Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth does indeed have some correct facts, but he says "sometimes you have to exaggerate to send the message to people". So, how are we supposed to know fact from fiction in the global warming debate?
It's easy to see why Al gore's movie should not be shown in schools. An Inconvenient Truth is a political commercial that misrepresents a whole area of science. He admittedly uses scare tactics to get people to listen then shows them a professional slide show that blames every thing bad on so called man made global warming.
Al did not make and publicize this movie because he cares; something obvious when you consider his own lifestyle. He did not make this movie to run for president. This movie has grossed over 60 million dollars to date and it hasn't even made it to cable. Al charges over $100,000 per slide show. But the real money that Al will make is through his new company, Generation Investment Management, a company that seeks to establish the rules and licensing for the new carbon-trading scheme. We have all heard of politicians who lie for money and power; it looks as if Al did not retire after all.Facts and Fictions of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" by Kristen Byrnes
Ponder the Maunder is an extra credit assignment for Honors Earth Science, Portland High School, by Kristen Byrnes of Portland Maine.
This report is a comprehensive look at the global warming issue without financial or political bias. It uses the most updated information provided by scientists and researchers and interjects common sense, an important component missing from the global warming debate.
As will be revealed post haste, this newest - and likely youngest - member of the growing list of folks skeptical about man's role in climate change actually walks the walk better than she talks the talk.
Yet, despite her youth and precocious scientific acumen, it seems quite unlikely that she'll be sitting down with Matt Lauer or Diane Sawyer any time soon to discuss her research concerning one of the most popular subjects on the media's front-burner. Why?
Because a prediction that she made last month concerning Australia's drought has marvelously borne fruit making the scientists employed by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change look a bit foolish.
As we move well into the fifth year of the Iraq war, a few brave voices are daring to suggest that the catastrophe that is now Iraq was not a result of a colossal mistake but is rather the result of conscious, deliberate intention.
The U.S. did not invade Iraq to establish "democracy" and to "free Iraqis". The U.S. invaded and destroyed Iraq in order to humiliate and divide Muslims - Arabs in particular - protect Israel's Zionist expansion and control Iraq's natural wealth.
I see the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld clique... as radical nihilists, bent on permanent war and destruction for its own sake. According to Wikipedia, one of the definitions of Nihilism is the irrational desire to destroy meaning, knowledge and value and it embraces suicide and mass murder.
"What I'm describing to the American people is this war on terror is going to take awhile, and Iraq is just a part of it."
----President George W. Bush, Interview with NPR/ Juan Williams, 1.29.07
President Bush's former chief of staff Andrew Card was loudly booed by hundreds of students and faculty members as he rose to accept an honorary degree at the University of Massachusetts on Friday.
The boos and catcalls - including those from faculty members who stood onstage with Card - drowned out Provost Charlena Seymour's remarks as she awarded the honorary doctorate in public service. Protesters claim Card lied to the American people in the early days of the Iraq war and should not have been honored at the graduate student commencement.
"In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war." That's what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.
Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation's history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.
Now that war has turned into an epic disaster, in part because the war's architects, whom we now know were warned about the risks, didn't want to hear about them. Yet Congress seems powerless to stop it. How did it all go so wrong?
Future historians will shake their heads over how easily America was misled into war. The warning signs, the indications that we had a rogue administration determined to use 9/11 as an excuse for war, were there, for those willing to see them, right from the beginning - even before Mr. Bush began explicitly pushing for war with Iraq.
In fact, the very first time Mr. Bush declared a war on terror that "will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated," people should have realized that he was going to use the terrorist attack to justify anything and everything.
A 23-year-old woman and her four children have been found hanging in a closet in their mobile home in the small town of Hudson Oaks in Parker County, just west of Fort Worth. Investigators say they are treating the case as a murder-suicide. Of the five people, only one survived. Paramedics took an 8-month-old girl to a hospital. Authorities say she is in good condition. The other children, ages 5, 3, and 2, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Military officials asked the Federal Communications Commission to make ham radio operators eliminate radio frequency interference with the PAVE PAWS radar station, or shut down.
