Posts Tagged ‘Geopolitics’
Top Obama Advisors Want More Troops In Afghanistan
The New York Times reports on the march to perpetual war in Afghanistan occurring within the Obama administration:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan.
Officials said that while Admiral Mullen and Mrs. Clinton were generally in sync with Mr. Gates in supporting an option of about 30,000 troops, there were variations in their positions and they were not working in lock step.
Did David Hasselhoff End the Cold War?
With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall today, I found this story from the BBC in 2004 kinda funny. This headline also seemed to inspire the title of a book from a great publisher in the UK, Icon Books. If you don’t take Icon’s or the BBC’s word for it, watch the Hoff in action at the wall below (or better yet, the music video for “Looking for Freedom”):
Barely a month after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the city that had been divided by politics for more than 40 years was united in song. And leading the chorus of several hundred thousand voices was a man hitherto known to the rest of the world for driving a talking car.
David Hasselhoff, star of the hit 80s TV series Knight Rider, is renowned in celebrity-obsessed circles for being Big In Germany; not only as an actor, but as a purveyor of soft rock anthems. For that seminal concert, on New Year’s Eve 1989, Hasselhoff stood atop of the partly-demolished wall and belted out a tune called “Looking for Freedom.” (Continued on BBC News)
The 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
A Denver Post News Photo Blog:
Monday, November 9th, 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down. Built with barbed wire and concrete in August of 1961 by the Communist East, The Berlin Wall, stretching for about 30 miles, was a Cold War symbol which separated East and West Berlin, preventing people from leaving East Germany. According to the “August 13 Association” which specialises in the history of the Berlin Wall, at least 938 people — 255 in Berlin alone — died, shot by East German border guards, attempting to flee to West Berlin or West Germany. It stood for 28 years as a division between the Soviets and the Allies. The wall was torn down after Communism collapsed in 1989. During the summer of…
Criminal Convictions of 22 CIA Agents in Italy
From Salon:
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA’s kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
The criminal conviction of 22 CIA agents (and 2 Italian intelligence officers) by an Italian court yesterday — for the 2003 kidnapping of an Islamic cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, off the street in Italy and his “rendition” to Egypt to be tortured — highlights several vital points:
First, illustrating how these matters are typically distorted by the U.S. establishment media, note that CNN — in the very first paragraph of its story — claims that the CIA agents were convicted “for their role in the seizing of a suspected terrorist in Italy in 2003.” What did Nasr allegedly do that warrants that “terrorist” label? Did he participate in the 9/11 attacks, or plan attacks on “the American homeland” or U.S. civilians? No. According to CNN, this is…
Noam Chomsky: War, Peace, and Obama’s Nobel
Noam Chomsky for In These Times:
The hopes and prospects for peace aren’t well aligned — not even close. The task is to bring them nearer. Presumably that was the intent of the Nobel Peace Prize committee in choosing President Barack Obama.
The prize “seemed a kind of prayer and encouragement by the Nobel committee for future endeavor and more consensual American leadership,” Steven Erlanger and Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in The New York Times.
The nature of the Bush-Obama transition bears directly on the likelihood that the prayers and encouragement might lead to progress.
The Nobel committee’s concerns were valid. They singled out Obama’s rhetoric on reducing nuclear weapons.
Right now Iran’s nuclear ambitions dominate the headlines. The warnings are that Iran may be concealing something from the International Atomic Energy Agency and violating U.N.…
25-year-old massacre Haunts India’s Sikhs
From CNN:
Gurdeep Kaur’s wrinkled face was wet with tears, as she recounted what she saw a quarter century ago: the killings of 21 of family members.She recalled how maddened mobs barged into her home and burned alive her husband, two of her sons and a son-in-law because they were Sikhs, easily identified by their beards and turbans wrapped around their uncut hair as their faith required them.
In her neighborhood in the Indian capital of New Delhi, many of her other relatives were among hundreds killed the same way and for the same reason on a single day, November 1, 1984.
Thousands of Sikhs were lynched or burned alive in parts of India in the wake of the assassination of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The attacks started in…
British Nuclear Expert’s 17th Floor UN Death Plunge ‘Was Not Suicide’
From The Daily Mail:
A British nuclear expert who fell from the 17th floor of a United Nations building did not commit suicide and may have been hurled to his death, says a doctor who carried out a second post-mortem examination. Timothy Hampton, 47, a scientist involved in monitoring nuclear activity, was found dead last week at the bottom of a stairwell in Vienna. An initial autopsy concluded that there were ‘no suspicious circumstances’. But it is understood that Mr Hampton’s widow Olena Gryshcuk and her family were deeply unhappy with that verdict.
