Missing Links: Salt & Light

Dizzy Gillespie
Salt Peanuts

Among other things.... Salt Burns, & Light Blinds...

Be glad - be supremely joyful, for your reward in heaven is great (strong and intense), for in this same way people persecuted the prophets who came before you. [II Chron. 36:16] You are the salt of the earth ~ but if salt has lost its taste (its strength, its quality), how can its saltiness be restored? It is not good for anything any longer but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.
~ Matthew 5:12-14

Bin Laden plans new attack on US

Brit MI6 confirms bin Laden nukes

Obama's advisers met with Hamas

Hamas Claims Secret Relationship with Obama Aides

Hamas claims contacts with Obama advisors are ongoing

Shares of companies developing therapies based on stem cells surged on Monday, after confirmation over the weekend that Obama plans to reverse an existing executive order against federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.

Obama called "a Prince Like Jesus"

The incoming Obama administration plans to explore a more regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan -- including possible talks with Iran -- and looks favorably on the nascent dialogue between the Afghan government and "reconcilable" elements of the Taliban, according to Obama national security advisers.

I can not imagine what Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir had for dinner the evening when he made his fervent speech in Darfur where he proclaimed 'America, Britain, and France are all underneath my shoes'.

Next attack might be Nuclear:
The most interesting thing about this particular video is that it was posted by a "Pro-Islamic" (read "Jihadi") individual calling himself "Ysdechi"

Iraq's Sunni fighters leave U.S. payroll
The Sons of Iraq are now employed by the Iraqi army. Ruling Shiites still view the fighters with suspicion, and the feeling is mutual. In Baghdad, a bombing kills 31.

Dhimmah & Brownose Do Beirut

Leave the Land So We Won't Rape You

Uranium found at Syrian nuke site bombed by Israel

Russia to sell heavy arms to Lebanon

Livni rejects Olmert's call for total surrender
Unholy triple-spoking double speaky alert:

"FM says she will not be bound by Olmert's defeatist remarks, but in the past she has supported them"

The Rise of India's Saffro-Nazis

Becoming Unborn-again in India

5.3 in Indonesia

Ecuadorian volcano spewing lava and smoke

Colombian volcanoes roar and rumble

Sing along with Hugo!

Chavez boasts nuclear cooperation with Russia

EU says it will talk with Russia

Putin: Russia should act to influence oil prices

Turkey faces key test in energy deal with Iran

The ongoing trial of ‘Ergenekon’, a clandestine Kemalist ultra secular radical group that has close ties with Turkey’s military and security apparatus, has been rightly noted as the ‘biggest trial of modern Turkey’

The trial of 86 people including former top military generals, a head of political party, important journalists and members of Turkish press and business giants started last week and sparked fierce clashes between ultra nationalists and Islamists. Ergenekon is alleged to be involved in political assassinations, terrorism, and collaboration with enemies of states i.e. PKK and propaganda missions in order to create an environment to overthrow the Islamist government by yet another direct or indirect military coup. Ergenekon existence is mostly noted from late 90’s but some Turkish sources maintain that the ‘Gladio’ has existed since 1960’s and has been involved in most of the military coups against elected governments, four to be precise.

Modern Turkey, where Ergenekon operated, came into being from the ruins of Ottoman Caliphate, relinquished anything that was once religious for centuries, under the banner of Kemalism. Kemal Ataturk, a unifying figure for many Turks, changed anything or every thing that related to the past of Caliphate, whom he served as a solider.

Ahmet Türk head of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, discusses the recent escalation between Turkish police and Kurdish protesters, the legal challenge facing DTP and the threat of a civil war in Turkey

Turkey, alongside Spain, was the driving force behind the establishment of the Alliance of Civilisations

Congo: Nkunda vows to fight peacekeepers

Cholera spreading; epidemic fear looms

Contaminated Chinese blood-thinner takes 81 lives in the US

6.3 in China

Fed Covers up Financial Crisis

AIG aid tops $150 billion

They did it AGAIN:
AIG spends $343000 for Arizona retreat as thousands lose their jobs

American Express gets full bank status

Shariah compliant finance coming to US

The Bretton Woods sequel will flop

Big oil companies eyes vulnerable M & A targets

GE developing nuclear detection system

CONSERVATIVES LOST MORE THAN AN ELECTION

Michigan: Gayhadis attack Christian church service

Joilet Jake Sees The Light
The Blues Brothers

11/11: Some Gave All

Mansions of the Lord

The United States Congress officially recognized the end of World War I when it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926, with these words:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations;

and Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday - - a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as "Armistice Day."

