We often hear about how the US is such a consumption oriented country. We’ve got the fattest people, we pollute the most, we’re spoiled… yeah, yeah, whatever.

But here is an interesting way to look at the economic impact the US plays on the global economy. You see, comparing the Gross Domestic Product of another nation, say… Canada, to the US is just silly. In fact, the entire output of Canada is roughly equal to just the state of Texas.
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A while back I wrote about a video of a Muslim cleric who gave a lecture on the proper way to beat a woman. And of course we were recently reminded of the true tragedy of spousal abuse with this film of a man actually beating his wife.

Well, thanks to Adi again we have this follow up lecture from another muslim “holy” man explaining with amazingly twisted logic why women do indeed need to be beaten.
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It’s actually hard to believe that anyone would be willing to do this, but at some factory in China they have convinced a bunch of grown men to sit INSIDE a 400 ton metal press while it is stamping steel!

Holy crap! Folks, if something went wrong here, there would be nothing left of these guys but jelly!
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Folks, I’ve been saying that if you haven’t already, you NEED to see An Inconvenient Truth. If it doesn’t change the way you look at the world, then you probably have no heart. (Grin!)

I also previously reported that Gore had been Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. This is not just because he made a movie and won an Oscar, it’s because he has devoted his private life to the cause of climate change - and like it or not many, many, many people happen to agree with him and are happy he is carrying out this work.

So, today Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2007 along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC):

“for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”

It’s too early to see the announcement on video, but Nobel has a YouTube channel which will no doubt post the video of this announcement shortly. View it here.
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I don’t even know what else to say other than this makes me sick. The elected representatives of the citizens of the state of Texas are caught on film casting votes on one another’s machines and all they can say is “well, we’re very busy”?

I swear to God, I think they should all be impeached and special elections should be held to replace them. Furthermore, I think that any law passed during this session should be annulled by the courts because of the absolute possibility of vote fraud. I have no doubt after watching this video that people are cheating like hell on votes and taking advantage of the vacancy at the desk beside them.

How do these people expect me to have faith in a single vote? The system is corrupt beyond repair.
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October is Black History Month in the UK (it’s February in the US), and one very unique individual is Gil Scott Heron, an American poet and musician known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word performer.

Mr. Heron recites a poem in which he uses sarcasm and wit to make the point that the white people who “discovered” Africa weren’t exactly discovering anything, and certainly weren’t good for the indigenous people.
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The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. It has a 9.2 rating on IMDB.

There are three one-hour films (embedded below), consisting mostly of archive footage with Curtis’s narration, which were first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and have been aired in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

This series is as controversial as Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 or Sicko. And it will evoke strong opinions on both sides of the debate about the reality (or lack thereof) of a brewing conflict between Christianity and Islam.
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As some may know, Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was in the United States to participate in the UN General Assembly.

While he was in the US, he also took the time to lecture at Columbia University, where:

He said there were no homosexuals in Iran - not one - and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

The press, of course, has been having a field day with Ahmadinejad’s visit.

“Should a man like Ahmadinejad be denied the freedom of speech that he so brazenly and brutally denies others?”

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Imagine this… it’s 8am, you’ve just dropped your 8 year old off at school and picked up your 22 year old daughter for breakfast. While your daughter goes inside a restaurant to correct the breakfast order your wife, in the seat beside you, notices a woman waiving her arms as if in distress. So you roll down the window to see if she needs help and she leans her head into your car and offers her “services”.

Then, to add injury to insult, a few seconds later a bunch of cops rush your car, drag you out of it, and handcuff you for soliciting a prostitute. Meanwhile your wife is freaking out, and your daughter, returning to the car, screams!
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Tasers were developed as a non-lethal option to bring dangerous situations under control. But law enforcement officials are now using them with wild abandon in cases where simple diplomacy or a little hard work would otherwise suffice.

In the past I’ve written about the police tasering of a UCLA student for refusing to show his school ID, as well as the time a cop tasered an 11 year old at school because the officer on hand apparently couldn’t physically restrain him?!? (Gee, what would they have done 10 years ago?)

Police have also used Tasers against peaceful protesters (NPR audio about tasering protesters), a pregnant woman (8 months) and an elderly man who called 911 to get medical attention for his diabetic seizure.

So who’s next? Maybe you.
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Six years have passed. Say what you will about the war in Iraq, George Bush, or religion. America was attacked. The last time this happened was Pearl Harbor. The result - the USA demonstrated it’s political will and military might.

That makes the US 2 for 2. Two attacks on US soil = two foreign military powers and their allies utterly destroyed.
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