Binghamton, NY -- North Korea's Exports
With everyone focused on Iran for the time being, it's easy to overlook the impending problem with North Korea.
Recently, the North Koreans cut off the six-party talks because they are upset that the US is trying to curb the other illicit activities that have been paying for North Korea's nuclear programme.North Korea creates the best fake $100 bills in the world. Recently, large stashes of the fake bills, called "supernotes," have been uncovered in the hands of mafia kingpins, terror cells, and even the Provisional IRA. A former member of the US State Department has called this counterfeiting, an act of economic warfare.
In addition to the counterfeiting of US currency, North Korea also produces fake drugs and cigarettes, takes part in massive money laundering activities, trades in endangered species, and of course, sells weapon systems on the black market to terrorist organizations. All in all, the illicit sector in North Korea comprises upwards of $1 billion per year (or 35-40% of total exports).
Binghamton, NY -- Sorry for the delay
I've been really busy lately, but I wanted to get out a post or two today to make up for it.
Since the budget is so lopsided (
The Economist calls it a budget of "guns and tax cuts" in reference to the more traditional "guns and butter"), I wanted to see what exactly we were increasing in the military budget. Bush has claimed that the costs of the Iraqi War will be going down dramatically every year.
As I stated previously, the $50 billion he has allocated towards the war for 2007 is not included in the $439.4 billion ($524 billion including both wars) military budget.
So what is included?
- 6 Navy DDX Destroyers: total cost of $15 billion
- FCS: future combat system; to link manned and unmanned units: $150 billion
- F/A-22 fighter jet development: $61.3 billion
Will these weapons even be affective against our "new enemies?" Probably not. In today's wars we're fighting street battles with militias, irregulars, partisans, etc. So unless we're going to use the DDX to fire water-to-land missles against cities, what's the point? What we need is better trained and better armored soldiers. Which leads me to my next list, what's missing? Rummy has outlined about $15 billion in cuts from the previous military budget (ostensibly to fund his new pet ship project):
- Air Force to shed 40,000 personnel
- Navy to shed 35,000 personnel
- Army to lose a temporary increase of 30,000 troops
I guess they expect those 105,000 people to just go to college. Too bad tuition assistence programs have been cut/eliminated.
Albany, NY -- Bush's Last Day
It's coming four years too late, but President Bush's last day in office is January 20th, 2009. A website,
Bush's Last Day.com has been established in anticipation of that day. The people organizating the site appear to be staunch defenders of the environment (thanks, Dan):
In the past four years, the decisions George W. Bush has made have had a damaging effect on our environment. He has made it clear that the success of big corporations is his top priority, not clean water and air.
Why do I want Bush out of office so badly myself(thanks, Paul)? Their poor management skills, of course!
Albany, NY -- The Kumatrix Revolution
A group named
Kumah, founded by my old friend and former Albany native Ezra Levine (now HaLevi) has put together a creepy, but well-done video encouraging Jews to move to Israel. Feels cultish to me, but kind of fun to watch, and it's spreading all over the Jewish Web.
Click here to watch it.
Meanwhile, another crazy Israeli winger and former settler leader David Epstein (also now HaLevi) has decided to leave his movement in a fairly public way,
on the discussion boards of Arutz 7:
After wasting so much time and energy to try and better a state that I thought was "reishit smichat geulatenu" I know understand that good and evil can not mix, that this State is truly evil (this is hardly teh first example, just one of the more shocking). Though I will continue to identify as a member of the Jewish People, I can no longer side with the "Israelis".This is an evil state,and an evil society, and I will not volunteer to continue to be a part of it.Goodbye Israel. U broke my heart.He's leaving because Israel pulled out of Gaza and has been closing settlements in the West Bank. Amazing. One certainly has to be living in another world to feel that way.
Albany, NY -- Gathering for Tasini
I attended a volunteer meeting for Jonathan Tasini's campaign last night at an apartment in Manahattan. 17 people showed up to the meeting (along with several connecting remotely), which was ably led by Jonathan's Volunteer Coordinator, Lea Kiefer.
The volunteers were enthusiastically behind Jonathan's campaign. The common thread in the room, of course, was antiwar sentiment. Every person plans to offer his or her individual talents to the campaign. I'll be doing what I can in upstate NY, and will also be giving what I can in the way of blogging any web expertise.
If anybody wants to help, please
get in touch with me.
Volunteer Coordinator Lia Kiefer leading the meeting
Croton-Harmon, NY -- Gettin' My Check From the Trash Treasury
For anyone who's interested in Elliott Smith bootlegs, go visit
Trash Treasury.
I know I'll be there... there's a ton of concerts and unreleased stuff.
Albany, NY -- AIM Triton Sucks, Continued
I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who's gotten suckered into AIM Triton, so if you'd like to go back to an older version, you can find
AIM version 5.9.3861 at Versiontracker.
Albany, NY -- AIM Triton Sucks
After about a month with
AIM Triton, I decided to give up on it. Tabbed messaging does little for me; the program had some weird entry bugs, and it didn't allow one-time use away messages. I've downloaded an older version, and I hope that AOL understands that it has a dog on its hands in Triton and releases something better soon.
I'm off to NYC tomorrow for work and for the Jonathan Tasini volunteer event. If you're interested in going,
e-mail me.
Binghamton, NY -- Expectmore.gov
So I was planning on making a post about the state of the economy -- fourth quarter growth has slowed to just 1.1% (while worldwide GDP growth continues to rise) -- but Jason and I both thought that more needs to be said regarding Bush's newest website.
Expectmore.gov is essentially a favoritism list. Nearly all the programs that have performed below expectations are on the Republicans hit list. On the other hand, anything the Bush Administration is currently pushing for is, of course, performing above expectations. Basically they set up unreasonable expectations for those education, health care, and social programs in order to set them up to fail. Meanwhile, military programs all seem to be doing pretty well these days -- gee who would have guessed that? Steps like these make it all that much easier to get budgets passed in favor of their choice programs.
Several years ago, the same exact thing was done with the "No Child Left Behind" initiative. Unreasonably high expectations were set for the initiative with funding for it well below the levels where it should have been. Then when the program inevitably failed to reach its expectations it wound up getting cut. Why do it? It was an easy way for the Bushies to show that public schools are not getting it done. Therefore, America
needs to adopt a school voucher program...
One program that was doomed to fail from the start was Karen Hughes' Islamic outreach program. So does that mean Karen Hughes should be fired when her program gets canned? Chances are she helped it fail...
