Armies of Liberation

Suicide CSM: A recent study revealed that one-quarter of the children (ages 8 to 15) in China’s wealthiest city have considered taking their own lives. Perhaps more surprising is that the results were made public.

Long a taboo topic in China, particularly when it comes to young people, suicide is becoming part of public discussion, opening the doors to education and prevention in a country with a suicide rate more than twice that of the United States….The survey indicates that children in this booming metropolis of 20 million are under pressure to excel at school and sports, as well as in their social lives.

Labor Unrest Fabian: an “unprecedented series of walkouts” marking “the first stirrings of unrest” emerging among the millions of youthful migrant workers who supply seemingly inexhaustible cheap labor for the vast expanse of factories in the PRC’s booming Pearl River Delta….The official federation announced that Wal-Mart, the American merchandizing giant, had agreed to allow unions in its factories in China.

“But factory owners and workers in the Pearl River boom zone said the official union does little to represent labor, even in the rare cases when branches are formed, because it is a spinoff of local governments that own or rely on the businesses.”

in Saudi Arabia

(More at Six Meat Buffet.)

The Arab News: Three gunmen with suspected Al-Qaeda links who attacked the US consulate in Jeddah today were killed by security forces, the Interior Ministry said. These three were among the five who stormed the consulate building in the morning. The remaining two were arrested following a gunbattle.

At least four members of the Saudi security detail were also killed and several wounded when they clashed with the gunmen who attacked the compound, police said.

“A gang affiliated to the deviant group hurled explosives on the gate of the US consulate in Jeddah at 11 a.m. (0800 GMT) today and then entered the area surrounding the consulate,” an Interior Ministry statement said. (Read on …)

Either you have them or you don’t. Either you return the extra change when the cashier makes a mistake or you don’t. Either you play by the rules or you cheat. Sometimes you can just tell someone else how to cheat and sit back and laugh at the results.

How to game it.

Since I was never in danger of winning, the suspension of voting doesn’t trouble me much. But the malicious fun of a few has hurt a wide group of people. And the one who deserved it least, Kevin, was the one most greatly harmed. As Hindrocket said: “(The awards are) done in a spirit of fun, and relies on a modicum of good faith among the participants.” I also have to agree with Captain Ed, they are sad and pathetic.

hehehe, that Commissar: What’s the best thing about Starbucks for a Kossack? Free pennies.

Click: Find another pawprint and put it in our notebook
Click: Partly cloudy with a chance of
Click: Not wearing their heavy wool coats during the battle of Monmouth
Click: This is Katie Couric at Wizbang headquarters with an election update. (beams) In the “Best Overall Blog” catagory, apparently some very talented Kos readers have devised an ingenious voting robot. Isn’t that cute? (beams) Poll watchers at Wizbang headquarters are engaging in a manual recount to certify the votes. Boy, that Kos has some loyal fans dedicated to victory for their candidate. Its great to see the political system in action. (tosses hair) Of course LGF readers and many of those on the right are tossing derogatory names like asshat, while those on the left are wondering if it is a Karl Rove inspired stroke of brilliance. One Wizbang commenter said there’s “no way to tell if it was agitprop by a freeper.” How true…..We all know about those brrr….(shivers) Freepers. (Read on …)

test

My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Hello. My name is Indigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

Bag of chips: $1.49

Cable monthly: $91.00

Watching The Princess Bride with your 9 year old daughter: priceless.

to the less fortunate.

(Hey at least I don’t owe $167,000- even counting the mortgage.)

Its a quaint and touching idea but I doubt it will soften the hearts of the extremists.

NYTimesTHAILAND: PREMIER SEEKS STRONGER SECURITY LAWS

Tough new security laws are needed to thwart Islamic separatists in the country’s predominantly Muslim southern states, while a peace plan to ease tensions by dropping millions of paper birds over the region is likely to have only a minimal effect, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said. The plan to airdrop more than 80 million Japanese-style origami cranes folded by Thais nationwide on Sunday, the birthday of King Bhumibol, will “have a psychological effect on moderate people,” he said, “but it will not work with people who are leading the vicious acts.” Since January, more than 550 people have died in violence in the south. Measures Mr. Thaksin is seeking would reportedly allow the police to hold suspects without charge for at least a week, carry out searches and tap private telephone lines without court warrants. (AP)

Some will appreciate the gesture, some use the floating cranes for target practice.

