This made me curious to see how many voices he does, so via wiki:

1. Porky Pig (1936-1989, assumed from Joe Dougherty)
2. The Maxwell (Jack Benny's car)
3. Daffy Duck (1937)
4. Happy Rabbit (a.k.a. Bugs Bunny's prototype) (1938)
5. Bugs Bunny (1940-1989)
6. Woody Woodpecker (1940)
7. Cecil Turtle (1941)
8. Tweety Bird (1942-1989)
9. Private Snafu, numerous World War II related cartoons (1943)
10. Yosemite Sam (1945-1989) ("Hare Trigger")
11. Pepé Le Pew (1945-1989)
12. Sylvester (1946-1989) aka Thomas (1947) in some films
13. Foghorn Leghorn (1946-1989)
14. The Barnyard Dawg (1946-1989)
15. Henery Hawk (1946-1989)
16. Charlie Dog (1947)
17. Mac (of Mac & Tosh) (1947)
18. K-9 (1948) (sidekick to Marvin the Martian)
19. Marvin the Martian (1948)
20. Road Runner (1949)
21. Beaky Buzzard (1950)
22. Elmer Fudd (1950, 1958, 1970s and 1980s)
23. Bruno the Bear (1951)
24. Wile E. Coyote (silent until 1952, first spoke in the short "Operation: Rabbit")
25. Speedy Gonzales (1953)
26. The Tasmanian Devil (1954)
27. Barney Rubble (1960-1989)
28. Dino (1960-1989) (Fred Flintstone's pet.)
29. Cosmo G. Spacely (1962)
30. Hardy Har Har (1962-1964)
31. Secret Squirrel (1965-1966)
32. Bubba McCoy from "Where's Huddles?"
33. Chug-a-Boom/The Ant Hill Mob/The Bully Brothers from "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1969)"
34. Speed Buggy (1973)
35. Tucker the Mouse from "A Cricket in Times Square (1973)"
36. Captain Caveman (1977)
37. Twiki from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)
38. Heathcliff (1980, appeared in syndication from 1984-1987)

I disagree with your assumption that the issue takes religion into account when picking sides or media (the US has a highly constricted view to reporting news from Israel in AIPAC controlled way, have you ever heard anything critical of Israel from US news sources?), there are many Christian and Jewish activists who believe that Israelis process of peace is heavy handed. As I recall Israel is the only nation that has a nuclear weapons program that is hush hush on the International scene, and is well armed with Merkava tanks, AH-1 Cobras and M-16 wielding soldiers, that force has always been there and is not a response to the threat recently. Not that this is a justification for Palestinian tactics, but what other response would you expect after 60 years? Them throwing rocks still?

I believe that the Israeli people want a peaceful resolution to this conflict, but that is at odds with the decision reached in high government of Israel to deny the Palestinian people the right to their own land.

For all the peace rhetoric of the last 60 years, all you have see is a slow dismemberment of the Palestinian territory into ever smaller enclaves. As Henry Siegman writes:

"The Middle East peace process may well be the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history. Since the failed Camp David summit of 2000, and actually well before it, Israel’s interest in a peace process – other than for the purpose of obtaining Palestinian and international acceptance of the status quo – has been a fiction that has served primarily to provide cover for its systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and an occupation whose goal, according to the former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, is ‘to sear deep into the consciousness of Palestinians that they are a defeated people’.

But I digress from the main video, I just find it so supremely ironic as well for UN Watch to attack the human rights records of Iran when you have Bush come up on the podium and talk about human rights when we have Guantanamo bay. Robert Parry from ConsortiumNews:

George W. Bush – who asserts his unlimited personal authority to kill, kidnap, torture and spy on anyone of his choosing anywhere in the world – opened his annual speech to the United Nations by hailing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The U.S. President pushed the envelope of the world’s credulity even further by citing the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of 1948 as justification for his “war on terror” and his draconian policies for eliminating “terrorists” or other threats to world order with little or no due process.

I mean srsly?

