Category: News

This is an Open Thread: No speaking in tongues or Parseltongue either.

USA

Plan for Nuclear Storage Is Slow to Form

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 – The Energy Department has not finished plans to consolidate storage of nuclear bomb fuel and other high-risk materials now spread among numerous sites, even though the department said in 2005 that it would do so within about a year, according to a Government Accountability Office report to be released Monday.

As a result, the department is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defend additional sites.

The G.A.O. had reported that the Energy Department was putting off making security improvements at some of the storage sites because the sites were due to be phased out. But the new report makes clear that the goal of shutting down some obsolete weapons and research centers, and simplifying the security job by centralizing “special nuclear material,” as bomb fuel is called, has yet to advance from concept to plan, let alone to finished project.

The Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Pakistani police detain 500 activists
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Writer
12 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: Speaking is the only way.

USA

New Detainee Rights Weighed in Plans to Close Guantánamo

By WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: November 4, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 – Administration officials are considering granting Guantánamo detainees substantially greater rights as part of an effort to close the detention center and possibly move much of its population to the United States, according to officials involved in the discussions.

One proposal that is being widely discussed in the administration would overhaul the procedure for determining whether detainees are properly held by granting them legal representation at detention hearings and by giving federal judges, not military officers, the power to decide whether suspects should be held.

The Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Pakistan’s Musharraf imposes emergency rule
By Kamran Haider, Reuters
24 minutes ago

This an Open Thread: No wiretapping just talking

USA

At Army Base, Bush Boosts Iraq War

By Josh White and William Branigin

Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, November 3, 2007; Page A03

FORT JACKSON, S.C., Nov. 2 — President Bush, invoking the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as he has many times before, contended Friday that Iraq is the central front in the struggle against extremism, telling a supportive military crowd at this Army post that it is imperative to continue fighting the increasingly unpopular war.

Bush praised the 1,300 newly minted soldiers graduating from Basic Combat Training here for volunteering to defend the country, urging them to “stay on the offense” and “keep pressure on the enemy.”

If you can help the victims of the Mexican Flood please do so

This is an Open Thread: I can hear what your saying.

USA

Industries Paid for Top Regulators’ Travel

Two Heads of Product Safety Agency Accepted Trips From Manufacturer Groups

By Elizabeth Williamson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, November 2, 2007; Page A01

The chief of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and her predecessor have taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children’s furniture industries and others they regulate, according to internal records obtained by The Washington Post. Some of the trips were sponsored by lobbying groups and lawyers representing the makers of products linked to consumer hazards.

The records document nearly 30 trips since 2002 by the agency’s acting chairman, Nancy Nord, and the previous chairman, Hal Stratton, that were paid for in full or in part by trade associations or manufacturers of products ranging from space heaters to disinfectants. The airfares, hotels and meals totaled nearly $60,000, and the destinations included China, Spain, San Francisco, New Orleans and a golf resort on Hilton Head Island, S.C.

This is an Open Thread: Free Speech Lives

USA

From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . .

In Sometimes-Brusque ‘Snowflakes,’ He Shared Worldview, Shaped Policy

By Robin Wright

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, November 1, 2007; Page A01

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid “physical labor” and wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat,” “link Iraq to Iran” and develop “bumper sticker statements” to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.

The memos, often referred to as “snowflakes,” shed light on Rumsfeld’s brusque management style and on his efforts to address key challenges during his tenure as Pentagon chief. Spanning from 2002 to shortly after his resignation following the 2006 congressional elections, a sampling of his trademark missives obtained yesterday reveals a defense secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public opinion of the Iraq war.

The Morning News is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 US State Dept in furor over reported Blackwater immunity deal
by Sylvie Lanteaume, AFP
1 hour, 28 minutes ago

2 U.S. to tighten rules for Iraq contractors
By Andrew Gray and Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters
2 hours, 31 minutes ago

3 Immunity deals ‘routine’ for contractors
By LARA JAKES JORDAN and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writers
3 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: Chat Like You Mean It!

USA

Bigger Budget? No, Responds Safety Agency

By STEPHEN LABATON

Published: October 30, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 – The nation’s top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency, which polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.

On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency’s authority, double its budget and sharply increase its dwindling staff.

This is an Open Thread: Let’s meet the neighbors.

Throughout the history of nations diplomacy has played a large role in bringing stability to conflicts and political tensions between adversaries. Diplomacy is not sexy, it isn’t instantaneous, in fact it requires the ability to deal with the all the inherent problems that comes with two competing ideologies seeking to gain advantage yet in the end nether side achieves all of their original goals. Hence the reason why it’s called diplomacy or just a fancy way of saying let’s talk.

History is replete with those who saw diplomacy not as a means to end conflict or reach agreement with one’s political adversaries but as a hindrance to conflict. Just such a person occupies the White House.

George W. Bush has never believed in diplomacy you just have to look to North Korea as a prime example. The Agreed Framework wasn’t perfect but it provided a way for the international community to monitor North Korea’s nuclear programs. All that fell apart on January 20 2002 when President Bush during his State of the Union address placed North Korea in an Axis of Evil.  Doing so the Agreed Framework collapsed and North Korea walked away from the negotiating table and threw out the United Nations nuclear monitoring team. North Korea isn’t the only country George Bush has refused to deal with on a diplomatic level: Syria and Iran are the others. In doing this he removes any reasonable method or means for avoiding armed conflict.

While this administrations pronouncements concerning Iran and its nuclear program have never been subtle in their outright hostility towards it there has been a profound change in their rhetoric. President Bush recently made illusions towards the coming of World War III if Iran should develop the means to produce nuclear weapons. 

Is America under the leadership of President George W. Bush who has 15 months left in office on the edge of the abyss hurtling towards war with Iran because President  George W. Bush refuses to engage the Iranian government diplomatically over Americas concerns about Iran’s nuclear program?

George Bush can no longer afford to play the lone cowboy bent on protecting the world from evil. Its time for him to step-up and be a real world leader something that in these last six years he has failed to do.

This is an Open Thread: Don’t Be Shy.

USA

Father gains sense of son’s last moments in Iraq

By James Ricci

Los Angeles Times

Darrell Griffin Sr. has gotten down to work on his final collaboration with his son and namesake.

The book taking shape is a compendium. It will blend an account of a father’s melancholy journey to Iraq with the dire experiences and searching meditations of a son, the latter written down by Darrell Griffin Jr. before a Sadr City sniper’s bullet pierced the back of his head in March.

Darrell Jr. was a Fort Lewis-based Army infantry staff sergeant, 6 feet 2 inches of muscled warrior. Married, with no children, he had been an emergency medical technician in Compton, Calif., before finding his life’s work as a soldier.

This is an Open Thread: Speak To Me

USA

‘I Don’t Think This Place Is Worth Another Soldier’s Life’

Oct. 26 Their line of tan Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles creeps through another Baghdad afternoon. At this pace, an excruciating slowness, they strain to see everything, hoping the next manhole cover, the next rusted barrel, does not hide another bomb. A few bullets pass overhead, but they don’t worry much about those.

“I hate this road,” someone says over the radio.

They stop, look around. The streets of Sadiyah are deserted again. To the right, power lines slump down into the dirt. To the left, what was a soccer field is now a pasture of trash, combusting and smoking in the sun. Packs of skinny wild dogs trot past walls painted with slogans of sectarian hate.