Paradise Lost… Well Almost Lost

HOW DO YOU go about saving your entire nation from sinking into the sea? Read more

Don’t Go Near The Shores In British Columbia!

BE WARNED, this is a bit gruesome, but apparently true. A number of severed feet have been washing up on the shores of western Canada in the past year. The fifth such severed foot just washed up this week. What the hell is going on over there? Read more

Bush: One Percent Away From Breaking Lowest Approval Rating Record

WITH ALL the fuss over the presidential race and the democratic nominations occupying most of the print and media space these days I’m not a completely surprised that the release of a long-delayed Senate committee report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans might be overlooked. Read more

Mobile Phone Users Secretly Tracked Outside Of USA

BEFORE you get all agitated, I’m not claiming that the USA is now tracking all mobile phones outside their borders – although I’m sure some genius is working on a program to do something similar in the seemingly endless war on terror. I’m actually referring to a recent study which is raising big questions about data protection, privacy and ethics. Read more

Falling Longer, Further & Faster Than Anyone In History

IT’S AMAZING WHAT AN OBSESSIVE person can accomplish sometimes, and certainly obsession is what has driven french parachutist Michel Fournier to the point where he intends to break a hell of a lot of records.

Picture this for a challenge…This guy intends to climb into a pressurized gondola of a 650-foot balloon, which resembles a giant jellyfish, and make a two-hour journey to 131,000 feet. Then, almost 25 miles up, Fournier will see both the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth.

Oh and another thing… he will also experience weightlessness. Not content with all of this he will then step out of the capsule / gondola and drop like a stone back down to earth for approximately 15 minutes equiped with only a spacesuit and a parachute.

In doing so, he will – if successful – fall longer, further and faster than anyone in history and may even break the sound barrier in the process. Fournier calls this project “Le Grand Saut” (The Great Leap) and has been working towards this for over 20 years. Read more

97% Of US Death Toll In Iraq Happened Since “Victory” Declared

THE PAPERS and online news sites are full of stories today relating to the mounting death toll in Iraq, specifically the US troops death toll, because the official figure has reached 4000 dead apparently; the latest to die were four soldiers whose patrol vehicle was blown up by a bomb in southern Baghdad on Sunday last weekend.

Most of the commentators and journalists are drawing comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam at this point, and reaching conclusions such as the US cannot successfully fight more than 2 “small wars” at once with any chance of emerging victorious.

I’ve written previously about the mounting civillian casualties and deaths in Iraq which just continues to spiral out of control and out of sight for most people. Back in October 2006 I posted an article citing the estimated civilian casualties at over 650,000, and things have only gone from bad to worse since then. Multiple sources seem to agree that this estimate is reasonably accurate and yet it still continues to be largely ignored.

What struck me as odd today however – because I suffer from the same infomation overload and statistic fatigue that everyone else does when talking about Iraq – is that of those 4000 US dead 97% of them happened after Bush declared victory in the “battle for Iraq” back on May 1st 2003 when he said that “major combat” was over.

Anyone else think this is just a teensy weensy bit of a PR problem for the outgoing el presidente and the republican party in general?

To quote from his speech directly:-

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the “beginning of the end of America.” By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation’s resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

That was then and this is now. Fast forward to 2008 and el presidente is still making victory speeches about the “successes in Iraq” on the five year anniversary of the illegal invasion war conflict in Iraq.

I’m sure the families of the dead 4000 US soldiers, the families of the 650,000 dead Iraqi civiliians and probably the relatives of US troops still on the ground over there in Iraq are really looking forward to his next victory speech…. oh wait, that’s right, he’s out of office at the end of the year isn’t he?

I guess it will be someone else from the Whitehouse making the regular victory speech in a year or so and all we will have to do is update the death toll figures again in response.

IRAQ, By The Numbers…