Friday News Bucket

20 Comments

1. 

   CabinGirl on October 13, 2006 at 8:27 am

   leaves 11 people dead: AP/Yahoo

   Suspected Shiite militiamen, some dressed as police, broke into a television station and gunned down 11 Iraqi executives, producers and other staffers Thursday — the deadliest attack against the media in this country, where at least 81 other journalists have been killed in the past three years.

   The station, Shaabiya, was new and had not started full broadcasting. So far it had aired only test programming of nationalist songs, including ones against the U.S. military presence in
   Iraq. That may have led Shiite militiamen to suspect it of a pro-Sunni ideology.

   • 

     Gaianne on October 14, 2006 at 3:20 am

     So far it had aired only test programming of nationalist songs, including ones against the U.S. military presence in
     Iraq.  

     There are the fingerprints.  These “suspected Shi’ite militiamen”  are really one of our own death squads.  

     Negreponte lives on.  

2. 

   ask on October 13, 2006 at 8:31 am

   Banker for the poor wins Nobel Peace Prize

   The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he started 30 years ago, citing their efforts to create economic and social development from the lowest grass-roots levels.

   “I can’t believe that it’s truly happened,” Yunus told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) shortly after the Peace Prize was announced. “Thank you so very much.”

   Yunus, who started the so-called “microcredit” system of making tiny loans to poor people in rural Bangladesh, said he already was looking forward to making the trip to Oslo on December 10 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He said he’d invest the SEK 10 million cash award that comes with the Peace Prize back into his financing offers for the poor.

   • 

     CabinGirl on October 13, 2006 at 8:40 am

     That’s a great story.  And now he has more money to loan!

     • 

       ask on October 13, 2006 at 8:47 am

       A most appropriate award.
       Grameen

       • 

         idredit on October 13, 2006 at 8:51 am

         Most fitting. 97% of the poor are women.

3. 

   Knoxville Progressive on October 13, 2006 at 8:47 am

   The costs to the global economy of failing to tackle climate change are potentially mind-boggling: A new report graphically warns that £11 trillion ($12 trillion) could be wiped off world economic output by the end of the century if nothing is done.  Facing such losses, insurance companies are becoming leading business protagonists in the assault on global warming.  

   Astronomers have made the first direct observation of distinct day and night temperatures on a planet orbiting another star, a “hot Jupiter” that keeps one face eternally facing its sun, while the dark side shivers.

   Oysters exposed to high water temperatures and a common heavy metal are unable to obtain sufficient oxygen and convert it to cellular energy, with profound ecological effects.  Oysters once thrived in the coastal regions of much of the eastern United States, but over-fishing, global warming, rising ocean water temperatures and increased pollution have combined to reduce the oyster population to 5% of what it was 200 years ago. The loss of oysters has far-reaching environmental implications.  A century ago, the oyster population could completely filter the water in the Chesapeake Bay in three days. Today, with the oyster population continuing to decline from poor water quality and disease, it would take a year to filter the same amount of water. In addition to filtering water, oysters create a kind of reef that up to 300 other species of marine life depend upon.

   Massive peat bogs in Siberia and elsewhere may have helped spur global warming at the end of the last ice age some 12,000 years ago, scientists reported on Thursday.  The ice was already melting when the bogs formed, but the fact that they emitted the greenhouse gas methane accelerated the warming trend.  Methane is 23 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  Human activities have already doubled the methane in the atmosphere over the last 200 years; 60% of the methane entering the atmosphere today is related to human activity.

   • 

     CabinGirl on October 13, 2006 at 9:07 am

     It always amazes me how many ways global warming affects everything (and vice versa).  

4. 

   CabinGirl on October 13, 2006 at 8:48 am

   (for FamilyMan): via Alternet

   Tom Lutz probes 400 years’ worth of changing attitudes toward work in Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2006). A blues keyboardist and screenwriter who heads a University of California MFA program, Lutz admits that he’s conflicted: “My life of sloth blends imperceptibly into my pathological flip side, my workaholism.” He and his friends are “all lazy imposters, and we are all workaholic slaves.” He was just as torn when, as a boomer rebel at a ’70s commune, he loved outwitting the Man yet wondered why he was, basically, breaking rocks in the hot sun…

   …The slacker is “a deeply ironic figure,” Lutz muses before analyzing beggars and beachcombers, ramblers and rebels, Anna Nicole Smith and Ferris Bueller. Synonyms for slacking, he asserts, “could be used as insults or adopted proudly as a protest.”

