Monday 29 March 2010

Head - Sin Bin


Featuring Gareth Sagar (ex The Pop Group & Rip Rig & Panic)
(Tip o'the hat to Martin!)

Truly amazing mummies

Perils of the Silk Road
The Silk Road was a legendarily dangerous 4,600-mile route connecting Asia and the Mediterranean, used by traders who for centuries traversed deserts and mountains, in temperatures ranging from minus-50 to 120 degrees. The exhibition at the Bowers features more than 150 objects excavated from the trail, including this infant mummy, believed to be from around the 8th century BCE (Before the Christian Era). Even more remarkable about the mummies in the Bowers exhibition is that, although found in the arid western reaches of China, the features are noticeably Caucasian.
More @'Life'

Breaking News: Rio Tinto employees sentenced in Chinese bribery case

Four employees of the British-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto, including an Australian citizen, were convicted by a Chinese court on Monday and sentenced to seven to 14 years in prison for accepting millions of dollars in bribes and stealing commercial secrets.
A three-judge panel at the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Court sentenced Stern Hu, an Australian citizen, to seven years in jail for bribery and five years on stealing secrets, but he will serve 10 years in prison.
The case has drawn international attention and even led to diplomatic wrangling between China and Australia over concerns that the four employees had been arrested on trumped up charges and questions about whether they could get a fair trial here.
At a three-day trial that took place here early last week, the four employees all pleaded guilty to accepting some bribes, though several of the men denied stealing commercial secrets.
The four employees — three of whom are Chinese citizens — were detained in Shanghai last July on suspicions of espionage and stealing state secrets from Chinese state-owned steel companies.
But after protests from Australia and foreign executives about the nature of the accusations, the men were formally charged with bribery and stealing commercial secrets, which are lesser charges.
Some Australian officials and foreign executives said the arrests looked like retaliation against Rio Tinto because of its tough negotiations over iron ore prices with Chinese state-run steel mills and the company’s decision last summer to scrap plans to accept a $19.5 billion investment from one of China’s biggest mining companies.
The Australian government was due to issue a statement shortly after the verdict was released.
Lawyers for the four employees have said they were considering an appeal. 

Live on Radio National's Australia Talks

Stephen Conroy says he knows nothing about the US objection to Australia's internet filter...
 The federal government will introduce mandatory internet filtering this year. And after recent abuse appearing on Facebook memorial sites, the government is also looking at establishing an internet ombudsman. So how far should control of the internet go for the sake of making the online world safer for children? Is it actually possible to make the internet safe?

Download link:
Internet filtering with Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy

Suicide bombers strike central Moscow metro, at least 37 dead


At least 37 people died as two suspected terrorist bombs ripped through the central Moscow metro system during Monday morning's rush hour, the emergencies ministry said.
The first blast occurred at around 8:00 a.m. (05:00 GMT), killing at least 23 people and injuring 18, many of them seriously.
A RIA Novosti employee who was on the train said the blast occurred between the Lubyanka and Okhotny Ryad metro stations close to the Kremlin.
The second blast occurred some 20 minutes later at the nearby Park Kultury station and killed at least 14 and injured at least 7. The carriage hit by the blast in still on the platform.
Prosecutors said the bombs, each with the equivalent strength of 2 kg of TNT, were denoted by suicide bombers.
A police source told RIA Novosti that the blasts bore all the hallmarks of "a well-planned terrorist attack."
With central Moscow at a standstill, helicopters are being used to evacuate the injured.
Russia's top investigator Vladimir Markin said that an investigation on terrorism charges had been launched.
If terrorism is confirmed as the cause of the blasts, this will be the first major terrorist incident in Russia outside of the North Caucasus since 2004, when hundreds of people died in two plane bombings. The same series of attacks culminated in the deaths of over 300 people, many of then children, when Chechen terrorists seized a school in Beslan.
A telephone hotline has been opened - +7 495 622 1430 and + 7 495 624 3440.

Meh, the weekend is almost over...


Another weekend comes to an end.  Bummer...

