Daily Manna (2/8)

Another day brings another shining moment for the right wing: The American Enterprise Institute (an Orwellian name if there ever was one), a lobby group funded by ExxonMobil with close ties to the Bush administration, has been accused of foul play. Accusations maintain that the group solicited climate scientists with ten thousand dollar bribes, in hopes they would pen articles de-emphasizing the severity of global warming. We cannot afford to have science, our very last vestige of objectivity and transparency, tainted by the agendas of political interest groups. This is a shameful abuse of power by the short-sighted behemoth that is Big Oil in America. Let's hope a comprehensive investigation is in the works.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2004230,00.html

Dictator Watch! Good, if temporarily bad, news on this front: Things in North Korea and Zimbabwe, two of the worlds most disgusting, backwards, liberty-smothering dictatorships, have gone into steep decline. The quality of life, as reported in the New York Times, in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe is plummeting, leading members of Mugabe's own party to shift their usually unquestioning support away from the "president for life". This is encouraging. In a similar sign of waning public patience, some 120 border guards defected into China from North Korea this past week. This is noteworthy for a few reasons. First, those border guards are responsible for containing the usual swell of would-be defectors: North Korean civilians that daily attempt to ilegally immigrate into China, to escape the barbaric conditions under Kim Jong Il. Secondly, Kim Jong Il is famous for coddling the military with cash and food, in effect bribing them to maintain his terror state. Thus, any sign of dissension among the ranks of soldiers there is encouraging, and is interpreted hopefully in the West as a sign his regime is crumbling. Godspeed to the glimmer of hope for freedom and representative government in those foul corners of the globe.

http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk00400&num=1645

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/world/africa/07zimbabwe.html?ex=1328504400&en=5709ec03b6b62b0d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss