https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AltyhmrIFgo

The topic of WMD in Iraq has been a hot potato for more than two decades, ever since the end of the first Gulf War and the procession of 17 UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein verifiably destroy them. Hussein ignored those demands and committed numerous violations of the 1991 cease-fire agreement that suspended the war. In 2003, the US went back to war in part over the issue of WMD, deposing Hussein but coming up empty on the accusations of chemical and biological weapons, which prompted the “Bush lied” arguments that have echoed ever since. Occasionally, caches of chemical weapons have been found in Iraq, reviving the debate, but they have been weapons that had already been declared and transferred to UN control before the 2003 invasion.

If the WMD existed in Iraq, what happened to it? Many suspected that it got transferred to Syria prior to the 2003 invasion, but the New York Times reports today that the CIA actually did find at least some of the suspected and undeclared caches of chemical weapons — and destroyed them:


The Central Intelligence Agency, working with American troops during the occupation of Iraq, repeatedly purchased nerve-agent rockets from a secretive Iraqi seller, part of a previously undisclosed effort to ensure that old chemical weapons remaining in Iraq did not fall into the hands of terrorists or militant groups, according to current and former American officials.

The extraordinary arms purchase plan, known as Operation Avarice, began in 2005 and continued into 2006, and the American military deemed it a nonproliferation success. It led to the United States’ acquiring and destroying at least 400 Borak rockets, one of the internationally condemned chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf war. …

In confidential declarations in the 1990s to the United Nations, Iraq gave shifting production numbers, up to 18,500. It also claimed to have destroyed its remaining stock before international inspectors arrived after the Persian Gulf war. …

The handoffs varied in size, including one of more than 150 warheads. American ordnance disposal technicians promptly destroyed most of them by detonation, the officials said, but some were taken to Camp Slayer, by Baghdad’s airport, for further testing.


This is the first time that there has been any media reporting on finds specific to the disputed munitions that Hussein refused to acknowledge. It sounds as though there were a large quantity of Borak rockets eventually procured, too, not just a few leftovers that might have been innocently overlooked by the previous dictatorship in Iraq. C.J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt also report that these were not the kind of exhausted and expired chemical weapons that the UN had been storing, but still potent enough to alarm the US when they were discovered.

Why this was kept quiet was anyone’s guess, but the secret was tightly held. Perhaps the CIA and Pentagon wanted to keep it under wraps so that they could quietly buy as many of the weapons off the black market as they could, without tipping their hand to the insurgency. That might have been good strategy, but the Pentagon kept it so quiet that it never told veterans serving in Iraq or the VA physicians that treated them later about the possibility that they had contact with chemical weapons from any source. It seems unlikely that the insurgents didn’t get their hands on any of the Boraks — and it’s not entirely clear that the US got them all, either.

This should recast the WMD debate from the 2003 invasion, but it probably won’t. At least so far, there’s no indication that the US found the new chemical- and biological-weapons programs that their faulty intelligence showed Saddam Hussein restarting between the two wars, and that will overshadow even a large number of undeclared sarin-filled Boraks in any attempt to show that the issue of WMD intel was at least nuanced. On the other hand, we’ve waited almost a decade to find this out, so it’s impossible to say what else may have been discovered and not declared by the Pentagon and CIA during that period. It may be another decade before we can safely assume anything.



http://hotair.com/archives/2015/02/16/nyt-cia-bought-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons-demanded-by-un/

[... A.k.a. “bit rot”.]

... A.k.a. “bit rot”.


Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned.

Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk.

Cerf called for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are.

“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said.


http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotten-century-email-photos-vint-cerf

1. You support revisionist history.

2. You cite Jesus as your reasoning for rejecting marriage equality.

3. You use Biblical scriptute to excuse yourself from feeding the hungry.

4. You lie when you say you value “freedom of religion.”5. You claim God speaks to you and tells you to do things.

6. You question my faith.

7. You care more about your guns than you do about children.

8. You get excited about people dying.

9. You assume that everyone who needs help are losers and parasites who refuse to work.

10. You weren’t concerned about uninsured people– including me.

11. The Creation Museum — that is all.

12. You’re liberal in youth, yet grow conservative in age.

13. You don’t want people who disagree with you to vote.

14. Some of your best friends are black. Or Mexican.

15. You scream about undocumented immigrant children at the border, but you hire Mexicans to do your dirty work.

16. You insist on calling undocumented immigrants “illegals” and “aliens.”

17. You don’t mind using force against “lesser” groups to get what you want.

18. You love war, death, and destruction.

19. Speaking of war, you think draft dodging is OK and military service is for the little people.

20. You claim to care about the Constitution, but in reality you don’t.

21. It’s impossible for you to see your privilege.

22. You don’t care about children.

23. You’re greedy and miserable.

24. You think our religion is the only one.

25. You are lazy and you refuse to read.

26. Your misfortune is God’s blessing.

27. “Everyone has their lot in life.”