The Catholic church seems to be crumbling, or at least cracking under the pressures of the truth.  I read some great commentaries regarding treating the church as a criminal organization, and rejecting them as a moral authority.

No kidding!

But there is more happening in the world... we all have the lives we live every day.  And we don't need the Pope or any other religious "authority" to tell us how or who or what to do.

We just DO.  And we know what is right or wrong in our hearts.

I plant things in my garden, because it will feed my family in a few months, and there is a great satisfaction in that.  Close to the earth!  Food that came from our hard work and care.



Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Stagger Lee (White Room)


Peter Brookes @'The Times'

Very useful that 'faith in g*d'!

The pontiff said faith in God helps lead one "toward the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion."
jayrosen_nyu
$215 a year for the Wall Street Journal on the iPad. $140 for the print delivery plus online. Do YOU understand that pricing? Does anyone?

Nathan Sawaya - The Art of the Brick

The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters

Top 10 internet filter lies

REpost: Obama on 'net neutrality' (november 14 2007)

US Government concerned about Australia’s proposed Internet filter

The Australian is reporting that the US State Department has some concerns about the Australian Government’s policy to introduce mandatory Internet filtering:
THE Obama administration has questioned the Rudd government’s plan to introduce an internet filter, saying it runs contrary to the US’s foreign policy of encouraging an open internet to spread economic growth and global security.
Officials from the State Department have raised the issue with Australian counterparts as the US mounts a diplomatic assault on internet censorship by governments worldwide.
The news is a blow to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who is defending the plan for internet companies to mandatorily block illegal and abhorrent websites — for instance, child pornography — but faces growing opposition.
While considered a noble idea, any filter is considered by many — even within the Labor caucus — to be unworkable and a misdirection of resources away from enforcement and policing.
Read more here.  The concerns of the US Government echo similar concerns being voiced by a wide range of different organisations, and will hopefully place even more pressure on Senator Conroy and the Australian Government’s misguided Internet filtering policy.

Drug adviser quits as ministers prepare mephedrone ban

Mephedrone
Another senior government drugs adviser has quit, hours before ministers are expected to ban a new "legal high".
Dr Polly Taylor said she did not trust the government's use of advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. She is the sixth member to quit.
On Monday the body will give the home secretary its advice on mephedrone.
It is unclear if Dr Taylor's resignation will affect the status of the expected ban on the drug, linked in the media to four deaths in the UK.
The council's meeting on Monday could be overshadowed by the departure of Dr Taylor - the ACMD's veterinary medicine expert whose post is required by law to be filled on the committee.
A Home Office spokeswoman said she would not speculate on any delay to the ban.
Dr Polly Taylor
There is little more we can do to describe the importance of ensuring that advice is not subjected to a desire to please ministers
Dr Polly Taylor
So far there is no scientific proof that mephedrone has been responsible for any deaths in the UK, and scientists are still trying to work out whether it is harmful on its own or if taken with something else.
However, there is widespread expectation that Home Secretary Alan Johnson will announce a ban on the drug before the end of the day because of the risks it poses.
Last week, the government's chief drugs adviser, Professor Les Iversen, strongly indicated that the council would recommend classifying mephedrone as a Class B drug.
In her resignation letter, Dr Taylor told the home secretary she was quitting because she did not have trust in the way the government would treat its advice.
"I feel that there is little more we can do to describe the importance of ensuring that advice is not subjected to a desire to please ministers or the mood of the day's press," she wrote.
MEPHEDRONE FACTS
Effects similar to amphetamines and ecstasy
Sold as a white powder, capsules and pills or can be dissolved in liquid
Often sold online as plant food marked "not for human consumption"
Completely different to methadone, used to treat heroin addicts
Reported side-effects include headaches, palpitations, nausea, cold or blue fingers
Long-term effect unknown
Currently legal to buy and be in possession of the powder, but against the law to sell, supply or advertise the powder for human consumption
Already illegal in Israel, Denmark, Norway and Sweden
Last October, Mr Johnson sacked his chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, saying the ACMD chairman had lobbied against government policy.
The sacking led five other members to quit and an urgent review of the committee's working relationship with ministers.
Dr Nutt, who has set up his own rival expert body, has warned that banning mephedrone could be self-defeating and that the evidence supporting a ban is not clear.
He has urged the ACMD and ministers to wait for the verdict of an expert European body which is looking at the use of the drug across all EU member states.
"This is a pivotal moment in UK drug policy," said Dr Nutt.
"Given the plethora of 'legal highs' that could follow in mephedrone's wake, the way in which this issue is handled could well set the tone for many years to come."
The Conservatives have called for the law to be changed to allow temporary bans of drugs while the scientific evidence is assessed.

