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Satellite Images Used to Document International Atrocities
wikkedwoman wrote with a link to a Washington Post story about the use of satellite imagery to detect atrocities around the world. The story details Amnesty International's efforts to identify areas in the world that may have been subject to man-made disasters. By comparing and contrasting imagery captured over time, researchers can produce hard evidence to present to a hard-to-please international community. "Tonight, [Amnesty Researcher Jeremy] Nelson begins his work by making a copy of the [older] shot in the right-hand screen and pasting it directly over the [newer] one on the left. Then he makes the top one nearly transparent. A river that cuts through the scene becomes a marker to help him line up the two. Now he can easily flip back and forth to look for changes. Sudanese huts tend to follow a similar pattern: a solid base ring with a steep, thatched roof. In the earlier image, they show up as small circles, with a slight shading to the dome, depending on the direction of the sun. Nelson draws a small, green circle slightly larger than the area of the average hut and makes several dozen copies of it ... When he finishes, he moves the 2007 shot to the top and begins the analysis again ... parts of this region were burned so thoroughly that there's nothing left but a large black scar. If you didn't know that huts were there before, you'd have no idea they were now gone. 'Whoever did this did a good job,' he says quietly. 'Thorough, at least.'"
Can they see through the roofs at Gittmo?
That's only proof if you actually know there's been a massacre there. Otherwise it can mean anything, including a forest fire.
Before fire retardants (which I doubt that a thatched hut would use), fires were a major problem in most of the world. E.g., take the Great Fire Of London, and England was a pretty advanced country at that time. Is that one some atrocity? Nope, it's just a fire that ran out of control, and a bit of inept management.
Or you could use the same technique on New Orleans. Just show some satellite pics from before and after the flood. Lookit all that devastation. Whoever did that atrocity was very thorough.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Google Maps. Street View! Explore secret CIA prisons at the cell level, Virtually from your desktop.
This will really get interesting when it becomes automated... for all sorts of purposes.
Your point is valid but your argumentation is flawed beyond use.
The areas they are looking into are areas with reported atrocities.
Apart from that, if you look at the summary, you'll see a description of the architecture that in no way resembles the 17th centure British capital. The reason that the fire was wide spread was the proximity of the buildings and the ineptitude of the civil servants. Apart from that, there is no documentation to support or point to a massacre (except that of the Dutch and other immigrants)
The reason for New Orleans' destruction is also heavily documented as being anything but a massacre.
The point of the technology would be to act as supporting evidence instead of conclusive. If taken alone, yeah, it could be an accident or a natural occurrence. When taken in the context of a country with millions of refugees and numerous reports of pogroms, ethnic cleansing and massacres... Well, it's less likely that the explanation is accidental/natural (but of course, not impossible)
Its great to be able to see exactly whats taken place in Sudan, but it was well know that genocide was taking place. This is just more confirmation. Im not sure what value this has. What is really needed is some concrete proof to bring someone to trial for crimes against humanity. The higher up the better.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I don't think there is really much debate that there are massacres taking place in Sudan at the moment. However is it very easy for the Government to control the flow of information out of the country. Doctors without Borders, who are often the organization on the front line of these crisis, who are willing to speak up about atrocities, got kicked out in 2005. A UN diplomat (http://www.janpronk.nl/index288.html#290) was also expelled for blogging about the Sudanese government.
NGOs have a hard time bringing in any sort of communication equipment (satellites for internet etc etc) and I'm pretty sure that you need to have a permit to take photos in Sudan, and the government controls where people can go. This is the same for many conflict zones, especially those with dubious treatment of human rights.
What this article shows is that there are now ways of documenting what is going on in Sudan, which is beyond the direct control of the Sudanese government. However it is very expensive (the images are costing about $1600 each) and there was an issue, when they couldn't book satellite time over Sudan. Whether this was because the government booked it out to prevent them from taking photos is unsure - but it does show the limitation.
Part of the reason that the international community is dragging their feet (or can drag their feet) is probably the lack of reliable concrete information - and this is what this project provides.
That and the fact that Sudan has oil, which the Chinese are heavily invested in.
