“Passing over, for the present, all the evils and mischiefs which monarchy has occasioned in the world, nothing can more effectually prove its usefulness in a state of civil government than making it hereditary. Would we make any office hereditary that required wisdom and abilities to fill it? And where wisdom and abilities are not necessary, such an office, whatever it may be, is superfluous or insignificant.

Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon monarchy. It puts it in the most ridiculous light, by presenting it as an office which any child or idiot may fill. It requires some talent to be a common mechanic; but, to be a king, requires only the animal figure of man, a sort of breathing automaton”. [[1]]

These are the words of Thomas Paine written in 1791. His logic and reasoning is as sound and pertinent now as it was then. But if Thomas Paine was alive and expressed similar sentiments in Saudi Arabia today, he would face imprisonment and torture. The very idea of republicanism which the founding fathers of United States so cherished is seen as subversive in Saudi Arabia, and is actively discouraged by the government.

Saudi Arabia is a special country. It is the place of two of the Muslims’ holiest sites. It is a major oil producer. It is the only country in the world that is named after its founder: Ibn Saud. It is one of a few countries in the world that is run as a family business. It also has the world’s highest military expenditure per head. In the period 1990 to 2004, Saudi Arabia has spent more on its military than Iran, Pakistan, or even India with a population of over 1 billion people. Yet, they (Saudis and friends) still feel that Saudi Arabia needs more military hardware.

On May 18, the general in charge of U.S. arms sales told Reuters that United States was talking to Iran’s neighbours, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and The United Arab Emirates (UAE), about ways to bolster their defences.
axisoflogic.com

ONE of BritainÍs most senior military strategists has warned that western civilisation faces a threat on a par with the barbarian invasions that destroyed the Roman empire.
In an apocalyptic vision of security dangers, Rear Admiral Chris Parry said future migrations would be comparable to the Goths and Vandals while north African “barbary” pirates could be attacking yachts and beaches in the Mediterranean within 10 years.

Europe, including Britain, could be undermined by large immigrant groups with little allegiance to their host countries „ a “reverse colonisation” as Parry described it. These groups would stay connected to their homelands by the internet and cheap flights. The idea of assimilation was becoming redundant, he said.

The warnings by Parry of what could threaten Britain over the next 30 years were delivered to senior officers and industry experts at a conference last week. Parry, head of the development, concepts and doctrine centre at the Ministry of Defence, is charged with identifying the greatest challenges that will frame national security policy in the future.

If a security breakdown occurred, he said, it was likely to be brought on by environmental destruction and a population boom, coupled with technology and radical Islam. The result for Britain and Europe, Parry warned, could be “like the 5th century Roman empire facing the Goths and the Vandals”.

Parry pointed to the mass migration which disaster in the Third World could unleash. “The diaspora issue is one of my biggest current concerns,” he said. “Globalisation makes assimilation seem redundant and old-fashioned . . . [the process] acts as a sort of reverse colonisation, where groups of people are self-contained, going back and forth between their countries, exploiting sophisticated networks and using instant communication on phones and the internet.”

Third World instability would lick at the edges of the West as pirates attacked holidaymakers from fast boats. “At some time in the next 10 years it may not be safe to sail a yacht between Gibraltar and Malta,” said the admiral.
timesonline.co.uk

Aw come on, honey. Brittania rules the waves.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, has refused to disown a speech by his deputy criticising the US government’s attitude to the UN.

The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, had demanded Kofi Annan should repudiate Mark Malloch Brown’s remarks.

Bolton described Tuesday’s speech as a “very, very grave mistake” that could undermine efforts to reform the organisation.

“Even though the target of the speech was the United States, the victim, I fear, will be the United Nations,” Bolton said at the UN on Wednesday after speaking to Annan.

Annan, however, will stand by his deputy’s views, said Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief spokesman.

“There is no question of any action to be taken against the deputy secretary-general,” he said.
aljazeera.net

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip, June 10 (Reuters) – “Don’t leave me alone.”

With those parting words, and amid a sea of tears from thousands of mourners, 7-year-old Huda Ghalya bade farewell on Saturday to her mother, father and three siblings killed when a sunny day on the beach turned into the child’s darkest day.

The five family members were among seven Palestinians who died when an explosion tore through the beach in northern Gaza on Friday as Israeli artillery shelled the coastal area used by militants to fire rockets into Israel.

She was swimming when her family died yards away onshore.

“Father, father, forgive me,” Huda cried as she kneeled to kiss her father’s face at the stark cemetery in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.
today.reuters.com

Paralyzed for life
The tangle of tubes and the artificial respirator attached directly to her windpipe cannot hide her beauty. A little 3-year-old girl lying in the pediatric intensive care unit at Sheba Medical Center, Maria Aman’s sad, brown almond eyes are wide open, her lips murmur in a whisper: “Food, I want to eat,” but all her limbs are paralyzed, forever. Not far from there, in an intensive care unit at Ichilov Hospital, lies her uncle Nahed, age 33 and father of two, who is in even worse condition: He is not only on a respirator and completely paralyzed, he is being kept asleep.

