Timothy Treadwell thought that grizzly and Alaskan brown bears are cute and cuddly. He took his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, with him to Alaska to go play with them. They both learned that this is not a good idea. Wild animals are, after all, wild. When around wild animals one should not act irresponsibly.
Anti-American liberals are now learning the same thing. Dr. Rusty Shackleford has it at The Jawa Report.
Christian Peacemaker Teams issued a statement saying the four were working on behalf of Iraqi civilians. The group said it has had a team in Iraq since October 2002, working with U.S. and Iraqi detainees and training others in nonviolent intervention and human rights documentation.
Kember and another person were part of a visiting delegation, while two members of the group's Iraq-based staff also were taken, the statement said.
The group said on its Web site that it was founded in the mid-1980s and is supported by Mennonite Church USA, Mennonite Church Canada, Church of the Brethren and Friends United Meeting.
It places teams of trained peacemakers in crisis situations and militarized areas, and those teams work with civilians to document abuses and develop nonviolent alternatives to war.
The group said the team in Iraq was working on documenting detainee abuses, referring Iraqis to human rights organizations and accompanying Iraqi civilians as they interact with coalition troops and Iraqi government officials [no doubt to ensure that the evil Americans and their usurper puppets would not take them to a secret prison somewhere - ed.].
These leftists probably believed that because they hate the U.S. the terrorists freedom fighters would like them and leave them alone. While it does not lessen the tragedy of their impending deaths, they were acting irresponsibly.
It seems that the execution video shown on CNN, and posted on this blog, was fake (at least according to that highly honest and credible government of the DPRK and its Dear Freak).
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea on Saturday called a recent CNN program depicting a public execution in the communist state a "sheer fabrication" and dismissed it as a ratings ploy by the U.S.-based broadcaster.
North Korea takes any criticism of its internal affairs sensitively and brands it a part of U.S. conspiracy to topple the government of its leader, Kim Jong-il.
CNN earlier this month broadcast a documentary, "Undercover in the Secret State," which among other images showed a grainy clip of what it called a public execution by firing squad of a man accused of helping a refugee cross into neighboring China.
YANJI, CHINA. Hungry and Stalinist North Korea keeps its' people under firm grip with public executions and a wide network of informants and prison camps, people who escaped from the country to China, human rights organizations and various news publications say. According to the interviews with nine North Korean escapees, the public executions have become routine in their country.
The North Koreans told in the Chinese city of Yanji, that the executed ones are often first beaten up to a near-dead condition, their elbows, knees and ankles are crushed, which after they are tied to a pole and shot before a firing squad.
"Their eyes, hands, middle bodies and feet are tied. Then they shoot them in every place," tells a teenager girl, who says that altogether ten shots are being fired. She estimates to have eye-witnessed 15 executions.
A 30-year-old man tells in another interview situation, that there are nine shots. International Herald Tribune interviewed one year ago a man, who said that for each person there are three soldiers, who all shoot three times - one in the head, the other one in the chest and third one in the stomach. That testimony is in line with the information gathered in Yanji.
All of the interviewed said they had seen several public executions. "At least twenty", a middle-aged woman says. Also children are invited to come and see the executions, the North Koreans say.
"For the first time, I saw the execution from far distance. I got nightmares. But I was told, that if I look nearer, it won't come to my dreams. So, next time I went very close and it helped. I don't see dreams about it any more," explains a woman in her thirties.
If this story is just CNN's attempt to garner ratings, it seems a bit widespread.
Those of you who are regular readers know that public executions are not the worst of it. Read these posts;
The Generals who run the government of Burma have, for various reasons which we can only guess, moved the capital of the country into the jungle. This is a central location which will enable them to better control the tribes further north.
Burma's top generals have finally begun their planned move to the hills North of Rangoon. For months Rangoon had been rife with rumours that the country's military rulers were planning to retreat to the hills in central Burma because of fears of a foreign invasion from the sea. This week deputy ministers have begun the major shift to the new government centre at Pyinmana.
More than two weeks ago the deputy interior minister cleared his desk in the ministry building ready to move. He is now installed in his newly completed offices, according to Burmese government sources. The ministers apparently are remaining in Rangoon for the time being and are slated to move by the end of the year.
