Thousands of Iraqis streamed to the holy southern city of Najaf on Sunday in response to a call by fiery Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for a big anti-American protest on Monday.
Sadr, who blames the U.S.-led invasion for Iraq’s unrelenting violence, has urged Iraqis to protest on the fourth anniversary of the day American forces swept into central Baghdad.
“In order to end the occupation, you will go out and demonstrate,” Sadr, who accuses U.S. forces of deliberately fomenting civil strife in Iraq, said in a statement.
CNN – BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Thousands of anti-U.S. protesters marched in the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.
Powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for the demonstration, which Najaf police said included tens of thousands of protesters. The U.S. Army estimated the crowd size at closer to 5,000 to 7,000 participants.
BBC – Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shias have gathered in the holy city of Najaf for a mass demonstration calling for US-led troops to leave Iraq.
Up to one million people were expected in Najaf after an appeal by Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, who branded US forces “your arch enemy” in a statement.
The effort, which lawmakers emphasize is still in its early stages, would exempt millions of people from the tax but would have to come up with a way to offset an enormous loss of revenue in the next decade. Measured in dollars, it would be far bigger than Democratic initiatives to provide money for children’s health care, education or any other spending program.
The alternative minimum tax was created in 1969 to prevent millionaires from using loopholes to avoid all federal income taxes. Under it, affected taxpayers have to do a second tax calculation without claiming popular deductions like those for state and local taxes that they have come to rely on. It is akin to a flat tax of 26 to 28 percent.
But the tax is expanding at a rapid pace, partly because it is not adjusted for inflation. It can hit people with incomes as low as $50,000 and if left unchecked is expected to affect 23 million households during the 2007 tax year — up from 3.4 million last year.
I guess I’m just waiting for them to fund this by repealing the tax breaks for the highest income earning 2% of the population, and show they really mean to do something for the folks in the middle.
Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx’s proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe’s drops as fertility falls. “Flashmobs” – groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.
This is the world in 30 years’ time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the “future strategic context” likely to face Britain’s armed forces. It includes an “analysis of the key risks and shocks”. Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD’s Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the assessments as “probability-based, rather than predictive.”
(snip)
“The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx,” says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest”. Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality.
(more)
Bleak future, indeed, along with the certainty of global warming.
DILI (Reuters) – East Timorese streamed to the polls on Monday to vote for a new president, hoping the election can help end deep divisions after a year of instability in one of the world’s youngest and poorest nations.
Over half a million voters are picking a new president in the election, which outgoing President Xanana Gusmao says is a chance to demonstrate his nation is not a failed state.
Supporters of rival candidates clashed during campaigning last week, injuring more than 30 people and prompting international troops to fire tear gas and warning shots.
“This election is important for the country’s future. I hope the new president will lift us out of the crisis,” said Rogerio dos Santos, a 30-year-old farmer, before casting his ballot at a polling station in an elementary school.
WASHINGTON-A worldwide scientific effort to catalogue every living species has topped the 1 million milestone.
Six years into the program, the total has reached 1,009,000, researchers report. They hope to complete the listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of about 1.75 million species.
Thomas Orrell, a biologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, said the finished catalogue will include all known living organisms, from plants and animals to fungi and micro-organisms such as bacteria, protozoa and viruses.
about ‘winning hearts and minds’? Reuters
Contrast in coverage:
to fix the alternative minimum tax: NYT
I guess I’m just waiting for them to fund this by repealing the tax breaks for the highest income earning 2% of the population, and show they really mean to do something for the folks in the middle.
Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future
Bleak future, indeed, along with the certainty of global warming.
I’ve added it as an update to the revolution will not be televised
East Timor votes for president after crisis year
1 million species and counting