Random Stuff (or) Here There and Everywhere!

News from all over.............. NASA is now afraid that private interests will get back to the Moon before they do! Serves them right for pissing around all these years.

We should be out colonizing the solar system by now and trying to figure out how the hell we can get to the stars!

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

Are we really in a police state? The secrecy coming from the US government is well documented, but now comes word that journalists here in Canada have tried to get info on the use of tasers from the RCMP under the "Access of Information act" ..... and the Mounties REFUSED!

Canada is good at conducting inquiries and this is a good time for another one!

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

The World's tallest man (See article on him H E R E ) Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk, who stands at eight feet five inches, was given a car by President Viktor Yushchenko.

Can't say those Ukrainians don't have a sense of humor. They gave him a "Mini Cooper!"

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

Anna Falco of Toronto was at Casino Rama in Orillia and while waiting to get into a show decided to put a buck into a slot machine. She won 8.9 million bucks!!!

The guy behind her committed suicide!

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

Mexico corruption rears it's ugly head again. Brenda Martin is a Canadian who has been in a Mexican jail for the last two years because....... (are you ready for this, the news just came out!) her former boss, Alyn Waage, was in an Internet fraud scheme that bilked investors out of $60 million.

He agreed to pay $500,000 bucks as a bribe to get out of jail.

Instead, he escaped and went to Costa Rica, so now the Mexican bandito's [cops and government officials] are holding Ms. Martin, (Who was a office clerk for Waage, and claims she is innocent!) for ransom until Alyn comes up with the half a million.

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

The latest Arab initiative to restore Palestinian unity turned to shit amid fresh recriminations between rival Fatah and Hamas movements.

How in God's name are they going to reach a deal with Israel if they can't even agree amongst themselves?

It's no wonder that the Jews get most of the support in the West, the crazy Arabs keep shooting themselves in the foot!

Yet Al-Qaida keeps calling for new attacks and a "Holy War" against Jewish and American interests and civilians on behalf of the Palestinians!

There is something, and more than someone, seriously wacko over there!

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

And this guest post by Greg Weston of Sun Media;

Imagine for a moment the reaction at the Pentagon to the news that America's premier surveillance satellite was being sold to some company up north in Canuckistan.

The sale would transfer all of the satellite's top-secret technologies to Canadian hands, and make its operations subject to the laws and national security considerations of Canada alone.

Now you have a good idea why a growing number of prominent Canadians are going ballistic over the planned sale of Canada's most advanced surveillance satellite to an American military contractor and arms merchant.

What would be ridiculous to the Americans is all but done in Canada.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice announced late last week the Conservative government wants another 30 days to review the proposed $1.35-billion sale of MacDonald Dettwiler Associates (MDA) to the space division of the U.S. giant, Alliant Techsystems.

No wonder Prentice is taking his time.

MacDonald Dettwiler owns and operates the newly launched Radarsat II satellite, spectacular Canadian technology that can "see" through the densest clouds, even at night, spotting objects the size of a car from its orbit 800 kilometres above Earth.

The firm is also mother of the iconic Canadarm robotic arm aboard the Space Shuttle, and most recently gave birth to Dextre, the amazing artificial "hand" installed on the outside of the International Space Station.

Sale of MDA gives the Americans well over a billion dollars of Canadian public investment in some of the most advanced, world-class technologies ever created in this country.

As we reported when the deal was first announced, Canadian taxpayers directly pumped $445 million into Radarsat II alone, or almost 85 per cent of its total cost.

Less than a month after the satellite was finally launched in December, it was sold as part of the MacDonald Dettwiler deal giving the company every dime of the proceeds. Taxpayers would get squat.

But the industry minister now reviewing the deal has a lot more to square than a satellite built by taxpayers and sold for someone else's profit.

For over a decade, MDA has been by far the largest recipient of government funding for Canadian space programs, support aimed at helping to make Canada a world leader in advanced robotics, and attracting the best and the brightest in the field.

A cursory glance at the contracts doled out by the Canadian Space Agency just in the past year gives a good indication just how dominant MDA has become to the national program.

In the first three months of 2007, for instance, the space agency doled out 227 contracts worth a total of $18.8 million for various hi-tech development projects.

While MDA only got 16 of those contracts, they were worth a whopping $8.2 million, or almost 44 per cent of all the financial support provided by the federal space agency.

In the 10 months before MDA sold itself to the Yanks, the firm was handed over $23 million in space agency contracts.

Only weeks before the deal was inked, the Canadian military handed MDA another $60 million contract for airborne radar.

All this is now in Prentice's lap with less than four weeks to sort it out.

As industry minister responsible for approving foreign takeovers of Canadian firms, Prentice has to establish that the MDA sale would be a "net benefit" to Canada.

But he also happens to be the minister responsible for the Canadian space program that is clearly at risk in the MDA deal.

Prentice is one of the most capable ministers in government today, and it will take all of his skills to avoid a rerun of the Avro Arrow disaster that crashed Canada's aviation industry for decades.

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com