J's Cafe Nette

Archive for June 25th, 2007

Solacegirl asked a question in one of the threads about whether or not we have heard Chavez has warned Mexico about a war with the U.S.

What I have been able to find is this article.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – President Hugo Chavez urged soldiers on Sunday to prepare for a guerrilla-style war against the United States, saying that Washington is using psychological and economic warfare as part of an unconventional campaign aimed at derailing his government.
Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela’s military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!”

“We must continue developing the resistance war, that’s the anti- imperialist weapon. We must think and prepare for the resistance war everyday,” said Chavez, who has repeatedly warned that American soldiers could invade Venezuela to seize control of the South American nation’s immense oil reserves.

U.S. officials reject claims that Washington is considering a military attack. But the U.S. government has expressed concern over what it perceives as a significant arms build-up here.

Chavez—a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro—told soldiers the Washington was trying to weaken and divide Venezuelan society, including the armed forces, without resorting to combat.

“It’s not just armed warfare,” said Chavez, a former army officer who is leading what he calls the “Bolivarian Revolution,” a socialist movement named after 19th-century independence hero Simon Bolivar. “I’m also referring to psychological warfare, media warfare, political warfare, economic warfare.”

Chavez seems to have been itching for a fight with the United States for some time. Remember the insults at President Bush at the UN last year, and other statements he has made that we are attempting to take over Venezuela for its oil.

He has purchased billions of dollars worth of helicopters, Kalashnikov rifles and fighter jets to protect Venezuela from an attack by the U.S.

Now he’s thinking of purchasing submarines to go along with his arsenal.

He is a dangerous man and if there is a war between the US and Venezuela I think it will start with Venezuela.

Here’s an instance of an insane man being declared the legitimate victor in a tainted election overseen by former President Carter, without checking ballots that were not hand-fed to him by the Chavez people.

I don’t see us attacking any country in this hemisphere unless we have knowledge they are preparing to attack us.

That’s my opinion.

Tweet This Post

Why this case was ever heard at all is beyond me, but a man who had attained the position of a judge sued a Korean couple and their son who own a dry cleaners because they lost his pants and he wanted to wear those pants to court the day he was sworn in as a judge.

He sued them originally for $67 million even though the pants were found and he refused to take them. He subsequently lowered his asking price to $54 million.

Well today the judge who matters, the one hearing the case, ruled against the plaintiff and ordered him to pay court costs for the defendents.

I hope that includes lawyer’s fees, as this man has been on a vendetta that has nearly bankrupted the couple and their son.

A judge ruled Monday in favor of a dry cleaner that was sued for $54 million over a missing pair of pants.

The owners of Custom Cleaners did not violate the city’s Consumer Protection Act by failing to live up to Roy L. Pearson’s expectations of the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign that was once placed in the store window, District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled.

Bartnoff ordered Pearson to pay the court costs of defendants Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung.

Pearson pinned all his hopes of winning this case on the fact the business had a sign stating “satisfaction guaranteed.” It did not state unconditional satisfaction guaranteed and certainly met the requirement when they produced Pearson’s pants along with various offers to settle the suit.

I hope he gets disciplined for filing a frivolous lawsuit that was even asking for money for a rental car to take his cleaning to another cleaner.

He represented himself in court. I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said, “A man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.”

Tweet This Post

I’m only seeing banner headlines and short stories of one paragraph on two stories.

The first is the SCOTUS ruled against the boy who displayed a banner reading “Bong Hits For Jesus”. No other information on that yet.

The other is the SCOTUS has struck down some of the restrictions on corporate and union-funded ads.

From Yahoo News here is the complete story as it is written right now:

The Supreme Court loosened restrictions Monday on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections, weakening a key provision of a landmark campaign finance law.

What a difference a couple of justices make when we got rid of Sandra Day O’Connor and her citations of foreign law to back up her decisions rather than using our Constitution.

Update:From Breitbart News (AP) is this one sentence announcement of the “Bong Hits for Jesus” decision:

The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday, ruling against a high school student and his 14-foot-long “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner.

Update: here’s a more in-depth article about the campaign finance law.

Here’s a more in-depth article on the Bong Hits story.

Tweet This Post

The Los Angeles Times is reporting President Bush is seeking ways to come to a truce with Congress over conducting the war in Iraq, looking for a way to satisfy war opponents and still preserve presidential goals.

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has begun exploring ways of offering Congress a compromise deal on Iraq policy to avert bruising battles in coming months, U.S. officials said.

With public support of the war dropping, President Bush has authorized an internal policy review to find a plan that could satisfy opponents without sacrificing his top goals, the officials said.

The president and senior officials “realize they can’t keep fighting this over and over,” said one administration official, who along with others declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly or because decisions were pending.

The Republican White House has not opened formal negotiations with the Democratic-controlled Congress. But some senior administration officials — including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and U.N. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad — have been quietly talking with lawmakers about how to adjust policy in the months ahead. Among other ideas, they have discussed whether the United States should advocate a sharply decentralized Iraq, a notion that has seen a resurgence on Capitol Hill.

For about a year now I have thought if we divided Iraq into three sections—one section for the Kurds, one for the Sunnis and one for the Shiites we might make some progress.

