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German Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says attempts to glorify Nazis must be resisted. But he has doubts that “a definite point of view can be imposed at order.”

“History must not be re-written. It must be given a through analysis. I am well aware how painful the memories of World War II remain to this day. And I am saying in absolutely clear terms: We must resolutely resist revanchist borrowings from the Nazi ideology, whenever they emerge,” Steinmeier said in an interview with Interfax ahead of his arrival in Moscow on Tuesday.

“As to the rest, I recommend that history be handled with great care. I don’t think decrees can impose a definite point of view. It is a lot more important, in my opinion, to go for a direct dialogue and ease the pain of differing memories, which alienate the sides,” he said in remarks about a bill proposing liability for the denial of the outcome of World War II and for rehabilitation of National Socialism, submitted to the State Duma.

Steinmeier also said that Polish, Russian and German historians met in Warsaw at the foreign ministers’ initiative and discussed the start of World War II together with experts from Baltic and others states. “The result was open and very differentiated debates. Perhaps it was a little step, but it was made definitely in the right direction,” Steinmeier said.

Russia and NATO should set up an efficient body to cooperate in the security area, Steinmeier also said.

“There will only be common European security if we cooperate. Therefore, I have always been in favor of the idea that we should gather again within the NATO-Russia Council framework as soon as possible,” he said.

The NATO-Russia Council should see debates from confronting points of view, Steinmeier went on to say. “However, the goal should be the establishment of an efficient body on cooperation in the security area,” he said.

Steinmeier praised the plans to hold a NATO-Russia Council ministerial meeting in June.

Commenting on the current level of relations between Moscow and the alliance, Steinmeier said, “There are no doubts that we are carrying the burden of hard times and new mistrust on our shoulders, and there are fundamental differences on the Georgia issue. But we cannot resolve a single issue if we keep silent.”

“As a matter of fact, NATO and Russia have common interests on many issues, be it combat against terrorism or piracy, the stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan, or the prevention of proliferation of nuclear weapons,” he said.

Steinmeier refrained from answering whether he believes that Georgia and Ukraine are much further from joining NATO now than two or three years ago. “I believe it is not very efficient to manipulate with timeframes in this issue, either regarding the future or the past. It is a fact that both Georgia and Ukraine should do quite an amount of work on the path of integration with the Euro-Atlantic institutions,” he said.

Steinmeier pointed out that the NATO members unanimously decided to continue intensive cooperation with Georgia and Ukraine at earlier summits. “But we also resolved that it is not yet the right time for certain phases in this convergence process, as, for instance, for the so-called Membership Action Plan. A lot has yet to be done here,” he said.

Steinmeier also said that, the European Union was not trying to establish its area of influence by launching the Eastern Partnership program.

“First, Eastern Partnership is an important project. Second, it is not aimed against anyone. Third, the matter is not about any areas of influence,” Steinmeier said in an interview with Interfax in the run up to his visit to Moscow starting Tuesday.

“On the contrary, it is about cooperation and convergence. Involvement of third parties is strongly welcomed where it looks natural. This concerns Russia as well,” he said.

“The purpose of all this is stability and wellbeing of our neighbors, which are also your neighbors. In this respect, I see that it would be in Russia’s best interests to implement this project together,” Steinmeier said.

Steinmeier is positive about the current state of German-Russian relations, including in the trade and investment sectors, but acknowledges that individual issues remain open, including the restitution of cultural valuables.

“Russia remains a very important economic partner for us. In 2008 bilateral trade hit the 68 billion euro mark, and 4,600 German companies remain active in Russia and continue their businesses despite the crisis. It is a good sign,” Steinmeier said.

“Relations are good between Germany and Russia. We strongly cooperate on many of the complicated international issues, such as Iran’s nuclear problem,” he said.

“But this does not mean there are no open issues in bilateral relations. The issue of cultural valuables remains on the agenda, of course, even though progress has been achieved. Naturally enough, following the crises over gas shipments we must work jointly to build stable and reliable relations between Russia and the European Union in the energy sector. And, of course, serious disagreements remain between us on the problem of Georgia,” he said.

Commenting on the opinion of experts who argue that some of the NATO allies are trying in various ways to restrain Germany and that Germany wants to secure the leading role in Europe, Steinmeier said,” We are not seeking any kind of ‘domineering’, and none of our partners have been trying to bridle us. All this is old mentality. But one thing is clear: Our voice has a weight. We are the European Union’s largest member-state, and we are enjoying the role of a pioneer in such matters of the future as climate protection and thrifty handling of energy,” he said.

“Generally speaking, I think we have an extremely responsible attitude to our role for everyone’s benefit. I have the impression that our partners see this from a similar angle,” the German foreign minister said.

Source: Interfax

Story Highlights
-Dignitaries, World War II veterans pay tribute to D-Day fallen
-President Obama, France’s Sarkozy, UK’s Brown among those attending
-150,000 allied troops took part in operation on June 6, 1944

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (CNN) — World leaders gave thanks Saturday to military veterans for their efforts in the D-Day landings of 65 years ago at a ceremony in northwest France, warning that their legacy must not be forgotten as the world faces renewed threats of tyranny.

President Obama joined Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper at a ceremony at the American Cemetary in Normandy, close where many died in the World War II offensive.

More than 150,000 allied troops, about half of them Americans, took part in D-Day on June 6, 1944, overwhelming German forces in an operation that proved a turning point in driving the Nazis out of France.

Allied forces secured the beaches at a cost of about 10,000 casualties in what was the first step in a campaign that would, in a matter of weeks, liberate Paris, which had been under Nazi occupation for more than four years.

Brown praised those who fought on that day, saying, “as long as freedom lives, their deeds will never die.”

He said their sacrifices had put obligations on people living today in what he called “the great covenant of D-Day.

“We must be as if liberators for our day and our generation too,” he said, citing Burma (renamed Myanmar) and Zimbabwe, as well as the “mortal threat of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, disease and want.”

Obama addressed the 288 veterans said to be attending the ceremony, telling them: “You are why we keep coming back.” Watch Obama deliver speech to veterans »

“You remind us that in the end, human destiny is not determined by forces beyond our control. You remind us that our future is not shaped by mere chance or circumstance.

“It has always been up to us,” he said.

He urged the world to remember what happened at nearby Omaha Beach, one of the main landing points for U.S. troops involved in the operation.

“Friends and veterans, what we cannot forget — what we must not forget — is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century.”

Sarkozy described the horrors of the battle, where so many died before they were able to land that “those who did make it ashore waded through the bodies of the dead and wounded that floated in on the tide.”

He cited a letter from a U.S. soldier who said the day “was like a waking nightmare. The ground was so strewn with bodies that you could practically cross the beach without touching the sand.”

“Never, never will France forget,” he vowed.

The speeches were followed by a 21-gun salute, a lone trumpter playing taps and a flyover by American, British and French jets.

Among veterans attending Saturday’s remembrance ceremonies will be 86-year-old former British soldier Jim Tuckwell, who said the events will help those present to remember fallen comrades lost in the heat of battle.

“There was no time to mourn, you didn’t have time to mourn,” he said, recalling the events of 1944.

And the worst thing about later battles was that when you lost people, you normally had to bury them yourself. You couldn’t leave the bodies on the ground, there was nowhere else to put them.”

© 2009 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.

Forty-five years ago, a site to launch missiles opened deep in the Everglades in South Miami-Dade. Now the base is opening to touring visitors.

BY HOWARD COHEN
hcohen@MiamiHerald.com
Miami Herald

President John F. Kennedy loved the James Bond classic From Russia With Love and the fictional Agent 007 and his exploits to outwit his Cold War enemies.

In the real world, however, Kennedy and his military advisors took the threat of a Soviet-armed Cuba seriously enough to build a missile site deep in the Everglades, where projectiles capable of traveling at 2,700 mph were stored and could be launched in 15 minutes.

Known as Nike Hercules Missile Base HM-69, the site in Everglades National Park recently opened to the public. Through April, visitors can take a 90-minute driving and walking tour to see the missile assembly building, the three barns where the 12 missiles were stored, the guardhouse, an underground control room and surrounding berms that still tower as silent sentinels.

”South Florida was unique in feeling that threat,” says National Park Service ranger Leon Howell, a retired Coast Guard officer who recently led a group of 10 into the former Cold War nerve center.

• • •

The tour begins with a ranger’s lecture and photo exhibition at the squat, single-story Daniel Beard Center. Once part of the Army base, it now houses a research staff charged with protecting the Everglades. A bronze plaque honors its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

The missile command center lies about 14 miles into the park, behind a padlocked, chain-link fence. In the distance three hangar-like buildings rise up from the rain-starved scrub.

”The desolate feeling gives you a reflection of what it was like for the men and war,” says John Talbot, a tourist from Ann Arbor, who found out about the tour at the last minute. “I had no idea this place existed.”

• • •

Though the radar installations and missiles were dismantled long ago, the concrete barns where the missiles were stored seem impervious to the passage of time — except for the flecked, blood-orange paint peeling from cinder-block walls.

A label affixed to a dust-encrusted rotary wall phone reads: ”Do Not Discuss Classified Information.” Nearby, a bolted metal door has a hand-scrawled message in block letters: ”Lock door immediately upon entry.” A control room about 50 yards away is buried under a thicket.

”This was an integrated defense system here in South Florida, and it was predicated on the Cold War and the threat from Cuba. That didn’t happen at other missile sites,” Howell says.

The base opened in 1964, two years after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It remained active until 1979, when the military turned it over to the National Park Service.

Howell, 61, remembers those stomach-in-your-throat days in the early ’60s.

‘I remember the fear in my parents’ eyes and remember the duck-and-cover drills in school. This takes me back to the day. Everyone reacts differently to this tour. For younger people it’s a history lesson.

‘For others, it’s, `Do you remember the day?’ ”

• • •

In October 1962, Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were on the brink of war over Sovietdirected missile bases being built in Cuba. It was that confrontation that led the Army to build the 40-acre base, located 45 miles or so from Dadeland Mall.

Nike Hercules missiles had a range of 110 miles, leaving them a bit short of striking Cuba, which was 160 miles away, Howell says. Instead, the missiles would have been used to intercept incoming attacks.

”If we had attacked Cuba, these missiles would have played some role in our defense,” Howell says.

Four missile sites guarded South Florida then. Three are gone — one is a Publix in Hialeah. Another is the home of Krome detention center in South Miami-Dade. Another has been transformed into Key Largo Hammocks Botanical State Park.

But the Everglades base remains intact. On the grounds are 22 buildings, including barracks, a guard dog kennel, a rec room and the missile assembly, storage and command center facilities. More than 130 military personnel worked and lived here.

The heart of the base was the battery-control trailer, equipped with radar, early-warning systems and control panels to detect, identify, launch and intercept a missile. The battery-control officer would have issued the signal to fire.

Park rangers like Howell are still ”just getting bits and pieces” about how things worked. One of the goals for opening the base is to encourage historians and former personnel, like Charles Carter, then 17 and a member of the A Battery as an underground console operator, to tell their stories.

• • •

The base was situated in an agricultural area just south of Homestead. Many of the military personnel lived in tents until the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers finished building the barracks.

‘Even though we lived in tents to mid-1965, I enjoyed going to my parents’ home on weekends, where I grew up off Southwest Eighth Street and 34th Avenue,” says Carter, 63, who now lives in Atlanta.

Initially, seasonal rains caused the heavy missiles to sink into the muck, Carter wrote in a paper he presented to the U.S. Army Conference of Military Historians in Washington, D.C., in 2002.

”The humidity of South Florida had an entirely different effect on missile electronics and other equipment than . . . the dry climate of Texas and New Mexico. Replacement circuit boards were in constant demand,” he wrote.

The proximity to South Florida’s core areas was ”to ensure an anxious populace that they were being taken care of and missiles were here at a moment’s notice to defend them,” says Melissa Memory, the park’s chief of cultural resources.

Most of the missiles had conventional warheads, although each barn held one nuclear warhead. The Army removed the missiles and warheads before turning over the site to the Park Service. Park officials say no nuclear waste residue remains on the site.

The control room and some other structures are closed to the public, however, as the Park Service is removing asbestos and lead paint.

Everglades National Park staffers, meanwhile, are searching for those who lived and worked at the base.

”It’s an important site to the country,” Memory says. “Everyone had an individual story of what went on here.”

MARCH 7, 2009

During Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev’s summits in the mid-1980s, Reagan speculated that Gorbachev, an avowed atheist, harbored religious beliefs. James Mann lifts the curtain on Reagan’s secret attempt to convince the Soviet leader that God exists.

By JAMES MANN
The Wall Street Journal

It was the question that preoccupied President Ronald Reagan: Was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a religious believer? Reagan held a series of summits with Gorbachev from 1985 to 1988, and as their meetings proceeded, Reagan sometimes speculated to his aides that Gorbachev’s use of phrases such as “God bless” might be an expression of religious faith. Many of the summit sessions involved large groups of U.S. and Soviet officials, discussing issues like arms control and regional conflicts. But in one-on-one talks with Gorbachev outside the presence of other senior officials like Secretary of State George Shultz, Reagan sometimes ventured off in directions of his own. The eternal optimist, Reagan was convinced that Gorbachev was capable of changing the Soviet system, and he thought the key to such a turnaround might be religion. Finally, during their fourth summit meeting in 1988, Reagan launched into a private conversation with Gorbachev, one that he promised the Soviet leader he would deny had ever taken place.

It was during the first one-on-one session in Moscow that Reagan engaged in a bold but questionable endeavor well beyond his mandate as president of the United States. According to the memo of their conversation, which was based on notes taken by two Reagan aides and has now been declassified and made available at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., Reagan secretly attempted to persuade Gorbachev of the existence of God.

The meeting opened with pleasantries. Both men agreed that they and their countries had come a long way since their first summit in Geneva three years earlier. Gorbachev then immediately turned to a surprise for which Reagan was not prepared: He read aloud and handed the president a written statement he wanted the two governments to sign during the summit that would commit the United States and the Soviet Union to “peaceful coexistence.” Reagan said vaguely that he liked the idea and would talk it over with his advisers; he handed the piece of paper over to one of his note takers, Thomas Simons. Gorbachev’s proposal would become the subject of considerable acrimony over the following days.

The two men next revived their running debate about human rights. Reagan handed Gorbachev a list of names of Soviet citizens he believed were victims of repression in one fashion or another. As in the past, Gorbachev countered by arguing that America could be criticized for its own human-rights abuses as well.

Suddenly, Reagan switched the subject to religion. He told Gorbachev that what he was about to say would be considered entirely secret. According to the notetakers, Reagan told Gorbachev that “if word got out that this was even being discussed, the President would deny he had said anything about it.” To emphasize this point, Reagan said again a few minutes later that “if there was anyone in the room who said he had given such advice [to Gorbachev about religion], he would say that person was lying, that he had never said it.”

In planning for the Moscow summit, Reagan had discussed with his aides the idea of focusing on freedom of religion. He had worked with aides on some talking points to use with the Soviet leader; he had honed these ideas during a stay in Helsinki. Once he was alone with Gorbachev, the president began with a plea on behalf of religious tolerance in the Soviet Union. He praised Gorbachev for easing slightly the rules for the Russian Orthodox Church. According to the notes of the meeting: “The President asked Gorbachev what if he ruled that religious freedom was part of the people’s rights, that people of any religion — whether Islam with its mosque, the Jewish faith, Protestants or the Ukrainian Church — could go to the church of their choice.”

