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And then there was that stupidity about disallowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed in a courthouse, except in cases where it is allowed

Some of his classmates -- these are people who are planning on becoming high-school teachers, remember -- were saying "I think it's awful that they'd show Michangelo's David in public"

Any idea how those folks feel about the Venus de Milo?? I mean, there seems to be this kind of double standard in censorship, where it may or may not be perfectly OK to show boobs and even pubes, as long as they're on a female, but you'll *never* see a guys' dangly bits...

Remember... We didn't conquer the Soviet Union with sanctions, but rather blue jeans, rock and roll, and McDonalds.Nope. We outspent them in the arms race. And it didn't help that they depended on us for mission critical software in a natural gas field. Big enough blast to be seen from space when it happened. Basically they fucked up in spending priorities, not giving enough to the solid-state physicists. So they lost in the electronics race.

MSNBC has a more detailed article with an interview with the study's lead researcher.

so they could take over the Iraqi Oilfields

I seem to recall a few years back when Bush was claiming that the war would be paid for with Iraqi oil. Of course, now that the cost of the war is expected to pass one or maybe two trillion dollars, Iraqi oil couldn't pay for it, so it's easy to backpedal on that claim.

You are correct sir.

No, he is wrong, there are two programs. One which tapped calls internationally as the grandparent posted, and a second one that collected phone records on nearly every single American's domestic calls. Did you call in for pizza? Did a terrorist call in for pizza (God forbid that terrorists actually run the pizza delivery place, mafia style)? Does it matter? Who knows! Nobody knows what the NSA is going to use such an enormous block of data for, since the vast majority (99.999999999999%?) of the calls have nothing to do with terrorism. Google other articles about Qwest's refusal to participate to see the millions in juicy taxpayer dollars they passed up that the other telecoms were apparently all too happy to suck out of your tax dollars for this service.

is infested with many of the same moonbat types

It's a shame the infestation hasn't managed to drive out the infestation of ignorant Bush supporters who can't even keep track of what their president is doing. Maybe we need to swallow a cat to get the spider now?

That said, the larger issue is important. Just last night NBC ran a story about nuclear plant and security information being available in public libraries. My first reaction was that I generally favor public access to information, and that private watchdogs and the free press are probably why the US has not had a Chernobyl. The idea of purging public libraries is distasteful. But then they talked about what information was available, and I had to agree some of it should not be public, such as specifically the most damaging place to hit a nuclear power plant with an airplane. It is old information, and that sort of information would probably never be released now. Is that a good or bad thing?

"They were all acting together for their own amusement," said Capt. Chris Graveline. "There was no justification for what they did that night."

Graveline said the group took pictures of what they were doing "so they could remember that night, so they could laugh again at these men. ... There's nothing funny about what happened at Abu Ghraib."

Harman, 27, of Lorton, Va., was the second U.S. soldier tried and convicted in the scandal.

During Tuesday's sentencing hearing, she tearfully apologized for mistreating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

"As a soldier and military police officer, I failed my duties and failed my mission to protect and defend," Harman said, her voice cracking. "I not only let down the people in Iraq, but I let down every single soldier that serves today.

"My actions potentially caused an increased hatred and insurgency towards the United States, putting soldiers and civilians at greater risk," she continued. "I take full responsibility for my actions ... The decisions I made were mine and mine alone."

Several of the worst abuses photographed took place on a single day, Nov. 8.

In one of the most striking images to surface, a detainee jokingly referred to as "Gilligan" by the MPs was forced to stand on a box of food, with wires connected to his fingers, toes and penis.

Harman said she attached the wires to "Gilligan" and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.

"Why did you do this to the detainee 'Gilligan'?" a military investigator asked.

"Just playing with him," Harman said.

Also that day, MPs punished seven detainees they said were instigating a riot in a part of the prison outside Tier 1A.

The detainees were stripped and forced to the floor of the cellblock.

"Graner was placing them into position," Harman told investigators.