Now a doctor who undertook a second post-mortem examination on behalf of the family believes she has found evidence that Mr Hampton did not die by his own hands. Professor Kathrin Yen, of the Ludwig Institute in Graz, Austria,…
Soon After His Brother is Revealed to be a CIA Drug Runner, Look Who is Handed a Second Term
The AP via Yahoo News reports:
President Hamid Karzai was effectively handed a second five-year term Sunday when his only challenger dropped out of the race, and the Obama administration said it was prepared to work with the man it has previously criticized to combat corruption and confront the Taliban insurgency.
President Barack Obama has been waiting for a new government in Kabul to announce whether he will send tens of thousands of new troops to Afghanistan. The war has intensified and October was the deadliest month of the eight-year war for U.S. forces.
Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah announced his decision to quit six days before the runoff election, after last-minute talks led by the U.S. and United Nations failed to produce a power-sharing agreement acceptable to Karzai, according to a Western diplomat…
Fast Internet Access Becomes a Legal Right in Finland
Saeed Ahmed writes on CNN:
Finland has become the first country in the world to declare broadband Internet access a legal right.
Starting last July, telecommunication companies in the northern European nation were required to provide all 5.2 million citizens with Internet connection that runs at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second.
The one-megabit mandate, however, is simply an intermediary step, said Laura Vilkkonen, the legislative counselor for the Ministry of Transport and Communications. The country is aiming for speeds that are 100 times faster — 100 megabit per second — for all by 2015.
“We think it’s something you cannot live without in modern society. Like banking services or water or electricity, you need Internet connection,” Vilkkonen said. Finland is one of the most wired in the world; about 95 percent…
Poll: 75% Of Finns Don’t Want The Swine Flu Vaccine
sikainfluenssa.biz writes
In Finland at least three somewhat big media outlets, Ilta-Sanomat, MTV3 and Helsingin Sanomat, have held polls asking the Finnish people if they are going to take the swine flu vaccine. The results are as follows.
The first online poll was held by MTV3. It’s unclear how many people took part in it, but 61% said they do not want the swine flu vaccine.
Nearly 12,000 people answered the Helsingin Sanomat gallup, and the overwhelming majority, 75%, answered “No”.
Then a third poll at the end of September held by Ilta-Sanomat rendered the exact same percentage as the Helsingin Sanomat gallup, 75% will not be taking the vaccine. Over 16,000 people took part in the Ilta-Sanomat poll.
Benito Mussolini Was Recruited By MI5
Tom Kington writes in the Guardian:
History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce’s CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.
Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.
For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to “persuade”…
The 5 Minute Decision that Saved the World in 1983
Here’s someone who really deserves a Nobel Peace Prize … Gimundo writes on DivineCaroline:
Ever heard of Stanislav Petrov?
Probably not—but you may very well owe him your life.
Petrov, a former member of the Soviet military, didn’t actually do anything but that’s precisely the point.
In 1983, Petrov held a very important station: As lieutenant colonel, he was in charge of monitoring the Soviet Union’s satellites over the United States, and watching for any sign of unauthorized military action.
This was the Cold War era, and suspicions were high; on September 1, the Soviet Union had mistakenly shot down a Korean aircraft it had believed to be a military plane, killing 269 civilians, including an American Congressman. The Soviet Union believed that the United States might launch a missile attack at any moment, and…
Americans Are Getting Used to Perpetual War
Ron Smith writes in the Baltimore Sun:
A new poll shows a substantial majority of Americans have resigned themselves to the reality of our nation’s perpetual foreign wars. They don’t like it, but they see it happening and know there is nothing they can do about it. The poll, conducted by Clarus Research Group, showed that 68 percent of us agree with idea that we won’t either win or lose the war in Afghanistan, now eight years long, but will instead just remain there. The image of flies and flypaper again swirls in my head, just as it did at the time of the invasion of Iraq. We invaded these places and now we’re stuck there, and President Barack Obama is likewise stuck, not on flypaper, but on the horns of…