Gorbachev deflected this question. He insisted that religion was not a serious problem in the Soviet Union. According to the notes, Gorbachev told Reagan that “he, himself, had been baptized, but he was not now a believer, and that reflected a certain evolution of Soviet society.” There might have been some “excesses” in repressing religion immediately after the Soviet revolution, Gorbachev said, but times had changed. His program of perestroika was designed to expand democratic procedures, and it would extend to religion. Reagan then ventured further, taking a step that quite a few Americans would have found objectionable. The president switched from seeking to persuade Gorbachev of the value of religious tolerance to promoting a belief in God. Reagan did so by telling one of his trademark stories. According to the notes of their meeting:

The president said he had a letter from the widow of a young World War II soldier. He was lying in a shell hole at midnight, awaiting an order to attack. He had never been a believer, because he had been told God did not exist. But as he looked up at the stars he voiced a prayer hoping that, if he died in battle, God would accept him. That piece of paper was found on the body of a young Russian soldier who was killed in that battle.

Gorbachev tried to switch the subject. Perhaps the United States and the Soviet Union might open the way for greater cooperation in space, he told the president. But the president wasn’t to be diverted. According to the transcript, Reagan told Gorbachev that space was in the direction of heaven, but not as close to heaven as some other things that they had been discussing.

As the meeting ended, Reagan became even more direct and personal. He noted that his own son Ron did not believe in God either. “The President concluded that there was one thing he had long yearned to do for his atheist son. He wanted to serve his son the perfect gourmet dinner, to have him enjoy the meal, and then to ask him if he believed there was a cook.”

Of the two American notetakers who were present for this extraordinary conversation, one took Reagan’s effort at face value. “Reagan thought he could convert Gorbachev, or make him see the light,” said Rudolf Perina, who was then the director of Soviet affairs on the National Security Council in a 2005 interview.

The second, Thomas Simons, the deputy assistant secretary of state, said in an interview three years ago that he viewed Reagan’s promotion of religion as, in part, a tactic to deflect Gorbachev away from discussion of other substantive issues. Reagan’s proselytizing was extremely unusual for an American president, but not entirely unprecedented. Nine years earlier, Reagan’s predecessor Jimmy Carter had stunned his aides when he asked the South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee about his religious beliefs and then told Park, “I would like you to know about Christ.” Religion had been a continuing theme underpinning Reagan’s views of the Soviet Union. He had observed the impact of the Catholic Church in Poland, he had talked with his friend Suzanne Massie about an upsurge in religious sentiment in the Soviet Union, he had speculated to Colin Powell that Gorbachev might be secretly devout. The secret one-on-one conversation in Moscow reflected Reagan’s continuing belief that the Soviet system’s repression of religion left it vulnerable to ideological challenge. It embodied his hope that Gorbachev was capable of changing the system.

The Reagans were determined to engage in some sort of seemingly spontaneous event with ordinary people on the streets of Moscow, comparable to Gorbachev’s stroll along Connecticut Avenue in Washington. White House planners had recommended a walk in the shopping area known as the Arbat. The Secret Service objected to the risks, but the Reagans decided to go forward. They took a limo to the Arbat and shook hands with crowds of Russians for about 10 minutes. When photographers complained that it was hard to get a good picture, Nancy Reagan found an old carriage and stood with her husband on it, framing the photo that they knew would be on newspaper front pages the next day. On the edges of the event, some KGB officials shoved away a couple of American onlookers, but the event was on the whole a success and served the purpose of showing that Reagan could do in Moscow what Gorbachev had done in Washington. “In my mind, the score with Gorbachev had been evened,” wrote Jim Kuhn, Reagan’s executive assistant, in his 2004 memoir, “Ronald Reagan in Private.”

The dispute over Reagan’s walk in the Arbat exemplified the intense security that surrounded him throughout the stay in Moscow. The Reagans were staying at Spaso House, the residence attached to the U.S. embassy. The president was informed that the rooms might have bugs or cameras in them, and that any time he wanted to study a briefing paper or talk to an aide, he should move to a secure room in the building. Reagan balked, saying he wanted to be able to read his material in relaxed fashion without these cumbersome procedures. The issue was brought to Powell, who decreed that Reagan didn’t have to go to the secure room for these routine preparations.

The demands of American security irked Gorbachev. When the president and his wife were scheduled to accompany the Gorbachevs to the Bolshoi Ballet one evening, the show had to be delayed because of logistical problems. “It was reported to Gorbachev that [the U.S. Secret Service] wanted to check all spectators themselves,” recalled Gorbachev’s interpreter, Pavel Palazchenko. “This was one of the few occasions that I ever saw Mikhail Gorbachev angry.” Before eventually relenting, the Soviet leader talked with his aides about canceling an after-ballet dinner for the Reagans at his dacha.

Despite the obsession with security, Reagan was able to attend several carefully orchestrated events aimed at demonstrating interest in several aspects of Soviet life. He visited the Danilov Monastery, where he declared that Americans shared “a hope for a new age of religious freedom in the Soviet Union.”

At a meeting with a group of Soviet writers and artists, Reagan voiced a hope that the works of exiled author Alexander Solzhenitsyn could be published inside the Soviet Union. He also reflected on his earlier career in film, saying that actors were often typecast and then added that “politics is a little like that, too.” In the most politically sensitive event on the president’s schedule, he met at Spaso House with nearly a hundred Soviet dissidents specially invited for the occasion. “You have the prayers and support of the American people, indeed of people throughout the world,” Reagan told them. He spoke of the values of freedom of speech, religion, and travel. “I’ve come to Moscow with this human-rights agenda because, as I’ve suggested, it is our belief that this is a moment of hope,” he told the dissidents. “We hope that one freedom will lead to another and another.”

Reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from “The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War” by James Mann. Copyright 2009. James Mann is the author of several books, including “Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet.” He is author-in-residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W1

Copyright ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Tech entrepreneur purchased document from a book dealer for $475,000

By Michael Felberbaum
updated 4:23 p.m. PT, Fri., Feb. 27, 2009
MSNBC

RICHMOND, Va. - A rare 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence belongs to a Virginia technology entrepreneur, not the state of Maine, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday. Richard Adams Jr. of Fairfax County purchased the document from a London book dealer in 2001 for $475,000. But the state of Maine claimed it belongs to the town of Wiscasset, where it was kept by the town clerk in 1776.

Virginia’s high court said that a lower court did not err in its ruling in Adams’ favor because Maine didn’t prove the document was ever an official town record and that Adams had superior title to the print.

Adams’ attorney, Robert K. Richardson, has argued that Wiscasset’s town clerk copied the text of the Declaration of Independence into the town’s record books on Nov. 10, 1776. It’s that transcription, not the document upon which it was based, that is the official town record, Richardson said.

“The fact that the print was not made by an authorized public officer and was not intended to be the official memorial of the Declaration precluded the print from qualifying as a ‘public record’ under common law,” the court said in its ruling.

Adams, who gained fame when he founded UUNet Technologies Inc., the first commercial Internet service provider, sued to establish title to the document after learning that Maine was trying to get it back. His attorney told the high court last month there’s no evidence the document was ever an official record kept by the town of Wiscasset and that Adams is the rightful owner.

Maine Assistant Attorney General Thomas Knowlton argued that Wiscasset never gave up ownership of the document, which is one of about 250 copies printed in 1776 and distributed to towns throughout Massachusetts to be read to residents. Maine was part of Massachusetts at the time.

Maine state archivist David Cheever said he found it “incredible” that the state’s rights were trumped by a private collector. Maine contended the document never should have been sold because of a state law which presumes that public documents remain public property unless ownership is expressly relinquished by the government.

“To us, it’s a public document. It was then. It is now,” Cheever said.

Knowlton said the state strongly disagrees with the decision, but acknowledged that it is the end of the road. There are no federal issues that could be pursued to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The unfortunate result is a public record that we believe rightfully belongs to the people of Maine is now in the hands of a private collector in Virginia,” Knowlton said.

Adams’ attorney was in court all day Friday and unavailable for comment.

Whether it was an official record or not, the document apparently was retained by Solomon Holbrook, Wiscasset’s town clerk from 1885 until his death in 1929. An estate auctioneer found it in a box of papers in the attic of Holbrook’s daughter’s home after she died in 1994.

Knowlton said town clerks in those days worked out of their homes — a likely explanation for why the document remained with the family instead of being passed along to the new clerk. Holbrook also was a jeweler.

The document changed hands a couple of times before Adams bought it. Cheever said officials became aware of the print’s existence after receiving an anonymous tip and decided to try to get it back because of its historical significance.

Cheever said only 11 of the approximately 250 copies printed by Ezekiel Russell in Salem, Mass., are known to still exist. One that originally belonged to the town of North Yarmouth also was obtained by a private collector but eventually was returned, Cheever said.

Associated Press Writer David Sharp in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Feb 25th, 2009 | By Sindh Today

Washington, Feb 26 (DPA) The first comprehensive list of Jews who were living in Germany when the Nazis came to power was given to a US museum, providing a detailed picture of the population before the Holocaust.

German culture minister Bernd Neumann gave the list of Jewish residents in Germany from 1933 to 1945 to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in a ceremony in Washington Wednesday.

From some 2.5 million pages of data, about 600,000 people of the Jewish faith have been identified so far. The directory is to be continuously updated with information from the German national archives, and will be used for historical purposes as well as for family research.

“I hope that the list can advance research and can help the families to pick up the lost traces of their relatives and to win back a piece of their own history and their own identity,” Neumann said in German during the event.

He said the document provides an overview of the names and residences of Germany’s Jews, including records detailing their migration, imprisonment or deportation during World War II, as well their as dates and places of death.

Holocaust survivor and museum volunteer Kurt Pauly welcomed the addition to the museum’s collection that might help others like him learn the fate of their family members.

“My grandparents and other relatives just disappeared in Germany. This list might help to find out what happened to them,” he told DPA.

The compilation of the list began in 2005, based on a register that the German federal archives created at the request of the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation, a group that was established to pay forced labourers and focus on Holocaust issues.

In accordance with the wishes of Jewish institutions and associations, the list was expanded. The effort was financed by the German government and the foundation.

The list was first given to the Yad Vashem memorial, during a visit to Israel by Neumann last year. The data will now be made available to researchers and family members in the US for the first time.

The Norway Post

The Norwegian Government has decided that the wreck of the WW2 German submarine U-864 which contains 65 tons of mercury, is to be raised, and that the contaminated seabed be covered with clean sand.

The wreck, which is located off the Norwegian west coast, near Fedje, north of Bergen, has long been considered an environmental hazard by the local population and environmental groups.

However, experts have long disagreed on whether or not the wreck should be raised or if it would be better to build a sarcophagus which would isolate the mercury from the marine environment, thereby eliminating the pollution hazard.

However, the head of the Marine Safety Directorate, Magne Roedland, disagrees. In his opinion the wreck should be raised.

He believes that the strong currents around the wreck will undermine the sarcophagus, and result in emissions of mercury. The local population agree, and have said the wreck must be removed.

On Thursday Fisheries and Coastal Minister Helga Pedersen announced that she had decided that the wreck be raised.

- I have given highest consideration to the insecurity felt by the local population, as well as the concern by the fisheries industry over possible contamination of the waters, if the wreck would just be entombed, Pedersen says to NRK.

(NRK)

Prosecution of Tortured, Injured Child Soldier Denounced by Experts

Lt. Gen. the Honorable Romeo Dallaire (Ret’d), Canadian Senator joins call for President-Elect Obama to halt trial of Canadian child soldier at Guantanamo

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following is being issued by the Juvenile Law Center:

WHAT: Children’s and human rights activists, scholars, advocates and professionals who work with youth condemn the Bush administration’s prosecution of child soldier Omar Khadr under the Military Commissions Act.

They call on President-Elect Obama to immediately halt the trial upon assuming office on January 20th until the facts can be further reviewed. Absent prompt action, Omar Khadr’s fatally flawed military trial will start on January 26th — just six days after the new administration takes office.

Citing violations of international law, U.S. law, the psychological effects of mistreatment, and mounting evidence of Omar’s innocence on the most serious charge he faces, representatives from these professions will issue a joint statement and provide a copy of a letter sent to both President Bush and President-Elect Obama.

This will take place at a press conference on Monday in Washington, D.C.

WHEN: 10:00 AM
Monday, January 12, 2009

WHERE: The Murrow Room
National Press Club
529 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20045

WHO: Marsha Levick, Legal Director, Juvenile Law Center

LtGen the Hon. Romeo A. Dallaire, (Ret’d), Canadian Senator

Ishmael Beah, Former Sierra Leone Child Soldier

David Fassler, M.D. Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of Vermont College of Medicine

David M. Crane, Professor Syracuse University College of Law, Former Chief Prosecutor of the Sierra Leone International War Crimes Tribunal

Patricia Puritz, Executive Director, National Juvenile Defender Center

SOURCE Juvenile Law Center

<---End of Quote--->

Related Article:
A child soldier or just a child?

Omar Khadr was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2002. His Guantanamo trial raises ethical questions.

By Carol J. Williams
December 27, 2008
Los Angeles Times

Two days after he was pulled unconscious from the rubble of a bombed Al Qaeda compound in southern Afghanistan, 15-year-old Omar Khadr lay strapped to a gurney, his left eye blinded by shrapnel, gunshot wounds to his back still raw.

U.S. agents who conducted the first interrogation of the Canadian teen at Bagram air base near Kabul on July 29, 2002, gauged the effects of their questioning by the blood pressure meter attached to their inert subject. The injured teen could do little more than grunt.

The latest, and possibly last, sessions of the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal have revealed disturbing details about how Khadr was treated during three months at Bagram in the custody of U.S. forces who were convinced he had thrown a grenade that killed an American soldier.

Subsequent interrogations during more than six years in U.S. custody have involved snarling dogs, “stress positions” and being upended by guards and used as a human mop to clean the floor.

Khadr is one of at least a dozen juveniles captured and brought to Guantanamo in the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism. Among the 19 Guantanamo prisoners charged with war crimes, Khadr and Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan thought to be a year younger than the Canadian, are the only ones who were juveniles at the time of their alleged offenses.

Human rights advocates consider the prosecution of Khadr and Jawad another blot on the Guantanamo prison and tribunal. Neither was accorded the protections promised by treaties the U.S. signed.

“Under international law, adults who recruit children for combat are to be prosecuted for that offense. But the children caught up in combat are to be protected, not prosecuted,” said Diane Marie Amann, a UC Davis law professor who observed the latest hearing in Khadr’s case for the National Institute of Military Justice.

The institute joined legal scholars, parliamentarians and human rights proponents in arguing in amicus briefs that underage combatants should be treated as victims, not responsible adults who made conscious decisions to join the fight.

Khadr’s trial is set to begin Jan. 26, with pretrial hearings starting on the eve of the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has vowed to shut Guantanamo.

Khadr was a toddler when his father began shuttling his family between Toronto and the Islamic militant strongholds along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Now 22, Khadr has spent almost a third of his life in U.S. custody. He was raised in a militant Muslim family and was surrounded in his teen years by holy warriors. His lawyers describe him as a confused, immature and emotionally damaged young man.

Seven inches taller than when he arrived, the 6-foot-3 Khadr could be seen on a recent weekday walking alone through the laundry-strewn courtyard outside his Camp 4 bunkhouse, behind fences topped by concertina wire and under the gaze of guards in watchtowers. He perused the tattered offerings of a library cart and selected an issue of National Geographic.

The Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child hold that it is the responsibility of the state whose soldiers capture juveniles on the battlefield to work to rehabilitate and integrate them into society. Appeals for consideration of Khadr and Jawad’s age have been consistently rebuffed at the tribunal.

