Lady Gaga will begin her third concert tour, "The Born This Way Ball", on April 27 at the Olympic Stadium in Seoul.
The show had an initial age rating of 12 and older but the Korea
Media Rating Board, a state watchdog, has adjusted it upwards, said
event organiser Hyundai Card.
"Our company will respect the board's decision and refund all
ticketholders younger than 18," a Hyundai Card official told AFP,
declining to be named.
Some religious groups in South Korea have opposed the concert, saying
Lady Gaga has advocated homosexuality and performed in an explicitly
sexual manner.
"Our Christian community needs concerted action to stop young people
from being infected with homosexuality and pornography," the Korean
Association of Church Communication said in a statement.
I think people should be banned from seeing Lady Gaga because she embodies everything that is wrong about the current music scene- the kind of manufactured, vulgar, pop kitsch that is as exciting and as original as sliced white bread.
(Sidebar: I would like to apologise to white bread. It didn't deserve to be compared to the sucktastic Lady Gaga. It has proven its delicious worth. Lady Gaga could never do that.)
But imagine for a moment a white American Christian group complaining about Lady Gaga's intentional vulgarity.
The Chinese workers
who often spend more than 60 hours per week assembling iPhones and
iPads will have their overtime curbed and their hourly wages raised
after a labour auditor hired by Apple Inc. inspected their factories.
The Washington-based Fair Labor Association says Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.,
the Taiwanese company that runs the factories, is committing to
reducing weekly work time to the legal Chinese maximum of 49 hours.
That limit is routinely ignored in factories throughout China. Auret van Heerden, the CEO of the FLA, said Hon Hai is the first company to commit to following the legal standard.
Apple's and FLA's own guidelines call for work weeks of 60 hours or less.
The
FLA found that many workers at the Hon Hai factories want to work even
more overtime, so they can make more money. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn, told the FLA that it will raise hourly salaries to compensate workers for the reduced hours.
Heerden said that it's common to find workers in developing countries looking for more overtime, rather than less.
"They're often single, they're young, and there's not much to do, so frankly they'd just rather work and save," he said.
The
FLA auditors visited three Foxconn complexes in February and March:
Guanlan and Longhua near the coastal manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, and
Chengdu in the inland province of Sichuan. They employ a total of
178,000 workers, with an average age of 23.
Average monthly salaries at the factories
ranged from $360 to $455. Foxconn recently raised salaries by up to 25
per cent in the second major salary hike in less than two years.
Foxconn employs 1.2 million workers in China to assemble products not just for Apple, but for Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and other pillars of the U.S. technology industry.
An estimated up to 2000 concerned parents from a wide range of ethnic
and faith communities demonstrated outside Ontario’s legislature
Thursday demanding the defeat of the Liberal government’s anti-bullying
Bill 13. The speakers and boisterous, chanting crowd, many with homemade
signs, expressed fears of a dangerous loss of freedoms from the
government bill and its imposition on all Ontario schools of a sex
education culture radically opposed to their own beliefs.
Iran is helping its ally Syria defy Western sanctions by providing a vessel to ship Syrian oil to a state-run company in China, potentially giving the government of President Bashar al-Assad a financial boost worth an estimated $80 million.
Iran, itself a target of Western sanctions, is among
Syria's closest allies and has promised to do all it can to support
Assad, recently praising his handling of the year-long uprising against
Assad in which thousands have been killed.
China has also shielded Assad from foreign
intervention, vetoing two Western-backed resolutions at the United
Nations over the bloodshed, and is not bound by Western sanctions against Syria, its oil sector and state oil firm Sytrol.
"The Syrians planned to sell the oil directly to the
Chinese but they could not find a vessel," said an industry source who
added that he had been asked to help Sytrol execute the deal but did not
take part.
The source named the Chinese buyer as Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp, a state-run company hit by U.S. sanctions in January.
North Korea
fired two short-range missiles off its west coast on Thursday believed
to be part of a test to upgrade capabilities, said news reports
published on Friday, quoting South Korean military officials.
North Korea has raised tensions in recent weeks by
announcing it would launch a rocket to put a satellite into orbit, but
regional powers are urging Pyongyang to drop the plan, saying it would
violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.
North Korea launched two short-range missiles believed
to be surface-to-ship missiles from its west coast Thursday morning, South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted government officials as saying.
"The launch is believed to be to upgrade missile capabilities and not related directly to the North's long-range missile launch," the newspaper quoted a military official as saying.
China has installed a silent alarm system inside every house
in a border town as part of its strengthened crackdown on fugitives from
North Korea, a report said on Friday. The system is designed to let residents secretly send a signal to
police if North Korean escapees come to their houses and ask for help,
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.
It can transmit dialogue between the owner of a house and visitors,
and Chinese authorities plan to expand it into other areas bordering the
North, the agency said.
“If you push the red button on the wall, a signal goes directly to a police station,” Yonhap quoted one man as saying.
The man said he saw the device during a recent trip to his relative in the Yanbian border area in northeastern Jilin province.
Yonhap said China had stepped up a crackdown in border areas since
South Korea criticised its repatriation of dozens of North Korean
refugees in February and this month.
Almost all those fleeing the North cross first to China, where they
face repatriation if caught. Many hide out and then travel on to
Southeast Asian nations before flying to the South for resettlement.
Seoul has repeatedly urged Beijing to treat fugitives from the North
as refugees and not to send them back, saying they face harsh
punishment. China says they are economic migrants and not refugees
deserving protection.
Omar Khadr is just a few steps away from returning to Canada.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he will soon be signing
papers that would clear the way to return the convicted terrorist.
“I don't have a specific timeline for signing it, but once those
arrangements have been made, we will approve the transfer to Canada,”
Panetta told an international press conference in Ottawa on Tuesday.
“It's an important step. We have others there that we would like to
be able to move as well, but the steps we've taken here and the
precautions we've taken are an example we would like to follow in the
future.”
Khadr was taken to Guantanamo Bay, an American military detention
camp, after he killed a U.S. medic in Afghanistan when he was 15.
He pleaded guilty last October to murder, attempted murder, supporting terrorism, spying and conspiracy.
The 25-year-old signed a plea deal and is supposed to serve eight
years behind bars, but he's allowed to serve seven of them in Canada.
It is expected Khadr will serve only a short time in a Canadian prison before being released.
Once the American officials sign the papers, it will be up to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to repatriate Khadr.
As the saying goes, “If you can't stand the heat, stay
out of the kitchen.” Only in this case, things really heated up between
edgy neighbors India and Pakistan when professional chefs from both countries competed in Foodistan, a first of its kind cook-off show which concluded Wednesday night following its 26 episode run.
Foodistan brought together 16 professional chefs from India and Pakistan to face off in a battle of national cuisines. Think Iron Chef with a geo-political edge.
The show, which aired simultaneously on India's New Delhi Television's lifestyle channel NDTV Good Times and Pakistan's GEO TV network, has been well received. On NDTV
Good Times it drew between eight and 10 million viewers, making it one
of the niche channel's bigger shows, according to NDTV Lifestyle CEO Smeeta Chakrabarti.
But the significance of Foodistan
goes beyond audience figures and market share. India and Pakistan have
fought three wars since independence from British rule in 1947 and
tensions between the two nations are notoriously high. In this context, Foodistan can be seen as a pop cultural attempt to bring the two nations together. As the show's tag line put it, in the land of Foodistan "borders cease to exist and food emerges as the winner in this Indo-Pak clash."
“When
we were developing the show, we looked at what brought the two
countries together and realized that, like cricket (which has a long
tradition of fierce rivarly between the two nations), food was integral
to both cultures,” Chakrabarti told The Hollywood Reporter.
The
eight member teams from both countries were given challenges to create
dishes in a limited time frame which were then awarded points by the
judges, with Foodistan pushing both sides to prove who could really serve a better kebab or biryani.
If we could put down our guns and eat biryani, the world might be a better place.
Pope Benedict and Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel
Castro, both octogenarians, joked about their age in a brief meeting on
Wednesday and then Castro popped the question: so what do you do?
The two world figures chatted for about 30 minutes at
the Vatican embassy in Havana near the end of the pope's three-day visit
to Cuba, where he called for greater freedom and a bigger role for the
Catholic Church in the communist-led nation.
A number of families in Central Butte, Sask., have
taken their children out of the local school claiming not enough has
been done to deal with bullying among students.
"I moved out of my
Mom's house so I could get my education," Dakota Songer told CBC News
about her families decision two years ago to have her attend school in
Moose Jaw.
Songer, 18, explained she was a victim of bullying and,
despite complaints and an informative talk by RCMP who visited the
school, the behaviour did not end.
"I walked into class late one
day and the students had put a picture of me up on the board and were
defacing me in front of my whole entire class," Songer said, adding the
teacher appeared to be condoning the activity. "My teacher was laughing
along with them. And that was the last day I was at school."
An examination of the goings-on in Central Butte have revealed three other families with similar stories.
In
the last few months the families have pulled nine youngsters out of the
school. Six are being driven 40 kilometres every day to attend school
in Chaplin.
The others are taking part in home schooling.
Bobby
Torrie said her 13-year-old son, who has epilepsy was taunted and
physically assaulted prior to them pulling him out of the school.
Torrie said when they took their concerns to officials at the school and the division, they were not taken seriously.
"We'd
get answers like, 'We're dealing with these kids. We're talking to the
kids,'" Torrie said. "But they're not. I don't see it."
"Escape From Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West" (Viking), by Blaine Harden:
Hitler's death camps, Stalin's gulag and Pol Pot's killing fields are
now the stuff of history, but the unspeakable horrors they evoke still
endure in the labour camps of North Korea.
However, the veil of
secrecy that has kept the camps off the world's radar screen may now be
less opaque thanks to the courage of a young man who was born in the
harshest of those prisons and at age 23 miraculously escaped and made
his way to the West.
Shin Dong-hyuk's story, told by veteran
journalist Blaine Harden, details how Shin was bred by camp guards who
selected his mother and father. Shin was tortured and starved, taught to
inform on family members and classmates, and forced to watch the public
execution of his mother and older brother.
Shin learned during an
interrogation that his father was imprisoned because two of his 11
brothers had fled to the South during the Korean War. Shin had to remain
in captivity because his father's sins against the state had left him
with tainted blood.
He had no knowledge of the world outside Camp
14, a 108-square-mile compound encircled by electrified barbed wire that
became home to up to 50,000 prisoners who worked long hours in mines,
farms and factories.
Prisoners were consigned to lives of squalor
while subsisting on meagre portions of corn and cabbage. The rules were
strict, and violators faced swift punishment. Shin said he felt no anger
as he watched his teacher beat a 6-year-old classmate to death after he
found five kernels of corn hidden in her pocket. Shin, ever passive,
thought her punishment was just and fair.
His thoughts turned to
escape only after he met an older prisoner who had travelled outside
Korea and described to him a world of computers and mobile phones. Faced
with constant hunger, Shin was more interested in his friend's stories
about food. "Freedom, in Shin's mind, was just another word for grilled
meat."
Shin suffered severe burns as he slipped through the fence.
He then found himself with no coat in the brutally cold Korean winter
and no idea how to make his way to China and freedom. But even as his
odyssey took him from there to South Korea and eventually to the U.S.,
where he decided to work as a human rights activist for North Korean
prisoners, his adjustment to a new life posed severe emotional
challenges.
"I am evolving from being an animal," he told Harden.
"Sometimes I try to cry and laugh like other people, just to see if it
feels like anything. Yet, tears don't come. Laughter doesn't come."
The tired, old line of feminists' selfless quest for gender equity hits several logical snags when one notices the fat, aging hippy feminist behind the curtain.
The Famous Five were notoriously white, elitist, anti-Asian and eugenicist. Hardly role models for a post-modern society that ostensibly eschews such backward thinking.
Ostensibly.
In the twenty-first century, who are the beneficiaries of such public policies as affirmative action, custody of children, increased female student enrollment in math programs or abortion?
There are other benefits which come with these public sector jobs such
as top-ups for maternity benefits. I can tell you from experience many
private sector employers offer nothing beyond the Employment Insurance
maternity/paternity leave plans which pay 55% of wages up to a maximum
of just over $400 per week. By contrast, federal government workers are
eligible for a top-up that pays them 93% of their wages for the full
year of maternal leave.
A study released Tuesday by the Institute for Women's Policy Research
says that while women represent a majority of college graduates
overall, only 27.5% of Associate’s degrees and occupational certificates
in the STEM fields were awarded to women in 2007. Cynthia Costello, the
study’s author, found that women are losing ground: This statistic was
more than 10% higher in 1997.
Underrepresentation in STEM fields at community colleges may be part
of the reason women lag behind men in the STEM workforce. According to
the study, women make up almost half of the American workforce but only
around a quarter of the STEM labor pool. Data presented in the study
shows that women are leaving some STEM fields. From 2000 to 2009, the
number of women working in computers and math dropped about 3%.
And who largely supports unrestricted abortion access as an essential right?
I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue
that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the
centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that
definition. And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months. We don’t
know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s
right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when
the child–first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester;
not so third trimester. There’s very clear distinctions. This isn’t
about abortion on demand, it’s about a careful, careful consideration of
all factors and–to–that a woman has to make with her doctor and her
god. And so I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins, human
life begins. As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been
discussing this, and there are those who’ve decided…
The country’s first criminal prosecution of Planned Parenthood was left
teetering Friday when it was revealed the state of Kansas destroyed
abortion records that prosecutors planned to use as evidence....
The shredding occurred when KDHE was under former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, an abortion rights supporter. Officials at KDHE, now part of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration, declined comment.
And how many of these prominent feminists -and feminist groups- deigned to speak out against sharia law or Islamist misogyny?
How many of these prominent feminists and feminist groups dare to speak out against the misogyny of Islamism?
Judy Rebick has a delightful bit of equivalence here:
"[In response to a comment from the floor that] Sharia law will make all
of the gains women made go up in a puff of smoke, ... the Christians
and Jewish courts got their laws in the Arbitration Act and quietly
under the radar the Jews and Christians have started to use it."
(Sidebar: Jews and Christians don't stone women to death, Judy. )
Thus, both U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton have donned the hijab when visiting Arab and Muslim
countries whereas Arab and Muslim female dignitaries and spouses do not
remove the hijab or the niqab while visiting the West. On July 18, 2010,
British Minister Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary and second
most powerful woman in the cabinet, described the burqa as
"empowering." She said, "I don't, living in this country as a woman,
want to be told what I can and can't wear. One of the things we pride
ourselves on … is being free to choose what you wear … so banning the
burka is absolutely contrary to what this country is about."
Now, where is the solidarity with their fellow Muslim feminists?
Indeed, feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in the august pages of the New York Times, recently insisted
that the burqa wearers are not coerced into wearing the shroud-like
garment, nor is it really uncomfortable, dangerous to one's health, or
associated with violence against women. She doesn't believe that showing
one's face for purposes of identification is even really necessary—and
that, of course, banning the burqa would be "discriminatory." Nussbaum
deftly marshals all her arguments without even getting to the "delicate
issue of religiously grounded accomodation." In her view, a ban would be
"unacceptable in a society committed to equal liberty. Equal respect
for conscience requires us to reject" all the arguments that have been
made against face veiling.
I don’t think that abortion should be banned because of the reason the
woman is procuring it. I believe that women should be able to have an
abortion for any reason at all, no matter how “shallow” or wrong someone else may judge it to be. ...
The situation in Punjab offers a great example of this. It’s unfair, in
my eyes, to go after the women having these abortions. Yes, they’re
making a choice, but they’re doing so in reaction to a series of
cultural issues that make them believe, as females themselves,
that femaleness is inferior and that it’s a burden. We can attempt to
rectify the deep-seated wrongs instead of attacking the women who are
simply trying to negotiate their own lives in a thoroughly fucked-up
world.
Surely this crusader for all things female will step in change things, right?
The Washington Post isn’t the only daily D.C. newspaper to rave about Sandra Bernhard’s anti-Palin ranting. Wednesday’s Washington Examiner
joined in, with the headline "Comedienne delivers enraged optimism."