"Even small air conditioners can consume thousands of watts per hour"

The narrator obviously has no clue about physics. One watt is one joule (unit of energy) per second. Total energy consumption would be measured in joules; the rate of energy consumption would be measured in watts; the rate of change of the rate of energy consumption would be measured in watts per (time).

Lithium bromide is no safer than other coolants used in air conditioners. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_bromide
Bromide is harmful because it displaces Iodine and interferes with the production of thyroid hormone (among many other ways it can poison you). Lithium is used as a psychoactive drug. Lithium was used as a food additive in the USA until 1948 when manufacturers were forced to stop adding it to food. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_pharmacology#Lithium_and_culture

The device in the video is far too bulky to be adopted in an urban area and provides the same net impact on the heat of the surrounding area as running an ordinary AC from solar panels.

Upvoted for the story of James...the rumor of his survival was a folk tale that I grew up on. From Wiki:

Rumors of Jesse James's survival proliferated almost as soon as the newspapers announced his death. Some said that Ford did not kill James but someone else, in an elaborate plot to allow him to escape justice. Some stories say he lived in Guthrie, Oklahoma, as late as 1948, and a man named J. Frank Dalton, who claimed to be Jesse James, died in Granbury, Texas, in 1951 at age 103. Some stories claim the real recipient of Ford's bullet was a man named Charles Bigelow, reported to have been living with James's wife at the time. Generally speaking, however, these tales received little credence, then or now; Jesse's wife, Zee, died alone and in poverty.

The body buried in Missouri as Jesse James was exhumed in 1995 and, according to a report by Anne C. Stone, Ph.D.; James E. Starrs, L.L.M.; and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D. titled Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Presumptive Remains of Jesse James, does appear to be the remains of Jesse James. A court order was granted in 2000 to exhume and test Dalton's body, but the wrong body was exhumed. Some people believed that Jesse James hid in the attic of a two story house in Dublin, Texas while he was hiding from the law.

"Palestine was designated as the Jewish National Home by the League of Nations, enshrining this designation in international law. Why should the Jewish people give up any part of Palestine?"

The Jewish National Home described in the Balfour Declaration, which was later incorporated into the British League of Nation Mandate over Palestine, does not necessarily suggest that there is international legal precedent for an Israeli state encompassing all of historical Israel. One, the Balfour Declaration itself was a wartime expedient designed to build support for WWI among European and, especially, American Jews so its value as legal precedent is suspect. Two, the British Government, who issued the Balfour Declaration, made two other, contradictory agreements: one with King Hussein, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, which gave all Arab speaking lands, except for the Lebanon, to his rule in exchange for orchestrating an Arab uprising against the Ottomans; and the second with the French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement which divided up Ottoman territories for French and British colonization and administration. Three, the League of Nations Mandate was in violation of the League's charter: it denied the right to self-determination to former Ottoman subjects. Four, the Balfour Declaration describes a Jewish National Home within Palestine which shall not "prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", not a Jewish state. Five, the Balfour Declaration was a declaration by fiat of the British Government that was performed with out consultation with or consideration of the Palestinian people. For these, and numerous other, reasons it is unwise to take the Balfour Declaration as international legal precedent for an Israeli state.

Fortunately, we don't have to take the Balfour Declaration as precedent. The 1948 UN Special Commission on Palestine enshrines the existence of separate Israeli and Palestinian states living alongside eachother. It is important to note however the the borders of these two states look very different from the borders we see today. In the 48-49 war, the Israelis seized territory beyond the '48 borders and declared them unconditionally Jewish. This seizure of land was in violation of international law but was tolerated, largely as a result of European guilt over the holocaust. Israel expanded it's borders yet again in the Six Day War of '67, in which they launched preemptive strikes against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, seizing and retaining territory to this day. The seizure of land by war is in violation of the UN charter and as result numerous UN Security Council Resolutions (242 and 338 among others) have been drawn up condemning Israeli's seizure of land and demanding that it be returned. The point is that Israel has a legal right to exist, but it illegally holds much of the land it currently possesses.

