May 4, 2005

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4:15 PM PST Premature Panic (Salon)
The doom-and-gloom brigade is savaging Kerry because the race is still tied after Bush's horrible April. But the campaign has barely begun...

4:15 PM Ralph Nader, Suicide Bomber (Village Voice)
Ralph Nader ran so he could hurt, wound, and punish the Democrats. His primary goal was not raising issues, much less building the Green Party...

4:15 PM Vanity Logging (Christian Science Monitor)
As more Americans move to the woods, they cut down neighbors' trees - sometimes at night - to widen the vistas...

2:00 PM Israel Gave Settlers Illegal $7m (BBC)
Israel's Housing Ministry broke the law to spend nearly $7 million on illegal settlements in three years, says an annual report by the state auditor. Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg said the Housing Ministry had funded settlements on land whose ownership was in dispute...

2:00 PM Why Antarctica Will Soon be the Only Place to Live -- Literally (Independent)
Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked, the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, said last week...

2:00 PM Tbilisi Offers Abashidze Safe Passage (Associated Press)
Thousands of people protested in the tense capital of Georgia's Adzharia region on Wednesday, calling for its defiant leader to resign amid signs he was losing support in his standoff with the central government over control of the Black Sea province...

9:45 AM Disney Blocks Distribution of Anti-Bush Documentary (Reuters)
Walt Disney Co. has barred its Miramax film studio from distributing a documentary by director Michael Moore that is critical of President Bush, Moore said on Wednesday...

9:45 AM Arnold's Big Chance (The Economist)
Something remarkable might just be happening in California. Not before time...

9:45 AM As Energy Thieves Turn Crafty, Utility Turns Up Battle of Wits (New York Times)
Jilted lovers, disgruntled former employees, prying neighbors - Charles A. Mormilo takes the anonymous tips where he can. But in his tireless pursuit of those stealing from the giant New York utility Consolidated Edison, Mr. Mormilo, its top inspector, is up against a city that prides itself on its scrappy ingenuity...

May 4, 2004

4:15 PM PST Paying for Iraq (Alternet)
While the budget issue is likely to dog Bush through the summer, no one has exposed the dirty little secret of military budgets: There is already plenty of money for Iraq in the whopping $423 billion proposed defense budget. It's just being spent on the wrong things...

4:15 PM Chicago Lab Helps Create Donor Babies (Associated Press)
In a growing practice that troubles some ethicists, a Chicago laboratory helped create five healthy babies so that they could serve as stem-cell donors for their ailing brothers and sisters...

4:15 PM State Smog Battle to Target Clunkers (Los Angeles Times)
The Schwarzenegger administration, working with business groups, legislators and environmentalists, is promoting an ambitious anti-smog initiative to eliminate the largest contributors to dirty air in California — heavy-polluting, older model cars, trucks, buses and farm vehicles...

1:00 PM One Party, One System (Guardian)
Moves towards reform in Hong Kong and elsewhere have triggered Beijing's old allergy to democracy...

1:00 PM Bush Under Fire From U.S. Ex-Envoys (BBC)
About 50 retired U.S. diplomats have written to President George W. Bush to criticize current American policy towards the Middle East...

1:00 PM Battlefield of Dreams (New York Times)
Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization...undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy...

10:00 AM Creative Linguistics from the Bush Administration (Time)
President Bush may not be remembered as a linguistic innovator. But in the tradition of classifying ketchup as a vegetable, a classic from the Reagan era, the Bush Administration may leave a rich legacy of redefining terms for regulatory purposes...

10:00 AM A War for Us, Fought by Them (New York Times)
If the war in Iraq is not worth your own family fighting it, then it's not worth it for America...

10:00 AM How Ahmed Chalabi Conned the Neocons (Salon)
The hawks who launched the Iraq war believed the deal-making exile when he promised to build a secular democracy with close ties to Israel. Now the Israel deal is dead, he's cozying up to Iran -- and his patrons look like they're on the way out...

May 3, 2004

4:00 PM PST Preach to the Choir (Austin-American Statesman)
The money Bush and his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry, are spending goes to just 18 states...

4:00 PM Editor of U.S-Funded Iraqi Paper Quits (Associated Press)
The head of a U.S.-funded Iraqi newspaper quit and said Monday he was taking almost his entire staff with him because of American interference in the publication...

4:00 PM Iraqi School Boys: Now We hate the U.S. (Christian Science Monitor)
When it comes to defending the U.S. military, 15-year- old Khldoon Abdullah Mahmood is a lone voice in the boisterous hallways of his Al Jadreeya Intermediate School...

2:00 PM PST Torture at Abu Ghraib (New Yorker)
American soldiers brutalized Iraqis. How far up does the responsibility go?

2:00 PM A Wave of Initiatives to Promote Marriage (Christian Science Monitor)
From a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage to new funding for programs to promote "healthy" marriage at the state level, Washington is making an unprecedented move into one of the most private and pivotal institutions in American life...

2:00 PM Vanishing Votes (Nation)
On October 29, 2002, George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (H.A.V.A.). Hidden behind its apple-pie-and-motherhood name lies a nasty civil rights time bomb...

10:00 AM God Save America (Guardian)
"Fundagelism" is not a word that trips easily off the tongue. It's a crunching together of the even more mouth-boggling compound "fundamentalist evangelism..."

10:00 AM U.S. Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences (New York Times)
The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation, according to federal and private experts who point to strong evidence like prizes awarded to Americans and the number of papers in major professional journals...

10:00 AM GI Joe vs. the Jarheads (Slate)
One of the wars behind the war in Iraq—the fierce rivalry between the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps—was settled this week. The outcome: Both sides lost...

April 30, 2004

4:30 PM PST Study Finds 25 Nations Hindered by Corruption (Washington Post)
A survey of government accountability and openness in 25 countries around the globe has found that each one is challenged by corruption and lacks sufficient protections against electoral abuses, including developed democracies such as the United States, Germany and Japan...

4:30 PM Thaksin's Quandary (Economist)
Attacks by mysterious militant groups in southern Thailand have met with a tough response by the country's security forces. The renewed violence could dent the aura of invincibility around the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra...

4:30 PM Anti-Semitic -- or Anti-Sharon? (Salon)
Two springs ago, the streets and Web sites of Europe erupted in a paroxysm of anti-Israeli rage summed up by one word: "Jenin." Across the continent, leftists organized to protest the deadly Israeli raid on the Palestinian refugee camp. One leaflet showed Uncle Sam with a hooked Jewish nose dangling the globe on a string...

10:15 AM The EPA's Revolving Door (Grist)
Yet another high-level leader at the Environmental Protection Agency has decided to throw in the towel. Is a heavy-handed Bush White House to blame...

10:15 AM Slovenia, Poster Child for the New Europe (Slate)
As nation-states go, Slovenia is the equivalent of a quiet but comfortable middle-class suburb. But like any suburban fairy tale, the Slovenian story has its dark sides...

10:15 AM Anti-American Grafitti (The Guardian)
'Democracy is a shirt that does not fit us,' Qais al-Nai'mi, a resident of the Sunni stronghold of Aadhamiya, in the Iraqi capital...

April 29, 2004

4:15 PM PST U.S. Losing Battle Against Rumors (San Francisco Chronicle)
Whatever happens, the word on the street tells a different story. Word has it that British F-16 fighters strafed those three police stations destroyed in Basra last week, killing scores of innocent men, women and children...

4:15 PM Leaks About Foes Seen as Routine (Washington Post)
On Monday morning, Sen. John F. Kerry was confronted with a 1971 videotape that appeared to contradict his past accounts of whether he had thrown away his military medals as a Vietnam War protest. This was no accident, not in a campaign season in which opposition researchers are constantly trying to unearth damaging material...

4:15 PM Under-the-Radar Radio (Newsweek)
While the FCC cracks down on Howard Stern, Hispanic shock jocks are as raunchy as ever. So far...

2:30 PM Pro-Life Zealots Ignore Republicans (New York Observer)
For the first time in more than 40 years, a Catholic politician is about to be nominated for President on a major-party ticket. He's a Democrat, of course, since the Republicans still haven't gotten around to nominating anyone who isn't a white Protestant male...

2:30 PM Syria Speculates Over Attack (BBC)
The mysterious gun battle which pitted armed assailants against security forces in Damascus on Tuesday evening has left Syrians, as well as diplomats, perplexed about the identity of the attackers and their aim...

2:30 PM Peril in the Air for Bush: Howard Stern (Los Angeles Times)
A strange new sound has been crackling over the nation's radio airwaves, the same airwaves that have been dominated by Rush Limbaugh and other specialists in right-wing Sturm und Drang. Suddenly, in the thick of an election year, a left-leaning equivalent has emerged, riling a mass audience with scathing, eloquent attacks on the Bush administration...

10:00 AM Getting in Bush's Faith (Grist Magazine)
Christian leaders challenge Bush's environmental policy...

10:00 AM Why Phones Are Replacing Cars (The Economist)
“Parks beautifully”, boasts an advertising hoarding for the XDA II, above a glimpse of its sleek silver lines. “Responsive to every turn”, declares another poster. Yet these ads, seen recently in London, are selling not a car, but an advanced kind of mobile phone...

