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I could really use some Easy Mac...Don't assume we're voting the same way when sending me politically themed emails, or that the praise you're forwarding for your candidate of choice sounds any less like the brainwashed silliness you complain about from "the other side." For every "My Party's Candidate Is A God Among Men!" link you send me that glows over your candidate of choice I have one that glows in an equally flashy and abrasive manner over mine while debunking everything your videos and links just plugged. Let's just leave it at "we're even" and assume nothing we say to each other will change the other's mind. Because let's face it: It won't.
...[W]hy is Chavez taking the lead in bashing Colombia?
There are several possibilities:
First, the hard drives captured from the FARC camp are absolute dynamite. So far the documents reveal that the FARC was negotiating with the Ecuadorian government at a very high level, that the FARC had given Chavez $150,000 while he was imprisoned after his 1992 coup attempt, and received $300 million from Chavez in return. ...
Second, Chavez is deterring possible Colombian attacks on FARC leaders in Venezuela. It has long been an open secret that the Venezuelan frontier regions were open territory to the FARC. ...
Third, Chavez is looking for an international crisis to distract the Venezuelans from their domestic crisis. This is the oldest play in the book for dictators the world over. ... Venezuela’s economy has been booming due to high oil prices, but there has been little trickle down. At the same time many of Chavez’s polices — particularly price controls on staples — have led to the predictable shortages and to popular discontent. ...
Fourth: Hugo es loco. There have been many rumors about Hugo’s mental health and some of his recent acts (such as calling for the exhumation of his hero Simon Bolivar’s remains for tests to see if he was assassinated by the oligarchs) are increasingly loopy. ...
... [A]s more intelligence about the FARC emerges from the late Raul Reyes’s hard drive, the nations of Latin America may be forced to make some tough decisions. Ecuador’s President Correa will have to decide if he wants to play Syria to Chavez’s Iran. But more broadly, the nations of Latin America, many of which have suffered from violence linked to the FARC, will have to decide if they can tolerate a state sponsor of terrorism in their midst or if that state should suffer the consequences of supporting terror.
Ordinary Cubans have wondered whether a change in power in Cuba will lead to lower food prices, higher salaries and more freedom to travel.
In Miami, Florida, the news came as no surprise to Janisset Rivero, the executive director of Cuban Democratic Directorate, a group that works with dissidents in Cuba.
"I think there have been preparations taking place for quite a while to assure the crowning of Raúl Castro," she said Tuesday morning. "It doesn't mean any change to the system. It doesn't mean there will be freedom for the Cubans. One big dictator is replacing the other.
"It will be a big deal when political prisoners are released, when political parties are allowed to organize, when the country stops being ruled by a single party."
The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.
The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.
"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."
Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. ...
"I think so far, we have been unable to tackle this problem properly," he says. "There are many motives for these crimes and parties involved in killing women, by strangling, beheading, chopping off their hands, legs, heads."
"When I came to Basra a year ago," he says, "two women were killed in front of their kids. Their blood was flowing in front of their kids, they were crying. Another woman was killed in front of her 6-year-old son, another in front of her 11-year-old child, and yet another who was pregnant." ...
Boldly splattered in red paint just outside the main downtown market, a chilling sign reads: "We warn against not wearing a headscarf and wearing makeup. Those who do not abide by this will be punished. God is our witness, we have notified you." ...
An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts. In addition to numerous e-mail messages sent to Wikipedia.org, an online petition cites a prohibition in Islam on images of people. The petition has more than 80,000 “signatures,” though many who submitted them to ThePetitionSite.com, remained anonymous.
“We have been noticing a lot more similar sounding, similar looking e-mails beginning mid-January,” said Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, which administers the various online encyclopedias in more than 250 languages.
A Frequently Asked Questions page explains the site’s polite but firm refusal to remove the images: “Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.”
The notes left on the petition site come from all over the world. “It’s totally unacceptable to print the Prophet’s picture,” Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. “It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately.”
The site considered but rejected a compromise that would allow visitors to choose whether to view the page with images.
Paul M. Cobb, who teaches Islamic history at Notre Dame, said, “Islamic teaching has traditionally discouraged representation of humans, particularly Muhammad, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent.” He added, “Some of the most beautiful images in Islamic art are manuscript images of Muhammad.”
The idea of imposing a ban on all depictions of people, particularly Muhammad, dates to the 20th century, he said. With the Wikipedia entry, he added, “what you are dealing with is not medieval illustrations, you are dealing with modern media and getting a modern response.”
A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh, according to a report in The Times of London on Thursday.
Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's "Mutaween" police, The Times reported.
"Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked 'Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin," recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.
The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers. ...
The animated virtual book for primary school children, The Three Little Cowboy Builders, was also criticized for its potential to offend builders.
The row centered on the Bett awards, which were supported by Becta, the Government’s technology agency for schools. The judges’ remarks, reported on the education technology Web site Merlin John Online, included: “Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?
“The idea of taking a traditional tale and retelling a story is fine, but it should not alienate parts of the workforce. Judges would not recommend this product to the Muslim community in particular.”
A radical Baptist church in Kansas known for picketing the funerals of soldiers who perished in Iraq said it intends to protest Heath Ledger's memorial service with signs claiming the actor died and is in Hell because he played a gay character in “Brokeback Mountain.” ...A hate group? No kidding, man.
Started 1955, the Topeka, Kan.-based church has conducted over 34,000 peaceful demonstrations opposing the homosexual lifestyle, according to their Web site, GodHatesFags.com.
The organization runs various Web sites, including GodHatesAmerica.com and others that condemn lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, Muslims, Roman Catholics and Jews as well as certain nationalities, according to Wikipedia. ...
The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the church as a hate group and the organization is monitored by the Anti-Defamation League, according to its Wikipedia entry.
Heath Ledger's director on the 2002 adventure movie Four Feathers, Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, had plans to meet up with his former star – until tragic fate intervened.From CRG Residential's "Business Digest":
"I last spoke to him the night before he died. I had just arrived in New York last night, he said he could not see me that night but really wanted to meet me the next day," Kapur, 62, whose films also include the two Elizabeth movies starring Cate Blanchett... "He made me promise that I would call him in the morning and wake him up. I tried. Little did I know that his soul had already left his body."
... "In Heath I have lost a younger brother He was one the most gentle, the most honest, most caring and most compassionate persons I had met. And one of the most honest actors I worked with. ... Farewell Heath. I always knew you had an ancient soul. I always said you had a wisdom beyond your years. And somehow I always knew that your spirit was too restless. Goodbye, my brother."
Of all the myths about our economy, none is more persistent- or wrong- than the "death of U.S. manufacturing." U.S. workers are producing and exporting record amounts, both in quantity and in dollar value, accounting for almost 25% of all goods produced globally. Despite the stunning rise of China and others, America's share of the world's total annual manufacturing has remained nearly level since 1982. Our homes may be filled with imported goods, but the big, expensive U.S.-made products that we don't purchase personally- plans, medical equipment and more- are the star exports of the global economy.
In an arid corner of the Texas Panhandle, three giants- a legendary oilman and a pair of energy companies- have laid out land for two huge wind farms. Neither project has broken ground yet, but when completed they'll be the two biggest generators of wind electricity in the world. In the meantime, they need to lay lines that will one day deliver the power to more populated areas. The T. Boone Pickens project will cost an estimated $6.4 billion with a capacity of 4,000 megawatts, powering as many as 900,000 homes. The TXU-Shell partnership plans a capacity of 3,000 megawatts at a cost of $4.8 billion.
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oceandoot, last night at Sunset. Hilarious. Too too funny. Unfortunately it was closing night, however, so for anyone still wanting to catch it, ya' can't. *neener neener neeeener*thisangelhurts at ComedySportz for the midnight show. It was... It wasn't as good as it used to be. Maybe it was just an off night, and there were some parts that were great, but for the most part it was... It was only so-so.patchworkmind, ain't this a laugh...Alfred Nobel felt horrible about the uses to which his invention -- dynamite -- was put. So he endowed the Nobel Peace Prize and instructed that it go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."And to round things out, Australia's got a thing or two to say about it as well...
Al Gore has done exactly none of those things.
Gore, however, did write a book and make a film about global warming. He has become the second environmental activist to win the peace prize in the past four years. Wangari Muta Maathai won it in 2004 for planting trees.
Thus we have indisputable confirmation that the Nobel Peace Prize is no longer a serious international award. In 1994 the five Norwegian politicians who award the prize gave it to the murdering thug Yasser Arafat. Two years before that they gave it to literary fraud Rigoberta Menchu, whose autobiography was largely fabricated. (An example: The brother she supposedly watched die of malnutrition was later found by a New York Times reporter to be very much alive and well.)
On Friday the prize was given to Al Gore and the International Panel on Climate Change. Two days before, a British judge ruled that Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," contained so many errors (read: lies) that it could be shown in British public schools only if accompanied by a fact sheet correcting the errors.
The Nobel Peace Prize is worse than a joke. It's a fraud.
ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.
His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.
"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous." ...
... [H]e said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.
"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said. ...
He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.
"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."
It all starts with one simple sentence, spoken almost in a whisper, but which has a thunderous effect. A female police officer deployed in Tehran's latest moral crackdown tells a woman that her manto (overcoat) is too short and infringes Iranian Islamic dress rules."Azizam (my dear), good afternoon, if possible could we have a friendly chat, please allow us to have a small chat," the officer, a graduate of Tehran's police academy, tells the young woman. "My dear there is a problem with your manto. Please do not wear this kind of manto. Please wear a longer manto from now on."
Some are just let go there, but others are escorted to waiting minibuses with dark black tinted window panes and labelled "Guidance Patrol."
A girl in a short white manto whose long hair was tumbling out the front of her headscarf is taken by the police to one of the minibuses on Vanak Square in central Tehran -- an unexpected and unhappy end to her shopping trip. Another arrested woman is already inside the bus. She begins to cry. "I promise, I promise!"
And the minibus doors slam shut.
Tehran's police have said they are operating a three stage process in implementing the new wave of a crackdown on dress deemed to be unIslamic, which started with some intensity on Monday afternoon.
First, women are given a verbal warning on the street. If the problem is not resolved there, they are taken to the police station for "guidance" and to sign a vow not to repeat the offence. Should this be unsuccessful, their case is handed to the judiciary.
"Sure my manto is short, but there are many others whose clothes are more seductive than mine and they walking by without any punishment," one of the arrested girls in the minibus complained bitterly.
The arrested women will now go to a "centre for combating vice". Their parents will be phoned and they will bring a longer coat and fuller headscarf for their daughters. If the young women sign the pledge they will then be released.
"We want our words to have an effect on people," a female Iranian police officer, who by law was not allowed to give her name, told AFP before being dispatched to take part in the crackdown. "Our method is through guidance and via words. We do not face an instance that prompts us to be physical. We do not have any bats or sprays, in the toughest instances we may grab her hand and 'guide' her to the minibus," she said.
"I am doing this it as it is my duty and my job is supported by the religious teachings," another women clad in the black chador uniform of Tehran's female police added.
A girl confronted by the female police for having overly short trousers and transparent stockings apologizes.
"I am wearing stockings but, sorry, they are too light. Sorry I will change them, definitely I will change them. Now can I go?"
Not everything goes so smoothly.
One young passer-by rounds on the police for devoting such resources to moral crackdowns rather than other social problems as the minibus -- now filled with "badly veiled" women -- speeds away to the police station.
"Shame on you, look what you've done! The people's problem is not this, go fix your traffic situation, people are stuck in traffic for hours, go fix other real problems," she shrieks.
There was already considerable controversy inside Iran when the first stage of the "plan to increase security in society" was launched in April. Many conservatives have applauded the drive, but moderates have publicly questioned whether Iran would be better off tackling poverty and crime rather than slack dressing.
Just before the new crackdown started, popular television host Farzad Hasani grilled Tehran's police chief Ahmad Reza Radan about the drive on his talk show, accusing the police of "not differentiating between people and thugs."
An old woman in a black chador in Vanak Qquare echoed the sentiment. "Our youth have no peace of mind. They are afraid to go out, they are afraid that if they go out they will be taken to the police. Aren't they saying that there is freedom?"
The vast majority of people in New Zealand are against a recent rule approved by lawmakers that bans using images captured inside Parliament to satirize, ridicule or denigrate lawmakers on broadcast and print media, according to a poll by TNS released by TV3. 71 per cent of respondents disapprove of this measure.Norwegian Irritation Grows Over High Taxes
In June, New Zealand’s House of Representatives voted to institute new media rules, which in effect ban the use of images in a way that satirizes, ridicules or denigrates lawmakers. Breaches of these measures can be treated as contempt of Parliament, a charge that can result in imprisonment.
Norwegians have long accepted high taxes to finance their social welfare state, but a new survey indicates rising dissatisfaction and, in some cases, outright hatred of some taxes that are viewed as way too high and unfair.Sorry to toss that whole thing in there. I just don't really have time at this point to weed it for sound bites...Norwegians are among the most heavily taxed people in the world, and that in turn has made Norway one of the most expensive countries in which to live. Most accept the taxes they're ordered to pay on income and even net worth and property, but growing numbers are publicly complaining about sky-high taxes on everything from cars to fuel to consumer goods.
