Justice Comes Late

But it finally comes for two more members of the Khmer Rouge regime that murdered at least 1.7 million people (other estimates range much higher than that.). Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, have been arrested by Cambodian officials for their roles in the killings.

Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, are both accused of involvement in the slayings of political opponents during the 1975-79 radical communist regime, according to documents from prosecutors seen by The Associated Press. Ieng Thirith served as the regime's minister for social affairs.

Police detained the couple at their Phnom Penh residence at dawn. Officers later brought them to tribunal offices, where they were to make an initial appearance before the judges later Monday, said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath. He did not elaborate on the charges they would face.

The radical policies of the Khmer Rouge blamed for the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution. None of the group's leaders have faced trial yet.

Both are accused of involvement in the slayings of political opponents, according to documents from prosecutors seen by The Associated Press.

Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith join Nuon Chea and Kaing Geuk Eav, aka Duch in a prison built just for the purpose. They'll have nice toilets. Unfortunately, too many of the guilty were allowed to live out their lives. Unlike the 14,000 who entered the Tuol Sleng prison alive. All but three of them died. Or the rest of the 2 million or so victims of the regime.

The Missing Monks

The military junta that rules Burma says that it has released all but less than 100 people of those detained in the bloody crackdown on dissent in September. They say that 3,000 have been released. The regime will not say how many Buddhist monks they detained. There is something odd. Because the monasteries are pretty much empty all over Burma. Some monks have gone into hiding, some have fled the country, some are staying back in their native villages. There is no way to get an accurate count of how many are hiding - or how many are dead or in custody. The monks are simply gone.

The junta has not disclosed how many monks were put behind bars since the upheaval of Sept. 26-27. In its last tally, on Nov. 6, the regime said nearly 3,000 people had been released, leaving 91 still in custody. But diplomats and dissidents say the figures are a fraction of reality and an unknown number of monks have been detained since then.

The picture that emerges, after scores of interviews with monks, abbots and other people in Myanmar, is that monasteries around the country have been depleted — particularly in the biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay, where protests were staged.

Many monks have slipped over borders or are hiding in their hometowns and villages. To avoid being caught in a nighttime raid on their monasteries, some stay with friends, despite Buddhist rules that forbid a monk and a lay person to sleep under the same roof.

In this devoutly Buddhist country, every male citizen has to be a monk for at least a short time.

But many parents are keeping their children out of the monasteries for their safety, several abbots said in interviews.

The junta has lifted a nighttime curfew, restored Internet access and ended a ban on assembly. But monks remain targets. The junta said recently it was still pursuing four monks who led rallies.

One of them, U Kovida, spoke to The Associated Press from the Thai border, asking that his location be kept secret for fear Thai authorities would send him back.

"At the moment you will hardly find a monk in Yangon. Monks are running away from danger. They are being arrested and sent to labor camps, tortured and killed," said U Kovida, 24.

The junta has not commented on allegations of abuse.

Kovida is officially accused of having hidden 48 blocks of TNT in his monastery before moving them elsewhere. He was hunted for three weeks by authorities and arrived at the border Oct. 18. He says the allegations are false.

"Whenever they want to arrest a leading monk, they have to make up some story because they know people have such great respect for monks and Buddhism," he said.

It would more than a little out of character for a Buddhist monk to be stockpiling explosives. So the question then becomes: where are all those missing monks? How many have been detained, sent to labor camps or worse? And why is the United Nations doing nothing? If they are the wonderful organization that western backers praise so much, why are they only praising potatoes instead of raising questions about the monks? The United States has used what little leverage they have against the regime in Burma by imposing unilateral sanctions. It isn't even close to enough.

Gifts Of Thanks

Major Elizabeth Robbins, deployed in Iraq, thanks America and Americans for the "paper love" sent to the troops deployed overseas. It means the world to the men and women serving our country in distant places.

Those of us overseas know that "support the troops" is more than a slogan. Here we are besieged by what my master sergeant calls "paper love," the cards, letters, posters and other gestures of support sent by people across America. The paper love is often accompanied by packages of snacks and comfort items. Some mail comes from family members, but even more is sent by private citizens and troop support organizations. The war has inspired a remarkable level of civic involvement that goes largely unnoticed — except by those of us in the field or recovering stateside.

All of us are volunteers. We're in Iraq because we want to serve. We are well educated and physically fit and could have pursued a variety of other life options. But, to paraphrase Defense Secretary Robert Gates, we are driven by the romantic and optimistic ideal that we can improve the world. We are seeing real progress on the ground, and we are helping Iraq to change.

Idealism, however, does not diminish our longing for home or the pain of missing family. It does not dispel all fear and doubt, and it does not heal our wounded or fallen friends. So when we are feeling disheartened, we open the care packages and read the letters.

Please read the whole thing. And please, if you can, donate to Project Valour-IT. The button is at the top of the sidebar. It is another way to show your support for those who serve.

German Town Overrun

In the most literal sense of the word. The village of Obereichstaett in Bavaria is once again facing the annual invasion. It happens every year about this time when the uncounted millions of feet march over the town. Fall is when the millipedes arrive. But they are finally fighting back.

Residents of a German village are celebrating victory over an unwelcome invader: thousands of millipedes which have turned their streets, gardens and homes into something from a horror film.

A foot-high wall, which will eventually encircle Obereichstaett in Bavaria, has finally stemmed the nightly flow of the crawling creatures, which have afflicted the village every autumn for hundreds of years.

Bernhard Koderer, 45, who lives with his wife and two children, said: "Last year was the worst so far. The road to my house was completely covered.

At times in the past, trains have not been able to run due to the coating of squished millipedes on the tracks. The new wall is only a foot or so high, but it's enough to stop the annual invasion. Now they just go around the village. Town residents and experts don't know where all the millipedes come from or where they are heading. Which is kind of silly. It should be obvious: they're on their way home from Oktoberfest. It just takes a long while for them to get their shoes on.

Armistice Day

Harry Patch is the very last British veteran of the trenches of World War One. (I first posted about Mr Patch when he helped kick off the annual Poppy Appeal in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset late last month.) Today Mr. Patch calls for support for the troops while they are serving or when they first come home - not 80 years later. 

So now, on Remembrance Sunday, it is up to me to speak out for all those fallen or forgotten comrades. But today isn't just about my generation. It is about all the servicemen who have risked or given their lives, and the soldiers who are still doing so.

My comrades died long ago and it's easy for us to feel emotional about them. But the nation should honour what we did by helping the young soldiers of today feel worthwhile, by making them feel that their sacrifice has been worth it.

Remember the men in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don't make them wait eight decades, like my generation had to wait, to feel appreciated.

The time for really remembering our Forces is while they are at war or in the years immediately after they return, when they are coping with the shock and distress or just the problems of returning to civilian life.

That is what upsets me now. It is as if we have not learned the lessons of the war of 90 years ago.

Last year, the politicians suggested holding a commemoration service at Westminster Abbey to honour the remaining First World War veterans. But why? What for? It was too, too late…….

……Somebody told me the other day that at homecoming parades for our men in Iraq and Afghanistan, barely anyone turns up. I was shocked. Even in our day there would at least be some kind of welcome.

I hope that today people will take the time to remember not just those who have died but those who are alive and fighting for our country. Please don't forget them - or leave your thanks until it is too late.

Veteran's Day in the United States, Remembrance Day in Britain and the other Commonwealth nations. I am not sure what they call it in France. But it was once just Armistice Day. The day the guns fell silent.

SILENCE FALLS
The echoes die, the smoke-clouds thin and pass,
The cannons are, like statues, dumb and cold:
Silent the crosses wait, and in the grass
The spent shells gleam like gold.

All spent he lay and dreamed till the moment came:
Now, waking with a cry, he looks, all wonder
To see the empty sky hurl down no flame:
To hear no crack of thunder.
- Henry Weston Pryce, 11 November 1918.

Harry Patch my be the last Tommy as he puts it, but he is certainly not the least. Support them, honor them and respect them for what they do for all of us. Don't wait 80 years to do so. It is not so very much to ask.

UPDATE: Sister Toldjah has more thoughts from all over. Callimachus has still more at Done With Mirrors.

Veteran’s Day And Project Valour-IT

Today is the day that is set aside to honor those who have served this country in the armed forces. What better way to express your support for veterans than by donating to Project Valour-IT?

Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, helps provide voice-controlled and adaptive laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries at major military medical centers.

There is a button at the top of the sidebar that will take you to the Soldier's Angels website to donate. Or you can follow this link.

Please consider making a donation.  

Saving A Piece Of History

A group of volunteers, headed by a French woman who heads a D-Day museum in Merville, Normandy, is trying to rescue a shot-up C-47 cargo airplane that is abandoned at an airport in Bosnia. If the Bosnian government does not sign the necessary papers by November 14th there will no chance at saving the craft. The plane participated in the Normandy Invasion, Operation Market Garden and in the siege of Bastogne. It is a true piece of history.

A team of volunteers has been on stand-by for weeks to crate up the plane and truck it out of Bosnia, where it was machine-gunned on an airfield near Sarajevo in 1994 during the Yugoslav civil war to prevent it from ever flying again.

However, a mix of blunders, bureaucracy and pure bad luck have stopped the Bosnian presidency from signing the release order and Guillaume says if they don't do it as promised on November 14, they will miss their final window of opportunity.

Ironically, given its history, the Douglas C-47 will need the help of German troops stationed at the Bosnian airfield to be loaded onto the waiting trucks. Their mission finishes on December 1. and they won't be coming back.

"If the memorandum of understanding is not signed now, it is finished. This is our last chance. We have tried to do everything we can. We are just waiting now," said Guillaume.

D-DAY SYMBOL

Guillaume and her friends began hunting for a Douglas C-47 years ago, seeing the sturdy transport plane as a potent symbol of the 1944 D-Day landings, when hundreds of thousands of allied troops poured into Normandy to liberate France from the Nazis.

A French soldier heard of her search and told her he had spotted one such plane while serving as a peacekeeper in Bosnia in the 1990s. A plane enthusiast, he had negotiated a one hour ceasefire to see the plane up close and in safety.

A check of its registration numbers revealed that it had taken part in the Normandy landings, as well as the disastrous Arnhem 'Market Garden' operation, the siege of Bastogne and the last parachute drop of the war in Europe in March 1945.

The crew named the plane The SNAFU Special during the war. Strangely appropriate right now. I hope Beatrice Guillaume can actually get the airplane out and give it a place of honor back in France where it served so faithfully. More about the C-47 Skytrain at this website. The C-47 was unbelievably tough and there are still some flying today. The official name 'Skytrain' was usually ignored, by the way. It was referred to as the Gooney Bird mostly -  in an affectionate way.

The crew named the plane The SNAFU Special during the war. Strangely appropriate right now. I hope Beatrice Guillaume can actually get the airplane out and give it a place of honor back in France where it served so faithfully. More about the C-47 Skytrain at this website. The C-47 was unbelievably tough and there are still some flying today. The official name 'Skytrain' was usually ignored, by the way. It was referred to as the Gooney Bird mostly -  in an affectionate way.

UPDATE: In a comment posted today, Beatrice Guillaume sends the following great news:

SNAFU Team Communiqué

On November, 12th, during its 26th ordinary session, the Collegial Presidence decided to offer an American plane wreck who took part in WWII to France.

This decision which has been reached on the Veterans American Day is a continuation of a large mobilization on the two sides of the Atlantic and especially the veterans who flew in this plane and the families of the different crews.

Within few days, the SNAFU Team members will go in Rajlovac to dismantle this big witness of our History who bravely took part in all the battles of the Europe freedom in 1944/1945.They will bring her on three trailers in Normandy where she will be restored before being shown to the public on June 2008.

We have a lot of gratitude towards the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina for this handsome gesture of friendship and we aim our warmly thanks to the diplomatic representations we mobilized as also all people who lavish help and encouragements on us.

The Batterie de Merville museum homepage is here.

Ignore Gore

Bjorn Lomborg, who believes global warming is real, does not believe - in any way shape or form - in the hyped up nonsense being passed off as science by Al Gore. While Gore may have won the Oscar for best baseless propaganda film, Lomborg has nothing but disdain for Gore the man and Gore the hysteric. His advice to the world: ignore Al Gore's hysterical fraud.

While Gore was creating alarm with his belief that a 20-foot-high wall of water would inundate low-lying cities, the IPCC showed us we should realistically prepare for a rise of one foot or so by the end of the century. Beyond the dramatic difference, it is also worth putting that one foot in perspective. Over the last 150 years, sea levels rose about one foot - yet, did we notice?

