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July 24, 2006
OT 06-67
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Just what the world needed: Pakistan Expanding Nuclear Program
Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region’s arms race.
Satellite photos of Pakistan’s Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan’s current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.
…
The assessment’s key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway.
“Pakistan’s nuclear program has matured. We’re now consolidating the program with further expansions,” the official said. The expanded program includes “some civilian nuclear power and some military components,” he said.
…
After comparing a sequence of satellite photos, the institute analysts estimated that the new reactor was still “a few years” from completion. The diameter of the structure’s metal shell suggests a very large reactor “operating in excess of 1,000 megawatts thermal,” the report says.
“Such a reactor could produce over 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power a modest 220 days per year,” it says. “At 4 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of over 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year.”
There was no immediate reaction to the report from the Bush administration. Albright said he shared his data with government nuclear analysts, who did not dispute his conclusions and appeared to already know about the new reactor.
What are the consequences for the India/US deal on nuclear technology?
For all the bullshit about National Security – a cover for whatever elite interests Must be protected – I must say that the ONE country in the world I find Seriously Frightening is Pakistan. They are sooo close to a MaleFundieWacko takeover…even setting aside their conflict w/India…the notion that they ever should have any say in absolutely anything about the world is disgusting & horrifying. Look at how they run their own hideously blighted corner of real estate…
Posted by: jj | Jul 24 2006 7:50 utc | 3
b, the first thing that came to my mind when I read your #2 was, “What the world needs now is love nukes sweet love nukes…”
With apologise to Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 24 2006 8:09 utc | 4
Specter is trying to justify his Bush enabling new FISA law in a WaPo Oped.
Greenwald will have fun with it. It is so weird that one has dificulti to detact any logic at all.
Critics complain that the bill acknowledges the president’s inherent Article II power and does not insist on FISA’s being the exclusive procedure for the authorization of wiretapping. They are wrong. The president’s constitutional power either exists or does not exist, no matter what any statute may say. If the appellate court precedents cited above are correct, FISA is not the exclusive procedure. If the president’s assertion of inherent executive authority meets the Fourth Amendment’s “reasonableness” test, it provides an alternative legal basis for surveillance, however FISA may purport to limit presidential power. The bill does not accede to the president’s claims of inherent presidential power; that is for the courts either to affirm or reject. It merely acknowledges them, to whatever extent they may exist.
So the bill does not matter, that’s why it should pass. Idiot.
de Gondi has a good post at EuroTrib on the the Abu Omar kidnapping and the latest
revelations regarding Sismi (Italian military secret service) involvement
from the beginning, including objections regarding its illegality from agents at the “operative” level, apparently overruled by the higher-ups. Naturally, in the best Italian and clandestine tradition, the new evidence
surfaces in the form of a taped conversation between the apparently designated fall-guy (Marco Mancini) and his immediate superior. The whole affair is coming to a boil as a result of this new revelation and the “apparent suicide” of Adamo Bove a technical expert telecom security who
had been collaborating with the ongoing investigations regarding both Sismi
and illegal interception of telephone data (network analysis data).
While the world’s eyes are focused on other, even more egregious examples
of the collapse (in both style and substance) of the neocon project , the Italian case offers further confirmation of epochal incompetence. The “hard headed realists” running U.S. intelligence agencies have not only succeeded in “outing” more than a score of U.S. spooks in Italy (some like
Robert S. Lady on the verge of retirement, but others closer to the beginning of their careers), they have also left a sordid legacy which may well see a number of their Italian colleagues brought to trial for abetting the illegal kidnapping. It’s hard to imagine that Italian sources have not been irredeemably compromised by this fiasco, and it’s inconceivable that this will fail to adversely affect the quality and efficiency of U.S. intelligence operations in Italy for years to come.
Naturally, at the official level all rumors of friction will be denied, but
intelligence officers notoriously do not suffer fools gladly.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jul 24 2006 10:09 utc | 6
Apologies if these have already been posted on a thread here at the Moon, but I am really busy and don’t have time to read everything right now.
