Posting has been very slow lately due to job demands. It should resume normally very shortly. I particularly have a lot to add in the well-publicized case of the Austrian man who kept his own family members captive for 20 years. Stay tuned.
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The BBC's Mohamed Olad Hassan in Somalia says many of the pirates are former fishermen, who began by attacking ships they argued were "illegally threatening or destroying" their business.
"Businessmen and former fighters for the Somali warlords moved in when they saw how lucrative it could be. The pirates and their backers tend to split the ransom money 50-50," he says.
The Puntland authorities argue that if piracy paid less well, there would be less of it.
They condemned the $700,000 (£350,000) ransom paid by a Danish company last month for the release of the crew of a tug, the Svitzer Korsakov, after 47 days of captivity off the Puntland coast.
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there is growing evidence that healthy mature trees are being felled by risk-averse insurers and councils because of the mere suspicion that they may affect neighbouring properties with subsidence, or fall on people.Incidentally, before you start raving over those crazy Brits, keep in mind that similar absurd legal problems over trees exist in the United States. Click here for more...
In the past five years, London councils alone have chopped down almost 40,000 street trees, including some more than 100 years old. Some were aged, diseased or dying, but 40 per cent were removed because of insurance claims; yet a report commissioned by the London Assembly said that only 1 per cent of tree-removals were justified.
...
Eric Pickles, the Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary, warned that the leafy character of urban areas was under threat. "Whitehall's failure to tackle the compensation culture and the heavy-handed application of health and safety regulation is doing more harm than good," he said. "Trees have a vital role to play in tackling climate change and improving quality of life, yet Britain's leafy suburbs face a chainsaw massacre under Labour."
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977) was a master of the English language and a brilliant writer. This was all the more impressive because he was born and raised in Russia; English was not his first language.
His most famous novel was Lolita, but he has a long and distinguished bibliography, both in Russian and English.
Why am I mentioning all this? Well, Nabokov's son Dmitri has finally decided to publish a his father's last working novel, The Original of Laura, based on a series of his father's notes. The reason why it took so long was because the author made it very clear he wanted it burned after his death, not published.
Both Marginal Revolution and Andrew Sullivan are not pleased.
I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, an author's wishes on his own works should be respected. On the other hand, this reminds me very much of the fate of Virgil's Aeneid, the greatest written work of all time, in my opinion. Virgil also didn't complete it before he died in 19 B.C., and also ordered the manuscript destroyed. Fortunately, Emperor Augustus himself intervened and saved this work for all future generations. He ordered Virgil's assistants to correct any obvious grammatical errors, but not to add or remove anything else from the work. And the classic was born.
So what does this have to do with the topics of this site? Maybe nothing, except that the Aeneid is actually a sequel to Homer's Iliad, where we are introduced to the famed "shield of Achilles"...
A St George's Day parade through an inner-city area hit by race riots has been cancelled following police advice.Those "health and safety reasons" were the fear of immigrant riots, a repeat of what happened in Bradford back in 2001, where groups of "asians" (overwhelmingly Pakistanis) went on rampages, destroyed property, and attacked the police.
Community groups had planned to stage the multi-cultural event in Bradford and 1,500 schoolchildren were due to take part.
Many of the youngsters had already made flags of St George to carry on the parade on April 23, which was designed to boost community cohesion.
But last week police and council chiefs told the organisers that the event could not go ahead as planned for 'health and safety' reasons.
But the Church of England is considering rejecting England's patron saint St George on the grounds that his image is too warlike and may offend Muslims.
Today, thousands of people the length and breadth of England will be celebrating Dragon Awareness Day.
This is to draw attention to the blatant slaying of a member of the dragon community by St George, several centuries ago, and to call for a more positive attitude to these mythical monsters.
We also want to highlight our demands for 1) A full apology from the Prime Minister and the Queen; 2) Back-dated compensation for all those affected by the event; 3) Legislation to outlaw the demonising of dragons; 4) A Channel 4 documentary outlining the war crimes committed by St George, possibly leading to a trial, or at least a full public inquiry.
