cartoon life

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Apparently the Generals have restored ‘Peace’ to the country. Really, we need another word. To say it is ‘Peace’ stains the meaning.

Myanmar, Somalia top 2007 corruption index

Myanmar’s business elite thrive by serving the generals, while many in the country go without regular food and electricity, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, Shari Villarosa, told reporters earlier this year.

The far point of the Art of Selfishness.

The Swindle of the “Great Global Warming Swindle” film at Smashing Telly

The Great Global Warming Swindle, was a very popular rebuttal of the idea that Global Warming is caused by humans. … This film, which consists of a lecture presentation and commentary by Chris Merchant a lecturer in geophysics at Edinburgh University takes it apart, piece by piece.  

Creationism raised as Ont. election issue

John Tory Promotes Creationism

Rapid back-pedalling and “clarification”:
Creationism in science class would disqualify schools for funding: Conservatives

From Newsweek: Into Thin Air He’s still out there. The hunt for bin Laden.

The frustrations of the snake eaters are well illustrated by the recollections of Adam Rice, the operations sergeant of a Special Forces A-Team working out of a safe house near Kandahar in 2002. … In July 2002, a CIA case officer told Rice that a figure believed to be Mullah Omar, the one-eyed chief of the Taliban, had been tracked by aerial drone to a location in the Shahikot Valley, a short flight to the north. The Taliban chief and his entourage would be vulnerable to a helicopter assault, but the Americans had to move quickly. Rice was not optimistic about getting timely permission. Whenever he and his men moved within five kilometers of the safe house, he says, they had to file a request form known as a 5-W, spelling out the who, what, when, where and why of the mission. Permission from headquarters took hours, and if shooting might be involved, it was often denied. To go beyond five kilometers required a CONOP (for “concept of operations”) that was much more elaborate and required approval from two layers in the field, and finally the Joint Special Operations Task Force at Baghram air base near Kabul. To get into a fire fight, the permission of a three-star general was necessary. “That process could take days,” Rice recalled to NEWSWEEK. He often typed forms while sitting on a 55-gallon drum his men had cut in half to make a toilet seat. “We’d be typing in 130-degree heat while we’re crapping away with bacillary dysentery and sometimes the brass at Kandahar or Baghram would kick back and tell you the spelling was incorrect, that you weren’t using the tab to delimit the form correctly.”                           

From Rolling Stone: The Great Iraq Swindle

According to the most reliable estimates, [The US] have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America’s contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where’s the incentive to deliver success?                            

Where is the American guerilla of the Revolution? Overcome, by managers driven by profit as god, who keep themselves safe from blame and risk.

In this sense, I am a Libertarian; use your own money—don’t steal it from taxpayers then bury the theft in paperwork and legal language. Climb down from the White House and pick up the landmine in your own bare hands. Living the idealogy of capitalism isn’t the same as actually doing the work.

Clearly the bureaucracy of cover-your-butt is in the way of actually getting the work done, yes, but, so clearly, those who would practice profit and capitalism have buffered themselves from actually handling the landmines, from actually taking the risks so much, that this is not capitalism, this is not actually hands on work, but this is idealogy of capitalism—all the reward and none of the risk.

This is why America will lose this war.

In this sense, I am  a Capitalist; individuals have a right to profit from their own work—but don’t sit your life away as some middle management cog in the business machine and exclaim the virtues of risk and reward. Don’t mistake a salary for profit. It’s better to admit you’re a cog in the machine and not lie to yourself. A lifetime in a risk averse culture living the comfort of someone else’s profit is blindness, hypocrisy, not capitalism.

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Ankor Wat was once a sprawling suburb at BBC News. The citizens themselves were architects of the demise.

The large-scale city engineered its own downfall by disrupting its local environment by expanding continuously into the surrounding forests,” 

Hey! Planning committee?

This really isn’t news around London, unless you haven’t been paying attention, but there are elevated lead levels in the city’s drinking water, especially in the older parts of the city, where commonly, before the 1950’s when lead was banned, lead pipes were used to, at least, run water to houses from the main line.

Anyway, as an airport book, I picked up Flushed by Hodding Carter - a fan of plumbing - published in 2006.

 … The EPA has has something called the lead and copper rule that requires water utilities to monitor the amount of heavy metals in their customers’ homes. Aggressive water, as the utilities call it, can exacerbate the leaching of metals into households. Water that is acidic or has too much chlorine is aggressive and breaks down the metal. If you have lead solder in your pipes, as most older homes do, it can deliver that lead directly to your body. It also breaks down copper, ingesting too much of which can lead to kidney and liver damage. …                          

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From this story at CBC.ca News, an artist’s rendering of the creature.

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From 2 Canadian boys with same name land on no-fly list

“Two boys … one from Saskatchewan and one from Ontario, were stopped while trying to board flights last week because their name matches a name that appears on a no-fly list.”                                           

Aged 10 and 15 years old they share the same rather unfortunate name of Alistair Butt. If I were a terrorist, that is certainly one the low-profile innocuous names I would choose.

“Transport Canada won’t confirm if the boys are on [one of three lists] a United States no-fly list, an airline no-fly list or Canada’s new no-fly list, which … is “believed to contain fewer than 1,000 names…”                                        

“We regret any inconvenience, but security must remain of paramount concern,” the airline said in a statement.  

Security? How about stupid irrational foolish fear? How about “I am so stupidly single-minded and directive-driven that I can’t look at a ten year old boy and decide that he can’t possibly be the person we’re looking for!” Wouldn’t these no fly lists actually be helpful if they held information useful towards actually identifying the suspect? Like; Alistair Butt: Caucasian,  Male, middle-aged, approx 5 to 6 ft, tall, weighs slightly more than 100 lbs.

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