Is Current Events dead?

[RocDoc]

Nov 14, 2009 22:53:52 GMT -5 Ayinger said:

Baseboard heat...individual thermostats for each room. I shut the breaker off months back because I had one unit in the spare bathroom off the bedroom that was ALWAYS on. I took the rheostat off and went around looking for a replacement but guess because of its age, not one is to be found. Sooooo,,,I've just got bare wires hanging off that one....guess I could just put on a couple of those plastic caps and hopefully feel safe about throwing the current back on and not start a fire or something......

oh definitely cap 'em pronto....snow on thanksgiving is predicted for chicago, and you're not THAT far.

~

New York travesty

<sub>Charles Krauthammer

November 23, 2009
WASHINGTON -- For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the "propaganda of the deed." The most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 -- not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life -- and KSM, a second act: "9/11, The Director's Cut," narration by KSM.

Sept. 11, 2001, had to speak for itself. A decade later, the deed will be given voice. KSM has gratuitously been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable -- a civilian trial in the media capital of the world -- from which to proclaim the glory of jihad and the criminality of infidel America.

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his codefendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure -- acquittal, hung jury -- is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Moreover everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning.

Apart from the fact that any such trial will be a security nightmare and a terror threat to New York -- what better propaganda-by-deed than blowing up the entire courtroom, making KSM a martyr and making the judge, jury and spectators into fresh victims? -- it will endanger U.S. security. Civilian courts with broad rights of cross-examination and discovery give terrorists access to crucial information about intelligence sources and methods.

That's precisely what happened during the civilian New York trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced to turn over to the defense a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators, including the name Osama bin Laden. "Within 10 days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum," wrote former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the presiding judge at that trial, "letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered."

Finally, there's the moral logic. It's not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony last week, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime -- an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war which the U.S. itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

Moreover the incentive offered any jihadi is as irresistible as it is perverse: Kill as many civilians as possible on American soil and Holder will give you Miranda rights, a lawyer, a propaganda platform -- everything but your own blog.

Alternatively, Holder tried to make the case that he chose a civilian New York trial as a more likely venue for securing a conviction. An absurdity: By the time Obama came to office, KSM was ready to go before a military commission, plead guilty and be executed. It's Obama who blocked a process that would have yielded the swiftest and most certain justice.

Indeed the perfect justice. Whenever a jihadist volunteers for martyrdom, we should grant his wish. Instead this one, the most murderous and unrepentant of all, gets to dance and declaim at the scene of his crime.

Holder himself told The Washington Post that the coming New York trial will be "the trial of the century." The last such was the trial of O.J. Simpson.

Washington Post Writers Group Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.

[e-mail]</sub>


comPLETEly w/krauthammer on this.
god, this is a REALLY fucking stupid move.

holder shoulda stuck to singin' with slade.
'gudbye ta jane' was a pretty good song.

[JACkory]

It's like Lee Ving once said, "New York's alright if you like saxophones."

[RocDoc]

yes, these motherfuckers ARE crazy, but DO you give in to them and allow them there self-servingly 'chaste' philosophies to be imposed on millions who don't want them?

Suicide attackers kill dozens at mosque near Pakistan Army headquarters

<sub>THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally Published:Friday, December 4th 2009, 7:56 AM
Updated: Friday, December 4th 2009, 8:02 AM

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Suicide attackers stormed a mosque close to Pakistan's army headquarters, killing 35 people during Friday prayers as they sprayed gunfire at worshippers and threw grenades before blowing themselves up, officials said.

The strike was part of a wave of bloodshed that has killed more than 400 people in Pakistan since October. It was a bloody reminder of the resilience of militant networks despite army offensives against the Taliban in the northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan.

At least four attackers took part in the attack an inside a heavily fortified area in the garrison city of Rawalpindi just a few miles from the capital.

Witnesses said two of the militants entered the mosque, which was popular with army officers, while others ran into buildings nearby. With reporters prevented from getting close, security forces exchanged fire with the assailants for an hour before they blew themselves up or killing them.

Nasir Ali Sheikh saw the attackers at the mosque as he walked there to pray.

"They were killing people like animals," he said. "I couldn't understand what was happening."

The attack was the third in Rawalpindi in the last two months. In the most high-profile incident, a team of militants attacked the army headquarters on Oct. 10 and held dozens hostage in a 22-hour standoff that left nine militants and 14 other people dead.

Three helicopters hovered overhead while trucks carrying commando teams and ambulances raced through the cordoned-off area as soldiers kept onlookers and traffic away.

The attack began when several gunmen staged an explosion to break through a checkpoint close to the mosque, said Yasir Nawaz, a police official at the scene.

He said the installation included an army parade ground as well as the mosque, which was often used by military officers.

Two of the assailants were able to enter the mosque and sprayed the congregation with gunfire and grenades, said military spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. He said there were two other attackers.

An intelligence official said 35 people were killed, their bodies taken to two hospitals close to the scene. Seventy others were wounded. The identities of the dead were not known.

Violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan has escalated since the army launched an offensive in mid-October against Taliban militants in the northwestern tribal area of South Waziristan near the Afghan border. Soldiers have pushed deep into what was a militant stronghold, but many insurgents appear to have fled.

Read more: www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/12/04/2009-12-04_suicide_attackers_open_fire_kill_dozens_at_mosque_near_pakistan_army_headquarter.html#ixzz0Ymm6YlP2</sub>

[RocDoc]

food fer yer thoughts...

Is the American Dream Over?

<sub>December 9, 2009, 1:13 pm
By DAVID BROOKS AND GAIL COLLINS

Gail Collins: David, I want to pick up on your column about the economy, which not only offered an optimistic take on our overall future, but also gave nine steps we need to take to revive innovation. I thought they were all good ideas, and I definitely want to be in one of those regional innovation clusters. Do you think there could be one for recycling aging print journalists? Maybe they could make us into motel operators. Or decorative figurines.

David Brooks: I’m thinking bobbleheads. I went into journalism because I thought you got to report on murders during the day and then go out drinking like some film noir hero at night. When I started in Chicago, this actually happened. In those days you didn’t recycle journalists, you just threw them out.

Gail Collins: Let’s take the discussion one step farther. You have confidence that our economy isn’t going to collapse, or deflate into a depressing pancake of minimal performance. Do you have the same faith in our standard of living?

Here’s my version of modern American history. Before World War II, you had a country in which most people lived pretty simple lives. Working-class, rented homes. Living without indoor plumbing was not regarded as the end of the world. Getting an education involved finishing high school.

After World War II, the U.S. was the last economy standing, and it boomed, but in the process did we create a false standard of living?
Then came the war and when it was over, the United States was the last economy standing. And it boomed. The government spent a ton of money to send the returning veterans to college, helped them buy their own homes, and created jobs with huge, ambitious projects like the interstate highway system. Meanwhile, the cost of living was pretty low, especially when it came to housing.

So suddenly you had a country in which most families enjoyed an absolutely unprecedented standard of living: A home of your own, a car, a TV. The occasional vacation. Kids in college.

Then in the 70s, things went sour. Prices spiked. Unemployment rose. I think of this as the moment that we realized that the rest of the world had developed economies of their own, although I know it’s more complicated than that.

Middle-class families had an increasingly hard time maintaining their middle-classness. And the way they adapted was to add another paycheck. Wives went to work. Not that there hadn’t been a lot of married women working all along, but the old ideal of the Ozzie-and-Harriet family model went out the window. When young people planned their futures together, it was under the assumption that there would be two incomes.

But as the years went by, even two middle-class incomes weren’t enough. So the families borrowed. They still had homes, but the mortgages were bigger. They had cars, TV’s and credit card debt. Their kids were more determined than ever to go to college, but by the time they got their diplomas, they were in hock to Sallie Mae or one of the other student loan factories.

When the bubble burst last year, I didn’t see it as the end to our economic power. But I did wonder if it was the end of the American Dream, or at least the version we’ve come to regard as practically a national birthright.

What do you think? If you have an encouraging response, I am prepared to embrace it wholeheartedly. So feel free to be irrationally optimistic.

David Brooks: I guess I have a different narrative. Some things about the American economy haven’t changed all that much. We work really hard and switch jobs more frequently than anybody else. The average American works 9 weeks longer per year than the average Western European, which is insane but does mean our standard of living is higher.

To me the big thing that’s changed is the cognitive revolution. Because of economic and technological change, there’s greater and greater demand for people who can manipulate ideas and abstractions (except philosophy professors of course).

The problem is that we’ve experienced a cognitive revolution, which has been bad for certain groups of people, namely those without advanced degrees.
This has been good for certain sorts of people, namely those with unique mental skills, the superstars in any field. It’s also been good for women, who can compete equally in a cognitive economy.

It’s been bad for other groups — men without advanced degrees, anybody without advanced degrees, people with decent but fungible mental skills. Suddenly they’ve become commodities with comparable pricing power in the labor market.

The end result is widening inequality, not only of income but of skills, as highly educated people marry each other and pass their skills to their kids. Educated Americans live in a stable Ozzie and Harriet world and the uneducated live in a much more disrupted world.

Nonetheless, people in the educated sector have tremendous cultural influence. Every TV network and publication is competing for their eyeballs. Cultural norms are thus set by the lucky 20 percent. Everybody else (we’re Americans, we don’t acknowledge class differences) measures their lifestyle according to the standards set by those top 20. To get the bigger house (which now seems normal) or the multiple cars or the flat screen, they go into debt. Pretty soon, kablooie.

As the economy recovers the upper middle class will probably be fine. This economy still rewards ideas with income. They will still have tremendous cultural capital, the ability to unwittingly set the norms everybody else must live up to. The consumption merry-go-round will begin again.

Maybe there’s a way out of this boom-bust cycle, but I don’t see it, frankly. This is an energetic country, and so G.D.P. growth will be fine. It’s the throttling back that we’re not so good at.

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/is-the-american-dream-over/?ref=opinion</sub>

[RocDoc]

*

[JACkory]

Dec 11, 2009 12:56:42 GMT -5 RocDoc said:

*

You've got a point there, old salt.

[RocDoc]

i wonder if the libs are all shitting themselves over prez obama's tacit recognition that there is a vital necessity to at least try to attempt to rein the taliban...

[RocDoc]

boy jac, you pounce so quickly.
i hope this exercise establishes some meaning to your life.

~

The new socialism operates on global scale

<sub>By Charles Krauthammer

December 14, 2009
WASHINGTON



-- In the 1970s and early '80s, having seized control of the United Nations apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a "New International Economic Order." The NIEO's essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

On what grounds?

In the name of equality -- wealth redistribution via global socialism -- with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early '80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die.

The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health.

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO{-2} a year will fall outside EPA control. This means more than a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.)

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.

Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free International Order. When the Obama administration signaled (in a gesture to Copenhagen) a U.S. commitment to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb wrote the president protesting that he lacks the authority to do so unilaterally. That requires congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty.

With the Senate blocking President Barack Obama's cap-and-trade carbon legislation, the EPA coup d'etat served as the administration's loud response to Webb: The hell we can't. With this EPA "endangerment" finding, we can do as we wish with carbon. Either the Senate passes cap-and-trade, or the EPA will impose even more draconian measures: all cap, no trade.

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There's the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society -- as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based -- you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO{-2} from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn't lurking in CIA cloak. He's knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

Tribune Media Services Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.

[e-mail]

www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped1214krauthammerdec14,0,3040303.column</sub>


quickly jac, right the equilibrium again!

[RocDoc]

Harassment across Arab world drives women inside

<sub>By SARAH EL DEEB
Associated Press Writer
Tue Dec 15, 3:41 am ET
CAIRO – The sexual harassment of women in the streets, schools and work places of the Arab World is driving them to cover up and confine themselves to their homes, said activists at the first-ever regional conference addressing the once taboo topic.

Activists from 17 countries across the region met in Cairo for a two-day conference ending Monday and concluded that harassment was unchecked across the region because laws don't punish it, women don't report it and the authorities ignore it.

The harassment, including groping and verbal abuse, appears to be designed to drive women out of public spaces and seems to happen regardless of what they are wearing, they said.

Amal Madbouli, who wears the conservative face veil or niqab, told The Associated Press that despite her dress, she is harassed and described how a man came after her in the streets of her neighborhood.

"He hissed at me and kept asking me if I wanted to go with him to a quieter area, and to give him my phone number," said Madbouli, a mother of two. "This is a national security issue. I am a mother, and I want to be reassured when my daughters go out on the streets."

Statistics on harassment in the region have until recently been nonexistent, but a series of studies presented at the conference hinted at the widespread nature of the problem.

As many as 90 percent of Yemeni women say they have been harassed, while in Egypt, out of a sample of 1,000, 83 percent reported being verbally or physically abused.

A study in Lebanon reported that more than 30 percent of women said they had been harassed there.

"We are facing a phenomena that is limiting women's right to move ... and is threatening women's participation in all walks of life," said Nehad Abul Komsan, an Egyptian activist who organized the event with funding from the U.N. and the Swedish development agency.

Open discussion of the harassment issue first emerged in Egypt three years ago, after blogs gave broad publicity to amateur videos showing men assaulting women in downtown Cairo during a major Muslim holiday.

The public outcry sparked an unprecedented public acknowledgment of the problem and drove the Egyptian government to consider two draft bills addressing sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment, including verbal and physical assault, has been specifically criminalized in only half a dozen Arab countries. Most of the 22 Arab states only outlaw overtly violent acts like rape, according to a study by Abul Komsan.

