Target Centermass

Category: General

  • Pakistani Accused of Exporting Devices

    Not much I want to comment on this; there’s just a link I’ve been aching to use.

    A Pakistani businessman illegally exported devices from the United States that could be used to test, develop and detonate nuclear weapons, the government alleged on Friday.

    A federal indictment against Humayun A. Khan was unsealed along with a guilty plea by his alleged partner, who admitted routing high-speed electrical switches through South Africa to avoid raising authorities’ suspicions. The switches – which can be used in medical and military devices – were then shipped to Pakistan.

    The United States prohibits the export of the switches, also known as “triggered spark gaps,” to Pakistan and a handful of other countries to prevent potential nuclear proliferation.

    Khan, of Islamabad, is not in custody. He is believed to be in Pakistan, Homeland Security officials said.

    The case raised “serious concerns,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Michael Garcia, because of the nature of the devices, the fact they were going to Pakistan, and efforts by Kahn to disguise the ultimate destination.

    “The proliferation of nuclear components is not only a homeland security threat, but a global threat,” Garcia said Friday.

    Khan!

    Man, that link kills me. Don’t ask me why.

  • Shia Named New Iraq PM

    A Kurd was sworn in as president. A Sunni and a Shiite took the oaths of the vice-president positions. Ibrahim Jaafari, another Shiite, was named to the key post of prime minister of Iraq, and interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi stepped aside. Hail to the first Iraqi government selected as a result of the power of the ballot rather than the fear of the bullet.

    Shia Islamist Ibrahim Jaafari was named as Iraq’s next Prime Minister today, moving the country a step closer to its first democratically elected government in more than 50 years.

    Jaafari announced his own nomination shortly after Iraq’s new President, Kurdish former guerrilla leader Jalal Talabani, was sworn into office in parliament, along with two deputies.

    “Today represents a big step forward for Iraq and a big responsibility for me,” Jaafari, who spent more than two decades opposing Saddam Hussein from exile, said.

    His appointment to the most powerful post under the interim constitution had long been agreed in principle but was held up by weeks of bargaining over other posts among the Shia and Kurdish groups that dominate the parliament elected on January 30. Jaafari said interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi had resigned from his post but would continue as caretaker while Jaafari worked on putting the finishing touches to his cabinet line up. “I hope within one or two weeks maximum I will name the cabinet,” a smiling Jaafari said after his formal appointment by Talabani and the Shia and Sunni vice-presidents.

    Talabani, 71, took the President’s oath of office a day after his election by parliament, as political and religious leaders looked on at a ceremony inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, seat of government and the vast US embassy. “I swear by God the great that I will work with devotion to preserve the independence and sovereignty of Iraq,” Talabani said.

    As I predicted, the pieces quickly fell into place after the initial logjam cleared Sunday with the compromise that led to naming Sunni Hajem al-Hassani as speaker of the National Assembly.

    Other interesting reading on the shape of the Iraqi government:

    Editorial: Toward a Multiethnic Future

    The convoluted constitutional process that has brought Iraqis thus far has been criticized for its unwieldiness. But most Iraqis are generally content with an arrangement that ensures that their country’s politicians work together on the basis of consensus. Extremists within the different communities have not found a way to exploit the delays caused by weeks of negotiations.

    Editorial: Iraq has Done Well

    As the parliament’s new speaker-elect, Hajem Al Hassani said after the vote: “This is the new Iraq — an Iraq that elects a Kurd to be president and an Arab former president as his deputy. What more could the world want from us?”

    Quite right. It is a great achievement amidst the noise and dust, sound and fury, of the insurgency in Iraq for the country to come up with a political arrangement that represents and accommodates the three ethnic and sectarian factions. But given Iraq’s situation, the new Iraq and its leaders will have to do more. Not because the world wants them to do more but because doing so is Iraq’s own necessity to survive as an honourable member of the world community.

    Doctor’s Mission: Heal Land Torn by War

    Dr al-Jaafari has been a favourite for the post since the religiously conservative block reversed generations of Sunni dominance in government in the landmark polls. The 58-year-old doctor was widely favoured by supporters for being a devout Shia Muslim, but one who eschewed the religious trappings of many of his colleagues.

    He has also said his government will not rule as a Shia leadership but as an Iraqi administration, and hopes to draw in Sunnis who have largely rejected involvement in the political process.

    President Talabani, himself a former guerrilla fighter who battled Saddam for years, held out an olive branch to the Sunni insurgents who make up the backbone of the 20-month uprising that has left thousands dead.

  • Court Won’t Stop Guardsman’s Deployment

    It’s called a contract for a reason: you signed it and it is binding.

    For the second time in two days, a federal appeals court declined to halt an Oregon National Guardsman from being deployed to Afghanistan on Friday.

    Emiliano Santiago, 27, an electronics technician and a helicopter refueler now living in Pasco, Wash., is fighting his deployment because his 8-year service agreement expired last year. His lawyers told the court Santiago is the victim of a “backdoor draft.”

    On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Seattle, declined to halt his looming departure. On Thursday, the court declined to rehear the case with 11 judges.

