At least eight people have been killed as Thai security forces declared a "live firing zone" in downtown Bangkok on Saturday following days of deadly clashes with anti-government protesters. Saturday's fatality takes the total number of deaths to 25 since a government-backed clampdown on protesters exploded into violence on Thursday. More than 150 people have been wounded, according to emergency officials. In a televised address, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said a small group of protesters among the opposition "Red Shirts" was trying to foment civil war.

We now have 50,078 followers. That's good, because in the coming weeks, we will face our greatest challenge.

Earlier this week, the Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, irked US authorities by pointing out that even the world’s economic superpower has a major fiscal problem -“even the United States, the world’s largest economy, has a very large fiscal deficit” were his words. They were rather vague, but by happy coincidence the International Monetary Fund has chosen to flesh out the issue today. Unfortunately this is a rather long post with a few chunky tables, but it is worth spending a bit of time with – the IMF analysis is fascinating.

On Thursday, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) blocked a bill that would have raised oil companies' "responsibility cap" -- the maximum amount in damages companies must pay for their accidents -- from $75 million to $10 billion. On Friday, Murkowski's office was rebutting critics who were asking whether her opposition to the measure had anything to do with the fact she is a major supporter of offshore drilling who has received $426,989 in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry over her eight-year Senate career. Murkowski is the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. HuffPo: WATCH: Murkowski blocks $10B liability cap (Video).

The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The volume of oil spilled from BP’s collapsed Deepwater Horizon oil rig is likely at least ten times greater than official estimates, independent scientific analysis has revealed. For weeks, BP, the Obama administration, its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the media have been claiming that 5,000 barrels of oil—or 220,000 gallons—were spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every day, even though scientists had expressed doubts about the figure. The real figure is likely closer to 70,000 barrels, or nearly 3 million gallons, per day. If so, over 70 million gallons of oil have poured out since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers, about 6.5 times more already than in the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which dumped nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. FDL: Scientist: Oil Pipe Pouring 2.9 Million Gallons Per Day. NYT: Size of Oil Spill Underestimated, Scientists Say. Florida State University: FSU Playing Major Role in Monitoring, Assessment of Gulf Oil Spill. Boston.com: Disaster unfolds slowly in the Gulf of Mexico (40 photos total). National Geographic: Gulf Oil Leaks Could Gush for Years. AWIP: Never Before Heard- Oil Leak Video With SOUND. + AWIP/Stephen Lendman: Lessons from the Gulf.

As violence continues to grip Thailand's capital of Bangkok, the death toll from latest clashes between Thai soldiers and anti-government protesters rises to 16. Over 140 people were also injured in Friday's unrest in Bangkok where protesters made a renewed push to reclaim the city center. An official from the Bangkok Emergency Medical Service said a number of foreign nationals were also amongst those wounded in clashes, including individuals from Myanmar, Poland and Canada. Three journalists also sustained injuries while covering Thailand's unrest. Al Jazeera: Death toll rises in Bangkok clashes.

Each new attack causes us to intensify that behavior through the use of the most circular logic imaginable. President Obama said this week that we must continue to fight in Afghanistan because of the recent Terrorist attacks aimed at the U.S.; of course, a primary reason there are Terrorist attacks aimed at the U.S. is because we continue to kill Muslim civilians around the world, including in Afghanistan. It's a never-ending, self-perpetuating cycle: we attack people in the Muslim world, causing Terrorist attacks aimed at the U.S., and then cite those episodes as a reason to further attack people in the Muslim world, etc.

That endless cycle would be bad enough standing alone. But it's accompanied by a relentless and still ongoing transformation of our political system. We never ask what we're doing to cause Terrorism and how we can change our actions to weaken it. We instead ask only one question each time the word Terrorism is uttered: which new rights can we get rid of now? Even after 8 years of Bush/Cheney, Americans are still finding new and creative ways to answer that question. AWIP/Matt Taibbi: Miran-Duhhhhh!

NYT: Proposal Would Delay Hearings in Terror Cases: President Obama’s legal advisers are considering asking Congress to allow the government to detain terrorism suspects longer after their arrests before presenting them to a judge for an initial hearing, according to administration officials familiar with the discussions. If approved, the idea to delay hearings would be attached to broader legislation to allow interrogators to withhold Miranda warnings from terrorism suspects for lengthy periods, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. proposed last week.

There are more than 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world but many aren't recorded and don't have a written form. Unesco warns that by the end of this century, more than half of these are likely to disappear. One of those dying languages is Wichita - a native American tongue. Doris McLemore, 83, is the last fluent speaker of Wichita. Al-Jazeera's Rob Reynolds travelled to Taah-leqwah in Oklahoma to meet her.

Google’s Street View cars have been spying on people’s internet use for three years, the search giant admitted last night. It had been scooping up snippets of people’s online activities broadcast over unprotected home and business wi-fi networks. Google admitted that the cars’ radio antennae snooped on e-mails and other bits of information when the vehicles trundled through towns and cities. Google said that the data was collected only in short bursts as the vehicles passed by, and was never used. The cars, which have cameras on a pole, have covered most of the towns and cities in the UK. Street View, launched in the US in 2007, provides real-world images of streets and roads that the user can manipulate, as part of Google’s online mapping products. Its launch in the UK in April last year provoked a storm of protest, when people claimed that its images would help burglars seek out where to strike and invaded home owners’ privacy.

In this situation, let me suggest, the country faces an existential threat. Either the legal system must do its work. Or the market system cannot be restored. There must be a thorough, transparent, effective, radical cleaning of the financial sector and also of those public officials who failed the public trust. The financiers must be made to feel, in their bones, the power of the law. And the public, which lives by the law, must see very clearly and unambiguously that this is the case.

At least 11 Afghans, mostly civilians were killed in an overnight raid by US forces today, sparking a massive protest that turned violent in Nangarhar Province, as raging demonstrators chanted “death to America.” The protesters proceeded to throw stones at the government buildings in the area, until police opened fire on the crowd, killing at least one more. NATO continues to deny that any civilians died in the attacks. [Yes, absolutely, death to America!]

Slams Iranian Refusal to Abandon Civilian Nuclear Program. At a news conference today with incoming British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that Iran had “proven” the need for sanctions itself by refusing demands to abandon its civilian nuclear program. “Every step along the way has demonstrated clearly to the world that Iran is not participating in the international arena in the way that we had asked them to,” Clinton claimed

Stuart Littlewood views the Zionist roots of Britain’s senior coalition party, the Conservatives, especially its leader David Cameron and the foreign secretary, William Hague, both self-confessed Israel stooges. He asks whether Nick Clegg, leader of the junior coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, will have the guts to neutralize the Conservatives’ Zionism and uphold his party’s position on Gaza and war crimes.

It turns out that Goldman Sachs really did place shorts on TransOcean stock days before the explosions rocked the rig in the Gulf of Mexico sending stocks plunging while GS profits soared -- benefitting once again from a huge disaster, having done the same with airline stocks prior to 911 then again with the housing bubble.

So I saw all of these mediocre pictures of that volcano in Iceland nobody can pronounce the name of, so I figured I should go and do better. But the flights to get over took forever as expected (somewhat). 4 days after leaving I finally made it, but the weather was terrible for another 4. Just before leaving it got pretty good for about a day and a half and this is what I managed to get. Wish I had more time. I missed all the cool Lightning and the Lava of the first eruption. But I figure this will just be a trial run for another day.