fantastic

Sphere: Related Content

Oil could hit $200 in 'super-spike'

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Oil prices threaten to hit $200 a barrel in a final "super-spike" over coming months as producers fail to keep pace with blistering demand from China and the Middle East, according to a controversial report by Goldman Sachs.

	US crude prices rose to a new high of $122.35 a barrel yesterday

"We believe the current energy crisis may be coming to a head. A 'super-spike' end game may be in the early stages of playing out," said Arjun Murti, the bank's energy strategist.

Goldman Sachs said a chronic lack of supply would lead to a "dramatic and continuous rise in oil prices", followed at some point by a sharp fall in oil demand as consumers retrench.

US crude prices hit a fresh high of $122.35 a barrel yesterday as rebel attacks on Shell installations in Nigeria and tensions in northern Iraq continued to strain markets already caught in a crunch.

Prices have doubled over the last year in what amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from the Atlantic region to the rising commodity powers.

This week's jump in prices comes despite the partial recovery of the dollar against the euro, suggesting that alleged investor appetite for oil as a sort of "anti-dollar" is no longer driving the market - if it ever was.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Show Us Your 1040, Mrs. McCain!

by Joe Conason  

Getty Images

Double standards are endemic in American journalism. But Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican presidential candidate, displayed poor taste in flaunting her family's special immunity from press scrutiny. Declaring on NBC's Today that she would "never" release her income tax returns even if she becomes first lady, the Arizona beer heiress showed no concern that she and her husband will have to meet the same tests as other would-be White House occupants—ever.

Unfortunately, the arrogance of Mrs. McCain is probably well founded.

While her personal net worth is estimated somewhere north of $50 million, she can surely rely upon the discretion of right-wing media organizations and commentators, which so far have given her and her husband a free pass on the income tax question. In contrast to their unrelenting demands for absolutely complete disclosure by Bill and Hillary Clinton over alleged or suspected conflicts of interest, the so-called conservative media have remained mum about Mrs. McCain.

That silence similarly contrasts with the hell raised four years ago over Teresa Heinz Kerry's reluctance to reveal her tax returns alongside those of her spouse, the Democratic presidential nominee and senator, John Kerry. Back then The Weekly Standard ran a smirking headline calling her Mr. Kerry's "sugar mommy" for a column that salivated over the "lavish lifestyle" and "vacation homes" to which her tax returns would draw attention. The Standard editors didn't even pretend to any substantive concern. They just wanted to play the politics of envy and elitism.

But the National Review's editors cited weightier reasons for curiosity, including the very size of the Heinz Kerry holdings and the use of her money to finance her husband's presidential campaign, "at least in its bleaker moments," as well as the "potential … for conflicts (or the perception of conflicts) of interest." So did The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial that said the Kerrys would be "the richest couple ever to live in the White House. … Their assets should be disclosed to the voters so that they can assess whether there are any potential conflicts of interest." The same editorial noted that since Senator Kerry was proposing to raise taxes on higher income brackets, "most people would probably like to know whether the Kerry household uses tax-avoidance techniques to avoid paying its 'fair share.'"

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

democratic primaries

Sphere: Related Content

Bird Flu Medicine Toxic for Teens

Students are startled as pigeons flap their wings to fly upward at a park in eastern Seoul, Tuesday. / Yonhap

By Bae Ji-sook

Concerns are rising over side effect of bird flu drug Tamiflu on teenagers.

Tamiflu is Swiss-based Hoffman-La Roche's antiviral for general influenza A and B but is also used to combat bird flu. However, worries have surfaced about the possibility of the medicine causing mental disorders among teenagers.

With fear of the H5N1 virus sweeping the nation, the government has doubled the quantity of the drug in storage, as it is the most effective treatment against avian influenza.

Whether to prescribe the pills with risks of side-effects such delusions or other disorders is being widely discussed among medical experts.

Although the drug has been the only medicine accredited to be effective against the H5N1 virus strain by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Japanese and Korean governments restricted its being prescribed to teenagers last year.

The Korea Food and Drug Administration announced that the drug should not be prescribed to those between 10 to 19 years old except for emergencies.

According to Roche, there has not been a reported case of side effects here, but the Seoul Shinmun, a local daily, reported that a woman in her 30s said she had nightmares after taking the drug in 2005.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Rummy and the Generals for Hire

By: Attaturk

 

Gouge deeper a-hole

More from the DOD document dump shows Rummy & the Washington Generals to be complete sociopaths:

An ongoing exploration of the documents related to the Pentagon's "message force multipliers" program has unearthed a clip of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggesting that America, having voted the Democrats back into Congressional power, could benefit from suffering another terrorist attack, and doing so in the presence of the very same military analysts who went on to provide commentary and analysis of the Iraq War.

