Mother in Tulay Goren 'honour killing' tells of daughter's last day

How can a MOTHER watch her own child be abused that way is unspeakable to me.  This is your flesh and blood laying there tied up.  These are lives at least.  I'm not that girls mother, sister, or family.  I can't imagine passing someone in the street being abused that way and not DO something.  My dog, had puppies.  Two died.  She had had a litter of 13 and 2 of them died.  I tried putting those under a bush pretty far from the house.  She wound up dragging the poor little body back and tried to revive it by licking.  This went on for 3 days.  After that it took me driving pretty far so that she could not drag the bodies back.  THAT is a MOTHER.  What on EARTH is this peice of garbage?  What kind of women are these?  To call them animals is debasing good animals.  It's insulting to the animal kingdom.  Evil!
A tearful mother today described finding her teenage daughter tied up on a bedroom floor the day before the schoolgirl was allegedly murdered by her father in an “honour killing”.

Hanim Goren told the Old Bailey that her daughter Tulay’s hands and feet were bound so tightly that they had turned purple.



She said that her husband, Mehmet, told her that he had tied the 15-year-old girl up to stop her from running away.



Tulay had agreed to return to her home in Woodford Green, northeast London, in January 1999 after disgracing her family by living with a boyfriend twice her age, the jury was told.



Related Links

'Honour killing' wife breaks decades of silence

'Honour killing girl' may have been pregnant

'Honour killing girl warned boyfriend of trap’

Mrs Goren, 45, has broken a 10-year silence to give evidence against her husband and his brothers Ali, 55, and Cuma, 42, who are accused of her daughter’s murder, the court has heard.



She said that she had returned home with another daughter, Hatice, 13, to find her husband and Cuma Goren sitting downstairs without Tulay on January 6, 1999.



“When we couldn’t see her downstairs, Hatice and I ran up the stairs straight away,” she told the court, speaking through a Turkish interpreter.



“In the children’s bedroom I saw Tulay lying on the floor face down. Her hands and her feet were tied up. Her hands and her feet were all a purple, black colour, tied,” she told the court. “Tulay said, ‘Mum, don’t untie, I want to die’.”



Mrs Goren said that she was crying as she tried to untie her daughter but that her husband ran upstairs and ordered her to stop.



“Mehmet said, ‘So that she doesn’t run away again, I tied her up’,” she told the court.



“Then after that I don’t know who untied her, whether it was Hatice, whether it was me or whether it was Mehmet himself, I don’t remember.”



That evening Mrs Goren invited a number of relatives to the house to discuss Tulay’s future, the court was told. Later she saw her daughter with her legs dangling from the window of an upstairs bathroom.



Mrs Goren said that she spent the night with her husband and daughter in the living room.



“I brought a cushion and a blanket and I put the cushion on the floor and made her lie down. She slept there,” said Mrs Goren.



“Mehmet slept on the sofa. He pulled the armchair in front of the door so that the door wouldn’t open.



“I put my head on Tulay’s feet and legs and I just lay down on the carpet and slept like that.”



Mrs Goren said that the following day her husband ordered her to leave the house with her two youngest children. As she left the house she had a final conversation with Tulay.



“I was very angry and very cross with her,” Mrs Goren told the court.



Jurors have been told that Tulay went missing in January 1999 and her body has never been found.



Mehmet Goren and his brothers Ali and Cuma, both of Walthamstow, East London, deny murdering Tulay on January 7, 1999. They also deny conspiracy to murdering her boyfriend Hilal Unal between May 1998 and February 1999.

Human Rights are being challenged - Freedom of speech - An ANTI free speech resolution cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt

The title says it all.  This is a sad thing to see in the US.  I am disheartened. 

Free Speech Under Foreign Assault – by Robert Spencer

Posted by Robert Spencer on Oct 9th, 2009 and filed under FrontPage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of eight books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, is available now from Regnery Publishing.

Does the United States Constitution protect the freedom of speech of American citizens, or does it not? In this era of globalization, the answer is becoming increasingly muddled. Thursday, an American citizen, Paul Williams, went on trial in Canada. He is charged with violating Canadian libel laws in charges he made in his book The Dunces of Doomsday about a jihad terror cell at McMaster University in Ontario. Likewise in Brazil, an American business writer, Joseph Sharkey, is on trial for what he wrote about Brazilian air-traffic controllers after he survived an airplane crash in Brazil.

Williams and Sharkey both live in the United States, which guarantees that its citizens’ freedom of speech not be infringed. Should Canadian and Brazilian libel laws apply to them? Williams has already had to pay enormous amounts of money for his defense, and Sharkey is likely to be found guilty and given a $500,000 fine. McMaster University wants a cool two million dollars from Williams.
Shouldn’t the United States government protect American citizens from such bullying by foreign powers?
If nothing is done, the problem is certain to get worse — for Williams and Sharkey are not the first American victims of the tactic that has come to be known as “libel tourism.” The late Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz sued Rachel Ehrenfeld, founder and director of the American Center for Democracy, several years ago. Bin Mahfouz was upset about Ehrenfeld’s book, Funding Evil, in which she wrote that he was involved in funding Hamas and al Qaeda – a charge for which there was abundant evidence from Western intelligence agencies. Nevertheless, taking advantage of British libel laws that place the burden of proof on the defendant, rather than the plaintiff, bin Mahfouz sued not in the United States, where Ehrenfeld lives and published her book, but in Britain, where neither he nor Ehrenfeld lived and where his entire case depended upon a handful of copies sold in that country mostly through special orders from Amazon.com, and the appearance of one chapter of the book on the Internet, where could have been read by British readers. A British court awarded bin Mahfouz $250,000, and Ehrenfeld had to devote the bulk of her time for years to fighting this judgment.

Now Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) has introduced the Free Speech Protection Act of 2009, which would shelter American writers from libel judgments by courts in countries that do not value the freedom of speech the way America does. But this bill faces an uphill battle – it seems unlikely that Barack Obama will give it his support after he just last week had the United States co-sponsor an anti-free speech resolution at the United Nations. Approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council, the resolution, cosponsored by the U.S. and Egypt, calls on states to condemn and criminalize “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”


“Hatred” and “incitement” are, of course, in the eye of the beholder — or more precisely, in the eye of those who make such determinations. The powerful can decide to silence the powerless by classifying their views as “hate speech.” The ability to dissent, publicly and without fear of imprisonment or other reprisal, is a cornerstone of any genuinely free society. Yet no less distinguished a personage than the President of the United States has now given his imprimatur to the quashing of such dissent.

