War is transforming itself before our eyes, turning into something unfamiliar and strange. Information has taken a place as a major class of weaponry, with sabotage and subterfuge as preferred tactics. On the new battlefield, these weapons are available not only to nation-states, but to organizations and even individuals.

The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is something that ought to be more widely known than it is. Starting in the 1980s, advances in cybernetics and communications began having a dramatic impact had on military operations. Such innovations as Precision-Guided Munitions (PGMs) and high channel capacity communications systems not only increased the effectiveness of individual weapons systems, but, acting as force multipliers, they also boosted the capabilities of entire units to a point where they could take on and defeat enemy forces that in the past would have been considered far superior.

The impact of the RMA became apparent in the First Gulf War of 1990-1991. Most of the two-thirds of a million Coalition troops deployed in Saudi Arabia never engaged with enemy forces. The Iraqis were defeated by a handful of spearhead units so technologically superior to the Warsaw Pact-type Iraqi units that there was no contest. In 2003, a much smaller Coalition force routed the Iraqis, utilizing all the technological advantages that had appeared in the ensuing twelve years. (Unfortunately, Donald Rumsfeld attempting to carry out the occupation of Iraq with the same size force, demonstrating that the RMA does not extend to civil affairs.)

But despite all the speculation surrounding the RMA, few foresaw the arrival of a second phase in which the breadth, execution, and very definition of warfare would be transformed. The new technology empowered not only military forces, but also intelligence agencies and even non-state actors. Utilizing communications and cybernetics innovations, the new combatants can, under the right circumstances, have an impact rivaling that of entire nation-states, causing serious turmoil and damage with a minimal outlay of effort. In 2010, we have been introduced to this mutated form of warfare by two distinct events: Stuxnet and WikiLeaks.

Yes it’s long, but read the whole thing.  TL;DR doesn’t cut it here…

Assailants on motorcycles attached bombs to the cars of two nuclear scientists as they were driving to work in Tehran Monday, killing one and wounding the other, state media and officials said.

Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said the man killed was involved in a major project at the country’s chief nuclear agency, though he did not give specifics.

Some Iranian media reported that the wounded scientist was a laser expert at Iran’s Defense Ministry and one of the country’s few top specialists in nuclear isotope separation.

UPDATE: looks like there’s a Stuxnet connection too! http://www.debka.com/article/20406/

Two South Korean marines were killed and 17 others injured, as well as three civilians, after North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells onto a Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow sea, 50 miles off the South’s northwest coast in an area close to a disputed sea border.

The attack, which comes days after it emerged that North Korea was pressing ahead with its illegal nuclear programme, marks a serious further escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

A presidential statement said the shelling “constitutes a clear armed provocation.”

“Furthermore, its reckless shelling of civilian targets is unpardonable.

Before taking off for Asia Saturday, Nov. 6, President Barack Obama ordered the Pentagon not just to beef up American and NATO military pressure on Iran but to do so as conspicuously as possible, debkafile’s Washington and military sources report .

At a special White House security consultation last week, Obama said it was time to plant America’s military option against the Iranian nuclear threat visibly and tangibly under the noses of Iran’s political and military decision-makers.

In the last few days, three aircraft carriers, four nuclear submarines and marine assault units have piled up opposite Iranian shores.

Early Sunday, the influential Senator Lindsey Graham (R. South Carolina), member of the Armed Services and Homeland Defense committees, said: “The US should consider sinking the Iranian navy, destroying its air force and delivering a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guards.”

In an address to the Halifax International Security forum, he declared “They should neuter the regime, destroy its ability to fight back and hope Iranians will take the chance to take back their government.”

A top-secret Iranian military installation was struck by a triple blast Tues. Oct. 12 the day before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon.

debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report the site held most of the Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers Iran had stocked for striking US forces in Iraq and Israel in the event of war – some set to deliver triple warheads (tri-conic nosecones).

The 18 soldiers officially reported killed in the blasts and 14 injured belonged to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) main missile arm, the Al-Hadid Brigades.

The Imam Ali Base where the explosion occurred is situated in lofty Zagros mountain country near the town of Khorramabad in the western Iranian province of Lorestan. This site was selected for an altitude which eases precise targeting and the difficulty of reaching it for air or ground attack.

It lies 400 kilometers from Baghdad and primary American bases in central Iraq and 1,250 kilometers from Tel Aviv and central Israel. Both are well within the Shehab-3 missile’s 1,800-2,500-kilometer operational range.

Our Iranian sources report that Tehran spent hundreds of millions to build one of the largest subterranean missile launching facilities of its kind in the Middle East or Europe. Burrowed under the Imam Ali Base is a whole network of wide tunnels deep underground. Somehow, a mysterious hand rigged three blasts in quick succession deep inside those tunnels, destroying a large number of launchers and causing enough damage to render the facility unfit for use.

Many veterans of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam brought home tales of heroism and valor and, unbeknownst to their loved ones, potentially explosive war souvenirs.

The police in Bangor, Me., received a call this month: a woman found a live hand grenade in a moving box, where it had probably sat for decades.

She believed that it belonged to her late husband, who served in the Vietnam War and probably brought it home as a keepsake.

A bomb squad was summoned to detonate it.

“These men are passing away because they’re in their 80s or 90s, and now, unfortunately, family members are unaware of the fact that they have war souvenirs,” said Sgt. Andrew Parsons of the New Hampshire State Police explosives unit.

“When they find Grandpa’s treasure chest and pull things out, lo and behold there’s a hand grenade at the bottom.”

Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

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Manning came to the attention of the FBI and Army investigators after he contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail. Lamo had just been the subject of a Wired.com article. Very quickly in his exchange with the ex-hacker, Manning claimed to be the Wikileaks video leaker.

Israeli forces seized a Gaza-bound aid vessel without meeting resistance on Saturday, preventing it from breaking an Israeli maritime blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory days after a similar effort turned bloody.

The military said its forces boarded the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie cargo ship from the sea, not helicopters. The takeover stood in marked contrast to a violent confrontation at sea earlier this week when Israeli commandos blocked a Turkish aid vessel trying to break the blockade.

At the time, Israeli commandos rappelled from helicopters and a clash with passengers left nine pro-Palestinian activists dead.

Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich says Saturday’s takeover took only a few minutes and that the vessel was being taken to Israel’s Ashdod port.

Unexploded Second World War bombs at an Austrian airfield threaten to shut down a May concert by metal rockers AC/DC.

The concert at Wels Airport on May 22nd has already faced another obstacle — complaints by environmentalists that it would disturb colonies of rare birds in the area.

Now, city officials have informed the metal band that the bombs pose a danger to the estimated 80,000 fans who have bought tickets to the sold-out concert.

Hermann Wimmer, the mayor of Wels, told Austrian TV this week that approval for the concert will not go ahead until experts in demining and bomb defusing evaluate the site.

The airport had been the target of heavy Allied bombing during the war.

Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC investigation finds.

Former rebel leaders told the BBC that they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money.

They used the cash to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time.

One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) – from Western governments and charities including Band Aid – was channelled into the rebel fight.

The CIA, in a 1985 assessment entitled Ethiopia: Political and Security Impact of the Drought, also alleged aid money was being misused.

Its report concluded: “Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing today on Paravant, a previously little-known subsidiary of Xe Services (aka Blackwater). It caps a six-month investigation by the committee, and it promises to be a doozy.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chair of the committee, met with reporters yesterday to give a sneak preview. According to a statement released last night by Levin, the investigation revealed “failures in U.S. government oversight” that allowed employees of Blackwater — sorry, Paravant (Levin said he saw “no meaningful distinction between the two”) — to go buck wild in Afghanistan.

Paravant employees were supposed to be helping train Afghan security forces. But according to the committee investigation, Paravant employees were also indulging in extracurricular activities like joyriding with automatic weapons, and treating an Afghan National Police arsenal like their own personal weapons stash.

The company first garnered headlines after two former Paravant contractors were arrested on murder charges in the shootings of two Afghans in a May 2009 traffic accident in Kabul. They were charged under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. According to the Senate investigation, Paravant employees were involved in a second, previously undisclosed shooting that happened in December 2008.

Paravant program manager Johnnie Walker told committee staff the incident happened after an employee decided to get on the back of a moving car with a loaded AK-47 and “ride it like a stagecoach.” The employee accidentally discharged the rifle when the vehicle hit a bump. The round struck another Paravant team member, who was seriously injured.

Hat tip to Larvae!

Last month, on the night of January 19, Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh arrived in Dubai, oddly without his bodyguards. He checked into the five-star Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel. He was allegedly on a weapons-buying trip.

A little after midnight that same night, eleven European tourists arrived at the Dubai airport carrying tennis rackets and various kinds of sporting equipment, apparently on vacation. Images of the group were captured on CCTV cameras at the airport.

The following afternoon, one of the eleven European tourists checked into the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel, specifically into room 237 located directly across the hall from where al-Mabhouh was staying in room 230. Throughout the day, all eleven Europeans roamed around the luxury hotel.

CCTV camera footage released by the Dubai police shows one of the tourists entering a bathroom. When he emerges, he’s wearing a false beard and a baseball cap. The group was not made up of tourists; rather, they were an assassination team on a mission to kill the commander from Hamas. One member of the hit squad, a female, roams around the hotel in a dark wig, a floppy hat, and sunglasses.

That evening, a little after 8:00 p.m., Mabhouh arrived back at the hotel and immediately went to his room. According to Dubai’s chief of police Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, forensic tests indicate that within the hour, Mabhouh was dead, having been suffocated to death. Two hours after the attack, the assassins left Dubai. They were in the country for only 19 hours.

Marine Lance Corporal Andrew Koenig is living proof Taliban snipers have been getting more accurate in Afghanistan.

World In a gunbattle this week, the 21-year-old from Casper, Wyoming, took a sniper’s bullet square in his forehead as he fought from the roof of a compound seized by U.S. Marines taking part in an offensive targeting the Taliban hotbed of Marjah.

Knocked back by the blow, he felt for blood from what he was sure was a head wound. Nothing.

“(It was) the craziest experience. I don’t think you could get any luckier than that. Total shock. The gear works, this proves it,” Koenig told Reuters, pointing to his dented helmet.

The bullet struck just above the rim of his helmet, dead center. Without the helmet, the shot was sure to have been fatal.

North and South Korea on Wednesday exchanged what appeared to be artillery fire near a disputed sea border with the South off the west coast of the peninsula, Yonhap news agency reported government officials as saying.

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said both sides were firing into the air and there were no casualties, according to Yonhap.

It has called a meeting of top national security officials.

The rare exchange of fire rattled markets, with Seoul’s main stock exchange extending losses and the won wiping out early gains against the dollar.

ISRAEL has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without their families’ permission.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, Jehuda Hiss.

The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians to harvest their organs.

Israel hotly denied the charge. Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 TV over the weekend.

In it, Hiss said: “We started to harvest corneas … Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family.”

The Channel 2 report said in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed the practice took place. “This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer,” the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems.

Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.

The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas. They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington’s growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

To set the scene, this comes from the October 8 war room meeting on Afghanistan, with McChrystal teleconferenced in from Kabul to explain what he’d been doing since receiving his orders in March. Smart power:

In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a PowerPoint slide: “Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population.”

“Is that really what you think your mission is?” one of the participants asked. In the first place, it was impossible — the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a major part of the population. “We don’t need to do that,” Gates said, according to one participant. “That’s an open-ended, forever commitment.”

But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan — the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff.

“I wouldn’t say there was quite a ‘whoa’ moment,” a senior defense official said of the reaction around the table. “It was just sort of a recognition that, ‘Duh, that’s what in effect the commander understands he’s been told to do.’ Everybody said, ‘He’s right.’”

“It was clear that Stan took a very literal interpretation of the intent” of the NSC document, said Jones, who had signed the orders himself. “I’m not sure that in his position I wouldn’t have done the same thing, as a military commander.” But what he created in his assessment “was obviously something much bigger, and more longer-lasting . . . than we had intended.”

They told him — in his official orders — to come up with a plan to eliminate the enemy and, dummy that he is, he thought that meant he was supposed to come up with a plan to eliminate the enemy. Then they told him he didn’t have to. Six months later.

Gordon Brown was snubbed by badly injured Afghan veterans when they closed curtains round their beds during a hospital visit and refused to speak to him.

 More than half the soldiers being treated at the Selly Oak hospital ward in Birmingham either asked for the curtains to be closed or deliberately avoided the prime minister, according to several of those present.

The soldiers, who have sustained some of the worst injuries seen in Afghanistan, described his visit as “opportunistic” and a “waste of time”.

Furious about equipment shortages and poor compensation for their injuries, one soldier said: “It is almost as if we are the product of an unwanted affair … he has done nothing for us.”

Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises.

The armed forces are said to have carried out “war games” in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country’s coast. Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops. Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the “potential aggressor”.

The documents state the exercises, code-named “West”, were officially classified as “defensive” but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature. The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a “Polish” beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Karol Karski, an MP from Poland’s Law and Justice, is to table parliamentary questions on Russia’s war games and has protested to the European Commission. His colleague, Marek Opiola MP, said: “It’s an attempt to put us in our place. Don’t forget all this happened on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.”

A suicide bomber killed six senior Revolutionary Guards commanders, including two of its top officers, and 25 other people on Sunday in one of the boldest attacks against Iran’s most powerful military institution.

The attack highlighted deepening instability in the Islamic Republic’s southeast bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, where many of Iran’s minority Sunnis live and which has seen a spate of deadly bombings and other violence in the last few years.

State media said a local rebel Sunni group called Jundollah (God’s soldiers) claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest on the elite Revolutionary Guards in recent years, which also wounded some 30 people at a meeting of tribal chiefs.

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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the perpetrators would be “seriously dealt with,” the official IRNA news agency said.

Kinda hard to seriously deal with a perp who’s been blown to bits, but that’s Ahmadinejad for you…

He had been squatting inside an unexploded mine which had remained undisturbed for the past 60 years. But the lobster nicknamed Lionel paid the ultimate price when Royal Navy divers failed to coax the stubborn crustacean out of his home – which tragically became his watery grave.

After the divers stumbled upon the 600lb mine off Swanage, Dorset, they took pictures of it and alerted Portland coastguard, who contacted the Royal Navy bomb disposal unit.

The experts inspected the device and found Lionel inside. He refused to be temped out of his make-shift house and delivered a nasty nip to the frogmen.

The bomb squad had no choice but to set charges to the mine with Lionel still inside and, after setting up a 1,000m cordon, blew it up. The huge explosion sent a 50ft plume of water shooting skywards and shook the nearby town of Swanage.

Lionel the lobster sadly did not survive.

Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal’s team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan

Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it.

In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion “premature.” Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “time is not on our side”; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public “to take a deep breath.”

In Kabul, some members of McChrystal’s staff said they don’t understand why Obama called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” but still hasn’t given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly. Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he’d stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy.

“Yes, he’ll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far,” a senior official in Kabul said. “He’ll hold his ground. He’s not going to bend to political pressure.”

The soldiers in his New York-based combat unit call Staff Sgt. Brandon Camacho the “Bullet Magnet.” Camacho – either the luckiest or unluckiest soldier in Afghanistan – is on his second tour here with the Fort Drum-based 10th Mountain Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

The reason for the nickname: He’s just earned his fifth Purple Heart after being shot in the left knee in a firefight 100 miles south of Kabul, military officials said.

“One of my friends said, ‘You’re the luckiest unlucky person I know,’” said Camacho, 24, who grew up in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands.  “I don’t know what to make of it.”

Purple Hearts are awarded to soldiers wounded or killed in combat. It is the oldest of U.S. military decorations and was established by Gen. George Washington with an order from his upstate Newburgh headquarters on Aug. 7, 1782.

It is possible to successfully fend off a zombie attack, according to Canadian mathematicians. The key is to “hit hard and hit often.”

Oh yes, somebody actually did a study on mathematics of a hypothetical zombie attack, and published it in a book on infectious disease. So, while we still don’t know what to do if a deadly asteroid takes aim at Earth, an unlikely but technically possible situation, we now know what to do in case of a zombie attack.

“An outbreak of zombies is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead,” the authors wrote. “It is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

The U.S. government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet.

The “feed over email” (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system.

The news feeds are sent through email accounts including those operated by Google Inc, Microsoft Corp’s Hotmail and Yahoo Inc.

“We have people testing it in China and Iran,” said Berman, whose agency runs Voice of America. He provided few details on the new system, which is in the early stages of testing. He said some secrecy was important to avoid detection by the two governments.

The Internet has become a powerful tool for citizens in countries where governments regularly censor news media, enabling them to learn about and react to major social and political events.

It could be a combination of 19th-century mechanics, 21st-century technology — and a 20th-century horror movie.

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that’s right, “EATR” — “can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable,” reads the company’s Web site.

That “biomass” and “other organically-based energy sources” wouldn’t necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they’d be plentiful in a war zone.

A report in a Russian military journal claims that half the planes Russia lost in its war with Georgia last year were shot down by friendly fire.The article, in the Moscow Defence Brief magazine, also claims that Russia lost a total of six military aircraft, two more than it is admitting to.

The report is highly critical of Russian forces during the brief war.
…

It says there was a total absence of co-operation between the Russian army and the Russian air force, which led them to conduct completely separate campaigns.

Russian forces easily overwhelmed Georgian troops during the brief war.

South Korean intelligence officials believe North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces committed cyber attacks that paralyzed major South Korean and U.S. government Web sites, aides to two lawmakers said Wednesday.

The sites of 11 South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency.

Agency spokeswoman Ahn Jeong-eun said 11 U.S. sites suffered similar problems. She said the agency is investigating the case with police and prosecutors. In the U.S., the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the July 4 holiday weekend and into this week, according to American officials inside and outside the government.

An inventory of deadly germs and toxins at an Army biodefense lab in Frederick found more than 9,200 vials of material that was unaccounted for in laboratory records, Fort Detrick officials said Wednesday.

The 13 percent overage mainly reflects stocks left behind in freezers by researchers who retired or left Fort Detrick since the biological warfare defense program was established there in 1943, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, deputy commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

He said the found material included Korean War-era serum samples from patients with Korean hemorrhagic fever, a disease still of interest to researchers pursuing a vaccine.

Other vials contained viruses and microbes responsible for Ebola, plague, anthrax, botulism and host of other ailments, Kortepeter said in a teleconference with reporters.

German soldiers are softies who lack discipline, hate responsibility and show an inadequate desire to serve their country, according to the army’s chief inspector.

General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn, the general inspector of the Bundeswehr, told the German parliament that depite their positive contribution in Afghanistan, complaints from troops about their conditions were an “embarrassment”.

“We have given a good account of ourselves in Afghanistan, but we cannot guarantee an all-round feel-good feeling for soldiers,” said the general, before going on to detail the less dignified side of the country’s armed forces.

He cited complaints reaching him about the quality of sleeping bags used in a deployment in the Congo. “Are our soldiers too soft?” asked the best-selling daily German newspaper Bild.

Gen Schneiderhahn told politicians in Berlin on Monday that the descendants of the country’s mighty military machines of the past needed to have “a better feeling for discipline and to show a greater readiness to serve the state”.

North Korea’s nuclear threats are grabbing the world’s attention. But if the North were to strike South Korea today, it would probably first try to savage Seoul with the men and missiles of its huge conventional army.

The attack might well begin with artillery and missiles capable of hitting South Korea’s capital with little or no warning.

North Korea’s vast cadre of commandos could try to infiltrate and cause chaos while the South tried to respond.

The hair-trigger nature of the danger is reflected in the pledge of preparedness that American ground forces stationed just below the North-South divide have lived by for decades: ”Fight tonight.”

If it came to war, destruction — civilian and military — would be heavy, even if the North held back whatever nuclear weapons it may have.

The consensus American view, generally shared by allies, is that the South would prevail but at enormous human cost, including a refugee crisis on the Korean peninsula.

The Church of Scientology in France went on trial today on charges of organised fraud.

Registered as a religion in the United States, with celebrity members such as actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta, Scientology enjoys no such legal protection in France and has faced repeated accusations of being a money-making cult.

The group’s Paris headquarters and bookshop are defendants in the case. If found guilty, they could be fined €5 million ($7 million) and ordered to halt their activities in France.

Seven leading French Scientology members are also in the dock. Some are charged with illegally practising as pharmacists and face up to 10 years in prison and hefty fines.

Taleban fighters have been using deadly white phosphorus munitions, some of them manufactured in Britain, to attack Western forces in Afghanistan, according to previously classified United States documents released yesterday.

White phosphorus, which can burn its victims down to the bone, has been found in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in regions across Afghanistan including in the south, where British troops are based. It has also been used in mortar and rocket attacks on American forces.

Last night the US military in Kabul condemned the use of white phosphorus by the insurgents as “reprehensible”. White phosphorus is banned as an offensive weapon under international rules of armed conflict.

Major Jennifer Willis, a spokeswoman for the US Army at Bagram, near Kabul, said that markings on some of the white phosphorus munitions that had been recovered showed that they had been manufactured in a number of different countries, including Britain, China, Russia and Iran.

The Bush Administration approved the use of “insects placed in a confinement box” during the interrogation of top Al Qaeda official Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2002 document that President Obama declassified for release Thursday.

The legal memorandum for the CIA, prepared by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, reviewed 10 enhanced techniques for interrogating Zubaydah, and determined that none of them constituted torture under U.S. criminal law. The techniques were: attention grasp, walling (hitting a detainee against a flexible wall), facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box, and waterboarding.(View pictures of life inside Guantanamo.)

The CIA desire to use insects during interrogations has not previously been disclosed, according to two civil liberties experts contacted by TIME.

The Bybee memorandum, which was written on August 1, 2002, described the CIA’s plans for using insects this way: “You [the CIA] would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us [the Department of Justice] that he appears to have a fear of insects. In particular, you would like to tell Zubaydah that you intend to place a stinging insect into the box with him. You would, however, place a harmless insect in the box. You have orally informed us that you would in fact place a harmless insect such as a catapiller in the box with him.”

Room 101 anyone?

The USA is developing a new nuclear doctrine. American experts believe that today’s system of U.S. nuclear forces is out of date. Now they are going to change nuclear targets on the territory of Russian federation. The U.S. is going to retarget their nuclear missiles from large Russian cities to 12 most important Russian economic facilities. According to the U.S. experts destruction of these facilities will paralyze Russia’s economy and Russia will not be able to maintain military resistance.

This information was provided in the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report calling for fundamental changes to U.S. nuclear war planning, a vital prerequisite if smaller nuclear arsenals are to be achieved.

“From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence – A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons” calls to abandon the almost five-decade-long central mission for U.S. nuclear forces, which has been and continues to be “counterforce,” the capability for U.S. forces to destroy an enemy’s military forces, its weapons, its command and control facilities and its key leaders.

The Finch Arboretum is being overrun by ground squirrels, and Spokane Parks and Recreation is bringing in some special artillery.

The agency is using a special machine called the Rodenator Pro to detonate some of the estimated 100 to 150 squirrels tearing up the grounds.

Shades of Carl Spackler, the gopher-hating groundskeeper from “Caddyshack.” The Rodenator Pro pumps propane and oxygen into the tunnels of squirrels, then sends an electric spark that causes an explosion. The shock waves kill the squirrels and collapse their tunnels – but in a humane way, the agency said.

Spokanimal, which is the local animal shelter and Humane Society chapter, was caught by surprise by Monday’s announcement. “You’re kidding,” Director Gail Mackie said when she learned the news. “That borders on cruelty.”

Military researchers have dressed live pigs in body armor and strapped them into Humvee simulators that were then blown up with explosives to study the link between roadside bomb blasts and brain injury.

For an 11-month period that ended in December, researchers subjected pigs and rats to about 200 blasts, according to Pentagon documents and interviews. The explosions have ranged in intensity, wounding some of the pigs and killing others. Roadside bombs are the top killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The research on pigs has determined that body armor does not worsen brain injury, said Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which conducted the study. The military feared body armor would deflect the force of blasts toward the head and increase the risk of brain injury.

Jeffrey Lockwood, professor of entomology at Wyoming University and author of Six-legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, said such Rift Valley Fever or other diseases could be transported into a country by a terrorist with a suitcase.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think a small terrorist cell could very easily develop an insect-based weapon.”

He said it would “probably be much easier” than developing a nuclear or chemical weapon, arguing: “The raw material is in the back yard.”

He continued: “It would be a relatively easy and simple process. “A few hundred dollars and a plane ticket and you could have a pretty good stab at it.”

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

A quickly growing jihadist group that used Facebook to spread its radical message has been shut down by the popular Web networking site after FOXNews.com alerted the company to the group’s activities. Facebook blocked the group, Fursan Ghazawat Alnusra — Arabic for “Knights in Support of the Invasion” — Thursday evening after the group swelled to about 120 members in just over one week. The group had been exhorting its members to wage “Jihad to aid the religion of Allah and his Prophet.”

THE Palestinian protesters massed at the fence expected tear gas and rubber bullets; what they got instead was a putrid yellow wind, Israel’s newest weapon against West Bank demonstrators.

The noxious mist, which Israeli police refer to as “skunk,” was used for the first time earlier this month, when a truck-mounted cannon sprayed it over the heads of protesters, sending them racing down the hillside, retching and tearing off their shirts to try to escape the stench.

Is the defendant’s dock at the International Criminal Court reserved for leaders of small and poor countries that defy the West? Not if Rwanda has its way. It wants to charge some of France’s most celebrated leaders of the 1990s as collaborators in genocide.

Last week the government of Rwanda issued a damning 500-page report documenting France’s participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This marks a remarkable turnaround in the deeply politicized world of human rights reporting. Usually, such reporting takes the form of governments or human rights groups based in the West condemning poor countries for having political or social systems that do not meet Western standards.

Now a wretched African country has turned the table.

All who study the Rwandan genocide, as I did while researching a book about that ill-fated country, come away stunned by what they learn about French support of mass murder. France was so eager to defend a client regime against English-speaking rebels that, as the new report asserts, it gave that regime “political, military, diplomatic and logistic support” and “directly assisted” its genocidal campaign.

The report names 33 present and former French politicians and military officers as conspirators, among them the late President François Mitterrand and other well-known figures like former foreign minister Alan Juppé and former prime minister Dominique de Villepin.

Hackers brought down the website for Russia’s state-sponsored news agency, RIA Novosti, today with a series of cyber attacks. This in the wake of three days of fighting between Russia and Georgia. “‘The DNS-servers and the site itself have been coming under severe attack,’ said Maxim Kuznetsov, head of the RIA Novosti IT department.” It’s hard to imagine why in the world anyone would want to cripple good ol’ RIA Novosti’s news-spreading capabilities.

Parts of Russia’s 58th Army — including 150 tanks and armored vehicles — reportedly were moving Friday on the capital of South Ossetia after Georgian troops entered the city in an attempt to crush separatist forces seeking to control the breakaway province.

Kakha Lamaia, a member of Georgia’s National Security Council, told Reuters the two countries are “very close” to war, if not already at war.

“If it’s not war, then we are very close to it,” Lamaia said. “The Russians have invaded Georgia and we are under attack.”

British forces were accused of staying on the sidelines during a battle in Iraq because of a “secret deal” between the UK and an Iranian-backed militia, it was reported today.

However the deal may have been a victory for Britain as news came today that Iraqi militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr has reportedly agreed to disarm his Shia milita.

Al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army has been the main militant group opposing American and British forces in Iraq, in Baghdad in particular. Its Shi’ite affiliation also led it to stir sectarian tensions in Iraq, giving rise to real fears of the country descending into civil war as Western forces pull out.

Last summer an “accommodation” was made between British intelligence and elements of the Mehdi Army.

Under the deal’s terms, no British soldier could enter Basra without the permission of Defence Secretary Des Browne.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres making him one of the world’s top war crimes fugitives, was arrested on Monday evening in a sweep by Serbian security forces, the country’s president and the U.N. tribunal said.

Karadzic is suspected of masterminding mass killings that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as “scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.” They include the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst slaughter since World War II.

While the mass media continues to feature wars and terrorism, the overall trend continues away from such unpleasantness. Such stories are anathema to the mass media, because they do not attract eyeballs, and revenue. That’s the way people are, and the result is a distorted view of trends in global violence.

Worldwide, violence continues to decline, as it has for the last few years. Violence has also greatly diminished, or disappeared completely, in places like Iraq, Nepal, Chechnya, Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. Even Afghanistan, touted as the new war zone, is seeing less violence this year than last.

All this continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere. The current wars are basically uprisings against police states or feudal societies, which are seen as out-of-step with the modern world. Many are led by radicals preaching failed dogmas (Islamic conservatism, Maoism), that still resonate among people who don’t know about the dismal track records of these movements.

Taliban militants have burned down four ice cream parlours in a province bordering the capital Kabul, a security guard said.

The militants, who attacked the parlours in the Kulanger district of Logar on Monday, also set fire to DVDs, CDs and televisions used to entertain ice-cream buyers while they eat.

Security guard Mohammad Alem said: “At about 1am 10 masked Talibs came into the market and asked me to show them where the ice-cream shops were. I was scared so I showed them.”

The masked men broke down the parlour doors, took out the televisions and set fire to them behind the shop.

Zimbabwe’s army has threatened to evict the country’s remaining white farmers if a single vote is cast for Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, in polling stations on their land.

The final round of the presidential election will take place on June 27 and Robert Mugabe’s regime is trying to guarantee his victory with a violent crackdown on opponents.

At least 42 people have been murdered and thousands assaulted since Mr Tsvangirai defeated Mr Mugabe in the first round on March 29, although he fell short of the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a run-off.

Five landowners from two different districts were called to a meeting last week by a lieutenant colonel in the army, whose name is known to The Daily Telegraph. He was accompanied by three senior officials from Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.

It has been a long, troubled journey for the brittle bones and skull of Obergefreiter Horst F, from the dusty frontline ditch where he was killed in 1945, via a Czech lavatory fittings factory to a military warehouse. Soon, though, he and more than 4,000 German soldiers will be laid to rest: Europe’s forgotten warriors, the corpses that no one wants to bury.

If the the luck of the German lance corporal holds, he will have not only a priest but also a civil servant at his graveside; and if the German War Graves Commission can trace the family in time, there may even be a distant relative. But one thing is for sure: it will not be the funeral of a war hero. More likely, the president of the war graves commission, Reinhard Fuehrer, will say similar words to those he used a few years back when he buried a thousand German Wehrmacht corpses in Krasnodar, southern Russia: “We are here today to represent the German people that has learnt its lesson from history and is now looking to the future.”

A new book which suggests that the German occupation of France encouraged the sexual liberation of women has shocked a country still struggling to come to terms with its troubled history of collaboration with the Nazis.

Like a recent photographic exhibition showing Parisians enjoying themselves under the occupation, the book’s depiction of life in Paris as one big party is at odds with the collective memory of hunger, resistance and fear.

“It is a taboo subject, a story nobody wants to hear,” said Patrick Buisson, author of “1940-1945 Années Erotiques” (”erotic years”). “It may hurt our national pride, but the reality is that people adapted to occupation.”

Mexico’s northern border town of Juarez, infamous for its history of drug-related violence, has gone into lockdown after an e-mail began circulating warning of an unparalleled “bloodbath” in the coming days.

Shops, bars and restaurants have shut and soldiers are patrolling the streets, giving a surreal and dangerous tone to this city of 1.4 million people which sits just across the US border from the Texan town of El Paso.

Authorities are taking seriously the anonymous e-mail, which menaced “the bloodiest and most violent weekend in the history of Juarez.”

The place is already reeling from a surge in murders that has claimed around 400 lives so far this year, several of them police officers and members of rival narcotics gangs.

The US embassy to Mexico has told US citizens that the message represented a “potential threat” and that public places, nightspots and the main streets in Juarez should all be avoided.

In Juarez, nerves frayed by the rising body count — including at least 20 people killed over the past weekend, among them two policemen gunned down as they finished their shift — have begun to shred in terror because of the much-forwarded e-mail, even though its veracity was unknown.

The Mexican Navy searched for sharks in the ocean near Pacific surfing beaches on Monday, after two bathers were killed and another maimed in a rare spate of shark attacks.

Three boats and a helicopter patrolled the sea while Navy and rescue officials scanned the horizon with binoculars from popular beaches around the southwestern Mexican resort of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. They warned surfers not to go far out.

“We’ve been monitoring the beaches; we’ve done reconnaissance flights,” Rear Adm. Arturo Bernal said, adding that no big shark had been detected yet in the area.

Defense analysts for the British intelligence service MI6 believe China is preparing for the “eventuality of a nuclear war.” The conclusion follows evidence that Beijing has built secretly a major naval base deep inside caverns which even sophisticated satellites cannot penetrate, says a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

In an unusual development, the analysts have provided details to the specialist defense periodical, Jane’s Intelligence Review, which published satellite images of the base location which is hidden beneath millions of tons of rock on the South China Sea island of Hainan.

The MI6 analysts have confirmed the submarine base hewn out of the rock will contain up to 20 of the latest C94 Jin-Class submarines, each capable of firing anti-satellite missiles and nuclear tipped rockets.

Knocking out the satellites would leave Taiwan, Japan and other countries around the Pacific Rim effectively without a key warning system. An attack also would disrupt vital communications between U.S. battle squadrons in the region and Washington.

It may have seemed like just another improbable scene from a Hollywood sci-fi flick – Tom Cruise battling against an army of robotic spiders intent on hunting him down.

But the storyline from Minority Report may not be quite as far fetched as it sounds.

British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives.

Prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year, scuttling into potential danger areas such as booby-trapped buildings or enemy hideouts to relay images back to troops safely positioned nearby.

Soldiers will carry the robots into combat and use a small tracked vehicle to transport them closer to their targets.

North Korean military engineers are completing an underground runway beneath a mountain that can protect fighter aircraft from attack until they take off at high speed through the mouth of a tunnel.

The 6,000ft runway is a few minutes’ flying time from the tense front line where the Korean People’s Army faces soldiers from the United States and South Korea.

The project was identified by an air force defector from North Korea and captured on a satellite image by Google Earth, according to reports in the South Korean press last week.

It is one of three underground fighter bases among an elaborate subterranean military infrastructure built to withstand a “shock and awe” assault in the first moments of a war, the defector said.

