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Top 10 Reasons to Vote for John Kerry:

10. John Kerry would handle the war in Iraq differently. I think.
9. He's got better hair.
8. John Kerry will personally create thousands of jobs in America.
7. He has a plan for America's future. I think.
6. George Bush stole the last election.
5. I think John Kerry may have served in Vietnam.
4. George Bush didn't go to Vietnam, AND he skipped a physical!
3. The french people and the rest of the world all like him best.
2. Didn't he get some medals in Vietnam?
1. He's Not George Bush! (TM)


Top 10 Reasons to Vote for George Bush:

10. George Bush is Tough on Terrorism.(TM)
9. He supports educating children.
8. George Bush freed all those Afgan and Iraqi people. Personally.
7. He will lower your taxes.
6. George Bush was President on September 11th, 2001.
5. John Kerry's medals are fakes.
4. Those CBS memos were forged, duh.
3. The french people and the rest of the world all hate him most.
2. He's not as rich as John Kerry.
1. George Bush will keep America safe.

The problem that Pol Pot, Hitler and bin Laden had/have, is that they too subscribed to the opinion that the world consists of black and white, good and evil.

In each case, the people they killed were, in their opinion, agents of evil.

Not only did the WMDs not exist, the mass graves didn't, either

Of 270 suspected grave sites identified in the last year, 55 have now been examined, revealing, according to the best estimates that The Observer has been able to obtain, around 5,000 bodies.

... some sites have contained hundreds of bodies ...

The standard way for americans to respond to someone hanging around their car is to send in a helicopter gunship to blow up as many of them as possible. It also helps if at least one of the soon-to-be-dead guys is filming for a network news agency. That way you are guaranteed that the rest of the world will say "Hey, those americans are really nice guys. Let's help them in any way we can."

Reading a post like this sincerely makes me want to get a huge dog, but I'm concerned about my kid (and eventually kids) around one.

Set up a sound alarm of dogs barking triggered by a motion detector. That's what these guys did.

"I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. Cheney....that you're pants are on fire.'

See also Steve Bell's take.

He works with chemists, physicists, psychologists and even neuroscientists in order to come up with some creations that sound crazy but taste incredible. Stuff like tobacco ice cream, sardine sorbet, and frying potatoes in syrup and injecting them with benzaldehyde to create marzipan chips (fries). He's one of the best chefs in europe.

Iraqbodycount is only a) only counting cilivilian deaths and b) only counting deaths which have been /reported/ twice in the media. Actual civilian deaths are likely to be significantly higher. One Iraqi group estimated 35k.

Even if we assume that only 12-14k civilians were killed, the number of military casualties were much higher; the Guardian estimates up to 45k.

60k is probably a reasonable estimate for total deaths.

See also the Wikipedia article.

Also, you just made my foes list for calling someone a troll without justification.

What Mr Bush called "temporary safeguards" to allow the US steel industry to undergo a long-postponed restructuring will hit British steel exports and make the domestic market vulnerable to far east imports diverted from the US.

Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in the 80s
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2002/US/09/30/sproject.irq.re gime.change/rumsfeld.80s.jpg

America's WMD: Air Force tests "mother of all bombs"
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/2020/iraq_moab03 0311.html

"In a flashy debut for its biggest non-nuclear bomb, the Air Force today dropped a 21,000-pound behemoth onto a test range in Florida"

"Anthrax sent to U.S. senate matches Army strain"
http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditions/12/18/an thrax.investigation/

CNN: Army confirms anthrax production in Utah
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/12/army.anthrax/

BUSH SPURNS BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS BAN
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,494257 ,00.html

"a 1972 treaty banning biological weapons has been added to the list of international protocols Bush has decided to ignore"

U.S. accused of trying to derail anti-torture pact
http://www.photius.com/rogue_nations/torture.html

"The United States on Tuesday was accused of trying to derail a new draft international treaty against torture that has taken a decade to negotiate."

"The treaty, which is to be debated in the U.N. Economic and Social Council beginning on Wednesday, would set up an international system of inspections for all sites where prisoners were held, to insure that torture was not taking place. "

and this:

Document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key U.N. Security Council members
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239, 905936,00.html

I don't think Moore's film is the cause of "controversy". I think the hawkish Bush administration and previous republican ones are the cause of controversy. Don't shoot the messenger.

Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in the 80s
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2002/US/09/30/sproject.irq.re gime.change/rumsfeld.80s.jpg

America's WMD: Air Force tests "mother of all bombs"
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/2020/iraq_moab03 0311.html

"In a flashy debut for its biggest non-nuclear bomb, the Air Force today dropped a 21,000-pound behemoth onto a test range in Florida"

"Anthrax sent to U.S. senate matches Army strain"
http://www.cnn.com/2001/HEALTH/conditions/12/18/an thrax.investigation/

CNN: Army confirms anthrax production in Utah
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/12/12/army.anthrax/

BUSH SPURNS BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS BAN
http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,494257 ,00.html

"a 1972 treaty banning biological weapons has been added to the list of international protocols Bush has decided to ignore"

U.S. accused of trying to derail anti-torture pact
http://www.photius.com/rogue_nations/torture.html

"The United States on Tuesday was accused of trying to derail a new draft international treaty against torture that has taken a decade to negotiate."

"The treaty, which is to be debated in the U.N. Economic and Social Council beginning on Wednesday, would set up an international system of inspections for all sites where prisoners were held, to insure that torture was not taking place. "

and this:

Document details American plan to bug phones and emails of key U.N. Security Council members
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239, 905936,00.html

I don't think Moore's film is the cause of "controversy". I think the hawkish Bush administration and previous republican ones are the cause of controversy. Don't shoot the messenger.

U.S. invading Venezuela for oil interests?
Nah, that'd never happen.

Speaking of film, this documentry shows inside of the failed American coup attempt.
http://www.chavezthefilm.com/html/film/home_film.h tm

This is being developed at my university (uwe) although we didn't get a mention in the article! :-( Anyway, yeh, they've been working on it for a while. Not sure about 7 but at least around 5 years ago. The original was a slugbot. An article in the guardian in 2000 makes reference to it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 101493,00.html Or you could go straight to the lab ;-) http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/ And for the guy complaining that solar is better. They do solar too :-)

Don't count the school in that list just yet. "About half of the 32 terrorists have been identified and we have not yet discovered anyone from Chechnya." That from a government I'm convinced wants it to be Chechens so they can continue cleansing the ethnics from an oilpatch. So far there's nothing connecting it to Chechens but cheap words.

There are several new stories today about Bobby Fischer winning a deportation injunction in Japan.

In what way is this movie's creation and/or television broadcast akin to "short-circuiting the democratic process"??!!

• Creating or broadcasting a movie is not the same thing as when the Supreme Court decides who gets to be the next president as they did in 2000.
• A movie such as F-9/11 is an act of speech and as such is contributing to the democratic process of debate, something Americans don't engage in critically enough.
• If this movie engenders any response in viewers that leads them to the voting booth (no matter which candidate they choose) then this movie is strengthening the democratic process, which has been weak and in decline for decades.
• This movie cannot be considered "overt political manipulation" until the movie reaches out and starts bribing people or otherwise coercing them to behave a certain way. However, it certainly does try to influence people's opinions about what has been going on for the last four years, just like any other newspaper or magazine editorial.

This movie is not propaganda:

To denigrate this as propaganda is either naive or perverse, forgetting (deliberately?) what the last century taught us. Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast. Propaganda invariably serves the long-term interests of some elite.
This single maverick movie is often reflectively slow and is not afraid of silence. It appeals to people to think for themselves and make connections. And it identifies with, and pleads for, those who are normally unlistened to. Making a strong case is not the same thing as saturating with propaganda. Fox TV does the latter; Michael Moore the former.

. . .because you're really, really dumb. Or at the very least, your reasoning is. Let's begin with a glaring appeal to ignorance:

They may be racists, fascists, and anything else you can call them, but if they publish something that is factually-untrue, people will be outraged. I haven't seen any such outrage (besides your own) over the BNP's and Telegraph's reporting of the murder, whatever the slant may be; then again, I admit I haven't looked that hard (again, citing the Telegraph article was due to my wanting to verify that this party's claim was, in all probability, at least generally-true, b/c I knew the BNP would - like any political party - have an axe to grind).

