May 16th, 2008
S’hot out there. Hot. So.
Early season heat? Delayed from before normal? Whooph. Tired, body s’hot. Monkey underpants pillow? Two museum flicker a colon mask. Brain. Water dish taken by the chickens.
Did you just say eggplant?
Oh, I know what the problem is: I’m still wearing pants.
Ahh, there. Much better. There’s nothing like the feeling of a cool breeze through the nether regions. Of course our only ventilation in the studio is one tiny little window near the floor on Timothy’s side of the room, so it’s like a dank waft of warm foot odor, but at least it’s only hot outside.
If a little heat wave is the worst that our planet’s going to throw at our little coastal oasis this week, then I’m all for it. The past couple of weeks have offered a cyclone in Burma, tornados in the mid-West, earthquakes in Sichuan and Detroit, a looming famine in North Korea, and a Primary election season that’s about a month past its sell-by date.
A little heat is the least of our worries.
Clintonite partisans taking to the hills to conduct hit-and-run raids on polling places from their aging Volvo station wagons? Probably higher on the list.
If it happens, you’ll hear about it on this, the Timothy Jordan Show News, coming to our dear listeners on the 16th of May, (16th of May!) in Ought-Eight.
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A combination of heatstroke and over-work has your Political Correspondent here a little discombobulated, so if I seem to make even less sense than usual, blame the eggplant.
Late last month many nuclear security experts were blown away, though not as much as the Syrians, over a U.S. government presentation that detailed the Syrian efforts to conceal a nuclear reactor blown up late last year by an Israeli air strike.
At the time of the strike, on the 6th of September, 2007, international security experts were baffled by the Israeli attack on what appeared in satellite photos to be an average, non-descript building in a desert valley. The Israeli government claimed that it was a prototype nuclear reactor being built illegally by the Syrians. Our own government vouched for their story; but the Syrians, no strangers to loudly complaining about Israeli aggression, were oddly silent about the attack on their territory.
Within days of the air strike the entire area was bulldozed, covered under a layer of soil, and the foundations for a new building lain on the site, hiding all previous construction. The Syrian government denied that there was anything special about the area, saying that it was a water-treatment facility.
But if it wasn’t anything special, then why was the Syrian government on-site within hours, dismantling equipment and burying everything that couldn’t be carted off? If it was something special, then why wasn’t it protected?
The building didn’t look like a nuclear reactor. Major features of a reactor, like cooling towers, water pumping stations, and electrical power lines weren’t visible in overhead imagery.
The reason we couldn’t see a reactor, according to the U.S. government and a report out earlier this week by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), was a massive program of deception and concealment by the Syrian government.
Color me as one of those skeptics until reading the ISIS report. Using publicly available satellite imagery they’ve been able to show not only how the Syrian site matches up to the general outlines of North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor, but also how the Syrians were able to hide an already large structure inside the shell of an even larger building, all under the watchful eyes of the international intelligence community.
Why does this matter? Well, it’s creepy, but the Bush administration was right for once. It looks like at least part of the Syrian government really was up to no good.
It also matters because of just how successfully this reactor was concealed from the rest of the world. If the Syrians were able to do it (With a little help from their friends in North Korea), then a secret nuclear reactor may not be that far out of reach for other countries around the world.
The only reason that we knew about it, according the U.S. government presentation, was a well-placed Israeli spy with access to the construction site.
So if a nuclear reactor isn’t that hard to build secretly, then what can we do to prevent them from being built?
Not much, unfortunately. The technology to build a reactor isn’t exactly cutting-edge science. The first nuclear reactor was assembled in 1942 underneath a hockey rink at the University of Chicago. Building another one, even one sophisticated as the North Korean design apparently used by the Syrians, just isn’t that hard.
What’s difficult is getting fuel for the damn thing. It’s not as if a few tons of uranium ore are available at the average neighborhood pharmacy, and it doesn’t grow on trees.
There’s some kind of national election coming up. Maybe one of the candidates will get actually get serious about controls on the uranium and plutonium that’s floating around the world.
• ISIS, The Al Kibar Reactor: Extraordinary Camouflage, Troubling Implications PDF (2.8MB)
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The Timothy Jordan Show News welcomes, as a matter of policy, the opinions of everyone. In this spirit, we have on the show today a representative of the Loony Party to offer a short commentary.
Thank you for that short commentary.
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Earlier this month a non-profit group based out of D.C. called Women’s Voices Women’s Vote (WVWV) was involved in some highly suspect automated phone calls and last-minute mailings to voters in North Carolina and Virginia.
The phone calls and mailings suggested that the recipients may not be registered to vote. Unfortunately they were all sent out past the deadline to register, leading some people to believe that they wouldn’t be able to vote in the primary elections.
According to the Institute for Southern Studies, the research group that first broke the story on the suspiciously timed phone calls and mailings, a spokesman for Women’s Voices claimed that the deceptive timing was the result of a mistake in the organization.
It was a mistake that had been repeated in eleven previous states, and then it happened again in West Virginia and Kentucky. The story was picked up by NPR and a few other media outlets, who all worried it like a tired soup bone, then forgot all about it.
But the Institute for Southern Studies hasn’t let up, according to their most recent report, the same practices that Women’s Voices Women’s Vote publicly disavowed several weeks ago. Even though their stated goal is to encourage young women to register to vote, earlier this week Oregon’s Secretary of State asked the group to “please-stop-doing-this-you’re-insane”.
It’s no longer possible to believe that they are innocently confused about the results of their controversial get-out-the-vote program, given the response by over a dozen Secretaries of State against the always confusing and often illegal initiatives undertaken by Women’s Voices Women’s Vote.
So why is this organization, linked to prominent figures in the Democratic party, actively working to disenfranchise people in the Party’s core demographic?
• Institute for Southern Studies, Women’s Voices Women’s Vote investigation
• Willamette Week, Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote
An Orwellian approach to universal suffrage.
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The State of Texas is looking out for its voters, by spreading word about the dangers of terrorism. A pamphlet released this week by the Texas Department of Public Safety lays out “What the Public Needs to Know” about terrorism.
To help residents of Texas identify a potential terrorist, they lay out some characteristics of terrorists, who are:
• Focused and committed to their cause.
• Team oriented.
• Communicate by cell phone, email, or text messaging.
• In many cases will try to fit in and not draw attention to themselves.
• And may appear “normal” in appearance.
• Trained to avoid breaking the law.
• May travel in groups of mixed sex and age.
So apparently terrorists look normal, talk on cell phones, try not to go to jail, and aren’t afraid of crowds. Does that description sound a little broad for our listeners? Don’t worry, because they State of Texas knows who they are.
They tell us that, “Many terrorists are directed by countries or groups outside the United States. However, terrorists can also be U.S. citizens (often called “extremists) who target the government, minorities, or foreign populations within the U.S.”
Still not enough to narrow down just who these terrorists are? Maybe you should watch out for them preparing for their mission, which could include the, “Review and practice tactical training, including the use of communications equipment, tactical weapons, and/or weapons of mass destruction.”
Yes, that’s it. Practicing the use of weapons of mass destruction. If you catch anyone doing that, they’re probably a terrorist. Thank you, Texas Department of Public Safety
• via Iran Affairs, Terrorism, What the Public Needs to Know: Page 1
• via Iran Affairs, Terrorism, What the Public Needs to Know: Page 2
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Editor’s Note: The transcript is, once again, incomplete. We have provided the links as a minimal service