Six-year old Zachary Christie is a first grade student in Newark, Delaware and a newly minted and very proud Cub Scout. He may also be sentenced to 45-days in REFORM SCHOOL for bringing one of his Cub Scout utensils to lunch at school. You see the utensil is a combined spoon, fork and knife to be used for camping.

The gadget feel out of Zach’s bag and was spotted by a school official who immediately seized it and charged the desperado with possessing of a weapon.

He was promptly expelled and faces a disciplinary hearing on Tuesday where he could be sentenced to 45-days in a Reform School.

Pontificating school official claim they are hewing to an ironclad no exception policy that a knife is a knife and a knife is a weapon and that’s that. Zach will have his day in court at an open meeting Tuesday evening, October 13, 2009 that promises to be spirited.

The erstwhile Dillinger has many defenders including Delaware legislator who wrote to the School Board urging common sense.

Zachary’s defenders have erected a website helpzachary.com urging sympathizers to contact the Board members and if they can attend tomorrow night’s disciplinary hearing. To decide whether Zach will get a rap sheet before he gets all his permanent teeth

Zachary’s family is flummoxed by the whole thing. They point out he insist on wearing a suit to school because he takes it so very seriously. For now Zach is being home schooled.

Maybe Obama will invite Zachary and his tormenters to have an Orange Crush at the White House.

Based on this School Board’s logic I would have been gunned down in the school yard for wearing my Boy Scout sheath knife to school.

Intrepid explorer who discovered America or merciless oppressor of the native peoples who already lived here? Some paint a darker picture of Christopher Columbus these days, and nearly a quarter (24%) of adults now don’t think America should honor him with a national holiday.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) disagree and say Columbus should be honored  with a holiday. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republicans favor continuance of Columbus Day, compared to 52% of Democrats and 54% of adults not affiliated with either party. Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to think Columbus should not be honored.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of whites say Columbus deserves a holiday, a view shared by just 50% of African-Americans and 51% of those in other racial categories.

Perhaps surprisingly, younger Americans are more supportive of the famous Italian explorer than their elders. Seventy-two percent (72%) of both men and women under 40 believe Columbus should be honored with a holiday. Only 57% of men over 40 and 53% of women over 40 agree.

Columbus Day honors the anniversary of the October 12, 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. But some historians look beyond his discovery of a new world to his actions upon arrival, including violence against and enslavement of those already living here, forced conversion of native peoples to Christianity and the introduction of a host of new diseases into the native population.

Despite these claims, however, 69% of Americans have a favorable impression of Columbus, down slightly from two years ago. Twenty-five percent (25%) have a very favorable view. Just 21% hold a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of the explorer.

The overwhelming majority of adults (72%) correctly identify 1492 as the year Columbus discovered the Americas. Five percent (5%) say 1482, four percent (4% ) think 1392, and three percent (3%) say 1592. Seventeen percent (17%) aren’t sure.

More Americans between 18 and 29 years of age and those over 50 correctly answered the year of Columbus’ discovery than those between 30 and 40 years old.

However, just 12% of adults consider Columbus Day as one of the nation’s most important holidays. Thirty-seven percent (37%) deem it the least important, while 49% say it’s somewhere in between the most and least important holiday. Two percent (2%) are undecided. These numbers have held steady since the previous survey.

China’s North Korean policy suffered a setback when Premier Wen Jiabao failed to get anything substantial from Kim Jong-Il regarding the resuscitation of the so-called six-party talks being hosted by the Chinese.

However, Obama’s decision not to see his fellow Nobel Prize laureate Dalai Lama during his ongoing visit to Washington has handed Beijing a big victory in its decades-long crusade of preventing “foreign interference” in its repressive policies toward Tibet and Xinjiang.

Upon leaving Pyongyang on Tuesday with Wen, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi claimed that the premier’s historic tour was “rich in content and weighty in outcome.”

However, on the subject of his country’s return to the negotiation table in Beijing, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il only expressed “our readiness to hold multilateral talks, depending on the outcome of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea-U.S. talks.” And while Kim reiterated Pyongyang’s theoretical commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, he was but repeating the same rhetorical pledges made by his aides and diplomats during the past month or so.

Newspapers in South Korea have reported that DPRK scientists have all along proceeded with their ambitious nuclear weapons program.