Participants at the conference said men are threatened by an increasingly active female labor force, with conservatives laying the blame for harassment on women's dress and behavior.

In Syria, men from traditional homes go shopping in the market place instead of female family members to spare them harassment, said Sherifa Zuhur, a Lebanese-American academic at the conference.

Abul Komsan described how one of the victims of harassment she interviewed told her she had taken on the full-face veil to stave off the hassle.

"She told me 'I have put on the niqab. By God, what more can I do so they leave me alone,'" she said, quoting the woman. Some even said they were reconsidering going to work or school because of the constant harassment in the streets and on public transpiration.

But even in Yemen, where nearly all women are covered from head to toe, activist Amal Basha said 90 percent of women in a published study she conducted reported harassment, specifically pinching.

"The religious leaders are always blaming the women, making them live in a constant state of fear because out there, someone is following them," she said.

If a harassment case is reported in Yemen, Basha added, traditional leaders interfere to cover it up, remove the evidence or terrorize the victim.

In Saudi Arabia, another country where women cover themselves completely and are nearly totally segregated from men in public life, women report harassment as well, according to Saudi activist Majid al-Eissa.

His organization, the National Family Safety Program, has been helping draft a law criminalizing violence against women in the conservative kingdom, where flirting can often cross the line into outright assault. Discussion of the law begins Tuesday.

"It will take time especially in this part of the world to absorb the gender mixture and the role each gender can play in society," he said. "We are coping with changes (of modern life), except in our minds</sub>


yeah, the hijab and naquib are truly all about religious expression...phffft.
it just allows the men to accept that their sexual 'animalism' is just 'hey! that's just the way we are...not MY fault. islam says so!'

so if their impulse control wavers just a bit, the imams'll dump it on the wild nature of muslim men's sexuality....and the loosey-goosey women they're by definition surrounded by.
it's fucking asinine.

'ACROSS the arab world...'

go.

[JACkory]

re: pouncing...huh?

Otherwise...Don't pretend you understand a goddamn thing about Islam.

[RocDoc]

pretending? i ain't pretending ANYthing.
the facts lay themselves out veryvery concisely.
so praytell, what is YOUR understanding of a religion STATING a woman's exposed leg, a lock of hair is too much temptation to subject that religion's men to?

and that, this heinous exposure becomes immoral and is punishable by prison or the lash or the cane.
with the entire responsibility for her 'dirty' body falling on the woman...

who btw, curiously, are also strongly discouraged from daring to educate themselves...to not be allowerd in public without a male relative accompanying them?
it's as though the men are deathly afraid of their women...

all myths, are they, jac?
then YOU, go on, talk about THAT why doncha?
flash YOUR sunshine on us JAC.
enlighten us pease so that WE might see the way.
YOUR way.

though i suspect 'issues' just don't interest you.
prove me wrong.

[JACkory]

It is what it is, dude. Some things will never change and it does no good flogging a dead horse. You can't apply your own standards because Islam is, and will always be, foreign to you. Like it or not. Disagree or not. Your notion of "progress" is not theirs. So why bother talking about it when Oral Fucking Roberts just died?

Come on, man.

[JACkory]

All I'm saying, doc, is that you don't have a clue. You can't save the world.

[RocDoc]

Dec 17, 2009 15:36:33 GMT -5 Matheus said:

...

If you would look at the history of Christianity in the developed world, you can see how things changed away from what you view as a negative worldview in Islam. As capitalism became an increasing focus, people placed a greater emphasis on individuality and progress rather than the constraints of religious dogma and its morality.

so you're saying there's a developmental progression here that is happening....one which we should be willing to wait on, til islam develops interests which include this 'emphasis on individuality and progress' ?

looking at 'christianity' as the template, d'ya really think we've got a couple of century's worth of time to let them get their 'individual rights'-shit together?

~

jac, i CAN understand what's going on as unsustainable fucking crazed thinking...on the part of THE FANATICS. or the tons of 3rd world muslims who simply can't see the rantings for the rantings they are.

THAT's fucking EZ...even you can see that.

any deeper an understanding than that, i don't know. no shit, of course...the thing is i do not WANNA know.

tho the architecture and music i totally dig..............

[RocDoc]

of COURSE there are a few who don't but is this some sort of a vast majority to you?
i'll guess your answer would still have to be 'no'.

so maybe, yeah sure, it IS embedded in the political power structure but in most of these NON-'enlightened' countries, who is it that pulls the politicians' strings (if they're not flatout titled politicians themselves) if not the imams and aya-f*cking-tollahs?

there simply is NOT any way to separate them...see: 'theocracy'...