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ATTACK OF THE KILLER DRONES

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been around for a while but real pilots didn't want to have anything to do with them. That's changed:

Drones had their successes, but Air Force jocks never accepted them as a part of top gun culture. UAVs were considered so second class, the Air Force had to order pilots into drone duty. After all, airmen earned less money operating a Predator, and too much time as a drone pilot could lead to a loss of flight privileges for manned planes. They weren't much fun to fly, either. At a fraction of the weight of an F-15, they get pummeled by the wind on takeoff and landing; 25 have crashed since 2001. That means questions, accident reports, and a blot on your record. And let's just come out and say it: You're not exactly risking your life for your country flying a mission from behind a desk at Nellis.

All these attitudes began to change in 2001, when the CIA and the Air Force rigged a few Predators with Hellfire air-to-ground missiles. Suddenly, a UAV could do more than just float over a target for 20 hours at a time, watching and taking pictures, already a significant asset. It could also be a killer.

What a difference a missile makes. Nowadays, drone pilots get treated better. Predator flight time counts the same and pays the same as time in a fighter. When Major Rogers got the chance to command a squadron after four years at the Air Force Academy and a dozen years behind the stick of F-15s and other jets, he didn't care at all that his planes would be thousands of miles away, or that he wouldn't be able to feel turbulence or smell a burning engine. "Most of the time, I get to fight the war, and go home and see the wife and kids at night," he says.

Killing with no chance of being killed, it isn't fair, is it? Cool.

MUGABE TAKES OUT THE TRASH

As most of you are aware, Mugabe's thugs have been very active recently:

In a long-planned operation codenamed Operation Murambatsvina - Shona for Operation Drive Out Trash - Zimbabwe's police have used sledgehammers and bulldozers to reduce brick homes to rubble, and they have torched flimsy shacks. At the same time, thousands of informal businesses have been destroyed, with more than 20,000 traders arrested, their possessions smashed or irretrievably confiscated by those entrusted to uphold the law.

So, what was the ultimate objective? Easy, eradicate the political opposition by attacking its roots:

With one brutal blow, Robert Mugabe set out to achieve multiple political objectives; most significantly, a pre-emptive strike against a restive urban population, a show of force designed to intimidate and subdue. By driving the poor into the impoverished rural areas, the urban population will be reduced, making future uprisings more manageable. And rural containment, with almost no access to modern communication systems, will make political resistance easier to control.

There is another objective too: with the Zimbabwean economy painfully on its knees, the destruction of informal businesses also represents a frantic attempt to force the informal sector to bring its foreign currency into the formal banking sector. The final Zanu PF objective - cruel retribution against an urban population that voted overwhelmingly for the opposition MDC - is a bonus.

Mr Mugabe's press laws make certain that the shivering, shocked faces of his defenceless victims will never appear on TV screens around the world. The police made doubly sure of that by carefully cordoning off areas where they were active to prevent cameras from recording the wreckage. Be assured, however, that the devastation cannot be overstated.

In a country where unemployment exceeds 75%, informal businesses help millions of Zimbabweans and their families to survive. Zanu PF's latest actions leave the poor with three remaining options: beg, steal or starve. Hundreds of thousands of people, including children, the elderly and the frail, have been rendered instantly homeless during Zimbabwe's cold winter months. The UN has estimated that as many as 3 million people - nearly a quarter of Zimbabwe's population - could eventually be affected by the police action.

Enough of that, let's get back to what's really important, book mishandling at GITMO.

PILGER AND FISK WINDSCHUTTLED

Keith Windschuttle, that is:

Between them, Pilger and Fisk represent the nadir of Western journalism in our time. They take us back to those apologists of the Soviet era in the 1930s, such as Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, who lavished praise on Stalin and the USSR at a time when hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians were dying of starvation or perishing before the regime’s firing squads. In his day, Duranty, who won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for his efforts, was as celebrated as Pilger and Fisk are now, but what stuck in the long run was the epithet another Moscow correspondent, Malcolm Muggeridge, later gave him: “the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism.” Duranty and his successors betrayed their profession.

The Australian left detests Windschuttle. What better recommendation could there be? Read it.

