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I love music history and I love good conspiracy theories. That’s not to say I believe conspiracy theories — I just find them entertaining. This explains why I’ve watched a lot of History Channel since is morphed into the Ancient Nazi Alien Network.

So when the music blogosphere (along with Facebook Windows Anytime Upgrade, Twitter Windows Anytime Upgrade, etc.) lit up this week with an anonymous letter entitled “The Secret Meeting that Changed Rap Music and Destroyed a Generation,” I simply had to say, “Thank you, Internet.” I can’t resist a story that combines the socio-political elements of music with far-fetched stories of corruption and immorality.

The unsigned letter, originally posted on the blog Hip Hop is Read, is written by a self-proclaimed “decision maker” working for an equally anonymous major record label. He contends that in 1991 he was invited to a secret meeting of 25-30 industry insiders and a group of armed, shady figures. In brief, the insiders were told the record labels had invested in the recently-conceived private prison industry. In order to ensure profits for their new business venture, the recording executives were directed to promote gangster rap music — a genre that was just beginning to emerge. By popularizing criminality, they would fill the private prisons and ensure their profitability.

To the writer, this explained the rise of gangster rap — with its themes of guns, drugs, bling, etc. — throughout the ’90s and the resulting decline of socially conscious rap.

Regrettably for my sense of the delicious, this conspiracy story doesn’t stand up to the test of common sense. It opts instead for a complex explanation of social and political phenomena when simple explanation will do.

First, let’s imagine the record labels really planned this sordid plot. It would have taken only one or two label heads to tell their A&R people, “Hey, start signing more of these gangster rappers the kids like so much. It’ll be good for sales.” After all, if you want keep something a secret, isn’t the best plan to let as few people as possible in on the secret? So why invite up to 30 people to a meeting and reveal the entire shady scenario, almost ensuring that the whole dodgy plan will be leaked?

Second, private prisons didn’t need rap music to make money. The American justice system’s enthusiasm for incarceration throughout the ’80s and ’90s was doing a more than satisfactory job already. The number of inmates per 100 Windows 7 product key free,000 people in the U.S. rose from 139 in 1980 to 313 in 1991. Today you can hardly pass a day south of the border without hearing “or else you’re going to jail” appended to some warning or another. Private prisons hardly needed Ice T’s help to fill bunks.

Conspiracies thrive on the unexplained, but there are plenty of obvious explanations for the record labels’ interest in gangster rap.

The introduction in March 1991 of the Neilsen SoundScan as the primary tool for measuring album sales revealed that rap music had a much larger share of the market than originally thought. For example, N.W.A’s album Efil4zaggin (Niggaz4life spelled backwards — how clever), a landmark album in gangster rap, debuted at number two on the Billboard charts in May 1991. The early 90’s also saw the duel between gangster rap labels Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records — with artist rosters that included 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., and Snoop Dogg. The major labels had to get on the gangster bandwagon or lose out.

Most damning for the prison-filling conspiracy theory, the rising sales of gangster rap albums in this period were driven by the allowances of suburban white kids: not exactly the demographic that sinister plots steer into the prison system. The University of Iowa’s Michael Hill explains that white suburban kids flocked to gangster rap out of a sense of rebellion, similar to the way they flocked to heavy metal in the ’80s. While only the most delusional white suburban kid could pretend to relate to the poverty and discrimination described by socially conscious rappers like Public Enemy, even the Brady Bunch could pretend to understand the gangsta scene.

Like all the really fun conspiracy theories, this one is broad enough to be both feasible and unverifiable (ever try to prove that aliens DIDN’T have a hand in building the pyramids?). But a simple appeal to common sense is sufficient to undo the “rap for prison profit” story. It’s almost a pity.

Then again, what fun would the Internet be without irrational theories to confirm what we already know in our hearts about the way the world really works?