Ten ministries have been relocated this week, including the interior, agriculture, forestry and power ministries. The government's Central Bureau of Statistics is also being transferred out of Rangoon. The second phase will begin at the start of next month follow by a further move at the beginning of January.
This is the start of a mass relocation of the Burmese government and military headquarters out of Rangoon. According to the blue-prints for the new complex, it is actually going to replace Rangoon as the country's capital.
"This is typical of Than Shwe's pretensions to be the new Burmese monarch. Like all the Burmese kings before him he is building a new palace-capital for posterity," according to a senior Burmese analyst, Win Min based in Thailand.
Burma's military rulers are preparing to relocate the country's centre of government inland for safety reasons, according to diplomats and government officials in Rangoon.
The military's headquarters, government ministries and the new parliament are all scheduled to be moved to an inland location within the next twelve months in what many in Burma are now calling "Escape City".
I'm not sure it's all about safety, although when you're paranoid I suppose everything is about safety.
The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 reinforced the top generals' fear that the US might attack Burma, according to analysts. Burma's military strategists have long argued that the country's defences were vulnerable to an attack from the sea. Burma's top generals have always suffered from a siege mentality. "Than Shwe has a bunker mentality, and when he's completely secure he'll launch his offensives," according to the Burmese analyst, Win Min. "But a key strategic drawback of the site is its lack of access to the sea, it is not close to a port," he added.
Many analysts believe that the move is also intended to give the regime better access to the frontier areas, especially the Chin, Karen, Kayah and Shan where most ethnic groups with ceasefire pacts with Rangoon are strong.
"Although the ethnic organisations have ceasefire agreements with the junta, the top generals remain highly suspicious of the ethnic groups and want to be in a better position to control them if they need to," said Win Min. [selection edited for punctuation only - ed.]
Fadhlallah: The Arabic language, 200 years ago, was a universal language. It's interesting to note that when Christopher Columbus went to America, in what language did he speak with the Indians? It is said that the language they spoke with the Indians – and I have indisputable documentation of this at home... The intellectuals among the Indians spoke Arabic. He took two Arabs with him, to serve as interpreters between the Spaniards and the Indians. He took two of them as translators. So you can imagine the historic and cultural value of Arabic. It's undoubtedly very important.
As he promised to the AFVKN and NARKN delegation on 27th October, US Congressman Henry Hyde, Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, has just sent a following letter to Park Gil-Yon, North Korean Ambassador to the UN, urging immediate resolution of the abduction issue.
We appreciate this strong warning message from a leading political figure in the United States towards a tyrannical regime.
It seems that the North Korean government likes to kidnap people from all over the world. I have written many times in this blog about the abduction of Japanese nationals by agents of the DPRK. We have known for a long time about the kidnapping of hundreds, and possible thousands of South Korean nationals by North Korean agents. Know we have this; Evidence grows that Thai woman abducted to North Korea
Hong Kong (dpa) - The memoirs of a U.S. army deserter have added weight to the theory that three young women who went missing 27 years ago in Macau were spirited away to North Korea, a news report said Sunday.
The trio - Thai masseuse Anocha Panjoy and jewellery shop assistants Hong Leng-ieng and So Mio-chun - have not been seen since the evening July 2, 1978, after they accepted a dinner invitation from a wealthy Japanese man who called himself Mr Fukoda.
At the time it was thought the women could have been abducted and forced into prostitution or murdered on the high seas after being enticed on board ships.
However in his recently published memoirs, American Charles Jenkins, who spent 39 years in North Korea after deserting his unit in 1965, claimed to have met Thai national Anocha Panjoy during his time there.
Jenkins says he knew her well because she was married to fellow deserter Larry Abshier who died of a heart attack in 1983. He also produced a photograph of a beach scene with a woman in the background he claimed was Anocha.
In his book Kokuhaku (To Tell the Truth) he says he believed there were abductees from all over the world in North Korea.
Thailand's government is investigating claims that a Thai woman missing since 1978 was kidnapped by North Korean agents and is now living there.
Relatives of the woman, Anocha Panjoy, were alerted to her possible fate by an article written by a US man who recently left North Korea.
Pyongyang has already "informally denied" abducting the woman, said Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkon.
And this should be interesting;
The North Korean charge d'affaires to Thailand, Kim Chol-nam will discuss [lie about, ed.] the case with Nopadol Gunavibool, director general of the East Asia Department at the Foreign Ministry, later this week, according to the Bangkok Post.
It is unbelievable to me that there are Westerners, particularly Americans, who support this monsterous regime. See this, and this, and this.
Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. No one lied. There were many valid reasons to take Saddam down, WMD being only one. Everyone left™ and right thought he had them. To say that he never did, as the Left™ now does begs the question, what about Halabja? I suppose those thousands of people just had a bad mass allergy.
Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it. We are not openly torturing anyone. Sleep deprivation and loud music are not torture. Oh, and ripping up Korans is not torture either.
Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night. If this idiot is writing about capturing illegal combatants on the battlefield, or nabbing people as they are caught trying to carry out terrorist acts is not "the merest suspicion". People found to be arrested in error are released.
Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule. Beneath discussion. And this idiot writes this in support of people who wish to impose a totalitarian Islamic Caliphate on all of us.
Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price. When?, Where?
Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion. How is this happening? Oh, it's not. Actually this would be impossible. Even assuming that we could get soft-headed American judges to rule against abortion, it is so popular in Europe that NO WESTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRY IS REPRODUCING AT REPLACEMENT LEVELS.
Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance. Opinion, and an idiotic one at that.
People look at all this and think of Hitler and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.
It is interesting that, in the cause of "freedom" they have no respect for elections. They accuse the President of wishing to set up a fascistic dictatorship when, in fact, it is they who wish to overturn an election and impose some other government. They are hypocrites and worse than despicable.
Read the list of endorsers. It is very interesting.
My hatred for the government of North Korea does not translate to support of an American military presence in South Korea. That force is so small that it would be little more than a speed bump during a North Korean invasion of South Korea, and they know that. While it would be exceptionally tragic for South Korea to be defeated in war and be governed by the murderers of North Korea, it would be better to preserve our forces in Japan to be used later, after the initial thrust of the DPRK, rather than lose them in a diplomatic and political exercise. As it stands now, our troops are there as an act of generosity to the people and government of South Korea. In fact, they are a hindrance to our ability to negotiate freely with the North Korean government because they are basically hostages to the murderer freak-boy Kim Jong-Il. The only benefit to the South Koreans is business. Most of which still want our money.
It is time for us to go. Perhaps the world will learn something by watching what happens to South Korea once we leave. Western liberals and their leftist™ fellow travelers will celebrate, but their cruelty will be fully revealed. Ironically the defeat of South Korea would aid in the struggle against them elsewhere.
The (now former) Korean Ambassador to the U.S., Hong Seok-hyun, disputes this.
Hong attributed such conceptions to an insufficient under- standing of changes sweeping Korea and the world at large, and to excessive focus on trivial incidents.
One major change in Korean society was that the decision-making process has become more complex, Hong said. Now dissenters need to be convinced, and the process takes longer as the democratization of Korean society progresses.
I have to say that that is pretty lame. The people in joshua's photos were not waiting for the opportunity to be convinced of anything.
Perhaps he fears the weakening of American support for our presence there, and rightfully so.
TOKYO, Oct. 27 (UPI) -- A Japanese citizens group will soon begin broadcast of a short-wave radio program for Japanese abductees living in North Korea.
The 30-minute Japanese-language program, "Shiokaze (Sea Breeze)," which will include messages from family members of abductees, will be broadcast daily at 11:30 p.m. starting in late November, the Asahi Shimbun reported Thursday.
The program will start with such messages as: "It won't be long. We will rescue you without fail." About 50 names of those believed to be held in North Korea will be announced each day.
With about 270 names on the list, the announcement of names will loop every five days.
The program also will tell listeners that many people in Japan are trying to rescue those snatched by North Korea, and that abductees should try -- with caution -- to send information to the outside world.
It is good to see the people acting independently of their government. This is a great American tradition and can only be done by people living in a free country.
More to follow on the story of Japanese (and others) abducted by North Korean agents.
Africans living and working in Paris have been pushed into ghettoized suburbs of Paris (banlieue), where the state has withdrawn education, health, and other services, while increasing police presence, checkpoints, raids on sans-papiers and levels of oppression in general. This week the suburbs have exploded.
The trigger came on Thursday, October 27th, 2005, as a group of 10 highschool kids were playing soccer in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. When police arrived to do ID checks, the kids ran away and hid, because some of them had no ID. Three of the children hid in an electrical transformer building of EDF and were electrocuted. Two of them, Ziad Benn (17) and Banou Traoré (15), died; the third, Metin (21), was severely injured.
There it is, the fictitious "oppression" in a socialist country that does whatever it can to appease her Muslims - oh, wait! Who said they were Muslims? They are African high school kids.
On Sunday, however, provocation turned into outrage as the women's prayer room at de Bousquets mosque was teargassed by police. As people stumbled out gasping for air, the policemen called the women "whores", "bitches" and other insults.
That's right. Women peacefully at prayer (just happens to be at a mosque) were teargassed by the police for absolutely no reason at all.
Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. "By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night," I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February.
Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: "French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest."
"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The notion that Texas neocon arrogance was responsible for frosting up trans-Atlantic relations was always preposterous, even for someone as complacent and blinkered as John Kerry. If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans? For half a decade, French Arabs have been carrying on a low-level intifada against synagogues, kosher butchers, Jewish schools, etc. The concern of the political class has been to prevent the spread of these attacks to targets of more, ah, general interest. They seem to have lost that battle. Unlike America's Europhiles, France's Arab street correctly identified Chirac's opposition to the Iraq war for what it was: a sign of weakness.
Liberal appeasers in the United States would have the same thing occur here.
NOTE: I wrote this post a couple of days ago hoping that something would change. Silly me.
The riots in France are now well covered by the MSM (for my new readers that's MainStream Media) although you may notice that they avoid a certain fact, knowledge of which is not permitted under current thought control laws.
It'’s not just Paris. Successive nights of riots have rocked parts of Århus, the second largest city in Denmark. Little to nothing has appeared in the English language press about the second front in the Eurabian intifada. Århus is home to an excellent Danish university, and is a place where I have spent some time. It is usually spelled "Aarhus" in English.
Fortunately, Hendrik, The Viking Observer, has translated in his blog a press account from Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper which has been the target of Muslim protests for publishing drawings of the prophet Muhammad.. A few excerpts:
Rosenhøj Mall has several nights in a row been the scene of the worst riots in Århus for years. "This area belongs to us", the youths proclaim. Sunday evening saw a new arson attack. Their words sound like a clear declaration of war on the Danish society. Police must stay out. The area belongs to immigrants....
He calls himself 100 percent Palestinian, born in a refugee camp in Lebanon 19 years ago, and now out of work in Denmark. "The police has to stay away. This is our area. We decide what goes down here".
A civil war is coming to France, and will eventually burn across all of Europe.
This man was one of the very great conductors of the 20th Century and a huge influence on me. As child and later as a music student at Illinois Wesleyan University and then Southern Methodist University I studied his recordings to learn how to clearly interpret symphonic music.
As I hadn't heard any news of him for some time, I did an internet search on his name and discovered the above listed article.
This is a man whose musical skills dwarfed virtually all others. It is impossible to say too much about him.
When I was a First Class Petty Officer on USS Florida I had a very hard time establishing myself as a leader in my Division. I ultimately succeeded. During that time I received great solace from his recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis (the greatest work of music ever written). I still have memorized every tempo and every balance of every voice, even in the most densely contrapuntal sections of his recording of that very complex work. His Mahler Symphony Number 1 in D Major is my paradigm of how Mahler is to be played. There is too much to write about here. His musical thinking was formative for me.
I am a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer and a freelance performing 'cellist who brews his own beer. I am an Orthodox Christian. I am NOT a professional journalist, therefore nothing prevents me from writing what is true. I am now working as an Engineering Technician at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