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This site is about photography, not video, so normally I don't embed videos here. But for extreme examples like this, I'll make an exception. This is about the creepiest interview I have ever seen. If anyone has any doubt whether or not the polygamous FLDS Church is a cult or not, just watch the following:
Notice the women repeating the same script, sometimes all at the same time. Notice the woman in the middle with a forced smile forgetting her line and having to be bailed out by the other woman on her left. Notice the total robotic manner of all the women and how they appear absolutely programmed. One woman claims they are the "freest in the world". I found this via Poligazette, which called it "spooky" (they also feature a good interview with a former member here). This makes me very, very glad that over 400 children were taken out of this cult, at least for a little while.
And just to prove that the ACLU is on the wrong side of every issue, they are complaining about the raids, without giving any specific reasons why. Pundit Master nails it:I understand the value of an organization that constantly monitors our justice system to ensure that individual rights are upheld. I wish we had one. The ACLU claims to be one, but they certainly seem to take a disproportionate interest in the protection of child molestors, whether it be individuals or organization such as NAMBLA and the FLDS which have institutionalized the practice.
I am now praying that none of these children go back to that compound. None.
The argument the ACLU seems to be making is that the government has no concrete proof that all of the children are in danger or have been molested, therefore, those who are not proven to be damaged or in danger should be released...and the government should apologize to the FLDS.
This makes about as much sense as removing 4 children from a burning building, finding two of them in good shape, and so sending them back in.
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As most of you know by now, last week police raided the YFZ (Yearning for Zion) ranch in Eldorado, Texas, taking 416 women and children into custody. The ranch is a church compound belonging to the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints).
Authorities claim that children were being abused and that underage girls were married off to much older men. Members of the sect claim their polygamous life is simply religious freedom, and that their families have been taken away unjustly.
But when you see the women in interviews on television, they don't appear normal. Of course they belong to a different culture from most of us, but it's more than that. When they speak, they don't appear alert or even fully awake. Their voices are so soft and childlike it is almost eerie. They repeat the same answers over and over verbatim (an indication of being coached), and constantly claim they "don't know" when asked about any underage girls being married, even though authorities have names of at least 10 of them. One 16 year-old girl reportedly has four children. Unless she had quadruplets, you can do the math yourself and figure out how young she must have been when she was married off.
I don't deny that religious freedom is an important right, and I couldn't care less how many wives/husbands consenting adults take. But when you involve children, you don't have consenting adults anymore, and all bets are off.
The spiritual leader of this sect is Warren Jeffs, who I wrote about in an earlier article. Although the man was guilty of gross immoral conduct, I criticized the way his case was handled. Still, I have little sympathy for him or for the abusive lifestyle his followers have chosen. Incidentally, in video of the dormitories on the compound, there is a photo of him on nearly every wall in the house - a strong indicator of a cult environment.
When police initially raided the compound, they were expecting to find about 150 people. Instead, they found over 400. That alone is rather disturbing. Has a census worker ever visited the compound? How many more people are living there in the shadows?
If anyone still has any qualms about this raid, they can listen to former FLDS members such as Flora Jessup, who describes how she was punished for trying to escape, or Kathy Nicholson, who describes the brainwashing involved.
UPDATE 04/18/2008 08:15:00 AM: Some grammatical fixes (I shouldn't write when I'm sleepy).
Also, since roughly the same number of boys/girls are born to each woman, if anyone is wondering how these sects can operate with marrying 5-6 women to every man, Slate has the answer. Essentially, they banish teenage boys from their families at alarming rates. This is from the same community that claims to care so deeply about their children.
It also should be noted that cults like this are isolated from the rest of society by necessity; they cannot exist otherwise. If these women lived in typical communities and sent their children to local schools, they might pick up "subversive" ideas, such as the idea of equality. Without exception, every single FLDS woman profiled on the news is a mother and a homemaker only. I have not seen a single one who has taken up a profession in medicine, art, business, or anything else. I don't even see any evidence that any of them has even had a higher education.
