citizens view of USA and why many key yet most negative of US were never asked of US citizens view of them at all. WHY BEGS THE QUESTION, NO? In fact this is the first US view of others used to date by the BBC or any of these views of the US polls made since 2003 and the IRAQ WAR Starting. WHY BEGS THE QUESTION
GERMANY of US: 20% Positive, 8% Neutral, 72% Negative
US Of GERMANY- NO POLL DONE
CANADA of US: 22% Positive, 16% Neutral, 62% Negative"
US Of CANADA NO POLL DONE
MEXICO of US: 10% Positive, 34% Neutral, 56% Negative"
US Of MEXICO NO POLL DONE
UK of US: 35% Positive, 12% Neutral, 53% Negative"
US Of UK: 45% Positive, 13% Neutral, 42% Negative
RUSSIA of US: 19% Positive, 28% Neutral, 53% Negative"
US Of RUSSIA: 45% Positive, 19% Neutral, 36% Negative
FRANCE of US: 32% Positive, 17% Neutral, 51% Negative"
US Of FRANCE: 48% Positive, 22% Neutral, 29% Negative
CHINA of US: 38% Positive, 16% Neutral, 46% Negative"
US Of CHINA: 33% Positive, 13% Neutral, 54% Negative
EU of US: 31% Positive, 25% Neutral, 44% Negative"
US Of EU: 71% Positive, 19% Neutral, 10% Negative
BRAZIL of US: 39% Positive, 21% Neutral, 40% Negative"
US Of BRAZIL: 61% Positive, 20% Neutral, 19% Negative
US Of USA: 56% Positive, 8 % Neutral, 36% Negative"
JAPAN of US: 21% Positive, 40% Neutral, 39% Negative"
US Of JAPAN: 70% Positive, 18% Neutral, 12% Negative
N. Korea of US: NO POLL DONE"
US Of N. Korea: 9% Positive, 14% Neutral, 77% Negative
INDIA of US: 18% Positive, 58% Neutral, 24% Negative"
US Of INDIA: 57% Positive, 10% Neutral, 33% Negative
ISRAEL of US: 68% Positive, 12% Neutral, 20% Negative"
US Of ISRAEL: 43% Positive, 22% Neutral, 39% Negative
PAKISTAN of US: NO POLL DONE"
US Of PAKISTAN: 21% Positive, 16% Neutral, 63% Negative
IRAN of US: NO POLL DONE"
US Of IRAN: 28% Positive, 13% Neutral, 55% Negative
The Actual Report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs..._globalview.pdf
Oddly surreal were the vastly more positive views of US citizens, who, for the first time since this forum’s creation of a world view about the Iraq War, Pom Pomed in Cheerleading against it by the BBC’s admittedly bias.
I always thought how strange it is we have these quantities of omnipotent insightful views of America but nary a one seeking the view of Americans of those so blessed to judge it.
Has it not been strangely self fulfilling to have so many willing to leave the views of US citizens and their opinions unattended about those so significantly negative in view as the selected righteous deemed worthy of having views oddly supposed to have more insightfulness in their worthiness to even have opinions of others and their affect on the world for some oddly unexplained reason?
THAT IS ALL!!
Attitudes to the United States are improving, an opinion poll carried out for the BBC World Service suggests.
The average percentage of people saying that the US has a positive influence has risen to 35% from 31% a year ago, according to the survey.
Those saying the US has a negative influence fell five percentage points to 47%.
The poll, part of a regular survey of world opinion, interviewed more than 17,000 people in 34 countries.
The survey period was the three months up to the end of January 2008.
However, the poll finds that views of US influence in the world are still mainly negative, though they improved in 11 out of the 23 countries also polled a year ago.
Perceptions of the US worsened in three - Canada, Lebanon and Egypt.
The World Service poll has been canvassing opinions about the influence of countries since 2005.
Of the 17 countries surveyed every year since 2005, positive views of the US have recovered for the first time this year to 32% after showing a steady decline over the previous three years.
Reacting to the poll results, senior US state department official Kurt Volker acknowledged perceptions had been negative in recent years, but said 2003 and 2004 had been an "anomaly" because of the Iraq war.
"I would say public opinion is a lagging indicator of what we are doing, working together with European governments and other elites," he said in a BBC interview.
"Everyone wants to be loved," he said.
But he added: "We are a superpower. We have tremendous responsibility, a large economy, large diplomatic reach and military reach, so naturally the world looks at the US with much greater attention than any other country in the world."
Most negative
Of other countries rated, Iran and Israel are viewed most negatively.
Negative views of Iran's influence remained at 54%. But Israel's negative rating went down from 57% to 52%.
Pakistan was the third most poorly rated country.
Germany, included in the ratings for the first time, is viewed most positively, with a 56% positive score to 18% negative.
Japan comes in a close second, with 56% positive to 21% negative. But a majority of those surveyed in neighbouring China and South Korea expressed negative views of Japan.
Russia showed the greatest improvement, with positive views rising on average among the countries surveyed from 29% to 37%.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44530000/gif/_44530224_us_influe_226gr.gif
The survey was carried out by the international polling firm GlobeScan with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.
PIPA director Steven Kull said the improved rating of the United States could be linked to the forthcoming presidential election.
"It may be that as the US approaches a new presidential election, views of the US are being mitigated by hope that a new administration will move away from the foreign policies that have been so unpopular in the world," he said.
People were asked to rate Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the US and the European Union as having positive or negative influence.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7324337.stm
Noting The BBC World Service Poll has been tracking opinions about country influence in the world since 2005 mainly instructive to gain a world Consensus of view as to the US visa via originally the IRAQ War.