The runway, reminiscent of the Thunderbirds television series, highlights the strange and secretive nature of the regime that provided the expertise for a partially built nuclear reactor in Syria, film of which was released by the CIA last week.

A Royal Marine who threw himself onto an exploding grenade to save the lives of his patrol has been put forward for the UK’s highest military honour.

Lance Corporal Matt Croucher, 24, a reservist from Birmingham, survived because his rucksack and body armour took the force of the blast.

He was part of a reconnaissance troop in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in February, when the incident happened.

The Ministry of Defence said he could be considered for the Victoria Cross.

Violence in Tibet spilled over into neighboring provinces Sunday where Tibetan protesters defied a Chinese government crackdown. The Dalai Lama warned Tibet faced “cultural genocide” and appealed to the world for help.

Protests against Chinese rule of Tibet were reported in neighboring Sichuan and Qinghai provinces and also in western Gansu province. All are home to sizable Tibetan populations.

The demonstrations come after protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa escalated into violence Friday, with Buddhist monks and others torching police cars and shops in the fiercest challenge to Beijing’s rule over the region in nearly two decades.

Grim tales of cannibalism highlighting the brutality of West Africa’s civil wars emerged in testimony Thursday at the war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.

Joseph “Zigzag” Marzah, who described himself as Taylor’s chief of operations and head of the death squad before Taylor became president, said African peacekeepers and even United Nations personnel were killed and eaten on the battlefield by Taylor’s militiamen.

Prosecutors described Marzah as a key witness with inside knowledge of the former Liberian president’s operations in Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone, where he is accused of responsibility for the widespread murder, rape and amputations committed by soldiers loyal to him.

Taylor, 59, has pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is accused of orchestrating violence in Sierra Leone’s civil war, which ended in 2002, and trading in illegally mined diamonds to finance the conflict.

Colombia’s precision air strike 10 days ago, on a guerrilla camp across the border in Ecuador, killed rebel leader Raúl Reyes. That was big. But the capture of his computer may turn out to be a far more important development in Colombia’s struggle to preserve its democracy.

Reyes was the No. 2 leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been at war with the Colombian government for more than four decades. His violent demise is a fitting end to a life devoted to masterminding atrocities against civilians. But the computer records expose new details of the terrorist strategy to bring down the government of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, including a far greater degree of collaboration between the FARC and four Latin heads of government than had been previously known. In addition to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, they are President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega and Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Mr. Chávez is said to have been visibly distressed when told of the death of Reyes, a man he clearly admired. He also may have realized that he played a role in his hero’s death, since it was later reported that the Colombian military had located the camp by intercepting a phone call to Reyes from the Venezuelan president.

Eight House Democrats were mailed a letter and photo of a Times Square recruiting station in Manhattan before it was bombed this morning, according to House insiders.

The letter did not contain any specific threats against the lawmakers or the site, but the U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI are now investigating the matter.

It was unclear which lawmakers received the letters or when, but House aides confirmed they were all Democrats.

Desperate for a glimpse into Adolf Hitler’s unpredictable mind, British spies hired an astrologer during World War II to write horoscopes for him and other Nazi leaders, documents declassified Tuesday show. They soon regretted it.

The file released to Britain’s National Archives catalogs the frustrations of MI5 handlers as they tried to prevent the astrologer, Louis de Wohl, from publicly embarrassing high-ranking intelligence and military officers.

“I have never liked Louis de Wohl — he strikes me as a charlatan and an imposter,” reads the first line in the astrologer’s file. The letter is typical and appeared to be signed by Dick White, who went on to become the head of Britain’s domestic spy agency, MI5, in the 1950s.

That view didn’t keep de Wohl from winning a temporary rank as a British army captain. He was sent by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who did not believe in astrology, to the U.S. to persuade Americans that the Nazis would lose within months if they entered the war.

While every combat death is a tragedy, the war in Afghanistan has been notable for how few of them there have been. We’ll use a standard measure of combat losses, the number of troops in a combat division (12-20,000 troops) who are killed each day the division is in combat. Since late 2001, there have been .12 American combat deaths per division day in Afghanistan. During the Vietnam war, the average division lost 3.2 troops a day, which was similar to the losses suffered in Korea (1950-53). In Iraq, the losses have been .44 deaths per division per day. By comparison, during World War II the daily losses per American averaged (over 400-500 combat days) about twenty soldiers per day. On the Russian front, German and Russian divisions lost several times that, and often over a hundred a day for weeks on end.

Hopes for a peaceful conclusion to the declaration of Kosovo’s independence were fading as the European Union announced it had withdrawn its staff from the north of the fledgling country in the face of increasingly angry Serb protests.

The civilian staff were meant to be preparing for the EU to take over responsibility for security in Kosovo from the United Nations.

The announcement of the withdrawal came as the United States – which backed Kosovo’s drive for independence – began to evacuate its American staff and their families from Serbia, offering US citizens the chance to join a convoy of 40 cars leaving Belgrade for Croatia.

“We are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here,” said US ambassador Cameron Munter. On Thursday protesters stormed and burned the US embassy in Belgrade. A week after tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the Kosovan capital Pristina to celebrate the country’s unilateral declaration of independence, Kosovo is already effectively partitioned.

Kosovo Serbs have set fire to two border crossings to protest against Kosovo’s declaration of independence.

The attacks took place at the northern Jarinje and Banja crossings, manned by United Nations and Kosovo police.

In response, Nato-led peacekeepers were deployed at the crossings. There have been no reports of any injuries so far.

This is the most serious incident since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, the BBC’s Nick Thorpe in Kosovo says.

Belgrade has said Kosovo’s declaration violates international law.

Enjoy the bloody mess! Hat tip to the USA (especially Condi Rice) and the EU…

Kosovo Declares Independence From Serbia

Kosovo’s parliament declared the disputed territory a nation on Sunday, mounting a historic bid to become an “independent and democratic state” backed by the U.S. and European allies but bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia.

Fireworks lit up the night sky over Kosovo’s capital Pristina, where thousands of giddy ethnic Albanians braved subfreezing temperatures to ride on the roofs of their cars, singing patriotic songs and chanting: “KLA! KLA!” the acronym for the now-disbanded rebel Kosovo Liberation Army.

“Kosovo is a republic _ an independent, democratic and sovereign state,” Kosovo’s parliament speaker Jakup Krasniqi said as the chamber burst into applause.

Serbia immediately denounced the declaration as illegal, and Russia also rejected it, demanding an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.

President Bush said the U.S. would work to prevent violence after the declaration and the European Union appealed for calm, mindful of the risk that the declaration could plunge the turbulent Balkans back into instability.

Hours after the declaration, an explosion apparently caused by a hand-grenade rocked a U.N. courthouse in the Serb-controlled north of Kosovo, but no one was injured.

Update @ 16:45 – More here: Protestors riot at US embassy and here: Troops on standby for Kosovo duty

Update @ 18:45 – War fears as Kosovo declares ‘freedom’

Like any soldier, he loved to relax with a cigarette and a bottle of beer when out of the firing line.

But in the heat of battle, he became an inspiring figure – bravely passing ammunition along to supply the guns.

All the men in the Second Polish Transport Company agreed that the recruit they called Voytek was the perfect comrade.

As for Voytek, he was just happy to be part of the unit… ever ready to lend a helping paw.

The 250lb brown bear, standing more than 6ft tall, was possibly the most remarkable combatant of the Second World War, seeing action amid the hell of Monte Cassino in Italy.

After the war, he and his fellow troops were billeted in Scotland and he lived out his days in Edinburgh Zoo, dying in 1963.

Aliens could misinterpret earth’s classic songs as declarations of war if they are recklessly broadcast into space, some scientists say.

Last week NASA broadcast a Beatles song, Across the Universe, towards the North Star, in the hope it would be noticed by extra-terrestrial beings.

But scientists have urged NASA to be more cautious, saying aliens could misinterpret the song, and even take it as a battle cry.

“Before sending out even symbolic messages, we need an open discussion about the potential risks,” New Scientist magazine reported Dr Douglas Vakoch of the SETI Institute as saying.

A German administrative court has upheld a lower court ruling allowing the country’s intelligence services to monitor activities of the Church of Scientology.

The North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Administrative Court in Muenster says there is sufficient information to permit intelligence agencies to keep the organization under observation.

The court ruled there are concrete indications that the church and its members maintain ambitions against Germany’s democratic order.

The court said, however, that it specifically left open whether Scientology is considered a religious organization,” saying that the issue had no bearing on the ruling.

The government has information suggesting that Hashim Thaci will declare Kosovo independence on February 17.

In talks with EU High Representative Javier Solana’s adviser Stefan Lene, Kosovo Minister Slobodan Samardžić said that the EU could not expect Serbia to sign off Kosovo’s independence, right before a unilateral declaration of Kosovo independence, said the Kosovo Ministry.

At this moment in time, by signing any sort of agreement with the EU, Serbia would be giving its consent and justification to creating a fake state on its territory, Samardžić reiterated, adding that Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica “will not sign such an act.”

The EU is attempting to get Serbia to sign any sort of agreement before February 17, since, by doing so, Serbia’s signature would be a signature for Kosovo independence, said the minister, adding that such a signature would justify the loss of 15 percent of its territory, and a violent breach of the UN Charter and Resolution 1244.

Authorities Thursday were trying to determine who sent envelopes containing apparently harmless powder to Church of Scientology locations, prompting street closings and evacuations.

Envelopes containing the mysterious white powder were mailed to at least 19 church addresses in Los Angeles and Orange counties, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

The letters began showing up Wednesday. Glendale police shut down a street for two hours and Tustin authorities evacuated 60 people from buildings as hazardous materials teams were called in.

Initial tests indicated the powder was harmless but more tests were being conducted, Eimiller said.

An anonymous group of hackers, fittingly known as “Anonymous,” has declared war on the Church of Scientology.

In a video posted on YouTube on Monday, the group appears to be upset over the way the church tried to eliminate a video of Tom Cruise from the Internet.

“We shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the church of scientology in its present form,” says the video’s narrator. “We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the “imminent” spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists.

Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a “first strike” nuclear option remains an “indispensable instrument” since there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”.

One of Liberia’s most notorious rebel commanders, known as Gen. Butt Naked, has returned to the nation his troops terrorized to confess, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.

Joshua Milton Blahyi, who now lives in Ghana, returned this week to face his homeland’s truth and reconciliation commission, this time wearing a suit and tie. His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon’s practice of charging naked into battle, a technique meant to terrify the enemy.

Other warlords, though, have refused to ask forgiveness, dismissing a commission many in Liberia see as toothless. Blahyi is urging other former killers to come forward as the country founded by freed American slaves in 1847 struggles to recover from past horrors.

A computer nerd from Shepherd’s Bush, West London, became al Qaeda’s top internet agent, it can be revealed today.

Younes Tsouli, 23, an IT student at a London college, used his top-floor flat in W12 to help Islamist extremists wage a propaganda war against the West.

Under the name Irhabi 007 — combining the James Bond reference with the Arabic for terrorist — he worked with al Qaeda leaders in Iraq and came up with a way to convert often gruesome videos into a form that could be put onto the Web.

Videos he posted included messages from Osama bin Laden and images of the kidnapping and murder of hostages in Iraq such as American Nick Berg.

His capture led to the arrest of several Islamic terrorists around the world, including 17 men in Canada and two in the US.

The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”

Since the Jan. 6 incident was announced to the public a day later, the U.S. Navy has said it’s unclear where the voice came from. In the videotape released by the Pentagon on Jan. 8, the screen goes black at the very end and the voice can be heard, distancing it from the scenes on the water.