An Open Letter to Conservatives by Russell King

Dear Conservative Americans,
The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.  You've lost me and you've lost most of America.  Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I'd like to give you some advice and an invitation.
First, the invitation:  Come back to us.
Now the advice.  You're going to have to come up with a platform that isn't built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more.  But you have work to do even before you take on that task.
Your party -- the GOP -- and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational.  Worse, it's tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred.  Let me provide some examples -- by no means an exhaustive list -- of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.
If you're going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you'll have to start by draining this swamp:
Hypocrisy
You can't flip out -- and threaten impeachment - when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that's centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.
You can't vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it's done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against, is especially ugly) --  114 of you (at last count) did just that -- and it's even worse when you secretly beg for more.
You can't fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.
You can't call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.
Are they "unlawful enemy combatants" or are they "prisoners of war" at Gitmo? You can't have it both ways.
You can't carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.
You can't refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn't meet with you.
You can't rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.
You can't rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.
You can't be for immigration reform, then against it .
You can't enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.
You can't flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent about white presidents doing the same.  Bush.  Ford.
You can't complain that the president hasn't closed Gitmo yet when you've campaigned to keep Gitmo open.
You can't flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush.  Nixon. Ike. You didn't even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed (on the mouth) leaders of countries that are not on "kissing terms" with the US.
You can't complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent.  (And, no, Newt -- the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)
You can't attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hours when you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn't issue any condemnation).  *Obama administration did the day of the event.
You can't throw a hissy fitsound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when -- in fact -- only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.
You can't condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attempted terror attack on his.
You can't mount a boycott against singers who say they're ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he's ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Maoist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.
You can't cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it's too short.
You can't support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.
You can't demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it.  Repeatedly.
You can't praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it "treasonous" under a Dem president.
You can't propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.
You can't be both pro-choice and anti-choice.
You can't damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you've paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.
You can't condemn criticizing the president when US troops are in harms way, then attack the president when US troops are in harms way , the only difference being the president's party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).
You can't be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.
You can't vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of  'open debate'.
If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it's 2004 or 2010.  This is true, too, if you're taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN.  Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution.  This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God's stand, too.
When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can't send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).
You can't criticize Dems for not doing something you didn't do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.
You can't decry "name calling" when you've been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.
You can't spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare
You can't praise the Congressional Budget Office when it's analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it's unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don't.
You can't vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president.  Either you support X or you don't. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.
You can't call a reconciliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.
You can't spend taxpayer money on ads against spending taxpayer money.
You can't condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the mandates were your idea.
You can't demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don't.
You can't whine that it's unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party's former leader admits you've been doing it for decades.
You can't portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.
You can't complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you've routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain -- threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented -- and admitted it.  Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.
You can't question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn't object when your own Republican president appointed them.
You can't preach and try to legislate "Family Values" when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer's wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife's mother;

Hyperbole
You really need to disassociate with those among you who:
History
If you're going to use words like socialismcommunism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they're NOT synonymous!)
You can't cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you've decided you don't like his ideas.
You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word "terrorism" or say we're at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.
If you're going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.
You can't just pretend historical events didn't happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn't make it better.)
You can't say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from "socialist utopia"; health care reform is not "reparations"; nor does health care reform create "death panels".
Hatred
You have to condemn those among you who:
Oh, and I'm not alone:  One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.
So, dear conservatives, get to work.  Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bold-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred.  Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America.  We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we'll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms.  We need you.
(Anticipating your initial response:  No there is nothing that even comes close to this level of wingnuttery on the American Left.)

