Big Boys Never Cry

     

But sometimes they have reason to

And yes, even presidents are not above sheding a tear when there is a good reason...

January 12, 2007 - 12:34PM

Tears rolled down US President George Bush's cheeks as he posthumously honoured a US marine hero, just 24 hours after ordering the controversial deployment of an extra 21,500 troops to Iraq.

The unusual display of emotion by the commander-in-chief came during a ceremony for Corporal Jason Dunham at the White House.

Corporal Dunham, 22, died from injuries after he jumped on a grenade and saved fellow members of his patrol in Iraq.

Mr Bush presented his parents with the prestigious Medal of Honour, America's highest military award.

Corporal Dunham saved at least two lives during a struggle with an insurgent near Iraq's Syrian border.

"On a dusty road in western Iraq, Corporal Dunham gave his own life so that the men under his command might live," the president said. "It's my privilege to recognise Corporal Dunham's devotion to the corps and country."

The presentation was made in the East Room of the White House before a packed crowd that included Corporal Dunham's family and dozens of marines in dress uniforms.

Corporal Dunham's father and mother said after the ceremony that the honour should be shared with their son's fellow marines.

"They're all courageous. It's as much theirs as it is Jason's," said Dan Dunham.

"I've lost my son but he became a part of history," said Corporal Dunham's mother, Deb. "It still hurts as a parent, but the pride that you have from knowing he did the right thing makes it easier."

She said Jason's "second family," the Marine Corps, had done everything that could be asked, but acknowledged they still do not have what they all want most.

"I wanted him here, and I didn't have him," said Deb Dunham.

In April 2004, Corporal Dunham received a report that a marine convoy had been ambushed, according to a marine corps account.

Corporal Dunham led his men to the site near Husaybah, halting a convoy of departing cars. An insurgent in one of the vehicles grabbed him by the throat when he went to search the car and the two fought.

A grenade was dropped, and Corporal Dunham covered the explosive with his Kevlar helmet, which, along with his chest armour plate, absorbed some of the blast. He lived long enough to be transferred to a hospital in the United States, where he died with his parents beside him.

Corporal Dunham was only the second member of the military to receive the Medal of Honour for service in the Iraq war.

AP, Reuters

Pompous Asses

   

I would add the image of politician here as well,

butt so many of them deserve to be seen here that there is
not enough room for them all....

WWW

What is the World Wide Web?

It is the one tool that has brought us so close together that now we write with less passion, say less, ignore more, view stuff we shouldn't, fill our digiverse with questionable facts and materials, an yet, we believe this to be progress.

Devils Handshake

Informed - Ignored - Obliterated

Humanity at its' Finest

Violets

Fat Man

Little Boy

The Tsar

Violet Club was a nuclear weapon deployed

by the United Kingdom during the cold war.

Infamy

Global Warming

Dry Earth by

Slawek Wojtwoicz

Anti-Whaling Forum

Research ?

Japanese scientific research programme?

Blood Money

Cat Food

Major hunger problems have occurred throughout history, leaving millions of people dead or suffering from the effects of hunger. Every day around 24,000 people die directly from hunger or hunger related diseases - an unbelievable amount. The problem of world hunger, particularly chronic persistent hunger, can be solved - even within our lifetimes

Chinese Famine - 1958 to 1961
- Irish Potato Famine - 1845 to 1851
- North Korea Famine - 1995 to 1998
- South Wollo, Ethiopia Famine - multiple
- Ukrainian Famine - 1932 to 1933

In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"

Every year 15 million children die of hunger

For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you've entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.

One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture
The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy

Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF

3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of 6 elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.

In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.

The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.

One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.

Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.

Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death
About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age

To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.

The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger

It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.

List of the worlds Billionaires

HIstory Lessons

Wars and Genocides of the 20th Century

160 million people died in wars during the 20th century

1860-65: American civil war (360,000)


1886-1908: Belgium-Congo Free State (8 million)

1899-02: British-Boer war (100,000)

1899-03: Colombian civil war (120,000)

1899-02: Philippines vs USA (20,000)

1900-01: Boxer rebels against Russia, Britain, France, Japan, USA against rebels (35,000)

1903: Ottomans vs Macedonian rebels (20,000)

1904: Germany vs Namibia (65,000)

1904-05: Japan vs Russia (150,000)

1910-20: Mexican revolution (250,000)

1911: Chinese Revolution (2.4 million)

1911-12: Italian-Ottoman war (20,000)

1912-13: Balkan wars (150,000)

1915: the Ottoman empire slaughters Armenians (1.2 million)

1915-20: the Ottoman empire slaughters 500,000 Assyrians

1916-23: the Ottoman empire slaughters 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks

1914-18: World War I (20 million)

1916: Kyrgyz revolt against Russia (120,000)

1917-21: Soviet revolution (5 million)

1917-19: Greece vs Turkey (45,000)

1919-21: Poland vs Soviet Union (27,000)

1928-37: Chinese civil war (2 million)

1931: Japanese Manchurian War (1.1 million)

1932-33: Soviet Union vs Ukraine (10 million)

1934: Mao's Long March (170,000)

1936: Italy's invasion of Ethiopia (200,000)

1936-37: Stalin's purges (13 million)

1936-39: Spanish civil war (600,000)

1937-45: Japanese invasion of China (500,000)

1939-45: World War II (55 million) including holocaust and Chinese revolution

1946-49: Chinese civil war (1.2 million)

1946-49: Greek civil war (50,000)

1946-54: France-Vietnam war (600,000)

1947: Partition of India and Pakistan (1 million)

1947: Taiwan's uprising against the Kuomintang (30,000)

1948-1958: Colombian civil war (250,000)

1948-1973: Arab-Israeli wars (70,000)

1949-: Indian Muslims vs Hindus (20,000)

1949-50: Mainland China vs Tibet (1,200,000)

1950-53: Korean war (3 million)

1952-59: Kenya's Mau Mau insurrection (20,000)

1954-62: French-Algerian war (368,000)

1958-61: Mao's "Great Leap Forward" (38 million)

1960-90: South Africa vs Africa National Congress (?)

1960-96: Guatemala's civil war (200,000)

1961-98: Indonesia vs West Papua/Irian (100,000)

1961-2003: Kurds vs Iraq (180,000)

1962-75: Mozambique Frelimo vs Portugal (?)

1964-73: USA-Vietnam war (3 million)

1965: second India-Pakistan war over Kashmir

1965-66: Indonesian civil war (250,000)

1966-69: Mao's "Cultural Revolution" (11 million)

1966-: Colombia's civil war (31,000)

1967-70: Nigeria-Biafra civil war (800,000)

1968-80: Rhodesia's civil war (?)

1969-: Philippines vs New People's Army (40,000)

1969-79: Idi Amin, Uganda (300,000)

1969-02: IRA - Norther Ireland's civil war (2,000)

1969-79: Francisco Macias Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (50,000)

1971: Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war (500,000)

1972-: Philippines vs Muslim separatists (Moro Islamic Liberation Front, etc) (120,000)

1972: Burundi's civil war (300,000)

1972-79: Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's civil war (30,000)

1974-91: Ethiopian civil war (1,000,000)

1975-78: Menghitsu, Ethiopia (1.5 million)

1975-79: Khmer Rouge, Cambodia (1.7 million)

1975-89: Boat people, Vietnam (250,000)

1975-90: civil war in Lebanon (40,000)

1975-87: Laos' civil war (184,000)

1975-2002: Angolan civil war (500,000)

1976-83: Argentina's military regime (20,000)

1976-93: Mozambique's civil war (900,000)

1976-98: Indonesia-East Timor civil war (600,000)

1976-2005: Indonesia-Aceh (GAM) civil war (12,000)

1977-92: El Salvador's civil war (75,000)

1979: Vietnam-China war (30,000)

1979-88: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (1.3 million)

1980-88: Iraq-Iran war (1 million)

1980-92: Sendero Luminoso - Peru's civil war (69,000)

1980-99: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000)

1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000)

1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000)

1983-: Sri Lanka's civil war (70,000)

1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2 million)

1986-: Indian Kashmir's civil war (60,000)

1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500)

1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000)

1988-2004: Somalia's civil war (550,000)

1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000)

1989-: Uganda vs Lord's Resistance Army (30,000)

1991: Gulf War - large coalition against Iraq to liberate Kuwait (85,000)

1991-97: Congo's civil war (800,000)

1991-2000: Sierra Leone's civil war (200,000)

1991-2009: Russia-Chechnya civil war (200,000)

1991-94: Armenia-Azerbaijan war (35,000)

1992-96: Tajikstan's civil war war (50,000)

1992-96: Yugoslavian wars (260,000)