28. You think you’re the only one working and paying taxes.




http://www.liberalamerica.org/2015/02/11/28-reasons-im-done-talking-to-most-of-my-conservative-friends-and-family-members/



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[Cholesterol Is Not a ‘Nutrient of Concern,’ Report Says]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/10/feds-poised-to-withdraw-longstanding-warnings-about-dietary-cholesterol/


The nation’s top nutrition advisory panel has decided to drop its caution about eating cholesterol-laden food, a move that could undo almost 40 years of government warnings about its consumption.

The group’s finding that cholesterol in the diet need no longer be considered a “nutrient of concern” stands in contrast to the committee’s findings five years ago, the last time it convened. During those proceedings, as in previous years, the panel deemed the issue of excess cholesterol in the American diet a public health concern.

The finding follows an evolution of thinking among many nutritionists who now believe that, for healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease.




Cholesterol Is Not a ‘Nutrient of Concern,’ Report Says


Experts say this would mean that recommendations are finally catching up with the evidence, which suggests that dietary cholesterol bears little impact on a person’s risk of heart disease.

“There have been multiple analyses and meta-analyses now looking at intake of dietary cholesterol and the risk of heart disease,” says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. “In the general population, there’s really not any strong evidence for a link.” However, a few studies have shown that there may be increased risk in people with type-2 diabetes, he says.



http://time.com/3705734/cholesterol-dietary-guidelines/


The shameful history of government, health industry, and media vilification of the egg:
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/28/breaking-eggs-not-bad-for-you-and-the-nyt-is-on-it/



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What a week for science! First, no big bang, the universe was always there. Now eating eggs is good for you. What's next?

 

[Old ideas revisited]

(Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the universe, as estimated by general relativity, is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or singularity. Only after this point began to expand in a "Big Bang" did the universe officially begin.

Although the Big Bang singularity arises directly and unavoidably from the mathematics of general relativity, some scientists see it as problematic because the math can explain only what happened immediately after—not at or before—the singularity.
"The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," Ahmed Farag Ali at Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Phys.org.
Ali and coauthor Saurya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, have shown in a paper published in Physics Letters B that the Big Bang singularity can be resolved by their new model in which the universe has no beginning and no end.

Old ideas revisited

The physicists emphasize that their quantum correction terms are not applied ad hoc in an attempt to specifically eliminate the Big Bang singularity. Their work is based on ideas by the theoretical physicist David Bohm, who is also known for his contributions to the philosophy of physics. Starting in the 1950s, Bohm explored replacing classical geodesics (the shortest path between two points on a curved surface) with quantum trajectories.

In their paper, Ali and Das applied these Bohmian trajectories to an equation developed in the 1950s by physicist Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri at Presidency University in Kolkata, India. Raychaudhuri was also Das's teacher when he was an undergraduate student of that institution in the '90s.

Using the quantum-corrected Raychaudhuri equation, Ali and Das derived quantum-corrected Friedmann equations, which describe the expansion and evolution of universe (including the Big Bang) within the context of general relativity. Although it's not a true theory of quantum gravity, the model does contain elements from both quantum theory and general relativity. Ali and Das also expect their results to hold even if and when a full theory of quantum gravity is formulated.

No singularities nor dark stuff

In addition to not predicting a Big Bang singularity, the new model does not predict a "big crunch" singularity, either. In general relativity, one possible fate of the universe is that it starts to shrink until it collapses in on itself in a big crunch and becomes an infinitely dense point once again.

Ali and Das explain in their paper that their model avoids singularities because of a key difference between classical geodesics and Bohmian trajectories. Classical geodesics eventually cross each other, and the points at which they converge are singularities. In contrast, Bohmian trajectories never cross each other, so singularities do not appear in the equations.
In cosmological terms, the scientists explain that the quantum corrections can be thought of as a cosmological constant term (without the need for dark energy) and a radiation term. These terms keep the universe at a finite size, and therefore give it an infinite age. The terms also make predictions that agree closely with current observations of the cosmological constant and density of the universe.

New gravity particle

In physical terms, the model describes the universe as being filled with a quantum fluid. The scientists propose that this fluid might be composed of gravitons—hypothetical massless particles that mediate the force of gravity. If they exist, gravitons are thought to play a key role in a theory of quantum gravity.

In a related paper, Das and another collaborator, Rajat Bhaduri of McMaster University, Canada, have lent further credence to this model. They show that gravitons can form a Bose-Einstein condensate (named after Einstein and another Indian physicist, Satyendranath Bose) at temperatures that were present in the universe at all epochs.

Motivated by the model's potential to resolve the Big Bang singularity and account for dark matter and dark energy, the physicists plan to analyze their model more rigorously in the future. Their future work includes redoing their study while taking into account small inhomogeneous and anisotropic perturbations, but they do not expect small perturbations to significantly affect the results.

"It is satisfying to note that such straightforward corrections can potentially resolve so many issues at once," Das said.


http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html

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Badda-Bing Badda-Bang!.. At least, global warming is here to stay as fact forever...

 

Liberals and progressives are the type that come to mind when considering P.T. Barnum’s famous quote that there is “a sucker born every minute” and they never stop trying to live up to being chumps. In 2008 they bought into the Barack Obama snake oil and after having ample evidence that it was a defective product, came back to buy another batch in 2012. The O-Bots are still living in a constant state of denial about the reality that their illustrious leader is one of history’s greatest bullshit artists and are still waiting for Obama to be Obama. But he is doing exactly that and the great marketing  to sell all of that “hopey changey stuff” was always bogus which is why Advertising Age magazine named Obama as their 2008 Marketer of the Year.

The “new” Obama with the so-called left is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren who advertises herself to be an opponent of too big to fail Wall Street gambling houses – except when she isn’t. Ms. Warren is just another phony and a Trojan Horse for the establishment designed to stick it to liberals only with a sugar coating. She has always been a devious flip-flopper, word-parser and deep cover agent for the elite and now her true nature is on full display. Warren has come out in opposition to efforts to conduct an audit on the grand temple of the moneychangers that is the Federal Reserve.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal “Sen. Warren Opposes ‘Audit the Fed’ Bill”:


A critical question for Sen. Rand Paul’s effort to expand oversight of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate decisions is whether he could win support from the central bank’s leftist critics in Congress.

But one of the Senate’s most prominent liberal Democrats says she’s not on board.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), a member of the Banking Committee and an outspoken critic of the Fed’s oversight of big banks, said she does not support Mr. Paul’s proposed legislation, which she said could have “dangerous” implications for monetary policy.

“I strongly support and continue to press for greater congressional oversight of the Fed’s regulatory and supervisory responsibilities, and I believe the Fed’s balance sheet should be regularly audited – which the law already requires,” Ms. Warren said in an emailed statement. “But I oppose the current version of this bill because it promotes congressional meddling in the Fed’s monetary policy decisions, which risks politicizing those decisions and may have dangerous implications for financial stability and the health of the global economy.”



http://downtrend.com/donn-marten/shes-in-the-bag-too-liberal-heroine-elizabeth-warren-opposes-fed-audit

[Chapel Hill shooting: Craig Stephen Hicks condemned all religions on Facebook prior to 'Muslim mass-murder' arrest]

A 46-year-old Chapel Hill man has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder after three college students were shot and killed Tuesday evening at a condominium complex on Summerwalk Circle in Chapel Hill, authorities said.

Craig Stephen Hicks turned himself in to the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office in Pittsboro following the shooting, which happened in the Finley Forest complex off Barbee Chapel Road shortly after 5 p.m.

Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, of Chapel Hill, Yusor Mohammad, 21, of Chapel Hill, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh, were pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

All three victims were shot in the head, sources said.

