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“Operation Enduring Freedom” was not legitimate self-defense under the charter because the 9/11 attacks were crimes against humanity, not “armed attacks” by another country. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. In fact, 15 of the 19 hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, there was not an imminent threat of an armed attack on the United States after 9/11, or President Bush would not have waited three weeks before initiating his October 2001 bombing campaign. The necessity for self-defense must be “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” This classic principle of self-defense in international law has been affirmed by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the UN General Assembly.
Bush's justification for attacking Afghanistan was that it was harboring Osama bin Laden and training terrorists, even though bin Laden did not claim responsibility for the 9/11 attacks until 2004. After Bush demanded that the Taliban turn over bin Laden to the United States, the Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan said his government wanted proof that bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks before deciding whether to extradite him, according to the Washington Post. That proof was not forthcoming, the Taliban did not deliver bin Laden, and Bush began bombing Afghanistan.
When he announced his troop “surge” in Afghanistan, Obama invoked the 9/11 attacks. By continuing and escalating Bush’s war in Afghanistan, Obama, too, is violating the UN Charter. In his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama declared that he has the "right" to wage wars "unilaterally.” The unilateral use of military force, however, is illegal unless undertaken in self-defense.
In his declaration that he would send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, Obama made scant reference to Pakistan. But his CIA has used more unmanned Predator drones against Pakistan than Bush. There are estimates that these robots have killed several hundred civilians. Most Pakistanis oppose them. A Gallup poll conducted in Pakistan last summer found 67% opposed and only 9% in favor. Notably, a majority of Pakistanis ranked the United States as a greater threat to Pakistan than the Taliban or Pakistan’s arch-rival India.
Willful killing is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, punishable as a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act.
The U.S. military commander in northern Iraq defended on Tuesday a new policy imposing strict penalties, including possible jail time, for troops who become pregnant or get other soldiers pregnant.
"In this 22,000-soldier task force, I need every soldier I've got, especially since we are facing a drawdown of forces during our mission," Major General Tony Cucolo, who commands U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq, said in a statement.
Cucolo's new directive, issued last month when he took command, lays out a long list of activities that could lead to court martial or criminal charges, from gambling to stealing historical artefacts, and applies only to his command.
At its heart, the single biggest weakness of the bill rapidly advancing in the Senate, which mirrors the central flaw of the House bill as well, is that it "cedes far too much power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry," as Karen Higgins, RN, co-president of the 150,000-member newly created National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of nurses in U.S. history, has said.
In a year when lobbyists, led by the health care industry, are poised to smash all recordsfor influence peddling in Washington, we should not be surprised.
But the greater tragedy is that the current bill may lock into place a dysfunctional and inhumane system that threatens to move beyond the reach of more comprehensive reform for generations to come.
SEBRING - The air potato, an invasive exotic plant, is attacking Highlands County's native plants and animals, and a few local super heroes are needed to fight it off.
Highlands County resident Clara Wyatt said that her mother has it growing on her backyard fence.
"Unless someone puts a stop to it, it will take over every piece of vegetation in its path. It is like a blanket. The plants underneath it can only survive so long without sunlight."
Burgess wants to start a neighborhood group with residents in the county to fight invasive species, with emphasis on the air potato.
The group will map out areas in the neighborhood with air potato plants and report them.
Burgess will get permission for volunteers to pull up the vines and pick up the air potatoes.
"All it will really cost you is some of your time and labor," she added.
The air potato has no natural enemies, and nothing can eat it.
This poses a threat to animals because it is killing off the plants they eat, Burgess said.
"It is a food-chain thing," Burgess said. "If there is nothing at the bottom of the food chain, everything will eventually be affected."
According to the University of Florida Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants' Web site, the plants are very toxic and should not be consumed.
They can grow up to roughly 8 inches a day.
Many Florida counties are recruiting volunteers to help protect and conserve Florida's natural areas through the removal of air potato.
During the air potato roundup, citizens, organizations and local businesses get together to collect vines and bulbils.
The Pentagon has announced it is reviewing policies following the tragic murders of 13 people at Fort Hood a few weeks ago. We're glad this review is under way and hope better checks and balances will catch people with murderous intentions long before there is a problem.
( Reassure the people. They don't really want to know that when you take youngsters and put them in gangs, they constitute natural predators which rape and steal and destroy. The military just have organized 'reporting' to remove the juicy parts of accounts of 'engagements' and provide 'justifications' for the exercise.
There remains the small problem of the participants' remorse : which provokes bringing the behaviour home,family violence, and suicides. Training with electronic games and giving troops remote killing opportunities helps preserve conditioning and mental acceptance of pretense.The stimulation of 'running amok' is addictive to many : even when it is controlled by a structure of ruthless suppression of individual initiative.
