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Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon's heartthrob and the State Department's and CIA's heartbreak, has taken the lead in a yearlong political marathon. Temporary constitutional arrangements are structured to give the future prime minister more power than the president... Chalabi holds the ultimate weapons -- several dozen tons of documents and individual files seized by his Iraqi National Congress from Saddam Hussein's secret security apparatus. Coupled with his position as head of the de-Baathification commission, Chalabi, barely a year since he returned to his homeland after 45 years of exile, has emerged as the power behind a vacant throne... All the bases are loaded for a home run by MVP Chalabi. If successful, it will be an additional campaign issue president Bush could have done without. Saddam was good riddance. But was Chalabi a worthy democratic trade?
posted by y2karl at 10:53 PM PST - 18 comments

The Alexandria Declaration. Between March 14 and 17, 2004, intellectuals, scholars, economists and activists from around the Arab world met at the new Alexandria Library in Egypt for the Arab Reform Conference. Among the recommendations of the conference was that all Arab governments should ratify "all international conventions on the rights of women providing for the abolition of all forms of discrimination against them."
posted by Ty Webb at 9:55 PM PST - 5 comments

"My hobby? It's funny you should ask... I make erotic carvings out of coconut shells..."
posted by jonson at 8:55 PM PST - 8 comments

The Work Less Party of Vancouver seeks to regain a little sanity for the North American employee. A 32-hour work week is not a very realistic fantasy for the information age. But at least someone is standing up for the right to go home earlier.
posted by PrinceValium at 7:45 PM PST - 47 comments

Guernica. Take a stroll through some famous works of art (larger version here.) More Pocket Movies. [Via The Cartoonist.]
posted by homunculus at 7:25 PM PST - 1 comments

The Great Citizens Campaign to Lose Three Kilograms. Okinawans have closely adopted the U.S. lifestyle of cars, suburban malls and fast food, and have become Japan's fattest people?
posted by the fire you left me at 7:03 PM PST - 6 comments

Camera Obscura trolls the attics and abandoned dressers of the world, finding the great lost portraits of the past, then burying them and posting these laughable ones instead. Develop Dutchophobia and learn to fear the Irma!
posted by snarkout at 5:56 PM PST - 9 comments

CSI helped him get away with murder ... but The Passion of the Christ made him confess. When did real life jump the shark and become a bad postmodern novel?
posted by blueshammer at 1:31 PM PST - 28 comments

Budapest Digitalized.
posted by hama7 at 1:13 PM PST - 11 comments

Looking Offshore How one offshore worker sent tremor through medical system In an ongoing Chronicle series on the ramifications of shifting U.S. jobs and services overseas, this installment focuses on the threat to individual privacy when companies send sensitive financial and personal data offshore.
posted by Postroad at 12:47 PM PST - 10 comments

The peace process in the Ivory Coast has collapsed (again). I haven't seen it reported yet but have it first hand from an official stationed there that the UN is evacuating all personnel. The evacuations in 2002 were limited compared to this. How could the Ivory Coast have come to this point? What does this mean for the rest of the region? sigh
posted by Grod at 12:20 PM PST - 3 comments

Time to replace your old Periodic Table. ...a joint American-Russian team has found two new elements—numbers 113 and 115 on the periodic table—hinting at an impending breakthrough in creating novel forms of matter that will test our understanding of atomic behavior.
posted by mcgraw at 11:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Creative Envelope and Letter Folding
"...hand folding letters and envelopes is one of those rare intersections of decoration and practicality, where paper folding produces the satisfaction of making something useful and novel...."
posted by anastasiav at 11:09 AM PST - 11 comments

Things fall apart Stressed societies move in strange directions. In Angola, shattered by a decades-long civil war, children and even infants are accused of being witches. Burkina Faso is also having a witchcraft epidemic. Are there parallels with conditions in Salem and Early Modern Europe?
posted by SealWyf at 10:25 AM PST - 16 comments

George Lakoff writes in his book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think that the book began with a conversation about a single question that might be used to tell liberals from conservatives. His friend offered the question: "If your baby cries at night, do you pick him up?" Is there a basic belief that underlies all conservative and liberal positions? Lakoff's answer, that our politics are connected to how we view family, is summarized in this interview. Is he right? What about you, what makes you a conservative or a liberal?
posted by yoz420 at 8:32 AM PST - 67 comments

The Kaceesque story of a woman in prison for faking her daughter's leukemia to gain thousands of dollars in donations, now says she concocted the scheme to keep her husband from leaving. Teresa Milbrandt said she regrets what she did, which included shaving her daughter Hannah's head and giving her sleeping pills to make it look like she was undergoing chemotherapy. The husband went to Prison As Well.
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a parenting disorder where parents, usually the mother, fabricate symptoms in their children, thus subjecting the child to unnecessary medical tests and/or surgical procedures, though It is a highly controversial condition, which some doubt even exists.
posted by Blake at 7:57 AM PST - 4 comments

Are we witnessing the end of the 4th Ammendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure? The United States 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled (parts 1 and 2) that police in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business.
posted by Irontom at 6:54 AM PST - 31 comments

The Evil of Banality. "You should never, ever get on a plane with a born-again pilot." Recent entries in Slactivist's excellent line-by-line Christian deconstruction of a best-selling series that MeFi has discussed before. But this time it's really the end. Jesus is coming back, and it's front page news.
posted by Slagman at 6:38 AM PST - 47 comments

Ilustris - delightful and whimsical works from a Polish illustrator. (flash)
posted by madamjujujive at 5:16 AM PST - 3 comments