    No U.S. federal appeals court has sided with similarly situated military personnel fighting their deployments.

    The courts have generally upheld the so-called “stop loss” law that authorizes President Bush to suspend service agreements of many armed forces personnel for national security reasons. Thousands of soldiers have been redeployed under stop loss orders.

    The last paragraph there is rather misleading. The president is not suspending service agreements with the stop-loss program. Rather, he is exercising an option in the contract signed by Santiago, an option that his service commitment may be extended beyond terms specified.

    While I have sympathy for Santiago personally, I hold no sympathy for his cause. Put the uniform back on, Emiliano, and report — your country has legally called you.

  • Reciprocity XV

    I’d again like to pause and thank those who have blogrolled or linked to Target Centermass.

    First, thanks to the following fine blogs for adding TCm to their blogrolls:

    Second, thanks to the following for recent links to TCm:

    As always, if you’ve linked or blogrolled Target Centermass and I haven’t found you, please send an email or post a comment. No good deed should go unacknowledged.

  • Congress May Extend Daylight-Saving Time

    Please, please, pretty please extend daylight savings time.

    If Congress passes an energy bill, Americans may see more daylight-saving time.

    Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extend daylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November.

    “Extending daylight-saving time makes sense, especially with skyrocketing energy costs,” said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, who along with Rep. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, co-sponsored the measure.

    The amendment was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is putting together major parts of energy legislation likely to come up for a vote in the full House in the coming weeks.

    “The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,” said Markey, who cited Transportation Department estimates that showed the two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day.

    The country uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

    Do it for the energy savings. Do it for whatever reason you can come up with, just do it.

    I am most assuredly not a morning person, and this move would give me a little bit more daylight during the time I actually am awake. Yeah, I’m just that selfish.

  • Tartan Day Link Dump

    Tartan Day

    Why April 6th?

    Gathering of the Blogs — Hosted by Ith at Absinthe & Cookies.

    Sport Kilt — kilts easy on the budget, limited selection but some clans available, as well as desert camo.

    Alexis Malcolm Kilts — kilts moderately priced, with a wide selection including tartans of all the branches of the U.S. military.

    Interactive Weaver — Design your own tartan.

    The Black Watch — the famed Scottish regiment that briefly served along side Americans in Baghdad.

    Save the Scottish Regiments — a campaign to, well, save the Scottish regiments.

    ElectricScotland.com — all things Scottish on the internet, be it history, geneology, clans or travel.

  • For Those of Scottish Roots

    Today is Tartan Day, 2005 edition. And here’s my family tartan:

    I’m still researching to find any clan affiliation, as my surname is a sept to multiple clans.

    The Scots of the blogosphere are celebrating the day with a Gathering of the Blogs, so feel free to peruse those links for a wealth of Scottish-related postings.

  • Iraqi Parties Break Deadlock on Candidates

    I expected that, after Sunday’s artful compromise on a Sunni speaker for the National Assembly, the pieces of the next Iraqi government would quickly fall into place. And so they have.

    The major political parties of Iraq agreed Tuesday evening to appoint a president and two vice presidents at a meeting of the national assembly on Wednesday, breaking a two-month deadlock and taking the first significant step in forming a new government.

    The presidency council will have two weeks from its appointment to name a prime minister, who will select a cabinet. The new government would then have to be approved by a majority vote of the assembly, according to the interim constitution.

    The main Shiite and Kurdish political blocs have agreed to name Jalal Talabani, a Kurdish leader, as president; Adel Abdul Mehdi, a prominent Shiite Arab politician as one vice president; and Sheik Ghazi al-Yawar, the Sunni Arab president of the interim government, as the other vice president, said Hussein al-Shahristani, a vice speaker of the assembly.

    The agreement breaks an enormous impasse between the main parties that had threatened to destroy the confidence built up during the Jan. 30 elections, when Iraqis defied insurgent threats to walk in droves to polling stations.

    A two-thirds vote by the 275-member assembly is required to install the presidency council, and so the Shiite and Kurdish blocs, which together can meet the two-thirds requirement, haggled for weeks over a range of issues, from control of oil revenues to the role of Islam in the new government.

    […]

    Shahristani, a nuclear physicist and prominent member of the Shiite bloc, said the presidency council could officially appoint the prime minister as soon as late Wednesday or Thursday. The leading candidate for that job is Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the head of the Dawa Islamic Party, a religious Shiite party.

    A government of the Iraqi people, by the Iraqi people, and for the future of the Iraqi people and, quite possibly, all of the people of the global community.

    Gee, no pressure there.

  • Anti-Terror Forces Ready for Pope Funeral

    Much like the recent Athens Olympics, one has to feel a tinge of angst at the pending gathering of luminaries and throngs of masses heading to pay their respects and show their love for the late Pope John Paul II. Obviously, the Italians are concerned about security.

    Italian air force jets are ready to scramble. Police are burrowing through the labyrinth of drains and aqueducts under the city looking for bombs. Snipers are staked out on strategic rooftops.