Errin Haines Associated Press, via the Tallahassee Democrat, USA 2007-02-04 08:37:00
ROME, Ga. - The faith of more than 1,600 small, black churches in 41 states was the foundation for a $9 million scheme carried out by a north Georgia preacher, prosecutors said Thursday.
The churches scraped together the $3,000 fee to join as "members" of the Rev. Abraham Kennard's business, expecting a windfall for their churches, but the money never came.
By George Lakoff and Glenn Smith The Rockridge Institute 2007-05-29 04:30:00
The Rockridge Institute issues a call to action in response to Congress's passage of the Iraq supplemental spending bill.
Critics of Congress's passage this week of the Iraq supplemental spending bill lament a lack of political courage. But Congress would find it easier to act courageously if the public understood the constitutional stakes. And that public understanding requires correct and persistent framing by Congress itself. What needs to have been framed - indeed what still needs to be framed - is Congress's constitutional responsibility and power to set the course on military missions like Iraq.
HAVANA - With a catfish fry for Cuban officials and pleas to U.S.
President George W. Bush to ease sanctions, dozens of American businessmen began negotiating new sales of agricultural products to communist Cuba on Monday.
"I challenge Mr. Bush to tear down this embargo," said Mississippi cotton farmer John Newcomb, borrowing Ronald Reagan's famous 1987 line to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall.
By DON THOMPSON Associated Press 2007-05-28 21:27:00
FOLSOM, Calif. - Every 30 minutes, day and night, guards walk the tiers of the isolation unit at California State Prison, Sacramento, checking inmates to make sure they don't kill themselves.
A source in the Russian intelligence community said Tuesday the Litvinenko case is not likely to affect cooperation between Russian and British intelligence services.
The British Sunday Telegraph newspaper recently published an article citing high-ranking British intelligence officers who expressed concerns that the U.K. could lose access to important intelligence data on terrorist groups because of strained relations with Russian security bodies over the investigation into the murder of ex-FSB agent and defector Alexander Litvinenko.
The paper said that British security services have received vital information from Russia on terrorist organizations based in Bosnia, Chechnya and some African countries that helped Britain fight terrorism on its own soil.
But now, U.K. intelligence officials fear that a possible standoff in the Litvinenko murder case could undermine trust in relations with their Russian counterparts.
Russia intends to provide $500 million in aid to the world's poorest countries over the next few years, the Russian finance minister said Tuesday.
"Russia's aid within the multilateral and bilateral agreements on the development of poorest countries will increase up to $500 million," Alexei Kudrin said.
The minister also said that the next Cabinet meeting on Thursday will discuss financial aid to Nicaragua as part of the international community's debt relief effort, with Russia planning to write off $5 million.
"Russia will contribute $5 million," Kudrin said. "Next in line will be Liberia, Somalia and other countries."
Earlier Tuesday at an event dedicated to Africa Day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia plans to cancel $500 million debt owed by Africa's poorest countries.
The European Commission reaffirmed its attachment to media freedom on Tuesday when asked about a Polish plan to investigate the Teletubbies children's television show for allegedly promoting homosexuality.
The move by children's rights watchdog Ewa Sowinska appeared to be the latest step in the conservative Warsaw government's drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda, although the pro-government parliamentary speaker warned her against turning her department into "a laughing stock".
Sowinska said in remarks published on Monday she would ask psychologists to advise whether Tinky Winky and other characters in the globally screened BBC show promoted homosexuality.
British authorities yesterday rejected suggestions from Russia that the man suspected of murdering Alexander Litvinenko could be swapped for an exiled Kremlin critic.
Last week, prosecutors began a formal extradition process of former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoy, the man suspected of killing Mr Litvinenko.
The Attorney General has told Russia's chief prosecutor that Lugovoy must face trial in the UK.
In a face-to-face meeting with chief prosecutor Yuri Chaika, Lord Goldsmith said he expected the Russian authorities to co-operate.