No, these are not the victims of this weekend’s operation, but their predecessors – victims of an airborne assassination in Gaza three weeks ago yesterday, an operation that shocked almost nobody here in Israel. The events of this past weekend should not come as a surprise to anyone: The deterioration has been going on for weeks, and the question that should be asked is not what Israel is doing to counter the Qassams, but what it is not doing. An army that fires missiles at busy streets and tank shells at a beach cannot claim there was no intent to harm innocent civilians.

US approves annual aid to Israel
The House of Representatives has approved the allocation of USD 21.3 billion in foreign assistance during 2007, including USD 2.46 billion to Israel, the largest sum received by any country.

The annual assistance package to Israel is comprised of USD 2.34 billion in military aid, in addition to USD 120 million in standard economic aid.

BAGHDAD, Iraq ã Frightened by warnings of an imminent offensive by U.S. troops massed around Ramadi, residents are pouring out of the insurgent-infested city.

U.S. and Iraqi forces cordoned off the city Saturday and were asking civilians to evacuate, residents and Iraqi officials said. Airstrikes on several residential areas picked up, and troops used loudspeakers to warn civilians of a fierce impending attack, Ramadi police Capt. Tahseen Aldulaimi said.

U.S. military officials refused to confirm or deny reports that an offensive in the city of 400,000 was under way.

Thousands of families remain trapped, those who have fled say. Many can’t afford to leave or lack transportation, and other families decided to wait for their children to finish final exams at school.

“The situation is catastrophic. No services, no electricity, no water,” said Sheik Fassal Guood, the former governor of Ramadi. “People in Ramadi are caught between two plagues: the vicious, armed insurgents and the American and Iraqi troops.”
seattletimes.nwsource.com

Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers deserting every month
BAGHDAD, June 10 (UPI) — Erratic pay, inadequate food and poor living conditions are driving several hundred Iraqi soldiers out of the army every month.

Lt. Moktat Uosef is a company commander in the 4th Brigade of the 7th Iraqi Army Division. U.S. Marines working with the brigade told Stars and Stripes, the U.S. armed forces newspaper, that its strength dropped from 2,200 soldiers in December to 1,400 in May.

“Many of my soldiers have not gotten paid in six months,” Uosef said. “Sometimes, they don’t eat for two or three days at a time. I tell my commander, but what else am I supposed to do?”

Desertions are a major problem in Anbar Province, the major stronghold of the insurgency. But officials say logistical problems are hurting morale far more than danger is.

In April, hundreds of soldiers staged what amounted to a short strike, refusing for two days to go on patrol. The job action strained their relationship with U.S. troops.
“We won’t make any real progress until we stop hemorrhaging the personnel,” said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Kenny, who commands the Marines working with the 2nd Brigade, 7th Army.

Iraq war bill deletes US military base prohibition
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congressional Republicans killed a provision in an Iraq war funding bill that would have put the United States on record against the permanent basing of U.S. military facilities in that country, a lawmaker and congressional aides said on Friday.

The $94.5 billion emergency spending bill, which includes $65.8 billion to continue waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is expected to be approved by Congress next week and sent to President George W. Bush for signing into law.

As originally passed by the House of Representatives, the Pentagon would have been prohibited from spending any of the funds for entering into a military basing rights agreement with Iraq.

A similar amendment passed by the Senate said the Pentagon could not use the next round of war funding to “establish permanent United States military bases in Iraq, or to exercise United States control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq.”

WASHINGTON — The best evidence yet for the oldest life on Earth is found in odd-shaped, rock-like mounds in Australia that are actually fossils created by microbes 3.4 billion years ago, researchers report.

“It’s an ancestor of life. If you think that all life arose on this one planet, perhaps this is where it started,” said Abigail Allwood, a researcher at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology and lead author of the new study. It appears Thursday in the journal Nature.

The strange geologic structures – which range from smaller than a fingernail to taller than a man – are exactly the type of early life astrobiologists are looking for on Mars and elsewhere.

They are known as stromatolites. They’re produced layer by layer when dirt sediments mix with carbon dioxide expelled from bacteria, water, and minerals – all trapped in the microbes’ sticky mucilage.

The theory is that these ancient mounds dotting a large swath of western Australia are not merely dirt piles that formed randomly into odd shapes, but that microbes built them a few billion years ago.
seattlepi.nwsource.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi raised hopes that Iraq’s slide toward civil war or sectarian disintegration could be arrested, but there are signs that Shiite-Sunni antagonism may now be too deeply rooted.
news.yahoo.com

Oh okay. I really believed it would.

A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a “good PR move to draw attention”.

Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and “a tactic to further the jihadi cause”, but taking their own lives was unnecessary.

But lawyers say the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair.

