A loss of nerve that cost tens of thousands of lives. David P. Colley, author of Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Mistake to Halt the Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944, writes in the NY Times:

IXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River.

One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up of the United States Seventh and French First Armies, 350,000 men, had landed Aug. 15 near Marseille — an invasion largely overlooked by history but regarded at the time as “the second D-Day” — and advanced through southern France to Strasbourg. No other Allied army had yet reached the Rhine, not even hard-charging George Patton’s.

Devers dispatched scouts over the river. “There’s nobody in those pillboxes over there,” a soldier reported. Defenses on the German side of the upper Rhine were unmanned and the enemy was unprepared for a cross-river attack, which could unhinge the Germans’ southern front and possibly lead to the collapse of the entire line from Holland to Switzerland.

The Sixth Army Group had assembled bridging equipment, amphibious trucks and assault boats. Seven crossing sites along the upper Rhine were evaluated and intelligence gathered. The Seventh Army could cross north of Strasbourg at Rastatt, Germany, advance north along the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and swing west to come in behind the German First Army, which was blocking Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine. The enemy would face annihilation, and the Third and Seventh Armies could break loose and drive into Germany. The war might end quickly.

Devers never crossed. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander, visited Devers’s headquarters that day and ordered him instead to stay on the Rhine’s west bank and attack enemy positions in northern Alsace. Devers was stunned. “We had a clean breakthrough,” he wrote in his diary. “By driving hard, I feel that we could have accomplished our mission.” Instead the war of attrition continued, giving the Germans a chance to counterattack three weeks later in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, which cost 80,000 American dead and wounded.

Garrison Davidson, then Devers’s engineering officer and later a superintendent of West Point, believed Devers’s attack would have succeeded and pre-empted the Bulge, writing, “I have often wondered what might have happened had Ike had the audacity to take a calculated risk, as General Patton would have.” Patton wrote in his diary that he also believed Eisenhower had missed a great opportunity; the Seventh Army’s commander, Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch, felt the same way.

Why did Eisenhower refuse to allow Devers to cross? …

Continue reading. The short answer: Eisenhower was appallingly petty.

Blue Fridays.     

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing blue every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the ’silent majority’.  We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers.

We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.  Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops.

Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday — and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV — let’s make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once ’silent’ majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?’ is ‘We need your support and your prayers.’ Let’s get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.

Blue Fridays.            

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing blue every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the ’silent majority’.  We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers.

We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.  Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops.

Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday — and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV — let’s make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once ’silent’ majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?’ is ‘We need your support and your prayers.’ Let’s get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.

Blue Fridays.

Very soon, you will see a great many people wearing blue every Friday. The reason? Americans who support our troops used to be called the ’silent majority’.  We are no longer silent, and are voicing our love for God, country and home in record breaking numbers.

We are not organized, boisterous or overbearing.  Many Americans, like you, me and all our friends, simply want to recognize that the vast majority of America supports our troops.

Our idea of showing solidarity and support for our troops with dignity and respect starts this Friday — and continues each and every Friday until the troops all come home, sending a deafening message that every red-blooded American who supports our men and women afar, will wear something blue. By word of mouth, press, TV — let’s make the United States on every Friday a sea of blue much like a homecoming football game in the bleachers. If every one of us who loves this country will share this with acquaintances, coworkers, friends, and family, it will not be long before the USA is covered in BLUE and it will let our troops know the once ’silent’ majority is on their side more than ever, certainly more than the media lets on. The first thing a soldier says when asked ‘What can we do to make things better for you?’ is ‘We need your support and your prayers.’ Let’s get the word out and lead with class and dignity, by example, and wear something blue every Friday.

Back in May of 2008, I wrote about the danger of appeasement that the election of a liberal Democrat to the presidency posed.

The trend of American casualties had been increasing, without question, but we have NEVER seen the kind of DOUBLING of fatalities (we’re now at 293 American fatalities, versus 155 last year, with more than a month to go) that we are seeing now under Obama’s leadership.  That’s because the Taliban and the terrorists now know that we have a dithering, indecisive, vacillating and appeasing weakling in the White House whom they will be able to push around.

And apparently their piling on is paying off big as “the leader of the free world” cringes before them.

This story is only coming from a single source in Saudi Arabia, but, if true, it means we’re at Neville Chamberlain’s level of disgusting appeasement in exchange for a psuedo “peace in our time” all over again.

Afghan Source: The U.S. Has Offered the Taliban Control in Return for Quiet

An Afghan source in Kabul reports that U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry is holding secret talks with Taliban elements headed by the movement’s foreign minister, Ahmad Mutawakil, at a secret location in Kabul. According to the source, the U.S. has offered the Taliban control of the Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Kunar and Nuristan provinces in return for a halt to the Taliban missile attacks on U.S. bases.

Source: Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), November 22, 2009

Even going back to April of last year, the Democrat presidential debates displayed a frightening ignorance of history, which would invariably lead to appeasement and – following the pattern, more demanding and stubborn enemies who sensed our weakness -  if their policies were ever implemented:

As a student of history, I remember the abject failure of the Western allies to grasp the growing threat of their enemies throughout the 1930s. I remember the refusal of the liberal governments of the Allied powers to comprehend what are now known to have been fundamental realities of naked aggression and looming war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain abandoned his country’s commitment to Czechoslovakia with a promise from Hitler of peace. The liberal, “anti-war” Chamberlain returned home saying, “I believe it is peace in our time!” Chamberlain saw Britain’s policy as a willingness to compromise and a desire for peace. But Hitler saw only weakness, hesitation, and cowardice, and became emboldened for total war. Again and again, the West had had an opportunity to demonstrate its genuine resolve to Hitler, and again and again the West had failed to stand.

In our present day, the Democratic Party has demonstrated a shocking degree of treachery in regard to Iraq. It is their war as much as it is Republicans’ war – because it should be America’s war.

History repeats itself because we keep putting the same sort of moral cowards in power.

Note that I was referring to Iraq, rather than Afghanistan, in my above warning.  Why?  Because the Democrats were talking tough about Afghanistan, even as they talked about walking away from Iraq.  Who could have known that a Democrat would so violate his own promises and be so shockingly weak in a war that he himself said was a “must win”? I fully believed that Barack Obama would be a weakling and an appeaser in office; but I simply had no idea that he would be as pathetically weak as he has actually revealed himself to be.

Thankfully, George Bush’s surge strategy in Iraq worked – and worked so well that even Obama’s weakness hasn’t been able to turn the success in Iraq around.  Barack Obama opposed that strategy and said it would fail.  And when he was proven wrong, this weakling and coward merely deleted his wrong, deceitful, and malicious prediction from his web site.

Obama’s dithering (and that’s the term Pentagon officials used, rather than merely Dick Cheney, btw), have 1) emboldened the enemy, 2) undermined American troop morale, 3) undermined the confidence of the military that Barack Obama will remain true to his commitment, and 4) weakened the people of Afghanistan’s trust for us all at once.

The last is the worse: the months that Obama has spent cravenly dithering while the resurgent Taliban have spread their control has forced the Afghani people to begin to choose the Taliban – whom will stay the course – over a U.S. under Barack Obama which clearly won’t.  And that means we may have already lost.

And now this?

What do you expect from the president who sold out Poland to Russia on the 70th anniversary of weakling appeasers just like Obama selling out Poland to Russia?

On top of the defeat in Afghanistan, Obama faces a far more significant defeat in Iran.  Obama is desperate to talk; Iran is determined to build nuclear missiles.  Iran will get become a nuclear military power under Obama’s watch, because the only way to prevent them from becoming such a power is to be willing to go to war with them to stop them – and Iran knows that Obama will not take that step.

As the nightmare of a nuclear-armed Iran manifests itself in the form of increased terrorism, sky-high gas prices, and even nuclear war, just remember: we conservatives tried to warn you.

That is the gist of what Obama is telling our brave men and women in the military as they sit in a hostile countryside riddled with dangers none of us would even imagine. Yet the commander in chief, after nearly four months of deliberation, STILL has no plan for sending more troops to the battlefield. Even telling the commanders on the ground no to more troops is better than leaving them hanging in limbo for months at a time.

Another four men were killed in bomb blasts in Afghanistan this week. I wrote about this before, Obama is twiddling his thumbs while troops die. It begs the question, does Obama hold our troops in such low esteem that he is more focused on spending us broke than on getting a strategy right and getting it working as soon as possible.

So while we are deliberating health care, global warming (oops. climate change) and other trivial things, troops die because of Obama’s willingness to make them wait.

This incredibly wonky table from a report by the people who bring you Foreign Policy in Focus caught my eye last week.

One thing that’s obvious is how lavishly more expensive the stuff on the right is compared to the stuff on the left. Not only that, but relatively small shifts in resources from the left column to the right can produce disproportionately positive improvements in overall security. By scrapping a single DDG-1000 you could double the amount of money spent on nonproliferation, etc. Given the success of Nunn-Lugar programs, that could be money more efficiently spent.

Politics gets in the way of the right decisions—no arms controller worth her political salt would advocate cutting the stockpile stewardship budget before the CTBT is ratified, and weapons platforms have historically had stronger constituencies than the often idiosyncratic reforms on the right.

But what often gets left out in these types of discussions is why weapons platforms are so expensive relative to measures that, while less sexy, could have a huge impact on long-term security, and whether this relationship is tenable.

