Blair Unveils Plan for Nuclear Missiles - " "In these circumstances, it would be unwise and dangerous for Britain alone of any of the nuclear powers to give up its independent nuclear deterrent," he said." -- But yet other countries should be prevented from acquiring their own 'independent nuclear deterrent'?
Iraq Study Group Offers No Real Plan for Withdrawal - "If we were to follow the recommendations of James Baker's Iraq Study Group, we'd be embedded in Iraq for at least another three to five years."
IRAQ IS BROKE -- MAYBE WE WILL BE, TOO - "About 25 percent of the Americans who voted in last month's congressional elections believed Iraq was the most important issue of the day -- at least that is what polls told us. A few more than 10 percent of poll respondents cited the state of the economy as what was most important to them. My guess is that those figures will be reversed in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections. Unless American leadership is even crazier than it has been these last few years, we will be out or well on our way out of the grotesquely expensive disaster in the desert. But many Americans who consider themselves middle-class may be on hard or harder times two years from now. We are living in a house of cards."
Jews and Arabs can never live together, says Israel's vice PM - "In his first interview since taking office – exclusively with The Sunday Telegraph – Mr Lieberman said that the best means of achieving peace in the Middle East would be for Jews and Arabs to live apart, including those Arabs who now live inside Israel."
Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon - "The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty. You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects. ... The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds." -- Because that's what humans love to do: make weapons.
The Checks and Balances Myth - "How important to civilised government is a written constitution? ... The Federal Constitution of the United States offered one of the earliest models for democratic government in history, but has proven itself powerless to provide a corruption-free government, and is incapable of protecting itself from being violated by a handful of evil and corrupt individuals. ... So what is it about the Swiss model that provides this paragon of good government? Here's a clue: can you name the Swiss head of state? ... I believe the single most important feature of the Swiss model which allows for these most excellent qualities is that the Swiss themselves are empowered to make political decisions. Important changes to government policy must be put to the people before they can be enacted, and every year every Swiss citizen is invited to vote on numerous government proposals, even if they live abroad. No significant changes can be made without the people's consent. No one knows who the Swiss head of state is because he's almost an irrelevance; it's the Swiss people themselves who are in charge, not some elitist puppet representative of renegade corporations." -- Hmmm.
Government blacks out whole response to ethics watchdog's FOIA request - "posting on the blog of the group CREW shares pdf documents containing almost all substantive material redacted from the response to the organization's FOIA request. CREW was following up on earlier disputed FOIA requests seeking the logs of visitors to the White House. CREW writes that "We believe that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been in a dispute with the White House about those records. NARA doesn't quite buy the White House argument -- and we want to know what they've said to the White House." The blog post shares the outcome of the FOIA request, in which extensive e-mail communication between NARA and White House officials are visible. However, the entirety of the substantive e-mail communication has been redacted. "Most of what we got from NARA was pages filled with those black boxes," said CREW. "You have to wonder what they are trying so hard to hide.""
BRAINWASHING REVISITED - "Why are a few public uses of the word “nigger” worth $10 million? This is a word that blacks use daily when addressing each other in ordinary conversation. But, if you are white, you felt a twinge just now – didn’t you? – when you read the word on your screen. Seeing the word triggered something in your head. ... Again, I offer my periodic request that you read a couple of books by the man who coined the term “brainwashing,” journalist Ed Hunter. I believe that if enough Americans were to read those books, the “Kramer” problem would evaporate. They are Brainwashing and Brainwashing in Red China. Don’t let the titles fool you. Because Ed Hunter was a journalist and a good writer, both books are very easy to read and exciting. They will prove that what is happening to us has happened before; it is exactly what the Communists did in Red China."
Was "Kramer" Richards' Racist Rant Staged? - "There seems little doubt that Richards will be held up by the hate speech crowd as an example of how all controversial speech, be it as distasteful or not, has to be seriously regulated and punished by an action of the state."
Katherine Harris contributor indicted for sending white powder, threats to liberals, while our famously free press yawns - "So, a winger sends threats and white powder to liberals, the LA Times buries the story in local news, and nobody else picks up on it. That darn liberal media:"
Wal-Mart Girds for Showdown With New Congress on Unions, Trade - "Wal-Mart Stores Inc., long an ally of Republicans, has spent the last two years ramping up political donations to Democrats. The company will soon find out whether that bet will pay off." -- Aren't political "donations" really just a form of bribery?
