Become a bird watcher and join a larger community that values the insight of the individual. It is a lifetime hobby. It adds dimension to life. You will be bored

May 29, 2019
By Mukta Patil

Fratercula cirrhata (Tufted Puffin - click here)

Every year in May, (click here) Christopher Wood, assistant director of information science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is occupied by one question: “If everybody around the world were to all go looking for birds on the same day, how many species could we find?”

Today, May 4, is that day. Wood is searching for avian life in the marshes of Alabama. Meanwhile, I peer through binoculars into the mists of Edgewood Park in Redwood City, California, with avid birder Whitney Mortimer. Seventeen miles west, Alvaro Jaramillo has left Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay, hoping to see birds only found at sea.

Wood, Mortimer, Jaramillo, and I are all participating in Global Big Day, a 24-hour birdwatching marathon designed to get as many people as possible outside, recording the birds they see. We are all using a mobile app called eBird, managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to record our sightings.

On any day of the year, eBird functions as the largest biodiversity-related citizen science project in the world. Users input more than 100 million bird sightings each year, while the app automatically collects data like the date, distance, and time the birder was out for.

With this information, the team at Cornell is able to gather information about things like bird distribution, population, and habitat use. “We're interested in understanding what's happening with a biological system,” Wood says. “And in order to do that, we also need to understand what's happening with the birdwatcher as part of the observation process.”...

Secretary General Nasrallah is absolutely correct.

Iran is the Shea Homeland. There will be no peace in the region and it will be centuries before the killing stops.

You know how Nasrallah came to power? No? He succeeded a cleric by the name of Abbas al Moussawi. Do you know how Moussawi died? The Israeli Defense Forces killed him.

The Iran that we know today was established by the oppressed people of Iran by following the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini (click here). The late Shah of Iran did not take care of the Iranian people. They were destitute and lived from day to day, nearly starving and in some cases succumbed to starvation. The Shah was fine. He enjoyed plenty of Western food flown in on jets from Europe. 

The Shia are a minority people and religion in the Middle East. Because of a variety of reasons the Shia lives mostly outside of Iran as a diaspora. That is also true of Israel.

What is occurring today with Trump is a blind ambition to start a significant war for land. Land for Israel. What is also occurring today is the confrontation of ideologies between the Sunnis and Shias. That spells complete disaster. It is an outline of a region of the world that will face their histories and decide dying for the Homeland, including their ideologies will be the final task of every man, woman and child.

When it comes to the Sunnis, a stable leader can be found in the President and ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed. Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammad bin Salman is a complete disaster of a leader. He has absolutely no realization or education of war to make good decisions. He is mentored by men like Trump to continue to throw weapons at Yemen when it begets him nothing but more violence in return.

Across the Middle East there are microwars compared to what Trump and Netanyahu has planned. Those smaller wars are a good insight to the success of a greater war. It won't be successful, it will be continuous and provide a reason for ideological killings for hundreds of years. Syria is locked into a war no one can win and so is Yemen. We know what the Middle East will look like with chronic wars in realizing the failed state of Somalia.

There is no reason to guess. There are clear indications of what any war effort will get. The USA's military are lined with very capable warriors. There is no doubt about that. But, if the USA enters into a war in the Middle East it will be confronted by Russia. Russian mercenaries were already attempting to kill Americans.

There is another aspect to this and that is Russia. Russia wants the USA defeated. Russia, no different than Iran have struggling economies. Russia is a communist country, burned by the collapse of the Soviet Union with leadership dedicated to recreating the Soviet Union and while it is not interested in a holy war, it is interested in an ideological one.

Today, the impetus for Russia to continue to build offenses against the USA is a one way street. Putin is a brinkman, but, after having the complete confidence of the Russian people for so long, his vision is the only one that matters. He will like to see the end of the USA before his own death.

A major driver to Putin is the USA invasion into Iraq and the instability that it created manifesting in a monster called Daesh. Communists, including China, are interested in stable states that can be controlled. They are not interested in fluid democracies of freedom as they see that as a weakness in government which allows for uncertainty in the future. In some ways, communism was created for Wall Street.