"How long did the human pyramid last?" an investigator asked her.

"The pyramid lasted about 15 to 20 minutes," she said.

That's my point -- you don't need their approval. You make predictions routinely. They are correct routinely.

The problem with this argument is that you assume your predictions come true the majority of the time. In many cases, environmental science especially, this assumption is not true. So what happens when you make your predictions and those predictions are wrong? While I think that his book on environmental theory was a bit of a sham, Michael Crichton definitely had a good idea when he proposed that scientists should be separated from donors - all research grants should either be anonymous or via the government, which as NASA and NOAA would attest, is never biased.

"In an age where we have to go to school longer and longer to acquire the skills for the technical and academic jobs, you honestly think that the ages are getting younger and younger?"

Right. And before the 1990s and the dot-com boom, how many under-25s were self-made millionaires?

I don't recall many pubescent Industrialists and Railroad Barons in the 1880s.

And how many bright people drop out of college to pursue their own agenda? Look up the figures - in many western countries (including the USA) highschools and colleges are haemmorhaging students.

Just because those who still subscribe to the traditional system of education->university->job->success have to study for longer, that doesn't negate the fact that increasing numbers of kids are simply short-circuiting the whole process.

"Oh, wait, these kids grow up with computers. I forgot. What a technical wonder it is to run Windows. I often have to teach my kids how to do certain things on the computer that goes beyond surfing a web page. And these are teenagers."

Congratulations - your kids are signally uninterested in technology. In the hypothetical future society we're talking about they will either be paupers or housepets.

But seriously - sure, millions of kids don't know how to do anything but swap MP3s, pirate games and post to their LiveJournals. But you know what? My parents wouldn't even know what "a LiveJournal" was, and my Granny doesn't even understand that it's possible to have "records on her computer", let alone how to rip MP3s, download and install LimeWire or Azureus and start sharing them with people all over the world... but half the kids I know do.

My point is that while a single carefully-chosen adult is almost better than a kid at a given technological subject, kids internalise and mass-adopt tedhnology with a speed that makes the average adult blink in confusion.

In non-technical (ie, 99.9% of the population) families, is it normally the kids or the parents who:

1. Spend more time on-line?
2. Know how to use all the functions on their mobile phone/camera/video/MP3 player/calendar/watch/gaming device?
3. Get called in to set the VCR time when the power goes?
4. Have a blog (inc. MySpace, LiveJournal, etc, etc, etc)?

Or, how about a really, really good example of the two groups' relative facilities with new technology?

When adults as a group adopt new technology as quickly as kids do, then I'll believe you've got a point.

And just to clarify, since you obviously didn't get it the first time around: I was exaggerating for comic effect when I was talking about "pre-pubescent teens" - obviously we're talking about 18-early 20s here, since this is the widely-recognised "sweet spot" between your youthful increased ability to learn and worldly-wise experience (which only comes with age).

"But it's true - the older generation might be a little lost when it comes to myspace or whatever the next fad is."

Right, but when the fad is the internet, digital media and mass-participation, it's a big deal.

Crowdsourcing, the rise of the internet and the increasing "digitalisation" of our culture means that even now governments are worrying about providing laptops to every child and getting internet access for all - if it's considered by them to be on par with the other things they try to ensure for all (you know - clean water, food, air, shelter and health) then doesn't that suggest your characterising the lot as "myspace and the latest fad" might be a teensy weensy bit dismissive?

"BTWo, it's not a matter of "keeping up", it's a matter of ignoring/blocking more and more irrevelant information in your life. The signal to noise ratio is growing ever higher. I can spend time keeping up with the news, but 99% of that is a waste of time, especially since I'm not a politician. So it is with /., u

Oh look - there were less than 150 thousand at launch:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15854413/

  Something blew up in manufacturing, because I somehow doubt Sony's going to crank out a quarter million a week to make their "1 million at launch". This would also indicate a very - very - long time before you'll actually be able to do the following. (a) walk into game store (b) go up to the counter (c) buy a game system.

