Blatant Reality

Recent poll findings suggest that the Muslim world is taking a more critical eye to suicide bombings. In multiple Middle East countries, minus Palestine, over 65% of Muslims surveyed believed that suicide bombings should Rarely or Never happen.

Read the complete report from The Pew Global Attitudes Project in .pdf form here.

UPDATE: Even with this heartening news, we are still by far seen as the most threatening nation, receiving eight more votes than Iran.

Notably, the United States is named about as often as a close ally as it is named the biggest threat by respondents in the 47-nation survey. No other single country or international institution was as frequently cited as a top ally or threat, including Iran.

However, we were seen as the closest ally by a huge majority, though there were only two more ally votes than enemy. Read more by clicking on The Pew Global Attitudes Project link above.

In their talks with South Korea, North Korea wants to redraw its borders with the Yellow Sea.

North Korea pressed South Korea yesterday to discuss redrawing their disputed sea border, the scene of bloody clashes in the past, as the two sides began high-level military talks on easing tensions.

The Pakistani Supreme Court has handed down a ruling declaring that Musharraf has to be re-elected between September and October of this year by the Pakistani Parliament.

According to a Supreme Court decision, General Musharraf must be re-elected between September and October this year. He has two options for this, one is to seek re-election from the present assembly and the other is to seek re-election from a new assembly.

Losing Musharraf without making a successful shift over to democracy may be very detrimental to the War on Terror. I would highly recommend reading this comprehensive Foreign Affairs story about Pakistan.

The British Government is footing the bill of more than £20,000 ($40,000) to get a terrorist who tried to kill innocents a skin graft. Why? I have no idea. This man should be tried and executed for plans to commit (mass) murder. The sad thing is that this criminal is probably getting preferential treatment and there is some other poor soul who would die (no pun intended) to get this same procedure.

Read this article here.

In response to a Los Angeles Times article, CNNMoney countered with an article blasting the Times for blaming the resurgence of malaria in the African highlands solely on global warming.

In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report that concluded: “Doubts exist as to the plausibility of climate change as proximate cause of epidemic malaria, because global warming cannot explain the World War II epidemics. Dramatic increases in malaria in the 1990s are not mirrored by prospectively collected climate data.”

 

Last year, faced with a body count that rivals AIDS as the leading killer in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Health Organization announced it was giving DDT a “clean bill of health.” DDT is safe for humans and “remarkably effective” when a small amount of DDT is sprayed in the indoor walls of houses and huts, it said.

 

“DDT presents no health risk when used properly indoors,” Dr. Arata Kochi, director of the WHO’s malaria program told environmental groups at the National Press Club in Washington. “Well-managed indoor spraying programs using DDT pose no harm to wildlife or humans.”

I’m a firm believer in the use of DDT. For developing countries with mosquito problems, it is a must to prevent unnecessary deaths.

Read the rest of the CNNMoney article here.

Good list of Republican Senators up for reelection in 2008 and analysis of their chances for success.

North Korea’s lackadaisical approach to the nuclear talks delayed South Korea’s life sustaining shipment of food.

Starvation deaths in North Korea have returned to 1990s levels. That means over a thousand people a week dying from lack of food. Over a million people died during the 1990s food shortages. This time around, the shortages are caused by government refusal to allow in food that must have its distribution monitored (making it difficult for the government to divert the food to the army or private sale). The government also took its time with the current round of nuclear disarmament talks, delaying shipments of food from South Korea. These have just arrived and are being distributed.

Read the rest here.

And he didn’t even know what it was! Read the article here.

Bob Carter, along with bashing global warming in general, states that there really hasn’t been any real warming in the lower-atmostphere in the past 30 years.

“Second, lower-atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).”

More reason for me to be a global warming skeptic.

A Mercury News Opinion author wrote a story about how the internet is affecting the 2008 presidential election.

Even though he recognize the importance of the Internet in the coming presidential election, they are still rankled by their inability to control what we see. The author states that we, the uneducated masses, “may not understand the source or accuracy” of a video or blog on the web.

What the author forgets is that the internet is interactive and allows people to think. If people don’t like or are confused about something they read on a blog, a majority of the time they are allowed to make their thoughts known right there. With television and newspapers, they aren’t allowed this option.

The author assumes that everything the mainstream media publishes is accurate and the sources are true. However, as we all know, the main stream media has been plagued with inaccurate reports such as the false beheading in Iraq the past month.

As I have stated in the About Us section of this website, always check the facts for yourself. I think bloggers and those who read blogs are the ones more likely to do this than anyone who relies strictly on the MSM for information.