On the one hand, weapons platform development is inherently capital-intensive. Research and development requires significant investment with little guarantee of success. Success is usually considered “worth” the high costs of development. When we had to plan to fight the Soviets over Germany, these costs were justified. On the other hand, we may soon be entering a time when high-technology high-cost weapons platforms are neither militarily necessary nor popular.

Even if counterinsurgency doctrine falls short of becoming the new defense orthodoxy, the needs of current conflicts and the undeniable tendency toward COIN-centric planning means that the average cost of your average weapons platform may get a lot cheaper in the next decade—more A-10 warthog close air fighters (per unit cost: $13 million) than F-22s (per unit cost: $100.1 million). Whether this trend toward building the weapons we need vs. the weapons some people demand depends in part on how effectively Gates’s Pentagon can cleave congress away from the teat of defense contractors.

Meanwhile, look at the stuff on the right—institutional funding/reforms, capacity-building, preventive measures—these measures could quickly get more expensive. For example, according to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Adaptation actions can be grouped into three broad categories:

(a) Actions that climate-proof socio-economic activities by integrating future climate risk;

(b) Actions that expand the adaptive capacity of socio-economic activities to deal with future and not only current climate risks; (capacity building, or decreasing the opportunity costs of alternative socio-economic activity)

(c) Actions that are purely aimed at adapting to impacts of climate change and would not otherwise be initiated. (costs endogenous to climate change adaptation)

Examples for each category include capacity-building, research and assessments, disaster risk reduction and risk management, and specific interventions. The adaptation component to be funded could either constitute the whole action (Category C) or part of the socio-economic activity (Categories A and B).

Increasing the costs of carbon-positive activities, building the social capacity to respond to climate change externalities, decreasing the opportunity costs of climate-friendly activities, and decreasing the intristic costs of adaptating to climate change…these costs could quickly get pretty high.

It will probably continue to be the case that weapons development is an expensive endeavor. But it remains the case as well that even as the steps on the right column get relatively pricier, the long-term security benefits justify the expense. Institutional reform, capacity-building, direct assistance, preventive measures—even a 100% increase in the resources available for some of these efforts can pay enormous security dividends. Meanwhile, one more attack submarine will do little to improve the chances of catching Bin Laden, and I don’t think we’ll be facing a big attack sub challenge from the Chinese any time soon.

The challenge is to fund the right mix of weapons technologies that can respond to extant physical threats while developing the capacities and funding measures that can reduce the causes of insecurity in the first place. The optimum level of security, in other words, depends on funding the right mix of reactive “kinetic” capabilities and preventive structural reforms. Kinetic capabilities at minimum deny only tactical success to adversaries, and at best they deter attacks in the first place. Long-term international stability depends on addressing root causes, not just on strategic stability. It’s a fundamentally progressive idea whose time has come.

(Hat tip to NoH and Travis Sharp)

Brian

Funding Source: Dept. of the Army
Funding Type: Discretionary, Grant/Cooperative Agreement
Total Available: $60 Million
Award Ceiling: N/A
Deadline: 02.17.10
Eligibility: Unrestricted

Description:
This Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity is focused on basic research, defined as research directed towards attaining greater knowledge and understanding of fundamental principles of science and medicine. The DMRDP Basic Research Award is designed to promote new ideas that are still in the early stages of development and have the potential to yield highly impactful data and new avenues of investigation. This mechanism supports conceptually innovative, high-risk/high-reward research that could ultimately lead to critical discoveries or major advancements that will accelerate the delivery of new medical countermeasures and information to protect military personnel from a variety of health threats inherent in the military operational environment, and to effectively diagnose and treat these personnel when they are ill or injured. These awards will also support basic research to enhance the training and education of military personnel and health care providers. Presentation of preliminary data is not required. However, investigators must demonstrate logical reasoning and a sound scientific rationale established through a critical review and analysis of the literature for the proposal to be competitive. Research projects should include a well-formulated, testable hypothesis based on strong scientific rationale. Awards under this announcement will consist solely of assistance agreements. This announcement is intended only for extramural investigators. Other announcements will be released for intramural investigators. An intramural investigator is defined as a Department of Defense (DOD) employee working within a DOD laboratory or medical treatment facility (MTF), or a DOD activity embedded within a civilian medical center. An extramural investigator is defined as all those not included in the definition of intramural investigator.

Comrade Matrix : Snippets from this year in Terrorism:

Maj. Nidal Hasan - what we should learn is that all Islamic US soldiers need closer observation in light of Malik Hassans terrorist connections. http://www.sphere.com/2009/11/20/primary-sources-maj-nidal-hasan/

Read also: “Terrorism under the Radar”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/11/terrorism_under_the_radar.html

There is a war against the US – IN THE US.  And the citizens are  sad Oprah is quitting.  The President is just golfing and dithering.  Holder is giving terrorist rights.  And Congress is pushing their socialist agenda.