Democrats inspect faith-based initiative - "Two leading Democrats on the House International Relations Committee said they want to investigate President Bush's faith-based initiative to determine whether taxpayer funds are being used to reward Bush's Christian conservative supporters and whether the faith-based groups are using the funds to help gain converts. In addition, Democrats on the panel said they could be in a strong position to try to overturn a measure that requires one-third of AIDS prevention money overseas to be spent on "abstinence-until-marriage" programs."
In the Diaspora: In-your-face atheism - "Those volumes do not settle for celebrating atheism while leaving poor, misguided theists alone. The new books are the literary equivalent of an intervention for a drug-addicted friend, a frontal assault on the very possibility that any intelligent human being could actually believe in God."
Atheism Is Not a Religion - "You hear it regularly from talking heads like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter (whose latest 'book', Godless, is subtitled The Church of Liberalism), and you're only going to hear it more now that the War on Christmas season is upon us: atheism is a religion just as sure as Christianity is, and all these heathens want to do is foist their religion on the good, god-fearing folk of America. There's always an undercurrent of defensiveness and desperation in this claim, as if one's own faith is invalidated by the existence of a genuinely different approach to life and the universe. In making their convoluted arguments, people who conflate atheism with religion actually weaken the foundations upon which their own belief is built. Atheism simply cannot be a religion unless that term carries essentially no meaning. Here's a handy list of qualities shared by almost all religions that atheism lacks: ... So, atheism shares none of the characteristics common to all belief systems commonly known as religions. Even widely-despised and derided belief systems like Satanism, Wicca, paganism and Presbyterianism are religions by these standards. Atheism is not. Arguing that it is means that faith in god, ritual, community, tradition, spirituality and theology are irrelevant. Religion then becomes an incredibly paltry thing. It is not a source of solace and spiritual wonder; it is not a vehicle for bringing symmetry to the chaos of life and meaning to the void - it's just the act of taking a position on the existence of god. That's it. How pathetic. ... There's no question that certain religious groups would like to impose their narrow view of the world on everyone. These people need to be opposed at every turn. But this does not mean that religion as a whole should be denigrated or dismissed as irrelevant. ... So much of the atheism versus religion debate takes place at the intractable fringes where there are so rarely either hearts or minds to be won. If we can surge past this white noise, however, we may come to a place where differences can be honestly respected and ideas can be exchanged in good faith (if you will)."
Firebrand pushes Atheism - "Over the next 70 minutes, Samuel painstakingly interviews several world authorities on science and organized religion to form a reasonably balanced account of the ills wrought upon civilization by belief in a single, omnipotent god."
Universal, MySpace set for landmark battle - "The legal battle brewing between Universal Music and MySpace could shape the broader commercial relationship between traditional media companies and a new generation of internet start-ups that rely on them for content."
Media climate - ""Senator Inhofe believes that poorly conceived policy decisions will result from the media's nonstop hyping of 'extreme scenarios' and dire climate predictions," said committee Communications Director Marc Morano. "This hearing will serve to advance the interests of sound science and encourage rational policy decisions.""
Dirty birds - "If you eat undercooked or mishandled chicken, our new tests indicate, you have a good chance of feeling miserable. CR’s analysis of fresh, whole broilers bought nationwide revealed that 83 percent harbored campylobacter or salmonella, the leading bacterial causes of foodborne disease. That’s a stunning increase from 2003, when we reported finding that 49 percent tested positive for one or both pathogens. Leading chicken producers have stabilized the incidence of salmonella, but spiral-shaped campylobacter has wriggled onto more chickens than ever. And although the U.S. Department of Agriculture tests chickens for salmonella against a federal standard, it has not set a standard for campylobacter. Our results show there should be. More than ever, it’s up to consumers to make sure they protect themselves by cooking chicken to at least 165° F and guarding against cross-contamination."
Video game violence 'harmful to brain' - "The effects include increased activity in the brain region that governs emotional arousal, and decreased activity in the part of the brain associated with control, focus and concentration."
NASA Says It Will Set Up Polar Moon Camp - "NASA announced Monday it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts return to the moon."
NASA Plans Lunar Outpost - "NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 -- the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system. The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024."
Russia Studies Exotic Lunar Elevator - "Russia's Space Research Institute has been studying the idea of a space-elevator cluster to economically deliver payloads from the Earth to the Moon and back."
Quote of the Day
"An educated man is one who has finally discovered that there are some questions to which nobody has the answer."
~ Unknown
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