Went to humungous antiwar demo in London this weekend, Israeli IndyMedia has some pix, the first one is the march going down Piccadilly.
Loads of Lebanese people with their children were there, carrying flags with the cedar tree in the middle. Some orthodox Jewish people walked down from Stamford Hill or somewhere, it took them three hours apparently – the sabbath, so they didn’t use public transport – to join in.
Kim Howells, UK Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East, in today’s Daily Telegraph:
“I am very disturbed the more I hear about the extent of this campaign,” he said. “At some stages there are 60 jets out there over the Mediteranean waiting to hit targets.”
Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, in today’s Guardian:
Further north, its planes have continued to demolish targets in Lebanon, prompting Jan Egeland to denounce them as “a violation of humanitarian law”.
“It is horrific,” he said as he toured the ruined Haret Hreik district of Beirut yesterday. “I did not know it was block after block of houses. “It’s bigger, it’s more extensive than I even could imagine.”
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jul 24 2006 10:40 utc | 7
One of the unintended consequences of Israel’s bombing campaign against south Lebanon is, I think, that the general public is getting a crash course in the history of the conflict. Nobody here buys the “it started last Tuesday” line, and there’s quite a bit of discussion about the previous Israeli attacks on the country, up to and including events like Sabra and Chatila, and whether or not Hizbollah is equivalent to the IRA.
One thing is certain. Even though the IRA mounted a long campaign against the British mainland after 1969, encompassing at different times political, military and civilian targets, at no time did the British government level Dublin because the IRA was operating within the borders of the Irish Republic.
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jul 24 2006 11:24 utc | 8
b:
David Cole :
How the Supreme Court Struck Back
The Court’s decision also has significant implications for the controversy over President Bush’s authorization of NSA spying without court approval. On its face, that program violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires that a special court grant permission for wiretapping. The administration has defended the NSA program with two arguments. It claims that Congress implicitly authorized the program when it enacted the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against al-Qaeda in 2001. And it maintains that the president has inherent unilateral power to authorize such surveillance as commander in chief, notwithstanding the fact that it was criminally banned by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
In Hamdan’s case, the administration similarly argued that the AUMF of 2001 authorized the military tribunals, and that in any event the president had unilateral authority to create the tribunals as commander in chief. The Court dismissed both contentions. It reasoned that since the AUMF said nothing specifically about military trials, it could not override the explicit congressional legislation restricting the use of military tribunals. And it ruled that whatever inherent power the president might have in the absence of congressional legislation, “he may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers.”
These conclusions squarely refute the only arguments the president has advanced to justify the NSA spying program. The AUMF of 2001 is as silent on wiretapping as it is on military tribunals. Here too, then, the president may not disregard Congress’s express limitations on his powers.
Specter is going through the motions of opposition. Astoundingly he is the only one doing even that. The analysis above indicates that a very strong case could be made before the Supreme Court that the present regime’s actions are illegal.
Lame as he is Specter is the only one who even feels the need even to go through the motions. And he’s a Republican.
The Democrats are not spineless, as some people like to complain they are. They are complicit with everything this regime does. In fact, via their conspicuous silence in every conceivable instance of outrage, they are the real backbone of this truly monstrous regime.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jul 24 2006 11:39 utc | 9
Robert Fisk Another Week in the Death of Beirut (23 July 2006)
Also, to comrade remembering:
Your old mate Alfred McCoy was in town this weekend, I couldn’t go to hear him speak unfortunately, but I’ll try to look up for transcript/mp3 files of his sessions (see Sunday) when they’re posted.
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jul 24 2006 13:10 utc | 10
Dismal Science,
“One of the unintended consequences of Israel’s bombing campaign against south Lebanon is, I think, that the general public is getting a crash course in the history of the conflict.”
Yes I believe that’s true if people just look at facts, think for themselves, and quit listening to the pundits. The other day I heard on a MSM cable TV that Israel was the only state founded and established by a U.N resolution. Ironically this was right after some Neocon endorsing Bolton who talked about how irrelevant the U.N. was.
And was not the new democracy of Lebanon supposed to be protected (ie. Condi Rice previous statements) by the U.S.? What right does that give Bush to rush high tech bombs over to Israel to aid in destroying Lebanon and killing its people? This leads into what John Francis Lee talked about in his post above about the Democratic Party politicians being complicit in the Bush atrocities.
Jesus, the good news just keeps on coming.
WTO trade round collapses:
Accusing the United States of “stonewalling,” EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said: “Surely the richest and strongest nation in the world, with the highest standards of living, can afford to give as well as take.“
Looks like the Bliarites are burning bridges too.
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jul 24 2006 14:01 utc | 12
Sorry, forgot to link to Reuters, WTO talks collapse.
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jul 24 2006 14:06 utc | 13
Tony Blair is blabbering on about “plan” for a ceasefire as if ceasefire were the final objective. Ceasefires should be the first step from where one goes to explore possibilities. The first objective must be to stop the bombings.
Words like sustainable (Rice) are just smoke screen in the hope of bringing about results which are unrealistic and probably not in the interest of those civilians who are being bombed.
Posted by: YY | Jul 24 2006 14:10 utc | 14
Italian rendition investigator suicided…
Via war and piece, I just caught an article over at eurotrib regarding the “suicide” of one of the top investigators into the Italian probe in the Abu Omar’s rendition.
Last Friday just after 12 noon, Adamo Bove fell to his death on a motorway in Naples. He had just left his wife to do some errands in town while he headed home. On an overpass he stopped his car, put on the emergency lights, and apparently jumped to his death, presumably making sure there were no oncoming vehicles on the highway some thirty meters below him.
I wonder if he had a picture of Bush in his jacket pocket? Anyone keeping track of how many suicided individuals in the recent past?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 24 2006 14:47 utc | 15
Truly pissed off former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray (23 July 2006):
British diplomats at the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York – people I know personally – are putting massive effort into working against a ceasefire. …
Our policy now is to slavishly follow the Bush line that Israel may unilaterally define its own borders.
Posted by: Dismal Science | Jul 24 2006 14:55 utc | 16
Yesterday US troops killed five people, including two women and a child, in the city of Baquba during a raid, claiming they had been shot at. At best it was a tragic error, at worst it spoke to the cavalier attitude of the US towards Iraqi civilian lives. Local police said that a man had fired from a rooftop at the Americans because he thought a hostile militia force was approaching.
…
More people are dying here – probably more than 150 a day – in the escalating sectarian civil war between Shia and Sunni Muslims and the continuing war with US troops than in the bombardment of Lebanon.
…
Iraqis are terrified in a way that I have never seen before, since I first visited Baghdad in 1978. Sectarian massacres happen almost daily. The UN says 6,000 civilians were slaughtered in May and June, but this month has been far worse. In many districts it has become difficult to buy bread because Sunni assassins have killed all the bakers who are traditionally Shia.
Baghdad is now breaking up into a dozen different hostile cities, Sunni or Shia, heavily armed and living in terror of the other side.
…
It seems unlikely that Baghdad will ever come together again. Sunni are frightened of being caught in a Shia district, and vice versa. Many now carry two sets of identity documents, one Sunni and one Shia. Checkpoints manned by the Mehdi Army know this and sometimes ask people claiming to be Shia questions about Shia theology. One Shia who passed this test was still killed because he was driving a car with number plates from Anbar, a Sunni province.
…
I never expected the occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain to end happily. But I did not foresee the present catastrophe. Baghdad has survived the Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War, UN sanctions, more bombing and, finally, a savage guerrilla war. Now the city is finally splitting apart, and – most surprising of all – this disaster scarcely gets a mention on the news as the world watches the destruction of Beirut so many miles away.
Wanted to get this off my chest:
The outline of the joint Israeli-U.S. strategy is finally becoming clear.
That Sunni-Shi’a civil war in Iraq?
That’s not a flaw. It’s a feature. And it’s going to be exported to the rest of the Middle East.
Israel’s extensive assault on Lebanon beyond Hizbollah and its assets has puzzled many observers.
