Telling it like it is

It's higher off the deck than I wanted but I don't have a lot of options because of the clearance around the kitchen porch. It does give nice shade up until about 18:00 when the sun is too low and too far to the west.

Not content with the middle-eastern mess he's created, it looks like Bush is going to get his nuclear war with Iran before he gets to the end of his term although he's likely relying on Israel to pull the trigger. The US has been quietly suggesting to Israel that they provoke Iran into attacking them. The Israeli Air Force exercise over Iran a few days ago resulted in Iran test-firing missiles yesterday and today. The Bush regime have said they'll "defend our allies" if they're attacked by Iran. It's assumed that Israel have their own nukes, either self-made or provided by the US so if attacked by Iran, Israel will undoubtedly retaliate with those. Bush will then see that as justification to go in all guns blazing. But Bush and the Iranians are locked in a diplomatic game of "Who's crazier?". With six months left in office, no political capital at home or abroad, the lowest approval rating since Nixon, a country he's brought to it's ...

I learned something tonight watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations travel show. During the Vietnam war, Laos was caught in the middle between the US and Vietnam. The CIA, without any support or knowledge of the American people, created a secret war in Laos by recruiting the hill tribe people in the east to fight the Communist North Vietnamese troops in Laos. When it was all over, the U.S had turned a tiny Laos into a second moon face of the earth. The U.S. bombing of Laos was unprecedented. The U.S. Air Force carried out 580,000 missions against the country. That breaks down to about one planeload of bombs dropped every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. According to the experts, the U.S. dropped over 2 million tonnes of bombs in Laos, more than all of the bombs dropped by all warring countries during World War II. U.S. pilots were "encouraged" to dump unused bombs on return flights from Vietnam bombing runs. Today, both land and people all walks of life...