Army Col. Patrick Parrish has ruled that Khadr’s trial can go forward on charges of murder, attempted murder, spying, conspiracy and material support for terrorism. His predecessor as judge in the case, Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, ruled last spring that the defendant’s age and upbringing were “interesting as a matter of policy” but irrelevant to prosecution under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Jawad’s military judge, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley, ruled similarly on the child soldier question but excluded evidence the government was relying on to convict the Afghan of attempted murder and other charges. Henley ruled that Jawad’s confessions were coerced, a decision prosecutors have asked the Court of Military Commission Review to overturn, but it is unclear when that appeal will be decided.

“My hope is that the Obama administration, as its first action, will say, ‘We don’t want to be the first administration in history to preside over the trial of a child soldier for war crimes,’ ” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, Khadr’s lead defense lawyer.

Kuebler said he was troubled by the mid-December hearing before Parrish, who refused to allow him to introduce as evidence photographs taken at the scene of the July 27, 2002, firefight near Khost, Afghanistan, in which Khadr is charged with throwing the grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer.

The photographs taken by U.S. soldiers as they stormed the bombed-out compound show Khadr lying facedown in the dirt under the blasted remnants of a roof. The soldiers didn’t know he was there until one stepped on rubble and felt something underneath give way.

Kuebler said Khadr could hardly have thrown the grenade that killed Speer if he was buried and unconscious when the Delta Force soldier entered.

Guantanamo supporters defend Khadr’s treatment. The tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence J. Morris, dismisses critics’ contentions that juveniles are prohibited from being held accountable for war crimes by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and a supplemental protocol.

“The convention is misunderstood, if not intentionally misrepresented,” Morris said. “It is not a bar to prosecution.”

Army Capt. Keith Petty, on the prosecution team in Khadr’s case, said it was up to military jurors at sentencing to consider a convict’s age at the time of the offense.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, has lodged a protest over Khadr’s prosecution, warning that it could set a precedent and undermine the protections intended by the convention.

U.N. tribunals established to prosecute alleged war criminals from Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Rwanda have tended to treat child soldiers as victims. David Crane, a Syracuse University law professor who served as chief prosecutor in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, wrote that “no child had the mental capacity to commit mankind’s most serious crimes.”

Canadian politicians have resisted calls to bring Khadr to his homeland for trial, though Kuebler hopes the impending change of U.S. administrations will apply new pressure on Ottawa to demand the repatriation of Guantanamo’s last Western detainee.

carol.williams@latimes.com

Source: Associated Press
Sulekha.com

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Thousands of Cambodians celebrated Wednesday the fall of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime 30 years ago as a UN-backed tribunal prepared to finally try some of its key leaders for crimes against humanity.

More than 40,000 people packed Phnom Penh’s Olympic Stadium for speeches and a parade to mark the day Vietnamese forces entered the capital to oust the ultra-communists from power.

Despite the deaths of 1.7 million or more Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-79 rule, none of the surviving leaders have yet faced justice.

One of the accused — Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who headed the Khmer Rouge’s largest torture center — is expected to take the stand in March, said co-prosecutor Robert Petit, adding that the trial is expected to take three to four months.

But the other four, all of them aging and ailing, probably won’t be tried until 2010 or later.

Tribunal spokeswoman Helen Jarvis said Tuesday that they would hold a procedural meeting next week.

Although this year’s celebration — dubbed “Victory over Genocide” — was the largest ever, keynote speaker and Senate President Chea Sim made no mention of the tribunal.

The Cambodian government, whose top leaders served in the Khmer Rouge ranks before defecting, has been accused of foot-dragging on the trial.

“After 30 years, no one has been tried, convicted or sentenced for the crimes of one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century,” the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a release Monday.

“This is no accident. For more than a decade, China and the United States blocked efforts at accountability, and for the past decade (Prime Minister) Hun Sen has done his best to thwart justice,” it said.

China was a key supporter of the Khmer Rouge and then the United States backed a post-1979 insurgency, which included Khmer Rouge guerrillas who fought the Vietnamese-installed government in Phnom Penh.

The Khmer Rouge finally fell apart in 1998 after the death of its leader Pol Pot.

Chea Sim said that the legacy of the Khmer Rouge era has yet to be erased in Cambodia, where peace, nonviolence and a sense of self-confidence were still needed. He also noted that 30 percent of the people were still living below the poverty line.

“I am happy to join in the ceremony today because on Jan. 7 my second life began,” said a 59-year-old farmer, Im Oun. She said her father and sister both died of starvation during the Khmer Rouge period, when the country was turned into a vast slave labor camp.

“I want to see Khmer Rouge leaders prosecuted as soon as possible because they are getting old now,” she said.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Finnish Government | Jan 6, 2009
Defence Talk

The United States threatened to impose conditions on arms sales to Finland during the eighties in order to pressure the Finns into joining a high technology trade blockade of the Soviet Union.

Hitherto classified documents from 1984 released by the Foreign ministry reveal former U.S. Defence Secretary Richard Perle wanted to deny Finland sales of night optic sensors for the I-TOW anti-armour missile if the country did not join the U.S. ban on sales of high technology to the Soviets.

Finland first received details of the U.S. conditions during a visit to Washington for talks on an arms deal by then Permanent Under Secretary at the Defence Ministry, Aimo Pajunen. Defence Secretary Perle expanded the discussions to include exports of high technology.

Perle has confirmed the Americans were particularly concerned about the possible export of, for example, digital telephone exchanges developed by Tele Nokia. Finland informed him the country would not approve U.S. demands. However, despite this Finland entered the so-called Cocom(Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) arrangement in 1987.

Prior to this, the U.S. Defence department had threatened to label Finland as permanently being on the wrong side of the iron curtain.

January 05, 2009
by Mark Whittington
Associated Content

Over eight years after she was raised from her watery grave, the Civil War submarine, CSS Hunley, is still presenting a mystery. Researchers are still not certain why she never returned froConfederate Submarine Hunley Continues to Fascinatem her mission against a blockading Union fleet.

The Hunley was an iron cylinder about forty feet in length with ballast tanks that could be filled or emptied with a hand pump to allow the vessel to submerge or surface. The Hunley was propelled by a hand cranked propeller by seven crew men seated inside with an eighth crewman to steer the vessel. There were two hatches, fore and aft, atop two conning towers with small portholes. The Hunley’s armament consisted of a ninety pound black powder explosive charge attached to a twenty two foot spar attached to the Hunley’s bow. The idea was that the Hunley would ram a sailing vessel, thus pushing the explosive to her hull, and then detonated as the Hunley backed away, likely with an electrical current.

The Hunley’s final mission took place in Charleston harbor in South Carolina on February 17th, 1864, when she set forth with a crew of eight commanded by Lt. George E. Dixon. The Hunley appears to have successfully completed her mission when she rammed the USS Housatonic, a steam powered sloop, and detonated the explosive charge, sending the Housatonic to the bottom.

Fifteen minutes later a lamp signal surmised to be from the Hunley was received from her base indicating that she had successfully fulfilled her mission and was headed back. What happened next has remained unclear for a hundred a forty five years.

The wreck of the Hunley was discovered in 1995 by an expedition financed by novelist and adventurer Clive Cussler. Hunley was raised five years later and was taken by transport barge to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center at the former Charleston Naval Yard for study and conservation. After forensic study, the members of the Hunley’s crew were buried with full military honors in what was described as “the last Confederate funeral”, attended by thousands of Civil War re-enactors.

Tiny diamonds sprinkled across North America supports hypothesis

MSNBC
Reuters
updated 1:12 p.m. PT, Fri., Jan. 2, 2009
WASHINGTON - Tiny diamonds sprinkled across North America suggest a “swarm” of comets hit the Earth around 13,000 years ago, kicking up enough disruption to send the planet into a cold spell and drive mammoths and other creatures into extinction, scientists reported on Friday.

