It’s time we faced the truth. The evidence is irrefutable.
Michael Hiteshew
Street Painting
Very cool. Master street painter Kurt Wenner. Images are clickable.
Nuclear Power Resurgent
I’ve long been a fan of nuclear power. I know that’s unfashionable to say. It implies that I either don’t care about the future of the human race or don’t care about the environment. But that’s wrong. I do care and I’m open to debate on the issues, especially if you can show me the science. I’ve been an environmentalist almost my entire life. I’ve supported various environmental groups over the years and am currently a member of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. I support the National Park system, nature refuges, clean water regulation, clean air regulation, all those things. I don’t think it’s necessary or justified to trash the earth – our home – in order to build a functioning society. Just the opposite. I believe a clean environment and a healthy ecosystem means a higher quality of life for everyone.
China & India: The Emerging Powers
James Hoge, editor of Foreign Affairs, in his article A Global Power Shift in the Making, claims a global power realignment is currently underway; from the West to the East. China, with 1/4 of the worlds population within its borders and a fast growing, increasingly decentralized market economy, has the potential to become the worlds largest economic and military power in the coming century. India, with a population exceeding a billion people and an economy growing at sustained rates of 6-8% per year, could outstrip both the US and China, should it maintain that growth for a number of decades. (In related and rather unsettling news, the US and India recently completed another series of ‘Cope India’ war games, wherein the pilots of the Indian Air Force cleaned the proverbial clocks of their USAF counterparts. That raised eyebrows in astonishment all over the world. The Russians loved it.)
This transistion of power centers will not be without difficulties, Hoge says. History, he points out, is replete with examples of large scale wars that result from the inability of nation states to fully grasp, much less manage and cope with these power transistions. War, from Taiwan to North Korea to Kashmir to the Indian-Chinese border, could more than simply derail the process, it might plunge the world into catastrophic warfare.
The Fall of the House of Saud?
Back on June 1st, the New York Daily News published an article where they claimed that Saudi security forces allowed Al Queda operatives to escape from the Oasis housing complex before they staged a ‘rescue’ for the cameras.
There also were new questions about how the four terrorists, if they were acting alone, could have pulled off the spectacular 25-hour killing spree. The attackers first struck an oil office and killed nine people, then dragged a British oilman’s body through the streets. Somehow, the same four still managed to gather dozens of hostages in the elite Oasis housing complex, where they killed several more before fleeing.