Serbian Intel Chief was CIA Ally
The LA Times has an interesting story out this morning on former Serbian intelligence chief, Jovica Stanisic.
Stanisic is facing trial at the Hague for his alleged involvement in ethnic cleansing...
In 1991, as ethnic violence escalated, Milosevic ordered the creation of secret paramilitary units, with names like Red Berets and Scorpions, that would roam the Balkans. They wore unmarked uniforms, were led by thugs and committed some of the worst atrocities of the war.
As the trial got underway last year, Groome showed photos of Stanisic posing with members of the special units. He played audio of intercepted communications in which Stanisic appears to refer to the units as his "boys."
At one point, Groome introduced a videotape showing images of Muslim men and boys -- their hands bound with wire -- being led into the woods and shot, one by one, by members of the Scorpions.
"Jovica Stanisic established these units," said Groome, an American lawyer. And Stanisic made sure "they had everything that they needed, including a license to clear the land of unwanted people, a license to commit murder."
But it turns out, Stanisic was a secret ally of the US Central Intelligence Agency and worked from the inside to "defuse some of the most explosive events of the Bosnian war."
In a document submitted in 2004, which the existence of is only coming to light now, the CIA, ironically, has put itself:
in the unusual position of serving as something of a character witness for a war crimes defendant.
Citing several instances of direct action Stanisic was able to maneuver from the inside, along with valuable information such as locations of Serbian built bunkers in Iraq, the CIA and Stanisic's contact made the rare move of stepping in to provide context for a defendant of war crimes.
The whole article is very interesting and worthy of a LeCarre novel...
Arnold Schwarzenegger's Staff Gives Californians a Raw Deal
Proving frivolously again rules without oversight are like speed limit laws without radar, Arnold's ban on nonessential travel among his staff was ignored by ten high ranking staffers, including three cabinet members.
There was a Justin Timberlake concert, short meetings scheduled around long weekend trips, food, fuel and travel expenses and all of it on California taxpayer's dime:
"That's really no different than saying, 'I'm going to Hawaii for a vacation,' and spending 10 minutes at a meeting in Hawaii, and having my employer pay for a round-trip airfare," Nolte said.
Remember this?
Specs on Marine One Security Breach
Once again we have a security breach in a private company:
An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama's helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC's affiliate in Pittsburgh.
Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the transfer of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information.
The channel quoted the company's CEO, Bob Boback, who said Tiversa found a file containing the entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One.
"What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One," Boback told WPXI.
Lovely.
New VP at CBS had a sick little history with Abramoff
Yes, I say sick. This new hire by CBS, Jeff Ballabon, is part of the country's rot. When people say corporations are sick and evil, this is one of those reasons:
Ballabon was an executive vice president with Channel One in 1998 when it came under fire from Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL). Channel One had developed a comfortable niche providing free educational programming to public schools in exchange for running commercials during the programs, many of them for soda, candy, and other junk food. Responding to complaints from conservative constituents, Shelby expressed concern and called for Congressional hearings.
Channel One quickly hired the lobbying firm of Preston, Gates to head off this threat to its profits, ultimately paying them over a million dollars. Preston, Gates assigned the still-obscure lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the account.
Emails released by the Senate Finance Committee show that Abramoff was hard at work by January 1999.
Over the next several months, he would recruit all his most reliable allies to speak on Channel One's behalf:Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Traditional Values Coalition, Rabbi Daniel Lapin's Toward Tradition. and two groups which had sponsored Abramoff's overseas junkets -- the National Security Council Foundation and the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR).
Why would CBS hire this guy? First off, commending Sen. Shelby is against my nature, but I am glad he fought this, but this guy Ballabon was cashing in from granting junk food companies exclusive advertising towards school children, and the Grover Norquist crowd comes in to defend the practice, in fact, insist on it. Wrapped in the flag, wrapped in the flag... What's worse, is that Ralph Reed was in on it too...
Ralph Reed, who had been friends with Abramoff since their College Republican days in the early 80's, also participated in the Channel One lobbying effort.
What a good Christian Ralph is.
In other Abramoff news, Sen. Thad Cochran has been sucked into the vortex:
A U.S. Department of Justice investigation is creeping closer to Republican Sen. Thad Cochran. The DOJ indicted Ann Copland, Cochran’s 29-year legislative aide, for accepting more than $25,000 worth of meals and event tickets from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in exchange for aiding Abramoff’s clients. The DOJ charged Copland with one count of conspiracy to commit honest-services fraud in connection to the Abramoff case.
