Israel's prime minister to step down

* Story Highlights
* Israel's prime minister announces he will not be party leader at the next election
* Ehud Olmert has been embroiled in a corruption probe
* He said he will resign once his Kadima party elects a new chairman
* Kadima has agreed to hold primary elections by September 17

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Scandal-hit Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Wednesday that he will not be his party's leader going into the next election.

Citing "a wave of investigations and criticism" at the hands of his political opponents, he said he will resign once his Kadima party elects a new chairman.

"I am not doing this out of a feeling that I cannot do my job. ... I believe in my ability to continue," he said at his official residence.

"When forced to choose between my own personal standing and considerations that relate to the welfare of the state, it is the latter that will take precedence."

There has been a slew of inquiries into allegations against Olmert. He denies any wrongdoing and has never been convicted of a crime.

Last month, Israeli lawmakers reached a deal that will allow Olmert to stay in power for a few more months. In exchange, Olmert's party agreed to hold primary elections by September 17.

No date has been set for general elections, which will have to be held by sometime next year. VideoWatch Olmert explain why he is stepping down »

Olmert has been embroiled in a corruption inquiry, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak had said he would pursue new elections if Olmert didn't step down.

Barak's office said after the announcement, "Prime Minister Olmert made a right and appropriate decision.''

Barak is the leader of the Labor party, Olmert's chief coalition partner, and a former prime minister himself.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, one of Olmert's top rivals within Kadima, said in May that the party needed to be ready to replace the prime minister should he step down. There was no immediate reaction Wednesday from Livni.

Olmert had said he would resign only if he is indicted on corruption charges.

Israeli authorities are investigating allegations that Olmert, while serving as Jerusalem mayor and a government minister, asked various public organizations to cover the same expenses and pocketed the extra money.

In May, a U.S. businessman testified that he gave cash-filled envelopes to Olmert.

Olmert was Jerusalem's mayor from 1993 to 2003 and served in several cabinet posts from 2003 to 2006. He took over as prime minister after a 2006 stroke left then-premier Ariel Sharon in a coma from which he has never recovered.

CNN's Atika Shubert in Jerusalem said the allegations surrounding Olmert had made him deeply unpopular with Israelis.

Olmert's announcement comes as the United States is pushing for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement before President Bush leaves office in January.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington remains committed to working with Israel, and "the Israelis will work out their own politics."

And a White House official said Wednesday that Bush spoke with Olmert to wish him well after he announced his decision to step down.

"Relations between the United States and Israel during Prime Minister Olmert's tenure have been exceptionally close and cooperative, and the president has appreciated his friendship, his leadership, and his work for peace," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.


Let's hope the next prime minister is a little more justice and tolerance inclined. I doubt it but fingers will remain crossed. Read more!

Dr. Kush: How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry.

by David Samuels
The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_samuels?currentPage=all Read more!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States of America

From Jack Cafferty's CNN blog:

"In case you’re wondering why our economy is in the toilet, President Bush had the explanation at a closed Republican fund-raiser in Houston last week:

”Wall Street got drunk – it’s one of the reasons I asked you to turn off your TV cameras. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is: how long will it sober up.”

The depth of the intellect at the very top of our nation’s government is staggering, isn’t it? Quite an assessment coming from a reformed alcoholic. The president had apparently requested that those attending the event turn off their cameras, but the comments were recorded and started popping up on Texas news outlets.

The White House grabbed their brooms and immediately began sweeping up after him. They say Mr. Bush was referring to the fact that, “the markets were using very complex financial instruments that had grown up over the years, and when confronted with the shock of this housing downturn, they did not fully understand what the consequences were going to be.”

Problem is, that doesn’t sound at all like the president saying “Wall Street got drunk.” It’s that kind of shallowness that has created an appetite in the American public and overseas for someone like Barack Obama.

King Abdullah of Jordan actually cut short his vacation this week so he could meet with Obama. It must be like someone who works in a nursery all week finally getting a chance to have a conversation with an adult." Read more!

Crisis of Faith: Danger

Read more!

