Tina's blog

TGIF!!

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:59:15 -0800

I wish I had the weekend off

Catholic Elementary School Test

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:25:01 -0800

Imagine yourself to be the nun sitting at her desk grading these papers
all the while trying to keep a straight face and maintain her composure!

test answers after the jump :)

Just another viral email, but cute..

PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE WORDING AND SPELLING. IF YOU ARE EVEN
REMOTELY FAMILIAR WITH HOLY SCRIPTURE, YOU'LL FIND THIS HILARIOUS! IT
COMES FROM A ROMAN CATHOLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEST. KIDS WERE ASKED
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ABOUT
THE BIBLE WERE WRITTEN BY CHILDREN. THEY HAVE NOT BEEN RE-TOUCHED OR
CORRECTED. INCORRECT SPELLING HAS BEEN LEFT IN.

1. IN THE FIRST BOOK OF THE BIBLE, GUINESSIS, GOD GOT TIRED OF CREATING
THE WORLD SO HE TOOK THE SABBATH OFF.

2. ADAM AND EVE WERE CREATED FROM AN APPLE TREE. NOAH'S WIFE WAS JOAN OF
ARK. NOAH BUILT AND ARK AND THE ANIMALS CAME ON IN PEARS.

3. LOTS WIFE WAS A PILLAR OF SALT DURING THE DAY, BUT A BALL OF FIRE
DURING THE NIGHT.

4. THE JEWS WERE A PROUD PEOPLE AND THROUGHOUT HISTORY THEY HAD TROUBLE
WITH UNSYMPATHETIC GENITALS.

5. SAMPSON WAS A STRONGMAN WHO LET HIM SELF BE LED ASTRAY BY A JEZEBEL
LIKE DELILAH.

6. SAMSON SLAYED THE PHILISTINES WITH THE AXE OF THE APOSTLES.

7. MOSES LED THE JEWS TO THE RED SEA WHERE THEY MADE UNLEAVENED BREAD
WHICH IS BREAD WITHOUT ANY INGREDIENTS .

8, THE EGYPTIANS WERE ALL DROWNED IN THE DESSERT. AFTER WARDS, MOSES WENT
UP TO MOUNT CYANIDE TO GET THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

9. THE FIRST COMMANDMENTS WAS WHEN EVE TOLD ADAM TO EAT THE APPLE.

10. THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT IS THOU SHALT NOT ADMIT ADULTERY.

11. MOSES DIED BEFORE HE EVER REACHED CANADA .. THEN JOSHUA LED THE
HEBREWS IN THE BATTLE OF GERITOL

12. THE GREATEST MIRICLE IN THE BIBLE IS WHEN JOSHUA TOLD HIS SON TO STAND
STILL AND HE OBEYED HIM.

13. DAVID WAS A HEBREW KING WHO WAS SKILLED AT PLAYING THE LIAR. HE FOUGHT
THE FINKELSTEINS, A RACE OF PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN BIBLICAL TIMES.

14. SOLOMON, ONE OF DAVIDS SONS, HAD 300 WIVES AND 700 PORCUPINES.

15. WHEN MARY HEARD SHE WAS THE MOTHER OF JESUS, SHE SANG THE MAGNA CARTA.

16. WHEN THE THREE WISE GUYS FROM THE EAST SIDE ARRIVED THEY FOUND JESUS
IN THE MANAGER.

17. JESUS WAS BORN BECAUSE MARY HAD AN IMMACULATE CONTRAPTION.

18. ST. JOHN THE BLACKSMITH DUMPED WATER ON HIS HEAD.

19. JESUS ENUNCIATED THE GOLDEN RULE, WHICH SAYS TO DO UNTO OTHERS BE FORE
THEY DO ONE TO YOU. HE ALSO EXPLAINED A MAN DOTH NOT LIVE BY SWEAT ALONE.

20. IT WAS A MIRICLE! WHEN JE SUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD AND MANAGED TO GET
THE TOMBSTONE OFF THE ENTRANCE.

21. THE PEOPLE WHO FOLLOWED THE LORD WERE CALLED THE 12 DECIBELS.

22. THE EPISTELS WERE THE WIVES OF THE APOSTLES.

23. ONE OF THE OPPOSSUMS WAS ST. MATTHEW WHO WAS ALSO A TAXIMAN.

24. ST. PAUL CAVORTED TO CHRISTIANITY, HE PREACHED HOLY ACRIMONY WHICH IS
ANOTHER NAME FOR MARRAIGE.

25. CHRISTIANS HAVE ONLY ONE SPOUSE . THIS IS CALLED MONOTONY.

The Great Atomic Film Cover-Up

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:26:28 -0800

Greg Mitchell | Nov 10 | Huff

Early this week, President Obama -- perhaps under new pressure as a Nobel Peace Prize winner -- said he would like to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his presidency. If he does, he will become the first sitting U.S. president to make that trip.

Yesterday, Veterans Day arrived, so here I'd liked to pay tribute to two of the most remarkable veterans I've ever encountered.

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, many newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The general public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. I first probed the coverup back in 1983, and developed it further in later articles and in my 1995 book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and in a 2005 documentary Original Child Bomb. To see some of the footage, go to my blog.

As editor of Nuclear Times in the early 1980s, I met Herbert Sussan, one of the members of the U.S. military film crew. The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF. I have a VHS copy of all of it today.

When that footage finally emerged, I spoke with and corresponded with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military film-makers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades.

"I always had the sense," McGovern told me, "that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child....They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done -- at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn't want the material out because...we were sorry for our sins."

Sussan, meanwhile, struggled for years to get some of the American footage aired on national TV, taking his request as high as President Truman, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow, to no avail.

More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

In 2005, Editor & Publisher (where I am editor) broke the news that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. But suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world. The common view abroad, and among many U.S. historians, is that Russia's entry into the war (long scheduled and carried out on August 8) would have forced a Japanese surrender long before any U.S. invasion took place. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower himself later said it was not necessary to hit Japan "with that awful thing."

Chimp Attack Victim Unveils Destroyed Face on Oprah

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:23:41 -0800

ABC News - The Connecticut woman who was attacked by her friend's chimpanzee in February, revealed the mangled remains of her face on the Oprah Winfrey show today for the first time, publicly showing the remnants of her missing eyes, nose and lips.

Charla Nash reveals her face publicly after being mauled by a pet chimp.Charla Nash, who wakes up every day in a hospital room at the Cleveland clinic where doctors change her bandages daily, told Winfrey she rarely touches her face so as not to learn the full extent of her injuries.

"I don't ask a whole lot about my injuries. I know that I have my forehead," she told Winfrey.

Nash, 56, must drink all of her meals with a straw though a small hole where her mouth used to be, She said she longs for the day when she might be able to eat "a hot dog or piece of pizza."

My Gawd! The video is horrifying and makes me think no wild animals should be allowed as pets.

Finally a bipartisan issue

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:44:02 -0800

High BPA levels linked to male sexual problems

How long before congress gets involved? ;)

Why is Earth’s upper atmosphere cooling?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:04:30 -0800

Moises Velasquez-Manoff | 11.10.09 | CSM Blog

Temperatures at the earth’s surface have increased by between 0.2 and 0.4 degrees C in the past 30 years. The vast majority of scientists attribute this warming trend to higher concentrations of greenhouse gases – CO2, methane, CFCs, and others – which warm both the earth’s surface and lower atmosphere by holding heat in.

But one of the seeming paradoxes of more greenhouse gases is that while they seem to warm the earth’s surface, they also seem to be cooling the higher layers of the atmosphere: Surface temperatures have gone up in recent decades, but they’ve declined to varying degrees in the stratosphere (above 20 km), the mesosphere (above 50 km), and the thermosphere (above 90 km).

In the lower and middle mesosphere, for example, temperatures have fallen by between 5 and 10 degrees C during the past three decades. And the outermost part of the atmosphere, around 350 km high — the so-called thermosphere — has, as would be expected by cooling, contracted.

(Here’s a review of these observed changes in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

The science behind the observed stratospheric cooling is complex, but important to understand.

