Maher: "I Think Anybody Could Be President In This Dumb F**king Country"
Panel: Larry King, Rick Lazio and Melissa Harris-Perry
BY ANNA BADKHEN | JUNE 3, 2011
BALKH PROVINCE, Afghanistan — The villages fell without a battle.
Armed men on motorcycles simply showed up at orangeade dusk, summoned the elders, and announced the new laws. A 10 percent tax on all earnings to feed the Taliban coffers. A lifestyle guided by the strictest interpretation of Shariah. All government collaborators will be punished as traitors.
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Their surrender was not in the news. In Afghanistan, most people live and die nameless, unsung, neglected by policymakers in Kabul and Washington both. The billions of international aid dollars pumped into Afghanistan in the last decade have mostly bypassed them. Maybe, then, they yielded so easily because they cannot tell which is worse: the Taliban's severe and unforgiving rule or Afghan President Hamid Karzai's kleptocracy. From the latter they've seen nothing. They still toil in their fields much like their forefathers have done since the beginning of recorded history: with homemade wooden tools, barefoot, and with no access to health care, decent roads, electricity, or clean water. "Either way, our life will be very hard," my friend in Oqa once told me.
Read the rest here.This is a good read.
Gates: Troop withdrawal from Afghanistan should leave combat power intact as long as possible
FORWARD OPERATING BASE WALTON, Afghanistan — A soon-to-begin U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan should leave combat power intact as long as possible to press an anti-Taliban offensive, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday. He said support troops should go first.
Posted By David Bosco 
Friday, June 3, 2011 - 10:58 AM 
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[W]e should turn to Congress, which has a rich history of dealing with U.N. actions it doesn't appreciate....Congress should legislate broadly that any U.N. action that purports to acknowledge or authorize Palestinian statehood will result in a cutoff of all U.S. contributions to the offending agency. If the General Assembly ignored this warning, all funds would be cut off to the bloated Secretariat in New York, but not to separate agencies like the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and others with their own governing bodies and funding mechanisms. [snip]
Climate models go cold
Apr 7, 2011 – 8:46 PM ET | Last Updated: Apr 7, 2011 8:57 PM ET
Carbon warming too minor to be worth worrying aboutBy David Evans
The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.
Let’s set a few things straight.
The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.
Russia: NATO 'one step' from land war in Libya
AP – In this photo made available by French Army Saturday June 4, 2011, combat helicopters are prepared on … SINGAPORE – Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov says NATO is "one step" from sending troops into Libya in a bid to help rebels remove Moammar Gadhafi from power.
Ivanov said Sunday at an Asian security conference in Singapore that Russia didn't know that a United Nations resolution it supported to protect civilians and shut down Libyan air space would lead to a land operation.
British and French attack helicopters struck for the first time inside Libya on Saturday. NATO had previously relied on attack jets generally flying above 15,000 feet (4,500 meters).
NATO airstrikes have kept the outgunned rebels from being overrun, but the rebels have been unable to mount an effective offensive against Gadhafi's better-equipped forcesEconomy will force shift in Barack Obama’s 2012 strategy
After months of relatively robust job growth, President Barack Obama and his team must now reckon with the reality that the economy probably won’t be on firm ground during the 2012 campaign — and that he must temper some of the Morning-in-America optimism he’d hoped to run on.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/56184.html#ixzz1ORqsxoJ3
Portugal votes for new govt under bailout shadow
Updated: Jun 5, 2011 - 3:23AM
AP
LISBON, Portugal -Portuguese voters are electing a new government to steer them through expected years of recession and grinding austerity measures being adopted in return for a euro78 billion ($114 billion) bailout.Portugal is one of the eurozone countries with an economy wrecked by debt, compelling it to call for a rescue loan two months ago. A recent election in Ireland — which also needed a bailout — spelled the end of the government.
Polls indicate Portugal's main opposition Social Democratic Party will unseat the Socialists on Sunday.
The winner will inherit a record jobless rate of 12.6 percent and a forecast economic contraction of 4 percent over the next two years in what is already one of western Europe's poorest countries.
'Saint Bono' the anti-povertycampaigner facing huge Glastonbury protest – for avoiding tax
By George ArbuthnottLast updated at 6:58 PM on 5th June 2011
Target: Bono is being accused of tax avoidance in his native Ireland and is likely to see a protest from the stage
But when Bono's band U2 perform at Glastonbury later this month, protesters are planning to accuse them of avoiding taxes which could have helped exactly the sort of people the singer cares about so dearly.
Members of activist group Art Uncut will hoist a massive inflatable sign with the message 'Bono Pay Up' spelt out in lights during the Irish band's headline performance.
They will also parade bundles of oversized fake cash in front of the singer.
The protest has been provoked by U2's decision to move their multi-million-pound music and publishing business away from Ireland – thus allegedly avoiding taxes on record sales.
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