Thursday, 31 May 2012

Secular Café: Pelosi expects SCOUS to vote 6-3 in support of Health Care Law

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Pelosi expects SCOUS to vote 6-3 in support of Health Care Law
May 31st 2012, 22:06

Not that her opinion necessarily means anything but we should be hearing something soon. I just wish the public option was still in there, particularly as I'm in the midst of trying to get private health insurance.

Quote:

Pelosi expects court to vote 6-3 in favor of Obama health care law

May 31, 2012, 1:31 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- As Washington awaits the Supreme Court's ruling on President Obama's healthcare law, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) said the Affordable Care Act will withstand the constitutional challenge before the court and be upheld.

"I know the Constitution – this bill is ironclad," Pelosi said Thursday. "It is ironclad."

The nation's new healthcare law, a signature legislative achievement of Obama's first term, was signed into law in 2010, but immediately challenged by attorney generals from more than two dozen primarily Republican-led states. Joined by small businesses, they questioned the constitutionality of one of the law's central provisions: that all Americans must have health insurance by 2014.

Few political leaders in Washington have been willing to publicly wager on the outcome as the court considers the case, but Pelosi reiterated her belief that she expects the justices would rule 6-3 to uphold it.

"Nobody was frivolous with the Constitution and the health of the American people in writing the bill," she said. "That's where my confidence springs from: the merit of the bill and the nature of the Constitution. The makeup of the court -- well, we'll see."

....
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics...,4677735.story

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Secular Café: Holy Cow! President Romney Ad

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Holy Cow! President Romney Ad
May 31st 2012, 20:21

This pisses me off. He has no right to call himself President even as an ad for the future.

(Not loaded: FExrZpvL2zs)

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Secular Café: Holy Cow! Edwards is going to walk!

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Holy Cow! Edwards is going to walk!
May 31st 2012, 20:27

Jury has reached a verdict on one out of the six charges! Not Guilty! They are deadlocked on the other five and the judge has declared a mistrial.

Unfuckingbelievable.

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Secular Café: Atrocities in Syria

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Atrocities in Syria
May 31st 2012, 17:20

I suppose everyone is aware of the frightful massacre that occurred in Houla.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18233934

Quote:

The village of Taldou, near the town of Houla in Syria's Homs province was the scene of one of the worst massacres in the country's 14-month-long uprising on Friday.

United Nations observers on the ground have confirmed that at least 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women. Some were killed by shell fire, but the majority appear to have been shot or stabbed at close range...

...The picture being pieced together by activists, survivors and the limited number of international journalists and human rights organisations in Syria is of an attack that began with the army shelling the town and ended with militiamen killing people house-by-house late into the night.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has said initial investigations suggest the majority of the victims were "summarily executed in two separate incidents" while fewer then 20 were killed by artillery or shell fire...

...Activists and eyewitnesses say the Syrian army shelled the town, reportedly at first with tank fire then with mortars, in a sustained bombardment that lasted at least two hours.

This tallies with UN accounts of tank and mortar shells in civilian areas. The UN Security Council issued a statement saying that "such outrageous use of force against civilian population constitutes a violation of applicable international law"...

...according to activists and eyewitnesses interviewed by the BBC, other media and human rights groups, army shelling paved the way for a concerted ground attack by the Alawite-dominated pro-government militia, the shabiha.

Their reports suggest that men from the shabiha entered people's houses in army fatigues and either cut their throats or shot them in the head from approximately 16:00 to 01:00 on Saturday morning.
The Syrian regime denies all responsibility.

So what can be done to help the tortured people of Syria? Bugger all, it would seem. Russia and China are cynically backing their client state against the outrage of the world and blocking any possibility of effective UN action. It's almost back to the Cold War.

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Secular Café: More Idiocy from N Carolina

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More Idiocy from N Carolina
May 31st 2012, 13:22

link

Basically making it illegal to properly measure things so that it doesn't appear sea levels will rise.
:bang:

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Secular Café: Super Computer Virus hits the Middle East

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Super Computer Virus hits the Middle East
May 31st 2012, 08:22

Meet 'Flame,' The Massive Spy Malware Infiltrating Iranian Computers | Threat Level | Wired.com
Quote:

A massive, highly sophisticated piece of malware has been newly found infecting systems in Iran and elsewhere and is believed to be part of a well-coordinated, ongoing, state-run cyberespionage operation.

The malware, discovered by Russia-based antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab, is an espionage toolkit that has been infecting targeted systems in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, the Israeli Occupied Territories and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa for at least two years.

Dubbed "Flame" by Kaspersky, the malicious code dwarfs Stuxnet in size — the groundbreaking infrastructure-sabotaging malware that is believed to have wreaked havoc on Iran's nuclear program in 2009 and 2010. Although Flame has both a different purpose and composition than Stuxnet, and appears to have been written by different programmers, its complexity, the geographic scope of its infections and its behavior indicate strongly that a nation-state is behind Flame, rather than common cyber-criminals — marking it as yet another tool in the growing arsenal of cyberweaponry.
It's designed to spy on its hosts, taking screenshots, searching for documents, and eavesdropping on network traffic and keystrokes and voice conversations. It's also designed to send to certain addresses what it has discovered, and unlike Stuxnet, its masters must command it to spread. That has made it more difficult to discover.
Quote:

The malware, which is 20 megabytes when all of its modules are installed, contains multiple libraries, SQLite3 databases, various levels of encryption — some strong, some weak — and 20 plug-ins that can be swapped in and out to provide various functionality for the attackers. It even contains some code that is written in the LUA programming language — an uncommon choice for malware.
Talk about supersophisticated software. It looks as if its designers had made it easy to reconfigure for a variety of espionage and sabotage tasks. By comparison, Stuxnet is only 500 kilobytes in size.

Stuxnet was designed for industrial sabotage, like spinning up Iran's uranium-enrichment centrifuges. Duqu, another predecessor, was signed to grab documents about Iran's nuclear efforts.
Quote:

Because Flame is so big, it gets loaded to a system in pieces. The machine first gets hit with a 6-megabyte component, which contains about half a dozen other compressed modules inside. The main component extracts, decompresses and decrypts these modules and writes them to various locations on disk. The number of modules in an infection depends on what the attackers want to do on a particular machine.

Once the modules are unpacked and loaded, the malware connects to one of about 80 command-and-control domains to deliver information about the infected machine to the attackers and await further instruction from them. The malware contains a hardcoded list of about five domains, but also has an updatable list, to which the attackers can add new domains if these others have been taken down or abandoned.
Where are these contact addresses?

Researchers Link Flame Virus to Stuxnet and Duqu - NYTimes.com
Who is responsible?
Quote:

For example, researchers at Kaspersky Lab tracked the working hours of Duqu's operators and found they coincided with Jerusalem local time. They also noted that Duqu's programmers were not active between sundown on Fridays and sundown on Saturdays, a time that coincides with the Sabbath when observant Jews typically refrain from secular work.
Seems like a job for a Shabbos Goy and people in different time zones. The places with the most Flame infections also suggests Israel: countries hostile to Israel like Iran, and countries that host militias and terrorists who are willing to attack Israel.
Quote:

Flame also shares a quirkier trait with Duqu: an affection for American movie characters. Flame's command for communicating with Bluetooth-enabled devices is "Beetlejuice." An e-mail that infected an unnamed company with Duqu last year was sent by a "Mr. Jason B." — which researchers believe is a reference to Jason Bourne of the Robert Ludlum spy tales.
Iran Confirms Attack by a Virus That Steals Data - NYTimes.com
Quote:

The computers of high-ranking Iranian officials appear to have been penetrated by a data-mining virus called Flame, in what may be the most destructive cyberattack on Iran since the notorious Stuxnet virus, an Iranian cyberdefense organization confirmed on Tuesday.

In a message posted on its Web site, Iran's Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center warned that the virus was dangerous. An expert at the organization said in a telephone interview that it was potentially more harmful than the 2010 Stuxnet virus, which destroyed several centrifuges used for Iran's nuclear enrichment program. In contrast to Stuxnet, the newly identified virus is designed not to do damage but to collect information secretly from a wide variety of sources.
However,
Iran claims to have beaten 'Flame' computer virus - Telegraph

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Wednesday, 30 May 2012

Secular Café: War criminal Charles Taylor gets 50 years

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War criminal Charles Taylor gets 50 years
May 30th 2012, 14:06

I bet there is rejoicing in Sierra Leone!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18259596#

Quote:

Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor has been sentenced to 50 years in jail by a UN-backed war crimes court.

Last month Taylor was found guilty of aiding and abetting rebels in Sierra Leone during the 1991-2002 civil war.

Special Court for Sierra Leone judges said the sentence reflected his status as head of state at the time and his betrayal of public trust.

Taylor, 64, insists he is innocent and his lawyer has told the BBC he will appeal against the sentence...

..."The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history," Judge Richard Lussick said.

The crimes - which took place over five years - included cutting off the limbs of their victims and cutting open pregnant women to settle bets over the sex of their unborn children, he said.

The prosecution had wanted an 80-year prison term to reflect the severity of the crimes and the central role that Taylor had in facilitating them.

But the judge said that would have been excessive - taking into account the limited scope of his involvement in planning operations in Sierra Leone.

However, Judge Lussick said in return for a constant flow of diamonds, Taylor provided arms and both logistical and moral support to the Revolutionary United Front rebels - prolonging the conflict and the suffering of the people of Sierra Leone.

"While Mr Taylor never set foot in Sierra Leone, his heavy footprint is there," the judge said.

"The lives of many more innocent civilians in Sierra Leone were lost or destroyed as a direct result of his actions," he said.

In its landmark ruling in April, the court found Taylor guilty on 11 counts, relating to atrocities that included rape and murder.

He became the first former head of state to be convicted of war crimes by an international court since the Nuremburg trials of Nazis after World War II.

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Secular Café: President Penis Painting Removed from S.A. Gallery :)

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President Penis Painting Removed from S.A. Gallery :)
May 30th 2012, 14:56

After Gallery agrees with ANC. :D

Quote:

South African art gallery agrees to remove Zuma penis painting


JOHANNESBURG -- A controversial painting showing South African President Jacob Zuma with his penis exposed will no longer be displayed at Johannesburg's Goodman Gallery, after an agreement was struck between the art gallery and Zuma's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party.

At a joint news conference Wednesday, ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu and gallery director Liza Essers confirmed that the ANC's court case against the gallery would be dropped.

In exchange, the gallery agreed not to display the painting. Essers added that the gallery would also remove an image of the painting from the gallery's website as a gesture of goodwill, The (South Africa) Times reported.

The painting, titled "The Spear," is the work of satirical artist Brett Murray. It went on display at the Goodman Gallery earlier this month.
...
http://www.wogx.com/story/18652745/s...penis-painting

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Secular Café: Assange extradition: complicated judgment

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Assange extradition: complicated judgment
May 30th 2012, 13:13

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18260914

Quote:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has lost his UK Supreme Court fight against extradition to Sweden to face accusations of sex offences.

Lord Phillips, the court's president said he had lost by a majority of five justices to two.

The court ruled the extradition request had been "lawfully made".

However, Mr Assange's lawyers have been given 14 days to consider challenging the ruling, saying it could have been reached unfairly.

Dinah Rose QC, for Mr Assange, said the Supreme Court's decision could have been made on legal points not argued during the appeal - and she needed time to consider asking the court to reopen the case.

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Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Secular Café: Dutch parliament officially rejects ACTA

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Dutch parliament officially rejects ACTA
May 29th 2012, 19:49

http://www.osnews.com/story/26011/Du...y_rejects_ACTA

Another crappy piece of legal crime endorsed by the foul Microsoft gets kicked out....


Quote:

Good news everyone! The Dutch parliament has just officially rejected ACTA. In addition, parliament has also accepted an additional motion which prohibits the government from signing similar agreements in the future. It was originally the plan to wait for the ACTA vote in the EU parliament, but a majority in the Dutch parliament felt that ACTA was too dangerous not to throw into the bin right away, EU vote or no. I'm not exactly sure what this means for ACTA as a whole, but it's my understanding that if one member state votes against ACTA - which we just did - it's effectively dead in the EU.

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Secular Café: Lady Gaga and Politics - Indonesia

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Lady Gaga and Politics - Indonesia
May 29th 2012, 12:29

Very interesting article IMO:

Quote:

Lady Gaga is finally relevant
Monday, May 28, 2012 - The Tygrrrr Express by Eric Golub

LOS ANGELES, May 29, 2012 – Lady Gaga is now officially relevant.

This is not about pop culture, which will never and should never be relevant. This is about Lady Gaga who is now relevant to society at large.

Before this past week, she was some 26-year-old woman named Stefani Germanotta. She sings and dances, and promotes herself by wearing outrageous costumes. In a nutshell, she is "edgy" and "original" to those too young to remember Madonna.

Ms. Germanotta's music was fairly harmless and inoffensive. While Madonna tackled abortion and racial prejudices, Ms. Germanotta tells people to "just dance."

Like many young people today, Ms. Germanotta through her Lady Gaga persona came to the conclusion that her musical talents (which admittedly are abundant) required her to express political opinions. My first experience with this unknown (to me) woman came while watching Bill O'Reilly. He showed a clip of a young woman pulling at her own hair and screaming like a lunatic. "Are you listening, President Obama? Are you listening?"

