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From Guernica to Fallujah It's difficult to believe that in this day and age, when people are blogging, emailing and communicating at the speed of light, a whole city is being destroyed and genocide is being committed - and the whole world is aware and silent. Darfur, Americans? Take a look at what you've done in Fallujah." - Female Iraqi blogger Riverbend
comment posted at 2:49 PM on Dec-2-04

First look look into the surgery of of Dr Huang Hongyun who cultivates the cells of aborted foetuses and injects them into the brains and spines of his patients. His method is controversial, but his results have led hundreds of westerners to his Beijing surgery. (MI)
comment posted at 2:28 PM on Dec-2-04

Harvard sucks, a fact that their alumni will verify. This is almost as good as Caltech's 1961 Rose Bowl prank.
comment posted at 8:06 PM on Dec-1-04

What "No Child Left Behind" Really Means
"There, buried deep within the law's 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student -- or face a cutoff of all federal aid."

Read that again slowly, No Child Left Behind is actually a military recruitment program. Backed up with an inverse extortion threat.
via.
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If we were having this conversation in 1985, and I had said to you, “Four years from now the Soviet Union will collapse and in six years it will disappear,” you would have thought, “This is not a reliable observer.” But the U.S.S.R. is gone -- disappeared -- and we didn’t predict it. Russia today is a much smaller country than the former Soviet Union. The CIA had all the wrong data. We also made a mistake when we concluded that we had won the Cold War. We had almost nothing to do with what happened in the Soviet Union: there were internal issues and it certainly wasn’t Star Wars. We now know in detail how Gorbachev brought Sakharov out of exile in Gorky to address the Politburo on, “What would you do about a ballistic missile defense?” Sakharov said, “It’s easy to overwhelm it with missiles. I wouldn’t spend a ruble on it.” And they didn’t. But in mistakenly thinking that we won the Cold War, we strongly imply that we did something to cause that. Instead, the Soviet Union collapsed because of overstretch, a case of imperial overstretch.   An Empire of More Than 725 Military Bases
An interview with Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback and The Sorrows Of Empire (More Inside)
comment posted at 12:43 PM on Dec-1-04

Free Annual Credit Reports
The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 goes in to effect today. One of the major provisions of the bill, is that consumers now have the right to one free report from each of the three major credit bureaus every 12 months. [more inside]
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comment posted at 11:36 AM on Dec-1-04

Eulogy of George W. Bush A comic of a far-right debate show hosted by Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan looks back on the presidency of George W. Bush in 2024. See them also debate Gay, Marriage, The Pledge, and Private Security in Iraq. Also, you might want to see as special guest Donal Rumsfeld Discovers Catch-22!
comment posted at 8:53 AM on Dec-1-04

LAWs instructions for starting criminal procedures against Bush Today in Vancouver, Lawyers Against the War filed torture charges against George W. Bush under the Canadian Criminal Code. The charges were laid by Gail Davidson, co-chair of Lawyers against the War--LAW, under provisions enacted pursuant to the U.N. Torture Convention, ratified by both Canada and the United States. The charges concern the well known abuses of prisoners held by US Armed Forces in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. The charges were accepted by the Justice of the Peace and referred for a hearing to decide whether Bush should be required to appear for trial. The Attorney General of Canada's consent is required within eight days for proceedings to continue, and the question of Bush's diplomatic immunity will have to be resolved by the court.
comment posted at 9:00 AM on Dec-1-04

Apartheid Dies Second Death A South African court has declared marriage discrimination to be unconstitutional, and has registered the union of Marie Fourie and Cecelia Bonthuys. Henceforth, marriage in South Africa will be defined as "the union of two persons to the exclusion of all others for life."
comment posted at 8:49 PM on Nov-30-04

The 20 X 20 Expedition is an experiment in photo format showing you what's great about ordering a 20 patty cheeseburger (with 20 pieces of cheese) at The In and Out Burger. Not exaclty pleasant (so you were warned). Bon appetit!
comment posted at 1:01 PM on Nov-30-04

Fascism in America? It Can't Happen Here is a masterful satire in which a popular, dimwitted politician rises to dictatorial power on the backs of radio evangelists, opponents of urban, yacht-owning, college professor liberalism, common people, and the Rotary Club. America is pushed into a manufactured war by all-powerful corporate interests, liberties are restricted in the name of national emergency, and all is coordinated by a behind-the-scenes political maestro sometimes called "the brain." Sound familiar? It's nothing new: the book was written by Sinclair Lewis in 1935.
comment posted at 11:51 PM on Nov-29-04

Bin Laden in Sweden Check out his HIP posse
comment posted at 5:50 PM on Nov-28-04

The new video for "Rockin' In The Free World" by Neil Young The new video for "Rockin' In The Free World" directed by filmmaker Michael Moore is now posted on the Warner Reprise site as reported by Baron on BNB. The video intercuts footage from the film Fahrenheit 9/11 and performance footage of Neil Young and Crazy Horse performing the song on the 2003/4 Greendale tour. Much of the audience footage appears to come from the May 18, 2002 broadcast of the Rockam Ring Festival in Nurburgring Racetrack, Eifel, Germany.
comment posted at 12:15 PM on Nov-28-04

Overqualified: A new letter every Tuesday
Joey Comeau wrote cover letter after cover letter, listing the same store bought traits in the same wording, day after day, hoping to find another job. And then one day he just snapped a little. He sat down to write a cover letter, and something entirely new came out. So he sent it anyway, but also publishes them on the web. (Or at least he used to.)
comment posted at 12:08 PM on Nov-28-04

Endless AOL CDs can fill your mailbox, but some people seem to love them. Others have found creative outlets for their AOL junk mail. Still more people simply love to collect the buggers, although some for grander purposes than others.
comment posted at 10:50 AM on Nov-26-04

The Orange Revolution -- A coup is taking place right now in the streets of several Ukrainian cities. Following the "election" of Viktor Yanukovych, an election that everyone from the Ukrainian man-on-the-street to EU observers and the US and Canada say was marred by serious and obvious fraud, Ukrainians are turning out by the hundreds of thousands to show their support for the opposition candidate, the pro-West reformer Viktor Yushchenko. Individual cities and municipalities, not to mention heads of Ukrainian religious groups, have even announced that they will refuse to recognize Yanukovych as the Prime Minster.

The problem is, Yanukovych is supported by the Kremlin. Russia's state-run TV stations had been broadcasting propaganda on his behalf, they called the election on his behalf before the polls were closed, and their increasingly despotic President Putin even congratulated him on his "win", before backtracking slightly. And now reports are trickling out--from former American congressmen communicating via Blackberry, no less--about Russian soldiers being flown across the border into Ukraine, dressed in Ukrainian militia garb, and set among the protestors. Phones have been cut across much of the country, including at the embassies. A semi-covert Russian-backed military push against the pro-democracy protestors is feared. Will this be another peaceful Rose Revolution, as happened in Georgia one year ago today, or more like Hungary, 1956? Stay tuned to the Ukrainian bloggers and webcams; this could get messy.
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comment posted at 9:31 AM on Nov-24-04

iPod Casings Au-go-go Have you seen the iPod socks? Even cuter: the iPod cozies. They just announced this iGrab casing which looks cool in an Arne Jacobson kinda way. If you live the life aquatic there’s a casing that allows an iPod mini to completely submerge underwater. I’m an old school pink bubblegum iSkin kinda guy. Finally, if casings aren't your deal there’s the solar powered iPod battery back up. If I could just get on the L.A. freeway with one. Please post other fun iPod goodies.
comment posted at 2:09 PM on Nov-22-04

"Around this country, it has always been territorial." A bizarre deer-stand dispute among hunters in Wisconsin turns violent, leaving five dead and three seriously injured.
comment posted at 10:16 PM on Nov-21-04

George "Don't mess with my homies" Bush. So, evidently, our president got in a scuffle. Yes, a scuffle.
comment posted at 10:03 PM on Nov-21-04

It hasn't been a good day for the Bill of Rights. In addition to this and this, it's now apparently a breach of security to take pictures of the White House from a public street. And to resell diaries of historical importance. [reg may be required.]
comment posted at 3:43 PM on Nov-15-04

Raw video footage from the US military offensive in Fallujah.
comment posted at 12:45 AM on Nov-15-04

"Marlboro Man" reflects on his sudden fame
comment posted at 2:20 PM on Nov-13-04

Respectable journalism. Funny or cruel?
comment posted at 4:55 PM on Nov-12-04

I feel safer already! Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security lowered the terror alert-level for the financial-services sector in the NY/DC area from orange to yellow, which has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with the election. "We don't do politics here at this department," days DHS deputy secretary James Loy. When the alert was jacked up back in August, some felt otherwise.
comment posted at 9:52 AM on Nov-11-04

Metafilter is Under Attack!
comment posted at 4:16 PM on Nov-7-04

We're so unbelievably sorry, everyone...
Seriously. We're not even kidding.
comment posted at 12:08 PM on Nov-5-04

Rape Haiku
comment posted at 10:27 AM on Nov-5-04

How Bush Did It "A team of Newsweek reporters unveils the untold fears, secret battles and private emotions behind a historic election." An in-depth series of behind-the-scenes articles. [via Salon 's War Room, which also says Bush's bulge was a bulletproof vest.]
comment posted at 9:33 PM on Nov-4-04

Update... ...Kerry won. Shhhh! Don't tell anyone!
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comment posted at 4:53 PM on Nov-4-04

"Reach out" to these voters? Yeah. Then boil your hand till it's sterilized. An alternate view of the seemingly regional political divide in the United States.
comment posted at 12:25 PM on Nov-4-04

Kerry Concedes President Bush won a second term from a divided and anxious nation, his promise of steady, strong wartime leadership trumping John Kerry's fresh-start approach to Iraq and joblessness. After a long, tense night of vote counting, the Democrat called Bush to concede Ohio and the presidency, The Associated Press learned.
comment posted at 8:30 AM on Nov-3-04
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comment posted at 10:02 AM on Nov-3-04

Kerry conceds.
comment posted at 8:24 AM on Nov-3-04

All this will pass. "A day will come when all this will pass away...all this will pass and a new, a noble existence will begin. "I am not here for ever", he tells himself again and again, "soon I shall be there - there where there is liberty, all that I dream of, all that the suffering soul desires. Here is a heavy sleep, a nightmare. There it will be waking, beautiful and happy. Open the doors of the prison, send away the warders, strike off the chains, it will be enough. I shall find the rest for myself, in this free and beautiful universe which I did not know how to appreciate before, although I saw it." A commentary on Dostoevsky's House of the Dead, a fictionalised account of his four year's of hard labour.
comment posted at 7:41 AM on Nov-3-04