How do I know that I'm still alive?  Suppose I had dropped dead during the night.  How would I "know" that didn't happen?  Just thinking.

I love the smell of roast chicken in the morning!

The Obama administration is standing firm in its support of several George W. Bush-era Patriot Act powers in the face of sharp criticism from civil rights groups, liberal Democrats and a Dec. 31 deadline to extend key provisions of the bill.

The Justice Department recently reiterated its request for Congress to extend with few changes key provisions of the Patriot Act: sections that allow roving wiretaps on multiple phones, seizing of business records and a never-used authority to spy on non-Americans suspected of being terrorists even though they have no connection to a recognized terrorist group....

At least six bills to reauthorize the act have been offered in the House and Senate, revealing Democratic divisions that must be overcome.[?] The administration appears to have convinced Leahy and his Senate colleagues on Judiciary, which passed a bill in early October that would renew the expiring powers for four years, with modest changes. The House Judiciary bill includes slightly stricter standards that the government must meet to win approval for a roving wiretap, access library or bookstore records and issue national security letters, demands for information without a court order....

Other than the letter to Leahy, so far the Justice Department has not publicly provided detailed reasons for keeping the Patriot Act provisions largely intact. In recent weeks, however, the administration has hailed its interception of an alleged domestic terrorism plot involving a legal U.S. resident from Afghanistan -- Najibullah Zazi, whom the government says is linked to al Qaeda -- as proof that the Patriot Act needs to be renewed. Disclosure of the 55-page written response from the Justice Department comes one week before Holder is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on general oversight issues.

A group of French students and workers, protesting against record youth unemployment and a lack of state help, are squatting at a mansion on one of Paris's oldest and most fashionable squares, the Place des Vosges.

"Squatting here is maybe the best thing for my morale, but as far as the rest is concerned, I can't see a light at the end of the tunnel," said Margaux, a 24-year-old urban planning student at Paris University, who declined to provide her last name. "I'm struggling to find a home and in the future I know I will struggle to find a job. You'd be surprised how little there is for young people to look forward to in France."...

Margaux and 30 other activists broke into and occupied the three-storey, 17th-century building late last month. With its high, carved and painted ceilings and oak floors, the stone mansion stands in same square where Victor Hugo, the author of "Les Miserables," once lived. It is also near a house owned by International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's wife Anne Sinclair.

The squatters, who may be ejected by the police, will try to stay in the house, once owned by the Marquise de Sevigne, until winter ends in March. The 2,000 square-meter (21,528 sq- feet) house overlooking a manicured lawn and other red and white mansions with dark blue slate roofs, belongs to an 84-year-old French woman, who bought it in 1963 and has never lived in it.

Hurting Youth

Data from the French statistics office, Insee, shows that unemployment among people aged 15 to 24 rose at the fastest pace on record during the economic crisis, adding 6.5 percentage points between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of this year. During the 1993 crisis, youth unemployment rose 3.3 percentage points.  

 "Who wants to know ?"

But why is he being published in the Guardian?

And, if the Guardian's going to insist on publishing Americans, could it please find some who aren't complete morons?  It's tough, I know, but not impossible.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

In the constitutional negotiations, he helped the Kurds ram through provisions that gave their region -- rather than the central Baghdad government -- sole authority over many of their internal affairs, including clauses that he maintains will give the Kurds virtually complete control over all new oil finds on their territory....

So it came as a shock to many last month when a group of Norwegian investigative journalists at the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv began publishing documents linking Mr. Galbraith to a specific Norwegian oil company with major contracts in Iraq.

Interviews by The New York Times with more than a dozen current and former government and business officials in Norway, France, Iraq, the United States and elsewhere, along with legal records and other documents, reveal in considerable detail that he received rights to an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan's oil fields in the spring of 2004.

As it turns out, Mr. Galbraith received the rights after he helped negotiate a potentially lucrative contract that allowed the Norwegian oil company DNO to drill for oil in the promising Dohuk region of Kurdistan, the interviews and documents show. He says his actions were proper because he was at the time a private citizen deeply involved in Kurdish causes, both in business and policy....

DNO's chief executive, Helge Eide, confirmed that Mr. Galbraith helped negotiate the Tawke deal and advised the company during 2005. But Mr. Eide said that Mr. Galbraith acted solely as a political adviser and that the company never discussed the Constitution negotiations with him. "We certainly never did give any input, language or suggestions on the Constitution," Mr. Eide said.

Does Biased News Have a 'Time Bomb' Effect?

A European study shows that, over time, even the most sophisticated readers can be manipulated.

http://gawker.com/5402172/the-shake-rattle-decline-and-fall-of-american-empire

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Barrick shuts hedge book as world gold supply runs out

Global gold production is in terminal decline despite record prices and Herculean efforts by mining companies to discover fresh sources of ore in remote spots, according to the world's top producer Barrick Gold.

Tony Blair unfit for EU Presidency

by André Nilsen

Recommendation to the European Council

The European Council should not make Tony Blair its first permanent President but instead choose a low-profile, consensual, trusted, multilateralist, centrist, progressive, diplomatic, Europeanist, forward-looking, and public-spirited woman or man among the many excellent other candidates.

OCGG Government Recommendation No 7 (PDF)

 

Soccernomics: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, and the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey,  --and Even Iraq-- Are Destined to Become the KINGS OF THE WORLD'S MOST POPULAR SPORT

It's chock full of less statistics than i expected, and it's heavy on the Premiere League and teams supported by fascist dictators, but some graphs even. One thing's for sure, it will change the discussion of the game, if it hasn't already.

one poster child for the Thesis: Olympique Lyon. Hi melancthon.

Skennah Kowa

The Institute of Caribbean Studies of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras invites the academic community and the general public to the lecture "La controversia marítima y territorial entre Colombia y Nicaragua: Implicaciones, retos y reflexiones" [The Maritime and Territorial Controversy between Colombia and Nicaragua: Implications, Challenges, and Reflections] by Silvia Mantilla Valbuena, professor and researcher from the Institute of Caribbean Studies of the National University of Colombia in San Andrés. Dr. María del Pilar Argüelles (Political Science Department, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras) will serve as commentator. The talk will be held on Tuesday, November 17, 2009, from 1:00 to 3:00pm in Amphitheater CRA 108, Carmen Rivera de Alvarado Building, School of Social Sciences, at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras.

Hope to see you all there.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne