Happy July 4th Independence Day, to all my fellow Americans.  Hopefully, you all had as enjoyable a holiday as I did.

1. Had a large glorious BBQ with family and friends.  Personally, I stuffed many hot dogs, hamburgers, and rib-eye steaks into my patriotic pie hole while I was manning the grill.  Is 'Manning' sexist?  I was 'personing' the grill.  ...the Super Bowl Champion NJ Giants, Eli Personing
2. Made a pact with the vegetarians, I grilled them assorted fresh vegetables and they promise to help take care of me when I get mad-cow disease.  Suckers!  Now I only have to worry about e-coli and a million other life threatening illnesses made popular by industry dergulation.
3. Played badminton on grass.   It was nothing like watching the Grateful Dead on grass.
4. Talked about wearing an apron that said, "I have relish for your weenie!"
5. Enjoyed myself at the grill by asking people to open their buns so I can shove my weenie in.
6. Tied a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.  My brother tied a string bean into a knot with his tongue, which seems more difficult and breakable - I didn't try.
7. Successfully named every starter for the 1969 Cubs (if you count Adolpho Phillips as a starter).
8. Listened to everyone apologize for supporting Obama, now that he has turned against citizen's Constitutional rights and into a corporate stooge.  Hopefully, he will learn his lesson over his own Independence Day get-together.
9. Watched my dear old Mom be very happy - and smiled when she cranked up "Monkey Man" by Rolling Stones (see you tube link in intro).
10. At the end of the long day, I read bedtime stories to my niece and nephew.
11. Lay in my love's arms, watching beautiful fireworks explode over the Hudson river.

Happy Independence Day, everyone! Remember to always fight for our freedoms and rights, and to keep your weenies away from Joey Chestnut's mouth.

Always cook your meat!

One of the books that influenced me the most as I was growing up was Guy Davenport's collection of critical essays, The Geography of the Imagination. It was given to me by my uncle - a man with no money, but who knew and still knows the importance of the right books, and more importantly (to me) the importance of those books for me. He was an out-of-work art director, a painter and intellectual, a refugee from both postwar Estonia and Madison Avenue. He had been giving me books for years: Yeats' Memoirs, Pound's Literary Essays, Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era - anything he thought I might profitably dip into. (He even had me reading John Cowper Powys at one point, but I always say there's nothing like knowing your own limits).

I think it was as he handed this large, pale blue book to me - in his and my aunt's little house in the Catskills, with no heating beyond a round, glass, central-flued wood-burning stove (intended for summer people to drink rum by, or something), sitting on chairs bought in flea markets and re-covered by my aunt in fabric that matched the fabrics with which she curtained (in the absence of anything as expensive as, you know, doors) the cupboards - surrounded by paintings and prints and framed posters and antique dolls and drawings by my cousins (was there a TV at that stage?) - it was as he gave me this book, with its conspicuously recent publication date, that I realised. The penny dropped (a penny Guy Davenport would have picked up, had he found it somewhere).

In fact, after giving me this book, my uncle grew enthusiastic and went into the other room, returning with a pile of hardbacks which he thrust into my hands, saying, "Here, you should probably have these too... I think you'll find them interesting, he's really worth reading..." The books were all by Davenport: Da Vinci's Bicycle (now lost), Tatlin! and Eclogues. But it was The Geography of the Imagination that really caught my (oh, sorry) imagination. Well: that, and the story of Vladimir Tatlin's tower, which exists only as a legend, and in prototype - a lost moment in a time which turns out never to have existed. But that's another story.

I preface this story "as I was growing up," which tells you something about my family. We're late developers; that childhood feeling stayed with me till I was about 25.

Anyway, in an aside the other day in connection with Junot Diaz, I mentioned having given a lot of thought over the years to "being American." I think this is something every American has to do on leaving the country. Of course they do it a lot IN the country too, but you do it in a different way after you leave, just the same as immigrants do it in a different way once they arrive. Like that Polish couple on Route 28 in Shokan, running that bakery out of their house with the amazing cinnamon buns and a giant American flag outside. To them it was the American flag itself that made it so they could make their cinnamon buns. In peace. The fact that I couldn't understand that didn't matter - and it did make me remember them. (That and the cinnamon buns.)