Here's the particularly hideous section as Lt. General Michael DeLong bemoans the Democrats victory in the 2006 elections:

DELONG: Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there.

RUMSFELD: That's what I was just going to say. This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack.

Those in attendance included many of Brian Williams and other talking heads' best military analyst buddies:

...it all went down at a valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld hosted for those analysts on December 12, 2006. Many of the "message force multipliers" named in the original New York Times piece were in attendance, including David L. Grange, Donald W. Sheppard, James Marks, Rick Francona, Wayne Downing, and Robert H. Scales, Jr.

Talking Points Memo has a whole host of bloggers digging into the thousands of pages, you can check it out here.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Why has the US dropped 9/11 charges?

 

By Adam Brookes BBC News, Washington

Mohammad al-Qahtani was a suspect in the first capital case at Guantanamo

The American government has given no reason why charges against the man it has alleged was the "20th hijacker" in the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US have been dropped.

Mohammad al-Qahtani has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, following his detention in Afghanistan.

In February, he was charged with conspiracy, terrorism, and murder in violation of the laws of war, among other offences.

The US alleges he attempted to come to the United States in order to take part in the 9/11 attacks, but was stopped at the airport on his arrival.

An immigration officer suspected he intended to stay in the US illegally, and refused him entry.

The charges were dropped "without prejudice" - which means they could be brought again at a later date.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Afghanistan seeks $50 billion in aid

By FISNIK ABRASHI

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan will ask international donors next month for $50 billion to fund a five-year development plan, a presidential aide said, despite growing criticism that aid money is being wasted.

About $14 billion is to go toward improving deteriorating security, but the key target is reviving the decrepit agricultural sector, Ishaq Nadiri, senior economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai, told reporters late Tuesday.

The plan will be presented to international donors June 12 in Paris.

"We expect a strong political commitment to Afghanistan," Nadiri said.

Afghanistan is struggling to recover from a quarter century of war. More than six years after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime, the country is mired in poverty and insurgent attacks are increasing. It also produces about 93 percent of the world's opium, the raw material of heroin.

The slow pace of development is hobbling public support for Karzai's Western-backed government as Afghans grapple with food shortages and the sharply rising cost of living. Official corruption is endemic.

"We are building a state, and that is a costly exercise," Nadiri said. "The country had lost its human, physical and social capital ... the collapse of Afghanistan was total."

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Some Detainees Are Drugged For Deportation

Immigrants Sedated Without Medical Reason

by Amy Goldstein and Dana Priest

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Tom Friedman's latest declaration of war

by Glenn Greenwald

Today's a very exciting day in America. Our nation's most Serious foreign policy expert, the brilliant Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, has today declared our latest new war:

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president -- but this cold war is with Iran.

So congratulations to us. After years of desperately searching, we've finally found our New Soviet Union. Nay-saying opponents of the New War (those who Tom Friedman, in March of 2003, dismissed as "knee-jerk liberals and pacifists") may try to point out that it's a country whose defense spending is less than 1% of our own, has never invaded another country, and could not possibly threaten us, but those are just small details. Iran is our new implacable foe in Tom Friedman's glorious, transcendent struggle -- which, in 2003, on NPR, he called "the beginning of World War III . . . the third great totalitarian challenge in the last, you know, 60 years," and which he today defines this way (featuring an amazingly disingenuous use of parenthesis):

That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today -- the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, "In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S."

Friedman laments that "Team America" -- that's really what he calls it -- "is losing on just about every front."

What's most striking about Friedman's formulation is that -- in the 2003 NPR interview -- this is what Friedman said about why 9/11 happened:

I did a documentary last year for the Discovery Channel on the roots of 9/11, and we went with a team all over the Arab-Muslim world for over a period of about six months and interviewed people on what 9/11 was all about. And our conclusion was 9/11 was really fed by three rivers of rage. One was about what we do -- what we, the United States, do, whether it's how we use resources, it's our support for a dictatorial Arab regime so they'll sell us cheap oil. It's our backing for Israel when it does the right thing and when it does the wrong thing. 9/11 is fed, in part, by what we do, OK. . . .

The second and hugely important river of rage feeding 9/11 was a real overpowering sense of humiliation. . . . The Arab Human Development Report told us last year that 22 Arab states, not a single one has a freely and fairly elected government. . . .

And the third river of rage is how much these people hate their own governments, governments that keep them voiceless and powerless and prevent them from achieving their full aspirations in a world where they know how everyone else is living.

So 9/11 was caused by our backing of dictatorial Arab regimes, our unconditional support for Israel, our general interference in the Middle East, and the fact that Muslims aren't free. So what does Friedman want to do now? Have the U.S. wage a "cold war" (at least) for dominance in the Middle East alongside our best friends: the dictators and monarchs of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf States (plus, incidentally, Israel). In other words, Friedman now wants to do everything that he himself said is what caused 9/11 in the first place.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Mentally unfit but still employed

Sphere: Related Content

Bush: I quit golf over Iraq war

US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.

"I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said in an interview for Internet hub Yahoo! and Politico magazine.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."

The US president traced his decision to the August 19, 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the world body's top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

"I remember when de Mello, who was at the UN, got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it anymore to do," said Bush.

Bush's last round of golf as president dates back to October 13, 2003, according to meticulous records kept by CBS news.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

MS-01: The Backbreaker

by: DavidNYC

This is it, folks. The one. The final piece of straw set atop the shambling camel of the GOP, the one which clove its desiccated humps in two.

Only it's more like a ton of bricks crushing the Republican roach.

Let's take stock of this race to see what I mean:

• This district has a PVI of R+10. It voted for Bush 62-37 in the last election. Only seven Democrats sit in comparably red seats - and not a single Republican sits in a seat as blue as this one is red. And almost every major prognosticator (at least at the start) treated this as a safe seat.


• The GOP had a perfectly serviceable candidate in Greg Davis - a standard wingnut with none of the baggage of Woody Jenkins in LA-06 or Jim Oberweis in IL-14.


• The NRCC spent $1.3 million on this race. Freedom's Crotch spent at least $400K more - and used illegal tactics to boot. And of course Davis himself raised over a million.


• They sent in Mike Huckabee, Thad Cochran, Trent Lott, Haley Barbour, and Roger Wicker.


• And when that wasn't enough, Darth Cheney came to town, to stump and raise money.


• The GOP played up Obama/Pelosi/"librul" fear-mongering to the hilt. They were shameless in exploiting whatever racial angle they thought would work.

And yet what happened? Despite all this, Travis Childers just became the newest member of the Democratic Caucus with a resounding 54-46 win. It's utterly unspinnable. Even Tom Cole knew not to try.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Maps of Misreading

Michael Chabon fills in the blank spaces

By Anthony Miller

A number of writers have begun to exult in print about the uncanny realms where the influences of pulp and pop (comic books, science fiction and fantasy, mysteries, rock & roll) meld with those "higher" and more established echelons of literature. Michael Chabon, the author of Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, relishes secret transactions between authors and their readers. When I realized that the two Japanese students Takeshi and Ichizo in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh bore the same names as the kamikaze pilots in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, the shock of recognition ushered me into yet another story. Here was one lesson about how one kind of fiction could subtly and surprisingly infiltrate another.

Maps and Legends (McSweeney's, $24), Chabon's first essay collection, unearths some of the author's source texts and offers his exuberant ruminations on the role of the writer as protector and defender of artistic ancestors. His intention to cast us out and off into alternate worlds is made clear from the outset with a deft touch to the book's epigraph, transforming the way we read a Melville quotation about those who have written about whaling before him merely by appending the mischievously explanatory phrase "on the writing of fan fiction." Chabon's 16 essays ponder those landscapes, whether mythological, alternate-historical, or post-apocalyptic, where entertainers and tricksters, ghosts and golems dwell. He is an exacting cartographer of those speculative spaces where only the genre of nurse romances (like Cynthia Ozick's Ruth Puttermesser, R.N.) was allowed to flourish or where one might catch a glimpse of a zeppelin ("that colophon of alternate-world fiction from Ada to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") screaming across the sky.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers

By Noah Shachtman

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is.  And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online.  The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity initiative."  That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks.  "You used to need an army to wage a war," a recent Air Force commercial notes.  "Now, all you need is an Internet connection."

On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for "Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement."  "Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access," a request for proposals notes, "to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms... any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware." This isn't just some computer science study, mind you; "research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities."