But we still have the First Amendment, right? Legal expert Eugene Volokh explains that it isn’t that easy: “If the U.S. backs a resolution that urges the suppression of some speech, presumably we are taking the view that all countries — including the U.S. — should adhere to this resolution. If we are constitutionally barred from adhering to it by our domestic constitution, then we’re implicitly criticizing that constitution, and committing ourselves to do what we can to change it.”


Is that the change that Americans were hoping for when they voted for Barack Obama in such large numbers in 2008? Specter and the other Democrats who have introduced and support the Free Speech Protection Act should recognize how inconsistent it is with their own party leader’s actions as President of the United States, and call upon him to end all support for any legal measure anywhere that restricts free speech.


Our survival as a free people could depend upon it.

Barack Obama must attend climate change talks to avoid 'catastrophe' for the planet

This is what Lord Monckton was talking to Bethel U. students about.  He's been trying to get a debate going with Al Gore.  He's also been shut up by the democrats for trying to get a voice of opposition. 
http://opntalk.blogspot.com/2009/04/lord-christopher-monckton-barred-from.html

Washington, DC -- UK's Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed House Democrats have refused to allow him to appear alongside former Vice President Al Gore at a high profile global warming hearing on Friday April 24, 2009 at 10am in Washington. Monckton told Climate Depot that the Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance at the House Energy and Commerce hearing on Friday. Monckton said he was informed that he would not be allowed to testify alongside Gore when his plane landed from England Thursday afternoon.
“The House Democrats don't want Gore humiliated, so they slammed the door of the Capitol in my face,” Monckton told Climate Depot in an exclusive interview. “They are cowards.”
Yes they are. And this is not just a claim, this is a FACT.
According to Monckton, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), Ranking Member on the Energy & Commerce Committee, had invited him to go head to head with Gore and testify at the hearing on Capitol Hill Friday. But Monckton now says that when his airplane from London landed in the U.S. on Thursday, he was informed that the former Vice-President had “chickened out” and there would be no joint appearance. Gore is scheduled to testify on Friday to the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment's fourth day of hearings on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The hearing will be held in 2123 Rayburn House Office Building.
According to Monckton, House Democrats told the Republican committee staff earlier this week that they would be putting forward an unnamed 'celebrity' as their star witness Friday at a multi-panel climate hearing examining the House global warming bill. The "celebrity" witness turned out to be Gore. Monckton said the GOP replied they would respond to the Democrats' "celebrity" with an unnamed "celebrity" of their own. But Monckton claims that when the Democrats were told who the GOP witness would be, they refused to allow him to testify alongside Gore.
[ Update: 1:55 PM EST: A GOP House source told Climate Depot that the Democrats on the Committee said “absolutely not” to allowing Monckton to appear during today's Gore hearing. The GOP committee “pushed at multiple levels” to bring Monckton in to testify but the Democrats “refused,” according to the GOP source. Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich was called in to testify after Monckton was rejected by the committee Democrats, according to the Congressional source.]
“The Democrats have a lot to learn about the right of free speech under the US Constitution. Congress Henry Waxman's (D-CA) refusal to expose Al Gore's sci-fi comedy-horror testimony to proper, independent scrutiny by the House minority reeks of naked fear,” Monckton said from the airport Thursday evening.

“Waxman knows there has been no 'global warming' for at least a decade. Waxman knows there has been seven and a half years' global cooling. Waxman knows that, in the words of the UK High Court judge who condemned Gore's mawkish movie as materially, seriously, serially inaccurate, 'the Armageddon scenario that he depicts is not based on any scientific view,'” Monckton explained. Monckton has previously testified before the House Committee in March. (See: Monckton: Have the courage to do nothing...US Congress told climate change is not real ) Monckton has also publicly challenged Gore to a debate. (See: Al Gore Challenged to International TV Debate on Global Warming By Lord Monckton - March 19, 2007
A call to the Democratic office of the House Energy and Commerce Committee seeking comment was not immediately returned Thursday night.

Freedom of speech is not something necessary here.  After all it's not polite speech.  But to who or whom is he not polite.  The hardcore scientists have been overridden by the politicians who think that it's inconvenient truth. 

Feds to issue new medical marijuana policy- amounting to legalizing POT

This policy amouts to making Pot legal.  This has nothing to do with STATES rights.  It has to do with weather we, as Americans, want to make DRUGS legal.  Medical pot is nothing but a hoax.  There are drugs out there that have THC in them and they don't make you high, but do have the same "medicinal" effect.  Medical pot is a non issue.  It should not be legal.  It is a very dangerous drug.  This administrations view on it is irrelevant.  The fact that this in effect make POT legal is a miscarriage of justice.  This administration is playing games with the law.  This might be something that YOU personally may agree with, but the idea is -
IF THEY CAN SCURMISH THE PEOPLE ON THIS ISSUE, THEN WHATS TO STOP THEM ON AN ISSUE THAT YOU MAY NOT AGREE WITH-
This is a absolute run away train administration.  We have NO control!

Feds to issue new medical marijuana policy-

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they closely conform to state laws.

The Justice Department is set to issue new policy guidelines on medical marijuana Monday. Two department officials described the new policy to the Associated Press, saying federal prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in compliance with state laws.
The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.
Vermont and Maine both allow the use of medical marijuana.

Ocean Lady- A ship carrying 76 suspected illegal migrants has been seized off Canada's Pacific coast

I remember that a few months ago there were some troops diverted from the Mexican border and put on the Candian border.  At the time I was asking myself why they would do something like that.  There was no reason.  But maybe there is.  But what would give officials in the Bush and Obama administration now pause to attend to the Candian border.  This may or may not be something to farther consider. 

Those on board the ship said they were trying to reach Canada, according to local authorities.




The identity of the migrants was not confirmed, although Canada's public safety minister said there were indications they were from Sri Lanka.



He said it appeared to be a case of human smuggling. The migrants, all men, were said to be in good health.



The merchant vessel, named Ocean Lady, was intercepted by a navy frigate off Vancouver Island before being escorted to a dock near Victoria, British Columbia.