   • 

     Family Man on October 13, 2006 at 8:52 am

     Thank you very much.  I choose “adopted proudly as a protest.” 🙂

     • 

       CabinGirl on October 13, 2006 at 9:04 am

       Yeah, me too.  🙂

5. 

   idredit on October 13, 2006 at 8:49 am

   Let the invasion begin:Congressman Murtha off to invade  mean Jean’s campaign (H/T TPM)

   One barbed of a guy: did you know John Ashcroft makes barbed wire sculptures. No sins. When tempted he calls his wife Not surprised?

   All roads lead to Karl: Go read Elizabeth de la Vega former prosecutor, her Part 2 of Scooter Libby’s trial strategy. A confession and a pardon that will clear the decks for 2008. She connects the dots and asks, why did Armitage confess?

   The numbers debate:

   It’s not credible?      
   Poor George. OK, let’s give him a handicap. Let the count start from today. Let’s also give there are only 317 days in a year-less smog days.  Before he leaves office in 2 years at the current rate of body count, yea, in two years it’ll likely be in the range 317,000 – 650,000 on his watch!

   Billmon on Catching up to Saddam. “The moral of the story, I guess, is that you don’t need to be an inhuman monster to cause an inhuman amount of death, destruction and suffering. You don’t even need evil — ignorance and arrogance and incompetence can manage the job quite nicely. But, as I’ve said before, it does requires a rare combination of those qualities to take a situation like Saddam’s Iraq and make it worse.
   The numbers may be (and will be) debated, but at this point they strongly suggest that Shrub and company have managed to do just that — or will, in the fullness of time.”

   Professor Cole reports the Iraqi police administrators have to budget for the loss of 25 police men a day—10 killed and 15 wounded.

   • 

     CabinGirl on October 13, 2006 at 8:57 am

     Not Credible? Talk about a state of denial: Bushco are the ones with no credibility. Are they surprised that anyone could keep up with the numbers of the dead when they’re piling up that fast?

6. 

   rba on October 13, 2006 at 9:32 am

   MIT Center for Collective Intelligence  “Our mission is to understand collective intelligence at a deep level so we can create and take advantage of the new possibilities it enables.”  You can be in on the launch today, and sign up for ongoing news.

7. 

   Kahli on October 13, 2006 at 9:37 am

   Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.  Buy your cheap WalMart crap now.

   While the U.S. is busy emasculating our unions, the Chinese are at least marginally strengthening theirs.

   China is planning to adopt a new law that seeks to crack down on sweatshops and protect workers’ rights by giving labor unions real power for the first time since it introduced market forces in the 1980’s.

   The move, which underscores the government’s growing concern about the widening income gap and threats of social unrest, is setting off a battle with American and other foreign corporations that have lobbied against it by hinting that they may build fewer factories here.

   .

   • 

     Nag on October 13, 2006 at 9:51 am

     Surprise surprise: Official Union in China Says All Wal-Marts Are Organized!!! Yes, that’s right, all 66 Walmart outlets in China are UNIONIZED. While China is seeing “breakthroughs” in organized labor, the US is seeing the Republican government and big business do away with workers rights to organize. Soon all those sweatshops will be in the US.

     • 

       Kahli on October 13, 2006 at 9:54 am

       Soon all those sweatshops will be in the US.

       Wow, I guess they did have a plan to bring manufacturaing jobs back to the U.S! ;(

8. 

   Nag on October 13, 2006 at 10:04 am

   This is up on Raw and it’s more proof that the radical right will believe just about any poo they hear as long as it blames Democrats for everything:

   Conservative group alleges gay GOP is really network of undercover liberals

   Conservative media watchdog Accuracy in Media is alleging that the Foley scandal is not the work of a gay Republican, but rather of a Democratic operative posing as a Republican to undermine the party.

   In a piece entitled, “Republican Gays are Closeted Dems,” Cliff Kincaid seems to allege that gay Republicans themselves are nothing more than a “Democratic ‘dirty trick,'” hoping to use the party to “advance the same homosexual agenda embraced by the Democrats.”

   “If you are getting the idea that gay Republicans may be closeted Democrats,” the column suggests, “then you are beginning to understand how the Mark Foley scandal could have been a Democratic Party dirty trick.”

   Conservatives couldn’t think themselves out of a paper bag even if you started the hole for them.

   • 

     CabinGirl on October 13, 2006 at 10:09 am

     As I have long suspected, the wingnuts are certifiably crazy…

9. 

   idredit on October 13, 2006 at 10:32 am

   Those mysterious wounds. The Dime bomb. Israel stands accused.

   and Just In

   British coroner rules, US troops unlawfullly killed UK journalist