Armistice Day was primarily a day set aside to honor veterans of World War I, but in 1954, after World War II had required the greatest mobilization of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen in the Nation’s history; after American forces had fought aggression in Korea, the 83rd Congress, at the urging of the veterans service organizations, amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word "Armistice" and inserting in its place the word "Veterans."

With the approval of this legislation (Public Law 380) on June 1, 1954, November 11th became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

Later that same year, on October 8th, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first "Veterans Day Proclamation" which stated:

"In order to insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans' organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in the common purpose. Toward this end, I am designating the Administrator of Veterans' Affairs as Chairman of a Veterans Day National Committee, which shall include such other persons as the Chairman may select, and which will coordinate at the national level necessary planning for the observance. I am also requesting the heads of all departments and agencies of the Executive branch of the Government to assist the National Committee in every way possible."

The LORD is my strength and my song;

he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him,
my father's God, and I will exalt him.
The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.

WFRL: Greet the Sacred Cow

Primus
Greet the Sacred Cow


Slice me up a big slab of that sympathetic cheer
If I'm zapped with radiation they say I'll last another year
Line 'em up now to greet the sacred cow
My hands are full of protein, my arms are made of fire
If you're calling me a diplomat, I'll be calling you a liar
Line 'em up now to greet the sacred cow

Missing Links: Behind a Wall of Sleep

November 7, 2008, Minsk: Woman holds portrait of Stalin
People gathered to mark October Revolution Day, the official public holiday commemorating the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

November 2008 - somewhere in America

Black Sabbath
Behind The Wall of Sleep

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

``The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that's a big problem,'' said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. ``In a liquid market, this wouldn't matter, but we're not. The market is very nervous and very thin.''

Bloomberg News has requested details of the Fed lending under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 7 seeking to force disclosure.

The Fed made the loans under terms of 11 programs, eight of them created in the past 15 months, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

``It's your money; it's not the Fed's money,'' said billionaire Ted Forstmann, senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co. in New York. ``Of course there should be transparency.''

Like a transvestite dressed up as Marilyn Monroe for Halloween skipping over an exhaust outlet on the sidewalk, the Fed gave us another sneak peak at its balance sheet this morning. Can you say, $2,000,000,000,000.00?

Gordon Brown calls for new world order to beat recession

Kneel Cash Carry: The Bailouts have just begun

Before we get on with the usual Rude ramblings, please allow us a moment to marvel at the unwavering magnanimity of the American taxpayer. It truly is amazing that, after picking up the $85 billion bar tab on behalf of AIG, the taxpayer’s have again agreed to take on more risk, upping the open limit to $150 billion

Venezuela & Russia Form Joint Bank With $4 Billion in Capital

U.S. Special Envoy to OIC Will Discuss Interfaith Issues

In November 2008, a U.S. delegation led by President Bush travels to a U.N.-sponsored conference to promote interfaith dialogue. On November 13, join Sada Cumber, U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), for an online discussion of interfaith issues. The time for this webchat has not yet been determined; please check America.gov. Sada Cumber serves as the U.S. representative to the OIC, seeking to promote improved dialogue and understanding between the United States and Muslim communities around the world. This webchat will take place at http://statedept.connectsolutions.com/conx No registration is needed. Simply choose "Enter as a Guest," type in your preferred screen name and join the discussion.

Message from grave: keep killing the infidel

The leader of an al Qaeda front group in Iraq is urging the "new rulers of the White House" and presidential allies from "Christian nations" to remove their forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim regions.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday used a Jerusalem memorial ceremony for former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to reiterate that Israel must be willing to cede parts of the capital

"If we want to keep Israel Jewish and democratic, we need to give up parts of the homeland we have dreamed about for generations and [mentioned] in our prayers, even Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and to return to a 1967 Israel with certain amendments," he said.

