Monthly Archives: November 2007

Busan, Korea: New US Consulate

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New United States Consulate in Busan .

In a (modest) ceremony at the Consulate’s location near Busan City Hall, Ambassador Vershbow noted that the Consulate marks the first opening in East Asia of an American diplomatic facility under Secretary Rices initiative to forge transformational diplomacy in vibrant regional capitals throughout the world.

The United States Consulate will be supervised by the Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs, Mr. Patrick J. Linehan, and the Acting Consul is currently Mr. Robert W. Ogburn, detailed (visiting) from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.

With a lean staff and a focus on building relations with important institutions in Busan and surrounding areas, the Consulate will not issue visas or provide emergency services to U.S. citizens.

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul will, therefore, continue to provide Consular services for Korean, American and third-country citizens from the Busan area.

More:here.

Venezuela Referendum

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In Venezuela, polls are showing a tossup heading into Sunday’s referendum on changing the constitution.

President Hugo Chavez is rallying the faithful by portraying the vote as a plebiscite on his nine years in office.

The 69 amendments on the ballot would give him vast new powers to push the oil-rich country toward socialism.

The reforms would remove limits on presidential re-election, give Chavez direct control over foreign currency reserves, expand his power to expropriate private property and allow for media censorship during political emergencies.

Several high-profile defections in his camp, a lackluster “yes” campaign, and a surprisingly strong opposition have produced a tight race just one year after he was re-elected by a landslide.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of the capital Thursday, shouting slogans urging people to vote “no.”

More:
Chavez rallies supporters for Sunday’s vote

Venezuela’s Chavez Faces Toughest Vote Test

Won’t Be Easy

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‘Moderate’ Arab papers showcase anti-Semitic cartoons ahead of summit


While Arab leaders trekked to Annapolis for the summit, Arab newspapers, many of them government-funded, have been running cartoons depicting Israel as violent and untrustworthy, according to a survey of Arab media conducted by the Anti-Defamation League.

The cartoons often use anti-Semitic themes, such as depictions of ugly, greedy Jews in religious garb, to convey their messages.

While some of the cartoons come from places with declared belligerent policies toward Israel, such as Syria and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, others come from what the American government has called “moderate” states, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, and even government-funded newspapers in Jordan and Egypt.

One cartoon, published in late October in Egypt’s government-funded mass-circulation daily Al-Ahram, shows an Israeli hand extended in peace, but with missiles in place of fingers and on the olive branch it holds.

A November 8 cartoon from Jordan’s Ad-Dustur shows a Jew, identified by a skullcap and a Star of David on his briefcase, sporting an evil grin and wearing a suit covered with images of fighter jets and tanks.

An example of classical anti-Semitic depictions came from Oman’s Al-Watan paper, which published a November 16 cartoon showing a religiously-attired Jew standing behind a gagged and seated Uncle Sam and speaking in his stead to a crowd of Arab listeners.

Qatar’s Ash-Sharq newspaper ran a late-October cartoon depicting Ehud Olmert as a snake wrapping himself around the Islamic shrine of the Dome of the Rock, while the country’s Ar-Raya newspaper depicted Olmert as a fox holding an olive branch, suggesting he had just eaten the dove of peace.

Qatar’s Al-Watan newspaper on November 12 depicted Israel as a personified death chasing after the dove of peace.

There is little new in the latest batch of anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic cartoons ahead of Annapolis, said Zvi Mazel, Israeli ambassador to Egypt until 2001. “The anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli caricatures have been showing up every day for many years. No one stops them, and no one stopped them in the past.”

Do they reflect the government line in Egypt? “I don’t think the government forces [the newspapers] to print such things. Clearly, if the government wanted this to change, it would, but [the newspapers'] line has been against normalization ever since the signing of the [1979 Israeli-Egyptian] peace treaty. And all the newspapers are the same. They talk about how Israel is taking over Annapolis in a Zionist-American conspiracy. That’s what Egyptian newspapers are calling it,” Mazel said.

“I wouldn’t say the governments are responsible for specific cartoons,” agreed Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, “but the directive to depict Israel negatively is coming from the top. This is the atmosphere and the message the Arab leadership wants to give.”

“You can’t make peace with a demon,” said MK Michael Melchior (Labor), “and these images demonize. I don’t think it’s done with the agreement [of government leaders in Arab countries], but they aren’t doing enough to stop it. There’s no chance for peace if the people aren’t prepared for it, and they’re not being prepared.”

