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541  Other / Politics & Society / Family Considers Killing 10-Year-Old Daughter After Mullah Rapes Her In Mosque on: July 22, 2014, 04:39:44 AM


It was bad enough that the alleged rape took place in the sanctity of a mosque and that the accused man was a mullah who invoked the familiar defence that it had been consensual sex.

But the victim was only 10 years old. And there was more: The authorities said her family members openly planned to carry out an honour killing in the case – against the young girl. The mullah offered to marry his victim instead.

This past week, the awful matter became even worse. On Tuesday, local policemen removed the girl from the shelter that had given her refuge and returned her to her family, despite complaints from women’s activists that she was likely to be killed.

The case has broader repercussions. The head of the Women for Afghan Women shelter here where the girl took refuge, Dr. Hassina Sarwari, was at one point driven into hiding by death threats from the girl’s family and other mullahs, who sought to play down the crime by arguing the girl was much older than 10. One militia commander sent Sarwari threatening texts and an ultimatum to return the girl to her family. The doctor said she now wanted to flee Afghanistan.

The head of the women’s affairs office in Kunduz, Nederah Geyah, who actively campaigned to have the young girl protected from her family and the mullah prosecuted, resigned May 21 and moved to another part of the country.

The case itself would just be an aberrant atrocity, except that the resulting support for the mullah, and for the girl’s family and its honour killing plans, have become emblematic of a broader failure to help Afghan women who have been victims of violence.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/20/family-under-pressure-to-kill-10-year-old-daughter-after-mullah-rapes-her-in-afghanistan-mosque/

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http://youtu.be/E2VCwBzGdPM


542  Other / Politics & Society / Welcome To The Pink Police State: Regime Change In America on: July 18, 2014, 04:13:55 AM



http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/17/welcome-to-the-pink-police-state-regime-change-in-america/

543  Other / Politics & Society / Malaysian Plane 'Shot Down With 295 On Board' in UKRAINE on: July 17, 2014, 04:05:01 PM


http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board

544  Other / Politics & Society / Pew poll shows atheists are America’s second-least popular religious group... on: July 17, 2014, 01:25:06 AM


Jews, Catholics and evangelical Christians are viewed warmly by the American public. When asked to rate each group on a “feeling thermometer” ranging from 0 to 100 – where 0 reflects the coldest, most negative possible rating and 100 the warmest, most positive rating – all three groups receive an average rating of 60 or higher (63 for Jews, 62 for Catholics and 61 for evangelical Christians). And 44% of the public rates all three groups in the warmest part of the scale (67 or higher).

Buddhists, Hindus and Mormons receive neutral ratings on average, ranging from 48 for Mormons to 53 for Buddhists. The public views atheists and Muslims more coldly; atheists receive an average rating of 41, and Muslims an average rating of 40. Fully 41% of the public rates Muslims in the coldest part of the thermometer (33 or below), and 40% rate atheists in the coldest part.

http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-religious-groups/


545  Other / Politics & Society / Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet on: July 15, 2014, 11:00:12 PM


The secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.” The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call.

The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive. Previously disclosed documents have detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts,” “false flag operations,” “honey traps” and psychological manipulation to target online activists, monitor visitors to WikiLeaks, and spy on YouTube and Facebook users.

But as the U.K. Parliament today debates a fast-tracked bill to provide the government with greater surveillance powers, one which Prime Minister David Cameron has justified as an “emergency” to “help keep us safe,” a newly released top-secret GCHQ document called “JTRIG Tools and Techniques” provides a comprehensive, birds-eye view of just how underhanded and invasive this unit’s operations are. The document—available in full here—is designed to notify other GCHQ units of JTRIG’s “weaponised capability” when it comes to the dark internet arts, and serves as a sort of hacker’s buffet for wreaking online havoc.


https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/


546  Other / Politics & Society / Obama administration says the world’s servers are ours on: July 15, 2014, 04:32:56 PM



US says global reach needed to gut "fraudsters," "hackers," and "drug dealers."


Global governments, the tech sector, and scholars are closely following a legal flap in which the US Justice Department claims that Microsoft must hand over e-mail stored in Dublin, Ireland.

In essence, President Barack Obama's administration claims that any company with operations in the United States must comply with valid warrants for data, even if the content is stored overseas. It's a position Microsoft and companies like Apple say is wrong, arguing that the enforcement of US law stops at the border.