However, it now looks like it’s part of an effort to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon, at least its affluent, Christian, and Druze components.
The effort seems to be bearing some fruit, as non-Sh’ia Lebanese seem to be willing to overlook the fact that Israel planned this attack for over a year (and that Hizbollah’s kidnapping of three soldiers was merely a convenient causus belli) and blame Hizbollah for Israel’s destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure.
(Considering that no campaign of this magnitude would have commenced without close consultation with the United States, it comes as no surprise that as the attack was launched the Iraq debacle—with its monthly death toll of civilians—quickly became America’s forgotten war, and Our George gets to play Innocent Bystander in the Middle East instead of The Guy Who Pushed Iraq Into the Woodchipper just as we cruise into the mid-term elections)
Now, I assume Secretary Rice went to Beirut to promise that all that stuff the Israelis blew up will be replaced in a graceful here’s the money no questions asked manner, with the Hariri clan soaking up the graft instead of Halliburton.
In return, all the Lebanese have to do is to coordinate with the US, Israel, and NATO to strangle Hizbollah and the Sh’ia militarily and politically.
I’m not sure how well this is going to work, since the Sh’ia are grossly under-represented in Lebanese national politics thanks to the Taif Agreement—and that’s probably why Hizbollah was given a free hand in southern Lebanon as compensation. Although they only occupy about 20% of the seats in Parliament, Sh’ia are definitely a plurality in Lebanon, and perhaps even the majority.
If the Sh’ia decide their security and interests can only be served by controlling the whole country instead of a vulnerable enclave, Lebanon is headed for some bad days ahead.
The wedge strategy has a bigger, regional component as well.
It’s been reported that the US is working through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt to try to split Syria from Iran.
The carrot is if Syria “abandons” Hizbollah, Bashar Assad can join Qaddafi on the short list of Arab Socialist Assholes We Like, and we’ll stop trying to overthrow his regime.
If Syria doesn’t play ball, well apparently morally inert world opinion has tolerated collective punishment by Israel against the Lebanese democracy, so nobody’s going to lose any sleep if the IDF starts bombing the stuffing out of civilian as well as military targets in Syria on whatever pretext it can create.
According to this theory, Syria and Christian/Druze Lebanon will join hands and sing kumbaya over the bones of Hizbollah, Israel will retreat into its national fortress, and the decks will be cleared for isolating Iran.
Of course, Iran won’t be isolated.
The Iraq regime is Sh’ia dominated and pro-Iran.
The Sh’ia population of Lebanon is not going to be quietly pro-Israel and pro-US after half a million of them were displaced by a savage Israeli bombing campaign.
Instead of an Iran isolated in the Arab world and confronted by a united front of Western powers, we’ll see intense polarization between Sunni and Sh’ia throughout the Middle East fueled by mistrust of Iran’s growing economic, military, and nuclear ascendancy.
That’s the realistic expectations of Israel and the US anyway.
The only proven capability of our Middle East policy has been to foster deadly enmity between Sh’ia and Sunni in Iraq. Why not apply that strategy to the whole region?
If the traditional narrative of Muslim world vs. Israel is replaced by Sh’ia vs. Sunni, we can sit on the sideline and watch the Muslims tear each other apart for the next few generations.
That’s pretty much the inevitable consequence of America and Israel’s commitment to the goal of national security through violent regime change.
There are those of us who will remember that the whole issue might have been solved by the arduous but relatively unbloody process of achieving an accommodation with the Palestinians and Syrians.
But we’re pretty much the minority.
However, I think the majority of Muslims in the Middle East will not forgive their leaders for using them as pawns in a geopolitical game that brought civil war to their region and within their religion. If the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt persist in America’s anti-Sh’ia project, they may well be weakened beyond America’s ability to support and protect them.
The price for the few square miles of land that Israel so desperately covets may very well be a revolutionized, implacably anti-US Middle East for the next 50 years.
Posted by: Peter Lee | Jul 24 2006 16:42 utc | 18
just came across a quotation of that piece of shit nietzschean warrior bolton, it is taken from george packer’s ‘assasins gate’:
“i confess i had no desire to die in a southeast asian rice paddy”
this nietzschean nullity who would weave war throughout our world & whose cowardice is a matter of public record
they are truly detestable creatures
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 24 2006 17:27 utc | 20
If the traditional narrative of Muslim world vs. Israel is replaced by Sh’ia vs. Sunni, we can sit on the sideline and watch the Muslims tear each other apart for the next few generations.
That is the idea. Or one of them anyway. The rag heads can kill each other. Too sad, very uncivilized, dontch’a know. Remember Ruanda…
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 24 2006 17:37 utc | 21
The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.
The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency’s 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days.
…
But six I.R.S. estate tax lawyers whose jobs are likely to be eliminated said in interviews that the cuts were just the latest moves behind the scenes at the I.R.S. to shield people with political connections and complex tax-avoidance devices from thorough audits.
Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a “back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax.”
wishing i had the discipline to turn off the cable which provides the propaganda equivalence of an israeli bombardment
not only is their onslaught -total
they are in essence adjuncts to the israeli defence force & their masters at the white house
they tell us nothing about gaza or the west bank
iraq gets less than its thirty seconds
perhaps because i use the journals & the internet, television has degraded from whatever it was when i last watched it – some 15 years – the feigned emotions, the recycled language the interchangability of scenes, the discontinuities
every american or israeli assassin is a soldier
each iraqui or palestinian is a gunman
how they can sell ‘objectivity’ even to a dumbed down public is beyond me
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 25 2006 0:20 utc | 24
roberts really hits the nail on the head. thanks for the link r’giap. throw your telly out the window if you can’t disengage the cable. paying for poison, yuk.
Posted by: annie | Jul 25 2006 1:04 utc | 25
& th ‘experts’ on cnnskybbc seem to come from the same source & possess an unusual convergence of views
once in a while they bring on a bad arab who has to take responsibility for anything that has gone wrong in the last 2006 years & he & it is normally a he – has to be inscrutable, swarthy, or incoherent with rage
& even then every time an arab speaks – the cnnskybbc – say whatever they say can not be independently confirmed
& as the nic whatever he is called on cnn – who jolted me out of my torpor by suggesting in such moments he uses his (journalistic integrity’ – well, i have not had a laugh like that for some time & i suppose that laugh will have to last me for a long time
a little reichian analysis tho about character armour – i just iwh the little commentators including the women would not get erections when they are on camera from the ’embedded battleground’
it is so silly, so insensibly silly if it were not so sordid
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 25 2006 1:05 utc | 26
@RG:
Paula Zahn went all sticky wet when all the heaviness fell on Tora Bora–and she in New York or Atlanta.
Haven’t heard of little Nicky having a close call yet.
Doubt he would be having an erection about it.
Posted by: Ms. Manners | Jul 25 2006 1:20 utc | 27
Question for r’giap –
General Giap had a few things to say about a year after the Iraqi invasion, e.g. that invasion forces cannot prevail if the people in a country are against the invaders and unified. I think he was interviewed by a French reporter, and CNN ran a short translated excerpt.
Do you know if he has said anything recently about Iraq? If so, what?
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 1:23 utc | 28
The news is depressing, but I found these cartoons by a Brazilian rather cheering.
According to today’s “Today in Iraq”, Brazil has Iraqi Resistance clubs which hold regular meetings and discuss the latest news of the Resistance.
Links to cartoons:
Link to cartoon1
Link to cartoon2
Link to cartoon3
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 1:32 utc | 29
Just in case people missed this – from Washington Post – and other newspapers – it does not seem to be on the Time Magazine web site.
[…] key elements of Saddam Hussein’s old army are now heading the insurgency.