...there are all kinds of atrocities going on internationally and domestically (for you /.'ers here in the US) that you don't need more than a pair of eyes to see. How many times a day do people just blow off the homeless and starving people of their own country.
Yes there are problems like Gitmo, Darfar and Sudan. Hell there is most of a continent that is what I consider an international atrocity because of starvation, disease, and corruption.
What about all the homeless people here in the US, the overrun VA hospitals with deplorable conditions and the Katrina victims still waiting for FEMA--things we can see without Satellite Imagery?
Maybe we should handle those problems first before we spend the big bucks on the technology to look for more problems we can't afford? And for fscks sake, no, I'm not saying that any atrocities found with this tech are of any less importance than the ones found without it. Human suffering is human suffering--it all sucks. But that money AI used for the satellite images could have been feeding people in Africa and the US and elsewhere... ~sigh~
I guess I'm just not as excited about technology as I am about humanitarianism. I feel like this is getting ahead of ourselves.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Don't ya wanna know how we keep starting fires ?
It's my desire ! It's My Desire !
Actually, thanks for bringing that up. 'Cause, see, that's the whole flippin' point I was trying to make.
No, I don't know enough about that conflict to have an informed opinion. And I'm not going to suddenly jump to a spoon-fed conclusion based on some emotional images and wording. When I have enough other data there, I might make a judgment. But I refuse to jump to one of the sides and wave a banner, just because the media spoon fed me some images.
That's all I'm preaching: exercise some healthy skepticism, get your information from more than one source. That's all.
If you already know enough about that conflict, by all means, go ahead and have an opinion about it. But so far I only have someone's word that some pictures mean what he says they mean. And that's just not enough data to base an opinion on.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Boy, I hate Slashdot.
c tab=0&geo=all&date=all
How is this story related to computers, nerds or stuff that matters to computers or nerds?
I encourage everyone to disable Javascript for slashdot.org in his settings
and to disable the loading of images from other servers than slashdot.org as
long as that FUD spewing loser is wasting our precious time here.
The name of his own site says it all:
http://www.randomdialogue.net/
[...]"I have random things to say."[...]
That is what I get when I read Zonk's articles. Random
sensation about bullshit only Zonk cares about. I guess
as a kid Zonk watched too much CNN where every sack of
rice in china is a important and threatening story.
I would rather read the whole duped SCO and Jack Thompson bullshit AGAIN
than any new Zonk story.
Forget it... it's TOO LATE! The market has already decided:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=slashdot%2C++digg&
perhaps I may suggest you get some more info before you open your trap? You got a point that unless you are heavily invested with all the info about a conflict, you cannot make a good judgment on it. But nobody was asking for your judgment, and you still spouted your 'that can mean anything' judgments.
You may also tell me what party AI or other human rights watch organizations are in these conflicts? Maybe you can at least expect some form of objectivity from them?
All in all these photos are not conclusive proof that these atrocities were committed by one particular party. But they will serve as very good supportive evidence when (if ever) these cases are brought before a real judge.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
E.g., do you even know which side was inhabiting that area, if not for being spoon fed that it's an atrocity against the Sudanese? While you do have a point it is still quite possible to use satellite photography quite effectively to document atrocities and prosecute the guilty. US and Nato footage from UAVs, satellites and recon aircraft has proven instrumental in locating mass graves of civilians murdered in ethnic cleansing operations by Bosnian Serb and Croat militias and that would otherwise probably never have been found. In some cases the perpetrators of the atrocities in question were even caught on film while doing the deed. Satellite footage can also serve to confirm the reports of refugees as to when a settlement was razed and if the footage is good enough the type of vehicles involved and any registration marks they carried can identify the party guilty of the atrocity and even individual military units involved. The Serbs for one got such a shock when they found out how these graves were being located by UN investigators that they started digging up the corpses of the people they had ethnically cleansed and tried to dispose of them by burning them. In at least one instance they tried to dispose of them by processing the decaying human remains in a plant intended to produce cattle fodder. From the UN investigators and SFOR/IFOR/EUFOR point of view this both mixed blessing since, while it resulted in some destroyed evidence, it also led to the discovery quite a few mass-graves the recon assets hadn't caught but that were located when the people responsible panicked and started to dig them up again in an attempt to dispose of evidence.