They're in deep S-

Waxman Threatens Mukasey With Contempt Over Cheney's FBI Interview on CIA Leak Probe

Karl Rove's Contempt for the Constitution and the Public's Right to Know

Did you know that Karl Rove was relatively recently added to the cast of the illustrious quality fair television programming that is the Fox News Channel? I don't know what to say about that. I think you understand. They're ON THE WRONG SIDE! Or are we the enemy? Read more!

Words to Live By

From the preface to the 1900 edition of Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman:


"The rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough … the fact will prevail through the universe … but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body… . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured … others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches … and shall master all attachment." Read more!

A Superhighway to Bliss

By LESLIE KAUFMAN
New York Times



JILL BOLTE TAYLOR was a neuroscientist working at Harvard’s brain research center when she experienced nirvana.

But she did it by having a stroke.

On Dec. 10, 1996, Dr. Taylor, then 37, woke up in her apartment near Boston with a piercing pain behind her eye. A blood vessel in her brain had popped. Within minutes, her left lobe — the source of ego, analysis, judgment and context — began to fail her. Oddly, it felt great.

The incessant chatter that normally filled her mind disappeared. Her everyday worries — about a brother with schizophrenia and her high-powered job — untethered themselves from her and slid away.

Her perceptions changed, too. She could see that the atoms and molecules making up her body blended with the space around her; the whole world and the creatures in it were all part of the same magnificent field of shimmering energy.

“My perception of physical boundaries was no longer limited to where my skin met air,” she has written in her memoir, “My Stroke of Insight,” which was just published by Viking.

After experiencing intense pain, she said, her body disconnected from her mind. “I felt like a genie liberated from its bottle,” she wrote in her book. “The energy of my spirit seemed to flow like a great whale gliding through a sea of silent euphoria.”

While her spirit soared, her body struggled to live. She had a clot the size of a golf ball in her head, and without the use of her left hemisphere she lost basic analytical functions like her ability to speak, to understand numbers or letters, and even, at first, to recognize her mother. A friend took her to the hospital. Surgery and eight years of recovery followed.

Her desire to teach others about nirvana, Dr. Taylor said, strongly motivated her to squeeze her spirit back into her body and to get well.

This story is not typical of stroke victims. Left-brain injuries don’t necessarily lead to blissful enlightenment; people sometimes sink into a helplessly moody state: their emotions run riot. Dr. Taylor was also helped because her left hemisphere was not destroyed, and that probably explains how she was able to recover fully.

Today, she says, she is a new person, one who “can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere” on command and be “one with all that is.”

To her it is not faith, but science. She brings a deep personal understanding to something she long studied: that the two lobes of the brain have very different personalities. Generally, the left brain gives us context, ego, time, logic. The right brain gives us creativity and empathy. For most English-speakers, the left brain, which processes language, is dominant. Dr. Taylor’s insight is that it doesn’t have to be so.

Her message, that people can choose to live a more peaceful, spiritual life by sidestepping their left brain, has resonated widely.

In February, Dr. Taylor spoke at the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference (known as TED), the annual forum for presenting innovative scientific ideas. The result was electric. After her 18-minute address was posted as a video on TED’s Web site, she become a mini-celebrity. More than two million viewers have watched her talk, and about 20,000 more a day continue to do so. An interview with her was also posted on Oprah Winfrey’s Web site, and she was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world for 2008.

She also receives more than 100 e-mail messages a day from fans. Some are brain scientists, who are fascinated that one of their own has had a stroke and can now come back and translate the experience in terms they can use. Some are stroke victims or their caregivers who want to share their stories and thank her for her openness.

But many reaching out are spiritual seekers, particularly Buddhists and meditation practitioners, who say her experience confirms their belief that there is an attainable state of joy.

“People are so taken with it,” said Sharon Salzberg, a founder of the Insight Mediation Society in Barre, Mass. “I keep getting that video in e-mail. I must have 100 copies.”

She is excited by Dr. Taylor’s speech because it uses the language of science to describe an occurrence that is normally ethereal. Dr. Taylor shows the less mystically inclined, she said, that this experience of deep contentment “is part of the capacity of the human mind.”