Let me know when those lines stop forming. I might actually buy one myself - I'm thinking May at the current rate of production. Or you could get one on eBay - given the release numbers that means at least a FIFTH of them were put on re-sale. Must be a fun box when over TWENTY PERCENT of your audience doesn't give two-shits about it and would rather scalp it. Now that's a hardcore system right there, boy howdy.

"There is currently no other technique in naval architecture that can promise such savings."

I hate innacurate reporting. Adding Giant Kite-like sails to cargo ships is an alternative as well.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13325827/site/newsweek /

This is in use now and increases both speed and fuel efficiency far more than the 20% savings the air bubbles promise.

Imagine using both technologies together, or even adding solar panels to the sails for even more efficiency.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-06 -03.asp

Snail mail is the ONLY private form of communications we have left.

"Most bone growth occurs at night, study finds"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6876520/

* Whites are a minority in 4 states, Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas but are not given minority status in those states.

The question isn't IF it will disappear, the question is really WHEN and HOW. Printing to paper-based hardcopy helps for a few hundred years. It can be recopied from paper to paper easily - it's a very low context solution: ink on paper followed by ink on paper. So, important information about our society can be transferred across generations, even if the generations have no electricity at all. This is how we know Shakespeare, for instance.

Many people say "Oh, but we'll have some NEW technology that will take care of it". This assumes that the resource base for a new technology will be as generous and dense as our present resource base provides. This is a VERY unwise presumption, as there is categorically no proof that such will be the case. In fact, there are a variety of intense warning signs that suggest quite the contrary.

From the evidence I have found, and, oddly, I've studied this for a number of years now, I am fairly well convinced that industrial civilisation will simply erase itself from the human record as little more than a horribly polluted stain that destroyed itself through overpopulation and environmental stupidity. All the music you hear, all the shows you watch, all the films you cried at, it will all go away. Poof. This also means that self-absorbed hucksters like Madonna, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, and their supporting technology of TV, Radio, DVD/CD, etc will also disappear - just the flotsam of "entertainment" culture.

The long term future will be people chasing bison/cows across the prairie or living in small agrarian villages bound by localised population bursts and die-offs. But it will take several centuries to get their. In the meantime we've got our MTV and Orange Crush. The most important thing to remember is this: not getting to that Star Trek future IS NOT A BAD THING. We pissed away the globe's resources on our Xbox's, SUVs, jetset vacationlands, and all the other minutae and ephemera that makes a society "civilised" and provides "leisure activity". All societies have that, to varying degrees. We just had more of it, thanks to our insane and unrelenting exploitation of resources, petroleum, and electrical generation. But it will all go away, and THAT'S OK.

We will disappear. We Are Atlantis.

RS

I've tried to understand the idea of Intelligent Design, but after reading the non-arguments that the biggest Dutch proponent of ID gave, I am convinced that it is a bad, bad thing. ID is no scientific theory as it has no single predictive value. It's more like a general statement you could make to complement all open answers you have, just so that you are not tempted to check any further. It will not be able to create any framework to base scienctific progress on. The powers-that-be are strong though, and it is worrying how much the nonsensical ID movement already made possible, now having non-scientific theory being tought in science class, the horror! These developments have made me very critical of any religion that tries too much to meddle outside their own field and people. Do what you want, but leave others and general politics out of it!

Is that both China and India are already suffering from staff shortages. They can barely get enough unskilled labour, never mind highly skilled IT staff.

e.g.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/business/03labor .html?ex=1301716800&en=49c0d472886e1f39&ei=5088&pa rtner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15212647/

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/pdf/fullreport.pdf On page 3 it says that one of the hijackers did not have any ID - it didn't say whether or not the others were valid. On page 169 though, it appears that they did have an organization affiliated with Al-Queda that did facilitate the production of fake IDs. Other sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5594385/ Say that "many" of the hijackers used fake IDs.

