Monday - August 18, 2008

Britain’s ‘youngest terrorist’ jailed.  Some damned serious stuff here. Trust NONE of them. EVER!

People I’m tellin ya.
Any community that puts out the welcome mat for anyone belonging to the ROP, is building the bomb that’ll kill them.

This creep btw, as you’ll see, was born in this country.  Doesn’t matter though. 
The article doesn’t say how long the jail term is for but what does it matter?  It won’t change this bastard one little bit.  He’ll see himself as a martyr.
What’s so wrong about a firing squad?  There are sure to be ppl who’d happily carry out that simple and much needed task.  Drew and myself for two. Well, I can’t speak for Drew but I’d be happy to introduce the SOB to his 72 virgins.

Britain’s youngest terrorist has been jailed after a guide to death and explosives was found his home.

Last Updated: 2:25PM BST 18 Aug 2008

Hammaad Munshi, just 16 and taking GCSEs when arrested, was part of a cell of cyber groomers that set out to brainwash the vulnerable to kill “non-believers”.

For nearly a year the teenager, whose grandfather is a leading Islamic scholar, led a double life.

By day he attended lessons at the local comprehensive and did as he was told.

But in the evening he spent hours surfing jihadist sites and distributing material to others as part of what the Crown branded a “worldwide conspiracy” to “wipe out” non-Muslims.

London’s Blackfriars Crown Court heard it contained detailed instructions about making napalm, other high explosives, detonators, and grenades, and “how to kill”.

He was 15 when recruited by Aabid Khan, 23, a “key player” in radicalising the impressionable and vulnerable here and abroad with his message of “violent jihad”.

They lived 10 miles apart, phoned each other during 2005 and 2006, and swapped documents about “black powder explosives”.

Khan wanted to fulfil the teenager’s wish to go abroad and “fight jihad”, and during one internet exchange discussed how the schoolboy might smuggle a sword through airport security.

The Dewsbury-born teenager was detained a day after Khan as he and friends returned from local Westborough High School.

The IT whizz-kid - whose online Arabic profile “fidadee” means a “person ready to sacrifice themselves for a particular cause” - ran a website selling hunting knives and Islamic flags and was the cell’s computer specialist.

Two bags of ball-bearings - the shrapnel of choice for suicide bombers - were found in one of his pockets

On his PC were al-Qa’eda propaganda videos and recordings promoting “murder and destruction”.

The teenager, whose grandfather is Sheikh Yakub Munshi, president of the Islamic Research Institute of Great Britain at the Markazi Mosque, Dewsbury, also stored notes on martyrdom under his bed.

“One who is not taking part in the battle nor has the sheer intention to die is in the branch of hypocrisy,” they read.

“I don’t want to be a person like it has been mentioned about, I don’t want to be deprived of the huge amounts or lessons Allah has prepared for the believers in the hereafter.”

http://tinyurl.com/6owklf

Posted by Drew458     on 08/18/2008 at 10:26 AM   
Filed Under: • RoPMA • Terrorists • UK • War On Terror •  
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   Sunday - August 17, 2008

trying to blog

Yes, I’m still alive. These past few days have been very hectic for me. I’d planned to spend an afternoon at my brother’s, but that turned into 2 1/2 days. First because the project ran much longer than I expected. Then because all heck broke loose with the weather.

Or at least it appeared to. He lives a bit northwest of NYFC, so the television there is dominated by NY stations. And they had a storm. A big thunderstorm that moved rapidly east, and dumped a lot of rain along the way. But it might, just might, have the right kind of wind patterns that could cause a tornado. And the TV news people just went nuts. They had crews in the field. They had crews reporting from the airports. They had crews reporting from the west side, from mid town, from the western end of Long Island. Here’s the traffic cam shot of some bridge. Oh look, a cloud! Look, it’s dark!! We’re all gonna die! OMG it’s raining, hold your breath or else you’ll drown! Take cover right this instant!!! For over 2 hours that’s all that was on all 7 of the local channels. Doppler radar endlessly. With zoom. And little white dots that showed every last bolt of lightning. And are you prepared for a disaster and don’t drive into puddles because you could drown if they’re deeper than you thought. And are the hospitals prepared for an emergency and how would you get there anyway since the helicopters can’t fly in this wind and the ambulances can’t drive through floods and the wind is probably too high for rescue boats and anyway the boats can’t get up on the flooded streets in midtown anyway and we’re all gonna die!!!

It was a pretty intense storm. The sky got dark real fast, the wind came along, it rained real hard for half an hour, then the storm went past. But the TV was giving off it’s emergency BEEP every 20 seconds, with the flashing red trailer running across the screen : Get Indoors! Find Shelter! We’re All Gonna Die!!!11!

There was no tornado. A few trees fell down here and there, and the totally overtaxed power grid in Westchester County failed. But it always fails. And trees always fall down in Westchester and Long Island. Always. And the trains were running late, as usual. And there was a bit of local flooding, since the natural ground cover in that whole area is asphalt. But that’s about it. Chicken Little rides again.

No, I don’t take tornadoes lightly. If somehow a twister could form and somehow survive in the iron and concrete canyons of NYC it could do quite a bit of damage. And I suppose it was good that all the talking heads on the tube could go into Emergency Mode so quickly and professionally.  But it seemed like the greatest overreaction to a medium thunderstorm I’d ever seen. So much ado about nothing that you would have thought George Costanza got a job with the Weather Channel and the whole thing was some bizarre Seinfeld episode.

By the time I got back here Saturday it was time to go apartment hunting. We’re thinking of moving. This is a nice place, we’ve been here a decade, but the utility bills are fierce. The whole place is electric. Heat, cooking, everything. Ack! So ever few years when the lease comes due we look at other places in the area that go for the same rent. And they’re all slums. Always. But we have to go and look anyway.