10:00 AM To Stay Out of the Red, China Needs to go Green (Christian Science Monitor)
This century, watch China. That nation's explosive development is reshaping the global economy. Its inexpensive exports, for example, are squeezing profits for business competitors in the United States and other nations. Its huge appetite for raw materials threatens to heat up inflation overseas...

April 28, 2004

4:15 PM PST WMDs Abound In Russia, But International Interest Fades (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)
Two years ago, the G-8 states announced an ambitious new partnership to prevent the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological materials amid increased fears of terrorism...

4:15 PM The College Cut-Off (American Prospect
It's an economy where educational credentials and connections count for more and more. A degree from one of the Ivies or from a Stanford, Michigan, or Berkeley isn't exactly a bus ticket to fat city - but it sure helps. At the very least, you need a bachelors degree just to get on the highway...

4:15 PM Super Organics (Wired)
Once upon a technologically optimistic time, the founders of a swaggering biotech startup called Calgene bet the farm on a tomato. It wasn't just any old tomato...

12:30 PM The Challenge: Halving Global Poverty Again (Moscow Times)
The proportion of people living on less than $1 per day worldwide dropped by almost half between 1981 and 2001, from 40 percent to 21 percent of global population...

12:30 PM High Court Upholds Pennsylvania Redistricting (Washington Post)
The Supreme Court today narrowly upheld the constitutionality of new congressional district boundaries in Pennsylvania but declined to rule out future challenges to political gerrymandering...

12:30 PM Think Again: Al Qaeda (Foreign Policy)
The mere mention of al Qaeda conjures images of an efficient terrorist network guided by a powerful criminal mastermind. Yet al Qaeda is more lethal as an ideology than as an organization. "Al Qaedaism" will continue to attract supporters in the years to come -- whether Osama bin Laden is around to lead them or not...

9:45 AM Brave New Jobs (Salon)
My menial job at a world-famous Washington resort was a crash course in today's screw-the-worker zeitgeist -- and the charming, monied guests who thrust bloody bandages into my hands and made my dignified old co-worker perform like a seal...

9:45 AM Welcome to Our Cities, Unless You're Communist (Los Angeles Times)
Memories of the Red Menace may be fading in much of America, but they are very much alive in Orange County's Little Saigon...

9:45 AM G.O.P. Protesters Plan to Infiltrate Convention as Volunteers (New York Times)
It is accepted as an article of faith among protesters planning to demonstrate against the Republican National Convention this summer that agents seeking to undermine their efforts have infiltrated their ranks. But now the protesters are talking about infiltrating the convention to undermine the event itself...

April 27, 2004

4:30 PM PST A Liberal Life in the City by the Bay (Washington Post)
This is the home of the Harrison family, who describe Bill Clinton as "intelligent," "charismatic" and "a good representation of America," and George W. Bush as "frightening," "a total imbecile" and "monkey boy."

4:30 PM Race Wars (City Limits)
It was billed as a chance for South Asian immigrants to learn from a cop and prosecutor what hate crimes are and how to report them. But by the end of the meeting in Brooklyn's heavily Pakistani Midwood section, the lecturers were mired in legalisms, the organizers were squirming with confusion, and many in the audience seemed like they wanted to be anywhere but here, the place they thought they'd find help...

4:30 PM Body Politics (American Prospect)
Hundreds of thousands of women turned out for the March for Women’s Lives on Sunday to rally in support of abortion rights. But while the Republican effort to scale back abortion-rights victories has been relentless, abortion is just one of the areas in which women’s freedoms are under assault...

12:45 PM Image-Conscious Schwarzenegger Works to Keep Media Under Control (Napa News)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has turned his savvy for handling the Hollywood media to his new role as workaday governor, and reporters are routinely encountering directorial control over what they can see, hear, photograph or record...

12:45 PM What Freudian Slips Do—Or Don't—Tell Us About Politicians (Slate)
Could preternaturally self-composed National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice actually have a roiling inner life? Is she tormented by needs, longings, embarrassing fantasies...

12:45 PM From Here to Economy (Grist Magazine)
When right-wing pundits and corporate flacks compare environmentalists to watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside), they mean it as a slur...

April 27, 2004

10:00 AM Nuclear Security Fixes Urged (Los Angeles Times)
Fearing that arms labs are vulnerable to attack by terrorists, the U.S. considers relocating stockpiles of plutonium and enriched uranium...

10:00 AM Colouring the Outcome (Guardian)
Since the ousting of Saddam Hussein, Iraq has had a little trouble with flags. Not at the same level as its lack of security or a basic infrastructure but trouble nevertheless...

10:00 AM Mexico Plans Human Rights Reforms (BBC)
Mexican President Vicente Fox has announced moves to guarantee human rights in the country's constitution...

 

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