Since the stroke, Dr. Taylor has moved to Bloomington, Ind., an hour from where she was raised in Terre Haute and where her mother, Gladys Gillman Taylor, who nursed her back to health, still lives.

Originally, Dr. Taylor became a brain scientist — she has a Ph.D. in life sciences with a specialty in neuroanatomy — because she has a mentally ill brother who suffers from delusions that he is in direct contact with Jesus. And for her old research lab at Harvard, she continues to speak on behalf of the mentally ill.

But otherwise, she has dialed back her once loaded work schedule. Her house is on a leafy cul-de-sac minutes from Indiana University, which she attended as an undergraduate and where she now teaches at the medical school.

Her foyer is painted a vibrant purple. She greets a stranger at the door with a warm hug. When she talks, her pale blue eyes make extended contact.

Never married, she lives with her dog and two cats. She unselfconsciously calls her mother, 82, her best friend.

She seems bemused but not at all put off by the hundreds who have reached out to her on a spiritual level. Religious ecstatics who claim to see angels have asked her to appear on their radio and television programs.

She has declined these offers. Although her father is an Episcopal minister and she was raised in his church, she cannot be counted among the traditionally faithful. “Religion is a story that the left brain tells the right brain,” she said.

Still, Dr. Taylor says, “nirvana exists right now.”

“There is no doubt that it is a beautiful state and that we can get there,” she said.

That belief has certainly sparked debate. On Web sites like evolvingbeings.com and in Eckhart Tolle discussion groups, people debate whether she is truly enlightened or just physically damaged and confused.

Even her own scientific brethren have wondered.

“When I saw her on the TED video, at first I thought, Oh my god, is she losing it,” said Dr. Francine M. Benes, director of the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, where Dr. Taylor once worked.

Dr. Benes makes clear that she still thinks Dr. Taylor is an extraordinary and competent woman. “It is just that the mystical side was not apparent when she was at Harvard,” Dr. Benes said.

Dr. Taylor makes no excuses or apologies, or even explanations. She says instead that she continues to battle her left brain for the better. She gently offers tips on how it might be done.

“As the child of divorced parents and a mentally ill brother, I was angry,” she said. Now when she feels anger rising, she trumps it with a thought of a person or activity that brings her pleasure. No meditation necessary, she says, just the belief that the left brain can be tamed.

Her newfound connection to other living beings means that she is no longer interested in performing experiments on live rat brains, which she did as a researcher.

She is committed to making time for passions — physical and visual — that she believes exercise her right brain, including water-skiing, guitar playing and stained-glass making. A picture of one of her intricate stained-glass pieces — of a brain — graces the cover of her book.

Karen Armstrong, a religious historian who has written several popular books including one on the Buddha, says there are odd parallels between his story and Dr. Taylor’s.

“Like this lady, he was reluctant to return to this world,” she said. “He wanted to luxuriate in the sense of enlightenment.”

But, she said, “the dynamic of the religious required that he go out into the world and share his sense of compassion.”

And in the end, compassion is why Dr. Taylor says she wrote her memoir. She thinks there is much to be mined from her experience on how brain-trauma patients might best recover and, in fact, she hopes to open a center in Indiana to treat such patients based on those principles.

And then there is the question of world peace. No, Dr. Taylor doesn’t know how to attain that, but she does think the right hemisphere could help. Or as she told the TED conference:

“I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”



video: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229 Read more!

Rubbish

The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden
Tuesday, 5 February 2008

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.




Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.

The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.

Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.

He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.

Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was "no reason to doubt" Algalita's findings.

"After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems."

Professor Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.

Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.

According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.

Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic,

Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.
Read more!

How much is your time worth?

03/13/99
How Much Is Your Time Worth?

I've been meaning to write this article for about six years. I
kept "not quite getting around to it" and putting it off, sometimes to
a degree that I find maddening.

To put it into my perspective, roughly 87,660,000 children
have died of starvation in the time that I've been not writing this
article. That's a population roughly the 3.5 times the size of Mexico
City, the most populous city currently on the planet.

When I first wrote this article in early 1999, I pointed out
that roughly 40,000 children die of starvation every day on this
planet. I learned this fact in the late 1980's or very early
1990's, when I began studying global health and housing issues.

Happily, those numbers are changing for the better, and less
people are starving to death each day. Unhappily, they aren't changing
very quickly, so we're still losing 24,000/day as of this update in
mid-May, 2003. As a result, some of the figures in the examples are a
bit out of date. However, the general point of this essay stands, so
I'll keep the original figures, and leave calculating the current
rates as an exercise for the reader in whatever time you're reading
this. Hopefully, all of this will seem like quaint history before much
longer, and no one will be dying of starvation anymore, but there's
still a lot of work left to do.

I bought a book called "Ending Hunger: An idea whose time has
come" (ISBN 0-03-006189-X) from a thrift-store on May 3, 1999, just a
month and a half after writing the first draft of this article. I
found it for $2.29, and it's a fantastic resource for those interested
in hunger issues and information. As of this update (mid-May, 2003),
Amazon.com has 49 new & used copies available, starting at $0.95.

The book was published and (c) 1985 by Praeger Publishers, and
author credit goes simply to "The Hunger Project". On page 2 it states
as its reference numbers the following statistics:

* 1 billion of us chronically undernourished
* 13-18 million of us dead a year
* 35,000 of us a day
* 24 of us (18 of whom are children) a minute

Then continues with:

"Yet because we view hunger in the background of life, this
terrible toll does not enter our headlines, nor, for most of us, our
concerns.

For most of us. But not for all."

If you're interested in finding out the current hunger
numbers, I'd recommend starting with the Worldwatch Institute at
http://www.worldwatch.org/ (While there, you might also want to pick
up a copy of the current edition of their book, "State of the World".)

For about as close to "live" data as you'll likely find, check
out o.s.Earth's "Worldometers". Their Food Supply meters are at
http://www.osearth.com/resources/worldometers/worldfood.shtml and
there are many other ones to check out. Please do.

Another good reference, and excellent project, is The Hunger
Site, at http://www.thehungersite.com/ There, you can click on links
that will cause internet advertisers to donate money that buys food
for starving people. (This is about the only good use I've ever seen
for advertising on the Internet. <*grin*> )

The Hunger Site states: "About 24,000 people die every day
from hunger or hunger-related causes. This is down from 35,000 ten
years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago. Three-fourths of the deaths
are children under the age of five."


At the beginning of the article, I made the claim that
87,660,000 children had died in the time I'd spent *not* writing this
piece. Here's my original math, using the 40,000/day figure:

40,000 people (I said "children", but the 75% figure from
"Ending Hunger" might make that only 30,000 children) starve to death
each day.

There are 365.25 days in a year (the .25 adds up to one leap
year every four years.)

(6)*(365.25)*(40,000)=87,660,000 children who've starved to
death in the past six years on planet earth. The numbers are a bit
rough, but don't worry, it will be larger by the time you read this,
and should cover any discrepancy.

Sorry to start this whole thing off on such a down note, but
it really is frustrating, and maddening.

Anyway, 40,000 per day is roughly 1,666 per hour, which is
roughly 28 per minute, which is roughly one child dying every 2
seconds. Mind you, this is only death from starvation and
malnutrition. Not disease, or accident, or war, or any of the litany
of other things that can kill children. It also doesn't cover adults
or senior citizens, just kids. It's a whole lot of kids, though.

So, roughly six years ago (from the initial writing - early
1993), I was walking down a street in San Jose, California, working in
a job I didn't like very much, fresh out of college with a head full
of ideas and ideals. I was calculating exactly how much I was making
per hour doing what I was doing (a dismal number somewhere in the
single-digit dollars per hour), and then calculating what I figured
was the potential value to society if I were able to pursue my chosen
work of finding solutions that would keep those kids from starving to
death.

Know what hourly rate I came up with?

$1.66 billion/hour. In long form, that's roughly
$1,660,000,000/hour.

Here's my math:

40,000 dead kids per day equals 40,000 people who can't ever
contribute to society, per day. That's lost value to society as a
whole. This is calculated by looking at a "standard" working-life of
approximately 40 years per person, and a rough estimate of a person
earning roughly $1,000,000 in their lifetime (a conservative estimate,
since that would average to about $25,000 per year for 40 years with
no raise, ever, in that entire time). It also doesn't take into
account the fact that society generally figures they're getting MORE
out of a person than they're paying that person, otherwise, it's not a
profitable venture for them.

So, we end up with (40,000/day)*($1,000,000 potential personal
income)=$40,000,000,000 day, or $1,666,666,666/hour lost to society.

Of course, I don't actually expect anyone to PAY me $1.66
billion per hour to go work on figuring out how to feed the world, or
to eliminate homelessness, ensure clean drinking water for all, or
similar things. To be quite frank, there's no one in the world,
individual or government, who can afford such rates. I'm merely
calculating the potential worth to society, and quietly wondering to
myself if we can afford NOT to be addressing these issues.

These are merely the things that I'd RATHER be doing with my
time, if I, like most others, wasn't worrying about how to pay the
rent, power, phone and grocery bills, and all the other things that
pop up unexpectedly. It also causes me to wonder about all those other
billions of people out there, and what it would be that THEY would do,
if they didn't have to worry about scraping out a living in an office,
or a factory, or a field, or an alleyway. What would happen if
EVERYONE had the means to support themselves indefinitely, and could
really turn their attention to whatever it was that their
inner-compass pointed them towards?

How much is it worth to society to develop a cure to AIDS? How
about cancer? How about antigravity or interstellar travel? How about
new music? New art? Perhaps teaching the future generations of
scientists, doctors, lawyers, and parents? How about writers?
Programmers? Designers? Space Technicians? Much much is it worth to us
to negotiate an end to the constant bickering between countries? To
stop genocide and conflict between nations who have historically
battled over who-knows-what?

I don't know if these things HAVE a price, but I'm certain
that they're worth a lot. An awful lot.

My main curiousity is in figuring out ways to make sure that
people have their basic needs met. That they have a roof over their
heads, clean water to drink, plentiful food to fill their bellies, and
lots of new ideas to fill their minds. I want to see people who have
lots of leisure time to ask themselves and each other "What if...?",
then try to find new answers. Having people punch clocks and then
stand around for 8 hours per day doing robot work seems better just
left for robots. I think that people, and the minds that those people
posess, have far more important things to be doing with their
time. And I think that their time is probably worth a LOT more to
society than whatever the going rate is in the job market.

So I ask you, and I ask you to ask yourself: What is it that
you'd REALLY rather be doing, if you had your choice? What sort of
changes might that activity bring about? Who might it benefit (think
BIG!), and how would it help? Then ask yourself if you (and we) can
really afford NOT having you follow your chosen path?

In short, I'd like you to figure out:

"How much is your time REALLY worth?"

Pat

___________________Think For Yourself____________________
Patrick G. Salsbury - http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
Check out the Reality Sculptors Project: http://reality.sculptors.com/
---------------------------------------------------------
"Kick your own ass. Live up to your true potential."
-World Entertainment War

Most Recent Update: 11-05-03 Read more!

glad this man is on TV. Read more!

Oh Billy, Come Now.

I have to thank Colbert for this one. Read more!

Myanmar Cyclone

YANGON, Myanmar May 12, 2008, 12:38 am ET
AP

Myanmar's monumental task of feeding and sheltering 1.5 million cyclone survivors suffered yet another blow Sunday when a boat laden with relief supplies — one of the first international shipments — sank on its way to the disaster zone.

The death toll jumped to more than 28,000 and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband warned that "malign neglect" by the isolated nation's military rulers was creating a "humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions."

The junta has been sharply criticized for its handling of the May 3 disaster, from failing to provide adequate warnings about the pending storm to responding slowly to offers of help.

Though international assistance has started trickling in, the few foreign relief workers who have been allowed entry into Myanmar have been restricted to the largest city of Yangon. Only a handful have succeeded in getting past checkpoints into the worst-affected areas.

But in what was seen as a huge concession by the junta, the United States finally got the go-ahead to send a C-130 cargo plane packed with supplies to Yangon on Monday, with two more air shipments scheduled to land Tuesday.

At the Thai air force base in Utapao, the C-130 was loaded with 28,000 pounds of supplies, including mosquito nets, blankets and water. Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, U.S. Marines spokesman for the operation, said the plane was carrying U.S. government, not military, supplies and was unarmed.

Myanmar's military rulers are deeply suspicious of Washington, which has long been one of the junta's biggest critics, pointing to human rights abuses and its failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

"We hope that this is the beginning of a long line of assistance from the United States," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters in Crawford, Texas over the weekend. "They're going to need our help for a long time."

Highlighting the many challenges ahead, however, a Red Cross boat carrying rice, drinking water and other goods for more than 1,000 people sank Sunday near hard-hit Bogalay town. All four aid workers on board were safe.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies could not say how much of the cargo has been lost, but it said the food supplies were contaminated by river water.

"Apart from the delay in getting aid to people we may now have to re-evaluate how we transport that aid," said Michael Annear, the IFRC's disaster manager in Yangon, who described the sinking as "a big blow."

Other aid was increasingly getting through, the group said, but on "nowhere near the scale required."

Heavy showers were forecast for the coming week, further complicating delivery of aid that is still barely reaching victims in the Irrawaddy delta, which was pounded by 120 mph winds and 12-foot-high storm surges from the sea.

In hard hit Laputta, hundreds of survivors crowded the floor of a monastery's open-air hall, the sound of hungry children wailing. Many people tried to sleep sitting up because of lack of space.

Pain Na Kon, a tiny nearby village of just 300, was completely obliterated. The only 12 known survivors huddled together in a tent set up in a rice field, sharing a small portion of biscuits and watery soup handed out at a local monastery.

"We don't know when they will also run out of food," said U Nyo, casting glances at his 6-year-old niece, Mien Mien, who lost both her parents in the cyclone and sat outside in the dark.

U Nyo called out to her gently, but Mien Mien stared emptily into the darkness. Overcome with emotion, U Nyo walked, teary-eyed, over to the girl and sat beside her in silence.

His wife, Saw San Myant, described in a hushed voice what had happened to Mien Mien's father.

"We hung together on a coconut tree as the tide continued to rise. Her father was separated. He tried to hang onto a pole of the hut but that was broken. The wind was too strong. She saw her father swept away by the water but we didn't see anyone else. We think they are all dead," she said.

On Sunday, Myanmar's state television said the death toll from Cyclone Nargis had gone up by about 5,000 to 28,458 — with another 33,416 missing — though some experts said it could be 15 times that if people do not get clean water and sanitation soon. The U.N. said about 2 million people were severely affected by the storm.

"A natural disaster is turning into a humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions in significant part because of the malign neglect of the regime," said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

"I would be amazed if there hadn't been about 100,000 who had died already ... what's more, hundreds of thousands more are at risk," he told British Broadcasting Corp. television.

Meanwhile, aid was piling up in foreign countries, awaiting approval from the junta.

The country's main airport in Yangon is incapable of handling more than five flights a day, when it should be taking in at least one every hour, said PLAN, a London-based children's aid group.

"Logistically, the situation looks bleak," it said in a statement. "In short, they have one congested airport, ill equipped to deal with the influx of cargo, no port, restricted fuel and no trucks."

Aid group World Vision said it has requested visas for 20 people and received approval for two, while the U.N. World Food Program had one approved out of the 16 it requested. Still, the U.N. was making some progress in aid delivery.

The junta released 38 tons of high-energy biscuits to the WFP that were confiscated on Friday and several other shipments were on their way.

"We're delighted and very encouraged by what is a very positive sign," said the group's spokesman, Marcus Prior.

But World Vision, which has a big presence in Myanmar, said relief material delivered so far is a tiny fraction of what is needed.

The junta says it wants to hand out all donated supplies on its own.

But many survivors have been without help for more than a week after fleeing their inundated villages to take shelter in monasteries and schools in towns. The canals and flooded roads to higher ground were littered with the bloated bodies of humans. The stench was everywhere.

"The first few we saw, we were all very shocked," said U Pinyatale, a monk living near the Pyapon River, where dozens of corpses floated in the brackish waters. "After a while, there were just too many." Read more!

The Panama Deception

I find it sickening, however, not surprising, that the U.S can get away with the building up of a ridiculous pretext in order to rationalize a totally inhuman attack resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent victims, not to mention the displacement of thousands more. It's interesting to note that the motive behind this attack, comically named "operation just cause," is very much so parallel to interventions in the Middle East and everywhere else the U.S sees an opportunity to profit off the suffering of others. I suggest you guys take a gander at this "hidden horror."

Read more!

Water as Fuel

This is apparently old news, but I hadn't heard of it until now. From the little that I've read on it so far there seems to be the question of how this would work without using electricity to generate the radio waves needed. Regardless, it's pretty interesting and worth taking a look at.

Read more!

Human Nature?

'World peace' hitcher is murdered

An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey.

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the northern city of Gebze on Friday.

She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people.

Turkish police say they have detained a man in connection with the killing.

Reports say the man led the police to the body.

Autopsy

Ms di Marineo was hitch-hiking from Milan to Israel and the Palestinian Territories with a fellow artist on their "Brides on Tour" project.

They had separated in Istanbul, planning to reunite in Beirut.

Ms di Marineo was last seen on 31 March in Gebze.

An Italian embassy official told the Associated Press news agency police tracked the man when he put a new SIM card into Ms di Marineo's mobile phone.

Local media identified the suspect only by the initials MK and said he had a previous conviction for theft.

Ms di Marineo's sister, who had gone to Turkey to look for her, identified the body. An autopsy is being conducted in Istanbul.

"Her travels were for an artistic performance and to give a message of peace and of trust, but not everyone deserves trust," another sister, Maria, told the Italian news agency, Ansa.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7344381.stm

Published: 2008/04/12 14:42:57 GMT

© BBC MMVIII Read more!

Overdrawn... The Seemingly Perpetual Cycle Of In and Out of Debt

I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel as though my life is dictated by my relationship with the bank that alternates between only two possible situations: the instance in which they hold my money and the one in which I owe them money. It seems as though there is a balance so delicate between these two that it's nearly impossible to achieve a stable and lasting security within that relationship. But there's something about it that doesn't feel right. I mean, I suck at handling money but I'm capable of learning a lesson, especially after overdraft fee #68. Alas, it may be time for a breakup, and this one might be awkward because, as it turns out, it's not me--it's them.

For those who can relate, and for anyone currently involved with a bank, these may be things you know already but it never hurts to remind yourself of who you're dealing with and to be sure to, erm, check yourself before your wreck yourself--financially speaking.



These facts were taken from the site for the documentary film above -- overdrawnmovie.net:

-- Banks make approximately anywhere from $17 to more than $50 billion per year (depending on who you talk to) from Overdraft (or Non Sufficient Fund, NSF) Fees, which represents roughly 30% of their fee revenues. Almost all of this (80% by one estimate), comes from low-income consumers. In the case of Washington Mutual, they make about $1 billion from their 10 million checking account customers, which comes to about $100 per customer, per year. These accounts are advertised as "free checking".

--Though the banks continue to call overdraft charges 'fees', they are in fact loans (which is stated in three different places in documents of the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), which means that they should be covered under the Truth in Lending Act. A loophole currently exists which allows them to continue to call advancing credit to consumers 'fees'.

--Banks have been chastised by the US Government for misleading advertising practices, insuffiently informing account holders of the nature of their "Overdraft Protection" programs, and turning an old system of ad-hoc bounced check policies into a major new sourc of revenue.

--The average NSF fee has more than quintupled in the last twenty years, from around $4 to more than $20. Read more!

Brown Says China May Hold Talks with Dalai Lama

NPR.org, March 19, 2008

· British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday that the Chinese government is willing to hold discussions about Tibet with exiled spiritual leader Dalai Lama.

Brown said China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao set two conditions for the talks, which have already been met.

"The premier told me that, subject to two things that the Dalai Lama has already said — that he does not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounces violence — that he would be prepared to enter into dialogue with the Dalai Lama," Brown told parliament.

Brown said during a conversation with Wen on Wednesday that he made it clear the violence in Tibet must end.

Protests against Chinese rule reached a peak Friday in a riot in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The Dalai Lama's government-in-exile — based in the Indian town of Dharamsala — said 99 people died when Chinese security forces tried to break up the riot. The Chinese government put the death toll at fewer than 20.

The official China News Service reported that 160 Lhasa rioters had so far given themselves up to authorities. The Tibet government set a deadline of midnight Monday for those involved to surrender or face harsh punishment.

On Tuesday, Wen accused the Dalai Lama's supporters of organizing the violent clashes in hopes of sabotaging the Olympics and bolstering their campaign for independence in the Himalayan territory.

The protests, which are the most serious challenge to China's rule in the region in almost two decades, are forcing human rights campaigners to re-examine their approach to the Aug. 8-24 games.

The Dalai Lama has said he wants only greater autonomy for his homeland, not independence from China.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government insisted that the unrest in Tibet would not deter plans to take the Olympic torch to the top of Mount Everest.

Brown plans to meet with the Dalai Lama when the Buddhist leader visits London in May — a move that could undermine Brown's efforts to strengthen relations with China.

Brown visited Beijing in January, stressing that Britain is open to Chinese trade and investment and lobbying for China's new $200 billion sovereign wealth fund to open an office in London.

From NPR staff and wire reports Read more!

Why is No One Talking About This Right Now?...

...because it's not you, your people, your country, your liberty, or your life. But when it comes to that point, what will we say then, that we were silent now; that a distance of a few thousand miles absolves us from responsibility; that if we believe in what we say we believe, spiritually and politically, we have a responsibility to talk about it, educate one another, and at the very least feel empathy and compassion for the suffering of ALL living beings.

Today, the Dalai Lama warned that if the violence didn't end soon, he would resign the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

People have been putting footage of the uprisings in Dharamsala and Lhasa on Youtube. Google owns Youtube, and thanks to Google's recent deal with the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party today has blocked all access to Youtube to Chinese citizens. SAY SOMETHING. Read more!

Excerpt of Obama's Speech Today on Race, Class, and what Matters in the United States

Apologies for the bad quality of the video.

Read more!

1% of Adult males behind bars

I'm sure you have heard about this but just in case...


NEW YORK (AP) -- For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report.


San Quentin State Prison in California holds more than 5,200 inmates.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 -- one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," the report said.

Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are prompting officials in many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft in crime.

"We're seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets," she said in an interview. "They want to be tough on crime, they want to be a law-and-order state -- but they also want to save money, and they want to be effective."

The report cited Kansas and Texas as states which have acted decisively to slow the growth of their inmate population. Their actions include greater use of community supervision for low-risk offenders and employing sanctions other than reimprisonment for ex-offenders who commit technical violations of parole and probation rules.

"The new approach, born of bipartisan leadership, is allowing the two states to ensure they have enough prison beds for violent offenders while helping less dangerous lawbreakers become productive, taxpaying citizens," the report said.

While many state governments have shown bipartisan interest in curbing prison growth, there also are persistent calls to proceed cautiously.

"We need to be smarter," said David Muhlhausen, a criminal justice expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation. "We're not incarcerating all the people who commit serious crimes -- but we're also probably incarcerating people who don't need to be."

According to the report, the inmate population increased last year in 36 states and the federal prison system.

The largest percentage increase -- 12 percent -- was in Kentucky, where Gov. Steve Beshear highlighted the cost of corrections in his budget speech last month. He noted that the state's crime rate had increased only about 3 percent in the past 30 years, while the state's inmate population has increased by 600 percent.

The Pew report was compiled by the Center on the State's Public Safety Performance Project, which is working directly with 13 states on developing programs to divert offenders from prison without jeopardizing public safety.

"For all the money spent on corrections today, there hasn't been a clear and convincing return for public safety," said the project's director, Adam Gelb. "More and more states are beginning to rethink their reliance on prisons for lower-level offenders and finding strategies that are tough on crime without being so tough on taxpayers."

The report said prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect a parallel increase in crime or in the nation's overall population. Instead, it said, more people are behind bars mainly because of tough sentencing measures, such as "three-strikes" laws, that result in longer prison stays.

"For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling," the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

The nationwide figures, as of January 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails -- a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults.

The report said the United States is the world's incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10. Read more!