The first place was a partially renovated 1840s house for the farmhands that had been split into 2 small apartments. There is a big sturdy chain link fence at the edge of the backyard, and on the other side is a highway. The busy end of the same highway in the picture actually. The owner had done a splap dash poor job of fixing up the kitchen and throwing some paint at the walls, but the windows were 19th century originals. So were the worn out floorboards, with gaps in them so big you could drop a rat right through. With next to no closets or storage space too. Hmm, no thanks.

The next place was a few miles up the road in some sleeply little town that was built when the railroad went through. In 1859. Which means that the houses there that are in really good repair are lovely, and the rest are termite traps. A town with no stores at all. No anything actually. This place was a dump too. There wasn’t a level inch in the whole place. And it was on the point of a sloping sharp triangular bit of land, so there was a main road right on the other side of the window - literally - on both sides of the house. But hey, the rent was cheap. And there were no termites. Because they’d been toasted. I looked around the clean and dry outside-entry basement, and I noticed that the great beams that held the place up had a crackled look to them. Freshly painted, but with some odd waffle - snakeskin like texture. I reached up to touch one, and a bit came away in my hand. It was black and powdery on the backside. WTF? Oh yeah, says the landlord, there was a bit of a fire down here a while back. A bit all right. The entire place went up. The only reasons the whole house didn’t collapse is because a) they used really big chunks of wood back in the day, and b) the place is right across the street from the fire house. And the fire siren. Which went off while we were there and brought conversation to a dead halt. Oh that? Oh you get used to it. We hardly even hear it anymore! Um, no thanks, I think I’ll look around a little bit more. We’ll let you know, Ok? Bye!

And today was double office cleaning. My usual Sunday work plus the Friday work I couldn’t get to because of the storm. But I did manage to snap a pic of some pretty low gas prices, a half mile down the road from that last apartment. Here’s hoping your local price is this low, or gets this low soon. Sayonara, and I’m off to help the wife pre-bowl tonight for the finals Tuesday. And then I can cook and do my own housework.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/17/2008 at 03:49 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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US gets ready to blow its economy away .  Christopher Booker, reaction to his visit to USA.

Doesn’t need any comments from me. He already has it nailed.

By Christopher Booker
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 17/08/2008

Visiting America last week to talk to audiences across the country about “global warming”, I was struck by television commercials for the two presidential candidates.

Senators McCain and Obama were each shown in front of film of the same giant wind farm, to lay claim to virtually identical “green” credentials. Since America has already built five times as many wind turbines as Britain, covering thousands of square miles, I checked out how much electricity all those 10,000 turbines actually produce. The answer is around 4.5 gigawatts - not much more than a single large coal-fired power station.

After years when America was vilified for not taking “global warming’ seriously, it was a shock to find how “environmentalism” is now threatening to transform what is still the largest and richest economy in the world.

Both candidates favour a version of the proposed “cap and trade” scheme to slash US greenhouse gas emissions to 63 per cent below 2005 levels, at an estimated cost by 2030 of more than $600 billion a year - representing a cumulative loss to the US economy, within 22 years, of $4.8 trillion.

Although America is still dependent on coal for around half its electricity, with reserves estimated as likely to last 200 years, state after state is proposing to ban new coal-fired power stations.

Environmental groups, with powerful political support, are now lobbying equally fiercely against natural gas or any new nuclear power plants.

Most dramatic of all are the implications of a Supreme Court judgment in the case of Massachussets v the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which ruled by a single vote that the EPA must treat any greenhouse gases as “pollution”, to be regulated under America’s Clean Air Act.

The EPA is thus mandated to impose drastic new limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from pretty well any source, not just industry and transport but schools, hospitals, even lawn mowers.

The implications are so immense for almost every sector of the US economy that government departments -commerce, agriculture, energy and others - have been queuing up to protest, arguing that the effects of such regulation would be so damaging that it should be regarded as unthinkable.

But politicians of both parties, led by the two men vying for the presidency, are so carried away in the rush to appear “green” that it seems there is no longer any national voice powerful enough to question the sanity of such measures.

All the fashionable talk is of how fossil-fuels must be replaced by massively subsidised sources of “renewable” energy, such as vast arrays of solar panels, even though a recent study showed that a kilowatt hour of solar-generated electricity costs between 25 and 30 cents, compared with 6 cents for power generated from coal and 9 cents for that produced by natural gas.

What is terrifying is the extent to which America’s leading politicians seem oblivious to the economic realities of what they are proposing. The readiness of Messrs McCain and Obama to posture in front of pictures of virtually useless wind turbines symbolises that attitude perfectly.

Here, in the EU we are only too sadly familiar with politicians floating off into cloudcuckooland over our future energy policy, with the virtual certainty that before many years this may leave us with a colossal shortfall in our electricity supplies.

But “the lights going out all over Europe” is one thing: if they go out in the richest economy in the world - while China cheerfully continues to build one new coal-fired power station a week - we may look back on the US presidential election of 2008 as a time when history really did reach a watershed; the moment when the nations of the West finally signed up to the most bizarre suicide note the world has ever seen

http://tinyurl.com/5j2q9p

Posted by Drew458     on 08/17/2008 at 11:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment •  
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   Saturday - August 16, 2008

ADOPT A LOVING CAT?  WHOA … JUST TO BE A BIT DIFFERENT …

My last posting for this Sat. evening.  Sorry about the quality but you won’t need perfect quality to appreciate this.
I don’t think this unfortunate fella knows how to calm or stroke a cat. Bet he still doesn’t know what he did wrong.

OUCH!

Posted by Drew458     on 08/16/2008 at 01:32 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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Nato is pushing Russia into a new Cold War.  (this is NOT pro American, be warned.)

This is another of those damned RCOB articles that make me boil. Yes, I’m PO’d but blogging it anyway.
I don’t agree and don’t like what he says about my country. So why give this guy space on an American conserv. blog site?

First, I don’t wanna be like the liberal left and act as I think they do. I am not editing this writer in any way. If I blogged conserv. Littlejohn, maybe I should add this guy as well.
Second, I want folks at home in USA to see this and see proof of what they already know.  Namely, not everyone on this side of the globe is on our side.
I also believe (without any personal proof I confess) that his is the prevailing view.  And yes, that bothers the heck out of me. That said, I can’t say that everything single thing this fellow says is wrong. He has a point or two that might be valid.  As in, “Russia will do as it pleases.” I think he’s correct on that.
I think too he’s right about the UN and protecting jobs and pensions and fringe benefits. 

When he asks, “Whatever made Washington think it could keep pushing Nato right up to Russia’s border without provoking conflict? “
I have to answer with ,,,, that’s a fair question and I really don’t have the answer.  Maybe some of you do.

I greatly am in much favor of his wish that America would become “isolationist.” Oh, if only.  I wonder tho how fast he’d be to ask for guns and aid and request we give up our hoped for isolation, in the face of a major war (which ain’t gonna happen) that might threaten his country and his way of life.
I think we all know the answer to that too.

By ANDREW ALEXANDER
The Daily Mail

As so often, the Americans are proving a menace on the international stage. And the term humbug is wholly inadequate to describe the reproaches that President Bush heaps on the Russians.

As are reckless and irresponsible to describe the use of the U.S. military to carry humanitarian aid to Georgia. That is the way conflicts can escalate.

It is easy to imagine the frenzy in Washington if Russia treated the U.S.’s Latin American neighbours as though they were within its sphere of influence.

One question has been lingering for years.

Whatever made Washington think it could keep pushing Nato right up to Russia’s border without provoking conflict?

Some European governments have long been uneasy about this provocative strategy, but never the United States.

This dangerous recruitment drive started under President Clinton.

Now we have Poland and the Czech Republic agreeing to U.S. missile and radar sites.

Almost beyond belief, Nato is wooing the Ukraine.

Yet, as anyone with an ounce of history knows, fear of encirclement has characterised Russia for centuries - after so many invasions from east, west and south.

This fear has a deep hold on the country’s psyche. This is not just being ignored by the U.S., it is being flouted.

The problem about Nato is that it may be a multi-nation alliance in theory, but Washington has always led it by the nose, being the dominant power, by virtue of size, funds and military technology.

There is also a curious fear that if we upset the Americans they might lose interest in Europe and become isolationist. If only!

Few would have believed that East-West relations should have so declined 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Nato itself has been a principle cause. With the collapse of Communism, the organisation lost its principal purpose.

But anyone familiar with large international organisations knows that no great military and bureaucratic machine is ever easily persuaded to dismantle itself or even shrink.

Jobs, pensions, prestigious appointments, fringe benefits, visa privileges and all the other comforts of officialdom were at stake.

So Nato set about devising a new role - expansion to the east.

This fitted all too well with Washington’s expansionist instincts.

Every quarter of the globe is regarded as the business of the U.S.

Everyone is seen as needing American guidance, to say nothing of lectures on human rights and the rule of law (from the creators of Guantanamo Bay).

The expansionist urge gained impetus from the ‘neo-cons’ in the late 1990s, with their ‘Project for the New American Century’, in which they lamented a lack of forcefulness in Washington’s policies.

Commanding huge sums of money, not least from the defence contractors, they succeeded in getting their pawn into the Oval Office and themselves into key government posts.

The American defence industry has good reason for backing the drive to the east.

The former Soviet satellites could be offered American military technology, naturally on comfortable terms.

The ‘industrial-military complex’, which a disillusioned President Eisenhower warned against nearly half-a-century ago, is alive and well.

Now we are in a position as if the Cold War had never ended.

Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has announced that the current conflict does not mean that Georgia may not yet become a Nato member.

He seems happy, like Bush, to strengthen the hardliners in the Kremlin.

In the course of its relentless expansion, Nato has acquired dangerous commitments.

The alliance is pledged to come to the aid of any member under threat.

Thus, we assume a responsibility for the policies of an array of former Soviet satellites, many of them traditionally unfriendly to Russia.

The belief that because these countries are now democracies they are bound to behave responsibly is absurdly optimistic.

We cannot be certain that none of the new Nato states - nine of them resentful, former Soviet satellites - may not drag us into conflict with Russia.

The position of Russian passport-holders in the Baltic states, a remnant from the Soviet conquest in World War II, has already been seen as a potential source of trouble.

Baiting the Bear is not only dangerous, it is wholly unnecessary.

Russia will do as it pleases - which may sometimes be disagreeable - when it thinks its own security is at stake.

It is hard to see why President Bush, of all people, should be surprised, let alone shocked.

http://tinyurl.com/6o6vc7

Posted by Drew458     on 08/16/2008 at 11:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • UK •  
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Former police officer held in cell after confronting yobs. 21st century crime and punishment.

Punishment. Yeah right.  Cept they got the wrong guy!
Another story calculated to bring on, RCOB!

A former police officer was arrested and held in a cell after confronting a group of unruly teenagers over their behaviour.

By Nick Allen
Last Updated: 7:57PM BST 13 Aug 2008

Paul Lawson, 52, challenged the youths after they threw a beer can at his car as he drove past.

Mr Lawson told two police officers that the gang had threatened to kill him and smash up his vehicle.

But he was then accused of attacking one of the teenagers and held in a police cell for two hours before being bailed on suspicion of assault causing bodily harm.

The former inspector from Morpeth, Northumberland, who served 30 years with London’s Metropolitan Police, was eventually told seven weeks later that no further action would be taken against him.

He said: “I still can’t believe this. As far as I am concerned, the police just abrogated their responsibility and should be ashamed of themselves.”

