ACCORDING TO a Chinese saying, if someone in the street tells you that you are drunk, you can laugh. If a second person tells you that you are drunk, start to think about it. If a third one tells you the same, go home and sleep it off.
Recently the lovely looking, media savvy and well endowed actress, Pamela Anderson came up above the 49 parallel to protest against the sick seal hunt in Canada. She calls it “barbaric”. Yes it is just that; a bestial and medieval and outdated practise. But then most Canadians don’t care about it which means they simply to approve it, just like the Japanese do, who support their “sacred, tradional” whale and dolphin slaughter. How patriotic this is indeed? How brave and daring it is to mass murder harmless animals in their habitat? No, not really it is all quite abject and repugnant.
Using and abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era
In the early 21st century, as polar ice sheets melt, deserts expand, hurricanes intensify and the ocean acidify, faced with governments focused on the next election instead of survival of the next generation, people are losing their faith in democratic governments being able to uphold the ideals of the enlightenment, indeed the physical survival of their citizens.
Now is the time for all good men to put their hands together, pull them apart and rapidly put them back together again, and repeat, to give props to the President for not curling up into a fetal position with a “Kick Me” sign taped to his butt. You know. Like a Democrat.
Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan presidential candidate and rival to Hamid Karzai, the incumbent president, has said the chairman of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has "no credibility" and should be replaced immediately.
Israel has said it will conduct a review of the internal inquiries that cleared its military of serious wrongdoing during its war on the Gaza Strip last winter.
Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, has called for a freeze on the Arab peace initiative with Israel in response to its police action in al-Aqsa mosque.
Fourteen Americans have been killed and more than 25 other people injured in two military helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, one of them being a mid-air collision, Nato says.
World leaders have joined their Iraqi counterparts in condemning Sunday's double bombing in Baghdad - the deadliest attack in Iraq in two years - and offered their condolences to the Iraqi people.
Arab journalists have deplored media censorship in their countries and called for greater freedom at a gathering held in the Qatari capital, Doha, to discuss freedom of speech in the region.
Barack Obama has sent a message through the Spanish government urging Cuba to undertake reforms and improve its human rights as a possible path to better relations with the US, a White House official said confirming reports in Spanish media.
News_Alerts 
World leaders have joined their Iraqi counterparts in condemning Sunday's double bombing in Baghdad - the deadliest attack in Iraq in two years - and offered their condolences to the Iraqi people.
