Rowson and I
Monday, May 14, 2012
Death in Derry
I had no idea things were as bad as this in Derry. But then, maybe what goes on in the north is outside my bubble. The Six Counties were never my favourite place, the atmosphere there is tangible, I was never comfortable on the occasions that I had to visit the place, I couldn't get back to the Republic quick enough.
Derry: fear and republican vigilantes stalk new city of culture
Exclusive: at least 85 people have been shot in escalating campaign of shooting and beatings
Henry McDonald
13 May 2012
Republican vigilantes conducting a campaign of shootings and beatings have in the past year forced more than 200 young men out of Derry, which will become Britain's City of Culture in 2013, the Guardian can reveal.At least 85 men have been shot over the same period in "punishment" attacks by Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD), according to police figures.
In some instances those targeted, mostly in their teens or early 20s, have been forced to turn up with a parent or relative for a pre-arranged appointment to be wounded for alleged drug dealing and other supposed crimes.
Martin McGuinness, the Provisional IRA ex-chief of staff turned deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, made an unprecedented move calling on the public in his native city to inform on the republican paramilitaries responsible. Figures from community organisations in Derry mediating between RAAD, the Real IRA and the victims show up to four men are being forced out of the city every week.
As Derry prepares to be the UK's City of Culture, the families of those under attack, including the mother of a RAAD victim who was murdered in February, say they are existing "in a city of fear".
Derry-based John Lindsay, author of "No Dope Here", a new book on the violence, who has shown his research to the Guardian, said: "On average there are about four young men being forced out of the city by RAAD and other vigilante groups per week.
"The figures are being recorded by at least two community groups who are called into liaise between the organisations and the men.
"There are, on a conservative basis, more than 200 who were put out of Derry over the last 12 months. They are going to places as diverse as Belfast, Armagh, Dublin and of course England, anywhere where they have friends or relatives to flee to. And they are told if they don't leave they will be shot or even killed."
The vigilante campaign turned murderous last February when RAAD gunmen shot dead a former Derry boxer, Andrew Allen, 24, just across the border in a relative's house in Co Donegal. His family say hardline republicans were so affronted when he stood up to them that they decided to kill him. Allen's mother, Donna Smith, said the peace process no longer meant anything to her or her family.
"How can they call this the City of Culture when they (RAAD) are going around butchering children? Something has to be done, it has to be stopped before another family is sitting in the situation that we are in: me without a son, my other children without a brother and two small children without a father."
There have been several demonstrations against the attacks, including one last month. Just before, an 18-year-old was shot in both legs.
Although some RAAD members are ex-IRA members who supported the end of its "war" against Britain and declined to join the anti-peace process Real IRA, McGuinness has issued his sternest condemnation yet of the vigilante campaign.
He said: "I think it is quite obvious the community is beginning to rise up against this and as a result of that it is quite clear that RAAD are about to make the biggest mistake of their lives. They are about to bite off more than they can chew because if the community in Derry turns against you then you are going absolutely nowhere.
"And I think they (RAAD) do need to be going somewhere and they need to be going to prison. And I would hope as a result of the rise in opposition to the activities of RAAD that people will come forward to give all the information they have about this group."
McGuinness, the Provisional IRA's second-in-command in the city on Bloody Sunday, described the republican vigilantes as "the new oppressors of the people of Derry".
The police have vowed to prosecute those responsible. However, there have been no prosecutions for the "punishment" attacks" and no one has been charged in connection with Allen's murder. Guardian + 7min video
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Our Wonderful World: Whale Joy
Perfectly beautiful.
Humpback Whale Shows Amazing Appreciation After Being Saved
Caught in a huge amount of nets, this humpback whale was completely trapped. But these people on their boat took matters into their own hands and freed it, saving its life. The best part is the end when he shows amazing appreciation by taking them for a ride and jumping around.
Is That a Bomb in Your Pants? More Tales of Entrapment
Let me get this small item out of the way before you read on. The first story was brought to my attention via Information Clearing House. The original article, posted below, first appeared in the Guardian. But ICH version gave us something that the Guardian couldn't, an informed comment regarding Naomi Wolf's use of Judith Miller as a a source.
There is nothing more that I wish to, or need to, add to that which is already writ below.
There is nothing more that I wish to, or need to, add to that which is already writ below.
The Buddha Within wrote:
Judith Miller, who shilled for the Bush regime about Iraq's supposed WMD while at the NY Times, and Newsmax are "conservative" disinformers for the power elite. I believe Judith is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She and Newsmax are not worth citation, particularly on a topic such as this. I'm surprised someone of Ms. Wolf's caliber would use Miller or Newmax as a source. (Comment ICH)
The spectacle of terror and its vested interests
A cycle of overhyped terror plots involving government agency entrapment feeds a multimillion-dollar surveillance industry
Naomi Wolf
9 May 2012
The news stories, which quickly surface, long enough to cause scary headlines, then vanish before people can learn how often the cases are thrown out. These are stories about "bumbling fantasists", hapless druggies, the aimless, even the virtually homeless and mentally ill, and other marginal characters with not the strongest grip on reality, who have been lured into discourses about violence against America only after assiduous courting, and in some cases outright payment, by undercover FBI or police informants.
They have become a litany in recent years. The terrifying 2003-2004 national news stories that a Detroit "sleeper cell" had sent Muslim terrorists to blow up Disneyland and other landmarks, including in Las Vegas, was later thrown out of court, with accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, to almost no press attention – the same cycle of hype and failed convictions that have characterized many such stories. The evidence had included a home video taken in Disneyland, "doodles", and a guy with a credit card fraud problem, who had been pressured to diminish his own sentence by accusing his buddies.
But the tales of entrapment and terror hype continue apace – ten years after 9/11. Judith Miller, in Newsmax, writes that one recent case was so lame that even the FBI distanced itself from NYPD: "Despite FBI Doubts, NYPD Convinced Pipe Bomb Case Posed Real Danger", noted the headline on her 28 November 2011 article. A 27-year-old Dominican immigrant, Jose Pimentel, aka Muhamad Yusuf, had been monitored by NYPD for two years. Last fall, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr charged Pimentel with constructing pipe bombs to attack "police cars, post offices, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and other targets".
An email in the case, which purports to show that Pimentel was writing about violent jihad to the al-Qaida-supporting "glossy magazine" Inspire, was described to Judith Miller by anonymous "law enforcement officials". Given Miller's journalistic history, this sentence alone should raise eyebrows. But the alleged email is, she writes, "part of a vast investigative file containing over 400 hours of surveillance audio and video tapes, interviews, and other material amassed by the NYPD". New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, in a flashy press conference, called the young man a "lone wolf" terrorist – a recent DHS soundbite. But the case was so shaky that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as federal prosecutors, did not want to join the case: "Too many holes in the case", other anonymous officials told Miller.
Pimentel was one of what has become an army of FBI- or NYPD-entrapped losers. He had no money, no job, and at key points lived with his mom. The New York Times noted that he may have been psychologically "unstable", and that he had made threats after smoking pot. Officials say that in May 2010, he repeated loudly in Arabic that "America is my enemy." This scary guy was a circuit city clerk in Schenectady, New York.
Additional evidence that Miller's anonymous sources give for his being a terrorist? In 2010, he had $100. One witness told police "that he had flashed a $100 bill when he made some purchases."Another? "Pimentel scraped the heads of some 750 matches, officials say." The scenario that entrapped Pimentel involved a surround-sound of informants trying to entrap him in cyberspace and to lure him to incriminate himself in taped phone conversations. But the FBI dropped its involvement after they judged that the informant had been too active in helping: urging or arranging for Pimentel to start drilling into pipe pieces – the evidence that he intended to set off a bomb.
Many other, much-ballyhooed cases of "homegrown terrorism" show this creaky, effortful, farcical quality of people who, left to their own devices by the FBI or NYPD, would have remained harmlessly playing video games in their childhood bedrooms, smoking their doobies, or babbling gently to themselves, on their anti-psychotic meds, about geopolitical forces.
The "Newburgh Four" is another such case, as Russia Today reported: four African-American Muslims were found guilty recently of a plot to place bombs in two Bronx synagogues and to shoot down military aircraft in Newburgh. Another flashy press conference in May 2009 showcased these four men as "the faces of homegrown terrorism". The FBI had claimed that the men had planned to commit their acts of terrorism on the day that they were arrested. Joseph Demarest from the FBI called it "a terrifying plot".
The men were low-income former convicts who could not read or write with literacy. They could not drive and had no passports. Shahid Hussain, a Pakistani immigrant who was an FBI employee, got them to say they were going to commit these crimes – paying them $100,000. Hussain presented the men with a fake stinger missile, and Hussain offered these poverty-stricken men cars and money in exchange for their promise to carry out the manufactured plot.