A final legal issue is Israel's denial of right to return to Palestinian refugees, a clear violation of international law. Israel faces a demographic problem, in that if they allow refugees to return, within a generation Arabs will outnumber Jews in the Israeli state. Israel would then have to either give up its Jewish identity, or give up its democracy in order to suppress Arab influence over the state. Israel doesn't have a solution to this problem as the Jewish birthrate is much lower than Palestinian. As a result, their only choice, from their perspective, is to continue to violate international law, with the knowledge the US financial and military back will remain, until a longterm solution can be devised. In the mean time, Palestinian refugees continue to languish in the conditions of refugee camps.

The Marshall plan was entirely in self-interest. Here's historian Howard Zinn on the Marshall Plan:

The motives for the Marshall Plan were both economic and political. Just to point to one aspect of the economic motive: George Marshall was quoted in an early 1948 State Department bulletin: "It is idle to think that a Europe left to its own efforts...would remain open to American business in the same way that we have known it in the past." Most of the money went to American businesses exporting to Europe. At least 10% of the aid money went for European purchases of oil, moving them away from coal-dependency (which involved dealing with troublesome trade unions) to oil dependency, with the U.S. dominant in the world oil market. The political motive was to shore up anti-Communist governments in France and Italy. Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson said at the time: "These measures of relief and reconstruction have been only n part suggested by humanitarianism. Your Congress has authorized and your Government is carrying out, a policy of relief and reconstruction today chiefly as a matter of national self-interest". You can read much more about the Marshall Plan, that is, realistic evaluations, in Michael Hogan's book "The Marshall Plan" (Cambridge Univ. Press 1987) and in Melvyn Leffler's excellent book "A Preponderance ofPower" (Stanford Univ. Press, 1992)

The Apollo Program was indeed a large project of the cold war - and it was arguably also a massive waste of money that was greatly needed elsewhere. I should have made it clear that by "great" I mean great in both the ethical sense as well as scale.

US history is like a clogged toilet; the more you flush the shit keeps rising.

"The hate you see in this video has nothing to do with the true teachings of Islam - and I object to the implication that it does. It is a perversion brought about by over fifty years of Israel's deliberate oppression of the Palestinians - including daily humiliation, terrorism and murder, and a concerted effort to steal more Palestinian land and annex Jerusalem."

Sure, blame Israel. This kind of hatred is displayed in other places outside of Gaza, and the West Bank. If it's not Israel, it's the West, if not the West, it's the Buddhists. Even when Muslims kill other Muslims it's somehow Israel's fault, always the same rhetoric. How are these clips so pernicious to Islam? It's obviously happening, and it does affect people, so why try to delegitimize it if you're against extremism. A small fraction of Muslims have been radicalized but it translates to a whole mess of people. Jews were hated LONG before the establishment of Israel, and getting a state of their own by defeating the Arab armies mortified the Arabs. Israel is not guilt-less, but we might have seen a Palestinian state if Israel wasn't attacked in 1948.

For a start - this is personal for me. As a Muslim and someone who has had friends murdered by the IDF this is personal.

Once again QM I don't even know where to begin with what you say - if you are not an ignorant bigot yourself then you have been reading an awful lot of books by ignorant bigots. The website you seem to have got all your information from - http://factsandlogic.org (it should be called bigotry and propaganda) - is one of many pro-Israel, pro-militant zionism websites which attempts to rewrite history. Thankfully, although such websites have an enormous influence on American public opinion the rest of the world is not so ignorant to real history. The website you link states that its purpose is ". . . the research and publication of the facts regarding developments in the Middle East and exposing false propaganda that might harm the interests of the United States and its allies in that area of the world." In reality it attempts to suppress any historically accurate accounts of the appalling mistreatment of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis. It does so in order to ensure that the American public continue not to question the blind support of their government for any crimes that the Israeli government chooses to commit.

"The concept that Jewish presence in Judea/Samaria is illegal and that the Jews are occupiers is bizarre. It just has been repeated so often and with such vigor that many people have come to accept it."

