Storms bring need for change to our shores

Only five weeks into the 2005-06 Hurricane Season, two tropical depressions have already taken aim at America. After last year’s devastating hurricanes, it’s hard not to notice that something is amiss. This “something” is most likely tied to the often-quoted global warming.

Apparently even President George W. Bush is buckling under the pressure as he recently acknowledged that humans did cause global warming “to some extent.”

The same conclusion was drawn by a report commissioned by the White House. That is, before White House officials edited it to reflect Bush’s point of view: global warming doesn’t even exist.

Bush also undermined what could have been a step in the right direction and went on to say, “The Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I can be blunt.” Thus, Bush preemptively dismissed an agreement to lower greenhouse gas emissions that was hoped to be discussed at the G8 summit this week. The agreement had been tabled to give the president another chance to opt in, yet save face for having snubbed the Kyoto agreement earlier.

The statement that environmental measures always conflict with economic interests is absurd. Done right it has no detrimental effect, as the industrial countries, which already ratified the Kyoto agreement, successfully proved over past years.

The statement is so absurd that even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger went on the record against it. He wrote in an editorial published last Sunday in Britain’s Independent, “governments everywhere” must combat global warming. Schwarzenegger not only contradicted Bush’s statement, he also said that ignoring climate change would in the long run be more damaging to the economy than any measures would.
Read entire entry

Doctor Who

If you have ANY way to watch the new series of Doctor Who that is currently airing Saturdays on BBC, watch it. It’s excellent. (Cough. Bittorrent. Cough.)

The first episode is rubbish, but the last two (three aired so far) have been some of the best written episodes on TV I have seen in a while.

Pope gets feeding tube

Not sure if there is a god or not, but if there is she sure has a twisted sense of humor.

Syria hands over Saddam’ s half-brother

Is Syria trying to play nice now? (emphasis added)

The Iraqi government said today that it had imprisoned a half-brother of Saddam Hussein, a suspected major financier of the insurgency and for several years the head of the country’s domestic intelligence and security service, once the most feared agency in Iraq.

The half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, is No. 36 on the list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis that the American government compiled after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. He is believed by Iraqi officials and American commanders to have funneled large amounts of money from Syria, where he sought refuge after invasion, to guerrilla cells here in Iraq. He was apparently captured in Syria with the help of the Syrian government over the weekend.
The New York Times

Iran vows to back Syria against U.S.

And so it begins:

Iran has vowed to back Syria against “challenges and threats” as both countries face strong US pressure.

“We are ready to help Syria on all grounds to confront threats,” Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref said after meeting Syrian PM Naji al-Otari. BBC

This development comes a day after the U.S. recalled their Ambassador to Syria and all but accused Syria for the bombing in Lebanon that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

This is bound to come up in next week’s Conference on Security Policy in Munich, Germany. Bush is scheduled to attend, how many more “freedom” and “liberty” riddled speeches will it take before Iran and Syria are taken out?

Page design!

Thanks to Jaime for giving me my old page design back!

Hero of the week

You just can’t make this stuff up:

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it. link (via Brad)

Terror alerts and intelligence gathering remain faulty

The city of Boston was placed on high alert, based on intelligence that suggested terrorists were planning a nuclear attack for last weekend. The warning also caused hysteria in other cities, where residents feared that the attack might also happen in their own back yard. Tuesday the FBI admitted the whole incident had been a ?hoax.? In order to ensure such threat warnings will be taken seriously in the future, it is vital that warnings have a basis in fact. But to ensure this, intelligence gathering systems will likely need considerable upgrades.

The FBI acted quickly, shutting down a Web site Wednesday that had allowed tipsters to anonymously submit ?threats.? Yet recent news about the computer system used by the FBI to manage the data collected is hardly re-assuring.

During the 9/11 Commission hearings it became public that the FBI system (called Carnivore) was not capable of the most rudimentary cross searches. It did not allow for two words to be entered simultaneously to cross-reference different files. This became a painfully evident flaw in the system when it was also revealed that an FBI field agent in Phoenix had filed a report that contained information about young men of Arabic descent attempting to gain admittance to flight schools.

It is not certain if the Sept. 11 attacks would have been prevented had the FBI possessed better equipment, but it is safe to say that not having such abilities did make any chance to foil the plot in its infancy considerably more difficult.
Read entire entry

Klingons for Kerry

There is a certain Portland group backing Kerry which say Bush is without honor. And they know a thing or two about honor. Klingons for Kerry.

“A good war is based on honor, not deception,” says K’tok (Earth name: Clyde Lewis), a 40-year-old Klingon from Lair Hill. “The first warrior, President Bush, deceived us all with this war.” link

Maybe they can not only help Kerry win but could help recapture Fallujah? Just a thought. (side note: OS X’s spellchecker tells me “Klingons” is not a word and wants me to use “Clintons” instead. There. Bill’s honor restored. Who knew it would be that easy?)

Allegations of racism against Eminem sensationalistic

The magazine The Source claims that surfaced old recordings of Eminem prove that he has a racist agenda.
Editorial
Read entire entry