Actually, the "Bad News" From Iraq is "Significantly Underreported" - "Baghdad and its environs are far too dangerous for most reporters to go visit, for example, hospitals or morgues in the country's worst hot spots -- most of the info we get from the media is based on these official data. So if the military is underreporting the 'bad news' the dreaded EM-ES-EM is as well. And then there's the very real likelihood that the "good news" about the status of reconstruction projects in Iraq coming from USAID and other agencies is quite significantly overreported. That suggests that, if anything, the commercial media is painting a better picture of Iraq than the facts on the ground warrant, which is a scary thought. "
Annan criticizes U.S. in farewell speech - "U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his farewell address, criticized the Bush administration, warning that America must not sacrifice its Democratic ideals while waging war against terrorism. ... "Human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity," Annan's text said. When the U.S. "appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused," he said."
Cornered US Military Takes to Desperate Tactics in Iraq - "People living in areas where resistance to U.S.-led occupation is mounting are facing increased levels of collective punishment from the occupation forces, residents say."
Time for Bush to Go! - "Despite wishful thinking about Bush “making a 180” and taking to heart the bipartisan Iraq Study Group’s 79 recommendations, the President is making it abundantly clear that he has no intention to reverse course, negotiate with his Muslim adversaries or pull American combat troops out of Iraq."
Iran offers to help U.S. withdraw from Iraq - "Iran's foreign minister delivered a blunt challenge to the United States on Saturday, saying Tehran is willing to help U.S. troops withdraw from neighboring Iraq but only if Washington makes some tough policy changes."
Israel's Olmert calls for dramatic measures against Iran - "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called for more dramatic measures to be taken against Iran and declined to rule out a military attack against Tehran in an interview with Germany's Spiegel magazine."
The Problem with Israel - "Let’s be honest (for once): The problem in the Middle East is not the Palestinian people, not Hamas, not the Arabs, not Hezbollah or the Iranians or the entire Muslim world. It’s us, the Israelis."
George Will: The problem with Iraq is that they're all savages - "Portraying the Iraqis as a bunch of irrational, bloodthirsty savages -- people fighting over some religious arcana who are "very difficult to help" -- is the latest craze on the right. Last week, the ever-charming Bill O'Reilly said: 'Do I care if the Sunnis and Shiites kill each other in Iraq? No… Let them kill each other. Maybe they'll all kill each other, and then we can have a decent country in Iraq.' This is a particularly disgusting bit of historical revisionism, but it's also quite familiar. It recalls 19th-century Europeans (and Americans) who embraced the idea that colonized peoples were infantile and incapable of self-governance. It shares the same roots as Jim Crow, which was largely justified by the idea that the newly freed slaves were incapable of functioning without the guidance of their former masters. It's social Darwinism, as clear as day. The narrative is intended to shift blame for the catastrophic sequence of events in Iraq from the policy-makers who started it to the Iraqis themselves. It's also simply wrong -- Iraq was a functional, modern and secular society before the Iran-Iraq war, and at least a functional one before the 2003 invasion. The chaos that followed resulted from choices made by the administration, not some deep-seated dysfunction in Iraq's culture."
And Now Come The Realists? - "When Donald Rumsfeld quit, no one in Europe noticed. He had long been a dead man walking. But it was different with the news that John Bolton had resigned as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In the foreign ministries of Europe, champagne corks popped in preholiday glee. With his droopy spaghetti-Western mustache and boorish manner, Bolton had come to epitomize all that America's friends hate about American foreign policy so far this century."
Iran Opens Holocaust Conference - "Iran on Monday opened a Holocaust conference that it said would examine whether the genocide took place, claiming the meeting was an opportunity for discussion in an atmosphere free of Western taboos."
9/11: The Roots of Paranoia - "According to a July poll conducted by Scripps News Service, one-third of Americans think the government either carried out the 9/11 attacks or intentionally allowed them to happen in order to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. This is at once alarming and unsurprising. Alarming, because if tens of millions of Americans really believe their government was complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their fellow citizens, they seem remarkably sanguine about this fact. By and large, life continues as before, even though tens of millions of people apparently believe they are being governed by mass murderers. Unsurprising, because the government these Americans suspect of complicity in 9/11 has acquired a justified reputation for deception: weapons of mass destruction, secret prisons, illegal wiretapping. What else are they hiding?"
Droves say goodbye to Golden State - "Between 2004 and 2005, the migration flow into California from the other 49 states started flowing the other way. Data from the state Department of Finance shows that, for the first time this decade, more people left California in 2005 for another state than the number who moved in. Mary Heim, a finance department demographer, says this particular kind of outflow will continue for the foreseeable future."
U.S. has most prisoners in world due to tough laws - ""The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs."
"I want that camera." -- Check out the video.
YouTube Adds a Layer of Filtering to Be a Little Nicer - "When the video-sharing site YouTube.com was sold to Google, many of its users worried that corporate ownership would restrict the content of its videos. But now one of YouTube’s corporate partners is changing the ways that users comment on those videos instead."
Excommunicated cleric installs married men as bishops - "An excommunicated Roman Catholic archbishop continued to defy the Vatican when he installed two married priests as bishops on Sunday. ... In a visible break from tradition, the wives of both men helped their husbands on with their vestments before each man was anointed."
Expensive Ignorance - "The Intercollegiate Studies Institute authorized the survey, which was conducted by the University of Connecticut's political-science department. In a random sampling, students from 50 colleges and universities were given a 60-question test with multiple-choice answers. The results were dismal."
UN downgrades man's impact on the climate - "The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent."
Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars - "A United Nations report has identified the world's rapidly growing herds of cattle as the greatest threat to the climate, forests and wildlife. And they are blamed for a host of other environmental crimes, from acid rain to the introduction of alien species, from producing deserts to creating dead zones in the oceans, from poisoning rivers and drinking water to destroying coral reefs."
Airport Christmas trees removed - "All 15 Christmas trees inside the terminal at Sea-Tac have been removed in response to a complaint by a rabbi. A local rabbi wanted to install an 8-foot menorah and have a public lighting ceremony. He threatened to sue if the menorah wasn’t put up, and gave a two-day deadline to remove the trees."
'Ray gun' cancer cure nears speed of light - ""Most of our patients won't lose their hair or even feel at all unwell because we are getting the beam to exactly where it needs to be, so healthy organs aren't being affected"."
Quote of the Day
"So much happens that the public doesn’t know about. People really need to wake up and not accept everything at face value."
~ Anonymous
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