JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME, WE HOPE!
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Harsanyi: Obama's position on Jerusalem was identical to Romney's
During his recent visit to Israel, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney commented that “it is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.” Somehow this declaration of fact has become controversial and a “gaffe.”
Needless to say, the Obama Administration took a shot at Romney’s foreign policy “fumbles.” And in response to the candidate’s innocuous declaration, White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest stated: “Well, our view is that that’s a different position than this administration holds. It’s the view of this administration that the capital is something that should be determined in final status negotiations between the parties.”
Funny, because when addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on June 4, 2008, as a Democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama said that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” Like Romney, Obama upset the perpetually upset Palestinian government.
Naturally, Obama later immediately backtracked – or perhaps evolved — saying, “Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations” – which is nearly identical to the position Mitt Romney took this past week on the status of (East) Jerusalem.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Assad’s Useful Idiots - Noah Glyn - National Review Online
Nancy Pelosi meets with Bashar Assad in 2007.
How to depose Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in a clean fashion has become a pressing question for the international community. How strange that, not so long ago, the question for them was how to convince Assad to join forces with the West. Along the way, many American policymakers worked strenuously to bring him into the fold, as they heaped praise befitting a statesman on the brutal tyrant.
In a recent column, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens recounted
some of the paeans to Assad: In a March 2011 interview, Hillary Clinton
implied that Assad was a “reformer.” In 2007, Nancy Pelosi, over strong
objections from the State Department, visited Syria, and said, “The
road to Damascus is a road to peace.” Senator John Kerry predicted that
“Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the
United States.”
The record of American policymakers’ failures to talk the Assad regime out of its iniquity is long indeed.
Libya rebels move onto Syrian battlefield - CNN.com
Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- Their war for freedom in Libya may be over, but almost a year after they won the battle for the Libyan capital, a group of fighters have a new battlefield: Syria.
Under the command of one of Libya's most well known rebel commanders, Al-Mahdi al-Harati, more than 30 Libyan fighters have made their way into Syria to support the Free Syrian Army rebels in their war against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
Al-Harati, who commanded the Tripoli Revolutionary brigade -- which was the first group of rebels to enter the Libyan capital last August -- has been in Syria for months leading some of his former men and Syrian military defectors who have joined his "Liwaa al-Umma" or "The Banner of the Nation" brigade.
Recent YouTube videos show at least two different Syrian rebel factions announcing that they are part of the Liwa al-Umma.
Faces of the Free Syrian Army - CNN.com
Rebel-controlled northern Syria (CNN) -- Mohamed Rashid walked out of the gate of his house with a giant blood stain on his white T-shirt.
"This is the blood of a martyr! Of a hero! Of a lion!" he bellowed.
"This is his blood. It is pure!"
Mad with grief, Rashid kissed his bloody T-shirt before being led away by worried relatives.
Just hours before, Rashid learned his son Abdul was killed in battle in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Housam Abdul Rashid was a 22-year-old defector from the army. He was also the fourth man from his small hilltop village to be killed fighting for the rebels.
FOR THE FULL ARTICLE W/VIDEO CLICK HERE: Faces of the Free Syrian Army - CNN.com
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
Syrian activists unfurl huge opposition flag under Eiffel Tower
A woman holds a protest banner, as a makeshift Syrian flag hangs under the Eiffel Tower, during a demonstration by a small group of people opposed to the Syrian regime in Paris. (Reuters)
Two Syrian opposition activists unfurled an enormous rebel flag at the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Friday and were arrested by police.
As a handful of supporters from the France Syria Democracy group rallied below, the two activists climbed scaffolding set up for maintenance works and released the flag, to applause from tourists gathered below.
FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE: Syrian activists unfurl huge opposition flag under Eiffel Tower
150 regime troops captured by Free Syrian Army in Aleppo and Idlib
Free Syrian Army soldiers flash v-signs and raise their rifles in Azaz, north Syria. (Reuters)
Syrian rebels captured 150 troops in Aleppo and Idlib on Friday, Syrian activists said.