The Kurds are already pretty stable and have their own little governing body, and trying to have Sunnis and Shiites live together is proving impossible with the tribal loyalties that are so strong.

Give them each their own territory to be run the way they want it run and see if that cuts down on the violence and allows us to withdraw without worry of civilians being slaughtered after.

Tweet This Post

Six U.N. peacekeepers who were in Lebanon to help the Lebanese military keep the peace have been killed in what has been described as a premeditated attack.

Three Spaniards and two Colombians were among the dead. The nationality of the sixth was not reported.

About a half-dozen bombs have exploded in Beirut and other communities since late May.

During the same period, fighting erupted between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam, a Sunni extremist group based in a Palestinian refugee camp near the northern city of Tripoli.

More than 100 people, including Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, have been killed in the fighting between the militants and Lebanese forces since May 20.

Late Saturday night, security forces raided an apartment in Tripoli and found an arms cache inside, protected by six members of an isolated Sunni extremist group, authorities said. A gun battle ensued, and the six extremists were among those killed. Lebanese officials said the fighters included three Saudis and had no known links to Fatah al-Islam or al-Qaeda.

The dead also included four members of a family living in the same apartment building. Neighbor Bassam Sardouk said the fighters entered the family’s apartment to use the occupants as human shields in their battle with the army.

Human shields seem to be the favored body armor for these pigs.

Tweet This Post

It seems that Al Qaeda is so thick in certain parts of Iraq that if a soldier shot indiscriminately he’d end up with a bunch of them dead.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, as Al Qaeda is good at hiding and using children and women to sheild them.

BAQOUBA, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi forces have killed 90 al Qaeda fighters across Baghdad in the past five days during one of the biggest combined offensives against the Sunni Islamist group since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, U.S. officials said yesterday.

U.S. air strikes yesterday killed seven fighters suspected of belonging to al Qaeda in Tikrit in Salahuddin province and near the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military also announced yesterday that roadside bombs killed seven American troops in Iraq, including four in a single incident outside Baghdad.

In the latest military action, thousands of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are taking part in simultaneous offensives in provinces across Baghdad to deny al Qaeda militants sanctuary in farmlands and towns from which they launch car bomb attacks and other violence.

U.S. officials say al Qaeda is trying to spark all-out sectarian civil war in Iraq. A key plank of the combined offensives is Operation Arrowhead Ripper, which began Tuesday in and around the city of Baqouba in Diyala province.

U.S. soldiers have been tightening the cordon around al Qaeda fighters holed up in Baqouba, advancing carefully through streets lined with roadside bombs and booby-trapped houses.

“We are enveloping the enemy into a ‘kill sack,’ ” said Command Sgt. Maj. Jeff Huggins from the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Stryker Brigade.

Baqouba is an al Qaeda stronghold that also has become a sanctuary for militants escaping the four-month-old security crackdown in Baghdad. U.S. officials hope that striking militants outside the capital will support the security operations inside Baghdad.

Col. Steve Townsend, commander of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, told local Iraqi political and military leaders in Baqouba that progress was being made.

“I believe the initial stage of the operation will be completed in another three to five days,” Col. Townsend said at a building that serves as a joint command center for U.S. and Iraqi forces.

The overall offensive around Baqouba is expected to last many weeks. U.S. military commanders have said the combined operations take advantage of the completion of a buildup of U.S. forces in Iraq to 156,000.

Reuters report in the Washington Times.

Tweet This Post

Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hasan al-Majid, better known to us as Chemical Ali, and two other Saddam regime members have been sentenced to death.

Saddam Hussein’s cousin, known as “Chemical Ali,” and two other regime officials were sentenced yesterday to hang for slaughtering up to 180,000 Kurdish men, women and children with chemical weapons, artillery barrages and mass executions two decades ago.

Two other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for their roles in the 1987-88 crackdown, known as “Operation Anfal.” A sixth defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence. Death sentences are automatically appealed.

The most notorious defendant was Saddam’s cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid, who gained his nickname for ordering the use of mustard gas and nerve agents against the Kurds in response to their collaboration with the Iranians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

Witnesses testified that Iraqi government forces indiscriminately attacked women and children, burned crops, killed livestock and rounded up civilians into detention camps in a campaign to exterminate the restive Kurdish minority.

The defendants insisted that they were defending the nation against Kurdish guerrillas who had sided with Iran during the bloody eight-year war.

Al-Majid, once among the most powerful and feared men in Iraq, trembled in silence as Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa read the verdict against him and imposed five death sentences for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“You had all the civil and military authority for northern Iraq,” Judge al-Khalifa said. “You gave the orders to the troops to kill Kurdish civilians and put them in severe conditions. You subjected them to wide and systematic attacks using chemical weapons and artillery. You led the killing of Iraqi villagers. You restricted them in their areas, burned their orchards, killed their animals. You committed genocide.”

“Thanks be to God,” Al-Majid said as he was led from the courtroom.

While they deserve death for the death they caused, it does seem to me the Iraqis could find a more humane way to do it than hanging. It seems so barbarous, and the observers seem irreverent in the taking of a life—even a life that should be taken.

I pray this doesn’t hit the internet the way some of the others have.

Tweet This Post