Airborne Combat Engineer

The War in Ireland is over -- again

The AP reports:

The Irish Republican Army renounced the use of violence against British rule Thursday and said it will disarm — a dramatic end to the IRA's 35-year threat to Northern Ireland and a boost toward peace making.

How many times have we heard this over the years?

House wants to attach strings to UN funding

CNN reports:

The House of Representatives has approved a measure that would withhold dues from the United Nations unless the world body adopts dozens of reforms.

A senator said he will introduce the measure in the Senate, where it must pass before going to the White House for the president's approval, but the Bush administration has signaled it does not support such threats.

Like the thought, but it's not likely to become law.

France supports pre-emptive strike on Taiwan

DW-World reports:

During a state visit to China, French Premier Raffarin threw support behind a law allowing China to attack Taiwan and continued to push for a lift of the EU arms embargo.

At the outset of a three-day visit to China, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said he supported Beijing's "anti-secession" law on Taiwan, and vowed to keep pushing for an end to an EU arms embargo that could open the door for Paris to sell weapons to the Asian giant.

Perhaps if the US had offered France some military contracts before the invasion of Iraq ...

Democracy "flu" spreads to Bahrain

The Publius Pundit notes demonstrations for democratic reforms in Bahrain.

See lots of photos here.

Remember when we used to worry about communism spreading like this?

India may also buy F-16s

AP (via Fox) reports:

India is considering buying American F-16 fighter jets for its air force, a news report said Sunday, just days after New Delhi protested a U.S. decision to sell the same aircraft to India's neighboring archrival, Pakistan.

American fighter aircraft and weapons' manufacturers have submitted proposals to India, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee as saying in the eastern city of Calcutta.

In related news, F16.net reports the US Air Force has accepted its LAST F-16 delivery. 

Taiwanese protest Chinese attack law

AP reports:

TAIPEI, Taiwan - In one of the largest demonstrations in Taiwan's history, about a million people marched through the capital on Saturday to protest a new Chinese law that authorizes an attack on the island if it moves toward formal independence.

Kyrgyzstan protestors seize government compound

AP reports:

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan Mar 24, 2005 — Protesters stormed the presidential compound in [the Central Asian nation of] Kyrgyzstan on Thursday, seizing control of the symbol of power after clashing with riot police who had surrounded it during a large opposition rally. The defense minister was led out of the building by demonstrators.

The storming of the compound was the culmination of the first major rally in the Kyrgyz capital since opposition supporters seized control of key cities and towns in the south to underline their demands that Akayev step down amid allegations of fraud in this year's parliamentary vote.

Al Jazeera calls it a tarnished beacon of democracy.

America promotes the dream the Europeans abandoned

Curt  @ Flopping Aces (crediting American Future - a blog deserving more ACE time) has compiled an interesting and enlightening post on our European friends.

He quotes John Daley's column in the Telegraph:

Eighteenth-century spoken English may or may not survive in America and in Australia, but 18th-century ideas about liberty and the redeeming quality of democracy certainly seem to have found a permanent home in exile.

The enlightenment idealism of Europe was exported to the rebellious colonies and, in geographical isolation, it flourished. While Europeans themselves undermined their own great democratic project with their ancient hatreds and their aristocratic nostalgia, the naïve Americans kept the dream intact, building it into a written constitution (which was an 18th-century idea itself).

America must lead the way to a better and safer world, dragging the old Europeans kicking and screaming. Picture a mother dragging a kid throwing a temper tantrum out of the safety of the family car to school. Except, in this case, it's the kid doing the dragging.

Iran given nuke know-how in 80s

By the late 1980s, members of a black market network had handed Iran  all the basic knowledge the Middle Eastern country needed to set up technology that can be used to make atomic weapons, diplomats familiar with an investigation of Iran's nuclear ambitions said Sunday.

1259Z SUN 27FEB05. AP.

US & EU differ re. arms to China

When President George Bush heads home to Washington from this week's goodwill tour of Europe, a less glamorous team of European Union officials will follow close on his heels. Their job: to persuade the U.S. that Europe isn't about to start arming China with high-tech weapons that could one day be turned on American soldiers.

It will be a tough sell. EU leaders have said it is all but certain they will lift a 15-year-old arms embargo on China by June. They say it is a purely symbolic act and that changes being made to the EU's general code of conduct on arms exports will restrict weapons sales to Beijing at least as much as the embargo. However, U.S. officials are unconvinced.

1151Z MON 21FEB05 WSJ