Three. Trillion. Dollars.



(Hat tip: Information Aesthetics.)

Reduced Dominance Is Predicted for U.S.

An intelligence forecast being prepared for the next president on future global risks envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community's top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority -- military power -- will "be the least significant" asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because "nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force."

Russia threatens nuclear attack on Poland over US missile shield deal

Russia's nuclear rhetoric marks an intense new phase in the war of words over Georgia. The Caucasus conflict has spiralled into a Cold War style confrontation between Moscow and Washington in less than a week.

We could have colonized Mars with the money we spent on the Iraq war -- what else could we do?

Photos of Hiroshima from the Robert L. Capp Collection

The Robert L. Capp collection at the Hoover Institution Archives contains ten never-before-published photographs illustrating the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb.

Mongooses 'can sniff-out landmines'

This headline evokes some delightfully morbid imagery. I wonder if PETA's on the case . . .

India-Pakistan Nuclear War Would Cause Ozone Hole

Nuclear war between India and Pakistan would cause more than slaughter and destruction -- it would knock a big hole in the ozone layer, affecting crops, animals and people worldwide, US researchers said on Monday.

Blast-Door Art: Cave Paintings of the Nuclear Era

Welcome to the mordant, jingoistic and occasionally crude -- but rarely before seen world -- of "blast-door art."

Like the garish and cheeky illustrations etched across the noses of World War II aircraft, these images in launch control centers across the United States testify to the bravado of the men (and, from the mid-1980s onward, women) of what has been called "America's Underground Air Force." But they also reflect the sometimes surreal pressures faced by two-person missile crews on 24-hour duty alerts, waiting for a call to turn their missile launch keys and perhaps end civilization as we know it.

I must admit: this video forced to to reexamine everything I thought I knew about "Space Invaders." I always assumed they started it.



(Big thanks to Pink Tentacle.)

Come for the military allegory, stay for the self-propelled cheeseburgers!



(Thanks: Information Aesthetics.)

Iraq: US military says it killed child

U.S. soldiers fired a warning shot near a woman who "appeared to be signaling to someone" along a dangerous stretch of road north of Baghdad, but the bullet killed a young Iraqi girl, a military official said early Thursday.

The shooting took place Wednesday where several roadside bombs had recently been found in the volatile Diyala province. An exact location was not given in a military statement.

The girl appeared to be "around 10 years old," said Maj. Brad Leighton, a military spokesman.

There has been an increase in the use of women as suicide bombers in Iraq. But Leighton said preliminary reports indicated that soldiers didn't believe the woman posed a threat of being a bomber. Rather "they were afraid she was signaling to someone that the convoy was going by."

Yeah, I know what I'm getting into by posting this latest morsel:

"Accidents happen."

"This sort of thing is inevitable."

"We sincerely regret this incident."

You know what? Fuck that.

Sometime during the last year I've abandoned the anti-war crowd in favor of the Genuinely Frightened crowd. It's not nearly as much fun, incidentally: no protests, no sociable gatherings, no documentary film festivals, no guest speakers, and no petitions to help dull the pain. Just depression and the jarring sense of one's own uselessness.

Make Solar Lamps Not War - Nobel Scientist

One billion people can get electricity for the first time for little more than the cost of one month's war in Iraq, said Rajendra Pachauri, the head of a Nobel peace prize-winning UN panel of climate scientists.

[. . .]

Pachauri compared the $15 billion cost of providing solar-powered lights to a billion people with a reported cost of the US-led military campaign in Iraq of $12 billion a month.

He described that perceived mis-match in resources as "one of the biggest tragedies that the world can be guilty of".

Worth a look:

March Military Campaign - now that's what I call ground clearance

Okay, I'm done. I've reached the apex of pure awesomeness. Nothing I ever post from here on out will match the German NK-101 Minenraumer rolling mine exploder (which the guys cataloging the odd vehicles of the Third Reich must have missed).

Unfortunately, little seems known about it. It currently resides in the Kubinka, Russia tank museum, and the Russians captured it from the Germans after World War II.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Will robots replace suicide bombers?

A leading expert has issued a grim warning about how a new generation of robot weapons being developed by world powers, including India and China, imperils humankind.

"Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy. How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act," maybe use them in suicide missions, he warned.

No, this isn't Photoshopped.

Yes, we're that profoundly messed up.

This isn't a matter of taking the moral high-ground. It's easy to scoff. Anyone can offer lofty, disparaging retorts about the grinning soldier in the photo. I'm not so much concerned about what she did as I am frightened by the possibility -- however slim -- that I could be that way too. After all, what really separates us, if anything?

Some people like to think that our "humanity" is in some way incorruptible and that we're largely immune to such things as giving toothy thumbs-up signs while posing next to blackening corpses.

I gave that nonsense up a long time ago.

Russia could aim rockets at European missile shield - Putin

Russia may have to retarget some of its rockets at the missile defenses that the U.S. is planning to deploy in Central Europe, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

"Our experts believe the system threatens our national security," Putin said at his final annual news conference in the Kremlin. "If it appears, we will be forced to respond appropriately - we will have to retarget part of our systems against those missiles."

If you need me, I'll be huddled under my car humming "99 Red Balloons."

10 Sci-Fi Techs We Could Build If They Weren't So Damn Expensive

Includes floating cities and android armies!

Judge: Navy not exempt from sonar ruling

The Navy must follow environmental laws placing strict limits on sonar training that may harm whales, despite President Bush's decision to exempt it, a federal judge ruled Monday.

I hope they can make this stick.

Iraq conflict has killed a million, says survey

More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain's leading polling groups.

The survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB) with 2,414 adults in face-to-face interviews, found that 20 percent of people had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The tension mounts . . .

Poland 'agrees' to host US shield

The US wants to install interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic.

Russia opposes the project, saying it would destabilise global security and undermine its own nuclear deterrent.

In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin compared the plans to the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s, which saw the US and Soviet Union go to the brink of nuclear war.

Russia has threatened to point missiles at Europe if the US positions elements of the new missile shield near its borders.