We want to work on nuclear bombs just a little Iran is threatening to discontinue negotiations with what has been dubbed the EU3 if the Europeans don't accept the compromise Iran has put forward. What "compromise" is Iran offering?
according to diplomats, Tehran wants to run a small plant for enriching uranium and keep the door open to fitting it with tens of thousands of centrifuges to produce enriched-uranium fuel on an industrial scale.
Um, How do you have a small plant with tens of thousands of centrifuges? What are they nano-centrifuges? And what does it mean to enrich uranium on an "industrial scale"? Nothing good.
For its part, Russia is at least trying to appear to care about something more than the economic deal it has with Iran to supply nuclear technology.
Moscow was pressing Tehran to "develop a feeling of trust" with the rest of the world concerning its nuclear ambitions and that the Islamic state planned to follow suit.
Follow suit by just keeping a tiny, teensy-weensy nuclear reactor (you'll hardly notice it's even there) to produce enriched-uranium on an industrial scale (with tens of thousands of centrifuges).
The EU3 are struggling with the new "compromise".
According to The Financial Times, Britain, France and Germany will be struggling the coming days to find a way to keep the talks going, without compromising on uranium enrichment.
The paper cited Western diplomats as saying that concessions to Tehran would undermine the U.S. support for the negotiations.
What negotiations? There's no negotiating going on here. Iran wants to make nuclear weapons and the EU3 (and the US) don't want them to for reasons that are abundantly obvious. Let's just cut to the chase, shall we, and get the sanctions going.
On the border Certainly one of the biggest failures of the Bush Administration has been, and continues to be, border security. So much so that a group calling themselves the Minuteman Project have been taking up positions on the Mexican border to attempt to discourage illegal immigration.
Since April 1, the MMP has placed hundreds of volunteers from all over the country along a 20-mile stretch of the desolate Arizona-Mexico border plagued by thousands of illicit crossings. The volunteers' assignment: to observe the entry of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and to report it to the U.S. Border Patrol.
Now, Governor Schwarzenegger is talking tough about sealing California's porus border.
“Close the borders in California and all across Mexico and in the United States,” Schwarzenegger said Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Newspaper Association of America. “Because I think it is just unfair to have all those people coming across, have the borders open the way it is, and have this kind of lax situation.”
Arnold has a great incentive to close California to illegal immigration since by California law, the state must provide education and health benefits to illegal immigrants. All of which costs large amounts of money to the financially strapped state. Since there seems to be no political will among Californians to change this, the next best thing is to keep them from getting to the state in the first place.
But he is not a recent convert
During the recall election, Schwarzenegger was repeatedly asked to explain why he had voted for Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot measure to deny many basic services to illegal immigrants. And shortly after entering office, he derailed a law passed and signed by former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis that would have allowed illegal immigrants to apply for drivers licenses.
In February, Schwarzenegger endorsed Congressional legislation authorizing the construction of a fence along California’s border with Mexico. The proposal has sparked opposition from the state’s Coastal Commission, as well as many environmentalists and Democrats.
Perhaps he'll benefit from the Minuteman Project too
OTB Alternate History is not restricted to the realm of genre fiction. Though to serious practitioners like the esteemed Steven Barnes, re-enacting an alternate history might consist of different plot elements than was recently found in Columbus, Georgia.
When the "Out of the Boxers", unconventional thinkers who believe "there are no stupid ideas," proposed to incorporate an alternate history scenario into a Civil War re-enactment of the Battle of Columbus that included Trekkers, the stage was set for a cultural disaster.
First the Confederates said they wouldn't associate with "Trekkies," and the Star Trek fans said they preferred "Trekkers." The Confederates all laughed, and "that right there got things off on the wrong foot," Lessjo says.
Uh oh.
"One of the Trekkers said Starfleet's prime directive wouldn't let the crew introduce superior technology to a primitive culture," Lessjo says. "Then a rebel yelled, 'Don't call us primitive, geek!' And the Trekker said Starfleet wouldn't defend a society based on slavery, either."
That riled the Confederates, provoking one to shout: "Y'all just go fight for the Yankees then! You're all living in a fantasy world anyway!"
"Yeah, like you're not!" a Trekker retorted
And this point, things got real ugly
Both sides abruptly drew their weapons, and Lessjo ducked under a table as the firing commenced, he says. He did not crawl back out until the smoke cleared, and by then the Trekkers had withdrawn from the field
Unfortunately, this then became an object lesson in Action Philosophy; don't bring a flashlight to a gunfight.
"It turns out replica Civil War guns use real gunpowder, whereas 'Star Trek' phasers have only a battery-powered bulb that lights up," says Lessjo. "You don't go up against a guy with a firearm if all you've got is a flashlight.
I think it would be best if the "Out of the Boxers" rethought the "there are no stupid ideas" thing.
