A British man is facing execution after being convicted of smuggling heroin into China. Akmal Shaikh, 53, from north London, was arrested after a suitcase he was carrying was allegedly found to contain 4kg of the drug, with a value of £250,000.
Shaikh, who is said to be severely mentally ill, will become the first British citizen to be executed in China; his lawyers warn that he could be killed imminently by a gunshot to the back of his head. Foreign Office officials said there were reports last week that his second appeal had failed, but had yet to receive "official confirmation" or any news from the Chinese authorities.
Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it?
Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we'll be all right. But if the Nobel committee truly cares about peace, they will think a little harder about actually trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you'll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description. During the 31 years leading up to the first atomic bomb, the world without nuclear weapons engaged in two global wars resulting in the deaths of an estimated 78 million to 95 million people, uniformed and civilian. The world wars were the hideous expression of what happens when the human tendency toward conflict hooks up with the violent possibilities of the industrial age. The version of this story we are most familiar with today is the Nazi death machinery, and so we are often tempted to think that if Hitler had not happened, we would never have encountered assembly line murder.
The truth is that industrial killing was practiced by many nations in the old world without nuclear weapons. Soldiers were gassed and machine-gunned by the hundreds of thousands in the trenches of World War I, when Hitler was just another corporal in the Kaiser's army. By World War II, countries on both sides of the war used airplanes and artillery to rain death on battlefields as well as cities, until the number killed around the world was so huge the best estimates of the total number lost diverge by some 16 million souls. The dead numbered 62 million, or 78 million — somewhere in there.
I'm guessing the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki don't think nuclear bombs were lifesavers. Jebus.
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A sure indicator that Harry Reid is doing a suck-ass job as Senate majority leader
Harry "Roll Me Over" Reid is the GOP's dream majority leader. As a political steamroller, this is Harry Reid:
But the GOP hates Nancy Pelosi, for she is like this:
Pelosi gets shit done. Reid flaps his jaws and waves his hands in frustration and general impotence. Reid couldn't scare a two-year old by jumping out of a closet at 4AM.No wonder the GOP loves Harry Reid.
This is what actual Swiss minarets look like.
###Obama gives good speech. Really. It should be quoted back to him every time he doesn't live up to it. Although he was able to cite one thing he has actually done for Teh Gays: "Michelle and I have invited LGBT families to the White House to participate in events like the Easter Egg Roll -- because we want to send a message." (Oh, all right to be fair, also something about ordering federal agencies to extend employment benefits to the partners of gay employees.)
I did like his reference to "the so-called Defense of Marriage Act." Which, yes, would mean more if he actually supported gay marriage. Gay people should be conspiring to contrive a situation where Obama has to introduce a married gay couple as "Jane Doe and her wife Sarah" or "Adam and his husband Steve."
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No wonder the U/S. is the joke among all the other industrialized countries. They know their future is much brighter than ours. They believe in investing in their citizens. Our country is more interested in destroying theirs.Bernie and Kelli Lange tried to get insurance for their growing family with Rocky Mountain Health Plans when their current insurer raised their rates 40 percent after Alex was born. They filled out the paperwork and awaited approval, figuring their family is young and healthy. But the broker who was helping them find new insurance called Thursday with news that shocked them.
" 'Your baby is too fat,' she told me," Bernie said.
Up until then, the Langes had been happy with Alex's healthy appetite and prodigious weight gain. His pediatrician had never mentioned any weight concerns about the baby they call their "happy little chunky monkey." - Denver Post
"I think I understand their disappointment," Grayson told MSNBC's Ed Schultz on Friday. "They're not going to be winning the Nobel Peace Prize anytime soon. They probably wish there was a Nobel prize for fear, a Nobel prize for hatred, a Nobel prize for racism. Then they'd be in the running."
Let me get this right. The big news tomorrow is that 'America's Health Insurance Plans' (AHIP, aka the health insurance lobby) has commissioned a study by PriceWaterHouseCoopers that comes to the conclusion that the Senate Finance Committee bill is a bad, bad thing and would to health care costs going up even faster than they are under the current system. This is news?
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A State Department spokesperson, commenting on the Obama's Nobel:
Certainly from our standpoint, this gives us a sense of momentum -- when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes.
