Fetus and Chips Please Mushrooms On The Side

Makes a change from a baby on a bun I guess.

Is insanity a prerequisite to becoming a US lawmaker? Talk about shit you couldn't make up! boy oh boy oh boy.

Oklahoma lawmaker wants to ban fetuses in food
January 25, 2012

Based on something he read online, an Oklahoma state senator has introduced a bill that would ban the use of aborted human fetuses in food.

Yes, you read that correctly.

No, he's never heard of any instances of this happening before, Sen. Ralph Shortey told the Associated Press.

But Shortey read that it might be happening, so he thought the bill would, at the very least, give any food companies toying with the idea an "ultimatum."



The legislation, known as SB 1418, is only a couple of paragraphs long. It states:

"No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients."

Shortey, a father of two who worked as an oil and gas production consultant, told the Associated Press that he found online evidence that some companies outside of Oklahoma use embryonic stem cells to develop artificial flavors.

Shortey did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday, but the Daily Oklahoman reported his motivation for the bill: "Shortey said he filed the bill after reading last fall that an anti-abortion group, Children of God for Life, had called on the public in March 2010 to boycott products of major food companies that partnered with a biotech company that produces artificial flavor enhancers, unless the company stopped using aborted fetal cells to test their products. The company has denied the allegation."

Federal food safety officials have never heard of such a thing. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the agency has never gotten any reports of fetuses being used in food production.



Shortey, elected in 2010, has introduced a spat of controversial bills including denying Oklahoma citizenship to children of illegal immigrants born in the state. Another bill he wrote would have allowed police to confiscate the homes and cars of illegal immigrants. He also tried to advance a bill that would have required presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship before being allowed on Oklahoma's primary ballot.

None of Shortey's controversial bills have become law.

As news began circulating of his latest legislative priority, the Twitterverse responded with disbelief and amusement.

One person wrote: "This may conflict with my dream of eating aborted fetus dumplings, but Sen Ralph Shortey is hilariously delusional."

Another: "Today in Oklahoma crazy: Sen. Ralph Shortey (R) proposes banning "human fetuses in food." Didn't know it was a thing."

Combing through all the tweets, finding one in support of the bill was as likely as finding fetus fries as a side order at your nearest fast-food joint. latimes.com

My Fellow Meerkats: Phil Hellenes - Speculum

http://www.youtube.com/user/philhellenes Catch up with Phill's latest, Oh, Really? A compilation of all that's holy.

Richard Dawkins: ‘Don’t waste time, there is no God’ Oh Yes There Is, Oh No There's Not

A perfect vehicle for my my vehicle, the Big No God Bus.

Click again when opened.

‘Don’t waste time, there is no God’
Amitava Sanyal
January 24, 2012

It will remain one of the abiding ironies of the Jaipur Literature Festival: For an event that got the loudest publicity because of the threats of ungodly communal trouble, a number of sessions were dedicated to denouncing god and religion. The most strident among the speakers on the subject, however, was Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller The God Delusion.

At one of his three sessions at JLF, where he read out from his latest work The Magic of Reality in tandem with his wife and actor Lalla Ward, the British author said, “Religious faith deserves a whole chapter in war technology, alongside tanks and guns… Religiosity usually recedes with the advancement of knowledge. In the fullness of time, we may see the death of all religions.” He followed the broadside with a statement in support of Salman Rushdie, which he said was a modified version of what he had written at the time of the earlier fatwa against the author. Dawkins’s eloquence on the “magic of truth in science” led a member of the audience to accuse the author of “fostering a religion of science”.

It’s a line of counter-attack the 70-year-old Dawkins is familiar with. The evolutionary biologist has been called ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’ for his passionate defence of the subject in works such as The Selfish Gene, the bestseller from which he read out in another session at the festival. Not long ago, he won a bruising battle against the British government to keep out religious Creationist myths from school science texts.

Off stage, when asked whether he would want to be immortal with the help of science, Dawkins said, “Eternity is a frightening thought whether you are in it or not. I can only go through it under general anesthesia.” He parried a question on why faith and emotion spurred humans to greater efforts – such as love and war – than reason ever could.

Such questions were straight down the line for AC Grayling, whose quote, ‘Religion and science have a common ancestor, ignorance’, features at the top of the quotes page of the Richard Dawkins Foundation website. At an earlier session in Jaipur, ‘In Defence of Enlightenment’, Grayling said, “Earlier, doubt about the existence of god was seen as a sin. This is what changed with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, which taught us scepticism; that humans can be fallible.”

“One of the best known examples of this divide between emotions and reason was Dr Spock of Star Trek. He thought he was a poor logician because he was always in love with someone or the other. It’s another matter that he was suspected to be in love with Captain Kirk,” Grayling told to a ripple of laughter. “But seriously, the rights of the individual are not in exclusion to his deep emotional bonds with family or society.”

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, who was on the dais with Grayling, addressed the ‘faith-versus-reason’ question head-on. He told Hindustan Times, “Emotions can be very destructive. And reason even lets you choose the right belief.”

The last throw on the subject, however, was Dawkins’s. At the last session of the festival on Tuesday, a debate on whether man has replaced god, Dawkins said, “You are utterly wasting your time – all of you who are indignant at being attacked about your god – because there is no god.” Hindustan Times

Dawkin’s Theory of God

Dawkin’s Theory of God
Jan 25 2012

Eminent British biologist and author Richard Dawkins was one of the most vociferously spoken writers to defend Salman Rushdie’s right to express his views while demolishing the idea of faith and religion. An ardent proponent of atheism, professor Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, called Rushdie’s absence a “lamentful disgrace” and “deplorable”, a day before the Midnight’s Children author’s video link at the Jaipur Literature Festival was canceled due to protests outside the venue.

“ Religious faith is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, without a whisper of doubt. It is so strong in some cases that they are prepared to kill and die for it. This is the terrifying thing about faith; wherein those taken over by it, are not open to reason, argument or persuasion. Faith is powerful enough to unite people against pity, forgiveness and decent human feeling,” said Dawkins, lashing out at the idea of faith with precision taking over every word he uttered in his packed session.

Author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker — books dealing with gene-centric view of evolution — Dawkins is known for his strong views on evolution and the origin of the universe. At the overcrowded festival, Dawkins’ charming style of decoding science, paired with his views on faith, was sprinkled with many ‘Dawkins moments’ lauded at regular intervals.