Officials there were carrying out health and safety and immigration checks.



Those on board the ship were pictured wearing civilian clothes. Some were shirtless.



"The signs do point toward human smuggling," said the public safety minister, Peter Van Loan.



Several ships attempting to smuggle migrants from China to Canada's Pacific coast were intercepted off Vancouver Island a decade ago.

Obama is going to sign a Climate Change Treaty in December that will give up US sovereignty

I saw this on the Atlas Shrugs website and had heard about the initiative from Michael Savage and others, but there has not been any definitive way that they were going to do this.  Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave the run down at Bethel U.  In my opinion he is right, but he said that the health care bill is small in comparison.  The thing that I see is that it is imperative to this Treaty, because the Health-care bill has POLICY in it that brings teeth to the ENFORCMENT policy that they will need to implement for the Climate Change Treaty to use.  I think that they will go hand in hand.  Once a policy is enacted, then it can be implemented in different ways.  Health-care is a AMERICAN redistribution of wealth and the policy will be implemented to make sure that it gets the money in to the government.  However, once it's there, and this new policy with Climate Change Treaty, it's only a short stretch to have GLOBAL redistribution of wealth.  It won't matter.  The only beneficiaries will be the ruling CLASS.  An Oligarchy of world domination.  HITLER is smiling proudly at this horrible turn of events.  Once the beacon of freedom, America become the subject of the powers of the Climate Change Treaty Members.  They will rename it later to the United Caliphates of the new World Nations.  Because at that point they will agree that the world religion is Islam.  And everyone should lower their heads in prayer. 

This is some of what Lord Monckton talked about at the scholl, from Atlas Shrugs website.  It make sense. 

Eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second - OBAMA POISED TO CEDE US SOVEREIGNTY, CLAIMS BRITISH LORD (repub X)




The Minnesota Free Market Institute hosted an event at Bethel University in St. Paul on Wednesday evening. Keynote speaker Lord Christopher Monckton, former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gave a scathing and lengthy presentation, complete with detailed charts, graphs, facts, and figures which culminated in the utter decimation of both the pop culture concept of global warming and the credible threat of any significant anthropomorphic climate change.



A detailed summary of Monckton’s presentation will be available here once compiled. However, a segment of his remarks justify immediate publication. If credible, the concern Monckton speaks to may well prove the single most important issue facing the American nation, bigger than health care, bigger than cap and trade, and worth every citizen’s focused attention.



Here were Monckton’s closing remarks, as dictated from my audio recording:



At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.



I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.



How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.



[laughter]



And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution, and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.



So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.



But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.



So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:



Sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

Insider-trading scheme involves INTEL

Now why would Intel be so heavily invested by a Sri Lanka firm?
Follow the money
Galleon Group's Titan Fund

Galleon Group's Titan Fund has returned 20% so far this year(2009), outperforming the Nasdaq by 33%. Rajaratnam started his career as an analyst at the investment banking boutique Needham & Co where his focus was on electronics. He was promoted to president 1991 and launched Galleon six years later. Initially invested in technology stocks; he says his best ideas come from frequent visits with companies, conversations with executives who invest in his fund. He is rumored to work 14-hour days. [6]


Raj Rajaratnam recently (September 2009) pledged to donate a million US dollars to help with the rehabilitation of former LTTE combatants.[7]

Who are the LTTE combatants

I'm taking this out of WIKI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTTE

The Westminster Journal further states:

Intelligence agencies are well aware that the LTTE was involved in the 1990s in training the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) both of which are closely linked to al-Qaeda. In 1995 and 1998, an LTTE combat tactician and an LTTE explosives expert accompanying groups of al-Qaeda Arabs was recorded training members of MILF. In 1999, an LTTE combat tactician accompanying a group of al-Qaeda Arabs was recorded training members of the ASG. At the apparent behest of al-Qaeda, the LTTE is recorded training members of Al Ummah (An Islamic terrorist group formed in India in 1992, believed to be responsible for bombings in southern India in 1998) in Tamil Nadu, India.[126]

Raj Rajaratnam

was listed as 262nd richest American in the 2008 Forbes magazine [5]. As of early 2009, he is the richest Sri Lankan born person in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Rajaratnam

By Grant McCool and Edith Honan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam and five others were charged with engaging in the largest ever hedge fund insider-trading scheme, generating profits of more than $20 million over several years, U.S. prosecutors, the FBI and the SEC said Friday.

Insider trading by hedge funds Galleon and New Castle and Intel's Intel Capital unit took place in shares of Hilton Hotels Corp, Google Inc, IBM, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and other stocks, according to two complaints filed in U.S. District Court in New York.

All six accused have been arrested, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan said. The case could represent an important development in the government's enforcement of securities laws, she said.

"This is not a garden-variety insider trading case," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a news conference. Beyond the scale of the scheme, "It shows that we are targeting white-collar insider trading rings with the same powerful investigative techniques that have worked so successfully against the mob and drug cartels."

He also fired a warning shot for the rest of Wall Street.

"Today, tomorrow, next week, the week after, privileged Wall Street insiders who are considering breaking the law will have to ask themselves one important question: Is law enforcement listening?" he said.

Securities fraud charges carry possible maximum prison sentences of up to 20 years.

SRI LANKA TITAN

One of the criminal complaints accuses Rajaratnam, considered the richest Sri Lankan in the world, of conspiring with Intel employee Rajiv Goel and Anil Kumar, a director of powerful management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The alleged offenses took place for about three years starting in January 2006.

Galleon had as much as $7 billion under management, the complaint said. Intel Capital is the investment arm of Intel Corp. Officials from Galleon did not return calls seeking comment.

Rajaratnam, born into a family of well-to-do Tamils in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, is one of the largest investors on the Colombo Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Grant McCool and Joseph Giannone; Additional reporting by Edith Honan, Walden Siew and Ritsuko Ando in New York, Clare Baldwin in San Francisco, and Bryson Hull in Colombo, Sri Lanka; editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Phil Berlowitz and John Wallace)

Far Rockaway High School Scheduled to Close

This was my school. I attended and graduated. I graduated in 1987.
Wow!
When I was going to the school, it was a rough innet city school. Gang fights were somewhat common. They occured about once every year. I don't mean the little 100 - 200 people gang involved clobberings. These were massive. It was once school gang competeing against another school gang. That meant a few hundred people each. Bloody.
I look at the history and can't believe that it had once been so esteemed. It was not in my day. How sad!
It seems that the rest of us somehow feel the same way. Everything upside down.