IS ANYONE GOING TO WAKE-UP?

Monitoring and repressing for the monarchy

Political Prisoners in Thailand: November 20, 2009

http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/monitoring-enemies-of-country-and-monarchy/

In a government that is increasingly authoritarian, Prime Minister’s Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey seems most enthusiastic about  increased repression and censorship. The Nation (19 November 2009: “Govt to monitor Jakrapob’s phone-in: Satit”) reports that Sathit has reminded “media outlets to abide by the law when reporting the phone-in of fugitive red-shirt leader Jakrapob Penkair…”.

Sathit stated that the authorities would “closely monitored by authorities” because he believed that Jakrapob  wanted to “smuggle weapons via the Northeast borders for an uprising during the rally from November 29 to December 3.”

He added: “The government is definitely keeping a close tap on Jakrapob who is acting hostile to the country and its revered institution…”.

Sathit repeatedly demonstrates the monarchy’s significant political role and the Democrat Party’s determination to repress dissent and opposition to protect the current order.

Update: Sathit is also cited in the Bangkok Post (21 September 2009: “Abhisit gets radio death threats”). This report claims that red shirt community radio stations in Chiang Mai had threatened Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

The Post states this somewhat circumspectly this way: “Some community radio stations are said to have threatened to kill Mr Abhisit in a bomb attack during his visit.” It adds that Democrat Party MP for Bangkok “Boonyod Sukthinthai lodged a complaint with … police against the host of a programme broadcast on FM 92.5 community radio in Chiang Mai. The complaint demanded an investigation into Phetchawat Wattanapongsirikul, host of the Sapha Kafae (Coffee Council) programme, and his co-host, who was not identified.Both were accused of encouraging their audience to come out to protest violently against Mr Abhisit. Mr Boonyod also handed over audio clips of the programme broadcasts to the CSD for further investigation.”

If it is true that a station called for Abhisit to be killed, then this is a serious issue. As serious as PAD speakers calling for the beheading of Hun Sen, General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, and Thaksin Shinawatra, alluding to an old Thai saying of shedding blood to wash royal feet.”

As is now usual, the Democrat Party-led government is awash with double standards. So PAD can call for murder and not a peep from them, but an allegation of a similar call from Chiang Mai reds and Minister Sathit is wound up into repress mode yet again.

He has ordered the community radio stations in Chiang Mai be closely monitored and he claims “have repeatedly incited red shirt supporters to protest against Mr Abhisit’s visit to the province on Nov 2.”

That might be true, but if Sathit knows it, why does he also state that there is no clear evidence?  Indeed, he says: “When there is clear evidence that they have violated criminal law and community radio regulations, the stations will be shut down and face legal action…”. Is Sathit simply trying to intimidate opposition and red shirt community radio stations?

The government is planning “[e]xtra-tight security is being planned. Twenty companies of police and another 20 companies of troops from the 3rd Army will be deployed during the prime minister’s visit.”

Abhisit “warned Thaksin Shinawatra’s supporters in Chiang Mai to stop their hostile action, saying they should work with the government to bring about peace and reconciliation in the province.”

[FACT comments: A nickname in Thai denotes a gangster. This case demonstrates precisely how screwed up our politics are.]

Seh Daeng gets 1 year for defamation

• Bangkok Post: November 20, 2009
• http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/160545/seh-daeng-gets-12-months-for-libel

The Criminal Court on Friday sentenced army specialist Maj-Gen Khattiya Sawasdipol, alias Seh Daeng, to 12 months in jail without suspension for defaming former police chief Sereepisut Taemeeyaves.

The court ruled Maj-Gen Khattiya guilty of wrongfully accusing Pol Gen Sereepisut of using false evidence to seek a court warrant to arrest him and of involvement with a casino.

Maj-Gen Khattiya submitted a request for bail, pending appeal, using his position as a guarantee.  The court was considering his request.

[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Now we might be onto something! I’ve got as much hope as anybody but O’Bama (born in Ireland) has no hope of fixing the US. There are simply too many fat cats for one man (and, believe me, he is alone) to stop the military-industrial-prison-pharmaceutical-agribusiness gravy train.  (Kind of pessimistic, eh?) Sweden gave the 2009 Nobel PEACE Prize to a US president supporting military regimes everywhere in the world, spending billions a day on war and prisons. The Internet is the only real hope for true, global participatory democracy. Let’s claim the prize—I can’t think of anyone or anything else worthy.]

Internet For Peace Nobel 2010 Candidate Initiative

http://www.internetforpeace.org/

We have finally realized that the Internet is much more than a network of computers. It is an endless web of people. Men and women from every corner of the globe are connecting to one another, thanks to the biggest social interface ever known to humanity. Digital culture has laid the foundations for a new kind of society.

And this society is advancing dialogue, debate and consensus through communication. Because democracy has always flourished where there is openness, acceptance, discussion and participation. And contact with others has always been the most effective antidote against hatred and conflict.

That’s why the Internet is a tool for peace.

That’s why anyone who uses it can sow the seeds of non-violence.

And that’s why the next Nobel Peace Prize should go to the Net.

A Nobel for each and every one of us.

The Pentagon Budget: Largest Ever and Growing

Sara Flounders

International Action Center: November 17, 2009

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16181

[FACT comments: This is one of the most important articles FACT has ever published. For only $30 million a year, the US can delete Internet censorship by any govt anywhere. Firstly, we can question the fact that the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, of which FACT is a member, has a hidden agenda, namely Falun Dafa, and therefore an axe to grind with Chinese authorities. Secondly, we can question the US agenda as an international police state. But the truth remains that $30 million can end Internet censorship (We may add, about effing time!) How much does the US spend on war, police, prisons, Homeland Security—say, $30 million a minute, an hour, a day??? Frankly, we don’t care who funds it—delete ‘net censorship, in Thailand and everywhere else, NOW!]

Twitter this

The means exist to rupture Internet censorship in China and Iran — if the State Department will cooperate.

Washington Post: November 21, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112004152.html

THE MOST interesting question President Obama fielded in China came over the Internet, via the U.S. Embassy, from a Chinese citizen who asked, “Do you know of the firewall? Should we be able to use Twitter freely?” In response, Mr. Obama, speaking at a town hall in Shanghai, did not directly address China’s massive Internet censorship operation — “the firewall” — and he confessed that he does not use Twitter. But he said, “I’m a big supporter of not restricting Internet use, Internet access, other information technologies like Twitter.”

No doubt that’s correct. And, just as likely, Mr. Obama is not aware that his State Department not only is doing next to nothing to support Internet freedom in countries such as China, but that it also has been slow-walking congressional initiatives to do so.

For two years Congress has appropriated funds to support groups that are developing ways to circumvent the Chinese firewall and those erected in Iran, Burma, Cuba and other repressive countries. The most prominent of the groups, the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, says it has the capacity to host 1.5 million users daily. Its technology works: Shiyu Zhou, the deputy director of the consortium, testified to the U.S. Helsinki Commission last month that at the height of opposition protests on June 20, more than 1 million Iranians used the system. He said that with $30 million of additional funding, capacity could be increased to 50 million users a day, making it “prohibitively expensive for any repressive government to counter our efforts.”

A bipartisan coalition that includes Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has been trying to channel the necessary funding. A total of $20 million has been included in the past two State Department budgets, and $30 million more is pending in the Senate’s version of the 2010 budget. But State hasn’t passed the money on to the firewall-busters. Instead it gave the lion’s share of its 2008 appropriation to a group that specializes in conducting media studies and training journalists, and it has failed to distribute the 2009 funds, even though the fiscal year ended nearly three weeks ago. The department says it is increasing the staff dedicated to working on Internet freedom issues and that it is funding some “implementing partners” that it won’t identify.

Still, no money is going to the one organization with a proven record of overcoming firewalls. The group’s advocates suspect that that’s because the Global Internet Freedom Consortium is identified with China’s banned Falun Gong movement — and State is fearful of Beijing’s reaction to any U.S. support for it. The Obama administration has already done plenty to appease the Chinese regime. The least it can do is act on the president’s own words about the value of free information — and help give Chinese their chance to Twitter.

I think this is a fair enough question. Therefore, I decided to do what I always do when I want to find out information on one subject or another. I Googled it. This is what I found out. It would seem that David Beckham, his wife Victoria and their three children will be going to Germany for Thanksgiving to visit with the troops. I found this quite interesting since I do not think they are even American citizens. I could be wrong about that.

Brokedown Cadillac, a Nashville county music group will visit troops stationed in Iraq for the Thanksgiving holiday. The band members say they have close ties to the military and that is why they feel honored to spend the holiday with troops. The Band wants to spend time with those who cannot spend Thanksgiving with their own families.

On November 23, 2007, then President George W. Bush made a surprise Thanksgiving visit to the troops stationed in Iraq. He spent 2 ½ hours visiting with the troops and even helped serve Thanksgiving dinner.

I wonder what President Obama plans to do for Thanksgiving? Play golf? Spend time with his family? Walk the dog?  I have a good hunch that he will not be going to Afghanistan. Or even Iraq. After all, he has been traveling quite a bit lately. He probably needs time to get over the jet lag.

