Part II – Part III – Part IV – Part V

I came across this great documentary which shows a few dark pages of Hungarian history. I was born in Zalau, about 8 miles from Treznea, where Hungarian troops slaughtered hundreds of civilians, and I’ve had relatives who witnessed the tragedy.

My grand-grandfather told my mother that people were impaled that day. Pregnant women were cut open, children killed with the bayonette, entire families murdered, all sorts of almost unimaginable acts of brutality. I say unimaginable because in Zalau the inter-ethnic relation between Romanians and Hungarians almost 70 years after the atrocity is excellent.

Anyway, the documentary stresses that most Hungarians felt that the Threaty of Paris was unjust. Well, if I’d loose my empire, I’d be pretty pissed too. But all their frustration was turned against the Romanians, for they were the majority in Ardeal (and in Transylvania in general) and used their self determination right to join Romania. They have forgotten the Romanian military initiative that saved Hungary from communism. In September 1919, the Romanian Royal Army took Budapest, and in consequence Bela Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic seized to exist. This was not a war of conquest, but one of liberation.

After the Romanian army pushed back the Horthyst and German troops in World War II, the Meses Mountain (where Treznea is located) became the front line. It is perhaps interesting to point out that there were no atrocities once the Romanian army retook lost ground and entered Hungary.

We must remember the tragedies of Ip and Treznea. I am glad that sombody has made this documentary to honor the memory of those who were murdered there. For far too long these dark episodes of history have been kept silent or ignored. But the stories of Ip and Treznea will continue, their memory will not fade, grandfathers tell the stories to their children, just like I learned this from my grand-grandfather through my mother.

The notorious private military firm Blackwater was hired by the CIA to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to secret prisons in Asia for interrogation, informs the German newspaper Der Spiegel.

The newspaper says it has obtained a memo from two ex-Blackwater employees which writes that the CIA employed “Blackwater and its subsidiaries” to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to “secret detention camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for interrogation.”

An Afghan journalist working for a series of international media outlets was killed in northwest Pakistan. The region is one of the most dangerous spots in the world for the media as journalists are targeted directly.

Reports inform that the 40-year-old Janullah Hashimzada was returning from Afghanistan when militants attacked his vehicle near Jamrud, a town located in the Khybar tribal district known to host many Taliban militants.

Rehan Gul Khatok, assistant administrative agent in Jamrud said that the gunmen stopped the vehicle and shot the journalist dead. He also mentions that Hashimzada was very critical of the Taliban and had valuable information regarding the militans. Even more, “his reporting was unacceptable both to Pakistani and Afghan governments and intelligence agencies,” he told the Vienna based International Press Institute.

The Aegis Weapon System destined for Australia’s first Air Warfare Destroyer began a four month testing program today at Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Production Test Center.

When testing concludes, the full Aegis Weapon System will be ready for installation in HMAS Hobart, the first of three Australian Air Warfare Destroyers under contract.

Lockheed Martin’s Production Test Center replicates a ship’s superstructure and allows for the first integration of all the subsystems of the Aegis Weapon System, including the SPY-1D(V) radar, illuminators, all computing hardware, and the cabling that will be used in the final ship installation. In its Production Test Center, Lockheed Martin conducts testing concurrently with each subsystem’s installation, as well as with the entire completed Aegis Weapon System, in order to ensure the system is ready for the rigors of sea before it ever leaves land.

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When the book is about robotics and advanced military technology, the reader might expect a more technical writing style – the author offering the full list of specs without too much thought on the art of writing. This is certainly not the case for Wired for War. P. W. Singer actually tells the fascinating story of unmanned machines, their evolution from the time when Nikola Testla demonstrated at the Madison Square Garden that he can control a boat by using radio frequencies to the unmanned vehicle remotely steered using a PlayStation-like controller.

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The United States have failed to see the evolution of warfare and the political reality of Iraq and Afghanistan before troops moved in. Every war brings changes to society and these particular armed conflicts facilitated the rise of the private military industry. Once the private military firms deployed armed personnel, a series of legal and ethical issues appear: is the employee to be regarded as a soldier or as a civilian? Can private military firms use lethal force? Under what circumstances? If abuses are committed, is the company to be held responsible since it provided weapons and ammunition?

The government failed to provide quick and concise solutions to these problems leading to serious human rights abuses.

In a two-week visit to the United States, the UN Working Group focused on the impact that private security contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq have on human rights. The Group expressed concern about the lack of public information on the contracts as well as poor investigations into human rights abuses committed by the firms.

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Romania exported infantry arms and antitank weapons to Georgia at the end of 2008 worth over 3.6 million euro, according to local Romania newspaper Cotidianul.

Russian ambassador to Romania, Aleksandr Ciurilin was quoted by the newspaper saying that “some countries are willing to contribute to the rise of the military potential of Georgia even after the Tzhinvali pogrom.”

Asked by the same publication if the ambassador has any information on the arms export, he is quoted saying that “I have no information regarding any help from Romania in arming Georgia.”

Patrick Cockburn is a journalist and a veteran war correspondent. He began his carrier as a Middle East correspondent for the Financial Times and the Independent in 1979 and he concentrated on Iraq ever since.

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