And today, a high-ranking Russian politician appeared to suggest Russia could extradite Lugovoy to Britain in exchange for Boris Berezovsky, an exiled tycoon long sought by Russia.
The controversial Church of Scientology is planning to target students at Scottish universities and colleges in a new recruitment drive.
Leaders of the church, which is largely regarded as a cult and believes humans descended from aliens, have revealed they intend to send workers into campuses to seek out impressionable youngsters.
Japan's top court rejected a lower court ruling Tuesday requiring the government to pay additional compensation to thousands of residents suing over noise from a U.S. military base in Tokyo, officials and a lawyer said.
In a suit brought against the Japanese government in 1996, about 6,000 plaintiffs living near Yokota Air Base in Tokyo's western suburbs demanded that early morning and late night flights be suspended, and residents be compensated for the noise.
The flights were not suspended, but the Tokyo High Court ruled in 2005 to award the residents a total of 3.02 billion yen in compensation, plus an additional 230 million yen for the damage of having to wait a year from the end of the court proceedings to the day of the ruling.
As I write this, I am looking at a Venezuelan newspaper, El Diario, from February 10, 1992. The editorial that would have occupied half of page 2 is missing. Page 4 is completely blank. The contents were censored by the government of the then president Carlos Andres Perez.
The newspaper is just one of many horrible memories of the pre-Hugo Chavez days in Venezuela's "exceptional" democracy.
Brazilian police - using lethal ammunition by mistake - shot dead a 12-year-old boy in a simulation exercise to practise for potential hostage crises, Brazilian media reported Monday.
Luiz Henrique Dias Bulhoes died immediately, while nine other people were injured, and some of them were in critical condition.
The exercise took place on Saturday in the western town of Rondonopolis, where special units wanted to display publicly how they would free hostages in a bus.
A police spokesperson in the city of 200,000 said the force cannot explain how lethal ammunition came to be used in the exercise.
Umaru Yar'Adua was sworn in as Nigeria's new president Tuesday, replacing Olusegun Obasanjo and marking the first peaceful handover from one elected leader to another in the oil-rich country's history.
Yar'Adua, whose election was overshadowed by fraud allegations, inherits rampant corruption, a weak democratic record and bad living conditions for ordinary Nigerians.
The United States plans to slap fresh sanctions on Sudan over the Darfur conflict on Tuesday and seek a tough new UN Security Council resolution punishing Khartoum, top US officials said.
China, one of Sudan's main allies, criticized the sanctions even before they were officially announced by President George W. Bush. Britain, however, welcomed the plan.
So the "kid" of "my kid's mom" appears to have grown up into a sociopath. Yes, Derek Schlessinger, beloved soldier-boy scion of talk radio's Queen of Moralizing Mean, has shown the world just what it means to be Dr. Laura's kid.
By Scott Galindez t r u t h o u t | Perspective 2007-05-28 04:28:00
"I think the handwriting is on the wall that we are going in a different direction in the fall."
"We can no longer support an endless occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The quotes above are not from anti-war Democrats. No, it's not Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) or Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska). These quotes come from Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).
As more information comes out in congressional hearings, some things about the firing of U.S. attorneys become murkier and others clearer.
On the murkiness side, it is still not apparent just who came up with the idea of firing a number of U.S. attorneys.
On the side of clarity, it seems more and more apparent that behind the U.S. attorney scandal is a blatant effort of the Justice Department to tamper with the U.S. election process, trumping up voter fraud as an issue to intimidate voters and suppress voting in the United States.
Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz has been ousted as Labour party chief, leaving an ex-premier and a former general neck and neck in a key primary which threatens Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's ruling coalition, official results showed Tuesday.
Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to visit Africa this week, in his last trip to the continent he has championed during his 10 years in power, his office said Tuesday.
The 54-year-old premier will visit Libya, Sierra Leone and South Africa, a Downing Street spokeswoman said, although she did not disclose exact dates or his full itinerary for security reasons.
Four people, including a pregnant woman, were killed early Tuesday in Lebanon as the death of a soldier brought the toll to at least 79 dead and further intensified tensions, local media said.