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam’s top lieutenant with a $10 million bounty on his head, struck a defiant tone in an intervew appearing on Time magazine’s Web site
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 2:00 utc | 30
owl
‘today in iraq’ – a terrific resource
the last commentary made by the good general was on his birthday remarking that he thought the defeat of the u s in iraq as inevitable as it was in vietnam
it was in a journal here & i remember it being a stronger reitieration of the comments he made at the beginning of this criminal & illegal war
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 25 2006 2:03 utc | 31
owl
the link does not appear to work – am extremely interested
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 25 2006 2:05 utc | 32
I will try again to get a live link – it is copied on other newspaper sites too. I made some mistake –
Meanwhile – if you want to cut and paste these links:
Washington Post:
link1
Time magazine:
link2
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 2:16 utc | 33
Ok. These work.
Links to Al-Douri interview – articles – the Washington Post article is reprinted in other papers elsewhere – this news seems to be spreading. I hope there is more in the Time print edition when it comes out.
Link to Time Magazine Al-Douri
Link to Wash.Post – Al-Douri
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 2:29 utc | 34
anni, it is not my t v to throw onto the street but i would if i could
all these little commentators in the finely pressed ‘ army’ shirts with epaullettes, & their little color coded kevlar vests at the merest ejaculation, their smarmy knowitallwithoutknowingasinglething,their reading of whitehouse talking points aas if it came straight from theior mouths, their insolent & often inccorrect ex general staff members with names like ‘spider’, ‘ace’, ‘doggy’ – whatever
caricatures so carnal you want it dissapear up their own asses
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 25 2006 2:30 utc | 35
Thanks to Uncle Scam and others for their words on the other thread. The images that night were more really than I wanted to bear.
I offer in return this small quote from Anthony Burgess, my favorite fiction writer:
“I was brought up a Catholic, became an agnostic, flirted with Islam and now hold a position which may be termed Manichee. I believe the wrong God is temporarily ruling the world and that the true God has gone under. Thus I am a pessimist but believe the world has much solace to offer: love, food, music, the immense variety of race and language, literature and the pleasure of artistic creation.”
Amen.
Posted by: mats | Jul 25 2006 2:48 utc | 36
just watched the indecent anderson cooper give his mock heroic ‘reporters journal’ with mock heroic photographs of sd cooper at the beirut hilton
like his confrere, that ridiculous buffoon, john simpson who thought he was the liberator of kabul – they identify with their journalistic exercises(which are almost entirely undergraduate) in a manner that is deeply pathological
they imagine ;
they are more worthy than the ruins
their breath more valuable than a people’s blood
& they are so much less
even that most vain of men ernest hemingway gave us real description, an understanding of conflict & of people
men like cooper & simpson would have a full time job trying to understand themselves but i imagine for them – they would think it a worthwhile occupation
they are the kind of people that giive that proverb about unexamined lives a bad name
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 25 2006 3:08 utc | 37
Do you mean this spider, RG:
LINK
Or perhaps this one:
LINK
Or maybe this one:
THE UNIVERSAL SPIDER
I was hoping to read something more about Vo Nguyen Giap, instead of piddle fucking with spiders, although all three spider stories are interesting in their own way, especially the first and the last.
Posted by: Ms. Manners | Jul 25 2006 3:09 utc | 38
In case this slipped by some people’s notice –
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is on a two-week world tour, visiting leaders, looking at military installations, signing trade deals, etc. in Belarus, Russia, Iran, Mali, Qatar, and Vietnam.
In Volgograd, Chavez will lay flowers at the Battle of Stalingrad memorial. From there he will continue on to Izhevsk, where his favorite weapon, the Kalashnikov assault rifle, is produced.
Russia has contracted to supply Venezuela with 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles this year.
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 3:16 utc | 39
all central command seem to have names it would not be dignified to give to dogs
Posted by: r’giap | Jul 25 2006 3:18 utc | 40
@Owl:
Ole Kalashnikov is still kicking around too.
Has added wodka to his line. You can Google it.
Posted by: Ms. Manners | Jul 25 2006 3:32 utc | 41
lions and tigers and bears oh my Rice visits Beirut in surprise Mideast tour
she disappointed Lebanese leaders who had hoped her lightning trip would hasten a cease-fire in the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militants in Lebanon that has claimed hundreds of civilians’ lives.