I believe that so far, the Texas authorities have done the right thing here. But this is an explosive situation, and hopefully they don't blow it.
UPDATE 04/18/2008 07:22:00 PM:
In an earlier posting, I spoke about the hypocrisy amoung some people who fight for the right of gays to marry, but won't lift a finger on behalf of marriage rights for polygamists.
Eric at Classical Values makes another good point about hypocrisy here. What about Muslim polygamy? Why so little outrage about that? They don't just happen in the Middle East - they are a reality in the US and Europe as well. In fact, in the bizarro land of the UK, Muslims with more than one wife can collect benefits for them all even though the marriages are illegal.
The next time that Europeans scoff at those strange religious Americans they see on TV, maybe they should take a look at their own backyard...
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One of the few times that I truly admire CNN; they call the man out and show him for the idiot he is:
Although Iran has condemned the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington in the past, this was the third time in a week that Ahmadinejad questioned the death toll, who was behind the attacks and how it happened.But:
"Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names," Ahmadinejad told Iranians in the holy city of Qom.
On the last anniversary of the attacks, the names of 2,750 victims killed in New York were read aloud at a memorial ceremony.The BBC, by contrast, shows their incredible insight by not bothering to point out the glaring lie in Ahmadinejad's statement. Similarly, Truthdig.com, which poured tears over the denial to allow Ahmad to visit ground zero last year, had nothing to say this time. Click here for more...
"That's the only dress we'll carry along -- with all stains accumulated during the journey,"I'll let you draw your own conclusions. May Ms. Pasqualino di Marineo rest in peace. Click here for more...
Apologize for lack of postings - Army classwork is currently taking a lot of my time.
But I absolutely had to mention this remarkable event. The media is barely doing so - probably because it's good news.
Today, Richard Butler, a CBS journalist who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents back on Feb 10, was found and rescued in the city of Basra. You can listen to him in his own words here. What makes this truly remarkable is that he was rescued by the Iraqi Army, without assistance from the US or UK. What makes it even more remarkable is that they weren't even looking for him; they were watching the house and raided it looking for illegal weapons instead. In other words, they were actually doing their job. It looks like the mass firings of disloyal Iraqi Army servicemembers in the wake of the recent Mahdi Militia violence, has had it's effect.
UPDATE: In fact, you know it must be good news when Professor Juan Cole refuses to mention it in his daily rundown on events in Iraq.
there has been significant but uneven security progress in Iraq. Since September, levels of violence and civilian deaths have been reduced substantially, Al Qaeda-Iraq and a number of other extremist elements have been dealt serious blows, the capabilities of Iraqi Security Force elements have grown, and there has been noteworthy involvement of local Iraqis in local security. Nonetheless, the situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory and innumerable challenges remain. Moreover, as events in the past two weeks have reminded us and as I have repeatedly cautioned, the progress made since last spring is fragile and reversible. Still, security in Iraq is better than it was when Ambassador Crocker and I reported to you last September, and it is significantly better than it was 15 months ago when Iraq was on the brink of civil war and the decision was made to deploy additional US forces to Iraq.I agree completely. The bottom line here is that progress is success. Ergo, if Iraq is progressing, then we are winning the war.
Yes, in the world as it is, whatever line we sell ourselves, there really is victory and there really is defeat, the two are different, and their effects on the future diverge profoundly. And yes, the reason we must continue to spend money and the lives of the very best Americans in that far-off land is that the interests of every American are actually at stake.The whole article is highly recommended.