Syrian rebels captured 50 troops, including 14 officers, in the town of Maaret al-Numan in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“After clashes that lasted 12 hours, rebels destroyed a military security post and captured 50 regime troops, including 14 officers,” Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Britain-based Observatory, told AFP by phone.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels said they have captured 100 regime soldiers and militia members during fighting in the city of Aleppo in the north of the country, according to a video distributed by Syrian activists on Friday.
Syrian rebels captured 50 troops, including 14 officers, in the town of Maaret al-Numan in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“After clashes that lasted 12 hours, rebels destroyed a military security post and captured 50 regime troops, including 14 officers,” Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Britain-based Observatory, told AFP by phone.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels said they have captured 100 regime soldiers and militia members during fighting in the city of Aleppo in the north of the country, according to a video distributed by Syrian activists on Friday.
The video, which shows dozens of men in civilian clothing seated in a courtyard, was filmed by a man who describes himself as a member of the rebel Free Syrian Army.
“I am Colonel Mohammed Rashid Mohammed al-Mhmeid... I was arrested at the entrance of Aleppo,” one of the men says.
FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE: 150 regime troops captured by Free Syrian Army in Aleppo and Idlib
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
62 foreign policy experts call on Obama to establish ‘safe zones’ in Syria | The Cable
Now that the Syrian opposition has established control over territory on the ground, it's time for the United States to help establish "safe zones" inside Syria, a group of mostly conservative experts and former officials said Tuesday.
"We believe it is clear that multilateral diplomacy and non-military pressure, by themselves, will neither compel Assad to step down nor ensure that America's national security interests in Syria and the wider region are protected," read a new letter compiled by the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and sent to U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday, obtained in advance by The Cable.
"America's national security interests are intertwined with the fate of the Syrian people and the wider region," the letter reads. "The longer we wait to act, the more others with interests contrary to ours will fill the void, limiting America's ability to ensure a multi-sectarian pluralistic Syria. We therefore believe it is long past due for the United States to adopt a strategy that will help the Syrian people to quickly end the Assad regime and actively promote order and stability after the regime's fall."
The letter was signed by 62 foreign-policy hands, most of them conservative. The list of signees includes several former Bush administration officials, such as Elliott Abrams, Karl Rove, Paul Bremer, Robert Joseph, and Douglas Feith, and several advisors to the Mitt Romney campaign, including Eric Edelman, Jamie Fly, Robert Kagan, and Stephen Rademaker. Radwah Ziadeh, a member of the Syrian National Council, also signed.
The signatories call on Obama to use military power to establish safe zones in already liberated areas of Syria to protect civilians there and to counter the threat of the Syrian regime using chemical or biological weapons.
"Such ‘safe zones' would serve as a destination for civilians fleeing violence. They would also provide the country's opposition groups-which have actively stood up to the Assad regime's relentless aggression, and bravely defended their cities, towns, and villages in the absence of decisive international action - a place to train, be equipped, and organize," the letter says.
The letter warns that America's inaction in Syria amounts to "complicity in oppression."
The safe zones would also help the United States and the international community coordinate and deliver nonlethal aid to the rebels and plan for the transition to a post-Assad government, the authors argue. A version of this idea was first proposed publicly by former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter in February, and then picked up by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in March; critics say the zones would be difficult to defend from a concerted ground and aerial assault.
FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK HERE: Conservatives call on Obama to establish ‘safe zones’ in Syria | The Cable
Monday, July 23, 2012
PHOTO-ESSAY: Libya’s Revolutionary Street Art | Libyan Tweep Forum
The street art of the Libyan Revolution:
PHOTO-ESSAY: Libya’s Revolutionary Street Art | Libyan Tweep Forum
 |
| Omar al-Mukhtar is Libya’s national hero. Known as the “desert tiger”, al-Mukhtar led an armed resistance against Italian colonialism for almost 20 years. In the recent conflict, al-Mukhtar re-emerged as a source of inspiration for Libya’s young rebels. |
They Did Build That | Washington Free Beacon
They Did Build That
AP
A Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday found the vast majority of Americans credit the success of small businesses to the hard work of their owners, rather than to federal or state government programs.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of Likely U.S. Voters believe that people who start small businesses are primarily responsible for their success or failure. …
Fifty-seven percent (57%) of voters believe entrepreneurs who start small businesses do more to create jobs and economic growth than big businesses or government programs. Sixteen percent (16%) think big businesses do the most when it comes to creating jobs and economic growth.
