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POPSRussian professor predicts disintigration of United States I strongly recommend reading the entire article. While it's hard to imagine his prediction coming true; given that our banks have become dependent on the government for survival and the government seems dependent on China for survival, it doesn't seem impossible. Further, this idea can't be taken lightly given the tense, extremely divisive nature of U.S. politics (look at the uproar between the different factions in the auto bailout as an example).
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POPSREALITY CHECK! There is a frightening new global trend of denial... Europeans think that they don't need to limit fishing... Car companies don't think they need to improve fuel economy standards... Bush thinks he can increase spending and cut taxes at the same time... Jingoists think we are winning the war in Iraq... Democrats think Hillary Clinton has enough experience to win an election... Polluters think that Global Warming won't really happen... Evangelicals think Jesus is coming back soon... Fundamentalists think they can win the war against modernity... The truth is: we're stuck with this world. The rules DO apply. No free passes. You have to face the music sometime. We must choose realism over comfortable delusion. Unfortunately, for now, wistful thinking will rule the day until we let it all collapse around us. Then we'll stand there scratching our heads saying: How could this happen?
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POPSFrance launches digital library... 12,000 public domain full-text documents but is set to have by 2010 over 6 million books, movies, photographs and other documents from across the European Union countries.
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POPSDoes Bush understand who we're fighting? Comments on the State of the Union address, in which Bush lumped together all sorts of groups and events that have no connection to one another as "the enemy." Reflects this administration's dangerously superficial understanding of what's going on in the world and an overriding reluctance to think critically about what causes violence.
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POPSThe Pirate Bay to sue anti-piracy agencies? The Pirate Bay showed that emails leaked from media defenders servers clearly showed that the company had launched illegal denial of service attack on the pirate bay’s servers, engaged in illegal hacking and repeatedly flooded them with spam. Funny ???
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POPSFlags of the world, given new meanings Very clever idea... Using UN statistics, an artist has attached "legends" to some of the world's flags such that the area filled by each color represents some statistic about that country. If you look at it, it'll make sense.
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POPSChernobyl: worldwide effect
One major result of the Chernobyl accident that would cause as much agony to the incident was the spread of radiation. A definite effect of the spread of the radiation was the damage it had on the Eastern European agriculture. The EC (European Community) immediately put a 90 day ban on agricultural goods from Eastern Europe. This was initially thought of as political strategy from the US as well as other Western countries. This caused the Soviet Union to take the responsibility to pay for all the damage done to the Eastern European agriculture. All the costs would eventually be analyzed in the short and long term by WHO (World Health Organization). The main factor that caused a lot of contamination and caused most of the European Countries to be concerned was the plume or cloud of smoke and debris that would travel through Europe. The countries that were affected the most are Eastern parts of Poland as well as parts of the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany). Most of the contamin
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POPSMedvedev: Ready To Respond If U.S. Ends Missile Plan "We hope to create frank and honest relations with the new administration and resolve problems that we were not able to resolve with the current administration," he said. Iran, Iraq, Russia, all have extended a hand of peace towards America. Obama had better not screw up this opportunity to make right some of all Bush's wrongs. As Bush once said: "Either you are with us, or you are against us." If America continues to choose to threaten the security of Europe with their paranoid evil plans, I will know for sure that America is the true enemy of the whole world. Russia are closer neighbours to us, than the US and I for one, (among many others here in Dk), trust them a hell of a lot more, than we'll ever trust America. Get Obama to stop the plans for the stupid paranoid damned missile shield. The ball is in America's court. I hope they play it wisely.
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POPSJane Goodall: We Need A New Mindset "We should admit that the infliction of suffering on beings who are capable of feeling is ethically problematic and that the amazing human brain should set to work to find new ways of testing and experimenting that will not involve the use of live, sentient beings." "Her call comes as the European Commission prepares to publish draft legislation to update the EU’s animal experiments directive (Directive 86/609 EEC). The existing law is out of date (over 20 years old), with hundreds of thousands of animals currently receiving no protection at all." "Dr Goodall was joined by biomedical researchers, MEPs and animal protectionists at a Replace Animal Experiments in Europe event in Brussels. Event organisers, the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research and the Humane Society International (HSI), are spearheading a campaign to accelerate European efforts to replace animal experiments with more ethical and reliable methods."
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POPSMonsanto guilty in 'false ad' row Earlier this month, Monsanto reported a fourth quarter loss of $233m (£147m), driven mostly by a drop in sales of its Roundup brand. It would be quite a result if this led to some of their other products like Aspartame being investigated publicly.
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POPSInterview with an Iranian demonstrator: "don't leave us alone" One Iranian demonstrator, in a phone interview with CNN American Morning, pleads with the world to intervene on behalf of the protestors. He is very direct and forthright and calls on Obama to treat the current Iranian regime as criminal and "insane." This isn't what I would have expected him to say.