Unfortunately it is the Israeli version of history which has been repeated so often and with such vigor that many Americans have come to accept it as gospel. The truth about Israel's history can be found in the writing of non-Zionist Jews like Elmer Berger, Alfred Lilienthal, Norman Finkelstein, Tanya Reinhart, Tony Judt, Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. Also read the following famous article published by Harvard University (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06) about the power of the Israel lobby in America.

"The concept of “Palestinians” as applied to Arabs and as a distinct nationality urgently in need of their own twenty-third Arab state, is a fairly new one; it was not invented until after 1948, when the State of Israel was founded."

A myth propgated by militant zionists to undermine the Palestinian people's legitimate claim to statehood and their own lands.

I implore everyone - disregard anything QM posts on this issue. If you truly care about Israel and Palestine - make your own mind up - don't let someone else make it up for you.

This isn't personal. In the marketplace of ideas, we are both selling and buying.

Have you thought this out thoroughly? What happens when/if "the Palestinians" get their "own" nation? It will end up another launchpad for rockets.

http://factsandlogic.org/ad_77.html

But how about the legal aspect of this matter? Isn’t the “West Bank” “occupied territory” and therefore the Jews have no right to be there? But the historic reality is quite different. Very briefly: The Ottoman Empire was the sovereign in the entire area. In 1917, while World War I was still raging, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration. It designated “Paleatine” — extending throughout what is now Israel (including the “West Band”) and what is now the Kingdom of Jordan — as the homeland for the Jewish people. In 1922, the League of Nations ratified the Balfour Declaration and designated Britain as the mandatory power. Regrettably, Britain, for its own imperial reasons and purposes, separated 76 percent of the land — that lying beyond the Jordan River — to create the kingdom of Trans-Jordan (now Jordan) and made it inaccessible to Jews. In 1947, tired of the constant bloodletting between Arabs and Jews, the British threw in the towel and abandoned the Mandate. The UN took over. It devised a plan by which the land west of the Jordan River would be split between the Jews and the Arabs. The Jews, though with heavy heart, accepted the plan. The Arabs virulently rejected it and invaded the nascent Jewish state with the armies of five countries, so as to destroy it at its birth. Miraculously, the Jews prevailed and the State of Israel was born. When the smoke of battle cleared, Jordan was in possession of the West Bank and Egypt in possession of Gaza. They were the “occupiers” and they proceeded to kill many Jews and to drive out the rest. They systematically destroyed all Jewish holy places and all vestiges of Jewish presence. The area was “judenrein.”

In the Six-Day War of 1967, the Jews reconquered the territories. The concept that Jewish presence in Judea/Samaria is illegal and that the Jews are occupiers is bizarre. It just has been repeated so often and with such vigor that many people have come to accept it.

How about the “Palestinians,” whose patrimony this territory supposedly is and about whose olive trees and orange groves we hear endlessly? There is no such people. They are Arabs — the same people as in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and beyond. Most of them migrated into the territories and to “Israel proper,” attracted by Jewish prosperity and industry.

The concept of “Palestinians” as applied to Arabs and as a distinct nationality urgently in need of their own twenty-third Arab state, is a fairly new one; it was not invented until after 1948, when the State of Israel was founded.

But here’s a thought: How about a deal by which the “settlements” were indeed abandoned and all the Jews were to move to “Israel proper.” At the same time, all the Arabs living in Israel would be transferred to Judea/Samaria or to wherever else they wanted to go. That would indeed make Judea/Samaria “judenrein,” and what are now Arab lands in Israel would be “arabrein.” The Arabs could then live in a fully autonomous area in eastern Israel and peace, one would hope, would descend on the holy land.

This idea of Moyers of a unified, transcendent faith smacks of world religion.
Farhad2000, are you really a progressive? Do you really want more welfare, more free education, more government control of health care?
It creeps me out, man! Like lord of the rings.... One government to rule them all...

Born Billy Don Moyers (a name he would later legally change to Bill) in 1934 in Hugo, Oklahoma, this son of a laborer grew up in the town of Marshall in east Texas, near the borders of Louisiana and Arkansas. In 1948, at age 14, Moyers witnessed the visit of an imposing 6'3"-tall politician named Lyndon Johnson, who spoke without microphone to a large crowd.

"His white shirt was glinting in the sun," Moyers once told an interviewer from Esquire Magazine about the moment. "And he was literally forcing himself physically on that audience of three thousand to four thousand people…. I remember the sheer presence of the man. And I thought 'This is what power is.'"

SCMD is a major supporter of radical environmentalist organizations whose goal, as writer Michael Berliner explains, is "not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization." At the same time, however, the Center is heavily invested in numerous corporations that it classifies as environmentally unfriendly.

That is, it exploits, as a wealth-generating vehicle, the very capitalist system which it blames for having created a host of environmental ills. The watchdog website UndueInfluence.com characterizes such an investment strategy as "using capitalist investments to destroy capitalist society."

For instance, at the very time when Moyers hosted a March 2001 program condemning the chemical industry, SCMD held large investments in chemical companies. Similarly, while Moyers has hosted programs advocating a reduction in America's dependence on foreign oil, SCMD has earned immense profits from its investments in gas and oil companies.

The Center's investment portfolio contains tens of thousands of shares in such companies as Exxon Mobil, Conoco, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Petroleum, Ford, Keyspan Energy, Pioneer Natural Resource Company, Noble Affiliates, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, Columbia Gas Systems, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Shell Oil, Shell Transportation and Trading, and General Motors.

1949

* Harry Truman is inaugurated as US president after being elected in 1948 to his own term; previously he was sworn in following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
* Doris Day enters the public spotlight with the films My Dream Is Yours and It's a Great Feeling as well as popular songs like "It's Magic"; divorces her second husband.
* Red China as the Communist Party of China wins the Chinese Civil War, establishing the People's Republic of China.
* Johnnie Ray signs his first recording contract with Okeh Records, although he won't become popular for another two years.
* South Pacific, the prize winning musical, opens on Broadway on April 7.
* Walter Winchell is an aggressive radio and newspaper journalist credited with inventing the gossip column.
* Joe DiMaggio is injured early in the season but makes a comeback in June and leads the New York Yankees to win the World Series.

1950

* Joe McCarthy, the US Senator, gains national attention and begins his anti-communist crusade with his Lincoln Day speech.
* Richard Nixon is first elected to the United States Senate.
* Studebaker a popular car company, is beginning its financial downfall.
* Television is becoming widespread (in black and white format) and becomes the most popular means of advertising.
* North Korea, South Korea engage in warfare as North Korea attacks on June 25, beginning the Korean War.
* Marilyn Monroe soars in popularity with five new movies including The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, and attempts suicide after death of lover Johnny Hyde. Monroe would later (1954) briefly marry Joe DiMaggio (the rhyme in the previous verse).

1951

* Rosenbergs were convicted on March 29 for espionage.
* H-Bomb is in the middle of its development as a nuclear weapon, announced in early 1950 and first tested in late 1952.
* Sugar Ray (Robinson) the boxer obtains the world's Middleweight title.
* Panmunjeom, the border village in Korea, is the location of truce talks between the parties of the Korean War.
* Brando (Marlon) is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the first time for his famous role in A Streetcar Named Desire
* The King and I opens on Broadway on March 29.
* and The Catcher in the Rye is a controversial novel by J. D. Salinger.

1952

* Eisenhower (Dwight D.) is first elected as U.S. president by a landslide.
* Vaccine for polio is privately tested by Jonas Salk.
* England's got a new Queen as George VI passes away and Elizabeth II succeeds to the throne of United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Realms.
* Marciano (Rocky) defeats Jersey Joe Walcott, becoming the world Heavyweight champion.
* Liberace has a popular 1950s television show for his musical entertainment.
* Santayana, good-bye as philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist George Santayana dies on September 26.

1953

* Joseph Stalin dies on March 5, yielding his position as leader of the Soviet Union.
* Malenkov (Georgy Maksimilianovich) succeeds Stalin for six months following his death.
* Nasser (Gamal Abdel) acts as the true power behind the new Egyptian nation as Muhammad Naguib's minister of the interior.
* and Prokofiev (Sergei) the composer, dies on March 5, the same day as Stalin.
* Rockefeller (Winthrop) moves to Arkansas, the state where he will be elected governor.
* Campanella (Roy), a baseball catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, receives the National League's Most Valuable Player award for the second time.
* Communist bloc is a group of communist nations dominated by the Soviet Union at this time.

1954

* Roy Cohn resigns as Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel and enters private practice with the fall of McCarthy.
* Juan Perón spends his last full year as President of Argentina before a September 1955 coup.
* Toscanini (Arturo) is at the height of his fame as a conductor, performing regularly with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on national radio.
* Dacron is an early artificial fiber made from the same plastic as polyester.
* Dien Bien Phu falls as Viet Minh forces under Vo Nguyen Giap take over the Vietnamese village, leading to the creation of North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
* "Rock Around the Clock" is a hit single released by Bill Haley & His Comets in May, spurring worldwide interest in rock and roll.

1955

* Einstein (Albert) dies on April 18 at the age of 76.
* James Dean achieves success with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, gets nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and dies in a car accident on September 30.
* Brooklyn's got a winning team as the Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series for the only time. (There is cheering in the background of the song during this line.)
* Davy Crockett is a Disney television series about the legendary frontiersman of the same name.
* Peter Pan is broadcast on TV live and in color from the 1954 version of the stage musical starring Mary Martin on March 7.
* Elvis Presley signs with RCA Records on November 21, beginning his pop career.
* Disneyland opens on July 17 as Walt Disney's first theme park.

1956

* Bardot (Brigitte) appears in her first mainstream film And God Created Woman and establishes an international reputation as a French "sex kitten".
* Budapest is the site of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
* Alabama is the site of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
* Khrushchev (Nikita) makes his famous Secret Speech denouncing Stalin's "cult of personality" on February 23.
* Princess Grace (Grace Kelly) releases her last film High Society and marries Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
* Peyton Place, the best-selling novel by Grace Metalious, is published.
* Trouble in the Suez boils as Egypt nationalizes the Suez Canal on October 29, beginning the Suez Crisis.

1957

* Little Rock is the site of an anti-integration standoff as Governor Orval Faubus stops the Little Rock Nine from attending Little Rock Central High School, and President Eisenhower deploys the 101st Airborne Division to counteract him.
* Pasternak (Boris), the Russian author, publishes his famous novel Doctor Zhivago.
* Mickey Mantle is in the middle of his career as a famous New York Yankees' outfielder and American League All-Star for the sixth year in a row.
* Kerouac (Jack) publishes his first novel in seven years, On the Road.
* Sputnik is the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4.
* Chou Enlai is in the middle of his reign as Premier of the People's Republic of China.
* Bridge on the River Kwai is released as a film adaptation of the 1954 novel and receives seven Academy Awards.

1958

* Lebanon is engulfed in a political and religious crisis.
* Charles de Gaulle is elected first president of the French Fifth Republic following the Algerian Crisis.
* California baseball begins as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants move to California and become the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants. They are the first major league teams west of Kansas City.
* Starkweather homicide captures the attention of Americans as serial killer Charles Starkweather kills eleven people before he is caught in a massive manhunt in Douglas, Wyoming.
* Children of thalidomide are born with birth defects caused by the sleeping aid and antiemetic, used to treat morning sickness as well (although not in the USA).

