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Libya: UN Security Council Approves No-Fly Zone

admin — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:38:55 +0000

The council also authorized all necessary measures to protect civilians from attacks by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s forces.

The US, UK, France, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Colombia, South Africa and Portugal voted to approve the resolution, while China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India abstained.

Celebratory gunfire and horns were heard in Benghazi and Tobruk immediately after the vote.

Sky News correspondent Emma Hurd, in Tobruk, said: “Clearly everybody in this town and further to the west in Benghazi have been watching their televisions waiting for the news from the UN in New York and this is exactly what they wanted to hear.

“They now have that no-fly zone resolution and also the pledge of all necessary means to protect civilians.”

She added that could involve air strikes against government forces on the ground.

Special Operations Forces Deal blows to Taliban Ranks

admin — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 20:07:15 +0000

By Bill Roggio

December 9, 2010

Coalition and Afghan special operations teams have hit hard at the Taliban and allied groups’ leadership and rank and file during more than 7,000 raids throughout Afghanistan over the past six months.

Approximately 7,100 special operations counterterrorism missions have been conducted between May 30 and Dec. 2 of this year, the International Security Assistance Force told The Long War Journal. More than 600 insurgent leaders were killed or captured. In addition, more than 2,000 enemy fighters have been killed, and over 4,100 fighters have been captured.

The enemy commanders and fighters killed or captured are from various jihadist groups battling Coalition and Afghan forces, including the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, Hizb-i-Islami, al Qaeda, and the Islamic Jihad Group.

The numbers of insurgents killed or captured include only those targeted in special operations raids, ISAF stated. These numbers do not include Taliban and allied fighters killed or captured during conventional counterinsurgency operations, or during massed Taliban assaults on Coalition and Afghan bases.

Within the same time frame, special operations troops also completed more than 2,500 humanitarian operations, including the provision of medical and educational assistance.

The intensity of the special operations raids over the past six months reflects a shift from counterinsurgency to counterterrorism operations.

In a speech at the National Press Club on Dec. 8, General James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, noted that such a shift has been taken place to adjust to the realities on the ground in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s ability to conduct raids from Pakistan’s tribal areas, then retreat across the border rest and recuperate, has forced ISAF to adjust its strategy and target the Taliban’s lines of communications into Pakistan.

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Largest Solar Power Plant in Mass. About to Start

admin — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 18:13:48 +0000

By STEPHEN SINGER, AP Business Writer Stephen Singer, Ap Business Writer – Sat Nov 13, 11:15 am ET

PITTSFIELD, Mass. – On land poisoned by toxins from a long-gone manufacturing era, more than 6,500 solar panels face the south sky, capturing the sunlight of a late autumn day in the Berkshire Mountains.

They’re ready to deliver power to New England.

The Western Massachusetts Electric Co. site in Pittsfield, New England’s largest solar project, promises to produce enough electricity for about 300 homes starting later this month. That’s a tiny fraction of what the region needs to run computers, lights, TVs and everything else utility customers take for granted.

But the $9.4 million solar plant and an even larger project planned for Springfield next year are expected to spur job growth in the solar industry and eventually make the cost of solar power competitive with the oil-burning furnaces that are common in New England.

“What we’d like to do is open a new sector,” said Carl Frattini, director of business development at Western Massachusetts Electric.

The cost to install smaller scale rooftop solar panels is about $8,800 per kilowatt, he said. However, increasing the efficiency of production with large projects reduces the cost to about $5,200 per kilowatt, he said.

Ian Bowles, the state’s secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said that although solar power represents less than 1 percent of electrical use in Massachusetts, it is not subject to price volatility common with rising and falling oil and natural gas prices. So the rates consumers pay are more stable.

Solar power still is far more expensive than fossil fuels, but its rates are down by almost a half in just a few years, he said. It’s on a trajectory toward parity with traditional sources of energy in the region.

“Then it will really take off,” he said.

But don’t get rid of that oil-burning furnace yet.

Philip Jordan, head of Green LMI Consulting, a Mendon, Mass., work force and economic consulting firm, said technology still has far to go to push down prices. Renewable energy depends to a certain extent on government spending, which could fall as public officials close budget deficits, he said.

“It’s hard to know how fast things will ramp up in terms of efficiency of scale,” he said.

Nationally, the solar industry employed 93,502 workers as of August, about double from the previous year, according to a report by the Solar Foundation, a research and education group. In the next year, employment is expected to jump 26 percent, adding nearly 24,000 jobs, despite the weak recovery from the worst recession in decades, the group said.

Paul Gromer, executive director of the Solar Energy Business Association of New England, said the trend in solar construction nationally is toward larger plants. He said improvements in manufacturing have pushed down costs, and installers are becoming more efficient with each new project.

“It is small but growing very, very rapidly,” he said.

Fouad Dagher, manager of energy products and services at National Grid, which is installing five megawatts of utility-owned solar power at five of its locations in Massachusetts, said equipment manufactured overseas also is pushing down prices.

“The more we do the more the prices are coming down,” he said.

Though Gromer called Massachusetts a “hotbed for the solar energy business,” New Jersey and Florida are home to larger solar projects. In Pilesgrove, N.J., Panda Power Funds of Dallas and Con Edison Development of Valhalla, N.Y., are developing a 71,000-solar panel project on a 100-acre farm. It is set to generate 20 megawatts by April or May, among the handful of largest solar farms in the nation.

A 25-megawatt facility opened last year in Arcadia, Fla.

Massachusetts legislation signed into law by Gov. Deval Patrick in 2008 helped push development of solar plants locally, Frattini said. The Green Communities Act permits utilities to generate power from solar plants, an exception to the prohibition against generating power that was part of deregulation more than a decade ago.

And to resolve another problem — the need for large tracts of land to house row upon row of solar panels — Western Massachusetts Electric looks to abandoned industrial and commercial areas and former landfills, which are relatively inexpensive. The company plans to use a capped landfill in Springfield for its next solar plant. And its eight-acre Pittsfield property, once used by General Electric Co. to make transformers, was fouled by PCBs.

The site of the 1,800-kilowatt plant in Pittsfield, with its 33 rows of solar panels in an out-of-the way industrial park, is less obtrusive — and less contentious — than alternative energy such as wind turbines.

“I know aesthetics depend on where you stand,” said Western Massachusetts Electric project manager Bill Blanchard. “But I love it.”

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Myanmar Democracy Leader Aung San Suu Kyi Released

admin — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:45:10 +0000

Associated Press YANGON, Myanmar – Pro-democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi walked free Saturday after more than seven years under house arrest, welcomed by thousands of cheering supporters outside the decaying lakefront villa that has been her prison.

Her guards effectively announced the end of her detention, pulling back the barbed-wire barriers that sealed off her potholed street and suddenly allowing thousands of expectant supporters to surge toward the house. Many chanted her name as they ran. Some wept.

A few minutes later, with the soldiers and police having evaporated into the Yangon twilight, she climbed atop a stepladder behind the gate as the crowd began singing the national anthem.

“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” the 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize Laureate said to laughter, smiling deeply as she held the metal spikes that top the gate. When a supporter handed up a bouquet, she pulled out a flower and wove it into her hair.

Speaking briefly in Burmese, she told the crowd, which quickly swelled to as many as 5,000 people: “If we work in unity, we will achieve our goal.”

“We have a lot of things to do,” said Suu Kyi, the charismatic and relentlessly outspoken woman who has come to symbolize the struggle for democracy in the isolated and secretive nation once known as Burma. The country has been ruled by the military since 1962.

But while her release thrilled her supporters — and also clearly thrilled her — it came just days after an election that was swept by the ruling junta’s proxy political party and decried by Western nations as a sham designed to perpetuate authoritarian control.

Many observers have questioned whether it was timed by the junta to distract the world’s attention from the election. It is also unlikely the ruling generals will allow Suu Kyi, who drew huge crowds of supporters during her few periods of freedom, to actively and publicly pursue her goal of bringing democracy to Myanmar.

While welcoming the release, European Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso urged that no restrictions be placed on her.

“It is now crucial that Aung San Suu Kyi has unrestricted freedom of movement and speech and can participate fully in her country’s political process,” he said.

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‘Foreign Fighter’ Cell Leader Captured in Central Afghanistan

admin — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 06:32:01 +0000

By Bill Roggio

November 2, 2010

Afghan and Coalition forces captured the leader of “a cell of approximately 50 foreign fighters” during a raid in central Afghanistan yesterday.

The commander, who was not identified, was detained during a raid in the Maidan Shahr district in Wardak province, which borders Kabul.

“The target [of the raid] was wanted for leading a cell of approximately 50 foreign fighters, serving as a suicide-attack facilitator and leading small-arms and improvised explosive device attacks against ANSF and ISAF,” the International Security Assistance force stated in a press release. He was wanted by the Afghan government and is currently being interrogated by the National Directorate of Security.

ISAF would not provide the nationalities of the 50-man foreign fighter cell to The Long War Journal, but indicated they were all “Taliban.”

A US military intelligence official contacted by The Long War Journal said that Arab and Pakistani al Qaeda operatives, and possibly members from the Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as members of the Haqqani Network who were from North Waziristan, belonged to the cell. Al Qaeda leaders are known to command forces in Afghanistan, while longtime fighters from other al Qaeda battlefields from across the Middle East and Central Asia often embed with Taliban forces and serve as expert trainers [see LWJ report, Analysis: Al Qaeda martyrdom tape shows nature and extent of terror group's reach in Afghanistan].

Also, on Oct. 30, ISAF killed four Haqqani Network leaders during a firefight in Paktia province, including a commander involved in supporting operations in Kabul. Among the four commanders killed was Qari Amil, a “Haqqani Network senior leader responsible for suicide attacks as well as facilitating fighters from Pakistan into Khost province and Kabul.”

The Haqqani Network has made inroads in the central province of Wardak over the past several years, and has used the province to stage attacks in the capital of Kabul. The Haqqani Network makes up a big part of what is known by ISAF as the Kabul Attack Network.

The Kabul Attack Network is the Taliban group responsible for carrying out attacks in and around the Afghan capital. It is made up of fighters from the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, and cooperates with terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and al Qaeda. Top Afghan intelligence officials have linked the Kabul Attack Network to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate as well. The network’s tentacles extend outward from Kabul into the surrounding provinces of Logar, Wardak, Nangarhar, and Kapisa.

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‘Vertical Farming’ Envisions Tech Future for Food DAVID RUNK , AP

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:45:19 +0000

DETROIT (Oct. 28) — A new book by an urban agriculture visionary aims to change the way people think about farming, offering a look into a future where city skyscrapers — not rural fields — produce the world’s food.

In “The Vertical Farm,” Dickson Despommier challenges the notion that plants should be grown in soil, advocating for developing and investing in big projects using hydroponic greenhouses and other indoor growing technology in cities.

The goal is to provide safe, fresh food around the globe in a way Despommier says is impossible with modern farming. He acknowledges that getting to that future might be expensive, but he considers it a challenge akin to the space race.

“There is nothing stopping us from doing that any more than there was nothing stopping us from going to the moon,” the 70-year-old Despommier said in a recent interview about the book, his third, released this month by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press.

Despommier developed his ideas as a professor of public health in environmental health sciences at Columbia University. He and his students spent the past decade studying ways to incorporate agriculture into urban areas and developing plans for high-rise farms.

Despommier, who retired in January, has been a leading voice promoting the possibility that urban agriculture could be more than community plots on vacant lots in cities like New York and Detroit. His ideas tend to be grander in scale — and more enmeshed in new technology — than those of others in the field.

He envisions growing crops in indoor areas more concentrated than farm fields, and herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers wouldn’t be used. Towers could be built just for growing, or empty buildings could be converted.

In its ultimate form, Despommier envisions a system for farming that would use energy from burning human waste, for example, and biofuels from the vertical farm itself to help power extremely energy efficient grow lights. Fish and poultry could be raised in the buildings, along with fruits and vegetables.

Some of those steps are taking place already on a smaller, lower-tech scale. In Milwaukee, for example, former pro basketball player and urban farmer Will Allen has created a self-sustaining system of fish and vegetable farming.

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Arkansas School Board VP to Resign After Saying Gays Should ‘Give each other AIDS’

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 18:02:59 +0000

By David Edwards
Friday, October 29th, 2010 — 8:57 am

A district school board member in Arkansas will resign after making comments on Facebook saying that gays should commit suicide.

“I am going to resign from the school board,” Clint McCance told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday.

McCance is vice-president of the Midland School District in Pleasant Plains, Arkansas.

The Advocate first reported Tuesday that McCance had posted a screed on Facebook wishing that gays would “commit suicide” and “give each other AIDS and die.” He also used words like “queer” and “fag.”

Thursday McCance said he was quitting “to help my community, to help my school.”

“I don’t want them to receive bad press or have a distraction because of some ignorant comments that have — that I made.”

“I’m sorry I’ve hurt people with my comments,” he said. “I’m sorry I made those ignorant comments and hurt people on a broad spectrum.”

“I would never support suicide for any kids,” McCant said. “I don’t support bullying of any kids.”

“I’d like to extend apologies to those families that have lost children, for all those children who feel that suicide is the only way out, especially for the five families who have already lost children,” he continued, referring to a rash of recent suicides by gay teens. “I brought more hurt on them… they didn’t deserve that and I do feel genuinely bad for them.”

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New High of 46% of Americans Support Legalizing Marijuana

admin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:08:07 +0000

Liberals, 18- to 29-year-olds express the highest levels of support
by Elizabeth Mendes

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While California’s marijuana ballot initiative is garnering a lot of attention this election cycle, Gallup finds that nationally, a new high of 46% of Americans are in favor of legalizing use of the drug, and a new low of 50% are opposed. The increase in support this year from 44% in 2009 is not statistically significant, but is a continuation of the upward trend seen since 2000.

1969-2010 Trend: Support for Making Use of Marijuana Legal

These results are from Gallup’s annual Crime poll, conducted Oct. 7-10. Approximately 8 in 10 Americans were opposed to legalizing marijuana when Gallup began asking about it in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Support for legalizing the drug jumped to 31% in 2000 after holding in the 25% range from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.

A separate question in the poll asked about legalizing marijuana for medical use, and found support significantly higher than it is for legalizing the use of marijuana in general. Seventy percent of Americans say they favor making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe in order to reduce pain and suffering. This figure is down, however, from 78% in 2005 and 75% in 2003.

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Rotary Helps Foster Peace Through Education

admin — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:37:37 +0000

While ceasefires and non-violence between nations are hallmarks of the United Nation’s annual International Day of Peace (Sept. 21) it’s also about bringing peace into our homes, communities and schools. Rotary clubs always have embraced this call for peace at the grass-roots level by addressing the underlying causes of conflict and violence through thousands of community-based service projects around the world. “Since 1905, Rotary clubs have worked locally and internationally to make the world a better and more peaceful place one person, one family, one community at a time,” said Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammar, chair of The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. Rotary also takes a direct approach to world understanding by providing future leaders with the tools they need to “wage peace” on the global stage with its innovative Rotary Peace Centers program. Launched in 2002, Rotary awards up to 100 full scholarships each year for master’s-level degrees or a professional certificate in peace and conflict studies at six Rotary Peace Centers located at:

University of Bradford, United Kingdom
University of Queensland, Australia
International Christian University, Japan
Universidad del Salvador, Argentina
Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, (an intensive, three-month course for mid-level professionals in government, nongovernment organizations, and international industry)

“As more than 20 major conflicts are currently being waged this year alone, the world needs more peace makers skilled in the arts of conflict resolution,” said Stenhammar. “We now have 516 Rotary Peace fellow alumni who already are making a difference in key decision-making positions in governments and organizations around the world.” Those interested in the program can apply through local Rotary clubs. Applications for the 2012-13 class will be available for download from the Rotary website in January 2011, and are due to The Rotary Foundation by 1 July 2011. Qualified applicants must possess an undergraduate degree, have a minimum three years of professional experience at international agencies, government and non-governmental organizations, businesses or academic institutions; and demonstrate a commitment to peace and international understanding through their volunteer, academic, and professional achievements.

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Judge Rules That Military Policy Violates Rights of Gays

admin — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:30:48 +0000

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: September 9, 2010

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay members of the military is unconstitutional, a federal judge in California ruled Thursday.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court struck down the rule in an opinion issued late in the day. The policy was signed into law in 1993 as a compromise that would allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military.

The rule limits the military’s ability to ask about the sexual orientation of service members, and allows homosexuals to serve, as long as they do not disclose their orientation and do not engage in homosexual acts.

The plaintiffs challenged the law under the Fifth and First Amendments to the Constitution, and Judge Phillips agreed.

“The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ act infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members in many ways,” she wrote. “In order to justify the encroachment on these rights, defendants faced the burden at trial of showing the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ act was necessary to significantly further the government’s important interests in military readiness and unit cohesion. Defendants failed to meet that burden.”

The rule, she wrote in an 86-page opinion, has a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services.