Faux News is in a kerfluffle tonight over Senator Obama's past association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers.  I searched the site for any diaries on this but found nothing, so here's the alert.

I just caught the tail end of a Hannity & Colmes broadcast (at least I think it was their show) and the "shocked, shocked, I say!" tone of voice over an association between Senator Obama and someone named Bill Ayers.

"Who's Bill Ayers?" I asked myself, then found close to a million google hits on "Obama AND Bill Ayers."  It was pretty much freeper sites a-go-go and it looks like this broke for them around February 28.

I'm not an international banker, nor do I play one on t.v., but reporting by John McGlynn at globalresearch.ca leads me to think he's got his eye on the arm-twisting money men over at the U.S. Treasury who, on March 20th, effectively declared that any bank that does business with any bank in Iran will not continue to do business with the international banking system.

McGlynn's headline is "Day of Infamy: The March 20, 2008 US Declaration of War on Iran"

Yesterday, December 21st, marked the Winter Solstice - the shortest day and longest night of the year for people living in the northern hemisphere. From now through summer we'll receive minutes more sunlight each day: life-giving energy for crops, animals and people. For our ancestors living beyond 10,000 years ago up until the present day, the celebrations of Winter Solstice have been all about "The (Re)birth of the Sun."

We have archeological proof that, among others, the northern Chinese, ancient Iranians, Neolithic Europeans, the ancient Egyptians, Abyssinians, Syrians, Jews, Greeks, and Romans, the Maya, Inca, Pueblo and Hopi Indians all celebrated the winter solstice, and the vast majority of our Christmas customs are derived from these pre-Christian civilizations.

Follow me if you'd like ...

Yesterday saw the debut of America's new central command for the African continent with a quiet announcement that AFRICOM is now taking over that continent's operations from the European, Central and Pacific commands.  General William "Kip" Ward, the Army's only black four-star general, will oversee the newly created entity.

It isn't everyday that the U.S. creates a new, continent-wide central command. As a member of this community, I think AfriCom should be duly noted.  (drum roll)

Someone hung a 15 y.o. boy yesterday in Helmond province in Afghanistan and stuffed five U.S. one dollar bills in his mouth as a warning to others.

Who hanged the boy?  As reported:

The Taliban warned villagers that they would face the same punishment if they were caught with dollars," said Wali Mohammad, the district police chief in Sangin.

Britain’s Sunday Telegraph reports on a Gulf air warfare conference in D.C. last week attended by the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.  It seems that

Pentagon air chiefs have helped set up an air warfare centre in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where Gulf nations are training their fighter pilots and America has big bases. It is modeled on the US Air Force warfare centre at Nellis air force base in Nevada.

Jordan and the UAE have both taken part in combined exercises designed to make sure their air forces can fly, and fight, together and with American jets.

As the Telegraph notes:

Gen Michael Mosley, the US Air Force chief of staff, used the conference to seek closer links with allies whose support America might need if President George W Bush chooses to bomb Iran.

You've probably seen the news about the ammunition shortage in the U.S.  Seems our local police forces can't train up with live ammo rounds which, while it isn't causing me to lose sleep, is getting play in the nation's local press. Of course this information has been around for a few years, but for whatever reason, sick of Vick diaries, this news caught my attention again today.

The reason for the shortage is the  One billion bullets used every year in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Those wacky Canadians!  I wrote a diary about the upcoming SPP protests in Canada a week or so ago, and junta0201 wrote one on 8/13 that is oh so much better than mine.  Both diaries detail the concerns of progressive Canadians over the closed-door meeting(s) between Bush, Harper and Calderon in Montebello, Quebec, and their determination to come out in force across Canada with a big FU!.  Today's the day, and my diary title is taken from one of the signs protestors are holding.

I had a conversation just yesterday with a 52 y.o. progressive woman who's decided she's not voting in 2008.  In fact, while I'll admit right up front that most of my friends are far left [though the national dialog as been pushed so far right that I'm not sure what that means anymore], I was surprised to hear two other friends voice the same opinion less than a week ago.  

Please understand, these are politically savvy people who worked their asses off for Al Gore in 2000 and Howard Dean or Wes Clark or, finally, John Kerry in 2004.  They grumbled and spit while they were doing it, because none of the candidates was as progressive as they wanted/needed/sought, but they ran voter drives, acted as Dem observers at polling places, raised money at house parties and prayed hard that the American people had woken up from the nightmare called GWB.

A new report from the government of India, covered today at Yahoo News tells us that
Seventy-seven percent of Indians -- about 836 million people -- live on less than half a dollar a day in one of the world's hottest economies.