Together with the Iraqi Security Forces, we have also focused on the Special Groups. These elements are funded, trained, armed, and directed by Iran’s Qods Force, with help from Lebanese Hezbollah. It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq’s seat of government two weeks ago, causing loss of innocent life and fear in the capital, and requiring Iraqi and Coalition actions in response. Iraqi and Coalition leaders have repeatedly noted their desire that Iran live up to promises made by President Ahmedinajad and other senior Iranian leaders to stop their support for the Special Groups.This has been going on since very early in the war, and incredibly some people are still in denial. Mideast "experts" like Juan Cole sing the praises of peaceful Iran while clutching at every straw to accuse Bush of trying to escalate the conflict instead. Others are clutching at straws to accuse the General of deliberately lying to us, simply because he updated one slide in his presentation. Meanwhile, noted military non-expert Arianna Huffington impunes Petraeus and his testimony before he even gave it. All of this is pretty pathetic. Gen Petraeus, the troops in Iraq, and particularly the Iraqi people deserve a honest treatment of the issues, not plain political spin.
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I absolutely support the torch protests, not only because of China's occupation of Tibet, but for more continuing human rights violations that I can list here.
The funny thing though is, that China has occupied Tibet for 50 years; people are acting like this is something "new". Just where have they been?
There is another upside as well - it's wonderful for a change to see people worldwide protesting a real human-rights abuser, not the United States or some European country that offended Islam. And that is a good change. But not surprisingly, that's too much for one of the moonbat writers at Balloon Juice who wishes people would hurry up and focus back on USA bashing again (the comments are even worse).
Definitely worth considering. One heck of an article on this is up at The Brussels Journal. All other minorities in the world but Europeans have protected status in one place or another. It's time to think outside the box.
Click here for more...It's also rice, a commodity that is far more important to billions of people around the world.
He [Roland Jansen, chief executive of Switzerland-based Mother Earth Investments] believes governments will maintain curbs on exports as they "want to be able to continue to feed their own populations".This is but one consequence of having a world population approaching 7 billion and still rising fast.
A British inquest has now concluded that the 1997 death of Princess Diana was caused by speeding and drunk driving. The amazing thing is that it only took them over £10 million pounds ($19.8 million) to figure this out. For more background on this ludicrous hunt for conspiracy theories, go here. It's interesting that the media in the UK are only now focused on the cost of this colossal waste of time and money; meanwhile I've mentioned it several times before.
The answers were already at hand; two separate British and French official investigations already concluded the very same thing.
But of course, that isn't enough for Egyptian millionaire Mohammed Al-Fayed, who has been driving this whole charade, and believes the deaths were assassinations ordered by the British Royal family and carried out by MI6 and the CIA. Now he says he might even appeal the verdict, dragging this thing out to oblivion. UK taxpayers, be prepared to pay some more - you allowed this to happen, you bring it on yourselves.
And why not? There are still plenty more who prefer the conspiracy theories.
Here's just a sample of how some of this money was spent:In one case the funds were used to fly an official to Los Angeles in America to collect a tape of a telephone conversation involving Dodi's ex-girlfriend Kelly Fisher.
In the recording she told her former partner: "You even flew me down to St Tropez to sit on a boat while you seduced Diana all day and f***** me all night."
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In one 2002 raid at the Leon house, Glendale police arrested Maria Leon and found cocaine, marijuana, a Tec-9 assault weapon, ammunition, a small explosive, packaging material and a cellphone that kept ringing with customers' drug orders, according to court records. Inside were six children under 10 years old, including Maria Leon's youngest child, a 3-month-old boy.She was released after credit for time served, which was less than a year, and immigration never picked her up.
Please, someone explain why Maria "Chata" Leon has been allowed to live in this country illegally for 23 years, having 13 children and committing crime after crime. Why has this woman never been deported? Why is she still on the streets of Los Angeles?More background on the Glassell Park area can be found here.
There is absolutely no excuse for this.
Sandra Stubban
Stanton
While most illegal immigrants entering the United States are honest people, it is the job of our governmental agencies to protect Americans from those who are not. The only way to do this is to secure our borders, penalize those hiring the undocumented, immediately deport those found guilty of crimes and, most important, have a Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of the 14th Amendment to determine who qualifies to become an American citizen.