US views of other Countries:
** OTHER NATIONS Most negative highest to the lowest **
Note US citizens view of USA and why many key yet most negative of US were never asked of US citizens view of them at all. WHY BEGS THE QUESTION, NO? In fact this is the first US view of others used to date by the BBC or any of these views of the US polls made since 2003 and the IRAQ WAR Starting. WHY BEGS THE QUESTION
GERMANY of US: 20% Positive, 8% Neutral, 72% Negative
US Of GERMANY- NO POLL DONE
CANADA of US: 22% Positive, 16% Neutral, 62% Negative"
US Of CANADA NO POLL DONE
MEXICO of US: 10% Positive, 34% Neutral, 56% Negative"
US Of MEXICO NO POLL DONE
UK of US: 35% Positive, 12% Neutral, 53% Negative"
US Of UK: 45% Positive, 13% Neutral, 42% Negative
RUSSIA of US: 19% Positive, 28% Neutral, 53% Negative"
US Of RUSSIA: 45% Positive, 19% Neutral, 36% Negative
FRANCE of US: 32% Positive, 17% Neutral, 51% Negative"
US Of FRANCE: 48% Positive, 22% Neutral, 29% Negative
CHINA of US: 38% Positive, 16% Neutral, 46% Negative"
US Of CHINA: 33% Positive, 13% Neutral, 54% Negative
EU of US: 31% Positive, 25% Neutral, 44% Negative"
US Of EU: 71% Positive, 19% Neutral, 10% Negative
BRAZIL of US: 39% Positive, 21% Neutral, 40% Negative"
US Of BRAZIL: 61% Positive, 20% Neutral, 19% Negative
US Of USA: 56% Positive, 8 % Neutral, 36% Negative"
JAPAN of US: 21% Positive, 40% Neutral, 39% Negative"
US Of JAPAN: 70% Positive, 18% Neutral, 12% Negative
N. Korea of US: NO POLL DONE"
US Of N. Korea: 9% Positive, 14% Neutral, 77% Negative
INDIA of US: 18% Positive, 58% Neutral, 24% Negative"
US Of INDIA: 57% Positive, 10% Neutral, 33% Negative
ISRAEL of US: 68% Positive, 12% Neutral, 20% Negative"
US Of ISRAEL: 43% Positive, 22% Neutral, 39% Negative
PAKISTAN of US: NO POLL DONE"
US Of PAKISTAN: 21% Positive, 16% Neutral, 63% Negative
IRAN of US: NO POLL DONE"
US Of IRAN: 28% Positive, 13% Neutral, 55% Negative
The Actual Report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs..._globalview.pdf
Oddly surreal were the vastly more positive views of US citizens, who, for the first time since this forum’s creation of a world view about the Iraq War, Pom Pomed in Cheerleading against it by the BBC’s admittedly bias.
I always thought how strange it is we have these quantities of omnipotent insightful views of America but nary a one seeking the view of Americans of those so blessed to judge it.
Has it not been strangely self fulfilling to have so many willing to leave the views of US citizens and their opinions unattended about those so significantly negative in view as the selected righteous deemed worthy of having views oddly supposed to have more insightfulness in their worthiness to even have opinions of others and their affect on the world for some oddly unexplained reason?
QUOTE
“Prejudice cannot see the things that are because it is always looking for things that aren't”
THAT IS ALL!!
QUOTE
It begins the lost of yet another Marxists dream of domination.
Castro and Chavez Envisions a Latin American USSR. saying,
"to realize in Latin America the dream lost in Eastern Europe."
When the Nanny State Pelosi and her Obama-Nation Doomocrat’s speak, Leftist Marxists like Chavez’s and those within Radical Islam,
Listens and act according in unanimity.
Castro and Chavez Envisions a Latin American USSR. saying,
"to realize in Latin America the dream lost in Eastern Europe."
When the Nanny State Pelosi and her Obama-Nation Doomocrat’s speak, Leftist Marxists like Chavez’s and those within Radical Islam,
Listens and act according in unanimity.
Terrorist-Supporting Venezuelan Strongman Has Famous Allies
Venezuela’s Marxist strongman Hugo Chavez is the kind of anti-American that certain kinds of American leftists swoon over. In September 2006, he stood before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City to insult President George W. Bush, who had stood at the same podium the day before. He called Bush “the Devil” and made the sign of the cross, adding “and it smells of sulfur still today.” Chavez held up Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, a book by the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, a radical critic of U.S. foreign policy, and urged his audience to read it. Within days the book had jumped to the top 10 in sales at the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites, and its publisher, Henry Holt, ordered a reprinting.
Chavez’s UN speech followed a six-week round-the-world trip to a dozen countries. He met with Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko and called for a strategic alliance between the two countries. He met with Vladimir Putin and purchased $3 billion in Russian arms, including fighter jets, military helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles. He also visited: Iran, where he voiced support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran-financed Hezbollah; Vietnam, where he fondly reminisced about its struggle against the U.S. in the 60s and 70s; Cuba, where he held hands with an ailing Fidel Castro who sent thousands of Cuban doctors and teachers to Venezuela in exchange for oil at much-reduced rates; China, where he struck yet more deals; and Syria, where he promised another strategic alliance to free the world of U.S. domination. The speech in New York was a high point in Chavez’s campaign to bait the United States and elevate his own world profile.
Chavez fancies himself a revolutionary leader, protégé and presumptive successor to Castro, who announced last month he was stepping down after a half-century in power. A leader of the anti-imperialist cause, “Chavez is the piper leading the most strident anti-Americanism to parade through Latin America since the Bay of Pigs invasion,” noted Venezuelan writer Ibsen Martinez.
Since becoming president in 1999, Chavez has called for political upheaval in Latin America and flirted with violent anti-government guerrilla movements in neighboring Colombia, with which Venezuela shares a porous 1,300-mile border. He has given tacit support to the Communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) and angered Colombia by urging it to stop calling FARC “terrorists.” Calling FARC and ELN “true armies,” Chavez described them as “insurgent forces that have political and Bolivarian goals, and here [Venezuela] that is respected.”