A military investigation into the deaths is under way, amid growing calls for the centre to be moved or closed.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour programme, Ms Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, said the three men did not value their lives nor the lives of those around them.

… earlier, the camp commander, Rear Adm Harris said he did not believe the men had killed themselves out of despair.

“They are smart. They are creative, they are committed,” he said.

“They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”
bbc.co.uk

Gee what PR firm did they hire?

If these guys are terrorists, they aren’t very good ones. At least that seems to be the picture that is slowly emerging of the 17 men and boys charged this week under Canada’s anti-terror laws.

Their so-called training camp turns out to have been a swath of bush near Washago, where their activities ã shooting off firearms and playing paintball ã were so obvious and so irritating that local residents immediately called police.

Serious terrorists, like Osama bin Laden, base their operations in remote areas where no one will bother them. These suspects, it is alleged, simply trespassed on someone’s farm and, when the owner told them to leave, gave him lip.

Serious terrorists, like the 19 who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, try to avoid making waves. They try to blend in.

The young men charged this week apparently didn’t bother with this kind of tradecraft. They apparently didn’t realize, or perhaps didn’t care, that large groups of brown-skinned urbanites dressed in camouflage are not a common sight in rural central Ontario.

So when local resident Mike Cote came upon a group of just such men near his Ramara Township farm last December, he immediately informed police.

As he told the Star this week, the group appeared cold, wet and bedraggled. Some had fallen though the thin ice into a marsh. The leader of these alleged terrorists was so disgusted with his young charges that he complained to Cote about their incompetence.

These, apparently, were the conspirators. One, a former army reservist, allegedly wanted to cut off Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s head. How would he find it?

It appears that a good many knew the police were on to these suspects. Harper knew. So did Toronto Mayor David Miller. So did some of the suspects’ neighbours. So did many near the ill-fated Ramara Township “training camp,” who told the Star later that police asked them to keep their mouths shut.

But the alleged terrorists, it seems, remained blissfully ignorant.

They let themselves get snared in an RCMP sting when one of the 17 allegedly placed an order for three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a substance that can be used to make bombs.

According to police, suspects happily took possession of the “fertilizer” when it was delivered, not realizing that the RCMP had substituted harmless white powder in its stead.

But then that seems to be the history of this group. For militant terrorists, if that’s what they are, they are remarkably naive.

Some, it appears, chatted openly online about their paramilitary exploits at websites such as the now-dismantled http://www.shaheed.ca, oblivious to the fact that the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service regularly troll such sites.

“I got my gun and tomorrow in the morning I am gonna do some target practise (sic) inshAllah (God willing) hott,” reads one 2003 posting. “Checked out some paintball guns today at walmart.”

Shaheed, the Arabic word for witness, is often used to refer to someone who has died defending Islam ã including suicide bombers. It’s not a terribly subtle title for a radical Islamic website. But then not all of the postings on http://www.shaheed.ca were radical or even devout.

“Man, ppl always say the Ummah (community of Islam) is so weak blah blah,” reads one 2004 posting. “What ummah? I don’t believe that there’s 2 billion or whatever muslims in the world….It sux.”

“Alhumdulilah (thank God) today was the first successful day of work,” reads another 2004 posting. “What a great day it was. Sure we were late, but it’s far. But Alhumdulilah, the boss is really nice. … After that we went for pizza.”
thestar.com

WASHINGTON – For the first time since Congress mandated its annual publication, a State Department report cataloging human trafficking across the globe includes allegations that American taxpayers financed such abuses.

This year’s Trafficking in Persons Report, released Monday, also ranks Iran among the 12 nations in the world with the worst records for limiting human trafficking within and across its borders, just as the Bush administration is attempting to bring pressure on Tehran because of its developing nuclear program.

Other familiar Bush administration targets, such as Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, also made this year’s list of the worst dozen, while White House allies and other strategically important nations – including India, Mexico, Russia and China – escaped the roll call despite evidence in the report of growing problems.

People can be trafficked across or within borders for prostitution or forced labor, a practice officials describe as a modern form of slavery.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice unveiled this year’s report by telling reporters that the United States and its allies “will stop at nothing to end the debasement of our fellow men and women.”

Yet this year’s report includes a special section on reforms the Defense Department instituted after an investigation prompted by “Pipeline to Peril,” a series published by the Chicago Tribune in October that detailed human trafficking into Iraq for privatized U.S. military support operations.

Human brokers and subcontractors from Asia to the Middle East have worked in concert to import thousands of laborers into Iraq from impoverished countries, often employing fraud or coercion along the way, seizing workers’ passports and charging recruitment “fees” that make it difficult for workers to escape employment in the war zone.

U.S. military leaders in Iraq have acknowledged confirming widespread abuses against such workers, who are brought to Iraq to do menial labor on U.S. bases for contractors and subcontractors. Those businesses ultimately receive their checks from the U.S. government. The abuses corroborated by military investigators included violations of U.S. human-trafficking laws.
mercurynews.com