According to Netaid,

Living in extreme poverty (less than $1 a day) means not being able to afford the most basic necessitites to ensure survival. 8 million people a year die from absolute poverty.

But let's focus on the global "rich", making close to $1.00 a day.  Net Aid's page on Global Poverty tells us that

Over 1 billion people—1 in 6 people around the world—live in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1 a day.

Follow me to find out what the G-8 finance leaders thought about all of this after their May meeting this year.

I'm leaving for work, but given the anti-immigrant hysteria gripping the nation, this headline from antiwar.com caught my attention.  Talk about piling-on.

Evidently the DEA issued a report in 2005 indicating that Arab terr'ists are crossing our southern border speaking spanish and establishing cells wherever Hispanics live.

Yesterday, Rep. Ed Royce of California, ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs terrorism and nonproliferation subcommittee, said the DEA document substantiates information that his committee has been given in the past year.

more ...

There have been two diaries this week on the Canadian protests being arranged for the Security & Prosperity Partnership Summit in Quebec on August 20th, my own , yesterday, and junta0201's vastly superior diary written on August 2nd.

Both diaries attempt to ask why the SPP and its working body, the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), a corporate led initiative without any press or public input , is galvanizing progressive Canada, but lacks any real discussion on progressive blogs in the U.S.

Perhaps 'galvinize' isn't the right word.  Canadian progressives are up in arms ...

Canadian progressives have called for a day of national action on August 20-21, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be meeting in Montebello, Quebec with U.S. President George Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón for a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America Summit. What can have the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Labour Council so riled up?

Well, from wiki, there's this:

Despite a lack of in-depth information about the North American Competitiveness Council (the 'working group' for the SPP - editor's note), opposition to it in both the U.S. and Canada has focused on the fact that it grants the corporate sector a formal role in the Security and Prosperity Partnership which has thus far been denied to the public, citizens organizations, labour and many legislators, who are still in the dark about the continental pact. In Canada, the Council of Canadians has run several articles about the NACC in its publication, Canadian Perspectives. The citizens organization is calling for the corporate body to be disbanded, and for the Security and Prosperity Partnership to be brought to the Canadian Parliament for a full legislative debate.

We're having a heat wave in the northeast - nearly 95 today in south Jersey.  But, it's between 110 - 120 in Iraq every day during the summer. Iraqis are dying from the heat and the lack of fresh water. Today we are told that

One of the biggest problems facing the national (electricy) grid is the move by provinces to disconnect their power plants from the system, reducing the amount of electricity being generated across the country. Provinces say they have no choice because they are not getting as much electricity in return for what they produce, mainly because the capital requires so much power.

More beneath the fold ...

Each week for a couple of months dopper0189 has written a roundup with links to blogs and and other sources on issues pertinent to black Americans.

This is going to be short: On his best week, Black Kos Week in Review has garnered 47 comments.  The talking heads on cable news shows (Bill O'Reilly) totally energize this community, garnering hundreds (if not thousands of comments over a period of days), but Black Kos can't draw a crowd?  

Something's rotten in Denmark, methinks.  What say you?

Americans will now be able to sit in front of a video/computer terminal in Arizona and target bombing sites in Afganistan and Iraq, 7,000 miles away with a new weapon.  The "Reaper" carries 7 times the amount of Hellfire missiles compared to the antiquated Predator drones, which now only carry two.  The new "hunter killer drones", loaded with one ton of munitions and titled the "Reaper" because

The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.

will be able to stay aloft for 14 hours "watching and waiting for targets to emerge."

Or is it more?"  That's the title of an article on alternet.org by Michael Schwartz from AfterDowningStreet, an article that takes another look at the 2006 Lancet study (postulating 650,000 Iraqi deaths at the time it was published) and goes on to explore how such numbers might come into being.

Scwhartz makes a strong and reasoned case by, among other examples, highling the Haditha massacre and the now current Navy investigation of marines accused of killing 10 unarmed captives in Fallujah in 2004 ... but alternet has more for us if we care to see.  

http://www.alternet.org/...

The video blog "Hometown Baghdad" has been making international waves since its advent less than a year ago.  The blog is managed by a group of young Baghdadi guys, fluent in English, wired into the international youth culture, some of whom are musicians and all of whom struggle to maintain a kind of mordant hope in the face of daily destruction.  One of the young men, Adel, recently traveled with his family to Syria in search of a job for his father.  Finding nothing, the family was forced to return home.  His video blog about their return is titled "Trouble Finds Its Way".