It's not because of the oil in darfur. It's not. There isn't enough oil. There is no stability and it's too hard to get oil out of darfur. It will take decades before the infrastructure is up to speed and by then oil will probably be a very very cheap liquid.
...) and Saudi Arabia are helping them. In short it would bring the reality of the war of civilizations, and the massacres that the other side commits in the spotlight
...
r fur-jihad-on-horseback.html
Why is this kept silent ? Because it's muslims carrying out jihad. Because it would bring up questions that have "unsatisfactory" answers :
1) muslims here know very well that it's mass-murder and that it's jihad, yet they're HELPING these people commit them. WHY ? (because this is islam : massacring anyone who thinks different)
2) it's the (muslim) government of the country that is carrying out the jihad. They do this in the name of allah. Iran (and Saddam, before
3) these are muslims, they're not like the american government. If we don't go there and kill a number of them, they won't stop. They won't accept arbitration, they won't accept peace forces. It's kill or be killed.
4) fair reporting of the darfur crisis would make it painfully obvious what islam is.
Quran 9:111 - all muslims fight and kill for allah, or they don't go to heaven
Quran 2:216 - all muslims must fight, even if they think it's stupid, because allah knows better
http://coalitionfordarfur.blogspot.com/2007/05/da
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
You don't think the international community knows about Dafur - or knew about Rawanda? They don't care. This may strip plausible deniabilty (eg "we had no idea that was happening"), but it won't mean there will be action taken.
I'm surprised TFA does not mention the newly announced by Amnesty International "Eyes on Darfur" website. Oh, Beirut imagery has been updated to reflect the situation after the 2006 Lebanon War.
Here's a few stories in the same vein:
Documenting Humanitarian Crisis with Google Earth
New Google Earth Layers: Darfur and more
The Israel-Lebanon Conflict in Google Earth
Beirut Destruction Through Remote Sensing
Israel - Lebanon Conflict and Geospatial Data Access
Animoog.org
Using satellites to track what is going on with Darfur is interesting for two important reasons. First, based on what reports have been confirmed, the number of people being killed in the conflict in Darfur appears to be larger than any other conflict on the globe at this time. Although the moral issues have some relation to each other, there is some difference between the genocidal murder of millions and the torture of a few hundred or so at Guantanamo. Second, information flow out of Darfur has successfully been restricted. This means that alternative information sources should be considered.
Based on your response you have little interest in either technology or humanitarian activities. In attempting to put Bosnia back together at some level satellite images have been critical in documenting what happened and assisting with recovery of bodies from mass graves. This means that this technological approach which you deride has already been shown to be extremely useful in helping people recover from all too common instances of genocide. Yet even with this proven record you would dare to suggest this is just some technological gimmick that somehow interferes with humanitarian goals.
Is one of the main reasons. Nothing can be done through the UN because of the Chinese veto, and we all know that action taken without UN sanction is illegal, and possibly a war crime.
Best Slashdot Co
Let's hope the rest of the world will finally do something - we've seen Khartoum and Omar al-Bashir flaunt sanctions and other restrictions. I think dealing with the Sudanese government will involve a lot of "hard evidence" (sadly, eyewitness accounts are still being questioned by Sudan). Plus a stronger standing army not fighting other battles would be helpful too.
OK, so I'm pretty sure that this is flamebait, but you did it on my comment, so I took it...
Sudan is already in the top 30 oil exporters in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chart_of_exports_and _production_of_oil_by_nation), so rubbish about what you're saying about it taking decades to get the oil out of there. Admitted I don't think that it's coming out of Darfur, but it's still the same government.
I actually believe that the biggest problem comes as much from people with close minded views such as your. When people think like that it becomes a "war of civilizations", instead of just an peacekeeping-operation to end genocide, of course the Sudanese government is going to object. Your views of Islam and Muslims are incredibly narrow-minded, and I can only guess, very uneducated. By thinking like that you prevent peaceful dialog from happening.
I have personally spent the last 18 months living mostly in Pakistan and Indonesia - the worlds two largest Muslim countries. Despite standing out as a tall westerner, I didn't have any trouble at all, no terrorists, no jihads. Actually I found most of the people much friendlier than the people back home.
So please take some time to think about the situation, and what will make it better, before spreading such narrow minded rubbish.
The UN basically won't send any stabilizing force into Sudan without approval from Darfur - the very leaders who are responsible for the massacre in the first place. They were formed so that these kinds of horrors would never happen again, but the fact is that they keep happening again and again and all the UN is capable of doing these days is wagging their finger like a disapproving parent. The US would have had to intervene unilaterally in Sudan, and the rest of the world would sit on the sidelines and wag their collective fingers at us for trying to be the world's police. So fuck you and your either/or scenario you ignorant asshat. By the way, it's spelled "Iraq", not "Irak."
How many people out here just troll google maps for fun sometimes? I know I know, only when a new version is released. But you know what would really be a good tool? If a dual screen or dual map version of a program like google maps was made. One w/ pics that were released on a yearly schedule. With this a community of people could be developed in tracking more then one kind of atrocity. The evidence of any kind ofglobal change could be seen and reported by any one. This would be a great tool for bloggers, reporters, and really any one who want to help gather evidence for a cause of global effect. Wow before and after pics, never looked so relevant to me.
So amnesty international takes one more step toward becoming big brother. But you slashdot whiney leftards will keep blaming Bush and RIAA for everything instead of seeing whats really happening.
Oh and they'll turn a blind eye to muslim genocide because the religion of peace is amnesty's ally.
but it's a safe bet that Google Earth can see you flogging the meat in your mom's basement.
You see, you think they'd just randomly attack anyone (and sometimes they do that, too), but islam is organized.
Will you keep denying if I provide you with a statement from the Sudanese government that it is indeed a jihad ? They actually released an official statement on that you know. So, will you ?
I wonder if we can get satallite photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well?
A post is not insightful because it agrees with your political belief. Neither oil, nor bush is responsible for all evil in the world. Neither of these 2 have ever touched Sudan more than a tiny bit, so I won't go as far as to say that the exact opposite is the case, but clearly there's at least more than one factor involved here.
... I don't really think so actually. It's just too little oil to realistically matter.
Maybe oil is involved, maybe
Of course, realism is something you're not worried about, right ?
I've read the article, but I saw no mention of what software they used to manipulate the images. Does anyone know?
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Let me just point out a few instances when oil may have played a part in recent history.
- Saddam's campaign against the Kurds - why was he allowed to get away with this for so long?
- Why were the French and Russians so opposed to sanctions against Saddam?
- Sudan is already listed here
- Venezuela seems to be losing its democracy right in front of our eyes, and nobody seems to want to do anything.
- Why are the middle-eastern countries allowed to get away with the kind of autocratic behavior that we would not tolerate in our own countries
There are probably others where oil has played a part, but I can't recall them off the top of my head.Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
It's true. The millenium dome is clearly visible.
God Be Gone
They need FLASH to show a jpg picture?! How lame is that.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Massacres are an emotional issue, and so are easy for us to latch on to as a means of overlooking our problems at home. And in the USA at least, the mess is huge. Most people hate their jobs. We spend half our lives commuting. The cities are disgusting, dirty and ugly thanks to commercialization. Corporations (insert MS|Apple|Google if you like) rule our world. Violence is increasing, so is desperation. Why don't we fix our own house before we try to tell others how to live?
technical writing / development
Looks like someone set Darfur up the bomb. All their base are belong to Sudan.
Actually, that's sorta the whole point: context is _everything_. And the context you're given can be misleading (deliberately let you connect the dots in the wrong direction), or outright a lie.
Yes, if you also have the right context, you can make an informed judgment. But do you? That's the question I'm asking.
Since you mention Nazis and mass graves, there is already at least one case where that was a lie. There are mass graves in Poland which the Soviets blamed the Nazis for. Turns out that it was the _Soviets_ themselves who were responsible for that. Stalin's NKVD had rounded up what they thought would be potential problem elements there, such as the Polish army officers, and summarily executed them.
Atrocity? Yes. But the context was an outright lie. Now I'm not saying the Nazis were nice guys, far from it, but in this case they had just provided a convenient scapegoat for NKVD's own atrocities.
And before someone says that's revisionism: no, it's not. The USSR finally owned up in the end. It's as official a confession as it gets.
Also, since you mention Nazis, those guys pioneered another thing: whole "war documentaries" that were entirely produced in a movie studio. Yay for first-hand front-line footage. You can believe that, can't you? I mean, the images surely speak for themselves, right? Well, too bad it came from a studio in Berlin instead of from France.
That's the whole point: if I show you a small pile of corpses in a mass grave, it's emotional and all, but you're entirely dependent on the context provided. How do you just know from that image alone whether that's Jews massacred by the Nazis, or "kulaks" (rich peasants, i.e., any peasant who wasn't starving) massacred by Stalin's NKVD, or maybe some the victims of the post-WWI flu epidemic (think like the bird flu, but it could be transmitted from human to human), or whatever else? The context is _everything_. And by just giving you the proper lie as a context, that image can be made to mean almost anything.
The point isn't to grow complacent or "post-modernist" but to start realizing when you don't have enough reliable context to make an informed judgment.
E.g., in this case, sure, burned villages is an emotional thought and all, but who burned whose houses?
One context particularly used as a battle-banner by a lot is that the Darfur conflict is some muslims-massacring-christians case. That's actually false, as both sides involved are muslims. It's an ethnic/racial war, not a religious war. There you go, an outright false context that's been used a lot lately.
Or how do you know which of the two sides burned the villages down? There are at least two sides in any conflict. And even the arab militias were funded in response to the insurgent forces of the other side. Are all the burned houses on the rebels side, or did the rebels do some burning of their own? In the absence of some first-hand information from down there, how _do_ you draw the right conclusions from just a satellite photo?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
unless it's in Europe.
Germany? Genocide.
Serbia? Genocide.
Some village full of uncivilized savages? Nah, that's just them being normal.
It's lack of options. What can the US do about Darfur? Stop trading with Sudan? What trade do we have? So do we stop trading with Sudan's trading partners? That would be China. Not a good plan.
Best Slashdot Co
Most of the mess that is currently in the Middle East now is due to promises made to both sides (Israel and the Arabic countries) to keep them from allying with the Axis in WWII. Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor was the result of our blockade on Indonesia (which was Japan's source of oil). Pretty much since the development of the internal combustion engine/tank/airplane every facet of geopolitics has been primarily about oil. Before that it was about coal (for steam ships).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
"I have personally spent the last 18 months living mostly in Pakistan and Indonesia - the worlds two largest Muslim countries. Despite standing out as a tall westerner, I didn't have any trouble at all, no terrorists, no jihads. Actually I found most of the people much friendlier than the people back home."
Well maybe you just expected less from them and where pleasantly surprised.
Actually I learned on of the big truths that most people never seem to get. I spent a summer with some relatives in Belfast when things where really bad. It looked like a war zone because it was.
The big truth that people seem to miss is this. I don't what messy place you are in 99% of the people in that place just want to provide a good life for their family. It is that 1% that are heavily armed and would rather kill and die than forgive that cause all the grief.
So you got to see the 99 during your visit. BTW I am on your side. I have meet some very nice people that follow Islam. When you judge an individual because of what group they belong too that is the definition of prejudice. Of course when it comes to members of certain groups that prejudice is ofter correct. I have to admit that I can not say that I know any good members of the Klan or the Neo-Nazis.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This is a Slovenian humanitarian worker's page in which he describes his stay and views of Darfur. He was imprisoned for "espionage" and sentenced to two years' imprisonment but was released after an effort from Slovenian president.
http://www.tomokriznar.com/ang/index.html
...Not harder! Are these guys seriously messing around with transparency layers and hand-drawing circles? Just subtract one image from the other. Their way is a waste of time, and time is money; money that could be used to help fight these problems instead of inefficiently-identifying them. (No, I didn't RTFA.)