Sad. Sad. Sad.

Far Rockaway High School Scheduled to Close

December 5, 2007

The news released today that Far Rockaway High School will be closing has made its way around the Internet with lightning speed. I am reprinting the letters I have received today and will be posting additional information as I receive it.

Skip Weinstock Email Address: rockaway@astound.net



The Demise of a Community Institution Is Always Sad
by Howard Schwach, Rockaway Wave Newspaper, 12/14/07

On November 10, 1947, 60 years ago, Far Rockaway High School celebrated its 50th, or golden anniversary. The gala anniversary dinner-dance was held at the Hotel Pennsylvania in Manhattan.

The dinner that night included fruit cocktail, cream of mushroom soup, roast turkey, cranberries and giblet gravy, string beans, mixed green salad, ice cream and cake, as well as coffee.

Among the hundreds who attended were my mother and father, Roz and Stanley Schwach. My father was FRHS, class of 1929. He was one of the students who walked from the temporary school at PS 42 in Arverne to the “new building” on Bay 25 Street the first day it opened in 1929. My mother was FRHS, class of 1934. I was FRHS, class of 1957. My wife, Susan, was FRHS, class of 1960. My son, Rob, was FRHS, class of 1983.

That is why you might see a teardrop on this paper. Far Rockaway High School is being phased out by the Department of Education. Coming soon, a new school called The Far Rockaway Educational Campus. No more Far Rockaway High School.

In the program given out on that night long ago in Manhattan was a section called “Far Rockaway Looks Ahead.” The final paragraph of that section read, “Far Rockaway High School is fortunate in that it holds the respect and affection of its alumni and the parents of its students. It is not enough for a school to keep abreast of the times. Far Rock-away must look ahead.” Now, we are all alumni without an alma mater.

There is a long list of FRHS graduates who should be remembered. Baruch Samuel Blumberg won the 1976 Nobel Prize in medicine. Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1976. He was involved with the Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bombs and ended World War II.
Burton Richter won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. There are not many high schools that can claim three men who won Nobel Prizes in the sciences. Now, there is one less.

Then, there were the countless sports stars who left Far Rockaway for stardom on the collegiate level, and even a few who made the pros. Off the top of my head, I can think of Nancy Lieberman, the Bayswater kid who came off the play-grounds of Bayswater to become the first legitimate female basketball star, and John Warren, who played for the New York Knicks and other teams before becoming a major player in the financial world.

Of course, there’s Joyce Brothers and Carl Icahn, Jonas Salk and Richard Cohen (the Washington Post columnist). The list could go on and on. “What high school did you go to?” “Oh, it no longer exists. They scrapped it in 2008.” Sad!

Ten years ago, in October of 1997, there was a 100th anniversary weekend that included a Friday night dinner, a Saturday morning breakfast at the Beach Club on Beach 116 Street, followed by a motorcade to the school for the day’s football game. There were more than 100 cars in the procession. That night, there was a dinner at a Nassau County hotel that was so crowded that it was impossible to find anybody you were looking for. There were literally thousands of people at the events, all of them coming back to Rockaway to remember their high school years. That is what the school means to its graduates.

Perhaps they should do what the government did with my ship, the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVA-42). When they scrapped it in the early 1970’s at the Philadelphia Shipyard, they invited all of those who had served on the ship to come and take a piece of the ship away. They could tear down the building, wipe out all memory of the school and give individual bricks to those who could prove they graduated from the school.

There are those, of course, who say that the school deserves to be closed down. That it was no longer serving an educational purpose. One person who I interviewed for the front-page story last week, an educator who asked not to be identified for obvious reasons, put it most succinctly. “They haven’t graduated anybody but felons for years,” he said. Perhaps he’s right and that’s sad.

The fault lies in lots of directions. When the Board of Education set its policy of every high school as a magnet school, it mostly destroyed the zoned schools such as Far Rockaway. Everybody who could get out, did so, leaving at the school only those who could not be accepted anywhere else.
When I attended Far Rockaway High School, there were three sessions. Freshman went to school from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. There were more than 2,500 students. Today, there are 865 students in the building.

There are also two other schools in the Far Rockaway High School building on Bay 25 Street, each with its own principal, its own administrators, and its own students. According to a present staff member, those two schools, Frederick Douglass Academy VI, a high school with 268 students and Knowledge And Power Preparatory Academy (KAPPA VI) with 159 students, get all of the gold mine while the old Far Rockaway High School gets the shaft. “We got no support from the DOE,” the staffer said. “Everything went to the mayor’s pet projects in other parts of the building.” The school got D on its recent progress report card.

The report card showed that 30 percent of the students graduated in a five-year period. Only 17 percent got a Re-gent’s Diploma on graduation. Only 34 percent of the students met standards on standardized tests. When asked in a survey, only 23 percent of the students, teachers and parents who responded believed that there was a culture of safety and respect in the building. In other words, the school is probably not meeting its mandate of educating students. That fault, however, lies with the students and their parents, not with the school, the teachers or the administrators. Two years ago, in an attempt to turn the school around, the DOE reorganized it, firing more than 75 percent of its staff and hiring all new teachers. It made no difference.

Neither will closing it down and making it into five or six smaller schools. They will be dealing with largely the same kids. It’s the kids that make the school what it is, not the staff. Want proof? Take the staff and administration from a high school that got an A on its report card and put them in Far Rockaway High School. Give them a few years, if they last that long. They will make no difference. It’s the kids, stupid. And their parents.

It is long past time that the DOE should understand that and set some standards and accountability for those two groups rather than closing schools and firing their staff. That would make a real difference. In fact, in this city, it is the only thing that will make a difference.

I have long held the belief that 50 percent of the city’s public school students get the best education in the world. They come from homes that value education and therefore, they learn. There is another 20 percent that might be turned on to education by a good teacher or a good administrator. The other 30 percent will never learn, no matter what the DOE does, because they come from a background that does not value education but denigrates it at every turn.

The liberal ideal that “All Children Can Learn,” is not close to being true. When our school officials begin to realize that, then we can get on the real road to a better educational system.



