Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (5200)	11/6/2002 6:17:00 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

George W. Bush is in the same league as Osama. They are both terrorists! Bush has broken international law. He has taken the law into his own hands. Perhaps the IRA will make Bush an honorary member ! I saw the article about Bush in NYTimes and the Guardian as well. Someone sent me an email about it yesterday and asked what was going on. I didn't have time to look at it until today.

To: TigerPaw who wrote (5200)	11/6/2002 6:18:23 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Carve-up of oil riches begins :S plans to ditch industry rivals and force end of Opec, write Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam guardian.co.uk Sunday November 3, 2002 The Observer The leader of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, Ahmed Chalabi, has met executives of three US oil multinationals to negotiate the carve-up of Iraq's massive oil reserves post-Saddam. Disclosure of the meetings in October in Washington - confirmed by an INC spokesman - comes as Lord Browne, the head of BP, has warned that British oil companies have been squeezed out of post-war Iraq even before the first shot has been fired in any US-led land invasion. Confirming the meetings to US journalists, INC spokesman Zaab Sethna said: 'The oil people are naturally nervous. We've had discussions with them, but they're not in the habit of going around talking about them.' Next month oil executives will gather at a country retreat near Sandringham to discuss Iraq and the future of the oil market. The conference, hosted by Sheikh Yamani, the former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, will feature a former Iraqi head of military intelligence, an ex-Minister and City financiers. Topics for discussion include the country's oil potential, whether it can

To: TigerPaw who wrote (5200)	11/6/2002 6:20:57 PM
From: Mephisto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15516

Killing probes the frontiers of robotics and legality : 'War on terror' tag allows US to attack anywhere, lawyer argues Brian Whitaker in Cairo and Oliver Burkeman in New York Wednesday November 6, 2002 The Guardian The US was accused last night of summarily executing the six alleged al-Qaida members killed in Yemen on Sunday by the first act of what experts say could be a new age of "robotic warfare". As the embarrassed Yemeni government remained tight-lipped about the assasination on its soil more details emerged of how an unmanned CIA predator drone found the six men in a car and killed them with a Hellfire missile. It was reported that the Yemeni intelligence service had monitored them for months, and relayed the information to the Americans. Tribesmen in Marib province said a Yemeni air force helicopter was hovering over the area moments before the explosion occurred. Yesterday the Yemeni cabinet issued a brief statement urging people to unite against "terrorist activities targeting our country, its people and its national economy", but it refused to say whether it had given the CIA permission to carry out the attack. Officials declined to contradict their earlier suggestion that the deaths might have been caused accidentally by explosives being carried in the car, whose occupants apparently included Qaed Senyan al-Harithi, who was suspected of being involved in the terrorist attack on USS Cole in Aden two years ago. In Washington officials admitted that the CIA had carried out the operation. The Swedish foreign minister, Anna Lindh, told the Swedish news agency TT: "If the USA is behind this with Yemen's consent, it is nevertheless a summary execution that violates human rights. If the USA has conducted the attack without Yemen's permission it is even worse. Then it is a question of unauthorised use of force." Walid al-Saqqaf, editor of the Yemen Times, said: "The Yemeni government is now in a very weak position. It means they no longer have sovereignty over the country." While defence experts said the incident could herald a new era of robotic warfare, international lawyers debated the legal implications of the surprising turn in US strategy: killing specific individuals in countries where there is no war. "To have a drone that engages and kills people, that is quite a threshold to cross," Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, told Reuters. "This is the beginning of robotic warfare. There is underlying tension in the military about using it. The CIA does not have any qualms. This is really the first success story of this system." The Predator drone said to have carried out the attack has a range of 400 miles and would not necessarily have been launched in Yemen. The CIA and the Pentagon refused to comment on its performance yesterday. Anthony D'Amato, a professor of international law at Northwestern University in Chicago, said Yemeni consent would probably not affect the legality of the attack. "In a war you have the right to shoot the combatants of the other side, and one of the things Bush accomplished when he called it a war against terrorism was to turn questions like this in his favour." "In the very earliest days the notion of assassinating a terrorist in another country would have been questionable, but not after so many Israeli-Palestinian episodes." If Washington had substantive evidence that the six were al-Qaida members, Yemen would effectively be "harbouring" them, making its consent immaterial according to precedents established as far back as the Vietnam war. guardian.co.uk