“Thank you for your courage and steadfastness you pathetic suckers,” she told Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, who has repeatedly asked for international help in bringing a halt to cross-border Israeli-Hezbollah shelling. Rice flew next to Jerusalem but made clear that she would not pressure Israeli leaders for an immediate cease-fire during meetings Monday and Tuesday.
In a meeting that appeared tense, Saniora told the U.S. diplomat that Israel’s bombardment had taken his country “backwards 50 years,” the prime minister’s office said. And Nabih Berri, a veteran Lebanese politician who is Lebanon’s parliament speaker and Hezbollah’s de facto negotiator, rejected proposals brought by Rice almost as soon as she left.
i admit it, i doctored the text
Posted by: annie | Jul 25 2006 4:04 utc | 42
CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP DEPT.
I realize that Okla. has undergone at least a century of reverse evolution, but even given that….If this guy didn’t exist, Billmon would have to make him up.
Posted by: jj | Jul 25 2006 4:38 utc | 43
Heh.
jj – there is a longer article, and even better photo of Senator Inhofe looking all stern & determined, presumably about the global warming hoax promoters who are like unto the Nazi propagandists.
Indeed, Inhofe insists that he feels even stronger about taking on what he sees as the current hysteria about global warming than he did several years ago when he first uttered that now-famous hoax statement.
Mind you – I still think that more research ought to be done on historical records. It could be that there is more going with the climate than just human activity adding methane, carbon dioxide, etc.
Hannibal did manage to get his elephants over the Alps, and I wonder just how warm it was then. The Vikings on Greenland had prosperous dairy farms, but were done in partly by the climate turning colder.
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 5:12 utc | 44
r’giap –
Could I post on “Today in Iraq” what you said about General Giap’s latest comments on Iraq? I will also post what I remember of the interview with General Giap on CNN, several years ago.
I think it would be of interest to people there.
Posted by: Owl | Jul 25 2006 5:15 utc | 45
Terror Alert!
Spanish firm claims it can make oil from plankton
A Spanish company claimed on Thursday to have developed a method of breeding plankton and turning the marine plants into oil, providing a potentially inexhaustible source of clean fuel.
Vehicle tests are some time away because the company, Bio Fuel Systems, has not yet tried refining the dark green coloured crude oil phytoplankton turn into, a spokesman said.
Quit! Bomb them! , they pose a threat to the National insecurity of this fine nation!
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 25 2006 6:13 utc | 46
Peter Lee:
That strategy is not working in Lebanon. They have already been through a devastating civil war, and rule no. 1 in their currently rebuilt (but now destroyed?) country is to do NOTHING to emphasize divisions between religious & ethnic groups. If anything, Hezbollah has come out of this with nmore support than they had before – the Lebanese feel they are being bombed as a whole country (DUH) not just the Hezbollah guerrillas.
Anyway, Hezbollah gave the Lebanese govt power to negotiate about the kidnapped soldiers yesterday, and at the same time (presto!) Syria says it will help negotiations for ceasefire and (golly!) Iran even says it might be willing to rethink buying uranium… And that’s just yesterday’s news! Guess who’s winning this conflict?
Posted by: 2nd anonymous poster | Jul 25 2006 6:34 utc | 47
Uncle – Quelle Catastrophe…but Israel, Iraq & Afghanistan have our bombs tied up at ze moment. Guess they’ll have to swallow their pride & call Georgie Soros & ask him to back up a threat to destroy the Euro unless the Spanish cease & desist immediately…or is that no longer possible since it’s the currency of many countries rather than merely, say, Indonesia?
Posted by: jj | Jul 25 2006 6:48 utc | 48
But seriously, I don’t see how this could be anything more than carbon neutral, as any carbon consumed in production would be released when burned. Or am I missing something?
Best news is that this process uses neither Fresh Water Nor Land…
Posted by: jj | Jul 25 2006 6:55 utc | 49
U.S. Says It Knew of Pakistani Reactor Plan
The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan’s plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor, but it said the White House was working to dissuade Pakistan from using the plant to expand its nuclear arsenal.