Eleven percent (11%) feel state and local government programs deserve the most credit, while seven percent (7%) think federal government programs have the biggest impact.
Among voters who are not committed to either Mitt Romney or Obama in the presidential campaign, just 13% think government programs are most responsible for economic growth.
Fifty-five percent (55%) think entrepreneurs drive growth.
The report follows the president’s controversial remark, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Austria’s OMV Says Libya Oil Output close to Pre-Revolutionary Levels | Libyan Tweep Forum
Austria’s OMV Says Libya Oil Output close to Pre-Revolutionary Levels
21/07/2012
Austrian energy group OMV reports that oil output increased in the second quarter in Libya, mainly due to a continuing recovery in the country, with production now close to the level it had been before last year’s revolution that ousted former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
In a trading statement, OMV said that total production worldwide rose to 305,000 barrels of oil per day from 299,000 in the previous quarter, also helped by higher production in New Zealand.
Libya had provided a tenth of OMV’s global output in 2010 before the bloody conflict halted production last year.
OMV said that that this increase was, however, partly offset by lower production in Romania (lower contribution from two gas fields) and Austria (planned shutdown in Aderklaa).
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
BBC News - AU chooses Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as leader
Jean Ping and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma both failed to get an outright majority in January
The African Union has chosen South African Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as its leader, making her the first woman to hold the post.
Ms Dlamini-Zuma beat incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon after a closely fought contest for the chairmanship of the organisation.
In January, neither got the required two-thirds majority, leaving Mr Ping in office for another six months.
The dispute has overshadowed other issues, especially security and trade.
Voting had been broadly split along linguistic lines, with English-speaking countries tending to support Ms Dlamini-Zuma and French-speaking countries lining up behind Mr Ping.
Senior officials had warned that failure to resolve the leadership deadlock would divide the AU and undermine its credibility.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Happy Memorial Birthday, Ingmar Bergman, Born July 14, 1918
 |
| Remembering Ingmar Bergman on his birthday, July 14 |
The Pen Proves Mightier than the Chicotte: Le Roi Souverain Tombe
The Pen Proves Mightier than the Chicotte:
Le Roi Souverain Tombe
Le Roi Souverain Tombe
by Mac McKinney
Forward to the Past in the DR Congo, Part 7
For Part 1, LA Progressive Post: Le Roi-Souverain of the Congo Free State
For Part 2, LA Progressive Post: The Horror Begins: Forward to the Past in the D.R. Congo
For Part 3, LA Progressive Post: The Horror Crescendos
For Part 4, LA Progressive Post: The Pen Proves Mightier than the Chicotte: 1st Battle
For Part 5, LA Progressive Post: The Pen Proves Mightier than the Chicotte: Assaulting Leopold's Castle Walls
For Part 6, LA Progressive Post: The Pen Proves Mightier than the Chicotte: Full Scale War
*********
As I recounted in Part 6, King Leopold could not exactly leave his heart in San Francisco, having never been there, but, thanks to the machinations of Colonel Henry I. Kowalsky, he could just as easily have put chunks of both it and his reputation, as well as his royal prestige and geopolitical fortunes, into an urn and shipped them there for cremation and scattering over the Pacific Ocean. The Hearst papers had, to say the least, cast him in a very poor light both in America and internationally. This blow served to pour salt on another self-inflicted wound that was already festering.
The Commission
With his back against an increasingly crumbling wall ever since Morel had launched his crusade against him, Leopold decided to stage, once more, some political theater that would paint him as virtuously high-minded, just and caring, the very kind of sleight of hand melodrama that had won him control over the Congo in the first place. He would appoint an august Commission of Inquiry to investigate any wrong-doing in his domain, a commission, however, that would be hand-picked by him.