Last week replica watches, Movoto asked The Koitz Group to estimate the value of the White House. The boutique real estate firm came back with a list price of somewhere between $110 and $115 million — just for the building and its 132 rooms. This didn’t include any of the mansion’s 200 year history, which would make valuing the structure nearly impossible.

At somewhere between $1,364 and $1,455 per square foot, the White House would be among the most expensive homes in the United State if it were to be listed on the open market.

To put some perspective on this, for the cost of one square foot of the White House replica watches, you could purchase about 50 shares of Facebook when the social media giant finally goes public later this month. (We used a conservative $28 per share.)

What I’m trying to say, as if we didn’t already know, is the White House is an extremely valuable piece of property, mostly because of its size — 55,000 square feet — and location in downtown Washington, D.C.

The large price tag started me thinking about the White House in terms of cost and location. What began with a comparison to the expected cost of a share of Facebook, turned into questions about the White House’s cost if it were located in different parts of the country.

I asked the Movoto team to crunch numbers. The real estate brokerage came back with the the average cost per square foot of a residence in seven of the country’s largest metro areas.

After some quick calculation, here is what the White House would cost if it was picked up and dropped into these major cities:

Washington $110,000,000
Houston $20,000,000
Chicago $44,000 replica watches,000
Miami $39,000,000
San Francisco $147,000,000
Los Angeles $79,000,000
New York City $387,000,000

Below is the Movoto team’s best guess as to how the White House would look in its new city.

SHANGHAI, May 12, 2012 (Reuters) — China’s central bank cut the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves on Saturday, freeing an estimated 400 billion yuan ($63.5 billion) for lending to head-off the risk of a sudden slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.

The People’s Bank of China delivered a 50 basis point cut in banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR), effective from May 18, the third cut in six months and one that investors had called for after data on Friday showed the economy weakening, not recovering, from its slowest quarter of growth in three years.

Industrial production weakened sharply in April and fixed asset investment – a key growth driver – hit its lowest level in nearly a decade, surprising many economists who thought Q1’s 8.1 percent annual rate of growth marked the bottom of a downswing and were expecting signs of recovery in Q2 data.

“The central bank should have cut RRR after Q1 data. It has missed the best timing What Is The Best Tattoo Ink,” Dong Xian’an Tattoo Kits Supply, chief economist at Peking First Advisory in Beijing, told Reuters.

“A cut today will have a much discounted impact. So the Chinese economy will become more vulnerable to global weakness and the slowing Chinese economy will in turn have a bigger negative impact on global recovery. Uncertainties in the global and Chinese economy are rising Tattoo Machine Prices,” he said.

The domestic production and investment data had followed hot on the heels of weaker than forecast trade data, with the annual rate of export growth around half the level expected and growth in imports grinding to a halt on a nominal basis in April, underlining China’s vulnerability to weakness in global demand for goods produced in the country’s vast factory sector.

Bank lending in April was also sharply below forecast at 681.8 billion yuan ($108.04 billion), missing the 800 billion consensus call and raising doubts about whether Beijing had policy settings slack enough to keep the economy expanding.

“It confirms our view that the economy was not able to sustain its momentum on current policy and policy needs to be loosened,” said Ken Peng, an economist with BNP Paribas.

“The fact that it waited so long meant it could have been responsible for the poor data in April. This sends a very positive signal that policymakers are accommodative.”

FURTHER LOOSENING FORECAST

The cut of RRR to 20.0 percent from 20.5 percent for big banks still has analysts forecasting another 800 billion yuan’s worth of cuts to have been earmarked for the rest of the year.

The central bank announced its first cut in RRR in three years on November 30 last year. That move took the rate down from a record 21.5 percent. The second cut in this easing cycle was delivered in February.

Lowering RRR for banks helps China offset sluggish capital inflows that have been hit by skittish investors wary of investing their funds in higher-risk emerging markets at a time of global economic uncertainty driven mainly by Europe’s festering debt crisis.

Crucially, an RRR cut would help Beijing meet its target of growing money supply by 14 percent in 2012. Data on Friday showed annual M2 money supply growth running at just 12.8 percent in April.

China’s bank lending had trumped forecasts to spike to 1.01 trillion yuan ($160 billion) in March, a sign of fresh traction in Beijing’s bid to boost credit creation to support the cooling economy.

The surge in lending was the biggest monthly extension of credit since January 2011, when new loans last topped 1 trillion yuan, holding out hope that China’s economy would not only avoid a hard landing but pick up speed again later this year.

Chinese leaders, however, are wary about inflation risks given rising global commodity prices and remain determined to cool down the property sector to ward off a speculative bubble.

The deep-pocketed government has also cut taxes for small firms, which are vital for generating economic growth and jobs, to help them cope with a credit squeeze and weaker exports.

But the bigger problem for the economy may not be the supply of credit but demand for it, given that the European Union – China’s single biggest export market – is battling recession again, consumers in the United States are still paying down debt and China’s domestic demand is looking limp.

That implies to some that policy has to become looser still.

“The problem is corporate loan demand is very weak right now, so the cut is not as good as an interest rate cut, since reducing banks reserves doesn’t change the price of loans,” said Liu Junyu, a money market analyst at China Merchants Bank in Shenzhen.

“If the economy continues to be sluggish, it is very likely that the government will choose to cut interest rates.” ($1 = 6.3106 Chinese yuan)

(Additional reporting by Lu Jianxin in Shanghai and Langi Chiang and Koh Gui Qing in Beijing; Editing by Alex Richardson and Nick Edwards)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. companies hired the fewest people in seven months in April, a worrisome sign for a labor market that has struggled to gain traction and adding to concerns that the economy has lost some momentum.

The ADP National Employment Report on Wednesday showed the private sector added 119,000 jobs last month, below economists’ expectations for a gain of 177,000 jobs. The March figure was also revised lower.

The report comes two days before the government’s broader and much-watched monthly jobs report.

“This is an upsetting report,” said David Carter, chief investment officer at Lenox Advisors in New York.

“The strength of the U.S. economic rebound is clearly still uncertain. Hopefully we don’t get a third consecutive summer of weaker growth.”

Recent data, including softer labor market figures Luos Handmade Machines, have fueled fears that the economy may have lost some strength as the second quarter got under way. Those worries were partly offset by data from an industry group on Tuesday that showed a better-than-expected pick-up in the manufacturing sector last month.

But government data on Wednesday showed new orders for factory goods suffered their biggest decline in three years in March as demand for transportation equipment and a range of other goods dried up.

Growth in the U.S. economy has been seen as increasingly important to offset slack elsewhere in the world. The euro zone on Wednesday reported another contraction in its factory sector.

In China, factory activity contracted again in April, although at a slower rate, hinting at stabilization in the world’s second-largest economy.

The day’s data helped take U.S. stocks down about 0.5 percent in midday trading, while Treasuries prices rose and the euro fell against the dollar.

WARM WINTER WEATHER

But despite the weak numbers in the ADP report on private-sector hiring, some analysts and economists were cautious on whether the data indicates a trend in the labor market.

Joel Prakken at Macroeconomic Advisers LLC Setting Tattoo Machine, which jointly develops the employment report with payrolls processor ADP, said the unusually warm winter months were partly to blame for the weakness in ADP report as employers had moved their hiring up to earlier in the year.

The evidence suggests private-sector employment was boosted by as much as 70,000 in the winter months, Prakken said.

“It does play into this notion that the numbers over the winter … probably weren’t quite as strong as the reports indicated, and this number today probably is not as soft as it appears on the surface,” Prakken said on a conference call with journalists.

The manufacturing sector shed 5,000 jobs, the first loss since September of last year, the report showed. That was in contrast to data on Tuesday that showed a gauge of employment in the sector rose to its highest level since last June.

