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Sunday, December 5, 2010

Japan's Harsh Colonial Rule of Korea

   Japan's offer to return the royal Korean texts also represents progress that overturns Tokyo's previous position that all issues regarding the colonial rule were settled in a 1965 package compensation deal between the two countries, Yun said. Under that agreement, Seoul received hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and low-interest loans from Tokyo.

   Japan's harsh colonial rule left deep scars on the hearts of Koreans. During that period Koreans were banned from using their own language at schools and forced to adopt Japanese names. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans were also mobilized as forced laborers and sex slaves.

   South Korea and Japan are key trade partners and cooperate closely in efforts to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. But issues related to the colonial rule have often badly strained their relations, with tensions flaring up whenever Japan attempted to gloss over its wartime past or lay claims to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo in school textbooks or government documents.

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2010/08/10/24/0301000000AEN20100810004800315F.HTML

Ian Fleming's Operation:Mincemeat

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11887115

And so the homeless Welsh alcoholic came to be buried with full military honours in a sunlit Spanish cemetery, under a headstone bearing the name William Martin, RM - for Royal Marines.
The best way to fake a top secret letter was to get a real general to write it
Michael/Martin was but a prop in Operation Mincemeat, brainchild of Ian Fleming, and put into action by Cholmondeley and Montagu, Churchill's "corkscrew thinkers" in the War Office.

Fittingly for a deception dreamed up by a novelist, the true story of the fictional officer was turned into a Hollywood film, The Man Who Never Was, in the 1950s, after Montagu wrote a book about the plot.

Prior to Mincemeat, they had created a network of fictitious double agents to feed misinformation to the Nazis. These imaginary spies were, like Michael/Martin, given jobs, hobbies, family, lovers and bank managers. The Germans thought they had an established spy network in the UK - in reality, they had none.

After a tense week or so - it took the Germans several attempts to get sight of the briefcase's contents - photographs of the falsified documents made it to Hitler's desk. He was fooled, and moved an entire panzer division - 90,000 soldiers - to Greece.

Montagu - in charge of the plot Ewan Montagu spent months fleshing out the fake officer

Montagu and his team fired off a telegram to Churchill: "Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker."

And so in early July, the Allies attacked Sicily. The island fell with but a fraction of the feared casualties and ship losses Britain had feared.

"Mussolini was soon toppled from power," says Macintyre. "Forced to confront this Allied invasion from the south, Hitler called off a huge offensive against the Soviets. The Germans were now on the back foot. The Red Army did not stop until it reached Berlin."

The tide of the war turned - thanks, in part, to the body of a tramp set adrift in the Atlantic.



(rememeber: possible comic adaptation of the Irregulars
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/books/review/Heilbrunn-t.html)

{The word is a blend of "gene" and the Greek word μιμητισμός (mimetismos, [mɪmetɪsmos]) for "something imitated".)
Historically, the notion of a unit of social evolution, and a similar term (from Greek mneme, “memory”), first appeared in 1904 in a work by the German Lamarckist biologist Richard Semon titled Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (loosely translatable as “Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings”). According to the OED, the word mneme appears in English in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: The Mneme.[
The word meme originated with Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. To emphasize commonality with genes, Dawkins coined the term "meme" by shortening "mimeme", which derives from the Greek word mimema ("something imitated").
...

Khmer Rouge Aftermath



The psychologist talks methodically for about 15 minutes and everything slows as he paints a picture of a country of small villages in which an entire society is distorted by the tragedies and atrocities of the past.
Where everybody knows things that cannot be said, where one businessman does not deal with another businessman because he was a killer.
Where victims killed too, sometimes simply for survival.
Today, children who lost both parents live among their parents' killers.
Secrets are everywhere: knowledge of where bodies were buried, who buried them, who did what to who.

Later, I discover the reason the psychologist speaks in English is because the authorities do not really censor what is said in English. That's because, as the editor of the English language version of the Phnom Penh Post says to me, somewhat ruefully, they know hardly any Cambodians will read or hear it.
Time and again I am told: "We don't have a culture of reading in this country," which actually means, "we killed everyone who could read". This is old news.
Information about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is in the open. Comrade Duch who ran the S-21 prison has been found guilty, there are four more Khmer leaders in prison just down the road from here.

here are foreign investors, NGO workers, diplomats, as well as backpackers and young travellers lured by holiday brochures describing Cambodia as an "enthralling destination" and eulogising the "warm, enigmatic people".
There are tours, temples, mountains, wonderful beaches. But all of this just seems to skate over the top of the enigmatic Cambodians who walk their own invisible paths.
Older people just do not talk about the past and their mantra to the young is that staying silent is always a solution if there is a problem.
What used to be a survival strategy for them as children, in a time of unimaginable brutality, has become almost a national characteristic a generation or two on.

China - N Korea ties

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11876831

Wang could not detect any scars on [Kim Jong-il's] head after his widely reported surgery after suffering a stroke," read the despatch.
With a failing economy, North Korea seems keen to attract as much Chinese aid as possible.
One report says Kim Jong-il - described by one Chinese official as a man who likes a drink - visited China earlier this year to get more economic assistance.
The country also wants as much Chinese investment as possible.

Another document, sent from the US consulate in Shenyang earlier this year, says some North Korean officials are selling mining and fishing rights to Chinese businesses in exchange for funds for construction projects.
It goes on to say that this arrangement sometimes allows the children of high-ranking officials in both countries to "hijack the most favourable investment and aid deals for their own enrichment".

n that despatch Mr Chun reportedly says some Chinese officials were willing to "face the new reality" that North Korea was of little value to China as a buffer state. ( i hardly think they would not want it as a buffer)

Drone Attacks Afghanistan

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10648909

While more than 700 people have died in these attacks, positive identification of the victims, either by Pakistani or US authorities, has been made in fewer than a dozen instances.

Pakistan has consistently argued that drone attacks are hindering rather than helping with the battle against extremism, saying they fuel public anger against the government and the US and boost support for militants.


More than 700 people have been killed in such attacks under Mr Obama, compared with slightly fewer than 200 from under his predecessor, George W Bush.
The militant backlash over the same period has been even more violent. Extremists have struck more than 140 times in various Pakistani locations, killing more than 1,700 people and injuring hundreds more, the BBC research shows.

Places such as Swat and South Waziristan which have seen offensives by the Pakistani military are virtually closed to independent media and other groups.

Iran Covert War

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/iran-nuclear-experts-killings

 Tehran's streets at the height of the morning rush hour resemble a vast, sprawling car park. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, much of it stationary, the acrid steam of a thousand exhausts hanging in the cold winter air. If you wanted to kill someone, this would be the moment to do it: when they are stuck in their cars – sitting targets.
At 7.40am last Monday, in north Tehran's Aghdasieh district, a motorcycle threaded its way through the long lines of cars on Artesh Boulevard. It edged up to a silver Peugeot 405, hesitating alongside for moment, before moving off into the maze of vehicles. A few seconds later there was a bang from the side of the Peugeot, as a small bomb stuck on to the window detonated, killing one of the men inside. The driver and a woman passenger were wounded.

It is certainly true that, while the discovery of any involvement in the killings of civilian scientists would be career-endingly embarrassing for the CIA or MI6, the Mossad is known for such exploits. It is widely believed to have killed scientists working on Iraq's nuclear programme in the 1980s.

The outgoing Mossad director, Meir Dagan, has stepped up the use of assassinations against Israel's enemies, and has won plaudits for doing so. The Israel Hayom news website remarked on the occasion of Dagan's retirement: "[He] will be leaving an organisation that is far sharper and more operational than the organisation he received, and all of the accusations from Tehran yesterday are a good indication of that. Iran will be the focal point for the next Mossad director, too."


One of the US cables made public by WikiLeaks describes a meeting of a US-Israeli joint political military group in November last year. It said: "The GOI [Government of Israel] described 2010 as a critical year – if the Iranians continue to protect and harden their nuclear sites, it will be more difficult to target and damage them. Both sides then discussed the upcoming delivery of bunker-busting bombs to Israel, noting that the transfer should be handled quietly to avoid any allegations that the US is helping Israel prepare for a strike against Iran."
The bombs duly arrived a few months later. The WikiLeaks cables also underpin a prediction made by western military officials earlier this year, that if Israel flew above Saudi Arabia to reach Iranian targets Saudi radar operators would somehow "fail to see them".

n September last year, Barack Obama announced the discovery of a secret enrichment plant burrowed into a mountain near the city of Qom.

But the US, Israel and other western spy agencies have also spent years slipping faulty parts into black market consignments of equipment heading to Iran – each designed to wreak havoc inside the delicate machinery requirement for enrichment.  Iran has now accumulated 3,000kg of low-enriched uranium – enough for two weapons, if further enriched. And this year Iranian scientists have stepped up the level of enrichment they are working on to 20%, which in terms of the technical obstacles that need to be overcome, is well on the way to 90% weapons-grade purity.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Russia "Mafia State"

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-12-03/russia-called-mafia-state-regrets-u-s-cynicism-.html

Putin, a former KGB spy, served as president for eight years before becoming prime minister in 2008, when legal limits prevented him from running for a third consecutive term. His successor, Medvedev, worked for Putin in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office before joining his presidential administration

eard from Russian opposition contacts that Putin didn’t install a strong successor because he feared “law enforcement investigations.” Putin’s aim was to protect “alleged illicit proceeds,” according to the cables published by the Guardian.

he prosecutor considers Russia a “virtual mafia state,” according to the cable. There are “unanswered questions regarding the extent to which Russian PM Putin is implicated in the Russian mafia and whether he controls the mafia’s actions,” the cable cited Gonzalez as saying.

Putin has accumulated “illicit wealth” through ties to secretive energy traders, including Gunvor International BV, according to oil industry experts cited in a Nov. 24, 2008, cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow and published by the Guardian.
Gunvor, whose main trading office is in Geneva, dismissed the memo as based on “old, completely unsubstantiated rumors.”
The company has two founders, Gennady Timchenko and Torbjorn Tornqvist, who are joint majority owners, Leasor said. An employee benefit trust for senior Gunvor managers owns a minority stake, he said. Timchenko was a founding member of a St. Petersburg judo club where Putin was once honorary head,

Gonzalez said he agreed with a thesis put forward by ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko that intelligence and security services “control organized crime in Russia,
Litvinenko, a Putin critic who received political asylum in the U.K., died from radiation poisoning in November 2006. U.K. investigators say former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi poisoned Litvinenko during a meeting in London. Lugovoi denies any involvement in Litvinenko’s death.
Litvinenko blamed Putin for his own murder in a deathbed statement,

Spanish prosecutor Jose Gonzalez as telling U.S. officials that he “cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and organized crime groups.”

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Futur bikes

http://www.beautifullife.info/automotive-design/unique-carbon-fiber-bike-hmk-561/
Unlike of many other concepts electric bicycle concept HMK 561 from Ralf Kittmann took home an iF Design Award for some seriously forward thinking. Cyclists HMK 561 is made of conductive carbon fiber, which is not only an excellent conductor of electricity, but also acts as a capacitor that can store energy. This energy is obtained by converting the mechanical energy into electrical energy in each mobile connection of mechanism. The resulting energy fed to the engine and lights. And there is already a working prototype! 







http://www.beautifullife.info/automotive-design/compact-eco-concept-ver2/