The men's relatives accused the FBI of entrapment. "I do not think this is entrapment. I know it is. This is entrapment," said Alicia McWilliams-McCollum, aunt of 29-year-old David Williams. As with many of these scenarios, one can easily imagine poor people with criminal records, offered large sums of money by a fake jihadist, trying to get the money and then trick the instigator. Also, as any AA or Al-Anon counsellor can tell you, if drugs or alcohol are in the mix, entrapment is a ridiculous premise, too: an addict will say anything, and make any ludicrous promise, to get a giant check. It doesn't mean the addict has any intention of delivering on the supposed contract. David Williams' aunt says that her nephew is in prison because of a pretend terror attack created by the FBI:
"They are creating scenarios; they are manufacturing crimes. That would not have occurred if you had not planted an unconstructive seed into a community."Attorney Steve Dowds, who tracks cases like the Newburgh Four, argues the US government is systematically employing preemptive prosecution:
"They are taking some down and out vulnerable individuals and not only planting the ideology of jihad on them, giving them all the things they need, all of the material. They are setting up the plan, giving them all the research and then grabbing them and claiming these were homegrown terrorists. It is just a fiction."Now we have another "underwear bomber" – declared by the Pentagon to have been about to launch a major attack via a US-bound plane, but who appears, reportedly, to have been a CIA-run double agent. What is the evidence that the "device", which is supposedly so sophisticated that there is doubt as to whether existing surveillance technologies in US airports would have caught it, actually exists? As with so many of these stories, we have no independent verification – because reporters from the British Daily Telegraph, to Reuters, to the Huffington Post are simply taking dictation from New York Representative Peter King and from the Pentagon, and scarcely asking for backup evidence of their elaborate assertions.
It is important to note that we can no longer assume that the FBI and the CIA and the NSA work, first of all, for the safety of the American people; they also now represent a revolving door of government officials who become security industry lobbyists and manufacturers, which, in turn, get the multimillion-dollar contracts for tackling the very problems these stories appear to highlight. The stories about the first "underwear bomber" preceded the rollout of former DHS chief Michael Chertoff's costly scanners; the press interviews for this round of mystery "underwear bomber" stories are practically a press release for some expensive technological upgrade – or yet more hellishly invasive and demeaning search technique. The sad truth is that we can no longer report and consume such stories as if there were no commercial vested interests involved in creating and sustaining such "terror theater".
You know we have "terror theater" in the US because nations such as Israel, which are genuinely focussed on deterring terrorism, downplay risk and threats rather than trumpeting them, as DHS does. If the threat is real, they don't reveal all the details of the latest "planned attack" to the news media – because they are busy investigating real planned attacks, rather than doing corporate PR and product placement. Instead of TSA groping, aviation security, from Britain to Israel, to Spain to Norway, uses much less invasive and more acute security processes, such as face-to-face, in-line interviewing. They do not sell commercial products that subvert recall surety issues, such as the various costly and vastly lucrative new "Global Entry Trusted Traveller Network", an apparent government program that is not transparent or accountable. You can sign up for for a fee of $100 a year, after an interview. No TSA representative I interviewed knows who owns the initiative, which they said was private, not a government program; nor could they tell me where the money really goes.
Actual terrorism-fighting nations would never devolve such security concerns to private contractors or sell easier travel access for cash – because it is both dangerous and absurd to do so. In fact, what the FBI and CIA and the Pentagon are up against is that people – including Americans – are waking up to the fact that there would be no enemy if we weren't manufacturing new terrorists by taking out civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan. An end to foreign wars (which are already costing us thousands of casualties a year) would be a much more effective counter-terror strategy than this hyped, synthetic threat to justify a corporate surveillance-and-security product gold rush. Instead, we are treated to a spectacle orchestrated by alarmist officials who keep holding frightening press conferences promoting the threat of dazed, poor, drugged-out "lone wolves". The true, Orwellian agenda is to support a vast new crony-capitalist industry that uses terror theater to turn open democracies into surveillance societies. Gruniad
Underwear Bomb Seizure Being 'Exploited' By FBI
Urges Restoration of Searches Without Warrants
By News Agencies
May 10, 2012
THE HEAD of the FBI says his agency is “exploiting” the alleged seizure of an intact and advanced form of underwear bomb that "Islamic militants" in Yemen apparently wanted to use to blow up a US-based jet.
Robert Mueller told a congressional hearing in Washington yesterday that the supposed plot, revealed by the Associated Press on Monday, demonstrated the need to renew surveillance provisions that expire at the end of the year.
FBI Director Mueller urged the reauthorization of an act passed by Congress in 2008, that gives federal authorities the ability to conduct warrantless searches.
“We also remain concerned about the threat from homegrown violent extremists,” he said. “Over the last two years, we have seen increased activity among extremist individuals. These individuals have no typical profile; their experiences and motives are often distinct. But they are increasingly savvy and willing to act alone, which makes them difficult to find and to stop.” ICH
Does The West Have A Future?
By Paul Craig Roberts
May 11, 2012
Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:
We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.
This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they buil[t] one, they probably built more.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder women and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa. The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”
FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect--what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives.
Even alternative news media initially fell for this fake plot. Apparently, no one stops to wonder how al-Qaeda, which has become so disorganized and helpless that it is on the run and left its revered leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistan village alone and unguarded to be murdered by US Navy Seals, could catch the CIA off guard with an “undetectable” bomb, to use the description provided by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the device by US intelligence personnel.
Notice that the Secretary of State has committed the bankrupt US and its unravelling social safety net to the protection of “India and others” from terrorists. But the real significance of this latest hoax is to introduce into the fearful American public the idea of an undetectable underwear bomb. More, but it goes off on a tangent.
Did Obama 'Define' Romney?
Define being a polite word for swiftboating that is.
Because if he did, as the headline suggests, it is an image, that of obnoxious, privileged frat boy, that just doesn't go away. Some could argue it was an error of youth, and some could argue that whatever did take place back in 1965, is an insight into Romney's true essence.
Because if he did, as the headline suggests, it is an image, that of obnoxious, privileged frat boy, that just doesn't go away. Some could argue it was an error of youth, and some could argue that whatever did take place back in 1965, is an insight into Romney's true essence.
Image of Romney Violently Cutting the Hair of a Gay Classmate Won't Go Away
Mark Karlin
11 May 2012
In early 2004, BuzzFlash at Truthout wrote a commentary advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to define Bush early or be defeated. The title of the BuzzFlash opinion piece was, "BuzzFlash Message to John Kerry: It's the Golden Hour of Opportunity, Define Bush or Be Defined by Him. There is No Option 'B.'"Kerrey apparently didn't read BuzzFlash, because he got "Swiftboated" early and never regained his footing.
With a large dollop of help from the Washington Post, the 2012 Obama campaign appears to be using the basic strategy that the GOP has successfully used for decades in presidential elections: bring out negative (or in the case of the Republicans, usually create) characteristics of your opponent and hammer them home early. Indeed, make the character issue so strong that many voters stop processing the issues.
The Post, as almost every reader of BuzzFlash knows by now, published a surprisingly detailed account of Mitt Romney's private high school record of homophobic harassment (although there were other elements to the story, but this was the lead and the major part of the article). A Chicago Tribune story on the Post report reveals the ripple impact of Romney's bullying as depicted in the image of its opening paragraph:
As a student at Cranbrook in 1965, Mitt Romney led a group of classmates in an attack on another student who was held down while Romney clipped off his long blonde hair with scissors, the Washington post reported today, quoting other students who participated in the incident.
The timing of the posting of the story online (Thursday morning), after President Obama announced his personal support for gay marriage on Wednesday afternoon, dealt a major challenge to the perception of Romney's character. It contrasted an Obama (who went out of his way to say that his being a Christian was a basis for his latest gay marriage position) on the side of embracing people versus Romney having an underlying hateful intolerance, undercutting the amiable "successful" guy in jeans image his campaign has cultivated.
BuzzFlash proposes a hypothesis here, just speculation, but it runs counter to the corporate mainstream media conventional wisdom that Biden made a gaffe in supporting gay marriage (as did Secretary of Education Arne Duncan) -- and that Obama was "forced into" his position.
We offer another theory: that the Obama and Romney campaigns knew about the article at least a couple of weeks ago (not many stories this politically hot remain secret in DC). The Obama campaign orchestrated a path toward the president's endorsement of gay marriage throwing up trial balloons with the statements of Biden and Duncan, and that when the WH learned that the WP article would be posted on Thursday rushed the planned Obama gay marriage "endorsement" to contrast it with the image of Romney's thuggish anti-gay forced haircut of a classmate.