The issue was gay marriage, and she was in favor of it. Ms. Gaga claims to be bisexual, which may be interesting to somebody, somewhere. Later on, she demanded a meeting with President Obama to discuss childhood bullying in schools.

Her activism does not make her unique. Many Hollywood celebrities assume their opinions matter. Yet what makes Ms. Gaga and her supporters frustrating (a polite way of saying hypocrites) is that when they truly should stand up, the only sound is silence. Ms. Gaga became a real victim this week, and everybody should rush to her defense.

She had a concert scheduled in Indonesia. 50,000 tickets were sold for this Jakarta extravaganza. Then she was forced to cancel the show under heavy pressure. Despite Indonesia being seen as a model of secular democracy mixed with moderate Islam, this nation of 140 million people still has Radical Islamists flexing muscle.

The Islamists decided that Ms. Gaga's concert would be too extreme for the youth.

Yes, the people who flew the planes into the Towers on 9/11 are still hoping to extend their worldwide Caliphate. This time all it took was the threat of violence to cause Ms. Gaga and her sponsors to retreat. She should not be blamed. She is a young girl who has every right to consider her personal safety.

Her promoters and supporters have no excuse. Once again, the West surrendered to pressure from Islamic fundamentalists.

Ms. Gaga and her supporters should think about this on a deeper level, despite Hollywood celebrities having an aversion to depth.

Those who care about gay marriage may be surprised to know that gay people do not fare well in most Muslim countries. Forget the right to marry. They just get murdered for "crimes against Islam." Crimes include being gay while breathing.

Ironically, many leftists hate Israel, even though Israel allows gay marriage.

Those who care about bullying should understand that Radical Islam is all about bullying. There is no need to ever "tolerate" or "try to understand" any of the "root causes" of Radical Islam. They hate us and want to kill us. They want to drive us from every part of the world. What the Islamists did in Indonesia is the very essence of what bullying is about.

....
much more here:
http://communities.washingtontimes.c...ally-relevant/

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Monday, 28 May 2012

Secular Café: See, here's the problem with health-care in the U.S.A.

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See, here's the problem with health-care in the U.S.A.
May 28th 2012, 21:18

The cash discount for care

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...008905.graphic

(sorry it's a strange graphic, I can't post the image)

I'm particularly sensitive to these costs as I just (finally after two months of no coverage) signed up for a very high deductible plan that costs me over $200/mo that is only for high-risk/extensive care (hospitalization, ct scans, etc) and I have to pay for virtually everything up to $15000 per year.

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Secular Café: Farewell, Timbuktu: Former seat of Islamic learning to become an “Islamic state” under Sharia

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Farewell, Timbuktu: Former seat of Islamic learning to become an "Islamic state" under Sharia
May 28th 2012, 12:26

http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2012...+News+Daily%29

This is not a good thing....

Quote:

Timbuktu, the city (and state) in northern Mali which was once a wealthy center of trade and seat of Islamic learning and culture, more recently home to many UNESCO World Heritage sites, will become an Islamic state under Sharia, the BBC reported today.

Quote:

Two rebel groups that seized northern Mali two months ago have agreed to merge and turn their territory into an Islamist state, both sides say.

The Tuareg MNLA, a secular rebel group, and the Islamist group Ansar Dine signed the deal in the town of Gao, spokespeople said.

Ansar Dine, which has ties to al-Qaeda, has already begun to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, in towns such as Timbuktu.

The groups took advantage of a coup in March to seize the territory.



Mali’s Communications Minister Hamadoun Toure told the BBC that other countries should help Mali tackle al-Qaeda in the region.
An Islamist group with ties to al-Quaeda is going to help Mali tackle al-Quaeda?

Am I the only person who sees this as naive as thinking that Mitt Romney will prove a ‘strong church-state separationist’?

Meanwhile, even before reaching the agreement–and I’m not sure how a secularist group reaches agreement to Sharia law–the Islamists had already been hard at work destroying Timbuktu’s fabled past.

Quote:

Since seizing the city in March, Ansar Dine has targeted Timbuktu’s precious Muslim heritage.

The shrine of a 15th Century sufi saint Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar has been attacked, according to Lazare Eloundou Assomo of Unesco.

“The entrance gate of the mausoleum was completely destroyed and burnt,” Mr Assomo told the BBC World Service. “The curtain that protected the shrine was destroyed.”

