In the Headlines

And the news is not good today...

The London Times reports that al-Qaeda operatives are planning 'the big one' to execute in Britain, something they say is on "a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki." This can only refer to exploding a nuclear device. In the War on Terror & Tyranny, this is what Graham Allison referred to as "the ultimate preventable catastrophe," and let us all hope that it is. Kevin Potvin has been given enough to pump his fist at already. Obviously we don't and can't know all the operational details that will go into preventing, disrupting, and dismantling, this plot, or how credible the information is, but it's not a secret that pursuing nuclear materials has long been an objective of Osama bin Laden's in his war against the West.

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died at the age of 76. Though his record on political reform is spotty at best, Yeltsin is best remembered as the Russian leader that ended the Soviet Union and stood defiantly atop an advancing tank to prevent his ouster in a coup attempt shortly after the fall of the Evil Empire.

The Nigerian election has returned the ruling party amid widespread complaints of fraud and other illicit behaviours that have come to mar most exercises in democracy in Africa. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be an expert on Nigerian politics, but suffice to say that I'm always disappointed when I see the trappings of democracy being used to trammel the progress of a state and its citizens' aspirations so that corrupt leaders can advance their own power with the fig leaf of legitimacy.