Is this to prepare us or scare us?

New York, NY (AHN) - The UN said Tuesday it will stage a mock nuclear accident Wedneday at Mexico's Laguna Verde nuclear power plant. The fake emergency is designed to test the responses of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN World Health Organization.

Now we are insulting the Italians

The Bush Administration has really quit trying, haven't they? They can't wait to scrape their shoes, slam the door and throw the keys to Obama. Let the next guy clean up the mess...

The White House has apologised to Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi for a briefing describing him as a political "amateur" who is "hated by many".

The "insulting" biography was included in a press kit distributed to reporters travelling with President George W Bush to a meeting of world leaders in Japan.

He was "one of the most controversial leaders" of a country "known for governmental corruption and vice".

Only last month, Mr Bush visited his old ally, calling him a "good friend".

The four-page description of Mr Berlusconi had been taken from the Encyclopedia of World Biography.

Carjacking just doesn't work when you don't have opposable fingers

It happened Sunday when a woman driving the Mercedes saw a goat and dog playing on U.S. 72 in northern Alabama, Sheriff Mike Blakely said.She stopped, afraid they would get hit, Blakely said. But the goat jumped on the car and wouldn't come down. Fearing scratches and dents in her import's paint job, she called the Limestone County Sheriff's Department. A deputy got the goat down and put it in his patrol car, but then the dog jumped into his back seat too.

It will be the usual excuses: They'd been drinking, it was all a misunderstanding, they'd lost their own car and needed a ride....

Who is prisoner 650?

The fact that we cannot know who has been locked up and abused in our name is horrific.

Pakistan political leader Imran Khan today pledged his full support behind a Cageprisoners' campaign to help a female detainee known only as The Grey Lady of Bagram.

Details of the woman, known only as Prisoner 650, are being kept secret by the US Military, but at a press conference yesterday Khan and several human rights activists demanded justice for her.

Leading the attack was Cageprisoners' patron Yvonne Ridley who first read an account of the woman in Moazzam Begg's gripping account of his own detention in his book Enemy Combatant.

"I remembered Moazzam telling me about the woman's scream and how he first imagined they could be from his wife. In truth I thought may be he had just been listening to a tape recorder as part of a form of mental torture.

"However, we now know the screams came from a woman who has been held in Bagram for some years. And without compromising anyone, we can also reveal from impeccable sources that her prison number is 650.

Horrific but totally predictable from the administration who brought us Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Prisons.

Update 7/10: A commenter mentioned a petition to help free Prisoner 650.

Update 8/17: Diane of Cab Drollery:

And I strongly suspect that Prisoner No. 650 is none other than Dr Aafia Siddiqui. It is quite possible that her captors decided to end her isolation after the Pakistani Press and activists like Yvonne Ridley began increasingly talking about the Prisoner No. 650 and how she was tortured and abused physically, mentally and sexually for the past four years.

Pure speculation by Yvonne Ridley and Aijaz Zaka Syed? Perhaps. Anti-American rhetoric by a disgruntled Arab? It's certainly possible. Ten years ago I would have dismissed this report out of hand. After all, surely no civilized government would behave in such a fashion, and, if it did, surely our free press would have gone through walls to uncover the behavior.

That was ten years ago. Now, I'm not so sure.

Let's go back to that NY Times article:

The lawyer, Elizabeth M. Fink, told the judge that the allegation that her client, who the lawyer said weighed 90 pounds, had picked up the rifle and attacked the Americans, was “patently absurd.” [Emphasis added]

The article also mentions the disappearance of Dr. Siddiqui in 2003 and the contention by her lawyers that she was held by the Americans. The article states only that US authorities denied the detention.

And, as far as I can tell, that's the last of the coverage of Dr. Siddiqui's case in the NY Times or any other news outlet. One would think that the unusual circumstances of a woman terrorist, trained in the US, alleged to have close ties with the very organization blamed for 9/11 would have launched an avalanche of stories, you know, like the avalanche of stories on Dr. Ivins, the presumed anthrax terrorist. Instead ... crickets.

One of the mines being laid for Obama

Is the idiotic Star Wars missile defense which has irritated Russia. Only the Czech Republic signed on:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has signed a deal to base part of Washington's controversial missile defence system in the Czech Republic.

The deal, signed in Prague, allows a tracking radar base to be set up.

The plans remain unpopular in the Czech Republic and the US has also failed to reach agreement with Poland on housing other parts of the system there.

A senior Russian official has been quoted as saying the deal "complicates" global security.

Moscow has previously threatened to aim its own missiles at any eventual base in Poland or the Czech Republic.

But wait! Condi says it's Iran that we should be afraid of!

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the shield is a good deal for the Czech Republic and for Poland, where the United States hopes to place another part of the system, although Warsaw hasn't yet agreed.

The next American president will have to decide whether and how to go forward with the missile defense system, Rice said, adding that the threat from Iran is growing and it is hard to imagine any administration giving up an effective deterrent.

Then ... it's not Russia that we're trying to contain? Then why aren't we setting up missile defenses in Iraq, Turkey and Armenia if it's Iran we're focusing on? Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan? India? Saudi Arabia? Why not Israel, which is about the only hostile country Iran can reach with its missiles.