The three victims were Muslim, and Hicks is not, according to posts about atheism on his Facebook page. In thousands of posts on social media, many have now questioned whether the victims' Islamic faith was a factor in the shooting.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest civil advocacy group for Muslims, called on law enforcement officials Wednesday to address speculation about a motive for the killings.


http://www.wral.com/three-killed-in-chapel-hill-shooting-46-year-old-man-charged/14438074/



Chapel Hill shooting: Craig Stephen Hicks condemned all religions on Facebook prior to 'Muslim mass-murder' arrest


As tributes poured in for the young family, a Facebook page in Hicks’ name showed that he read paralegal studies at Durham Technical Community College and described himself as a supporter of “Atheists for Equality”.

A regular social media user, his last three posts were a cute dog video about the Pavlov effect, a viral advert for Air New Zealand involving mountain bikes, and a picture from United Atheists of America asking “why radical Christians and radical Muslims are so opposed to each others’ influence when they agree about so many ideological issues”.

TV programmes liked by Hicks include The Atheist Experience, Criminal Minds and Friends, while he describes himself as a fan of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chapel-hill-shooting-craig-stephen-hicks-condemned-all-religions-on-facebook-prior-to-muslim-massmurder-arrest-10038126.html

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First Atheist Terrorist...? "But what about the Crusaaaades!!!11!!11???"

[Now: US Closes Embassy in Yemen – Suspends ALL OPERATIONS]

That was then.

youtube

Now: US Closes Embassy in Yemen – Suspends ALL OPERATIONS



The US Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen has now suspended all operations and closed its doors.

ALL CONSULAR SERVICES AT EMBASSY SANAA ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Updated February 8, 2015

Due to the security situation in Yemen, U.S. Embassy Sanaa has suspended all consular services until further notice. Please check this website frequently for updates.

NOTICE TO ALL U.S. CITIZENS RESIDING IN OR TRAVELING TO YEMEN:

Embassy Sanaa has suspended consular operations in Yemen. If you are a U.S. citizen residing in or traveling to Yemen, the Embassy may be unable to provide assistance or services to you, even if an emergency situation arises. If you must travel to or remain in Yemen, please register with the State Department’s online Smart Traveler Enrollment Program as soon as possible. This will allow Embassy Sanaa to communicate travel alerts and Emergency Messages to you, should the need arise.


http://yemen.usembassy.gov/service.html

https://twitter.com/HuffingtonPost/status/565237551045570562

President Barack Obama will soon give Congress his proposal for a new authorization for the use of military force against Islamic State fighters, and it will place strict limits on the types of U.S. ground forces that can be deployed.

Almost six months after the president began using force against the Islamic State advance in Iraq and then in Syria, the White House is ready to ask Congress for formal permission to continue the effort. Until now, the administration has maintained it has enough authority to wage war through the 2001 AUMF on al-Qaeda, the 2003 AUMF regarding Iraq and Article II of the Constitution. But under pressure from Capitol Hill, the White House has now completed the text of a new authorization and could send it to lawmakers as early as Wednesday. Aides warned that the White House may tweak the final details before releasing the document publicly.

In advance of the release, top White House and State Department officials have been briefing lawmakers and Congressional staffers about their proposed legislation. Two senior Congressional aides relayed the details to me.

The president’s AUMF for the fight against Islamic State would restrict the use of ground troops through a prohibition on “enduring offensive ground operations," but provide several exemptions. First, all existing ground troops, including the 3,000 U.S. military personnel now on the ground in Iraq, would be explicitly excluded from the restrictions. After that, the president would be allowed to deploy new military personnel in several specific roles: advisers, special operations forces, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to assist U.S. air strikes and Combat Search and Rescue personnel.

Under the president’s proposal, the 2002 AUMF that was passed to authorize the Iraq war would be repealed, but the 2001 AUMF that allows the U.S. to fight against al-Qaeda and its associated groups would remain in place.

The new statute would authorize military action against Islamic State and its associated forces, which are defined in the text as organizations fighting alongside the jihadists and engaged in active hostilities. This means the president would be free to attack groups such as the al-Nusra Front or Iraqi Baathist elements who have partnered with the Islamic terrorists in Syria or Iraq. There are no geographic limitations, so the administration would be free to expand the war to other countries.

The president’s proposed AUMF would sunset in three years and would not give the president the unilateral authority to extend the authorization. That means the next president would have to come back to Congress for a new authorization in 2018, if the fight against Islamic State fighters lasts that long.

The White House’s AUMF largely tracks a version introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Democrat Robert Menendez last December, with small tweaks to clarify the definition of Islamic State and its associated groups, and to remove the geographic limits. The president's limits on ground troops are more constricting than what some Republicans had asked for.