The excerpt from Guy Davenport below is about just this: identifying things and knowing what they are once you've seen them. One of his great traits was this ability to draw connections between things, to group them in ways that were at once meaningful and fresh. Applied to literature it was very instructive and invigorating; applied to his (precisely regional, and also set in time) childhood, as here, it is simply wonderful.

It occurs to me that that house was in fact haunted. I wouldn't say "in fact" if I hadn't seen the ghost myself. It's been corroborated by my cousin, whose room I saw it in. Years later, having forgotten about that incident, I had a vivid and terrifying dream about that benign little place, in which the house was so thick with ghosts that I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. And what is a ghost but a way of making a connection between different things, times, places?

The quote below comes from an essay called Finding, from The Geography of the Imagination. As Wyatt Mason states in his "Weekend Read" article in Harpers, which reproduces the whole thing, this piece is a family memoir disguising (less and less thoroughly as you go on) a treatise on critical thinking. It also incidentally encapsulates an American moment, a particular view in the viewfinder, a glimpse of a long road back - back to Europe via the Cherokee, via the old ladies of the Civil War, via the notion of civilisation itself. We never talk about this stuff any more.

Davenport writes:

"It is now shocking to me that I realized so few connections between things as a child. I vividly remember reading a book about Leonardo, and remember the important detail of his finding seashells in the mountains, but I thought that wonderful, wholly beyond my scope, failing to see any similarity between my amateur archaeology and Leonardo’s. What controlled this severe compartmentalization of ideas was my sense of place. Books were read by the fire or by the Franklin heater in the kitchen; in the summer, under the fig tree, and what one read in books remained in the place where one read them. It did not occur to me that any of my teachers at school had ever heard of Leonardo da Vinci any more than of Tarzan, Victor Hugo, Robert Louis Stevenson, or the Toonerville Trolley...

The schoolroom was its own place, our home another, the red fields of the Savannah valley another, the cow pasture another, uptown, the movies, other people’s houses... At Grannyport’s ... one never mentioned the moving pictures that played so great a part in my life, for Grannyport denied that pictures could move. It was, she said, patently illogical (she was absolutely right, of course, but I didn’t know it at the time), and no dime could ever be begged of her for admission to the Strand...

...Nor could the movies be mentioned at Grandmother Fant’s, for attending them meant going into public, a low thing that the Fants have never done... Nor could I sing 'The Birmingham Jail' at Granny Fant’s, as Uncle Jamie had once spent a night in that place. Nor could we (later on, in adolescence) mention new births in Uncle Jamie’s presence, for at forty he still did not know the facts of life, and Granny Fant was determined to keep up the illusion that humanity is restocked by the stork...

Nor could we mention looking for arrowheads - the thought that her daughter, son-in-law, and their children walked all over fields and meadows in public would have sent Granny Fant to her bed with a vinegar rag across her forehead."

I came to Mason's article via the ever-erudite Patrick Kurp on Anecdotal Evidence. He says, paraphrasing several hundred words by that other linking-person, Henry James: "Happy Independence Day."

It's still the weekend, so I say it again. Follow these guys through the woods and you know you'll come out somewhere.

But it's all good.

The sun is still oppresively shining and the birds are still chirping in a nature reserve 20 minutes away from my hotel.

America, I miss you bro. I know you're having a tough time with the subprime and the credit cards and the transfatty foods and Obama's running mate and Mike Meyers in a crazy wig and floods and the fires and the oil and the ogggggggle.  I'm with you, I miss you.

I remember your last birthday. I drank forties and watched this go down:

 Thanks for the memories Boston. So epic, Eric.

Happy belated birthday, bro! Hope you let your hair down. Had a few brews. Fired up the barby. Kicked it.  I know how you do.

In Aden, our nation's birthday fell on Firday, or Islam's Sunday, so my employers gave us Saturday, America's Monday, off for observence. I proceeded to kick it quite hard. There weren't many fireworks or anything like that, but I did manage to grab a few brews with a brah from Georgia. More on the bar later...

My good friend and former student Mohammad Saad emailed me note that I found quite touching, so I'm forwarding it onto you, America.

[T]he coming conflict is not one between religion and secular civilization but rather 'between the God religious and the social religious'---in other words between the worship of God and the cult of the state or of the race or of humanity.

Dawson was obviously referring to the gathering clouds of conflict that he foresaw in the evangelical cults of Nazism and Stalinism.

But what I think is really interesting is Dawson's ability to make the distinction between 'religion and secular civilization' and 'evangelical religion v. evangelical secularism.'

