Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Fort Leavenworth Chaplains Accused of Anti-Semitic Publishing

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This needs to be dealt with aggressively.

This sort of behavior is antithetical to good order and discipline of the military, and this behavior is becoming more common.

Fort Leavenworth Chaplains Accused of Anti-Semitic Publishing

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 11 June 2007

At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic.

The Fort Leavenworth chaplains have posted these lesson plans on the Internet under a web address that is maintained by the federal government, giving off the appearance that the religious materials in question are endorsed by the Pentagon. Moreover, disseminating the ideology via a government funded web site may violate the law mandating the separation between church and state.

The nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state in the US military, discovered the documents late last week. The anti-Semitic materials are posted as PDF files at the web site, Command Chaplain Bible Studies, which is maintained by the US Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth.

The Officers Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides quote portions of the New Testament and were written by Major George Kuykendall, the leader of Fort Leavenworth’s Officer’s Christian Fellowship (OCF) who died in 1998, according to Chris Rodda, a senior researcher at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Rodda said, “The study guides also encourage soldiers to engage in an unconstitutional level of proselytizing to fellow military personnel in the Fort Leavenworth Community.”

In one of the study guides, Galatians, posted on the Fort Leavenworth chaplain web site, the materials refer to Jews as “Judaizers” – persons who without being Jews follow in whole or in part the Jewish religion or claim to be Jews – and claim that “the Judaizers were zealous people much like the zealous Moslems have become today.”

The 34-page Galatians study guide deals primarily with “Paul,” who the Jews “persecuted,” according to the study guide.

“Why did the Jews persecute Paul? Because of his teachings,” the study guide says. “The cross was an offense to the Jews. Jesus had victory over the cross (death).”

The study guide then says that anyone who turns from Christianity to Judaism “should be condemned to spiritual death and hell.”

“The Judaizers attempted to destroy the two foundations of the Christian religion: a. The Grace of God, and b. The Death of Christ,” the Galtatian study guide says, adding that Judaism is a religion of “bondage” and Christianity a religion of “freedom.”

In discussing modern day Jerusalem, chaplains ask soldiers to provide an answer to the following question: “How does the present Jerusalem represent slavery?”

A person who answered the telephone at the Fort Leavenworth chaplains’ office refused to disclose his name when contacted for comment. The individual, a male, said there have not been prior complaints to the Bible study guides and that “I would not characterize the material as anti-Semitic.”

“I guess if you’re Jewish you may see it that way, but we’re discussing the gospels as it appears in the New Testament,” this person said, who added that there was no plan to remove the study guides from the web site. Messages left at the public affairs office at Fort Leavenworth were not returned. Calls to a Pentagon spokesperson were also not returned.

But for Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the religious teachings are not only blatantly anti-Semitic, but he believes disseminating it over the Internet tramples upon the Constitution.

“It’s illegal for an arm of the federal government to push this ideology,” Weinstein, who is Jewish, said in an interview. “This is the official web site of the US Army, and this is here for everyone to see. Anyone would easily come away with the belief that the US Army endorses these teachings. The last time someone talked about a Jewish problem the way these chaplains are talking about it was in Europe in the 1930s. What these Bible teachings say to me or to anyone participating in these classes is that the US government loves the military but Jews are bad.”

Weinstein said he intends to file a lawsuit against the US Army alleging Constitutional violations.

“I’m sick of writing letters,” Weinstein said. “This type of fundamentalism needs to stop. This particular violation propagates every vile and wretched stereotype of the Jewish faith.”

Weinstein, a former White House counsel who defended the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra probe, has been waging a one-man war against the Department of Defense for what he says is a blatant disregard of the Constitution. He recently published a book on the issue: “With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military.” Weinstein is also an Air Force veteran and a graduate of the Air Force Academy. Three generations of his family have attended US military academies.

Since he launched his watchdog organization 18 months ago, Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity.

Weinstein said a right-wing fundamentalist Christian agenda under President Bush has hijacked the military.

“The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House,” Weinstein said in an interview. “This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative.”

Over Memorial Day weekend, Weinstein lashed out at the Air Force for co-sponsoring, along with evangelical Christian organizations, a three-day event celebrating the Air Force’s 60th anniversary.

The event, sponsored by Task Force Patriot USA, an evangelical organization, and LifeWay Christian Resources, the publishing house of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), was described by the official publication of the Robins Air Force Base as “an official US Air Force 60th Anniversary event.” The paper stated that the religious groups and the United States Air Force “have joined together to create a three-day celebration….”

Plans for the event prompted a forceful response from watchdog groups. In a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Acting Secretary of the Army Peter Geren, the Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), called the event “a stunning display of the federal government using vast resources to trumpet a religious celebration.”

Lynn added: “Military personnel and veterans come from many religious traditions and no religion at all. So it is wholly disingenuous for the organizers of this evangelical Christian gathering to promote it as a salute to all our troops. It is anything but.”

Weinstein is quick to point out that the issues his organization is tackling are not about “Christianity versus Judaism.” Rather, they’re about keeping rampant fundamentalism out of the military.

But the Biblical teachings at Fort Leavenworth certainly appear to lean heavily on an anti-Semitic and pro-Christian agenda.

In the 14-page study guide Nehemiah, chaplains discuss a portion of the Sanballat, the first high priest of the temple at Samaria, who, according to the Bible study, had to deal with a “Jewish problem.” He mocked the Jews’ efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the hopes that they would give up.

The study guide then poses the following questions for soldiers: “How do you interpret Sanballat’s reaction to the Jews progress? Anxiety and fear? In light of what we know about the Jews performance today, were his fears reasonable?”

Another question in the same study guide asks soldiers to offer suggestions on a title for the portion of the scripture discussing Nehemiah.

“How would you short-title this portion of scripture?” the study guide asks. “Jews take advantage of Jews?”

Speed bump: USAF sets modest goals for new bomber-12/06/2007-Washington DC-Flight International

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Really and truly, if we look at how bombers used, it makes sense to keep the BUFF (B-52) in service for another 50 years.

Speed bump: USAF sets modest goals for new bomber

By Graham Warwick

The USAF wants a new bomber by 2018, but says available technology will limit it to subsonic and manned. Is it aiming too low?

After studying options ranging from unmanned aircraft to hypersonic weapons, the US Air Force has decided its next-generation bomber will be subsonic and manned. Given the budget and time­scale pressures it is not a surprising decision, but the USAF still faces financial and technical challenges if it is to field a new long-range strike aircraft by 2018.

By setting relatively modest requirements, the USAF appears to want to minimise the risk and cost to maximise the chances its next bomber will be delivered on time, within budget and in sufficient numbers. The service wants to avoid repeating its experience with the Northrop Grumman B-2 stealth bomber, cut from 135 aircraft to 21 as requirements changed.

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After a 30 Year Absense, the Advancing Blade Helicopter Returns

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I remember reading about this in my teens.

Eventually they went with the V-22 Osprey.

This is definitely better helicopter technology than the V-22, which is more a VTOL aircraft than a helo.

It remains to be seen where this might fit in.

My guess would be for an A-10 replacement that would be under army control, as it is not fixed wing.

One interesting fact, the ABC concept is well out of patent, so if the demonstrator works, other vendors could reverse engineer this technology.

X2 marks the spot for radical rotor designs-12/06/2007-Flight International

Sikorsky’s X2 helicopter programme has a mixed R&D heritage, and could be the model for the next generation of rotorcraft designs.

Along with broadening the realm of vertical lift, first flight of Sikorsky’s internally funded X2 compound helicopter demonstrator in the fourth quarter this year will also spotlight what may become the best model for introducing new civil and military rotorcraft designs – do it yourself.


Sikorsky is hoping its X2 technologies will increase helicopter cruise speeds by nearly 100kt

The US government continues to invest in the basic and applied research that helps manufacturers create breakthrough aircraft. However, the prime focus for most funding has become results-oriented incremental component or operational efficiency improvements to aid the US military on the battlefield.