1992-99: Algerian civil war (150,000)

1993-97: Congo Brazzaville's civil war (100,000)

1993-2005: Burundi's civil war (200,000)

1994: Rwanda's civil war (900,000)

1995-: Pakistani Sunnis vs Shiites (1,300)

1995-: Maoist rebellion in Nepal (12,000)

1998-: Congo/Zaire's war - Rwanda and Uganda vs Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia (3.8 million)

1998-2000: Ethiopia-Eritrea war (75,000)

1999: Kosovo's liberation war - NATO vs Serbia (2,000)

2001-: Afghanistan's liberation war - USA & UK vs Taliban (40,000)

2002-: Cote d'Ivoire's civil war (1,000)

2003: Second Iraq-USA war - USA, UK and Australia vs Saddam Hussein (14,000)

2003-09: Sudan vs JEM/Darfur (300,000)

2003-: Iraq's civil war (60,000)

2004-: Sudan vs SPLM & Eritrea (?)

2004-: Yemen vs Shiite Muslims (?)

2004-: Thailand vs Muslim separatists (3,700)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arab-Israeli wars

I (1947-49): 6,373 Israeli and 15,000 Arabs die

II (1956): 231 Israeli and 3,000 Egyptians die

III (1967): 776 Israeli and 20,000 Arabs die

IV (1973): 2,688 Israeli and 18,000 Arabs die

Intifada I (1987-92): 170 Israelis and 1,000 Palestinians

Intifada II (2000-03): 700 Israelis and 2,000 Palestinians

Israel-Hamas war (2008): 1,300 Palestinians

"F"

The worst genocides of the 20th Century


Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,000

Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39) 23,000,000 (the purges plus Ukraine's famine)

Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)

Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908) 8,000,000

Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)

Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20) 1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)

Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000

Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)

Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000

Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000

Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000

Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000

Suharto (East Timor, West Papua, Communists, 1966-98) 800,000

Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) 600,000

Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987) 570,000

Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39) 500,000? (Chinese civilians)

Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000

Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) 400,000

Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) 300,000

Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71) 300,000 (Bangladesh)

Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII) 300,000

Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97) ?

Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996) 220,000

Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) 200,000

Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) 150,000

Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99) 100,000

Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999) 100,000

Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79) ?

Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974) 70,000 (vietnamese civilians)

Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83) 70,000

Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71) 60,000

Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990) 40,000

Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947) 30,000 (popular uprising)

Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 (dissidents executed)

Francisco Franco (Spain) 30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)

Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999) 30,000

Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968) 30,000

Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000) 25,000

Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89) 20,000

Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority) 20,000

Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83) 13,000

Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957) 10,000 (war in Algeria)

Harold McMillans (Britain, 1952-56, Kenya's Mau-Mau rebellion) 10,000

Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) 6,000

Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001) 3,500

Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973) 3,000

Al Zarqawi (Iraq, 2004-06) 2,000

Obsolete

Democracy
Parole Board
Morality
Fairness
Piety
Sanctity
Childhood
Family
Blind Justice
Gun Control
War Wagons
Dialogue
Arms Control
Treaties
Government
Common Sense
Manners
Etiquette

Burp !

The Eyjafjallajokull Volcano

Business Security 3

OK, for all you math geeks out there...What are the odds of cracking that USB security system and read the data files.

1 - Any length password to open a hidden volume
2 - 64 Character password requiring multiple on-board or standalone key files of any quantity and type in multiple drive locations to authenticate the password
3 - All files then buried in secondary containment files each one possessing the same levels of security as indicated in #2
3 - THEN, all data files are subjected to a triple cascading encryption algorithim and an additional hash algorithim
4 - with each data file also being password protected as in #2

The odds of accessing the data are ?

Business Security 2

OK...I know that was a bit much, but consider this....Multiple corporate locations spanning the globe with a mobile executive and management work force being on call 24/7 required to manage activities and events quickly and efficiently.....How do you do that without the necessary information being at their fingertips, especially communications information.

Consider the Business Continuity Plan Security requirements necessary to protect such confidential information yet have it immediately available as required. Mobile, Sensitive, Secure.... 

Hmmmm...Maybe by attempt to create a bullet proof USB security environment was not too much afterall?

Business Security

Working in the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery disciplines for many years with a major financial institution was at times a challenge. One of our primary concerns was how to secure sensitive data that had to be carried about in anticipation of a disaster befalling the company. At that time, options were few.

