(Thanx Drew!)
...don't forget what the Toties did to the country last time and don't kid yourself that they won't do it all over again!
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Regretsy - Where DIY meets WTF!
Golden poo small
Description
Here are the poos that you wish you took; Soft, Gold and Shiny,
plus, they don't smell, unlike your poo.
These georgeous poo are made from gold metallic fabric and filled with cotton.
you can use them as cushion on couch or bed,
as a cocktail hat on you and you loved one's head for some party, as a knee cap warmer on your knee cap or your loved one's thigh when you are chatting with friends.
pretty much you can put anywhere they need attention, or put on anybody who needs attention.
These georgeous poo are made from gold metallic fabric and filled with cotton.
you can use them as cushion on couch or bed,
as a cocktail hat on you and you loved one's head for some party, as a knee cap warmer on your knee cap or your loved one's thigh when you are chatting with friends.
pretty much you can put anywhere they need attention, or put on anybody who needs attention.
Elián González: Now
He is grown up now, almost an adult, but there is no mistaking the face of Elián González. The 16-year-old youth in an olive-green military school uniform has not changed so much from the boy who a decade ago was the subject of a diplomatic battle between Cuba and the US.
Cuba's rulers have released photos of González attending a Young Communist Union congress at a convention centre in west Havana last weekend. The images were posted on government websites yesterday, then widely transmitted by state-controlled media.
His hair is still cropped short, his expression remains solemn, except this time González presumably knows that, like it or not, he is still a political symbol.
"Young Elián González defends his revolution in the youth congress," read the headline over the photo posted on Cuba Debate, the same site where Fidel Castro posts columns.
State media did not elaborate on the adolescent's role but the green uniform with red shoulder patches appears to be from a military academy. There is a military school near his hometown of Cárdenas.
In November 1999, aged five, he was found floating off the coast of Florida in an inner tube after a vessel sank and his mother, Elizabeth Broton, died with other Cubans who tried to flee the island.
US immigration officials ruled the boy should return to his father in Cuba but Cuban exiles in Miami demanded he stay, prompting an uproar that galvanised mass protests on both sides of the Florida straits.
When Miami-based relatives refused to give him up, federal agents stormed the house 10 years ago this month and returned him to Havana.
Elián was celebrated as a hero and his father, restaurant employee Juan Miguel González, was elected to parliament. Cuba has marked González's 7 December birthday with parades but kept the boy away from foreign media.
Rory Carroll @'The Guardian'
'pedophiles go to jail' and 'church = mafia = state'
Seen on a wall of the Church of St Eutizio in Soriano on Easter Monday April 5, 2010
Beyond torture: the future of interrogation
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay: two names that have become synonymous in many people's minds with torture and abuse of human rights by American interrogators. When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, he set out to erase the stain such practices have left on America's image. The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group established later that year has as one of its stated aims to interrogate without brute force and to employ "scientifically proven" techniques - though without saying what these might be.
It seems like a noble goal, but on closer inspection it raises a host of questions. Can science validate interrogation techniques - and if so, how? What is the effect on the human mind of coercive interrogation that stops short of physical torture? And, crucially, are there any interrogation techniques that can be shown to be both effective and humane?
In the past, the US military used a set of 19 approved interrogation methods laid down in the Army Field Manual 2-22.3, which explicitly prohibits threats or coercion. Following the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, the George W. Bush administration decided that this should change. So, after legal consultations, new ways to apply pressure on people under interrogation were drawn up. For several years they remained secret, but more recently we have acquired a pretty good idea of the techniques interrogators used at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the US base at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
Take, for example, the treatment log of Mohamed al-Kahtani, made public in March 2006. This revealed that for weeks on end he faced a daily routine of just 4 hours of interrupted sleep, prolonged stress positions, blaring music, extremes of temperature, and various humiliations - including being treated like a dog, and a mock birthday party at which he was shown puppet shows of himself engaging in sexual acts with Osama bin Laden.
The technique known as waterboarding, in which the subject experiences the sensation that they are drowning, was also common. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed responsibility for planning the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding more than 180 times in March 2003 alone.
Do any or all of these amount to torture? The 1984 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is somewhat vague. It differentiates between torture - "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person" - and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" (CIDT). This distinction may reflect the notion that inserting needles under someone's fingernails or pulling out their teeth is in some way worse than, say, blindfolding and hooding, forced nudity, isolation, humiliation, forced stress positions, or deprivation of sleep or light.
Yet the UN convention is clear: both torture and CIDT are illegal. And maybe the distinction is unimportant anyway, as there appears to be little to choose between them in terms of the long-term ill-effects they cause to their victims.
Continue reading
International Paul Haig Day II
Includes exclusive mix from the man himself!
Well it is that time of the year again...
JC from the 'TheVinyl Villian' blog started this day last year after he was dealt a DMCA takedown notice for posting a track by Paul Haig. A track that was owned by him and had been given to the blog as a way of promoting his then new album.
You should of course know who Paul Haig is but if you don't then please visit all the blogs taking part today (there is a list over at the 'The Vinyl Villian' and by the end you should have built a good little introductory collection of mpfrees. Like Franz Ferdinand? Well a massive debt is owed to the man above...)
Anyway on to the DMCA process...well the problem is that I don't know where to begin... as the wiki article states:
"The DMCA has been criticized for making it too easy for copyright owners to encourage website owners to take down allegedly infringing content and links which may in fact not be infringing. When website owners receive a takedown notice it is in their interest not to challenge it, even if it is not clear if infringement is taking place, because if the potentially infringing content is taken down the website will not be held liable."
This blog has received three infringment notices in it's 4,500 post history, two of which were for links to 'the internet archive', which are legal downloads. I did write to blogger at the time pointing this out and never heard back but interestingly if you check up 'Exile On Moan Street' at 'Chilling Effects' there is only one one DMCA notice listed...and yes I was (probably) guilty that time!
Google themselves have said:
"that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims. "
This matters as this recent article at 'The Guardian' points out blogs are disappearing after only one DMCA notice! Blogger has never satisfactorily said under what circumstances they do delete blogs, but from what I can gather it seems to be after five notices usually.
There has also been cases like Sire Records having their official 'Youtoob' channel deleted for infringing copyright!!!
Bloggers, in the main are trying to point you to artists and songs that they like and want you to know and I am convinced this can only help the artists in question become better known...and do not get me started on Lily Allen biting the hand that fed her!
So it is with thanks to Paul Haig for getting bloggers on his side that I leave you with the first single from his first band from 1979 to his most recent song...
...and don't forget to visit 'The Vinyl Villian' for updates of other blog's posts throughout the day...
Monday, 5 April 2010
Collateral Murder
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
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