But the judge told Gibbs that he still wasn’t completely sold on the argument. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that you have a substantial likelihood” of the parents’ lawsuit succeeding, the judge said.

The attorney for Terri Schiavo’s parents pleaded with a judge Monday to order the brain-damaged woman’s feeding tube reinserted. But the judge appeared cool to the argument.

 Schiavo bill - House roll call  (there was no Senate roll call vote, it was done by voice)

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Opposition protesters, using clubs and petrol bombs, seized Kyrgyzstan’s second city, Osh, Monday as increasingly violent unrest swept the south of the country aimed at forcing President Askar Akayev to step down.

An obviously stolen election sparked the protests, which now appears to be a serious uprising, if not a revolution yet the Bushies are saying nothing about how fair elections must be conducted. Why is this? Probably because a new government will be less friendly to the U.S.

The current government is friendly to the neocons.

Their Vice Prime Minister “readily acknowledges that his country has some political conflicts. While the nation’s top goal is to decrease poverty among its people, not everyone agrees with the western-style reforms as the best tool to accomplish this.”

Yeah I guess so, considering police stations have been burned and cities have fallen to the insurgents. Sure sounds like ‘political conflicts’ to me!

There’s no pipeline or plans for pipelines, it’s too mountainous, however a Canadian firm owns a big gold mine there.

The mine, which accounts for 40 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s industrial output and the same share of exports, is several hundred kilometers east of the center of the violence in the city of Osh, where police clashed with about 1,000 young men.

Kyrgyzstan’s geostrategic significance: tilting eastward

Although Kyrgyzstan lacks the oil and gas reserves of its neighbors - particularly, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan - it has geostrategic importance in the new great game for spheres of influence in Central Asia that pits Moscow and Beijing against Washington and Brussels.

(Akaev) accepted aid from all sides and has tried to avoid having to choose among them. In 2004, however, Akaev began to come under pressure from the two leading interested powers and started to tilt towards Moscow.

The U.S. Secretary of State has done little except issue a tepid statement calling for “dialogue” with no mention of  the obviously fraudulent election, no howling for fair elections like they did in similar situations recently in Georgia and Ukraine. 

Maybe this is why.

There is no strong pro-Western slant to the protests in Kyrgyzstan which is bordered by three other Central Asian countries and China.

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From Scripting News

Tina Brown: “Bloggers are the new Stasi,” or the East German secret police during the Cold War.

They actually ran this piece in the Washington Post. The reporters have had a free ride all our lives, the only ones watching them were other reporters. Accountability, of which today’s reporters have just the tiniest portion of, will improve journalism and politics, and will shake out the lazy ones, the ones who think that visibility is equivalent to totalitarianism.

For WaPo to equate bloggers will secret police shows how utterly out of touch they are, how terrified they are of accountability, and how they don’t want their cozy little insular class system upset by those not beholden to them. Pathetic.

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A year ago, global warming was dismissed as leftie fringe stuff. Now, mainstream media in the US is acknowledging global warming is real and happening. This is a huge change! Of course, all other industrialized nations, Europe, Asia, etc. accepted this long ago, and have been working on solutions for years. The Bushies, blind and greedy, refuse to believe it because, boy howdy, it might interfere with the god-given right of companies to make money, and we can’t allow that, can we?

Thankfully, the facts about global warming have finally entered mainstream media consciousness - and this is a good thing indeed. Unexpected allies are appearing out of nowhere.

The Heat Is On: A call for action on global warming

The Dallas News, deep in the heart of oil country, quotes a source that could not be more sober or business-oriented.

 ”Today, global warming is a fact … [and] human intervention in the natural climatic system plays an important, if not decisive role. The question, then, is … how the occurring climate changes will affect our existence … If climate change accelerates and we fail to adapt in time, we will suffer losses in terms of safety and prosperity.”

That, as the measured tone suggests, is not the opinion of some wild-eyed eco-freak, or even of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has put global warming at the top of his agenda as this year’s head of the G8 group of industrialized nations.

That is the conclusion of Swiss Re, a Swiss insurance company that is in the business of reinsuring other insurers. Having analyzed the science and statistics for more than a decade, Swiss Re’s basic message is: Stop arguing and do something – or pay the consequence.

Global warming: Our problem, our solutions

From the Aspen Times

Shorter warmer winters, reduced snowpack, earlier river runoff, less water available in summer, increasing forest fires and insect infestations. We’ve already seen these changes beginning in Aspen, and greater changes are on the way. Global warming is our problem.

But the solution is also ours. Some 80 percent of U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide (the primary culprit in global warming which comes from burning coal, oil and gas) are a consequence of consumer demands for energy in our homes, cars, and travel. This gives us a great deal of power in reducing these emissions.

Evangelical leaders swinging influence behind effort to combat global warming

A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming.

These church leaders, scientists, writers and heads of international aid agencies argue that global warming is an urgent threat, a cause of poverty and a Christian issue because the Bible mandates stewardship of God’s creation.

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