In a comment to an Afghanistan post at The Moderate Voice last night, I reported some breaking news published by the New York Times. It dealt with the discovery of nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in war-torn Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and “enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government...

A very big bucks new twist has been added to the context of Afghanistan: the U.S. has discovered some $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan — a finding that is likely to urge some to keep the U.S. there, some to pull out, rosy predictions about Afghanistan’s easier future, and gloomier predictions that with the country’s stultifying corruption the find could eventually trigger...

The coverage of the BP disaster is pretty much non stop but what we have not heard is that it may not be possible to stop it.  But there is another potential toxic invasion.  This month has not been a quiet one for the booming Marcellus Shale natural gas well drilling industry, and the commotion has the attention of Debbie Borowiec of Upper Burrell, where two gas wells are planned near 67 homes on...

There are many different types of elitism and, contrary to populist memes or egalitarianism, not all of them are bad. Elitism in the workplace is a force to motivate higher achievement and to punish laziness. And elitism in education is the sole remaining bulwark against the anti-intellectualism of post-modernism and the “diversity movement”. But elitism in government regulation of lifestyle choices...

In Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday, the NYTimes takes a feature look at the Singularity, “a time, possibly just a couple decades from now, when a superior intelligence will dominate and life will take on an altered form that we can’t predict or comprehend in our current, limited state.” An obvious focus of the piece is the Singularity’s primary proponent and advocate, futurist Ray Kurzweil....

Snippets of this story have been all over TV and the Net. According to this article from Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda, the Soviets used the technique of nuking out of control well heads five times – although never on the ocean bottom. According to columnist Vladimir Lagovskiy, however, it should work just as well a mile below the Gulf. For Komsomolskaya Pravda, Vladimir Lagovskiy writes in part: It’s...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri

So much of the BP oil spill damage in the Gulf of Mexico is predicated on educated guesses but the speculation I consider most relevant in the long-term is whether the British-based conglomerate will declare bankruptcy for its North American division. At first blush, the idea appears preposterous because it would involve shutting down or selling all its drilling and contractual obligations to the U.S. Defense...

As Worldmeets.US has been documenting over the past month, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has come under fire both from within and without his country for opposing tougher U.N. sanctions against Iran, which are championed by not only the United States and Europe, but Russia and China as well. In this broadside against Lula, columnist Sergio Malbergier of Brazil’s Folha newspaper...

I am open to alternative explanations, but this story from Jake Tapper about Admiral Allen and the White House not knowing about the manufacturer in Maine who could manufacture 3 million feet of absorbent boom a month is a consequence of an almost total lack of private sector experience in Obama’s cabinet. TAPPER: I talked to a guy who runs a company in Maine that offers boom, and he has – he says –...

I first raised the analogy a week ago. Then again earlier this week. Then I suggested the concept might be more appropriately described, per Donny Deutsch, as a “Sputnik moment.” Last night, Timothy Egan returned to Apollo 13 to again consider the underlying question: When, where, why, and how did we lose the ability to inspire, organize, and unleash the unflappable power of American ingenuity?...

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

EM Forster and Facebook by Tina Dupuy “Big Brother” is watching you in a very “Orwellian” way. Has been for years. People who have never heard of George Orwell know of the term “Big Brother.” In many ways his dark vision of what the year 1984 would look like is prophetic. For example, his novel 1984 takes place during a never-ending war while technology is aiding an over-reaching government. I read...

Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

I am wondering why I can’t get clear confirmation on answers to certain questions: 1. If a ‘no fly zone‘ has been put into place over the hemorrhaging oil line in the Gulf, who ordered that? The US government, or British Petroleum or whom? 2. Have there been people arrested in that area, and how many, and for what reasons? Who exactly has ordered that citizens or reporters/ photographer be...

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune This copyrighted cartoon is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

With the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, is it time for Americans to well and truly change their lifestyles? According to Martin Laubli of Switzerland’s Tages Anzeiger, President Obama needs to lead the world by pointedly rejecting George H.W. Bush’s 1992 statement that ‘The American way of life is non-negotiable.’ For Tages Anzeiger, Martin Laubli writes in part: Obama has the opportunity...

Farhad Manjoo describes today’s Steve Jobs’ keynote speech as underwhelming: Gizmodo did Jobs’ presentation for him. In April, the gadget site purchased and dissected an iPhone prototype that an Apple employee had left behind in a Bay Area bar, and in May, another prototype somehow surfaced on a tech blog in Vietnam. As punishment, Apple banished Gizmodo from Jobs’ speech at the company’s...

Forget my Apollo 13 analogy. Donny Deutsch’s use of the phrase, “Sputnik moment,” better conveys what I’ve been trying to express in my prior posts on this topic: The need for transcendental leadership from the White House, for the President to rally the nation with a bold plan for engaging our best and brightest, focusing their energies (and ours) on a common cause. Visit msnbc.com...

When it comes to the BP oil crisis, is Obama the victim of circumstances beyond his control – or is he partly to blame? Whatever the answer, according to Der Tagesspiegel columnist Malte Lehming, it would be tragic if the ‘drill-happy’ Republicans benefited from the biggest oil disaster in U.S. history. From Der Tagesspiegel, Malte Lehming writes in part: The oil disaster is threatening the...

Following up on my post from last week — wherein I suggested we needed a more systematic, comprehensive approach to involving more brains in the search for solutions to the Gulf oil spill disaster — I’d like to first offer an apology. I pointed to this article and suggested that more than the following was needed … The Unified Command overseeing the Deepwater Horizon disaster features...

WASHINGTON — The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has created a double bind for the Obama administration. How it deals with a challenge even more complicated than it looks will determine the kind of summer the president has and the kind of election the Democrats will face this fall. The obvious problem is how the administration can get ahead of a disaster that promises to be a running story for much...

John Herrman says Microsoft — “the lumbering giant, the sprawling monster” with more experience online than Apple and Google combined — is best positioned for Our Future in the Cloud: [O]ur phones will be mere extensions of our online epicenters; bulging hubs of data from which we conduct our computing, and our lives. Of course [Microsoft's new social network-y, seriously flawed, and...

Tony Hayward, the BP chief executive whose credibility has jumped the shark told a British Broadcasting Co. audience Sunday that engineers have siphoned off a majority of the Deepwater Horizons oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Hayward, who earlier made such pronouncements that the spill will have only minor environmental impact on the Gulf Coast region, said engineers have managed to divert 10,000 barrels of...

The Bright Side of the BP Oil Spill by Will Durst To say the news coming out of the Gulf is not what you call encouraging is like saying it’s been a rough week for Dennis Hopper. And it’s making people crazy. No. Really. Crazy. Louisiana native and Democratic strategist James Carville went off on the President like a string of overstuffed firecrackers in a pot-bellied stove. And for Carville to savage...