BuzzFlash can only offer this as speculation, but if it's true, maybe the Democrats have learned the importance of defining their opponents early.
After all, if you want to know how effective this sequencing was, just look at the Romney campaign trying to run away from the Post story as quickly as possible. They say their candidate wants to talk about the economy.
The pro-bullying crowd is already a subset of Romney's base, and this searing and haunting image from his high school years is likely to turn off independents and Republican gays in a visceral way. It also energizes Obama's base, many of whom are disappointed in his progressive concessions as president.
We'd bet that most people who resented the school bullies don't buy that they stopped being bullies as they became adults.
Maybe Democratic presidential campaigns have finally gotten the message: define your opposition early, and keep reinforcing negative character traits. buzzflash
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Dennis Potter The Last Interview
Updated below.
It was afterall a rather light hearted program, never for a moment had I expected to find within, content that moved me the way it did. But that part of the program, Frost on Interviews, (UK only) that featured Melvyn Bragg talking about, and talking with, Dennis Potter (The Last Interview 1994) I found profound, inspirational, and quite moving.
It's at this point that I would normally say a few more words on the subject, but I can't, and for no other reason that I am posting the full interview sight unseen. Unusual I know, but I'm pretty sure it's a decision that will be without regret, watching for the first time, as you yourself may, here on this blog.
Though I can't give you an introduction, I an taking the liberty of employing one already writ, courtesy of Brian Edwards Media.
By the by, enjoy the three minute "parting shot" from Potter, I think you may find it quite amusing. Certainly topical.
Update:
What can I say; other than perhaps to parrot the words: ‘the finest television interview ever recorded’? But by concentrating on the 'interview' does that do disservice to the man? Most surely, for if nothing else, you bathe in Potter's remarkable essence throughout this fascinating, sixty some odd minutes.
Of all that past, and there was much, during this fleeting hour, I never felt more connected with a man as when he described his type of patriotism, for as you might know I don't do patriotism, but Potter described his love for this England, not for its flags and all the razzmatazz that people normally associate with, as Samuel Johnson put it: Patriotism, the last refuge of scoundrels, but a quiet almost unspoken love for this country ours, this England.
But no few words would be complete, particularly in light of what is transpiring at this very moment that I write, is Potter's scathing condemnation of Rupert Murdoch, and in other places during the interview other than the aforementioned 'parting shot.' Which is by the way, part of the main body of the interview, not the parting shot as the words imply.
File under: unmissable.
Update: Bollocks, video private. There are some miserable fucking cunts about, let me see if I can find a new upload.
Sorry folks, everywhere I've searched it comes up as private, I can't even find any files to download in order that I might up it myself. What a bummer.
Tip of the hat to HerefordMSV for the uploads.
It was afterall a rather light hearted program, never for a moment had I expected to find within, content that moved me the way it did. But that part of the program, Frost on Interviews, (UK only) that featured Melvyn Bragg talking about, and talking with, Dennis Potter (The Last Interview 1994) I found profound, inspirational, and quite moving.
It's at this point that I would normally say a few more words on the subject, but I can't, and for no other reason that I am posting the full interview sight unseen. Unusual I know, but I'm pretty sure it's a decision that will be without regret, watching for the first time, as you yourself may, here on this blog.
Though I can't give you an introduction, I an taking the liberty of employing one already writ, courtesy of Brian Edwards Media.
The Finest Television Interview Ever Recorded: Melvyn Bragg talks to Dennis Potter
Brian Edwards
February 7th, 2011
On 15 March 1994 Melvyn Bragg interviewed the playwright and television dramatist Dennis Potter. The interview was broadcast on the BBC’s Channel Four on April 5. Potter died of cancer two months later on June 7.
Potter smokes throughout the interview, holding the cigarette and lighter between the bunched fingers of his clawed right hand. Like his hero Philip E Marlowe, the mystery writer in perhaps his most celebrated work, The Singing Detective, the playwright had suffered for much of his life from debilitating and painful psoriatic arthropathy, a skin and joint disease which, in its chronic stages, formed lesions and sores over his entire body, partially crippling his hands and feet. He was eventually obliged to write with the pen tied to his wrist.
Beside his chair in the television studio he has a flask of morphine, which he drinks from at intervals during the conversation to control the pain.
All of this would make the interview remarkable enough. But it is the quality of what is said, of Bragg’s questions and Potters responses, which allows me to call this ‘the finest television interview ever recorded’. Much of a media commentator’s time is given over to criticism in the negative rather than the neutral sense of the word. I thought it appropriate to redress the balance a little by inviting you to watch this small screen gem. The YouTube version is in seven parts, each just under 10 minutes long.
If you’re unfamiliar with Potter’s work, Wikipedia or YouTube are both good places to start.
Enjoy! Brian Edwards
By the by, enjoy the three minute "parting shot" from Potter, I think you may find it quite amusing. Certainly topical.
Update:
What can I say; other than perhaps to parrot the words: ‘the finest television interview ever recorded’? But by concentrating on the 'interview' does that do disservice to the man? Most surely, for if nothing else, you bathe in Potter's remarkable essence throughout this fascinating, sixty some odd minutes.
Of all that past, and there was much, during this fleeting hour, I never felt more connected with a man as when he described his type of patriotism, for as you might know I don't do patriotism, but Potter described his love for this England, not for its flags and all the razzmatazz that people normally associate with, as Samuel Johnson put it: Patriotism, the last refuge of scoundrels, but a quiet almost unspoken love for this country ours, this England.
But no few words would be complete, particularly in light of what is transpiring at this very moment that I write, is Potter's scathing condemnation of Rupert Murdoch, and in other places during the interview other than the aforementioned 'parting shot.' Which is by the way, part of the main body of the interview, not the parting shot as the words imply.
File under: unmissable.
Update: Bollocks, video private. There are some miserable fucking cunts about, let me see if I can find a new upload.
Sorry folks, everywhere I've searched it comes up as private, I can't even find any files to download in order that I might up it myself. What a bummer.
Tip of the hat to HerefordMSV for the uploads.
Netherlands First Country in Europe with Net Neutrality
Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality
8 may 2012
Door Ot van Daalen
On 8 May 2012 The Netherlands adopted crucial legislation to safeguard an open and secure internet in The Netherlands. It is the first country in Europe to implement net neutrality in the law. In addition, it adopted provisions protecting users against disconnection and wiretapping by providers. Digital rights movement Bits of Freedom calls upon other countries to follow the Dutch example.
The net neutrality law prohibits internet providers from interfering with the traffic of their users. The law allows for traffic management in case of congestion and for network security, as long as these measures serve the interests of the internet user. A technical error in the law might still be corrected in a vote on 15 May.
In addition, the law includes an anti-wiretapping provision, restricting internetproviders from using invasive wiretapping technologies, such as deep packet inspection (DPI). They may only do so under limited circumstances, or with explicit consent of the user, which the user may withdraw at any time. The use of DPI gained much attention when KPN admitted that it analysed the traffic of its users to gather information on the use of certain apps. The law allows for wiretapping with a warrant.
Moreover, the law includes a provision ensuring that internet providers can only disconnect their users in a very limited set of circumstances. Internet access is very important for functioning in an information society, and providers currently could on the basis of their terms and conditions disconnect their users for numerous reasons. The provision allows for the disconnection in the case of fraud or when a user doesn’t pay his bills.
Bits of Freedom, the Dutch digital rights movement which campaigned for these provisions, applauds the new law. It considers this a historical moment for internet freedom in The Netherlands and calls on other countries to follow the Dutch example.
The provisions are part of the implementation of the European telecommunications rules. A translation of the provisions can be found here, but it does not include the technical error in the law which might be corrected on the 15th. bof.nl
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Department of Fear: Must Try Harder
Updated below.
It's the middle of the night here, so I will try and update this latest "bomb plot foiled" nonsense when I can find a more trustworthy source of information than the BBC, who bring you this story:
But for now, I shall just utilise this short passage.
Now go here and read this piece which ends: “Umar, you are not a Muslim martyr. You are merely a government patsy.”
It's the middle of the night here, so I will try and update this latest "bomb plot foiled" nonsense when I can find a more trustworthy source of information than the BBC, who bring you this story:
Al-Qaeda underwear bomber 'was US double agent'
But for now, I shall just utilise this short passage.
US officials told ABC News that Quso had been planning an attack similar to the failed 2009 attempt to blow up a passenger plane.
