Pelosi Backs War Funds Only With Conditions
The News Review:
- Pelosi Backs War Funds Only With Conditions
- Istanbul uncowed since 2003 blasts
- Ken Livingstone: The rise of the fascist BNP is a threat to democracy…
- Firms Ride High on China’s Huge Rail Upgrade
- Horror of Madrid blasts relived as trial begins
Pelosi Backs War Funds Only With Conditions
Washington Post – Feb 16, 2007
They fought for a noble cause, and just because the politicians are now playing games does not mean that the cause was not just. What two faced folks we have running our country if they can cut and run when the going gets tough! Shame on them, and thank God that our soldiers do not follow their pitiful example of courage under fire. Saddam was a modern day Hitler- practicing genocide on his own people, and his home grown terrorists are no better or worse than any others, and they needed to be stopped. We do need to make Iraq stand up and defend their own country, and we do need time tables or benchmarks to make sure that happens in a timely manner, but we certainly do not need to do anything that will hamstring our troops in any way, shape or form. They are doing a job that most of us do not have the courage to do.
Istanbul uncowed since 2003 blasts
BBC News – Feb 16, 2007
Since 2003, the volume of trade between the UK and Turkey has almost doubled. “There have been lots of positive developments since then, plenty of firms looking for opportunities here in Turkey,” he says. Increased security
The trial of more than 70 men accused of involvement in the Istanbul bombings has revealed a network of home-grown Islamic extremists with close ties to al-Qaeda. Many defendants spent time in terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and sent fighters to wage Jihad, or holy war, in places like Chechnya and Bosnia. According to statements made in court and to police, the plotters were initially focused on sites linked to the US or Israel. The British targets were added in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. But most of the dead and injured were local Turks.
Ken Livingstone: The rise of the fascist BNP is a threat to democracy…
Guardian Unlimited – Feb 16, 2007
And yet this is a political party with a long record of racist activity, peddling hatred and mistrust in order to gain access not just to seats on local councils but – more insidiously – access to mainstream debate. Just over 60 years since the end of the second world war, we seem to have lost sight of the lessons of the fight against fascism – that unless you openly confront the racism and intolerance of the far right, they will grow. The fight against home-grown fascism can often focus on historical events: the victory at Cable Street or the battles against the National Front in the 1970s. But we have our own battles to fight now. At the 2006 local elections the British National party polled over 238,000 votes compared to 3,000 votes in 2000, increasing their number of councillors from 19 to 49. In the last six years the BNP vote has increased more than 75-fold. Yorkshire and the Humber and the West Midlands continue to be the BNP’s key target regions.
Firms Ride High on China’s Huge Rail Upgrade
Wall Street Journal – Wall Street Journal (subscription) – Feb 16, 2007
Furthermore, foreign manufacturers that win rail-related contracts face demands to transfer technologies to Chinese joint-venture partners, as a quid pro quo for the profits they stand to earn in China. For example, Siemens, a German conglomerate, has agreed to build 57 of its 60 trains at a local factory. The trick for these foreign companies, as for those making aircraft and many other high-tech products in China, will be to give the Chinese enough to keep them happy without sowing the seeds of home-grown competition. Still, China’s ambitious plan to modernize and expand its rail system is an opportunity no supplier can afford to miss. Hoke says he can’t think of any other market in which every one of the world’s main producers of high-tech trains is grabbing a share. Siemens recently clinched a €190 million contract to manage construction of a high-speed rail line from Beijing to the coastal city of Tianjin.
Horror of Madrid blasts relived as trial begins
unison.ie – Feb 16, 2007
“I looked them in the eye as I wanted to know I was going to be their worst nightmare. They avoided my gaze,” she said. Prosecutors argue the bomb plot was the work of a home-grown Islamist cell inspired by al-Qa’ida, who sought to punish Spain for participating in the war in Iraq. Some of the 12 directly implicated were already known to police, either for links with terrorism, or for small-scale acts of theft or drug dealing. But the three years of investigations summarised in hundreds of cardboard boxfiles lined up yesterday behind the judges will afford a painful reminder of past mistakes. And how easily a clutch of religious fanatics and common criminals exploited enormous security gaps in a country obsessed with combating terrorism. Explosives Spanish security services had no inkling of what was to come before the remote-controlled rucksack bombs triggered by mobile phones exploded within moments of each other.