Wen’s North Korean diplomacy is disappointing because prior to his visit, the Chinese Foreign Ministry took the unusual step of announcing that Beijing would bolster food and fuel aid to the Stalinist regime. On top of this, Wen personally presented China’s once-and-future ally with gifts worth $20 million.

Since July, the leadership under President Hu Jintao, who takes personal charge of foreign and security policies, has also silenced domestic critics of the DPRK.

Soon after Pyongyang’s nuclear test on May 25, several renowned Chinese experts on the Koreas published articles in the official media blasting Kim’s misguided attempts to build a full-fledged nuclear arsenal. Such criticisms have disappeared from even the chat-rooms of China’s websites.

On relations with the U.S., however, Hu, who heads the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Leading Group on Foreign Affairs, is said to be ecstatic over Obama’s decision not to see the Dalai Lama during the Tibetan spiritual leader’s five-day visit to Washington this week.

This was the first time since 1991 that a U.S. president has failed to vouchsafe the Dalai Lama even a “drop in” opportunity at the White House.

U.S. officials have indicated that this stems from the new policy of “strategic reassurance,” meaning essentially that Washington will make concessions to Beijing on issues such as human rights and Tibet in return for the latter’s cooperation on the financial and environmental fronts.

Chinese and foreign diplomatic sources in Beijing said since large-scale riots broke out in Tibet and Xinjiang in March 2008, Hu, who also oversees policies toward ethnic minorities, has been attacked by CCP factions outside of his own Communist Youth League clique.

Former President Jiang Zemin, who shared the limelight with Hu during the National Day military parade in Beijing last Thursday, launched bitter criticisms against Hu — and his cronies who are running Xinjiang and Tibet — for failing to maintain “socio-political harmony” in China’s restive western regions.

Obama’s buckling under Chinese pressure, however, has been perceived by Hu and his advisers as a major Chinese triumph. Henceforward, Hu, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, will feel much less qualms about turning the big guns on recalcitrant Tibetan and Uighur groups in the two strife-torn autonomous regions.

Moreover, Obama’s snubbing the Dalai Lama would set a precedent that Beijing’s newly assertive diplomats will use when they try to oblige a number of European and Asian countries not to meet senior members of the exiled Tibetan and Uighur communities.

Beijing is also expected to put more pressure on Washington not to “interfere” with China’s handling of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Since taking office in January, Obama and his top aides have largely refrained from criticizing Beijing’s policies on human rights and ethnic minorities.

Adapted, and amended from an article by Willy Lam a Hong Kong-based China scholar and journalist specializing in Communist Party politics and foreign policy.

Four-to-five assailants held  between 10 and 15 officers hostage in a building near the main gates of Pakistan’s army headquarters in capital Saturday, Oct. 10 after an audacious invasion of the complex and gunfight in which at least eight soldier including a lieutenant general and four gunmen were killed. There are reports that lodged in the HQ compound is the secret department in charge of securing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

As the Taliban dressed as soldiers burst into the army HQ in Islamabad, Pakistani paramilitary forces battled a second group of insurgents to recover control of a road tunnel which connects the towns of Darra Adam Khel and Kohat in the North West Frontier Province.

Pakistan special forces assaulted the building killing the assailants losing two of their own and two hostages, and capturing what is reportedly a terrorist ring leader.

On May 15, DEBKA-Net-Weekly exclusively named Kohat and the Wah Cantonment Pakistani Ordnance Complex in the city of Kamra, both in the NWFP, as keys to Pakistan’s nuclear and missile arsenals.

Military sources stressed at the time that Kohat’s fall to the Taliban would cut off Islamabad and the Pakistani high command from Kamra and its nuclear arsenal. This appeared to be the object of the Taliban push on the tunnel-road coupled with the assault on military headquarters.

In a rare news conference, Khalid Kidwai, chief of Pakistan’s strategic planning division which controls its nuclear program, rejected international fears that Pakistan’s weapons could fall into the wrong hands and warned against any foreign intervention over the issue. “‘The state of alertness has gone up,” he admitted without going into details, but stressed: “There is no conceivable scenario, political or violent, in which Pakistan will fall to the extremists of the al Qaeda or Taliban types.”

He spoke the day after the chief of Pakistan’s army, General Ashfaq Kiyani, dismissed as “unrealistic” fears that al Qaeda could seize the country’s nuclear weapons.

As reported earlier: The Islamabad attack occurred at a defining moment in Washington for the Afghan/Pakistan conflict. Obama is completing a military review of US military strategy in the two arenas with his “was council.” The conference is tilting toward shifting the US military focus away from the Taliban to al Qaeda. Obama has even said there maybe a role for the Taliban in Afghaniostan despite three factors now illustrated in blood Saturday:

·         Just as Taliban and al Qaeda are inseparable, so too are the Afghan and Pakistan warfronts.

·          Those two organizations hold the initiative, not the American army. They are capable of answering the White House’s decisions on strategy in unexpected places and ways.

·         Pakistan, America’s chosen senior ally in the war against Taliban and al Qaeda, is a broken reed in military terms and too vulnerable to lean on.

Saturday, Pakistan’s president, Ali Zardari, saw those adversaries striking inside the headquarters of his armed forces in the capital, demonstrating their ability to reach into any part of his government, including the presidential palace, and topple his regime. This is exactly the same tactic the two partners in terror are pursuing in Kabul. Insurgents or al Qaeda were also admitted to be within range of key locations for Pakistan’s nuclear and missile arsenals.

For some weeks, the Pakistani army has been concentrating a large force of more than 100,000 men for a big offensive against Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds in the lawless tribal territories of Waziristan bordering on Afghanistan. The attack on its headquarters in Islamabad carried a message: If this offensive goes forward, Pakistan’s major cities will pay the price.

On Oct. 8, a car bombing later claimed by Taliban killed 49 people in the Khyber Bazaar of Peshawar.

Monday, five people died in the bombing of a United Nations aid agency in Islamabad.

Zardari’s army chiefs are flatly opposed to the understanding he is developing with the Obama administration for $1.5 billion in US aid in return for launching a major Pakistani military offensive against Taliban and al Qaeda. They accuse the US of interfering in relations between civil government and the military.

The attack on the army’s headquarters Saturday would have been taken as a gesture of support for the opponents of a US-Pakistan alliance. It was also a warning that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal may not be entirely safe from terrorist control.

Obama’s prolific campaign promises have paid at least one big dividend – a farcical Nobel Peace Prize.  But, according to the Washington Post “ he is struggling to keep most of those promises he made during last year’s campaign.”  Starkly, for instance: Saturday evening as Obama renewed his pledge to end the military’s ban on openly gay service members as he appeared at a fundraising dinner for the nation’s largest homosexual advocacy group on Saturday night in Washington DC..

According to the Washington Post article printed on Sunday, October 11, 2009 Obama pledged, “”I will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” Obama said at the Human Rights Campaign dinner.  Recounting the ongoing effort to bring full civil rights to homosexuals; Obama said: “I’m here with a simple message: I’m here with you in that fight.”

The Washington Post could not avoid pointing out that Obama in what is become his hallmark did not offer specifics on how he would advance the cause of allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military, or of same-sex marriage, two areas where his inaction have disappointed many homosexual supporters.

Obama’s most recent promise comes on the eve of a major “gay rights” rally in Washington, an event aimed in part at pressuring Obama and Congress, the president was met with a standing ovation and resounding cheers. Obama acknowledged the frustration of some activists, portraying himself as a forceful ally in a lengthy fight. And while he said that gay rights are only one part of his agenda, which is loaded down with domestic and international challenges, he said that would not deter him.

“My commitment to you is unwavering, even as we wrestle with these enormous problems,” Obama said. “Do not doubt the direction we are headed and the destination we will reach.”

Just days after winning the presidency, Obama vowed that he would be “a fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans.” But, advocates for the homosexual community have been disappointed by what has so far has been a broad pattern of dithering and inaction.in many areas.

Many in the homosexual community joionj other critics saying Obama  “has done little to make good on that statement. They accuse the president of putting their agenda on the back burner…” Obama they say has not acted to reverse the Bill Clinton imposed “don’t ask; don’t tell” policy in the military nor end the Defense of Marriage Act.

Opponents of ending both policies quickly pointed out Obama is pouring fuel on the fire again biting off more than he can chew, and in an odd moment of agreement that hollow hyperbole is worn thin

So, far Obama’s massive spending has not produced jobs nor reversed the slides in housing or manufacturing. Critics point out that Obama’s aversion to cutting taxes as an economic spark plug, or using economic stimulus money to support job producing support small businesses rather than pour hundreds of billion of dollars to prop up labor union dominated smokestack industries for political but not smart economic reasons.