The device seized from Yemen shares some features with the bomb sewn into the underwear of would-be suicide bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab during that attempt, officials said.
The Nigerian was arrested when his device failed to explode fully while on a plane bound for Detroit.
Now go here and read this piece which ends: “Umar, you are not a Muslim martyr. You are merely a government patsy.”
Another Foiled False Flag
By Stephen Lendman
May 09, 2012
Wikipedia defines false or black flags as "covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities."
"The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is: flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations and can be used during peace-time."
Big lies substitute for truth. Stories are fabricated. Media scoundrels promote them. At issue is heightening fear for planned policies. Pretexts are needed for militarism, imperial wars, and homeland repression. If and when people learn they were duped, it's too late to matter.
It's an American tradition. Incidents are strategically timed. Innocent victims suffer. So does everyone living under heightened national security state conditions.
Threats are manufactured. States of emergency are declared. Rule of law principles are discarded. Unchallenged dominance alone matters. Wars on humanity follow. Big lies facilitate them. False flags play their part.
Here we go again. This one's a sequel. Perhaps Hollywood blockbusters will follow, first the original plot, then the latest. More on the earlier one below.
On May 7, AP headlined "US: CIA thwarts new al-Qaida underwear bomb plot," saying:
Agents foiled "an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a US-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned."
AP described an upgraded underwear bomb plot. Like the earlier one, it was "designed to be used in a passenger's underwear, but this time" US officials called it "more refined."
On May 7, the FBI issued a brief statement, saying:
"As a result of close cooperation with our security and intelligence partners overseas, an improvised explosive device (IED) designed to carry out a terrorist attack has been seized abroad."
"The FBI currently has possession of the IED and is conducting technical and forensics analysis on it. Initial exploitation indicates that the device is very similar to IEDs that have been used previously by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in attempted terrorist attacks, including against aircraft and for targeted assassinations."
"The device never presented a threat to public safety, and the US government is working closely with international partners to address associated concerns with the device."
"We refer you to the Department of Homeland Security, including the Transportation Security Administration, regarding ongoing security measures to safeguard the American people and the traveling public."
The device contained no metal. It's not clear if body scanners could have detected it. Officials said an alleged Yemen-based bomber hadn't yet picked a target or bought plane tickets. CIA agents seized the device before he had a chance. The suspect wasn't identified.
AP learned of the plot earlier but agreed to White House and CIA requests to delay publishing because intelligence operations were ongoing.
On May 8, the White House and FBI confirmed AP's report. Deputy national security council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said Obama knew last month. "The disruption of the IED plot underscores the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad," she said.
"While the president was assured that the device did not pose a threat to the public, he directed the department of homeland security and law enforcement and intelligence agencies to take whatever steps necessary to guard against this type of attack," she added.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman Matt Chandler said:
The latest plot "demonstrates our adversaries' interest in targeting the aviation sector." Protective "layers" are thus used.
They "include threat and vulnerability analysis, prescreening and screening of passengers using the best available technology, random searches at airports, federal air marshal coverage, and additional security measures both seen and unseen."
"It's not clear who built the bomb," AP reported. Authorities "suspect it was the work of master bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri." A Saudi citizen, he's one of their most wanted. Earlier he was imprisoned and released.
He's reportedly in Yemen with his brother Abdullah. He's another Saudi most wanted. Washington claims they're both Al Qaeda connected. He's blamed for earlier bomb plots.
On March 24, 2011, the State Department included Ibrahim on its terrorist watch list. He's also on an Interpol Orange Notice one. It "warns police and other international organizations about potential threats from disguised weapons, parcel bombs, or other dangerous materials."
Washington considers Yemen strategically important. It's mostly for its location near the Horn of Africa on Saudi Arabia's southern border, the Red Sea, and Bab el- Mandeb strait.
It's a key chokepoint separating Yemen from Eritrea. Around three million barrels of oil pass through it daily. The Gulf of Aden connects to the Indian Ocean. Since 2009, Obama waged drone war on the country. CIA and Special Forces operate on the ground. Death squads are deployed.
America's at war with Yemen without declaring it. Predator drones escalate killing. Media scoundrels say little. Yemen gets attention when foiled bomb plots are claimed. They're pretexts for stepped up measures there and at home.
Washington's targets are global. US citizens share risks with foreign ones. Waging war on humanity leaves no one safe. Everyone everywhere is fair game. Any place could erupt in free-fire zone violence. Anyone can be accused of terrorism or conspiracy to commit it.
America's hegemonic ambitions threaten humanity. Too few at home understand. Public ignorance and indifference let Washington get away with murder. It's a global killing machine to remove all challenges.
The Earlier Underwear Bomber False Flag
It was fake like the sequel. In December 2009, US officials claimed Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen, got Al Qaeda training, and explosive PETN chemicals.
Supposedly he tried using them to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. In fact, he was a fall guy for a joint CIA/Mossad/India Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) false flag.
The same alliance staged coordinated 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Dozens were killed and hundreds wounded. They also were behind former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's 2007 assassination.
The same issue then remains US policy now. Destabilizing and balkanizing Pakistan is planned. It's also perhaps intended for Afghanistan and Libya. Iraq's already divided. Always it's for easier control and exploitation.
Abdulmutallab was a convenient patsy. He was used to facilitate America's war on Yemen. Britain denied him an entrance visa. His name was on a State Department terror watch list.
Yet he wasn't on a No Fly List. He paid cash for a one-way ticket to Detroit, checked no luggage, had a US visa but no passport, and was helped onboard by a "well-dressed Indian" gentleman (a RAW agent) to facilitate Washington's scheme to use him as a convenient dupe.
His PETN was virtually harmless. It was technically deficient, failed to go off properly, and had fire cracker strength. Following the incident, Washington's war on Yemen escalated and enhanced airport screening began. Full body scanners the ACLU calls "virtual strip search(es)" are used.
False flags create opportunities to advance America's imperium. They also facilitate its war on dissent. In May 2011, three key Patriot Act powers were extended for another four years. Little debate assured swift passage. As a result:
(1) Unlimited roving wiretaps continue unchecked.
(2) Section 215 pertains to alleged suspects. It authorizes government access to "any tangible item." They included financial records and transactions, student and medical records, phone conversations, emails, other Internet use, and whatever else Washington claims essential.
(3) Alleged suspect organizations and individuals can be surveilled, whether or not evidence links them to terrorism or complicity to commit it. In other words, police state powers to monitor anyone for any reason or none at all remain unchecked.
Racial profiling and waging war on Islam got boosts. Abdulmutallab benefitted Washington at his own expense. Expect the underwear bomb sequel to provide more.
Washington will take full advantage. Perhaps Obama has another war in mind.
A Final Comment
On May 8, The New York Times headlined "Rare Double Agent Disrupted Bombing Plot, US says."
Most likely it's double-dealing official lies and misreporting. According to Times-speak, a Saudi intelligence agent "infiltrated (a) terrorist group and volunteered for the mission, American and foreign officials said Tuesday."
Washington claims he provided an "innovative bomb" designed for "aviation attack." The Times reported the story without checking for reliability. If official sources say it, accounts follow true or false.
The agent is back in Saudi Arabia, The Times said. CIA agents were involved.
What's true or false isn't clear. What's certain is another false flag for reasons similar to previous ones. They repeat well-timed for strategic advantage.
They're manufactured to look real. Media scoundrels headline them. Most people don't know they've been had. The scam repeats because it works. No wonder America gets away with murder and much more. ICH
Monday, May 07, 2012
Did The Earth Move For You? Shagging in Iran
And you always thought Sha Ging and Wan King were cities in China!
The last of three posts on religion and sex. (1) (2) And one that hardly needs elaborating on, other than perhaps to say: looking forward to a nuclear Iran?
Previous: Respect People's Religious Beliefs. Why? Seat belts essential.
The last of three posts on religion and sex. (1) (2) And one that hardly needs elaborating on, other than perhaps to say: looking forward to a nuclear Iran?
Women to blame for earthquakes, says Iran cleric
Women behaving promiscuously are causing the earth to shake, according to cleric, as Ahmadinejad predicts Tehran quake
19 April 2010
A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.
Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair. "What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon last week. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes." Seismologists have warned for at least two decades that it is likely the sprawling capital will be struck by a catastrophic quake in the near future. Some experts have even suggested Iran should move its capital to a less seismically active location. Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.
In 2003, a powerful earthquake hit the southern city of Bam, killing 31,000 people – about a quarter of that city's population – and destroying its ancient mud-built citadel.