Timbuktu is known as the city of the 333 saints, says Alida Jay Boye, author of Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu.

The fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam objects to the veneration of saints’ tombs, maintaining that it amounts to saint worship.

“Salafis do not want there to be any intermediary between the believer and God. It looks like Ansar Dine is going after shrines just like other groups have done in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia,” she says.

Neil Whitehead, a former hotelier in Timbuktu, has fled to Morocco because of the recent unrest.

He says that conditions are deteriorating in the city.

“The Salafis are turning on the locals, raiding their homes and taking anything of value, together with any food. All shops are shut and, in the words of our friends, ‘everything is broken’,” he said.

“They have introduced a form of Sharia and the locals feel like prisoners in their houses.”
Once again, Islamists demonstrate their acceptance of other cultures and their willingness to leave others to their own beliefs.

Yes, they act much like fundamentalist Christians. If it doesn’t support their belief system, they want it destroyed.

You can read more about Timbuktu’s present and past at UNESCO.org, and about how UNESCO and the government of Mali are working to preserve Timbuktu’s earthen architectural treasures here.
There are links at the site with further info.....

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Sunday, 27 May 2012

Secular Café: Republican Party too "wacko"

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Republican Party too "wacko"
May 27th 2012, 21:04

Republican Party too 'wacko' to still be considered mainstream - The Irish Times - Sat, May 26, 2012
Quote:

Two prominent political scientists say the Grand Old Party has become more loyal to party than to country and is to blame for dysfunction in the US political system.
They cited Mitt Romney's dismissal of global warming as a hoax, MR's extreme anti-immigrant policy, Allen West's claims of Commies in Congress, and a Republican audience cheering when someone stated that someone unemployed who loses medical insurance should be allowed to die.
Quote:

These examples are cited by two prominent political scientists, Thomas Mann of the liberal Brookings Institution and Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, as evidence the Grand Old Party is no longer mainstream.

The GOP, they write, has become “an insurgent outlier – ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition”.
Though the two gentlemen have long pointed their fingers at both parties, they have decided that it's the Republican Party that deserves most of the blame nowadays.
Quote:

Last summer’s debt-ceiling fiasco showed how Republicans “have become more loyal to party than to country”, Mann and Ornstein write. ...

The authors quote Mike Lofgren, a Republican congressional staffer who resigned last year, after nearly three decades, saying the party “is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th-century Europe”.
That article referred to
‘It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics of Extremism’ by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein - The Washington Post
Quote:

Now Mann and Ornstein have decided that the time has come to abandon the evenhandedness still fashionable among political journalists (as opposed to the partisan talking heads and bloggers now so popular). The blunt result will be invigorating for some readers, and infuriating for others.

Their principal conclusion is unequivocal: Today’s Republicans in Congress behave like a parliamentary party in a British-style parliament, a winner-take-all system. But a parliamentary party — “ideologically polarized, internally unified, vehemently oppositional” — doesn’t work in a “separation-of-powers system that makes it extremely difficult for majorities to work their will.”
There's an additional problem.
Quote:

Mann and Ornstein chose not to explore the history of today’s voters’ cynicism, a powerful ingredient in the poisonous brew they describe. Doing so would have given them a chance to add some even-handedness to their story. In 1964, on the eve of the disastrous Vietnam War, 77 percent of Americans expected their government do “do the right thing” always or most of the time, according to opinion polls. Ten years later, after Vietnam and Watergate, 77 percent had become 36. Today it is less than 20 percent who have that confidence in the government. The Vietnam War, largely the work of Democrats, and Richard Nixon together destroyed Americans’ confidence in their governing institutions. It has never been restored. Several generations have grown up since reflexively distrusting their government.

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Saturday, 26 May 2012

Secular Café: Strange 1942 World Map

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Strange 1942 World Map
May 26th 2012, 23:59

"OUR POLICY SHALL BE THIS:

1. We, the U.S.A., in cooperation with our allies, for reasons of our national safety and in the interests of international morality, are determined to crush and completely destroy the military power of the Axis aggressors, and their satellites regardless of cost, effort and time necessary to accomplish this task.

2. The old world order of colonial oppression, exploitation of dominions, rival imperialism and mercenary balance of power diplomacy; of majesties, dictators, privileged minorities, plutocratic monopolists and similar social parasites; the corrupted order responsible for the present world cataclysm, endangering our national safety and peaceful process, shall never rise again.

3. A New World Moral Order for permanent peace and freedom shall be established at the successful conclusion of the present war.

