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Demcracy Now with Amy Goodman | TV Channel
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America's #1 Populist - Jim Hightower On Air
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Mark Fiore Animated Political Cartoons
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Documentary - Bilderberg and the Obama Deception
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Daniel Estulin on the Bilderberg Group | Video
On Coast to Coast - Tuesday, May 25, 2010
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Breaking News

Real clear Politics Daily Rundown
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At least 10 activists killed in Israel Navy clashes onboard Gaza aid flotilla
Haaratz.com - By Anshel Pfeffer, Avi Issacharoff - Sunday, May 31, 2010
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Israel Defense Force says 10 activists killed, 2 commandos wounded, troops attacked when trying to board ships; Turkish TV says over 60 pro-Palestinian campaigners wounded after aid convoy bound for Gaza ignored Israel's order to turn back.

WATCH, or read more details about the incident here:
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Gaza Flotilla Attacked: Israel Storms Aid Ship
The Huffington Post / AP - Monday, May 31, 2010
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JERUSALEM - Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing nine passengers in a botched raid that provoked international outrage and a diplomatic crisis.

Dozens of activists and six Israeli soldiers were wounded in the bloody predawn confrontation in international waters. The violent takeover dealt yet another blow to Israel's international image, already tarnished by war crimes accusations in Gaza and its 3-year-old blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory.>

Mavi Marmara Ferry | VIDEO: Footage From Israeli Raid On Gaza Flotilla

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Al Jazeera reporter Jamal Elshayyal was on board the aid ship 'Mavi Marmara,' which was trying to break an aid blockade that Israel has imposed on Gaza when it was stormed by Israeli soldiers.
From Al Jazeera's blurb on the video:

Commandos lowered themselves from helicopters and onto the Mavi Marmara - the lead ship in a flotilla of six vessels which are carrying humanitarian aid for the Palestinian territory.

Elshayyal on board the Mavi Marmara sent this report before communications were cut.

Israelis Block Aid Flotilla - Obama Meeting with Israeli PM Scrathed
Netanyahu Cancels Tuesday Meeting With President Obama. Israeli Actions Invite Flurry of International Condemnation
ABC World News - With Diane Sawyer - Monday, May 31, 2010
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Israel Boat Raid Sparks International Outcry
The Huffington Post / AP - Monday,May 31, 2010
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ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel and called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council as criticism and condemnations arose across Europe and the Arab world Monday over Israel's deadly commando raid on ships taking humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Turkey's prime minister described the raid as "state terrorism," saying that Israel had violated international law and shown that it does not want peace in the region. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey will call on NATO to convene in an emergency session to discuss the incident. It has made a similar plea to the U.N. Security Council.

"This attack is state terrorism, violating international law," Erdogan said. "It should be known that we are not going to remain silent in the face of this inhumane state terrorism."

Protesters try to storm Israel consulate in Turkey after Gaza flotilla deaths
Haaretz - Sunday, May 31, 2010
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Turkish police blocked dozens of stone-throwing protesters who tried to storm the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul over reports of an Israeli attack on at least one aid ship in international waters on Monday, news channels reported.

Story Highlights
Confrontation took place in international waters
Army claims passengers opened fire
Flotilla had reportedly changed course to avoid confrontation
Unofficial reports put death toll at between 14 and 20
Turkey's NTV said over 60 were also wounded after Israel Defense Force vessels stormed the flotilla in international waters. . . . The military said in a statement: "Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) ... During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire."

The IDF earlier confirmed that two navy commandos had been wounded in fight, which apparently broke out after activists tried to sieze their weapons.

According to the IDF, commandos who stormed the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, the largest vessel in the convoy, encountered violent resistance from activists armed with sticks and knives. Activists attacked a commando with iron bars as he descended onto the ship from a helicopter, the army said. The IDF said its rules of engagement allowed troops to open fire in what it called a "life-threatening situation".

