More detail on the oil grab scenario

** Via the Christian Science Monitor: Oil plays starring role in plans for post-Hussein Iraq

One thing is certain: Even if oil is not America's prime motive in confronting Iraq (as some Bush critics allege), the resource figures centrally in US plans.

'To love where others hate': Peacemakers lauded

Via St. Paul Minnesota Pioneer Press | 02/03/2003 |

As the U.S. prepares for war, a group gathered Sunday afternoon at Hamline University to note a lesson of compassion and selflessness from last century's bloodiest war.

Sixty years ago today, the U.S. Army troopship Dorchester sank off the coast of Greenland after being torpedoed by a German U-boat, killing 672 men. In the tragedy, four chaplains of different faiths gave up their life preservers so that others might live, an act that emerged as one of World War II's enduring stories.

On Sunday, the Immortal Chaplains Foundation awarded its fifth-annual Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity for those who risked their lives to protect others of a different faith or ethnic origin.

In a showing of reconciliation, among those attending was the first officer of the U-boat that sank the Dorchester.

"We the sailors of U-223 regret the deep sorrow and pain caused by the torpedo. Wives lost their husbands and parents lost their sons,'' said Gerhard Buske. "I ask for forgiveness. We had to fight for our country, as your soldiers had to do.''

Buske, who spent two years in a Canadian prisoner of war camp, also said it was important to apply what happened in 1943 to today's world.

"We all should try to live in the sense of these immortal chaplains. We ought to learn to love where others hate,'' Buske said.

Complete article

It's the oil, stupid

** After Colin Powell's presentation to the UN last week, it would have been easy to conclude that it's worth sending troops, mostly US, into Iraq to rid the world of that bad, bad guy, Saddam, because he has lots of bad, bad stuff hidden away. But wait, what's new about that? The US gave Saddam all that bad, bad stuff in the first place. Now we want it back? What for?

Oil.

It's so obvious it's easy to overlook: Saddam controls Iraq's huge oil reserves and we want that oil for ourselves, without restriction. Many US companies stand to profit handsomely from a regime change in Iraq. That alone should make us cautious about wasting our youth in the streets of Baghdad.

That's what the organization Target Oil thinks. Here are a few highlights from an article on their Web site:

Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.

Saddam has offered lucrative contracts to companies from France, China, India and Indonesia as well as Russia.

It is only the oil majors based in Britain and America - now the leading military hawks - that don't have current access to Iraqi contracts.

A leaked oil analyst report from Deutsche Bank said ExxonMobil was in 'pole position in a changed-regime Iraq'.

Chevron used to employ the hawkish Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, as a member of its board. Five years ago the then Chevron chief executive Kenneth Derr, a colleague of Rice, said: 'Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to.'

Full article
See also:
Fueling war - Christian Science Monitor
December 05, 2002
With the cold war over, more global conflicts are being spurred by a scramble for natural resources rather than by geopolitics, and poor countries rich in mineral deposits are the new focal point.

Ten Reasons Why Many Gulf War Veterans Oppose Re-Invading Iraq

** By an anonymous Gulf war veteran
Article via Veterans for Common Sense

Take a wild ride from the infinite to the infinitesimal

Powers Of 10: Interactive Java Tutorial
View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

Also see Cosmic Zoom an 8-minute film made in 1968. This film probes the infinite magnitude of space, and its reverse, the ultimate minuteness of matter. Animation art and animation camera achieve this journey to the farthest conceivable point of the universe and then into the tiniest particle of existence--an atom of a living human cell--with a freshness and clarity that would seem impossible with other means of exposition. Film without words.

Missing the Meaning of Success

When Hamilton College celebrated its centennial, one of its most famous
alumni, Alexander Woolcott, was asked to give a major address. Horace Fenton
Jr., remembers that Wolcott opened his speech in this way: "I send my
greetings today to all my fellow alumni of Hamilton College, scattered all
over the world. Some of you are successes, and some of you are
failures--only God knows which are which!"

We don't always know success when we see it.

J. Ellsworth Kalas, If Experience Is Such A God Teacher Why Do I Keep
Repeating The Course, Nashville: Dimensions, 1994, p. 88.

McDonald's Coffee Case - What are the Facts?

Via Siegfried and Jensen law firm Web site

The now infamous case of a lawsuit against the McDonald's Corporation for serving dangerously hot coffee generated an extraordinary amount of public outcry. Every time I question potential jury members before a trial, I always hear the same thing. The potential jurors all say that the civil justice system is out of control and they refer to the McDonald's case. Then when I question them as to what they really know about the case, again, I always hear the same thing. All they know is that a jury awarded $2.7 million in damages to some little old lady who spilt coffee on herself while driving away from McDonald's drive through line. Unfortunately, just about none of this is what happened.
Here are the facts: