What are they thinking?
Can't feed their own people the North Korean government torpedoed a South Korean ship, then denies their action.
Must be nice to act so shamelessly knowing their own nation is immune to retaliation.
NKorea warns of war if punished for ship sinking
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Tensions deepened Thursday on the Korean peninsula as South Korea accused North Korea of firing a torpedo that sank a naval warship, killing 46 sailors in the country's worst military disaster since the Korean War.
President Lee Myung-bak vowed "stern action" for the provocation following the release of long-awaited results from a multinational investigation into the March 26 sinking near the Koreas' tense maritime border. North Korea, reacting swiftly, called the results a fabrication, and warned that any retaliation would trigger war. It continued to deny involvement in the sinking of the warship Cheonan.
"If the (South Korean) enemies try to deal any retaliation or punishment, or if they try sanctions or a strike on us .... we will answer to this with all-out war," Col. Pak In Ho of North Korea's navy told broadcaster APTN in an exclusive interview in Pyongyang.
FULL Story
"Associated Press Video
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
European Union
My observations of a commentary by George F. Will
I must wonder, what the heck is going on over there?
When Chancellor Angela Merkel decided that Germany would pay part of Greece's bills, voters punished her party in elections in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. How appropriate. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years' War, ratified Europe's emerging system of nation-states. Since the end of the Thirty-One Years' War (1914-1945), European elites have worked at neutering Europe's nationalities. Greece's debt crisis reveals this project's intractable contradictions, and the fragility of Western Europe's postwar social model -- omniprovident welfare states lacking limiting principles.
Greece represents a perverse aspiration -- a society with (in the words of Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan) "more takers than makers," more people taking benefits from government than there are people making goods and services that produce the social surplus that funds government. By socializing the consequences of Greece's misgovernment, Europe has become the world's leading producer of a toxic product -- moral hazard. The dishonesty and indiscipline of a nation with 2.6 percent of the eurozone's economic product have moved nations with the other 97.4 percent. 
-- and the United States and the International Monetary Fund -- to say, essentially: The consequences of such vices cannot be quarantined, so we are all hostages to one another and hence no nation will be allowed to sink beneath the weight of its recklessness.
The European Union has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament (in Strasbourg) no one other than its members wants to have power (which must subtract from the powers of national legislatures), a capital (Brussels) of coagulated bureaucracy no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should nor soon will exist (a European central government), and rules of fiscal behavior that no member has been penalized for ignoring. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction -- that "Europe" has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/14/AR2010051404279.html
CIA Kills Traitor
It is unimaginable to me that a traitor should expect his citizenship protect him.
This guy wants to destroy us, he gets the same as any other enemy.
U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism.
The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy.
To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.
“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”
Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence. The attempted bombing of Times Square on May 1 is the latest of more than a dozen terrorist plots in the West that investigators believe were inspired in part by Mr. Awlaki’s rhetoric.
“American citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country,” said a counterterrorism official who discussed the classified program on condition of anonymity. “If you cast your lot with its enemies, you may well share their fate.”
President Obama, who campaigned for the presidency against George W. Bush-era interrogation and detention practices, has implicitly invited moral and legal scrutiny of his own policies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/world/14awlaki.html?hp
This guy wants to destroy us, he gets the same as any other enemy.
U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism.
The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy.
To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.
“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”
Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence. The attempted bombing of Times Square on May 1 is the latest of more than a dozen terrorist plots in the West that investigators believe were inspired in part by Mr. Awlaki’s rhetoric.
“American citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country,” said a counterterrorism official who discussed the classified program on condition of anonymity. “If you cast your lot with its enemies, you may well share their fate.”
President Obama, who campaigned for the presidency against George W. Bush-era interrogation and detention practices, has implicitly invited moral and legal scrutiny of his own policies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/world/14awlaki.html?hp
Autistic Boy Faces Felony Rap
Sometimes I am just amazed in how petty dictators (Public School Officials) can make a mountain out of a molehill.
Autistic Boy Faces Felony Rap for Stick-Figure Sketch
(May 14) -- A 14-year-old autistic boy in Georgia faces possible felony charges of making terroristic threats after he drew a stick-figure version of himself firing a gun at his teacher.
Autistic Boy Faces Felony Rap for Stick-Figure Sketch
(May 14) -- A 14-year-old autistic boy in Georgia faces possible felony charges of making terroristic threats after he drew a stick-figure version of himself firing a gun at his teacher. After discovering the crudely rendered drawing that Shane Finn had made on his classwork, officials at Atlanta's Ridgeview Charter School suspended the eighth-grader and decided to pursue charges against him, Fox News in Atlanta reported.
In Finn's drawing, a stick figure identified as "me" is shooting a gun at the head of another stick figure, identified as "hartman," a reference to one of the boy's teachers. Finn also added a tombstone to the picture, with the letters "R.I.P."
Spirit Airlines installs pre-reclined seats
Airlines have become very chintzy.
Charging for a snack, soda, carry on baggage, now this niggardly attempt to save a few bucks.
Spirit Airlines installs pre-reclined seat
Spirit Airlines, the low-cost carrier that soon will charge passengers for stowing carry-on bags in overhead bins, is now installing seats that can't move backward or forward on some of its aircraft.
The "pre-reclined" seats — they lean back 3 inches — are already on the airline's two Airbus A320 jets, and it will outfit two more by the end of this year, the airline says.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/item.aspx?type=blog&ak=91924.blog
Charging for a snack, soda, carry on baggage, now this niggardly attempt to save a few bucks.
Spirit Airlines installs pre-reclined seat
Spirit Airlines, the low-cost carrier that soon will charge passengers for stowing carry-on bags in overhead bins, is now installing seats that can't move backward or forward on some of its aircraft.
The "pre-reclined" seats — they lean back 3 inches — are already on the airline's two Airbus A320 jets, and it will outfit two more by the end of this year, the airline says.http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/item.aspx?type=blog&ak=91924.blog
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