Happy Birthday BBC World Service

19 December marked the BBC's World Service's 75th birthday. Quite an achievement for the basically venerable broadcaster.

"This year the BBC World Service celebrates 75 years of broadcasting. In this audio archive, each of those years is looked at in a special one-minute-long programme, based on our vast radio archive. Presented by Helen Boaden, the BBC's Director of News, the series looks at how mass communications have changed the world, and how the world has changed the media. The series begins in 1932, with the rather downbeat words of the BBC's founder, Lord Reith: "as to programmes - don't expect too much in the early days... The programmes will neither be very interesting nor very good." It covers innovations in broadcasting and charts changing styles in reporting."

Go here, BBC WORLDSERVICE.com to access the program.

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

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The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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