The trajectory of the leadership in the White House is one that will result in deaths for a long time. It will result in war that will rob Americans of their futures with ever increasing "debt of war" to the national treasury. With the spending of this administration, additional warfare may make Putin's dream come true.

A USA involvement in a war in the Middle East is not an acceptable option. There is no future for the USA in such a war. Most importantly, it will compromise the stability of this democracy, imperil a free democracy, collapse Wall Street and cast allies of both oceans into insecurity, both economically, hence militarily. What does Russia care, it is already there.

I have always like Nasrallah as a human being and a leader. He actually cares about people and now he is in leadership. Hezbollah is a problem and it is a growing problem in the Western Hemisphere, but, it is not a Russia or a China and is a non-state actor. If a war in the Middle East erupts it will give small regimes like that of Hezbollah a larger chance to advance their superiority, do different than the war to end Daesh.

A lot of what is transpiring today in the Middle East is in reaction to the destruction of Daesh. There are flame throwers everywhere in the people that live there and carry ideologies too far. The events in the Gulf of Oman were staged to inflame the tensions that already exist and INVITE a Hot Head President of the USA into the developing lake of fire.

DO NOT DO THIS.

Nasrallah is correct and I have never known him to be wrong. Escalating to a war will damn all the people involved to a hell that never ends. 

Trump started this. He withdrew from a long fought for international agreement. Today, the tensions that exist are his making and he has nurtured it with every word he speaks.

A war with Iran is not to be fought. There are many reasons for that. It is time to have the leadership of all the ideologies, including the Hot Heads of Trump, to end this insanity and return to a place where peace manages tensions in the Middle East.

31.05.19
By Elan Benan

Hassan Nasrallah, (click here) leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, warned on Friday that if a war broke out against Iran, the whole Middle East region would "erupt".

US President Donald "Trump, his administration, and his intelligence know well that any war on Iran will not remain confined to Iran's borders", Nasrallah said in a televised speech in honor of the Iranian Al-Quds Day.

"Any war on Iran will mean the whole region will erupt, and any American forces and American interests will be permissible" as a target, he warned.

Nasrallah also denounced the US peace plan to solve the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict, describing it as a "historic crime".

"Our duty is to confront the 'Deal of the Century,'" said Nasrallah, using the name which has been given to the Trump administration’s peace plan.

"It's a void deal... a historic crime," he added....

The USA is fueling violence under Trump.

Donald Trump is trying to pay for whatever government continues to exist in the USA with war munitions. At a time when the global community wanted a greater peace with the Small Arms Treaty, Trump has decided the USA is in the arms business. The USA has no right to complain when episodes of violence cause problems in the world when it is becoming a key contributor to that violence. 

Iran is stated to be a state sponsor of terrorism, then what is the USA under Turmp? Is he going to declare an emergency wherever it is profitable to sell American munitions? He is an irresponsible president with nothing on his mind except money. The ability of the USA to produce military hardware is a candy store for Trump's idea of wealth.

26 April 2019
By David Smith

Donald Trump has announced (click here) that the US will withdraw its support for a United Nations treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade.

Addressing the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Indianapolis, the president said he would revoke America’s status as a signatory of the arms trade treaty regulating conventional weapons including small arms, battle tanks, combat aircraft and warships.

“My administration will never ratify the UN arms trade treaty,” Trump said. “We’re taking our signature back. The United Nations will soon receive a formal notice that America is rejecting this treaty.”

Trump added: “Under my administration, we will never surrender American sovereignty to anyone. We will never allow foreign bureaucrats to trample on your second amendment freedom. I’m officially announcing today that the United States will be revoking the effect of America’s signature from this badly misguided treaty.”...

A dangerous duo.

While tensions in the Middle East escalate due to Trump's reckless campaign promises, Russia has been disregarding nuclear weapon treaties and has returned to testing.

In the year 2019, the USA states it is "likely?" There needs to be a demand for transparency and a verification of such tests. These tests can effect the entire world and the world has a right to know what is transpiring with a return to hostile profiles.

