be just

United States - International Diplomacy - Economic Trends - World Economy - Politics - New York Times : "It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear energy. America’s standing in the world remains in steady decline."

Al Jazeera English - News - Renewed Kenya Clashes Claim Lives : "At least 26 people have been killed in the latest ethnic clashes in Kenya, as the unrest over the disputed re-election of Mwai Kibaki, the country's president, continues. Police said on Sunday that 17 people had been killed overnight in Nakuru, the provincial capital of the western Rift Valley, and in the nearby trading post of Timboroa. 'As of now, we have 17 people killed - 11 in Nakuru's Manyan slums and six in Timboroa [trading post],' a police commander told AFP on Sunday."

Al Jazeera English - News - PFLP Founder George Habash Dies George Habash, the Palestinian leader and a longtime rival of Yasser Arafat, the former Palestinian president, has died in Jordan, aged 80. Habash, who passed away on Saturday, founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which carried out the hijackings of several aircraft in the 1970s. "He had a severe heart attack and he died instantly," Leila Khaled, a member of the Palestine National Council and a leading member of the PLFP, said.

blackagendareport.com - Progressive Shutout: Kucinich Banned, No Real Debate : "The corporate-controlled U.S. electoral system is a fine-tuned machine, designed to filter out all voices that challenge the rule of the rich. Dissent is systematically shunted to the margins of American political discourse - even when the dissenters are popularly elected politicians whose views are consistent with huge sectors of the population. Such is the case with six-term Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose campaign stance on withdrawal from Iraq and truly universal health care resonates with large majorities of Democrats, but who has been made to disappear by corporate operatives posing as journalists. The Congressional Black Caucus is complicit in the latest shutout of progressive political thought, through their acquiescence to CNN's ouster of Kucinich from the primary debate."

Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan : "Compared to the old Taliban movement of 1994-2001, the new insurgents have less orthodox attitudes towards imported technologies like video production. By 2005, some district commanders were equipped with laptops, despite the scarcity of electricity. The neo-Taliban have no qualms in exploiting free-market principles for military operations. They protect opium traffickers' convoys in exchange for favors and pay non-hardcore members by piece work, such as firing a rocket or carrying out an assassination. By late 2006, their commanders were even relaxing harsh imposition of their infamous moral codes. Giustozzi partially attributes the re-entry of the Taliban to the feebleness of President Hamid Karzai's administration, which is geared to accommodating tribal strongmen and warlords rather than to building a professional bureaucracy. Corruption, infighting and arrogance among provincial auth...

The God Delusion The God Delusion explores the unproven beliefs that are treated as factual by many religions and the extremes to which some followers have ... taken them. Dawkins opens the programme by describing the "would-be murderers .. who want to kill you and me, and themselves, because they're motivated by what they think is the highest ideal." Dawkins argues that "the process of non-thinking called faith" is not a way of understanding the world, but instead stands in fundamental opposition to modern science and the scientific method, and is divisive and dangerous. The Root of All Evil? is a television documentary, written and presented by Richard Dawkins, in which he argues that the world would be better off without religion. The documentary was first broadcast in January 2006, in the form of two 45-minute episodes (excluding advertisement breaks), on Channel 4 in the UK.