A magistrate judge has already sided with the government's position, ruling in April that "the basic principle that an entity lawfully obligated to produce information must do so regardless of the location of that information." Microsoft appealed to a federal judge, and the case is set to be heard on July 31.

In its briefs filed last week, the US government said that content stored online doesn't enjoy the same type of Fourth Amendment protections as data stored in the physical world. The government cited (PDF) the Stored Communications Act (SCA), a President Ronald Reagan-era regulation:



Overseas records must be disclosed domestically when a valid subpoena, order, or warrant compels their production. The disclosure of records under such circumstances has never been considered tantamount to a physical search under Fourth Amendment principles, and Microsoft is mistaken to argue that the SCA provides for an overseas search here. As there is no overseas search or seizure, Microsoft’s reliance on principles of extra-territoriality and comity falls wide of the mark.



Microsoft said the decision has wide-ranging, global implications. "Congress has not authorized the issuance of warrants that reach outside US territory,” Microsoft’s attorneys wrote. “The government cannot seek and a court cannot issue a warrant allowing federal agents to break down the doors of Microsoft’s Dublin facility."

The Redmond, Washington-based company said its consumer trust is low in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations. It told the US judge presiding over the case that "[t]he government's position in this case further erodes that trust and will ultimately erode the leadership of US technologies in the global market."

Companies like Apple, AT&T, Cisco, and Verizon agree. Verizon said (PDF) that a decision favoring the US would produce "dramatic conflict with foreign data protection laws." Apple and Cisco said (PDF) that the tech sector is put "at risk" of being sanctioned by foreign governments and that the US should seek cooperation with foreign nations via treaties, a position the US said is not practical.

The Justice Department said global jurisdiction is necessary in an age when "electronic communications are used extensively by criminals of all types in the United States and abroad, from fraudsters to hackers to drug dealers, in furtherance of violations of US law."

The e-mail the US authorities are seeking from Microsoft concerns a drug-trafficking investigation. Microsoft often stores e-mail on servers closest to the account holder.

The senior counsel for the Irish Supreme Court wrote in a recent filing that a US-Ireland "Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty" was the "efficient" avenue (PDF) for the US government to obtain the e-mail held on Microsoft's external servers.

Orin Kerr, a Fourth Amendment expert at George Washington University, said, "The scope of the privacy laws around the world is now a very important question, and this is the beginning of what may be a lot of litigation on the question. So it's a big case to watch."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/obama-administration-says-the-worlds-servers-are-ours/


547  Other / Politics & Society / Australian judge says incest may no longer be a taboo on: July 11, 2014, 06:44:22 PM



Judge in Australia says incest may no longer be a taboo and the only reason it is criminal is potential birth abnormalities, which can be solved by abortion



A judge in Australia has been criticised after saying incest may no longer be a taboo and that the community may now accept consensual sex between adult siblings.

Judge Garry Neilson, from the district court in the state of New South Wales, likened incest to homosexuality, which was once regarded as criminal and "unnatural" but is now widely accepted.

He said incest was now only a crime because it may lead to abnormalities in offspring but this rationale was increasingly irrelevant because of the availability of contraception and abortion.
"A jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now 'available', not having [a] sexual partner," the judge said.
"If this was the 1950s and you had a jury of 12 men there, which is what you'd invariably have, they would say it's unnatural for a man to be interested in another man or a man being interested in a boy. Those things have gone."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10958728/Australian-judge-says-incest-may-no-longer-be-a-taboo.html

548  Other / Politics & Society / SUPREME COURT'S FAVORABILITY INCREASES AFTER HOBBY LOBBY DECISION on: July 11, 2014, 06:36:08 PM

In the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, Americans are closely divided in how they view the Court, but there has been a slight improvement in the last week.

Although the Hobby Lobby decision was unpopular with Democrats, whose image of the Court shifted from mixed to negative after the ruling, Republicans (who were more positive about the Court to begin with) became even more positive.   Favorable ratings of the Supreme Court jumped six points among Republicans, while unfavorable views rose seven points among Democrats.

But the greatest change in perception of the Supreme Court came from independents.  Last week, independents were more unfavorable than favorable, this week, a majority of independents are favorable.



https://today.yougov.com/news/2014/07/09/supreme-court/

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 Grin Cheesy Grin


549  Other / Politics & Society / Another Orwell Prediction Comes True… ‘Shadow Parents’ Now Government Approved on: July 11, 2014, 05:36:36 PM



http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/named-persons-spies-in-the-family-home/15261#.U8Aeh_ldV8H




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“Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen– There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.”

Orwell’s 1984




550  Other / Politics & Society / Rhode Island may use DNA to track students; Federal bill passes House on: July 09, 2014, 03:17:56 PM


A bill to reauthorize federal funding for newborn DNA collection passed the U.S. House of Representatives by voice vote—meaning without a vote record—on June 26.

DNA pleaseCurrently, the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007 mandates collecting blood samples from every newborn by heel prick. Labs then screen the samples for diseases. While many states allow for discarding the samples at that point, this bill would collect each newborn’s DNA in federal databases for subsequent medical research and, in one state, tracking its owners’ education progress.

Neither existing law nor the reauthorization bill, which extends the legislation until 2018, requires informed consent from parents. The Senate approved similar legislation in January.

“It’s not appropriate for the government to know that much about any human being, much less a young innocent citizen whose parents don’t know it’s being collected,” said Jane Robbins, a senior fellow of the American Principles Project.

In most states, parents may request a screening exemption, but only for religious reasons. In Nebraska and West Virginia, parents may not refuse screening.

$50 Million From Feds

So far, Rhode Island appears to be the only state connecting a child’s DNA to his state education record, Robbins said. But in return for federal funds, a number of states plan to link children’s health data with their student records, she noted.

In 2011, Rhode Island received a $50 million Race To The Top Early Learning grant from the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services.

In their grant application, the Rhode Island Department of Education said it would link the state’s newborn DNA database, KIDSNET, to the state’s K-12 database.

“Another key asset is that Rhode Island provides universal newborn screening to all infants and enters the data into KIDSNET, a public health data system that is used by primary care providers to identify the need for follow-up on areas of concern,” the 2011 grant application reads. “This database will be linked to Rhode Island’s PK-20 database as we develop the Rhode Island Early Learning Data System using a unique child identifier so that there is the ability to track progress and child outcomes over time.”

Despite its contract with the federal government, RDOE says it will not use newborn screening data.

“We will link our data with some screening data from the R.I. Department of Health; it is our understanding, however, that the Department of Health does not collect DNA samples,” said Elliott Krieger, a department spokesman, in an email. “In any event, no such data will be linked to data from this agency, nor would we use any such data.”

Robbins said promises would be more assuring if they were backed up with state privacy laws positively forbidding such data collection.

“There is no reason for them to have [DNA] information, certainly when parents are not required to consent,” she said.

http://eagnews.org/rhode-island-may-use-dna-to-track-students-federal-bill-passes-house/

551  Other / Politics & Society / “What are we going to do for the people who are here who are starving already?” on: July 07, 2014, 08:31:09 PM


Murrieta Immigration Rally black americans debating July 4th



“If somebody brought six children to your house and you ain’t got no job, are you going to take them in?… Are you going to try to find out where they came from? Are you going to try to send them back?… What are we going to do for the people who are here who are starving already?… Why would we add to the problem?”


“It’s just too much. We already got starvation, kids walking without with no shoes. We are already taking that on in America. We don’t need other people’s kids to bring more problems.”






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The O's cheerleaders and members of "La raza" will call them uncle tom in 3... 2...  Grin


552  Local / Hors-sujet / Un trafic de bitcoins démantelé pour la première fois en France - Libération on: July 07, 2014, 03:18:21 PM


Deux personnes ont été mises en examen. Au total, 388 bitcoins ont été saisis, pour une valeur de 200 000 euros.
Un trafic présumé de bitcoins vient d’être démantelé dans le sud de la France, une première en Europe pour cette monnaie virtuelle dont la réputation sulfureuse suscite une vive inquiétude au sein des autorités financières. Comme toute monnaie virtuelle, ont souligné les enquêteurs de la gendarmerie lundi, à Foix, les bitcoins présentent «un risque élevé de dérives criminelles» compte tenu de «l’opacité» qui entoure leur fonctionnement et de «l’absence complète de régulation par les acteurs du marché monétaire».

Les gendarmes de la section de recherches de Midi-Pyrénées ont frappé la semaine dernière, les 2 et 3 juillet, interpellant trois personnes et procédant à des perquisitions à Cannes, Nice, Toulouse et Bruxelles, où l’un des suspects possède une maison. Ils agissaient sur commission rogatoire d’une juge d’instruction de Foix, Catherine Ostengo, chargée depuis avril d’une enquête pour «exercice illégal d’opérations de banque» notamment.