Hello,

I found your email address on the Far Rockaway alumni site. The Department of Education today announced that they are closing the school over the next few years, and I was hoping to talk to someone who remembers how it used to be. If you’d like to talk today, I can be reached at the number listed below. Thanks

Carrie Melago - Education reporter - New York Daily News - 212-210-1556 - Email Address: cMelago@nydailynews.com

Queens high school, Bronx elementary school to close
due to poor report cards

By CARRIE MELAGO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, December 6th 2007, 4:00 AM

A Queens high school and a Bronx elementary school are on the chopping block after getting poor report cards, officials said Wednesday.

Far Rockaway High School, beloved by alums but suffering from low graduation rates, and Public School 220 in the Bronx were the latest schools to learn they're being shuttered.

Six other schools were told Tuesday they'll be closed or phased out as a result of poor performance on the first-ever report cards.

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum yesterday criticized the administration for not consulting school communities or holding public meetings before making decisions.

"These closings have a devastating and destabilizing effect on the community," she said. "The DOE shouldn't make these decisions without input from parents and the larger community."

But Mayor Bloomberg defended the closures, saying the schools needed a new start.

"We just can't sit here and let a school that does not do what it's supposed to do continue on its merry way," he said.



Thought you might like to know that Far Rockaway High School is officially being phased out. There will be no new entries in the school in September. The building will revert to the "Far Rockaway Educational Campus," and will include at least three, and probably five of the mayor's "small schools." Look for the story on page one in this week's Wave. This has been confirmed by the DOE.

FRHS Going.... Going.... Gone!
by Howard Schwach
Rockaway Wave Newspaper

More than 110 years after it began in a wing of PS 42 in Arverne, Far Rockaway High School is slated for extinction over the next two years. The school’s present site will morph into a multi-school complex to be called the Far Rockaway Educational Campus, school officials say.

“The school hasn’t been serving student needs for years,” Melanie Meyers, a spokesperson for the Department of Education told The Wave on Wednesday. “We are phasing out the school because drastic changes are needed in order for the school to serve students well.”

Meyers said that the renamed educational complex would include several schools, including the two that already share the Bay 25 Street building with FRHS.

They are the Frederick Douglass Academy VI High School, which enrolls 347 students in grades 9 to 12, and the Knowledge And Power Preparatory Academy VI, which enrolls 159 students in grades 6 and 7. FRHS currently enrolls 865 students in grades 9 through 12. Each of the schools has its own principal, administrative staff and teachers.

A new, small school, probably a middle school, will open in September 2008, officials said. It will be joined in September of 2009 by a new high school unit.

The phase out of FRHS will begin in September, when no new freshman students will be enrolled. It will take three years, officials say, for the building, and the name, to be completely phased out, because students who began at the school last September have the right to remain there through graduation. The last graduating class from FRHS will leave in June of 2011.

The reaction to the word that the high school would be closing was varied. One alumnus told The Wave that the school had been stagnant for years and that something drastic had to happen. “All the school has graduated for years are felons,” the alumnus, who asked not to be identified, said.

When told of the closings, however, Steve Berman, one-time Seahorse quarterback and a star pitcher on the baseball team in the 1950s, said that it was sad that a school with such a rich history was coming to an end.

“There is so much history there, Nobel Laureates, city championships, tens of thousands of alumni,” Berman said. “You’d think that they could do something to keep the name alive.”
A present staff member, who asked not to be identified, argued that the Department of Education had not done enough to help the school stay alive.

“There is a good core group of young teachers in the building who have been trying to work with the kids,” the staffer said. “From day one, however, all the support has gone to the other schools in the building. We were neglected, both physically and educationally. I think that this was the plan from day one. If so, they should have been more honest with us. The DOE supports its pet projects and the rest of us are left out in the cold and then discarded.”

“What’s going to happen to the at-risk kids who go here,” he asked. “What about the English language learners and the special ed kids who can’t go to the small schools? What will happen with them?”

City Councilman James Sanders, FRHS class of 1975, said that his alma mater is “near and dear” to him, but that he would not “let his sentiment stand in the way if the DOE proves to him that the school must be closed.”

Sanders said on Thursday that he was calling for an emergency meeting at the school with Department of Education officials to explain why it must be closed and why the community had no input into the process. He was still awaiting confirmation on meeting specifics at press time, he said.

Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum criticized the Department of Education for not consulting the impacted communities before making the cut. She argues that the DOE should have held public hearings in Rockaway before actually making the announcement that the school would be phased out.

“These closing have a devastating and destabilizing effect on the community,” she said. “The DOE shouldn’t make these decisions without input from parents and the larger community.”
Mayor Mike Bloomberg, pointing out that the school received a D on its recent school progress report, said, “We can’t just sit here and let a school that does not do what it’s supposed to do to continue on its merry way.”

Meyers said that all of the schools in the building would contribute to the present sports program and that the campus would field teams in several sports, as they do now.

Howie Schwach, Class of '57 Email Address: editor@rockawave.com
Managing Editor
The Wave
Photos courtesy of the Wave Newspaper - Subscribe to the Wave at http://www.rockawave.com/




Students at the school in its early years show pride in FRHS


The first faculty of Far Rockaway High School, circa 1897, sits in front of the school



You may be interested to know that the DOE is closing Far Rock. There are currently two other schools in Far Rock. They will remain, but Far Rockaway High school will be taking no new freshman class. In 4 years there will be no school known as "Far Rockaway High School"

Ray Taruskin, Class of 69 Email Address: rtaruskin@nyc.rr.com
Teacher at Far Rock from 1973 to 2005
Dean from 1996 to 2005
Chapter leader from 1996 to 2005



HOT NEWS FLASH -
I referee high school girls basketball in NYC. Yesterday I did a game at "The Rock" and was given this info by the coach, who knows that I am alum. At 2 PM yesterday ( 12/4 ) there was a rapid dismissal followed by a faculty conference. The principal notified the faculty that as Sept. 2008 there will be no more incoming freshmen to Far Rockaway High School. When the current students graduate, or leave, Far Rockaway High School will no longer exist!!!!! As a retired NYC high school assistant principal ( Long Island City ) I can tell you that this is the way that the current Chancellor and Department of Education ( it's no longer the Board of Education ) operates. This is their way to "help" schools that are failing to graduate students at their "required" rate. Our alma mater is not the first to fall victim to this type of reorganization.