Periodically Chavez proposes to mediate FARC disputes with Colombia and has offered to negotiate the return of hostages that FARC has seized. Colombia says FARC is currently holding some 750 people hostage, including three Americans. Recently Chavez helped negotiate the release of two hostages, but the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe asked him to stop. “Any person who openly aligns himself with one of the parties could not be a mediator,” Colombia’s defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, told London’s Financial Times. Chavez also has threatened neighboring Guyana, making claims to three-quarters of its territory.
Experts estimate that FARC may take in from $200 million to $400 million annually from the illegal drug trade, but Chavez refuses to allow U.S. drug surveillance flights in Venezuelan airspace. However, he has allowed Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas terrorists to open offices in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.
In Latin America, Chavez has vigorously promoted a new coalition of anti-American governments. He is urging left-wing governments in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and the Caribbean island nations of Antigua, St. Vincent and Dominica to join Venezuela and Cuba in an alliance he calls the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. This grand design is an alternative trade agreement meant to challenge the hemispheric free-trade agreements negotiated by the United States. Chavez also urges investors to withdraw their funds from U.S. banks, and last month, he acted on his promise to curtail oil supplies to the U.S. by ordering government-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) to cut off crude oil sales to ExxonMobil, which is fighting his regime’s seizure of its assets. Reacting to the Bush Administration’s support for ExxonMobil, Chavez lashed out: “If the economic war continues against Venezuela, the price of oil will reach $200. Venezuela will take up the economic war, and more than one country is inclined to join us.”
Chavez calls capitalism “savagery” and rejects free-market prescriptions to lift less-developed nations out of poverty. Instead he preaches the gospel of redistribution, promising to build a workers’ utopia similar to the supposed paradise created by his friend, Castro, to whom he reportedly speaks daily by telephone. Last year, he nationalized firms in Venezuela’s petroleum, communications and electricity sectors, and last month, he vowed to have the government seize food producers and distributors that “hoard” products to sell at “inflated” prices. He demands that banks contribute a percentage of their profits to his social programs and threatens to seize any that fail to make loans at favorable rates for homes, farms and small businesses.
Chavez likens himself to Simon Bolivar, the great liberator who led the movement to free Latin America from Spain in the early 1800s. Chavez even renamed the nation the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” when he took power, and he retains power by mobilizing support from among poor, black and indigenous Venezuelans, holding out the promise that they are key elements in a new national culture he is creating.
His Socialist reforms are wreaking economic havoc. The World Bank ranks Venezuela as the second-worst country in the Americas for the control of corruption, above only Haiti. Venezuela’s more than 22% inflation rate is the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Its currency has lost half its value in the past year and given rise to a thriving black market for dollars. To stem the hemorrhaging, Chavez prohibited overseas money transfers and has ordered his nation’s media outlets not to mention the underground currency market.
U.S. Leftists Love Chavez
Clearly, Hugo Chavez is a man only American leftists could love—and they do. U.S. activists such as anti-war campaigner Cindy Sheehan say Chavez is a well-intentioned idealist who wants to help the poor and that he is indeed a modern-day Bolivar.
In early 2006, Chavez met in Caracas with Sheehan, whom he calls “Mrs. Hope.” Following a photo-op-filled visit, Sheehan urged the world to help bring down “the U.S. empire” and declared she would rather have Chavez in the White House than President Bush: “Hugo Chavez also wants to finally realize Simon de Bolivar’s vision of a united South America which can be together stronger to live more peacefully with the U.S. and stand in solidarity against the constant meddling of all of our regimes in their affairs.…George [Bush] is a reverse Robin Hood and even steals from our grandchildren’s future to further enrich the already obscenely rich of the present. I would rather live under a President like Hugo who tries to improve living conditions in his country than someone like George who is demolishing our social structures and making the poor, poorer.”
Of course Bolivar was no Socialist, notes James M. Roberts writing for the Heritage Foundation: “Bolivar would be embarrassed to see Venezuelans being oppressed by the same kind of Latin American caudillo (strongman) from which he fought to free them two centuries ago. Bolivar championed a unified South America and strong constitutional government to provide the same freedom, equality and prosperity that he saw developing in North America.” The real Bolivar “opposed precisely the type of one-party, personalized, dictatorial rule that is embodied by Hugo Chavez.”
It’s also hard to imagine Bolivar condoning the Venezuelan president’s attacks on civil liberties and the free press (it is now illegal to “practice” journalism in Venezuela without joining the National College of Journalists and holding a journalism degree). These acts of repression have stirred up opposition from the country’s middle and professional classes, including university students, artists and intellectuals and small and large business owners who protest his rule. In December, voters pushed back, handing Chavez a startling defeat by rejecting in a 51%-to-49% vote changes to the constitution that would have increased the president’s power. But that has not dampened the enthusiasm of some Americans for Hugo Chavez.
Sheehan is only one of the many Americans who eagerly voice their support for the “Bolivarian revolution.” They all seem to find their way to Caracas for meetings and photos with Chavez:
l Brenda Stokely, president of AFSCME Local 215 in New York City, addressed a rally in Caracas in 2004. “President Chavez is trying to provide poor people with healthcare, education and decently paid jobs,” said Stokely. “Anyone opposed to that either has their head under a rock or has no respect for human beings that live in poverty.”
l After visiting Venezuela, Oakland, Calif., community organizer Mamie Chow said, “You can’t question what’s happening here. It’s so uplifting.”
l “Venezuela has become a major source of interest for social visionaries in the United States,” said Larry Birns, director of Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, a leftist advocacy group.