Via: Watch (winds of change)

CHRENKOFF FIXATION

Doctor Downer, aka Tim Dunlop, is having another of his regular sads:

Lest we remember

Seems Dr Feelgood, Arthur Chrenkoff, has had another moment of media influence. You'll remember he suggested that ABC not bother to commerate [sic] the dead on the grounds that the media didn't pass his sincerity test:

Make no mistake, tributes and remembrance of the ultimate sacrifice paid by the troops to bring freedom and democracy to the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan are all very worthy things, but - call me cynical - coming from the mouths of the mainstream media they ring neither true nor sincere. Since the MSM as a general rule doesn't believe in our mission in Iraq (less so in case [sic] of Afghanistan), its remembrance then is at best that of a futile sacrifice, at worst of a criminal one.

So rememberances [sic] are okay if he endorses them, but the ABC [sic] in particular and the mainstream media in general shouldn't do them because that would be criminal. (And really, just reading that para again, it has to be one of the most equivocal, mealy-mouthed paragraphs trying to justify his war on reality that you could imagine.)

Anyway, as I say, another member of the mainstream media has taken Arthur's advice and has stopped commemerating [sic] dead soldiers. Atrios notes that Fox News stopped updating their fatality list a month ago. So good work, Arthur. Keep this up and it will be just like nobody died.

When I first read Dunlop's post I just shrugged my shoulders – this is typical whiny Dunlop stuff – and moved on. After thinking about it for a while I went back and reread the post. It's more than whiny, it's complete bullshit.

Chrenkoff's paragraph is unambiguous. Anyway, "equivocal" and "mealy-mouthed" have essentially the same meaning in the context in which they are used. There was no need to use both.

At no point does Chrenkoff suggest MSM efforts to remember soldiers killed in the war on terror are "criminal". Rather, he sees them as point-scoring exercises.

Dunlop has now added a gratuitous sic to Chrenkoff's paragraph, in an apparent effort to embarrass Chrenkoff. I've done the same for Dunlop, he's an academic, right?

Finally, Dunlop suggests that unless the fallen soldiers are remembered in a fashion he thinks appropriate, they will not be remembered at all. That's typical self-centered-lefty thinking.

If Dunlop's so concerned with the appropriate remembrance of fallen soldiers he should do something about it and post their names and biographies as a public service. But, since the real point of his post is to generate controversy and increase his hits, that isn't going to happen.

HILLARY A LESBIAN?

The evidence is hardly convincing:

"The Truth About Hillary," to be published by Penguin's right-wing Sentinel imprint this month, makes much of Clinton's supposed lesbian affinities. Klein says that she "embraced" lesbianism and that it "shaped" her politics in a profound way.

Klein also makes much of Clinton's friendship with Nancy Wanderer, a classmate who came out of the closet. He recounts an episode at their 25th reunion when Clinton — who, Klein says, was "widely rumored" to be a lesbian herself — fondled Wanderer's buzz-cut hair.

But, it would explain a lot.

STEYN ON GITMO

There are only two writers who can make me laugh out loud, P J O'Rourke – his old stuff – and Mark Steyn. Here's some classic Steyn:

Guantanamo exists in a legal limbo about which different opinions can be held. And, as in every prison camp, there are no doubt foolish and wicked things that go on. But no serious allegation of torture has been substantiated, and in the al-Qa’eda training manual found in Manchester a couple of years back Rule 18 couldn’t be more explicit: when held captive by the infidel, members ‘must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them’ and ‘complain to the court of mistreatment while in prison’. A healthy scepticism would seem to be advisable, especially when the alleged forms of torture involve lurid, if psychologically rather obvious, fantasies of menstruating Western women. Instead, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times runs around shrieking like a hysterical ninny that Washington needs to shut down Guantanamo right now — not because of anything that actually occurred there but because of negative ‘perceptions’ of the camp in the overseas press.

And would caving in to those negative perceptions lead to any better press from the Guardian or Le Monde? Nobody got killed in Gitmo, so instead America is being flayed as the planet’s number one torturer for being insufficiently respectful to the holy book of its prisoners, even though the Americans themselves supplied their prisoners with the holy book, even though the preferred holy book of most Americans is banned in the home country of many of the prisoners, even though Americans who fall into the hands of the other side get their heads hacked off, even though the prisoners’ co-religionists themselves blow up more mosques and Korans than Americans ever do, and even though the alleged insufficient respect to the prisoners’ holy book occurred at a rate of one verified incident of possibly intentional disrespect per year. But sure, go ahead, close Gitmo and wait for the torrent of rave reviews — right after the complaints that it is culturally insensitive to rebuild the World Trade Center when it’s the burial site of ten devout Muslim flying enthusiasts.

The man can write. Read the whole thing.

SENIOR DEMS ASK PRESS TO IGNORE DEAN

Sure Dean's been doing what he does best – shooting his mouth off – but it's the right wing and press conspiring to blow his marks out of proportion that's causing a problem:

"I think we all understand what's happening with you all," said Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, in remarks echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy" for her husband's legal-ethical woes.

"The right wing has got the agenda moving. Fox [News Channel] and everybody's got the agenda. It's all about Howard Dean. You've bought into it," Mr. Durbin said.

"You can't let up on it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

Dean couldn't do a better job of undermining the Democrats if he tried.

APPROVAL RATING HITS NEW LOW

Chimpy's approval rating is nothing to brag about:

About one-third of adults, 35 percent, said they think the country is headed in the right direction, while 43 percent said they approve of the job being done by Bush.

But, he's doing a hell of a lot better than Chirac:

Jacques Chirac's popularity has reached its lowest level since his election in 1995, as only 27 percent of those questioned have a positive opinion about him, compared to 47 percent in May.

No French president has ever been so unpopular, according to French daily Le Figaro.

This despite Chirac keeping France out of Iraq.

CANADA'S TERRORIST FAMILY

The father was killed in a shootout in Pakistan in which one son was permanently paralyzed. The other son, Omar, is held at Guantanamo. Here's the short take on Omar:

The thundering F-16 and A-10 warplanes reduced the fighters' compound in Afghanistan to smoldering rubble. No one could still be alive, figured the U.S. soldiers crouched nearby. But inside, saved by a half-standing wall, a lanky 15-year-old waited as the wary soldiers neared.

As the Americans recount it, he leapt up, threw a grenade and was cut down by the soldiers' fire. The grenade scored: A 28-year-old sergeant was mortally wounded.

The boy was not, however. Blinded in one eye, his chest ripped opened by bullets, Omar Khadr lay on the ground and asked the soldiers to kill him -- in perfect English.

He was a Canadian.

"Everybody who walked by wanted to put a round in him," said Master Sgt. Scotty Hansen, who was awarded a Bronze Star for Valor after the battle in 2002. "But we all knew that's not the way we do it."

Omar Khadr survived. Today, he is 18, a prisoner at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and an increasingly awkward presence there for the Canadian government. His mother, sister and brother Abdurahman -- who was briefly imprisoned with Omar at Guantanamo -- have become what Omar's lawyer calls "the most despised family in Canada."

The article runs to three pages and is well worth reading. The family just can't seem to understand that, while they have a right to be different, the rest of us have the right to dislike them.

HUFFINGTON POST SCARE HEADLINE

Here's the Huff 'n' Puff headline:

UN: Detailed Nuke Bomb Plans Missing...

Here's the story as presented by the Guardian:

UN ALERT AS NUCLEAR PLANS GO MISSING

Electronic drawings that give comprehensive details of how to build and test equipment essential for making nuclear bombs have vanished and could be put up for sale on the international black market, according to UN investigators.

The blueprints detail how to manufacture the components for a uranium centrifuge, what materials are needed, how to assemble the machines, and how to test them. The centrifuges are the main route to producing bomb-grade uranium. Uranium concentrate is converted into uranium hexafluoride gas which can be spun through cascades of centrifuges at super-high speeds to be enriched to weapons grade.

The technical papers, which obviously aren't instructions for building a nuclear weapon, were being held by the IAEA. The story's scary enough without embellishment.

Huff 'n' Puff: Misinforming the world since May 9, 2005.

TOUGH ASSHOLES

Almost a third of those who climb Mt McKinley suffer diarrhoea. It's a matter of hygiene:

Furthermore, fewer than half said they always washed their hands after defecating, with 16% admitting using rocks and snow instead of toilet paper.