Though the X2 concept is the result of much of that government-funded R&D, the demonstrator itself is 100% Sikorsky funded, and features a frugality and simplicity that reflects who is paying the bill. The aircraft is being built from numerous off-the-shelf components scavenged from near and far to keep costs low so much so that Peter Grant, Sikorsky advanced programmes manager, affectionately refers to the two-seater as a “mongrel”. It uses dual rigid counter-rotating coaxial main rotors and a pusher propeller to reach cruise speeds of 250kt (462km/h), well beyond the 170kt maximum speed for conventional helicopters.

The X2 has a mixed heritage of government and industry R&D in rotor systems, propulsion, aerodynamics and controls technologies that will help it meet performance goals of high speed and “low” vibration – about the same vibration level as a traditional helicopter at its top speed of 140kt.

The X2’s chief predecessor, the XH-59A advancing blade concept (ABC) helicopter, was built by Sikorsky and funded by the US Army, NASA, Sikorsky and others. Two vehicles were built and readied in two years, starting in 1971, a time when the US government funded such experimental aircraft.

The goal was to test the premise that rigid counter-rotating main rotors, where the advancing blade on each side produces lift while both retreated blades are feathered, could be used reduce drag and tip velocities to allow for cruise speeds well above the norm for helicopters. During testing from 1973 to 1977, Sikorsky pilots reached 240kt with the help of two fuel-thirsty auxiliary turbojets.

Though it was successful, the flight-test programme proved that the concept was ahead of its time because the technologies needed to solve key issues – high vibration levels, tedious mechanical control mechanisms and inefficient power management – have only recently become available.

“We believe it now makes this configuration feasible for next generation helicopter flight,” says Grant.

The maturation was due in large part to government-funded research on military contracts, among them the Boeing-Sikorsky Comanche advanced light attack helicopter, cancelled by the US military in 2004, and its precursor, the Shadow programme, an S-76 with fly-by-wire (FBW) flight controls. Both provided the knowledge base for the X2’s flight controls.

The means to control vibrations came partly from the military-funded UH-60M Black Hawk upgrade programme. Coaxial rotor design expertise came partly from the Cypher programme, a vertical takeoff and landing unmanned air vehicle demonstrator that Sikorsky developed under a US Marine Corps contract.

Solving specific problem areas through directed research, rather than funding whole demonstrator aircraft, continues to be the R&D focus for the US government. Its research is largely provided by the US Army and NASA for basic and applied research, and the Defence Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA) for long-term, high-risk and potentially lucrative projects.

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X2 joint heavylift

Many key foundation technologies for Sikorsky’s JHL entrant, a much larger version of the X2, will be tested when the X2 demonstrator takes flight later this year. Included are active vibration control centralised around the transmission, a method designed to “short circuit vibrations at their origin”, says Grant. Sikorsky currently uses distributed active vibration damping systems for its production helicopters.

Once first flight is completed, Grant says his goal will be to get to high speed flight as quickly as possible. The company plans four phases of flight tests, beginning with hover and low-speed work later this year, followed by phases 2 to 4 throughout next year.

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RAF Reinstalls Cannons all Typhoons

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They decided that they needed the cannons in Afghanistan. A 500 lb bomb against a guy in a pickup near civilians will cause too much collateral damage.

They discovered this in Sierra Leone, with their Harriers, which had had the cannons pulled, and sometimes the target was just a guy on a bicycle.

It was a false economy in the first place.

Cannons will be operable on all UK RAF Eurofighter Typhoons

The 27mm Mauser cannons on all UK Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons will be operable, and will only require ammunition and loading equipment for them to work, contrary to our report last week (Flight International, 17-23 August). The UK Ministry of Defence says it will spend up to £6 million ($11 million) on support equipment, training and ammunition for those aircraft needed for a deployment where cannons were necessary. The timeframe for enabling pilots to use the cannon is two weeks, or similar to the time required for a force to deploy for UN missions or similar operations, says the MoD.

Originally, only the UK’s first 55 Eurofighters were to have guns fitted (Flight International, 9-15 May 2000). The decision to not enable those guns stemmed from the UK’s current air warfare doctrine, which specifies stand-off weapons. “The decision to retain operational flexibility was made in early 2003 after a detailed assessment of the costs of ballast compared with guns,” says the MoD. Ballast would have been needed to replace the gun mass as the aircraft’s flight-control system took into account the presence of the gun. An assessment into the use of ballast for the UK’s planned remaining 177 Eurofighters, carried out by UK Eurofighter partner company BAE Systems, concluded that guns, and not ballast, was the better option. The MoD estimates the decision will save £10 million a year by avoiding training and maintenance costs and ammunition supply.

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Tom Shales – Dan Rather Takes On Network News With His Tart Remark – washingtonpost.com

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Never been a great fan of Rather, but I’ve always respected him as a journalist.

He said the truth, and that’s why people are squealing like the pigs they are.

Tom Shales – Dan Rather Takes On Network News With His Tart Remark
By Tom Shales
Wednesday, June 13, 2007; Page C01

‘It may not have been the wisest thing I’ve done this week,’ Dan Rather joked yesterday by phone from his office in New York.

Wise or not, the former CBS anchor’s comments about the network’s evening newscast have created a firestorm — the kind that is probably good for the TV news business.”

Rather sparked the controversy during a radio appearance Monday morning when he said CBS executives have attempted over the past year to lure viewers to the “CBS Evening News” — which has plummeted in the ratings — by “dumbing it down and tarting it up.” He said they have tried to graft the ” ‘Today’ show ethos” onto the program, which just happens now to be anchored by former “Today” star Katie Couric.

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And in The Get A Life Department

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Sorry, but I want my women in meat space, not cyber space.

Playboy takes a ride to Second Life

Adult magazine unveils virtual rabbit head-shaped island populated with female avatars and merchandise.
June 12 2007: 1:07 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Playboy Enterprises, Inc. slipped into the virtual world known as Second Life Tuesday with the launch of Playboy Island.

The adult entertainment company said it is offering Second Life residents a taste of the Playboy lifestyle on a rabbit head-shaped island, which houses a retail store and will feature events and social opportunities.
Video More video
Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick talks about what he sees as the future implications for Second Life and the 3-D Internet.
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The virtual Playboy store includes merchandise from PlayboyStore.com and ShoptheBunny.com, and is staffed by female avatar employees wearing Playboy-branded apparel or Playboy Bunny costumes. Playboy-branded apparel can be purchased in the virtual store for real-world wear or Second Life avatars.”

US Air Force seeks replacement for high-explosive cannon rounds-12/06/2007-Washington DC-Flightglobal.com

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Anyone out there know how frequent in-bore explosions for the PGU-28 A/B there are?

This round replaces the venerable M56 round, and is supposed to offer better ballistics, and a fuse that will detonate at lower velocities (hence higher ranges) than its predecessor.

It sounds like the fuse is just a bit too sensitive.

The PGU-27 (bottom) and M56.

US Air Force seeks replacement for high-explosive cannon rounds

By Stephen Trimble

High-explosive incendiary (HEI) rounds fired by most US Air Force fighters may soon be replaced in the inventory by inert 20mm bullets.

The General Dynamics PGU-28 A/B 20mm semi-armour piercing HEI round entered service during the last decade with the M61 cannon installed on the Boeing F-15, Lockheed Martin F-16 and Lockheed F-22. As of 2001, the USAF and US Navy had stockpiled 8 million PGU-28 rounds, each of which features a pyrotechnic fuze and a pyrophoric explosive.

But the USAF is now seeking a replacement round, launching a market survey on 1 June to identify potential sources for a “non-fuzed, non-explosive round with PGU-28/B [aerodynamic] performance”, an acquisition notice says. The market survey is being conducted by the Joint Munitions and Lethality acquisition centre at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey.

The current stockpile of PGU-28/B rounds “limits mission effectiveness,” the notice adds. Concerns about the safety of the HEI round have surfaced involving in-bore explosions. An upgraded version of the PGU-28/B has satisfied the navy’s Boeing F/A-18 community, but not the air force.

Unlike the F-18, the air force’s fighters have cannons mounted directly beside the cockpit, making in-bore explosions an injury risk for the pilot.

Anticipating the requirement long in advance, Alliant Techsystems (ATK) has licensed manufacturing rights in the USA for a round designed by Germany’s Rheinmetall.

The Penetrator with Enhanced Lateral Effect (PELE) round would provide a tungsten casing that would be shattered on impact by a plastic slug. The effect is a blast of shrapnel spreading outward, or laterally, from the impact area.