But the Czech Republic? And ... Poland? The neocons sure do miss the Cold War days, don't they? Life was simple then, men were men and bad guys spoke in Russian accents.

The first months of motherhood

I remember as exhausting, hormonal, and stressful... but I remember the joy as well:

...[S]cientists at the Baylor College of Medicine say there’s more to the baby buzz than just a rush of happy feelings. Turns out that seeing your own child smile actually activates the pleasure receptors in the brain typically associated with food, sex — and drug addiction.

“It may be that seeing your own baby’s face is like a ‘natural high,’ said Lane Strathearn, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor and and Texas Children's Hospital who studied the brain reactions of 28-first time moms.

Nice, to include drug addiction into the process of loving something like this:

"The relationship between mothers and infants is critical for child development," said Strathearn. "For whatever reason, in some cases, that relationship doesn't develop normally. Neglect and abuse can result, with devastating effects on a child's development."

To study this relationship, Strathearn and his colleagues asked 28 first-time mothers with infants aged 5 to 10 months to watch photos of their own babies and other infants while they were in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The machine measures blood flow in the brain. In the scans, areas of increased blood flow "light up," giving researchers a clue as to where brain activity takes place.

In some of the photos, babies were smiling or happy. In others they were sad, and in some they had neutral expressions.

They found that when the mothers saw their own infants' faces, key areas of the brain associated with reward lit up during the scans.

Scientists are avoiding stating the obvious. For the sake of evolutionary survival, there had better be some rewards for losing sleep, sanity, and hair when you produce a small, smelly, irritating, noisy, insistent infant and need to take care of it 24/7. Love helps.

And for those who are unsure how to operate a baby:

Accepting global warming as a fact

Will affect the way energy and oil companies do business.



So Cheney had the scientific reports severely edited:

In fact, Vice President Cheney called for the deletions because he feared tough testimony by Gerberding might make it harder for the Bush administration to avoid regulating greenhouse gas emissions:

The White House, at the urging of Cheney’s office, “requested that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change,” wrote Burnett.

“CEQ [Council on Environmental Quality] contacted me to argue that I could best keep options open for the (EPA) administrator (on regulating carbon dioxide) if I would convince CDC to delete particular sections of their testimony,” Burnett said in the letter to Boxer.

Make your own fuel from your garbage!

Sounds efficient until you begin to think about how many incompetent neighbors would blow up their houses during the process...

Floyd Butterfield was ahead of today's need for alternative energy sources when he built a small Paso Robles plant that would produce fuel from alcohol — in 1981.

But not until recently, as gasoline prices started creeping up, has Butterfield’s contest-winning design for a small-scale ethanol production plant garnered worldwide attention.

Now he's designing and consulting for two innovative ethanol-based businesses. One includes production of four small-scale gas-from-trash plants in the Midwest, and another could bring ethanol production into your own backyard.

Trying to save the troops

One soldier at a time:

In 2007, at least 115 active-duty soldiers and National Guard and Reserve troops committed suicide, the highest rate since the Army began keeping records in 1980. IAVA estimates that between 30 percent and 40 percent of returning war veterans will face “serious mental health injury” — especially post-traumatic stress disorder — and that those numbers are exacerbated by long tours and frequent redeployments.

[snip]

"When these guys go [into battle], they learn to shut down their emotions,” said Campbell. “What helps you in Iraq is now hurting you at home.”

During a particularly rough patch earlier this year, Campbell said, the sergeant received a letter notifying him that his unit would be going back to Iraq.

“It was just too much,” said Campbell. “[The sergeant] sent a text message to someone at the armory, and they sent the police to go find him. They found him in a boat a couple days later. He had shot himself.”

[snip]

Campbell said that the transition from military to civilian life often hits Guard and Reserve troops particularly hard. He experienced it firsthand. After returning from Iraq, he said, it took a full year of his own reckless behavior and an ultimatum from his best friend before he admitted that he needed counseling for combat stress.

Even then, Campbell said he didn’t fully break down until days later, when a preview for an Iraq war film sent him over the edge. He said he spent hours in the theater, crying.

At IAVA, Campbell is helping to push for legislation that would provide returning soldiers with mandatory one-on-one screenings with mental health professionals within six months of returning from combat. He is also working toward increased access to mental health services in rural areas, a particular problem for some of the soldiers in his unit from remote parts of Louisiana.

Campbell wants Congress to lead the charge for a holistic approach to veterans’ mental health, including help for family members and targeted advertising campaigns to reduce the stigma that soldiers attach to counseling.

We need to listen to those who have been there. We need to honor their service and give those that need help the assistance they need. No one should stand by and let another generation of homeless and lost veterans wander the streets.

Once again we get to thank Canada

A Canadian court has ordered the country's refugee board to re-examine an American deserter's rejected attempt for asylum in Canada.

The court ruled that the board made mistakes when it turned down Joshua Key's claim for asylum.

Mr Key served in Iraq in 2003 before deserting to Canada with his family while on leave in the US.

The ruling could affect scores of other US soldiers sheltering in Canada who have refused to fight in Iraq.

About 200 of them. Thanks, Canada!