Editor - "According to the IDF, commandos who stormed the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, the largest vessel in the convoy" - So, what kind of defense is this when a national armed force, a navy ship in international waters, "stormed" a group of civilian aid ships with the result that 20 civilians were killed and 60 wounded.According to the IDF, commandos who stormed the Turkish ferry Mavi Marmara, the largest vessel in the convoy
Acres of land burnt by Israeli war games
Press TV - Friday, May 28,2010
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Military exercises conducted by the Israeli army have set fire to thousands of acres of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, destroying plant life in the region. Firefighting teams put out the fire on more than 17,000 acres, Israeli news outlet Ynet reported on Thursday. "Unfortunately this was a huge fire that caused a very big natural disaster, for animals as well as plants," said Fire Department spokesman Yair Elkayam. The five-day-long military maneuvers, dubbed Turning Point 4, began Sunday and were conducted in 68 cities and towns.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and annexed it in 1981. The move has never been recognized by the international community.

Boycott Israeli Products
Editor - View this wesite for numerous articles on this boycott. Scroll down for extensive list of products and further information. By attacking civilian ships in innternational waters carrying aid to the "imprisoned people in Gaza" Israel has exceeded all norms of civilized behavior. The international boycott of apartheid South Africa changed a goverment there. Boycotts do work.
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United States Government

US Senate passes $349 million aid for Pakistan
Daily Times/ Pakistan - Saturday, May 29, 2010
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House passes economic and security aid for Pakistan as part of a $60 billion war supplemental bill to fund Afghan operations and some projects requested by Obama admin

WASHINGTON: The US Senate has passed $349 million in economic and security aid for Pakistan, as part of a $60 billion war supplemental bill to fund Afghan operations and some other projects requested by the Obama administration

Commentary | Obama the Aggressive, Militaristic Interventionist?
The Nation.com - By Robert Dreyfuss - Tuesday, May 25, 2010
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A secret military directive signed last September 30 by General David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, authorizes a vast expansion of secret U.S. military special ops from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia and “appears to authorize specific operations in Iran,” according to the New York Times.

If President Obama knew about this, authorized it, and still supports it, then Obama has crossed a red line, and the president will stand revealed as an aggressive, militaristic liberal interventionist who bears a closer resemblance to the president he succeeded than to the ephemeral reformer that he pretended to be in 2008, when he ran for office. If he didn’t know, if he didn’t understand the order, and if he’s unwilling to cancel it now that it’s been publicized, then Obama is a feckless incompetent. Take your pick."

Commentary | "Hope-and-Change," A Hoax
CLG - By Michael Rectenwald and Lori Price - Thursday, May 27, 2010
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In our encounters on various social networking sites and political blogs, we consistently encounter the faithful remnants of the “hope-and-change” believers. To combat the onslaught of evidence and opinion that leads one to the conclusion that Obama is a fraud at best and represents a hoax at worst, they point to lists of his accomplishments and the ways he has delivered on his campaign promises. Such lists, we believe, are generally misrepresentations and fail to rise to the level of credibility. They are misleading because they represent minor deeds that might very well have been accomplished otherwise. We have characterized them as delivering on promises to “sharpen the pencils in the White House --mission accomplished.” There are some notable changes, but are they commensurate with Obama’s euphuistic campaign rhetoric? We think not. We believe that Obama’s rhetoric was a complete fabrication aimed at diverting real energy for change into a cul de sac of Democratic apologetics. It was, in short, a hoax.

Commentary | Obama's Foreign Policy Failures Are Clear Signs That the American Age of Dominance Is Ending
The American century is so over, baby.
Alternet - By Dilip Hiro - Friday, May 28, 2010
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Irrespective of their politics, flawed leaders share a common trait. They generally remain remarkably oblivious to the harm they do to the nation they lead. George W. Bush is a salient recent example, as is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. When it comes to foreign policy, we are now witnessing a similar phenomenon at the Obama White House.

Op-Ed | Obama’s Katrina? Maybe Worse
The New York Times - By Frank Rich - Friday, May 28, 2010
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For Barack Obama’s knee-jerk foes, of course it was his Katrina. But for the rest of us, there’s the nagging fear that the largest oil spill in our history could yet prove worse if it drags on much longer. It might not only wreck the ecology of a region but capsize the principal mission of the Obama presidency.

Obama’s news conference on Thursday — explaining in detail the government’s response, its mistakes and its precise relationship to BP — was at least three weeks overdue. It was also his first full news conference in 10 months. Obama’s recurrent tardiness in defining exactly what he wants done on a given issue — a lapse also evident in the protracted rollout of the White House’s specific health care priorities — remains baffling, as does his recent avoidance of news conferences. Such diffidence does not convey a J.F.K.-redux in charge of a neo-New Frontier activist government.

Long before Obama took office, the public was plenty skeptical that government could do anything right. Eight years of epic Bush ineptitude and waste only added to Washington’s odor. Now Obama is stuck between a rock and a Tea Party. His credibility as a champion of reformed, competent government is held hostage by video from the gulf. And this in an election year when the very idea of a viable federal government is under angrier assault than at any time since the Gingrich revolution and militia mobilization of 1994-5 and arguably since the birth of the modern conservative movement in the 1960s.

Obama bans new drilling in deep coastal waters
Dallas News / Hearst Newspapers - AP - Friday, May 28, 2010
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WASHINGTON – Describing the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a "wake-up call," President Barack Obama on Thursday banned new drilling in deep coastal waters and ordered floating rigs to quickly stop work on 33 exploratory wells. He also blocked planned drilling in Arctic waters this summer and canceled the long-planned sale of leases in the western Gulf of Mexico and a tract 50 miles off Virginia's coast.

Also on Thursday, the head of the federal agency that regulates the industry resigned under pressure, becoming the highest-ranking political casualty of the crisis so far.

Obama press conference | Lies and evasions in defense of BP
World Socialist Website - Friday, May 282010
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The White House press conference Thursday, the first held by President Barack Obama in nearly ten months, was devoted to presenting his administration as an active crisis manager in the Gulf oil catastrophe, rather than a handmaiden for BP, the giant oil company whose profit drive is responsible for the worst ecological disaster in US history.

Despite the now ritualistic reference to being “angry and frustrated,” however, Obama exuded indifference. Shortly before he spoke, reports emerged of new estimates confirming that the amount of oil already released into the Gulf far surpasses the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill—a fact that Obama failed to mention in his opening remarks.

With the government’s passive and virtually nonexistent response now so obvious that it has become the subject of criticism from within the president’s own party, Obama focused his remarks on the claim that the federal government, not BP, was in charge of the operation to plug the Deepwater Horizon well and of the efforts to defend hundreds of miles of vulnerable coast line, now being hit by a surge of toxic crude oil.

“Our teams are authorized to direct BP, in the same way that they’d be authorized to direct these same teams if they were technically being paid by the federal government,” he claimed.

If this account is true, so much the worse for Obama, since he has declared his administration responsible for the actions taken by BP over the past month: covering up the dimensions of the spill, failing to cap the well, and hampering the clean-up operation.

The truth is that the US government is prostrate before the power of the giant multinational oil companies, just as it was before the demands of Wall Street for a trillion-dollar bailout. The two parties that rotate control of the government are both political instruments of big business, and their top priority, particularly in a crisis situation, is to safeguard the interests of the financial aristocracy.

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Corporate Life

BP Oil Spill: Why Size Matters Money - Money - Money
Mother Jones- By David Corn - Wednesday, May. 26, 2010
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Initially it seemed that arguing over how much oil was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico thanks to the BP disaster was mostly an academic exercise. BP said about 5,000 barrels a day; others put the figure at perhaps ten times that much. But the critical issue was how to stop the damn leak, whatever the amount.

Yet the size of the leak, it turns out, may matter a lot. Reuters reports:

Just how many barrels of oil are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon spill is a billion dollar question with implications that go beyond the environment. It could also help determine how much BP and others end up paying for the disaster.

A clause buried deep in the U.S. Clean Water Act may expose BP and others to civil fines that aren't limited to any finite cap -- unlike a $75 million limit on compensation for economic damages. The Act allows the government to seek civil penalties in court for every drop of oil that spills into U.S. navigable waters, including the area of BP's leaking well.

As a result, the U.S. government could seek to fine BP or others up to $4,300 for every barrel leaked into the U.S. Gulf, according to legal experts and official documents.

US Oil spill: BP had wrong diagram to close blowout preventer
McClatchy Newspapers - By Maria Recio, Dave Montgomery and Mark Washburn - Tuesday, May 18, 2010
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WASHINGTON — In the days after an oil well spun out of control in the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the supposedly failsafe device's configuration, congressional investigators said Wednesday.

US / China | Opinion | Killing Themselves So We Can Have a Smart Phone?
Free Speech TV - By Thom Hartman - Thursday, May 27, 2010
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Complete here
The Financial Times is reporting on its front page today that nine people at a giant manufacturing facility in southern China where Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard manufacture their products for the U.S. market have committed suicide. The factory is in Shenzen and both employs and houses 300,000 people. Our cheap labor - our slave labor overseas - are starting to protest.
These companies that go overseas looking for cheap labor not only have the blood on their hands of the people so tormented by working conditions in Asia that they are committing suicide, but also that of the devastated working-class families in America who must buy goods made in China yet are no longer manufacturing anything.

It's time for America to return to rational tariff-based trade policies that bring our jobs home.

US | Is the Pentagon Finally Overmatched?
The Atlantic Free Press - By Tom Engelhardt - Sunday, May 30, 2010
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When it comes to the Pentagon and the U.S. military, wherever you look, there’s money being handed out. Wildly and in staggering amounts. Early this month, for instance, the U.S. Army announced that it had awarded KBR, the private contractor which was once part of Halliburton, a contract worth up to $568 million through 2011 “for military support service in Iraq.”

This is the same KBR that has regularly been accused of improprieties of all sorts. As it happened, the Army made its announcement, noted Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News, “only hours after the Justice Department said it will pursue a lawsuit accusing the Houston-based company of taking kickbacks from two subcontractors on Iraq-related work.” Even though the company has been the object of numerous investigations and law suits, and is the Blackwater (now Xe) of construction firms, as well as a prime victor in the Bush administration’s military privatization sweepstakes, this was a no-bid contract. Given the Pentagon’s spending track record, none of this should surprise you.

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Economy and Finance

Bloomberg Economic News
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Bloomberg Current Worldwide Financial News
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Are Goldman Sachs and the Megabanks Able to Wipe out an Entire Economy with a Keystroke?
How artificial intelligence and robotrading pose a growing threat to the global marketplace.
Alternet - May 27, 2010
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Education Aa A Foundation for Democracy

US | But then, all education is not the same - Some is anti-democratic | Richard the LyingHearted

Atlantic Free Press - By Lawrence Velvel Ph.D. - Sunday, May 30, 2010
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Question: What do John Roberts, Bernie Madoff, Elena Kagan, Richard Blumenthal, Allen Stanford, George W. Bush and Adam Wheeler have in common? Answer: All of them have shown lack of respect for truth and honesty.

John Roberts told senators and the country that as a Justice he would merely call balls and strikes, not make the rules. Like in the Citizens United case where he ruled that corporations have first amendment rights! That’s strike three, John. Imagine: holding that corporations have first amendment rights is supposedly not making the rules! That’s not only strike three; it’s also a foul ball.

Madoff and Stanford were two of the all time liars of the financial world. Nothing more need be said about them.

Adam Wheeler is the young man who attended Harvard and lied about almost every aspect of his record, both to get into Harvard and in applying for other schools and honors.

Richard the Lyinghearted, who is running for Senator from Connecticut, lied about serving in Viet Nam. He also lied about being the captain of the Harvard swim team.

George W. Bush -- enough said; his name, like Lyndon Johnson’s, is synonymous with the word lie.

Elena Kagan, as far as I know, didn’t lie herself, but she also didn’t see fit to significantly punish two famous liberal Harvard law professors who lied about writing their own books. Claiming all the credit for writing their own books, they either plagiarized parts of those books themselves, or had the offending parts secretly written by students who did the plagiarizing. Either way their claiming of full credit for writing the books was a lie. But this did not much move Kagan, who appeared not to care enough about the lie to strongly punish it, just as she seemed not to care much that a leading conservative professor she hired, and whom she lauded to the skies, is thought by many to be a war criminal and certainly helped pave the way for war crimes.

Of course, Kagan is a careerist, and punishing leading liberal professors at Harvard is not good for one’s career, while hiring leading conservative law professors is. Then, too, Roberts, Madoff, Stanford and Wheeler -- and probably Blumenthal too -- were also careerists. That is the nature of the game among the Washington, the political and the financial elite. As for George W. Bush, he managed to be a careerist while being talentless.