4. For reasons of history, economic structure, favorable geography and the welfare of mankind, the U.S.A. must, altruistically, assume the leadership of the newly established, democratic world order.

5. To reduce the burden and criminal waste of armaments expenditures everywhere in the world, the U.S.A., with the cooperation of Latin-America, the British Commonwealth of Nations, and the U.S.S.R. shall undertake to guarantee peace to the nations which will be permanently disarmed and demilitarized after the conclusion of the present war.

6. In order to be able, in the fulfillment of our obligations, to effectively prevent the possibility of a recurrence of another world cataclysm, the invincibility of the U.S.A. as a military, naval and air power, shall be the major prerequisite.

7. For realistic considerations of strategy and our invulnerability, it is imperative that the U.S.A. shall obtain relinquishment of controls of their possessions from all foreign Powers in the entire Western Hemisphere, it's surrounding waters and strategic island outposts as outlined on accompanying map.

8. For considerations of hemispheric defense and in the spirit and tradition of the new Monroe Doctrine of hemispheric solidarity and the "Good Neighbor" policy, the U.S.A. with the consent of the Latin-American Republics, shall obtain control and protectorate rights of the relinquished territories.

9. To strengthen our position in the Caribbean area which is of obvious importance to hemispheric defense, all possible inducements shall be offered to our neighbors of Central America and the West Indies to facilitate their entrance as equal states of the U.S.A. as outlined on map.

10. To fortify the politico-economic unity of the Western Hemisphere, the U.S.A. shall promote and assist the unification of South America into a well organized, democratic, federated "United States of South America."

11. The liberated British, French and Netherlands Guiana shall be reorganized as one state of the U.S.S.A.

12. All Powers shall relinquish their controls of their colonial, mandate and strategic island possessions everywhere in the world.

13. The British Commonwealth of Nations, the second military and naval Power of importance cooperating in a binding compact with the U.S.A. as a Power for freedom, shall retain and acquire control such territories, peace-security bases and strategic islands outposts essential for the maintenance of world peace and freedom as outlines on the map.

14. The U.S.S.R., the third military Power of importance cooperating with the U.S.A. as a Power for freedom and the maintenance of world peace, shall acquire control of the liberated, disorganized adjacent areas and those of Germany-Austria to be re-educated and eventually incorporated as equal republics of the U.S.S.R., as approximately outlined on map.

15. A world League of Nationalities with arbitration and supervision powers shall be organized.

16. A World Court with punitive powers of absolute boycott, quarantine, blockade and occupation by international police, against lawbreakers of international morality shall be organized.

17. The U.S.A. with the close cooperation of the United States of South America, the British Commonwealth of Nations, the U.S.S.R. and the World League of Nationalities, shall promote and assist in the unification of the relinquished territories and the areas at present unsoundly divided into well organized democratic and absolutely demilitarized republics as approximately on the map.

18. The areas known as Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, France, Spain, Portugal, the island of Corsica, and eventually Italy and the islands of Sardinia and Sicily shall be unified as a demilitarized, federated "United States of Europe."

19. The areas known as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Spitsbergen islands shall be unified as a demilitarized, federated "United States of Scandinavia."

20. The continent of Africa shall be reorganized and unified as a demilitarized, federated "Union of African Republics."

21. The areas of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Hejas, Aden and Oman, shall be unified as a demilitarized union of "Arabian Federated Republics."

22. The areas known as India, including Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Burma shall be unified as a demilitarized "federated Republics of India."

23. The areas known as China, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Thailand, Malaya, Indo-China and Korea, shall be unified as a demilitarized, federated "United Republics of China."

24. The areas known as Greece, Macedonia, Albania, Crete, Dodecanese and adjacent islands in the Aegean sea shall be unified as a demilitarized "Federal Republic of Greece."

25. The areas known as Eire and Northern Ireland shall be unified as a demilitarized independent republic of "Eire."

26. The area of the Holy Land of the ancient Hebrews, at present known as Palestine and Trans-Jordan, and the adjacent requisite regions as outlined on map, for considerations of history and the imperative necessity to alleviate a post war refugee problem, shall be unified as a demilitarized republic of "Hebrewland."

27. The area known as European Turkey, adjacent to the Dardanelles, sea of Marmora and Bosporus, for considerations of realistic peace strategy shall be placed under joint control of the U.S.S.R. and Turkey.

28. The area known as Turkey shall be a demilitarized independent republic of "Turkey."

29. All problems of exchange, transfer and repatriation of populations shall be administered by the World League of Nationalities.

30. The criminal perpetrators and their partners in guilt of this hideous war shall be brought to justice and unforgettable punishment administered.

31. All subjects of Japan and all persons of Japanese origin of doubtful loyalty shall be expelled from the entire Western Hemisphere, U.S.A. protectorates and strategic island outposts and their property confiscated for post-war reconstruction needs.

32. All subjects of Germany and Italy and all persons of German and Italian origin known as active supporters of Nazi and fascist ideologies shall be treated similarly.

33. German, Italian, Japanese immigration to the Western Hemisphere, its protectorates and island outposts shall be indefinitely stopped.

34. All persons of German origin in East Prussia and the Rhineland shall be transferred to inner Germany and the regions permanently de-Prussianized.

35. All persons of German, Italian and Japanese origin shall be permanently expelled from their now conquered territories and their property confiscated for post-war construction needs.

36. To cleanse the populations of the defeated Axis aggressors of the intoxication of military chauvinism; to effectuate the removal and destruction of their potential military establishments; to recover the accumulated loot and to re-educate them for their eventual membership in the Family of Nations, the areas of Germany-Austria, Italy and Japan shall be hermetically and indefinitely quarantined and administered by appointed Governors subject to supervision by the world League of Nationalities.

37. All resources, industrial and labor capacity of quarantined areas shall be employed for the post war restoration and reconstruction needs.

38. To reduce the numerical power of the aggressor nations, as a potential military advantage, a Population Control Policy shall be elaborated and applied in the quarantined area.

39. In the New World Moral Order which we seek to establish, besides the essential political freedoms, the following fundamental economic changes are imperative:

(a) Nationalization of all natural resources and equitable distribution of same to all nations…everywhere in the world;

(b) Nationalization of international banking, foreign investments, railroads and power plants….everywhere in the world;

(c) Nationalization of all armaments producing establishments by all military powers;

(d) Federal control of foreign commerce and shipping;

(e) The establishment of a world common monetary system;

(f) World wide limitations of interest rates to a maximum of two percent;

40. To retain the victory and leadership of our united democratic effort….the aim of which is not vengeance or exploitation, but freedom and security to all nations for peaceful progress….the unified "Supreme War Command of the United Nations" at the conclusion of the present war, shall be recognized and transformed into a permanent "Supreme Military and Economic Council" collaborating with the World League of Nationalities in post war construction and to enforce world peace.

41. The "Supreme Military and Economic Council" shall appoint the Governors to administer the quarantined areas until their eventual parole.

For this purposeful beginning we must fight until absolute victory."


http://bigthink.com/ideas/21338

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Secular Café: South Africa taking a step backwards?

Secular Café
For serious discussion of politics, political news, policy, political theory and economics and events happening round the world
South Africa taking a step backwards?
May 26th 2012, 13:34

The SA constitution was much admired. But what on earth are they doing now?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...bt-traditional

Quote:

The traditional courts bill threatens to undermine this security for millions of South Africans living in rural areas. The bill is the latest in a series of clumsy attempts to define, regularise and institutionalise the role of traditional leaders. In so doing, the bill undermines the protection afforded by constitutional civil rights.

The bill would grant individual traditional leaders sole authority to interpret and implement customary law. The bill would also prohibit rural people from opting out of the jurisdiction of traditional courts, preventing access to alternative forms of justice and circumventing the authority of the constitution...

...It is no accident that some of the most vociferous public debates in South Africa and sites of the most violent conflict have concerned the role of women and the legal equality of sexual and gender minorities. These have sometimes been adjudicated by traditional authorities but, contrary to the way the chiefs are presenting it, the traditional courts bill elevates the role of chiefs and threatens to ossify traditional law.

Tradition, too, must evolve, and, indeed, it has done. The constitution holds that customary law should be recognised, respected, and – most importantly – subject to the constitution. Yet Contralesa and the National House of Traditional Leaders have consistently rejected LGBT people as "un-African", recently recommending that "sexual orientation" be removed from the bill of rights.

The very essence of our democracy is the protection of vulnerable people. This bill, if enacted, would effectively remove that protection for millions of South Africans. For women, gays, lesbians and transgender people, in particular, the protection of the bill of rights is necessary armour against traditional authority. If South Africans keep traditional leaders in a modern democracy, these figureheads should play a role consistent with the constitution, not one that tampers with our rights.