Leur coup de filet a permis de mettre un terme à l’activité d’une plate-forme internet «illicite» d’échange de bitcoins, ont-ils expliqué lors d’une conférence de presse à Foix. L’animateur du site, un Tunisien de 27 ans déjà condamné pour escroquerie en bande organisée, est poursuivi pour «travail dissimulé, exercice illégal de la profession de banquier, blanchiment à titre habituel et offre illégale de jeux en ligne». Son complice présumé, un Français de 36 ans présenté comme le «fournisseur» des bitcoins, est mis en examen pour «exercice illégal de la profession de banquier» notamment. La compagne de l’animateur du site, également interpellée, n’a pas été poursuivie.

L’enquête a permis de déterminer que le site utilisé pour les échanges «ne bénéficiait d’aucun agrément de l’Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), organe de supervision français de la banque et de l’assurance».

«Il s’agit là du premier démantèlement au niveau européen d’une telle plate-forme illicite d’échange de bitcoins», a assuré la gendarmerie.

http://www.liberation.fr/societe/2014/07/07/un-trafic-de-bitcoins-demantele-pour-la-premiere-fois-en-france_1058938

553  Other / Politics & Society / Children of same-sex couples are happier and healthier than peers, research show on: July 07, 2014, 03:05:22 PM



http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/07/children-of-same-sex-couples-are-happier-and-healthier-than-peers-research-shows/

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The science is settled...  Cheesy

554  Other / Politics & Society / How does the Red Cross spend donor money? It’s a “trade secret” on: July 06, 2014, 05:01:29 PM


The Secretive American Red Cross


According to ProPublica in a newly-published article: “Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy? The charity has hired a fancy law firm to fight a public request we filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a ‘trade secret’…As we’ve reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent. The Red Cross did give some information about Sandy spending to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been investigating the charity. But the Red Cross declined our request to disclose the details.”

[...]
On May 12, 2010 I reported for CBS News on how 5 major nonprofits, including the American Red Cross, had spent funds intended for Haiti earthquake victims four months after the disaster. I noted that enough aid had been raised to give each displaced family a check for $37,000 but thousands of Haitians were still going hungry and living under flimsy shelters. I learned that, to a large degree, the charities can’t tell anyone with specificity where exactly all the money goes. They can give general figures such as, ‘we’ve given out 10,000 meals’ or ‘we’ve distributed 10,000 bottles of water,’ but I wondered why there wasn’t a spreadsheet that explains how many bottles or meals were shipped to which refugee camp and when. It seems pretty basic. After all, somebody has to know. A lot of the funds that donors intended for “emergency relief” were, in fact, still sitting in funds unspent. Some charity officials privately acknowledged that many charities receiving a giant influx of donations in the wake of a giant disaster are ill-equipped to produce long term recovery programs. They sometimes find themselves frantically trying to figure out how to spend all the money in a responsible way that serves the mission.

http://sharylattkisson.com/the-secretive-american-red-cross/

555  Other / Politics & Society / The NSA Is Targeting Users of Privacy Services, Leaked Code Shows on: July 04, 2014, 12:40:20 AM


The NSA Is Targeting Users of Privacy Services, Leaked Code Shows


If you use Tor or any of a number of other privacy services online or even visit their web sites to read about the services, there’s a good chance your IP address has been collected and stored by the NSA, according to top-secret source code for a program the NSA uses to conduct internet surveillance.

There’s also a good chance you’ve been tagged for simply reading news articles about these services published by Wired and other sites.

This is according to code, obtained and analyzed by journalists and others in Germany, which for the first time reveals the extent of some of the wide-spread tracking the NSA conducts on people using or interested in using privatizing tools and services—a list that includes journalists and their sources, human rights activists, political dissidents living under oppressive countries and many others who have various reasons for needing to shield their identity and their online activity.

The source code, for the NSA system known as XKeyscore, is used in the collection and analysis of internet traffic, and reveals that simply searching the web for privacy tools online is enough to get the NSA to label you an “extremist” and target your IP address for inclusion in its database.

But the NSA’s analysis isn’t limited to tracking metadata like IP addresses. The system also conducts deep-packet inspection of emails that users exchange with the Tor anonymizing service to obtain information that Tor conveys to users of so-called Tor “bridges.”

Legal experts say the widespread targeting of people engaged in constitutionally protected activity like visiting web sites and reading articles, raises questions about the legal authority the NSA is using to track users in this way.

“Under [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] there are numerous places where it says you shouldn’t be targeting people on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment,” says Kurt Opsahl, deputy general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “I can’t see how this activity could have been properly authorized under FISA. This is suggesting then that they have come up with some other theory of authorizing this.”

