Interesting Stuff # 41

It’s not going to be 10 years

All of this points toward a faster development cycle for Iran than anyone has predicted. If they develop a P-2 centrifuge cascade and have plans and a working model on which to build a design, the Iranians only need the fissile material itself in order to produce nuclear weapons. Their existing cascade has been assumed to be P-1 technology, but the Iranians have busied themselves with secret work at Ishfahan and Natanz to fortify and expand both facilities while refusing to answer IAEA questions about their work on the P-2.
If the Iranians have the P-2 technology, they can create fissile material much faster and in greater quantities than has been reported previously. When they have enough, they will move directly into weapons production, and that will not be in 2015. That could well be next year.

Rallying against genocide
George W. Bush was the first and only world leader to have said plainly that the mass killings in Darfur are genocide. And at Freedom House in Washington on March 25, the president emphasized: "When we say genocide, we mean genocide must be stopped." He continued by pointing out that the African Union's small force in Darfur is not enough: "There should be a NATO overlay of support.
However, it was appalling to hear, on PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer say that "Africans feel very strongly" that they should take care of problems on their own continent. So, he added, one "should be careful" about imposing oneself on them. "There is not yet the need for declaring a willingness for [NATO] to participate." There is not yet a need when more than 300,000 unarmed African Muslims in Darfur have been killed or died of disease; 2 million have been displaced; and when the United Nations' chief humanitarian coordinator, Jan Egeland, declared on April 4 that barbarism in Darfur "is changing dramatically for the worse."
…
The April 30 "Rally to Stop Genocide" will take place between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on the National Mall, between Third and Fourth streets in front of the U.S. Capitol Metro Station Federal Center SW (Orange and Blue lines). The crowd will assemble from 1:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
For information on this rally and how to be a part of it, the Web site is: savedarfur.org/rally, or call Chuck Thies, the rally coordinator, at (202) 478-6302.

This is a list of some of my publications. I hope you find them interesting and useful.
Visit Allison Haywood’s SkepticsEye to keep up on campaign financing issues. If she doesn’t have the whole goods, she’ll steer you to who does.

Iranian group seeks British suicide bombers

The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which claims to be independent but has the backing of the regime, said it is targeting potential recruits in Britain because of the relative ease with which UK passport-holders can enter Israel.

Mexico Harsh to Undocumented Migrants

Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money.
While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.
And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people - compared with 12 percent in the United States.

Of Words (THAT ALL MUST BE READ, FROM MICHAEL YON)

The Civil War did not start subsequent the invasion; it was already underway. The former Iraqi regime had slaughtered unknown thousands of civilians and buried many of them in mass graves that are still today being discovered and catalogued. If anything, the previous Civil War has merely changed shape, the advantage has clearly shifted, and now that Americans and Europeans are in the combat zone, the war gets more complicated.
…
True, I am anti-war, but I recognize that at this juncture in human history that refusing to fight in many parts of the world means that we agree to be beaten to death, or we agree to allow airliners to ram into our buildings. War is a pitiful human reality that we must face, and we are far from finished with facing this demon. We live in a rough world where strength is rewarded, weakness is penalized.
…
What is also new is that in the absence of better reporting of the complex situation on the ground, good and bad, Americans are increasingly turning against this mission. They are not ignoring poor media but are rewarding it by paying attention to it. The people are not ignoring the poor media, but they are doing something far worse: they are ignoring our troops!
…
These people, whether we call them freedom fighters, insurgents, thugs, or terrorists, have a stated mission to attack anyone who is not like them, wherever they can. They are not bluffing. They cannot be appeased. They will not stop if and when we leave, if we leave without completing the mission. If we leave, all vestiges of progress will be lost and those Iraqis who risked their lives to work with us to gain that progress will no longer trust Americans. If we run, the enemy will follow us. They will kill us. They will not stop until we stop them. I might be anti-war, but I am much more anti-terrorist. No more needs to be said on the subject of whether or not a portion of the violence in Iraq should be called a civil war, unless we want to argue about the definitions while the place explodes around us. There are more pressing issues than the limitations of our dictionaries.

Blood Money (So, now the Palestinians can steal Arabs’ $ instead of ours)

“We have received pledges from the Arab world that will help us operate for several months,” the minister said on the website of Hamas. “In all, $20m from Saudi Arabia, $40m from Kuwait and $20m from the UAE are to be transferred,” he said. “We will not collapse despite the war being waged against us by the racist Zionists, by the United States and the European Union,” he said.
Abdelrazek said earlier that the government still faced a $120m monthly budget shortfall, despite having received $35m from Algeria.
We didn’t mention the $50 million from Iran.

Busted! Cindy Sheehan's Story Hits a Snag!
(This is even sadder and sicker than her deranged politics.)

Is the bloom off the Tulip?

Kyrgyzstan, formerly the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic during Soviet times, gained its independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Askar AKAYEV became President of Kyrgyzstan and the country seemed to be on the road to democracy. However, over time corruption became rampant, the country suffered from a poor economy, and there was blatant nepotism in the country. This led democracy activists to protest against his government. The Kyrgyz non-governmental organizations (NGO) and many young people began protesting the corruption, and against unfair parliamentary and presidential elections. The Kyrgyz government cracked down on opposition groups and the NGOs, and many government opponents were imprisoned and harassed. Newspapers critical of the government were also shut down. The protests became known as the Tulip Revolution, a relatively nonviolent revolution that forced AKAYEV to resign and flee to Moscow in March 2005.

The Tulip Revolution brought Kurmanbek BAKIYEV into power as the President, and Feliks KULOV as the Prime Minister. BAKIYEV ran on a democracy ticket and pledged to fight corruption within the government. Now, a year after the Tulip Revolution, the economy is still weak, President BAKIYEV has failed to deliver on his promises of reforms, and there is fear that the Kyrgyz government is being taken over by organized crime figures and thugs….

Kyrgyzstan is important to the United States, and is an ally in the fight against terrorism. Shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Kyrgyz government granted the United States the use of an airbase located at Manas Airport in Bishkek, the capitol of Kyrgyzstan…. The US and coalition forces have used the base for operations in Afghanistan since 2001. The airbase in Kyrgyzstan has become more important since the Uzbek government has evicted the US from the airbase in Uzbekistan after the US was critical of the Uzbek government’s crackdown on protestors last year.

Americans donate and volunteer for a lot of good causes abroad

While it is well known that past and present U.S. governments spend much less on foreign aid as a percentage of GDP than most other rich countries do, the enormous amount of private aid is less well known outside the U.S. The State Department summarizes a new study:
The U.S. private sector donates to international causes at a level nearly four times the amount spent by the U.S. government on official development assistance (ODA), according to a report about to be published by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity. Called the Index on Global Philanthropy, the report tallies $71 billion in international donations by U.S. private charities, religious organizations, universities, corporations, foundations, and immigrants sending money home for the year of 2004 (the latest year available). That compares to $20 billion in government foreign aid for the same year. (...)
According to the Hudson Institute, "the tradition of private giving is considerably less developed in Europe than in the U.S." (...) Close to half of all American adults do volunteer work, according to Independent Sector, a forum for charitable organizations. The index estimates volunteering for international projects totals 135,000 full-time work hours per year -- worth more than $4 billion.