He had actually pulled a similar stunt in the 1890s when he appointed his Commission for the Protection of the Natives, consisting of three Catholic and three Protestant missionaries scattered over a thousand miles who only met twice, with only three present each time, while never having even traveled to the rubber-producing zones, the hub of the atrocities, to boot. Their findings were, unsurprisingly, banal. That commission served as a white-wash then, and Leopold had every reason to believe that a new one would do the same for him now, in 1905.
This time he appointed three "impartial" judges, a Belgian, a Swiss and an Italian, the Italian being none other than Baron Giacomo Nisco, who was actually chief judge of the Congo Free State at the time, in a word, an employee of his, who, like the other two, spoke no native language and little English, the common language of Leopold's harshest critics, British and American missionaries.
Thus interpreters would have to be relied upon heavily, although Leopold would have been better off if every interpreter in Africa had suddenly contracted Yellow Fever and died, because now it was the turn of dauntless English missionary John Harris and his wife, Alice, to come to the forefront once again to damn the entire wretched forced labor/slavery system. He and his wife had already become major contributors to Edmund Morel's Congo Reform Association through their letters, photographs and extensive speaking engagements. Now they do their best to reveal the truth to the Commission of Inquiry.
Thus interpreters would have to be relied upon heavily, although Leopold would have been better off if every interpreter in Africa had suddenly contracted Yellow Fever and died, because now it was the turn of dauntless English missionary John Harris and his wife, Alice, to come to the forefront once again to damn the entire wretched forced labor/slavery system. He and his wife had already become major contributors to Edmund Morel's Congo Reform Association through their letters, photographs and extensive speaking engagements. Now they do their best to reveal the truth to the Commission of Inquiry.
 | |
| Rev. John Harris and his wife, Alice, in their pith helmets amongst the Congolese (source: print screen capture from the documentary, White King, Red Rubber, Black Death) |
Once the proceedings began, the judges were gradually overwhelmed with emotion as horror after horror was unfolded before their eyes and ears, with the most dramatic moment coming when Chief Lontulu of the village of Bolima, who had arrived by boat with a pile of 110 twigs, began, when it was his turn to testify, to place each twig into one of four piles upon the commission table, the piles representing the nobles, men, women and children of his tribe. As he laid each twig out, he recited the name of a person murdered by agents of the state, a deeply moving scene that infuriated the Congolese authorities who, in revenge, had Lontulu tortured to death several weeks later.
 |
| A father stares at the hands of his five year-old daughter, which were severed as a punishment for having harvested too little caoutchouc/rubber. (Wikipedia Commons: source) |
A Potemkin Summary
When they returned to Europe, the commissioners began finalizing their 150 page report that the King, knowing of its contents, could only hope to sidetrack or delay. Actually, he did both. The report's release was delayed until early November 1905, while Leopold, as disingenuous as ever, pulled off yet another fraud on the international press.
Knowing full well of newspaper editors' and reporters' lazy propensity for synopses of lengthy reports, he delivered, on November 3rd (the day before the release of the full report) to every major newspaper in England, a "complete summary and authentic resume of the report" (p. 251 - Mariner Books edition of King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild), compliments of the "West African Missionary Association". Certainly missionaries, Leopold's staunchest critics, could be trusted, every editor would think.
What this "resume" was though was Leopold's own attempt at a whitewash, a Potemkin summary so to speak. Newspapers naively and dutifully headlined this latest canard in both Europe and America before they finally caught on to the scheme by bothering to read the full report. And when they later decided to investigate the West African Missionary Association, they discovered that this was but a phantom dummy front created to give credence to Leopold's plot, and whose address was a one-room office in London with no office workers in it, a one-trick pony that never rode again.
It was against this sordid backdrop that the explosive revelations in the Hearst newspapers of Leopold's lobbying efforts in America, via Colonel Kowalsky, soon occurred, adding new public damnation to prior condemnation. Leopold, around 70 years old now and with his health beginning to fail, had already decided that, upon his death, he would bequeath his "private" African domain to the state of Belgium in his royal will. But now the walls were rapidly closing in upon him through the relentless international efforts of Morel, Casement, missionaries and countless others. Cries were increasingly astir everywhere for Belgium to annex the Congo, or for an international conference to be convened to revoke King Leopold's sovereignty over it. The King knew that the "gig" was about up and accurately surmised that the entire Congo Free State could indeed be ripped from his hands by a collective effort.
The Belgian Congo
Leopold, ever the unscrupulous businessman and con artist, now sensed that it was time to hold a transfer of sale to a decidedly captive customer, his own homeland, Belgium. If he had to relinquish the Congo, he would at least replenish his coffers doing so.
Belgium was suffering all the slings and arrows of guilt by association from various critics simply because Leopold was their constitutional monarch, even though they had no legal, official say over his actions in or ownership of the Congo. He had made sure that the legalese of the Berlin Conference General Act of 1885 bequeathing sovereignty of the Free Congo State to him, as well as the subsequent ratification of him as "le Roi-Souverain" by the Belgian National Congress, had no loopholes for encroachment upon his "turf."
Belgium, pressed to annex the Congo by both Great Britain and Teddy Roosevelt's White House, and which even Edmund Morel admitted was the only feasible solution, finally felt compelled, in late 1906, to negotiate with its now suddenly, rather mercenary king. Leopold the barterer now proved as inventive as a mother lapwing protecting her chicks in preventing the government from even studying the Congo accounting books, which in reality, if properly investigated, would have led to new front-page scandals. An exasperating year and a half later, after many melodramas and enough time to hide more of his blood-profits, Leopold finally settled on a contract.
To paraphrase Hochschild's passage in King Leopold's Ghost, Belgium agreed to (1) assume all of Leopold's Congo-related debts, some 110 million francs; (2) finance, for another 45.5 million francs, the completion of Leopold's vain and ambitious construction projects in Belgium, projects such as a massive royal homestead at Laeken; and (3) personally pay him, in what amounted to a gigantic pension for his tenure as le Roi-Souverain, another 50 million francs, which in another black twist of irony, would be extracted from monies from the Congo instead of from the Belgian taxpayer. (p. 259 - Mariner Books edition of King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild)
So even the removal of the tyrant who made Congolese soil run red with blood for some two decades would have to be paid for by further exploiting the land's wealth and people for his benefit. In modern terms, this would be like forcing the people of Sierra Leone to pay Charles Taylor billions of dollars in recompense for the countless horrors of mutilation and mass-murder he visited upon them. Fortunately, however, Taylor now sits in prison with a fifty year sentence awaiting him pending final appeals.
On November 15, 1908, the Parliament of Belgium formally annexed the Congo Free State, marked by a ceremony in Boma, its capital, and what had been a de facto colony in all but name would now become one formally, henceforth to be called the Belgian Congo.
The Trial
Intriguingly, during this same period a legal battle between missionaries and Belgian officials had developed in the Congo, a battle that would serve as a portent for what degree the harsh injustices of the old Congo would carry over to the new Congo. Meanwhile, our stalwart African-American missionary crusader against the Rubber Terror, William Henry Sheppard, had become the center of this controversy.
In January, 1908, Sheppard had written yet another scathing report on human rights abuses, despite the increasingly draconian crackdown on freedom of the press in the Congo Free State, this time on the outrages of various rubber concession companies within the area of responsibility of his American Presbyterian Congo Mission. His article, entitled "From the Bakuba Country", was published in the Kasai Herald, a small missionary journal actually run by his by now close associate and equally outspoken foe of Leopold's system, the Virginian preacher, William Morrison.
The article accused, in particular, Belgian rubber concessions of brutally mistreating the Kuba people. One Belgian company, Campagnie du Kasai, whose new inspector-general was none other than the notorious, retired Force Publique officer, Leon Rom, infamous for his brutality, and which was not even named in Sheppard's piece, decided to demand a retraction from Morrison, who responded by hurling further charges in his replies to them. The company then decided to sue for defamation in February 1909, a very serious matter at that point in time ever since Leopold had decreed, in 1906, that calumny against Congo state officials was punishable by a heavy fine or five years in prison. All rubber concession officials were considered to be agents of the Congo Free State, and although Leopold had by February already handed over the Congo to Belgium, this decree still held.