Steve Lewin, Class of '66 Email Address: PEBOSSLIC@AOL.COM



Two More Schools to Close for Bad Performance
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: December 6, 2007

The Department of Education announced yesterday that it planned to close Far Rockaway High School in Queens and Public School 220 in the Bronx, weeks after both schools received poor marks under the city’s new school-grading system. P.S. 220, also known as the Mott Haven Village School, will shut its doors at the end of this school year, and Far Rockaway will stop accepting new students and be phased out over the next four years. The Mott Haven school has been plagued with problems for several years — in 2004, the city decided to restructure it by eliminating the middle school grades there. Both of the schools had already been on the state’s list of failing schools in danger of being shut down. Officials said they expect to announce within the next week up to 12 more schools to be closed.



Hi,

Bari Randal, Class of 74 here. I stumbled upon the announcement below on NY1.com today here in NY. Since so many Rockawayites are no longer here in NY, thought I'd pass the news along. I suppose it will come as no surprise to most of us, FRHS hasn't been living up to its potential for some time. Nevertheless, I'm sure I won't be the only one interested, and at least a bit saddened, by the news of the official passing of our high school. Regards,

Bari



P.S. 220, Far Rockaway High School Among Those Set To Close
December 06, 2007

Just one day after it was announced that six city schools would be shut down or phased out, two more schools were added to the chopping block Wednesday.

The Department of Education announced that Far Rockaway High School in Queens and P.S. 220 in the Bronx have been added to the list.

All of the schools received Ds or Fs on the city's first school report cards. The facilities are now slated for re-organization.

The most recent schools added to the list are Far Rockaway High School in Queens and P.S. 220 in the Bronx.

For some students, the news is hard to handle.

"Well, actually, it's kind of shocking because I never pictured the school closing,” said P.S. 220 graduate Zoraida Rosado. “And it is surprising to me because when I was in the school, we used to do all fun activities. We would do work, and we’d actually get good grades. And it's pretty shocking to see that their going to close down the school. It hurts."

The middle and high schools set to close will stop accepting new students, although current students will be allowed to graduate.

The elementary schools will close at the end of the school year and re-open with new names and possibly new administrators.



Far Rockaway High to close its doors
BY BRENDAN BROSH
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Friday, December 7th 2007, 4:00 AM

Far Rockaway High School alumni were saddened Thursday by the news that the once-mighty academic and athletic powerhouse will be phased out of existence because of slumping graduation rates and poor scholastic performance.

Several notable graduates bemoaned the school's closing, and mourned the impending loss of their once-illustrious alma mater.

"It was everything a public school should be," said Far Rockaway grad and Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, 66, who plans to attend his 50-year reunion next year. "We were the beneficiaries of a great education, for free."

The school will stop accepting ninth-graders this year, and students currently enrolled will be allowed to graduate, said an Education Department spokeswoman.

The building will be renamed the Far Rockaway Educational Campus, and will house as many as four smaller high schools in coming years.

The school's alums include billionaire financier Carl Icahn and Nobel Prize winners Richard Feynman, Baruch Blumberg and Burton Richter.

"We had some of the best teachers in the world," said Kenneth Ribet, 59, a mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley and 1965 graduate. "It's sad, but times have changed and institutions have to evolve."

Psychologist and advice columnist Dr. Joyce Brothers graduated from the school in three years - a good deal of which she spent flirting, she joked.

"I was pretty sassy, paying more attention to boys than to my studies," said Brothers, a 1943 graduate who commuted to the school from Long Island. "I went back a couple of years ago and they gave me a special day. It was really wonderful."

The school also was an athletic powerhouse, winning the city football championship on more than one occasion.

"Far Rockaway High School made me who I am," said 1976 grad and basketball great Nancy Lieberman, 49. "It allowed me to excel athletically."

Lieberman, now a commentator for ESPN, revisited the school nearly 15 years ago with pal Martina Navratilova, and taught the tennis star how to play stickball in the school's gymnasium.

The high school's athletic program will live on as the new schools at the campus will compete together under the banner of Far Rockaway High School.

"I can't believe (Schools Chancellor) Joel Klein did this to me," said Cohen with a chuckle. "I'm so choked up. I'm taking this personally. Joel Klein couldn't have even gotten into Far Rockaway High School."





Goodbye FRHS
December 7, 2007

The Department of Education is closing Far Rockaway High School. The school had dozens of notable alumni including three Nobel Prize winners, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Carl Icahn, Nancy Lieberman and a host of others.

The school’s graduation rate and safety record have been less than stellar for a number of years, so I guess the DOE is doing the right thing by taking a new approach to education in Far Rockaway.

This morning I had the pleasure of speaking to Nobel laureate Burton Richter, who attended FRHS for two years and recently retired from Stanford University.

“I can’t believe the whole thing fell apart,” said Richter, who won the prize in 1976 for his pioneering work in physics. “Far Rockaway was a small town in a big city…It’s sad news. I thought the new principal would succeed in raising it from the dead. Apparently she didn’t. ”




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balloon boy

Fox is reporting that the balloon boy story.
The father is an "inventor" and a wanna be actor.
In my opinion, and remember - everyone is entitled to have one, is that the father rehersed the story with his kid and he put the rest in to motion.
The mother is probably tired of having to support his HABITS. She went along with it, since the child was not going to be in danger.

"What will this guy go through or put up with to become a celebrity?"

Authorities are seeking another interview with Heene's family to clarify a statement by Falcon that Thursday's runaway balloon saga was done "for a show."

"If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck."

The article below is very troubling to me.
This international agency should be under investigation for being an enemy to the US and Israel and anyone else thats on the Iranian hit list.
Everything and Everyone should be fully investigated

Friday, October 16, 2009
NOBEL LAUREATE MOHAMED ELBARADEI REFUSED EVIDENCE OF IRAN'S NUKE PROGRAM BY FINNISH NUCLEAR PHYSICIST......

GIVE EM ANOTHER NOBEL!



Mohamed Albaradei basks in praise

for not doing his job





The incorruptable Finnish nuclear physicist, Olli Heinonen, who works for the international atomic watchdog agency, the IAEA, has let it be known that Mohamed Albaradei had refused to include a 67 page appendix to a seasonal report on Iran's nuclear ambitions, that included information of a three minute film by Iranian nuclear scientists smuggled out of Iran, that depicted a computerized simulation of the detonation of a warhead.



