"Pro-Life", yeah right. It's sad and dumb. I saw it via both my Pharyngula and BBC News RSS feeds and Sifted the CNN report some 2 hours ago:
"Pro-Life": Prominent US Abortion Doctor Shot Dead in Church

Tags for this video have been changed from '1549, Airbus, cockpit view, hudson, river' to '1549, Airbus, cockpit view, hudson, river, US, Airways, crash, BBC, News' - edited by Trancecoach

thinker247, you need to get to know!
try finding his bbc news theme tune skit.... omg.

how dose my voting right afect a global comunity ? the fact is if we have a global econimy i am directly afecting people in other countries . this is why people in uk payed so mutch atentoin to us polatics because we know how mutch it will efect us , just because i dont vote on it dosenot reduce its afect ore comunity sagnificance. for example in russa thay dont decide who is in goverment it still afects there comunity and socity who it is that gets into power.

eveyone should pay atentoin and have a vestead intrest in the countries around thw world , at a minimum the power players. i have friends in canida usa france and exspect to have meaningfull relatoinships with people in manny countries.

people teering up over this is just obsurd especaily as thay probably wernt evan alive when alot of the shit stuff happend and these people on tv are just picking up fealings from there what thay percive there parents realities to be.
i wouldent mind if it was say a black rights actavist ore sumone who had realy investead themselfs into the issues and had been through the shit times that was geting worked up. (evan then i think thay would be nieve as america is still very racist ) and obama only got in because of his conectoins + mcain and palin been so uterly retarded and then the ecanomic events + bush.

i just have a problem with people misporpotoinaly reacting to things . liek totaly seperatly in the uk we had this "scandle" where 2 comideans took the piss out of some guy over the phone and some how that was percived to be more important on the bbc news than the potentail of thousends of people duying from starvatoin with the shit hapaning in africa.

How about Central and South American Socialist Governments? How are those working out?

..and Europe isn't excelling at the moment. Check your facts:

The 15 countries that use the euro agreed on a massive bail-out package earlier this month to help banks survive the crisis, which has seen inter-bank lending dry up, threatening the wider economy.
BBC NEWS

Our mostly capitalistic economy may be able to recover from "the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression" more quickly than you might think. Oil Prices are dropping rapidly, this week the credit markets are thawing, value of the US Dollar continues to be stable reflecting that "the U.S. looks relatively safer compared to how shaky some of the other world economies are" (David Wessel, Economics Editor of the WSJ on NPR Morning Edition, Oct 21).

After you talk to the EU, why don't you ask North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and China how they're doing this year.

I think the U.S. has created some very valuable social programs. I don't believe that the U.S. should move to be as socialist as say, Canada or England or France. I think we should embrace and encourage individual self-reliance.

All this talk of tax cuts for the middle class is just pandering. I am happy with the tax rates now. I think we should keep them relatively close to where they are and force our elected officials to make due with the revenue available to them.



>> ^NetRunner:
^ This will sound childish, but BansheeX, you're a nutbar.
Actually, socialist policies have done nothing but increase, and the problems you describe have gotten worse.
...in America. Other countries' socialist policies, like in say, the whole of Europe, do quite well compared to us.


I say: Check your facts again, Europe is excelling, and we're declining, and between the two, we're vastly closer to libertarian philosophy.

Yeah I'm in Ireland!

Man, I was a news junkie for years, I picked it up from my grandfather. I was one of those guys who sat and watched BBC News 24, all day long, changing over to the ITV news to see their take on the same stories. All I ever watched on TV was News and Star Trek.

I remember the exact moment when BBC News started to change and go the way of American news. It was in 2003, when David Kelly, the british UN weapons expert was found dead in a forest near his home. Just a couple of days previous, I had watched the entire live 2 hour cross examination of David Kelly in front of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, as he completely tore holes in the dossier that the UK government had put forward claiming that Saddam had WMD. I had been following the whole story in impeccable detail, online, on TV, bookmarking everything I could, and I had been looking forward to seeing David Kelly appear in front of the committee.

Anyone who watched it live was completely blown away by it, it couldn't have been any more dramatic. The government totally shot themselves in the foot. That night on the news, the BBC got stuck right into Tony Blair and the UK government and they continued to do so for the next couple of days, exposing all the lies about the Iraq war. It seemed finally that we were going to get the whole truth, and David Kelly was the key to the whole thing.

Then David Kelly was found dead, an alleged suicide. The same day the government went on the offensive against the BBC, people in the BBC were sacked over the next few weeks, government mouthpieces started appearing on all the TV news programmes shouting down presenters and acting very very strange indeed.

That is the exact moment when it changed. The BBC started becoming very very dumbed down very very quickly. Reports on the Israel/Palestine conflict became very watered down, that was when I really knew that the government had gagged the BBC (also happened in the 80s when Thatcher was in power during the Falklands war). The only decent reports were hour long specials broadcast at 1am or 2am, the normal daily news became a joke. Even the presenters were changed.

Within a year, the ITV News (Independent TV news in the UK), which had been reporting very consistently about the whole debacle ceased broadcasting.

Now the House of Lords - very little of what goes on in there is ever covered on the news. To see it you have to watch the live broadcasts on the Parliament channel (which I don't get any more cos I cancelled my cable a few months ago). It's where law is made, the house of commons is the showpiece for the public. All the stuff they decide in the commons has to go to the Lords where it is actually discussed at a very high level of detail and intelligence before it can be made law. The Lords also recommend what the UK prime minister should be saying to foreign presidents during state visits, a good example was when Blair was going to Russia and the Lords wanted him to confront the Russians about old KGB type activity rearing its head again - fascinating stuff, not a bit of it was ever on the normal news.

The Lords are probably the most well versed people on the history of Europe you could possibly meet. It is an education watching them debate sensibly and intelligently without all the pomp and drama you get on the TV news. They have bloodlines going way way back, they are soaked in the history of Britain and Europe. (Tony Blair near the end of his term even made moves to get rid of the Lords altogether when he wanted to get his 48 days detention without trial bill passed into law, the BBC actually started running hit pieces on the Lords, another sign that the BBC had changed)

Anyway, the point is, the Lords are a bit jumpy about stuff like this, and I'm sure it won't have gotten past them. Someone will have raised it for discussion. Obama making speeches in Israel about fighting extremism is very dangerous for Britain because I have watched discussions about the oppression of Palestine in the Lords and how delicately it has to be handled because the UK is an ally of the US which is an ally of Israel. Following that up with an event reminiscent of a British coronation more than a US presidential acceptance speech will really be ringing alarm bells.

I hope you're following my line of thinking, I'm brainstorming it all right out in full flow...

To Americans, these events will be soaked in pride, hope and patriotism, there is nothing wrong with that.

But to a British politician or to the Lords who have reign over the politicians, it paints a very different picture. It's one thing when Luther King makes speeches about civil rights in this way, it's another when Obama talks about uniting forces against extremism, and even goes as far as talking about Iranian nukes. That's the language of fear, that's the kicker, that's the alarm bell - and I mean that in the most literal sense, this language of fear is one of the things Winston Churchill warned about in the tomes of books he wrote after WW2, about how the world must avoid the same thing happening again, and how he regretted that Britian didn't move sooner against Germany.

These are very specific things contained in Obama's speeches, and I really don't know what to make of it. I think you should be thankful that at least somebody in American media saw this from a perspective of history. WW2 is very fresh in the minds of people in England, the country is soaked in the history of that war in every town and city and bit of countryside and Obama's words are very potent and a bit scary to be frank in that context.

That's why I say it's all about persepective, and what makes it frightening is that Obama's speechwriters couldn't have made it any more potent in the context of WW2.

Phew.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Are you, as your name implies, from Ireland?

I'm definitely curious on your take as to why the House of Lords would have an objection to what Obama said in Israel, or the fact that he plans on giving a speech to 75,000 campaign volunteers at his nomination (different from inauguration, BTW).

I did a couple searches of BBC News's site, and it seemed to generally be reporting positive reactions in the UK and elsewhere to Obama's trip. Is the UK media as distorted as the US's these days?

Here, there's already a meme forming about how this trip is going to hurt Obama domestically.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
http://politics.videosift.com/video/Obamas-Speech-Something-the-Fuehrer-would-have-done

In regards to this, I think it's important that this stuff be posted, sifted, and discussed. I'm not into posting stuff that I personally believe or subscribe to. I'm quite the opposite, I post stuff because I want to know what people think so I can get a big brainstorm of commentary. I don't know what to make of it, but I have an excellent knowledge of WW2 and whether intentional or not this is resonates with that history and is very dangerous ground for Obama and America to be on.

To be absolutely honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if this and the Israel visit are items for discussion in the House of Lords in the UK.

>> ^choggie:
What on earth are Fox (MSNBC,CNN,ABC,CBS,NBC,Associated Press, Reuters,Al Jazeera,BBC) News doing with stuff like this?
Can they really just make stuff up, say it, and get away with it?
NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!! How bout this??? Turn off the fucking television, and Fox news disappears!!


If you turn it off it disapears to you, but not to the millions of morons that continue to watch. :-(

What on earth are Fox (MSNBC,CNN,ABC,CBS,NBC,Associated Press, Reuters,Al Jazeera,BBC) News doing with stuff like this?

Can they really just make stuff up, say it, and get away with it?

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!! How bout this??? Turn off the fucking television, and Fox news disappears!!

The GAU-8 Avenger on the A-10 Warthog is meant as a Anti-Tank weapon thus it is loaded with a combat mix munitions composed of Armor Piercing Incendiary (DU) and High Explosive Incendiary rounds.

