Koizumi's visit yesterday was aimed at paving the way for talks to end North Korea's nuclear program. He returned with five of the eight known relatives of Japanese abducted by the communist nation in the 1980s, while his visit was overshadowed by a New York Times report that said evidence was found North Korea exported nuclear materials to Libya."

FT.com: "North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has agreed to let all eight relatives of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang decades ago leave for Japan, media said, and a Japanese official said five would be reunited with their parents in Tokyo on Saturday."

Reuters: "North Korean leader Kim Jong-il said on Saturday that he wanted a nuclear-weapon-free Korean peninsula and reaffirmed a moratorium on ballistic missile lanuches, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said"

Bordering the Red Sea, between Egypt and Eritrea,  lies the country of Sudan. The nation has been embroiled in a civil war for almost all its existence over the fifty years since it won its independence from the United Kingdom. The ongoing wars are rooted in northern economic, political, and social domination of non-Muslim, non-Arab southern Sudanese. Since 1983, the war and war- and famine-related effects have led to more than 2 million deaths and over 4 million people displaced. Life expectancy for the Sudanese is only 58 years.

In Darfur, a region in southern Sudan approximately the size of Texas, over a million people are threatened with torture and death at the hands of marauding militia and a complicit government. Imagine a militia that forces parents to choose whether their children will be burned alive or shot to death. Imagine that in the very same month the world remembers the genocides of Cambodia and Rwanda, the unfolding news of another in Sudan is barely heard and largely ignored.

- Passion of the Present 

Jim Moore is leading an effort designed to raise the awareness of the Sudanese genocide and put it to a final stop. Be sure to check out this great resource and pass the link around.

The more that this information is shared, the more it will matter. The more it matters, the bigger the difference that we make.

Wizbang: When I originally put the Nick Berg video on one of my servers, it was as a service to the relatively small group of regular Wizbang! readers as well as the "extended readership."  ...then Google happened. I'll admit the search engines picked it up faster than I anticipated. My first instinct was to delink the video. But then it hit me. Everyone of these people that find "us" via google are new blogosphereonians. This is why we are here. We can do what the big guys can't.

Dude - you've got this so wrong in so many ways. I'm not sure what type of readers you have, so if you are catering to the same sick twisted people that traded "Faces of Death" video tapes back in the '80's then perhaps this might be a service for your readers. But to think that you are doing weblogging a service by attracting new "recruits" is completely off-base.

You are attracting people that are looking to satisfy their twisted curiousity and get an odd thrill from this sort of thing. You aren't recruiting new webloggers and the likelihood that these people are going to turn into devoted readers of your weblog is nil - unless you plan on keeping them coming back with more demented footage.

The circumstances that led up to this killing aren't known yet, and may never be - but this doesn't change the fact that Nick Berg is dead and you are looking to profit from this terrible act. Enjoy your notoriety if you can, but please, don't mislead yourself by thinking that you are doing me, weblogging or anyone really, a public service.

You are peddling someone else's tragedy in order to increase your profile. Be proud, hold your head up.

Great work.

Agriculture Canada"...buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is not a cereal grain, but a fruit or nut."

Birkett Mills: "Buckwheat contains all essential amino acids (eight proteins that the body cannot manufacture) in good proportions, making it closer to being a "complete" protein than any other plant source, even soybeans. "

On a completely unrelated note, I threw out my Buckwheat (otay) necktie last week. I had it for 15 years and it hurt me deeply to get rid of it, but I really couldn't answer one key question for myself - where on earth could I wear this thing without getting beaten up?