The incident happened late on a Friday night as Mr Lawson and his wife Chris, 54, a nurse, drove home.

Mr Lawson said: “They were the usual crowd of boy racers who gather in Morpeth and I got out and moved towards them.

“I was planning on making a citizen’s arrest but things very quickly turned nasty. I was surrounded by about 12 of them.

“They told me to leave or they would kill me and the ringleader said if he saw my car parked in Morpeth again they would wreck it.”

Mr Lawson found two patrolling police officers in the town centre and reported the incident to them, but said they did not bother to take his details and simply promised to patrol the area.

A fortnight later he was summoned to Bedlington police station where he was interviewed, arrested and held in a cell.

Mr Lawson said: “I was told I had been arrested on suspicion of actual bodily harm and that a youth claimed I had grabbed and bruised him. I was absolutely furious about that, it was unbelievable.

“Up to today I have not heard about any action taken against the youths who threatened me.”

http://tinyurl.com/55agq8

oh btw ... yawn ... this is soooo tiresome to report .... two more teens stabbed to death ... yawn .... authorities say zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by Drew458     on 08/16/2008 at 11:10 AM   
Filed Under: • UK •  
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OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT?  DON’T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS SAYS THE MAIL’S LITTLEJOHN.

I HAVE SELECTIVELY EDITED LITTLEJOHN COMMENTS.
Go to the link for everything.  This guy is always worth reading.

On Main Street, America, Obama’s grandstanding in Europe went down like a bucket of cold sick.
In Peoria and hundreds of other similar towns, what they saw was not a President-in-Waiting but an uppity kid with delusions of grandeur.

On our side of the water, there’s an assumption that if you act as if you’ve already got the job, it’s yours by right.

Not so in the USA. They might loathe the incumbent, but they revere the office. Obama’s presumptive glad-handing of foreign leaders was seen in many quarters as an insult to America itself.

Wonder boy Barack may be Europe’s choice for next President but that counts for nothing in the swing states he has to win if he is to enter the White House.

America remains a deeply small ‘c’ conservative country. Obama’s other big mistake was to sneer at ‘ frightened’ Middle Americans whom he accused of ‘clinging to God and guns’. It might play well with the liberal media, but it doesn’t play in Peoria.

Doubts about Obama started to surface towards the end of the primary process. He lost seven out of the last eight contests, many of them blue-collar states which he’ll need to win to become President.

He’s even in trouble in rust-belt Michigan, next door to his home state of Illinois, despite Detroit’s depressed economy, which has shed almost half a million jobs under Bush.

McCain has played a canny, low-key game, not least because he lacks Obama’s budget, boosted by millions of internet donors, and because the networks have decided that Barack is the only show in town. The Republican’s use of advertising time has been well-targeted.

Watch out for those Clintons!

Never mind McCain. Obama’s biggest problem is the Clintons. They haven’t forgiven him for outsmarting them in the primaries and are planning to hijack the convention in Denver. Hillary still thinks that the Presidency is her birthright. Billy Bob seethes with barely-disguised hatred and racism.

Clinton supporters intend to turn the convention into a rally for Hillary.

Keen observers who watched her graceless ‘concession’ speech back in June will have noticed she announced she was ‘suspending’ her campaign for the White House, not abandoning it.

Now she’s claiming disingenuously that if John Edwards had been exposed as an adulterer earlier in the campaign, his votes would have gone to her and she would now be the candidate.

While Billary will ostensibly support Obama, they are willing him to lose with every fibre of their being.

A McCain victory is her best chanceof another crack at the Presidency in four years’ time. If Barack wins convincingly, she’s toast.

And I wouldn’t give much credence to her joining the ticket as Vice-President.

Obama may have a bit of Lady Di charisma, but he’s bright enough to have absorbed her ‘three people in a marriage’ lesson.

Hillary could yet return to haunt Barack like Glenn Close emerging from the bath with a carving knife at the end of Fatal Attraction.

Tellingly, one of the Clintons’ most effective attacks on Obama during the primaries was the notorious ‘3am’ advert.

This showed a phone ringing in the dead of night as children slept in their beds.

The message was: if America is attacked, who would you want to answer the phone - Obama or Hillary?

Don’t be surprised if the Republicans re-run it. And the answer will be: John McCain.

http://tinyurl.com/5vyeel

Posted by Drew458     on 08/16/2008 at 10:25 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Politics •  
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The Second American Revolution.  Just got this, be interesting to know your thoughts.

HT Jim and thanks.

A former neighbor in CA. sent this to me and I was much impressed. Very passionate is this fellow. Be very interesting to know what BMEWS readers think.
Was it on target? Was it overdone?  Agree? Don’t agree? Why?  Will it do any good or have we become so apathetic it won’t matter anymore.
And btw, I was just infomed by friend Jim thru photos, about floods in Iowa.  Huh?  When?  Not being funny, not at all.  I never saw or read about the extent of the floods anywhere here.  True, there may have been a mention but nothing lasting so it was new, news to me.

Will post on that later.

Sorry to have left Friday a blank.  Wasn’t home here at the house, and never booted Fri.  Feel guilty for that but could not be helped.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/16/2008 at 02:56 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration • Judges-Courts-Lawyers • Patriotism •  
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   Thursday - August 14, 2008

Georgians trust in God: in Saakashvili, not so much .

By Adrian Blomfield
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 13/08/2008

The Georgian people are fabled for their generosity and charm - sometimes to ridiculous extremes. As a heavy Russian artillery assault pounded one village near the Ossetian border, an old Georgian woman crept alongside a garden wall where I was taking shelter to offer me apples from her orchard.

Yet many Georgians have a tendency towards recklessness - as anyone who has driven on their roads can confirm.

