Tuesday, 14 February 2012

Ms Mona-S

Dolly Parton performs her song "I will always love you" as Miss Mona Stangley in the movie The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds from 1982.

My Funny Valentine

Milan (1964)
Miles Davis - trumpet
Wayne Shorter - tenor sax
Herbie Hancock - piano
Ron Carter - bass
Tony Williams - drums

...unless of course you have a chocolate penis that ejaculates money!

Monday, 13 February 2012

Rick Santorum Says Women Should Buy Their Own Birth Control Because It Only Costs A Few Dollars

Former Senator and current Republican golden boy Rick Santorum has a huge problem with women. He thinks they’re a distraction on the battlefield, he thinks they can’t make their own decisions about their bodies, thinks they should be told who to have sex with (no gays) and when (only when married), and thinks women are just baby carriers who should serve the demands of men. Santorum may well be the most anti-women candidate in the field...

Cat Liberation Front

(Thanx GKB!)

Depressed Cat @depressed_cat

I feel like something the cat dragged in.

Path addresses privacy controversy, but social apps remain a risk to users

The bigger question Path raises

Kashgari’s deportation a black day

The deportation of Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi Arabian jounalist, clearly showed that the government has scant regard for human rights, rule of law and justice.
DAP international bureau secretary Liew Chin Tong said it was often cynically observed that foreign policy was merely an extension of domestic politics.
“In the case of Malaysia, it is unfortunately true.
“It was a black day for Malaysia’s international image,” the Bukit Bendera MP said in his e-statement here today.
Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s government detained and deported the young Saudi at Kuala Lumpur International Airport following an Interpol request.
Kashgari was en route to New Zealand to seek asylum.
The journalist had fled his country after his twitter comments about Prophet Muhammad triggered calls for his execution.
The Arabian columnist was detained by Malaysian authorities despite fears voiced by human rights groups that he could face execution in his home country.
He was deported despite his lawyers obtaining a Malaysian court order to prevent it.
Liew noted that Malaysia was now also the butt of international jokes as a result of the BBC’s global apology over the FBC Media scandal.
The Malaysian government paid public relation company FBC Media to make a series of eight documentaries for the BBC about Malaysia, while failing to declare it was paid 17 million pound by the Malaysian government for “global strategic communications”.
Investigations into the scandal uncovered 15 breaches of editorial guidelines of which eight were related to FBC’s programmes on Malaysia.
But, Liew said the millions that the Najib administration spent on public relations companies were meaningless if the government cannot uphold basic human rights principles in the case of Kashgari and uphold integrity in the BBC-FBC case.
“Malaysia is not a backwater banana republic.
“We used to pride ourselves as an important and supposedly principled player in the international arena.
“The deportation was a black day for Malaysia in the eyes of the world,” Liew added.

Arrested in Riyadh

Meanwhile Saudi newspaper Arab News says Kashgari has been detained on arrival in Riyadh after being deported from Malaysia.
Kashgari caused an outcry among devout Saudis earlier this month, when he used his Twitter account to post thoughts about the Prophet Muhammad they deemed insulting to Islam.
The comments by the 23-year-old columnist for Jeddah-based newspaper al-Bilad triggered tens of thousands of Twitter responses, many from enraged Saudis calling for his death.
Kashgari quickly apologized and deleted his Twitter account, but fled the country last Tuesday as the outrage grew.
A day later, a committee of senior Saudi clerics appointed by the king declared Kashgari to be an apostate – a crime punishable by death – and called for him to be put on trial.
Christoph Wilcke, a senior researcher with New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch, told Voice of America that Kashgari is “very unlikely” to get a fair trial in which the offending remarks can be explained.
Wilcke said the senior Saudi clerics who called for Kashgari to face trial also have predetermined its outcome by declaring him an apostate. He said one cleric even called for the blogger to be executed.
But, Wilcke said there is a chance that Kashgari could appeal to Saudi King Abdullah for leniency and avoid execution. He noted the case of Hadi al Mutif, a member of the minority Ismaili sect whom the government pardoned last week after arresting him for apostasy in 1993 and later sentencing him to death.
Athi Shankar @'Free Malaysia Today'

What grounds can a state get an Interpol warrant?

Evgeny Morozov @evgenymorozov

Wow! Unbelievable: Norway's pension fund may have invested 2 billion USD in companies that make surveillance tech goo.gl/nk2R2

Original (Norwegian)

Dubai Fountains Synchronized With Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You'

Arab World Mourns Whitney Houston

Australian Govt holds second secret anti-piracy meeting

WTF???

Hmmm...

A message for the newbies...

Hyperdub @Hyperdub

Any dropouts crackles etc are intentional #burial

Ghandi - Masala Mix (Bhangra 'n' Breaks)

Download

Tracklisting/Details:

Smith & Mighty 'U Dub'
Asian Dub Foundation 'Riddim I Like'
Meat Beat Manifesto 'Radio Babylon'
Donaeo 'Riot Music' (Shy FX rmx)
Panjabi MC 'Jugni' ft. Kuldip Manak
DJ Swami 'Reached Amritsar'
DJ Sanj & Karan MC 'Babulla'
Subbs ft. Binder Bajwa 'Nach Ke'
Sub Swara 'Inshallah' (Gislain Poirier rmx)
Bass Bin Twins 'Woppa'
Groove Chronicles 'Blackjack'
PMC 'Panj Pind'
Charged 'Electro Punjabi Dakoo' (Wayward Soul rmx)
PMC 'Pyar Wich/ Planet Rock'
David Starfire 'Ashes'
MJ Cole 'Ruff Like We'
Artful Dodger 'Ruffneck Sound'
Dee Pattern 'Who's The Badman?'
Sully 'In Some Pattern'
Jason Sparks 'Gangsters'
PMC 'GT Road'
Kuldip Manak 'Sharaab' (Swami rmx)
Tigerstyle 'Bol! Bol! Bol!' (SteamerPilot Dholstep rmx)
Bhang Bros ft. Juz D 'Hik Taan Kay'
Lightnin MC 'Sum Nex Auntie'
Via

John Barnes: Liverpool are 'blameless' for lack of handshake

Luis Suárez must show Liverpool he is worth the trouble of keeping him

Liverpool apologies seek to quell ugly echoes of Luis Suárez affair

David Hepworth made an interesting point yesterday about modern footballers over at his blog but as a life long Liverpool fan and a life long anti-racist, I really do think it is time for Suárez to go.
Meanwhile...

'Uncle Tom' jibe at Kop star Johnson

Declining health-care productivity in England: the making of a myth

Journalism we need – and don't need

:)

Via

Kavanagh attacks arrest of Sun journalists

Police raids which led to the arrest of five Sun journalists have been attacked by the paper's associate editor.
Trevor Kavanagh said the senior members of staff had been treated like "an organised gang" and the tabloid was "not a swamp that needed draining".
He said money sometimes changed hands while unearthing stories, and this had always been standard practice. The Met Police were unavailable for comment.
The Sun staff were held over alleged corrupt payments to police and others.
A Surrey Police officer, a member of the armed forces and a Ministry of Defence employee were also arrested - and all eight were released on police bail.
'Homes ransacked'
Writing in the Sun, Mr Kavanagh said at any other time the treatment of the journalists would have caused uproar at Parliament and among civil liberty and human rights campaigners.

The paper's former high-profile political editor said they were subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history - bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder inquiry.

He said 171 officers are involved in three separate operations, and claimed two officers on one raid revealed they had been pulled off an elite Olympics anti-terror squad.
"Instead of being called in for questioning, 30 journalists have been needlessly dragged from their beds in dawn raids, arrested and held in police cells while their homes are ransacked," he wrote.
"Wives and children have been humiliated as up to 20 officers at a time rip up floorboards and sift through intimate possessions, love letters and entirely private documents."
Sun editor Dominic Mohan has said he was "shocked" by the arrests but pledged to continue to lead the paper.
They were arrested as part of the Operation Elveden probe into payments to police.
The BBC understands they were picture editor John Edwards, chief reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker, reporter John Sturgis and associate editor Geoff Webster.
Meanwhile, the solicitor representing alleged victims of phone hacking is said to be heading to the US to take legal action against Rupert Murdoch.
Mr Murdoch is the boss of News Corporation, the parent company of News International, which runs the Sun.
Mark Lewis, who represents the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, told the Press Association he was not prepared to deny the reports.
He is expected to travel to America within weeks to meet lawyers and is said to be close to bringing at least one case against Mr Murdoch's US company.
@'BBC'

Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom

Interview with a Designer Drug Designer

Niels Shoe Meulman

Calligraffiti
Niels Shoe Meulman
Interview
Caught this expo in Melbourne last week. Simply stunning...

The Sun, the baby and the bathwater

HA!

Magic

(Thanx Gennady!)

Anatomy of an unsafe abortion

Athens

I fear for a social explosion: Greeks can't take any more punishment

Info
Where is 'Riot Dog'?

Truth

(Click to enlarge)

Via

Barak: make peace with Palestinians or face apartheid

'If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state' – Ehud Barak Photograph: JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish majority or an "apartheid" regime.
His stark language and the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli figure only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.
There have been no formal negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in more than a year, but Barak was speaking at a rare joint event with the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as part of an annual national security conference in the Israeli city of Herzliya. The pair shook hands and both were warmly applauded.
Barak, a former general and Israel's most decorated soldier, sought to appeal to Israelis on both right and left by saying a peace agreement with the Palestinians was the only way to secure Israel's future as a "Zionist, Jewish, democratic state".
"As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic," Barak said. "If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
He described Israel and the Palestinian territories as the historic "land of Israel" to which Israelis had a right.
"We have to demarcate a border within the land of Israel," he said.
"We have a linkage, we have a right, but the reality of standing on the stage of history in realistic terms requires us to pay attention to international constraints." Barak is in a delicate political position. He leads the Labour party, supposedly a centre-left movement, but accepted a position in a rightwing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu, a decision that split his party.
Though Barak articulates a willingness for peace talks, he represents a government that has defied US and Palestinian calls for a full settlement freeze as a prelude to any negotiations. He was also defence minister during last year's Gaza war in which nearly 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
The Herzliya conference has echoed Israeli concerns about growing international criticism, particularly in the year since Gaza. Barak himself alluded to the danger that Israel might lose legitimacy if no peace deal was forthcoming. "The pendulum of legitimacy is going to move gradually towards the other pole," he said.
He acknowledged that Washington was pushing the two sides towards "proximity talks" but said this was "only an initial stage" before any return to full negotiations.
Fayyad, who has a limited political following among Palestinians, called on Israel to stop settlement building in the occupied territories and to halt military incursions in Palestinian cities as a sign of seriousness about negotiations.
"Things have to begin to happen in order to give the suggestion that this occupation is going to end," he said. "That Palestinian state is supposed to emerge precisely where settlements are expanding." Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has refused to start fresh negotiations with Israel unless settlement construction stops, in line with the 2003 US road map. Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, even though settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
"How confident can we all be that once relaunched that political process is going to be able to deliver that which needs to be delivered, the permanent status issues and the key question of ending the occupation?" Fayyad asked.
Rory McCarthy @'The Guardian'