They suggest an event that would transcend anything Biblical — a series of blinding explosions in the atmosphere equivalent to thousands of atomic bombs, the researchers said.

The so-called nanodiamonds are made under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts, similar to an explosion over Tunguska in Siberia that flattened trees for miles in 1908.

Doug Kennett of the University of Oregon and colleagues found the little diamonds at sites from Arizona to South Carolina and into Alberta and Manitoba in Canada.

They are buried at a level that corresponds to the beginning 12,900 years ago of the Younger Dryas, a 1,300-year-long cold spell during which North American mammoths, saber-toothed cats, camels and giant sloths became extinct.

The Clovis culture of American Indians also appears to have fallen apart during this time.

Bones of these animals, and Clovis artifacts, are abundant before this time. Excavations show a dark “mat” of carbon-rich material separates the bones and artifacts from emptier and younger layers.

Writing in the journal Science, Kennett and colleagues report they have evidence of the nanodiamonds from six sites across North America, fitting in with the hypothesis that a giant explosion, or multiple explosions, above the Earth’s surface cause widespread fire and pressure.

There is evidence these minerals can be found in other sediments, too, they said, and help explain the “black mat”.

“These data support the hypothesis that a swarm of comets or carbonaceous chondrites (a type of meteorite) produced multiple air shocks and possible surface impacts at 12,900 (years ago)” they wrote.

The heat and pressure could have melted part of the Greenland ice sheet, causing currents to change and affecting climate. Any impacts would have kicked up dust that would have shrouded the sun and lowered temperatures, endangering plants and animals.

“The nanodiamonds that we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above it or below it,” Kennett, an archeologist, said in a statement.

“These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America.”

Copyright 2009 Reuters.

<---End of Quote--->

Related Article:
Mammoths wiped out by ‘perfect storm?’

Climate change, overhunting and perhaps even an asteroid contributed

MSNBC
By Michael Reilly
Discovery

updated 12:46 p.m. PT, Fri., Jan. 2, 2009
Mammoths were a hearty group of giants that went extinct not because of climate change or overhunting by early humans, but a “perfect storm” of conditions, according to new research.

At the height of their numbers, the elephant-like beasts roamed the northern hemisphere from France to Canada, north above the Arctic circle and south into China.

But after thriving for millions of years, they suddenly disappeared around 12,000 years ago. Scientists have argued that climate change, an asteroid impact, or even the rise of a new predator — humans, armed with spears — did them in.

Sergey Zimov of the Russian Academy of Science and a team of researchers believe the animals were far tougher than we give them credit for. In a presentation at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union this month, they proposed that mammoths lived in an ecosystem as rich in life as today’s African savannah, and that all three extinction factors must’ve converged to deliver the mortal blow.

Around 12,900 years ago, temperatures in the northern hemisphere plunged abruptly, beginning 1,000 years of bitter cold known as the Younger Dryas cooling event. The shift in climate is thought to have destroyed the mammoths’ ecosystem and, the theory goes, starved the giants as tundra mosses and woody scrub carpeted the frosty Earth.

“Climate change alone is not enough to kill them off,” said Nikita Zimov, Sergey’s son, also of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “They lived … in many different temperatures and levels of precipitation.”

For years the team has been recreating the environment around that time in a 62-square-mile paddock in Siberia they call “Pleistocene Park.” They’ve introduced a variety of animals that used to live alongside mammoths, including reindeer, musk oxen, and moose.

They found the large mammals carve out a grassy landscape from what would otherwise be tundra. Their trampling hooves kill mosses and scrub brush, but allow room for hearty, nutritious grasses to grow.

The researchers believe that as long as mammoths and other creatures existed in abundance, they were able to maintain grasslands, even in the face of climate change. Something other than temperature must have gone haywire.

Enter humans. Though armed only with spears, and in too few numbers to kill off mammoths entirely, they could have reduced the population enough to allow tundra plants to creep back into the ecosystem.

“First the animals died, then the pastures vanished,” Nikita Zimov said.

There is evidence, too, of an asteroid or comet several miles wide impacting Earth 12,900 years ago, a fact the Russian team acknowledges. They argue that the changing climate, human hunting, and the asteroid all contributed to the mammoths’ extinction.

“This whole business of man causing the demise of these animals is way overstated,” Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California said. “Man co-existed with these animals for 100,000 years before the Younger Dryas.”

© 2009 Discovery Channel

Page last updated at 01:57 GMT, Tuesday, 30 December 2008
By Dan Bell
BBC News

Documents marked “Top Secret, UK eyes only” which have just been de-classified by the National Archives, show the Labour government of 30 years ago was engulfed in a furious row over the inadequacy of the nation’s defences.

The papers paint a picture of a 1970s Britain that would have been virtually helpless in the face of a Soviet attack.

As the public were being advised on how to prepare for a three-minute warning, government briefings made it clear their efforts would have been a waste of time.

Just released by the National Archives, conversations in 1978 between the then Prime Minister James Callaghan and his defence secretary, Fred Mulley, describe the country’s defences as “outweighed”, “outnumbered” and “insufficient”.

The damning assessment came after Mr Callaghan ordered a defence analysis in response to a Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) report on the scale of the Soviet threat to the UK.

In reply, Mr Mulley wrote: “The picture the Chiefs of Staff set out is a sobering one.”

“Air defences would be outweighed because aircraft would be outnumbered and stocks of air defence munitions would sustain operations for only two or three days.

“The Army would be able to counter the currently assessed Soviet land threat during the initial stages of war but, lacking supporting arms and logistic support, it would be inadequate to deal with any significant threat.

“In the case of nuclear attack by ballistic missiles there would be no defensive capability, save the indirect defence of our nuclear forces.”

In the air, the UK would be forced to confront an estimated 200 Soviet bombers with 98 fighters, resulting in destruction to the UK many times worse than that delivered by the German Luftwaffe.

At sea, the country’s force of minesweepers and mine hunters numbered “only 32″ and were considered “obsolete”.

Mr Callaghan was furious. He described the lack of air munitions in particular as a “scandal” and said “one or two people should be sacked”, although he did not include Mr Mulley.

The documents are scrawled with his exasperated comments. At one point he writes: “Heaven help us if there is a war!”

At another: “I take it someone has worked out whether we can defend ourselves!”

The assessment also had implications that reached beyond the fate of Britain.

Mr Mulley wrote: “It is unlikely that the UK defences could prevent the loss of a substantial proportion of Nato’s forces based in the UK, including important US assets.

This would, he said, “significantly reduce Nato’s ability to sustain conventional operations successfully in Europe, in the eastern Atlantic and in the Channel areas”.

Their conclusion was also sobering. It showed a realisation that Britain could not hope to stand alone against the Soviet war machine.

One letter to the prime minister reads: “The problem is made worse by the rate at which the offensive capability which the Russians might use against the United Kingdom is growing. We shall have to run hard to stand still.

“Though the secretary of state for defence’s report on the United Kingdom’s direct defences is a worrying one, we should continue to rely on the collective deterrence offered by the Alliance as the main source of our security.”

In the end the attack never came and just four years later the country was at war on the other side of the Atlantic, over the Falkland Islands.

According to William Spencer, a military specialist at the National Archives, since the row in 1978, both the military threat to the UK and how the nation’s forces prepare for it, have changed dramatically.

As the Cold War ended, the emphasis on fighting a nuclear war with a major European opponent declined.

The UK’s nuclear capacity is now limited to submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles - Trident - and the military’s focus has moved towards a much more global commitment.

The British military is spread more thinly across a variety of different conflicts and operations - a force that has to be both more mobile and multi-tasking.

The need for powerful alliances, however, remains a cornerstone of British defence strategy.

Page last updated at 01:06 GMT, Friday, 2 January 2009
BBC News

Cuba is marking the 50th anniversary of the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, creating a communist state on the United States’ doorstep.