1959

* Buddy Holly dies in a plane crash on February 3 with Ritchie Valens and J. P. Richardson, "The Big Bopper". (As an intro to this stanza, Billy Joel mimics Buddy Holly's trademark "hiccup" style, singing a-UH-uh-oh...).
* Ben-Hur wins eleven Academy Awards as a film based around the New Testament starring Charlton Heston.
* Space monkeys Able and Miss Baker are the first living beings to successfully return to Earth from space aboard the flight Jupiter AM-18.
* Mafia are the centre of attention for the FBI and public attention builds to this organized crime society with an historically Sicilian/American origin.
* Hula hoops reach 100 million in sales as the latest toy fad.
* Castro (Fidel) comes to power after a revolution in Cuba and visits the United States later that year on an unofficial twelve-day tour.
* Edsel is a no-go as production of this car marketing disaster (Ford spent $400 million developing it) ends after only two years.

1960

* U-2: an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, causing the U-2 Crisis of 1960.
* Syngman Rhee: was rescued by the CIA after being forced to resign as leader of South Korea for allegedly fixing an election and embezzling more than twenty million U.S. dollars.
* Payola: was publicized due to Dick Clark's testimony before Congress and Alan Freed's public disgrace.
* and Kennedy (John F.): beats Richard Nixon in the November 8 general election amongst allegations of vote fraud.
* Chubby Checker: popularizes the dance The Twist with his song of the same name.
* Psycho: an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, based on a pulp novel by Robert Bloch and adapted by Joseph Stefano, which becomes a landmark in graphic violence and cinema sensationalism. The screeching violins heard briefly in the background are a trademark of the film's soundtrack.
* Belgians in the Congo: The Democratic Republic of the Congo was declared independent of Belgium on June 30, with Joseph Kasavubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister.

1961

* Hemingway (Ernest): commits suicide on July 2 after a long battle with depression.
* Eichmann (Adolf): is captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and tried for crimes against humanity.
* Stranger in a Strange Land: written by Robert A. Heinlein, is a breakthrough best-seller with themes of sexual freedom and liberation.
* Dylan (Bob): after a New York Times review by critic Robert Shelton, Dylan is signed to Columbia Records.
* Berlin: The Berlin Wall, which separates West Berlin from East Berlin and the rest of East Germany, is constructed.
* Bay of Pigs Invasion: failed attempt by United States-trained Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro.

1962

* Lawrence of Arabia: the Academy Award-winning film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence starring Peter O'Toole premiers in America on December 16.
* British Beatlemania: The Beatles gain Ringo Starr as drummer and Brian Epstein as manager, and join the EMI's Parlophone label.
* Ole Miss: James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi.
* John Glenn: flew the first American manned orbital mission termed "Friendship 7" on February 20.
* Liston beats Patterson: Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson fight for the world heavyweight championship on September 25, ending in a round-one knockout.

1963

* Pope Paul (VI): is elected to the papacy.
* Malcolm X: makes infamous statements about agreeing with the Kennedy assassination, thus causing the Nation of Islam to censure him.
* British Politician Sex: the Profumo Affair.
* JFK blown away, what else do I have to say?: President Kennedy is assassinated on November 22.

1965

* Birth control: in the early 1960s, oral contraceptives, popularly known as "the pill", first go on the market and are extremely popular. Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 challenged a Connecticut law prohibiting contraceptives. In 1968, Pope Paul VI released a papal encyclical entitled Humanae Vitae which declared most birth control a sin.
* Ho Chi Minh: a Vietnamese Communist, who served as President of Vietnam from 1954–1969.

1968

* Richard Nixon back again: Nixon is elected in the 1968 presidential election of the United States.

1969

* Moon shot: refers to the Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing.
* Woodstock: famous rock and roll festival of 1969 that came to represent the epitome of the counterculture movement.

1974

* Watergate: political scandal involving a hotel break-in, eventually leading to President Nixon's resignation in 1974.
* Punk rock: the Sex Pistols and their new sound become popular.

1977 (Note that these two items, while later chronologically than the two 1976 items, come immediately before them in the song)

* Begin (Menachem): becomes Prime Minister of Israel in 1977 and negotiates the Camp David Accords with Egypt's president in 1978.
* Reagan (Ronald): President of the United States from 1981 to 1989; attempted to run for president in 1976

1976 (Note that these two items, while earlier chronologically than the two 1977 items, come immediately after them in the song)

* Palestine: the Palestine Liberation Organization is admitted as a member of Arab League; see history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
* Terror on the airline: Numerous aircraft hijackings took place, specifically, the Palestinian hijack of Air France Flight 139 and the subsequent rescue at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, 1976.