Whispers of Surrender in Afghanistan?

An Afghan source in Kabul reports that U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry is holding secret talks with Taliban elements headed by the movement’s foreign minister, Ahmad Mutawakil, at a secret location in Kabul. According to the source, the U.S. has offered the Taliban control of the Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan, Kunar and Nuristan provinces in return for a halt to the Taliban missile attacks on U.S. bases.

This, if true, is a disturbing development. I have tried to come up with scenarios of why someone would lie about it in a leak. What would be to gain? Who would gain, and what would they gain? Without sleeping on it, the options for such appear narrow at best. What does seem logical is that an Afghan privy to the negotiations could have become (rightly) spooked that they might just pull it off, and leaked word in hopes that it might so anger American public opinion that the entire endeavor might be scrapped. That’s the most logical explanation for motivation I see at the moment. It would also fit in consistently with Ambassador Eikenberry’s leaked cables recently railing against a ’surge’ in forces in Afghanistan. He wouldn’t voice such without thinking he has his hands on something else. Could this be it? The surrender of 25% of Afghan territory in exchange for some form of ceasefire?

My two cents. Having been in Afghanistan while Eikenberry was there (Lieutenant General Eikenberry-WPOS) this wouldn’t surprise me at all. This is however taken from MEMRI which is often hit and miss.

[FACT comments: Does this sound familiar???]

Latin America: Former Mexican Foreign Minister Accuses Army of Extra-Judicial Executions in Drug War

Drug War Chronicle: November 20, 2009

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/609/mexico_former_foreign_minister_castaneda_army_killing_drug_gang_members

Jorge Castañeda, Mexico’s foreign minister under President Vicente Fox, said Saturday that the Mexican military is engaging in the extrajudicial execution of members of drug trafficking organizations. The frank and surprising comments came as Castañeda spoke on a panel at the 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“We are having more and more ‘false positives,’” Castañeda said, referring to a term used in Colombia to describe people executed by the military and then described as guerrillas killed in combat. “Here in Mexico, apparent gang war killings are in fact being carried out by the military. Every time the cartels catch the police and military infiltrators and slice them up, the army says ‘We’re taking out ten of yours.’ The statistics say that 90% of the killings are within the cartels, but the army is engaging in these killings.”

President Felipe Calderon deployed the military against the so-called cartels in December 2006. Since then, more than 15,000 people have been killed in prohibition-related violence in Mexico, including more than 6,000 so far this year. Hundreds of police and soldiers are among the dead.

In response to a question asking for documentation of his assertions, Castañeda said: “The only known incident was a town in

Chihuahua where the bodies of 29 sicarios (assassins) were found, with witnesses who said this was after they were detained. The press has not wanted to investigate this.”

But the military can’t keep its mouth shut, Castañeda said. “They go to bars and restaurants and get drunk and talk and they are going around saying how many people they have knocked off,” he reported. “The 12 military officers killed by the cartels in Michoacan — that’s why the army went out and killed a bunch of other people.”

Castañeda’s comments come as the US State Department is preparing the process of certifying Mexican compliance with human rights conditions as part of the $1.4 billion Plan Merida anti-drug assistance package. The bill authorizing the aid requires that portions of it be withheld if the State Department determines Mexico is not in compliance.

Castañeda also criticized President Obama for turning a blind eye to human rights violations by the Mexican military. “Obama regrettably said that the human rights violations he was most concerned with was with the victims of the drug war,” the former diplomat noted.

[FACT comments: Journalism is about speaking the truth. Speaking truth to power, even when that power comes from the barrel of a gun. If you’re not fearless, make another career choice. Criminals are killing criminals in Mexico (any many other places) for money. This situation has been created simply by US prohibition which has led to wars on drugs, killing thousands of innocent civilians in many countries, including Thailand. In Mexico, no violence has spilled into ordinary citizens which is more than we can say for Thailand’s wars on drugs which resulted in more than 3,000 extrajudicial murders or the US war on drugs which has resulted in race-bias for five million drug prisoners.]

Guns and journalism – reporting from South America’s drugs frontline

Candido Figueredo risks his life exposing traffickers on Paraguay’s lawless border

Tom Phillips

The Guardian: November 18, 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/18/south-americas-drugs-frontline

Candido Figueredo, caught up in the violence of guns and drug trafficking in the border town of Pedro Juan Caballero. Photograph: Tom Phillips

Candido Figueredo sits on his bullet-riddled porch holding the tools of his trade: a reporter’s notepad, a mobile phone and a black 9mm submachine gun.

“I’m a rare species of journalist,” admits Figueredo, the regional correspondent of Paraguay’s largest daily newspaper, ABC Color, who also boasts a 24-hour security detail and a collection of 11 bones and two human skulls he has personally dug up from clandestine cemeteries.

