Chrenkoff of right wing intelligence fame provides yet another Tsunami round up while Indonesia's Vice-President, Jusuf Kalla, put a No Longer Welcome sign yesterday by pulling the political plug on foreigners Foreigners should get out of Aceh as soon as possible
From Sparta to Nicaragua, disasters alter political history. History suggests that South Asia's tsunami tragedy could engender regional political fallout.
Christian Science Monitor: Ancient Womangroves;
The coastal trees and shrubs saved hundreds of lives in India by protecting villages from the waves. Mangroves
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: An Inescapable Part of the Spooky Repertoire
You can make the argument that we’re better off with him (at large). Because if something happens to Bin Laden, you might find a lot of people vying for his position and demonstrating how macho they are by unleashing a stream of terror.
CIA number-three man AB "Buzzy" Krongard said: Let’s say you and I want to blow up Trafalgar Square. So we go to Bin Laden. And he’ll say, ‘Well, here’s some money and some passports and if you need weapons, see this guy’.
Saying it's OK to have bin Laden around is like saying it was OK when the Nazis ran France. Obviously, many French preferred it that way; hence the strange thinking about bin Laden. You might also find that if you kill its head, the snake dies
• Let Bin Laden stay free, says CIA man ; [The Most Powerful Weapon of Terror is the Internet Digital Jihad ; There should be a way of minimising a damage done by the digital Jihad... Together, grassroots/Internet activists have just moved three major American mountains Together, We Moved Three Mountains Lets stop the normalisation of horror. Back in 1968 Czechoslovakia went through the normalisation process and in 2004 the country I was born in no longer exists. Gone. Finished. Kapito. Erazed.]
• · Nightmares don't last this long, so the death and destruction must be real The Scent of Fear ; [This is pure unadulterated copying. Mark Bahnisch at Troppo Armadillo did the heavy lifting of actually finding this item from the Times via The Australian, and I am just going to post the whole thing. It is beyond boggling. It is beyond boggling ... ]
• · · The modern institution of civil and human rights, and particularly the writ of habeas corpus, began in June of 1215 when King John was forced by the feudal lords to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede. Although that document mostly protected "freemen" - what were then known as feudal lords or barons, and today known as CEOs and millionaires - rather than the average person, it initiated a series of events that echo to this day. First They Came For The Terrorists...; [The plan of dragging the Soviets into economic bankruptcy, which bin Laden emphasized, was a plan orchestrated by the United States which in reality supported the Afghan jihad militarily and financially. The horns that come out later outstrip the ears, implying that an able apprentice outdistances his master Richard A. Clarke: Against All Enemies
• · · · In politics, as in show business, you reach for golden oldies when you are not brimming with fresh ideas. Gov. George E. Pataki understands that. So when he delivered his State of the State address to the Legislature last week, he trotted out a few crime-fighting proposals. On Justice, in Politics and on Stage ; [The Changing Settlement Experience of New Migrants Theatre of Exile ; Forget all the snide remarks - the Brits love Australia, more than any other country except their own Antopodean Stage Respected even in the Morning ]
• · · · · Sometimes it is easy to forget that the era also produced truly horrifying Cold War schemes like Project Pluto: a low-altitude cruise missile, powered by an atomic ramjet that carried multiple hydrogen bombs and puked out chunks of radioactive debris, killing everyone along its flightpath Pluto: Triple Dragon ; [Boing Boing ]
• · · · · · Until two weeks ago, Smith Thammasaroj was a prophet without honor Today, Smith is being lionized for his foresight after the devastating Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami; [Lindsay Moran read "Harriet the Cold River Spy" as a girl and dreamed of growing up to join the CIA. After graduating from Harvard, she did just that Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy ; David McKnight is a senior lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is part of the Allen and Unwin publishing empire. It is also true that in 1968 the Australian communists were the first in the world to condemn the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. David McKnight joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1972 at the age of 21 out of unashamed idealism but with a full awareness of the tragedy that was Stalinism. I was confident that socialism did not automatically lead to Stalinism. I had enjoyed George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 but also his idealistic Homage to Catalonia. Socialism and equality seemed so obviously the answer to the world's ills. By the late 1980s my views had changed. Both the problems and solutions were not so simple any more. I drifted out of the Communist Party and by 1991 the party itself dissolved. Russified Marxism Blowing its Cover ]