I'm not so sure about assuming the quality of Chinese censorship. If you're only watching mainstream news feeds, it looks like "another day, another protest" in China. In the Washington Post via MSNBC this morning, it's One-dog policy resisted in Beijing crackdown where in these near-daily articles, juicy quotes like this one are increasingly common, too:

"More and more people own dogs. It is pointless to restrict dog-raising. The stricter the government is, the more people will love to own a dog," said Liu Tao, 26, who was at the unauthorized protest Saturday. "We are not blocked from the outside now. With the Internet, we can see how Western countries treat dogs well. It's hard to stop us from communicating with the outside."

Aside from the groundswell of Western ideals changing China, and back to their Wikipedia: Chinese officials might believe they can handle it. In addition to the drumbeat of articles in our free press indicating their people's increasingly free access to information, I also have known many friends and colleagues in China who have effectively unfettered access. Party-types might think they can handle it, but I would not assume they actually can. BG

You have reports of cruelty to animals, and widespread rumors of lab engineered chickens (albeit untrue), and THIS is what you spend your money on? Instead of pointless junk that doesn't serve any purpose other than get your name in the Guinness book of World Records, about you do something useful with the money. You can start by doing research to come up with a type of grease that WON'T kill your customers.

You can't be serious...

There's another way to make the jump from web to TV. I think Dateline NBC has been running shows on it.

Fine, here's another indicator:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15636348/

"Last week, the government reported that the overall, seasonally adjusted civilian national unemployment rate for October fell to 4.4 percent, the lowest level in 5½ years."

Not as bad as you think.

If you believe the newly appointed Defense Secretary, cyberterrorism is legit term and is tantamount to using WMDs.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6300590/

I think large parts of the so called 'Patriot Act' need to be repealed....

Source?

Soldiers in Iraq engaged in war brought to us on 9/11. Of course, that's just one of many cases of Bush lumping the Iraq invasion into the "war on terror" after the "imminent threat" thing fell through.

Believing something to be true that later turns out to be false is not lying.

Nigerian yellowcake. Oh, and your "believing something to be true" rings hollow when Bush denounced all of the CIA staff that told him he was wrong as "liberals" and ordered them all fired. If he believed that they were wrong, he'd have at least labeled them "wrong" or "incompetent", but being unable to attack them on grounds of truth, it seems he resorted to the nastiest label he could think of.

The problem most states have is that they do not have a large pre-existing and non-partisan based bureaucracy in place with a tech background, that possesses an understanding of the potential pitfalls with electronic voting machines, along with vast experience in enforcement. These States should look for help from one that has a long history of dealing with honest and transparent auditing from electronic devices.

In Nevada, Dean Heller, the Scretary of State, decided to tap the knowledge of the Nevada Gaming Control Authority when deciding upon a system to choose. They rejected Diebold machines, judging them to be easily tampered with, and instead went with Sequoia Voting Systems, but only after a paper trail model, which was satisfactory to the state had been implemented. Sequoia's name for this version seems to be, AVC Edge® with VeriVote Printer.

Nevada was the only state in 2004 to require a paper trail in their electronic voting machines, and the election was smooth. Here's the current URL for The Clark County, Nevada(Las Vegas)Election Department's voting machine guide.

Today was my second use of the machine (I didn't vote in the primary-it tends to be pointless for non-partisan voters like me), and I have a fairly high degree of faith in its veracity. This faith is contingent on believing that any tampering from the government side would require too large of a group of individuals to keep it quiet, and that Nevada Gaming Control Authority values its integrity higher than short term partisan interests. The vote begins with signing a registered voter print-out next to my name, then a card with a programmable magnetic strip is given to me whereupon I go to a machine and insert it. Then I make my election choices using a touch screen screen. After finishing those, I am given an onscreen recap of my intended vote, and if acceptable, the vote is then printed on a continuous register tape that can be viewed behind a glass barrier, and if it is the same as my vote, I finalise my vote.