The international consensus is that Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, took the national trait of recklessness to a farcical level when he decided to launch an offensive to liberate the region of South Ossetia from separatist rebel control.

Around the world and even in Georgia itself, where the mood has swiftly changed from gung-ho optimism to glumness and introspection, many wonder how the president could have made such a monumental blunder.

Did he not, they say in bewilderment, realise the consequences of antagonising Russia at a time when the Kremlin was itching to show off its rediscovered bad-boy swagger?

As Georgians begin to analyse what went wrong, Saakashvili’s future appears bleak.

The consequences of his adventure are little short of catastrophic. The president has been humiliated, his demoralised army is in disarray. Even more seriously, Georgia’s dream of joining Nato and securing international protection against Russia is far further from realisation than it was a week ago.

Yet Saakashvili’s gamble - while it has undoubtedly backfired - was not quite as foolhardy as might appear. The president, after all, is not a stupid man, even if he can come across as naïve, even foolish on occasion. He speaks five languages fluently and has even learnt Abkhaz and Ossetian, the languages of the two breakaway areas.

For a long time he showed restraint, despite his own instincts and the advice of his administration’s hawks, in dealing with his two renegade regions in the face of intense provocation from Russia.

Moscow not only funded and probably armed the rebels in both Abkhazia and South Ossetia; it also persuaded many of the people there to take up Russian passports by luring them with the promise of pensions. This gave the Kremlin the disingenuous pretext of defending Russian “citizens” to justify military intervention in Georgia.

Provocation, in the shape of sporadic air raids, intensified from Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in February. From that point, a war with Georgia over either South Ossetia or Abkhazia became likely.

The stakes were raised in April, when Nato promised Georgia that it would eventually be placed on the path to membership - a move that Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, could not tolerate.

By goading Saakashvili into war, Russia knew that Georgia’s Nato ambitions would be scuppered. European members had opposed an American push to fast-track Georgia’s membership precisely because of the unresolved issues of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Yet Saakashvili knew that, if he did not resolve the separatist problem, European members would continue to block Georgia’s membership bid. With Russian interference, a diplomatic solution to the crisis would never be reached. That left Saakashvili with the option of a swift surgical strike to take back the provinces.

Believing that South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity’s relations with the Kremlin had deteriorated to the extent that the Russians would not retaliate, he decided to end the Ossetia problem first.

Given that his troops had received US training, and that much of his army had been blooded in Iraq, he believed he could take South Ossetia within 48 hours. It was a grave miscalculation. Saakashvili both overestimated the prowess of his army and underestimated the likely Russian response.

Passionate, colourful and instinctive, Saakashvili is often blinded by his visions for Georgia to such an extent that he becomes detached from reality.

Determined to remove the Soviet-era hangovers who dominated Georgia’s bureaucracy, the president thought that the best way to move the country towards liberal democracy was to replace them with educated youngsters. He surrounded himself with bright, earnest advisers in their twenties and thirties who had gone to college in America and had eagerly devoured the writings of Western economists and political scientists.

Masters of public relations, and brimming with enthusiasm, this cadre of clever and often beautiful young things essentially became Mr Saakashvili’s kitchen cabinet. But of experience in the intricacies of diplomacy and the treacheries of regional politics, they had little.

In going to war with Russia, the Georgian president took his counsel not from seasoned heads, but from what was essentially a university debating team. That mistake could cost Saakashvili his job.

http://tinyurl.com/56lgu8

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 01:40 PM   
Filed Under: • War-Stories •  
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Ukraine imposes restrictions on Russian navy.

Ukraine imposed new restrictions on Russian naval vessels based at Sevastopol on the Black Sea as former Soviet bloc states lined up to show support for Georgia in its fight with Russia.

By Damien McElroy in Tbilisi
Last Updated: 4:51PM BST 14 Aug 2008

President Victor Yushchenko raised the prospect of revoking an agreement that allows Russia to use the Crimean port until 2017 if Russian commanders defy the new restrictions. The presidential decree requires vessels blockading Georgia to ask Kiev’s permission to return to the treaty port.
Reasserting control over its near neighbours is at the heart of Russia’s foreign policy. It has ruthlessly cut winter energy supplies to secure compliance from Eastern Europe and used Russian-speaking minorities from the Baltics to Central Asia as leverage against states courting the West.

Mr Yushchenko joined the leaders of Poland and the Baltic states on a solidarity mission by a self-described group of “captive nations” of the USSR, to Tbilisi on Tuesday.
Even before yesterday’s decree, Mr Yushchenko had faced domestic criticism for adopting positions that inevitably antagonise Moscow. Ukrainian political analyst James Hydzik said the president had put the country in Moscow’s crosshairs. He said: “Protestations of neutrality from the Ukrainian government are not helped by the visit [to Tbilisi], at least from the Russian standpoint.”

Russia has used a mixture of bluster and threats to resist efforts by Georgia and Ukraine to join Nato. But even states that are members of the EU are not immune from Kremlin intimidation. “In the Baltic states and Ukraine, independence is still seen as something fragile and not necessarily built to last,” said Bartosz Cichocki, an expert at the Polish Institute for International Affairs. “So if it’s not defended actively, it can’t last.”

In the aftermath of the Russian assault on Georgia, many former Soviet citizens doubt that the West can restrain Moscow. Even confidence in Nato’s charter guarantee that all states will aid any member attacked from abroad has been shaken. “People are certainly afraid that Russia could attack Lithuania just like Georgia,” said Lithuanian political scientist Kestutis Girnius. “And you see that kind of view among politicians,” The legacy of Soviet domination still haunts Russia’s relations with its former allies. “We came to fight since our old neighbour thinks that it can fight us,” Polish President Lech Kaczynski said in Tbilisi. “This country thinks that old times will come back, but that time is over. Everyone knows that the next one could be Ukraine, then Poland.”