Many U.S. lawmakers buy into the idea that Chavez is a social democrat. Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) has defended Chavez as a democratically elected president. When coup-plotters briefly ousted Chavez from power during a 48-hour period in April 2002, Dodd attacked the Bush Administration for not denouncing them. Rep. John Conyers (D.-Mich.) and 12 other Democrats in Congress wrote a letter to Bush the following year complaining that the United States was not doing enough to protect Chavez.
In 2004, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio) signed another joint letter endorsing Chavez’s re-election and calling on President Bush and Congress to look upon Venezuela “as a model democracy.” Other signers included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, actor Ed Asner and the Marxist writers Howard Zinn and Naomi Klein. In 2006, Rep. Brad Sherman (D.-Calif.) reminded the international terrorism panel of the House Committee on International Relations that Venezuela traditionally had “a strong free press and respect for important freedoms.” But in May 2007, Chavez pulled the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television and the popular cable TV station went off the air despite mass protests in Caracas. Sherman, who became chairman of the House subcommittee last year, admits to being troubled by Chavez’s actions and his association with sponsors of terror, but says that the U.S. government must be patient in dealing with him.
Chavistas in Hollywood
Then there’s the Hollywood glitterati.
Chavez’s regime enjoys enthusiastic support from actors Danny Glover, Kevin Spacey, Sean Penn, Ed Asner, singer Harry Belafonte and supermodel Naomi Campbell, who South American newspapers report is having a romantic affair with Chavez (a claim Campbell denies). Campbell speaks of her “amazement” at the “love and encouragement” that Chavez pours into social-welfare programs. Oscar-winner Spacey praises Venezuela’s support for film-making. A $13 million government-owned movie studio provides Venezuelans a valuable opportunity to “make films about their own country and their own culture,” said Spacey. “I think every country should have this.”
Last year, Chavez’s compliant congress returned Hollywood’s favor by approving $20 million in financing for two films by Glover, who has had business dealings with Chavez for years. Glover is a frequent visitor to Venezuela. On a trip there two years ago he said he was “excited to get back to the United States to talk about what is happening [in Venezuela], knowing that you are in a transformative stage and that you are the architects of your own destiny.”
Co-chairman of far-left Vanguard Public Foundation in San Francisco, Glover also serves on the advisory council for La Nueva Televisora del Sur (“The New Television Station of the South”), also known as teleSUR. Aiming to be a (more) left-wing alternative to CNN, the station has been broadcasting from Caracas since 2005. Rep. Connie Mack (R.-Fla.) observes that teleSUR, “the Chavez-funded network … has teamed up with Al-Jazeera to spread anti-democratic messages across Latin America.”
Of course, no survey of left-wing celebrity can fail to take notice of singer Harry Belafonte and actor Sean Penn. After making a pilgrimage to Venezuela in 2006, Belafonte told Chavez: “No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush, says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution.” Penn took a look at the Chavez-crafted constitution of Venezuela, which gives the president the power to rule by decree, and concluded that it was “a very beautiful document.”
Chavez seems to have only one vocal detractor in Tinseltown, and she hasn’t been in any box office smashes lately. Cuban-born actress and singer Maria Conchita Alonso, whose family left Cuba when Castro seized power, says Chavez is “a totalitarian dictator” who has long plotted to make himself president for life. The former Miss Venezuela is producing and starring in a film, Two Minutes of Hate, about the events of April 11, 2002, when Chavez sent snipers to crush a peaceful protest march. “Nineteen died, and more than 100 were hurt,” she says. And Alonso takes issue with press reports that, she says, understate the financing Danny Glover is actually receiving from the Venezuelan government. “The word in Venezuela is that Danny got $30 million, not 20, and that there are three movies they will shoot,” she told Fox News’s “Hannity and Colmes” last May.
Petro-diplomacy
Chavez can cause trouble around the world because he controls one precious commodity: oil. Venezuela is the world’s fifth-largest oil producer. Oil generates 80% of the country’s export revenue and half of the government’s income. And more oil is likely to be discovered in the country’s interior. Some experts think Venezuela eventually could rival Saudi Arabia in total oil reserves.
As the world price of oil has soared past $100 a barrel, Chavez has enjoyed “windfall profits” that he is lavishing on government social programs, which reinforces his political support among the country’s poor. Venezuela’s state-owned oil company is required to spend 10% of its investment budget on social programs, an estimated $7 billion in 2005.
Petroleos de Venezuela SA has been described as a “black box” because it is believed to also fund Chavez’s overseas political ambitions. Oil exports revenues fuel Chavez’s petro-diplomacy. They make possible political overtures to China and Iran, which have been invited to invest in oil exploration and refining in Venezuela. They allow Venezuela to take the lead in structuring regional Latin American trade agreements that undermine U.S. efforts to promote free trade. And they support a Venezuelan foreign-aid program that purports to help poor Americans who live in 16 of the United States. The real target of this ingenious program of “public diplomacy” is George W. Bush.
Chavez Tool Joe Kennedy
The agent of Chavez’s foreign aid program to Americans is former Rep. Joe Kennedy (D.-Mass.). Kennedy heads a nonprofit called Citizens Energy Corporation, which he founded in 1979 to provide discounted home heating oil to low-income people in Massachusetts. Elected to Congress for six terms (1987-1999), Joe Kennedy returned to Citizens Energy full-time in 2002, after his plan to run for governor of Massachusetts fizzled.
Citizens Energy Corporation (2005 assets: $58.3 million) has undertaken a number of social ventures to raise funds by marketing energy, but it is best known for the charitable help it gives eligible families, providing them with an annual one-time delivery of 100 gallons of heating oil, the principal fuel used in New England to heat homes. Kennedy’s group has won praise for working with heating-oil dealers and state and federal agencies to provide fuel delivery to those in need. But, starting in 2005, the group became a tool of Chavez’s efforts to win public support from ordinary Americans for his regime.