“ Our whole society is soft on religion. The assumption is remarkably widespread. Without being religious, we might find all sorts of things offensive. I have been deeply offended by things that are a part of Christmas — Baby Jesus and Rudolf, the reindeer — but if I like to act on these prejudices, then I will be held accountable. I will be challenged to justify myself. But let somebody’s religion be offended, and it another matter entirely,” said Dawkins, who added that “the antidote to any kind of religious indoctrination is education specially scientific and critical education and protecting children from indoctrination,”

Talking about separating religion from politics, the antagonist in him wants to have “no privileges given to religion via the state.” He said, “I suspect we have already seen several atheist US presidents, they just didn’t admit it. I suspect Lincoln was an atheist, probably so was Kennedy. Obama is an intelligent man, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a closet atheist.”

When asked if he would like to be immortal, Dawkins said, “The idea of eternity is frightening; would never want it.” indianexpress.com

Click again when opened.

"But Allah willing, Belgium will soon be freed from polytheism and idolatry''

I wish I could say this lot just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace, but their goals go a tad further than that. Utopia for this lot would be to turn Belgium into an Islamic State, that by comparison would make Iran look like a beacon of benevolence and compassion.

Not only are they insane, they are dangerously insane. While we, as enlightened Europeans, have cast off the yoke of superstition and dogma and just go about getting on with our lives, these headbangers are constantly working away to return Europe to the Eighth Century.

"Let's Turn Belgium into an Islamist State"

by Soeren Kern
December 19, 2011

An Islamist group in Belgium is intensifying a propaganda and intimidation campaign aimed at turning the country into an Islamic state.

Over the past several months, Sharia4Belgium, a Muslim organization that wants to implement Islamic Sharia law throughout Belgium, has become increasing belligerent in its appeals to fellow Muslims to overthrow the democratic order in the country.

The latest installment of Islamist agitprop comes in the form of a video in which the Belgian Islamist Sheik Abu Imran declares that the black flag of Islamic Jihad will "soon be flying on top of all the palaces in Europe."

The December 11 video, which has been translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), shows Imran dressed in military camouflage calling for the destruction of the Atomium, a monument in Brussels that is the national symbol of Belgium.

Imran says: "This is a short message to the King of Belgium and specifically to the Muslims in Belgium. This is the flag [black flag of jihad] that, Allah willing, will soon be flying on top of that building over there [the Belgian royal palace]. There you see the flag [Belgian flag] of the Taghut, the infidels, and soon the flag of 'there is no god but Allah' will be flying there, on top of that palace, and on top of all the other palaces in Europe, until Allah willing, we reach the White House…We will not rest, we will not stop, until this flag flies on top of that building [the royal palace]."

The video then continues from another location in Brussels, namely directly in front of the Atomium. Imran says: "We can see nowadays how people are taking photos, and how people from all over Brussels and from all over Europe, come here for what is called 'tourism' and take photos of this monument. They hold on to this monument. On top, you can see the Belgian flag. This monument is a symbol of Belgium…Soon, Belgium will fall apart. May Allah disperse them and their country. Amen. Then this symbol will be useless to them."

Imran continues: "Look how people view this monument as their Taghut, their idol…We should destroy these monuments. How can we demonstrate that we are Muslims? … We must free ourselves from this idolatry…we call upon everyone to stay away from idols and idolatry. One of these idols is this Taghut [the Atomium] here behind us, with the flag of the Taghut government [Belgium] on top of it, a symbol of the Taghut regime, the Taghut system ruling this country.

"But Allah willing, Belgium will soon be freed from polytheism and idolatry…We promise to clean Belgium from the system of idolatry as well as of the idols themselves. Then we will demolish this symbol, this monument. Why? … We need to ensure the safety of Belgian Muslims and non-Muslims in the Islamic state that will replace this Taghut. Allah willing, the more Muslims who participate, the faster we will reach our goal of freeing Belgium from tyranny, and from idolatry, and of implementing the purest form of Tawheed [Islamic doctrine] in our lives. Let us live in an Islamic state, in which there is no idolatry, and there is only 'There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.'"

This video came just days after a mob of extremists belonging to Sharia4Belgium stormed a debate in Amsterdam that was featuring two Muslim liberals: the Canadian writer and Muslim feminist Irshad Manji and the Dutch-Moroccan Green Left MP Tofik Dibi.

Waving an Islamist jihadist flag, the Islamists yelled "Allahu Akbar!" (Allah is Greater) and threatened to break Manji's neck. They then demanded that both Manji and Dibi be executed for apostasy.

The December 8 debate on how liberal Muslims can prevent Islam from being hijacked by Muslim extremists was held at the De Baile venue in downtown Amsterdam, and was sponsored by the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy. The event resumed after police arrested several of the Islamists.

Previously, 40 members of Sharia4Belgium engaged in "Campus Jihad" by disrupting a speech about Islam by the Dutch author Benno Barnard. The lecture, entitled "The Islam Debate: Long Live God, Down with Allah!," was part of a series of talks at Antwerp University about the Enlightenment.

In September, Sharia4Belgium established Belgium's first Islamic Sharia law court in Antwerp, the second-largest city in the country. Leaders of the group say the purpose of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium in order to challenge the state's authority as the enforcer of the civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.

The self-appointed Muslim judges running the Islamic Sharia court apply Islamic law, rather than the secular Belgian Family Law system, to resolve disputes involving questions of marriage and divorce, child custody and child support, as well as all inheritance-related matters.

Unlike Belgian civil law, Islamic Sharia law does not guarantee equal rights for men and women; critics of the Sharia court say it will undermine the rights of Muslim women in marriage and education.

Sharia4Belgium says the court in Antwerp will eventually expand its remit and handle criminal cases as well.

But Sharia4Belgium also expects non-Muslims to submit to Sharia law.

A partial archive of an earlier version of Sharia4Belgium's website includes a threat in the form of an invitation calling for all Belgians to convert to Islam and to submit to Sharia law or face the consequences. The text says:

"It is now 86 years since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate. The tyranny and corruption in this country [Belgium] has prevailed; we go from one scandal to another: Economic crises, paedophilia, crime, growing Islamophobia, etc."

