WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) — Homeland Security (OTCBB:HSCC) officials are looking into allegations that a member of the department’s advisory council offered to arrange meetings with senior administration officials in exchange for a large donation to the Bush presidential library.

Stephen Payne, a major GOP fundraiser and international affairs lobbyist, also touted his success in getting an Uzbek opposition leader removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list and issued a U.S. visa…

Link

Dallas scientists find the risk may rise by at least 30% if the climate change indeed occurs
By ERIC BERGER

The next time you feel a sharp, cramping pain in your lower abdomen, spare a thought for your personal carbon footprint. That’s the message from Dallas scientists who predict that as the planet warms during the coming century people will sweat more, not drink enough water to compensate, and therefore develop more kidney stones…more

Let me guess, Government causes global warming by subsidizing ethanol, Antarctica melts, I get a stomach cramp so I sue the Government for surgery! That’s crazy! Will the Medicare buy it? After all, Acts of God aren’t covered, how about Acts of Congress?

I’m going to check the fine print in my policy….

AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq By BRIAN MURPHY ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER July 6, 2008 “The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program – a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium – reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans…more“

If the dead could speak, what would this man say? ( click on image for larger view )

Image at Wikimedia Commons ( public domain )

As the Bush Administration comes to a close, I expect many such news releases. Mark Twain was a radical in his own day, with little formal education and few ties to the Establishment. That allowed him to speak freely about the world he lived in;

‘Politicians are liars and thieves, which makes them eminently qualified to represent their constituents.’

While we ponder our ‘need to know’, we should ask ourselves if the actual truth about nuclear energy should be taught anywhere, by anyone. Someone is in charge of the science, and they determine who has the ‘clearance’ to study real science on the issue. Even if a science student thinks he needs to know how to make a bomb, it is very doubtful that any of his teachers have the ‘clearance’ to actually teach him.

Just how much does the average man ‘need to know’ to cast an informed vote?

America doesn’t seem to be getting much news about the war in Iraq lately, at least not in the Main Stream Press. Most of what we learned about the war in Iraq was from reporters ‘embed’ with Coalition troops, and from Retired Generals that sat as “message force multipliers” on news broadcasts.

I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for apologies from pundits that condemned the Bush Administration decision to go to war. Perhaps they don’t think we ‘need to hear’ that.

As the Armenian post-election saga developed, I was forced to learn new skills to keep up with history. And, I discovered new tools that have greatly influenced my own blogging efforts. I’m also learning ( daily ) about people I would never had known existed ( that’s the best part of the inter-net, meeting people ).

When I read Azerbaijan: Blogs, BarCamps & Social Networks on the Oneworld Mutimedia Blog I began to search for better tools to share what I was reading. The more I searched, the more I found at Google. I wonder if Blogspot and Google are available in Georgia? I’m sure it is in Armenia.

My Google rss reader provided the means to share all the feeds I’ve been enjoying, and several gadgets that add much to this page ( I really like the custom rss gadgets on my left rail, you can build your own, just click on ‘gadgets’ at the bottom of the reader. )

‘Blogworld‘ is the tag I use share posts from different sources, about a movement in countries that are learning, and building their blogging skills. Take a look at the face of the future, the youth of today…

Photo by; onewmphoto

I would be an Seagull I suppose, soaring above the shore by day, and resting the side of a cliff by night. Eating, sleeping, searching for a soul-mate to share my sky!

Zooming Around the Alps In a Homemade Wing Suit
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 4, 2008; Page A10

CRANS-PRES-CELIGNY, Switzerland — Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s . . . Fusion Man!

“…It’s always been my dream, to fly like a bird,” Rossy said in an interview at his home in this Swiss village overlooking Lake Geneva. “And I don’t want to do it just for myself, but to show mankind how to do it…”

A former fighter pilot in the Swiss air force who now flies commercial aircraft for Swiss airlines, Rossy has been scheming for a decade about possible ways to transform himself into a bird, albeit a mechanical one.

