Endgame in Sudan by George Clooney

"We were late to Rwanda. We were late to Congo. We were late to Darfur. We can't afford to be late again. This is our chance to actually stop a war before it starts." Read the article

George Carlin on the Sanctity of Life

"Life is sacred?! Who said so?! God?! Hey if you read history you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians, all taking turns killing each other cause God told them it was a good idea! The sword of God, the blood of the lamb, vengeance is mine..millions of dead mother fuckers all because they gave a wrong answer to the God question!" George Carlin, Back in Town

Sex by surprise!

Yesterday, the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was arrested in London. He will be extradited to Sweden to be tried there. However, as the prosecutor of the case insisted, charges are totally unrelated to the fact that this guy has frequently and repeatedly embarrassed many of the world’s leaders and has been a permanent threat to their secretive machines. Instead, he was accused of rape (in fact, the technical term is "Sex by Surprise!!!"). As if the world’s most wanted anarchist; who happens to be a good-looking guy, needs force to get laid in SWEEDEN - among all places - for crying out loud!!!!

Another smooth move came from Assange’s bank in Switzerland. They froze his account due to a technical glitch: he did not have an address in that country! So I guess it was OK for Nazi leaders to live in Guatemala and have their bank accounts in Switzerland, but not for this guy, huh?!!

Well done folks, but you’re fooling no one!

Let’s see what this “crime of the century” was: During a slumber party, bunch of teenagers who were gossiping about some other teenagers, suddenly realized that they’ve forgotten to turn off their webcam! Now that the whole high school knows about it, their small brains can’t come up with a better idea than breaking the webcam!

That’s it! That’s the story! Only here, that webcam is Julian Assange, and those gossipy teenagers are – regretfully - folks who lead our world!!!

In fairness, they have a lot to be embarrassed about: They’re sending men and women to be killed for wars in which they don’t believe. They’re transferring billions of dollars to governments that are knee deep in corruption and their closest allies in the Middle-east are; and always have been, supporting their biggest enemy, Talibans!

But relax people! Sadly, none of this information is news to us! We already knew that you were bunch of lying hypocrites! We didn’t elect you for your honesty (at least, those among you who’ve been elected, for Christ sake!). We elected you because we didn’t have any better option, and we elected you to create some freaking jobs, balance the budget, and get the world’s economy out of this slump!

So shut the hell up, stop whining, get back to your jobs and leave this poor guy ALONE!

And for future references, if you can’t build more transparency, at least STOP acting like teenagers!

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

100 Notable Books of 2010

Read the article

The Spanish Prisoner by Paul Krugman

"The bad news about America is that a powerful political faction is trying to shackle the Federal Reserve, in effect removing the one big advantage we have over the suffering Spaniards. Republican attacks on the Fed — demands that it stop trying to promote economic recovery and focus instead on keeping the dollar strong and fighting the imaginary risks of inflation — amount to a demand that we voluntarily put ourselves in the Spanish prison." Read the full article

I do not entirely agree with him on the Spain's debt issue. Although, by joining the Euro zone they have lost their ability to devalue their currency, but at least their debt remains in Euro (the luxury from which most of east Asian countries were deprived, during 1997 crisis). However, he is right on the money in condemning the latest assaults on the Fed's independence (though despite what he says, the attacks are not coming only from conservatives, but from the liberals as well).

Dear Congressmen, confine the democracy to that dysfunctional Congress and don't mess with the Fed's precious Independence, please!

WikiLeaks: U.S.-Iran Relations "Now What" Moment?

"Moreover, as the leaked cables show, the highest levels of the Obama administration never believed that diplomacy could succeed. While this does not cheapen Obama's Nowruz message and other groundbreaking facets of his initial outreach, it does raise three important questions: How can U.S. policymakers give maximum effort to make diplomacy succeed if they admittedly never believed their efforts could work? Why was Iran expected to accept negotiation terms that relinquished its greatest strategic asset (1200 kg of LEU) without receiving a strategic asset of equal value in return? And what are the chances that Iran will take diplomacy seriously now that it knows the U.S. never really did? The Obama administration presented a solid vision, but never truly pursued it. " Read the article

India's Ambani hosts party for 'world's priciest home'

The world's most expensive dwelling...Read the article

Eating the Irish by Paul Krugman

"Then the bubble burst, and those banks faced huge losses. You might have expected those who lent money to the banks to share in the losses. After all, they were consenting adults, and if they failed to understand the risks they were taking that was nobody’s fault but their own. But, no, the Irish government stepped in to guarantee the banks’ debt, turning private losses into public obligations."

"Before the bank bust, Ireland had little public debt. But with taxpayers suddenly on the hook for gigantic bank losses, even as revenues plunged, the nation’s creditworthiness was put in doubt. So Ireland tried to reassure the markets with a harsh program of spending cuts."...

"But at this point Iceland seems, if anything, to be doing better than its near-namesake. Its economic slump was no deeper than Ireland’s, its job losses were less severe and it seems better positioned for recovery. In fact, investors now appear to consider Iceland’s debt safer than Ireland’s. How is that possible?

Part of the answer is that Iceland let foreign lenders to its runaway banks pay the price of their poor judgment, rather than putting its own taxpayers on the line to guarantee bad private debts. As the International Monetary Fund notes — approvingly! — “private sector bankruptcies have led to a marked decline in external debt.” Meanwhile, Iceland helped avoid a financial panic in part by imposing temporary capital controls — that is, by limiting the ability of residents to pull funds out of the country."

Read the article

Cost of long-gun registry a fraction of what Tories claim, report shows

I am not against saving some money here and there, but guys, there's a limit to bullshitting the public! There is a slight difference between $1.5 million and $2 Billion!!!!

"An independent cost-benefit analysis of Conservative legislation to kill the federal long-gun registry has found the public savings could amount to just over $1.5-million annually"...

"This September’s very close vote is the furthest we have come to dismantling the $2-billion wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry,” said Christopher McCluskey, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews. “We will continue to work to scrap it.”

Read the article

A Spanish Bailout Would Test Europe’s Strained Finances

"But any bailout of Spain — with an economy twice the size of the other three combined — could severely stress the ability of Europe’s stronger countries to help the financially weaker ones, and spell deep trouble for the euro, Europe’s common currency". Read the full article

U.K. to measure happiness alongside GDP

I'm no fan of Tories, but I'm beginning to like this guy! Shame on me! :))

Read the article

A Hedge Fund Republic? By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

"Oops! That’s already us. The top 1 percent of Americans owns 34 percent of America’s private net worth, according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The bottom 90 percent owns just 29 percent." Read the full article

Scientists Claim Breakthrough In Antimatter Hunt

"Scientists may have been able to capture elusive atoms of antimatter"..."But in a report published online by the journal Nature, the scientists said they'd been able to trap individual atoms and keep them around for a bit more than one-tenth of a second. To a particle physicist, that's a pretty long time." Read the full article

The Man Who Shattered Our Economy

The story of Citibank's CEO...It is a disgrace that some people are spending time in jail for shoplifting, but these bandits are enjoying their lives! Read the full story

15 Food & Cooking Myths, Busted

"MYTH: Raw foods are more nourishing than cooked foods because their enzymes are still alive."

"MYTH: Brining meats before cooking makes them juicier and more tender."

"MYTH: Searing meat at a high temperature seals in its juices."

I have heard these so many times that I have hard time believing they aren't true...Read the full article

Top 10 Must-Have Apps for the iPhone, and Some Runners-Up

Google, Soundhound, Hipstamatic, Evernotes and many more...Read the full article in NYTimes

The Hijacked Commission by Paul Krugman

I do not agree with him entirely but he does raise some valid points...

"that “bipartisanship” would mean what it so often does in Washington: a compromise between the center-right and the hard-right."..."what the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class"...

"They want the age at which Social Security becomes available to rise along with average life expectancy. Is that reasonable? The answer is no, for a number of reasons — including the point that working until you’re 69, which may sound doable for people with desk jobs, is a lot harder for the many Americans who still do physical labor. But beyond that, the proposal seemingly ignores a crucial point: while average life expectancy is indeed rising, it’s doing so mainly for high earners, precisely the people who need Social Security least. Life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution has barely inched up over the past three decades. So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers live to a ripe old age."...

Read the full article in NYTimes

Super Efficient Crew Builds 15-Story Chinese Hotel In Just SIX DAYS

Un-freaking-believable!!! Watch this amazing video

Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow

Two people that I deeply respect are having an impeccably eloquent and intelligent debate about news media...not to be missed:

Part one

Part two

Part three

Part four