The 20mm PELE round for the M61 cannon was designed with the air-to-air role of the fighter as the main focus. However, its utility in strafing runs against ground targets – an increasingly important mission for the USAF – has never been tested, says Rodney Ward, a business development director for ATK Ammunition Systems.

In 2004, ATK received a USAF contract to test the air-to-air effectiveness of the PELE round, Ward says. An operational test and evaluation phase is ongoing and should be completed in the fourth quarter of this year.

The market survey is an indication that the air force will seek alternatives to the PELE round to replace the PGU-28/B. Ward says the programme reflects a major change in combat capability for the air force, rather than just a straightforward replacement for a round already in the inventory.

“This is a whole new capability,” he says. “They [will] have a round that is effectively inert that has a lot of blast effect.”

Here is the scoop on on PELE.

Penetrator with Enhanced Lateral Effect (PELE)

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PELE technology makes it possible to produce fully inert projectiles. The new technology modifies the projectile performance characteristics,significantly enhancing the accuracy of tank and artillery fire, while substantially reducing the risk of collateral damage. Non-explosive PELE ammunition consists of a high-density casing containing a core made of low-density, low-compressibility material. Upon impact with the target, the low-density material inside the shell is compressed to such an extent that the casing bursts, generating numerous fragments that are propelled in the direction of fire. This way, the round’s lethal impact is restricted to a defined space or limited area, reducing the likelihood of collateral damage. PELE and ALP make it possible to manufacture warheads containing little or no explosive. Moreover, existing ammunition can be inexpensively retrofitted with PELE and ALP technology. Both technologies can be integrated in full- and sub-caliber rounds, and fired from current and future weapon systems.

US Air Force to expand Boeing F-15C active radar upgrade with Raytheon-05/06/2007-Washington DC-Flight International

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My guess would be that the US is expecting to see more cruise missile threats, and this upgrade is about dealing with this.

Then again, it may be that the F-22 is too damn expensive to buy enough to use in a meaningful defense of the US, and the JSF is behind schedule.

US Air Force to expand Boeing F-15C active radar upgrade with Raytheon

By Stephen Trimble

Raytheon is reviving a programme to upgrade the US Air Force’s Boeing F-15C fighters with active electronically scanned array radars, expanding on an initial phase performed on a single squadron of 18 Alaska-based aircraft in the late 1990s.

The emergency supplemental funding bill for fiscal year 2007, signed by President George Bush in late May, contains about $62 million to upgrade a small number of active duty F-15Cs with an enhancement of the ‘brick’ array APG-63(V)2 radar previously integrated to now use a tile design, says Mike Henchey, Raytheon business development director. Raytheon has previously designated this as the APG-63(V)3, but it is likely to enter service under a new designation in the APG-series, he says. The (V)3 variant refers to the active array of transmitter/receiver modules, with this front-end to be mated with the APG-63(V)1 radar processor already installed on most of the USAF’s active duty F-15Cs.”

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Pictures: First Australian Airbus A330 MRTT air-to-air refuelling tanker rolled out-12/06/2007-London-Flightglobal.com

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This is significant in terms of the Boeing EADS competition for tankers, because both now both companies have their tankers flying, and either in deployment (Boeing), or months from deployment (EADS) with a foreign military.

Pictures: First Australian Airbus A330 MRTT air-to-air refuelling tanker rolled out

By Barbara Cockburn

The first of five Airbus A330 multi role tanker transports (MRTT) ordered by the Royal Australian Air Force has been rolled out of the hangar at the conversion centre of EADS Casa in Getafe near Madrid.”

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Warplane nose art Done in by PC RAF

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Another grand tradition lost.

PC brigade ban pin-ups on RAF jets – in case they offend women and Muslims

In killer heels and little else, they have a definite deadly charm.

But the risque images of women that have decorated warplanes since the First World War have been scrubbed out.

The Ministry of Defence has decreed they could offend the RAF’s female personnel.

Officials admitted they had no record of any complaints from the 5,400 women in the RAF.

But commanders are erring firmly on the side of caution and “nose art”, as it is known, has been consigned to the history books.

Harrier jump jet bombers currently launching daily airstrikes against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan have been scrubbed clean to comply with the orders.

Critics said the MoD should be focusing on more important issues – such as the quality and quantity of equipment available to British forces sent off to war.

Nose art first appeared on warplanes during the First World War and enjoyed a golden age during the Second World War when thousands of American fighters and bombers were decorated with pictures of glamorous women.

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Some Interesting Pieces of Economic News

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Some news that, when taken together, sounds like a perfect storm.

This first one is most straightforward:

Home foreclosures leap 19 percent in May – Jun. 12, 2007
90% leap over last year; figure pushed up by slowing real estate market, subprime meltdown.
June 12 2007: 3:23 PM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Home foreclosures in May jumped 90 percent from a year earlier, reflecting a poor spring housing market and foreshadowing even higher levels later in 2007, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said Tuesday.

The May foreclosures – a sum of default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions – totaled 176,137, up 19 percent from April, the firm said in its May
‘After a barely perceptible dip in April, foreclosure activity roared back with a vengeance in May,’ James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in a statement.

‘Such strong activity in the midst of the typical spring buying season could foreshadow even higher foreclosure levels later in the year,’ said Saccacio. ‘Certainly not every community nationwide is seeing an increase in foreclosures, but foreclosed properties are becoming more commonplace and adding to the downward pressure on home prices in many areas.’

RealtyTrac said there was a national foreclosure rate of one foreclosure filing for every 656 U.S. households during May.

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The message here is very basic. We are headed for some VERY bad times in real estate.

Even if one assumes a 24% YoY increase in foreclosures in the next three years, that puts foreclosures down to about 1 filing for every 328 homes at the end of that, and we have a few TRILLION in mortgage resets on adjustable rate mortgages coming down the pipe.

I’m not sure if the market will drop significantly, or just become illiquid. The latter is MUCH worse, becaude it means that you can’t sell a house period.

The next one is a bit more complex. Basically, the private equity frenzy is being squeezed by higher interest rates. This is yet ANOTHER bubble, in this case, it is driving the stock market, and it looks to be close deflating

The people who really drive these deals make their money on the transaction, and if they can’t buy, then they will sell.

Rising rates threaten the buyout boom

A shift in the bond market could signal an end to the cheap money that has fueled the surge in private equity buyouts.
By Grace Wong, CNNMoney.com staff writer

By Grace Wong, CNNMoney.com staff writer
June 12 2007: 1:08 PM EDT

LONDON (CNNMoney.com) — Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, took home nearly $400 million in pay last year and stands to reap billions when his firm goes public – a reflection of the booming success of private equity firms.

But the favorable conditions that have lined the pockets of Schwarzman and other kings of the buyout business are running into headwinds.

For years, Blackstone and other private equity firms – which have become the new face of dealmaking on Wall Street – have basked in an era of cheap money and low interest rates. But turmoil in the Treasury bond market is raising worries that this golden age may be coming to an end.

Bond pricesfrom Tokyo to Frankfurt to New York have sold off in recent weeks amid concerns that interest rates are marching higher worldwide. That’s pushed up bond yields and fueled worries that it will be harder to borrow money. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

“This is the end of the cheap money cycle,” said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald.

In the United States, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note has kept pushing higher since it eclipsed the key 5 percent level last week. Early Tuesday, the yield was around 5.21 percent, up from 4.88 percent just two weeks ago.

Analysts say the rise in bond yields means bond investors are finally coming to terms with big changes in the global economy – such as rising commodity prices and rising labor costs in former low-cost countries like China – and many expect long-term yields to keep heading higher.

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Finally, we have inflation heating up in China. This means that the Chinese central bank will have have to raise interest rates, which will have the effect of strengthening the Chinese Yuan, which will have the effect of weakening the dollar, increasing US inflation.

This will likely, for both currency and inflation reasons, lead to increased rates from our central bank, the Fed.

Food costs send inflation in China to 27-month high – Jun. 12, 2007

Rising cost of pork sends food prices soaring in May; more interest rate hikes expected.
June 12 2007: 3:50 AM EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) — Surging food prices boosted China’s annual consumer price inflation in May to a 27-month high, extending a rising trend and reinforcing expectations that interest rates will rise further.