"The GAU-8 Avenger fires a mix of both high explosive incendiary (HEI) and armored piercing incendiary (API) ammunition. A typical combat load for the GAU-8 would include 1,100 rounds of 30mm high explosive or armor piercing ammunition. The 30mm API is mixed with 30mm High Explosive Incendiary (HEI) at the factory and is called Combat Mix Ammunition. The ratio of API to HEI rounds in the Combat Mix is 4:1. Combat mix is a sequential mixture of DU and HEI rounds in which 1 HEI round followed by 4 DU rounds are fired by the AN/GAU-8 gatling gun. DU is the primary munition for the A/OA-10 in a combat environment."
FAS Article on the GAU-8 Avenger.

The combat mix is a practice solution for what is essentially a belt fed system in the air, changing munitions out is not ideal within a combat zone where targets of opportunity would change requiring a change of attack profile, the A-10 landing and switching out rounds would not work.

I believe this is a video from Afghanistan not Iraq. CAS is provided by US forces for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is an operation of NATO nations including the U.S. BBC News would report casualties, while close calls like this is a daily occurence for operations both in Afghanistan and Iraq. This was from MilitaryVideos.com

You really seem to not know about the intricate nature of the issues you raise about muslim intergration within Europe. Furthermore picking a few anti-Islamic, anti-Immigration, pro-conservative websites doesn't give the issue fair light.

This BBC News report shows the issue in better light. Also this MSNBC interactive site, the common words being mentioned is poverty, alienation, discrimination and integration problems.

The issue isn't so much religion in Europe it's social reactionism against immigration, using the Islamic religion as a scape goat to increase anti-immigration sentiment. Tell me the last time someone put the issue in favourble light in the last 7 years post 9/11 and the whole radical Islam scare, before 9/11 we could look at terrorism as simply that but now we couple it with the Islamic faith.

Islam being a religion of war? Please. If Islam was a religion of war you'd be screwed then because you know its the single largest religious denomination now in the world? But for some reason all these ideas only exist in your fantasies.

Am sick and tired of this hypocrisy with regards to claiming Islam a religion of war, you connect anything a Muslim person does to his religion, I bet if a Muslim kills an American tomorrow it won't be that one person killed another but will be reported as "Muslim Slays American".

Think of it this way from the same perspective "Christian President Declares War on Islamic Nations of Afghanistan and Iraq". There we go again. Its the myth of clash of civilizations. Go back to 1999, no one gave a shit about Islam, now post 9/11 and the media drive everyone has become a buck shot specialist on the 'threat' of Islam.

He skirts from comical to angry and I have had a difficult time taking this guy seriously when he intends to be. From blah-smirky-chuckle to raising his voice, addressing the camera makes me shudder to think what this guy's intentions are. And when he builds up a poorly executed statement from Clinton into an false encouragement to assassinate Obama, me thinks Olbermann a megalomaniac, a partial, Dr. Jeckel/Mr. Hyde kind.

When Jim Lehrer or Judy Woodruff starts commenting into the camera or if CSPAN mornings has someone who talks back to the callers then I will have to start watching BBC News for unbias U.S. news.

>> ^Farhad2000:
Hey lets not all blame the doctors here, I think your views are biased towards the US end of the health care system which is at times slanted towards heartlessness.
In my country alot of women now do Caesars because they think for some stupid reasons that it doesn't widen your pelvis and thus retains your figure. But since now its all up to patient choice the doctor cannot really convince them either way.


Oh absolutely there are a lot of women who are doing elective caesars because they:
* think it'll hurt less
* want to schedule their birth in around their oh so hectic life
* have been told 'you're just not big enough to give birth' (which in 99.999% of cases is a bald faced lie)
* think it'll be less 'embarrassing'

I'm not jumping down the US particularly on this, I'm angry at my own country, Australia. We have our very close neighbour, New Zealand, with their female prime minister, which has much, much, much better rates of intervention and caesers because they are a lot more supportive of the midwife/natural method of giving birth.

Many more happy, more empowered, more self confident women because of it.

found this picture of the aftermath on LiveLeak
Apparently it was shown on the BBC News website, then withdrawn.

Yeah, i caught the BBC news article and it made me sad

I met him at a signing many years ago, when and he's always been a really nice and centered guy.

Thankyou, it was an interesting read. I appreciated your sending it... I'm afraid it doesn't really answer my laymen's questions since I've been sent other articles advocating concerta and ritalin. It seems for every con article, there is a pro one to counter it. What's the truth? Meanwhile there are these families that are stuggling to do whats best for the their kids.
What's your opinion of this article?

In reply to this comment by Thylan:
(Added to the vid thread too)

Just come across this BBC news article on this.

In reply to this comment by swampgirl:
Thanks. I appreciate your thoughts on this. (Thylan, Redsky..Overcast) I posted this hoping to hear some advocating from both sides since I'm not sure of my own opinion on this. For years I've rallied against medicating children, but I've tried to be objective and realize that it maybe beneficial in some cases.
It is unfortunate that this label is so abused...it's a catch-all term for every child that has issues.