But, added Melchior, “with us, the picture isn’t perfect, either. Tonight I heard racist statements against Arabs from leading rabbis, and no one in government, not one person, spoke out against it. When Rabbi Dov Lior, who earns a government salary, [at a conference in Jerusalem] calls to ‘cleanse the land of Arabs and to settle them in their countries of origin,’ you can’t advance toward peace with so much poison. I’m not saying there’s symmetry between the sides, but there’s poison on our side, also. [Lior] influences hundreds of thousands of people.”

Sticks And Stones

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Iran’s Ahmadinejad says Israel will not survive, doomed to “collapse”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Israel is doomed to “collapse” and will not survive, speaking a day after a U.S.-brokered Mideast peace conference that many saw as aimed in part at isolating Tehran.

“It is impossible that the Zionist regime will survive. Collapse is in the nature of this regime because it has been created on aggression, lying, oppression and crime,” Ahmadinejad said after a Cabinet meeting, according to state-run television.

Iran has condemned Tuesday’s Annapolis conference, saying it was doomed to failure and will discredit Arab countries who participated. Syria participated in the gathering, a step Iran said surprised it in a rare show of discontent with its close ally.

Annapolis Invitees

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The United States is inviting forty nine countries, groups of nations, financial institutions and individuals to the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis .

Forty nine opening statements could take a while. Three opening statements were enough.

Here’s the list:

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Someone You Should Know

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SPC Christopher Hoyt – Someone You Should Know
(Posted By Blackfive)

He said he wasn’t finished. He said, ‘I still have a job to do.’ I’ve never seen the like.” – Lt. Col. Mark Landes talking about Spc. Christopher Hoyt, an infantryman with 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

Soldier Re-enlists Hours After IED Injury

Story and Photo by Staff Sgt. Russell Bassett

A U.S. Soldier re-enlisted in the Army just hours after being seriously wounded in an improvised explosive attack near Zaganiyah, Iraq, Nov. 13.

Spc. Christopher Hoyt, an infantryman with 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division from Fort Lewis, Wash., suffered severe laceration to his legs and torso when an IED went off near him while conducting a dismounted patrol. Two of his fellow Soldiers were killed in the attack.

Hoyt was rushed to the emergency room at Logistical Support Area Anaconda, where he decided to re-enlist for four more years in the Army.

“He said he wasn’t finished,” said Hoyt’s battalion commander Lt. Col. Mark Landes, who re-enlisted the Soldier. “He said, ‘I still have a job to do.’ I’ve never seen the like.”

Command Sgt. Maj. John Troxell, the brigade’s top non-commissioned officer, was also on hand for Hoyt’s re-enlistment. “It takes a person of very strong character to go through an incident where another Soldier five feet away was killed and he was severally wounded and still say ‘I believe in what we are doing and I want to stay on the team. I want to support the United States Army and my country.’

“Spc. Hoyt is the epitome of what a Soldier should be,” Troxell continued. “He is a model for what all men and women should be, and that is very patriotic and very selfless.”

Hoyt, whose hometown is Clemente, Calif., is currently recovering in an Army hospital in Germany.

3rd ID Birthday Party

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General Petraeus went to a birthday party for the 3rd Infantry Division.

“We’re making progress across Iraq. You see it everyday. You feel it everyday. And you know it’s true…’cause you’re the one that’s making the difference.” – Major General Rick Lynch, Commanding General of the 3rd Infantry Division, addressing 281 Soldiers re-enlisting on the 3rd ID’s 90th Birthday.

Watch the party here.

(h/t to Blackfive).

Mailing Lists

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Speaking of privacy, how much do you know about mailing lists?

Have you ever looked over your junk mail and wondered how the advertiser chose your name and address?

Or how that telemarketer picked your phone number?

One company, NextMark offers a Google-like internet interface to help you find the mailing lists that fit your need.

60,000 mailing lists is a lot of names and addresses.

Mailing Lists seems to be a growth industry, judging by a Google search.

UK Privacy Problems

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More privacy problems, this time in the UK.

Q&A: What went wrong

Two password-protected discs containing the personal information of 25 million people have gone missing. The details include names, addresses, dates of birth, Child Benefit numbers, National Insurance numbers and bank or building society account details. Alastair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has called the incident an “extremely serious failure”.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) child benefit database was copied by a junior official and sent by couriers TNT in response to a query from the National Audit Office (NAO). However, the discs were not recorded or registered. They never arrived, and the loss was not reported for three weeks.

How many people are affected? Every family in the country with a child under 16, which equates to 10 million adults and 15 million children, or 7.25m families.