The president has crafted the bill so it can engender bipartisan support on Capitol Hill while still preserving an enormous amount of flexibility on the battlefield without micromanagement from Congress, one senior Republican Senate aide said. More Republicans are likely to support an AUMF now that the president has requested it formally, the aide added, warning that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and other hawks will still object to the ground-force limitations.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been resisting a vote on the floor on an AUMF, but now that the president has made his move we can expect floor action in late February or early March, following hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Some Republicans remain skeptical of the president’s actual enthusiasm for an AUMF, as the current ambiguity gives Obama a lot of flexibility in carrying out the war. They will now wait to see if the administration remains active on the issue after the legislation is introduced.

“The president has to deliver Democrat votes on this and he has to show a commitment,” the senior Republican Senate aide said. “He’s actually got to prosecute the fight to get this thing passed. If he doesn’t demonstrate that he actually wants this, you might see Republicans walk.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. In recent days, White House officials have acknowledged that the release of the president’s AUMF proposal is just the beginning of the effort.

“There will be a very robust debate,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week. “Things that aren’t that serious have a hard time getting through the United States Congress these days. So when we’re talking about something as weighty as an authorization to use military force, I would anticipate that it will require substantial effort.”

The last time President Obama asked for an authorization to use military force, it was to strike the Assad regime in response to its use of chemical weapons. Yet it was obvious that the administration wasn’t wholly committed to actually prosecuting that war. He nixed the attacks before Congress weighed in.

This time around, Obama is already engaged in the fight against Islamic State and his team genuinely wants Congressional buy-in. Clearing up the legal ambiguity of the war will be helpful. But it won’t solve the more important conflict between the White House and lawmakers over the scale and effectiveness of the mission.


http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-10/obama-s-islamic-state-war-authorization-limits-u-s-ground-forces

 Over the weekend, hacktivist group Anonymous made true on their promise and began their cyber war on ISIS.

The hackers claim in a video posted Friday that they had taken dozens of accounts on Twitter and Facebook, all of which were used as a recruiting platform for ISIS to gain more numbers in their organization.

But before they made the claim, Anonymous prefaced with an explanation of who exactly is fighting against the terrorist organization in what they call “Operation ISIS.”

They explain that the ones fighting the cyber war are “young, or old, gay or straight… from all races, countries, religions, and ethnicity. United as one, divided by zero.”

At the end of the video, Anonymous leaves one of their threats aimed at ISIS, telling them there is no safe place to hide.

“We will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you…

From now on, no safe place for you online…

You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure…

We own the internet…

We are Anonymous; we are Legion; we do not forgive, we do not forget, Expect us.”


http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/hacker-group-anonymous-strikes-first-blow-against-isis#.VNjHGk3GDbA.twitter

Wiltshire force says it has deleted from its system details of four people who bought copies of magazine from a newsagent



A British police force has apologised after an officer told a newsagent to hand over details of customers who purchased copies of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

Wiltshire police confirmed that one of their officers visited a newsagent in Corsham, Wiltshire, to ask for the names of four customers who ordered the commemorative “survivors’ issue” of the magazine.

The incident came to light when Anne Keat, 77, who bought the special issue from that newsagent, wrote a letter to the Guardian to warn people that wearing badges emblazoned with je suis Charlie may attract police interest.

In the letter, which was published on Monday, Keat wrote: “Your offer of commemorative badges in support of journalistic freedom highlighting je suis Charlie prompts me to suggest a degree of caution following my experience. Tongue in cheek, I asked my helpful newsagents to obtain a copy of the edition of Charlie Hebdo issued after the dreadful massacre in Paris, if indeed a copy was ever available in north Wiltshire.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/09/wiltshire-police-apologise-details-charlie-hebdo-readers


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Sounds like it is too late for the UK...

Years of unending news stories on U.S. government programs of surveillance, rendition and torture have apparently chilled the speech of even top business executives in the United States.

Yesterday, Jim Clifton, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, an iconic U.S. company dating back to 1935, told CNBC that he was worried he might “suddenly disappear” and not make it home that evening if he disputed the accuracy of what the U.S. government is reporting as unemployed Americans.

The CNBC interview came one day after Clifton had penned a gutsy opinion piece on Gallup’s web site, defiantly calling the government’s 5.6 percent unemployment figure “The Big Lie” in the article’s headline. His appearance on CNBC was apparently to walk back the “lie” part of the title and reframe the jobs data as just hopelessly deceptive.