“We don’t know for sure where they came from,” said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for 5th Fleet in Bahrain. “It could have been a shore station.”

While the threat — “I am coming to you. You will explode in a few minutes” — was picked up during the incident, further jacking up the tension, there’s no proof yet of its origin. And several Navy officials have said it’s difficult to figure out who’s talking.

This came from a longtime reader in Afghanistan. I waited for permission to publish:

Well, yesterday I celebrated my first Christmas away from the states. I’m at a little outpost in Afghanistan training Afghan soldiers where I have the distinction currently of being the lone American (everyone else is either recently reassigned or on leave). Aside from the Afghans the place is mostly French Canadian, with a bomb-sniffing K-9 guy hailing from Tanzania. The French Canadians celebrate Christmas very differently (i.e. wrong) than we do. They stay up late to count down until midnight and then celebrate. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that they’d gotten it confused with New Year’s. I imagine in a few days we’ll celebrate New Year’s Morning. One of the unit’s few long-suffering Anglophones told me that it was a first for him too.

The Japanese Minister of Defense is calling for efforts to work out the military and legal issues that would result if Japanese were attacked by extraterrestrials. Two members of the Japanese cabinet have expressed personal beliefs in the existence of  extraterrestrials out there, somewhere. Because of Japans 1947 constitution, there are restrictions on what actions the military can take. Basically, the Japanese military is, technically, a purely defensive force. But an extraterrestrial invasion might play out in ways that would find the Japanese military prevented, by lawyers, from moving against an extraterrestrial menace.

The heads of enemy soldiers impaled on roadside trees. Hundreds of prisoners tortured, killed and dumped in mass graves. Napalm dropped on jungles where guerrillas sheltered, and grass-hut villages torched with cigarette lighters.

These gruesome acts were carried out in Portugal’s name two generations ago during its colonial wars in Africa. But for most Portuguese, the events aren’t history — they’re news.

A groundbreaking series aired by public broadcaster Radiotelevisao Portuguesa is confronting Portugal with unsettling aspects of its recent history that for decades have been shrouded in silence. The series has become a top-rated prime-time program and the most-watched documentary in years, regularly drawing more than a million viewers in a country of 10.6 million.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

The men emerged from behind the shop’s metal grille clutching black plastic bags, or with pockets bulging, eyes peeled for the enforcers of Islamic law.

They hurried with their precious, clanking cargo to waiting cars or quickly flagged down taxis. It may be furtive but, for the first time in years, alcohol is being sold openly again on the streets of Baghdad.

With security slowly improving in the city centre Iraqis are returning to a long-forgotten pastime — drinking. In the days when the Mahdi Army, the deadly guardians of Muslim morality, roamed central Baghdad at will, many alcohol vendors had their shops blown up and their colleagues kidnapped and murdered.

A US F-16 fighter used an air-to-air missile to destroy a sounding rocket in its boost phase for the first time this week in a test of a new missile defense concept, US spokesmen said Tuesday.

The system — named the Net-Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCDE) — breaks new ground in that it would arm fighter aircraft or drones with missiles fast enough to intercept a ballistic missile as it lifts into space.

The aircraft would have to get to within a 100 miles of the launch site to catch the ascending missile in the first two to three minutes after launch.

But it could be very useful in a short range combat situation against short and medium range missiles, said Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the US Missile Defense Agency.

Unmanned aircraft are showing up in the skies more often and today the US Army awarded $14.4 million to Carnegie Mellon to build a remote-controlled unmanned tank.

A certain amount of the award will go toward significantly improving the Crusher, a 6.5-ton unmanned support vehicle Carnegie engineers developed in 2006 in conjunction with DARPA. Since its introduction, the Crusher has demonstrated unparalleled toughness and mobility during extensive field trials in extremely rugged terrain, according to Carnegie Mellon.

The next generation Autonomous Platform Demonstrator (APD) ill make use of the latest suspension, vehicle frame, and hybrid-electric drive technologies to improve upon its predecessor’s performance. Enhanced mobility capabilities will push the envelope for autonomous and semi-autonomous operation, the engineers said. The engineers will develop a comprehensive control architecture that makes use of hardware and software components as well.

The Royal Navy can no longer fight a major war because of years of under­funding and cutbacks, a leaked Whitehall report has revealed.

With an “under-resourced” fleet composed of “ageing and operationally defective ships”, the Navy would struggle even to repeat its role in the Iraq war and is now “far more vulnerable to unexpected shocks”, the top-level Ministry of Defence document says.

The report was ordered by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, who had intended to use it to “counter criticism” on the state of the Navy in the media and from opposition parties.

But in a damning conclusion, the report states: “The current material state of the fleet is not good; the Royal Navy would be challenged to mount a medium-scale operation in accordance with current policy against a technologically capable adversary.” A medium-scale operation is similar to the naval involvement in the Iraq War.

American commanders in Iraq are urging Pentagon chiefs to authorise the deployment of newly-developed heat wave guns to disperse angry crowds or violent rioters.

But the plea for what senior army officers believe could prove a valuable alternative to traditional firepower in dangerous trouble-spots has so far gone unanswered.

Washington fears a barrage of adverse publicity in the suspicious Muslim world and is concerned that critics will claim the invisible beam weapons were being used for torture

A federal agency that disburses billions of dollars in humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and pro-democracy programs every year, has inadvertently funneled American taxpayer funds to individuals and entities with “terrorist affiliations” and lacks the safeguards to prevent such incidents from recurring, an internal audit has revealed.

In a report entitled “Audit of the Adequacy of USAID’s Antiterrorism Vetting Procedures,” dated November 6 and obtained by Fox News, U.S. Agency for International Development Inspector General Donald A. Gambatesa concluded USAID’s “policies, procedures, and controls are not adequate to reasonably ensure against providing assistance to terrorists.”

Finally, there are some definitive answers to the mystery of the missing WMD. Civilian volunteers, mostly retired intelligence officers belonging to the non-partisan IntelligenceSummit.org, have been poring over the secret archives captured from Saddam Hussein. The inescapable conclusion is this: Saddam really did have WMD after all, but not in the way the Bush administration believed. A 9,000 word research paper with citations to each captured document has been posted online at LoftusReport.com, along with translations of the captured Iraqi documents, courtesy of Mr. Ryan Mauro and his friends.

This Iraqi document research has been supplemented with satellite photographs and dozens of interviews, among them David Gaubatz who risked radiation exposure to locate Saddam’s underwater WMD warehouses , and John Shaw, whose brilliant detective work solved the puzzle of where the WMD went. Both have contributed substantially to solving one of the most difficult mysteries of our decade.

The absolutists on either side of the WMD debate will be more than a bit chagrinned at these disclosures. The documents show a much more complex history than previously suspected. The “Bush lied, people died” chorus has insisted that Saddam had no WMD whatsoever after 1991 – and thus that WMD was no good reason for the war. The Neocon diehards insist that, as in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the treasure-trove is still out there somewhere, buried under the sand dunes of Iraq. Each side is more than a little bit wrong about Saddam’s WMD, and each side is only a little bit right about what happened to it.

Thieving monkeys ‘out of control’ in northeast India

Troupes of monkeys are out of control in India’s northeast, stealing mobile phones and breaking into homes to steal soft drinks from refrigerators, lawmakers in the region have complained.

“Monkeys are wreaking havoc in my constituency by taking away mobile phones, toothpastes, sipping coke after opening the refrigerators,” Hiren Das told Assam state’s assembly.

He said the primates were “even slapping women who try to chase them”.

“It is a cause of serious concern in my area, with more than 1,000 such simians turning aggressive by the day,” fumed Goneswar Das, another legislator representing Raha in eastern Assam.

There is a cottage industry forming to thwart the twin threats of unexploded bombs and intentionally placed IEDs—by convincing the Pentagon to use long-range lasers in the warzone. Boeing, always at the forefront of a lucrative market niche, has mounted a solid-state direct-energy beam that can explode bombs in the clear before they can take out a convoy. And if the proving-ground footage we’ve been checking out is any indication, this zapper is definitely showing potential.

Late last month, Boeing conducted a series of tests at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama with a 1-kw laser mounted on the back of a converted anti-aircraft Humvee. Shooting an invisible beam just a few centimeters in diameter and 20 times hotter than an electric stovetop, the laser burned a hole through the casing of artillery and mortar rounds, detonating them more or less instantly. (As for bystanders, all bets are off.)

Sunday, the Porter responded to a distress call from a merchant vessel carrying benzene. The warship fired on and sank two skiffs used by pirates to hijack the vessel in international water.

An official said that when the Porter fired on the skiffs tied up to the merchant vessel, it was not known that the ship was filled with highly flammable benzene.

At the request of Somalia’s government, a second U.S. ship, the Norfolk-based guided missile destroyer USS Arleigh Burke, is now shadowing the merchant ship inside Somali waters.

We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it. Nice job again guys — now, pull the damn trigger.

Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden.

You cannot make this crap up; truth is always stranger and more telling than fiction. Our government, the current administration and yes, our military leaders included, failed to kill bin Laden for no other reason than incompetence.

The most powerful Internet weapon on the planet is apparently dying the death of a thousand cuts. The weapon in question is the Storm botnet. This was the largest botnet ever seen, and it appeared to be acting like something out of a science fiction story. Last Summer, the Storm network was believed capable to shutting down any military or commercial site on the planet. Or, Storm could cripple hundreds of related sites temporarily. Worse, Storm could have done some major damage in ways that have not yet been experienced.

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14 on Danger Room

The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have,” he said. “It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers.”

Researchers in England have developed their own flying saucer — and it might be going to work for the U.S. and British militaries.

GFS Projects’ unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can soar high in the air, hover, bank and fly over any terrain, making it ideal for military surveillance.

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed.

The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.”

Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has failed, said he fled when he was ordered to take part in a massacre of holy men. He has now reached the border with Thailand.

IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.

At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in flames.

Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.

Advanced Russian Air Defense Missile Cannot Protect Syrian and Iranian Skies

Western intelligence circles stress that information on Russian missile consignments to Syria or Iran is vital to any US calculation of whether to attack Iran over its nuclear program. They assume that the “absolute jamming immunity” which the Russian manufactures promised for the improved Pantsyr missiles was immobilized by superior electronic capabilities exercised by the jets before they were “forced to leave.”

Syria took delivery in mid-August of 10 batteries of sophisticated Russian Pantsyr-S1E Air Defense Missile fire control systems with advanced radar, those sources report. They have just been installed in Syria.

Understanding that the Pantsyr-S1E had failed in its mission to bring down trespassing aircraft, Moscow hastened Thursday, Sept 6, to officially deny selling these systems to Syria or Iran and called on Israel to respect international law. This was diplomatic-speak for a warning against attacking the Russian-made missiles batteries stations where Russian instructors are working alongside Syrian teams.

Western intelligence circles maintain that it is vital for the US and Israel to establish the location and gauge the effectiveness of Pantsyr-S1E air defenses in Syrian and Iranian hands, as well as discovering how many each received.

A US official has confirmed that Israeli warplanes carried out an air strike “deep inside” Syria, escalating tensions between the two countries.

The target of the strike last Thursday remained unclear but Israeli media reported that a shipment of Iranian arms crossing Syria for use by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon was attacked.

Syria first reported the incident on the day, saying its air defences had engaged five Israeli planes, but did not say what their target was. Israel remained uncharacteristically silent, pointedly refusing to deny that its warplanes were involved in an operation. The closest it came to acknowledging the affair happened was when it made an undertaking to Turkey to investigate how an Israeli long-range fuel tank was dropped on Turkish territory near the Syrian border.