It must be an outdoors tough-guy thing. They're lucky they only had diarrhoea and not bleeding out the ass.

MUSHARRAF, IDEALISM VERSUS REALISM

During the course of an SBS interview, the capture and possible torture of al Qaeda number three Abu Faraj al-Libby came up:

GEORGE NEGUS: Can I ask you this - I mean I don't know Pakistan's procedure or principles on this - but would he have been tortured by your people when he was in custody here?

GENERAL PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: I wouldn't be able to comment on that. We presume not, but again, I mean - as I see it - leave the torturing aside - are we here to give comfort to terrorists or are we here to extract information? Because he is a part of a terrorist organisation and we should not show much sympathy towards an individual who is a terrorist.

GEORGE NEGUS: Understood, understood.

GENERAL PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Now when it comes to the methodology, I really don't know what methods they use, but I believe we should not tie the hands of the intelligence operatives in interrogation. That is all that I would like to say. They have to extract information. The key issue is you must get information out of the man.

GEORGE NEGUS: Does that mean, though, that all the human rights rules are out the window... .for the interrogation of suspected terrorists?

GENERAL PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: If you talk idealistically, yes. If you're talking of human rights, what about the human rights of the number of people he's killed and what about the human rights of - he's attacked, he's the mastermind in attacking me - what about my human right?

GEORGE NEGUS: Is that true, that he was the mastermind behind one or two, maybe more, assassination attempts against your life?

GENERAL PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: Absolutely, absolutely. No doubt he is the man behind about 8 to 10 terrorist attacks in Pakistan, where people got killed. He is the mastermind of attacking me, the suicide bomb, and there were 14 people killed. What about their human rights? What are the condition of the families? What is the condition of that one policeman who stopped the vehicle which blasted himself up when my motorcade passed? What about that policeman? What about his family? Where are their human rights?

It's a very good point. How many lives must torture save before it's appropriate? If it's my life, or the life of a loved one that's saved, I'd be willing to see a terrorist tortured to death. Hey, I am a Right Wing Death Beast, after all.

For the whole interview, click here.

IRAQ EMBASSY ARMS CACHE

There has been an interesting find at Iraq's London embassy:

Scotland Yard confirmed "a number of firearms" had been recovered from the embassy in an upmarket area of southwest London but declined to say when.

Dr Salah Al Shaikhly told BBC radio the arms haul, which dates to Saddam Hussein's period in power, included four machine guns, several Uzis and 10 handguns with silencers and had been found in one of the 20-odd safes at the embassy.

Just your typical Saddam tools of diplomacy.

EU AND NATO AT ODDS OVER DARFUR AIRLIFT

Actually it's not the EU that's at odds with NATO, it's the self-important French:

Disagreement between Nato and the European Union has stymied arrangements for the airlift of thousands of African Union troops to Sudan's stricken province of Darfur, weeks before the mission is set to begin.

The US plans to airlift three battalions of Rwandan troops to the country, while Canada, France and Germany have all promised similar "strategic airlifts" for the remaining five battalions needed - from Senegal, South Africa and Nigeria.

While the US and Canada want the airlifts to be co-ordinated by Nato - which would give the alliance's "branding" to the operation - France would like it to be co-ordinated by the EU.

"Clearly if you are going to start an airlift on 1 July, we need to have an agreement in the near future," said General James Jones, Nato's supreme allied commander, Europe.

The French, obstruction specialists since... forever.

DEAN DOMINATED DEMOCRATS DOOMED

That's the thinking of savvy Democrat operatives, like Silicon Valley fundraiser Wade Randlett:

Randlett said he hopes and expects party leaders will soon "have a sit-down" with Dean over his message "that we're smarter than they are, and we ought to be running the country."

The American street isn't going to buy it. Go Howard!

Update: Improbably, Susan Estrich shares my view of Dean:

So it should come as no surprise to experienced Dean watchers to hear him say that most Republicans have never earned an honest living. This is what it means not to be ready for primetime. You make the sort of statements that are sure to get attention because they hit flashpoints like class warfare. It's a Republican talk show host's dream.