Now, we have the USB drive, capable of holding upwards of 64 GigaBytes of information. A search of the internet will provide numerous drive selections with varying degrees of embedded security.

The following diagram is a sample of what is possible and is the results of my combining multiple security packages onto one USB drive.

Mushroom Farmer

Sweet Dreams

Hall of Shame

Justice Served ?

June, 2001...

Last week, a Saint Jerome boy, who coolly described how he beat a classmate to death with a baseball bat, was described by psychiatric experts as not responsible because he suffers from a paranoid delusionary disorder. And in another Canadian courtroom, an accused sex-killer was portrayed as a case of multiple personality disorder. While prosecutors and the occasional skeptic may express disbelief, the courts have become so accustomed to listening to psychiatrists explain away hideous crimes, these arguments often sway judges and juries. READ MORE

Law Practice

Canadian Justice

Just Desserts

No Door

Gun Control

Belem

Norse

Eagle

The United States Coast Guard training ship Eagle under full sail.

Eagle is one of very few "Tall Ships," or full-sized sailing ships, remaining in the world

U.S. Frigate Congress

In this colorful marine painting Christopher Blossom presents us with the Flagship of the California squadron during the war with Mexico. Built between 1839 and 1842 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard in Maine, the U.S. Frigate Congress served off South America in the 1840's.

The Civil War brought the Frigate Congress back to U.S. waters, joining the blockade of the Confederacy's Atlantic Coast. In March 1862, the US Congress was attacked by the Ironclad CSS Virginia and forced to surrender.

Sea Witch

In 1849 the famous tea clipper, Sea Witch above,

set a new record for the China to New York

run of 74 days 14 hours

HMS Victory

1805

Her Majesty’s Ship Victory is the only surviving naval warship that represents the skill of naval dockyard shipwrights, ship designers and the industrial ability of Britain during the mid 18th century.HMS Victory is a first rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, started in 1759 and launched in 1765, most famous as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. She is the oldest naval ship still in commission, and now sits in dry dock in Portsmouth, England as a museum ship.

More than this the Victory is equally a classic example of warship construction techniques used by all maritime powers of that period including Denmark, France, Holland and Spain, also the lesser naval powers of Russia, Naples, Sweden and Turkey.

Besides her historic role serving as Admiral Lord Nelson’s flagship at the battle of Trafalgar, the Victory stands in the line of technical advances made between the 16th century Tudor warship Mary Rose, the Victorian built iron warship Warrior of the mid 19th century and the steel built monitor M33 of the early 20 century.

Simply just a manoeuvrable floating weapons platform, the Victory is likewise historically comparable with the modern naval warships of the 21st century.

USS constitution

USS Constitution is a wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy. Named by President George Washington after the Constitution of the United States of America, she is the oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat in the world.

Flying Cloud

Held record for passage under sail from New York to San Francisco,

89 days 8 hours, for over 100 years, from 1854-1989

Thermopylae

The famous tea-clipper Thermopylae, was built 1868 by Walter Hood in Aberdeen, Scotland. Thermopylae was known as one of the fastest clipper ever. An awesome competition was between Thermopylae and Cutty Sark, another famous British tea-clipper of similar size. After the opening of the Suez-Canal in 1869 steamers took over from the sailing ships carrying the tea from India to England. Thermopylae was then used for transport of lumber and one of its voyages from London to Melbourne, Australia, took but 59 days and another, between Newcastle, England and Shanghai, China, took 28 days - both a record that stood for a long time. Theropylae could reach a speed of 20 miles per hour - no steamer could match its speed but in dead calm wind. A legend told that Thermopylae did not require but such a light breeze to reach 7 miles speed that it was possible to walk the deck with a burning candle. The Portuguese Navy bought Thermopylae and used it as a training-ship for a while or until it was destroyed by a torpedo in an exercise in 1907. This picture is of a painting by the Dutch artist Cornelis de Vries as printed in the book "Great Classic Sailing Ships", by author Kenneth Giggal. That book, in a grand format and with English text, is of exceptional quality containing the brief history along with remarkable illustrations of many of the grandest sailing ships until the third decade of the 20th Century.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Mariner up on the mast in a storm.

One of the wood-engraved illustrations by Gustave Doré

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 (see 1798 in poetry). The modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
Mayst hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,
"There was a ship," quoth he.
`Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropped he.

He holds him with his glittering eye -
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.
 
READ THE POEM