Guest Column

Moscow and the Merchant of Death

by Patrick Radden Keefe, Taking Note As tensions intensified between the United States and Russia over the crisis in South Ossetia, one person who has no doubt been watching the story very closely is the notorious gun runner Viktor Bout, who is currently sitting in a jail cell in Bangkok. Known as the “Merchant of Death,” Bout is widely believed to have been the most prolific smuggler of black market weapons during the 1990s, who flouted UN embargoes to fuel the bloody conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other African countries. Bout played a clever game of jurisdictional arbitrage through much of his career, hopscotching from one country to another, always a step ahead of national laws and law enforcement. Eventually he settled in Moscow, where despite an Interpol red notice and the fact that he was wanted in numerous countries, he lived openly, and with impunity, going so far as to grant an interview for a cover story in the New York Times Magazine.

Anti-hate group calls Democrats to disinvite radical Muslim leader from convention

(Denver, CO) Americans Against Hate (AAH) is calling on the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) to disinvite Ingrid Mattson, the National President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), from speaking at its Denver convention. Mattson is scheduled to help lead a convention interfaith forum tomorrow, Sunday, August 24th.

The Nugacity of Obama

Barack Obama will undoubtedly wax eloquent when he accepts the Democratic Party nomination in front of 75,000 adoring acolytes at Denver’s Mile High Stadium on August 28th. Obama will talk about hope, change, this being our moment and how yes we can.

Selective Human Rights- Fraudulent Democracy

(Queen’s Park) – The Liberal government is doubling the size of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal and this spells double trouble for the people of Ontario. In response to a series of hearings this week at Queen’s Park, MPP Randy Hiller has lost faith in the legitimacy of committee oversight when it comes to Government bodies deciding the fate of Ontarians.

Chain wrapped around ‘old man’s body’ found in mosque

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- "There are the bloodstains on the wall, and here it is dried on the floor," Abu Muhanad said as he walked through a torture chamber in a Baghdad mosque where more than two dozen bodies have been found.

U.S. Helpless To Help Georgia?

by JR Dieckmann Why is the American left not reacting to the Russian invasion of Georgia in the same way that they reacted to the American invasion of Iraq? Where are the liberal protesters gathering in the streets and burning the Russian flag in objection to this “unjustified and illegal” invasion? Where is all the shouting that Georgia doesn’t have WMDs, a nuclear program, or ties to al Qaeda? But more importantly, why isn’t the U.S. doing more to help Georgia repel the Russian invasion of their country, as we did when Iraq invaded Kuwait?

What Washington is willing to Spend in Africa

by Scott A Morgan October 1st begins the new fiscal year in the United States. This year FY 09 marks the end of the Bush Presidency. So in what is his final budget submitted to the Congress how much money does He want to send to Africa?

Remembering the start of WWII and the day before it started

World War II began when Adolf Hitler ordered the military forces of Nazi Germany to invade Poland on the morning of September 1, 1939. His blitzkrieg was a new and barbaric method of waging war which made civilian men, women and children just as much a target as any military one. It was also a war of deception, disinformation and falsification for which the German Ministry for Propaganda became notorious.

Fossil Fuels are the New Green Power

By Allan Taylor If we want a greening planet we must have more CO2 in the atmosphere. We have been doing this by burning fossil fuels to an increasing extent and the planet has responded favorably. We have benefited because now we can (almost) feed 6.6 billion people whereas 100 years ago we were feeding only 1.5 billion people when the atmospheric CO2 level was much less.

Beijing Olympics: ‘Ethnic’ children exposed as fakes in opening ceremony

Another section of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony has been exposed as faked - the children supposedly representing the country's 56 ethnic groups were in fact all from the same one, the majority Han Chinese race.

Muslim rebels raid Philippine towns

Muslim separatist rebels raided two southern Philippine towns on Monday, burning houses and taking over local banks and businesses, prompting some residents to flee, officials said.

Russian Army Dig In Outside Tbilisi

By Kommersant, Russia's Daily Newspaper On Saturday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the ceasefire agreement that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili signed the day before. Kommersant correspondent Vladimir Solovyev spent two days in the Gori area, expecting to accompany the 58th Russian Army out, but instead he watched Russian forces move toward Tbilisi.

For The General Welfare Of The Country

By JR Dieckmann For far too long, Congress has been violating the Constitution by passing legislation that gives them powers that were never authorized by the Constitution. In every case, those powers represent rights that were intended to be reserved to the states and to the people.

Pakistan’s Musharraf announces resignation

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced in a televised address to the nation Monday that he had decided to resign after nine years in power to avoid the threat of impeachment.

Report from the Georgian Front

By Ilana Freedman As we continue to follow the war in Georgia, and make no mistake, the war is still on; our exclusive sources on the ground have been filling in some of the gaps. A team went out on reconnaissance last night to assess the damage and came back with stories you won't see on the news. Their trip took them well into the next day, and they returned with much to tell about what they had seen. The first thing our source told me was that in spite of all the stories of Russians continuing to move throughout Georgia, the team saw few signs of movement. The Russians seem to be staying in place for the moment. But the team met a group of Russian soldiers, with whom they stopped to talk. The soldiers were angry and bitter because they had clearly outrun their supply chain and were forced to forage for food and clothing.

Before the gunfire, cyberattacks

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.

Look who came for dinner

In Bittinger, MD area A fawn followed this beagle home -- right through the doggie door in. The owner came home to find the visitor had made himself right at home.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili Appeals To The World For Georgia

By MIKHEIL SAAKASHVILI AND CONDOLEEZZA RICE PRESIDENT SAAKASHVILI: Madame Secretary, we had almost five — hour discussion about mechanics to stop ongoing violence and deterring Russian invasion, as well as about massive assistance programs for Georgia from the United States in order to start immediate rebuild, immediate assistance, and immediate normalization of life in my badly damaged country. As we speak now, significant part of territories of Georgia remain under foreign military occupation. You might have heard reports that some Russian APCs were dislocated to move closer to the capital and on — halfway between Gori and Tbilisi.

Political grandstanding won’t help companies find oil on federal leases

Newt Gingrich and Roy Innis Senator Jeff Bingaman, Congressman Nick Rahall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who oppose producing more American oil are in a bind. They know voters are hurting from high gas prices and overwhelmingly want the government to allow more American oil production. But they can’t side with the American people and risk upsetting their left-wing base. So they needed a way to make us think they support more drilling – while effectively preventing us from ever drilling a single new well.

Georgia: Europe wins a gold medal for defeatism

To some, China's muscular domination of the Olympic medal table is a powerful allegory of the shifting balance of global power. A far better and more literal testimony to the collapse of the West may be seen in the distinctly weak-kneed response to Russian aggression in Georgia by what is still amusingly called the transatlantic alliance.