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
OBVIOUSLY this isn't the only source of information being used by the intended audience. You might as well point out that "golly, how do *I* know that's really Chad? I mean, it's brown, the buildings are made of sticks, it could be, you know, like Ouagoudougou...but I don't know where that is either, so it might as well be London." These images are part of the analysis kit for those who already have half a clue what is going on and where, not for the sub-average moron who couldn't find Chad on a map if it was already labeled in flashing 150pt Helvetica bold.
You're making a garrulous argument that could be made for every piece of historical evidence in existence if taken individually, which is to say: no shit, Sherlock.
Because you're a cretin? Because your smooth neanderthal brains can't deal with other stances than "us-vs-them"? Just a thought.
Point in case: here noone was arguing whether the Darfur massacre exists or not, but that a satellite image by itself doesn't prove much. Yes, if there's more information to confirm it, that's good, but that kinda was the whole point: you need a ton of context information before you even know what that picture even means.
Let me spare you the effort to figure that out: it's _not_ taking either a pro- or contra- "save Darfur" stance, it's just debating a tangential detail. No more, no less. It's really just a marginally off-topic tangent. But I guess that just doesn't compute in your retarded "us-vs-them" world, does it? Someone _has_ to take sides in your view of the world, don't they?
Is there some connection between that and Iraq? Not really, and I'm pretty sure I've been against war in Iraq for years. But it seems that in your tiny little brains there's no room for such complexities. People have to be neatly divided into two camps. If someone doesn't support this, they surely pro-war in Iraq too. That someone can actually have different positions, on two unrelated issues, and use their own brains instead of following party lines, doesn't even compute in your deffective little mind, does it?
You amuse me, little cretin.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Nice. Now the agents of those governments know the names of those who need to be eliminated.
Ok now take the other side of the coin... you could just as easily replace Islam with Christianity say that all the Christianophobia on Slashdot is incredibly narrow-minded. Yet the FUD seems like it's a persistent Slashdot meme. Double standard?
FTA: "But today, anyone with a big enough checkbook can order spy-quality images. (With some exceptions; a 1997 U.S. law prohibits the collection and release of satellite imagery of Israel with a resolution better than two meters, for example.)"
We wouldn't want see satellite details of Israeli war crimes now, would we?
Oh yeah the world would have been *so* much better if USA did not block indonesia. *cough*
You ARE a white german speaking aryan or a japanese heterosexual non-cripple, right ? Just to check your sanity, and to remind you that it was *not* about oil.
Yes at one point in the war the supply routes of the armies were an issue. This does *not* mean the war was about oil.
The issue in the war was the same issue we have with muslims today : ideology. We don't like the death penalty, and we're having freedom as our main ideology.
They wish to stone people to death - slowly - so they suffer more, and they wish to rape them first (if they're women), and wish to lash people publicly with a whip for wiping their ass with their right hand (seriously, you have to do it with your left hand according to the paedophile prophet), that's 20 lashes of the whip !
Needless to say, their society is not exactly a prime example of prosperity.
Ok, so Hezbollah is a charity and aid organization. So are lots of Middle Eastern countries. Right?...Right?
So where are they on Darfur? What are they doing to help?
The war was most definitely about oil, Germany and Japan needed it, and the Allies sold their souls to the then leaders of the Middle East to keep them from supplying the Axis with oil. I'm very happy that the Allies won, but most of the war was entirely about who would control access to cheap oil in the Middle East and South Asia. A decent amount of the indirect blame why Germany lost was because they were cracking oil (in limited supply) from coal rather than getting it from Saudi Arabia.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
the government controls where people can go.
Actually the government in Sudan doesn't have that much control. As long as a person is willing to risk their life they could enter the Darfur area via Chad or the Central African Republic or southern Sudan via Ethiopia or other nations. And these borders aren't strung with barbed wire fences or have many guards if any. Once inside travel to the center or north of Sudan is where there will be trouble with the government.
...the fact that Sudan has oil, which the Chinese are heavily invested in.
Which is why the UN will do nothing until after a massive atrocity, China won't allow the UN do do something. The thing is is this could byte China in the ass. The Sudan government is made up of Arab Muslims, and they may support Muslim separatists in western China. Though it's not in the news much, there are Muslims in the western part of present day China the Chinese under Mao invaded the lands of and subjegated such as the Uighur.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Venezuela seems to be losing its democracy right in front of our eyes, and nobody seems to want to do anything.
No, Venezuyela isn't loosing it's democracy, what it's loosing is what small amount of capitalism it has as well as freedom of the press. I used to support Chavez especially after the coup but he's going too far now in closing down the opposition press or radio and tv. Then again the US under Bush is supporting those outlets which is no different than the if the Chinese were to support the US opposition press.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This would be a very interesting community approach for other matters that are less subject to caution such as rain forest destruction rate...
This is happening now in Brazil. There was an article earlier this year on /. about how Indians and others were using Google Maps to look for places of illegal mining and such in Brazil. Although good use of Google Maps was being had, the problem was that the maps weren't being updated enough. By the tyme an illegal mine was identified and could be checked out the miners could of already left.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Finally: how would you justify invading Sudan vs e.g. Tibet? Tibet doesn't even exist anymore as the sovereign state it was. Yet I don't hear any whining from the usual suspects in our gov'ts.
Of course you don't hear anything about China's invasion of Tibet, trade is more important. You won't hear about the Chinese, Nationalists, invasion of Formosa, Tiawan, for the same reason. Fact is is until now, there has been no united China, like pre-Colombian America or pre-Czar Russia, there were many difference ethnic/religious groups occupying the landmass of China.
Falcon
Ni howNi how ma?
Should there be a Law?
Doesn't it bother you to be a revisionist ? I mean you cannot seriously think that you're right ... I've yet to see oil mentioned anywhere in the reasons for Germany's attacks. The reason for their attacks was their supremacist and totalitarian ideology.
I suppose you're going to say that the cold war was also about oil.
As you said, they could, if necessary do without oil. And yet you keep saying this.
Same with Japan. They did not join the war to get access to oil. That's bullshit.
Why do you think that we have a strategic petroleum reserve? That oil isn't for regulating the price, it allows a war to take place without imports. Since WWI militaries have depended on oil to operate. Oil was one of the key strategic resources and it was most certaily the reason for the direct engagement of the US/Japan portion of the war.
a ureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm
Paragraph 8:
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2129.html
In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina (Vietnam) upon agreement with the French Vichy government, and joined the Axis powers Germany and Italy. These actions intensified Japan's conflict with the United States and Great Britain which reacted with an oil boycott. The resulting oil shortage and failures to solve the conflict diplomatically made Japan decide to capture the oil rich Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and to start a war with the US and Great Britain.
Paragraph 6:
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/
At the outbreak of the war, Germany's stockpiles of fuel consisted of a total of 15 million barrels. The campaigns in Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France added another 5 million barrels in booty, and imports from the Soviet Union accounted for 4 million barrels in 1940 and 1.6 million barrels in the first half of 1941. Yet a High Command study in May of 1941 noted that with monthly military requirements for 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German stocks would be exhausted by August 1941. The 26 percent shortfall could only be made up with petroleum from Russia. The need to provide the lacking 1.9 million barrels per month and the urgency to gain possession of the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus mountains, together with Ukrainian grain and Donets coal, were thus prime elements in the German decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941.3
Did you think that the war was just about some land in Poland?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Can we look at Iraq?8 7288831-8l5AMVpCdg07M3w6XdmTXoPuzno_20061109.html? mod=tff_main_tff_topwsjt /11casualties.html?ex=1318219200&en=516b1d070ff83c 15&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rssNY Times
There have been estimated 600,000 civillian deaths to the war on terror.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB1160528967
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeas
I think, and I feel just about the entirety of history agrees with me on this, that the invasion of poland was about the conflicting ideologies of nazism and communism.
And you know as well as I do that that is true.