    The millions of people and the 200 foreign delegations expected for Pope John Paul II’s funeral Friday offer a tempting target for any terrorist group hoping to score a spectacular strike. Authorities insist they have taken all possible measures to prevent such an attack.

    “Precautions have been taken for airports, stations and all the other places where people gather,” said an official of the Rome prefect’s office, which is responsible for coordinating the security apparatus.

    Air traffic over central Rome likely will be banned Friday, the official said on condition of anonymity.

    The military-civilian airport of Ciampino may be closed to commercial flights, and traffic to and from the main airport at Fiumicino, 16 miles from Rome, may be curtailed, the official said.

    Radar is scanning the air for any irregular activity, ready to alert pilots on standby. Helicopters have begun regular patrols.

    Italy has not been a direct target of international terrorism in recent years. But in the 1970s and 1980s, the Italian Red Brigades cowed the nation, and Palestinian groups struck with devastating effectiveness.

    Methinks communists fighting the Cold War and Palestinians begging for international attention aren’t really the feared parties that are driving these measures. Could it be … ahem … Islamist terrorists?!!

    But like all European security networks, Italy has heightened its anti-terror efforts following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and last year’s train bombings in Madrid.

    The Europeans have strengthened their cross-border cooperation and the sharing of information, though many experts say it has not gone far enough.

    Italian authorities have arrested dozens of suspects, aided by a new international terrorism charge introduced following the New York attacks.

    In Milan, where prosecutors have investigated Muslim extremist cells based in the north of Italy, a judge handed down the first al-Qaida-related guilty verdict since the Sept. 11 attacks, convicting seven Tunisians for helping recruits for al-Qaida get fake documents.

    The suspects included Essid Sami Ben Khemais, the alleged logistics head of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist operations in Europe.

    Hmmm … an al-Quida presence is known in Italy and throughout Europe. However, I’m sure if you ask commie Italian journalist and part-time faux-hostage Giuliana Sgrena, she of the ever-morphing tale of horror (hat tip to the Jawa Report), the real danger is the expected presence of those dastardly Americans.

    Dozens of monarchs, presidents and prime ministers will attend John Paul II’s funeral, including President Bush, former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

    Authorities also are expecting as many as 4 million pilgrims, mourners and tourists. Poland’s Foreign Ministry said 2 million people were expected from that country alone.

    Such an inviting target of massed infidels for the Islamists. The pope’s fading health was no secret and his passing has been but an eventuality for some time, possibly adequate time to have laid groundplans for an action.

    Despite this, I have a good vibe about this, speaking strictly from a security point of view, for several reasons. First, it would have been extremely difficult to plan anything on a concrete basis, as actual timing was unknown. Second, despite all the talk of the American military’s being stretched thin, so too is the effective reach of the terrorists, who are slowly being forced to decide between exporting serious bloodshed or keeping any kind of credible threat in the current theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Third, Pope John Paul II was loved by a great many, and his life full of devotion and effort was respected practically across the board. To target this moment could spell the death knell of the radical Islamic movement.

  • Afghan Officials Urge Donors to Shift Focus

    Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai understandably wants to up the pace of progress for his people. In those hopes, he is asking for greater national control over the incoming assistance in hopes of spurring the economy and helping the people of his war-ravaged country.

    President Hamid Karzai and his top ministers made an urgent plea to international donors at an annual aid conference in Kabul on Monday to shift their focus to helping the country’s struggling private sector and to let the Afghan government take a controlling lead in development planning.

    Mr. Karzai said his government considered building the infrastructure – including energy, aviation and telecommunications – to be an urgent priority to provide the foundation for private sector development. Urban development, completely neglected in the past three years, would be a priority too, he said.

    The conference follows months of debate and recriminations over why the billions of dollars in aid that have poured into Afghanistan since the former Taliban rulers were ousted more than three years ago have accomplished so little.

    The government contends that private aid groups, which control much of the donated money, have squandered it. Many business leaders say corruption and the lack of staff trained in government are largely to blame.

    The government will insist on a national unified budget for 2006, said the finance minister, Anwar ul-Haq Ahady. More than 93 percent of Afghanistan’s annual budget comes from international donors, but only a third of this year’s $4.7 billion budget will go through government hands, he said. “Let this government take full responsibility for our country’s development,” he told the donors.

    Muhammad Iashaq Naderi, the government’s chief economic adviser, said at the conference that the government would insist on greater control over foreign assistance flowing into the country and greater coordination with donors and private aid groups. Aid organizations will be monitored for the cost-effectiveness and impact of their programs, he said.

    Mr. Karzai said he had promised the Afghan people that he would raise the annual per capita income to $500 from $200 and reduce poverty during his five-year term. “We must now work together to overcome chronic poverty, and build Afghanistan into a stable and thriving economy in the region,” he said. “We are keenly aware of our people’s expectations, and our responsibility towards them.”

    Karzai seems reasonable and well-intentioned, as has been the norm, in this matter.

    For those individuals looking for ways to directly support the people of Afghanistan, I would recommend the fine programs at Spirit of America.