Iraq doctor brings evidence of US napalm at Fallujah - "EVIDENCE to support controversial claims that napalm has been used by US forces in Iraq has been brought to Australia by an Iraqi doctor."
Iran Requests Direct Talks on Nuclear Program - "Iran has followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent letter to President Bush with explicit requests for direct talks on its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials, Iranian analysts and foreign diplomats. The eagerness for talks demonstrates a profound change in Iran's political orthodoxy, emphatically erasing a taboo against contact with Washington that has both defined and confined Tehran's public foreign policy for more than a quarter-century, they said."
Crying for a Horse - "Now the nation waits with bated breath to find out if Barbaro will even survive his broken ankle. For horse racing fanatics like Judi Hunt of Aberdeen, Washington, who has listened to or seen each and every Triple Crown race since 1948, the reaction was as expected. The New York Times reported Ms. Hunt as saying, "I cried yesterday when the horse came up lame. I just want to know how the horse is going to do." Such empathy and pity are both predictable and natural in such a heartrending circumstance. However if Americans cared as much about people as they do about horses, Sunday night’s presentation of the HBO documentary Baghdad ER might have actually awoken the somnolent majority of our citizenry who are as indifferent to the carnage in Iraq as they are to tax rates in Tanzania." -- Too much to post here. Check it out.
Vladimir Putin and the rise of the petro-ruble - "On May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin ignited a firestorm that is bound to sweep across the global economy. In his State of the Nation speech to parliament,, he announced that Russia was planning to make the ruble “internationally convertible” so that it could be used in oil and natural gas transactions. Presently, oil is denominated exclusively in dollars and sold through the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMX) or the London Petroleum Exchange (LPE) both owned by American investors. If Russia proceeds with its plan, the ruble will go nose to nose with the dollar on the open market sending several billions of surplus greenbacks back to the United States. This could potentially send the American economy into freefall; triggering a deep recession and an extended period of hyper-inflation."
ACLU Launching Don't Spy on Me Campaign - "A civil rights group was launching a nationwide Don't Spy On Me campaign Wednesday to urge the public to demand that the Federal Communications Commission and state utility commissions probe whether phone companies broke laws by sharing customer records with the government's biggest spy agency."
Web inventor warns of 'dark' net - "The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said. Recent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh. He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period"."
A Nation in Chains - "Beneath the thunder of the mighty cataclysms unleashed by the Bush Administration – the war crime in Iraq, the global torture gulag, the epic corruption, the gutting of the Constitution, the open embrace of presidential tyranny – a quieter degradation of American society has continued apace. And this slow descent into barbarism didn't begin with George W. Bush – although his illicit regime certainly represents the apotheosis of the dark forces driving the decay. ... Earlier this month, the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London released its annual World Prison Population List. And there, standing proudly at the head of the line, towering far above all others, is that shining city on the hill, the United States of America. But strangely enough, the Bush gang and its many media sycophants failed to celebrate – or even note – yet another instance where a triumphant America leads the world. Where are the cheering hordes shouting "USA! USA!" at the news that the land of the free imprisons more people than any other country in the world – both in raw numbers and as a percentage of its population?"
Feedback Loops In Global Climate Change Point To A Very Hot 21st Century - "Studies have shown that global climate change can set-off positive feedback loops in nature which amplify warming and cooling trends. Now, researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have been able to quantify the feedback implied by past increases in natural carbon dioxide and methane gas levels. Their results point to global temperatures at the end of this century that may be significantly higher than current climate models are predicting."
By 2020, kiss the snows of Kilimanjaro goodbye - "There are a lot of projections about global warming, and almost all of them are scary."
McGavick would bar Iran from soccer's World Cup - ""This is not a trivial matter," McGavick said in an interview. "The world needs to use all the tools at its disposal against Iran. It needs to see that it's an outlaw state."" -- Idiot.
Jeb Bush Approached About Running NFL - "Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he was privately approached about his interest in becoming the NFL's next commissioner."
Googling America's Brain - "I spend a lot of time at a computer trying to avoid writing, which means that I make extensive recreational use of Google. For me, Google is a toy with which to tap into the written word of the American people -- and thus to plumb the psyche of the nation. Google turns out to be a septic cesspool in which deviant idiots splash around." -- Pretty funny.
A car that slows you down - "Vehicles in London could soon be fitted with technology that would automatically slow them down if they break the speed limit."
Doctor, did you warm up with 'Grand Theft Auto'? - "Surgeons who warmed up by playing video games like "Super Monkey Ball" for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors than those who did not, said Dr. James "Butch" Rosser, lead investigator on the study, slated for release Wednesday."
Quote of the Day
"How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?"
~ Bob Dylan, (Blowin' In The Wind)
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