The case would not go to trial until September 1909, which gave our two missionaries ample time to build up strong support not only from Morel and the Congo Reform Association, but from authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, various prominent Americans including the Administration, which began leaning upon the Belgian government for a favorable verdict, and, most significantly, from the leader of the Belgian Socialist Party, Emile Vandervelde, who also happened to be a lawyer, and who decided, to everyone's surprise, to take on the case himself, pro bono and travel to Africa.
 | |
| Emile Vandervelde, the famous Belgian Democratic Socialist leader and legal lion at the trial of Sheppard and Morrison (source) |
The trial itself attracted international attention and its opening quickly led to the acquittal of Morrison on a technicality, leaving Sheppard alone in the dock. Concern arose when, unfortunately, the judge also ruled that the abused Kuba tribesmen could not testify to prove the veracity of Sheppard's article, but once Vandervelde took to the floor to begin what would become a two hour masterpiece of courtroom oratory, this would not matter. Vandervelde reduced much of the audience to tears in what was not only an eloquent defense of the missionaries, but a clarion call for justice against a cruel and unjust system.
The judge subsequently acquitted Sheppard on the grounds that since he had not actually named Campagnie du Kasai in his article, he could not be held liable. Headlines around the world rejoiced, and the fact that justice had been obtained under the Belgian state's fledgling auspices duly noted.
Le Roi Souverain Tombe
Shortly after this one last struggle between progressive humanitarian forces and what was now the ghost of the Congo Free State, since the trial ended after the Belgian Congo was inaugurated, Leopold's health took a dramatic turn for the worst and he became bed-ridden at his luxurious estate at Laeken, Belgium. He was suffering from severe intestinal problems.
His former queen consort, Marie Henriette of Austria, with whom he had had a stormy relationship, had died some seven years earlier, so he was officially a widower. He had, however, been infatuated with one Caroline Delacroix, a much younger, common French courtesan (which is perhaps too euphemistic a term) since the turn of the century and had made her his mistress publicly, sparing no expense or extravagance to impress her, to the point where she was a despised figure to the Belgian citizenry.
As Leopold lay dying by mid-December, 1909, he shared a bedside wedding with Caroline, while meanwhile secretly working with his aides to transfer millions of francs in Congo state securities to her. On December 17 the King, after some unsuccessful eleventh hour surgery, passed away. Two of his estranged daughters, Louise and Stephanie, quickly sprang into action to try to prevent the "usurper" Caroline from absconding with so much of the family assets, but were only partially successful as Leopold's instant wife/instant widow fled to Paris with a good percentage of them.
Thus King Leopold the Second's adventures with the Congo ended as they had begun, corrupted and contaminated with intrigues about money. Of his legacy, perhaps Mark Twain said it best when, in his biting satire King Leopold's Soliloquy, he has Leopold sardonically opining about a memorial for himself:
Another madman wants to construct a memorial for the perpetuation of my name, out of my 15,000,000 skulls and skeletons, and is full of vindictive enthusiasm over his strange project. He has it all ciphered out and drawn to scale. Out of the skulls he will build a combined monument and mausoleum to me which shall exactly duplicate the Great Pyramid of Cheops, whose base covers thirteen acres, and whose apex is 451 feet above ground. He desires to stuff me and stand me up in the sky on that apex, robed and crowned, with my "pirate flag" in one hand and a butcher-knife and pendant handcuffs in the other. He will build the pyramid in the center of a depopulated tract, a brooding solitude covered with weeds and the mouldering ruins of burned villages, where the spirits of the starved and murdered dead will voice their laments forever in the whispers of the wandering winds. Radiating from the pyramid, like the spokes of a wheel, there are to be forty grand avenues of approach, each thirty-five miles long, and each fenced on both sides by skulless skeletons standing a yard and a half apart and festooned together in line by short chains stretching from wrist to wrist and attached to tried and true old handcuffs stamped with my private trade-mark, a crucifix and butcher-knife crossed, with motto, "By this sign we prosper"; each osseous fence to consist of 200,000 skeletons on a side, which is 400,000 to each avenue. It is remarked with satisfaction that it aggregates three or four thousand miles (single-ranked) of skeletons -- 15,000,000 all told -- and would stretch across America from New York to San Francisco. It is remarked further, in the hopeful tone of a railroad company forecasting showy extensions of its mileage, that my output is 500,000 corpses a year when my plant is running full time, and that therefore if I am spared ten years longer there will be fresh skulls enough to add 175 feet to the pyramid, making it by a long way the loftiest architectural construction on the earth, and fresh skeletons enough to continue the transcontinental file (on piles) a thousand miles into the Pacific. The cost of gathering the materials from my "widely scattered and innumerable private graveyards," and transporting them, and building the monument and the radiating grand avenues, is duly ciphered out, running into an aggregate of millions of guineas, and then -- why then, (---- ----!! ---- ----!!) this idiot asks me to furnish the money! [Sudden and effusive application of the crucifix] He reminds me that my yearly income from the Congo is millions of guineas, and that "only" 5,000,000 would be required for his enterprise. Every day wild attempts are made upon my purse; they do not affect me, they cost me not a thought. But this one -- this one troubles me, makes me nervous; for there is no telling what an unhinged creature like this may think of next.... If he should think of Carnegie -- but I must banish that thought out of my mind! it worries my days; it troubles my sleep. That way lies madness. [After a pause] There is no other way -- I have got to buy Carnegie. (source)
 |
| (source) |
In the Best Traditions of Stalin: Russian ship with helicopters for Syrian regime sets sail again - Telegraph
A Russian ship carrying refurbished attack helicopters destined for Syria has weighed anchor from its Arctic port for a second time after failing to deliver the cargo last month.
Moscow has insisted it will deliver the Mi-25 helicopters in the teeth of western disapproval and it appears likely the ship's real or eventual target is Syria
5:10PM BST 13 Jul 2012
The Alaed's previous attempt to convey the Mi-25 gunships to the regime of of President Bashar al-Assad under a Curaçao flag caused anger in London and Washington. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the aircraft would be used to kill innocent civilians.
The ship's new destination is unclear but maritime data show it was travelling south off Norway on Thursday and is due in Baltiysk on the Baltic coast of Kaliningrad, Russia's exclave between Poland and Lithuania, on July 17.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Libya’s Kib predicts bright future for foreign investors
Friday, 13 July 2012
The outgoing Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib, says Libya’s 2012 crude output surpasses expectations in its pre-revolution levels. (Reuters)
Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib predicted a bright future for foreign investment in Libya especially in the oil sector whose infrastructure needs to be overhauled, in an interview with AFP.
“The plan is to revamp the whole thing and work on the infrastructure of the oil and gas industry... (an) area for projects for companies that might be interested so that we can increase production levels,” he said.
The outgoing premier, whose government did not have the prerogative to sign contracts, noted the country’s 2012 crude output had surpassed expectations and reached its pre-revolution levels.
Current production is about 1.6 million barrels per day.
Libya, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa. It also boasts vast natural gas reserves.
But other opportunities for investment abound: tourism along a 1,700-kilometre (more than 1,000-mile) Mediterranean coastline, basic infrastructure including roads and housing, airlines, the health and education sectors, and e-governance.
The outgoing premier, whose government did not have the prerogative to sign contracts, noted the country’s 2012 crude output had surpassed expectations and reached its pre-revolution levels.
Current production is about 1.6 million barrels per day.
Libya, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), holds the largest proven oil reserves in Africa. It also boasts vast natural gas reserves.
But other opportunities for investment abound: tourism along a 1,700-kilometre (more than 1,000-mile) Mediterranean coastline, basic infrastructure including roads and housing, airlines, the health and education sectors, and e-governance.
“I guarantee you, any sector you think of, there are plenty of projects to work on,” said Kib, a U.S.-educated electrical engineer, urging international companies to make fact-finding visits.
Libya’s Kib predicts bright future for foreign investors
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