President Raul Castro, who took over from Fidel last year, spoke from below the same balcony where his brother declared victory on 1 January 1959. He predicted the revolution would survive another 50 years.

The festivities have been muted as Cuba struggles with big economic challenges and the aftermath of three hurricanes.

Reacting to the anniversary, a White House spokesman said the US continued to seek freedom for the Cuban people.

Series of concerts
Addressing the nation from the south-eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, Raul Castro said the next 50 years “will also be of permanent struggle”. He was speaking from the very place where his elder brother proclaimed victory after the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista had fled the country 40 years ago.

A series of free concerts was planned across the island, but the authorities have said it is not the time for lavish celebrations after the nation suffered one of the most difficult financial years since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The frail health of Fidel Castro has also dampened the mood, says the BBC’s Michael Voss in Havana. The 82-year-old has not been seen in public since undergoing major surgery almost 18 months ago. There was no pre-recorded message on state television on New Year’s Eve nor one of his regular newspaper editorials to mark the event. Nonetheless, he remains a towering presence in Cuba, even in the background.

Raul Castro has introduced some limited reforms since he has been in charge, but many Cubans believe that as long as Fidel is alive, no meaningful political or economic change will happen, correspondents say.

Change
Fifty years on, the legacy of the revolution is complex. There is free education and health care but the state-controlled economy means wages for many Cubans are very low, on average about $20 to $25 a month. The country’s difficulties cannot just be blamed on the US trade embargo, in place since 1962, or global financial problems, says our correspondent.

There is enormous pressure and expectation amongst Cubans for change, he adds. Over the decades since the revolution, political opposition has been crushed and hundreds of thousands of Cubans have gone into exile.

“The Castro brothers have not treated their people particularly well,” said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe on the eve of the anniversary. “Many political dissidents are in jail. The economy is suffering and not free. And the United States will continue to try to seek the freedom of the people of Cuba, and support them.”

During his time in office, President George W Bush imposed tight restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting the island and the amount of money they could send. However, US policy towards Cuba appears set to change. President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on 20 January, has said he will maintain the Cuban embargo but that some restrictions could be eased.

Attitudes among Cuban-Americans may also be changing. A recent poll suggested that for the first time a majority of those living in Miami, the centre of anti-Castro sentiment, favoured ending the embargo.

After more than 65 years, brothers find his sunken World War II submarine

By Bob Dotson
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 27 minutes ago
MSNBC

Longing can chart a better course than MapQuest. After more than 60 years, the Abele brothers have finally found their father.

Lt. Cmdr. Jim Abele commanded the USS Grunion, a submarine that disappeared off the coast of Alaska during World War II. Seven years ago his sons made a deal with their hearts, not their heads, and went looking for him.

It cost them a bundle. “If this were an official Navy project, I would guess that the taxpayers would be paying about 10 times what we’re paying,” John Abele chuckled.

“How much are you paying?” I asked.

“That’s a secret,” he laughed.

Searching by sonar
A secret like the mystery of what happened to their father’s sub. Military search planes never found where the Grunion sank, but the brothers from suburban Boston kept looking. In 2006 they began crisscrossing the Bering Sea, probing its depths with sonar.

In 2007, they found the sub a mile down, on the slope of an underwater volcano 12 miles north of Kiska, at the western tip of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Last fall the Navy confirmed that the Abele brothers had done what it could not — solve one of World War II’s biggest mysteries.

The brothers’ big break came when a Japanese historian found an account of the Grunion’s last battle. It said there was a confrontation between a cargo ship and a sub.

The Japanese freighter’s crew spotted two torpedoes bubbling toward them. The first one missed. The second one hit.

The torpedo exploded and stopped the freighter’s engine. Terrified, the Japanese seamen turned a deck gun on the sub and fired it 84 times. As the Grunion began to surface, “There was a dull ‘thud’ noise and a little spout — presumably oil, we don’t know,” said John Abele.

Their dad’s sub slid into history’s shadows. Seventy men were never heard from again.

No goodbyes
The last time the brothers saw their father was at a Sunday dinner at his sub base in Groton, Conn. Wartime secrecy prevented him from telling them he was leaving. He slipped away without a kiss or a wave.

With a tear in his eye, Bruce Abele told me: “We knew that he was gone when a neighbor called and said she had seen the sub leave. We didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.”

Four months later, their mom got a telegram saying that Lieutenant Commander Abele was missing. Then came a letter with a Navy Cross, citing him for valor. It came with a check.

“She sent it back to the government,” said John.

And put her sons to work while she taught violin.

The brothers showed me stacks of letters their mother had received. She wrote to every family that had lost someone on the Grunion.

Their mom never remarried. The boys never forgot. Jim never left their minds.

“How did you finally grieve for your father?” I asked Bruce.

“I used to shoot baskets in the backyard,” he said. “This is hard to say, but if I could make five at a time, I’d say, ‘Jim’s coming back!’ ” He choked up. “But he never did.”

So his sons went to Jim Abele instead. Some love cannot be measured. It is the sum of a lifetime of searching.

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive.

updated 11:45 a.m. EST, Tue December 30, 2008

Story Highlights
Britain feared it would have been overwhelmed in Soviet attack, papers reveal
Papers were released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule
Prime Minister James Callaghan called the situation a “scandal”

CNN.com

LONDON, England (CNN) — Britain feared that it would have been overwhelmed in the event of a Soviet attack because of the depleted state of its armed forces, according to secret files made public on Tuesday.

Papers released by the National Archives, under the 30-year rule, reveal that Royal Air Force fighter jets only had sufficient ammunition for two days of combat and the Royal Navy would fail to defend the country from Russian submarines.

The army would have been too over-stretched to cope with a widescale campaign of sabotage and subversion by Soviet special forces, the papers show.

Prime Minister James Callaghan called the situation a “scandal” when he discovered the scale of the problem and demanded resignations among the military.

“Heaven help us if there is a war!” he scrawled on one note. But ministers could do little until the Tornado fighter plane became available in the mid-1980s along with other military hardware.

The problem became clear when senior intelligence officers warned in late 1977 that, in the event of a conventional war, the Russians could unleash up to 200 bombers and 18 submarines against the UK.

The assessment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was that British forces would be unable to cope.

“UK forces cannot match the threat postulated by the JIC assessment,” the chiefs noted in January 1978 in a document marked Top Secret UK Eyes Alpha.

“Air defenses would be outweighed because aircraft would be outnumbered and stocks of air defense munitions would sustain operations for only two or three days.

“Maritime forces need better anti-submarine weapons, and face a massive threat from submarine and air-launched missiles and also from mines; the most serious deficiency is in numbers.

“The army in the UK would, until mobilization is complete, have insufficient forces to meet its commitments; after mobilization of the reserves, a process taking between 15-20 days, the Army would be able to counter the currently assessed Soviet land threat during the initial stages of the war but, lacking supporting arms and logistic support, it would be inadequate to deal with any more significant threat, including sabotage or subversion on a wide scale.”

The Foreign Office actively colluded with the Argentine junta in the late 1970s to cover up the occupation of a remote Falkland Islands dependency, newly declassified files show.

By John Bingham
Last Updated: 12:06AM GMT 30 Dec 2008
Telegraph

David Owen, James Callaghan’s Foreign Secretary, feared that revelations about what he accepted was a “violation of British sovereignty” on Southern Thule would derail talks between the two countries about the future control of the Falklands themselves.

In diplomatic language, he described the prospect of the islanders finding out about a large Argentine base on British territory to the south of them as a “complicating factor”.

Mr Owen, now Lord Owen, made clear to his Argentine counterpart, Oscar Montes, in February 1978 that Britain wished to keep the base secret lest it become an “obstacle” to resolving the long-running dispute over sovereignty.

