There's peanuts and a prize inside her?

Probably. Why, do you have peanuts envy?

No, but I get snoopy, sometimes.

Yeah, I've heard that Snoopy is easy.

Appreciate a tremendous risk that Ted Turner took when he started CNN. News was not profitable. Turner created a broadcasting news service to make a profit. Because Turner was doing something innovative, he could not raise capital from investment banks – Wall Street. However Michael Milken had developed a way of financing innovators. Junk bonds. In its early days, Drexel Burnham was making possible so many innovative companies. To do things that that ‘we fear to innovate’ Wall Street investment banks would not touch. Risky was to make a profit on broadcasting news.

Drexel Burnham's other success stories are legends of American industry by also doing things so new. Including Steve Wynn's Golden Nugget and Mirage casinos. And many Vegas hotels. Malone's TCI which became the world's biggest cable-TV firm. And numerous Rupert Murdoch projects. All those were also not worthy investments on a Wall Street that could not see innovation even if it is in their cocaine.

Almost nobody thought broadcast news could make a profit.

The f*ckers in Bahrain are shooting their own people with live ammo. One of my friends was ordered to leave a metric assload of ammunition behind when his unit left Bahrain... yay for allies!

Steve Inskeep did an interview with Vali Nasr this morning. His take on the unrest is pretty clear-eyed.

... and reports are that in Libya pro-govt forces - apparently brought in from Chad - have killed around 70.

Using outside forces against domestic uprisings is an old and vicious trick, but it works.

Bahrain GRAPHIC NSFW

The Brits used to play that card in the bad old days.

Bahrain looks like a lose - lose for the US, we're allied to an oppressive religious minority who can't afford to have democracy break out among a probably religiously intolerant majority...

Libya on the other hand...?

The main idea I got from Ali Vasr was that those in support of the uprisings may appreciate the international systems of trade and finance if not the Western way of life in general so this doesn't have to play out badly.

democracy and personal freedoms are fundamentally the fruit of western civilization. Does anyone else find this ironic in light of the fact that the people in the countries revolting seem forcefully anti-western?

I disagree with the anti-western bit. A significant % are anti-western, true, but quite a lot want western style democracy and rights. (The sort we pretend we have, not the crappy ersatz version we actually have :p: )

As to which group is bigger, I only have media reports to judge by, and that isn't much use, but when I see footage of the protests I look to see what they are wearing. Traditional robes, or jeans and jackets? I see both, and I see quite a few women with their faces, and even their heads, uncovered. Quite a few western-style logo T-shirts, too.

I guess it varies from country to country, too.

Maybe soon some Bahrain soldiers will start having accidents when off duty, yes?

Libya. WTF.

Crazy can be multi-generational. I hope the protesters have a plan because that state is going to fall.

The six-day-old uprising had reached the capital, Tripoli, where government buildings on Monday were in flames and police were noticeably absent from the streets. There were signs of growing disunity within the government and reports that several senior officials had resigned and joined the protesters.

In a rambling, disjointed address delivered about 1 a.m. on Monday, the son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, played down the uprising sweeping the country, which witnesses and rights activists say has left more than 220 people dead and hundreds wounded from gunfire by security forces. He repeated several times that “Libya is not Tunisia or Egypt” — the neighbors to the east and west that both overthrew their veteran autocrats in the space of the last six weeks

Hmmm... Gaddafi headed for Venezuela? Chavez could get himself in trouble.