Gaddafi´s "foreign legion" of mercenaries should be eliminated

Madman Gaddafi´s allies and diplomats are deserting him, but he can still count on the mercenaries in his "Islamic legion" formed after the French Foreign Legion:

The African fighters that Gadhafi is allegedly using against protesters come from several nations, representing a map of the Libyan leader's often contentious history with his neighbours.
Many young citizens of Mali and Niger who flocked to Libya in the 1970s and 1980s were ethnic Tuaregs and were recruited into an "Islamic Legion" modeled on the French Foreign Legion.
A Tuareg politician in Mali said he believes 16,000 Tuareg remain in the Libyan security forces, based in Tripoli and Sabha but not in Benghazi, a major city that has broken away from Gadhafi's rule.
"We've been getting updates from some of them by phone," Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assaleh told The Associated Press. "They say their orders are to protect Gadhafi and they will defend him to the end."
Witnesses in Libya have reported African fighters shooting at protesters or being captured by anti-Gadhafi forces. Witnesses have described mercenaries being flown in to put down the rebellion, but most fighters are already in the strife-torn country.

Read the entire article here, and another piece here.

PS

(image by French Foreign Legion)

The original French Foreign Legion was founded on this day 180 years ago by king Louis-Philippe to support his war in Algeria. President Sarkozy could give the legion a nice "birthday present" by allowing them to take out Gaddafi´s bad imitation.
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China: the luxury - and the misery

It´s boomtime for this German export product in China

These days both Western and Chinese media are full of stories about the booming market for luxury products in China. The communist government openly boasts about how China soon is to overtake Japan as the number one market for luxury products:

BEIJING, March 7 (Xinhua) -- China is expected to surpass Japan to become the world's largest consumer of high-end goods by 2015, Commerce Minister Chen Deming said Monday.

This shift was attributed to China's large population, rising income and inadequate supplies of home-made high-end brands, Chen told reporters.

Consumption of high-end products in China rose 23 percent in 2010, he said, adding that the number of Chinese people shopping for luxury goods overseas increased 30 percent.

The government will develop the country's own brands and work out measures to let foreign brands sell their China-made products directly in China's market to benefit Chinese consumers, he said.

China will also improve its sales network and strengthen regulations in retail markets to reduce charges in circulation, he said.

The Economist is equally excited - the luxury products will "add a little color" to the lifes of chinese consumers:

China’s growing taste for bling is a good thing not only for makers of luxury goods but also for Chinese consumers. It is a symptom of the fact that they have more to spend, that necessities no longer gobble up every spare yuan and that they can afford to add a little colour to their lives. Mao Zedong would not have approved, but his former serfs ignore his frowns and merrily fritter away the banknotes that still depict his face.

As a believer in free markets I have nothing against luxury products (although it is not difficult to live without them), but it is good to remember, that there is another side to the Chinese miracle, which is not quite as glamorous and "colorful" as the one described by comrade Chen Deming and the Economist:

China's disabled exploited as slaves

In an economy where manual labor is in demand, ruthless recruiters often prey on the mentally disabled. One man, held at a brick kiln, is one of countless slaves who endured torture and deplorable living conditions.

Read the entire Los Angeles Times article here.

The Chinese Laogai are the largest gulags of our times, providing slave labour for the fast growing Chinese economy. The admirable Laogai Research Foundation, established by Laogai survivor Harry Wu, has this to say about the China´s huge machinery of repression:

Putin the fundraiser - money missing

You may remember back in December, Vladimir Putin "performed" at a charity gala in St. Petersburg organized by a friend of his in order to raise money for sick children. Among the enthralled celebrities in the audience were actors Sharon Stone, Kevin Costner, Monica Belluci and Alain Delon.

Now the Moscow Times reports that no money has reached the children:

In what could prove an embarrassment to Putin, people linked to the event are even offering mixed accounts of whether any aid had been promised in the first place.
Putin played a tune from a popular Soviet-era spy movie and delivered a solid rendition of "Blueberry Hill," singing with a live jazz band, during the Dec. 10 charity show at the Ice Palace in St. Petersburg.
The show, also attended by the actors Monica Bellucci, Alain Delon and Mickey Rourke, aimed to help children with oncological and ophthalmological diseases, according to organizers, one of whom is an old acquaintance of Putin.
But a sick child's mother has told President Dmitry Medvedev via his Twitter page that hospitals still have not received money or equipment that the money was supposed to buy.
"I think I have a right to know how the raised money was used," wrote Olga Kuznetsova, mother of 13-year-old Liza, who has cancer.
She said seats at the private charity party were sold for up to 1 million rubles ($35,000), but the organizers behind a foundation called Federation have transferred none to the sick.

PS
Well, while waiting for the money to re-appear, you can always watch this, slitghtly improved version of Putin´s "Blueberry hill":

UNICEF spreading global warming propaganda

UNICEF used to be a respectable organization helping children in need all over the world. The organisation is probably doing some of those traditional good things even now, but one wonders, why it has chosen to start spreading alarmist climate scare propaganda to those it is supposed to help:

The video is according to MarketingWeek part of UNICEF´s digital campaign "to raise awareness of the impact of climate change on children and aid projects in developing countries".

The charity has partnered with environmental non-profit group Do The Green Thing to create a 90 second illustrated video featuring a character called Climate Kid voiced by broadcaster Jon Snow.

The video illustrates how the boy would need to adapt to cope with the effects of climate change, such as drought and flooding, on his environment.

PS

There are fortunately still a number of organizations that have remained true to what they were supposed to work for. From now on my own small contributions go to them - not to UNICEF.

We are not running out of oil or other energy resources

We have been reading about peak oil for decades now - and new scare stories -like this one - are published almost daily.  But should we believe these scaremongers, who often also happent o be believers in the man-made global warming religion? Of course not. There is no need to believe that we are running out of natural resources any time soon:

Prof. Steve Horwitz addresses the common belief that the world is running out of natural resources. Instead, there are economic reasons why we will never run out of many resources. In a free market system, prices signal scarcity. So as a resource becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive, which incentivizes people to use less of it and develop new alternatives, or to find new reserves of that resource that were previously unknown or unprofitable. We have seen throughout history that the human mind's ability to innovate, coupled with a free market economic system, is an unlimited resource that can overcome the limitations we perceive with natural resources.

Professor Horwitz´s home page.

"Operation Night Dragon" - Chinese cyber attacks worrying West

China appears to be actively pursuing cyber attacks primarily against Western goverments and companies. The latest attacks are part of a campaign that is known as "Operation Night Dragon":

March 8, 2011: Network security experts throughout the West are calling the increasing number of attacks on corporate and government computer systems as operation "Night Dragon," and describe it as a major Chinese effort to grab as much valuable information as they can before Western defenses get stronger. China is the likely culprit because so many of the operations have been traced back to China, many of the hacking tools are known to be of Chinese origin, and so much of the information is particularly useful to Chinese companies, or the Chinese military. Moreover, China has refused to assist Western network security specialists and law enforcement efforts in getting access to the Chinese based servers that much of the information is being sent back to.

Read the entire article here

More on "Operation Night Dragon":

Chinese hackers working regular business hours shifts stole sensitive intellectual property from energy companies for as long as four years using relatively unsophisticated intrusion methods in an operation dubbed "Night Dragon," according to a new report from security vendor McAfee.

The oil, gas and petrochemical companies targeted were hit with technical attacks on their public-facing Web sites, said Greg Day , director of security strategy. The hackers also used persuasive social-engineering techniques to get key executives in Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Greece, and the U.S. to divulge information.

