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Russia plants flag on North Pole seabed
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Russia symbolically staked its claim to billions of dollars worth of oil and gas reserves in the Arctic Ocean today when two mini submarines reached the seabed more than two and a half miles beneath the North Pole.
In a record-breaking dive, the two craft planted a one metre-high titanium Russian flag on the underwater Lomonosov ridge, which Moscow claims is directly connected to its continental shelf.
However, the dangerous mission prompted ridicule and scepticism among other contenders for the Arctic’s energy wealth, with Canada comparing it to a 15th century colonial land grab.
Luckiest guy in Minnesota
This guy in a wheelchair is the luckiest guy in Minnesota. Click the picture to see why:
Also available: security camera footage
Minstens 43 miljoen euro aan verkeerde aanbestedingen
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Ministeries hebben vorig jaar voor minstens 43,4 miljoen euro aan opdrachten aanbesteed die niet voldeden aan de Europese regels. Dat blijkt donderdag uit een inventarisatie van de Algemene Rekenkamer op verzoek van NRC Handelsblad.
Ik heb duidelijk de verkeerde vriendjes…
Conversation with Kip Hawley, TSA Administrator (Part 4)
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BS: What about Registered Traveler? When TSA first started talking about the program, the plan was to divide people into two categories: more trusted people who get less screening, and less trusted people who get more screening. This opened an enormous security hole; whenever you create an easy way and a hard way through security, you invite the bad guys to take the easier way. Since then, it’s transformed into a way for people to pay for better screening equipment and faster processing — a great idea with no security downsides. Given that, why bother with the background checks at all? What else is it besides a way for a potential terrorist to spend $60 and find out if the government is on to them?
KH: Registered Traveler (RT) is a promising program but suffers from unrealistic expectations. The idea — that you and I aren’t really risks and we should be screened less so that TSA can apply scarce resources on the more likely terrorist — makes sense and got branded as RT. The problem is that with two million people a day, how can we tell them apart in an effective way? We know terrorists use people who are not on watch lists and who don’t have criminal convictions, so we can’t use those criteria alone. Right now, I’ve said that RT is behind Secure Flight in priority and that TSA is open to working with private sector entities to facilitate RT, but we will not fund it, reduce overall security, or inconvenience regular travelers. As private companies deploy extra security above what TSA does, we can change the screening process accordingly. It has to be more than a front-of-the-line pass, and I think there are some innovations coming out in the year ahead that will better define what RT can become.
If RT is no longer based on background checks, all that remains is money. In other words, the approach is now based on tiered citizenship: “in” groups who are unaccountable, “out” groups who are denied the protection of the law. It is as wrong as wrong can be.
As U.S. Rebuilds, Iraq Won’t Act on Finished Work
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The United States often promotes the number of rebuilding projects, like power plants and hospitals, that have been completed in Iraq, citing them as signs of progress in a nation otherwise fraught with violence and political stalemate. But closer examination by the inspector general’s office, headed by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has found that a number of individual projects are crumbling, abandoned or otherwise inoperative only months after the United States declared that they had been successfully completed. The United States always intended to hand over projects to the Iraqi government when they were completed.
Although Mr. Bowen’s latest report is primarily a financial overview, he said in an interview that it raised serious questions on whether the problems his inspectors had found were much more widespread in the reconstruction program.
The process of transferring projects to Iraq “worked for a while,” Mr. Bowen said. But then the new government took over and installed its finance minister, Bayan Jabr, who has been a continuing center of controversy in his various government posts and is formally in charge of the transfers.
“After Mr. Jabr took over, that process ceased to function,” Mr. Bowen said.
In fact, in the first two quarters of 2007, Mr. Bowen said, his inspectors found significant problems in all but 2 of the 12 projects they examined after the United States declared those projects completed.
In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day.
Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like the refurbished turbines, the United States is “finding someone at the local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying, ‘Operate and maintain it,’ ” another official in the inspector general’s office said.
Fixer
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The next morning, I met a friend at a nearby teahouse. As I was enjoying a glass of black tea, my friend told me about all the foreign journalists pouring into town. Then someone called out, “Which one is Ayub?” It was a man in a brown coat. He drove me to a house where two American journalists needed an interpreter to do an interview. They worked for this magazine: Elizabeth Rubin, a writer, and Lynsey Addario, a photographer. They were sitting with a local Kurdish commander waiting for someone to help them talk to him.
When the interview was finished, they asked me to be their “fixer.” The word initially puzzled me. I was two years out of the Teachers’ Institute in Sulaimaniya, trained to instruct children in the English alphabet and vocabulary. I would have taught those children that a “fixer” is a person who repairs broken machines. But in a war zone, a fixer is a journalist’s interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional lifesaver. Every major media organization in Iraq would come to have its fixers. And fixers, it turned out, were well paid. I was offered $100 a day, about 25 times what I could make as a teacher.
I was 24, and suddenly I was the eyes and ears for some of the world’s top journalists. I would spend the next three years as a fixer and watch as my country learned a painful lesson: sometimes when you try to fix something, you break it even more.
When Gamers Have Babies: Level 1 Human
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Americans lose track of 190,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces
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The US government cannot account for 190,000 weapons issued to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to an investigation carried out by the Government Accountability Office. According to the July 31 report, the military “cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces.”
The weapons disappeared from records between June 2004 and September 2005, as the military struggled to re-build the disbanded Iraqi forces from scratch.
So, who’s funding the insurgency and giving them weapons?