The Haaretz reports that in one of the most important meetings ever held in the IAEA building in Vienna, the representatives of 35 member states that comprise the board of governers, viewed the video and were stunned. What makes it all the more stunning (if not bizarre) were the documents supplied by the Finnish Physicist, as well as the fact that the Iranians themselves added the soundtrack from the movie "Chariots of Fire" to the video.

"Heinonen was very cautious, emphasizing there was no evidence proving that what they had seen was necessarily a mock-up of a nuclear warhead; it could have been a conventional one. Nonetheless, his listeners were stunned. It was clear to most of them that it was likely a nuclear device.

As one of those who was present explained to Haaretz: "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck." That is, one can assume the Iranians have conducted research and calculations for weaponization - how to assemble a nuclear device - as part of a secret military nuclear program alongside their civilian one.

What makes matters worse, is that the Finnish physicist, Olli Heinonen's concerns fell on deaf ears, Mohamed Elbaradei would not include his team's findings in the IAEA's annual report on Iran's uranium/nuclear development. The fix is in folks, the US and the Euros will not use force to remove Iran's nuke program, or at least, that is what appears to be the case. KGS





Haaretz VIENNA - The last place you would expect to hear the apocalyptic soundtrack of the movie "Chariots of Fire" would be Iran. This 1981 film recounts the story of a Jewish British athlete and his teammate, a devout Christian, who refuses to compete on Sunday, his day of rest. But this soundtrack accompanies a highly secret video, produced by Iranian nuclear scientists, but never screened before the general public - a three-minute film depicting a computerized simulation of the detonation of a warhead, most likely a nuclear one. Whether it was intentional or merely coincidental, the nameless Iranian editor decided to use the soundtrack of the British blockbuster to accompany the video.

This film was, however, screened on February 26, 2008, in the fourth-floor conference room of Building C at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) overlooking the Danube. The host of the screening was Finnish nuclear physicist Olli Heinonen, the IAEA's deputy director general and head of its inspection department, officially called the Department of Safeguards. In attendance were representatives of the 35 member states that constitute the organization's board of governors. It was one of the most important meetings ever held by the IAEA.

In the seven years prior to the gathering, Heinonen visited Iran many times as part of his inspections on behalf of the agency. Iranian intelligence agents followed his every move, hoping to catch him doing something that could either embarrass him or be used for blackmail purposes. They offered him bribes, but the stern-faced Finnish nuclear scientist never took the bait.



Heinonen even laid out his own money for the clock with a Farsi inscription that now adorns one of the walls in his office. He found it in one of the warehouses of the Kalaye Electric Company, in the southern outskirts of Tehran. The Iranians were adamant that Kalaye produced only electronic watches and clocks, although the IAEA discovered that it clandestinely manufactures centrifuges for uranium enrichment. These centrifuges are being used today in Iran's nuclear program, both at the uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz and at the recently discovered plant in Qom.

A dedicated official, esteemed by agency colleagues for his integrity, Heinonen is known to oppose the conciliatory approach toward Iran that has for years been the policy of IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei, who will be leaving his post at the end of the year. Heinonen managed to recruit his boss' agreement to invite the representatives of the board of governors' member states to the briefing on that wintry Vienna day. The purpose: a briefing on the suspected "military aspects" of Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran claims is intended only for peaceful purposes.

The video depicted a room made of stone. At the center stood a Perspex mock-up - equipped with a flashing red light - of a ball-shaped bomb resting in the metallic, gold-plated cone of a missile warhead. In the most important scene in the film, the computer simulation shows the launched warhead reentering the atmosphere and exploding 600 meters above the earth's surface. According to experts, this is the ideal altitude for detonating a nuclear bomb in order to generate the maximum degree of destruction on the ground.

At the briefing, Heinonen noted that the type of warhead represented by the model could fit an Iranian Shahab missile.

Thus, with the soundtrack of "Chariots of Fire" in the background, the participants in Vienna had the impression they were viewing a PR marketing film produced to advance the sales of some corporation. Some present thought it was a training film intended to demonstrate to senior Iranian officials - either members of the country's political or religious echelons, or the top brass of its Revolutionary Guard - that Tehran had reached an advanced stage in its nuclear program.

In addition to the video, Heinonen displayed documents in Farsi, which he said dated back to July 2003-January 2004, and which included a number of sketches. Both the film and sketches showed a machine that can produce light-weight aluminum warheads.

Heinonen was very cautious, emphasizing there was no evidence proving that what they had seen was necessarily a mock-up of a nuclear warhead; it could have been a conventional one. Nonetheless, his listeners were stunned. It was clear to most of them that it was likely a nuclear device.

As one of those who was present explained to Haaretz: "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a duck." That is, one can assume the Iranians have conducted research and calculations for weaponization - how to assemble a nuclear device - as part of a secret military nuclear program alongside their civilian one.

At the briefing, Heinonen told participants that he and other IAEA officials had asked the Iranians for an explanation of the video - specifically, about the warhead, its simulated reentry into the earth's atmosphere, the detonation of its nuclear payload at an altitude of 600 meters, the ball-like mechanism and so on. However, as befitting their usual tactics, the Iranians delayed their response, and then argued that the materials - the footage, photos and sketches - were a total fabrication, produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency or Israel's Mossad, or perhaps by both of them together. According to the Iranians, the forgery was intended to frame them, to present Iran as a country engaged in developing nuclear weapons, and thus operating in blatant violation of international conventions.

The Iranians' next move was to admit half-heartedly that the video was authentic, but that it depicted a computer simulation of a reentry vehicle of a conventional warhead - not a nuclear one.

Smuggled out

Three years prior to the Vienna gathering, reports leaked to the media and also published by Haaretz already claimed that Iran was involved in secret research for weaponization purposes. The reports were based on secret documents that had reached the IAEA. This data, according to the reports, had been concealed in a laptop smuggled out of Iran, ostensibly by a scientist who had been a part of his country's nuclear program, and who handed the computer over to the German intelligence service, the BND.