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Secular Café: Right-Winger quits "Hate, Anger And Fear Machine"

Secular Café
For serious discussion of politics, political news, policy, political theory and economics and events happening round the world
Right-Winger quits "Hate, Anger And Fear Machine"
May 26th 2012, 06:44

Writer Michael Fumento Quits Conservative Movement, Calls It "Hate, Anger And Fear Machine" / Queerty
My break with the extreme right - Salon.com
Quote:

…I find myself linked not only with the Unabomber, but also Charles Manson and Fidel Castro. Or so says the Chicago-based think tank the Heartland Institute, for which I've done work. Heartland erected billboards depicting the above three declaring: "I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?" Climate scientists now, evidently, share something in common with dictators and mass murderers. Reportedly bin Laden was scheduled to make such an appearance, too.You see, I've published articles saying I do "believe in global warming." Yes, I've also questioned the extent to which man-made gases have contributed to that warming and concluded that expenditures to reduce those emissions would be as worthless as they'd be horrifically expensive. No matter; just call me "Ted." Or "Charlie." Or "Fidel."

This is nuts! Literally. As in "mass hysteria."
The sort of manners that the right wing has?
Quote:

Civility and respect for order—nay, demand for order—have always been tenets of conservatism. The most prominent work of history's most prominent conservative, Edmund Burke, was a reaction to the anger and hatred that swept France during the revolution. It would eventually rip the country apart and plunge all of Europe into decades of war. Such is the rotted fruit of mass-produced hate and rage. Burke, not incidentally, was a true Tea Party supporter, risking everything as a member of Parliament to support the rebellion in the United States.

All of today's right-wing darlings got there by mastering what Burke feared most: screaming "J'accuse! J'accuse!" Turning people against each other. Taking seeds of fear, anger and hatred and planting them to grow a new crop.
In effect, many "movement conservatives" have much more in common with Maximilien Robespierre than Edmund Burke. Their policy prescriptions often have a remarkably Robespierrian quality about them, the sort of reckless radicalism than Burke had so famously criticized. By comparison, Obama seems Burkean, a cautious reformist.

Look at the sort of "research" that many "movement conservatives" do:
Quote:

Conservatism has also historically emphasized empiricism. Joe Friday of "Dragnet" must have been a conservative: "All we want are the facts, Ma'am." When President Reagan famously said, "Facts are stupid things," he meant to quote President John Adams' observation that "Facts are stubborn things."

But how much fact was there in Heartland's billboards, whose shock purpose has been likened to tactics of the hard-left animal activist group PETA, with whom I've repeatedly locked horns. Or in West's assertion? Or Breitbart's tirades? Rush Limbaugh compared Breitbart, who never wrote a single investigative report, to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the dynamic duo who brought down the thoroughly corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon.

He actually said Breitbart's work was superior. Oh, dear!

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Friday, 25 May 2012

Secular Café: My take on Afghanistan

Secular Café
For serious discussion of politics, political news, policy, political theory and economics and events happening round the world
My take on Afghanistan
May 25th 2012, 12:36

Taliban was created by Pakistan to remove Russians (America aided) and to take over Afghanistan for Pakistan.

"In the beginning the Taliban numbered in the hundreds, were badly equipped and low on munitions. Within months however 15,000 students arrived from the madrassas in Pakistan."

"Pakistan, however, started to provide stronger military support to the Taliban. Many analysts like Amin Saikal describe the Taliban as developing into a proxy force for Pakistan's regional interests. On September 26, 1996, as the Taliban with military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia prepared for another major offensive. The Taliban entered Kabul on September 27, 1996, and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan."

"The Taliban were largely founded by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 1994. The ISI used the Taliban to establish a regime in Afghanistan which would be favorable to Pakistan, as they were trying to gain strategic depth."

"According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, "between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan" on the side of the Taliban. Peter Tomsen stated that up until 9/11 Pakistani military and ISI officers along with thousands of regular Pakistani armed forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.

In 2001 alone, according to several international sources, 28,000-30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000-15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000-3,000 Al Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force."
All quotes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban

With the loss of Bangladesh (considered by many Pakistanis as 'good riddance'), Pakistan is focusing in Central Asia. Afghanistan (pop. 32 m.) is the first step which they think will lead them to Uzbekistan (27 m.), Turkmenistan (5 m.), Kirghistan (5 m.), Tajikistan (7 m.), and possibly Kazakhistan (16 m.) as compared to Paksitan's 200 m. These are the stakes for Pakistan with all the minerals and oil that they can control there.

US can avoid all war costs and losses by simply handing over Afghanistan to Pakistan, if it suits their long-term strategy. Taliban would vamoose in a day and Pakistan will stop helping al-Quaeda. :)

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