Rice to pin down Israeli "concessions" for Obama team

Although the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have yielded no agreements on core issues, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided that a departmental panel will “summarize” their transcripts and hand them over to the Barack Obama team.Rice said at the Middle East Quartet meeting in Egypt Sunday, Nov. 9, that she would hand over to her successor “in private” and then "you won't hear any more from me".

US, EU officials meet with Arabs on Iran

Britain's cowardice in the Congo

U.K. Can't Shift Entire Iraq Force to Afghanistan, General Says

Poland & Lithuania cannot veto EU-Russia talks

Blair hearts Obama, urges him to continue the peaceful destruction of Israel

The CIA reaches out to Obama

Secret order lets U.S. raid militants anywhere

THE GOREACLE: Gore: Internet Revolution That Elected Obama Could Save Earth

The Russian government has refused to confirm a newspaper report that a senior Hamas leader had been invited to Moscow

Al-Hayat’s London edition reported last week that the parliamentary speaker of the Hamas government, Ahmad Bahar, had received invitations to Moscow and to the European Parliament in Brussels for early 2009, according to NewsRu, a Russian-language Israeli news site.

Pakistan: Islamists kill 2 alleged US spies & leave'em in the street as a message

Egypt sends bin Laden's wandering son to Qatar

Queen Mother was ‘ghastly bigot’, says BBC presenter

The Smithereens

Behind a Wall of Sleep

Is this an odd or an end?

Joe Pesci & Rodney Dangerfield browse...
"Easy Money"

WFRL: Last Bongo in Belgium

The Incredible Bongo Band
Last Bongo in Belgium

2008: Belgian far-Right leader resigns over Holocaust song

1938:


Kristallnacht: Murder by Euphemism
By Rabbi Benjamin Blech

To remember Kristallnacht properly, we must first renounce its German-given name.

Seventy years ago, on the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, rampaging mobs throughout Germany, Austria and Sudetenland freely attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places of work and worship in a carefully orchestrated outbreak of government sponsored violence. At least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, hundreds of synagogues were burned, almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps -- many of them never to return alive to their loved ones.

Many historians consider that as the real beginning of the Holocaust, the first step in the planned extermination of the Jewish people leading to the eventual deaths of six million victims of the Nazi program of genocide.

For that reason it is certainly proper to commemorate this harbinger of horror, the infamous dates that mark the onset of the spiral of unimaginable hatred unloosed among a supposedly civilized people.

What is unfathomable to me, though, is the name by which this commemoration continues to be known.

This November Jewish communities throughout the world will again gather to recall Kristallnacht -- and will unwittingly allow themselves, in some measure, to verbally embrace the very heresy that abetted the Holocaust.

Kristallnacht is German for "the night of crystal." And 70 years after the horrible events of 1938 should have given us by now sufficient perspective to expose the lie of a horrible

WMD

~ Word of Mass Deception ~ that epitomizes the key to the most powerful methodology for murder perfected by the Nazis.

How, after all, were the Nazis able to commit their crimes under the veneer of civilized respectability? Upon analysis, the answer is obvious. They glorified the principle of murder by euphemism.

SPECIAL TREATMENT

In the language of the Nazi perpetrators: Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment") was the way to describe gassing victims. Euthanasie was the "polite" way to speak of the mass murder of retarded or physically handicapped patients. Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes you Free) were the words that greeted new arrivals at the entrance to the death camp of Auschwitz. When the Nazis launched their plan to annihilate the remaining Jews in Poland in the fall of 1943, they called it "Erntefest," or Harvest Festival. And perhaps most cynical of all was the use of the term, "Endloesung der Judenfrage" -- in English "The Final Solution" -- to express the concept for which civilized language as yet had no term. (The word 'genocide' was introduced in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, who had escaped from German-occupied Poland to the US.)

Euphemisms, as Quentin Crisp so brilliantly put it, are "unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne." On the simplest level the name Kristallnacht suggests that the only terrible thing that happened was breakage of a tremendous amount of glass that would have to be replaced -- a financial loss caused by wasteful vandalism that the government subsequently dealt with by taxing the Jewish community to pay for the damages inflicted upon them.

Kristallnacht was the German euphemism for a time of sanctioned killing. The word takes into account only the loss of kristall, and is one reason why its continued usage is so appalling.

But there was more to it than that. Dr. Walter H. Pehle, a historian specializing in modern Germany, has already pointed out that Kristallnacht's original intent was cynically propagandizing the violence into something metaphorically holding "sparkle and gleam" for Germany.

Almost by way of confirmation, in googling the English for "crystal night" I was startled to find among the many references that related to the night of Nazi terror, the inclusion of the following ad: "For an extra-inviting glow, consider using Sylvania's new C7 light bulbs in your electric candles. The multi-faceted crystal lights provide a warm, sparkly glow."

Crystal night. It is that very connection that played no small role in Goebbel's choice of descriptive for a moment that the German Minister of Propaganda wanted to immortalize as a sparkling and glowing portend of a future rid of its "Jewish parasites."

Why then would we choose to identify the night of initial mass murders with a word that not only ignores everything other than broken glass, but in fact glorifies its results as gifts of crystal clear light to the distorted truths of Nazi ideology?

To remember Kristallnacht properly we must first renounce its German-given name.

We must proclaim that we commemorate not broken windows but shattered lives.

We must pledge never again to allow evil to enter our lives disguised as the good and the noble.

We must declare that no euphemisms will ever again be permitted to cloak the horrors they intend to conceal.

After The Fire
Der Kommissar

Melanie Phillips does Dick Dawkins

Melanie
Brand New Key

Is Richard Dawkins Still Evolving?
(Jesus I hope not, he looks nuts enough already~ bz)
By Melanie Phillips

On Tuesday evening I attended the debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox at Oxford’s Natural History Museum. This was the second public encounter between the two men, but it turned out to be very different from the first. Lennox is the Oxford mathematics professor whose book, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? is to my mind an excoriating demolition of Dawkins’s overreach from biology into religion as expressed in his book The God Delusion -- all the more devastating because Lennox attacks him on the basis of science itself. In the first debate, which can be seen on video on this website, Dawkins was badly caught off-balance by Lennox’s argument precisely because, possibly for the first time, he was being challenged on his own chosen scientific ground.

This week’s debate, however, was different because from the off Dawkins moved it onto safer territory– and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said:

A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that

...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

In Oxford on Tuesday night, however, virtually the first thing he said was that a serious case could be made for believing that it could.

Anthony Flew, the celebrated philosopher and former high priest of atheism, spectacularly changed his mind and concluded -- as set out in his book There Is A God -- that life had indeed been created by a governing and purposeful intelligence, a change of mind that occurred because he followed where the scientific evidence led him. The conversion of Flew, whose book contains a cutting critique of Dawkins’s thinking, has been dismissed with unbridled scorn by Dawkins – who now says there is a serious case for the position that Flew now adopts!

Unfortunately, so stunning was this declaration it was not pursued on Tuesday evening. Instead, Dawkins was able to move the debate onto a specific attack on Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus, which is a very different argument and obscured the central point of contention – the claim that science had buried God. The fact that Dawkins now appears to be so reluctant publicly to defend his own position on his own territory of scientific rationalism – and indeed, even to have shifted his ground – is a tribute above all to the man he was debating once again on Tuesday evening.

Afterwards, I asked Dawkins whether he had indeed changed his position and become more open to ideas which lay outside the scientific paradigm. He vehemently denied this and expressed horror that he might have given this impression. But he also said other things which suggested to me that some of his own views simply don't meet the criteria of empirical evidence that he insists must govern all our thinking.

For example, I put to him that, since he is prepared to believe that the origin of all matter was an entirely spontaneous event, he therefore believes that something can be created out of nothing -- and that since such a belief runs counter to the very scientific principles of verifiable evidence which he tells us should govern all our thinking, this is itself precisely the kind of irrationality, or ‘magic’, which he scorns. In reply he said that, although he agreed this was a problematic position, he did indeed believe that the first particle arose spontaneously from nothing, because the alternative explanation – God -- was more incredible.

Later, he amplified this by saying that physics was coming up with theories to show how matter could spontaneously be created from nothing. But as far as I can see – and as Anthony Flew elaborates – these theories cannot answer the crucial question of how the purpose-carrying codes which gave rise to self–reproduction in life-forms arose out of matter from which any sense of purpose was totally absent. So such a belief, whether adduced by physicists or anyone else, does not rest upon rational foundations.

Even more jaw-droppingly, Dawkins told me that, rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet. Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from, is it not remarkable that the arch-apostle of reason finds the concept of God more unlikely as an explanation of the universe than the existence and plenipotentiary power of extra-terrestrial little green men?

The other thing that jumped out at me from this debate was that, although Dawkins insisted over and over again that all he was concerned with was whether or not something was true, he himself seems to be pretty careless with historical evidence. Anthony Flew, for example, points out in his own book that Dawkins’s claim in The God Delusion that Einstein was an atheist is manifestly false, since Einstein had specifically denied that he was either a pantheist or an atheist. In the debate, under pressure from Lennox Dawkins was actually forced to retract his previous claim that Jesus had probably ‘never existed’. And in a revealing aside, when Lennox remarked that the Natural History Museum in which they were debating – in front of dinosaur skeletons -- had been founded for the glory of God, Dawkins scoffed that of course this was absolutely untrue.

But it was true. Construction of the museum was instigated between 1855 and 1860 by the Regius Professor of Medicine, Sir Henry Acland. According to Keith Thomson of the Sigma XI Scientific Research Society, the funds for the project came from the surplus in the University Press’s Bible account as this was deemed only appropriate for a building dedicated to science as a glorification of God’s works. Giving his reasons for building the museum, Acland himself said that it would provide the opportunity to obtain the:

knowledge of the great material design of which the Supreme Master-Worker has made us a constituent part...The student of life, bearing in mind the more general laws which in the several departments above named he will have sought to appreciate, will find in the collections of Zoology, combined with the Geological specimens and the dissections of the Anatomist, a boundless field of interest and of inquiry, to which almost every other science lends its aid : from each Science he borrows a special light to guide him through the ranges of extinct and existing animal forms, from the lowest up to the highest type, which; last and most perfect, but pre-shadowed in previous ages, is seen in Man. By the aid of physiological illustrations he begins to understand how hard to unravel are the complex mechanisms and prescient intentions of the Maker of all; and he slowly learns to appreciate what exquisite care is needed for discovering the real action of even an apparently comprehended machine.

Truth is indeed the crux of the matter – but Dawkins seems to understand the word rather differently from the rest of us.The great question, however, is whether his own theory is now in the process of further evolution -- and whether it might even jump the species barrier into what is vulgarly known by lesser mortals as faith.

Billy Preston ~ Outer Space

BTW this freakin' guy has more "glam shots" than any other academic on earth! What does that tell yez?

AHHHM ready for mah closeup, Mista DeMille!

Also see: Spleen Search: Dick Dawkins

Missing Links: Glow Ballistic

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Around the World

You down with OIC?

"The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) expressed his grave concern over the tragic conditions facing the Palestinians in Hebron due to the suffocating siege imposed by Israel on more than a hundred and eighty thousand Palestinians living in the occupied city in a bid to protect a handful of settlers who wreak havoc and devastation in the city."

OIC honors Haddad-Adel

WhoTF is Haddad-Adel anyway?

Freed Canadian Reporter Was Held in Afghan Cave

Threats of revenge as 3 executed for Bali bombings

Hizbullah spokesman attends UK parley

UK militants 'back jihad'

"Allah is a Woman, and I am married to Her"
Really? Tell me, what color burka does Allah wear?

Nov 9, 1938: Actual Headline: Nazis Intensify Anti-Jewish Drive

Kristallnacht: An Israeli writer believes the objects in an old dump near Berlin are related to the infamous 1938 pogrom considered by many to be the start of the Holocaust.