Bulgaria’s southern Turkey is speckled with German army tanks that remain pointed at the fellow NATO member. After decades of service — from World War II to the Cold War — their days are finally numbered.

Taking a closer second look, a visitor to the village of Fakiya in southeastern Bulgaria can just make out a rusting cannon some 10 meters (33 feet) off the side of a narrow road.

It belongs to a tank built in 1943 for Nazi Germany, with which Bulgaria was allied during World War II. Inside, the tank is filled with spider webs and rust. The serial number, stamp of the imperial eagle and a Nazi swastika are still easily recognizable.

Not far away, atop a small hillock, there’s a second armored vehicle. Beneath some oak trees and overgrown with weeds, the tank perched on the edge of an abandoned vineyard has virtually merged into its natural surroundings.

There are still around 40 World War II tanks in the region next to the Turkish border, particularly in the towns of Sharkovo and Voden. The barrels are aimed at Turkey, only a few kilometers to the south.

Zimbabwe`s economy is sliding toward anarchy and could fall prey to warlords and violent tribal tensions by year`s end, it was reported Sunday.

Western diplomats fear Zimbabwe`s business, agriculture and financial industries will fail, triggering a collapse of the authoritarian government of President Robert Mugabe, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

Britain is reviewing plans to evacuate more than 20,000 British citizens should the government show imminent signs of falling apart, the British newspaper reported.

Police closed streets near London’s Canary Wharf financial district on Saturday after an unexploded German flying bomb from World War Two was found on a construction site.

Bomb disposal experts were called in to make the V1 missile safe after it was unearthed close to the east London complex that houses 80,000 office workers during the working week, police said. At weekends the area is busy with shoppers and visitors.

US arms and aerospace manufacturer Boeing announced on Friday that it had landed a contract to develop truck-mounted laser cannons for the US Army.

As part of the Army’s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) project, Boeing will produce a “rugged beam control system”, which will be mounted on a monstrous 20 tonne Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck.

The HEL TD is intended to shoot down incoming enemy artillery shells, rockets, or mortar bombs. Laser systems which can actually blast stuff, as opposed to merely lighting targets up for other weapons to hit, are big and bulky items – hence the big carrying vehicle (though the HEL TD is a mere peashooter compared to Boeing’s other famous blaster-cannon programme, the jumbo-jet mounted Airborne Laser).

AN international legal tussle has broken out over the fate of deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega as he prepares for his release from a Florida prison.

Authorities in France, backed by the US Justice Department, are demanding that the inmate, known as Pineapple Face because of his pockmarked features, be extradited to Paris, where he allegedly bought three flats using illegal drug money.

However, the Government in Panama wants him returned to his homeland to face punishment for the torture and murder in 1985 of a dissident leader whose severed head was discovered in a mailbag.

Noriega, meanwhile, is also fighting to go home, hopeful thatsympathetic elements in the Panamanian leadership will allow him to live out his old age with his family as a free man.

THE Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a scary rumour – giant badgers are stalking the streets by night, eating humans.

The animals were allegedly released into the area by British forces.

Local farmers have caught and killed several of the beasts, but this has done nothing to dispel the rumour.

The granddaughter of wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo said Tuesday if she wins election later this month for a seat in the Diet she will push to strengthen the military, rewrite the history of the Rape of Nanking and move to censure the United States for dropping atomic bombs on Japan.

Yuko Tojo is seeking a seat in the Upper House of the Diet. She is running as an independent after being rejected by the ruling conservative party.

Tojo told a news conference one of her primary goals in office would be to settle issues from World War II that remain deeply controversial.

On Japan’s mobilization of tens to hundreds of thousands of “comfort women” to serve in front-line brothels, Tojo said the government was not directly involved, a commonly held belief among Japanese conservatives despite evidence to the contrary.

Blair launches stinging attack on ‘absurd’ British Islamists

…’The idea that as a Muslim in this country that you don’t have the freedom to express your religion or your views, I mean you’ve got far more freedom in this country than you do in most Muslim countries,’ Blair told Observer columnist Will Hutton, who presents the documentary.

‘The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we’re not actually fighting it properly. We’re not actually standing up to these people and saying, “It’s not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn’t justified.”‘

ZIMBABWE’S leading cleric has called on Britain to invade the country and topple President Robert Mugabe. Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo, warned that millions were facing death from famine, unable to survive amid inflation believed to have soared to 15,000%.

Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday.

“I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn’t be helped,” Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.

Kyuma’s remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb survivors.

FOR Hein Severloh the ‘Longest Day’ meant nine hours constantly machine-gunning American soldiers as they attempted to land on Omaha Beach.

One image still brings tears to his eyes. A young American had run from his landing craft and sought cover behind a concrete block. Severloh, then a young lance-corporal in the German army in Normandy, aimed his rifle at the GI. He fired and hit the enemy square in the forehead. The American’s helmet flew away and rolled into the sea, his chin sank to his chest and he collapsed dead on the beach.

Tormented by the memory, Severloh now weeps at the thought of the unknown soldier’s death.

Severloh was safe in an almost impregnable concrete bunker overlooking the beach. He had an unimpeded view of the oncoming Allied forces. He was the last German soldier firing, and may have accounted for about 3,000 American casualties, almost three-quarters of all the US losses at Omaha. The Americans came to know him as the Beast of Omaha.

A financial expert has told the Mucyo commission that the French government used French pensioners’ money to secretly finance the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. Martin Marschner, a private insurance broker told the seven-man panel of commissioners that the Paris establishment diverted social security funds into procurement of arms that were sent to Rwanda.

“I became aware of what was taking place on January 12, 1994, when I found out that at least one billion French francs (about Frw 108.75 billion) of my clients’ money had disappeared mysteriously,” he alleged.

The German-born was testifying to the commission on Monday at Telecom House in Kacyiru on Monday. The panel is charged with gathering and documenting evidence depicting the role of France in the Genocide which claimed the lives of an estimated one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Prime minister Ehud Olmert is accused of grave failures of judgment, responsibility and caution in his decisions to go to war in Lebanon last summer and its management. His decision was hasty and undertaken without in-depth study of the circumstances in the arena, a proper plan of action and clearly defined objectives.Full partners in these failures are defense minister Amir Peretz and former chief of staff Dan Halutz.

These are the key findings of the tensely-awaited 250-page interim report evaluating the government’s conduct of the Second Lebanon War 2006 presented by an inquiry panel led by Judge Eliahu Winograd, Monday afternoon, April 30, 2007.
…
The defense minister, lacking in military and political experience, was unable to appreciate a strategic situation, yet failed to take advice, heed alternatives proposed to him or develop an independent approach. Therefore, Amir Peretz fell down on the job and was a weak link in the government’s ability to contend with the challenges. [Emph. mine]

Wreckage from a World War II torpedo boat was tossed up from the sea in the Solomon Islands after a powerful 8.1 earthquake hit the area in early April, an official said Friday

Jay Waura of the National Disaster Management Office said the explosive-laden boat was exposed when reefs were pushed up 10 feet above sea level by the April 2 quake, which caused a devastating tsunami in the western Solomon Islands that killed 52 people.

The Solomons’ coastline is still littered with decaying military wrecks from World War II, including the torpedo patrol boat commanded by U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

“My team members believe that this boat could have been one of those U.S. torpedo boats such as the famous PT-109, which the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy had served aboard during the war,” said Waura.

Israel air force fighter planes scrambled Wednesday to intercept a U.S. airliner after it lost communications with air controllers, security officials said.

The Continental passenger plane was flying in from the U.S. when it lost contact. Following anti-terror procedures, two Israeli warplanes intercepted the plane and guided it back over the Mediterranean Sea until communications were restored, Channel 10 TV reported.

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced today that the remains of ten U.S. servicemen, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors.
…
 On April 16, 1944, a B-24 Liberator crewed by these airmen was returning to the aerodrome at Nadzab, New Guinea, after bombing enemy targets near Hollandia. The aircraft was altering course due to bad weather and was proceeding to the aerodrome at Saidor, but it never returned to friendly lines.

In late 2001, the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea notified the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command that wreckage of a World War II bomber had been found in Morobe Province. Early the next year, a JPAC team surveyed the site and found aircraft wreckage and remains. They also collected more remains and Grady’s identification tag from local villagers who had found the items at the crash site.

 
Later in 2002, a JPAC team began excavating the crash site and recovered remains and crew-related items, including identification tags for Knight and Smith. The team was unable to complete the recovery, and another JPAC team re-visited the site two weeks later to complete the excavation. The team found additional remains and identification tags for Sargent and King.

RAF Top Guns were stunned last night after being asked to think of being Kamikaze pilots in the war on terror. Elite fliers were shocked into silence when a senior RAF chief said they should consider suicide missions as a last resort against terrorist targets. Air Vice Marshal David Walker put forward the attacks — like those flown by desperate Japanese pilots in World War Two — as a “worst case scenario” should they run out of ammo or their weapons failed.

American troops in Iraq figured out how Iraqi terrorists had managed to ambush American helicopters with heavy machine-guns and get away with it. The Iraqis had used trucks with the machine-gun mounted in the back, and a tarp over metal supports (a common feature of military trucks) to conceal the weapon. The tarp was rigged so it could be quickly pulled aside, as well as the metal supports for the tarp. This enabled the heavy machine-gun to immediately open fire. There were four of these trucks, and they roamed around areas that American helicopters were operating above. One of these trucks was spotted, with its machine-gun revealed, by a UAV, after informants indicated that this was probably the weapon responsible. U.S. intelligence then analyzed video and other data they had, and put more UAVs over areas believed frequented by the trucks. On the ground, intelligence operatives began beating the bushes for information on these mobile flak traps. Soon the four trucks were identified and, one by one, destroyed with smart bombs.

Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid terrorists for protection in a volatile farming region of Colombia.

 The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company’s financial dealings with right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels the U.S. government deems terrorist groups.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

Cypriot soldiers remove parts of an outpost from a wall at the UN buffer zone in Nicosia

Greek Cypriots have demolished a key section of the barrier dividing the island’s capital city, Nicosia. The Green Line has separated Cyprus’s Greeks from the Turkish population since 1974, when Turkish troops occupied the north.

An Iranian general who went missing on a visit to Turkey last month appears to have defected to America, taking with him a treasure trove of his country’s most closely guarded secrets.

Ali Resa Asgari, 63, a general in the elite Revolutionary Guards and former Deputy Defence Minister, vanished on February 7 after arriving in Is-tanbul on a flight from Syria. He had reservations at the Cey-lan Intercontinental Hotel but never checked in.

Iran has notified Interpol and raised fears that General Asgari might have been kidnapped. Yesterday, however, several sources confirmed reports in America that General Asgari had fled to the West, becoming the first senior Iran official to defect since the revolution 27 years ago.

The US Navy is funding research into a “Star Trek phaser set on ’stun’”.

At least to begin with, the kit is intended for use by Marines in ordinary urban combat rather than starship crewmen beamed down onto strange new worlds (fans of the classic series may be interested to note that the USS Enterprise happens to be preparing for an “upcoming surge deployment”, however.)

The new technology has been given an acronym, EPIC, for Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control. The idea is that intense radio-frequency emissions – capable of passing through walls – would be used to temporarily disrupt the balance and coordination functions of targets’ inner ears, knocking them down relatively harmlessly.

The Navy notes that “second order effects would be extreme motion sickness,” suggesting that in fact the order given by future Captain Kirks may be “set phasers on ‘puke’”.

