India is to conduct a test of a submarine launched ballistic missile, the K-15, which is nuclear capable, and has a 700 km range.
It is intended to be installed at some point on a nuclear submarine that India is building.
Yet more evidence that the arms race between India and Pakistan is continuing unabated.
There is a very good that Darius Rejali, Author of ‘Torture and Democracy’ makes in this interview:
Yes, torture does migrate, and there are some good examples of it both in American and French history. The basic idea here is that soldiers who get ahead torturing come back and take jobs as policemen, and private security, and they get ahead doing the same things they did in the army. And so torture comes home. Everyone knows waterboarding, but no one remembers that it was American soldiers coming back from the Philippines that introduced it to police in the early twentieth century. During the Philippine Insurgency in 1902, soldiers learned the old Spanish technique of using water tortures, and soon these same techniques appeared in police stations, especially throughout the South, as well as in military lockups during World War I. Likewise, the electrical techniques used in Vietnam appeared in the 1960s appeared in torturing African Americans on the south side of Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, and, as I argue in the book, that wasn’t just an accident.
So torture always comes home. And the techniques of this war are likely to show up in a neighborhood near you. Likewise, the techniques that appeared in the War on Terror were already documented in INS lockups in Miami in the 1990s. There is no bright line between domestic and foreign torture; the stuff circulates.
Next time you talk with a wingnut, mention that.
And go read the full interview.
Seriously, the people behind the internet attacks on Scientology will be hounded to death as Shawn Lonsdale has just been.
Scientology is an organization that harassed the Internal Revenue Service into submission.
See here for background.
It appears that Musharraf’s party has been absolutely crushed in Pakistani elections, here and here, and that there is now growing pressure for him to resign – USATODAY.com.
There are still some seats outstanding, but right now, the Pakistan People’s Party ( Benizir Bhutto) has won 87 seats, the Muslim League-N party (Nawaz Sharif) has won 66 seats, and Musharraf’s Muslim League-Q won only 38 seats.
There are 272 seats in the Pakistani National Assembly, so they need 137 for a majority, and 181 for the 2/3 vote to remove Musharraf, and t gether the parties have 155 seats right now.
There is a question as to whether the PPP and MLN can work together though, they are like the hatfield and the McCoys.
My guess is that he is not long to this world. Ill health is the best explanation for his retirement.
Hopefully, this will lead to some reforms.
If the US is interested in helping the Cuban people and hastening reforms, it should take steps to formally abandon the claims of US Cuban emigré community.
The comment that Talleyrand made about the Bourbon restoration (aka Bourbon Renewal*) applies here, “They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing.”
While any people who wish to return should be free to do so, and any investment should be allowed, allowing old claims to be pressed will damage the country, and it is a most powerful argument against reform, that old crazies, and (in some cases) outright terrorists, would come back and take it all.
*Yes, I know, bad pun.
The US Military’s new Africa Command (Africom) was to have been relocated from Germany to an African nation, but only Liberia was willing to be a host, I guess that that whole illegal war of aggression in Iraq probably put other host nations off.
They don’t want to be a part of future colonialist military actions.
The US government is claiming that Africom is, “not about militarisation but consolidating existing operations under one single command, while helping Africans with military training and supporting peacekeeping and aid operations”.
And no one believed this, largely because of recent behavior.
This report (paid subscription required) says that the Navy wants to start replacing the C-2 in 2017, with a complete replacement by 2026.
They are planning to let out the contract in 2011.
It’s not going to happen. Big defense cuts are on the way, and the 6 year time frame for designing what has to be a from scratch replacement (carrier landings, folding wings) given the ponderous nature of defense procurement.
A proof of concept engine developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) was used for the flight from a LongEZ.
The purpose of the test was to show that the vibrations would not shake apart the airframe, though noise behind the aircraft was in the 195-200 dB range, which is around the noise level of a howitzer firing.
And so goes the technological war between BitTorrent and Comcast. A coalition of BitTorrent software providers are developing an encryption technology to allow the connections to be obscured.
What Comcast does not realize is that BitTorrent is the canary in the coal mine. Any issues that they create are an artifact of a network that is heading towards inadequacy, and they need to fix it.