You readily admit that you don't know anything about the BNP, other than that they're a political party (which is evident from their name). You want outrage? Google News has over 150 stories mentioning them, none particularly complimentary; a search on The Guardian's website finds almost a page's worth of stories in the last week alone, and a search at the dreaded BBC News site finds 27 pages of results. The BNP aren't small, or stealthy, or unknown, and the outrage against them isn't small, or stealthy, or unknown either. Certainly, knowledge of the BNP is prerequisite to commenting on contemporary British politics. Your strategy of justification is an appeal to ignorance (you haven't heard the outrage against the BNP, so it must not exist), and in the end, all that it proves is your own ignorance. And it's offensive that you use a quote that you misattribute to Malcolm X to defend an organization that publishes articles like The Islamic Menace.

Now, let's tackle your fundamental misunderstanding of the BBC and the TV licence. The TV licence isn't a one-time tax collected by the government at the point of purchase (as you assert on the basis of, it seems, absolutely nothing), but rather, a monthly fee, collected by the BBC. So your arrow diagram falls flat. It is, of course, collected with the authority of the government, but all sorts of private and arms-length public bodies collect money from users with the authority of the government: toll roads, utilities, that sort of thing. I also think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the BBC: in no sense is it "private sector": it's owned by the crown, but its revenue and its governance is independent. To suggest that this arrangement is "by definition" fascism totally misunderstands fascism: the BBC isn't subject to central control by an anti-democratic despot; rather, it often works as an important part of British democracy, holding the government to account (as you did note later on). Fascism isn't so much about formal structures, but rather what's done with those structures, and the BBC certainly doesn't act in a fascistic manner. And as part of their charter-renewal process, the BBC is looking at the future of the TV licence. As I understand it (and I've moved away from the U.K., so I'm not keeping up as much as I was), they want to keep the licence, but there are alternative proposals being put forth, and while the BBC is lobbying to keep the licence, it hasn't "denounced" anyone.

Anyway, my main point is this: you've gone off, in an authoritative way, stating "economic definitions" (whatever the hell that means), and opinions about the "definition of fascism" and the legal status of the BBC, from a professed position of ignorance

Yes, and the 5th Anniversery of his unfortunate demise was 2 days ago. Since then they have been lead fearlessly by joint leaders Alan "Howling Laud" Hope and Cat Mandu, photographed here.

Unfortunately, Cat Mandu was found dead last year - the victim of a traffic accident, having ended his days as another road death statistic, renewing calls from Loony Party activists to introduce Cat crossings on main roads so that cats have the same chance of crossing the road as pelicans and Zebras.

You are somehow labeled as "right" or "left" depending on the whim of the moderators or random members of the community.

Really old, but I happened to be thinking of it earlier today - the Political Compass. Apparently I'm way off to the left, and down a bit.

Maybe all posters in this new section should take said test so that posters with conflicting views may safely ignore viewpoints that they disagree with. After all, there's a place for partisan publishing (scroll down a bit...) ;-)

Any argument for which you cite the BNP is likely to be bullshit. The BNP, if you don't know, are a far right racist political party known to be a haven for neo-Nazis, anti-semites and general racist motherfuckers. They fucking hate all the media because all the media realise that they're racist motherfuckers. As for the Telegraph article, it seems as though the murder was completely unrelated to any work he did for the BBC, even less BBC News. He happened to murder somebody, after being employed by the BBC.

As for the left right scale, CNN and PBS are leftist, Fox News are right wing twats and MSNBC I haven't seen enough of to know.

For the record, I get my news from the Guardian (left wing newspaper), the Independent (nice, politically independent (although VERY slightly leftist) newspaper which employs Robert Fisk), the BBC and CNN International (a completely different beast from the American CNN, with more concentration on world affairs). Anybody looking for radio can do no worse than the BBC World Service. If you haven't noticed, most of those are British (and even CNNI comes from London). That's because we kick ass :)

The Iraqi resistance fighters who are holding those two French journalists are making demands that the French government will surely refuse to meet.

Of course, they are not to be blamed. The French and the Iraqis are both victims in this sad situation.

The Poincare C. indeed is explained with apples and doughnuts.

According to the Guardian another clever Maths dude has proposed a solution to another of the 7 "million dollar" problems.

This particular problem has big implications for online cryptography as it deals with the distribution of prime numbers. Apparantly.

(I'm no mathematics person BTW.)

In the UK, the BBC is independent of the government and is supposed to maintain an independent stance of e.g. political parties by law (with certain exceptions where British interests are concerned).

Of the nespapers, the centre-left Guardian is pretty good -- they print regular corrections, and are owned by a trust so they can print what they want.

Of the papers on the Right, the best (in terms of accuracy, not politics) of a bad bunch is probably the Torygraph.

An "up close and personal" supernova might have been responsible for the Cambrian-Ordovician mass extinctions and glacial age, some 0.5 billion of years ago. The massive pulse of gamma ray turned the ozone layer into a brown nitrous dioxide layer.

In turn that (A) allowed UV radiation from the sun to cook a lot of organisms. Yes, including those under water. _And_ (B) affected the climate so massively, that the Earth was turned into a cosmic ball of ice for an awfully long time. _And_ (C) must have caused one hell of a nitrous acid rain.

So I'd say you _really_ don't want to see one up close and personal.

Some reading on this topic:

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/headates /earlier.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/dispatch/story/0,12 978,1053475,00.html

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 94198

(On the other hand, _if_ there's a God, you have to give the guy some credit. This is a much more clever way to devastate a planet than just a flood. Very efficient too.)

I'm a disabled vet and I can't figure out the same thing.

I mean, I think it's fairly clear that Bush used huge political influence to avoid Vietnam. The former Texas Lt. Gov. from the 70s has recently publicly stated that he pulled strings to get Bush and other sons of the elite into the Nat'l Guard.

Bush obviously didn't want to go to Vietnam (I can't blame him), since he checked the box saying he didn't want to go overseas.

It's also clear that Bush was a deserter. After his father sent him away from Texas for being a drunk he went missing from the Nat'l Guard for a year. You mean to tell me that some of the supposedly hundreds of people that served with him are not stepping forward to claim the thousands of dollars in rewards for saying they served with Bush?! That's insane.

Then there's the military records. I remember how fat my 201 file was and how the military loved to keep paperwork. There's no way those records are "lost" -- I think it's far more likely that Bush cronies cleaned house on his records.

I also think it's fairly likely that Kerry worked an angle to get 3 purple hearts and to get out of Vietnam. Hell, I would not have wanted to go to Vietnam. But then again, when an explosion went off and Kerry got a butt-ful of rice, dirt, and some shrapnel, do we honestly think he was knew about that explosion or was calculating how it would impact on him? When he was grazed with a bullet, do we really think he was volunteering to be shot "just a little" so he could get the hell out of Vietnam and go back home?

Hell no. He got lucky. He got lucky repeatedly, saw an angle to get out, and got the hell out. I can't say as I blame him -- he did his time and played by the rules.

But that's a helluva lot more than you can say about Bush's "service"[sic]. The fact that this deserter organizes campaigns to criticize Kerry or McCain says a lot about his lack of character.

Have a look, for instance, at ChildLocate.co.uk

Some more links:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-8593 96,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,690 3,1101683,00.html
http://www.followus.co.uk/

There's another article on the Guardian today about this kind of topic, though this one is only about tracking criminals. Welcome to the prison without bars.

licence

that was a joke obviously.

As for their server problems, I paid my years fee yesterday.

Check out this article in The Guardian which is a fully paid for advert for this bollocks.

In reply to your factless, logic-devoid ad hominem attack defending the thinking of Red Staters by attacking mine, I cheerfully back up my own statements:

You just keep thanking god,

You just thanked god for our republic. I don't remember seeing god's signature on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

and we, the majority on the coasts,

I live in NYC, on the East Coast, which is home to over 102M people, while the West coast is home to over 45M people. Not even counting the Gulf Coast, that's over half of Americans, plus the people who are counted as living outside those coasts, but actually live here while they go to school or work. That's a majority. We're popular.

will keep making the money that's always propped you up

The great myth of "Western Independence" is belied by simple evidence like the net transfer of wealth from East/West Coast states through even the income tax, and federal spending. Find your welfare state in the handy chart! Don't forget to thank us.

since you massacred the Indians.

OK, *you* personally have never massacred any Indians. But where do you think that healthy environment around you came from? The stewardship of SUV driving, TNT-fishing, laser-scope hunting, WalMart shopping aboriginal tribes of golfshirt people?

Just remember that we don't need you brain-drainees so much now that the Cold War is over,

Look at all the out of towners around NYC, the johnny-come-latelies in California, and all the people fleeing the vast wasteland between the mountains, then turning to the monster truck rallies, wrestling supermatches, and amber waves of grain. You might prefer the peace and quiet, but we've got your best and brightest. Once your Bush boys have waved goodbye to all the jobs except China's WalMart salesdroids, even those charming missile silos won't endear you to an American economy fighting to compete in a global info economy strangely alien to downhome tractor drivers.

so when your pickups are trudging through the next Dust Bowl

You didn't learn from the last one, judging from the mileage on those pickups and SUVs. Isn't history funny the way it repeats? And I don't mean just the perpetual war on your History Channel.

searching for the last gallon of gas

Of course you can trust your buddies in Oklahoma and Texas to save some for their country cousins, right?

don't come whining to us about how we've moved on.

That one might be off the mark. You'll probably figure out some way to send in the troops to our coastal states, because we've got WMDs or something.

And keep your apocalypse stories away from our Button.

"God speaks through me." - GW Bush. Cut the crap, denier. You made the mistake of insulting New York, where the smart people live. You're the kind of mockery that isn't funny, coming unarmed to a battle of wits. This is not a joke. Your empty, obnoxious insults, biting the hands that feed you, are unacceptable. Don't be surprised when we cut off the free ride.

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."

According to this,, some people are doing just that. Hopefully it'll have some impact.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

Your quote completely mischaracterizes the report, which you can read in its entirety from here. Let me offer an alternative quote from the report (p. 7-8):

Rather than predicting how climate change will happen, our intent is to dramatize the impact climate change could have on society if we are unprepared for it. Where we describe concrete weather conditions and implications, our aim is to further the strategic conversation rather than to accurately forecast what is likely to happen with a high degree of certainty. Even the most sophisticated models cannot predict the details of how the climate change will unfold, which regions will be impacted in which ways, and how governments and society might respond. However, there appears to be general agreement in the scientific community that an extreme case like the one depicted below is not implausible. Many scientists would regard this scenario as extreme both in how soon it develops, how large, rapid and ubiquitous the climate changes are. But history tells us that sometimes the extreme cases do occur, there is evidence that it might be and it is DOD's job to consider such scenarios.

In other words, the the report does not claim that the extreme doomsday scenerio you describe above is likely to happen. Rather, the purpose of the report was to pick a unlikely but plausable extreme outcome since it's the DOD's job to prepare for the worst-case scenerios.

In fact, let me know share with you the emphasized section in a big box on the front of the report,

IMAGINING THE UNTHINKABLE

The purpose of this report is to imagine the unthinkable - to push the boundaries of current research on climate change so we may better understand the potential implications on United States national security.

We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research, and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts. The scientists support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two fundamental ways. First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely happen in a few regions, rather than on globally. Second, they say the magnitude of the event may be considerably smaller.

We have created a climate change scenario that although not the most likely, is plausible, and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately.

The article you quote from The Observer reports that "'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'" The sentance quoted from the Pentagon report was summarizing what the world would be like in the imagined, extreme scenerio. Your wouldn't have been able to tell this at all from The Observer article, however, since the article made it seem like the Pentagon thinks that thi

Since atomic clocks can be used to measure effects of gravity, it would be interesting to see how mass producing atomic clock chips could be used to create maps of gravity, seeing how they can be used to reveal geological information.

There are much more serious and interesting instences of banning, like the actual 1995 book burnings of Germar Rudolph's published findings (a German chemist who found evidence showing no signs of Zyklon-B use in Auschwitz other than in delousing chambers). Extreme or not, his publications were literally burned...

And another similar instance wherein publication was halted and pages were ordered torn out of a medical study which showed people of Jewish ancestry to be significantly genetically linked to the Arab and Palestinian population.

Tax around 30p per liter, I think it's classed as biodiesel hence is discounted from the usual rate of over 50p pl duty. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,878122,0 0.html http://www.channel4.com/4car/buying-guide/faq/biof uels/biofuels-4.html

This project might fail just as it gets going. Some people say bananas are going to die out.

