News

unknown wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
Why Not?

by Uri Avnery
Saturday, July 12, 2008

“President Bush is about to end his career in disgrace. The same fate is waiting impatiently for Ehud Olmert. For politicians of this kind, it is easy to be tempted by a last adventure, a last chance for a decent place in history after all.”

IF YOU want to understand the policy of a country, look at the map - as Napoleon recommended.
Anyone who wants to guess whether Israel and/or the United States are going to attack Iran should look at the map of the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.

Through this narrow waterway, only 34 km wide, pass the ships that carry between a fifth and a third of the world’s oil, including that from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.

MOST OF the commentators who talk about the inevitable American and […]

Read the rest of this great post here

unknown wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
July 11, 2008 Lebanon becomes Western Syria and the Mediterranean
the “Syrian Sea.” No words can express how bad this is. New Beirut government
restores Syria to control over Lebanon. Emblem of the new Beirut govt party,
the SSNP. Fouad Siniora holds 16 portfolios in the new Lebanese government,
the opposition led by Iran puppet Hellzballah. President Michel Sleiman exercised
his prerogative to name three ministers.
This lineup ends Lebanon’s political crisis. (Or begins it.) But this represents
the radicalization of Lebanon by two terrorist groups. Hellzballah has gained
veto power and Damascus has solidified its grip on Lebanon’s center of power
called the Syrian Social Nationalist Party – the SSNP, which is dedicated to a
Greater Syria. The SSNP was Syrian terrorist arm in Lebanon.
http://debka.com/headline.php?hid=5425

Read the rest of this great post here

unknown wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
[caption id=”attachment_200″ align=”alignnone” width=”203″ caption=”Commemorative Art The The Firefighters Of 9/11″][/caption]

Trying to understand 9/11, for me, is like trying to understand how the universe really operates. Even Einstein was not sure so he created a “theory” of relativity. Not even being close to having the brainpower of Einstein, I can only mark it down as the fact that there are many more misguided terrorists in the world than I had previously thought. Terrorism exists and I guess will for a long while.
Like nearly everyone, a great sadness comes over me when I think of September 11, 2001. I try, now, and do a good job, of keeping it out of my mind for most the year. But whenever an anniversary is approaching us of that tragic day, it is impossible not to to try to ponder why it happened, question God for letting it happen, thinking of all […]

Read the rest of this great post here

website.editor@tearfund.org wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
Islam offers Dignity and Rights to all Humanity

by Mohamed Elmasry
(Friday, July 11, 2008)

“Islam was accepted and welcomed all around the Mediterranean basin because it countered the rigid conformity of Roman rule by introducing the value of respecting each person’s inherent human dignity and by implementing concrete precepts to make the achievement of universal human dignity a reality.”

The Romans always regarded their Empire’s northern and eastern borders as two major points of vulnerability to their far-flung territories. They were not expecting the emergence of a mightier power from the south - a power that was not so much a military force as a moral one.
The extraordinarily rapid spread of Islam from its modest beginnings in Arabia has no parallel in history, even to this day. And while there are a variety of reasons why this phenomenal movement took hold, none of them include the use of […]

Read the rest of this great post here

attendingtheworld wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
by Treadmarkz
As disabled sports enthusiasts everywhere anxiously await the outcome of Oscar Pistorius’ last chance to make the South African Olympic team on Wednesday, July 16, I gotta wonder, is Oscar being catered to?
I mean, they extended the deadline on their decision on who to put on their team, from July 11 to July 16, and seemingly just so Pistorius, the first amputee to make it this close to the Olympics, has one more race to make the cut. Why? Is this common practice? Or maybe they just really see something in Pistorius and they feel that to not have him on their national team would be a disservice to the country. Or maybe they think that being the first country to have a disabled person on the national Olympic team would make them really look forward-thinking and open minded.
We should have all stopped holding our collective breath on […]

