Ex-Khmer Rouge on trial for killing British deminer
Phnom Penh (dpa) - Five former Khmer Rouge soldiers went on trial Friday in the Cambodian capital, charged in the 1996 murders of a British deminer and his Cambodian translator.
Briton Christopher Howes and his interpreter, Houn Hourth, were abducted along with a group of Cambodian co-workers in March 1996 by Khmer Rouge guerrillas while clearing mines near the Angkor Wat temple complex in northwestern Cambodia.
Howes, 37, a former soldier, was said to have behaved heroically during the ordeal, persuading the kidnappers to free all his colleagues except himself and Hourth.
Their fate remained a mystery for more than two years, but Scotland Yard confirmed in 1998 that they had been killed in the remote, northern former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng.
Among the defendants at Friday's trial was Khem Ngun, a former rebel commander who defected to the government soon after the killings. He is accused of ordering the killings.
The abduction was just one of a spate of kidnappings by the Khmer Rouge during the mid-1990s when the embattled group was attempting to shore up the movement financially with hijackings of cars and trains, abductions of foreigners and other brutal crimes.
The suspects have been charged with premeditated murder and illegal confinement and face life in prison.
The Cambodian government was accused at the time of being slow to make arrests in the killings because negotiations for Khmer Rouge leaders to defect were at a crucial stage. In November, police arrested two accused ringleaders, grabbing three more men in May.
Cambodian trials usually take one day, but judges often reserve verdicts for weeks.
Friday, October 3, 2008
The Braughtwerst Debate
I read all the post-debate punditry so now I think I'm in the know. I know that all the conservative blogs were happy with the job Palin did and all the MSM polls, charts, opinion pieces and fortune tellers agree that Biden won. Now I need to watch a debate, or at least read the post debate round ups to figure which view is the correct one?
I'm officially give Palin the 20A4 thumbs up just because I like her style. Biden gets the big thumbs down because he reminds me of a Fire Sign Theatre skit about about bunch of drunken Senators. Or was it chicken straighteners?
I forget.
Hey, Yorgi!
Then they knocked over the vodka bottle and woke up...
The Russian president said in a speech Thursday that the financial crisis in the United States should be taken as a sign that America's global economic leadership is drawing to a close, reiterating an argument that leaders here have been making for some time, though investors in recent weeks have been fleeing Russia and depositing money in U.S. Treasury bills.
right... American bad, Russia good...
Perhaps inevitably for a country long lectured to by the United States, Russia is using the occasion of the U.S. financial crisis to do some lecturing of its own.
Because they are so well qualified to lecture on things... like assassination and invasions...
President Dmitri Medvedev said Thursday that the U.S. crisis showed that "the times when one economy and one country dominated are gone for good." Speaking of the United States, Medvedev said the world no longer needed a "megaregulator."
Or any regulations apparently...
Russia has argued that the freewheeling Anglo-American style of capitalism is to blame for the crisis, a position echoed by Germany and other Continental European nations. Medvedev even called it financial "egoism."
Yep, its that free wheeling little guy from the Monopoly Game. It's all his fault.
A drumbeat of similar pronouncements has been heard in Russia in recent days. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a major speech Wednesday on U.S. financial "irresponsibility," blaming the plunge of more than 50 percent in the Russian stock market on the global economic slowdown and U.S. financial turmoil, rather than on any troubles endemic to Russia.
Troubles like Mr. Putin for example.
Debates
Two debates to watch last night and I could stand about three minutes of the US VP debate and exactly 43 seconds of the Canadian "Engrish" debate. Why am I so unable to observe such important political events such as this? Because these aren't really debates. The moderators are biased, and the debate is more akin to the cheap shot put down humour made popular by todays television situation comedy. I may as well loop Pee Wee Herman saying "I know you are but what am I?" for an hour and watch that.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
But it Works in the Third World
Michelle Malkin points out more voter dodge in the US of A. The Thai Rak Thai party used this sort of thing as well as vote buying to win several elections in Thailand. I am surprised by the GOP Poll observers being turned away though. That has to be illegal in some way or another. The USA is certainly rushing towards officially becoming a Third World Country this way.
All Your Skype Belong To Us
Imagine this... A Communist Government is SPYING on it's country's citizens and censoring what they can see and say...
A group of Canadian human-rights activists and computer security researchers has discovered a huge surveillance system in China that monitors and archives certain Internet text conversations that include politically charged words.
The system tracks text messages sent by customers of Tom-Skype, a joint venture between a Chinese wireless operator and eBay, the Web auctioneer that owns Skype, an online phone and text messaging service.
The discovery draws more attention to the Chinese government's Internet monitoring and filtering efforts, which created controversy this summer during the Beijing Olympics. Researchers in China have estimated that 30,000 or more "Internet police" monitor online traffic, Web sites and blogs for political and other offending content in what is called the Golden Shield Project or the Great Firewall of China.
The activists, who are based at Citizen Lab, a research group that focuses on politics and the Internet at the University of Toronto, discovered the surveillance operation last month. They said a cluster of eight message-logging computers in China contained more than a million censored messages. They examined the text messages and reconstructed a list of restricted words.
The list includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and the Chinese Communist Party, according to the researchers. It includes not only words like democracy, but also earthquake and milk powder. (Chinese officials are facing criticism over the handling of earthquake relief and chemicals tainting milk powder.)
Canuck-a-vote '08
Only in Canada would you have a debate in a language that most of the country doesn't speak.
Opposition leaders ganged up Wednesday night to shake Stephen Harper's claim to be the fittest leader to guide Canada through economic turbulence, criticizing him during the French-language election debate for a do-nothing attitude reminiscent to that of U.S. President George W. Bush.
"You are the economic risk," Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said as the five party leaders sparred in the first of two debates before the Oct. 14 election. "You don't believe in the role of government in the economy. We need to have a government that believes in the role of government."
The debate, which took place at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, was seen as critical to Mr. Harper's effort to win a majority government and to Mr. Dion's efforts to revive the faltering Liberal campaign. The bout saw Mr. Harper raked over the coals, smiling thinly as his opponents did most of the talking. Although there was no gotcha moment, the multipronged barrage did appear to leave the Conservative Leader resigned to having to weather the onslaught. The Conservatives hope to capitalize on their 2006 electoral breakthrough in Quebec, but their support has stalled this past week over cuts to arts funding and proposed tougher sentences for teenagers.
Onslaught? Lets see the opposition is made up of Quebec separatists (breaking up the country is good for the economy), The NDP (Socialists), The Liberals (Corrupt Uber-Bureaucrats) and the Green Party (Luddites).
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