Poland and the three Baltic countries yesterday raised objections to a French ceasefire plan, criticising it for not explicitly guaranteeing Georgia territorial integrity.
Not all ex-Soviet states are anti-Kremlin democracies. But even pliable Belarus, a Soviet-style dictatorship with a mutual support pact with Moscow, was admonished by the Kremlin for not offering enough support.

Moscow has challenged world opinion before, most notoriously its agents used radioactive material to poison defector Andrei Litvinenko in a London hotel. But the Russian operation in Georgia has raised calls to isolate Russia to the forefront of international politics.
Both candidates in the US presidential election have condemned Moscow’s aggression. Senator John McCain had already signalled he would toughen policy towards Russia if elected by securing its expulsion from the G8.

Guided by the foreign policy specialist Robert Kagan, Sen McCain hopes to establish a league of democracies to contain authoritarian states, principally Russia and China.

http://tinyurl.com/6lmuta

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 01:25 PM   
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Russia destroying military bases in Georgia.

Russian forces have been accused of rampaging through Georgia and destroying its military infrastructure.

By Adrian Blomfield near Gori
Last Updated: 6:05PM BST 14 Aug 2008

American and Georgian officials said that Russian soldiers were sabotaging airfields and tearing up army facilities.

Russia is defying an appeal by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, for it to obey the terms of a peace deal with Georgia. In Moscow its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov announced that the world can “forget about” Georgia’s territorial integrity.

A Georgian spokesman said: “The Russian troops are destroying the city of Gori. They are mining the city. They are destroying everything in Poti port. They are destroying the newly built roads in western Georgia.”

Moscow appeared to renege on a pledge to end its occupation of Gori, where several explosions were heard today. Russian soldiers and Georgian troops were involved in a tense stand-off at the strategic town.
Russian troops were also alleged to have re-entered the port of Poti, on the Black Sea, further testing an already shaky ceasefire brokered by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Under intense pressure from the United States, which has ordered a military-led humanitarian mission to Georgia, hopes of a peaceful resolution to the crisis were raised after Russia said it would hand over Gori to the Georgian police this morning.

Russian troops used the first day of the truce on Wednesday to take the town, 15 miles into undisputed Georgian territory from the South Ossetian border, in contravention of a six-point ceasefire plan that called on all combatants to withdraw to positions held before the conflict began.

But as Georgian police in military vehicles approached a checkpoint outside Gori, the Russians appeared to change their minds. Both sides drew their guns, before the Georgians withdrew as Russian tanks arrived to reinforce the position.

A tense stand-off ensued as the Georgians retreated 200 yards. Drunk South Ossetian irregulars, manning the checkpoint alongside the Russian soldiers, most of them drawn from a Chechen battalion, began to barrack onlookers. One fired his handgun into the air as his colleagues robbed passers-by of their vehicles. Moments later, Russian field guns fired shells at what was said to be an ammunitions dump behind a nearby hill.

Behind the Russian checkpoint, fire could be seen raging though hillside farms and there was the occasional crackle of gunfire.
It was the sort of chaos that has characterised so much of this conflict and raises fears that while Moscow may have been talking peace and pledging to withdraw troops on Tuesday, it is in no rush to pull out of Georgia.

Russian troops had agreed to withdraw from positions around Gori, but diplomats say they may have delayed their pull out as the Kremlin digests the implications of the American humanitarian mission.
While US military aircraft and warships are being sent to the region to deliver aid, and Miss Rice is due to visit the Georgian capital Tblisi on Friday, the presence of US soldiers in Georgia is also intended to send a strong signal to Russia of Washington’s support for the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili.
It is unclear whether the Kremlin, convinced of Russia’s re-emergence as a global power, will be persuaded to ease tensions or increase its defiance as a result of the American move.

Georgia sent Alexander Lomaia, the secretary of the country’s National Security Mission, to negotiate with the Russian troops holding Gori.
Mr Lomaia said that although Russia had reneged on its initial promise to leave Gori it was now saying it would do so at some stage on Friday.
“We are trying to agree on the deployment of Georgian police into Gori,” he said. “But there is mutual suspicion. There are [South Ossetian] separatists trying to intervene. The situation is tense. The ceasefire is quite fragile.”

Mr Lomaia then met a Russian colonel, who, in an apparent drunken rage, railed incoherently at western correspondents.
Mr Lomaia tried to reason with him. “There’s no need to shout at the correspondents,” he said quietly. “Why don’t we go and sit in the car.”
Meanwhile, South Ossetian irregulars continuing to loot and pillage in Gori and nearby Georgian villages, often with the encouragement of Russian troops.
“Take whatever you want,” a Russian officer shouted at the Ossetian militiamen in one village.

Fears of Balkans-style reprisals by South Ossetian fighters have grown since they entered Georgian territory after the ceasefire was agreed.
Human Rights Watch accused Russia of inflaming the mood of the irregulars by exaggerating the number of civilian deaths in the secessionist province of South Ossetia since Georgia attempted to win back the region last Friday.

The Kremlin has accused Georgia or perpetrating a genocide in the region, claiming that 1,600 civilians had been killed. But Human Rights Watch, a respected New York based advocacy group that monitors abuses around the world, said it had so far only been able to find evidence of 44 civilian deaths in South Ossetia.

Two US aid flights today delivered cots, blankets and medicine to help the estimated 100,000 civilians displaced by the weeklong fighting. The shipment arrived on a C-17 military plane, an illustration of the close US-Georgia military co-operation that has angered Russia.

http://tinyurl.com/6fwag7

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 01:09 PM   
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The West must support Georgia and spell out costs of Vladimir Putin’s actions.

THE FOLLOWING IS THE EDITORIAL FROM TODAY’S TELEGRAPH.

YOU MIGHT WANT TO FOLLOW THE COMMENTS AS WELL. GET SOME IDEA OF PPL’S THINKING HERE.

The most telling support for the beleaguered Georgian government has come from Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They, after all, have first-hand experience of living under the Russian boot.

Elsewhere, America has taken the lead in denouncing the annexation by Moscow of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. George W. Bush, who visited Tbilisi in 2005, said he was dispatching his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to the Georgian capital, and yesterday saw the landing of the first American military aircraft, carrying humanitarian aid.

Washington, along with Britain and France, had already cancelled joint military exercises with the Russians.

Meanwhile, the EU has, unconvincingly, taken on the role of mediator. At a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels yesterday, it expressed willingness to monitor the terms of the truce agreed by Nicolas Sarkozy, its current president.

However, Poland and the three Baltic states rightly condemned Mr Sarkozy’s intervention as failing to respect the territorial integrity of Georgia.

The West must now spell out the cost to Vladimir Putin of his revanchism in former “Soviet space”. The talks between the EU and Moscow on a new “strategic partnership” and meetings of the Nato-Russia Council should be put on hold. Russia should be expelled from the G8 and denied entry to the World Trade Organisation.

The first three steps would be a blow to the pride of a country that craves to be considered a great power again. The fourth could also have a long-term effect on a state that is still overwhelmingly dependent on oil and gas. Consider the boost that WTO membership has given to the more diversified Chinese economy.

To treat with impunity what has happened in Georgia will merely encourage Mr Putin to apply the screw elsewhere in the former Soviet empire. The most obvious target is Ukraine, which, like Georgia, aspires to join Nato.

The bone of contention could be the Russian Black Sea fleet’s base in Sevastopol, whose current lease expires in 2017.

Further north, Moscow might be tempted to intervene in Estonia and Latvia in the support of the Russian-speaking minority, and will certainly put further pressure on Lithuania to establish a visa-free corridor between the mainland and the maritime exclave of Kaliningrad.

To forestall further revanchism, the Russians should be left in no doubt that the consequence will be the freezing of their considerable assets in the West.

Diplomatic isolation and financial sequestration are the best means of curbing the sinister attempt to recreate their old sphere of influence.

http://tinyurl.com/5fzd9q

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 12:50 PM   
Filed Under: • Military • Tyrants and Dictators • UK • War-Stories •  
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AN OBIT FOR A BATTLING BRIT FROM ANOTHER TIME. RIP COLONEL JOHNSON.

THIS IS A FAIRLY LONG STORY BUT FASCINATING OR IT WOULDN’T BE HERE.  THIS MAN WAS MOSTLY UNKNOWN TO THE PUBLIC AT LARGE, AND THIS READS LIKE AN IAN FLEMMING STORY.  THIS IS HOW THE TELEGRAPH DOES OBITS ON THOSE WHO’VE PASSED AND LEFT A STORY BEHIND THEM.  IN OTHER WORDS, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE FAMOUS.

BRITS HAVE BEEN PRETTY DARN GOOD AT THIS IN THE PAST.  COULD DO WITH ANOTHER ENTIRE GENERATION LIKE HIM.  BUT HEALTH AND SAFETY ACTS WOULDN’T ALLOW FOR IT.  MORE’S THE PITY AND SAD FOR ENGLAND AS WELL.

Colonel Jim Johnson
Former SAS officer who in the 1960s led a three-year guerrilla campaign against Egyptian forces in Yemen.

Colonel Jim Johnson, who has died aged 83, was responsible for running Britain’s clandestine war against Egyptian forces in Yemen during the mid-1960s, an experience that inspired him to set up Britain’s first post-war private military company.

Six years after the allied withdrawal from Suez in 1956, the Yemeni monarchy fell victim to a military coup staged by Egyptian-trained officers, an event which served as a warning to the British protectorates of Aden and Oman.

In London the Macmillan cabinet was divided between those who were ready to recognise the new Yemeni regime (the approach taken by Washington) and those who favoured supporting a guerrilla campaign of resistance on behalf of the displaced ruler, Imam al Badr, who had been forced to retreat into the hills.

As the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) dithered, Colonel David Stirling, founder of the Special Air Service (SAS), suggested that Jim Johnson, a retired SAS officer, “put something together”. Johnson was then asked if he might be willing to go to Yemen to destroy the Egyptian Mig aircraft which were bombing tribes loyal to Imam al Badr with phosgene poison gas; and there followed an adventure that would have done credit to Bulldog Drummond.

Weapons of indeterminate origin were stored at Johnson’s home in Sloane Avenue, Chelsea, for use by former SAS regulars and reservists, some of whom had left the Army to take part in the operation.
Among the leaders selected for the operation were Colonel John Woodhouse, a prominent figure in the fortunes of the post-war SAS, and Major John Cooper, David Stirling’s wartime driver, who was now working as a professional freelance soldier.

A cheque for £5,000, signed by the Imam al Badr’s foreign minister, was paid through the bank account of the Hyde Park Hotel, where the SAS’s colonel commandant, Brian Franks, was chairman of the board.
Johnson took leave of absence from his job as a Lloyd’s underwriter and recruited a number of French mercenaries, among them Colonel Roger Faulques, a veteran of the Foreign Legion, and the notorious Robert Denard.

Then, the day before the first reconnaissance team, led by John Cooper, was due to leave London, Macmillan’s war minister, John Profumo, resigned because he had lied to the House of Commons. The Foreign Office now became concerned by the possibility of political embarrassment, and it seemed as if the Yemeni operation might be called off.
Johnson, however, reasoned that SIS would probably not put the brakes on before the relevant duty officer took over at 9am the next morning, and Cooper’s team left the country.

When David Stirling then received a telephone call from the Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, he denied any knowledge. Immediately afterwards Stirling then rang Johnson, who told him: “Too late. They are half way across already.”
While they were changing planes in Libya, one of Cooper’s suitcases broke open and rolls of plastic explosive spilled out; he explained that the substance was marzipan, and the Libyans obligingly helped with the repacking.

(Marzipan is an almond and sugar paste used to ice cakes and other pastries or sculpted into a variety of shapes to be eaten as candy or used as cake decorations. Marzipan is simply a mixture of almond paste, powdered sugar, and a moistening agent such as water, corn syrup, glucose, fondant, or egg whites. After the ingredients are mixed, marzipan reaches a consistency of dough or soft rubber and can be rolled, shaped, cut, or molded.)

After the team had arrived in Yemen, supplies were dropped from a variety of aircraft – some of them Israeli – using the drop-zone expertise Cooper had acquired during the war in Occupied Europe. Johnson himself flew in to Yemen later, on a Canadian passport in the name of Cohen and with a pocketful of gold sovereigns.

Over the next three years he and his men conducted a resistance campaign, wearing down the Egyptian forces sent in by Nasser. The Saudi Arabian government, meanwhile, funded the Yemeni royalist faction and dictated overall strategy, but the hostilities became a war of attrition which eventually led to stalemate. Nevertheless, the Egyptians lost 10,000 men. “Yemen,” Nasser later reflected, “was my Vietnam.”

Henry James Johnson born on December 21 1924, the son of a Ceylon tea planter who was employed on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park during the Second World War; one of his forebears had been a soldier in the privatised East India Company army who had later guarded Napoleon on St Helena.
The young Jim was educated at Westminster, where he was a contemporary of Tony Benn, and as a schoolboy he joined the Home Guard.

Subsequently he was serving as a junior officer with the 2nd Battalion, Welsh Guards, near Caen in 1944 when the artist Rex Whistler was killed.

After his unit had liberated Brussels, he was involved in the hard fighting across northern Germany until he and a brother officer found themselves on the steps of Cologne cathedral. As two armed Wehrmacht officers ran past them, Johnson reached for his revolver, but his companion exclaimed: “No, Jim! Not from the cathedral.”
After the war Johnson joined Lloyd’s, and in his spare time rose to command 21 SAS (TA). On retiring from the TA in 1963 he was appointed OBE, and was later appointed ADC to the Queen.

After his three years running the operation in Yemen, Johnson wrote a memorandum for the British and Saudi governments pointing to “the apparent lack of interest by HMG and the stated indifference to our activities by MI6”, and the “absolute disinterest” of the Saudis. He identified three possible policies in such circumstances: to withdraw; to replace resistance with intelligence-gathering; or to “hang on… and hope we will be used sensibly again”. But he added the reminder that the operation had “discovered, trained and helped arm tens of thousands of tribesmen without official help”.

In 1975 Johnson and David Walker, a former regular officer in 22 SAS, set up their firm to operate in the grey area between the politically acceptable and the officially deniable. Having begun by providing protection for British diplomats in South America, and then for foreign statesmen, the firm trained mujahideen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.

It also made a substantial contribution to the defence of Oman after the British-backed victory over Communist forces in that country. KMS was allowed by Whitehall to set up the Sultan’s Special Force, an elite unit modelled on the SAS and trained by former SAS personnel. Now “omanised”, it remains an integral part of the country’s armed forces.
In later years Johnson recalled that, during his final audience with a member of the Saudi royal family after leaving Yemen, he had made two requests. These were for the orderly disposal of the heavy weapons, particularly mortars, under his control, and for his men to receive an enhanced month’s severance pay. He had added: “French mercenaries have a habit of blowing up the aircraft of national airlines if they don’t get paid properly.”

Both his requests were granted, and Johnson and his comrades celebrated with champagne a month later at the Hyde Park Hotel.
The final reunion of those who took part in the Yemen operation was attended by eight survivors last year.
Jim Johnson died on July 20. His first wife was Judith Lyttleton, with whom he had a son and a daughter. After her death he married, in 1982, Jan Gay.

http://tinyurl.com/57mxu6

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 11:04 AM   
Filed Under: • Heroes • UK • War-Stories •  
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The Sat-Nav wristwatch from 1920.  Who would have thought. There really isn’t anything new.

THIS STORY REMINDS ME OF MY DAYS IN NASHVILLE, WORKING WITH WRITERS AND MUSICIANS AND THE OLD SAYING, “THERE’S NOTHING NEW.”

It contains no temperamental microchips and would never send a lorry truck down a bike track.

By Nick Allen
Last Updated: 4:16PM BST 14 Aug 2008

Invented in 1920 the original Sat-Nav wristwatch relied instead on good old fashioned paper maps wound around wooden rollers.
It was intended to allow drivers to navigate around the UK but with so few cars on the roads the invention never really took off.

Now consigned to the scrap heap of history the watch is one of many gadgets patented by inventors looking to strike it rich with their bizarre contraptions.
Fifty of the labour saving devices, all conceived between 1851 and 1951, have been collected by author Maurice Collins.
They are on show as part of the British Library’s Weird and Wonderful Inventions Display.

Many of them reflect the inventive spirit of the Victorian era and embraced new technology to make every day tasks easier.
They include a mechanical page turner from 1890, a two-handled self-pouring teapot from 1886 and a whisky bottle lock patented in 1882 which was designed to stop servants pilfering the drink.
There were also self-lighting matches and “Go no further” honeymoon garters.

Other potentially ingenious, but ultimately futile, inventions included a clockwork burglar alarm from 1852, a grenade that puts out fires from 1890 and an automatic nose hair cutter from 1920.

In 1940, as the Blitz began, one budding inventor was more worried about patenting his new beer can hole maker. Needless to say his creation did not make a him a millionaire.

http://tinyurl.com/6quzpd

Posted by Drew458     on 08/14/2008 at 10:45 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology • UK •  
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