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POPSSix Blackwater Guards 'May' Be Charged in Iraq Massacre Immunity and impunity have gone hand in hand. Representative Jim McDermott. "The private contracting thing is the most erosive thing that this administration has done. You look at all the things that are being run by private contractors, you simply cannot be handing money to a private contractor who is not under the law of that country or the law of this country and can do anything they want. They're really -- they're rogue outfits." Blackwater and at least 300 other companies have been hired by the US government for privatized armed services in Iraq to the tune of about $6 billion in taxpayer money..
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POPSThe CIA influence on Hollywood The model for this is the defence department's "open" but barely publicised relationship with Hollywood. The Pentagon, for decades, has offered film-makers advice, manpower and even hardware - including aircraft carriers and state-of-the-art helicopters. All it asks for in exchange is that the US armed forces are made to look good. So in a previous Scott film, Black Hawk Down, a character based on a real-life soldier who had also been a child rapist lost that part of his backstory when he came to the screen.
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POPSMashup on DR Congo This is a an interesting site that allows information to be published on a map, and people on the ground to submit updates by text. The site is called ushahidi.com
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POPS Day One Obama faces a Cold War threat and a warning from Israel Gordon Brown became one of the first world leaders to congratulate Obama in a ten-minute telephone call last night. Aides said they discussed Obama's plans for a phased withdrawal from Iraq and his commitment to boost forces in Afghanistan. Speaking from the South Lawn of the White House, President Bush said he would be meeting Mr Obama next week and is making 'unprecedented efforts' to make a smooth transition during his final 74 days in office. As if the instant foreign policy tests were not enough, Mr Obama was also facing more economic problems with the Dow Jones Index dropping for a second successive day. Wall Street greeted his election win by plunging nearly 500 points on Wednesday and it was down again by 274 points in afternoon trading.
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POPSBolivian President Says DEA Killed Farmers According to the US government, Bolivia has joined Myanmar and Venezuela as countries that "failed demonstrably" in anti-drugs cooperation. Morales in September expelled US Ambassador Philip Goldberg from Bolivia, charging him with conspiring to overthrow his government.
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POPSSomething to consider ....I want to come back to this and blog on it. The gender theology advocated by Piper needs to be analyzed. I think this post might help.
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POPSIran to U.S.: Back Off, Stay Out of Airspace After all, even the ally Pakistan has said the same now to the U.S. to defend its sovereignty. It is no secret the neocons in the Pentagon want to provoke war (even force Obama's hand). Watch to see if Obama removes the neocons from the Pentagon and all advisory positions. If he does not it would say alot.
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POPSVoter Intimidation In Philadelphia: Law Enforcement Intervenes Evil Republicans want to intimidate poor people by requiring some kind of polling place ID verification, under the cynical guise of attempting to curb the coordinated voter fraud we now know to be occurring across the country. If only they knew that a much more effective method of intimidation is to have armed supremacists simply block the entrance to the polling place. ”We will not allow some racists and other angry whites, who are upset over an impending Barack Obama presidential victory, to intimidate blacks at the polls,” said. “Most certainly, we cannot allow these racist forces to slaughter our babies or commit other acts of violence against the black population, nor our black president.”
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POPSUN vehicle seized in Darfur The driver was robbed of his personal possessions, his UN identity card and a hand-held radio. UNAMID reported the incident to the Government of Sudan police and National Intelligence for Safety and Security. The peacekeeping mission in Darfur is working with Sudanese police forces to try to improve their respect for human rights and their ability to enforce the law. UNAMID police in West Darfur are currently preparing to conduct a training course designed for Sudanese Movement Police. The Sudanese forces will be trained in law enforcement, human rights, community policing, child protection and protection of women. The course will be held from November 9 to November 27 and is expected to be attended by 90 local police officers.
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POPS Is Wall Street Wise To Obama? He is far too smart to say what Barney Frank just said–that we should cut the military budget by 25%. But it tells you something that Morgan Stanley has just downgraded the entire aerospace and defense sector ahead of the presidential election Obama is heavily favored to win. Wonder why they figure that we won’t be spending so much on defense in the future? Maybe the financial analysts aren’t buying Obama’s centrist makeover?
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POPSColumbia military killing civilians Soldiers are kidnapping civilians, posing them as insurgents and killing them to pad their 'kill rate' so they can get promotions, time off, and extra pay. The depth of human depravity knows no bounds. The unseen tragedy of random killings is that the victim might have one day aspired to be a great leader or been instrumental in solving some medical mystery that could have benefited all of mankind. As the result of the selfishness and greed of a handful of murderous and theiving people, the rest of the world loses so much more. "If the responsibility of the army is to protect us from harm, how could they have killed my son this way?" Blanca Monroy, 49, Oviedo's mother, asked in an interview in her cinderblock home here. "The official explanation is absurd, if he was here just a day earlier living a normal life," she said. "The irony of it all is that my son dreamed of being a soldier" for the government.
