South Asia suffered a 7.6 magnitude earthquake epicentered around 60 miles north of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, with tens of thousands feared dead and many more injured. The quake was felt as far away as New Delhi, India and Kabul, Afghanistan, and seems to have done particular damage in the Hindu Kush Mountains region, around disputed Kashmir, particularly on the Pakistani side of the line of control (where at least one report suspects 30,000 dead alone). This is reported to be the largest quake in the area in over a century. While the recriminations stateside will continue over Hurricane Katrina (whose...

Sunnis– and UN officials– are furious at a last-minute change in the Iraqi constitutional referendum process, which appears designed to virtually guarantee passage of the constitution, according to this Grey Lady piece. The change means that 2/3 of registered voters in at least three of Iraq’s eighteen provinces must vote to reject the proposed constitution in order to defeat it, a change from 2/3 of votes cast. The difference is obvious, given that it is Sunnis in heavily Sunni provinces likely to vote no to defeat the constitution, and I’m guessing there are three Sunni dominated provinces. Given that the...

We’ll start with this take from the Grey Lady, offering the premise that with the ascendance of Chief Justice Roberts and the probable ascendance of Associate Justice Miers, Roe v. Wade may as well already be reversed… so its time to think ahead to chemical alternative means of abortion, which have the virtue of lining the coffers of major pharmaceutical companies (and hence, still reflecting actual American “moral values.”) One such drug is misoprostol market by Pfizer as Cyotec, which, evidently, is already used extensively in Brazil, and by poor and immigrant women here, to induce abortion; it has a...

It seems to be a Bush II Administration tradition: get yourself in charge of selecting a key position, and then pick yourself. Dick Cheney did it for the vice-president position, and now, White House Counsel Harriet Miers has done it for the opening on the Supreme Court. Ms. Miers has never served as a judge, and therefore, doesn’t have that irritating paper trial. She has been a lawyer in Texas, bar association president, Dallas city council-person, has no (irritating) husband or kids, and… is a really, really good buddy of the President. We’ll find out, of course, that her political-ideological...

This week’s visit to our comrades at Beijing’s People’s Daily give us this rather alarming news about the Arctic polar ice cap: it might be gone in 55 years or so. Scientists, conservative by nature, do not know the exact cause (perhaps they should ask the “intelligent designer?”), but can come up with no alternative than the likelihood of the effects of accumulation of greenhouse gases and global warming. In essence, as noted by the People’s Daily, the melting of the floating ice cap itself will not directly raise world sea levels, as the ice is already floating, but will...

Of the 6 plus billion people in the world, a huge number will soon be threatened with instantly devastating– and deadly– illness, if fears of the avian fly mutating and migrating to humans in a human-to-human transmittable form this winter come to pass, according to this piece from our old friend Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey at Pravda. In the “great minds think alike” department, our friends over at the American Street are also focusing on this issue, which could easily kill tens of millions of people. The bird flu out of Asia now– which has killed an astounding 60 of the 120...

Or waive, as in waiver, provided by Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, who allegedly finally waived confidentiality of co-conspirator, war criminal, and New York Times employee Judith Mililer, who reached a deal with the Valerie Plame case special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and accordingly, Ms. Miller was released jail, agreeing to testify about her conversation with Mr. Libby. Well, well. With Tom DeLay actually under indictment, and Bill Frist under a cloud, and the Bush Administration still reeling from its mishandling of Katrina in every possible way (including its blank check to Halliburton after the fact to rebuild, which...

Oh, what a day… ethical corruption in high places has taken it on the chin… First, close to home, Brooklyn Democratic kingpin Clarence Norman was convicted of felonies related to campaign law violations, and will have to relinquish his state assembly seat and his law license. Indeed, your talking dog had been advised from time to time that the cost of obtaining a job as a judge in (his home borough of) Brooklyn was around $75,000, payable to Mr. Norman, his friends, relatives and/or their “consultancies”. With Norman convicted… hey… who do you have to bribe to become a judge...

After years and years of telling us we can have everything (and free pie too), i.e., tax cuts for the super-rich, drugs for Granny, a strong and overpriced defense, homeland security, a huge discretionary war, big new education spending (no child left behind), and now, a coupla hundred billion to give away to friends and GOP contributors at Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater, et al. pay for Hurricane Katrina recovery and rebuild the Gulf States… finally, the President has called for some level of national sacrifice. “Don’t drive, “ sayeth the President. Unless you really have to, of course. None of those...

Two groups of people, both of whom expected (or probably didn’t actually expect, but had a right to expect, legal, moral or otherwise…) the help of the United States government, and won’t get it: (1) Gulf area residents who, thanks to Republican largesse, will find it difficult to impossible to take advantage of bankruptcy protections…, and (2) Iraqis, in general of course, Shiites specifically, of late, five schoolteachers rounded up and murdered, execution style, in their school, along with the usual day’s atrocities, bringing American soldiers killed in the Iraq adventure ever closer to the 2000 mark, a grim death...