"As in the past we [Muslims] have saved Europe from the dark ages, we now plan to do the same. Now we have the right solution for all crises and this is the observance of the divine law, namely Sharia. We call to implement Sharia in Belgium.

"Sharia is the perfect system for humanity...As a result, we invite the royal family, parliament, all the aristocracy and every Belgian resident to submit to the light of Islam. Save yourself and your children of the painful punishment of the hereafter and grant yourself eternal life in paradise."

A cache of the background image for the Sharia4Belgium website has the black flag of jihad flying above the Belgian Parliament. Until recently, the Sharia4Belgium Youtube page (which has been shut down) was used to incite Muslims to Jihad, or Holy War. The group had posted videos with titles such as, "Jihad Is Obligatory," "Encouraging Jihad," "Duelling & Guerrilla Warfare," and "The Virtues of Martyrdom."

In a recent debate with Filip Dewinter, a Belgian politician who has raised public awareness of the dangers posed by radical Islam, Imran said: "There are a lot of Muslims in Belgian politics, which is something I cannot understand. You are either a Muslim or a democrat, you cannot be both. I have no business with infidels. My mission is to please Allah, not infidels."

Imran continued: "Let's turn Belgium into an Islamic state. We have enough judges, scholars and leaders who can become caliphs…Filip Dewinter is right. This is the beginning of the Islamization of Antwerp. And to all infidels: Adjust or get out!" stonegateinstitute.org

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Drowning in Hypocrisy: Paul Craig Roberts

Drowning in Hypocrisy

By Paul Craig Roberts
January 24, 2012

The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”




If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?

Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars. The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment by equating free speech with terrorism and spying. Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in the City of Chicago. The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.




Washington’s grotesque hypocrisy goes unremarked by the American “media” and in the debates for the Republican presidential nomination. The corrupt Obama “Justice” Department turns a blind eye while goon cop thugs commit gratuitous violence against the citizens who pay the goon cop thugs’ undeserved salaries.

But it is in the War Crimes Arena where Washington shows the greatest hypocrisy. The self-righteous bigots in Washington are forever rounding up heads of weak states whose countries were afflicted by civil wars and sending them off to be tried as war criminals. All the while Washington indiscriminately kills large numbers of civilians in six or more countries, dismissing its own war crimes as “collateral damage.” Washington violates its own law and international law by torturing people.

On January 13, 2012, Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers reported that Spanish judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez re-launched an investigation into Washington’s torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Prison. The previous day British authorities opened an investigation into CIA renditions of kidnapped persons to Libya for torture.




Rosenberg reports that although the Obama regime has refused to investigate the obvious crimes of the Bush regime, and one might add its own obvious crimes, “other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.”

There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law. But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.

The War Criminal Court at the Hague is reserved for Washington’s show trials. No foreign government is going to pay Washington several hundred millions of dollars to turn Bush, Cheney, Obama and their minions over to them in the way the US bought Milosevic from Serbia in order to create the necessary spectacle at the War Crimes Tribunal to justify Washington’s naked aggression against Serbia.




No government can be perfect, because all governments are composed of humans, especially those humans most attracted by power and profit. Nevertheless, in my lifetime I have witnessed an extraordinary deterioration in the integrity of government in the United States. We have reached the point where nothing that our government says is believable. Not even the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, the GDP growth rate, much less Washington’s reasons for its wars, its police state, and its foreign and domestic policies.

Washington has kept America at war for ten years while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. War and a faltering economy have exploded the national debt, and a looming bankruptcy is being blamed on Social Security and Medicare.

The pursuit of war continues. On January 23 Washington’s servile puppets--the EU member states--did Washington’s bidding and imposed an oil embargo on Iran, despite the pleas of Greece, a member of the EU. Greece’s final ruin will come from the higher oil prices from the embargo, as the Greek government realizes.

The embargo is a reckless act. If the US navy tries to intercept oil tankers carrying Iranian oil, large scale war could break out. This, many believe, is Washington’s aim.




It is easy for an embargo to become a blockade, which is an act of war. Remember how easily the UN Security Council’s “no-fly zone” over Libya was turned by the US and its NATO puppets into a military attack on Libya’s armed forces and population centers supportive of Gaddafi.

As the western “democracies” become increasingly lawless, the mask of law that imperialism wears is stripped away and with it the sheen of morality that has been used to cloak hegemonic ambitions. With Iran surrounded and with two of Washington’s fleets in the Persian Gulf, another war of aggression seems inevitable.

Experts say that an attack on Iran by the US and NATO will disrupt the flow of oil that the world needs. The crazed drive for hegemony is so compelling that Washington and its EU puppets show no hesitation in putting their own struggling economies at risk of sharply rising energy costs.

War abroad and austerity at home is the policy that is being imposed on the western “democracies.” ICH

Santorum: Pregnant Rape Victims Should "Make the Best" of It As GOP Anti-Choice Insanity Ramps Up

Santorum: Pregnant Rape Victims Should "Make the Best" of It As GOP Anti-Choice Insanity Ramps Up
By Sarah Seltzer
January 24, 2012

Perhaps you missed this little gem from GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, perhaps one of the most aggressively anti-choice candidates ever to run for such a high office. Despite this reputation, he still managed to shock people with this rather callous response to the question on his position that abortion should be illegal in cases of rape or incest (emphases mine). From the CNN transcript:

MORGAN: But do you really -- do you really -- let me ask you this. Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that -- I know that you believe, even in cases of rape and incest -- and you've got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped.

SANTORUM: Yes.

MORGAN: And was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion, would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father?

SANTORUM: I would do what every father must do, is to try to counsel your daughter to do the right thing....

MORGAN: And they are looking at their daughter ,saying, how can I deal with this, because if I make her have this baby, isn't it going to just ruin her life?

SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn't have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn't, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I've always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created -- in the sense of rape -- but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.

As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can't think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

The video of this exchange is below, thanks to ThinkProgress.

But Santorum isn't the only candidate trying to prove his forced-birth bona fides.

Last night, Rachel Maddow had an important segment--and an interview with former Rep. Alan Grayson--about how the GOP race in Florida is turning into the "anti-abortion primary." AlterNet

I will pass on the videos if you don't mind, they can be found at the link.

Righteous Abortion: How Conservative Christianity Promotes What It Claims to Hate

Righteous Abortion: How Conservative Christianity Promotes What It Claims to Hate
Valerie Tarico
January 22, 2012

One of the great ironies of American society is that most abortions in the U.S. are caused by conservative Christians. Read the statistics: Forty nine percent of pregnancies in this country are unintended, a rate that has been painfully stable for almost 30 years. Almost half of those pregnancies end in abortion. Or, to turn it around, over 90% of U.S. abortions are the result of accidental pregnancy. U.S. rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion far exceed any other country with similar economic development. So does our rate of religiosity. The fact that we are outliers on both is not a coincidence.

Three aspects of conservative Christianity promote abortion: pro-natalism, an obsession with sexual sin, and an emphasis on righteousness over compassion.

Biblical Christianity is not pro life. It is not even pro human life. Steven Pinker recently estimated that the Old Testament alone describes 1.2 million deaths at the hand of Yahweh or his servants. It is, however, pro-birth. Be fruitful and multiply. (Genesis 1:28) Women will be saved through childbearing. (1 Timothy 2:15). Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant reformation, put it in his own words: “If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her only die from bearing; she is there to do it.” Christian competitive breeding, a strategy for increasing adherents, is at the heart of the Catholic anti-contraceptive stance and the Protestant Quiverfull movement.

Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe. We all know what it means. By the time the Abrahamic religions emerged, the male desire to invest in only their own offspring had taken the form of men owning women. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Exodus 20:17) Women caught in adultery (or missing their hymens) were killed by the ancient Hebrews, just as they are by conservative Muslims today. The Christian obsession with sexual sin or rather with female purity has produced the American virginity myth. In contrast to more secular, open societies, American teens typically don’t seek contraception for a year after becoming sexually active. Contraception would make them guilty of the sin of premeditated sex.
38,000. That’s the number of Christian denominations. more

Why Mega Cruise Ships Are Unsafe: Opinion

Many of you will have by now seen multiple photographs of the stricken Costa Concordia. Just as surely as many of you will have seen photographs of the Concordia's stabiliser and dismissed it as just that, a stabiliser.

But it is far more than just a stabiliser, it is the mother and father of all stabilisers, it is simple enormous. And it is enormous for reasons other than to stop passengers honking up their foie gras when the ship experiences inclement weather.

It is the only thing that keeps the ship upright in any bit of a breeze.

Although I might be in danger of wearing out my own analogy, the one where I describe the Costa Concordia as a plank with a block of flats stuck on top, there is no better one that I can offer up, the thing is quite simply, a naval architect's nightmare, and quite frankly, I personally wouldn't cross the boating lake on the thing.

Before we address the design factors of the Costa Concordia, let's take a look at the way ships should be designed, and what better example given the subject of this post, than the infamous Titanic. If we look at the ratio between draft, the amount of ship below the waterline, and that of the air draft, the amount above the waterline we see a vessel of reasonable and safe proportions.





Now let us look at the Costa Concordia. What you see regarding draft, (the plank) is what you get, about twenty foot of it, there isn't but a few foot more than what's visible.



And air draft? (the block of flats) a good two hundred feet of it, generically referred to as top hamper. Now I don't think you need to be a naval architect to appreciate that things look somewhat amiss. There is an old saying in boat building, if it looks right, it is right. Something we can never accuse the Concordia of looking. To really put things in true perspective, just compare the size of the people on the stern of the vessel in the second photograph. The amount of draft is equivalent to four of those people. Scary; very scary indeed.




So what we have so far is a vessel that, although it must have passed some kind of inclination test, doesn't exactly fill one with confidence regarding its seaworthiness. Enter the stabilisers.

With a vessel of such air draft comes one thing, windage, lots and lots of windage. And the only thing combating that windage, preventing the ship heeling at an alarming rate, is the forward motion of the vessel and the deployment of the aforementioned monster sized stabiliser.

The photograph below shows an unnamed cruise ship, just getting underway leaving Charlotte Amalie harbor in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. There is no sea running, the wind is offshore and is striking the vessel on its starboard quarter, not even beam on. And if I were to make a guess, the wind would be approximately force four, about fifteen knots, judging by the ripples on the water. But as you can see, she is struggling to keep upright in this breeze.

She too will be fitted with similar stabilisers, and you can bet the farm it's doing all it can to try and pull the ship back on an even keel. As will the port side stabiliser; it will be set to try and fly, whilst starboard side is trying to reach the sea floor. That is why they are so huge, they need to be effective as soon as the ship lets go and gets underway at low speed.

So basically what we have, is a ship that is inherently unstable that has to rely on oversized stabilisers to make a passage.

As long as they don't go wrong, and as long as the ship doesn't break down. And don't forget, a ship that is dead in the water will invariably lay across the wind, side on if you will, presenting her windage to whatever is blowing at the time.




Update: From the comments, and unchallenged by me. But that's not to say these things don't lean like a sonofabitch in a wind. And if they were dead in the water, the leeway they would make would be alarming. But I still stand by what I said about how the stabilisers would be set in the picture above.

Please be aware that the Princess Cruises ship ("getting underway leaving Charlotte Amalie harbor in St. Thomas") is not leaning because of high wins but because it is turning - this is completely normal behaviour, no reason for worries at all and results from pure physics ... centrifugal force.

Italy wanted to relax safety standards before Costa Concordia

.....As is almost always the case after a major maritime casualty in European waters, the commission will now launch a review of existing passenger safety legislation. As it happens, a revision of passenger ship construction rules was on the commission's work program prior to the Costa Concordia grounding. The body has, however, until now not considered major changes to the way cruise ships are designed and built.

"Gargantuan" cruise ships such as the Costa Concordia are "not safe, terribly unstable" and start listing in the wind as soon propulsion is cut - according to John Kuehmayer, chairman of the Austrian Marine Equipment Manufacturers.

"The only vessel designed for yearlong passages across the North Atlantic is Cunard's Queen Mary 2. All the other cruise ships have to be cheap money-making machines", he says. If the commission engages in a serious review of cruise ship safety, it might not like the evidence it uncovers. Significant changes would be opposed tooth-and-nail by the multi-billion dollar industry. The commission scored a significant victory over Italy on passenger safety. Taking on the cruise industry would be a battle of a different magnitude. Full story publicserviceeurope.com

A bit extra found on the web. "block of flats on a barge" LOL.