Clifton stated the following on CNBC:

“I think that the number that comes out of BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] and the Department of Labor is very, very accurate. I need to make that very, very clear so that I don’t suddenly disappear. I need to make it home tonight.”

After getting that out of the way, Clifton went on to eviscerate the legitimacy of the cheerful spin given to the unemployment data, telling CNBC viewers that the percent of full time jobs in this country as a percent of the adult population “is the worst it’s been in 30 years.”


http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/02/gallup-ceo-fears-he-might-suddenly-disappear-for-questioning-u-s-jobs-data/


Jobs number misleading: Gallup CEO
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000352013

[... and lots and lots of new taxes:]

... and lots and lots of new taxes:



First, President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works. It’s an overreach that will let a Washington bureaucracy, and not the American people, decide the future of the online world. It’s no wonder that net neutrality proponents are already bragging that it will turn the FCC into the “Department of the Internet.” For that reason, if you like dealing with the IRS, you are going to love the President’s plan.

Second, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet will increase consumers’ monthly broadband bills. The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband. Indeed, states have already begun discussions on how they will spend the extra money. These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.

Third, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet will mean slower broadband for American consumers. The plan contains a host of new regulations that will reduce investment in broadband networks. That means slower Internet speeds. It also means that many rural Americans will have to wait longer for access to quality broadband.

Fourth, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet will hurt competition and innovation and move us toward a broadband monopoly. The plan saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market. As a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices. This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated
monopoly is what we’ll get. We shouldn’t bring Ma Bell back to life in this dynamic, digital age.

Fifth, President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet is an unlawful power grab. Courts have twice thrown out the FCC’s attempts at Internet regulation. There’s no reason to think that the third time will be the charm. Even a cursory look at the plan reveals glaring legal flaws that are sure to mire the agency in the muck of litigation for a long, long time.

And sixth, the American people are being misled about what is in President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet. The rollout earlier in the week was obviously intended to downplay the plan’s massive intrusion into the Internet economy. Beginning next week, I look forward to sharing with the public key aspects of what this plan will actually do.


http://www.fcc.gov/document/comm-pais-stmt-president-obamas-plan-regulate-internet

With the possible exception of Umberto Eco, medieval scholars are not used to getting much media attention. We tend to be a quiet lot (except during the annual bacchanalia we call the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, of all places), poring over musty chronicles and writing dull yet meticulous studies that few will read. Imagine, then, my surprise when within days of the September 11 attacks, the Middle Ages suddenly became relevant.

As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word “crusade” in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked to comment on the fact that the Islamic world has a just grievance against the West. Doesn’t the present violence, they persisted, have its roots in the Crusades’ brutal and unprovoked attacks against a sophisticated and tolerant Muslim world? In other words, aren’t the Crusades really to blame?

Osama bin Laden certainly thinks so. In his various video performances, he never fails to describe the American war against terrorism as a new Crusade against Islam. Ex-president Bill Clinton has also fingered the Crusades as the root cause of the present conflict. In a speech at Georgetown University, he recounted (and embellished) a massacre of Jews after the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and informed his audience that the episode was still bitterly remembered in the Middle East. (Why Islamist terrorists should be upset about the killing of Jews was not explained.) Clinton took a beating on the nation’s editorial pages for wanting so much to blame the United States that he was willing to reach back to the Middle Ages. Yet no one disputed the ex-president’s fundamental premise.

Well, almost no one. Many historians had been trying to set the record straight on the Crusades long before Clinton discovered them. They are not revisionists, like the American historians who manufactured the Enola Gay exhibit, but mainstream scholars offering the fruit of several decades of very careful, very serious scholarship. For them, this is a “teaching moment,” an opportunity to explain the Crusades while people are actually listening. It won’t last long, so here goes.



http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=4461

“I got the ultimatum right then,” [Samuel Forrest] said. “She told me if I kept him then we would get a divorce.”

Attempts to reach the hospital for comment weren’t immediately successful. The baby’s mother, Ruzan Badalyan, told ABC News that she did have a child with Down syndrome and she has left her husband, who has the child, but she declined to elaborate.

Forrest, who’s from Auckland, New Zealand, said he was completely unaware of the hospital practices in Armenia when it came to children.