Unlike an Air Force colonel's proposal, to knock down enemy websites with military botnets, the Research Lab is encouraging a sneaky, "low and slow" approach. The preferred attack consists of lying quiet, and then "stealthily exfiltrat[ing] information" from adversaries' networks.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Measure for Measure

Literary criticism could be one of our best tools for understanding the human condition. But first, it needs a radical change: embracing science

By Jonathan Gottschall

IT'S NOT SUCH a good time to be a literary scholar.

(STOCK PHOTO/GLOBE STAFF PHOTO ILLUSTRATION)

For generations, the study of literature has been a pillar of liberal education, a prime forum for cultural self-examination, and a favorite major for students seeking deeper understanding of the human experience.

But over the last decade or so, more and more literary scholars have agreed that the field has become moribund, aimless, and increasingly irrelevant to the concerns not only of the "outside world," but also to the world inside the ivory tower. Class enrollments and funding are down, morale is sagging, huge numbers of PhDs can't find jobs, and books languish unpublished or unpurchased because almost no one, not even other literary scholars, wants to read them.

The latest author to take the flagging pulse of the field is Yale's William Deresiewicz. Writing recently in The Nation, he described a discipline suffering "an epochal loss of confidence" and "losing its will to live." Deresiewicz's alarming conclusion: "The real story of academic literary criticism today is that the profession is, however slowly, dying."

Not every literary scholar is so pessimistic, but most would agree that the field's vital signs are bad, and that major changes will be needed to set things right.

Though the causes of the crisis are multiple and complex, I believe the dominant factor is easily identified: We literary scholars have mostly failed to generate surer and firmer knowledge about the things we study. While most other fields gradually accumulate new and durable understanding about the world, the great minds of literary studies have, over the past few decades, chiefly produced theories and speculation with little relevance to anyone but the scholars themselves. So instead of steadily building a body of solid knowledge about literature, culture, and the human condition, the field wanders in continuous circles, bending with fashions and the pronouncements of its charismatic leaders.

I think there is a clear solution to this problem. Literary studies should become more like the sciences. Literature professors should apply science's research methods, its theories, its statistical tools, and its insistence on hypothesis and proof. Instead of philosophical despair about the possibility of knowledge, they should embrace science's spirit of intellectual optimism. If they do, literary studies can be transformed into a discipline in which real understanding of literature and the human experience builds up along with all of the words.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

SUPPORT OUR VETERANS

by Jim Hightower

Politicians should not be allowed to utter the phrase "Support Our Troops" – unless they actually do.

None have shouted this phrase more insistently than the Bushites, yet they've been caught again and again shortchanging our troops on everything from protective gear to family benefits. Most damning has been the abysmal failure of Bush & Company to honor war veterans with adequate treatment here at home, and two recent cases show how empty their words really are.

First is the important, bipartisan proposal made by Sen. Jim Webb to establish a new GI Bill for veterans of Bush's war. The original version, signed in 1944 by FDR, was an enormous success, not only moving millions of vets into the middle class, but also democratizing America's college system. Just in financial terms, the investment paid for itself seven fold. Webb now wants those who are sacrificing so much in Iraq and Afghanistan to make the same gains.

But guess who says no? Bush, the Pentagon, and even John McCain. Why? It would cost too much, say these Washington warmongers, who have already thrown trillions of our tax dollars into the debacle of Iraq.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Darth Vader Feels Blue

Sphere: Related Content

Stakeholders

 "As it happens, the more time you spend working with real students in a real classroom, the less likely you are to be considered an [education] expert."...  ...Peter Berger.

The Irascible Professor

Guest commentary by Poor Elijah (Peter Berger).

It may get crowded out by super-delegates and candidate gaffes, but public education still makes it into the news cycle once in awhile.  Sometimes it's when test results are released.  Other times it's when politicians announce that that they have a plan to save our schools.

 

It's a toss-up as to whether the numbers or the candidates' sound bites ring more hollowly.  Let's start with the numbers.  From coast to coast the tests mandated by and produced for No Child Left Behind have proven so embarrassingly unreliable, unenlightening, and expensive that the miracle of modern testing is that any public officials are willing to admit they're responsible for them.  Modern assessment is the bastard child conceived by conservatives and businessmen who demanded numbers, and liberals and educators who favored squishy, subjectively scored pseudo-tests.  The result has been a discredited heap of data, an assessment system that, according to a RAND study, identifies not "good" and "bad" schools, but "lucky" and "unlucky" schools, an epidemic of inconsistencies within districts, across districts, and from state to state, and pervasive variations in the difficulty of scoring standards from one grade to the next on the same test in the same state.

