HeidiAllen.com

Evidence is now coming out that a former State Department official appointed by President Bush may have been involved in a scheme to sell nuclear weapons secrets to Turkey. While this has been largely ignored in the US press, it’s received quite a bit of attention overseas. In part, this is because Valerie Plame was part of the team investigating the case before it was abruptly shut down. As it turns out, Marc Grossman, the State Department official, is the man who originally circulated the classified document identifying Plame as a covert agent.

The White House has clearly been paying attention. On January 23rd, President Bush issued a press release announcing the proposed Agreement for Cooperation between the United States of America and the Republic of Turkey Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. Despite the new evidence to the contrary, Bush says,

“U.S. agencies received … information implicating Turkish private entities in certain activities directly relating to nuclear proliferation. … My Administration (is) confident that the pertinent issues have been sufficiently resolved and that there is a sufficient basis (as set forth in the classified annexes, which will be transmitted separately by the Secretary of State) to proceed with congressional review of the Agreement and, if legislation is not enacted to disapprove it, to bring the Agreement into force.”

Unless Congress acts to stop it, this agreement will go into force on April 21st or 22nd. It will provide all the cover needed to sell not only nuclear information and technology to Turkey, but materials as well. Let us not forget that Turkey aided A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani physicist, in selling nuclear hardware and information to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

I urge you to contact your Senators and Representative and ask them to stop the next round of nuclear proliferation before it starts… by killing this agreement. Thanks in advance for your efforts.

So… you’ve been romantically involved with someone for years now, and the relationship is serious and solid. For whatever reason (and there are many!), you don’t want to get married. Now that you’ve achieved the sought after “long-term, committed relationship”, how do you refer to eachother?

You could just let people call you husband and wife, but if that’s what you wanted, you’d be married.

The same goes for “fiance”.

You could confuse people with “common law husband/wife”, but that’s unwieldly and stiff sounding.

You could call eachother boyfriend and girlfriend, but that sounds like a casual fling or just plain juvenile. It can also cause real problems with people who assume that the playing field is still open.

You could put knots in your tongue with “significant other” or shorten it to “SO”, but the term has become dated and laughable to many. It also becomes tiresome explaining to people what it means.

You could refer to eachother as “my partner”, but if you have a business partner, things get confusing fast. If you say “life partner”, you assume that you’ll be together for your whole lives, and frankly, that’s unlikely.

You could say “soul mate”, but many people find that phrase too new-agey, or inappropriate for formal situations. The same goes for “lover”.

You could say “my better half”, but that’s sort of dodging the issue, isn’t it? And I hate to say it, but what about situations where it’s just not true?

“Other half” is a bit better, but personally, I like to think that my “partner” and I are discreet individuals.

What we need is a term that meets all these requirements:

* Short
* Obvious in its meaning
* Appropriate for both casual and formal situations
* Can be used by both males and females

With all the creative talent out there, this should be doable. Post your suggestions!