All the while 'defense' is the public cry to cover aggression upon the defenseless. 'Leaders' use any and all means of 'motivation' to steer events in their chosen paths : which are opportunism and profit for them and theirs.
'Catching people with murderous intentions': Low humour. )
This reference list is compiled by Professor Tim Halliday (formerly DAPTF International Director) (tim.halliday@homecall.co.uk). It lists papers on amphibian declines and their causes and papers on amphibian conservation, with an emphasis on those that describe methods for monitoring and conserving amphibian populations. Tim is always delighted to receive details of forthcoming papers from their authors.
reduced reaction time by 99%, from 48 hours to 30 minutes, and increased average molecular weight of the polymers by a factor of more than 3.
The reduced reaction time effectively cuts production time for the organic polymers by nearly 50%, since reaction time and purification time are approximately equal in the production process, in both laboratory and commercial environments.
The higher molecular weight of the polymers, reflecting the creation of longer chains of the polymers, has a major benefit in increasing current density in plastic solar cells by as much as a factor of more than four. Over polymer batches with varying average molecular weights, produced using varying combinations of the elements of the new methodology, the increase in current density was found to be approximately proportional to the increase in average molecular weight.
The methodology, detailed in a recent Nature Chemistry paper, "will greatly accelerate research in this area," stated Bazan, "by making possible the rapid production of different batches of polymers for evaluation."
The Environment California Research & Policy Center concluded that launching a nuclear power industry nearly from the ground up is too slow and expensive a process. Energy efficiency standards and renewable energy options are better solutions.
Peter Bradford, a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, made this comparison in a statement: “Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”
If the mullahs decide to approve spacing their children and keeping both mothers and babies healthy, the transformation could be dramatic. Islam has one advantage: the mullahs are obeyed. “If the clerics will support this, no one will oppose it, “ one trainer said.
If spacing children takes hold, not only would the maternal mortality rate plunge, but the average family income would rise. It may seem strange to have to ask for the approval of the mullahs to enable women to survive childbirth. But as I think about it, we in the United States of America, who do not suffer like women in poor countries, still have to ask for the approval of the 83% male Congress for the right to have insurance plans cover abortions.
( But the United States does not acknowledge the influence of religion on public policy : nor lobbying. There is an interesting commentary on Islam which shows them natural antagonists of the current regime :
Title:
Corruption from the Islamic perspective: Some recommendations for the MENA region
Purpose – In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region several factors contribute to corruption with a consequence of savings being squandered away and funds withheld from productive investments. This paper aims to argue that Muslim countries have a competitive advantage over the industrialized world in that the Islamic faith is important to the populace, which the west lacks and is trying to replace it with substitutes like for instance moral education in schools.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines corruption in the light of the Qur'an and Hadith. It looks at related issues and corrupt practices in the industrialised world based on secondary sources and a few primary data.
Findings – Moral renovation in Muslim societies appears to be easier to realize than in western societies once its underlying cause, notably poverty, is tackled. Self-restraint is an absolute prerequisite for a successful fight against corruption. Organizational instruments against corruption can only succeed to eliminate corruption only through political leaders committed to weeding out corruption.
Originality/value – The paper informs educationalists, policy makers, entrepreneurs in the MENA region that Islamic ethics must be the guiding force behind all good economic attitudes.
Do you see similar 'Christian' or 'Jewish' reports ? I'm not saying they are not there : but if so, they are poorly reported...and implementation frustrated. )
The Daily Star
Published On: 2008-10-31
Letters
Corruption in BTTB
Shafiqul Islam, NY, US
Refer to the DS editorial on institutional corruption in BTTB. You have expressed surprise on the scale of corruption in public offices and cited example of using 122 labourers to fix a toilet pan and lack of accountability. This is not the only one of such amazing examples. All public utility departments like gas, water, electricity, municipality etc. are dens of open-air corruption and there is no accountability anywhere in those offices. There is a saying that the table, chairs and files of Titas Gas office take bribes. Nothing comes out without greasing of the hands of officials of those offices.
I believe we are genetically a corrupt nation. Our education and motivation by both schools and homes of our children are not flawless. If we want to reduce corruption, we will have to start right from primary schools and respective homes.
Instead of helping our children with copying in exams, we should start telling them to learn good things and the parents should talk honesty before our children. If we can do that, in 20/25 years, when today's kid of 2 years becomes an adult with good education, some change in behaviour will be possible. Also, the parents should desist from glorifying the ill-gotten riches in front of their children.
Let us all try to change our mindset and help our children who are our tomorrow's leaders and bureaucrats with good ideological teachings.
Michael Ruppert is a former Los Angeles police officer turned independent reporter, and he gained some credibility after predicting the financial meltdown that most politicians claimed no one had seen coming. Ruppert has plenty of other apocalyptic theories, from peak oil to drugs to, yes, 9/11. In the new film Collapse, filmmaker Chris Smith follows Ruppert and looks into his theories. Is he a genius, or just paranoid? The film allows you to make your own judgments, while showing the risks and rewards of having–and publishing–unpopular opinions. Smith joined Laura in the studio to discuss his film and whether or not he believes Ruppert.
The Race Goes Not Always To The Fastest http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/genelogsdon/2009/10/22/the-race-goes-not-always-to-the-fastest I am not a real farmer, my neighbors say, because I don’t do it for money. That’s almost funny because the economists are saying that nobody’s farming for money this year. Although the corn crop is good in most of the midwest, there’s not much profit in it. Some go as far as projecting that on average, corn farmers will lose $8 per acre over the whole midwest. If that is the case, I’m not a real farmer for sure because I figure on netting $550 an acre on my corn......Those ears of corn in the photo are from my crop this year. They measure up to 14 inches long, as you can see by the foot long ruler beside them. The longest one has 20 rows of kernels. It will shrink a little as it dries, but as far as I can learn from researching, this is as big as any ear of yellow dent corn has ever gotten and is almost twice the size of any of today’s hybrids. (There are strains of maize in Mexico that produce ears two feet long but are very skinny.) I’ve had in previous years one or two 16-inch ears but they were frowzy on the tips, with only 16 rows of kernels. The fatter, slightly shorter ears in the photo above contain 22 and 24 rows of kernels, and I know from experience that the kernels will weigh as much per cob as those from the 14-inch ears. There will be about a pound of kernels on each of these ears. If I had an acre where all the stalks produced one such ear and I planted 18,000 stalks per acre, which is about right for open-pollinated corn, (hybrid growers are planting as many as 30,000 stalks per acre) the yield would be 300 bushels per acre, right up there with the world records for corn. If I could live 200 years maybe I could produce a crop of all fourteen inchers. After all it took the Mesoamerican Indians thousands of years to get ears of maize up to five inches long.
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As unemployment continues to rise, deficit hawks are upping their efforts to use the economic crisis as a pretext for gutting basic social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The idea keeps surfacing for a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission, supposedly insulated from politics, which would agree to mandatory caps on spending and perhaps increased taxes as well. Social programs would take the biggest hit. Congress would then take an up or down vote on the whole package.
The latest ploy to promote such a commission is to use the upcoming vote on increasing the national debt, scheduled for late November. Democratic deficit hawks such as Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota are working with Republicans such as Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, to condition an increase in the debt on creation of a panel. They have some allies in the White House such as Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, who has intermittently signaled support for such a plan. The Senate Budget Committee will be holding hearings on this idea in mid-September, according to The New York Times.
The whole approach is bad economics and bad politics on several grounds. First, there is no evidence for the premise that financial markets are anxious about the rising debt. As Dean Baker observes, they keep buying the Treasury's long-term bonds at a low 3.5 percent interest rate. If there were worry that the increased debt would spike inflation, investors would be demanding higher interest rates.
Secondly, it is not "entitlements" that have caused the big increase in the deficit and the debt. The cause is plummeting tax collections as a consequence of the recession. Social Security will be surplus for another generation, and both the House and Senate versions of the health reform bill do not add to the deficit, but help cut costs.
Third, obsessing about debts and deficits when the economy is still losing jobs has it exactly backwards. We probably need bigger deficits for a year or two, to propel a strong recovery. Higher growth will then bring the debt back down to tolerable scale. In World War II, deficits averaged about 25 percent a year (compared to under 10% this year.) But all of that war spending rebuilt the economy and powered three decades of economic boom and the big wartime debt was soon paid off.
Finally, the idea that such a commission could be "above politics" is a deception. The politics–very conservative politics–would be baked into the cake.
Congress Should Not Reject the Goldstone Report http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/michaelratner/2009/11/03/congress-should-not-reject-the-goldstone-report On Tuesday, November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the “President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora.’ ”
The Resolution instructs the Obama Administration to prevent further consideration of the Goldstone Report (as it is informally known) in any international body. For Congress to do so, without a hearing where Judge Goldstone can testify and based upon a Resolution rife with factual errors, makes a mockery of assertions by the United States that fundamental protections of human rights laws law apply equally to all. It leaves the United States, and especially Congress, without a thread of moral authority. ( Damn. It will pass in a heartbeat. )
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There are 12491 applications currently in the database, with Final Fantasy XI Online Final Fantasy XI being the top voted application. ............................................................................................................ I don't usually reference commercial sites, but fond memories of youth spent reading their work prompted an exception to at least note it. Back to Britannica
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Since its origins, the IPCC has been open and explicit about seeking to generate a ‘scientific consensus’ around climate change and especially about the role of humans in climate change
I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.
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