 

Naturally, when the data are released, no public official stands up and admits, "My God, these numbers are worthless.  We wasted a helluva lot of money."  Instead, they issue press releases about the need to prepare students for the twenty-first century, and how they stand ready to take action.

 

Yes, armed with meaningless numbers and virtually no experience teaching actual children, the experts and your government are on the case.

 

Why doesn't that make me feel better?

 

Consider the example of one high school here in the Green Mountain State.  Whether it's good, bad, lucky, or unlucky is anybody's guess, but the school in question hasn't fared well on our state's annual assessment sweepstakes.  In an arrangement worked out with the state education department, the school has announced plans to "boost academic outcomes" by hiring a $95,000 a year "director of school improvement."  Although the principal has already written "nineteen school improvement reports," officials felt an additional administrator was needed "to concentrate full time on the school improvement process."

 

Unfortunately, what schools need more are students who concentrate full time on the school improvement process.

 

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Save America's Redrock Wilderness

Tell your senators to protect Utah's wildlands by opposing S. 2834 unless its serious flaws are fixed.

I am a defender of Utah's magnificent redrock country and I urge you to oppose S. 2834, the Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2008, unless its serious flaws are remedied.

S. 2834 would protect less than half of the identified wilderness-quality lands in Washington County. More of these spectacular lands should be protected. In addition, the bill does not provide sufficient protection from off-road vehicles for threatened desert tortoise habitat in the Mojave Desert or for currently protected wilderness-quality lands near Zion National Park. Furthermore, it would allow for the sale of up to 14 square miles of public lands, the majority of which have not been identified for sale through land-use planning processes, and would give a significant chunk of the proceeds to Washington County for potentially harmful development projects. In short, S. 2834 is bad for Utah wilderness and would enact into law damaging precedents for future public land bills.

For the sake of present and future generations, please stand up for the spectacular wildlands of southwestern Utah. Oppose S. 2834 unless necessary improvements are made.

- click here to send this letter -

Sphere: Related Content

Comic Book & Cartoon Characters as Senior Citizens

Donald Soffritti has a great series of illustrations showing what some superheroes and supervillains might look like in their old age.

Along these same lines, Spirit Magazine, the inflight magazine for Southwest Airlines, recently published an article on Nickelodeon which includes a wonderful illustration of some popular cartoon and comics characters as senior citizens.

via Neatorama & Cartoon Brew

illustration by Donald Soffritti & unknown

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

By ARIEL DAVID

VATICAN CITY - Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."

In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said.

The interview, headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother," covered a variety of topics including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.

Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

- more -

Sphere: Related Content

I'm Bill Hicks and I'm dead now

Sphere: Related Content

Chairman Conyers is worried

 

The drumbeat to war with Iran is getting louder. With only a few months left in the Bush Presidency, it's tempting to sit back and wait until November. But belligerent rhetoric and fear mongering about Iran is on the rise. In the latest example, George Bush's mouthpiece, General Petreaus, claimed that Iran's involvement is "the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq."1 Our progressive friend, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, is so worried that he is now circulating a letter to his Congressional colleagues "to register our strong opposition to possible unilateral, preemptive military action against other nations by the Executive Branch without Congressional authorization".2 Chairman Conyers isn't taking any chances and neither should we. See the fear mongering and sign the petition: http://www.truemajority.org/dontbombiran It's been six months since we started our Not Another War campaign to prevent an attack on Iran. In that time tens of thousands of you have sent messages to Congress opposing another war. And, our "IranMobile" toured eight states leading grassroots demonstrations and congressional petition deliveries, building the national movement. After Iraq, domestic spying, torture and spy gate, we can't leave the possibility of another war to chance. Congress must tie the President's hands and prevent any more wars without explicit Congressional approval. Watch the drumbeat to war and sign our petition right now: http://www.truemajority.org/dontbombiran Thanks for all you're doing to stop the march to war, -Ilya Ilya Sheyman Online Organizer   1 online.wsj.com/article/SB120821715478214431.html?mod=googlenews_wsj 2 afterdowningstreet.org/node/33389

TrueMajority.org is a grassroots group of citizens who believe in America's true values of openness, fairness and compassion. We believe participating in an effective government is the best way to be mutually responsible for our community. TrueMajority is a project of USAction, a 501(c)(4) organization under the IRS tax code.

Sphere: Related Content

Pulitzer Prize for Bob Dylan

2008

SPECIAL CITATION

A Special Citation to Bob Dylan for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.

 

- more -

Sphere: Related Content