In other words, religion and secular civilization can thrive alongside one another, and needn't be hostile to one another, if they accept the limits of their proper domains.

The problem comes in two directions:

• First, wherever religion becomes theocratic and wishes to impose itself upon the liberty of its opposition, either by majority will, or by force.
• Second, wherever the State becomes evangelical, and wishes to impose upon the liberty of its perceived opposition, either by majority will, or by force.

Examples of the first include religious strictures placed upon gays and women---such as laws against same-sex marriage and abortion---and enforced by the State. Examples of the second include forced educational curriculums upon the children of the religious---as occurs when parents are not given the option to guide their children's beliefs about evoluton.

One thing that I like about Barack Obama, and that I find conservative about him, is that he seems to genuinely try to make peace between the secular and the religious. He seems to recognize the dangers of overreaching in both the realms of religion and the State.

Notice, for example, that Obama opposes the same sex marriage ban that will be on California's ballot in November, but he also supports the expansion of President Bush's faith-based initiatives program.

And he supports abortion rights, but also rejects the notion that late-term pregnancies should be terminated due to mental distress alone.

He supports the right of students to have prayer groups in schools and certain traditional mottos to be on display (such as "In God We Trust"), but does not support prayers led by teachers.

Obama, in short, has a deeply conservative instinct concerning the relationship between the State and religion, and he deserves credit for his attempts to strike a balance between the two.

He seems to be a man who, absorbing the lessons of history, has learned caution, and what could be more conservative than that?

Cheap is what we like. When political consultants say, “Programs for the poor are poor programs,” what they mean is that poverty plays poorly on the stump. Even John Edwards, in trying to focus the nation’s attention on poverty during his presidential campaign, proposed strategies like raising the minimum wage, which, while admirable, do nothing to help the poor and may, at the margins, even harm them.

University affirmative action programs, whatever their benefits, are no remedy for the problems of the black poor. Perhaps this is why Barack Obama has questioned publicly whether his children should benefit from them and also why leading voices on the black left — Cornel West comes to mind — have proposed that college admissions programs give preferential consideration based on economic class.

Maybe I've been reading a bit too much Orlando Patterson (or Bowen and Bok, for that matter), but I've never had the impression that affirmative action in college admissions was designed to even benefit the black poor, at least not in huge numbers.  Patterson argues (and I'm inclined to agree) that affirmative action in college admissions  was intended to increase the number of African-Americans (and women and other minorities) represented in elite colleges and professions.  This in turn, is supposed to have the effect creating a sort of institutional inertia, where the existence of African-Americans in higher positions makes it more likely that they will recruit other African-Americans to similar positions.  All in all, this is intended to aid African-American's integration into a broader society from which they had traditionally been isolated.  And, as Patterson stresses, these policies were targeted at middle and working class African-Americans who otherwise could have worked their way up to elite circles, if not for institutional racism.

If that's the case, then Carter's op-ed is a little silly, since he's basically arguing that affirmative action doesn't do what it wasn't intended to do in the first place. 

yesterday was America Independence Day,since the shipyard at Sembawang beach is an American shipyard,fireworks was not to be missed.damn the Subway in there is closed to the public.super lame.

Lady!show me your face!

She is camera shy for some unknown reason.

ouch,my ears~!~!

I Love You!

Current pull ups completed:5

Days to enlistment:5

So Ahmadinejad has launched an energy-independence program designed to shift Iran's transportation system from gasoline to natural gas, which Iran has plenty of. "If we can change our automobiles' fuel from gasoline to [natural] gas during the next three-four years," he said last July, "we won't need gasoline anymore." His plan includes a mandate for domestic automakers to make "dual-fuel" cars that can run on both gasoline and natural gas, a crash program to convert used vehicles to run on natural gas and a program to convert Iranian gas stations to serve both kinds of fuel. According to the International Association of Natural Gas Vehicles, more than 100 conversion centers have been built throughout the country: Iranians can drive in with their gasoline-only cars, pay a subsidized fee equivalent to $50 and collect their newly dual-fuelled cars several hours later. Ahmadinejad's plan, which has been largely ignored by the West, means that within five years or so, Iran could be virtually immune to international sanctions.