Most tellingly, while Gore was raising fears about the Gulf Stream halting and a new Ice Age starting, the scientists discounted the prospect entirely.

The Gulf Stream takes warm water from around Mexico and pushes it toward Europe. Around 8,000 years ago, a melting lake in the region of the present-day Canadian Great Lakes broke through and a massive torrent of cold, fresh water flooded into the North Atlantic, significantly slowing the Gulf Stream for around 400 years. Gore worries that Greenland's ice shelves could melt and do the same thing again.

Ice in Greenland is obviously melting. But over the next century, it'll spill 1,000 times less water into the ocean than occurred 8,000 years ago. It will have a negligible effect on the Gulf Stream.

In his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Gore claimed that scientists were discovering that the current is "surprisingly fragile". However, the IPCC scientists write in their 2007 report: "None of the current models simulates an abrupt reduction or shut-down" of the Gulf Stream.

Again, Lomborg does believe in global warming and does believe that man is at least partly responsible. He also believes that the draconian, economy-collapsing "solutions" of Gore and his sycophants are beyond stupid. The Gore faction has tried, repeatedly, to shut Lomborg up. Yet Gore is afraid to talk to Lomborg - he canceled an interview when he found out that Lomborg had also been invited. That should tell you exactly how confident Gore really is about his claims.

John Christy has also slammed the True Believers® over their extremely arrogant claims that they "understand the science". Most of those claiming to understand the science do not. Nor do they have any understanding of the complexity of the earth's climate. Yet they go around saying that they do and that skeptics do not. Christy begs to differ.

Lomborg and Christy both understand the science and council against the excesses of Al Gore and his followers. They do not believe that planting a green jackboot firmly on the throat of civilization is the solution to any warming trend. Unlike some fraudsters and fiction writers.

The Eleventh Hour Of The Eleventh Day Of The Eleventh Month

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae

Spitzer Backing Off From Licenses for Lawbreakers®?

Eliot Spitzer has caused rather a lot of problems for Democrats with his Licenses for Lawbreakers® scheme. His plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants provided the tool that wounded Hillary Clinton and started making her look a lot less inevitable - triggering a sharp drop in Clinton's opinion poll numbers. But now, his attempt to ram the plan through may be shelved by Spitzer.

The governor’s aides have grown increasingly concerned that reaction to the plan is preventing Mr. Spitzer from advancing or even discussing other matters. It has also become an issue for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign and has caused anxiety among other Democrats.

After a meeting on Friday with Hispanic lawmakers at a conference here, Mr. Spitzer was not displaying the defiance with which he had defended the plan in the past. Asked by a reporter if he would change or table the plan, the governor said he was sticking with it “as of now,” but suggested that he was open to abandoning it.

“Sometimes you put out an idea and there isn’t so much support, and you try to persuade people and you see where you go,” Mr. Spitzer said. “This is the way the world works.”

He added: “I don’t think there’s ever been an executive, a president, a governor who hasn’t put out ideas, that at the end of the day there isn’t support, and so things don’t work out, but as of now, sure, I think this is the right idea from a security perspective. We’ll wait and see.”

McQ over at QandO points out that this is a bald-faced lie. That is not what Spitzer did at all. He wasn't trying to persuade people, he was trying to push this through by executive fiat:

Uh, yeah, but this wasn't an "idea" and Spitzer wasn't trying to "persuade" anyone. He used an executive order to put the measure into effect. It was only after the fact, when his ploy had been discovered and was catching so much flack, that he was suddenly interested in "persuading" people.

Spitzer also ended up hurting presidential candidates, Clinton and others, and is undoubtedly taking heat from them and from the national committee. The voters in New York are furious with Spitzer and are overwhelmingly against the plan. Spitzer is even taking heat from pro-illegal immigrant factions because he tried to water the plan down in response to the uproar it generated.

Spitzer is in a political corner over this debacle. He knows it, the reporters know it and the voters sure as heck know it. It is only a matter of time before the plan is quietly disappeared. But it has already done serious damage. Sure, Democrats were quick to crow that the issue of illegal immigration had not figured in state and local elections on election day earlier this month. But those were state and local, weren't they? It will be a different story on the national level. The Democrats know that. That is why they are after Spitzer and his plan.