Inflation quickened to 3.4 percent from 3.0 percent in April, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday, as food prices, which make up a third of the consumer basket, rose 8.3 percent from a year earlier and a shortage of pork caused meat prices to jump 26.5 percent.

The overall inflation figure was in line with the median forecast of a Reuters poll of economists, but Shanghai’s benchmark stock market index fell as much as 2.1 percent at one point on expectations of tighter monetary policy. It recovered in early afternoon to stand 0.65 percent higher.

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Look for This on Ebay

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Remember my post about Bush getting his watch stolen?

Here is a description.

From Mystery of President Bush’s watch in Albania

Italian media reports said that Mr Bush only noticed his watch was missing when he got back to his armour-plated people-mover to be whisked back to Tirana airport. By the time he stood on the aircraft steps to wave goodbye someone on his staff had given him a replacement watch. He is said to wear a $50 Timex with the Stars and Stripes on the dial.

Heck…I’m tempted to put a similar model of watch up for bidding on Ebay.

And in the War over Spam Bots, There is Escalation

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A Dog or a Cat? New Tests to Fool Automated Spammers
On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a human — until you fill out a captcha.

Captchas are the puzzles on many Web sites that present a string of distorted letters and numbers. These are supposed to be easy for people to read and retype, but hard for computer software to figure out.

Most major Internet companies use captchas to keep the automated programs of spammers from infiltrating their sites.

There is only one problem. As online mischief makers design better ways to circumvent or defeat captchas, Web companies are responding by making the puzzles more challenging to solve — even for people.

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“You can make a captcha absolutely undefeatable by computers, but at some point, you are turning this from a human reading test into an intelligence test and an acuity test,” said Michael Barrett, the chief information security officer at PayPal, a division of eBay. “We are clearly at the point where captchas have hit diminishing returns.”

If that is true, at least captchas had a good run. Though several researchers devised similar tests early in the decade, credit for inventing the technology usually goes to Carnegie Mellon University, which was asked by Yahoo in 2000 to create a method to prevent rogue programs from invading its chat rooms and e-mail service.


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Yet some of that activity can be ethically murky. Aleksey Kolupaev, 25, works for an Internet company in Kiev, Ukraine, and in his spare time, with his friend Juriy Ogijenko, he develops and sells software that can thwart captchas by analyzing the images and separating the letters and numbers from the background noise. They charge $100 to $5,000 a project, depending on the complexity of the puzzle.

He lives in the former Soviet Union there’s a surprise.

On the bright side, with the mob penetration of those countries, hitmen are cheap and plentiful.

Microsoft researchers have developed an alternative captcha that asks Internet users to view nine images of household pets and then select just the cats or the dogs.

“For software, this is wildly hard,” said John Douceur, a Microsoft researcher. “Computers are tripped up by all the photos at different angles, with variable lighting conditions and backgrounds and the animals in different positions.”

The project, called Asirra (for Animal Species Image Recognition for Restricting Access), uses photographs of animals from Petfinder.com, a site that finds homes for homeless pets and has more than two million images in its database.

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It would be nice if this were to get some of those animals adopted.

Adopt a stray. Mutts and alley cats are just as good pets, and they don’t have the flaws from inbreeding.

He added: “No single defensive technology is forever. If they were, we would all be living in fortified castles with moats.”

Not everyone feels that the traditional captcha is finished. Luis von Ahn, a professor at Carnegie Mellon and a member of the team that invented captchas, recently unveiled an effort to give them new usefulness.

His reCaptcha project (recaptcha.net) seeks to block spam while handling the challenge of digitally scanning old books and making them available in Web search engines.

When character recognition software fails to decipher a word scanned in a book — when the page is yellowed or the letters are smudged, for example — Mr. von Ahn’s project makes it part of a captcha. After the mystery word has been verified by several people, it is fed back into the digital copy of the book.

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That is an insanely good “out of the box” application for this technology.

Doughy Pantload Wants to Eliminate Public Schools

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Let’s be clear about this. There are two goals here. Eliminating the teachers’ unions, because they support dems, and resegregating schools.

Do away with public schools – Los Angeles Times
Jonah Goldberg

Government is inept at running schools. It should subsidize education for needy students, then get out of the way.
June 12, 2007

HERE’S A GOOD question for you: Why have public schools at all?

OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government’s interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can’t leave any child behind.

he problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid “behind” is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

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Brown Disses Tony Blair Over “Dodgy Dossier”

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Brown has pretty much said that Blair used maipulated intel on this.

When the Tories win, there will be an investigation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Tony Blair goes to gaol over this, as well he should.

Brown promises to avoid the mistakes that led to war in Iraq

By Andrew Grice and Ben Russell
Published: 12 June 2007

Gordon Brown has promised to prevent the “party political” use of intelligence material so that he would never repeat Tony Blair’s mistake in taking Britain to war on a flawed prospectus.

On his first visit to Baghdad, the incoming prime minister said he would learn lessons from the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when Mr Blair based his case for war on intelligence reports about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Brown said he had already begun discussions with Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to ensure security and intelligence material was collected “free of the party political process” and was ” fully verified” if it was to be made public. “That is learning the lessons from things that happened in the past, and we should make sure that we can do things better in the future,” he said.

His remarks were seen as a barely coded criticism of Mr Blair and an attempt to draw a line under a controversy which left a stain on the Government. Mr Blair’s official spokesman said measures to reform the use of intelligence recommended by the 2004 Butler inquiry were already being taken forward.

The Chancellor, who heard nine mortar shells land near by during his Baghdad visit, refused to be drawn on a possible cut in the number of British troops in Iraq. He said he was there to “listen and learn” and that such decisions were for another day.

In interviews, he declined to repeat Mr Blair’s pledge to the Iraqis that Britain would not “cut and run” but said Britain had obligations to the Iraqi people and the United Nations. He said the number of British forces would continue to decline as Iraqis took over more responsibility for security.

Mr Blair and Mr Brown rejected growing demands for an immediate inquiry into the mistakes made before and since the invasion, but Mr Brown left open the option of calling one after more British troops have left Iraq.

Last night a Tory attempt to force the Government to hold an inquiry into the conflict was rejected by 288 votes to 253 in the Commons. Ten Labour MPs backed the calls for an inquiry.

Earlier, the Government amendment saying that a further inquiry would ” divert attention” from the campaign in Iraq was passed by 274 votes to 229, a majority of 45.

During the debate, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, had dismissed the idea as self-indulgent and poured scorn on Conservative calls for the Government to accept the principle of an inquiry, insisting that there had been four inquiries into the war.

She said: “To carry this motion would be both an unnecessary and a damaging diversion of effort, focus and attention. All our time and energy is badly needed now to address the challenges of the present. It is our responsibility to the people of Iraq which should receive our focus and attention in the critical times ahead.”

William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, urged ministers to bow to the ” gathering consensus” and called for an inquiry by privy councillors. He said: “It’s not true that our troops would be demoralised or our enemies would take heart if we took the trouble to find out what’s gone wrong. In a democratic society the examination of successes and failures is a sign of strength not of weakness.” Michael Moore, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, told MPs: “The Government is still trying to avoid an inquiry while hinting that there will be one, simply ducking the question of when.”

Fox News Doesn’t Do News

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Yes, they spend more time on she who must not be named than they do on the Iraq war.

That’s ignoring the pundits who are dishonest, stupid, and just plain insane.

War takes up less time on Fox News – Yahoo! News

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer Mon Jun 11, 9:52 AM ET

NEW YORK – On a winter day when bomb blasts at an Iraqi university killed dozens and the United Nations estimated that 34,000 civilians in Iraq had died in 2006, MSNBC spent nearly nine minutes on the stories during the 1 p.m. hour. A CNN correspondent in Iraq did a three-minute report about the bombings.

Neither story merited a mention on Fox News Channel that hour.

That wasn’t unusual. Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN’s daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC’s. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.

The independent think tank’s report freshens a debate over whether ideology drives news agendas, and it comes at a delicate time for Fox. Top Democratic presidential candidates have refused to appear at debates sponsored by Fox. Liberals find attacking Fox is a way to fire up their base.”

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