The U.S. Labor Department’s report on Friday on nonfarm payrolls is expected to show hiring rebounded last month with 170,000 new jobs, an improvement from a meager 120,000 in March. Private payrolls are seen rising by 175,000.

Jonathan Basile, director of economics at Credit Suisse, said Wednesday’s release did not change his forecast for a gain of 150,000 in Friday’s jobs data, noting ADP has had a mixed record as an indicator of the payrolls numbers.

“For what it’s worth, the first print of ADP … has had some big misses in recent months in either direction compared to the first print of private payrolls. For instance Damascus Steel Tattoo Machines, ADP overshot by 88,000 in March, undershot by 87,000 in January and overshot by 113,000 in December,” Basile said in a note.

Boris Schlossberg, director of FX research at broker firm GFT, said he was watching more closely for the employment reading in the U.S. Institute for Supply Management’s survey of the services sector, due out on Thursday, which he said was a better forecaster for the payrolls report.

In other data on Wednesday, the Commerce Department said orders for manufactured goods dropped 1.5 percent after a revised 1.1 percent rise in February.

On the housing front, applications for U.S. home mortgage purchases rose for a second week in a row, though demand for refinancing slipped as interest rates edged up, an industry group reported.

Markets have been speculating whether the Federal Reserve will embark on a third round of bond buying, or quantitative easing, to drive down long-term interest rates and help bolster the economy. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last month said monetary policy was appropriate, though he said the U.S. central bank would not hesitate to launch another round of asset purchases if the economy were to weaken.

Comments from several top Fed officials on Tuesday reinforced the picture that the central bank is happy to stand pat for now. The Fed has held interest rates at near-zero since late 2008 and has purchased more than $2 trillion in long-term securities.

Still, the Fed’s concern about the high unemployment rate means investors will be watching the jobs number on Friday for clues on whether more bond buying – known as QE III – is in the cards.

“Any disappointment over Friday’s non-farm payrolls will take us one step closer to QE III this summer, with the likelihood already at over 50 percent that Bernanke pulls the trigger by U.S. Labor Day,” in early September, Michael Woolfolk, senior forex strategist with BNY Mellon, wrote in a note.

(Additional reporting By Ryan Vlastelica and Nick Olivari in New York, Lucia Mutikani in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Money Related Quotes and News Company Price Related News

Derryn Carnaby is on the walk of her life.

She is trekking 600 kilometres from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia's Goldfields to Perth with a small group of like-minded people to raise money for research into asbestos-related cancers, such as mesothelioma and asbestosis.

“People say Derryn, you're mad, you're crazy but when they find out what I'm doing it for, they just put their hands in their pockets and put something in the tin,” she said.

Ms Carnaby says she's just an everyday citizen, turning a traumatic personal experience into a positive one.

“I lost both of my parents and two brothers to mesothelioma,” she said.

“There doesn't seem to be any hope once they are diagnosed, it's horrible.

“We've just got to find a cure, that's all, we just need a cure.”

Ms Carnaby is hoping the walk, which she estimates will take several days, will help do just that.

“My Mum and I once said we should walk to Kalgoorlie, I don't know why we said it, but we thought it would be good fun to do it.

“Mum never made it, she died of the disease so I said to my brother and sister, lets do something.”

Wittenoom upbringing

Ms Carnaby's mother and father used to live and work in the Pilbara town of Wittenoom, where they raised three of her siblings.

During the 1950s and 60s, the nearby Wittenoom Gorge was Australia's major producer of blue asbestos.

From the early 1940s until the mine closed due to serious health concerns in 1966, more than 20,000 people had lived in the town, including more than 4 Buy Chanel Dresses,000 children.

Today, Wittenoom is a ghost town and remains the site of Australia's worst industrial disaster, with more than 100 West Australians dying each year from asbestos-related cancers.

The family then moved to Kalgoorlie where Ms Carnaby was born as well as three more siblings.