Argentine forces landed on Southern Thule - a barren, uninhabited dependency, more than 1,000 miles south of the islands - in late 1976 in a move mirroring the later occupation of South Georgia which preceded full invasion of the Falklands.

They set up an illegal “scientific” base manned by up to 50 “technicians” which remained until the defeat of Argentina in 1982.

Although the British Government soon knew of the incursion and quietly protested, it was kept secret until May 1978 when it was exposed by the media and eventually confirmed to Parliament.

But in February of that year, as important sovereignty talks were about to get under way in Lima, Peru, a British Antarctic Survey ship, the RRS Bransfield, came across the Argentines on Southern Thule.

Ministers were informed and it set in train a series of urgent messages between London and negotiators in Lima highlighting a possible plan to legitimise the base as a joint scientific station before it came to light.

Officials warned the Argentines of the “danger of a leak” and urged them to agree quickly.

“We were concerned that the Argentine base on Southern Thule would become public knowledge,” Lord Owen told the embassy in Buenos Aires on February 17, following the three-day talks.

“It was relevant that the RRS Bransfield had recently discovered the base in Thule and the crew might talk about this on their arrival in Port Stanley on February 20.

“In the event of a leak … the British Government would need to make it clear publicly that they had protested to Argentina about a violation of British sovereignty.

“It would be a complicating factor in our negotiations.”

by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) Dec 22, 2008
Space War

Japan asked the United States in 1965 to be ready to attack China with nuclear weapons if the two Asian powers went to war, newly declassified documents said Monday.

Japan, the only nation to have suffered atomic attack, has long campaigned to abolish nuclear weapons — principles that led former prime minister Eisaku Sato to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

But the foreign ministry declassified documents showing Sato sought a US nuclear strike on China in the event of a war between the two countries.

According to the diplomatic papers, Sato told then US defence secretary Robert McNamara at a 1965 meeting in Washington: “We expect the United States to retaliate immediately using nuclear weapons” in a war.

McNamara, best known as an architect of the Vietnam War, was quoted as replying only that the United States had the technical capability to deploy nuclear weapons overseas.

Sato also said that he would let the United States use Japanese waters, although not its territory, to transport nuclear weapons in the event of a war between Japan and China.

China, then a year away from launching its “Cultural Revolution,” was a major cause of concern in the 1960s for World War II rival Japan. Neither Japan or the United States had diplomatic ties with communist China until the 1970s.

Asked Monday about Sato’s remarks, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura, the Japanese government’s spokesman, defended the then premier by noting that China had just carried out nuclear tests.

“We can reach a conclusion that no nuclear weapons have been brought to Japan,” Kawamura, a member of Sato’s long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party, told a news conference.

Sato’s three-point non-nuclear policy — that Japan will not produce, possess or allow the entry of nuclear weapons — is “determined and steadfast,” Kawamura said.

“Washington has understood this,” he said.

Sato led Japan from 1964 to 1972, making him the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

The United States dropped atom bombs in 1945 on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 210,000 people.

But the United States is now the main ally of officially pacifist Japan and stations more than 40,000 troops on its soil.

19:00 AEST Wed Nov 19 2008

By ninemsn staff
9 News

Moving ceremonies to commemorate the country’s best known sea tragedy — the loss of HMAS Sydney — have led to renewed calls for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to instigate a search for the wreck of the mystery ship at the heart of Australia’s greatest maritime disaster, the Montevideo Maru.

A total of 1053 Australian soldiers and civilians disappeared without trace when the Japanese transport ship Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by an American submarine off the Philippines coast in 1942.

It was Australia’s greatest loss of life at sea — 400 more than the 645 who perished when HMAS Sydney was sunk by the Kormoran 67 years ago today.

Mr Rudd said in April he would consider an appeal to launch a search for the wreck - similar to the hunt for the HMAS Sydney — to bring closure for generations of grieving descendents and throw light on one of the darkest chapters in Australian history.

However, angry relatives of the missing men say the government is ignoring them.

Author and historian Elizabeth Thurston, in this article for ninemsn, says the relatives of the victims of the Montevideo Maru deserve to pay their respects to their loved ones, just as the families of the HMAS Sydney have done.

“Letters to the Australian government on this tragedy go unanswered,” said Ms Thurston.

“And our requests for them to fund a search to locate the vessel using the same technology that discovered the Sydney seem to fall on deaf ears.”

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said in April the government would consider an appeal to provide funds to find the ship after receiving a letter from Sydney historian and Montevideo Maru campaigner Albert Speer.

“The Rudd government understands the desire of relatives to know the resting place of their loved ones who tragically lost their lives at sea” she said.

Anyone with information on sunken vessels of historical significance was urged to contact the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

“They will consider all applications on merit. If merit is found, a proposal will then be put forward to government for consideration,” the spokeswoman said.

David Mearns, the renowned wreck hunter who found the Sydney and Kormoran, told ninemsn the 3.7km sea depth at the sinking site would not prohibit a search.

“Such a depth is not a barrier to search like the one we conducted for Sydney, it just ensures that the expedition will be costly and run into the millions of dollars,” he said.

Twice as many Australians died in this single incident than the entire Vietnam War.

“The sinking of the Montevideo Maru was the greatest disaster at sea ever suffered by Australians,” said prominent historian Hank Nelson, who has spent decades researching the loss of 845 prisoners of war and 208 civilians.

Only one eyewitness account has ever emerged and then only after 60 years when the sole surviving Japanese sailor revealed heart-wrenching details of the “death cries” of trapped Australians going down with the ship while others sung ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

Among the missing were the uncle of former opposition leader Kim Beazley and the grandfather of current Rudd government minister Peter Garrett. Mr Beazley has backed calls for a search of the Montevideo Maru.

The Australians had been taken aboard the Montevideo Maru on June 22, 1942 at Rabaul where they’d been interned after the Japanese invasion and occupation of the former capital of Australian-mandated New Guinea. It was bound for Hainan.

However, it was intercepted and sunk by the USS Sturgeon about 97km west of Cape Luzon in the Philippines in the early hours on July 1.

The submarine commander, Lieutenant William “Bull” Wright had no way of knowing the ship was carrying allied troops and civilians.

Kim Beazley told ninemsn in April that the Montevideo Maru should be found and he felt for the descendents of the victims.

“There are a lot of people looking for closure, a lot of Victorians especially,” he said.

“We grew up with the Montevideo Maru in the family lore. I never got to know my Uncle Syd but my father was very close to him and talked about him a lot.”

More than 1000 people have joined ninemsn’s online petition to fund the search for the Montevideo Maru.

By Adam Easton
BBC News, Warsaw

Prosecutors in Poland have announced they will exhume the body of the country’s World War II prime minister.

Gen Wladyslaw Sikorski will be exhumed as part of a inquiry to decide whether his death in a plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943 was an accident or murder.

A British investigation ruled that it was an accident, but some historians in Poland believe Gen Sikorski died as a result of foul play.

Poland’s president and prime minister are backing the current inquiry.

The general’s body will be exhumed in two weeks from the crypt of Krakow Cathedral, where it lies next to Polish monarchs and national heroes.

Prosecutors say it may provide clues to help them determine whether Gen Sikorski was assassinated.

Theories

During the war the general was prime minister of the Polish government-in-exile in London.

In July 1943, the Liberator aircraft he was travelling on together with two British MPs, crashed into the sea just seconds after it took off from Gibraltar.

A British investigation at the time found the plane’s controls had jammed. But a separate Polish investigation did not rule out he may been murdered.

The general’s death has produced several colourful conspiracy theories despite a lack of evidence.

At the time Gen Sikorski had demanded an investigation into allegations that Poland’s then ally, the former Soviet Union, had massacred more than 20,000 Polish officers in the forests of Katyn three years earlier.

Some even believe British Prime Minister Winston Churchill may have ordered his death to preserve good relations with Stalin.

However, prosecutors have said they are investigating a “communist crime”, suggesting that the suspicion falls on the former Soviet Union.