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On Monday morning, Fox News ran a cover story— “ATF ‘Fast and Furious’ Claim SHOT FULL OF HOLES” (The caps belong to Fox). The visuals were pretty exciting, but the revelations in the article, hardly breaking news, were SHOT FULL OF SPIN. Listen. It’s time for the media and Congress, to get the story (the whole thing) right. We need more focus more on the criminality that may attend Fast and Furious and less discussion about the outrageous, but not illegal, aspects of the operation. More news and less
noise…

Let’s review.

Fox reporter William LaJeunesse (US Government Bought and Sold Weapons) tells us, first, that it was ‘taxpayer money’ (1.25 million—ok, sounds right) that paid for the military-grade weapons ATF sent across the US-Mexico border as part of Fast and Furious.

Where else would that money have come from? Do we think ATF agents in Phoenix passed the hat…

My boss over at APS, Dr. Francis Slakey, continues the battle with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over efforts to get them to take proliferation risks into account in their licensing decisionmaking. The latest salvo comes in the form of a report by Aussie news channel ABC, which profiled efforts by Silex Systems Inc. to get […]

Wangari Maathai, Nobel laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, passed away late Sunday night while undergoing cancer treatment in Nairobi. But she left the world having fully lived her 71 years, to the benefit of the rest of us. Like many prominent women her age, Maathai had to break through many […]

An interesting find and a valuable place to look at images–BagNews features some provocative and informative photographers and their work. For example, an image they posted of the Japanese “sumimasen” (apology without end) in action: (photo: AFP/Getty. caption: Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) president Masataka Shimizu (C) and company executives bow to evacuees to apologise […]

Has America exhibited moral courage by addressing change, or the lack there of, in the world? Or has it squandered our hope for a principled effort to rid American foreign policy of its realist inclinations and desire to cling to paradigms? Many of us have placed our trust in America (i.e., President Obama) to challenge […]

  Can you imagine a world without oil?  I can.  Even with all the oil in which we’re swimming today – as pictured by this excellent graphic from the latest issue of Momentum from the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota – I can see a world powered by renewables, generating electricity […]

The Arms Control Association has made available the transcript of a discussion it sponsored last Monday on Iran’s nuclear program. Moderated by ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball, the discussants were Admiral Joe Sestak, a former congressman; Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the nonproliferation and disarmament program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; and […]

Yesterday, twenty aid agencies called on the international community to put “people’s lives before politics” in Somalia. There are two very urgent problems in this war torn nation. First, aid dollars for famine relief are falling short. The head of Somalia’s National Disaster Management Agency claims the Somali government is only receiving 30 – 40 […]

The Federation of American Scientists has just issued a report, Upsetting the Reset: The Technical Basic of Russian Concern over NATO Missile Defense, by the FAS scientific consultant Yousaf Butt and MIT’s Theodore Postol. To judge from the FAS summary, the report is actually not very technical and largely states the obvious: The Obama Administration’s […]

This coming Saturday, September 24th, there will be events all over the world, in 170 countries, to demand that the transition from fossil fuels, the move toward a greener planet take place at a faster pace and with more focus.  Sustainability is – to tell you the honest truth – the only way we’re going […]

Armed drones may be just the beginning of a major technological revolution in the defense industry. An expert on military robotics, P. W. Singer says the “Predator” and “Reaper” drones flying over Pakistan and elsewhere are “the equivalent of the Model T Ford or the Wright Brother’s Flyer.” Indeed, more can and is already being […]

In 2008 international rumors and reports flared in China that the controversial one-child-per-couple law may be coming to an end, however the rumors turned out to be just that and the law was then set to remain in effect for at least the next decade according to government officials. The  statement by the Chinese government […]

Saving a the life of a child is truly simple, yet all too often children suffer and die needlessly.  This year alone across the globe some two million children will die from preventable diseases.  These children will suffer and die from diseases that here in the United States are nothing more than a faded memory, […]

Its that time of year again, when the top nuclear dogs convene in Vienna for the annual IAEA General Conference. Not too much pomp, lots of circumstance. “Side” meetings galore. And, as always, the U.S. and its allies “mean girl” Iran and other evil-doers by not inviting their delegations to the good stuff. The list […]

More vaccinations would save 6.4 million poor children Boosting childhood immunization rates over the next decade in 72 of the world’s most impoverished countries would save some 6.4 million lives, and result in long-term gains in productivity valued at between $151 billion and $231 billion, according to two studies by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of […]