“That's where we were as a big happy family Discount Herve Leger v neck, not a torn family,” she says.

The Asbestos Disease Society of Australia's president, Robert Vojakovic, is joining Ms Carnaby and about 20 other people on the walk.

The 72-year-old Australian of the Year winner used to work in Wittenoom and has dedicated his life to helping those affected by the disease.

Mr Vojakovic says the deaths are not only amongst Wittenoom workers and their families, but also those who have come into contact with asbestos products.

“There are more and more people coming to our office [who] were exposed through renovations, or just being there as children when their fathers were building cubby houses, building a carport or putting an extra room in the house,” he said.

“Drugs for treatment get very expensive and the patients can't afford it.

“I don't want these people to be short of money if there is a need for medication, we're talking about saving lives and this walk will save lives.”

Mr Vojakovic says generations are being destroyed.

“Its unacceptable, right now we have an epidemic,” he said.

“At this point in time I know about 47 cases of mesothelioma in this state.

“What's upsetting me is people who worked in Wittenoom are dying, their children are dying and their grandchildren are dying from the same source of exposure to the asbestos.

“We can't allow generations of people to be destroyed.”

Devastating generations

All money raised will be donated to a research unit into asbestos-related cancers at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, which leads the global research into treatment.

A Professor of Medicine at the University of Western Australia and an oncologist at the hospital, Anna Nowak, says the money will go a long way.

“I'm so grateful for the support,” she said.

“Without the support as well as government funding, this research doesn't happen.”

“It's very hard to get funding for mesothelioma because its a rare cancer compared with lung cancer, breast cancer and colon cancer, but it affects so many Western Australians.

“The type of asbestos around Western Australia is exactly the right size and shape to go down through the airways and penetrate through the outer wall of the lung and into the lining of the chest wall.

“It's like a needle shooting down the airways and lodging in your chest.

“Over many, many decades it can cause mutations in those cells and eventually one of those cells will turn into a cancer cell.”

Ms Nowak says in the last two weeks, she has seen two new patients with mesothelioma who spent their very early years at Wittenoom.

“One spent the first two years of their life there, and other spent the first six months,” she said.

“So, these are people who were babies and toddlers in Wittenoom whose father worked there during a short period of their childhood and now they have mesothelioma.

“It's just devastating.”

The group see hundreds of people every year, including Ms Carnaby's mother before she passed.

“They're so dedicated and clever so I'm sure that they can get there if they just had the funding,” says Ms Carnaby.

So far, she has raised nearly $25,000 for the cause with the goal of a grand total of $100,000.

“I'll walk a million miles for them and I'll walk a million miles in honour of the people who lost their lives from it.”

Toyota FT-CH live unveiling – Click above for high-res image gallery

Toyota is in the enviable position of being the market leader in hybrid production, with over 500 Tattoo Supplies,000 battery assisted cars and crossovers sold in 2009. The rest of the industry isn’t even close to catching up, and if a report from the Japanese business daily Nikkei is true Tattoo Supplies, it’s going to become a lot tougher catch the World’s Largest Automaker in the next couple years. Nikkei reports that Toyota will reportedly aim for one million global hybrid sales per year by 2011, twice as many as 2009 and many times more than any other automaker is likely dreaming of selling.

To get to a million hybrids sold, Toyota will likely need to increase the amount of hybrid-powered vehicles it sells while also increasing the amount facilities that produce hybrid vehicles and components. Toyota is expanding hybrid production to countries ranging from China and Thailand to the United States. The Nikkei says Toyota will build as many as 10 new hybrid vehicles for markets around the world.

One vehicle that could help Toyota meet its supposed goal of one million hybrids by 2011 is a production vehicle based on the FT-CH concept from the 2010 Detroit Auto Show. The hybrid hatch is a bit smaller than the Prius, and such a vehicle could produce outstanding fuel economy while also providing big-time boost to hybrid volume.

