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Friday, September 1, 2006 |
ThisIsLondon: "Held up by a secret service bodyguard in his dying moments after being shot in the stomach, this is President Bush being assassinated."
But do worry, the POTUS is still alive.
ABC: "The United States says it has carried out a subcritical nuclear experiment successfully at an underground test site in Nevada - the 23rd such test since 1997."
Officer: "Intelligence officials now fear that homegrowns pose as much of a threat to the U.S. as foreign terrorists. State and local police are being enlisted to watch for signs from people who in the past would have never gotten a second look."
Yahoo: "In a move to satisfy the GOP's most conservative supporters, President Bush on Wednesday nominated five people as appeals court judges, including one whom Democrats have threatened to block with a filibuster."
TheDigest: "The US has three military bases in Baluchistan. They say they are fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the region. Perhaps. But, Baluchistan borders with Iran to the west. Baluchistan, too, is rich in natural gas and minerals. China is helping the Pakistani government to build a natural gas pipeline from Baluchistan's port of Gwadar to China, a project the Bush administration opposes. The port of Gwadar just happens to be geographically located to overlook the Straits of Hormuz, which the Iranians intend to block if they are attacked. Hormuz is the crucial sea route for international oil distribution.
Coincidence that the US should be interested in 'terrorism' in Baluchistan and urging Musharraf to be more zealous at the same time that it is planning an attack on Iran?"
Reuters: "A New York Times decision to block British online readers from seeing a story about London terrorism suspects raises new questions on restricting the flow of information in the Internet age, legal and media experts say."
1:01:21 PM 
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UNCTAD: "Alarmed by increasing volatility in the stock, commodities, and currency markets of developing countries and emerging economies, UNCTAD's Trade and Development Report 2006, warns that without quick international action to reduce global trade imbalances, financial crises in the wake of a tumbling dollar will threaten the benign growth performance of the world economy."
Independent: "Rich countries must deliver more money directly to poor nations to avert a growing health and sanitation crisis spreading across the southern hemisphere, Oxfam will say today.
The global charity said investment in health care, water, sanitation and education must be delivered by governments rather than the private sector.
The report condemned the World Bank for forcing privatisation or inappropriate private sector projects on developing countries, and criticised Western governments for signing up to the so-called Washington agenda."
In the Public Interest, Health, Education, and Water and Sanitation for All, An Oxfam/WaterAid report.
12:43:23 PM
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TheYesMen: "It is with great joy that I announce to you today a brand new Department of Housing and Urban Development. Everything is going to change about the way we work, and the change is going to start right here, today, in New Orleans."
Wish that were true. I love the Yes Men.
"An irresponsible, unemployed, middle-class huckster posed as an assistant to HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson and insinuated himself into a Gulf Coast Reconstruction Conference yesterday."
12:23:58 PM
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Kofi Annan: "Here is a country that has been through war and is now entering the period of recovery and reconstruction. And it will need to bring in lots of material. It will need to get its commercial activities going. With that sort of blockade lots of businessmen and lots of people are going to be held back. And I think it is important that that is lifted and not be seen as collective punishment of the Lebanese people, and Israel itself has said it has no quarrel with the Lebanese people."
Finkelstein: "Israeli troops launched airstrikes on the outskirts of Gaza City and exchanged gunfire with Palestinian militants Wednesday, killing six people, officials said."
George Soros: "When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan on behalf of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, allowing an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt; and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands. None of the six points was implemented. This contributed to Hamas's electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to hold elections, then backed Israel's refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect was to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.
The time has come to realize that the present policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. The Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise."
Haaretz: "Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because 'God chose us'. Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All of these are not counted among the collaborators. These are the architects, the planners, the designers, the executioners.
But there are others. Historians and mathematicians, senior editors, media stars, psychologists and family doctors, lawyers who do not support Gush Emunim and Kadima, teachers and educators, lovers of hiking trails and sing-alongs, high-tech wizards. Where are you? And what about you, researchers of Nazism, the Holocaust and Soviet gulags? Could you all be in favor of systematic discriminating laws? Laws stating that the Arabs of the Galilee will not even be compensated for the damages of the war by the same sums their Jewish neighbors are entitled to (Aryeh Dayan, Haaretz , August 21).
Could it be that you are all in favor of a racist Citizenship Law that forbids an Israeli Arab from living with his family in his own home? That you side with further expropriation of lands and the demolishing of additional orchards, for another settler neighborhood and another exclusively Jewish road? That you all back the shelling and missile fire killing the old and the young in the Gaza Strip?
Could it be that you all agree that a third of the West Bank (the Jordan Valley) should be off limits to Palestinians? That you all side with an Israeli policy that prevents tens of thousands of Palestinians who have obtained foreign citizenship from returning to their families in the occupied territories?
Could your mind really be so washed with the security excuse, used to forbid Gaza students from studying occupational therapy at Bethlehem and medicine at Abu Dis, and preventing sick people from Rafah from receiving medical treatment in Ramallah? Will also you find it easy to hide behind the explanation 'we had no idea': we had no idea that the discrimination practiced in the distribution of water - which is solely controlled by Israel - leaves thousands of Palestinian households without water during the hot summer months; we had no idea that when the IDF blocks the entrance to villages, it also blocks their access to springs or water tanks.
As Jews we all enjoy the privilege Israel gives us, what makes us all collaborators. The question is what does every one of us do in an active and direct daily manner to minimize cooperation with a dispossessing, suppressing regime that never has its fill. Signing a petition and tutting will not do. Israel is a democracy for its Jews. We are not in danger of our lives, we will not be jailed in concentration camps, our livelihood will not be damaged and recreation in the countryside or abroad will not be denied to us. Therefore, the burden of collaboration and direct responsibility is immeasurably heavy."
11:54:33 AM
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InsideGoogleBookSearch: "Starting today, you can freely download, print and save out-of-copyright titles to read at your own pace."
Just one example of the books you can download: Rights of Man by Thomas Paine.
And have you tried out Google Earth yet?
A good place to start is with the Wodehouse placemark folder. Wodehouse is one of my favourite comic writers and with Google Earth you can now visit the places of interest in his life and the places that served as the source for the sites his fictional characters frequented.
One thing that is certain is that Bush doesn't read enough.
11:23:52 AM
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