Hamas ready to talk with Obama

IDF and Hamas gunmen exchange fire

Syria's Assad says Israel must prove it wants peace

Livni: No alternative to direct talks with PA, Syria

Olmert: Obama 'well-intentioned'
[insert your own road to hell jokes here]

Trinidad& Tobago Say: Obama must attack Israel’s apartheid

Abbas to address Quartet mediators

"President Abbas will stress that the Palestinians will not accept partial, transitional or provisional negotiations," Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio.

Haniyeh: We will accept Israel within '67 borders
Is that right? Well I do not accept you within any borders.

Rice visits bastion of terrorists

Queen Condi promises "Aid" in Jenin

Queen Condi of the Amalekites promises her people a State

Rice said Palestinians should "soon have their own state", though she has made it clear she does not expect a breakthrough before Barack Obama moves into the White House.

Arab Bloggers Size Up Obama

Will Iran acquire a nuclear bomb with Barack Obama as US president?

Iran expects Obama to make "real change"

Obama’s paternal aunt to be deported to Kenya

Can a Nuclear Iran Be Deterred or Contained?
If I were writing this piece it would be model of brevity.
No.

Ex-spy talks of Iranian role in South America

Who needs to win an election when you are your country’s saviour?

Russian Roulette

EU "deeply concerned" about Russia missile threat
As well they should be. But the EU also likes heat & hot water.

Split Over Russia Grows in Europe

Will Russia Point Its Missiles at Poland and Czech Republic?


Obama's Office Says `No Commitment' to Missile Shield in Poland

Barack Obama's office said the president-elect has made ``no commitment'' to a planned U.S. missile-defense system

Russia Aims to Be High on Obama’s Agenda

GM Opens $300 Million Russian Plant

Medvedev hails US-Russia ties at new GM plant

Pelosi, Reid press for auto bailout

Let Russia bail out GM

Medvedev: Russia 'ready' for better relations with Obama

KREMLIN: Obama, Medvedev to meet soon

Russia suspects 'female bomber'

More than 20 killed in Russian nuclear sub accident

Kremlin on lonely G20 crusade against Washington

Our Arctic Neighbors: Gazprom plans environmental controls
....IN ALASKA

OMV and Gazprom to develop a central European gas hub

Only a single European gas market can counter Russia's 'Gazprom

EU FIGHTS FOR NABUCCO’S FUTURE

EU Energy Chief Visits Turkey as US Piles Pressure for Nabucco

The 3,300 km Nabucco pipeline project is designed to bring 30 billion cubic meters of central Asian gas annually to Europe via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. Supporters say it is vital to wean Europe from its over-dependency on Russian energy.

EU pushes Turkey on speeding up Nabucco project

Turkey pipeline blast rekindles security concerns

Uzbekistan Not Interested in Supplying Gas for Nabucco

Chevrons profits soar

Gunmen attack Nigerian army at Chevron oil facility

Drug-cartel weapons bust is Mexico's largest

The cache of 540 rifles, 165 grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of TNT were seized on Thursday at a house in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas

Goldman Sachs settles suit, will pay $100.5 million

China Announces 4 Trillion Yuan Economic Stimulus

Cyber attacks on McCain and Obama came from China

Advisory issued for Alaskan Volcano

Ethiopia: Images of the recent volcano eruption in Afar

The Night We Waved Goodbye to America, Our Last Best Hope on Earth

IT'S A COOKBOOK, I TELL YA!

Already planned: National Obamaday

Austria: Obama, black people not "civilized enough" to rule
Is that right? I don't like him either Von Shtupp, but that ain't why.
Go Ooooomm pah pah yaselves, ya Nazi MFers.

P.J. O'Rourke : "We Blew It"
Little known fact: PJ was one of the writers on my favorite Rodney flick, "Easy Money"
"Is this an odd or an end?"

6.4 in the sea off Vanuatu

6.0 in the water off eastern Indonesia

5.4 in New Zealand

The Gayhad Rages On

Tears for Fears
Everybody Wants to Rule The World