The reason other Democrats don't say such things is because you don't win elections this way. In point of fact, of course, what Dean is saying is wrong. Most Republicans are not coupon-clippers -- they go to work and earn a day's pay like the rest of us. And hearing Howard Dean say otherwise not only offends Republicans, but also moderates and independents who have no taste for class warfare or the strident liberalism that Howard Dean is selling.

Estrich hopes Dean will be long gone from the scene by 2008. I, on the other hand, passionately hope he's still around helping the Republicans defeat Hillary.

DUMB BITCH (PART TWO)

Lefty academic Australian blogger Tim Dunlop, currently residing in the USA, is all indignant that American motorist Victoria Goodwin was Tasered by police when she did not exit her vehicle as directed by police. In linking to video of the incident Dunlop notes:

I'll warn you, it's very disturbing footage, not just because of the obvious pain it inflicts on the woman, but because of what it says about the way such methods may be used, what it says about how some officers understand the notion of civil rights.

The video is indeed "very disturbing": it's very disturbing Ms Goodwin did not respond appropriately to lawful police direction even when the directing officer was pointing a Taser at her.

Dunlop is also none too happy with my original post on this, in which I referred to Ms Goodwin as a "dumb bitch":

Of course, not everyone cares. For some people, the unnecessary infliction of pain is of no concern and the woman involved was merely a "stupid bitch" who got was coming to her and ended up "flopping around on the ground". Ha ha. The same person links to the video and you get the distinct impression that he enjoyed watching it.

Dunlop's right, the pain Ms Goodwin suffered was unnecessary: all she had to do was comply with the order to exit her vehicle and everything would have been fine. The fact that she didn't and got Tasered isn't funny, it's hilarious. But, for hilarity it's hard to beat the very first comment to Dunlop's post – by Friendly Fire, concerning the officer who fired the Taser:

He's probably in the National Guard and serving in Abu Ghraib at the moment.

Jeez, the dumb bitches are thick on the ground at the moment.

PROMINENT MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRAT CHARGED

Former House Speaker Thomas Finneran is in a spot of bother:

On Monday Finneran was charged with lying to a federal appeals court about his involvement in a legislative redistricting plan that minority groups said would hurt black and Hispanic candidates.

A lying Democrat working behind the scenes to disadvantage minorities, who would have thought it possible?

GUANTANAMO GUARDS TALK TO PRESS

They put up with a lot:

Army "block guards" were making their daily walk through the stifling heat of the cellblocks inside the barbed wired camp here in late May.

But after a guard discovered a dangerously sharp object hidden in the empty cell of a detainee, a violent confrontation ensued, illustrating military officials' contention that criticisms from human rights groups only tell part of the story.

According to two Army prison guards, one 22 years old and the other 28, the prisoner was temporarily in another part of the prison for a bath when the jagged, rectangular piece of metal, three to four inches long was found and removed.

But the two guards, who spoke in a rare interview with The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity, said an altercation then followed in which the detainee tried to gouge out one of the guards' eyes.

After first allowing the detainee to return from his shower to the cell, a five-man team of guards then began a carefully choreographed "cell extraction" to move him to another cell, where he would not be able to do further damage.

"He was extremely aggressive from the moment we went in," said the 28-year-old guard, whose job it was to "push the detainee back" as another guard quickly handcuffed the prisoner.

Before the cuffs could go on though, things went wrong and the detainee forced his hands up under the first guard's plexiglass face mask and began digging for the eyeball.

"He tried to insert one finger into my eye socket, then he transitioned into a fishhook maneuver," the guard said. "He got his finger into my mouth and was trying to rip my cheek off." After another moment, the detainee's hands were forced down and into the cuffs.

The entire incident was videotaped, as are all cell-extraction procedures under the tight protocol with which military officials have been running the Guantanamo prison amid scrutiny and harsh criticism from human rights advocates.

What with constant media scrutiny and continuing accusations of abuse, it's no surprise the military is having trouble making recruiting goals. It must also be pretty hard to take crap like this:

Col. Bumgarner said some detainees taunt guards by referring to the leader of the al Qaeda terrorist attacks in Iraq.

" 'Zarqawi kill you' -- that's their favorite line," he said.