Read the rest of this great post here

website.editor@tearfund.org wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
Article from Counterpunch which talks about the economy, the Iraq war, Bush Administration policies, and NYT columnist Paul Krugman’s oversights on these issues in one of his recent columns.
In a New York Times column on Monday (“Behind the Bush Bust”), economics columnist Paul Krugman mused on whether President George Bush could be blamed for the nation’s economic crisis. His conclusion was that, yes, to some extent the crisis was Bush’s fault, but he largely lets the current administration off the hook, instead blaming Republican policies dating back 10-15 years…
…The gaping hole in Krugman’s logic is the Iraq War, which the columnist, incredibly, doesn’t even mention. Yet clearly, the invasion and subsequent war and occupation of Iraq which was purely the result of Bush/Cheney machinations, has been a major, if not the major cause of oil price increases.
By destroying Iraq’s oil production, and by hindering much of Iran’s production (Iran, seen as an […]

Read the rest of this great post here

unknown wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
Tutti in fila ieri davanti ai rivenditori Tim e Vodafone, anche a Milano, per accaparrarsi i primi cellulari iPhone della Apple. In centro, sia in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele che in piazza Duomo, i negozi di telefonia sono stati presi d’assalto con gruppi di persone in attesa sin dalla prima mattina. I più previdenti si sono recati già la scorsa notte nei negozi Tim, aperti straordinariamente anche a tarda ora, per impossessarsi dei primi modelli a partire dalla mezzanotte. Un ragazzo in attesa davanti al rivenditore spiega: «Già dalla notte c’erano file di due-trecento metri e oltretutto non funzionavano i terminali, abbiamo quindi dovuto aspettare diverse ore prima di poter acquistare l’iPhone». La «febbre» è alta, Vodafone e Tim sono soddisfatte anche se c’è massimo riserbo sui numeri. Per avere cifre concrete bisognerà aspettare il bilancio della Apple, che, fanno sapere dalla società, arriverà forse solo oggi. «Il lancio […]

Read the rest of this great post here

IBM and Linden Lab take the next big step for (virtual) mankind : The Metaverse Journal - Australiaâ??s Virtual World News Service wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
L’asportazione del cristallino in età pediatrica, a seguito di un intervento per cataratta congenita, portava, in passato, a soluzioni non completamente soddisfacenti. «Togliere il cristallino, presenta inevitabilmente un difetto di accomodazione (il processo che consente di vedere bene da vicino), e quindi l’instaurarsi di una precoce presbiopia, un difetto che generalmente insorge a partire dai 40-45 anni di età», afferma Michele Fortunato (micfortunato@hotmail.com), presidente dell’Association Internationale pour l’Enfance et la Reabilitation Visuelle (Aierv),associazione di oculisti internazionali che si occupa di organizzare eventi scientifici e attività di volontariato,prevenzione e riabilitazione visiva in paesi in via di sviluppo. «Eseguire questa operazione su un bambino significa quindi renderlo simile ad una persona anziana, causandogli una difficoltà visiva importante».Un problema che i cristallini artificiali classici monofocali non erano in grado di risolvere: «In pratica, si imponeva la scelta se privilegiare una visione migliore da lontano oppure da vicino. Optando per il primo caso, era […]

Read the rest of this great post here

appardio wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt
È «Una giornata al mare» di Paolo e Giorgio Conte il secondo singolo di Daniele Silvestri, tratto dal cd «Monetine», in radio da ieri. «Una giornata al mare» venne interpretata dall’Equipe 84 nel Sanremo 1971 e poi riproposta, dallo stesso Paolo Conte, nell’album omonimo del 1974 in versione più intimista.
Fonte: http://www.ilgiornale.it/a.pic1?ID=275518

Read the rest of this great post here

appardio wrote an interesting post today on
Here’s a quick excerpt

A Movie: A Chronicle of the First Half of the 20th Century

Bruce Conner died on Monday at the age of 74. Over the years, Conner made some two dozen films. Conner’s euphoric films, were assembled from pieces of old documentaries and educational reels, as well as from from mass-cultural snippets. They were both salvage projects and assertions of individuality in an increasingly anonymous age. In their own modest way, they were acts of resistance, an aesthetic counterpoint to a world drowning in its own image. Critics have described his films as generally a blast, witty, exuberant, despairing, engaged and portentous.

For example, Conner used a very early short clip of Marilyn Monroe at the beginning of his most famous film, A Movie, which was followed by an assemblage that featured a startling sequence focussing upon a man peering through a periscope, a submarine discharging a […]

Read the rest of this great post here