The indictment leads to questions about how conscious Cochran was of political bribery in his office. Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist with government watchdog group Public Citizen, said it was highly unlikely that Cochran knew nothing of the exchanges.
Video of Police Beating Teen-age Girl
MSNBC reports:
Former neighbors of a teenage girl shown in a video of an alleged deputy assault saw the video for the first time today.
Prosecutors charged Deputy Paul Schene with fourth-degree assault after he was seen on tape roughing up the 15-year-old suspect. The girl was arrested after police said she stole a car from a woman she lived with.
Neighbors are shocked after seeing what happened after that arrest.
"That makes me sick, physically sick," Sue Sandell said.
She and her daughter Amber saw the tape today for the first time.
"You don't need to be physically punished for that, not at that age," Amber said.
The tape was locked up for three months until a judge ordered it be released to the public.
When police act like this, they are thugs and in this case, guilty of assault and battery of a minor. I hope they go away for a long time. If that was my daughter, prison would be safer than their homes.
To mercenary or not to mercenary, that is still the question...
... well, until the robots take over, but veteran voice of the private military debate, David Isenberg, keeps the discussion alive with a piece in the Middle East Times Friday on PMCs in UN peacekeeping missions:
As Article 29 of the charter allows for the creation of subsidiary bodies for the performance of Security Council functions, this would allow for the formation of a contractor directorate. This would have two main responsibilities. The first would be assessment of tenderers. Successful applicants would be graded through a certification system that would accredit those holding competencies required to carry out a wide spectrum of peacekeeping and intervention deployments. Contractor companies would bid on fixed-term contracts for which they would periodically retender to the contractor directorate in open competition.
The second responsibility would be the administration of a criminal-justice apparatus. While states have always been reluctant to allow other authorities to exercise criminal jurisdiction over their troops, the better militaries have created standards of process and substantive law that could be adapted to deliver encouraging results in the contractor context.
Corporate forces would, after all, face many comparable scenarios, although the trial of a civilian (rather than military) contractor within a court having military characteristics will arouse criticisms. But given that the United States has starting using the Uniform Code of Military Justice to investigate and prosecute contractors accused of crimes, it is at least feasible.
Meanwhile, private military companies have gone to television with the Cobus Claassens led team of contractors fighting off pirates and poachers for the History channel's cameras:
Cobus has a rich history; he was with Executive Outcomes in the nineties and embodies the archetypical Afrikaaner soldier. The show is definitely a new twist on PMCs going mainstream, though the likes of Cobus always thought they should be, and it will be interesting to see if these ideas, bouncing around more in the public sphere, will change a public perception fostered by the dark side of integrating contractors into policy actions.
Three different headlines on Iranian Nuclear Capacity
*Iran has enough material for bomb
*Top Defense Officials: Iran Has Fissile Material for Nuke, but No Bomb Yet
*Iran "not close" to nuclear weapon: Gates
Tribunal in the Assassination of Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri Opens in The Hague
In midst of most rainfall in almost a year, California declares drought
For once, I agree with the Governor:
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday declared a state emergency due to drought and said he would consider mandatory water rationing in the face of nearly $3 billion in economic losses from below-normal rainfall this year.
As many as 95,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, communities will be devastated and some growers in the most economically productive farm state simply are not able to plant, state officials said, calling the current drought the most expensive ever.
Schwarzenegger, eager to build controversial dams as well as more widely backed water recycling programs, called on cities to cut back water use or face the first ever mandatory state restrictions as soon as the end of the month.
"California faces its third consecutive year of drought and we must prepare for the worst -- a fourth, fifth or even sixth year of drought," Schwarzenegger said in a statement, adding that recent storms were not enough to save the state.
This and fire really worry me about California. I hope the governor can take the lead on this and we can, as he says, plan for the worse.
Obama's open hand in the Southeast Asia
Reuters:
"If the (Obama) administration could somehow engineer the strategic realignment of Syria -- away from Iran toward the peace camp -- it would prove a real blow to regional militants," David Schenker, a senior fellow at Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote in a research note.
Syria would find it harder to maintain backing for militant groups and its longstanding alliance with Iran if the United States normalized ties and sought to broker peace between Israel and Syria, as it did for almost a decade until 2000.
In a goodwill gesture, the Obama administration has released $500,000 in donations raised in Washington for a Syrian charity backed by Assad's wife. However, Obama has retained Stuart Levey, a Treasury official appointed by former President George W. Bush to make sanctions against Syria and Iran more effective.
Of course, the Hariri assassination tribunal could make things difficult, but overtures made by an internationally popular leader may prove to countries we've had problems with in the past that this may be the best time to deal.