In a case of unprecedented brinksmanship in a European Union antitrust battle, regulators threatened on Thursday to impose millions of euros in daily fines on Microsoft for defying orders designed to give consumers and businesses broader choice in the market for software that runs office computer networks.

Microsoft threatened with daily EU fines - Business - International Herald Tribune

2005 was already the year of the demagogue, having been dominated for months by the endlessly echoed falsehood that the president "lied us into war." But the year ends with yet another round of demagoguery.

Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president's actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.

Charles Krauthammer Impreachment Nonsense Washington Post Op Ed

In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

two opinions

Power We Didn't Grant

It is terrific that Iraqis just had another free and fair election and that some 11 million people voted. Americans should be proud that we helped to bring that about in a region that has so rarely experienced any sort of democratic politics.

But what's still unclear is this: Who and what were Iraqis voting for? Were they voting for Kurdish sectarian leaders, who they hope will gradually split Kurdistan off from Iraq? Were they voting for pro-Iranian Shiite clerics, who they hope will carve out a Shiite theocratic zone between Basra and Baghdad? Were they voting for Sunni tribal leaders, who they hope will restore the Sunnis to their "rightful" place - ruling everyone else? Or, were they voting for a unified Iraq and for politicians whom they expect to compromise and rewrite the Constitution into a broadly accepted national compact?

The Measure of Success - New York Times

A court in the US has ruled against the teaching of "intelligent design" alongside Darwin's theory of evolution.

good

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | 'Intelligent design' teaching ban

Grainne Close and Shannon Sickles stepped out of a black taxi and into history.

The two women had become "engaged" in New York three years earlier but it was the city of Belfast which was to offer them the first opportunity to "tie the knot".

Holding hands and in the full glare of the waiting media, Ms Close, wearing a black trouser suit, declared: "This is for all the people who went before us ... "

Ms Sickles, wearing a white trouser suit, finished her partner's sentence like any true "married" couple: "... and all the people who would like to come after us."

congratulations to them

BBC NEWS | UK | Out of the ceremony, into history

WHAT if they held a culture war and no one fired a shot? That's the compelling tale of "Brokeback Mountain." Here is a heavily promoted American movie depicting two men having sex - the precise sex act that was still a crime in some states until the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws just two and a half years ago - but there is no controversy, no Fox News tar and feathering, no roar from the religious right. "Brokeback Mountain" has instead become the unlikely Oscar favorite, propelled by its bicoastal sweep of critics' awards, by its unexpected dominance of the far less highfalutin Golden Globes and, perhaps most of all, by the lure of a gold rush. Last weekend it opened to the highest per-screen average of any movie this year.

Two Gay Cowboys Hit a Home Run - New York Times

Over the past few years, the Iraq war has morphed from a war of liberation against Saddam into a civil conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. And when you look at this civil conflict - or civil war if you want to call it that - you see how typical it is of many of the civil wars we've seen in the world over the past six decades. Over that time, there have been 225 civil wars, and many of them have featured the same sort of insurgency and counterinsurgency, the same ethnic feuding and the same pattern of elections intermingled with violence that we see in Iraq today.

Taking a Long View of the Iraq Conflict - New York Times

It emerged last week that the U.S. Department of Defense has been selling the war to Iraqis by covertly planting fake news in their media; paying Iraqi newspapers to run favorable stories.

i would particularly recommend reading the transcript of the wicked propagandist BBC.
i read the transcript and thought yes that's pretty much the coverage i would expect of a bbc reporter embedded with a british unit. it gives a british grunt's eye view of the war on the ground and the mission. if i was a bbc embedded journalist i might have produced something similiar. if british journalists felt free and safe to explore the country and get a genuine iraqi perspective without the fear of being kidnapped and beheaded then there would be more balance but you can't blame the bbc for that. what exactly does aljazeera expect? the bbc will inevitably sometimes give the point of view of british soldiers when reporters are embedded, and share a common language nationality and culture with their companions but that does not make it pro war propaganda. i beleive in the ability of western journalists to, occasionally stand back and challenge their working assumptions. I don't think aljazeera is being malicious but it is being naive about the ability of individuals to detach themselves from their own culture. I also believe aljazeera in some of its reporting, of note particularly in its section on conspiracies, could learn quite a few lessons about impariality. It is the job of journalists to tell "stories". It is the duty of journalists to mediate their own reality as experienced by predominantly middle-class males and fight to subdue point of view and reach towards objective reality. i am sure a brief survey of some of the al-jazeera coverage of israel might reveal less than olympian impartiality. Al-jazeera is an important counter balance to the western media but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

UK too promotes Iraq war propaganda?

The U.S. media is ignoring the torture carried by U.S. military forces. Although the military reports provide a full description of the suffering the prisoners face, the U.S. media refuses to tackle the issue. Prisoners are tortured to death under the supervision of the U.S. forces.

U.S. media hides evidence of torture

When it comes to Iraq, if the United States is going to stay, then Rumsfeld has to go.

Let Rumsfeld Go