"A divine authority told me to tell the people to make a general repentance. Why? Because calamities threaten us," said Sedighi, Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader. Referring to the violence that followed last June's disputed presidential election, he said: "The political earthquake that occurred was a reaction to some of the actions [that took place]. And now, if a natural earthquake hits Tehran, no one will be able to confront such a calamity but God's power, only God's power ... So let's not disappoint God."
The Iranian government and its security forces have been locked in a bloody battle with a large opposition movement that accuses Ahmadinejad of winning last year's vote by fraud.
Ahmadinejad made his quake prediction two weeks ago but said he could not give an exact date. He acknowledged that he could not order all of Tehran's 12m people to evacuate. "But provisions have to be made ... at least 5 million should leave Tehran so it is less crowded," the president said.
The welfare minister, Sadeq Mahsooli, said prayers and pleas for forgiveness were the best "formulae to repel earthquakes. We cannot invent a system that prevents earthquakes, but God has created this system and that is to avoid sins, to pray, to seek forgiveness, pay alms and self-sacrifice," Mahsooli said. Gruniad
Previous: Respect People's Religious Beliefs. Why? Seat belts essential.
If God Didn't Want Us To Wank He wouldn't Have Given Us Hands: The Strange Life of John Harvey Kellogg
The second of three posts on religion and sex. (1) (3)
An interesting article from The Punch Australia that takes a look at Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a fellow probably as famous for his bizarre views on sex and being a professional virgin, as he was for being the brother of flake manufacturer, W K Kellogg.
But just as interesting as the article, is the Wikipedia entry on the fellow, which includes such delights as John Harvey's pantheistic view of the world ......
But his interest in sunflowers and the harmony of science and the Sacred Scriptures, paled into insignificance when it came to his obsession with the evils of sex and sexuality. But it has to be said in all fairness, and much unlike our contemporary moral crusaders, he appears to have applied the same rules to himself as he wished to apply to others.
Perhaps though as you read on, the more cynical among you, myself included, might come to the conclusion that he just couldn't get it up. And as a consequence of such, didn't think anybody else should get it up either.
Among his other charms he was an admirer of both eugenics,(US) Anthony Comstock and segregation. Wikipedia
More insanity: 11 Strange, Horrific, or Just Plain Weird Ways Societies Have Policed Sex Throughout History Link
An interesting article from The Punch Australia that takes a look at Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a fellow probably as famous for his bizarre views on sex and being a professional virgin, as he was for being the brother of flake manufacturer, W K Kellogg.
But just as interesting as the article, is the Wikipedia entry on the fellow, which includes such delights as John Harvey's pantheistic view of the world ......
"Take the sunflower, for example. It looks straight at the sun. It watches and follows the sun all day long, looking straight at it all the time; and as the sun dips down below the horizon, you see that sunflower still looking at it; and as the sun turns around and comes up in the morning, the flower is looking toward the sun rising. It is God in the sunflower that makes it do this…
But his interest in sunflowers and the harmony of science and the Sacred Scriptures, paled into insignificance when it came to his obsession with the evils of sex and sexuality. But it has to be said in all fairness, and much unlike our contemporary moral crusaders, he appears to have applied the same rules to himself as he wished to apply to others.
Perhaps though as you read on, the more cynical among you, myself included, might come to the conclusion that he just couldn't get it up. And as a consequence of such, didn't think anybody else should get it up either.
He was an especially zealous campaigner against masturbation; claims such as "neither the plague, nor war, nor small-pox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of onanism,"
Kellogg also believed the practice of this "solitary-vice" caused cancer of the womb, urinary diseases, nocturnal emissions, impotence, epilepsy, insanity, and mental and physical debility; "dimness of vision" was only briefly mentioned. (But not earthquakes?)
Among his other charms he was an admirer of both eugenics,(US) Anthony Comstock and segregation. Wikipedia
~ ~ ~
H/T Maren
Sex and masturbation evil? Get your hand off it.
by Christopher Ryan
September 2011
Nothing inspires murderous mayhem in human beings more reliably than sexual repression. Denied food, water, or freedom of movement, people may lash out at what they perceive as the source of their problems, albeit in a weakened state. But if expression of sexuality is thwarted, the human psyche tends to grow twisted into grotesque, enraged perversions of desire.
Unfortunately, the distorted rage resulting from sexual repression rarely takes the form of rebellion against the people and institutions behind the repression. (If it did, perhaps we’d be reading of abused priests rather than priests as abusers.)
Instead, the rage is generally directed at helpless victims sacrificed to the sick gods of guilt, shame, and ignorant pride.
Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, an Iranian cleric, recently warned that adultery causes earthquakes. I assume he said this with a straight face, Iranian clerics not being known for their impish sense of humor.
Lest we dismiss this as just another example of distant fundamentalist lunacy, we might take a look at some examples a bit closer to home.
Christianity is a religion centered upon a figure whose holiness begins with his having been conceived asexually. Mark Twain noted the bizarre anti-eroticism of Christianity when he considered heaven:
Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race . . . sexual intercourse! It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!
(Letters from the Earth)
There’s little question that the centuries-long campaign of child rape enabled by institutional cover-up is a direct result of the Church’s inhumane teachings concerning human sexuality. If priests were allowed to form erotic connections with consenting adults, does anyone doubt that countless children would have been spared their abuse in the hands of these distorted, twisted men?
Of course, religions aren’t the only institutions to champion such abuse of spirit and body; medical doctors have participated in some of these shameful crimes against humanity, as well.
In 1850, the New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal echoed mainstream thinking by declaring masturbation public enemy number one, warning:Neither plague, nor war, nor smallpox, nor a crowd of similar evils, have resulted more disastrously for humanity than the habit of masturbation: it is the destroying element of civilized society.
“Scientific” declarations like these inspired Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (brother of the Corn Flakes Kellogg) in his campaign to eradicate masturbation from the United States. Though widely considered to be one of the leading sex educators of his day, Kellogg proudly claimed never to have had intercourse with his wife in over four decades of marriage.
As a medical doctor, Kellogg asserted the moral authority to instruct parents on the proper sexual education of their children.
If you’re unfamiliar with the writings of Kellogg and his contemporaries, their gloating disdain for basic human eroticism is chilling and unmistakable. In his best-selling Plain Facts for Old and Young (written on his sexless honeymoon in 1888), Kellogg offered parents guidance for dealing with their sons’ natural erotic self-exploration in a section entitled “Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects”:A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision… The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment.
If circumcising a struggling, terrified boy without anesthesia wasn’t quite what a parent had in mind, Kellogg recommended:The application of one or more silver sutures in such a way as to prevent erection. The prepuce, or foreskin, is drawn forward over the glans, and the needle to which the wire is attached is passed through from one side to the other. After drawing the wire through, the ends are twisted together and cut off close. It is now impossible for an erection to occur.
Lest you think Kellogg was interested only in the sadistic torture of boys, in the same book he soberly advises the application of carbolic acid to the clitorises of little girls to teach them not to touch themselves.
Kellogg, the Catholic church, and Iranian clerics all demonstrate that the repression of human sexuality all-too easily becomes a “malady that considers itself the remedy,” to paraphrase Karl Kraus’s dismissal of psychoanalysis. The Punch AU
More insanity: 11 Strange, Horrific, or Just Plain Weird Ways Societies Have Policed Sex Throughout History Link
The Kingdom in the Closet 'The land of sand and sodomites'
The first of three posts on religion and sex. (2) (3)
The article below was linked from, and is the essence of, Pat Condell's video.
The article below was linked from, and is the essence of, Pat Condell's video.
The Kingdom in the Closet
Nadya Labi
May 2007
Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. Why it is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet
By Nadya Labi
Yasser, a 26-year-old artist, was taking me on an impromptu tour of his hometown of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on a sweltering September afternoon. The air conditioner of his dusty Honda battled the heat, prayer beads dangled from the rearview mirror, and the smell of the cigarette he’d just smoked wafted toward me as he stopped to show me a barbershop that his friends frequent. Officially, men in Saudi Arabia aren’t allowed to wear their hair long or to display jewelry—such vanities are usually deemed to violate an Islamic instruction that the sexes must not be too similar in appearance. But Yasser wears a silver necklace, a silver bracelet, and a sparkly red stud in his left ear, and his hair is shaggy. Yasser is homosexual, or so we would describe him in the West, and the barbershop we visited caters to gay men. Business is brisk.
Leaving the barbershop, we drove onto Tahlia Street, a broad avenue framed by palm trees, then went past a succession of sleek malls and slowed in front of a glass-and-steel shopping center. Men congregated outside and in nearby cafés. Whereas most such establishments have a family section, two of this area’s cafés allow only men; not surprisingly, they are popular among men who prefer one another’s company. Yasser gestured to a parking lot across from the shopping center, explaining that after midnight it would be “full of men picking up men.” These days, he said, “you see gay people everywhere.”
