Eideard

When the president decided to send more troops to a distant country during an unpopular war, one powerful senator had enough. He warned that the U.S. military could not create stability in a country “where there is chaos … democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life.”

“It’s unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or idea while neglecting the needs of its own people,” said Sen. J. William Fulbright, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in 1966 as the Vietnam War escalated.

Fulbright’s warning is being applied by some to Afghanistan today. The U.S. is still fighting dubious wars abroad while ignoring needs at home, says Andrew J. Bacevich, who tells Fulbright’s story in his new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path To Permanent War.”

As the Afghanistan war enters its ninth year, Bacevich and other commentators are asking: When does it end?

They say the nation’s national security leaders have put the U.S. on an unsustainable path to perpetual war and that President Obama is doing little to stop them…

Bacevich has become a leading voice among anti-war critics. He is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army, a former West Point instructor and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

He’s also a Boston University international relations professor who offers a historical perspective with his criticism. He says Obama has been ensnared by the “Washington Rules,” a set of assumptions that have guided presidents since Harry Truman.

The rules say that the U.S. should act as a global policeman. “Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland or Detroit,” Bacevich writes.

His solution: The U.S. should stop deploying a “global occupation force” and focus on nation-building at home.

RTFA. He offers an understanding of history similar to what I grew up with. Especially my studies in military history with veterans of WW2. I was “lucky” – I got to follow it as it happened, not just read about it.

Detail, analysis, and that old American bugaboo – history for people who neither wish to study history or learn from history.

MUMBAI: The Central Bureau of Investigation has arrested eight finance executives, including the chief of LIC Housing Finance, accusing them of taking bribes to give big corporate loans and sending shockwaves through stock and property markets at a time when the government is buffeted by a series of high-profile scandals.

LIC Housing Finance chief executive Ramachandran Nair , Life Insurance Corporation secretary for investments Naresh K Chopta, Bank of India general manager RN Tayal, and Central Bank of India director Maninder Singh Johar were among those arrested in the nationwide swoop by investigators.

The agency also arrested Rajesh Sharma, chief executive of Money Matters Group, a specialist loan arranger that was the go-between for lenders and corporates and is at the centre of the scandal…

“Officers of top management and middle management of various public sector banks and financial institutions were receiving illegal gratifications from the private financial services company who were acting as mediators and facilitators for corporate loans and other facilities from financial institutions,” a CBI statement said. The arrests come at a time the government is on the defensive and is accused of condoning a culture of loot.

These are the biggest and most high-profile arrests since the Unit Trust of India corruption scandal a decade ago and the 1992 securities scam…

All the accused will be in CBI custody until Monday. They have been charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act and, if convicted, could be jailed for up to seven years and lose retirement privileges.

At this stage of the judicial proceedings you can’t predict the effect of these arrests being positive or negative.

Certainly, prosecution of corrupt bureaucrats is always welcome. You never catch up – do you? And peering from a distance, I think it unlikely that negative spin by analyst bears will be lasting. Not in an economy as hot as India.

A Travis County jury today found former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay guilty of political money laundering charges relating to a corporate money swap in the 2002 elections.

The verdict came down five years after DeLay was forced to step down as the second most powerful Republican in the U.S. House. The charges also led DeLay to resign from his Sugar Land congressional seat in 2006.

DeLay was accused of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. On the conspiracy charge, DeLay faces a sentence of two to 20 years in prison and five to 99 years or life in prison on the money laundering count…

At the center of the case against DeLay was an exchange of $190,000 in corporate donations to TRMPAC for an equal amount of money donated by individuals to the Republican National Committee. The RNC money was given to seven Texas candidates specified by TRMPAC.

Corporate money cannot be used in candidate campaigns in Texas.

Not that it’s a problem any longer in national elections – thanks to the Republican/Roberts Supreme Court.

Still, it’s nice to a little corruption recognized for the slime and crime that it is.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Concentrations of the main greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached their highest level since pre-industrial times, the World Meteorological Organization has said…

“The main long-lived greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have reached their highest recorded levels since the beginning of the industrial age, and this despite the recent economic slowdown,” WMO Deputy Secretary-General Jeremiah Lengoasa told a briefing.

The findings will be studied at a U.N. meeting in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29 to December 10 to discuss climate change.

Total radiative forcing of all long-lived greenhouse gases — the balance between radiation coming into the atmosphere and radiation going out — increased by 1.0 percent in 2009 and rose by 27.5 percent from 1990 to 2009, the WMO said.

The growth rates for carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide were smaller than in 2008, but this had only a marginal impact on the long-lasting concentrations…

Carbon dioxide is the single most important greenhouse gas caused by human activity, contributing 63.5 percent of total radiative forcing. Its concentration has increased by 38 percent since 1750, mainly because of emissions from burning fossil fuels, deforestation and changes in land use, the WMO said.

Natural emissions of methane due for example to the melting of the Arctic icecap or increased rainfall on wetlands — themselves caused by global warming — are becoming more significant, it said.

This could create a “feedback loop” in which global warming releases large quantities of methane into the atmosphere which then contribute to further global warming.

Yes, I know it seems to be too difficult a task for many to comprehend time beyond the next 2 quarters much less a few centuries. Geologic time fits only into the rationalization scheme of some ideologies.

Treating the “Age” of industrialization as comparable to prehistoric epochs only works for those whose skull shape matches their perception of the Earth’s geometry.

German home-owners who have chosen to opt out of Google’s Street View service appear to have become the unsuspecting victims of anti-privacy vandals.

Local media report that homes in Essen, west Germany have been pelted with eggs and had ‘Google’s cool’ notices pinned to their doors.

The properties involved have all chosen to be blurred on Google’s Street View service.

So far, this appears to be a one-time bit of anarchy – though most dipshit student anarchists defend their privacy with gusto – figuring it may protect their boring middle-class lives after school.

Street View is rolling out across Germany this month and is proving a hit with users, according to Google.

The German government took a hard line on the service, mandating that citizens be allowed to opt out, before pictures went live. Almost 250,000 Germans requested that Google blur pictures of their homes on the service.

The quiet neighborhood in Milton where the body was found

The teenager found dead on a Milton, Massachusetts, street last week is the 16-year-old who disappeared from his father’s house in North Carolina, authorities confirmed last night.

Police matched the fingerprint taken from the body, which was found Monday night, with samples taken from a personal item that belonged to Delvonte Tisdale, whose father reported him missing just hours before his body was found…No details were released about how Tisdale got to Boston or how he died…

The case has puzzled authorities since Monday night, when the body was found on Brierbrook Street, a secluded area of the town.

There was no identification on the body, except for what looked like a school lunch pass with what appeared to be Tisdale’s name on it.

Anthony Tisdale reported his son missing Monday at 5:48 p.m., according to a police report from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. The body in Milton was found at about 9:30 that night…The body had been found with broken bones and evidence of massive trauma, especially to the head. A preliminary autopsy did not specify a cause of death.

A 2nd opinion

Officials are looking into the possibility the teenager was hiding in the wheel well of an airplane bound for Boston when he fell to the ground…

Federal Aviation Administration officials said Tuesday jets headed for Boston’s Logan International Airport from the south drop their landing gear when they are over Milton.

And there was a flight from North Carolina the night the teen was reported missing, the Herald reported.

If this, in fact, was how this kid died, it’s a testament to the ignorance of urban legends. People believe this is a safe way to steal a free ride when 99% of the time it ends in death. Either you are crushed when the wheels come up after take-off or you freeze to death traveling at altitude in an unheated compartment – or you drop out of the sky when the wheels come down.

Larry Ellison
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

SAP AG must pay Oracle Corp $1.3 billion for software theft, a jury decided, awarding damages that could be the largest-ever for copyright infringement.

The decision, by a U.S. district court jury in Oakland California, drew a gasp from the courtroom and prompted hugs and handshakes among Oracle’s legal team, which has pursued their case for years…

While SAP could appeal, Oracle attorney David Boies said, that would raise the possibility of a retrial. “If I were SAP, and I’m not, but if I were SAP, I’m not sure I would want to have another trial,” Boies said.

At the outset of the trial, the German company acknowledged that its TomorrowNow subsidiary had wrongfully downloaded millions of Oracle’s files.

With the admission of liability, the issue before the jury was how much Oracle was owed in damages. SAP said no more $40 million, while Oracle at least $1.65 billion…

The U.S. government is also conducting a criminal investigation into the events surrounding TomorrowNow but has not disclosed details. SAP said it has been cooperating with Department of Justice investigators.

You have to wonder what would be the realistic chance of reducing the penalty for a crime you already admitted to?

The man accused of turning his North County rental home into a makeshift “bomb factory” initially denied to authorities last week that he had anything explosive in his backyard, according to a search warrant affidavit returned Tuesday morning at Vista Superior Court.

Authorities who were called to the home on Via Scott on Thursday said George Djura Jakubec, 54, “appeared evasive and nervous during his conversation” with an Escondido fire captain, despite the fact that a gardener had just been injured in an explosion there, the warrant said…

After continued questioning, investigators got Jakubec to admit to possessing additional explosives and bomb-making materials that were in the backyard and inside the house, the court documents said.

The nine to 12 pounds of chemicals — hexamethelyne triperoxide diamine, pentaerythritol tetranitrate and erythritol tetranitrate — turned out to represent the largest such find in a single location in the United States, prosecutors later said. Thirteen grenades wrapped with shrapnel and nine detonators also were found.

Bomb technicians were still determining Tuesday how to clear the home of the highly dangerous and volatile cache of chemicals, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Jan Caldwell. The house remained sealed off, and the residents of two neighboring houses have not been allowed to return home.

Jakubec remains jailed in Vista on $5 million bail. He has been charged with 26 counts of manufacturing or possessing explosives. He also was charged with robbing two banks in San Diego this year…

The gardener who was injured, Mario Garcia, was recovering from his injuries at home and said Tuesday he gives thanks every day that he survived the blast. He and his wife are staying with their daughters in Fallbrook after losing their home to foreclosure a few months ago.

RTFA. One of those cautionary tales that suggests you treat your neighbors with due respect – but, keep an eye on what they bury in the backyard.

How did the mugger botch the robbery of a Staten Island pizza man? He grabbed the wrong bag of dough, of course…

Salvatore LaRosa and an unidentified accomplice allegedly followed the owners of Brother’s Pizzeria home on June 30, 2008. They put on masks and confronted the victims at gunpoint in their driveway, according to a complaint unsealed Monday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The assailants demanded one of the shopkeepers hand over a bag – thinking it contained the day’s proceeds, officials said. “The bag that was stolen contained pizza dough,” Drug Enforcement Administration agent Kristie Osswald stated in the complaint.

Even though it wasn’t cash, the robbery victim resisted and was shot twice in the legs.

This creep managed a get-out-of-jail card by fronting a $1 million bail order from the Federal Court. Poisonally, I think they should lock him up and throw away the key. He shot the poor bugger he robbed.

Aside from being stupid, he’s still a danger to society.

A Catholic priest charged with sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 2008 in the rural parish where he worked west of San Antonio was rearrested last week in Dallas and charged with trying to hire someone to kill his accuser.

Father John M. Fiala, 52, was in Dallas County Jail on one count of solicitation to commit murder and two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child, officials said. A judge set bail at $700,000.

The sexual assault charges were part of indictments handed up last week in Howard County, which brought to six the number of such charges Fiala faces that involve the boy, who was 16 at the time of the alleged offenses.

The Texas Rangers and Department of Public Safety troopers arrested Fiala on Thursday after he negotiated a murder arrangement with an undercover officer at his residence in Garland, DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said. Fiala sought to have his accuser in the sexual assault cases killed, Vinger said in an e-mailed statement…

“I have to honestly say that I didn’t expect this development,” Sheriff Don Letsinger added. “I really was kind of surprised that he would stick his neck out this far and talk to people he didn’t even know about having someone murdered…”

In September, the priest was indicted on three counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and one count of aggravated sexual assault by threat in Edwards County, where Fiala is accused of raping the teen at gunpoint, according to the charges and the lawsuit.

Nice guy. Not much need to address the phenomenon of pedophile priests once again. A sickness representative of what can result from a lifetime of dedication to an unnatural lifestyle.