Perfect? Hardly, but it fewer problems than the punch card balloting, and the old lever voting machines that were in use before those.

Here are a few links:

• Rachel Konrad-AP, "'Paper trail' voting system used in Nevada Electronic ballot machines equipped with printers", MSNBC, September 7, 2004
• Marsha Walton, "Nevada improves odds with e-vote: Slot machine experts consulted on voting technology", CNN, October 29, 2004
• Jim Drinkard, "High-tech voting accessory: Paper", USA Today, August 8, 2005
• Associated Press, "Nevada's Seamless E-Vote", Wired, September 13, 2004

There is at least one dissenter in Nevada though:
Martin Griffith, "Citizen activist sues provider of electronic voting machines", Tahoe Daily Tribune, October 30, 2006.
Maybe a grain of salt would be a proper prescription with this link though, as 'activist' does seem to be used properly in this headline, and it is the only complaint of this nature I am aware of.

The United States left Saddam Hussein in power after the acts he was on trial for occurred. God, you are dumb.

Of course, that is why the show trial was cut short -- so Saddam Hussein could not call all of his witnesses and put the evidence on the table of the United States having supplied and supported him during the Iran-Iraq War which lead to millions of people dying. But don't tell Republicans that Donald Rumsfeld shook Saddam Hussein's hand. They just don't want to hear it.

George Bush has shown himself to be a clear and present danger to the freedom of the American people and the world. He belongs in prison. His supporters are, for whatever reason, no different from those who did not speak up during Hitler's regime.

Tell the more than 300 people being held in the Guantánamo Bay concentration camps who didn't speak up. And keep on supporting the occupation of Iraq, just like a coward, with no concern for the people dying there.

And the GOP are rigging an election right now as we speak http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15603344/ Of course you can always find one or two examples, but the fact is the widespread orchastration of voter supression and voter fraud comes from the Republican party. Every election is like that. You can try and cloud the issue, but it just ain't so.

I wonder why the average American (or Brit) doesn't demand the same level of privacy that many of the mainland Europeans now have? While some other freedoms (e.g. speech,press) are more limited in countries like Germany, there appears to be a strong right-to-privacy movement backed up by the government.

Sure, our media and government pay lip service to privacy issues, but the reality is that our government wants to increase monitoring in the name of fighting terror. Compare this story of Germany forcing the ISP to delete logs for a customer to this one outlining yet another argument by US officials to require ISPs to maintain even more user data.

I'd hate to see us to become a 'surveillance society' like Britain has. Unfortunately, we seem to be quickly heading down that path, particularly since our citizens haven't yet raised up to demand greater freedom.

Is very critical of the Sir Nicholas Stern paper:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15563663/site/newsweek /

Get this story out of the tech sites and into the major media outlets:

Media contacts:
* Contact CNN: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10285339/ (viewerservices@msnbc.com letters@msnbc.com)
ABC: http://abcnews.go.com/Reference/story?id=54216
CBS: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/feedback/fb_news_for m.shtml
* Contact the DNC: 202-863-8000 http://www.democrats.org/page/s/contact
* Complain to the FCC: 202-418-1440, phone; 202-418-0232, fax.
* Yell at the NRCC 202-479-7000
* 1-866-OUR VOTE and get in the database if you get this kind of harassment

... And simply slash the tires of GOP voters so they can't get to the polls - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12498215/from/RSS/

Saddam Hussein's U.S. attorney was ejected from the court before the verdict was even read (at least his U.S. attorney with a conscience was). Oh, and there is the little matter of the head trial judge having been ousted 45 days before this verdict was read. This proceeding was a sham.

A conviction in a sham court is worth what a conviction in a sham court is worth: nothing. Bush has been convicted in many sham court proceeding throughout the world for his involvement in the murders committed at his order. So, no, you have not shown any difference between these two men. George Bush and Saddam Hussein are two peas in a pod. Or, if you like, two sides of the same coin. It is time to count the over 3,000 U.S. soldiers who have died at Bush's order and the near 3,000 U.S. citizens who died in the United States due to George Bush's neglect. As far as Iran and its citizens are concerned, that is for Iran to reckon not the U.S.

Yeah, because this trial has not been a circus. The Iraqi government (installed by the United States, not really sovereign in any sense of the word) actually removed the chief judge overseeing the trial 45 days ago. So basically the executive branch did not like how things were going in the trial and so stepped in and changed the judge. And we are supposed to believe this was anything but not a fair trial?

The new judge just ejected the U.S. attorney of Saddam Hussein. Don't expect this to be reported widely, even as the verdict is.

I find it hard to believe that the judge who was removed for being sympathetic to Saddam was not done so at the behest/pressure of the US government.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15175836/site/newsweek / BTW, hilarious film, never laughed so much in my whole life!!!

From the post -- "He is to be hanged inside 30 days from now. Saddam Hussein has been given 10 days to appeal against the decision." This is not true. The sentence is automatically appealed to an appeals panel with unlimited time to debate the appeal. If they uphold the appeal, then Saddam's death sentence will be carried out within 30 days of that ruling. Source: MSNBC AP News

So unless some new laws have been passed making it illegal to do lots of things that are incredibly normal

Like swearing?

In case you haven't heard, dead zones (without oxygen) in the oceans are increasing rapidly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4624359/
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/53803.html
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/scifocus/ocea nColor/dead_zones.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_Dead _Zone.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-19 -03.asp
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.as px?linkid=59371
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/20/deadzone_ pla.html?category=earth&guid=20061020143030

If a can of tuna went for $300 dollars because of a tuna shortage, I bet a lot of people would start cutting back on their tuna consumption.

Yeah, you'd think so. But Atlantic bluefin tuna are already usually sold for tens of thousands of dollars on the Japanese market. A large bluefin will get a price of over $100,000.

You can make a lot of sushi out of one good sized fish. And sushi is damn expensive.

And bluefin is very, very tasty.

Funny that Microsoft screwed their customers with DRM first. http://music.msn.com/help/customer.aspx

Also having helped with similar surveys... realize, they're often loaded.
1. How likely are you to prefer a device with wireless capabilities over a device without wireless capabilities.
2. How likely are you to prefer a device that transfers songs to similar devices via wireless connection to a device that has no wireless sharing capabilities.
3. How likely are you to buy a device with a larger screen to a device with a smaller screen.
4. How likely are you to buy a device which allows you unlimited downloads for a low fee compared to a device that charges you per song.

I don't know what questions were asked in this survey... But odds are it's not as cut and dry as they make it out to be. Did they actually ask, "How likely are you to choose a Zune over an iPod?"

Also, have you seen these commercials? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07RUtej79Iw&eurl=

is that techniques we used against the Soviets during the Regan Era may also be used against us if we're not careful? Say it ain't so!

Let me get this straight: Google refuses to run ads on adult sites, but it has no problem driving traffic to adult sites via ads? Does this strike anyone else as backwards?

Not backwards at all, but not entirely forthright either. We're talking about porn, here... hello-o?!

Lemme 'splain...
No... there is too much.
Lemme sum-up.

AdWords drives traffic based on contextual relevance; not to mention it annoys the heck out of me when I get on these sites; pausing my reading to pop-up a little ad. (keep... mouse... away...)

The contextual relevance part is academic; the adult-content sites will only get clicks from words on similar-content sites. You won't find words like "honey" on a cooking site directing you to "honeybearhouseofpleasure.com" or anything. There is a measure of relevance to the words that get "picked" as ad-links.

As for refusing to put adult-content sites in AdSense, I think that's just good business practice. As a click-generator, you don't want to get involved in what the visitors to adult sites are seeking. (or vice versa) Let them start a new window and Google the URL apart from the adult site.

I mean really, if you owned a business, how would that statistics page look to you? [It appears here we got 7% of traffic from labia-twaddlers.biz; now we know the perversion-ratio in our customer base! Yay!]

(I didn't think so.)

So, to end the confusion once and for all. Google seems to have taken a don't-ask-don't-tell stance on adult-content sites, while still taking advantage of—let's be honest here—a *proven* market. Hypocritical? Maybe. Wise move? I think so.

We're talking about a harmless, self-indulgent market share... unless they show-up on Dateline.

That's right. I also believe that it's pretty easy to get a domain name cancelled.

Who would pay the big bucks to get his super-phishing domain cancelled?

Seems like one more groundless scare from F-Secure. A company that has been known to cry wolf regularly (especially when it create a market for their products)

Actually, the current administration has a lot to do with the recent escalation:

On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs." In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would "respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations."

Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country's access to the international banking system, branding it a "criminal state" guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

Source: Newsweek

The chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.

U.N. officials in New York sought to play down the significance of Annan's remarks, noting that he had previously said the U.S.-led war was not "in conformity with the U.N. charter." They noted that he was prodded three times by the BBC reporter before acknowledging his position. "The secretary general was quite reluctant to use that word," said Annan's chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard. U.S., Allies Dispute Annan on Iraq War

Annan's statement that the war was "illegal" is both false and spurious. By Annan's logic, the 1999 U.S./British-led intervention in Kosovo, which was conducted without benefit of a Security Council resolution, also would be "illegal" despite the fact that it was widely supported by the international community. It is true that Washington failed to convince Paris and Moscow to vote for a final Security Council resolution that explicitly endorsed the use of force if Iraq's dictatorship continued to renege on its legal commitments to disarm. But the Security Council did unanimously pass Resolution 1441 in November 2002, which threatened "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to do so. Iraq also defied sixteen other Security Council resolutions on disarmament, human rights, and support for terrorism.

Moreover, Iraq put itself in a state of war with the United States by violating the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqi forces shot at American and British warplanes assigned to enforce the U.N.-imposed "no-fly zones" over Iraq on a daily basis long before the 2003 war. While the Clinton Administration chose to ignore these and most other cease-fire violations, the Bush Administration correctly decided to take action in view of Iraq's manifest failure to prove that it had dismantled its prohibited weapons programs. The U.N. Charter explicitly recognizes the right of every state to act in self-defense, a fact that Annan curiously neglects.

An Ill-Timed Intervention

Kofi Annan's ill-timed comments should be seen as a poorly conceived attempt to undercut the U.S. President's impending address to the U.N. General Assembly and to indirectly influence the electoral debate in the United States. The notion of U.S. isolation, a prominent theme advanced by Senator John Kerry, is a myth that Annan is keen to promote on the world stage. He ignores the fact that the U.S. is backed by over 30 allies with troops on the ground in Iraq, including 12 of the 25 members of the European Union and 16 out of 26 NATO members states.[3] Kofi Annan's Iraq Blunder

So the Bush government has been doing a fantastic job taking money out of your pocket so far, potenitally a trillion dollars for the iraq war http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/, but a few million for your own civil liberties is too much to pay?

Remember, just in case maths wasn't your strong point, a trillion is a million-million, so in perspective, the civil liberties case cost about 0.000001% of the war in iraq. Or maybe if it was a few million, 0.000003% of the war in iraq. Starting to get the picture that this cost you bugger all

Maybe if I put it another way, if there are 275 million americans, and the case cost 3 million, then the cost to you personally is $0.012. Maybe that's a lot of money to you, but most people can round that one down to nothing. Contrast that with the war in iraq, which has cost each person $3636.

For a year, researchers watched algae multiply in huge, bubbling test tubes beneath the hot Arizona sun so they could find just the right strand of the microscopic single-celled plant.

The experiment has been so successful that it's about to expand into greenhouses on the plant grounds, and in time, be grown in such large quantities that it could be converted into fuel, cutting down on harmful greenhouse gases.