Toshiba officially discontinues HD-DVD.
Why it never pays to be an early adopter.
The entire accusations of “plagiarism” against Obama in his speaking are bogus.
There is a qualitative difference between a politico using someone else’s catch phrase, which is done all the time, and what Joe Biden did in 1988, when he lifted an entire speech and life story.
John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” phrase came from a speech from Warren G. Harding, for example.
This some seriously lame stuff.
This is pretty close to unprecedented, see here and here.
The judge, Jeffery White, had the registrar take down the page, and prevent any transfer of the domain.
FWIW, I’ve not reviewed his background, but Judge White does not seem to be a lockstep Bushite, he has allowed environmental groups and cities sue federal agencies over global warming.
This was in response to a lawsuit brought by a Swiss banking group over documents leaked that imply that they were aiding tax evasion and money laundering.
FWIW, a Belgian mirror is accessible at this time, and the number of mirror sites is probably growing exponentially.
There is even a name for folks who squat in abandoned homes, they are called “bandos”.
The US is sounding more like a post-crash Argentina every day.
I’ve already posted about returning Hoovervilles (Favelas), and this appears to be more of the same.
Clinton is saying that if elected, she will ask the Justice Department to see if the trials can be moved to US courts, Obama is splitting the difference, saying that they should be tried in “traditional military” or federal courts, and McCain thinks the military kangaroo courts are just fine.
I think that it should be a core value of any candidate, not just the Democratic party candidate, that all efforts should be made to try the defendants in open court under US civilian rules.
Good for Hillary Clinton, and a C- (at best) to Barack Obama on trying to split the difference. This should be a core American value.
F- to the sick, old man.
He is not running, but there is aDraft Lessig effort going on, and to this point, the potential candidate has been non-committal.
Congress needs someone who understands that the IP system has run amok, and better still that he would be from California, which typically produces legislators in the pockets of the movie and record industries.
As the late, great Steve Gilliard says, never stop a your enemy from stepping on his own dick, and George W. Bush’s proposal to raise Medicare premiums is such an example.
It turns out that the Medicare costs projected by the lying sacks of excrement in the Bush admin are wrong, so the lying chimpy usurper boy is proposing an increase in premiums, along with the proposed cuts he put forward earlier.
FWIW, I think that this is an excellent time to reintroduce legislation granting authority to the government to negotiate with drug makers.
The Republicans are going to have to vote for higher premiums, which is a political loser, and for Medicare cuts, which is a political loser, and against the power to negotiate with drug manufacturers, which is a political loser.
Heck of a job Georgie.
Good. The Serbia lost any claim to the region when it attempted Genocide.
The Russians are upset, but with recognition from the US, UK, and France, that does not mean much.
EzraKlein has found this study by the Harvard School of Public Health, which shows that a plurality support “socialized medicine” even when it’s called “socialized medicine”.
Here is the picture:
[img]http://pic60.picturetrail.com/VOL1689/10590113/18913141/304823818.jpg[/img]
and here is why the picture looks that way:
This is important because “SOCIALIZED MEDICINE” has been the scare word used by Republicans for years to kill any healthcare reform, and now nearly half of the people have a favorable opinion of this, even when it’s called by those scare words.
Last year, McCain and Obama agreed to go with public financing in the general if they were the nominees, and now McCain is demanding that Obama adhere to his so-called pledge.
Obama is in a no-win situation right now, and it may very well not be his fault.
It appears that the argument regarding the “pledge” is that he made some inquiries regarding going on public financing in the general seem to be statements that have some wiggle room, but considering how far the press has their tongue up McCain’s asshole, it will be sold as a pledge.
I think that a good plan of attack against this is to show how McCain attempted to use public financing as an insurance policy for his campaign, where it would only kick in if he lost to retire his debts.
Human Rights Watch has released a tape of an interview with the Pakistani AG saying this.
It appears that they were conducting a phone interview, and than Attorney General Malik Qayyum initiated a second phone call without terminating the first, and he was recorded saying, “They will massively rig to get their own people to win.”
Oops.
It appears fairly likely from the whole conversation that the “they” in question is Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League-Q party.