Some people cite this cooling as evidence that greenhouse gases aren’t warming and that human-induced climate change isn’t happening. But the conclusion, it seems, should be the opposite.

In 1989, scientists predicted that more greenhouse gases would cool the stratosphere.

Indeed, Venus, which many say has a “runaway” greenhouse effect — its atmosphere is 97 percent carbon dioxide and temperatures at its surface can reach 900 F. — has a stratosphere that’s four to five times cooler than ours.

It’s also worth remembering that Earth supports life as we know it only because of a greenhouse effect. Without some heat-trapping ability, Earth’s surface temperature should be, on average, around -0.4 F. Instead, it’s a nice 57 F.

So why is our stratosphere cooling?

As Dr. Elmar Uherek of the Max Planck Institute explains, human activity affects the stratosphere in two ways:

1. By ozone depletion.
2. By increasing carbon dioxide.

Hersh: In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:18:54 -0800

Seymour Hersh | Nov 16 Issue | New Yorker

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

Seymour Hersh | Nov 16 Issue | New Yorker

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.

On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”

The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”

In The Year 2525

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:07:07 -0800

Chomsky Doubts Change from Obama

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:36:54 -0800

Mamoon Alabbasi | Baltimore Chronicle

Editorial note by Robert Parry: A year after Barack Obama was elected President, many on the American Left are criticizing him for not achieving all they had hoped for – including an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a complete rejection of George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” and sharp reductions in military spending.

But MIT professor Noam Chomsky suggests those hopes were always naïve and that only a powerful grassroots movement can force such changes, as reported in this guest article by Mamoon Alabbasi that previously appeared in Middle East Online:

As civilized people across the world breathed a sigh of relief to see the back of former U.S. President George W. Bush, top American intellectual Noam Chomsky warned against assuming or expecting significant changes in the basis of Washington's foreign policy under President Barack Obama.

During two lectures organized by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Chomsky cited numerous examples of the driving doctrines behind U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II.

"As Obama came into office, Condoleezza Rice predicted that he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style," Chomsky said.

"But it is wise to attend to deeds, not rhetoric. Deeds commonly tell a different story," he added.

"There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that we if can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world," explained Chomsky.

Chomsky said that a leading doctrine of U.S. foreign policy during the period of its global dominance is what he termed as "the Mafia principle."

USC prof's new book: 'Americans like lonesome'

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:39:11 -0800

USC religious studies professor Kevin Lewis has been thinking about the meaning of being lonesome in American culture. He’s written a new book that explores the theme of loneliness and lonesomeness that is pervasive in American art, from Emily Dickinson’s poems to country music lyrics, and analyzes why solitude is sometimes good.

The State/SC - To be an American is to have buried, deep within our collective DNA, a profound sense of the lonesome.

At least that is what USC religious studies professor Kevin Lewis has speculated during a long - and perhaps lonesome - intellectual trek through the landscape of American music, fiction, art and religion.

For all the cultural reflection on the meaning of e pluribus unum, he believes Americans are a people who understand the solitary ache in the heart, the twist in the gut. After all, he noted, who among us has not walked through "that lonesome valley" or traveled down an open highway with the wail of Hank Williams in our ears?

"That word lonesome seems to do so much more work in our vocabulary than in any other anglophone culture," he said. "Americans like lonesome."

His ruminations have borne fruit in a newly published book titled, simply, "Lonesome: The Spiritual Meanings of American Solitude." In this scholarly work, he explains how we are a people hard-wired to perceive and experience lonesomeness in a way that is far different from that of our counterparts on other continents.

Rooted in our spiritual and religious life, lonesomeness is a vessel in which we pour parts of ourselves.

He writes: "... Lonesomeness offers to those given it a nontraditional, informal encounter with an unnamed 'otherness,' always inviting, always receding. If only we could peer deeply enough into it that we could 'see' through the feeling of it the 'otherness' plain!"

Lewis argues that this transcendent expression of lonesomeness exists alongside organized religion.

"This is part of the American cultural matrix for me, and as a religionist, as a practicing, believing, confessing, Calvinist, Protestant humanist Christian, I want to make sure that no one is offended by this on the traditional religious side," he said. Conversely, he is also determined that the book isn't taken as "an airhead spirituality guide for the perplexed."

Lewis has been captivated by the concept of lonesomeness for nearly two decades, sparked in part by a re-reading of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Mark Twain's tale of Huck and the runaway slave Jim rafting down the Mississippi River is the consummate American story, rife with the contradictions of a people struggling with the idea of freedom and what it means.

"There is a passage where Jim and Huck, these archetypal black and white Americans, are rafting down the river," Lewis recalled. "In early dawn they pull up on the shore, and they tether the raft and put their fishing lines in, catch a couple fish, build a fire, and there is this wonderful moment of calm for them. Huck hears the sound of an axe chopping wood across the wide Mississippi. He sees the flash so far away, and the sound, there was this little delay, and he says it was solemn lonesome."

To be lonely is not the same as lonesome, Lewis said. Perhaps, he suggested, there is a whiff of self-pity about the lonely, an isolating, bitter phenomenon, but "there is nothing really good about lonely."

While the two words have been used interchangeably, lonesome is employed "to express this something extra," Lewis said. "I call this feeling-perception. It is not only an emotion, but to me it is something that relates to something you perceive."

The lonesome in American culture is "transfigured," he said, through an expansion of the spirit and in the unspeakable yearning for this "feeling-perception."

He quotes Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, two of the greatest 19th-century American poets who worshiped at the altar of solitude. Whitman speaks of the "joys of the free and lonesome heart," while Dickinson writes of the "lonesome Glee" that "sanctifies the mind."

The internet has done for Scientology. Could it rumble the Christians, too?

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:30:17 -0800

Marina Hyde | The Guardian

While Hubbard's cult gets ever more exposed, it's a shame other religions are not forced to justify their own doctrinal lunacies

Draw near, infidels, for these are dark days for the Knights of Hubbard. Do not despair entirely – the Church of Scientology remains insanely rich, has excellent and rapacious lawyers, and according to the International Scientology News, "every minute of every hour, someone reaches for L Ron Hubbard technology … simply because they know Tom Cruise is a Scientologist". So unless the world's supply of troubled fools is melting away quicker than the Arctic ice cap, they can probably hold off trying to lure disaffected Kabbalists into their cultish communion, after the fashion of Pope Benedict and the Anglicans. And yet, all things considered, it has not been the best of weeks for our operating thetans.

In France, Scientology was found guilty of defrauding its followers after a judge effectively debunked the idea of the church's trusty e-meter, a crude polygraph whose readings are used to encourage Scientologists to purchase everything from books to extreme sauna courses. In Los Angeles, the Oscar-winning (even if it was only for the abysmal Crash) director Paul Haggis cut his ties with Scientology in protest at what he branded their tolerance of homophobia, adding for good measure that the church's claim that they do not tell people to "disconnect" from unsupportive family members was untrue – his own wife had been ordered to do so. Meanwhile, Scientology's chief spokesman Tommy Davis stormed out of a television interview with Martin Bashir, after the latter pressed him on what we might delicately term "certain articles of faith". The alien stuff, basically.

What has caused these synchronous events? Naturally, one's initial assumption is that the everlasting battery which provides the force field which holds the intergalactic tyrant Xenu captive in an unspecified mountain here on Earth is not as everlasting as billed, or was perhaps commandeered when the battery went in some vast cosmic remote control. In humanoid households, of course, a TV remote is the appliance for which all other batteries must be yielded up – including those in the smoke alarm – and the same hierarchy holds true on a galactic scale.

American intervention in Honduras isn't as selfless as it seems

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:03:38 -0700

Trey Treviño | Oct 29 | smudailycampus.com

I was browsing through Google News when I came across an article about how the United States is sending three officials to Honduras to facilitate negotiations with the recently ousted president, Manuel Zelaya-who still has a significant portion of public support-and the new leader, Roberto Micheletti.

Apparently, tensions are reaching a fever pitch, and Honduras has been temporarily suspended from the Organization of American States until the crisis is under control.

The first thing that popped into my head when I read this story was: Why the hell are we wasting manpower on Honduras of all places?

