Against A Dark Background

Relations Break Down Between U.S. And Them | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

This says it all.

Perspective on the Jewels From the C.I.A.s Chief Historian - Washington - News - New York Times Blog

For more than 30 years, the Family Jewels have clouded the C.I.A.’s reputation, even though most of their contents have long been known from official reports and ad hoc disclosures. William Colby — who oversaw the compilation of the Jewels while serving as the agency’s operations chief and director-designate — is the source of some durable misconceptions about them.

Calling a list of possible violations of the CIA Charter “the Family Jewels” was a huge mistake which should not be perpetuated. They are “family jewels” only in the sense in which a vulnerable man is held by “the family jewels.” Why not just release them as what they are?

“A List of Possible Charter Violations Committed Thirty or More Years Ago.”

Technorati Tags: CIA, Family Jewels, Colby, Central Intelligence Agency

Europe and U.S. Reach Climate Deal - New York Times

Environmental campaigners, however, played down the agreement, saying it does not fundamentally alter the Bush administration’s refusal to accept binding targets for reducing emissions.
…
Specifically, Mrs. Merkel was pressing the Group of 8 to adopt the plan to cut emissions in half by 2050 and to limit the rise in global temperature to two degrees Celsius — terms the president’s chief environmental adviser, James L. Connaughton, said Wednesday the United States was not prepared to accept.

Instead, he said, the final communiqué approved by the Group of 8 nations — the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan — would probably reflect a merging of Mrs. Merkel’s plan with a proposal by Mr. Bush. In a major speech on climate change last week, the president spelled out his plan to convene major polluting nations, including China and India, in a series of meetings aimed at setting long-term goals by the end of 2008.

this complaining is just stupid. environmentalists are getting what they have wanted.

Bush, Putin agree to cooperate on missile shield plan - CNN.com

Putin’s proposal to drop objections if the system were set up in Azerbaijan was a welcome surprise, as Moscow’s rhetoric condemning the shield and the relationship between Russia and the United States were beginning to be reminiscent of the Cold War era…

Putin said he had suggested using an existing radar station in neighboring Azerbaijan, which covers all of Europe.

“The existing agreement makes it possible for us to do this. And the president of Azerbaijan stressed he would be glad to contribute to world security and stability,” Putin said. He said he met with the Azerbaijan president on Wednesday.

We might as well cancel the missile defense program for Europe if it is going to be under Russian control. What a waste of money it would be to build a system that will be turned off the first time Putin wants to put some pressure on the Europeans in the middle of a crisis.

Technorati Tags: Putin, Bush, missile defense

ARMED FORCES JOURNAL - A question of cost - June 2007

We cannot continue to perpetuate 29 models of ships, 16 surface-ship combat-system baselines and multiple configurations of shipboard hardware, such as 4,171 different pumps.

Later in the article, the admiral/author explains a plan for getitng down to six to ten different types of ship.

Technorati Tags: U.S. Navy, shipbuilding, Northrop

FOXNews.com - U.S. Warship Fires Warning Shots Over Vessel Boarded by Pirates Off Somali Coast - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

The U.S. Navy has fired warning shots across the bow of a Dutch ship that has been boarded by armed pirates off the coast of Somalia, FOX News has learned.

The USS Carter Hall also fired on three small boats that surrounded the commercial ship, the “Danica White,” after her crew messaged for assistance after being boarded by pirates, the Navy said.

There’s a reasonable chance that the pirates are better armed than the CARTER HALL, which has:

Armament: Two 25mm MK 38 Machine Guns, Two 20mm Phalanx CIWS mounts and Six .50 cal. machine guns.

CARTER HALL will be hard put to do other than put bullet holes in the superstructure … unless they board!

Technorati Tags: Carter Hall

The purpose of this book is to mine the military history of World War II for ideas and insights that may be helpful in understanding the “Global War on Terror.” I hasten to add that I do not advance a simple-minded equation between the two global struggles. I merely suggest that there are enough similarities to sustain interesting discussion. At the macro level, World War II was an effort by various major powers to recast the world system to their advantage. Does that sound anything like what’s happening today?

To be sure, the current struggle is different in many ways. To name just one, non-state organizations like al Qaeda and Hezbollah have played a major role in the most dramatic events of the period. But one might argue that the very reason non-state organizations have been so active is that the Western powers enforce a world system in which the power of the formerly “colonial” states is severely limited. In this light, the new power of non-state organizations is, fundamentally, a reaction to the system of international relations. In this view, it is no accident that the formerly colonial nations of the world have produced most of the angry non-state actors.

Furthermore, one must acknowledge that in many ways the current era is quite familiar, as conventional nation-states are working assiduously to recast the world system to their advantage. In that respect, the current period seems a lot like other periods of convulsive global change such as the Napoleonic era, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.

At the micro level, some things are familiar, some things are not. Just as in WWII, G.I.s are riding around in trucks and relying on superior firepower while America sends expeditionary forces to the far corners of the earth in pursuit of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. But the “coalition of the willing” is a lot less robust than the Allied Coalition in World War II when either the United States or the Soviet Union, standing alone, had enough industrial power to overwhelm any combination of the Axis powers. Similarly, despite the flip David Shrum coinage of the phrase “Axis of Evil,” the “Axis” in the current struggle is in many respects different from the actual Axis of World War II. Palestinian homeboys being crushed by Israeli bulldozers are a lot more sympathetic than Nazis wearing the double lightning bolts of the Waffen SS.

I will argue in this book that there is a great deal that can be learned about the current struggle from looking at World War II at the “micro” level of individual battles and campaigns. The simple reason why this is true is that, as Ecclesiastes observed, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Of course, things do change, but many fundamental principles of war, politics, technology, and human nature remain the same. When we look closely at the campaigns and battles of World War II, it will not be difficult to find patterns and phenomena that give pause for thought about today’s situation.

One might argue that other historical periods are, in fact, more similar to the current period than World War II. For example, the Napoleonic period can be seen as a ruthless effort by a single “hyperpower,” governed by an ambitious, aggressive militarist, to export its radical social model throughout the “civilized” world, on its own terms, in a completely un-collegial manner. Sound familiar?

Let me conede at the outset that other historical periods may well shed equal or more light on the current struggle. There are sound practical reasons why I have chosen World War II as the jumping off point for my discussion.

WW II has been the subject of exhaustive study. Hundreds of thousands of books and monographs have been published. Official records and archives have been opened for scrutiny. We think we know most of what actually happened (unless we have read too many Jack Higgins novels). Most people who are interested in military history know at least something about the military history of World War II. Yet for almost everyone, there’s still plenty to learn! Finally, there is a ready-made community that should find the premise of this book provocative and interesting. At the end of the day, publishing is a practical art.

Mass grave found | Herald Sun

A mass grave believed to contain the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine.

A Jewish community representative said on Tuesday the grave was found by chance last month when workers were digging to lay gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, said Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community.

He said that the Nazis established a concentration camp near the village in November 1941 and killed about 5,000 Jews at or near the site.

“Several thousand Jews executed by the Nazis lie there,” Shvartsman told The Associated Press.

Ukraine’s Jewish population was devastated during the Holocaust. Babi Yar, a ravine outside the capital Kiev where the Nazis slaughtered some 34,000 Jews over two days in September 1941, is a powerful symbol of the tragedy.

The good news here is that the story came out at all, because Ukraine is an independent country where Jews are not oppressed. This story might never have been made public in the old Soviet Union.

What atrocities will be dug up sixty-six years from today?

Technorati Tags: Babi Yar, glasnost

wfzimmerman's review: "A standalone novel by Banks describing the tragic plight of Thrale, a lonely inhabited planet surrounded by tens of millions of light-years of "dark background," with no neighbors. I never think that I've fully understood this book -- there are a lot of unexplained subtleties -- but I think it is one of the most profound meditations I've ever read on the human condition. Here we are, on our own lonely planet, torn by war and suffering, against a dark background."
Spectra (1993), Mass Market Paperback
tags: collecting author's complete works

Democracy stuns Polish coma man - CNN.com

WARSAW, Poland (Reuters) — A 65-year-old railwayman who fell into a coma following an accident in communist Poland regained consciousness 19 years later to find democracy and a market economy, Polish media reported on Saturday.

Wheelchair-bound Jan Grzebski, whom doctors had given only two or three years to live following his 1988 accident, credited his caring wife Gertruda with his revival.

“It was Gertruda that saved me, and I’ll never forget it,” Grzebski told news channel TVN24.

“For 19 years Mrs. Grzebska did the job of an experienced intensive care team, changing her comatose husband’s position every hour to prevent bed-sore infections,” Super Express reported Dr. Boguslaw Poniatowski as saying.

“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere,” Grzebski told TVN24, describing his recollections of the communist system’s economic collapse.

“Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin.”

Thank God for Ronald Reagan.

Technorati Tags: Poland, Berlin Wall