Washington Post – Video

With a classic ‘thumbs up’ He bestowed his blessing on the victorious and sealed the fate of their opponents. A silent gesture, high above and far removed from the bloody floor of the arena, often determined the fate of entire nations. Spoils of War often went to the victor, and generous commissions to those blessed by Caesars hand. Who’s fate will Caesar’s fickle finger favor today?

Keep in mind that all serve at the pleasure of Caesar… 

Iraq Seeking Help to Develop Oil
BBC
Monday,
30 June 2008 11:08 UK

Iraq has begun the process of opening up its oil industry to foreign investment in an effort to boost output of the country’s key income earner.

US and European firms will be asked to provide technical expertise to increase production by half a million barrels…more

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are heavily favored by oracles, auguries and pundits of the realm. ( My money is on Exxon, given their popularity with the Senate )

Moscow is staging an extraordinary comeback on the Afghan chessboard after a gap of two decades following the Soviet Union’s nine-year adventure that ended in the withdrawal of its last troops from Afghanistan 1989. In a curious reversal of history, this is possible only with the acquiescence of the United States. Moscow is taking advantage of the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan and the implications for regional security could be far-reaching…more

I read this article, just as I was getting ready to leave for work. I’ll be back in the morning to update, and give my opinion ( for what it’s worth )

Normally, I would never cut-and-paste another blogger’s post ( like I did in my last post ‘Ban the Dumb Bombs ), but this is so short and sweet that it just begs to be taken in one bite! A self-proclaimed, “…extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey…” the author knows no shame, or inhibition. As they say, ‘brevity is the essence of wit’

Mugabe, I am confused!
Rantings of a Sandmonkey
Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Ok, Mugabe, out of curiosity: If you are going to arrest your opponent in the upcoming election and his second man in charge, Impound the buses he uses to campaign in the country, send hired killers against Human Rights activists, and state that the opposition will never govern in your lifetime and that you would rather go to war than cede power to them even if they did win , then..ehh…why even have an election? Why go through all of that trouble? Or are you just doing it for attention, you attention-whore you?

A Protection Paradox
Sunday, May 11, 2008

It is always wonderful, at this time of year, when grading a student’s paper teaches a professor something new and leaves him/her thinking anew about ethical ironies in world politics.

My MPIA student, Christopher Farnsworth, who is now being recruited by the US Department of Defense, just wrote a fascinating analysis of Congressional policy on the sale of precision-guided munitions for my class on the “Rules of War.” (The paper, which is still in draft form as these things go, nonetheless contains a wealth of information on this issue, and is available here for those who know as little about this policy process as I did before I read it.)

Here’s the ethical irony his analysis raises. The US is generally committed to more bloodless war for primarily humanitarian reasons (hence the development of smart bombs and non-lethal weapons to avoid killing enemy civilians) but is highly selective as to which governments it will share this technology with so that they, too, can avoid hitting foreign civilians in their various wars. Why?
Farnsworth points out that humanitarianism would be better served by relaxing the rules for the dissemination of smart bomb technology. Yet he concludes it this option – selling our most precise weapons to those governments we trust least – would be politically unpopular. Americans, he thinks, are unlikely to support handing our potential adversaries advanced weapons, merely on the grounds it might save innocent lives elsewhere.

But I wonder. Why shouldn’t the US public support open sales of PGMs – that is, putting smart-bombs in the hands not only of our allies but also our enemies, out o sel-interest? Why would we (civilian voters) want to prevent our adversaries from having the capacity to avoid hitting our homes in an assault if someday they so chose? Shouldn’t our government want to extend us this protection?

Instead, the Presidential criteria for a country’s eligibility for Foreign Military Sales includes “strengthens the security of the United States and promotes world peace.” (World peace being very unlike jusr war.) In other words, we sell smart bombs to our allies (sometimes) but want our enemies – those likeliest to attack us – to use dumb bombs; and we associate this policy with national security and world peace. Why?

The paper (which is mostly about whether to ban dumb bomb sales) only speculates as to the logic here, but to me it seems like a puzzle that could be thoughtully investigated.