The attacks have been linked to China due to the use of Chinese hacking tools commonly seen on underground hacking forums. Further, the attacks appeared to originate from computers on IP addresses in Beijing, between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. local time there, suggesting that the culprits were regular company employees rather than freelance or unprofessional hackers, McAfee said in its report.

Bloomberg recently reported that Exxon, Shell and BP are among the companies recently targeted by Chinese cyber attacks:

Computer hackers working through Internet servers in China broke into and stole proprietary information from the networks of six U.S. and European energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, according to one of the companies and investigators who declined to be identified.

According to a US Department of Defense report published last year, the Pentagon is increasingly worried about the Chinese cyber war activities:

“However, developing capabilities for cyberwarfare is consistent with authoritative PLA military writings,” the report added, revealing US fears of China's focus in this area. The People's Liberation Army has already stated that cyberwarfare will be a primary focus of its renewed military programme over the next decade, stating that it wants to close the gap with the US, which is seen as the dominant player in the virtual battleground.

The report also uncovered knowledge of a Chinese digital spying system that affected over a hundred countries: “In March 2009, Canadian researchers uncovered an electronic spy network, apparently based mainly in China, which had reportedly infiltrated Indian and other nations’ government offices around the world. More than 1,300 computers in 103 countries were identified.”
The report highlighted PLA investment in electronic countermeasures, defences against electronic attack, and computer network operations (CNO). It revealed China's efforts to develop electronic and infrared decoys, angle reflectors, and false target generators, as well computer network attacks, computer network exploitation, and computer network defence.

If that were not enough, the PLA is also apparently working on developing viruses to attack enemy computers and networks, even devoting entire information warfare units for this single goal.

US worries about Chinese cyber attacks also feature in cables leaked through Wikileaks:

The US fears China is plotting internet warfare via private companies that are known to have recruited top hackers.

According to leaked cables, the state department is concerned about Beijing's close working relationship with two major providers of information security in China. The companies have hired experienced hackers, who include Lin Yong, aka Lion, who founded the Honker Union of China, a Chinese hacker group that emerged after the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and launched a series of cyber attacks on US government-related websites.

EU climate change fraud: Germany alone lost 850 million euro

The reality behind the EU climate change madness is slowly becoming visible. Germany alone has lost hundreds of millions of euros in tax revenues to frauds involving carbon trading:

On March 7th Alexander Badle senior prosecutor for the Office of the Attorney General of Germany issued a statement, saying that tax fraud on carbon dioxide emission trading has cost the government an estimated total of EUR 850 million in lost revenues. The figure emerged throughout the course of the ongoing investigations into frauds allegedly committed by 120 companies operating in Germany and registered across Europe and in the United Arab Emirates.
The investigations were prompted in 2009 when evidence arose of multinational companies across the EU using “carousel fraud” to bypass taxes on carbon emissions trading. Initial Interpol investigations estimated that the schemes cost EU tax authorities a cumulative EUR 5 billion.
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Alexander Badle said that 180 people are being investigated for their roles in the carousel schemes, with four people already in custody. Alexander Badle went on to say that seven people who are being investigated are employees of Deutsche Bank AG. The bank has replied, saying that an investigation conducted on its own behalf has shown no evidence of wrong doing.
Read the entire article here.

The EU Emission Trading System was closed for two weeks in February due to fraud and theft. EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard then promised the following action:

 “The commission has identified a range of actions member states can already take in the short term to further improve security. For example, by regularly reviewing security plans, by reinforcing registry account policies and identity checks, by training registry users, etcetera.”

 “For the medium and long term, we reinforce efforts to identify solutions in co-operation both with member states and through a regular dialogue with stakeholders.”

PS
"Regular dialogue with stakeholders" - that sounds tough! The criminals using loopholes in the EU legislation must be scared stiff. Unfortunately Ms. Hedegaard and the other EU climate change promoters do not need to have a dialogue with the real stakeholders - the European taxpayers - because they are unelected buraucrats.

The carbon criminals must have studied this official EU "documentary" closely: