News bits

[tangaroa]

• Peak oil has peaked in most countries in the world. The rate of discovery still exceeds the rate of exploitation in the major oil producing states, except for the United States of America.
• Shipping costs have plummeted by up to 90% due to reduced demand since the start of the current Little Depression, leaving a fleet of container ships idle and anchored offshore. This is a bad sign of the state of the world economy. On the brighter side, U.S. manufacturing is up.
• A U.S. airstrike killed an al-Qaeda leader Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia. The second news item in that headline is that the U.S. risked an attack in Somalia. The Washington Post has more information about the operation and Ha'aretz has more information on Saleh Nabhan's background.
• The New York Times devotes seven pages to how badly Bush under-funded the Afghanistan war, a little-told story that most media have failed to highlight until now. Several Democratic Senators want to continue under-funding the war, which ironically will only prolong it. Also, Former U.S. Army Captain Joseph Goodwin explains how epidemic corruption is undermining the war effort.
• The Jewish blog Solomonia has a good round-up of links debunking the recent U.N. report on the Gaza war: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. In short, the Goldstone report makes numerous unsupportable allegations and its legal analysis is at best incompetent and sometimes hostile to the principles of international law. Among the findings are that sections of the report were written by a Hamas propaganda bureau.
• Michael Totten posts an interview with Walid Jumblatt of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon.
• The NYT has reports of some Iranian protesters condemning not only Russia, viewed as a supporter of the current regime, but also condemning Iran's anti-Israel operations in Lebanon and Gaza. This is a shocking development and suggests a rebellion against the entire social order.
• A woman in Australia faces up to seven years in jail for having an abortion. It seems that abortion is illegal in several Australian provinces but prosecutions are extremely rare.
• Rush Limbaugh blames Obama's election victory for some white kids getting beaten up by some black kids on a school bus. The clear impliciation of Limbaugh's words is that this is what happens when you let a nigger into the government. See also earlier racist quotes by Limbaugh.
• Glenn Beck is influencing what stories are covered by the U.S. mainstream media.
• Radio hatemonger Michael Savage has been dropped by the last station in his home market of San Francisco.
• Via Media Matters: The last time there was as much right wing nuttiness in the U.S. as there is today was November 22 1963.
• A film about the life of Charles Darwin has been turned down by every movie distributor in the United States for being too controversial because it promotes evolution.
• The New York Times remembers the late Norman Borlaug, the botanist whose genetically-engineered strain of wheat is credited with saving hundreds of millions of people from starvation.
• Thomas Friedman says that China is pouring money into energy-efficiency research.
• Another Republican abandons ship.
• The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on the killings of seventeen Russian journalists over the past decade.
• Senator Russ Feingold has introduced a bill to curb the excesses of the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. In tit for tat, the bill is called the J.U.S.T.I.C.E. Act. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced its support of the bill.
• A video game has been developed to point out the privacy implications of blogging your personal habits on line.