Chickenhawk call-out
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A call to Congressman Turner and all his “chickenhawks” friends:
Although I retired from the Army in 1983 and will be 69 in 4 days, I am heeding President Bush’s call to join the surge and fight “evil” in Iraq. I have good skills. In Vietnam I fought in the middle of a civil war, was ambushed, had friends killed by IEDs and was on the receiving end of rocket and mortar attacks numerous times.
Because I am overage, and need a waiver to return to active duty, I will appeal directly to President Bush with this letter.
Dear Mr. President,
You have convinced me that if we fight terrorism in Iraq long enough we will win militarily. I know we are shorthanded because you are calling up an additional 12,000 National Guard troops this summer. So I am prepared to return to active duty immediately. Given my prior service and age, I have several requests I hope you will see fit to grant.
While I retired as a lieutenant colonel, I want to return as a sergeant so I can lead a squad in combat. I also want to stay not for a year, but until we achieve victory. I should live long enough. My Dad, a WWII vet, died at 88.
I want my squad to consist of personnel committed to the war. Your neoconservative co-conspirators, who supported the war with Iraq as early as 1992, will undoubtedly enthusiastically volunteer to join me. Pugnacious Bill Kristol, who called for attacking Iran to free the British sailors, will be my point man on patrol. Dick Cheney, a deadeye with a lifetime of hunting experience, will be my sniper. Doug Feith, who prepared the “intelligence” which got us into the war when he was head of the Office of Special Plans will, of course, be in charge of intelligence. John Bolton, a superb diplomat, will be responsible for liaison with the Iraqis and remaining members of the “Coalition of the Willing”. Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the Bush Doctrine which resulted in the Iraq invasion, will be in charge of mission operations to insure that financial support for our efforts is siphoned off to Halliburton. Scooter Libby, a fixer for Vice President Cheney, will maintain our equipment (if you pardon him so he can enlist). Entrepreneurial Richard Perle will be our quartermaster. I’m sure he will keep us well provisioned. And last, but not least, I want Fred Kagan, who, lacking military experience and knowledge of the Middle East, nonetheless devised the surge, our key to success in Iraq. He will be the machine gunner in the open turret of our lightly armored Humvee.
We don’t ask for special treatment, only that which you afford all soldiers and Marines. Pre-deployment training will be abbreviated. We won’t be trained in insurgent tactics until we arrive. Our equipment will come from the squad we replace. (I’d rather not use hand-me-downs in combat, but it is more important to fund Halliburton rather than using funds to procure equipment for the troops.) As Secretary Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the equipment you have.”
In Iraq, we’ll serve on convoy duty, to participate in the IED and ambush “experience” first hand. We will go on nightly raids where we knock down doors and take the men away. Doug Feith will interrogate them according to rules you and Alberto devised. Then we will be assigned to work in Sadr City with Iraqi police of unknown allegiance. Living with them should be quite interesting as we are exposed to death and dismemberment from rocket and mortar attacks, the occasional sniper, IEDs, and suicide bombers, not to mention the hostile Shiite populace.
We will undoubtedly suffer casualties, even men killed in action. I only ask that the dead be buried in Arlington Memorial Cemetery with full military honors, presided over by you, our Commander-in-Chief. I am sure our wounded will receive excellent treatment at the VA. Please hire additional VA administrative personnel, so we don’t have to wait for 18 months before receiving our benefits as at present. And please expand the definition of PTSD so we all qualify. It really doesn’t take too many IEDs, rocket attacks and views of the carnage when the bad guys blow up schools and markets for us to return home with serious issues which need to be resolved.
In conclusion, I am sure that sometime in the next 10 to 15 years you will be extremely proud when those of us who survive return home to report to you “Mission Accomplished.”
Very respectfully,
Fred Seamon
Lieutenant Colonel
U.S. Army, Retired
Dancing Ballmer subjected to Zune dance therapy
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If you’re sitting at your desk, staring out of the window and wishing you were running around in the sun, spare a thought for one Microsoft employee who will soon be doing just that. Permanently.
The japester appears to have used an internal Microsoft website to direct, well, just about anyone to this re-reinterpretation of Steve Ballmer’s infamous monkeyboy dance. Or is it a re-reinterpetation of Apple’s iPod advertising campaign? In these mashed-up days, it’s hard to tell.
As our informant says, “Who says Microsoft “ain’t down” with the web2.0 kids.”
Well, the Web 2.0 kids for a start probably.
Just for added August-ness, the same page throws up this:
Which should be a joke, but feels just a little too real for our comfort. ®
Vriendjespolitiek
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Ook minister André Rouvoet (Jeugd en Gezin) heeft bewust de regels voor aanbestedingen geschonden bij de organisatie van een evenement.
Hij huurde voor de Kindertop op 6 juni rechtstreeks het evenementenbureau Kuiters uit Sassenheim in, terwijl dit evenement openbaar had moeten worden aanbesteed.
De Kindertop vormde de afsluiting van Rouvoets tournee door het land. De Kindertop kostte inclusief btw 280.000 euro.
7 die when bridge collapses into Mississippi River in Minneapolis
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A busy highway bridge that spans the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour Wednesday, killing seven people, injuring more than 60, and sending dozens of cars, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water below
I know, you’ve already heard about it, so why post about it? Well, I want to get your attention to how fast you get amateur footage available online.
Take a look here, here, here, here, here, here andhere.
Reporters on local TV stations were calling for people to stop using their cell phones (the networks were horribly overloaded as everybody tried to call people known to cross this bridge) and to stop coming to the bridge just to take pictures.
What a world we live in….
no comparison to professional photo’s, of course…
Cartoons