1979

* Ayatollahs in Iran: during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the West-backed and U.S.-installed Shah is overthrown as the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gains power after years in exile.
* Russians in Afghanistan: Soviet forces fight a ten-year war in Afghanistan, from 1979 to 1989.

1983

* Wheel of Fortune: a hit television game show which has been TV's highest-rated syndicated program since 1983.
* Sally Ride: in 1983 she becomes the first American woman in space.
* Heavy metal, suicide: Billy Joel himself had previously stated on his website that even though the two terms are separated by a comma they are collectively one item (like "North Korea, South Korea" above). In the 1980s Ozzy Osbourne and the bands Metallica and Judas Priest were brought to court by parents who accused the musicians of hiding subliminal pro-suicide messages in their music.
* Foreign debts: Persistent US trade deficits lead to substantial foreign debt in the eyes of the 1980s period, particularly to Japan.
* Homeless vets: Veterans of the Vietnam war are homeless and impoverished.
* AIDS: A collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is first detected and recognized in the 1980s, on its way to becoming a pandemic.
* Crack: Refers to crack cocaine, a popular drug in the mid-to-late 1980s.

1984

* Bernie Goetz: On December 22, Goetz becomes a vigilante after being mugged four times; he shoots four young men who he believed to be threatening him on a New York City subway. Goetz was charged with attempted murder, but was acquitted of the charges.

1988

* Hypodermics on the shore: medical waste was found washed up on beaches in New Jersey after being illegally dumped at sea.

1989

* China's under martial law: On May 20, China declares martial law, enabling them to use force of arms to end the Tiananmen Square protests.
* Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore!: soft drink giants Coke and Pepsi each run marketing campaigns using popular music stars to reach the young adult demographic.

Whenever I see someone advocating war, I can't wait to see them personally experience it.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

- Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

Great post!

It's about time the Gulf states started exerting political pressure on Israel (and America) to negotiate. I've always been pissed off by the way the Gulf governments encourage a domestic anti-Israel rhetoric (which at times is often anti-semitic) - in part to appease the more radical sections of the public - but make no real attempt to exert political influence on America or Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians.

It's nice to see an Israeli politician being put on the spot, but he doesn't look uncomfortable, and I don't really hear anything new. We've heard the same rhetoric before - and he shows no signs of compromising on the important issues. Settlements were removed because they were too costly to defend - not as a gesture of peace towards the Palestinians. Furthermore it is perfectly clear that they intend to steal further land for settlements in areas which are cheaper to defend. He makes no apologies for the illegal apartheid wall and again, as always, there is no possibility of any kind of joint control of Jerusalem. "Israel never initiated...Israel always just reacted" - this is completely untrue. Israel initiated the murder and expulsion of Palestinians in 1948. Furthermore, if violence stops Israel will still not negotiate on the key issues - like Jerusalem and the right of return. Israel did not simply attack Hezbollah, they collectively punished the Lebanese people - and for this he makes no apology. "I'm not making any account with the past" - again, Israel refers to past injustices committed against the Jewish people and Israel to justify its actions, but will never accept that Palestinian actions are a direct result of past injustices committed against them by Israel. How has Israel forgiven and forgotten?

T.S. Eliot wrote the Four Quartets and Willem Dafoe reads one of them from the roof of 600 Broadway in NYC, produced by Robert Galinsky. Eliot made an indelible impression on me in high school, it's been a rhapsody on a windy night ever since.

The full set can be found at http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) was a poet, dramatist and literary critic, whose works, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", and Four Quartets, are considered major achievements of twentieth century Modernist poetry. The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, he is one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot

I remember being 13 and mesmerized by Kate Pierson in this video... and I still am. Born 1948! Anyone spotted her recently?