After much trumped-up suspense, Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced this week — via a YouTube spoof of the last episode of “The Sopranos” — that the votes are in.

No, sorry, not those votes. You’ll have to endure another year of stilted YouTube spots before the last presidential primary votes are cast.

I mean the votes from the Clinton campaign’s YouTube “pick our theme song” contest. And, in case you missed this major national event, the winning song was “You and I,” by Celine Dion.

Clinton staffers have declared the “pick our theme song” contest a resounding success. And who knows what her wacky campaign will do next?

Maybe Clinton will soon have YouTube viewers select her campaign’s strategy for ending Iraq’s civil war or reducing greenhouse gases.   more »

Driven underground and into despair by zealotry, Rushdie finally emerged blinking into New York sunshine shortly before the towers came tumbling down.

Those formidable literary powers would now be deployed not against, but in the service of, an American regime that had declared its own fundamentalist monopoly on the meanings of "freedom" and "liberation".

The Sir Salman recognised for his services to literature is certainly no neocon but is iconic of a more pernicous trend: liberal literati who have assented to the notion that humane values, tolerance and freedom are fundamentally western ideas that have to be defened as such.

Vociferously supporting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on "humane" grounds, condemning criticism of the war on terror as "petulant anti-Americanism" and above all, aligning tyranny and violence solely with Islam, Rushdie has abdicated his own understanding of the novelist's task as "giving the lie to official facts".   more »

As for where Blair should go next, the answer is clear.

If we have any decency in this country, he should be sent to the Hague to stand trial on charges of starting a war of aggression and procuring and abetting numerous acts of mass murder, torture, and terrorism.

If only...

America beckons, where so many people have still not seen through him, with a lecture circuit on which he can easily rack up $100,000 a time (and greedy Cherie can top up with not much less, as she has already begun doing), and where he has another friend who owes him one.

If, after all the prime minister has done for Rupert Murdoch, the munificent magnate can't stump up a few million dollars for Blair's ghost-written memoirs, there's no gratitude.   more »

No doubt some in Washington persist in the fiction that the United States is following a "road map" to democracy for Palestinians, just as others believe the Iraq war has been a sincere exercise in nation-building.

Neoconservative strategists have miscalculated, however, and Hamas is stronger than ever.

For the first time in months, Gaza is secure. This may be a momentary peace as Israel prepares an attempt to retake parts of Gaza.

Yet neither blunt force nor U.S. subterfuge will extinguish Palestinian aspirations for self-governance, free from outside interference.

Hamas's actions to secure Gaza from the horrific recent violence of the Palestinian contras have been out of self-defense.   more »

So why have those people decided to go vegetarian? The reasons vary nearly as much as the people themselves, although definite themes motivate the choice, namely health and ethical and environmental reasons.

Consuming animal products isn’t just making the environment sick - it’s making us sick, too.

Meat, eggs, and dairy foods are high in cholesterol, saturated fat, calories, and concentrated protein.

Animal products are known to contribute to heart disease, diabetes, certain types of cancer, obesity, and other debilitating diseases.

And don’t forget that more than 10 billion animals are killed each year in the U.S. alone to feed our meat addictions. We’re talking about an awful lot of suffering.   more »