Norwegians differentiate between skatter (taxes) and avgifter (duties, fees or user taxes) and the latter is the most hated. They're what causes a glass of house wine at an Oslo restaurant to cost the equivalent of nearly USD 16, or a gallon of gas to cost nearly USD 9 at current exchange rates.
"It's clear that taxes are much too high in oil-rich Norway," Oslo resident Gro Pettersen told newspaper Aftenposten. "It's sick!"
The taxes placed on new cars, which can more than double the price of the car itself, are another bone of contention, even though most Norwegians support measures to protect the environment. "The car tax is much too high, but so are most all the other avgifter also," said Ernst Bendiksen of the northern city of Vadsø, where Norwegians are far more dependent on their cars than those living in cities with good public transit systems. "We certainly don't get anything in return for them."
The study also showed that 67 percent of the population think Norway's inheritance taxes are too high, while 63 percent think fuel taxes are too high. Norway's hefty 25 percent VAT (like a sales tax) on nearly all consumer items is considered too high by 53 percent of the population. Only 32 percent, meanwhile, believed tobacco taxes are too high, while 44 percent believed liquor taxes are too high.
A study conducted by research firm MMI for the Norwegian Tax Payers Association (Skattebetalerforeningen) showed that the most hated taxes are those on new cars and a transfer tax levied when real estate changes hands. The so-called dokumentavgift on real estate transactions, which implies that it's meant to cover the costs of property registration, costs homebuyers around 2.5 percent of the purchase price.
Three of four Norwegians believe that's too high, according to the MMI study, and absolutely no one believed it was too low. With even a modest flat in Oslo costing a few million kroner these days, the tax amounts to a fair bit of change.
Regressive inequality
The user taxes, or avgifter, are also unpopular because they're largely regressive taxes that hit people with low incomes much harder than those with high incomes. Filling the car's gas tank, and paying the taxes that requires, is much more expensive for someone earning NOK 300,000 than it is for a car owner earning NOK 900,000.
The head of the tax payers' association, Jon Stordrange, said he thinks user taxes should be adjusted to reflect actual costs inflicted on society. "Then I think people would have more respect for the system," he said.
...Dressed in olive green fatigues and a red beret, Chavez spoke inside Tiuna Fort—Venezuela's military nerve-center—before hundreds of uniformed soldiers standing alongside armored vehicles and tanks decorated with banners reading: "Fatherland, Socialism, or Death! We will triumph!"...Alright. So there we have Venezuela. And now, traveling down and over, a purse makes waves in Peru.
Under Chavez, Venezuela has recently purchased some $3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets.
Last week, Chavez said he is considering arms purchases, including submarines and a missile-equipped air defense system, as he prepares for a tour of Russia, Belarus and Iran.
"We are strengthening Venezuela's military power precisely to avoid imperial aggressions and assure peace, not to attack anybody," he said Sunday.
US actress Cameron Diaz has apologised for wearing a bag with a political slogan that evoked painful memories in Peru.
The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated Shrek films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru's Andes wearing an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People", perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan, printed in Chinese.
The bags are marketed as fashion accessories in some cities around the world, but in Peru the slogan evokes memories of the Maoist Shining Path insurgency that fought the government in the 1980s and early 1990s in a bloody conflict that left nearly 70,000 people dead.
"I sincerely apologise to anyone I may have inadvertently offended," Diaz said in a statement. "The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China and I did not realise the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan printed on it."
One prominent Peruvian human rights activist said Diaz should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.
The fog of time and the strength of anti-anti-Communism have obscured the real Che. Who was he? He was an Argentinian revolutionary who served as Castro's primary thug. He was especially infamous for presiding over summary executions at La Cabana, the fortress that was his abattoir. He liked to administer the coup de grace, the bullet to the back of the neck. And he loved to parade people past El Paredon, the reddened wall against which so many innocents were killed. Furthermore, he established the labor-camp system in which countless citizens — dissidents, democrats, artists, homosexuals — would suffer and die. This is the Cuban gulag. A Cuban-American writer, Humberto Fontova, described Guevara as "a combination of Beria and Himmler." Anthony Daniels once quipped, "The difference between [Guevara] and Pol Pot was that [the former] never studied in Paris."
Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defence Ministry said on Monday.Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.
And on an oddly related (to the potential movie, that is) note: I wonder how Jolene feels about all this...
What costume should Ruth start working on for Halloween?
Saffron (Firefly)
4 (36.4%)
Charlie (Lost) 1 (9.1%)
Lakshmi Singh (NPR) 0 (0.0%)
Inga (Young Frankenstein) 7 (63.6%)
busy
frustrated frustrated
productive