One of the things bothering me most is the sudden loss of initial stability leading to the rapid, and ultimately fatal, listing. I have dug up some numbers that might shed a bit of light. The original Queen Mary is 1,019' 6" long, 118' beam, with a 40' draft. Gross Tonnage is listed at 81,237. The air draft (distance from water line to the top of the forward funnel) is 181'. Passenger capacity listed at 1,957 with 1,174 crew. 3,131 total.

Compare this to the Queen Mary 2. Length, 1,132', beam, 135', draft, 32' 10" air draft 236'! and 151,400 GRT. Passengers, 2,620, crew, 1,253. Total 3,873. The Costa Concordia is even more extreme. Length, 951'. Beam, 118'. Draft, 26' 10"!!. 114,500 GRT. Air draft 215'.! Passengers, 3,570. Crew 1,068. Total 4,638.!! The purpose is to illustrate that modern naval architecture has a much greater portion of the ships volume and weight above the waterline. this is compensated in part by wider beam but mainly is accomplished by computer controlled ballast and fuel stowage.

Costa Concordia has 14' less draft but 34' more air draft and 33,000 more GRT in a 68' 6" shorter hull. Consider that the Titanic, with a similar gash type damage sank more slowly and for practical purposes the decks remained level albeit down by the head. They would have had time to launch many more lifeboats had they had them. This sudden loss of stability is a scary issue. In fact, passengers have been injured in modern cruise ships when a steering malfunction caused a sharp turn and a severe list from the turning forces.

Perhaps safety standards will be modified and the "block of flats on a barge" style of naval architecture will have to revert to a more "seagoing" style of ship. One thing for certain, there will be repercussions from this. Had the ship had this sudden loss of stability in deep water, I fear the results would have been much more terrible.

http://cruiseforums.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=31972708&postcount=43

Here is a ferry that came to grief a bit nearer home, virtually on my doorstep as it were. And for all my saying, that I wouldn't cross the boating lake on such a vessel, I have in the past, bummed a ride on this thing. Never realising of course, just how shoal drafted the thing really was. Story

Costa Concordia: Were ''Salutes'' an Accepted Part of Company Policy?

I suppose the only thing that you can rely on regarding the hype surrounding the Costa Concordia, is that you can rely on nothing surrounding the Costa Concordia.

Listening to lawyers that are falling over themselves to bring a class action against Carnival, is about as reliable as listening to Clarence Mitchell, aka the Angel of Death, a transparently lying son of bitch brought in by owners, Carnival Cruise lines, to paint Carnival whiter than white, and to paint the unfortunate Francesco Schettino, skipper of the Costa Concordia, blacker than black.

Well I don't think it is going to be quite so easy for Carnival and the odious Clarence Mitchell, to achieve such an effect. Not when it was seemingly common practice, and we have to assume with full knowledge of the owners, for the Costa Concordia to carry out these types of salutes. (and other Carnival cruise ships?)

(U.S. lawyer Mitchell Proner) “While they might be trying to indicate that the incident is the fault of this one rogue captain, we know that they’ve had some precedents going close to these islands along the Italian coast,” he said.

He said the same ship had earlier cruised dangerously close to the island of Procida in the Gulf of Naples.

“Procida set up mortars and saluted and the Concordia responded by blasting their sirens. So this is something that they have done in the past as a way of generating publicity and advertising for their company,” he said.

So not quite the same ''The Captain deviated from his course'' that we first heard from Carnival, in trying to distance itself from the hapless Francesco Schettino. And it is this prior knowledge of such salutes by owners Carnival, that is going to play a major role in this investigation.

And an even greater role altogether, if in fact it was company policy to ''show the flag'' in such a manner.

I hadn't realised until I read the article below, that the Concordia had lost propulsion after she hit the rock, and if we are to take the graphic and the information thereon as something like accurate, Schettino displayed a fair degree of seamanship in bringing the boat about and running her aground.

But it is the loss of power, in part, that I want to deal with in my next article. An article that doesn't deal with the loss of the Concordia, but where I try and address the question, Why Mega Cruise Ships Are Unsafe

Update: Photographer claims company encouraged captains to take their ships close to shore... linky

Further update below: Costa Concordia captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

Costa Concordia criminal probe may widen as passengers file class-action

By Antonella Cinelli and Gabriele Pileri
Jan 23, 2012
GIGLIO — A criminal probe into the Costa Concordia’s doomed voyage, which ended with at least 15 dead and the cruise ship lying off the Italian coast, may be widened, a lawyer for the captain said on Monday.

The toll includes the bodies of two women, their nationalities so far unknown, found by divers on Monday.

Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of causing the accident and is under investigation for multiple manslaughter and abandoning the 450 million-euro ($590 million) ship before it was evacuated.

Schettino’s lawyer Bruno Leporatti said in a statement that evidence from his client about phone calls with the ship’s owners, Costa Cruises, at the time of the accident could lead to the investigation being widened.

He said the calls with Costa’s marine operation director had “opened further channels for investigation that could reasonably lead to an increase in the number of those under investigation.”

Third parties “could have at least contributed to creating the tragic event,” Leporatti said.

According to leaked transcripts from the investigation, Schettino has admitted steering too close to shore. Leporatti has said that while Schettino is willing to accept his share of responsibility, other factors were involved in the accident.

Investigators say he brought the ship to within 150 meters of the shore, apparently while performing a “salute” to the island. Schettino says this maneuver was common but the company says it should not be performed so close to the shore.

Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp, the world’s largest cruise ship operator, has suspended Schettino and declared itself an injured party in the case. It has said “unfortunate human error” by Schettino caused the disaster.

CLASS-ACTION

A U.S. lawyer said Monday the Costa Concordia had earlier cruised recklessly close to other islands to impress passengers.

Mitchell Proner of New York law firm Proner & Proner, which is planning to file a class-action suit in Miami on Wednesday on behalf of passengers in the disaster, said the ship owner would be a main target of the lawsuit.

“At this point we’re exploring numerous defendants; certainly you’ve got (ship owner) Costa Cruise lines,” Proner told AFP.

“While they might be trying to indicate that the incident is the fault of this one rogue captain, we know that they’ve had some precedents going close to these islands along the Italian coast,” he said.

He said the same ship had earlier cruised dangerously close to the island of Procida in the Gulf of Naples.

“Procida set up mortars and saluted and the Concordia responded by blasting their sirens. So this is something that they have done in the past as a way of generating publicity and advertising for their company,” he said.

“It’s thrill-seeking for the passengers, but it’s reckless.”

Proner & Proner is teaming up with Italian consumer rights’ association Codacons and another New York law firm, Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, to lead the lawsuit on behalf of victims in the January 13 shipwreck, which occurred after the vessel moved too close to the shore of the island of Giglio.

Proner said they would likely file the suit on behalf of all victims on Wednesday in Miami, home base of Carnival, the giant U.S. cruise ship operator which owns Costa Cruise lines.

They would seek at least U.S.$160,000 for each of the victims.

“If they sustained injury it can be a multiple of that number. If they have a disability as a result of the incident and certainly in the cases of fatalities, we’re expecting in excess of a million euros per individual.”

He said they would also be examining whether the equipment on board the vessel designed to prevent such accidents had failed or were disengaged.

NOTIFICATION

The vice president of Carnival Corp, Howard Frank, arrived in Italy on Sunday to help oversee the situation, according to a source close to the company.

Frank and Pier Luigi Foschi, chairman and chief executive of Costa Cruises, met some of families of the victims of the tragedy on Giglio island on Sunday, the source said.

Costa Cruises has not received any notification that it is being investigated, according to a company spokesman. The company will be forthright with investigators and has full faith in the magistrature, he added.

According to transcripts of Schettino’s questioning by prosecutors leaked to Italian media, the captain said that immediately after hitting the rock he sent two of his officers to the engine room to check on the state of the vessel.

As soon as he realized the scale of the damage, he called Roberto Ferrarini, marine operations director for Costa Cruises.

“I told him: ‘I’ve got myself into a mess, there was contact with the seabed. I am telling you the truth, we passed under Giglio and there was an impact’,” Schettino said.

“I can’t remember how many times I called him in the following hour and 15 minutes. In any case, I am certain that I informed Ferrarini about everything in real time.”

Separately, Leporatti said that Schettino tested negative in hair and urine tests for drug use, but was not tested for alcohol on the night of the accident.

If the probe is broadened, it will reduce the glare of the spotlight on Schettino, who has so far been assigned almost exclusive responsibility for the disaster. His first officer Ciro Ambrosio is also under investigation.

A judge has said Schettino showed “incredible carelessness” and a “total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency,” according to documents from a hearing.

SEARCH CONTINUES

Search operations were still under way for nearly 20 bodies missing. Navy divers blasted underwater holes in the hull of the ship to provide additional points of access. Debris floated out and was gathered by coastguard boats.

An Italian navy ship, the Galatea, which is equipped with a sophisticated undersea radar system, has been sent to the area to help search for bodies.

Reports on Sunday of the possible presence of unregistered passengers, including one Hungarian woman, raised questions about the exact number of people missing.

Costa Cruises on Monday denied the presence of stowaways. The Hungarian foreign ministry said it had no news that any of its nationals had been secretly on board, according to Italy’s civil protection agency.

Franco Gabrielli, head of Italy’s civil protection authority, said the ship was stable and there appeared to be no immediate risk that it could slide off the rock outcrop where it is caught and slip into deeper waters.

He said search operations could continue, and operations to pump some 2,400 tons of fuel from the vessel could begin while the search for bodies was still under way.

On Tuesday, a platform boat for the fuel recovery team will be positioned hear the Costa Concordia and preparatory dives will be made, according to SMIT, the Dutch company hired to salvage the fuel.

Giglio’s economy depends on tourists seeking clean beaches and clear water for snorkeling and scuba diving. Its drinking water, too, is drawn from the sea and desalinated.

UNESCO DECREE

United Nations cultural body UNESCO urged the Italian government Monday to restrict the access of cruise ships to World Heritage Site Venice in the wake of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster.

In a statement, Paris-based UNESCO said it had called on the Italian government “to restrict access of large ships to culturally and ecologically important areas, particularly Venice and its lagoon which are visited by some 300 large cruise ships a year.”

It said cruise liner traffic in Venice “is particularly damaging because of the fragile structure of the city.

“The ships cause water tides that erode the foundations of buildings. They contribute to pollution and impact the cityscape as they dwarf monuments in the heart of the city,” UNESCO said.

Amid efforts to eventually pump out hundreds of tons of fuel remaining in the ship, environmentalists have warned of an ecological catastrophe in Europe’s biggest marine sanctuary.

DISCOUNTS

on Monday, it emerged that the ship’s owner, Costa Cruises, a division of Carnival, the largest cruise ship operator in the world, is offering survivors a 30% discount off future cruises.

The move is the first obvious effort to limit the corporate damage done by the shipwreck, the result of a failed nighttime sail-by in which the ship was gashed by a rock, then beached to facilitate rescue, only to topple over on the rocks when the tide went out.

But with people still missing, and the rescue operation complicated by the question of unregistered passengers, the offer was criticized as “insulting,” by one British survivor.

The Daily Telegraph also reported that the Florida-based company had been telephoning survivors “asking if they are suffering nightmares or sleepless nights,” which are the hallmark symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. nationalpost.com

It's a big rascal, click it again once you have opened it.

H/T Costa Concordia Imbroglione

Costa Concordia captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

Investigators urged to consider role of ship's owners in incident as salvage experts begin pumping out fuel from wreck
John Hooper in Rome
Tuesday 24 January

The chief prosecutor overseeing the inquiry into the Costa Concordia shipwreck has urged investigators to look beyond the behaviour of the captain to the role played by the liner's owners, Costa Cruises.

His remarks were published as salvage experts began the delicate task of pumping out around 2,400 tonnes of fuel to prevent an environmental disaster in the area where the vessel ran aground on 13 January.

Beniamino Deidda, the chief prosecutor of Tuscany, said in an interview carried by several Italian newspapers on Tuesday: "For the moment, attention is generally concentrated on the responsibility of the captain, who showed himself to be tragically inadequate. But who chooses the captain?"

He said investigators needed to lift their gaze to the decisions taken by "the employer; that is to say, the ship's owner".

Costa Cruises has from the outset put the blame for the accident squarely on the allegedly reckless behaviour of the captain, Francesco Schettino. He lost control of the 114,500-tonne Costa Concordia after hitting a rock as he skirted the shoreline of the island of Giglio in a 'salute' to a retired cruise line commodore.