“What happens when a baby like this is born here, they will tell you that you don’t have to keep them,” he said. “My wife had already decided, so all of this was done behind my back.”


http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/dad-refuses-give-newborn-son-syndrome/story?id=28756025&cid=fb_abcn

http://www.gofundme.com/bringleohome

[But]

There’s wisdom in our founders writing in those documents that help found this nation the notion of freedom of religion, because they understood the need for humility.  They also understood the need to uphold freedom of speech, that there was a connection between freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  For to infringe on one right under the pretext of protecting another is a betrayal of both.

But part of humility is also recognizing in modern, complicated, diverse societies, the functioning of these rights, the concern for the protection of these rights calls for each of us to exercise civility and restraint and judgment.  And if, in fact, we defend the legal right of a person to insult another’s religion, we’re equally obligated to use our free speech to condemn such insults — (applause) — and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with religious communities, particularly religious minorities who are the targets of such attacks.  Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t question those who would insult others in the name of free speech.  Because we know that our nations are stronger when people of all faiths feel that they are welcome, that they, too, are full and equal members of our countries.



http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/5/obama-people-faith-must-confront-insults-religion/

[... bullets"]

... bullets"

Members of the House Armed Services Committee met with Jordan’s King Abdullah Tuesday not long after news broke that ISIS had burned to death a Jordanian pilot captured in the fight against the terrorist group. In a private session with lawmakers, the king showed an extraordinary measure of anger — anger which he expressed by citing American movie icon Clint Eastwood.

“He said there is going to be retribution like ISIS hasn’t seen,” said Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a Marine Corps veteran of two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, who was in the meeting with the king. “He mentioned ‘Unforgiven’ and he mentioned Clint Eastwood, and he actually quoted a part of the movie.”

Hunter would not say which part of “Unforgiven” the king quoted, but noted it was where Eastwood’s character describes how he is going to deliver his retribution.

“He’s angry,” Hunter said of the king. “They’re starting more sorties tomorrow than they’ve ever had. They’re starting tomorrow. And he said, ‘The only problem we’re going to have is running out of fuel and bullets.'”


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/after-isis-execution-angry-king-abdullah-quotes-clint-eastwood-to-u.s.-lawmakers/article/2559770?custom_click=rss

[The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon.]

The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon.


According to documents obtained by Reuters, U.S. companies can stake claims to lunar territory through an existing licensing process for space launches.

The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to “leverage the FAA’s existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis.”

In other words, experts said, Bigelow could set up one of its proposed inflatable habitats on the moon, and expect to have exclusive rights to that territory - as well as related areas that might be tapped for mining, exploration and other activities.

However, the FAA letter noted a concern flagged by the U.S. State Department that “the national regulatory framework, in its present form, is ill-equipped to enable the U.S. government to fulfill its obligations” under a 1967 United Nations treaty, which, in part, governs activities on the moon.

The United Nations Outer Space treaty, in part, requires countries to authorize and supervise activities of non-government entities that are operating in space, including the moon. It also bans nuclear weapons in space, prohibits national claims to celestial bodies and stipulates that space exploration and development should benefit all countries.

    “We didn’t give (Bigelow Aerospace) a license to land on the moon. We’re talking about a payload review that would potentially be part of a future launch license request. But it served a purpose of documenting a serious proposal for a U.S. company to engage in this activity that has high-level policy implications,” said the FAA letter’s author, George Nield, associate administrator for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Transportation.

“We recognize the private sector’s need to protect its assets and personnel on the moon or on other celestial bodies," the FAA wrote in the December letter to Bigelow Aerospace. The company, based in Nevada, is developing the inflatable space habitats. Bigelow requested the policy statement from the FAA, which oversees commercial space transportation in the U.S.

The letter was coordinated with U.S. departments of State, Defense, Commerce, as well as NASA and other agencies involved in space operations. It expands the FAA’s scope from launch licensing to U.S. companies’ planned activities on the moon, a region currently governed only by the nearly 50-year old UN space treaty.

But the letter also points to more legal and diplomatic work that will have to be done to govern potential commercial development of the moon or other extraterrestrial bodies.

“It’s very much a wild west kind of mentality and approach right now,” said John Thornton, chief executive of private owned Astrobotic, a startup lunar transportation and services firm competing in a $30 million Google-backed moon exploration XPrize contest.

Among the pending issues is lunar property and mineral rights, a topic that was discussed and tabled in the 1970s in a sister UN proposal called the Moon Treaty. It was signed by just nine countries, including France, but not the United States.

"It is important to remember that many space-faring nations have national companies that engage in commercial space activities. They will definitely want to be part of the rule making process," said Joanne Gabrynowicz, a professor of space law at University of Mississippi .

    Bigelow Aerospace is expected to begin testing a space habitat aboard the International Space Station this year. The company intends to then operate free-flying orbital outposts for paying customers, including government agencies, research organizations, businesses and even tourists. That would be followed by a series of bases on the moon beginning around 2025, a project estimated to cost about $12 billion.

Company founder Robert Bigelow said he intends to invest $300 million of his own funds, about $2.5 billion in hardware and services from Bigelow Aerospace and raise the rest from private investors.

The FAA’s decision “doesn’t mean that there’s ownership of the moon," Bigelow told Reuters. "It just means that somebody else isn’t licensed to land on top of you or land on top of where exploration and prospecting activities are going on, which may be quite a distance from the lunar station.”

Other companies could soon be testing rights to own what they bring back from the moon. Moon Express, another aspiring lunar transportation company, and also an XPrize contender, intends to return moon dust or rocks on its third mission.

“The company does not see anything, including the Outer Space Treaty, as being a barrier to our initial operations on the moon," said Moon Express co-founder and president Bob Richards. That includes "the right to bring stuff off the moon and call it ours.”


http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/03/us-usa-moon-business-idUSKBN0L715F20150203

ou can tell when a battle has been won.  Read the Pink News or any other gay news site and you will see that there are almost no stories left to report.  A politician in Northern Ireland may be caught expressing an opinion on gay marriage which was the view of all mainstream UK political parties ten years ago.  There might be some gossip about various celebrities (so no different from any other newspapers).  But otherwise gay news sites are reduced to tentatively wondering if Transgender rights are the same as gay rights (the jury is out) and otherwise running mainstream politics stories which strangely favour the Lib Dems while expressing an inherited hostility towards the Tories and Ukip.  This is no tragedy.  It is a demonstration of the fact that after victory people get on with life as normal.

Of course not very far away there are people who take a quite different view of these matters.  In the newspapers today we can see photos of events in the Syrian town of Raqqa.  There Isis have just carried out another ‘execution’ of someone accused of being gay.  The victim – this time a man in his 50s – was thrown off the top floor of a seven-storey building.  He appears to have survived the fall and so was stoned to death by the crowd on the ground.

What are right-thinking people to do about this?  For most of them it isn’t easy because they don’t even know where to begin thinking about this and have been taught to be almost fearful about speaking about it.

I think we can probably say with some confidence that if an evangelical Christian group threw gays off towers in the Deep South, gay media outlets would currently be lambasting the Christian churches for a history of homophobia which had led to this pass.  There would be demands for every prominent and obscure Christian pastor to condemn this brutal act.  And they would.  If a group of group of deeply extrovert Jews did a similar thing we could, I think, expect a similarly stern response.  But the most that can be done with Isis is simply to report the facts and let them sit there, as though they come from nowhere.  As if the traditions of throwing gays off buildings or collapsing walls on them and so on are probably just accretions of colonial times with no connection to any religious tradition.  And so, anyway – back to minor stories about Tom Daley or Clare Balding.

There are those who believe that the fight for gay rights, or indeed human rights in general, stops at the borders of Islam.  Very few people seem to realise that they should not.  Of course we have legions of celebrities who are willing to sign letters calling for posthumous pardons for Alan Turing and others.  But how do these people select their targets?  Well, whenever I ask that question the best answer I hear is that people try to do things in their own societies because that is where they can make most difference.  Well, Alan Turing is dead.  It is hard to think of anything more tokenistic or pointless than ‘pardoning’ a man after he’s been tormented and many years after he has died.  But it is, of course, really really easy.

As for encouraging grass-roots responses on the ground (which is where everybody of course hopes it will come from), for the forseeable future is it hard to see the opportunities for a decent LGBT society to flourish in Isis-held territory.  So where are all these people who profess to care about gay rights?  Their absence suggests to me that agreement has broadly been reached that religious sensitivities trump human rights, as long as the sensitivities in question are Islamic.


http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/02/who-does-the-battle-for-gay-rights-stop-at-the-borders-of-islam/


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