While Iran is moving quickly toward energy independence, Brazil is already there. It's a striking turnaround; three decades ago, the country imported 80 percent of its oil supply. But since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the Brazilians have invested massively in their sugar-based ethanol industry and created a fleet of vehicles that can run on the resulting fuel. According to the Sugar Cane Industry Union (Unica), 90 percent of the new cars sold this year in Brazil will be flexible-fuel vehicles that cost an extra $100 to make but can run on any combination of gasoline and ethanol.

Unlike Brazil or Iran, infrastructure in the United States - roads, agriculture, housing developments, etc. - was built on the assumption that cheap oil would flow for the foreseeable future.  And when the entire superstructure of American living rests on cheap oil, it makes it extremely difficult - and truth be told, risky - to move towards energy independence in the way that Brazil or Iran can.  Both of which aren't as reliant on oil as we are, and both of which can afford to suffer energy shocks (to a degree).  More importantly, the sheer scale of American energy consumption - the huge number of cars on the road, the staggering number of people in the suburbs - means that any approach must be piecemeal and incremental.  I'm not sure how to begin that approach - I would start with reducing our reliance on industrial agricultural methods - but I do know that there aren't very many models for transition that we can look at for guidance, including of course, Brazil and Iran.

"The funeral-home defendants are charging about double for caskets that are identical to what you can get elsewhere," says Gordon Schnell, an attorney representing the class-action defendants. "You can buy caskets privately, on the Internet, at Costco—we want to get the word out that consumers have options."

Funeral home defendants described here are: the major Funeral Home Corporations and the major  casket corporation.These are the major funeral corporations in America.

Unfortunately family funeral homes also employ this tactic Some Funeral Home leaders mentioned on this blog do this( Hultrgen Funeral Home, Calvert Funeral Homes and Trimble Funeral Homes). Just to be clear half off is an estimate and does not apply to all areas of the country

The full Funeral article including the bit on funeral corporations in Newsweek can be viewed here:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/144482/page/2

Paying less for a funeral and Caskets promotes the broad prosperity and better future for all.

More information on lowering the information on lowering the average cost of a funeral can be found here:

Rest in Peace: Insider’s Tips to the Low Cost Less Stress Funeral by R Brian Burkhardt and Matt Bacak

Your Funeral Guy, R Brian Burkhardt, Funeral Director, Author, Blogger, State of Illinois

Be sure to let me know how you achieved low funeral cost

The theme is allegedly the broader one of use, and abuse, of our national banner. The post-modern piece is in the WaPo, of course. And while it is ostensibly about the flag, it's really about what a patriot Barack Hussein Obama is. From this piece, which should have had a pro-McCain article to balance it:

Obama was grilled about his failure to regularly sport a flag pin by Charles Gibson of ABC News during an April debate. Advisers to Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain agreed that it could become "a major vulnerability if you're the candidate in November," Gibson said. "How do you convince Democrats that this would not be a vulnerability?"

Obama came back with a spirited defense of his love of country and his patriotism. He called the lapel-pin question a distraction from the serious issues facing the country. But although the focus on that particular piece of the senator's attire ebbed as he wrapped up the Democratic nomination, rumors questioning the first African American presidential nominee's patriotism have continued to dog his campaign.

The lapel-pin flap is little more than a political ploy. Does anyone seriously believe that a popular U.S. Senator from the Midwest does not love his country because he doesn't (or didn't) wear a flag pin every time he puts on a suit? But since this non-issue involves the American flag, it receives loads of media attention and resonates with those who want to believe the worst about Obama.

Can't you just feel the tingle about Obamarama going up your leg? Well, for those who swallow this brand of ObamaTown KoolAid, here's one American's take on it.

Wearing a flag lapel pin: quite right. The wearing of a pin, by itself, means nothing. However, making a big deal about not wearing one, and then showing up surrounded by dozens of flags, while wearing one, says something about Obama's (lack of) character.

I agreed with Obama on the point that the wearing of a pin is not a substitute for patriotism. A better test of patriotism? Look at our actions, at what we support, over our careers. Obama has not supported this nation; he has supported a back-to-Africa, Afrocentric radical "church." In this he has shown he is not a patriot of any sort.

I love my nation; I love my nation's flag. I was taught the Navy's code for protecting the colors, and for always showing respect. For not wearing the flag in any way that would soil it -- like the moron I saw wearing a flag as a sweatband yesterday; probably thought he was the great patriot.

Barack Hussein Obama's use of the flag as a political prop is especially offensive. He soils it by using it for crass political purposes, never having served under its banner. In fairness, Bill Clinton did this, as have many others. But all presidents up until now, and all major party candidates, have served or had patriotic bona fides which Obama lacks.

Obama, never having served in anything except the increase-the-welfare brigade, and having been raised overseas, can't be expected to know flag etiquette. But we can, and should, expect that our next commander-in-chief know these things.

The laws this administration has created to protect themselves from war crimes need to be overturned, Their is no Statue of limitations to prosecute war criminals. These criminals need to be prosecuted before the world court for the murders of 911 against the American people and the murders in Iraq, The Corporate profits they have made for themselves and their Big Oil buddies are criminally gained, and should be gave back to the people they stole from. To help rebuild America and Iraq. What about the freedoms that were taken from us to spy on who found out the truth ,so they could shut them up. What about the comments Bush made about the constitution just being a piece of paper.[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9153741586264750761&q=911+truth&ei=58lwSMm7EZfA4AKyyO2VDw&hl=en]

It is our responsibility as Americans to bring these criminals to justice.

http://kerouac.blogs.liberation.fr/cherel/2008/07/avant-la-route.html

“Sur les pas de Jack Kerouac, à nouveau cet été «On the road», de New York à San Francisco.”

Spre surpriza mea, la comentarii cineva recomandă şi cartea lui Robert Pirsig de călătorie cu motocicleta,  “robert m.pirsig sur son traité des motocyclettes”, este vorba despre “Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance”, o carte despre filosofia antică, filosofia orientală  şi Calitate în tehnologie.

Titus Filipas

I haven't yet settled on what to write about, most likely it will revolve around the simple things in life, such as good beer, beautiful girls, good design (I am a graphic design major) and multimedia. I will try to write another post soon, right now I gotta go. Dinner is served.

/j

Due to the Wimbledon Men's Final, Fox Television, and Fox Sports, which have approximately 10 channels in the US, have decided to time delay the British Grand Prix for 5 hours, and show it at 1pm our time.  So I must now avoid all media and internet access, and leave my mobile phone switched off until after watching the race.

To any Fox employees that may be reading this....  Oi, idiots, this is unbelievable!  When I was growing up in Great Britain with only 4 channels of television they managed to show the Wimbledon Final and the Grand Prix at the same time.  When the BBC held the franchise to both sports and had only two channels they managed it.  This is America, the 4th of July weekend, and you've a dozen channels, Fox, Fox News, Fox Sports, Fox World Sports, et al, at your disposal and yet you can't free up enough space for two major international sporting events at the same time.  Hope you plan better during the olymics, they sometimes have several sport events on the same day, even in the same stadium, how will you cope?  If you greedly grab the franchise for the 5 most popular races of the season (the rest are shown on the SPEED Channel) then you should, guess what, show them live like they do on SPEED...

Okay, I feel better now, and while the rest of you are watching the first few laps I'm going back to bed!

Israelis killed a Palestinian youth for driving a bulldozer onto the midst of a crowd in the heart of East Jerusalem and killing three Israelis last week. But the reaction of the Western political leaders to the action of the Palestinian worker, one of over a million and half living in humiliation of the Israeli occupation, amounted to killing him and other Palestinians a thousand times.

While the Western leaders did not feel any compunction in condemning the poor building worker in the harshest words they could find in the dictionary, they did not have the guts to describe the incident as the natural and likely reaction of a human being put to indignities beyond his endurance powers.

It is true that no Israeli civilian ever drove a bulldozer onto the midst of Palestinians on a crowded street. Why should they when their bombers and missiles can and do kill Palestinians in thousands in their homes and streets?

Over the past six months 365 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, most of them civilians, with children accounting for 50 percent.

The only civilian an Israeli bulldozer killed was an American woman, Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old peace activist from Olympia, Washington. Corrie was crushed to death by a 60-ton Israel Defense Forces bulldozer as she stood before a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip in 2003. She was killed while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home.

It is high time that we made a clear distinction between the acts of terror, particularly from a state that calls itself a democracy, and the acts springing from frustration, injustice and humiliation.

This Palestinian youth was a human being with normal feelings of pride and honor. He could not be blamed for losing his equanimity for a moment when he thought about the plight of his brothers and sisters who are being treated like dirt in the Gaza Strip and West Bank and put under a blockade denying them the most basic requirements of life.

"D - Day" Demonstration : 8th July- Vaclavske Namesti - Wenceslas Square
July has arrived in Prague, and as well within just a few days, the U.S. Secretary Of State, Condoleeza Rice is expected to attend discussions with the intentions of signing the treaties involved in the installation of a U.S. Missile Defense Radar Base in the Czech Republic.

The length and exact term of "Condi's" visit has been reported to be on the morning of July the 8th and stay between the 10th.

If our government here in the Czech Republic thinks that it's citizens will remain passive, quiet and indifferent "neteční" during it's ignorant and defiant pursuit of a rapid signing of the Missile Defense & Radar Agreement, truly they have made an unprecedented mistake.

"Pokud si naše vláda myslí, že občané zůstanou neteční k její úporné snaze o urychlené podepsání smlouvy o radaru, tak se plete."

"D - DAY" Demonstration

"D-Day" = The Day Of Condoleeza Rice's Arrival In Prague.
Individuals who are against the placement of the U.S. Radar Base on Czech Soil, Voice It ! - Say It ! - THE RADAR WILL NOT BE HERE !!

The people have remained against the agreement for two years without change, and the government has also not changed in it's stance of ignorance of the people, citizens and the majority "Czech Vote". We can voice our final words once more to Parliament via elected and responsible spokespeople for the "No To Bases" Iniciative, "Ne Zakladnam".

We will demonstrate in protest of "Condi" and the Radar, On Tuesday, 8th of July, in Wenceslas Square, from 18:00 (6pm).

Police say Torrey Lowrey, 30, pulled into the Kum & Go on Westover Road and Skyline Drive at about 1:30 p.m. He paid for gas and then walked around the station for more than an hour mumbling to himself. At about 2:50 p.m., Lowrey told a man pumping gas that he had a gun and wanted to kill himself.

A crush of patrol cars swarmed the gas station as police tried to coax Lowrey out of his Budget rental truck, but he refused to budge, telling officers he had a gun taped to his hand and several explosives that would “blow up several city blocks,” police Sgt. Andy Boisvert said. Minutes later, Lowrey surrendered.

Boisvert said police confiscated two rifles, a shotgun, two pistols, a semiautomatic handheld carbine, three knives and several cases of ammo from the rental truck, but didn’t find any explosives. Two black labradors that were in the truck were taken to the local pound.

Source

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The three American hostages rescued by Colombia's military said in their first public statement that they are doing fine and are thrilled to "return home to the country we love."

In a statement released late Friday by the U.S. Army, the men thanked their families, the Colombian military and the U.S. government, "who never forgot us."

"For five and a half long years, we all hoped and prayed this day would come," the men said. "Now that it has, we're just overwhelmed with emotion. The love and the joy we're all experiencing is beyond description."

The three freed American hostages — Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Thomas Howes — have been receiving medical care at Brooke Army Medical Center at San Antonio's Fort Sam Houston. The three were working for a Northrop Grumman Corp. subsidiary when their drug-surveillance plane went down in Colombia's southern jungle in February 2003.

Source

She once taught elementary school in her native Kurdistan, in northern Iraq. That was before she, her husband and their three children fled the Saddam Hussein regime a decade ago.

Later, as U.S. citizens, her husband and children supported her decision to enlist in the Army, even if they didn't fully understand it.

Source

The five-day exercise, which started Saturday, tested the Ballistic Missile Defense capabilities between the USS Russell, sailing in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and the USS Benfold, now in the northern Persian Gulf.

"This cooperation … represents the latest in an ongoing series of defensive exercises intended to provide increased security," Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of 5th Fleet, said in a statement.

The exercise differed from recent ballistic missile tests in that it was a simulated shoot-down, and focused on communication capabilities between 5th Fleet and 6th Fleet leaders, officials said.

Source

U.S. troops set up a base in Kandaksai, Afghanistan, along Pakistan's border in August 2006. The strength of extremists has grown as U.S. counterterrorism plans for the region have hit a wall.Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden's terror network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad; sharp policy disagreements; and turf battles between U.S. counterterrorism agencies.

Source

There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint in Tikrit who claimed to be a dirt farmer but had 11 felony charges in the United States, including assault with a deadly weapon.

The records suggest that potential enemies abroad know a great deal about the United States because many of them have lived here, said officials. The matches also reflect the power of sharing data across agencies and even countries, data that links an identity to a distinguishing human characteristic such as a fingerprint.

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