But Deidda, who has spent a large part of his career dealing with health and safety cases, said numerous other issues needed to be addressed.

He specifically mentioned "lifeboats that did not come down, crew who did not know what to do [and] scant preparation in crisis management".

He added it was "absurd" that in at least one instance, recorded on video after the Costa Concordia was holed, a member of the crew should have told passengers to return to their cabins.

Schettino has also maintained his employers have a shared responsibility for what happened. Among questions the inquiry is seeking to answer is why more than an hour elapsed between impact and the order to abandon ship.

Questioned by prosecutors last week, the captain said he was in frequent contact with a representative of the company during that period.

Schettino and his first officer are the sole formal suspects in the inquiry, which is considering whether to bring charges of manslaughter and the illegal abandoning of a ship.

On Monday, islanders reported seeing a large fuel slick in the waters off Giglio, which are protected as a marine nature reserve. The fuel, however, is thought by the authorities to have come from the ship's initial impact with a cluster of rocks just south of the port of Giglio.

The official co-ordinating operations on the island said on Monday there was still no evidence that fuel had leaked from the Costa Concordia's tanks. gruniad

The Caging of America

The Caging of America

Why do we lock up so many people?
by Adam Gopnik
January 30, 2012

A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic—the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happens. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is all you need to know about Ivan Denisovich, because the idea that anyone could live for a minute in such circumstances seems impossible; one day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. It isn’t the horror of the time at hand but the unimaginable sameness of the time ahead that makes prisons unendurable for their inmates. The inmates on death row in Texas are called men in “timeless time,” because they alone aren’t serving time: they aren’t waiting out five years or a decade or a lifetime. The basic reality of American prisons is not that of the lock and key but that of the lock and clock.




That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling. Time stops. A note of attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia—anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog, covering the guards as much as the guarded. “Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard, / Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,” Dylan sings, and while it isn’t strictly true—just ask the prisoners—it contains a truth: the guards are doing time, too. As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment. For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.

For most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a mere brush, encountered after a kid’s arrest, say. For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.



The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. Ours is, bottom to top, a “carceral state,” in the flat verdict of Conrad Black, the former conservative press lord and newly minted reformer, who right now finds himself imprisoned in Florida, thereby adding a new twist to an old joke: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a conservative who’s in one.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized. Though we avoid looking directly at prisons, they seep obliquely into our fashions and manners. Wealthy white teen-agers in baggy jeans and laceless shoes and multiple tattoos show, unconsciously, the reality of incarceration that acts as a hidden foundation for the country. new yorker

H/T xklamation

Anonymous Hacks Into The FTC Online Security Site

Anonymous hacks into the FTC online security site, warns of more protest action
24 Jan,2012

If SOPA/PIPA/ACTA passes we will wage a relentless war against the corporate internet, destroying dozens upon dozens of government and company websites. As you are reading this we are amassing our allied armies of darkness, preparing boatloads of stolen booty for our next raid. We are sitting on hundreds of rooted servers getting ready to drop all your mysql dumps and mail spools. Your passwords? Your precious bank accounts? Even your online dating details?! You ain’t even trying to step to this.

Anonymous has brought down yet another US government website, as the FTC’s federal online security site was hacked by the anonymous collective, as it continues to attack sites in protest at a number of US Internet laws and the closure of file sharing site Megaupload.

The front page of the site has been replaced by a screen featuring the now infamous Anonymous logo, a rap song and a message to politicians and US authorities, which warns of future attacks and action should SOPA, PIPA and ACTA be passed as laws: More

Surrey Police Covered up Dowler Hacking for Nine Years

Nice huh?

Police Covered up Dowler Hacking
James Cusick
24 January 2012

Surrey Police knew for nine years that the News of the World had been hacking Milly Dowler's voicemails – and was even played a recording of one message by a journalist from the Sunday newspaper – but never took action about the law-breaking or told her anguished family.



The force, which was investigating the schoolgirl's disappearance and murder in 2002, has stayed silent for a decade despite repeatedly being given evidence of the NOTW illegally accessing the 13-year-old's mobile phone messages during the middle of its inquiries. Two other police forces also had knowledge of the hacking, it emerged yesterday in highly damaging evidence released by Parliament.

In a trail of logged exchanges between Surrey Police and journalists from the now-defunct Murdoch-owned tabloid – finally released yesterday after months of demands from this newspaper and another – officers and public relations officials from the force are shown to have been fully aware of how NOTW journalists illegally hacked into her mobile phone during 2002, and yet did and said nothing until late 2011.

The report, which details exchanges during the crucial weeks of the police hunt, is a heavily redacted summary of the initial findings of Surrey's deputy chief constable, Jerry Kirkby.

The report, published by the Culture and Media Select Committee of MPs, which has been investigating the phone-hacking scandal, backs up the central claims made in an investigation carried out by The Independent last October.

Surrey Police, despite its stonewalling, had discussed phone hacking with the NOTW in 2002 and had failed to take action against the News International title – action which could have halted the tabloid's criminal activities, which continued for almost a decade.


The logged exchanges in the Kirkby report reveals journalists from the NOTW interfering in the Surrey investigation, offering excuses about where they were getting information from, and attempting to bully police press officers into backing its theories on Milly's disappearance.

The report also confirms The Independent's claim that there was also a formal meeting between representatives of the tabloid and Surrey Police. The report says this meeting took place in July 2002. However, no notes have been given of what was discussed.

The report edits out the names of the NOTW journalists and the senior police officers who exchanged information. Mr Kirkby said this was done at the request of the Metropolitan Police which is currently pursuing a criminal investigation into key individuals at the centre of the hacking scandal.

Surrey officers admit they knew the NOTW held a recording of Milly's voicemails messages; that the force was played the message; that they were told the NOTW had got Milly's phone and pin number from "school friends".

The NOTW journalists redacted in the report are shown to be engaged in harassment, blagging, bullying, deception and a refusal to accept the views of the police investigation.

One unnamed individual tried to "blag" information about Milly by calling a recruitment agency and pretending to be her mother, Sally.

Last night the Dowler family said in a statement: "Surrey have not explained why they did not investigation that deception in 2002." More Independent

Creationists, Every One of Them, Are Today's Cunts of The Day

Creationists, every one of them, are today's Cunts of the Day.