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Touring car racing isn’t big in the States Buy Christian Audigier Clothing, which could be in part due to the popularity of NASCAR. But whatever the reason Buy BCBG Dresses, it’s a bit of a shame White Herve leger sale, because the cars can be wicked cool. Like the new Audi A5 DTM.

Though powered by the same 460-horsepower V8 Replica DKNY Dresses, the racer internally dubbed R17 is set to replace the long-serving A4 DTM (and the V8 Quattro that preceded it) when the new regulations take effect next season. Then it will line up on grids across Germany alongside the new Mercedes-Benz C-Class DTM Coupe and the fresh M3 DTM entry from BMW in the German touring car series. But while development is still ongoing, we got a good look at the A5 DTM here in Frankfurt.

Follow the jump for the press release, and check out the car in the live gallery for a closer look, because while rumors are afloat of the series potentially making the U-Boat trip across the Atlantic Herve Leger v neck sale, for the time being this is as close as we’re likely to get.

Sales of the RAV4 are down five percent so far in 2012, but that won’t stop Toyota from increasing North American production. Automotive News reports that Toyota will spend $80 million to retool its Woodstock Cheap White Herve leger, Ontario plant to increase production from 150 Cheap Herve Leger v neck,000 crossovers per year to 200 Cheap Christian Audigier Clothes,000. The increased production will also lead to the hiring of an additional 400 workers at the plant.

Some speculate that Toyota is ramping up North American production to combat the high Japanese yen. Only 13 percent of the RAV4s sold in North America in 2012 have been Japanese imports. Toyota has steadily decreased its reliance on Japanese plants in general; it’s only building 35 percent of its vehicles in Japan this year Buy BCBG Dresses, compared to 53 percent in 2006.

Toyota spokeswoman Carly Schaffner tells AN that there are currently no plans to build the RAV4 exclusively in North America. Schaffner says that the reason for the production increase is that Toyota is finally able to get enough supplies to the plants after the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan a year ago. That said Discount Bandage dresses, Toyota has already moved all Highlander production to North America and could do likewise for the RAV4 if localized demand for it warrants a similar move.

It’s also important to remember that the RAV4 Hale Bob Dresses sale, basically unchanged for several years, is due for a makeover, so the plant upgrade might coincide with a model refresh.

Weekly Standard Emilio Pucci Dresses sale, Jan. 5, 2009
Charles Krauthammer’s cover story calls for a “net-zero” gasoline tax. A $1-per-gallon levy tempered by a $14-per-week reduction in payroll taxes would leave the average American no poorer (and his government no richer), but it would shrink gas demand. This would help keep the price of oil down, hurting the United   States’ hydrocarbon-exporting enemies and rivals. Krauthammer contends that currently cheap gas (about $1.65 per gallon) combined with the memory of extremely pricey gas (over $4 last July) has made the tax not only wise but also “politically palatable”—a “once in a generation opportunity”… “Obesity is the new smoking Cheap Herve leger strapless,” argues one article, citing New York’s “fat tax” on soda and a Binghamton, N.Y., ordinance barring discrimination against the overweight. The author ridicules progressives’ use of epidemiological language to cast the obese as blameless victims of disease and wonders whether that soda tax might not run afoul of that anti-discrimination law.

New York, Jan. 5, 2009
A spotlight on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who taught a course on faith and globalization at Yale last semester, argues that he is “a better American politician than most American politicians.” Like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, he has found a warmer reception stateside, where his strong personal faith is not anomalous, than he has back home. … A column points to foreign policy to explain why George W. Bush and Barack Obama seem to have found themselves cast in a transition buddy comedy. The success of the troop surge aided Obama by minimizing the commander-in-chief question. Now Obama will control much of Bush’s Iraq legacy. The author argues, “Obama’s foreign-policy instincts bear a strong resemblance to those of George H.W. Bush, whose pragmatic realism looks more and more like the essence of an emerging new consensus in foreign policy”—especially given that Dubya, too, has recently adopted his father’s global outlook.

