flickering pictures

This summer, the Iranian government brutally suppressed citizen unrest following an election that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad won in a landslide. The consensus — on the left, on the right, and everywhere in between — is that the election was rigged.
Five months later, the anti-Ahmedinejad protests have become more muted — probably due in […]

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Go on, find Palau on a map without Googling it — I double dog dare you.
Its 21,000 citizens have only had a country for 15 years, but the Pacific mini-state of Palau is already distinguishing itself by welcoming 17 Chinese Guantanamo inmates with open arms, and inviting them to settle wherever they like on its […]

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Yes, it’s a rock. But a lot of people want it. Here’s why.
The creatively named island of Rockall sits just northwest of Ireland and south of Iceland in the Atlantic Ocean, and unless you to listen to BBC shipping forecasts, it’s a safe bet you’ve never heard of it. At about 83 […]

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The Vatican has rejected yet another potential U.S. ambassador — Caroline Kennedy this time — because even though she’s Catholic, she isn’t anti-abortion. And as if to drive home the point, the Vatican chose Easter to express its outrage at Washington’s “calculated insult to the Holy See.”
Washington’s previous nominee, a former lawyer for Reagan […]

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CNN takes a rare look beyond the borders of the Homeland to chronicle Britain’s long, proud tradition of throwing disgusting things in politicians’ faces. It’s not exactly news, but it beats the hell out of this, so we’ll call it a step in the right direction:
Here’s an excerpt:

Friday’s custard attack by an environmental campaigner […]

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To voice its displeasure about joint South Korean-U.S. military exercises, North Korea is threatening to shoot down civilian airplanes that venture near its airspace — even if they don’t actually enter it. Russia, China, South Korea and Japan may have something to say about that.
From the BBC:

In the latest of a series of bellicose […]

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Population of Washington, D.C.: 572,059
Number of people attending Obama’s inauguration: 2,000,000+
Wow.
Update: The Toronto Star created a word cloud from Obama’s acceptance speech, and it turns out he didn’t use the word “evildoer” a single time.
Image via New York Times.

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The quote of the day comes from Republican National Committee chairman Mike Duncan, who’s leading the GOP’s charge into social media:

“We have to do it in the Facebook, with the Twittering, the different technology that young people are using today.”

Is it just me, or does the phrase “do it in the Facebook” sound just ever […]

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The presidential pardon has got to be one of the strangest traditions in Washington. How exactly is justice served when an outgoing president hands out clean slates to a dozen or so convicted criminals, just because he’s a few weeks away from retirement? Why should a president have the power to bypass the […]

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Not that it’s any of my business, since I’m not American, but on behalf of the rest of the world, congratulations on choosing the best person for the job. We — and 52% of America — could be wrong about him, and we’ll have four years to find out, but in terms at least […]

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