I was reading slashdot, and he left a message for me.

Give me all your money - I know who you are. ps. I accept paypal

So I clicked away as fast as I could and started reading fark - but he was one step ahead.

If you don't give me all your money I'll disable your SETI@home account!

I was terrified. This guy was good. So I thought I'd try something else, I went to google news - how was he doing this? There in the headlines:

iraqWarDeathToll++;
Stem Cells blocked by extremists citing Satan - Christopher Reeve unavailable for comment.
I Said Send Me Your Money.
jobsAvailable--;

I'd had enough, I turned off my computer and ran to a newspaper.

95% of the money in the world controlled by 5% of the population, 50% controlled by 1%.
Economic middle-class taxes and expenses rising - wages stagnant.
Super-rich get tax break on overseas investements.
Incumbent campaigns to convince citizens that they will be rich - fights for lower taxes.

And I realized there wasn't anyone stalking me. The messages weren't directed at me alone, but at me as a member of the economic middle-class. I thought I was a bully's target, and I guess in a way I am. I'm personally affected by every corrupt policy, every writ of habeas corpus, every war, every genocide.

VOTE, if you care.

Look
you been quoted. Now all geeks ,hackers & script kittys. Are honry teenage males .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,129 0974,00.html

As recent incidents in French schools showed, people who harass Jewish students these days are not paragons of the Aryan race, but pro-Palestinian Muslims.

If you RTFA, there's not much background info....Here's a link....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theissues/article/0,6512 ,353264,00.html/

IANAE (European), but I have a question (Don't jump on my case, please)....

Why do most European countries insist on covering up any history of Hitler? Yes he was evil, yes he did bad things, but history is history, and not changeable......We in the US do not hide the Civil War, slavery, or even racism. Any insight would be appreciated...

-thewldisntenuff

Sorry to reply again, but here is a link in which it is reported that Lord Hutton thinks the BBC over-reacted to the criticisms in his report.

...as those in the UK might realise, the newspaper The Guardian also published today a much longer and more detailed article with Sasha Yuvchenko, another engineer working at Chernobyl at the time who survived the disaster. He too comments on the excellent medical care he recieved. Read it here.

Seems young George is a constant source of amusement (and frustration) to many of us.

In much the same way as John Prescott is over here (in the UK).

Some choice quotes:

• "I would like to make some start in my speech."
• "The city of York already is a city, as is my own city of Hull is a city, and that I think is the definition of city and town."
• "If I decide it is right to make a statement to this house, that's what I do, that's what I have done, and it didn't come from anybody else."
• "At the end of the day it's a negotiated settlement, they're always the more difficult ways of finding acts of violence or unilateral actions like this will not help, and we just see the matter escalating from day to day, again just walk the table - that's still the only solution!"

More here and here.

If education has gone downhill since he was a lad, we're all in trouble!

What passes for 'education' in the US is gameshow knowledge; memorizing a nearly endless stream of disjointed factoids just long enough to repeat it on a test.

We need to stop kidding ourselves - education in the US isn't worth a damn.

How anyone can claim it is when we place such heavy emphasis on largely unnecessary, irrelevant and highly specialized classes (like calculus)

How about this article or this one. Maybe not direct evidence for bankrolling, but Iranians are moving into Iraq to fight against the U.S. Many analysts think that Iran and Syria are co-operating with the terrorist organizations.

I've seen many other articles as well. Do a search at google.

the story is covered in detail on http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1286 066,00.html/ I sumitted this story atleast 3 days back and as usual for me it was rejected ;-) Keep it up GODs ;-) - I will get you some day.

To see how Microsoft really feels, read this excerpt from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,128 5890,00.html

For example when employees were arrested in Turkey because Kurdistan had been shown as a separate entity on maps of the country, a decision was taken to remove Kurdistan from all maps.

"Of course we offended Kurds by doing this but we had offended the Turks more and they were a much more important market for our products. It was a hard commercial decision, not political."

In the Spanish version, they used "hembra" instead of "mujer". There is a more descriptive article.

Writing Software for a Worldwide Distribution Proves Difficult

Or see article

(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
(Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily.

(ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them.

(iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.

(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.

(c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis;

(i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so.

(ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual.

(iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you a