Recently, however, a new version of events has surfaced. David Albright, a physicist who serves as president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington, D.C., wrote that the data was smuggled out as "electronic media" and not via a laptop. A former IAEA inspector, Albright is considered to have very good relations with the agency as well as with American intelligence. In recent years, ISIS has beat even the media in publicizing on its Web site information about the nuclear programs of Iran and Syria. Indeed, Albright was the first to publish aerial photos of the nuclear site at Qom.

Albright explained last month that the scientist who smuggled out the secret data was indeed an agent for German intelligence, who suspected Iran's security services had discovered his espionage activities. For that reason, he gave his wife the "electronic media," including the video, and instructed her to go to Turkey and hand it over to American diplomats there. A short while afterward, reported Albright, the scientist-agent vanished without a trace: Apparently, he was arrested by Iranian intelligence and executed for treason.

When it reached the United States, the data was sent to the Sandia National Laboratories to verify whether it was authentic and whether the simulation of the detonation of a nuclear device had, in fact, been carried out. Subsequently, probably in 2005, the information was transmitted in censored format to the IAEA. However, after examination, the organization's experts could not determine definitively whether it was genuine.

Nonetheless, the data convinced the IAEA's board of governors that Iran had indeed reneged on its obligations, and the agency decided to submit a report on the matter to the UN Security Council. In 2006, that body imposed sanctions on Iran for breaching its safeguards agreements and called upon it to suspend its uranium-enrichment activities. However, because of the internal dispute within the IAEA, the Vienna briefing was held only two years later.

Heinonen and his team compiled a 67-page report and asked ElBaradei to include it as an appendix to one of the IAEA's seasonal reports on Iran. However, on this issue, ElBaradei gained the upper hand: Convinced that there was no evidence of an Iranian military program, he refused to append the internal report and even asked that the fact of its very existence be concealed.

A few weeks ago, Haaretz revealed the very existence of the appendix. However, the bitter truth is that such information cannot change the reality on the ground. Iran continues to enrich uranium while claiming that it has no military nuclear program. Russia and China insist on opposing harsh sanctions on Iran. Israeli spokespersons have hinted at, or even threatened, a military operation against Iran, but they prefer it be carried out by the United States. The United States and the European Union oppose the use of force and find themselves isolated in their attempts to deal with Tehran's nuclear challenge. This week, the IAEA said it had no comment when asked by Haaretz about the information presented at the Vienna briefing.


Posted by KGS at 6:30 PM

Labels: Elbaradei, IAEA, Iran, WMD


0 comments:

Warlords and Taliban - #4

The type of corruption that is seen there reminds me of stories of the 1920’s and the corruption and gangsters of that erra.

Chief Zazai: You are a trucker who is delivering a load of goods from Kabul to Herat. What happens? Along the road there are checkpoints, some of “police,” some you don’t know who they are. Each time you must pay. You are held up at gunpoint. Or you may own a shop and you’re doing well. One day they arrest you and take you to jail. Or you or your son is snatched off the street. Your family must pay a ransom to get you back. Do you want a license to build a building or permission to dig a well or put in a pipe for sewage? Everywhere you find outstretched hands.

It, however, differs in that the governments is the corrupt entity

Chief Zazai: It is the police, it is the army, it is agents of the warlords who run their districts and deliver votes to the Kabul government. And when the people believe that the U.S. is backing these people, you can see what that does.

The next paragraph is frightening, because it reminds me of the corruption that we are only beginning to see here in the US. The US should look to Afghanistan to see what the future looks like.

Chief Zazai: The people are caught between two fires. When the warlords ran Afghanistan after the Soviets got kicked out, a poor person had to pay a “tax” to have a bicycle, to buy rice, if you sneezed they took money out of your pocket. The Taliban arose in response to this and were backed by the people who thought, These guys are bad but at least they are honest. At least they believe in something beyond their own greed and gangsterism. But then the Taliban became just as much of a plague upon the people by jamming their cruel ways down everybody’s throat. And we saw what Mullah Omar let happen, culminating on 9/11.

This is actually the way Americans feel right now about gun control. Maybe their idea of TRIBES is the same as our idea of STATES. When the word is substituted the idea is the same. So, I believe it’s the same concept.

SP: Skeptics of course will say that to arm the Afghan tribes would only be adding another ungovernable element to an already-seething witches’ brew of contending forces. How would you answer that objection?
Chief Zazai: I absolutely can understand the point where many minds’ red light alerts goes off, but that again is due to the lack of understanding of the Afghan tribal structure. Back in the 18th and 19th Centuries the British Raj faced similar problems and the threats were immediately felt by London. In order to stop the Afghan tribes from crossing into the greater Indian side and destabilizing the British Raj, the British created tribal forces from the Afghan tribes to defend the territory of the British Raj in what is now the (NWFP) North West Frontier Province. That strategy worked so well that the British models of Khyber Rifles, Mommand Regiments and Frontier Constabulary have become legendary forces and all are made from the tribesmen and are still part of the today’s Pakistani armed forces.

The same as the states have each law of their own

SP: As I understand it, these British-officered forces were, in practical terms at the rank-and-file level, governed by tribal constraints and conventions.
Chief Zazai: Militia do not exist in the frame of the tribal structure, we have got Arbakai, which means Tribal Police or Tribal Armed Constables. As I said before, the Tribal Police Force programme is and will be under the total control of a Tribal Council. The elders will control the force, there shall be no problems at all because we have a strong tribal system that no individual can break the treaties these elders make. What the elders promise, they will do and deliver. It will be more depending on the U.S. Army to deliver what they promise. To prevent tribal conflict, it has to be structured in such a way that all the tribes living in one province will sign Unity treaties among each other and agree on the conditions laid out. This would be expanded to the neighboring provinces as well, that’s where we will be able to unite the Afghan Tribes and bring them all under a single leadership. I have done so in my valley with the 11 Tribes. It’s a small-scale achievement but it could be applied all over and enlarged.
So, what would the US have to object to with this idea?
Chief Zazai: To send more troops means to create more new battles, I think we have already got a few nasty fronts in the south where the British soldiers and U.S. Marines are fighting almost non-stop and of course more troops means more body bags and that itself would be an alarming sign. In Vietnam the U.S. had over half a million soldiers and still the generals were asking for more. I would suggest that Gen. McChrystal instead explore better alternatives on the ground rather than asking for more troops. I agree when he is asking for resources and equipment and here I present the Tribal Police Force for his attention–to consider the TPF as an alternative to more U.S. troops.