After seeing his newsroom machine-gunned twice and suffering a barrage of death threats as the result of his reports on organised crime in the border region between Paraguay and Brazil, Figueredo is taking no chances.

“I’m not an idealist, I’m a pragmatist. I don’t want to become a martyr,” he says. “I’m a product of the environment in which I’m working. If a drug trafficker is going to shoot me, I won’t hesitate in shooting him first. I’d prefer to kill him than to die.”

Figueredo, probably South America’s most heavily armed journalist, also covers one its most perilous news beats.

The last 15 years have seen Pedro Juan Caballero – a dusty town where drugs are cheap and life cheaper – transformed into Ground Zero for South American gangsters, known here as “peces gordos” or “big fish”.

“I consider Paraguay my second fatherland,” Brazil’s most notorious drug lord, Fernandinho Beir-Mar, told Figueredo in a 2003 phone interview while he was on the run from police.

Authorities openly admit that Paraguayan and Brazilian traficantes have overrun Pedro Juan Caballero, putting this town of just under 90,000 residents at the centre of one of South America’s most important trafficking routes.

“We have information that more and more people are working in this [area],” says Juan Bartolome Ramirez, an ally of Paraguay’s leftist president Fernando Lugo and governor of Amambay state, which is at the heart of the marijuana growing region and is an entry point for Bolivian, Peruvian and Colombian cocaine and weapons. “If the traffickers lose 1,000kg [of cocaine to the border police], 20,000kg are getting through.”

The trade in illegal weapons is also booming along the border, fuelling bloody shoot-outs between cocaine traffickers and police hundres of miles away, as the crow flies, in the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

“All of the guns that come through here are all going to the favelas,” claims Figueredo, who describes the region as a mecca for members of Rio’s Red Command and Sao Paulo’s First Command of the Capital or PCC factions. “Pistols, machine guns, anti-aircraft weapons. Everything.”

The recent shooting down of a police helicopter in Rio de Janeiro has cast the spotlight on to places such as Pedro Juan Caballero, along 16,000km of “dry border” between Brazil and its neighbours. Police in Rio say they have seized nearly 800 rifles since January 2007 and 3,500 firearms since 2000. Many are thought to have passed through the town.

“It is time for the federal government to come down hard on the border … sealing it in everyway possible,” the head of Rio’s military police, Mario Sergio Duarte, told the Rio paper Extra, arguing that the city’s drug conflict would not end unless the influx of weaponry could be halted.

Last month, Brazilian authorities announced they were sending 20 members of the National Security Force to beef up security on the border, creating an anti-trafficking base close to Pedro Juan Caballero. Paraguayan authorities say much more is needed. “We can’t control it all,” said special agent Mariano Baez, who heads a 12-man anti-drug taskforce in Pedro Juan Caballero backed by the US government.

Baez, who describes the town as “the most critical point” along the border, said the profits involved in drug and gun trafficking were simply too great.

“Here an AR-15 assault rifles costs between $3,000 and $5,000 (£3,000). A light assault rifle costs $5,000. A Glock costs $1,500.” In Rio de Janeiro, police say such weapons can fetch up to 10 times those values. “Here you pay $3-3,500 per kg [of cocaine],” added Baez. “In Europe this cocaine is worth $30,000 or $40,000.”

So far this year Figueredo has recorded nearly 80 homicides, making Pedro Juan Caballero statistically one of the most murderous towns on Earth, with a homicide rate that is more than three times that of Rio de Janeiro.

Figueredo possesses a spinechilling personal archive of photographs that document the rising death toll. They show those who have crossed the local traffickers – skinned, burned or with their hands or tongues chopped off. One body had its heart ripped out.

Special agent Baez says one recent victim was found with his lips padlocked together. “He talked.”

Ramirez said the only solution was for Latin American leaders to rethink their drug laws. “Cocaine is a lost war – the way we are fighting it. Brazil spends trillions and can’t solve the problem of the favelas. Mexico spends even more and they have lost control. As long as people can make millions out of cocaine, repression will not solve the problem.”

Figueredo meanwhile beats a monthly retreat to Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, where he can relax without worrying about being executed.

“I’m a hostage in my own town,” he complains. “I don’t go out walking. I don’t go to the supermarket. I don’t have any friends here any more. Nobody wants to visit me. They are scared.

“Here there is only one truth,” he said. “If you get involved in the underworld you will die. You can be sure of it.”

• This article was amended on 19 November 2009. The original said that the border area where Pedro Juan Caballero is located is thousands of miles from Rio de Janeiro. This has been corrected.