The Metropolitan Police are trying to locate the discs. They say there is no evidence the information “has found its way into the wrong hands” or of any evidence that it has been used for fraud.

Kieran Poynter, chairman of Price Waterhouse Coopers, has been appointed to investigate HMRC security procedures. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is also likely to investigate the incident.

The Government has alerted banks and building societies, who will be monitoring their customers’ accounts for unusual activity.

The head of Revenue & Customs has resigned.

Read the rest of the story -> here.

The Gettysburg Address

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Delivered at Gettysburg by President Abraham Lincoln, on November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate–we can not consecrate–we can not hallow–this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us:

– that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,

– that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain,

– that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,

– and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

DOD Furloughs?

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SEC. GATES: Good afternoon. I have a statement, and copies of it will be available after the — after the press briefing.

Yesterday Secretary Rice and I, General Cartwright and Deputy Treasury Secretary Kimmitt met with members of Congress to discuss ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We reviewed the real security gains being made in Iraq as well as the political and economic situation.

I also strongly urged the Congress to pass a global war on terror funding bill that the president would sign. With the passage of the Defense Appropriations Act, there is a misperception that this department can continue funding our troops in the field for an indefinite period of time through accounting maneuvers, that we can shuffle money around the department. This is a serious misconception.

The fact is, the department has significantly less funding flexibility than it had last spring. In the fall of 2006, Congress provided us with a bridge fund of $70 billion until passage of the full war supplemental. The full supplemental did not pass Congress until late May.

This fall, the department has been operating under a continuing resolution. Now that the regular appropriations bill has been enacted, we are left with no bridge fund and only our base budget to support normal war operations. Further, Congress has provided very limited flexibility to deal with this funding shortage. We can only move a total of $3.7 billion under general transfer authority, which only amounts to a little over one week’s worth of war expenses.

All this leaves the department only with undesirable options to continue operations in the absence of a bridge fund. The path we believe is least undesirable fiscally and militarily would involve the following.

The military would cease operations at all Army bases by mid-February next year. This would result in the furloughing of about 100,000 government employees and a like number of contractor employees at Army bases.

These layoffs would have a cascading effect on depots and procurements. Similar actions would follow for the Marine Corps about a month later. By law, we’re required to notify certain union employees 60 days in advance, so appropriate notices would have to go out starting in mid-December.

If the Congress does not provide bridge funding this week on a bill that the president will sign, and given the uncertainty of future action in December, by the end of this week, as a prudent manager, I will be obliged to take a series of anticipatory steps.

First, submit an urgent reprogramming request to the Congress. And second, direct the Army and Marine Corps to develop a plan to furlough employees, terminate contracts and prepare bases for reduced operations.

These plans would begin to be implemented in mid-December. It is a fact of life that even if we received a $50 billion bridge now, and the president signs it, it will fund war operations only through about the end of February. And so we would be back in this situation immediately after the Congress reconvenes in late January.

A final point, I make these comments solely as the person charged by the president and the Congress with administering the Department of Defense. The high degree of uncertainty on funding for the war is immensely complicating this task and will have many real consequences for this department and for our men and women in uniform.

(Read the whole transcript here.)

Pressure

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There is a lot of talk about the pressure on the 110th Congress by certain factions. But is that the whole story?

It’s a tough life, being a lawmaker. Every problem takes a lot of focus to keep up with. Almost every day, there is some new problem to cope with.

Underneath it all is another issue: the voters who sent you here in the last election. You represent them and they expect you to look after their needs and interests. Just what that means may depend upon what you said to them when you ran for office, and, of course, what you expect to say to them when the next election rolls around.

That’s where earmarks come in. Earmarks are hitchhikers or add-ons to some other legislation, and often are unrelated to the basic bill. Quoting from Earmark Watch:

Through earmarks, members of Congress can secure millions of dollars of funding for a recipient (a private company, nonprofit, university, or a state or local government) or a specific project (building a road, purchasing or setting aside land). Earmarks receive little or no debate from Congress as a whole; they are not subject to competitive bidding or administrative review, and most earmarks are not examined by the press.

There are a lot of earmarks, so it is safe to say that lawmakers like them and use them. And the lawmaker’s constituency like them too.

But what does the lawmaker do when there isn’t any legislation being passed into law?

To borrow an example from the headlines, the airport may be filled with travelers, but nobody is leaving town if there are no planes to take them.

All those earmarks are waiting for some legislation to ride on. The longer they wait, the bigger the pileup.

Now the next election is beginning to loom on the horizon.

Earmarks are mostly about a lawmaker’s home district.

That’s real pressure.

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