The UK's Guardian reports that annoying Richard Dawkins is celebrating a UK government decision to cut funding to free schools that teach intelligent design as fact. This is an excellent move on the part of the UK government to stem the tidal wave of stupidity that is behind creationism and intelligent design.

Obviously, these morons whose literal understanding of religious texts leads them to reject science will instill creationism in their children anyway. At least in the UK they won't be doing so getting government funding.

You have to wonder how many children who are brainwashed into sharing their parent's beliefs grow up questioning what they have been told once they realize what nonsense has been put in their heads. Perhaps it's when they figure out their beliefs land them on the same page as the likes of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and supreme knobcheese Ben Stein.

Everyone should stand up against religious based teaching in schools. It is, after all, stone cold horsepiss. People should, like Dawkins, be even more vocal when these idiots try and get their hands on tax dollars with which to brainwash children. The world, after all, has enough stupid people in it. Today these cunts have received a set back that rational people everywhere should be celebrating.

Sponsored by people who are delighted to see the UK's Telegraph newspaper is ever on the case of Tony Blair, particularly when it comes to his ever increasing finances. Rightly fucking so. Shrub Monkey

Responsible for close to 200 deaths so far this year, Boko Haram, whose name means "Non-Islamic Education is sacrilege"

Scores dead in northern Nigeria as Islamist militants terrorise the country

Group bidding to impose sharia law claims responsibility for wave of attacks in city of Kano
Monica Mark in Lagos
21 January 2012

More than 140 people have died in the northern Nigerian city of Kano after a series of attacks by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. In a series of attacks on Friday, as residents were leaving mosques, five police buildings, two immigration offices and the local headquarters of the national intelligence services were targeted.

"We are still collecting the bodies so we cannot confirm the total death toll. We have nine so far. We will know the final number once we have finished collecting," a spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency told the Observer.

Witnesses reported seeing at least 100 bodies sprawled around the regional police base alone. Officials in the main hospital said the wounded and dead were still being ferried in on Saturday, some after being trapped by overnight gunfights.

Authorities largely refused to offer casualty statistics as mourners began claiming the bodies of their loved ones to bury before sundown, following Islamic tradition. However, a hospital official told the Associated Press at least 143 people were killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to release the death toll to journalists. The figure could rise further, since other bodies could be held at other clinics and hospitals.

Olusola Amore, a police official, appealed for members of the public to come forward "with information on the identity and location of these hoodlums".

Britain's Foreign Office updated its travel advice, warning people not to travel to Kano. On its website the FCO said: "We advise against all travel to Kano whilst the curfew remains in force and for those in Kano to remain vigilant and to exercise caution.

It urged British nationals in Nigeria to comply with all curfews.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said: "The nature of these attacks has sickened people around the world and I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of those killed and to those injured.

Responsible for close to 200 deaths so far this year, Boko Haram, whose name means "Non-Islamic Education is sacrilege", wants to extend sharia law – already in place in some northern states – across Nigeria's 160 million-strong population, which is evenly split between Muslim and Christian.

Analysts say the group has so far failed to gain significant traction outside its homebase states of Yobe and Borno in the north, but the group stages near-daily shootings on police targets there and claimed responsibility for the first ever suicide attack in Nigeria, which killed 24 people in the capital, Abuja, in August. A Christmas Day attack on a Catholic church just outside the capital killed at least 37 people.

"The temptation is going to be to see these attacks as an indication of greater co-ordination, to which I would say maybe, maybe not," said John Campbell, the former US ambassador to Nigeria. "It's not rocket science for the various groups to go around planting bombs in government headquarters."

However, he warned that a slow response to a movement that, analysts say, has used a fanatical ideology to stoke local economic and tribal rivalries, is eroding faith in the ability of Nigerian authorities to manage the threat. Kano, an ancient city on the cusp of the Sahara that has a long history as a bustling trade and learning centre, had largely escaped the violence that has plagued the north of the country.

The most deadly spree yet by Boko Haram came just days after popular protests forced the government to partially back down over plans to remove fuel subsidies in Africa's top oil economy. As thousands took to the streets last week, President Goodluck Jonathan acknowledged that Boko Haram had infiltrated the government and security services. In a belated statement regarding the Kano attacks, he said: "As a responsible government, we will not fold our hands and watch enemies of democracy, for that is what these mindless killers are, perpetrate unprecedented evil in our land."

A security source said community reports had foiled two attacks in Kano last year. "The population recognised the Boko Haram people from their tribal markings and reported them to us. They are ordinary people known to the communities. So people are now wondering why the government cannot protect them," he said.

By Saturday afternoon residents began to venture outside, looking for bodies of relatives and friends that Muslim custom dictates should be buried within a day. Most were still reeling from the ferocity and speed of the attacks. Police officers, who apparently bore the brunt of casualties, had been pulled off the streets and replaced by soldiers.

In the main Kano hospital, Musa, a police officer wounded in the attack, wondered if his colleagues at the regional headquarters had survived. He told how, as he started work on Friday, a Honda approached the building at high speed. "There was a powerful sound, then complete darkness. Darkness and smoke. Then the noise of shooting and then I couldn't feel my leg. I was shot in the leg," he said.

While Musa was trying to crawl out of the burning building, in another part of the town centre Nura Maaji, whose Advocacy Nigeria group fronted protests to reinstate the fuel subsidy, was meeting with colleagues. At first he thought the explosion was an attempt to stop the group convening.

"Then we heard a sound like thunder. Before we knew it, there was another explosion," he said. "We saw black smoke with fire in it coming from the [state police building]."

Running gun battles erupted as he attempted to drive back home. "People in cars were exchanging gunshots with the police," he said. "Kano has never been like this. It was terrible, it has cast fear in the minds of residents."

Kano's governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, appealed to residents to remain calm and said a 24-hour state curfew would be lifted shortly.

Religious leaders have mediated with Boko Haram in the past, which has threatened to make the country "ungovernable" in retaliation for the imprisonment of its members.

The tense mood has spread beyond Kano. "People are really angry – they are thinking where could be next?" said Abuja resident Abdulkadir Alkasim. "They need some sort of reassurance from the president which they are not getting at the moment." more Terror Timeline

H/T @w_nicht