It is a curious thing, isn’t it, that of the seven people I’ve mentioned as not respecting truth, five have some connection with Harvard: Roberts, Kagan, Richard the Lyinghearted, Shrub and Wheeler. (And let us not forget one of the all time-kings of lies and careerism, Harvard’s own Henry Kissinger.) Perhaps those who think I was picking on Harvard for some no good, nefarious reason a few years ago when I wrote extensively about the plagiarism there, the ghostwriting there, and the stupid depredations there of The Great Summers, who helped importantly in leading us into economic disaster, will now begin to understand that my reason was not nefarious. Rather, it was a deep concern for truth, a commodity that has drastically shrunk in importance in this country since the early 1960s.

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Energy

The year is 2010 and to anyone not in denial, the industrialized nations have entered the greatest calamity the world has ever known:
Atlantic Free Press - By Robert Singer - Sunday, May 30, 2010
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35 Million Americans on Food Stamps: 12 Percent of U.S. Population on Food Stamps Highest Since Records Kept in 1969, and that’s before the Obama administration announced a planned three-year budget freeze on government discretionary spending. (My Budget 360)

18 Million empty houses in the United States and 39 million Americans who are no longer working or looking for work, and that’s before Federal Reserve finishes rewriting the rules of American “capitalism” as US Housing, the Automobile Industry and the American Dream are dismantled. (The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M., David E. Sanger

“There are now well over 150 million Americans who feel stress over these things on a consistent basis. Over 60 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck.” (The Economic Elite vs. People of the USA, David DeGraw)

So then, why is President Obama going back on his word and drilling holes in the earth?

The Interior Department under Barack Obama offered for sale more acres of dry-land drilling on public lands than the Bush Administration had at the same point in 2008.

An economy in a state of rigor mortis doesn’t need oil to lubricate an engine that blew up on October 29, 2008, and our way of life won’t come back if the oil industry creates a handful of jobs or we reduce our dependence on foreign oi

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Environment

22-mile oil plume found under Gulf surface
AP - By Matthew Brown and Jason Dearen - Saturday, May 29, 2010
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NEW ORLEANS — Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles from the leaking BP wellhead northeast toward an underwater canyon whose currents feed sealife in the waters off Florida. The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine Science's Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume reported since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20. The find was announced Thursday.

The cloud was nearing a large underwater canyon whose currents fuel the foodchain in Gulf waters off Florida and could potentially wash the tiny plants and animals that feed larger organisms in a stew of toxic chemicals, another researcher said.

How an Ingredient Found in Everything from Chocolate to Chips Is Causing Massive Environmental Destruction
The production of palm oil, the common ingredient in an astounding number of products, is causing deforestation, global warming emissions and a loss of biodiversity.
Alternet - By Sarah Newman - Friday, May 28. 2010
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Health and Fitness

Brush teeth to 'prevent' heart disease
People who fail to brush their teeth twice a day are putting themselves at risk of heart disease, research suggests
BBC News - By Emma Wilkinson Health reporter - Friday, May 28, 2010
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US | Opinion | Gulf oil spill is public health risk, environmental scientists warn
Pollution could do lasting damage to locals' health.
The Guardian / UK - By Suzanne Goldenberg - Friday, May 28, 2010
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Media and Journalism

BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill
Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Newsweek - By Matthew Philips - Wednesday, May 26, 2010
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Science and Technology

Bloomberg Index of Current Science News
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Archive of Miscellany

Dance Video | MICA | "Blame It On The Girls"
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Musical Group Video | Neville Brothers - Yellow Moon
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Out of the Hills | Jesus Is Coming Soon -The Oak Ridge Boys
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Musicians mix Coldplay and Taylor Swift together - Enjoy
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Music Video | "Democracy Is Coming to the USA" - Leonard Cohen
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Music Video | Leonard Cohen | "First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin"
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Music Video | Jordan Page - "Listen" | What If This Happened On Your Block?
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Music Video | Jordan Page - "Pendulum"
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Music video - Neville Brothers performing "Fearless" -
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Video - The Arts of Peace and Violence | video
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