Kennedy rarely mentions Chavez publicly, but the television and radio messages that advertise his charitable program are paid for by Venezuela by way of the CITGO oil company, which also provides most of the discounted heating oil. The Boston Globe reported that Rep. William Delahunt (D.-Mass.) helped broker the deal. In the ads, Kennedy invites those who need help to call 1-877-JOE-4-OIL, and he thanks “our good friends in Venezuela” for helping shivering Americans. In one ad, Kennedy pontificates: “Our own government cut fuel assistance. And the Big Oil companies with oil and money to burn all said ‘no’ when we asked for help—all but one. CITGO, owned by the Venezuelan people, is donating millions of gallons to non-profit Citizens Energy.…Some people say it’s bad politics to do this. I say it’s a crime against humanity not to, because no one—no one—should be left out in the cold.”
Now in its third year, the CITGO-Venezuela Heating Oil Program expects this winter to have delivered 112 million gallons of fuel at a 40% discount to 224,000 U.S. households and 250 social-service charities.
How is CITGO connected to Hugo Chavez? Houston-based CITGO Petroleum Corporation is a U.S. corporation once known as Cities Service. It was purchased by Occidental Petroleum in 1982, which sold it to the Southland Corporation, the owner of the 7-11 convenience store chain, in 1983. In 1986, Southland sold a 50% share of the company to the national oil company of Venezuela, which bought the other half in 1990. By the late 1990s, CITGO was refining and distributing oil and operating almost 15,000 retail gas stations in the U.S., more than any other company. No one much cared about the company’s ultimate owner.
But in 1999, Hugo Chavez, who had tried to seize power in a failed 1992 coup attempt, managed to be elected president of Venezuela on the strength of his demagogic attacks on the faltering then-government. As president, he visited CITGO’s Lake Charles, La., refinery and Houston offices in 2000, where he explained how his government would handle Venezuela’s national oil company. The Oklahoma-born head of CITGO and the Venezuelan civilian running the parent company were fired. Their replacements would be Venezuelan army generals. Chavez offered Houston’s rattled oil men soothing words, urging them not to worry and reminding them that George Washington and Simon Bolivar were generals too.
The Kennedy charity is another public relations ploy. It’s designed to win sympathy for Chavez, and it’s working, at least in some quarters. For instance, media critic Jeff Cohen, founder of the watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), urged Americans to buy CITGO gas to back up “a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation’s oil revenue to benefit the poor.” That’s the same argument Kennedy used when he berated a Wall Street Journal reporter who inquired about the motives behind the heating-oil deal. Kennedy has said he is impressed that Chavez is socializing his nation’s oil profits and alleviating poverty, a claim refuted by prominent researchers in Latin America who conclude that poverty has been reduced a mere 0.1% (and that government help is often conditioned on support for the Chavez regime).
Revolutionary Tourism
The heating-oil deal with Kennedy is but one example of Venezuela’s “public diplomacy” campaign in the U.S. Public diplomacy is the effort to generate favorable public opinion by ostensibly non-political means, and Venezuela’s efforts seem to compare favorably to the U.S.’s. While the Clinton Administration shut down the U.S. Information Agency in 1999, Chavez was opening the Venezuela Information Office (VIO) in Washington, D.C., in 2003.
According to John J. Miller in National Review, VIO moved aggressively to improve Venezuela’s image, contracting with the firm Patton Boggs for lobbying help, buying ads in the Economist, New Yorker and Roll Call, and hiring staff from Global Exchange, the far-left activist group responsible for violent demonstrations at the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999.
Global Exchange seems to be spearheading much of Venezuela’s U.S. propaganda campaign. In 2008, it will be offering 13 “reality tours” of Venezuela. Lasting from 10 days to two weeks, the tours are on such topics as “Women’s Rights and Leadership in the Bolivarian Revolution,” “Community-Based Organizing and the Bolivarian Revolution,” and “Afro-Venezuela: The San Juan Cultural Festival.” According to Global Exchange, “Venezuela is at the center of a new, progressive model of socioeconomic development that is shaping Latin America’s future.” For between $800 and $2,500, an American can see Chavez’s revolution in action.
An indication of the Global Exchange outlook is evident in the views of JoJo Farrell, who directs the Reality Tour Program. In an op-ed last fall, he applauded the Chavez government for not renewing Radio Caracas Television’s broadcast license. The false story that “Chavez was silencing the station due to their opposition to his policies” continues “to be perpetuated in the U.S. media today,” Farrell claimed. The real reason, according to Farrell, was the station’s “role” in the attempted 2002 coup against Chavez.
Farrell isn’t the only American who thinks the American public isn’t getting the real story about what’s going on in Venezuela. Princeton Prof. Cornel West, who makes a living denouncing his native land as racist and patriarchal, said reality tours are essential because “we in the United States have so many lies about President Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution.” West said he visited in 2006 “to see the democratic awakening taking place.”
Established in 1988, Global Exchange reported assets of $1,561,689 and income of $4,173,190 in 2005. Its funding comes from foundations and from organizing reality tours to places such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea.
Let no one assume that Global Exchange is led by well-intentioned dupes. Its founding director is Medea Benjamin. Born “Susie Benjamin” to an affluent family, she changed her first name to that of the enraged woman in the Greek tragedy who seeks revenge against her husband by murdering her children. Benjamin’s own vengeance against America has led her to support murderous dictators across the globe. She is an ardent pro-Castro advocate, having once lived in Cuba and married a pro-Castro Cuban. For years she led guided tours to Cuba. After returning from her first trip to Cuba in the early 80s, Benjamin told the San Francisco Chronicle that Cuban life “made it seem like I died and went to heaven.” In the 80s, Benjamin helped form the Institute for Food and Development Policy (IFDP), which sent aid to the Marxist Sandinistas ruling Nicaragua. Benjamin is also a co-founder of Code Pink, the anti-war feminist group that disarms critics by frivolously dressing in pink, which disguises its deadly serious political ideology.
Stupid to Ignore Chavez
It may seem far-fetched to expect a revival of revolutionary Marxism either at home or abroad. All eyes today are focused on terrorism and radical Islam. By contrast, the American friends of Hugo Chavez seem caught in a time warp, spouting foolish left-wing rhetoric to justify the buffoonish behavior of their hero. But Venezuela’s head of state is no fool, and his country’s main export is not bananas. We do well to pay attention to his schemes and devices
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25528
Venezuela's Congress OKs "windfall" oil tax
CARACAS, April 3 (Reuters) - Venezuela's Congress on Thursday gave initial approval to a windfall oil tax that extends leftist President Hugo Chavez's campaign to increase government revenue from the OPEC nation's oil industry.
The tax will tap into private company profits amid record oil prices above $100 per barrel, giving Chavez additional funds to shore up his self-styled socialist revolution and stepping up his confrontation with global energy giants.
A statement on the legislature's Web site said the measure will "readjust the excessive benefits of foreign investors that are above the reasonable levels of profitability."
The legislation, called the Tax on Extraordinary Hydrocarbons Prices Law, taxes
50 percent of oil revenues between $70 per barrel and $100 per barrel and 60 percent of revenues above $100 per barrel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7435275
UPDATE 2-Venezuela's Chavez nationalizes cement industry
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews...347676720080404
Is There an “Embodiment” Effect?
Evidence from the Insurgency in Iraq
http://people.rwj.harvard.edu/~riyengar/insurgency.pdf
Proven: Democrats give Aid and Comfort to the Enemy.
From an email I received from the Patriot Post:
More Democrat ‘aid and comfort’ to the enemy
By Mark Alexander
http://psycmeistr.blogspot.com/2008/03/pro...nd-comfort.html
Pollaganda-
http://patriotpost.us/news/pollaganda.asp
QUOTE
During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare." --Thomas Jefferson
Pollaganda — n.
1. mainstream media (MSM) polling used to manipulate public opinion and advance a particular bias.
2. Outcome-based polling; instruments designed to generate a preferential outcome, which can be used to manipulate public opinion by advancing the perception that a particular issue, individual or group has a majority of public favor or disfavor.
3. A dezinformatsia (disinformation) campaign of political polling used for propaganda, polling masquerading as "objective journalism" designed to advance a liberal bias.
Pollagandize — v. 1. To engage in pollaganda. 2. To utilize instruments of pollaganda, or selective poll reporting (reporting polls that comport with a particular ideological viewpoint), to advance a bias.
Pollaganda Cycle — n. A self-perpetuating cycle — the intentional and systematic propagation of MSM polls to manipulate public opinion by first saturating viewers with "reporting" that reflects a particular bias; second, conducting public opinion polls in concert with like-minded organizations or campaigns, which will reflect that bias; third, further proselytizing viewers by treating these poll results as "news"; and fourth, using pollaganda to induce "bandwagon psychology" (the human tendency of those who do not have a strong ideological foundation to aspire to the side perceived to be in the majority), thus further driving public opinion toward the original media bias, ad infinitum.
This is not to say that polls don't provide an accurate account of public sentiment. It is simply to say that such sentiment is largely a reflection of MSM indoctrination
I do not suggest that there is anything but a benign Leftmedia conspiracy to undermine anything conservative; the bias is largely the consequence of the mass-media zeitgeist and culture, which are uniformly and profoundly left of center. Such liberalism has become so embedded within the collective consciousness of print copywriters and television talkingheads that it flows freely from every front page and broadcast.
So much for the "free examination of public characters and measures." When confronted with the next headline or talkinghead report about the latest poll results, caveat emptor!
http://patriotpost.us/news/pollaganda.asp
THAT IS ALL!!
The Doomocracy’s political spin doctors, the “Pom Pom” Media of special interest groupings and their slickly worded Polls made in effort to convenience us without showing us the proof that it is “unquestionably” Military spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that are the major reason of our very recent economic downturn, Right?
Oddly without much of any real evidence the Pom Pom media in efforts of “electioneering” have for months now cheered on to that drum beat as to a Recession, and now they quickened the beats more and more as the election grows, to now near doom, now to a beat that we are in a depression. But is that true, the wars had anything to do with it?
Oil as a defensive weapon:
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/reading_room/239.pdf
Persian Gulf costs
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/persian_gulf/
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/annual_report/annual_report.htm
Persian Gulf war: 1 Aug 1990 to 31 Aug 1992 $61.1 Billion X factor 1.51= $275.56 Billion in 2007 dollars, NOT including Post VA costs which were more than significant.
Nearly 700,000 U.S. military personnel were deployed to the Persian Gulf theater of operations during 1990-1991. Upon their return, 42% or 294,000, of Persian Gulf War veterans reported health concerns. The Va has estimated on average their medical costs has been $12.34 Billion a year.
The cost of the war to the United States was calculated by the United States Congress to be $61.1 billion U.S. troops represented about 74% of the combined force, and the global cost was therefore higher
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/reading_room/650.pdf
Pre-war CBO estimates given to all in Congress both those who did not and who voted for the war authorization.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aairaqwarcost.htm
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offs...mp%3Bsequence=0
Post Persian Gulf war; No fly zone war costs
MONETARY COST OF THE WAR/GDP
• The liberation of Kuwait in 1991 cost the equivalent of 1% of the GDP of the time, or about $80 billion in today’s dollars.
• The Vietnam war cost between 1.5% and 2% of GDP each year during the eight years of major American commitment, or about $600 billion. At its peak we had more than 500,000 soldiers and other military in Vietnam.
• Iraq war costs of between 0.5% and 0.7% of GDP.