Yasser turned onto a side street, then braked suddenly. “Oh shit, it’s a checkpoint,” he said, inclining his head toward some traffic cops in brown uniforms. “Do you have your ID?” he asked me. He wasn’t worried about the gay-themed nature of his tour—he didn’t want to be caught alone with a woman. I rummaged through my purse, realizing that I’d left my passport in the hotel for safekeeping. Yasser looked behind him to see if he could reverse the car, but had no choice except to proceed. To his relief, the cops nodded us through. “God, they freaked me out,” Yasser said. As he resumed his narration, I recalled something he had told me earlier. “It’s a lot easier to be gay than straight here,” he had said. “If you go out with a girl, people will start to ask her questions. But if I have a date upstairs and my family is downstairs, they won’t even come up.”
Notorious for its adherence to Wahhabism, a puritanical strain of Islam, and as the birthplace of most of the 9/11 hijackers, Saudi Arabia is the only Arab country that claims sharia, or Islamic law, as its sole legal code. The list of prohibitions is long: It’s haram—forbidden—to smoke, drink, go to discos, or mix with an unrelated person of the opposite gender. The rules are enforced by the mutawwa'in, religious authorities employed by the government’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The kingdom is dominated by mosques and malls, which the mutawwa'in patrol in leather sandals and shortened versions of the thawb, the traditional ankle-length white robe that many Saudis wear. Some mutawwa'in even bear marks of their devotion on their faces; they bow to God so adamantly that pressing their foreheads against the ground leaves a visible dent. The mutawwa'in prod shoppers to say their devotions when the shops close for prayer, several times daily. If they catch a boy and a girl on a date, they might haul the couple to the police station. They make sure that single men steer clear of the malls, which are family-only zones for the most part, unless they are with a female relative. Though the power of the mutawwa'in has been curtailed recently, their presence still inspires fear.
In Saudi Arabia, sodomy is punishable by death. Though that penalty is seldom applied, just this February a man in the Mecca region was executed for having sex with a boy, among other crimes. (For this reason, the names of most people in this story have been changed.) Ask many Saudis about homosexuality, and they’ll wince with repugnance. “I disapprove,” Rania, a 32-year-old human-resources manager, told me firmly. “Women weren’t meant to be with women, and men aren’t supposed to be with men.”
This legal and public condemnation notwithstanding, the kingdom leaves considerable space for homosexual behavior. As long as gays and lesbians maintain a public front of obeisance to Wahhabist norms, they are left to do what they want in private. Vibrant communities of men who enjoy sex with other men can be found in cosmopolitan cities like Jeddah and Riyadh. They meet in schools, in cafés, in the streets, and on the Internet. “You can be cruised anywhere in Saudi Arabia, any time of the day,” said Radwan, a 42-year-old gay Saudi American who grew up in various Western cities and now lives in Jeddah. “They’re quite shameless about it.” Talal, a Syrian who moved to Riyadh in 2000, calls the Saudi capital a “gay heaven.”
This is surprising enough. But what seems more startling, at least from a Western perspective, is that some of the men having sex with other men don’t consider themselves gay. For many Saudis, the fact that a man has sex with another man has little to do with “gayness.” The act may fulfill a desire or a need, but it doesn’t constitute an identity. Nor does it strip a man of his masculinity, as long as he is in the “top,” or active, role. This attitude gives Saudi men who engage in homosexual behavior a degree of freedom. But as a more Westernized notion of gayness—a notion that stresses orientation over acts—takes hold in the country, will this delicate balance survive?
‘They will seduce you’
When Yasser hit puberty, he grew attracted to his male cousins. Like many gay and lesbian teenagers everywhere, he felt isolated. “I used to have the feeling that I was the queerest in the country,” he recalled. “But then I went to high school and discovered there are others like me. Then I find out, it’s a whole society.”
This society thrives just below the surface. During the afternoon, traffic cops patrol outside girls’ schools as classes end, in part to keep boys away. But they exert little control over what goes on inside. A few years ago, a Jeddah- based newspaper ran a story on lesbianism in high schools, reporting that girls were having sex in the bathrooms. Yasmin, a 21-year-old student in Riyadh who’d had a brief sexual relationship with a girlfriend (and was the only Saudi woman who’d had a lesbian relationship who was willing to speak with me for this story), told me that one of the department buildings at her college is known as a lesbian enclave. The building has large bathroom stalls, which provide privacy, and walls covered with graffiti offering romantic and religious advice; tips include “she doesn’t really love you no matter what she tells you” and “before you engage in anything with [her] remember: God is watching you.” In Saudi Arabia, “It’s easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There’s an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism,” Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. “They’re not really homosexual,” she said. “They’re like cell mates in prison.”
This analogy came up again and again during my conversations. As Radwan, the Saudi American, put it, “Some Saudi [men] can’t have sex with women, so they have sex with guys. When the sexes are so strictly segregated”—men are allowed little contact with women outside their families, in order to protect women’s purity—“how do they have a chance to have sex with a woman and not get into trouble?” Tariq, a 24-year-old in the travel industry, explains that many “tops” are simply hard up for sex, looking to break their abstinence in whatever way they can. Francis, a 34-year-old beauty queen from the Philippines (in 2003 he won a gay beauty pageant held in a private house in Jeddah by a group of Filipinos), reported that he’s had sex with Saudi men whose wives were pregnant or menstruating; when those circumstances changed, most of the men stopped calling. “If they can’t use their wives,” Francis said, “they have this option with gays.”
Gay courting in the kingdom is often overt—in fact, the preferred mode is cruising. “When I was new here, I was worried when six or seven cars would follow me as I walked down the street,” Jamie, a 31-year-old Filipino florist living in Jeddah, told me. “Especially if you’re pretty like me, they won’t stop chasing you.” John Bradley, the author of Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (2005), says that most male Western expatriates here, gay or not, have been propositioned by Saudi men driving by “at any time of the day or night, quite openly and usually very, very persistently.”
Many gay expatriates say they feel more at home in the kingdom than in their native lands. Jason, a South African educator who has lived in Jeddah since 2002, notes that although South Africa allows gay marriage, “it’s as though there are more gays here.” For Talal, Riyadh became an escape. When he was 17 and living in Damascus, his father walked in on him having sex with a male friend. He hit Talal and grounded him for two months, letting him out of the house only after he swore he was no longer attracted to men. Talal’s pale face flushed crimson as he recalled his shame at disappointing his family. Eager to escape the weight of their expectations, he took a job in Riyadh. When he announced that he would be moving, his father responded, “You know all Saudis like boys, and you are white. Take care.” Talal was pleased to find a measure of truth in his father’s warning—his fair skin made him a hit among the locals.
Marcos, a 41-year-old from the Philippines, was arrested in 1996 for attending a party featuring a drag show. He spent nine months in prison, where he got 200 lashes, before being deported. Still, he opted to return; he loves his work in fashion, which pays decently, and the social opportunities are an added bonus. “Guys romp around and parade in front of you,” he told me. “They will seduce you. It’s up to you how many you want, every day.” Go to page two.
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Two Arrested in Birminghan on Charges of Female Genital Mutilation
2 arrested in Britain on charges of genital mutilation
By Agence France-Presse via Raw Story
May 4, 2012
Two people were arrested in Britain’s second city of Birmingham on Friday after a media report that medics and alternative practitioners had offered to perform female genital mutilation.
West Midlands Police said they had arrested two men aged 55 and 61 on suspicion of offences under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, which forbids the cutting of a girl’s genitalia unless medically necessary.
The arrests related to articles published in The Sunday Times newspaper on April 22, police said in a statement.
“We are still in the very early stages of this investigation but I hope this morning’s action sends out a clear message about how seriously we are taking these allegations,” said Detective Inspector Caroline Marsh of West Midlands Police’s public protection unit.
“Female genital mutilation is a serious assault against young girls and while it is perceived by parents not to be an act of hate, it is harmful, it is child abuse and it is unlawful.”
The Sunday Times reported that a doctor at a private clinic referred undercover reporters to a dentist who he said would give children the “circumcision” surgery.
The dentist then agreed to perform the operation, the newspaper reported. It said an alternative medical practitioner had separately also agreed to carry out the operation.
Britain’s interior ministry estimates that 24,000 girls under 15 are at risk of genital mutilation (FGM), but it has secured few convictions since outlawing the procedure.
Numbers of women and girls in Britain subjected to FGM have increased along with immigration from countries in the Middle East and Africa where it is practiced, The Sunday Times said.
Some 100 to 140 million girls and women globally are thought to have undergone FGM, which ranges from removal of the clitoris to more widespread mutilation, and can lead to infection and long-term severe pain.
The practice is thousands of years old. Raw Story
Previous and related: Female Genital Mutilation 'Offered by UK Medics'
Tokyo Soil Samples Would Be Considered Nuclear Waste In The US
Please also see previous post.
Fairewinds.com
About this video
While traveling in Japan several weeks ago, Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen took soil samples in Tokyo public parks, playgrounds, and rooftop gardens. All the samples would be considered nuclear waste if found here in the US. This level of contamination is currently being discovered throughout Japan. At the US NRC Regulatory Information Conference in Washington, DC March 13 to March 15, the NRC's Chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko emphasized his concern that the NRC and the nuclear industry presently do not consider the costs of mass evacuations and radioactive contamination in their cost benefit analysis used to license nuclear power plants. Furthermore, Fairewinds believes that evacuation costs near a US nuclear plant could easily exceed one trillion dollars and contaminated land would be uninhabitable for generations.
About this video
Is the Japanese government and the IAEA protecting the nuclear industry and not the people of Japan by claiming that Fukushima is stable when it is not? Fairewinds’ chief engineer Arnie Gundersen outlines major inconsistencies and double-speak by the IAEA, Japanese Government, and TEPCO claiming that the Fukushima accident is over. Dynamic versus static equilibrium, escalated dose exposures to the Japanese children and nuclear workers, and the blending of radioactive materials with non-contaminated material and spreading this contaminated ash throughout Japan are only a small part of this ongoing nuclear tragedy.
About this video
Fairewinds analyzes cancer rates for young children near Fukushima using the National Academy of Science's BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) VII Report. Based on BEIR VII, Fairewinds determines that at least one in every 100 young girls will develop cancer for every year they are exposed to 20 millisieverts [millisievert (1 mSv = 0.001 Sv)] of radiation. The 20-millisievert/ year figure is what the Japanese government is currently calculating as the legal limit of radiological exposure to allow habitation of contaminated areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In this video, Fairewinds introduces additional analysis by Ian Goddard showing that the BEIR VII report underestimates the true cancer rates to young children living near Fukushima Daiichi. Looking at the scientific data presented by Mr. Goddard, Fairewinds has determined that at least one out of every 20 young girls (5%) living in an area where the radiological exposure is 20 millisieverts for five years will develop cancer in their lifetime.
Fairewinds.com
Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb
It's hard to believe the coincidence, that it was only ten minutes before coming across this article, I had this to say:
Please also see above post.
Fukushima is still a huge global problem and isn't going to go away anytime soon. I think a worse case scenario is another tsunami/earthquake, then it's curtains for vast swathes of the planet.
I wonder if they will take the opportunity to remove the hundreds/thousands of tons of spent fuel that sits in tanks above all GE Mark 1 type reactors, moving it to facilities independent of susceptible shore sited installations? source
~
Please also see above post.
The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb
Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S.
By Brad Jacobson
May 4, 2012
More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site's current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over.
But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel -- 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment.
Reactor 4: The Most Imminent Threat
The spent fuel in the hobbled unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi not only sits in an elevated pool outside the reactor core's reinforced containment, in a high-consequence earthquake zone adjacent to the ocean -- just as nearly all the spent fuel at the nuclear site is stored -- but it's also open to the elements because a hydrogen explosion blew off the roof during the early days of the accident and sent the building into a list.
Alarmed by the precarious nature of spent fuel storage during his recent tour of the Fukushima Daiichi site, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon subsequently fired off letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko and Japanese ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki. He implored all parties to work together and with the international community to address this situation as swiftly as possible.
A press release issued after his visit said that Wyden, a senior member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources who is highly experienced with nuclear waste storage issues, believes the situation is "worse than reported," with "spent fuel rods currently being stored in unsound structures immediately adjacent to the ocean." The press release also noted the structures' high susceptibility to earthquakes and that "the only protection from a future tsunami, Wyden observed, is a small, makeshift sea wall erected out of bags of rock."
As opposed to units 1-3 at Fukushima Daiichi, where the meltdowns occurred, unit 4's reactor core, like units 5 and 6, was not in operation when the earthquake struck last year. But unlike units 5 and 6, it had recently uploaded highly radioactive spent fuel into its storage pool before the disaster struck.
Robert Alvarez, a nuclear waste expert and former senior adviser to the Secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, has crunched the numbers pertaining to the spent fuel pool threat based on information he obtained from sources such as Tepco, the U.S. Department of Energy, Japanese academic presentations and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the U.S. organization created by the nuclear power industry in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
What he found, which has been corroborated by other experts interviewed by AlterNet, is an astounding amount of vulnerably stored spent fuel, also known as irradiated fuel, at the Fukushima Daiichi site. His immediate focus is on the fuel stored in the damaged unit 4's pool, which contains the single largest inventory of highly radioactive spent fuel of any of the pools in the damaged reactors.
Alvarez warns that if there is another large earthquake or event that causes this pool to drain of water, which keeps the fuel rods from overheating and igniting, it could cause a catastrophic fire releasing 10 times more cesium-137 than was released at Chernobyl.
That scenario alone would cause an unprecedented spread of radioactivity, far greater than what occurred last year, depositing enormous amounts of radioactive materials over thousands of miles and causing the evacuation of Tokyo.
Nuclear experts noted that other lethal radioactive isotopes would also be released in such a fire, but that the focus is on cesium-137 because it easily volatilizes and spreads pervasively, as it did during the Chernobyl accident and again after the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi last year.
With a half-life of 30 years, it gives off penetrating radiation as it decays and can remain dangerous for hundreds of years. Once in the environment, it mimics potassium as it accumulates in the food chain; when it enters the human body, about 75 percent lodges in muscle tissue, including the heart.
The Threat Not Just to Japan But to the U.S. and the World
An even more catastrophic worst-case scenario follows that a fire in the pool at unit 4 could then spread, igniting the irradiated fuel throughout the nuclear site and releasing an amount of cesium-137 equaling a doomsday-like load, roughly 85 times more than the release at Chernobyl.
It's a scenario that would literally threaten Japan's annihilation and civilization at large, with widespread worldwide environmental radioactive contamination.
"Japan would suffer the worst, but it would be a global catastrophe," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste expert at the watchdog group Beyond Nuclear. "It already is, it already has been, but it would dwarf what's already happened."
Kamps noted that these pool fires were the beginning of the worst-case analysis envisioned by the Japanese government in the early days of the disaster, as reported by the New York Times in February.
"Not only three reactor meltdowns but seven pool fires at Fukushima Daiichi," Kamps said. "If the site had to be abandoned by all workers, then everything would come loose. The end result of that was the evacuation of Tokyo."
In an interview with AlterNet, Alvarez, who is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, said that the Japanese government, Tepco and the U.S. NRC are reluctant to say anything publicly about the spent fuel threat because "there is a tendency to want to provide reassurance that everything is fine."
He was quick to note, "The cores are still a problem, make no mistake, and there will be some very bad things happening if they don't maintain their temperatures at some sort of stable level and make sure this stuff doesn't eat down through the concrete mats."
But he said that privately "they're probably more scared shitless about the pools than they are about the cores. They know they're really risky and dangerous."
AlterNet asked the NRC if it is concerned about the vulnerability of the spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi and what, if anything, it had expressed to the Japanese government and Tepco on the matter.
"All the available information continues to show the situation at Fukushima Dai-ichi is stable, both for the reactors and the spent fuel pools," NRC spokesman Scott Burnell replied via email. "The available information indicates that Spent Fuel Pool #4 has been reinforced."
But nuclear experts, including Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president who coordinated projects at 70 U.S. nuclear power plants, warned days after the disaster at Fukushima last year of a "Chernobyl on steroids" if the spent fuel pools were to ignite, strongly disagreed with this assessment.
"It is true that in May and June the floor of the U4 SFP [spent fuel pool] was 'reinforced,' but not as strong as it was originally," Gundersen noted in an email to AlterNet. "The entire building however has not been reinforced and is damaged by the explosion in both 4 and 3. So structurally U4 is not as strong as its original design required."
Gundersen, who is chief engineer at the consulting firm Fairewinds Associates, added that the spent fuel pool at unit 4 "remains the single biggest concern since about the second week of the accident. It can still create 'Chernobyl on steroids.'"
Alvarez said that even if the unit 4 structure has been tentatively stabilized, it doesn't change the fact "it sits in a structurally damaged building, is about 100 feet above the ground and is exposed to the atmosphere, in a high-consequence earthquake zone."