Unlike the Middle East, Honduras has no oil, so why should our government actually care what's going on over there? A genuine desire to help impoverished nations, you say? To which I respond: There have been many impoverished nations and many countries which have suffered greater problems than Honduras (Rwanda, Uganda, Europe before Pearl Harbor). We didn't so much as lift a finger for them for the simple reason that they had absolutely nothing of value to offer us.

I'm not necessarily saying that we are an incredibly selfish and self-centered country. We are, however, certainly a pragmatic one. We, as a country, have established a long and cultured tradition of never rendering assistance unless it benefits us in some way.

There are countless dictators all over the world towards whom we turn a blind eye. Do we really care about making the world a better place? Well, what would the point of that be if there was no monetary gain? Perhaps we want other countries to like us? Nah; we have Israel on our side, so we're good.

So there I was, reading the news, wondering what the gain of intervention could possibly be, when I stumbled upon a little factoid: Honduras is the second largest producer of coffee in all of Central America.

Suddenly, it was clear: We did have something to gain, for until this "crisis" is resolved, we lose easy access to a ready supply of coffee, that special concoction that a majority of the population depends upon to function. And that's why we're sending help.

But coffee still isn't as important as oil, so we're only sending three officials, and not the entire god damn army.

Iraq & Afghanistan Update/ Oct 28

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:27 -0700

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

NYT - Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” said Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan.

_{** U.S. defense bill would pay Taliban to switch sides

** Karzai's Narco-Trafficking Brother Is On CIA's Payroll ~ Newshoggers

** UN staff killed in Kabul attack

** Obama meets with Joint Chiefs on Friday over Afghanistan

** Brit bullets too small to beat high on opium Taliban militants ~ anyone seen this report?

** United Against Afghanistan Escalation}

Iraq goes nuclear with plans for new reactor programme

Iraq has started lobbying for approval to again become a nuclear player, almost 19 years after British and American war planes destroyed Saddam Hussein's last two reactors, the Guardian has learned.

The Iraqi government has approached the French nuclear industry about rebuilding at least one of the reactors that was bombed at the start of the first Gulf war. The government has also contacted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and United Nations to seek ways around resolutions that ban Iraq's re-entry into the nuclear field.

_{** ‘Occupation’ captures inner battles of war

** USDA-funded project helping revitalize Iraq’s agriculture

** Baghdad provincial Council demands resign two top security officials

** Fate of oil-rich Kirkuk stalls Iraq election law}

Please check comments for updates and related articles, previous updates after the jump

Oct 27

U.S. official resigns over war in Afghanistan

Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting war, which he believes simply fueled insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter(PDF)(HTML) to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

_{** Karzai rebuffs calls for vote chief's sacking

** Afghanistan: Bilateral agreement gives microcredit to Afghans

** Afghan Army MIA

** Runoff splits Afghanistan in three}

Gulf Air starts flights to Northern Iraq

Gulf Air, the national carrier of Bahrain, has commenced services to Erbil in Northern Iraq, its third destination in the country.

The airline had earlier launched services to Baghdad and Najaf in September.

The airline will operate three flights per week to Erbil, which is the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq and one of the fastest growing commercial cities in Iraq.

_{** Extremist group claims responsibility for Baghdad bombs

** Washington worried by Iraqi electoral dispute

** Auditor Faults Work on U.S. Embassy in Iraq}

Oct 26

US: 14 Americans killed in 2 helicopter crashes

A U.S. statement says seven U.S. troopers and three U.S. civilians working for the government died when their helicopter went down early Monday in western Afghanistan. Twelve Americans and 14 Afghans were injured.(Taliban claims responsibility)

Also Monday, two U.S. helicopters collided in southern Afghanistan, killing four American troops and wounding two others.
140 killed, 700 wounded in Baghdad bombings

The death toll of Baghdad bombings which occurred on Sunday targeting the Ministry of Justice and Baghdad provincial council increased to 140 dead and more than 700 wounded most of them in critical conditions.

Oct 25

Double explosions in Baghdad kill four

Two powerful explosions rocked central Baghdad killing four people on Sunday, the interior ministry has said.

One of the blasts severely damaged the justice ministry while the second struck near the governor's office, an AFP correspondent said.

The first blast at 9.30 am (0630 GMT) caused massive damage to the justice ministry and minutes later the second blast struck the building housing the offices of the Baghdad governor. (136 dead - AP)

_{** The Kirkuk conundrum

** CSI, Iraq: Old treasures' new storyline

** Some troops in Iraq look longingly to Afghanistan}

Afghans oppose U.S. hit list of drug traffickers

A U.S. military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops.

The U.S. military and NATO officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of NATO's new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban. The list is thought to include people with close ties to the Afghan government and others who have served as intelligence assets for the CIA and the U.S. military, according to current and former U.S. and Afghan officials.

Afghan counternarcotics officials expressed frustration that U.S. and NATO military leaders have refused to divulge the names on the list, a decision that they said could undercut joint operations to hunt down opium traffickers.

_{** Protests: desecration of the Koran by foreign troops

** UN Election Body Head Admits Afghan Runoff Will Be Just As Fraud-Filled

** NATO approves US troop surge, but not one of their own?

** President Obama’s Lonely Walk to the Situation Room

** Afghan vote: Questions over how free, safe can be

** Did The Fat Lady Just Sing In Afghanistan?}

Karzai Agrees to Run-Off Election in Afghanistan

Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai conceded Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, and agreed to hold a runoff election with his top challenger on Nov. 7

Flanked at a news conference in Kabul by Senator John Kerry, the head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Kai Eide, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai said he would accept the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly one third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

** Afghan vote runner-up pushes for interim gov't
** Karzai to accept final vote result: spokesman
** US troop move may come without Afghan 'legitimacy': Gates
** U.S. counts on some insurgents in Afghanistan to switch sides
** Bomb kills four Fort Carson engineers in Afghanistan

NATO "a corpse" fumes former Canada military boss

The splits inside NATO over the Afghan war have turned the alliance into a rotting corpse that will be virtually impossible to revive, says the former head of Canada's armed forces.

General Rick Hillier also said the 28-member alliance was "dominated by jealousies and small, vicious political battles" and bemoaned its "lack of cohesion, clarity and professionalism" at the start of the Afghan mission.

Thousands of poor Iraqis queue for oil jobs

With a clutch of deals between Iraq and global oil majors in the pipeline, unemployed Iraqis hope to finally benefit from their country's oil wealth.

Thousands have been queuing this month to apply for 1,670 new jobs at Iraq's South Oil Company (SOC), which oversees most of Iraqi oil exports and is gearing up to work with some of the world's biggest oil firms.

Overnight lines, angry crowds and scuffles with police are a taster of what Britain's BP (BP.L), China's CNPC, Italy's ENI (ENI.MI) and others may face when they start work in Iraq, which has seen little foreign investment since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

As part of contracts to rehabilitate Iraq's crumbling oil sector, foreign oil majors must employ Iraqis wherever possible, and set aside $5 million for training.

** Iraqi Campus Is Under Gang’s Sway
** Unique program brings injured vets back to Iraq -- to heal

Don't shift poverty money to climate

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:06:05 -0700

Savio Carvalho | Oct 27 | Reuter blogs

In the early 1970s, rich countries committed to give 0.7 percent of their income in the form of aid to poor developing countries as Overseas Development Assistance. In the past decade a few countries have actually reached this target and others have plans to achieve it in the next few years. This money is used primarily for poverty reduction and long-term development goals in developing countries.

But climate change is now creating additional burdens on poor communities across the world. This means that poor communities need additional support to adapt and cope with climate-related changes, including increases in the frequency and severity of weather-related disasters and other slow changes such as sea-level rise, melting glaciers and shifting seasons.

The poor are least responsible for causing climate change but are most affected. Under the laws of natural justice, that suggests richer nations need to stem climate change, and help poorer nations cope with the damage done.

This week leaders from the European Union are debating if the money they will offer to help developing countries adapt to climate change should be part of the 0.7 percent they promised decades ago or additional funding. That this is even up for debate is deeply worrisome.

Damn Brits

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:35:30 -0700

always trying to one up us...