Police are investigating a shooting that wounded a prominent intelligence expert.
…
Joyal is known for his expertise on intelligence and terrorism and his contacts in the former Soviet Union.
…
The shooting came four days after he told “Dateline NBC” that he believes the Russian government was involved in the fatal poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London.

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein. According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

Fourteen Iranian military personnel were killed in a helicopter crash last week during an operation against rebels close to the Turkish border, the Revolutionary Guards confirmed on Monday.

A statement carried by the ISNA agency said that two commanders of the Guards’ ground force and 12 other military personnel were killed in Friday’s accident. Kurdish rebels had claimed they shot down the aircraft.

“Commanders Ghahari Said and Dorosti of the Guards’ Hamzeh Army 3, along with 12 other members of the Islamic republic’s army and the Guards, were martyred in the helicopter accident,” the army statement said.

Police raided the headquarters of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang on Monday over the shooting death of a senior member of a rival affiliate of the Sumiyoshi-kai crime syndicate, investigators said.This is the second raid that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has conducted over the incident following its search of the headquarters of the Kokusui-kai, an affiliate of the Yamaguchi-gumi.

Investigators suspect that at least one organization under the umbrella of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation’s largest crime syndicate, was involved in the killing even though the MPD says it has not identified the suspect.

America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear programme.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime is accused of repressing minority rights and culture In a move that reflects Washington’s growing concern with the failure of diplomatic initiatives, CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran’s border regions.

The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime.

In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials.

Ten Revolutionary Guard members including two officers were killed when their helicopter was shot down by insurgents on Saturday. Iranian news reported that 17 “terrorists” were eliminated during the fighting.

The helicopter was on a mission at Khoy region, East Azarbaijan province, where it had to make an emergency landing immediately after which it was exploded. All IRGC forces on the board including two commanders were killed instantly.

A laser developed for military use is a few steps away from hitting a power threshold thought necessary to turn it into a battlefield weapon.

The Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL) has achieved 67 kilowatts (kW) of average power in the laboratory.

It could take only a further six to eight months to break the “magic” 100kW mark required for the battlefield, the project’s chief scientist told the BBC.

A postcard sent from the trenches during World War I by a private to his wartime sweetheart finally arrived — 92 years after he had sent it.

Pvt. Walter Butler wrote to Amy Hicks in 1915, telling her he was alive and well — but the army issue postcard never made it to her home in Wiltshire, 60 miles west of London. Butler survived the war, and the couple went on to marry.

A German submarine that was sunk off Norway at the end of World War II will be buried in special sand to protect the coastline from its cargo of toxic mercury, the government announced Tuesday

The U-864 submarine, which was found by the Royal Norwegian Navy in March 2003, is believed to have about 70 tons of mercury on board.

While members of the U.S. House of Representatives take turns weighing in on President Bush’s planned troop surge in Iraq, the focus in Iraq is not on the arrival of more U.S. troops, but the departure of one of the country’s most powerful men, Moqtada al Sadr and members of his army.

According to senior military officials, al Sadr left Baghdad two to three weeks ago and fled to Tehran, Iran, where he has family.

Al Sadr commands the Mahdi army, one of the most formidable insurgent militias in Iraq, and his move coincides with the announced U.S. troop surge in Baghdad.

If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nation’s critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source.

The primary group responsible for analyzing the need for any cyber counterstrike is the National Cyber Response Coordination Group (NCRCG). The three key members of the NCRCG, who hail from the US-CERT computer-readiness team, the Department of Justice and the Defense Department, this week described how they would seek to coordinate a national response in the event of a major cyber-event from a known attacker.

American researchers at Georgia Tech, investigating how fish hear underwater, have developed a sensor that can detect the sound objects make while moving through the water, and what direction it’s coming from. This will enable submarines to “hear” other submarines, or surface ships, moving. Fish use this acute sense of sound to detect prey, or predators. Submarines will use this ability in the same way, and for the same purpose. The new motion sensor is passive. It just listens, and does not give off any signals.

One of the better videos from the Iraq front in the last few months.  Nice secondaries resulting from the Apache too

NOTE: Strong language / NSFW alert

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/25/mahdi-militia-get-the-american-treatment/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/25/crowd-control-ray-gun-unveiled/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/25/crowd-control-ray-gun-unveiled/#comments Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:54:31 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/25/crowd-control-ray-gun-unveiled/ US military unveils heat-ray gun:

The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds. Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling, but is said to be harmless.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/25/crowd-control-ray-gun-unveiled/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/more-proof-royal-marines-are-ultra-bad-ass/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/more-proof-royal-marines-are-ultra-bad-ass/#comments Mon, 22 Jan 2007 04:16:26 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/more-proof-royal-marines-are-ultra-bad-ass/ TO HELI.. AND BACK:

IT IS one of the most daring military rescues ever – an extraordinary race against time in the heart of Afghanistan’s bandit country. The men of 45 Commando Royal Marine had just returned to base following an assault on a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province when the radio on the Apache helicopter crackled into life. One of their comrades – Lance Corporal Matthew Ford – was missing and they had just minutes to find him and bring him back before the Taliban got to him.
…
Realising that unless they acted immediately the fallen Marine had no chance of survival, Tom Smith, a 39-year-old Army Air Corps warrant officer, devised an extraordinary plan. By strapping four troops on to two Apache helicopters – which cannot take passengers – they could reach Matt before the Taliban did.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/more-proof-royal-marines-are-ultra-bad-ass/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/wreck-of-uss-perch-discovered/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/wreck-of-uss-perch-discovered/#comments Sun, 21 Jan 2007 22:37:08 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/wreck-of-uss-perch-discovered/ Sunken WWII sub found by accident near Java

The wreck of a World War II submarine was discovered by accident near Java on Thanksgiving Day, according to officials of the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum. Charles Hinman, the museum’s education director, said the 300-foot diesel submarine USS Perch was discovered in 190 feet of water in the Java Sea by an international team of divers and photographers who were hoping to photograph the wreck of the British cruiser Exeter.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/wreck-of-uss-perch-discovered/feed/ 2 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/associated-press-meltdown-continues/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/associated-press-meltdown-continues/#comments Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:06:58 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/associated-press-meltdown-continues/ DESTROYED – NOT

WELL, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior says disputed Associated Press source Jamil Hussein does exist. But at least one story he told the AP just doesn’t check out: The Sunni mosques that as Hussein claimed and AP reported as “destroyed,” “torched” and “burned and [blown] up” are all still standing. So the credibility of every AP story relying on Jamil Hussein remains dubious.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/21/associated-press-meltdown-continues/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/electromagnetic-weapon-update/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/electromagnetic-weapon-update/#comments Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:55:54 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/electromagnetic-weapon-update/ ‘Star Wars’ Weaponry Gets a Trial Run in Dahlgren:

A flashy demonstration of the futuristic and comparatively inexpensive railgun weapon Tuesday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center had Navy brass smiling. The weapon, which was successfully tested in October at the King George County base, fires nonexplosive projectiles at incredible speeds, using electricity rather than gun powder.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/electromagnetic-weapon-update/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/chinese-getting-ready-for-space-war/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/chinese-getting-ready-for-space-war/#comments Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:24:35 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/chinese-getting-ready-for-space-war/ Chinese Satellite Test Draws Sharp Protest From Other Nations

The Chinese military used a ground-based missile to hit and destroy one of its aging satellites orbiting more than 500 miles in space last week, an apparent test of anti-satellite technology that raised concerns about a possible arms race in space and drew sharp protests from other space-faring nations.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/18/chinese-getting-ready-for-space-war/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/al-qaeda-bails-on-baghdad-setting-up-shop-in-diyala-province/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/al-qaeda-bails-on-baghdad-setting-up-shop-in-diyala-province/#comments Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:52:27 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/al-qaeda-bails-on-baghdad-setting-up-shop-in-diyala-province/ Al Qaeda flees Baghdad:

The apparent evacuation of Baghdad by al Qaeda forces comes from direct orders issued by al-Masri, the former soldier who took control of the Iraqi wing of al Qaeda following the June 2006 bombing death of Zarqawi.Initially, the intelligence officer informed Pajamas, the Baghdad-based AQ fighters did not want to leave. Al-Masri had to send unequivocal orders for their retreat, adding that one of the lessons from the Fallujah campaign was that Americans have learned how to prevail in house-to-house fighting. Masri said that remaining in Baghdad was a ‘no-win situation’ for the terrorists.

“In more than ten years of reading al Qaeda intercepts, I’ve never seen language like this,” the intelligence officer said. Usually, al Qaeda communications are full of bravado and false confidence, he added.

Al-Masri’s evacuation order – assuming that it is authentic – reveals that al Qaeda in Iraq leader has a good grasp of a tactical situation. “He is far more formidable than Zarqawi was,” the intelligence officer said, because of his training at Soviet special warfare schools.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/al-qaeda-bails-on-baghdad-setting-up-shop-in-diyala-province/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/the-age-of-the-terminator-has-arrived/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/the-age-of-the-terminator-has-arrived/#comments Wed, 17 Jan 2007 17:39:14 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/the-age-of-the-terminator-has-arrived/ Pint-sized soldier with a big wallop

The Army’s newest recruit can’t speak or climb stairs well. And at 3 feet tall and a whopping 200 pounds, it wouldn’t pass a physical. But it fires a machine gun with half-mile accuracy and doesn’t flinch. The latest infantryman is electronic — a gun-slinging robot developed at Picatinny Arsenal. Engineers at the Army weapons research post in Rockaway Township hope to send the machine, the first of its kind, into combat this year.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/17/the-age-of-the-terminator-has-arrived/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/16/congress-has-little-ability-to-influence-the-war/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/16/congress-has-little-ability-to-influence-the-war/#comments Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:47:40 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/16/congress-has-little-ability-to-influence-the-war/  What Congress Can (And Can’t) Do on Iraq

Either they stand up to be counted and cut off all funding or they show themselves to be fatuous windbags:

Just as there are constraints on the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief, there are limits on Congress’s ability to direct presidential action. In particular, Congress cannot use its power of the purse to micromanage the president’s execution of his office. Indeed, although the prosecution of the Iraq war looms large in today’s political discourse, the consequences of substantive decisions related to the war are dwarfed by the imperatives of protecting the integrity of the core rules governing interactions between the executive and legislative branches, which are rooted in our distinctive constitutional fabric.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/16/congress-has-little-ability-to-influence-the-war/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/15/is-w-a-geopolitical-genius/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/15/is-w-a-geopolitical-genius/#comments Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:53:16 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/15/is-w-a-geopolitical-genius/ Two Alliances

It was the hugely ambitious project of the Bush administration to transform the entire Middle East by remaking Iraq into an irresistible model of prosperous democracy. Having failed in that worthy purpose, another, more prosaic result has inadvertently been achieved: divide and rule, the classic formula for imperial power on the cheap.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/15/is-w-a-geopolitical-genius/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/13/why-you-should-always-keep-your-psychic-powers-quiet-in-wartime/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/13/why-you-should-always-keep-your-psychic-powers-quiet-in-wartime/#comments Sun, 14 Jan 2007 00:47:41 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/13/why-you-should-always-keep-your-psychic-powers-quiet-in-wartime/ Campaign to pardon the last witch, jailed as a threat to Britain at war

Mrs Duncan, a Scotswoman who travelled the country holding seances, was one of Britain’s best-known mediums, reputedly numbering Winston Churchill and George VI among her clients, when she was arrested in January 1944 by two naval officers at a seance in Portsmouth.The military authorities, secretly preparing for the D-day landings and then in a heightened state of paranoia, were alarmed by reports that she had disclosed – allegedly via contacts with the spirit world – the sinking of two British battleships long before they became public.