Three people were killed when Lebanese forces opened fire after their vehicle failed to stop at an army checkpoint near Beirut airport, and later a pregnant woman died in a similar incident at a checkpoint in Beirut's Christian quarter.
The soldier was reported killed by a rocket-propelled grenade launched by a Fatah el-Islam gunman holed up with around 150-200 co-fighters in the largely abandoned refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in the northwest of Lebanon. The Lebanese army surrounding the camp has been returning fire since morning.
At least 34 soldiers, 27 militants and 18 civilians have died since May 20 in what is Lebanon's worst internal fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war.
BAGHDAD - Ten American soldiers died in roadside bombings and a helicopter crash on Memorial Day, the military reported Tuesday, making May the deadliest month of the year for U.S. troops in Iraq.
Saudi officials have arrested a man in Mecca for being a Christian, saying that the city, which Muslims consider to be holy, is off-limits to non-Muslims.
Nirosh Kamanda, a Sri Lankan Christian, was detained by the Saudi Expatriates Monitoring Committee last week after he started to sell goods outside Mecca's Great Mosque.
By Laurie Kellman The Associated Press 2007-05-29 04:50:00
Washington - President Bush said Thursday he would address any wrongdoing uncovered by congressional or other investigations related to the firings of eight federal prosecutors, but added that new allegations have not swayed his support for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
"If there's wrongdoing, it will be taken care of," Bush told reporters at a Rose Garden news conference. Congress and the Justice Department are conducting separate probes into the firings, which Democrats say were improperly political.
The Democrat-led Senate, meanwhile, scheduled a no-confidence vote on Gonzales in mid-June.
On Thursday, May 24, the US Congress voted to continue the war in Iraq. The members called it "supporting the troops." I call it stealing Iraq's oil - the second largest reserves in the world. The "benchmark," or goal, the Bush administration has been working on furiously since the US invaded Iraq is privatization of Iraq's oil. Now they have Congress blackmailing the Iraqi Parliament and the Iraqi people: no privatization of Iraqi oil, no reconstruction funds.
Steven R. Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra Associated Press 2007-05-28 22:29:00
BAGHDAD - The United States and Iran broke a 27-year diplomatic freeze Monday with a four-hour meeting about Iraqi security. The American envoy said there was broad policy agreement, but that Iran must stop arming and financing militants who are attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces.
Another heat record has fallen as Russia's capital city continues to bake in unseasonable May weather, with a temperature of 32.1 degrees Celsius (89.7 degrees Fahrenheit) beating a 116-year-old maximum, the Moscow meteorological service said Tuesday.
"At 4:00 p.m. Moscow time (noon GMT), a temperature of 32.1 degrees Celsius was recorded, surpassing a reading of 31.8 degrees Celsius (89.2 degrees Fahrenheit) set in 1891," the service said.
"We will only know this evening by how much that record has been beaten, as temperatures will continue rising several tenths of a degree," it said.
Police say they're sure they shot a four-foot-long, 80-pound monitor lizard that had been lurking in an Orlando suburb for months. Still, neighbors aren't ready to let their children or pets back outside until they see a carcass.
The lizard didn't bite anyone, but police officers were authorized to kill it because of the potential danger it posed to small children and animals.
An officer shot the reptile twice Sunday but wasn't close enough to catch it before the animal scampered into a retention pond, said Lt. Dennis Stewart of the Casselberry Police Department.
"If they did shoot it, I'm sure it's going to be angry if it comes out now," said Ilene Gothelf, whose home borders the pond about 10 miles from Orlando. "I want to know that it is safe for the kids to come out."
A round table of experts answer all our pressing questions about the sudden death of the nation's bees. What they have to say has a bigger sting than we ever expected.
They are among the most sensitive and hardest-working creatures in nature. Ancient navigators of the air, honeybees are guided between hive and flower by the angle and direction of the sun. Their internal clock signals the time of day a particular flower's nectar is flowing. And daily changes in the earth's magnetic cycle alert those in the darkened hive to sunrise and sunset.