This is not an anti-immigrant solution; it's a pro-law, pro-American solution. Illegal is just that.
Cheryl Smith
Gardena
L.A.'s Drew Street -- crime fortress, drug dealers operating with near impunity, illegal immigrant haven, illegal immigrant mother of 13 "deeply involved in the drug trade" with a "lengthy arrest record" and three convictions but no prison time -- need I go on? And how many other Drew Streets are there throughout California? Sort of makes one wonder what our police and immigration authorities are doing as these lesions are allowed to fester and spread. It has certainly reached the point for us to demand accountability and action. Otherwise, it's only going to get much worse.
Ron Romanosky
Tustin
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The phrase above is not really mine. It's actually a typically foul pet phrase the blogger John Cole brings up when any meme runs through right-wing blogs. He complains that when one conservative picks up on a story the rest all the rest pick it up and run with it. Problem is, he doesn't seem to notice that liberals do the exact same thing, and when I pointed that out in his comments section, I was not exactly welcomed with open arms...
Case in point, a long legal opinion piece written in 2003 by former Department of Justice attorney John Yoo was released this week.
Although it doesn't tell us anything new, the leftist blogosphere falls all over itself to display more righteous indignation, claiming the US legalized torture. Right on cue, Cole, Greenwald, Daily Kos (some of them even calling for Yoo's execution, which is ironic for a blog where most people are death penalty opponents). These are just a few - there are actually too many for me to list all here.
Unfortunately, they leave out some key points and distort others, starting with the fact that Yoo's memos were not law, but also opinion pieces, and were rescinded nine months later.
But the biggest problem is the constant whining that we didn't give Geneva Convention status to prisoners in the war on terror. Well, if anyone takes the time to actually read the Third Geneva Convention, it is very clear on who is or is not considered a prisoner of war. Some of the applicable criteria here:2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
and:
(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.(6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
I don't see how any of these apply to Al-Qaeda. If you want to give POW status to these guys, then you would have to afford it to people like Timothy McVeigh as well.
Meanwhile, media opinionators like Keith Olbermann try to whip up hysteria by spinning this to falsely claim that John Yoo "wrote Bush a memo telling him he could ignore the Geneva Conventions". This is, quite frankly, a bald-faced lie.
In any case, in 2003, the Bush administration concluded that while these prisoners didn't meet the Geneva Convention's criteria for POW status, they were still protected by the eighth amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment. OK, then, you might ask, what about waterboarding? I don't support waterboarding, but it was only done to three high-ranking Al-Qaeda operatives in 2003, and never since. If you want to prosecute that, you might be able to, but you will need some luck.
One of the things Yoo was doing was essentially crafting legal arguments to assist the administration if someone tried to file torture charges against them down the line. You might find this unseemly, yet it's strange that no one bats an eye when attorneys pull out every argument to vigorously defend people like Timothy McVeigh, Mumia Abu-Jamal, or OJ Simpson. That's what lawyers do. Now maybe it was inappropriate that he was doing this as a deputy in the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel, and not a privately retained attorney - I don't know. But he wasn't writing to defend Bush (or anyone) specifically.
What's really ludicrous is when people link John Yoo's writings to Abu Gharaib - as if the guards had copies of Yoo's memos, or could understand them even if they did (moreover, none of Yoo's arguments got them off the hook at their trials. This isn't just ordinary people using the "seven-degrees of separation" link to Abu Gharaib, but well-educated ivory tower denizens like Glenn Greenwald above.
Holy cow, give it a rest. If these legal minds are so confident that they are right, why don't they stop their whining and file charges against John Yoo or anyone in the Bush administration? Or are they worried that, unlike on their blogs, counter-arguments and evidence are allowed to be entered into the record?
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This wasn't really intentional, but according to the "blog cuss-o-meter" tool, this site is 100% free from foul language: 
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