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POPSColombia: Fascist Generals Sacked for Deaths Sources in the attorney general's office said hundreds of soldiers were under investigation in similar cases. The 11 men disappeared from the poor Bogota suburb of Soacha early this year. Their bodies were found in mass graves near the Venezuela border in August and September.
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POPSThe World That Awaits This is a sobering moment in American history. You'll begin with a good deal of popular support, but mandates must be replenished. I suggest you think of the Oval Office as a classroom, and explain to the American people what we need to accomplish and what it will require. Some 21st-century version of the fireside chat is called for. My reading of things is that the American people are ready to be leveled with. Once the campaign is over, let the leveling begin. FROM: Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations
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POPSCongo rebels seize gorilla park headquarters Virunga National Park authorities said the rebels had seized its headquarters 5 km (3 miles) away at the same time. "When the rebels started approaching the park station we thought we were all going to be killed," Park Ranger Bareke Sekibibi was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the park. Virunga, near the border with Uganda and Rwanda, is home to around 200 of the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas. "The conflict on the ground is chaotic and dangerous and we cannot allow our rangers to become targets," Virunga Director Emmanuel de Merode said in the statement.
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POPSLashkars and the tribal regions of Pakistan they expressed their concern over killing of innocent people in bombardment and militant activities in the area. They asked the tribal youth come back to their homes and help their brethrens, in eradicating the menace of extremism and terrorism from the tribal belt.
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POPSDouble Standards What do you call it when just over 3 thousand people were killed in the September 11 attack on the US? – An atrocity. What do you call it when nearly 5 million people were killed in the Vietnam war? – A mistake. What do you call it when very rich people exploit poor people? – Greed and selfishness. What do you call it when very rich countries exploit poor countries? – Globalization. What do you call it when someone carrying a gun enters your house and steals your valuable possessions? – An armed robbery. What do you call it when a multinational corporation supported by armed forces enters your country and steals your valuable possessions? – Free trade. What do you call someone who steals from the rich and gives to the poor? – Robin Hood. What do you call someone who steals from the poor and gives to the rich? – The US government.
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POPSOnly 1 thing can slow military-industrial complex Excellent B-1 Bomber example: politically engineered. While voting is essential, it is not enough. “Unless we see our vote as part of a commitment to involve ourselves consistently and unrelentingly in the political process , our vote is wasted. This is because the forces that have led us to this economic, military, and political precipice exert such awesome power over...Washington that no single candidate or group of legislators, whatever their intentions, can possibly go up against them unless armed with an irrepressible public mandate.”
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POPSSomali extremist Islamic group threatens Kenya Al-Shabab is among several Islamic militia groups that have waged an Iraq-style insurgency against Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies for almost two years. The nearly daily mortar attacks and gun battles have killed thousands of Somali civilians in the capital, deaths that all sides blame on each other. Ethiopian troops entered Somalia in December 2006 to back their Somali allies and oust Islamists who controlled much of southern Somalia and Mogadishu for six months. Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991, when warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre before turning against each other, reducing the Horn of Africa nation to a state of chaos and anarchy.
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POPSGeorgia closes air space to Russia "If Georgia doesn’t provide an air corridor, Russia will find alternative ways of supplying its military base here," Aghabekian told EurasiaNet. "After all, Russia is bound by an agreement with Armenia that commits it to keeping the base combat-ready and on high alert. Russia will resort to any method to honor that obligation."
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POPSBush signs bill to turn military satellites on U.S. G W Bush, aka Big Brother, is inching closer to allowing Homeland Security greater access to military satellites, despite statutes that make it illegal to use the armed forces to "execute the laws" within U.S. borders. Bush continues to subvert civil protection laws in the government's obsessive quest to 'know' everything that goes on within our borders. This shows this administrations sociopathic distrust of its citizens and a continued lack of respect for its citizens privacy.
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POPSDistrict Judge Orders Release Of Uighur Jihadists In D.C. By Friday
This is the very nightmare scenario I warned about. The courts' steps are outrageous, but predictable and inevitable. A lot of the blame here, however, goes to the administration and the military. They have long taken the position that radical Islamic ideology is not the problem, and that we need only worry about actively those taking up arms against the United States. They don't want us to talk about jihad — the better to keep us in the dark about jihadist ideology. Thus, the government rationalizes, the Uighurs are not a threat to us, only to the Chinese. That was all the daylight the judges need to say: OK, then release them in the U.S., since no other country — except China, where they'd be persecuted — will take them. The government's self-defeating argument is preposterous. Jihadists — and there is not question that the Uighurs are jihadists — do not recognize distinctions based on the Westphalia world of nation-states.
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