28 April, 2007

Odds and Ends

Minor observations that have caught my eye. Make of them what you will.

Students at Turner County High School (Ashburn, GA.) held an integrated prom for the first time in the school's history.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to the list of symbols it will inscribe on headstones in military cemeteries.

The Russians are bringing back the grandiose (and financially disasterous) plan to build a tunnel under the Bering Straight. Last time this was tried, Stalin used slave labor from the Gulag.

The International Theological Commission of the Roman Catholic Church has found that unbaptized babies may, after all, go to heaven. Limbo is in, shall we say, limbo.

The World Health Organization reports there are now between 300 million and 800 million malaria cases a year. Eighty percent of the victims are children, and "millions of whom could hae been saved over the years" if DDT hadn't been unfairly banned after Silent Spring. If there is a Limbo, perhaps Rachel Carson is there.

18 April, 2007

Darfur


ISN Security Watch - Darfur: The great sacrifice

Darfur: The great sacrifice

As the situation in Darfur deteriorates, with reports of the regime using military planes disguised as UN aircraft bombing villages, international, particularly US inaction removes the last chance for millions of innocent civilians.

The government of Sudan is said to be disguising military planes as UN and African Union (AU) aircraft in order to fly arms into its troubled Darfur region and to bomb villages, the New York Times News Service reports, citing an unpublished UN report.

The UN Security Council committee report is said to provide photos of one example of a white-washed Sudanese military plane with the UN logo stenciled on its side parked at an airport in Darfur, while rows of bombs wait to be loaded.

The Security Dilemma in Action