• We would have still stationed half to three-fourths as many troops as we now have in Iraq in neighboring countries. The cost of stationing them there would be lower than what we now pay but would still be substantial.
• The continuous use of air power would have been necessary to police the no-fly zones established in the ceasefire of the first Iraq war.
• Increased surveillance of the Iran-Iraq and Syria-Iraq borders would have been necessary to limit terrorist migration.
• Evidence suggests Saddam would have rebuilt his WMD capability. it is plausible that not invading Iraq would probably have cost at least a third as much as we ultimately spent on deposing Saddam.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:UBoFr...cd=35&gl=us
No Fly Zone ( Aircraft Only*) costs average at $1 billion per year calculate in 2008 dollars
1992, Factor =1.51 =1.51 Billion
1993, Factor =1.47 =1.47 Billion
1994, Factor =1.43 =1.43 Billion
1995, Factor =1.39 =1.39 Billion
1996, Factor =1.35 =1.35 Billion
1997, Factor =1.32 =1.32 Billion
1998, Factor =1.30 =1.30 Billion
1999, Factor =1.27 =1.27 Billion
2000, Factor =1.23 =1.23 Billion
2001, Factor =1.20 =1.20 Billion
2002, Factor =1.18 =1.18 Billion
2003, Factor =1.15 =1.15 Billion
Totaled $15.81 billion
* Cost not inclusive of US having 66,000 troops off shore and in and around Iraq for 13 years of the No Fly zone cease fire, like in Korea for the last 55 years, so many presume was concluded as a war ending peace treaty. Oddly opened end in UN authorizing resolutions yet non-participating resolution.
Since American and British forces carried out Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 against Iraq, this "forgotten" war in the Middle East has only become more intense. According to the New York Times in an article on August 13, 1999, American and British forces have escalated the continuing war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Since the beginning of 1999 through August 1999, Allied pilots launched over 1,100 missiles against 359 Iraqi targets. That number equals nearly three times the amount of ordnance used in the four-day Desert Fox strike. Also, the pilots in the Iraq War have flown two-thirds the number of missions as NATO pilots in the 1999 Kosovo War. By all accounts, Iraqi forces continue to target their radar and fire missiles at Allied warplanes despite the punishment inflicted from the air. The estimated, unofficial cost of this war to U.S. and British taxpayers is around $1 billion per year. As of August 1999, over 200 military planes, 19 naval ships and 22,000 American military personnel are committed to enforcing the "no-fly zones" and to fighting Iraq. In addition, reports indicate that the death rate for small children has doubled in Iraq over the past decade. These child deaths are attributed to the continuing war and economic sanctions on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s unwillingness to live up to the 1991 cease-fire agreement
http://www.historyguy.com/no-fly_zone_war.html
Democrat’s “Politico”costs
http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/10/the_real_cost_o.php
“Harvard’s” $3 trillion cost
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:LAvT7...cd=18&gl=us
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:jntJF...cd=16&gl=us
a detailed analysis in comparsion to the CBO analysis shows a distorted bias of debatable inflationary assumptions used by the Harvard Doomocracy stuidy.
This has been the case in all our wars. World War II ultimately cost about 140% of GDP. Would FDR have thought, "Well, the war is worth it at 130% of GDP, but not at 170%"? In terms of the damage it did to the American economy and the American heartland, or simply in terms of the number of dead, the Civil War dwarfed all the others. But Lincoln certainly never took a pencil to do a cost-benefit test. Nor did John F. Kennedy when he said, "We will pay any price, bear any burden ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Had any of these leaders done that, they would have fallen into the trap that the economics profession is so often accused of: They would know the price of everything and the value of nothing
In late 2002 the U.S. had more than 60,000 troops stationed in the countries around Iraq to back up UN Security Council resolutions. Hans Blix, the UN's weapons inspector, credited those forces as being the reason he was getting even limited co-operation from Saddam. In the congressional debate about authorizing the war, the opponents' position was that we should continue with the UN inspection process, which required U.S. troops to stay on the scene. It was presumed that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), not just by President Bush, but by the National Intelligence Estimate and the spy agencies of many other countries. It would have taken a long time to convince a skeptical world that Saddam's noncompliance with 17 UN resolutions was innocent. Under the alternative scenario of the time American forces would have been stationed around Iraq for years, many of them in harm's way.
The true cost of the Iraq war, therefore, is not the pricetag we see in the papers, but the cost of that conflict relative to the alternative scenario on offer. We would have still stationed half to three-fourths as many troops as we now have in Iraq in neighboring countries. The cost of stationing them there would be lower than what we now pay but would still be substantial. The continuous use of air power would have been necessary to police the no-fly zones established in the ceasefire of the first Iraq war. Increased surveillance of the Iran-Iraq and Syria-Iraq borders would have been necessary to limit terrorist migration. While we did not find WMDs in Iraq, there was plenty of evidence on the ground to suggest that Iraq would have developed them if it had had the opportunity, as it
Oddly without much of any real evidence the Pom Pom media in efforts of “electioneering” have for months now cheered on to that drum beat as to a Recession, and now they quickened the beats more and more as the election grows, to now near doom, now to a beat that we are in a depression. But is that true, the wars had anything to do with it?
Oil as a defensive weapon:
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/reading_room/239.pdf
Persian Gulf costs
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/persian_gulf/
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/annual_report/annual_report.htm
Persian Gulf war: 1 Aug 1990 to 31 Aug 1992 $61.1 Billion X factor 1.51= $275.56 Billion in 2007 dollars, NOT including Post VA costs which were more than significant.
Nearly 700,000 U.S. military personnel were deployed to the Persian Gulf theater of operations during 1990-1991. Upon their return, 42% or 294,000, of Persian Gulf War veterans reported health concerns. The Va has estimated on average their medical costs has been $12.34 Billion a year.
The cost of the war to the United States was calculated by the United States Congress to be $61.1 billion U.S. troops represented about 74% of the combined force, and the global cost was therefore higher
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/reading_room/650.pdf
Pre-war CBO estimates given to all in Congress both those who did not and who voted for the war authorization.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aairaqwarcost.htm
http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offs...mp%3Bsequence=0
Post Persian Gulf war; No fly zone war costs
MONETARY COST OF THE WAR/GDP
• The liberation of Kuwait in 1991 cost the equivalent of 1% of the GDP of the time, or about $80 billion in today’s dollars.
• The Vietnam war cost between 1.5% and 2% of GDP each year during the eight years of major American commitment, or about $600 billion. At its peak we had more than 500,000 soldiers and other military in Vietnam.
• Iraq war costs of between 0.5% and 0.7% of GDP.
• We would have still stationed half to three-fourths as many troops as we now have in Iraq in neighboring countries. The cost of stationing them there would be lower than what we now pay but would still be substantial.
• The continuous use of air power would have been necessary to police the no-fly zones established in the ceasefire of the first Iraq war.
• Increased surveillance of the Iran-Iraq and Syria-Iraq borders would have been necessary to limit terrorist migration.
• Evidence suggests Saddam would have rebuilt his WMD capability. it is plausible that not invading Iraq would probably have cost at least a third as much as we ultimately spent on deposing Saddam.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:UBoFr...cd=35&gl=us
No Fly Zone ( Aircraft Only*) costs average at $1 billion per year calculate in 2008 dollars
1992, Factor =1.51 =1.51 Billion
1993, Factor =1.47 =1.47 Billion
1994, Factor =1.43 =1.43 Billion
1995, Factor =1.39 =1.39 Billion
1996, Factor =1.35 =1.35 Billion
1997, Factor =1.32 =1.32 Billion
1998, Factor =1.30 =1.30 Billion
1999, Factor =1.27 =1.27 Billion
2000, Factor =1.23 =1.23 Billion
2001, Factor =1.20 =1.20 Billion
2002, Factor =1.18 =1.18 Billion
2003, Factor =1.15 =1.15 Billion
Totaled $15.81 billion
* Cost not inclusive of US having 66,000 troops off shore and in and around Iraq for 13 years of the No Fly zone cease fire, like in Korea for the last 55 years, so many presume was concluded as a war ending peace treaty. Oddly opened end in UN authorizing resolutions yet non-participating resolution.
Since American and British forces carried out Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 against Iraq, this "forgotten" war in the Middle East has only become more intense. According to the New York Times in an article on August 13, 1999, American and British forces have escalated the continuing war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Since the beginning of 1999 through August 1999, Allied pilots launched over 1,100 missiles against 359 Iraqi targets. That number equals nearly three times the amount of ordnance used in the four-day Desert Fox strike. Also, the pilots in the Iraq War have flown two-thirds the number of missions as NATO pilots in the 1999 Kosovo War. By all accounts, Iraqi forces continue to target their radar and fire missiles at Allied warplanes despite the punishment inflicted from the air. The estimated, unofficial cost of this war to U.S. and British taxpayers is around $1 billion per year. As of August 1999, over 200 military planes, 19 naval ships and 22,000 American military personnel are committed to enforcing the "no-fly zones" and to fighting Iraq. In addition, reports indicate that the death rate for small children has doubled in Iraq over the past decade. These child deaths are attributed to the continuing war and economic sanctions on Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s unwillingness to live up to the 1991 cease-fire agreement
http://www.historyguy.com/no-fly_zone_war.html
Democrat’s “Politico”costs
http://www.democrats.org/a/2005/10/the_real_cost_o.php
“Harvard’s” $3 trillion cost
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:LAvT7...cd=18&gl=us
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:jntJF...cd=16&gl=us
a detailed analysis in comparsion to the CBO analysis shows a distorted bias of debatable inflationary assumptions used by the Harvard Doomocracy stuidy.
This has been the case in all our wars. World War II ultimately cost about 140% of GDP. Would FDR have thought, "Well, the war is worth it at 130% of GDP, but not at 170%"? In terms of the damage it did to the American economy and the American heartland, or simply in terms of the number of dead, the Civil War dwarfed all the others. But Lincoln certainly never took a pencil to do a cost-benefit test. Nor did John F. Kennedy when he said, "We will pay any price, bear any burden ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Had any of these leaders done that, they would have fallen into the trap that the economics profession is so often accused of: They would know the price of everything and the value of nothing
In late 2002 the U.S. had more than 60,000 troops stationed in the countries around Iraq to back up UN Security Council resolutions. Hans Blix, the UN's weapons inspector, credited those forces as being the reason he was getting even limited co-operation from Saddam. In the congressional debate about authorizing the war, the opponents' position was that we should continue with the UN inspection process, which required U.S. troops to stay on the scene. It was presumed that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), not just by President Bush, but by the National Intelligence Estimate and the spy agencies of many other countries. It would have taken a long time to convince a skeptical world that Saddam's noncompliance with 17 UN resolutions was innocent. Under the alternative scenario of the time American forces would have been stationed around Iraq for years, many of them in harm's way.
The true cost of the Iraq war, therefore, is not the pricetag we see in the papers, but the cost of that conflict relative to the alternative scenario on offer. We would have still stationed half to three-fourths as many troops as we now have in Iraq in neighboring countries. The cost of stationing them there would be lower than what we now pay but would still be substantial. The continuous use of air power would have been necessary to police the no-fly zones established in the ceasefire of the first Iraq war. Increased surveillance of the Iran-Iraq and Syria-Iraq borders would have been necessary to limit terrorist migration. While we did not find WMDs in Iraq, there was plenty of evidence on the ground to suggest that Iraq would have developed them if it had had the opportunity, as it