My 2 cent, Bush the younger has been slapping his dick all over the world for the past 8 years, of course China have been “doing stuff” under the radar.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Apr 18 2009 12:11 utc | 4

On torture … from the DailyBeast – The Torture Problem Is Going to Get Worse

One thing to add: The memos also spell out the central involvement of a certain CIA contractor—a psychologist from a military agency who played a major role in coming up with the techniques that were used in the CIA program. The psychologist is not named in the memos but his identity has been reported elsewhere: James E. Mitchell.
Mitchell, who does not appear to have a psychology license and has not conducted any relevant academic research on the methods he advocated, played a central role in convincing the CIA that the abusive techniques would be effective. And he did quite well for himself as a CIA contractor: Since 2006, he has built his family a large luxury house on lakefront property north of Tampa, Florida; he also bought a Lexus SUV and his wife a convertible BMW. The CIA psychologist who crafted the torture program and got rich doing so—what better witness could there be for a congressional investigation?

Posted by: Outraged | Apr 18 2009 14:35 utc | 6

. On Friday, a Palestinian man was killed after he was struck in the chest by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops dispersing a protest against Israel’s West Bank separation barrier.
deja vu. using tear gas canister as lethal weapon?

Posted by: annie | Apr 18 2009 16:18 utc | 8

In short, how much of the apparent US productivity miracle, a miracle not shared by Europe, was a statistical illusion created by our bloated finance industry? -Krugman.
Krugman is a good barometer, that is, he only mentions something when he thinks it might be appropriate, have some echo, and be agreeable to 20% (that is the rule, 20, you need at least that, and have to expect it to grow). One has to mix in a few ‘radical’ things as well.
That is the fate, and/or modus operandi of so called public intellectuals, analysts, respected, mainstream, high-earning, high-exposure in one field or another. It is a good living but quite boring; the role played is close to a politician’s role, with some of influence mixed in. Now he suddenly comes to questioning the role of ‘finance’ when many bloggers, politicians, officials, bankers, state employees (always minor voices) have been doing so since 2005, specifically for this recent debacle.
Krugman must be being disingenious here, unless he is an idiot, which is of course always possible. The GDP and other stats. such as unemployment are not meaningful, artificial, and moreover cooked, a fantasy constructed on ridiculous measures in favor of feel-good numbers. If he reads the professional literature he knows this; if he has thought about productivity and living standards, etc. EU-US, he knows at least that the relevant issues are elsewhere. Sure, ‘bloated finance’ is true, ppl sending checks to each other back n forth or borrowing and lending with different interest rates don’t produce anything of use or value, it is gambling and paperwork. A Nobel prize winner suddenly discovers this? Pathetic.

Posted by: Tangerine | Apr 18 2009 17:04 utc | 10

@Cater Wauling – could please crap elsewhere?

Posted by: b | Apr 18 2009 18:24 utc | 12

bombshell from the baltimore sun
Army’s claims for survival rate in Iraq don’t hold up
Deaths in the past few years rival casualty statistics from Vietnam War

By one measurement — the percentage of all injured troops who die — the battlefield casualty rate is at an historic low. In Vietnam the rate was 15.8 percent; in Iraq it is roughly 10 percent.
But according to the raw data, which must be gathered from two separate federal agencies to calculate a survival rate, the change comes from a sharp rise in the number of injuries so minor that casualties did not have to be removed from duty.

does this mean by flooding the statistics w/minor injuries the all over percentage goes down?

The standard measurement of battlefield survival, Bellamy said, is a comparison of the number of deaths and the number of serious injuries — those severe enough to prevent a casualty from returning to duty within three days. And to determine the role of medical care, the military typically separates death reports into casualties who die before reaching a hospital and those who die afterward.
Using those measurements, the improvements are harder to find.
The rate at which troops with serious injuries die before reaching a hospital, which the military calls Killed in Action, is roughly 15.5 percent in Iraq, compared to 20 percent for the whole Vietnam War. But despite the Army’s introduction in Iraq of advanced tourniquets, HemCon blood-clotting dressings and other changes geared at saving lives on the battlefield, the KIA rate has risen steadily since early 2005. If only the last three years are considered, the rate is roughly the same as it was in Vietnam 35 years ago.
Meanwhile patients who survive to reach a hospital — a separate category that the military terms Died of Wounds — are almost twice as likely to die today than the comparable group was in Vietnam. And despite changes in transfusion practices, the use of blood-clotting drugs and other innovations, that rate climbed steadily for the first three years of the war and has remained at roughly 5.2 percent since the start of 2007. The Died of Wounds rate in Vietnam was 3.2 percent.

Posted by: annie | Apr 18 2009 23:02 utc | 14