He also said that the urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around northeast Japan, in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 to 5.7 have occurred off the northeast coast of Honshu between April 14 and April 17.
"This has been the norm since 3/11/11 and larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant," Alvarez added.
A recent study published in the journal Solid Earth, which used data from over 6,000 earthquakes, confirms the expectation of larger quakes in closer proximity to the Fukushima Daiichi site. In part, this conclusion is predicated on the discovery that the earthquake that initiated last year's disaster caused a seismic fault close to the nuclear plant to reactivate.
"There are a few active faults in the nuclear power plant area, and our results show the existence of similar structural anomalies under both the Iwaki and the Fukushima Daiichi areas," lead researcher Dapeng Zhao, a geophysics professor at Japan's Tohoku University, said in a press release. "Given that a large earthquake occurred in Iwaki not long ago, we think it is possible for a similarly strong earthquake to happen in Fukushima."
AlterNet asked Sen. Wyden if he considers the spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi a national security threat.
In a statement released by his office, Wyden replied, "The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States."
Alvarez agrees, saying, "My major concern is that this effort to get that spent fuel out of there is not something you should be doing casually and taking your time on."
Yet Tepco's current plans are to hold the majority of this spent fuel onsite for years in the same elevated, uncontained storage pools, only transferring some of the fuel into more secure, hardened dry casks when the common pool reaches capacity.
For the moment, though, and for the foreseeable future -- unless the international community substantively comes to Japan's aid -- Tepco couldn't transfer the irradiated fuel from the damaged reactor units into dry cask storage even if it wanted to because the equipment to do so, such as the crane support infrastructure, was destroyed during the initial disaster.
"That's kind of shocking," said Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. "But that's why we're still sitting on this gamble that there won't be another earthquake that could topple a very precarious unit 4."
Gunter is concerned that even a minor earthquake or a subsidence in the earth under unit 4 could cause its collapse.
"I think we're all on pins and needles every day with regard to unit 4," he said. "I mean there's any number of things that could happen. Nobody really knows."
Gunter added, "Right now its seismic rating should be zero."
Alvarez echoed Wyden's letters to the Japanese ambassador and U.S. officials.
"It really requires a major effort," he said. "The United States and other countries should begin to get involved and try to help the Japanese government to expedite the removal of that spent fuel and to put it into dry, hardened storage as soon as possible."
Same Spent Fuel Pool Designs at Dozens of U.S. Nuclear Sites
So why isn't the NRC and the Obama administration doing more to shed light on the extreme vulnerability of these irradiated fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, which threaten not only Japan but the U.S. and the world?
Nuclear waste experts say it would expose the fact that the same design flaw lies in wait -- and has been for decades -- at dozens of U.S. nuclear facilities. And that's not something the NRC, which is routinely accused of promoting the nuclear industry rather than adequately regulating it, nor the pro-nuclear Obama administration, want to broadcast to the American public.
"The U.S. government right now is engaged in its own kabuki theatre to protect the U.S. industry from the real costs of the lessons at Fukushima," Gunter said. "The NRC and its champions in the White House and on Capitol Hill are looking to obfuscate the real threats and the necessary policy changes to address the risk."
There are 31 G.E. Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors (BRWs) in the U.S., the type used at Fukushima. All of these reactors, which comprise just under a third of all nuclear reactors in the U.S., store their spent fuel in elevated pools located outside the primary, or reinforced, containment that protects the reactor core. Thus, the outside structure, the building ostensibly protecting the storage pools, is much weaker, in most cases about as sturdy, experts describe in interviews with AlterNet, as a structure one would find housing a car dealership or a Wal-Mart.
Not what Americans might expect to find safeguarding nuclear material that is more highly radioactive than what resides in the reactor core.
The outer containments surrounding these spent fuel pools in these U.S. reactors patently fail to meet the NRC's own "defense in-depth" nuclear safety requirements.
But these reactors don't merely suffer from the same storage design flaw as those at Fukushima Daiichi.
In the U.S., the nuclear industry has been allowed to store incredible volumes of spent fuel for decades in high-density pools that were not only originally designed to retain about one-fourth or one-fifth of what they now hold but were intended to be temporary storage facilities. No more than five years. That was before the idea of reprocessing irradiated fuel in this country failed to gain a foothold over 30 years ago. Once that happened, starting in the early 1980s, the NRC allowed high-density storage in fuel pools on the false assumption that a high-level waste repository would be opened by 1998. But subsequent efforts to gain support for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have also been scrapped.
More recently, the NRC arbitrarily concluded these pools could store this spent fuel safely for 120 years.
"Our pools are more crammed to the gills than the unit 4 pool at Fukushima Daiichi, much more so," noted Kamps of Beyond Nuclear. "It's kind of like a very thick forest that's waiting for a wildfire. It would take extraordinary measures to prevent nuclear chain reactions in our pools because the waste is so closely packed in there."
Experts say the only near-term answer to better protect our nation's existing spent nuclear fuel is dry cask storage. But there's one catch: the nuclear industry doesn't want to incur the expense, which is about $1 million per cask.
"So now they're stuck," said Alvarez, "The NRC has made this policy decision, which the industry is very violently opposed to changing because it saves them a ton of money. And if they have to go to dry hardened storage onsite, they're going to have to fork over several hundred million dollars per reactor to do this."
He also pointed out that the contents of the nine dry casks at the Fukushima Daiichi site were undamaged by the disaster.
"Nobody paid much attention to that fact," Alvarez said. "I've never seen anybody at Tepco or anyone [at the NRC or in the nuclear industry] saying, 'Well, thank god for the dry casks. They were untouched.' They don't say a word about it."
The NRC declined to comment directly to accusations it's reluctant to draw attention to the spent fuel vulnerability at Fukushima Daiichi because it would bring more awareness to the dangers of irradiated storage here in the U.S. But the agency did respond to a question about what it has done to address the vulnerability of spent nuclear fuel storage at U.S. nuclear sites with the Mark I and II designs.
"All U.S. spent nuclear fuel is stored safely and securely, regardless of reactor type," NRC spokesman Burnell replied in an email. "Every spent fuel pool is an inherently robust combination of reinforced concrete and steel, capable of safely withstanding the same type and variety of severe events that reactors are designed for."
He continued, "After 9/11, the NRC required U.S. nuclear power plants to obtain additional equipment for maintaining reactor and spent fuel pool safety in the event of any situation that could disable large areas of the plant. This 'B5b' equipment and related procedures include ensuring spent fuel pools have adequate water levels. The B5b measures are in place at every U.S. plant and have been inspected multiple times, including shortly after the accident at Fukushima.
"The NRC continues to conclude the combination of installed safety equipment and B5b measures can protect the public if extreme events impact a U.S. nuclear power plant."
But nuclear experts told AlterNet that the majority of Burnell's response could've been made prior to the disaster at Fukushima. In fact, Ed Lyman, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, investigated these so-called "B5b" safety measures the NRC ordered post-9/11 and published his findings in a May 2011 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article.
Directly reflecting Burnell's response to AlterNet, Lyman wrote that after the Fukushima disaster, "the NRC and the industry invoked the mysterious requirements known as 'B5b' as a cure-all for the kinds of problems that led to the Fukushima crisis.
"Even though the B5b strategies were specifically developed to cope with fires and explosions, the NRC now argues that they could be used for any event that causes severe damage to equipment and infrastructure, including Fukushima-scale earthquakes and floods."
But contrary to these NRC assurances, then and now, Lyman's report found B5b requirements inadequate, containing flaws in safety assumptions that suggest the NRC has not applied the major lessons learned from the Fukushima disaster. Additionally, he revealed emails showing that the NRC's own staff members questioned the plausibility of these procedures to effectively respond to extreme weather events like floods, earthquakes and concomitant blackouts.
Burnell sent a follow-up email, noting, "I also should have mentioned the NRC issued an order in March to all U.S. plants to install enhanced spent fuel pool instrumentation, so that plant operators will have a clearer understanding of SFP status during a severe event."
This is a curiously roundabout way of saying that spent fuel pools at U.S. reactors currently have no built-in instrumentation to gauge radiation, temperature or pressure levels.
Kamps also pointed out that the NRC commissioners voted 4 to 1, with Chairman Gregory Jaczko in dissent, to not require requested such safety upgrades to U.S. reactors until the end of 2016.
He added, "Burnell's flippant, false assurances prove that pool risks, despite being potentially catastrophic, are largely ignored by not only industry, but even NRC itself, even in the aftermath of Fukushima." AlterNet
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