4
POPSCreech Air Force Base: A Place of Disbelief, Confusion and Sadness There is a disturbing contrast between aggressor and victim. The aggressor zooming around Las Vegas in a posh automobile, living a luxurious life style and launching missiles onto a target that is far away and the victim located in a village or inside a building on the Afghanistan Pakistan borders. There are over 200,000 people in internally displaced camps (IDP) in Afghanistan because of US bombardment and war. The number one enemy in Afghanistan is poverty. For many of those holding a presence outside of Creech Air Force Base, there is a look of total disbelief, confusion, and sadness. As the US troop presence in Afghanistan increases, the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) program will ramp up. Read about the actions in the local spotlight here and in the news here.
1
POPSDevelopment: Hunger Summit's Failure to Expose Grim Reality Diouf was not suggesting rich countries shell out 44 billion in fresh cash - much of the money could simply come by diverting already-assigned resources to increase agriculture’s share of ODA from the current level of around five percent to about 18-19 percent. But the FAO does not have any battleships or financial sanctions to use to coerce nations into taking action. Before the summit Diouf said that the FAO budget does not permit it to do much alone about such a huge problem, pointing out that individual states, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the regional development banks are the ones with the serious money. Furthermore, a large portion of the hunger problem is related to unfair international trade conditions - caused in part by First World support of domestic agriculture - where the FAO has no role. It is up to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to engineer a deal to iron out these distortions.
2
POPSGoldman Sachs Is Arming Themselves Against Angry Mobs. Guilty Conscience? While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.” Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.
11
POPSRoyal Society Puts Rare Scientific Manuscripts Online Newton?s theory on light and colours in the 1600s, that continues to provide the basis for theoretical physics, will be published along with a gruesome account of a 17th-century blood transfusion. A paper by Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, will also be released on an experiment to fly his kite in a storm to prove that lightning is electricity rather than a supernatural force.
2
POPSIS ANYONE SUPRISED? Lots of issues out there, and shaky leadership everywhere, does any of this have a chance to end well?
1
POPSSwiss Government Votes To Ban Minarets 4. Dim-witted, lazy, fit only for physical labor -- but you have to threaten them to get off their butts, because they won't work otherwise; 5. Constitutionally weaker than members of the dominant culture; 6. Complete lack of moral self-control; 7. Bent on world domination. These plans always involve secret conspiracies and special skills known only to the clan; 8. Despite their minority status, they are thought to have far more power than their numbers, and an inordinate influence over the running of the country; 9. Heirs to an inhumanly bloody history that cannot be forgiven, and which they have never moved past (they're "bloodthirsty savages" with no redeeming qualities); and which never created anything meaningful in the way of art, music, science, or architecture (writing them out of history);
8
POPSNASA Experts Claim Evidence of Life on Mars The team has also been studying two other Martian meteorites — Nakhla, which landed in Egypt in 1911, and Yamato 593, which was found by a Japanese expedition to Antarctica. In research due to be published shortly, the scientists claim that both of these fossils also show evidence of microbial life. Bill Clinton, then the US President, said of the research in 1997: “It speaks of the possibility of life. If this discovery is confirmed, it will surely be one of the most stunning insights into our Universe that science has ever uncovered. Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined.”
1
POPSClimate Change: Small islands Fear Going the Way of Atlantis Drought, rising sea levels, flooding, and increased food insecurity are predicted to negatively affect hundreds of millions of people across the globe ... Indigenous peoples, intimately inter-connected with their environment, are already sensing environmental changes. "Even if indigenous peoples don't completely understand the science, they understand perfectly that modern civilisation is living out of balance with nature, the consequences of which we are now reaping, The precarious situation of the Amazon rainforest can be viewed as a bell-weather for the survival of Earth's ecosystem as a whole. Industrial-scale human activities, leading to deforestation, are conspiring with climate change symptoms like drought to point the Amazon toward the nightmare "die-back" scenario.
20
POPSLaugh! No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants. With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. Laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life. Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place. Laughing is one of my MOST favourite things to do, no doubt about it. :D
3
Popular
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Print
Save
Turn on live update