Enough about nuclear weapons, cabinet appointments, freedom of the press, and the insurgency in Iraq:

It’s Time to Vote in the Wizbang Weblog Awards. (Read on …)

Its hard to figure out exactly whats happening in countries with a semi-censored media. From what I can gather from this report in the Yemen Times, (written in an atmosphere of renewed governmental pressure since the imprisonment of Abdulkareem Al_kaiwani) a) security forces killed two people in October b) their case against the intelligence department offical was repeatedly delayed and postponed c) a crowd has gathered outside the court d) on the third adjounment of the case, the crowd staged a sit in e) a policeman started shooting into the air to dispurse the crowd f) a passerby holding a baby girl was shot and killed.

See what you get out of the article. A day of horror and outrage was witnessed on Monday, 28 November when Abdurrahman Mohammad Al-Sawka was killed and Hussein Mohammad Karout wounded when a policeman opened fire to disperse a crowd of people gathering in front of the Sira Court in Aden.

Update: Jeremy has a great article about this issue as well.

Unfortunately its the ICRC we’re talking about that has let its left leaning, anti-American tilt obscure its function and its once important role:

WSJ Editorial: Once upon a time, the International Committee of the Red Cross was a humanitarian outfit doing the Lord’s work to reduce the horrors of war. So it is a special tragedy to see that it has increasingly become an ideological organization unable to distinguish between good guys and bad.
That’s the unfortunate conclusion suggested by three years of open ICRC hostility toward U.S. conduct in the war on terror. The latest salvo was Tuesday’s front page story in the New York Times quoting from an ICRC report complaining about the detention conditions and interrogation practices used on Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For decades, the very core of Red Cross methodology has been strict confidentiality agreements with cooperating governments. The practice has obvious drawbacks. But it has helped the Red Cross get access to–and help–prisoners of genuinely repressive regimes like Nazi Germany and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and ensured that the organization’s recommendations are not regarded as political in any partisan sense. (Read on …)

Not quite implementing democracy according to the agreed timeline, Musharraf will not have a wardrobe malfunction- it will be legal.

Arab News: ISLAMABAD, 1 December 2004 — Pakistan’s Senate president signed legislation yesterday that will allow Gen. Pervez Musharraf to remain as both head of state and army chief beyond Dec. 31, a senior Cabinet minister said.

Parliament passed the legislation earlier this month. It was signed into law by Mohammed Mian Soomro, who as chairman of the Senate is Pakistan’s acting president while Musharraf is on a visit to Latin America, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said by telephone from London.

There was no doubt that the legislation would be signed, but the timing was unusual and appeared to indicate that Musharraf did not want to put his name on it.

The general has been under fire for reneging on promises to restore full democracy, though both Washington and the Commonwealth of former British colonies have indicated a willingness to go along with his move in the interest of stability in a key ally in the war on terror. (Read on …)

Its a good day for civilians. They are one step closer to being out of a free fire zone, one step closer to an affirmation of the concept of civilian immunity.

Finally, a UN panel on global threats has defined terrorism as “any action … that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.”

That seems rather self-evident but for years the concept of legitimizing deliberate harm to civilians was resisted in the UN. The “freedom fighter” who targeted civilians was legitimzed as acting from a postion of inferior strenth and resources. In Beslan we saw the logical extension of this thinking.

Occupied peoples struggling for self determination, the report says, to not have a basis in international law for victimizing civilians to achieve their goals or publicity: “There is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians,” the panel agreed said.

By removing this tool, terrorism, from the globally acceptable tactics of resistance, the UN presupposes an effective mechanism within international law and international institutions to advance the interests of occupied persons, seperatists, and others with a political agenda who face an overwhelming power.

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