Russia is an ally of every marginal country on the planet. With tensions increasing because of Trump's hostile stance, Russia is going to return to old methods to counter the fears that Trump is causing, ie: Venezuela is only one example. If the USA thinks it can start a war in the Middle East, it will most likely be the spark that begins WW III.

Aggression does not work in the Middle East, ie: Palestine and Israel, the chronic civil war in Syria and the forever war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Middle East is a patchwork of tribal interests that once ignited will only awaken a global threat.

Russia will take a more aggressive stance globally if the USA continues down the path of war to maintain a campaign promise. This is an outrageous set of circumstances and the world has a right to know where all this is leading to end it before it begins.

May 30, 2019
By David Brennan

A senior U.S. intelligence official (click here) has warned that Russia is likely conducting secret nuclear weapon tests at remote Arctic sites as it works to modernize its atomic arsenal, despite an internaitonal treaty prohibiting such activities.

Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, made the claim in a speech given on Wednesday at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., The Wall Street Journal reported. He said the U.S. believes that Russia is carrying out low-yield testing at Novaya Zemlya—a secluded archipelago above the Arctic Circle where the USSR often tested nuclear weapons.

Ashley's comments mark the first time the U.S. has publicly accused Russia of violating the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified by Russia in 2000, which prohibits any tests that create a nuclear yield.

The U.S. never ratified the treaty, though has not carried out a nuclear test since 1992, The New York Times explained. Not enough nations ratified the agreement for it to take effect, though the Journal noted that major powers have agreed to abide by it....

No one should stand for Trump's demands for a greater war. Acrid air is what Trump and Putin are promising their countrymen.

Ambio. 2014 Oct; 43(6): 729–744.

Published online 2014 Feb 22

The beginning of the atomic age (click here) marked the outset of nuclear weapons testing, which is responsible for the radioactive contamination of a large number of sites worldwide. The paper aims to analyze nuclear weapons tests conducted in the second half of the twentieth century, highlighting the impact of radioactive pollution on the atmospheric, aquatic, and underground environments. Special attention was given to the concentration of main radioactive isotopes which were released, such as 14C, 137Cs, and 90Sr, generally stored in the atmosphere and marine environment. In addition, an attempt was made to trace the spatial delimitation of the most heavily contaminated sites worldwide, and to note the human exposure which has caused a significantly increased incidence of thyroidal cancer locally and regionally. The United States is one of the important examples of assessing the correlation between the increase in the thyroid cancer incidence rate and the continental-scale radioactive contamination with 131I, a radioactive isotope which was released in large amounts during the nuclear tests carried out in the main test site, Nevada.

Indefinite delay to Hong Kong extradition bill announced (click here for news article - thank you)

Air Force One is a military jet, not a commercial jet. Congress needs to legislate the paint scheme of the jet.

The paint scheme needs to remain the same. In the picture to the left, the top half of the jet appears to be missing against the clouds in the background. There is a reason for that.

Presidents have been safe in that jet for decades. The paint scheme serves them well and it HAS TO REMAIN THE SAME.

...Technically, Air Force One (click here) is used to describe any Air Force aircraft carrying the President — but since the middle of the 20th century, it has been standard practice to refer to specific planes that are equipped to transport the Commander-in-Chief. Today, this name refers to one of two highly customized Boeing 747-200B series aircraft, which carry the tail codes 28000 and 29000. The Air Force designation for the aircraft is VC-25A.

Air Force One is one of the most recognizable symbols of the presidency, spawning countless references not just in American culture but across the world. Emblazoned with the words “United States of America,” the American flag, and the Seal of the President of the United States, it is an undeniable presence wherever it flies.

Capable of refueling midair, Air Force One has unlimited range and can carry the President wherever he needs to travel. The onboard electronics are hardened to protect against an electromagnetic pulse, and Air Force One is equipped with advanced secure communications equipment, allowing the aircraft to function as a mobile command center in the event of an attack on the United States....