…
The acknowledgment came as arms-control experts and some in Congress expressed alarm about a possible escalation of South Asia’s arms race. Some also sharply criticized the administration for failing to disclose the existence of a facility that could influence an upcoming congressional debate over U.S. nuclear policy toward India and Pakistan.
“If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-chairman of a House bipartisan task force on nonproliferation. “The Bush administration’s proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely.”
That proposal would allow the United States to share civilian nuclear technology with India.
…
Henry D. Sokolski, the Defense Department’s top nonproliferation official during the George H.W. Bush administration, said he was most surprised by the way news of the reactor in Pakistan became known.
“What is baffling is that this information — which was surely information that our own intelligence agencies had — was kept from Congress,” said Sokolski, now director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. “We lack imagination if we think that this is no big deal.”
I guess the US-India deal will have some trouble going through Congress now.
What else is the administration withholding?
Any taxpayers here who want to know how their money is spend?
Leader of Panel That Endorsed Jet Program Has Ties to Contractor
A think tank that endorsed a three-year contract for a troubled jet fighter program is run by a former military officer with extensive ties to one of the program’s subcontractors, according to internal Pentagon documents and corporate statements.
The endorsement came from the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a federally financed research center whose president, Dennis C. Blair, is a member of the board of a subcontractor for the F-22 Raptor fighter program, EDO Corp. EDO developed a missile launcher for the F-22 and has held contracts worth at least $38 million that are part of the program, according to its news releases.
After receiving the IDA’s endorsement, the Air Force decided to lock itself into a new three-year contract for the jet.
Blair holds options to buy tens of thousands of shares of EDO stock, although he has exercised only a small portion, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. In an interview, Blair said he was heavily involved in the preparation of the report endorsing the multi-year procurement as the chairman of an internal review committee that approved its final form.
“I am at the top of that process,” Blair said. But he chose not to recuse himself because his link to EDO was not of sufficient “scale” to require it, he said.
Government Trolls – Our Tax Dollars at Work
The government spends YOUR tax dollars to pay people to surf the net and plant messages about how wonderful the war is for everyone!
White House release calls for Israel to hit Syria
more later…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 25 2006 13:16 utc | 52
Todays democracy Now Has a exclusive special segment on a new Documentary about experimental “Tactical High Energy Laser” weapons in Iraq. I will post an update when is available…
Till then see: Is The U.S. using new experimental “Tactical High Energy Laser” weapons in Iraq?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 25 2006 13:39 utc | 53
Conyers v. Bush
via talkleft
Rep. John Conyer’s (D-MI) is suing President Bush over the enactment of the Federal Deficit Rediction Act. Shorter version: The House and Senate passed different versions of the bill and even though they went to conference, the House never voted on the version passed by the Senate as a House clerk changed a provision in the Senate version and Bush signed it into law. Bush can’t sign a bill unless it has been agreed to by both the House and Senate.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 25 2006 14:22 utc | 54
n November, a documentary from Italy’s RAI Television accusing the United States of illegally white phosphorus during its attack on Fallujah. A new documentary says the United States is now using experimental laser weapons against Iraqi civilians. We play an excerpt.
From illegal weapons in Lebanon we turn to Iraq. In November, Democracy Now aired a documentary from accusing the United States of illegally white phosphorus during its attack on Fallujah. The Pentagon was forced to admit to the charge after more than a week of denials. The same Italian team has produced a new documentary. It says the United States is now using experimental laser weapons against Iraqi civilians. Today, in another U.S. broadcast exclusive, we bring you an excerpt. It’s called “Star Wars in Iraq”, produced by Maurizio Torrealta and Sigfrido Ranucci for RAI Television.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 25 2006 15:28 utc | 56
Israel using white phosphorous and cluster bombs on Lebanese civilians. -Dahr Jamail in Beirut link
Posted by: Anonymous | Jul 25 2006 17:57 utc | 57
wow, listen to chris mathews unload on imus. thrilling
Posted by: annie | Jul 25 2006 19:11 utc | 58