A mysterious ailment, however, is causing the great pollinators to lose their way home. The disorder, called "colony collapse," has resulted in the deaths of millions of honeybees worldwide and up to half of the 2.5 million colonies in the United States.
The chief suspect, say many scientists, is the most commonly used insecticide on the planet: imidacloprid.
Franziska Badenschier Der Spiegel 2007-05-29 07:24:00
Soil samples from the Grande Playa lagoon in Puerto Rico have given US scientists insight into the last 5,000 years of Atlantic hurricanes. The samples suggest that recent devastating storms may not necessarily be linked to global warming.
Bottles and cans of alcoholic drinks will carry health warnings on their labels next year, a health minister said Monday.
The Health Ministry and the drinks industry struck a voluntary agreement that will lead - by the end of 2008 - to labels detailing how many units of alcohol each drink contains and recommended safe drinking levels for men and women.
Public Health Minister Caroline Flint did not reveal the exact wording to be used on the labels, but said the warnings will not be as strong as those found on cigarette packets.
Collateral Damage: Bad Medicine in Tennessee, a new film by Julie Winokur, explores the single largest Medicaid cuts in history -- a failed "reform" attempt that left 170,000 people without care almost overnight.
Mr Tan Boon Hock, 83, was nicked on his finger by a crab on Feb 22 while preparing live crabs for his family's dinner. He died two days later from the infection of the flesh-eating Vibrio bacteria.
Mr Tan had put a plaster on the cut and continued with his work, but around midnight he began vomiting and had diarrhoea. He refused to go to the hospital despite pleaas from his wife and daughter.
American Journal of Public Health 2007-05-29 03:49:00
If you're a husband who wants to keep your wife happy, you don't have to spend a fortune on diamonds, spa treatments and exotic vacations; just pitch in and help with the housework!
Turning off a gene that has been associated with Alzheimer's disease made mice smarter in the lab, researchers said on Sunday in a finding that lends new insight on learning and may lead to new drugs for memory problems.
They said these mice were far more adept at sensing changes in their environment than their mouse brethren.
"It's pretty rare when you can make an animal smarter," said Dr. James Bibb, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who led the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
An Indian zoologist said Monday he has found a new species of limbless lizard in a forested area in the country's east. "Preliminary scientific study reveals that the lizard belongs to the genus Sepsophis," said Sushil Kumar Dutta, who led a team of researchers from "Vasundhra," a non-governmental organization, and the North Orissa University.
The newly found 7-inch long lizard looks like a scaly, small snake, Dutta said. "It prefers to live in a cool retreat, soft soil and below stones."
"The lizard is new to science and is an important discovery. It is not found anywhere else in the world," Dutta told The Associated Press. He is the head of the zoology department of the North Orissa University in the eastern Indian town of Baripada.
Ellen Goodman - Truthdig AlterNet 2007-05-29 08:53:00
With technology becoming far more sophisticated and pervasive, sports is awash in ethical dilemmas. So where does a lightning fast amputee fit in the spectrum of Barry Bonds with his alleged doping and Tiger Woods with his better-than-perfect Lasik eyes?
A football-sized block of ice fell out of the sky on to the roof of an industrial building in Madrid, police say, denting the roof but without causing injuries.
"We don't know where it came from," a police spokeswoman said of the 20 kilogram lump.
In this 1960 photograph, the seven original Mercury astronauts participate in U.S. Air Force survival training exercises at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada. Pictured from left to right are: L. Gordon Cooper, M. Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Virgil I. Grissom, Walter Schirra and Donald K. Slayton. Portions of their clothing have been fashioned from parachute material, and all have grown beards from their time in the wilderness. The purpose of this training was to prepare astronauts in the event of an emergency or faulty landing in a remote area.
John Zarrella and Patrick Oppmann CNN 2007-05-29 07:57:00
The minister has the number 666 tattooed on his arm.
But Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda is not your typical minister. De Jesus, or "Daddy" as his thousands of followers call him, does not merely pray to God: He says he is God.
"The spirit that is in me is the same spirit that was in Jesus of Nazareth," de Jesus says.
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