If anything, the detainess have it too easy.

MURDEROUS SUDANESE BASTARDS IN DEEP SHIT

It's panic time in Sudan:

The International Criminal Court in The Hague is set to launch a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed in Sudan's western Darfur province.

To be followed in a few months by a stern letter.

DUMB BITCH

It's always a good idea to cooperate with police, but especially so when caught speeding on a suspended license. Self-proclaimed beauty queen Victoria Goodwin refused to cooperate and ended up flopping around on the ground after being shot with a Taser. Go here for story and video - for video scroll down, it's on the left.

GUANTANAMO PRISON A GULAG OR MAYBE NOT

Here's the latest from Australia's ABC on the Guantanamo gulag – first, the ABC's Leigh Sales interviews Amnesty International's William Schulz:

LEIGH SALES: At Guantanamo Bay, detainees eat culturally-sensitive meals, they have Korans, clean clothes and access to medical treatment. In the Soviet Gulag prisoners were starved, deprived of adequate clothing in subzero temperatures and severely beaten.

Yet Amnesty International's American Director, William Schulz, says the organisation basically stands by its comparison between the two detention camps.

WILLIAM SCHULZ: There are some similarities. The United States is maintaining an archipelago of prisons around the world, many of them secret prisons into which people are being literally disappeared, held in indefinite, incommunicado detention without access to lawyers or a judicial system, or to their families, and in some cases at least we know that they are being mistreated, abused, tortured and even killed. And those are similar at least in character, if not in size, to what happened in the Gulag. (Disappeared is, of course, code for murdered.)

LEIGH SALES: Amnesty's criticism of Guantanamo has attracted a sustained and furious attack from the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney:

DICK CHENEY: Frankly, I was offended by it. For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously.

LEIGH SALES: Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld:

DONALD RUMSFELD: To compare the United States and Guantanamo Bay to such atrocities cannot be excused.

LEIGH SALES: And President Bush himself:

GOERGE W. BUSH: I'm aware of the Amnesty International report, and it's absurd. It's an absurd allegation.

Sales isn't exaggerating with the furious attack thing, is he? If Cheney keeps getting all worked up like that he's bound to have another chest-burster.

For a bit of perspective, lets take at look at what former Soviet political prisoner Natan Sharansky has to say about the AI gulag beat-up:

"In Guantanamo Bay, there was a very serious violation of human rights and it's very important to deal with this and to correct it. But the comparison of Amnesty International is very typical, unfortunately, for this organization, which has no moral clarity."

Sharansky argued that Amnesty International compromises its work by refusing to differentiate "between democracies where there are sometimes serious violations of human rights and dictatorships where no human rights exist at all."

"This comparison between gulag and Soviet Union and United States of America, erases all these differences," he said. "It makes moral equivalence between these two very different worlds and that's unfortunately very a typical, systematical, mistake of Amnesty International."

To that end, Schulz said his group has no favorites and they are "equal opportunity offenders."

"We do our best within the limits of human fallibility," he said. "To apply one universal standard -- one plumline to every society -- to China and to the U.S. to Israel and to Cuba, to Afghanistan and Zimbabwe."

But Amnesty International critics say that may be part of the problem.

They point out that the group's international report has multiple pages criticizing Israel and milder critique of the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, the report devotes a similar amount of space to the slaughter in Sudan as it does poor treatment by police officers in Switzerland.

Anyway, back to the ABC's Leigh Sales who's now speaking with Jackie Northam, the National Security Correspondent for National Public Radio:

LEIGH SALES: A few days ago, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld expressed his frustration at the amount of media coverage Guantanamo Bay is attracting. He says the criticism is out of proportion.

JACKIE NORTHAM: Guantanamo is really becoming a public relations problem for the administration right now. For a long time there wasn't an enormous amount of attention given to the prison camp. It's a long way away, it's isolated, security is enormous in that area.

But, you know, ever since Abu Ghraib something's changed. More and more questions are being asked about Guantanamo right now, and they're not really being answered.

And the other thing that's developing is that Guantanamo is becoming a rallying cry for the Arab world, much along the same lines like the Palestinian issue is. There's growing resentment that there's hundreds of detainees, Muslim detainees being held there without charge, you know, without representation, nothing. So it's a growing problem for the administration.

It's a growing problem for the administration because the left dominated MSM is trying to blow the story out of all proportion. But, the American public ain't gonna buy it:

Large majorities of between 3-to-1 and 2-to-1 trusted the police and the military in both the United States and in Europe.

A 62 to 22 percent (almost 3-to-1) majority of Americans did not trust "the press."

And, rightly so.

ABC HAMMERS ANVIL

Australian based Anvil Mining , that is:

An Australian mining company has been implicated in the massacre of what the United Nations estimates to be more than 100 villagers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The attacks occurred in October last year but details have not been made public until now.

ABC TV's Four Corners program tonight reveals how the Anvil Mining company, which operates a mine in the south-east of the war-ravaged country, provided vehicles and other assistance to government troops to quell a rebel uprising in the village of Kilwa, 50 kilometres from its mine.

The company maintains it did nothing wrong.

Eyewitnesses say that on October 14 last year, a small band of rebels took over the police station in the town of Kilwa, then set its sights on Anvil Mining.

The rebels were unhappy with the Australian company they believed was taking multi-million dollar profits from mining silver and copper out of the country, yet was giving little in return to the community that provided its work force.

The rebels got as far as the Anvil depot, looting trucks and stealing fuel and food.

Although small on the scale of uprisings witnessed during the Congo's eight-year, bloody civil war, the situation was taken very seriously by the Government of Joseph Kabila.

If only Anvil had allowed its operation to be destroyed and its staff killed the rebels and ABC would be happy.

Bill Turner, Anvil's chief executive officer is convinced he did the right thing. When confronted with the allegation that Anvil had allowed government forces to use company vehicles he replied, "so what?" Exactly.

CHINESE AMBASSADOR: TRUST ME, I NO FU YING YOU

Seriously, Fu Ying, China's ambassador to Australia says fugitive Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin, who has been in hiding since leaving the Chinese consulate in Sydney 11 days ago, has nothing to fear should he return to China:

"China has moved on, it's not the 1970s, China's not behind a bamboo curtain," said Madame Fu.

"I don't see there is any reason he could face jail because there is no civil crime in his behaviour. He hasn't committed a civil crime, I don't know why he would be in jail."

Jeez, that has to rank right up there with "your cheque's in the mail" and "of course I won't cum in your mouth". FU Mme. Fu.

FRANCE'S ECONOMIC PROBLEMS EXPLAINED

Patrick Devedjian, formerly France's minister of industry, knows what the problem is:

"The state has been at the center of the country's industrial projects since Louis XIV or Napoleon..."

It's just that nobody wants to serve up the bad-tasting anti-socialist medicine.

WORSE THAN WAR

More than 10,000 French and UN peacekeepers are in the Ivory Coast to stop ethnic clashes but the violence continues:

"The assailants entered the homes, killing and cutting the throats of the townspeople, using pistols and rifles and knives," said Administrative Reform Minister Eric Kahe, speaking to AFP.

He said 11 people were burned alive in their homes, and witnesses said the attackers were traditional hunters from the north.

Many of the victims were elderly or children, according to a local pastor.

"I saw one woman, her whole mouth had been torn apart and her body covered with blows from a machete," Djo Bi of the Baptist Protestant Church in Duekoue told AFP.

"People have been coming to the church all day with their belongings, afraid to spend one more minute in their homes."

An official with Medecins Sans Frontieres said frightened children have been trickling in all day.

"What's happening here is worse than war," she said.

Peacekeepers? There is no peace to keep.

RALPH NADER, LUDDITE

Those familiar with Nader will be aware he lives alone and does not own a car. It should come as no surprise then that he doesn't use a computer and has no understanding of the political mobilization potential of the internet. He can't understand his presidential campaign's failure to become a populist movement to rival that of the American populist movement of the 1880s:

But just take a moment and ask yourself – if our message is so compelling, and at the push of a button, we can deliver it to millions of citizens – then why hasn’t it helped us to galvanize Populist Moment II?

Where are the thousands of alliances and two million people to shake the irrevocably corrupt Democratic and Republican parties?

Where is the mass movement to extricate us from the quicksand's of Iraq?

Could it be that the technology itself has undermined our ability to organize?

That we have become slaves to our machines?

It's a message problem, Ralph. The poor guy obviously has a common sense deficiency.

GREEN CITIES DECLARATION

Mayors from around the globe are meeting in San Francisco for World Environment Day. The United Nations, once content to meddle at the national level is now seeking to meddle at the city level, thereby exerting much greater control over our lives:

ACKNOWLEDGING the importance of the obligations and spirit of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (UNCED), the 1996 Istanbul Conference on Human Settlements, the 2000 Millennium Development Goals, and the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, we see the Urban Environmental Accords described below as a synergistic extension of the efforts to advance sustainability, foster vibrant economies, promote social equity, and protect the planet’s natural systems.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, today on World Environment Day 2005 in San Francisco, we the signatory Mayors have come together to write a new chapter in the history of global cooperation. We commit to promote this collaborative platform and to build an ecologically sustainable, economically dynamic, and socially equitable future for our urban citizens; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we call to action our fellow Mayors around the world to sign the Urban Environmental Accords and collaborate with us to implement the Accords; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that by signing these Urban Accords Environmental Accords, we commit ourselves to moving vital issues of sustainability to the top of our legislative agendas. By implementing the Urban Environmental Accords, we aim to realize the right to a clean, healthy, and safe environment for all members of our society.

Follow the link and read the particulars of the massively expensive action plan the mayors have committed to. The lefties are determined to control our lives one way or another. They're unable to win elections, but there's always the UN.

Update: Those arriving via Tim Blair – thanks Tim! – should go here to read about the UN's tough new approach to the genocide that's not a genocide in Sudan.

MAKING UK DRIVERS SUFFER

Roads are crumbling:

The condition of three-quarters of Britain's local roads, footpaths and cycleways has deteriorated over the past year, according to a survey by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

The research, compiled from Britain's local authorities, estimates there is a £8.3 billion backlog of maintenance to be carried out.

It's no wonder then that those who can afford it buy a 4WD to negotiate what are rapidly becoming "potholed cart-tracks." But, prospective 4WD buyers are tormented by environmentalists:

Eleven climate change protesters were arrested yesterday after chaining themselves to Land Rovers at the start of a national campaign against 'gas guzzling' four-wheel drive vehicles.

At dawn up to 1,000 Greenpeace activists stormed Ford dealerships across the UK and attached wheelclamps on sports utility vehicles or handcuffed themselves to their steering columns.

'Land Rovers are less fuel-efficient than cars manufactured more than 80 years ago, and we are asking the government to tax them off the roads,' said Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace, who was present.

A proposed UK road-use tax will charge by the the time of day and route driven rather than according to the infrastructure wear and tear caused by the vehicle, in an attempt to tax drivers off the road:

The government is throwing its weight behind a revolutionary plan that would force motorists to pay £1.30 a mile to drive on Britain's busiest roads in a bid to prevent 'LA-style gridlock'.

Such a plan would be revolutionary in Western Australia as well: if the government tried to introduce a AU$2 per mile road use charge, drivers would revolt.

KORAN DESECRATION STANDARD PRACTICE?

Bubba's former press secretary Joe Lockhart is doing his best to make something out of nothing:

"I think on this issue, they fell into a trap," Lockhart said. "They saw a way to push back on a damaging story [Newsweek] by making it look like it was just out-of-control journalists, and now they've had to admit that it has happened."

[Presedential Press Secretary] McClellan's statements after the Newsweek report left an impression that no desecration at all had occurred at Guantanamo, Lockhart said.

"While the news organization got an example wrong, they got the practice right," he said. "I think certainly the public is within their right, in this case, to believe they were misled."

Just in case Lockhart has forgotten, the Newsweek article claimed a Koran had been flushed down a toilet. As it turns out, it was the detainees who attempted to flush a Koran, not the guards.

The instances of Koran "abuse" now attributed to guards are so minor they aren't even worth discussing. Anyway, even if a Koran had been flushed by guards, it's no big deal.

It's also curious that a bunch of god-less lefties are so concerned about the fate of a work of fiction.