She was not the only person caught up in the very understandable Pre D-Day paranoia. A Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle editor and school headmaster, Leonard Dawe, nearly suffered the same fate because several invasion code words (e.g. “Mulberry”, “Neptune”, “Utah”, “Omaha”, and most damningly “Overlord”) appeared in his puzzles in the weeks leading up to the invasion. The poor man suffered lengthy interrogations, completely confused as to what he had done. 40 years later, it was revealed that he routinely asked his young pupils to suggest clues; unsurprisingly, they made suggestions based on conversations of American military personnel that they had overheard.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/13/why-you-should-always-keep-your-psychic-powers-quiet-in-wartime/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/12/rebels-and-ufos-attack-in-iran/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/12/rebels-and-ufos-attack-in-iran/#comments Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:16:12 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/12/rebels-and-ufos-attack-in-iran/ 3 Explosions In the West & 1 MASSIVE UFO BLAST In Central Iran!:

Three massive explosions went off in the Khuzestan region of Iran today where the regime is planning on hanging 7 political prisoners in the coming hours. There was also a massive blast in central Iran that was witnessed by people in several cities!

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/12/rebels-and-ufos-attack-in-iran/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/silly-string-update/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/silly-string-update/#comments Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:26:35 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/silly-string-update/ Silly String Goes to War:

Troops have a tendency to improvise. They’ve often used commercial equipment, where it seemed better than issue stuff. And they’re usually quick to spot ways to use in combat items not originally intended for the purpose. Consider “Silly String.”

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/silly-string-update/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/yet-another-iranian-hostage-crisis/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/yet-another-iranian-hostage-crisis/#comments Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:12:18 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/yet-another-iranian-hostage-crisis/ US forces storm Iranian consulate:

US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized five members of staff. The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/11/yet-another-iranian-hostage-crisis/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/10/the-era-of-anti-artillery-lasers-arrives/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/10/the-era-of-anti-artillery-lasers-arrives/#comments Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:25:17 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/10/the-era-of-anti-artillery-lasers-arrives/ Raytheon tests new laser weapon

Raytheon said its prototype solid-state Laser Area Defense System, or LADS, “successfully detonated 60-millimeter mortars at a range greater than 550 yards within the tactical timeline in static ground testing conducted in partnership with the United States government.” The company described the tests as “groundbreaking’ and said the results had been achieved “in less than six months.” “The LADS demonstration used a proven, existing, off-the-shelf solid-state laser, coupled with commercially available optics technology,” Raytheon said. “The goal of the demonstration was to rapidly prove that lasers can yield military utility now by demonstrating that such a system could protect warfighters against mortars.”

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/10/the-era-of-anti-artillery-lasers-arrives/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/todays-lol-award/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/todays-lol-award/#comments Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:48:50 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/todays-lol-award/ U.S. Denies New Attacks in Somalia

But one U.S. military official said this morning that there was no U.S. involvement in ongoing fighting. “It’s a fluid situation,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said Ethiopian forces, who last month ousted Islamist leaders from the Somali capital, continued to clash with remnants of militias supporting the Islamists.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/todays-lol-award/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/americans-in-somalia-helped-rout-islamists/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/americans-in-somalia-helped-rout-islamists/#comments Tue, 09 Jan 2007 19:22:09 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/americans-in-somalia-helped-rout-islamists/ America’s Boots on the Ground in Somalia:

The al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic Courts Union’s (ICU) rapid retreat in the face of Ethiopia’s military campaign in Somalia has puzzled many observers. How could the Ethiopians roll up the jihadists so quickly? Pajamas Media has learned that one significant factor is that U.S. air and ground forces covertly aided the Ethiopian military since its intervention began on Christmas day.

U.S. ground forces have been active in Somalia from the start, a senior military intelligence officer confirmed. “In fact,” he said, “they were part of the first group in.”

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/09/americans-in-somalia-helped-rout-islamists/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/07/next-time-get-it-right/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/07/next-time-get-it-right/#comments Sun, 07 Jan 2007 16:28:14 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/07/next-time-get-it-right/ A slim guidebook for executing a deposed ruler

The Ceausescus of Romania were dragged to their executions on Christmas Day 1989 with Nicolae singing “The Internationale” and Elena alternately directing her captors to hell and snapping at them, “I was like a mother to you.” Or so go accounts by some of the executioners. Videotape shown on Romanian television in the aftermath records scenes from a farcical tribunal but stops as the couple are led away after they are condemned, picking up again only after the deed is done, the bullet-pocked bodies cooling where they fell. The event did not need cellphones and YouTube to peel back the veneer of civility.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/07/next-time-get-it-right/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/06/british-jihad-update/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/06/british-jihad-update/#comments Sat, 06 Jan 2007 16:30:16 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/06/british-jihad-update/ Court ‘cursed’ as cartoon protester is convicted of incitement

Extremists screamed insults at an Old Bailey judge yesterday as a British Muslim was convicted of inciting murder during protests against the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Umran Javed, 27, had shouted “Bomb, bomb USA” and “Jihad is the path to Allah” as he led a 300-strong crowd in chants during a demonstration in London last year.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/06/british-jihad-update/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/britannia-flees-the-waves/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/britannia-flees-the-waves/#comments Fri, 05 Jan 2007 04:55:21 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/britannia-flees-the-waves/ Navy to cut its fleet by half

Royal Navy commanders were in uproar yesterday after it was revealed that almost half of the Fleet’s 44 warships are to be mothballed as part of a Ministry of Defence cost-cutting measure. Senior officers have said the plans will turn Britain’s once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defence force.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/britannia-flees-the-waves/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/craven-generals-messing-with-marines-underwear/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/craven-generals-messing-with-marines-underwear/#comments Thu, 04 Jan 2007 14:47:04 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/craven-generals-messing-with-marines-underwear/ Marines Mutiny Over Underwear Ban

U.S. Marines in Iraq are in a rebellious mood. It all began about a year ago, when the brass banned the use of polyester undergarments. These high-tech T-shirts employ fibers that wick sweat away from the body, cooling the wearer, or keeping them warmer in cold weather. Trouble is, polyester melts if exposed to flame, which often happens when a roadside bomb goes off, and you are in the way.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/04/craven-generals-messing-with-marines-underwear/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/peace-breaking-out-round-the-world/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/peace-breaking-out-round-the-world/#comments Mon, 01 Jan 2007 17:18:51 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/peace-breaking-out-round-the-world/ Wars Update: Less War, More Peace in 2006:

You’d never know it from the headlines, but, overall, things quieted down in the past year. Fighting has died down considerably, or disappeared completely, in places like Nepal, Chechnya. Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. This continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/peace-breaking-out-round-the-world/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/cut-and-run-jihadi-style/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/cut-and-run-jihadi-style/#comments Mon, 01 Jan 2007 15:41:23 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/cut-and-run-jihadi-style/ Not a shot was fired yet the Somali jihad was suddenly over…

Their fortress fell without a shot. After just nine days of clashes in Somalia’s hinterland, the Islamists who had vowed to fight to the death abandoned Mogadishu, the city they had governed since June. From having controlled most of southern and central Somalia, they were holed up yesterday in the southern port city of Kismaayo, facing annihilation by Ethiopian troops.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2007/01/01/cut-and-run-jihadi-style/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/31/antimatter-bombs-coming-our-way/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/31/antimatter-bombs-coming-our-way/#comments Sun, 31 Dec 2006 23:19:08 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/31/antimatter-bombs-coming-our-way/ Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source — antimatter, the eerie “mirror” of ordinary matter — in future weapons.

The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction films and TV shows, whose heroes fly “antimatter-powered spaceships” and do battle with “antimatter guns.”

But antimatter itself isn’t fiction; it actually exists and has been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

During the Cold war, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military uses — for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one’s hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/31/antimatter-bombs-coming-our-way/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-nazi-sub-threatens-norway/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-nazi-sub-threatens-norway/#comments Sat, 23 Dec 2006 15:09:26 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-nazi-sub-threatens-norway/ Norway threatened by WWII-era submarine

More than 60 years after being torpedoed by the British navy, a Nazi submarine built to threaten allied ships continues to spread fear off the coast of Norway.The rusting wreckage of the U-864, sunk in a desperate mission to supply Japan with advanced weapons technology, now poses a major environmental threat due to its poisonous cargo: 70 tons of mercury.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-nazi-sub-threatens-norway/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-japanese-mini-sub-found-off-sydney/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-japanese-mini-sub-found-off-sydney/#comments Sat, 23 Dec 2006 15:07:48 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-japanese-mini-sub-found-off-sydney/ ‘42 midget sub committed to the deep

The wartime midget submarine discovered off the beaches of Sydney is to be left on the ocean floor and is expected to become a permanent tomb for the two crewmen killed inside the vessel after their attack on Sydney Harbour in 1942.

Australian government officials have confirmed that the sub will probably never be raised for various reasons, including technical difficulties. The vessel’s discovery last month by amateur divers ended a 64-year mystery about its whereabouts.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/ww2-flashback-japanese-mini-sub-found-off-sydney/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/al-qaeda-takes-responsibility-for-democratic-victory-in-elections/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/al-qaeda-takes-responsibility-for-democratic-victory-in-elections/#comments Sat, 23 Dec 2006 13:59:11 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/al-qaeda-takes-responsibility-for-democratic-victory-in-elections/ Al Qaeda’s message to the Left:

Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists. In a portion of the tape from al Qaeda No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, made available only today, Zawahri says he has two messages for American Democrats. “The first is that you aren’t the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen — the Muslim Ummah’s vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq — are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost,” Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/23/al-qaeda-takes-responsibility-for-democratic-victory-in-elections/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/more-progress-in-iraq/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/more-progress-in-iraq/#comments Wed, 20 Dec 2006 23:08:54 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/more-progress-in-iraq/ Iraqi soldiers eat frogs, rabbit at handover ceremony

Iraqi soldiers bit the heads off frogs and ate the heart of a rabbit as signs of courage on Wednesday at a ceremony to transfer Najaf province, home to one of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest shrines, from U.S. to Iraqi control.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/more-progress-in-iraq/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/no-place-to-hide/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/no-place-to-hide/#comments Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:17:53 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/no-place-to-hide/ X-51 Hypersonic Cruise Missile: The Pentagon’s Prompt Global Strike Weapon Plan

The mission: Attack anywhere in the world in less than an hour. But is the Pentagon’s bold program a critical new weapon for hitting elusive targets, or a good way to set off a nuclear war?

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/20/no-place-to-hide/feed/ 0 http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/19/starship-troopers-on-the-way/ http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/19/starship-troopers-on-the-way/#comments Tue, 19 Dec 2006 13:01:03 +0000 Administrator http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/19/starship-troopers-on-the-way/ Semper Fly: Marines in Space

If a group of Marine Corps visionaries have their way, however, 30 years from now, Marines could touch down anywhere on the globe in less than two hours, without needing to negotiate passage through foreign airspace. The breathtaking efficiency of such a delivery system could change forever the way the U.S. does battle. The proposal, part of the Corps’s push toward greater speed and flexibility, is called Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion, or Sustain. Using a suborbital transport—that is, a vehicle that flies into space to achieve high travel speeds but doesn’t actually enter orbit—the Corps will be able, in effect, to instantaneously deliver Marine squads anywhere on Earth.

]]> http://rotstan.com/blog2/2006/12/19/starship-troopers-on-the-way/feed/ 0