Hicks Rejecting Offer for Liverpool, RBS Threatens to Repo Club

Word out of the U.K. has Tom Hicks refusing Rhone Group's offer of a £100 million for a majority piece of Liverpool FC, the exact amount he and George Gillett owe the Royal Bank of Scotland come July. I've asked Hicks's local spokesperson, Lisa LeMaster, wot the wot, but till then this report in News of the World is raising quite the ruckus abroad. It says not only is Hicks unwilling to give Rhone a 40-percent ownership stake in Liverpool FC, but his "hardline stance" is running off other potential piecemeal investors or those interested in buying the club outright. From the Saturday story:
The Royal Bank of Scotland is putting the squeeze on the Americans, demanding Hicks 'put up or give up' in his efforts to run the club. They want Hicks to agree to Purslow's recommendations. They don't believe the Texan can raise his own funds to reduce Liverpool's debt by the £100m demanded.
The Sunday Times puts it even more plainly today: "Royal Bank of Scotland, to whom the bulk of Liverpool's £237m debt is owed, have told Hicks and partner George Gillett they will repossess the club and sell it should the Americans fail to repay £100m by July." Gillett, according to accounts, wants to sell, but Hicks doesn't. The perception, at least, is because "he won't personally benefit financially."...
Robert Wilonsky @'Unfair Park' 

How do you say it in American?
Hicks - you are an asshole!

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale

Hawaii to Honor Cockfighting as a "Cultural Activity?

McCain - you are an idiot!

President Obama's decision to bypass the vacationing Senate and directly appoint 15 nominees has produced some expected cries of outrage from Republicans.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pronounced himself "very disappointed" with the move, charging that it showed "once again" that the Obama administration has "little respect for the time honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress." The president's team had "forced their will on the American people," McCain fumed in a written statement.
Were these the words of a principled opponent of presidential recess appointments, or of a politician in a tough primary jumping at an opportunity to bash President Obama?
Well, here's how McCain reacted in 2005 when President Bush was considering a recess appointment for John Bolton, the controversial nominee to be United Nations ambassador: "I would support it. It's the president's prerogative."
Indeed, just a few years earlier, McCain had succeeded in a one-man crusade to persuade President Bush to install a favored nominee using a recess appointment. Here's how UPI described it in 2002:
Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain prevailed in his fight with the White House to have Ellen Weintraub, a former Capitol Hill attorney, named to a Democratic seat on the Federal Election Commission as a recess appointment. McCain must now be overjoyed that her colleagues have elected her chairman of the commission for the coming year. In her new role, Weintraub, the wife of Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold's legislative director, will have a lot to say about how the regulations governing the McCain-Feingold campaign legislation will be written an implemented.

The Rage Is Not About Health Care

There were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.
But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.
How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.
No less curious is how disproportionate this red-hot anger is to its proximate cause. The historic Obama-Pelosi health care victory is a big deal, all right, so much so it doesn’t need Joe Biden’s adjective to hype it. But the bill does not erect a huge New Deal-Great Society-style government program. In lieu of a public option, it delivers 32 million newly insured Americans to private insurers. As no less a conservative authority than The Wall Street Journal editorial page observed last week, the bill’s prototype is the health care legislation Mitt Romney signed into law in Massachusetts. It contains what used to be considered Republican ideas.
Yet it’s this bill that inspired G.O.P. congressmen on the House floor to egg on disruptive protesters even as they were being evicted from the gallery by the Capitol Police last Sunday. It’s this bill that prompted a congressman to shout “baby killer” at Bart Stupak, a staunch anti-abortion Democrat. It’s this bill that drove a demonstrator to spit on Emanuel Cleaver, a black representative from Missouri. And it’s this “middle-of-the-road” bill, as Obama accurately calls it, that has incited an unglued firestorm of homicidal rhetoric, from “Kill the bill!” to Sarah Palin’s cry for her followers to “reload.” At least four of the House members hit with death threats or vandalism are among the 20 political targets Palin marks with rifle crosshairs on a map on her Facebook page.
When Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935 and Medicare in 1965, there was indeed heated opposition. As Dana Milbank wrote in The Washington Post, Alf Landon built his catastrophic 1936 presidential campaign on a call for repealing Social Security. (Democrats can only pray that the G.O.P. will “go for it” again in 2010, as Obama goaded them on Thursday, and keep demanding repeal of a bill that by September will shower benefits on the elderly and children alike.) When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association.
But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
The apocalyptic predictions then, like those about health care now, were all framed in constitutional pieties, of course. Barry Goldwater, running for president in ’64, drew on the counsel of two young legal allies, William Rehnquist and Robert Bork, to characterize the bill as a “threat to the very essence of our basic system” and a “usurpation” of states’ rights that “would force you to admit drunks, a known murderer or an insane person into your place of business.” Richard Russell, the segregationist Democratic senator from Georgia, said the bill “would destroy the free enterprise system.” David Lawrence, a widely syndicated conservative columnist, bemoaned the establishment of “a federal dictatorship.” Meanwhile, three civil rights workers were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.
If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.
They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.
If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.
Frank Rich @'NY Times'
johannhari101  
Why does everyone keep asking for the Pope to show "repentance", rather than for him to be arrested?

Tonight 6PM (AEST) on Australia Talks (Radio National)

Monday 29 March 2010
The federal government will introduce mandatory internet filtering this year. And after recent abuse appearing on Facebook memorial sites, the government is also looking at establishing an internet ombudsman. So how far should control of the internet go for the sake of making the online world safer for children? Is it actually possible to make the internet safe? 

Forbidden Images

Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay evades capture for a year

 
(Thanx BillT!)

Sunday 28 March 2010

The Fall - Reformation

How Discogs changed the face of record buying

Where do you buy your records from? While many vinyl lovers lament the closure of countless record shops due to the rise in internet shopping and a growing digital-only audience, diggers worldwide have had to find new ways to source their fixes of the black crack. Warehouse operations such as Juno and Chemical Records, and popular specialist electronic outlets like Phonica, Boomkat, Hardwax, Rubadub and Piccadilly may be the main ports of call for listeners only interested in brand new records, but if you talk to people who are interested in disco, boogie, '80s and '90s house, UK garage, jungle and other genres of yesteryear, it's likely at least some of their collection has been procured via a website which holds no stock at all: Discogs.
Discogs has become an online phenomenon within the music world, providing a detailed and searchable catalogue of nearly two million releases that currently attracts four million unique visitors, who managed to rack up a staggering 100 million page views between them during January of this year. Portland-based programmer Kevin Lewandowski is the brains behind the operation. He got his first electronic music kicks via some DJ friends at university before going on to buy his own turntables after his graduation. Originally, Lewandowski had planned for Discogs to be a comprehensive database strictly for electronic music, due to the dearth of information on the internet about the subject...
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The FBI Museum of Evil Minds

Ooops!

Pacou - 19 years of Tresor 12-03 2010

   

Christopher Hitchins on the Catholic church

Pop & Bowie

Live audio from a number of gigs in 1977

The inspiration...

Peter Pozorek - Truck Drivers Deluxe Mix


 
Bruce Springsten State Trooper (Trentmollerremix)+ Peter Pozorek edit
Brian Ferry – DJ Hell remix
Justus Knockean
Jan Jelinek
The Per Eckbo Orchestra-Kodo Verano
Brigitte Fontaine and Khan-Fine Mouche-(dOP Vocal Mix)
Riva Starr Once Upon A Time In Naples-(Extended Version)
Equinox Henrik Schwarz Remix
The Machine Fuse

(This is a seriously good mix!)