Advocates for government thrift and using tax incentives for job creation like Indiana Governor Mitch Daniel who appeared on Sunday morning’s Fox News Sunday say that Obama is far too busy meddling in social engineering like his continuing pandering to the homosexual community. An stupifying example is Obama’s $1.4 trillion in borrowing to fund- of all things—a budget deficit that represents nearly 10% of gross domestic product or the total sum of all goods and products produced by everything and everyone in the entire nation.So much borrowing and bad economics in fact that a dollar bill is about to become little more than a bubble gum wrapper.

Obama is more adept at making promises than producing results.

Last Fall’s emergency stop gap TARP program plugged the hole in the nation’s banking system that one year ago was under organbized global attack. But, since taking office  he has been little more than being a show horse and not a work horse. Exaggeration and embroidering like at last night’s festivities is just that..

Obama style politics make for strange bedfellows to use an unfortunate metaphor. Of course compared to Afghanistan – where White House paralysis has taken over too – these issues pale.

China has deployed sleeper cells of agents and special operations commandos in Canada who would be activated for military and covert action missions against the United States in future conflict.

The Paris-based Intelligence Online reported October 1 that the Unit 8189 would not be viewed during the Tiananmen parade marking China’s 60th anniversary because the unit is secret.

“Unit 8189 (jiefangjun bayibaijiu fengiandu) is the most secretive organization in the People’s Liberation Army,” the report said.

“If a conflict arises, its ‘strategic commandos’ are trained to carry out sabotage missions, selective assassinations and attacks abroad.”

The unit was established in the late 1980s by Gen. Zhang Shihai, who remains its adviser. The unit has an estimated 10,000 men and women and has been enhanced with soldiers trained in special warfare methods from various military regions and elite units from the three services.

The unit became known after an agent from China’s Ministry of State Security defected.

According to Canadian counterintelligence officials, about 50 Chinese agents from Unit 8189 have infiltrated Chinese neighborhoods in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver and “would be activated in the case of a clash between China and the United States.”

What appears to many to be the impending emasculation of the USA Patriot Act is worrisome to those knowledgeable about foreign intelligence activities, like Unit 8189 as well as Islamic and other terrorists including homegrown threats inside the U. S. targeting military and private facilities.

The “Patriot Act”, is a federal signed into law on October 26, 2001. The contrived acronym stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.

The Act increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to search telephone, e-mail communications, medical, financial, and other records; eases restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the United States; expands the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, particularly those involving foreign individuals and entities; and enhances the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expands the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.

A leading Russian analyst said Iran has surpassed the missile development potential of North Korea.

The analyst pointed to Iran’s success in building a space-launch vehicle that could place satellites into orbit.

“In my view, Iran has even greater potential and greater resources than North Korea has today,” Vladimir Dvorkin, a leading Russian analyst, said.

The analyst’s assessment differed sharply with that of the Kremlin. The Russian General Staff was said to have concluded that Iranian missiles had a range of no more than 1,000 kilometers.

In a briefing on Sept. 21, Dvorkin, the senior researcher at the Moscow-based International Security Center, said North Korea was helping Iran produce intermediate-range ballistic missiles. But he said Teheran has extended Pyongyang’s technology capabilities and could produce missiles with a range of more than 3,000 kilometers.

“And if the upper stage of the carrier rocket that took the first Iranian satellite into space is re-equipped, the range could be increased to 4,000 kilometers,” Dvorkin said. That puts Europe well in range.

“I believe statements by the Russian General Staff that Iran possesses missiles with a range of up to 1,000 kilometers are inaccurate,” Dvorkin said.

Another former Russian general and analyst said Teheran could develop an intercontinental ballistic missile as early as 2015. Viktor Yesin, a former chief of staff of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, said Russian defense systems were capable of intercepting Iranian missiles.

“Russia and the United States could jointly turn to this topic again in the future if Iran gets such a weapon [ICBM], but this won’t happen until at least 2015,” Yesin said.

It is difficult to miss the irony, hypocrisy, or worse of these conclusions given Obama’s collapse under Russian pressure on the proposed Ballistic Missile Defense shield that was to have been installed in the Czech Republic and Poland and readied by 2013-14 to defend against exactly this  threat and be ready  to defend against an Iranian ICBM by – you guessed it – 2015.