Kim Jong il, the crazy dictator from North Korea is dead. He was 69 years old. I’m not gonna say much about him. He falls in the category of “better off dead.”
This is one of those unexpected events that comes up from time to time. He’s dead, but it is unclear who will be his successor. He anointed his third son, Kim Jong-un, to replace him but some people may have other ideas. Anything is possible:
South Korea’s military is on “emergency alert” just in case the North does something rash. That could happen inadvertently, if the chain of command starts to break down under the weight of power struggles and NK units go rogue, or intentionally if the NorK leadership fears mass military desertions or a popular uprising inspired by the death of the camp-commandant-in-chief. Frankly, I wonder if North Koreans are physiologically capable of that; as in any cult worth its salt, they’ve been brainwashed and malnourished to the point where resistance may now be literally unthinkable. But never underestimate the paranoia of a totalitarian regime: Kim Jong-un, or whoever’s running North Korea, may conclude that the only way to keep the people timid, distracted, and united is by picking a fight with the enemy. That won’t end well for them if it escalates to actual war, but a limited provocation — like a new nuclear test, for starters — might be enough of a show of force to keep everyone at home in line.
This could end up being a major foreign policy crisis or even a shooting war. If it does, it could end up giving Obama a chance to finally demonstrate leadership. Or it could be just another chance for him to demonstrate epic fail.
On the other hand this could end up just being a new phase of a long-simmering problem.
The US soldier accused of leaking thousands of government secrets struggled with emotional problems and gender issues, a court has heard.
Private Bradley Manning faces 22 charges of distributing state secrets to anti-secrecy site Wikileaks.
But his defence have questioned whether he should have been given access to the sensitive documents in the first place.
The hearing, at Fort Meade army base in Maryland, will determine whether Pte Manning should face a court martial.
The hearing began on Friday under tight security and is expected to last around five days.
The defence have failed to get Lt Col Paul Almanza dismissed as presiding officer for the prosecution.
They had said Lt Col Almanza’s refusal to accept all but two of 38 defence witnesses meant the defence could not adequately make their case, but the army’s appeals court rejected their concerns.
Lt Col Almanza, is a former military judge who now works for the Department of Justice, which has its own investigation into Wikileaks.
Under cross-examination of military investigators, details emerged of incidents during Pte Manning’s deployment as an intelligence analyst in Iraq between November 2009 and his arrest in May 2010.
His defence lawyer, David Coombs, highlighted emails his client had sent to a superior officer explaining that confusion about his gender identity was impacting on his ability to do his job.
Hundreds of demonstrators march in support of Bradley Manning outside Fort Meade on Saturday 17 December 2011 Anti-war activists say Pte Manning helped expose mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan and must be freed
Investigators admitted they had found evidence that Pte Manning had created an online alter ego called “Breanna Manning”.
The soldier had also reportedly assaulted a superior, turned over a table, damaged a computer and on another occasion was found “curled up in a ball”.
Mr Coombs pointed out that hundreds of thousands of government employees had access to the military’s classified network, and yet Pte Manning’s access was never revoked.
This hearing has been strange.
First the defense challenged the judge. They lost.
Normally these kind of hearings (similar to a civilian preliminary hearing) are almost a formality. The purpose is to determine whether there is enough evidence to hold a trial. The defense usually doesn’t even present witnesses.
Here the defense is putting on a full court press, but they aren’t trying to prove that Manning is factually innocent.
The defense has questioned prosecution witnesses about Manning’s sexual orientation. Apparently he is either gay or has gender identity issues. Normally that would irrelevant to the charges. If the prosecution tried to introduce Manning’s sexual orientation the defense would object. Here, they raised the subject.
They have also raised issues relating to poor security practices and whether Manning was a poor security risk. Normally this would also be irrelevant. (The fact that it is easy to steal does not justify stealing.)
I think this is less a defense than a sentencing strategy. It won’t hold up as an insanity plea, even if a court-martial has any such option, so it looks more like they’re stipulating that the evidence will prove Manning did what the Army alleges. This is almost certainly their idea of mitigating circumstances in order to get a lower sentence for Manning, although Jazz’ point on the sudden embrace of gender issues as mental illness is still very, very salient indeed.
Perry Mason never lost a case, but he had the luxury of representing innocent defendants. In real life, most criminal defendants did something wrong. Maybe not what they are charged with, but some lesser crime. Sometimes when they are innocent of the current offense the reason they are facing charges is because they have priors for the same thing.
As a defense attorney it is considered a “win” if you succeed in beating the offer. You don’t need to get an acquittal – if they offered four years but you got it reduced to two – that’s a win.
Bradley Manning is facing life in prison and possibly the death penalty. The indications are the government has a strong case. If Manning gets 5-10 years he should consider himself lucky.
What’s that you say? Manning is a hero and should go free? And the stuff he leaked wasn’t really important anyway?
The first isn’t going to fly in a court-martial, and the second would be a mitigating circumstance, which would mean he was guilty but deserves a lesser sentence.
The above photo shows Egyptian army soldiers beating a young woman in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Saturday, the second straight day of clashes with protesters that began on Friday and continued overnight. There’s no reason to believe that there was anything special about this woman or even about the way that soldiers treated her. Members of the army, once beloved by Egypt’s activists for standing by their side during the revolution in February, have sent hundreds of men and women to the hospital over the last 48 hours and have killed at least 10, some with live ammunition fired into crowds.
But there is something especially barbaric about this photo. The taboo of violence against unarmed women is unusually strong in the Arab world. But to watch three soldiers beat a defenseless woman with batons, their fists, and for one extraordinarily cruel soldier with his boot, is not even the most provocative part. For these men to pull her black abaya above her head and expose her midriff and chest is, for Egypt, a profound and sexually charged humiliation.
[...]
The Egyptian military, the strongest and most powerful institution in the country and perhaps the Arab world, has taken a dramatic and dark turn since winning power earlier this year. Though it initially safeguarded the revolution in February by protecting protesters from President Hosni Mubarak’s state security forces, it has gradually (if clumsily) consolidated power since his fall, declaring that it will retain independence from and control over any democratically elected government. As protests against the military have grown, the generals have abandoned their earlier pledges to support the people and refrain from violence against civilians. The SCAF — the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, a panel of top military leaders — increasingly looks like Egypt’s new dictator. Its troops, now openly attacking civilians, are unlikely to deescalate their war against democratic activism.
A few months ago some people were getting giddy over revolts in the Arab world. They wanted us to join them in supporting these revolts. Some of us were less than enthusiastic.
History teaches us is that those who start revolutions are often not the same ones who finish them, and brutal dictatorships are rarely replaced by peaceful democracies. And when you upset an apple cart the apples don’t always roll the way you expect.
Among the people who were getting giddy over revolts in the Arab world were the Occupiers. I hope they are paying attention but I doubt it. They are too full of themselves to let reality intrude.
This week, the Obama Administration declared the war in Iraq over. You can tell because they say so. The reality is that American military bases will be disbanded and troops will no longer be deployed. American money and contractors will be in Iraq for some time, and will be subject to the whims of the Iraqi justice system.
How did we get to this point? Obama has been president for 2 years and 10 months. He promised to end the Iraq War as one of his first acts, like closing Guantanamo (which is still open). It turns out that the Iraqi government wanted to prosecute American soldiers if they felt a crime was committed. This was politically radioactive so Obama chose to make lemonade out of lemons. Thus was born the sudden decision to pull out of Iraq.
Whatever one thinks of the war in Iraq, there were reasons to go in. I’ve heard this idiotic mantra that Iraq was a war of choice. The United States has never been invaded. Every war has been a war of some choice, including the Civil War. There were all kinds of reasons to not join World War 2, for example. We started after being bombed by the Japanese. We ended it by nuking Japan. German expansion had nothing to do with us for years before then.
Afghanistan, the “good” war, is equally pointless now. Osama bin Laden is dead. We could let that country go to hell again. If Iraq has been a total failure, why did it take this administration three years to call an end to it? Why are we in Afghanistan? Why kill foreign leaders with international forces? What are we gaining?
The Iraq war started as a demand for Saddam Hussein to produce his weapons. Most of the world thought he had some, but none were going to do anything about it. Iraq was a major source of oil for permanent Security Council members like France. Kofi Annan’s son was working for the oil for food program. Then there were critics like Joe Wilson, who was dispatched by his wife, and Scott Ritter, in-between arrests for child pornography.
We will never know if there were never any WMDs or if they were simply moved. Saddam certainly didn’t spill the beans. Most people didn’t strongly object at the time, either. The war didn’t become an issue in the 2004 campaign until the economy started to recover and Kerry had to pick a different tactic. Bush ended up choosing a different tactic when his party had significant losses in 2006. He fired Rumsfeld and started the famous surge.
By 2007, the war belonged to Democrats. Threats to remove funding by not passing authorizations failed immediately. Bush was able to continue the war and plan an eventual end with little resistance. Democrats tried again in 2008, by electing a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress. Still, there was no change. In fact, not until the Republicans regained control of the House did the Iraq war come to the ending it did.
The president has the authority to use existing military assets for limited military engagements. Only the Congress has the ability to declare war. They also have the ability to refuse funding to the military. The Congress has abdicated that responsibility for half a century. Maybe they should give up their place in government as well.
For months, they were the best of neighbors: the slapdash champions of economic equality, putting down stakes in an outdoor plaza, and the venerable Episcopal parish next door, whose munificence helped sustain the growing protest.
But in the weeks since Occupy Wall Street was evicted from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, relations between the demonstrators and Trinity Wall Street, a church barely one block from the New York Stock Exchange, have reached a crossroads.
The displaced occupiers had asked the church, one of the city’s largest landholders, to hand over a gravel lot, near Canal Street and Avenue of the Americas, for use as an alternate campsite and organizing hub. The church declined, calling the proposed encampment “wrong, unsafe, unhealthy and potentially injurious.”
And now the Occupy movement, after weeks of targeting big banks and large corporations, has chosen Trinity, one of the nation’s most prominent Episcopal parishes, as its latest antagonist.
“We need more; you have more,” one protester, Amin Husain, 36, told a Trinity official on Thursday, during an impromptu sidewalk exchange between clergy members and demonstrators. “We are coming to you for sanctuary.”
Trinity’s rector, the Rev. James H. Cooper, defended the church’s record of support for the protesters, including not only expressions of sympathy, but also meeting spaces, resting areas, pastoral services, electricity, bathrooms, even blankets and hot chocolate. But he said the church’s lot — called Duarte Square — was not an appropriate site for the protesters, noting that “there are no basic elements to sustain an encampment.”
“Trinity has probably done as much or more for the protesters than any other institution in the area,” Mr. Cooper wrote on his parish Web site. “Calling this an issue of ‘political sanctuary’ is manipulative and blind to reality. Equating the desire to seize this property with uprisings against tyranny is misguided, at best. Hyperbolic distortion drives up petition signatures, but doesn’t make it right.”
Let’s get a couple things clear. This was not a group of homeless people in desperate need of shelter. This is a group of protesters looking for some private property where they could stage another semi-permanent camp-out. Of course they don’t want to pay for it (even though they have over $500,000 in the bank) nor do they want to obtain official permission or permits.
Duarte Square is a fenced-in gravel lot. There is no shelter there, nor any running water, electricity nor toilets. It is not public property and the protesters have no legal claim over it or any right to use it.
The Occupiers claim they have no place to protest. THIS IS A LIE!
The Occupiers can protest at Zuccotti Park every single day of the year, from 6 am until 10 pm. They just can’t camp-out over night or set up tents. They can do the same at every public park in New York City.
What is really pathetic is that OWS had a whole month to plan something and this nothing-burger was the best they could come up with.