The findings also contradict NSA longstanding claims that its surveillance targets only those suspected of engaging in activity that threatens national security.

“They say ‘We’re not doing indiscriminate searches,’ but this is indiscriminate,” Opsahl notes. “It’s saying that anyone who is looking for those various [services] are suspicious persons.”

He notes that the NSA actions are at clear odds with statements from former U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and others in the government about the importance of privacy services and tools to protect First Amendment freedoms.

“One hand of the govnerment is promoting tools for human rights advocates and political dissidents to be able to communicate and is championing that activity,” he says. “While another branch of the government is determining that that activity is suspicious and requires tracking. This may intimidate people from using these very important tools and have a chilling effect that could undermine the free expression of ideas throughout the world.”

The findings were uncovered and published by Norddeutscher Rundfunk and Westdeutscher Rundfunk—two public radio and TV broadcasting organizations in Germany. An English-language analysis of the findings, along with parts of the source code for the XKeyscore program—was also published by Jacob Appelbaum, a well-known American developer employed by the Tor Project, and two others in Germany who play significant roles in Tor.


http://www.wired.com/2014/07/nsa-targets-users-of-privacy-services/

556  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Kuwait finance firm suggests trading oil in bitcoins on: July 03, 2014, 12:17:00 AM




Oil producing countries, particularly in the GCC, could benefit if they would use bitcoin in oil trading, instead of dollars, Markaz’ research department argues.


 

 There have been a number of proposals in the past to trade oil and gas in another currency than the US dollar, for political as well as for monetary reasons. Some OPEC member states not particularly friendly to the US, whenever there was a crisis of some sort, have been making repeated noise about denominating their price for hydrocarbons in another than the US currency, but have never quite managed to agree on an alternative.

The most active countries today that pursue a no-dollars-for-oil policy are Iran, which encourages all trading partners to pay for oil in a currency other than the US dollar, and Russia, whose flagship company Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, recently told oil importers from China and Japan that they should pay their bills not with greenbacks, but preferably with yen, yuan or even ruble.

But a new report (Disruptive Technology: Bitcoins, Currency Reinvented?) recently issued by Kuwait-based investment banking and asset management firm Kuwait Financial Centre, also known as Markaz, even goes a step further: Oil producing countries, particularly in the GCC, could benefit if they would use bitcoin in oil trading, Markaz’ research department argues.

This comes a bit as a surprise, since bitcoin as an unregulated and — as of now — highly volatile cryptocurrency, has no manifestation other than bits and bytes stored somewhere in the virtual space and seems not to be the most reliable means of trade for the world’s most sought-after commodity.  The idea is not new, though: There has been an Internet debate about one year ago on what would happen if the Opec would adopt bitcoin as transaction currency. The outcome: Firstly, the US would certainly not sit and watch the dollar losing its petrocurrency status and would do whatever needs to be done to defend the greenback; secondly, China wouldn’t allow it as it wants the yuan to be a petrocurrency as well; thirdly, in the moment oil and gas gets priced in bitcoins, it would be exposed to the cryptocurrency’s extreme volatility with massive consequences and fiscal uncertainties for petroleum-exporting countries. Speculators had a wide and anonymous field to play.

So what did Markaz actually mean? They basically said that using bitcoins would save payment transaction costs for oil exporting countries, because sending and receiving bitcoins of any denomination is just a matter of seconds and costs next to nothing. For the clearance of oil payments through conventional banks, exporting countries currently have to wait one to three days and pay the usual banking fees.

But just for saving some transaction time and costs, would the GCC, where the oil industry currently accounts for 90% of exports and 75% of government revenue, as per Markaz’ own research, really be wise to channel these massive money flows through bitcoin clearing houses, which are, as per their nature, unregulated, work with open source codes and can get — at recent history shows — easily hacked and digitally robbed? This is open for debate.

Before any barrel will ever be paid for in bitcoins, it will be the Chinese yuan that has taken on the role as the dollar’s challenger. China already pays Russia’s and Iran’s oil in yuan and is busy setting up yuan clearing houses in major financial centres all over the world to facilitate the global money flow of its currency. This is, for now, probably a much better solution until the world knows what will rally happen to bitcoin.

http://www.gulf-times.com/eco.-bus.%20news/256/details/398622/kuwait-finance-firm-suggests-trading-oil-in-bitcoins



557  Other / Politics & Society / Chase Bank Asks Employees If They Are “Allies of The LGBT Community”… on: July 02, 2014, 02:42:40 PM


A second source has confirmed that JP Morgan Chase has asked each of its employees whether they are “an ally of the LGBT community,” which employees have taken as a veiled threat.