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The New Yorker DKNY Dresses sale, Jan. 5, 2009
A lengthy dispatch examines the Darfur conflict from the perspective of the United Nations employees who run 12 camps in eastern Chad, which together have taken in about 250,000 Sudanese refugees. The author marvels at the nascent economies the refugees have established but finds himself giving money to a few desperate inhabitants. Meanwhile, portraits of aid workers, doctors, and bureaucrats do justice to the article’s title: “Lives of the Saints.”… A review of sex books past and present describes the “explosion” produced by The Joy of Sex’s 1972 release while criticizing its infamous hairy-man drawings Karen Millen Dresses sale, unfortunate heteronormative inclinations, and general Internet-age obsolescence. The author then applauds the P.C. revisions in a new edition of Joy (“crucially, rear-entry intercourse is no longer called sex “à la Négresse”), but critiques its odd prudishness: “What was revolutionary in 1972 seems obvious now, and to present the material otherwise feels silly and square.”

GQ, January 2009
Robert Draper describes his experiences interviewing George W. Bush for his book Dead Certain. “Bush’s greatest talent is personal diplomacy,” Draper relates. “Conversation with him feels like a physical experience. He listens acutely, relishes argument, and is just as quick to concede a point as he is to pummel a specious one.” The article discloses Bush’s post-White House plans—”I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers”—as well as some dish: Lynne Cheney, Draper says Buy Missoni Dresses, “seemed affronted by my every question—except for the ones that gave her an opportunity to say what an asshole John Edwards was.” … A dispatch from Foreclosure Alley, the expanse of southern California where the housing and credit crashes are yanking 500 homes from their owners per day, features a 21st-century ghost town and a McMansion with “walls … so thin a Chablis drinker could put a fist through them without dropping the Brie from his wafer.”

New York Review of Books, Jan. 15, 2009
In a review of three new books on the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation techniques, David Cole expresses sorrow and anger at the U.S. military’s official adoption of what amounts to torture. In one book, former Pentagon official Douglas Feith “practically gloats” about constructing legal doctrines that exempt alleged al-Qaida members from the Geneva Conventions; another tome “convincingly makes the case that [Donald] Rumsfeld committed war crimes.” Cole argues Cheap BCBG Dresses, “The best insurance against cruelty and torture becoming U.S. policy again is a formal recognition that what we did after September 11 was wrong.” But an official “reckoning” is as unlikely as it is crucial. … An article on U.S. Middle East policy indicts Bush for a “lethal mix of arrogance and ignorance” while noting that President Bill Clinton also failed to produce positive results. So what ought the United States do under Obama? The authors counsel patience and humility concerning the limits of the United States’ ability to bring peace.

Ferrari Enzo Modulo II by Paolo Martin – Click above for high-res image gallery
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Paolo Martin knows Ferraris. Having worked for several decades as a designer for Pininfarina – the design house of choice for Maranello – he’s styled several Prancing Horse design studies. One of his most iconic designs was the Ferrari Modulo concept Replica Seiko Watches, unveiled at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show.

Based on the chassis from a homologated Ferrari 512 S racing car Fake Zenith Watches, the Modulo was the absolute cutting edge of space-age design. It was far too radical to ever see production, of course Fake Panerai Watches, but its design has endured as one of the most exceptional of its era.

Now Replica Franck Muller Watches, in a rather unique move, Martin has revisited his concept, re-interpreting the theme in a more contemporary design. Theoretically based on a Ferrari Enzo chassis Fake Dewitt Watches, the “nuovo Modulo” looks as radical now as the original did in its day. The question is, does Pininfarina still have the gusto to build even just the one?

Related GalleryFerrari Enzo Modulo II by Paolo Martin
[Source: Car Body Design]