Haleh Esfandiari: Prisoner of Tehran

Laura Secor

The New York Times: November 20, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/books/review/Secor-t.html?ref=todayspaper

Stephanie Luykendal / Getty Images

In 2007, Haleh Esfandiari, the Iranian-American director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, told Iranian intelligence everything she knew. She was interrogated for almost eight months, nearly four of them inside Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. During that time, she explained the institutional structure of the Wilson Center, identified its board members and described her work organizing conferences. She translated reams of material from the center’s Web site into Farsi. But it was a dialogue of the deaf.

MY PRISON, MY HOME

One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran

By Haleh Esfandiari

Illustrated. 230 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $25.99

She knew the smirking, ubiquitous bureaucrat assigned to her case as Ja’fari, and his sinister, smooth-talking superior only by a Persian honorific, Hajj Agha. As she recounts in her new memoir, “My Prison, My Home,” these men were certain that Esfandiari, the refined 67-year-old daughter of a high-born Iranian ­botanist and an Austrian mother, was a central figure in an American plot to topple the Iranian government. Her answers to their questions, they believed, were evasions. What they wanted to understand was the deep structure of the conspiracy. They asked her to tell them about meetings that had never taken place and people she’d never met; they asked her the same questions, in jumbled order, with numbing frequency, hoping to catch her in a lie. She was not cooperating, they told her, and so the interrogations would go on. She could put an end to the intimidation by inventing a story to please them — but only at the cost of incriminating herself and ­others.

Esfandiari had come to Tehran to spend Christmas with her elderly mother. It took a staged armed robbery, the seizure of her Iranian and American passports, a raid on her mother’s home and several weeks of interrogations at an ersatz “Passport Office” before she fully understood that she was ensnared in two ugly and intractable struggles. One was the Islamic Republic’s nearly 30-year cold war with the United States; the other was its battle with its internal opposition. These two enemies, the Iranian intelligence ministry had come to believe, were linked. The domestic opposition spoke a language of democracy and civil society that resonated suspiciously with the agendas of foundations like the Open Society Institute. The regime’s hardliners associated such foundations with the opposition movements that overthrew autocratic regimes in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine.

At a time when the Bush administration had made no secret of its desire to forge ties with the Iranian opposition, it was hardly irrational for the unpopular regime to fear that it would come to a similar end. The revolving door between American government and Washington research institutions made it relatively easy for Iranian investigators to draw maps that connected internal opponents to prominent expatriates to the United States government. The president of the Wilson Center was Lee Hamilton, a former congressman: this, to their minds, was evidence that Esfandiari was recruiting fifth columnists at the bidding of the United States government.

Esfandiari and her husband mobilized an army of devoted friends and loyal colleagues as the trap closed around her. They knew people who had served in various ministries during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, or who had contacts inside the intelligence apparatus, or clout, they hoped, with the hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a sign of just how serious Esfandiari’s case was, her friends in Iran, presumably under threat, stopped inquiring about her case, dropped contact with her and in one instance even hung up the phone when she called. During her imprisonment, she did not know that she had become an international cause célèbre; her interrogators told her that she had been forgotten in America. (Reading about Esfandiari’s tribulations, the reader may spare a thought for Iran’s young and unknown political prisoners — the journalists, feminists and student activists who do not have powerful friends, American passports or international media attention, and who are often terrorized into confessing to crimes they did not commit.)

Esfandiari recounts in measured, at times chilling, detail her journey into the bowels of the Iranian intelligence apparatus. Neither the fear nor the fury that she undoubtedly felt compromise the clarity of her observations. Ja’fari, though malevolent, is not a cartoon villain but a creature of a certain sweaty banality, constantly interrupting interrogations to take cellphone calls about the teaching job he holds after hours. The prison guards discuss their skin problems and do their laundry at the prison; Esfandiari recalls at least one of them, a pious older woman, with warmth. At Evin, Esfandiari exer­cises constantly, refuses medicine and food other than what she can get from outside, loses a frightening amount of weight and avoids allowing her belongings to touch the dirty floor. What might look compulsive under ordinary circumstances becomes, in solitary confinement, the means to survival, a stubborn insistence on personal agency even if its sphere is as small as a prison cell, or, smaller still, the body.

With its fractured chapters and frequent subheadings, “My Prison, My Home” sometimes lacks narrative cohesion. Its most revealing passages are those detailing experiences no doubt painful and even boring at the time: the hours wasted testing the obduracy of Ja’fari’s pinched mind, and later, keeping pace with the more sophisticated Hajj Agha, whose face Esfandiari is never allowed to see. Esfandiari writes without literary affectation, to the point of flatness; but in her refusal to aggrandize or feel sorry for herself, there is an unmistakable and persistent dignity.

Laura Secor is writing a book about Iran.