Each year JP Morgan Chase sends its employees a survey asking questions related to management and other non-controversial issues. A longtime Chase employee told Professor Robert George of Princeton that the survey this year included the following questions for the first time:

Are you:
1) A person with disabilities;
2) A person with children with disabilities;
3) A person with a spouse/domestic partner with disabilities;
4) A member of the LGBT community.
5) An ally of the LGBT community, but not personally identifying as LGBT.


This employee was alarmed to receive the final question. If he answered no, he feared, he would be opened up to criticism that may affect his employment. Only a few months ago Brendan Eich was hounded out of the CEO role at Mozilla for not supporting LGBT marriage.

The employee told Professor George he fears for his job:
This survey wasn't anonymous. You had to enter your employee ID. With the way things are going and the fact that LGBT rights are being viewed as pretty much tantamount to the civil rights movement of the mid 50s to late 60s, not selecting that option is essentially saying "I'm not an ally of civil rights;" which is a vague way to say "I'm a bigot." The worry among many of us is that those who didn't select that poorly placed, irrelevant option will be placed on the "you can fire these people first" list.

After posting the item on the law blog Mirror of Justice, Professor George received skeptical emails and Facebook postings, so he came back to Mirror of Justice with a second source.

This source told him, “I just wanted to confirm the Chase employee survey. It did have the last two options about being an LBGT ally. I have worked for Chase for [a number of] years and was blown away by this question. I have no idea what they were thinking when they asked that. If this is posted, please spare my identity.”

Breitbart News contacted the media relations office of JP Morgan Chase, and spokesman Loretta Russo said, “We do not comment on internal surveys.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/01/Chase-Bank-Revealed-as-Bank-Hounding-Employees-about-LGBT-Support

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Be docile so the pink mafia can leave you alone  Wink



558  Other / Politics & Society / Iraq’s Christians See Putin As Savior on: June 29, 2014, 07:36:51 PM



http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/29/iraq-s-christians-see-putin-as-savior.html


559  Other / Politics & Society / ICLOAK ™ Stik - Easy, Powerful, Online Privacy for YOU - Kickstarter on: June 26, 2014, 10:57:56 PM




https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/icloak/icloak-tm-stik-easy-powerful-online-privacy-for-yo


560  Other / Politics & Society / Vox, derp, and the intellectual stagnation of the Left on: June 26, 2014, 03:31:42 PM


“explanatory journalism”

[...]
Meanwhile, two things are particularly striking about the current Democratic agenda. The first is that it’s so tired. Raising the minimum wage, raising taxes on high earners, tightening environmental regulation — these are all ideas from the ’60s. The second is that nobody on the left seems to be aware of it.

One of the most striking examples of this epistemic closure among liberal writers are their forays into “explanatory journalism.” The idea that many people might like clear, smart explanations of what’s going on in the news certainly has merit. But the tricky thing with “explaining” the news is that in order to do so fairly, you have to be able to do the mental exercise of detaching your ideological priors from just factually explaining what is going on. Of course, as non-liberal readers of the press have long been well aware, this has always been a problem for most journalists. And yet, the most prominent “explanatory journalism” venture has been strikingly bad at actually explaining things in a non-biased way.

I am, of course, talking about Vox, the hot new venture of liberal wonkblogger extraordinaire Ezra Klein. It was already a bad sign that his starting lineup was mostly made up of ideological liberals. And a couple months in, it’s clear that much of what passes for “explanation” on Vox is really partisan commentary in question-and-answer disguise. …

Increasingly, liberal writers have been drinking their own kool-aid. They really believe they are the “reality based community.” When they talk about conservatives they respect, they qualify their praise with “The smart conservative so and so…” — with such “he’s one of the good ones” asterisks betraying the wholly unwarranted assumption on the left that the vast majority of conservatives are crazy, stupid, or both.

And yet, liberals themselves are very rarely capable of passing an Ideological Turing Test. They believe not only that an honest evaluation of the world lines up with their worldview (everyone does, to some extent), but have also forgotten how to differentiate between the honest evaluations and their worldview, or that doing so is even possible, or that their worldview is based on very idiosyncratic moral priors.


http://theweek.com/article/index/263711/vox-derp-and-the-intellectual-stagnation-of-the-left


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