Barbara Mackay claimed "in the end, oddly and subtly, Bernhard’s message
is positive." That’s not the impression you’d get from the blog of Theater J,
where Bernhard is appearing. It has video of Bernhard calling Palin
"Uncle Women," a "turncoat b—h" and a "whore." One complaint on the blog
that Bernhard crosses a line of political incorrectness draws a defense
from Ari Roth of Theater J that really drops the curtain on how coarse
this show is:
In fact, the play wears its politically VERY correct heart on its sleeve with its indictment of America as "A Man’s World, It’s a White Man’s World, It’s a F–ked Up White Man’s Racist World"
and can only be suggested to be racist in its content if one is
hell-bent on protecting White Folk for Sandra’s blistering
indictment.When Sandra warns Sarah Palin not to come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers, she’s being provocative, combative, humorous, and yes, let’s allow, disgusting. The
fact that the show has a few riffs like this does not — to my mind —
make it a "disgusting show." there’s too much beauty, variety, vitality,
and intelligence to label the entire show as "disgusting." I’ll agree
with you that we produced this show because we did find it to be edgy —
because we wanted to give right wing conservative Jews a good run for
their money by being on the receiving end of some blistering indictments
from Sandra.Does it go over the edge sometimes? On the gang-rape joke,
yes. Sure. Not much else. It goes over the edge and then comes right
back to the cutting edge. [Profanity editing is mine.]
Forgive
me if gang-rape jokes don't greet my ears as oddly and subtly positive,
as the Examiner suggests, and forgive me if gang-rape jokes aren't "a
rotating sprinkler that a spectator washes in most happily," like the Washington Post insists.
Why black American men would be the criminal elements in this scenario is anyone's guess but surely someone in the feminist ranks thought this was not at all humourous.
"What I said yesterday, Ben, is something that I
think everyone in this room understands. Arms control is extraordinarily
complex, very technical, and the only way it gets done is if you can
consult and build a strong understanding, both between countries and
within countries. And, when you think about the New Start treaty that
Dmitry and I were able to hammer out and ultimately get ratified,
that was a painstaking two year process.
"I don't think it's any surprise that you can't
start that a few months before presidential and congressional elections
in the United States, and at a time when they just completed elections
in Russia, and they're in the process of a presidential transition where
a new president's going to be coming in a little less than two months."
What will Obama give Medvedev (read: Putin's Russia) if he is re-elected? There is no point in discussing any treaty or defense plan prior to an election that may remove him from the seat of power. Obama's hubris and deceit is what was witnessed. The American electorate should be worried.
The crowd of 1000 was about half men, half women, with significant numbers of Hispanic, Asian and African Americans. Attendance in San Francisco was double that reported by Catholic San
Francisco Online, the National Catholic Register or the San Jose Mercury
News. High resolution photographs captured by Fund47 reveal at least a
30×30 grid of protesters, with an additional hundred around the
periphery. Also, the crowd turned over at a decent clip during the
90–120 minute event, scheduled on a workday, meaning even higher
numbers.
… The silence by San Francisco mainstream media on the Catholic protest
is deafening. I could not find a report in the San Francisco Chronicle
online, which recently gave full page coverage to a “bum rush” by 25
protestors (and 30 photographers) on the residence of Wells Fargo’s CEO
by an OccupySF splinter group, revealed as utter farce by Fund47. Two
weeks ago, a war protest with 15 professional protestors received frothy
local TV news coverage.
The book in question contains Koranic verses advocating, even demanding, wives to be mistreated, beaten and restrained.
From the Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians (5: 22-33):
"Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the
husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the
church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is
subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in
everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and
gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed
her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to
Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any
such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought
also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own
wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes
and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are
members of His body. FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND
MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE
FLESH.
This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and
the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love
his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she
respects her husband."
Wives and husbands love each as Christ loves the Church. Husbands
love their wives as themselves "for no one ever hated his own flesh, but
nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,
because we are members of His body".
Your insults, degrading remarks and home made statistic only shows
your own lack of capacity to fathom the realities in the world. Islam
and 1.7 billion Muslims are not going to disappear just because some
illiterate westerns do not like it or do not understand it. Besides
Muslim countries, you to have also deal with 1.2 billion Indians, 1.4
billion Chinees and many other challenges. So tighten your belt and get
ready to go down the drain of history.
The idea of tens of thousands of former Muslims coming to Jesus Christ
in North Africa within a few short years is mind-boggling. But entire
mosques coming to faith? That news is even harder to wrap one’s mind
around, but it is in fact what is happening according to reports from a
former church planter among Muslims in West Africa.
In the new book Miraculous Movements, Jerry Trousdale, now
director of International Ministries for CityTeam International, records
amazing and inspiring stories of faith among Muslim communities in
North Africa. The author opens up a new world to Western readers, taking
them into the heart of the “miraculous movement” of God in Africa that
is transforming the hearts of Muslims. Trousdale writes that “unprecedented” events are happening among the
Muslim populations that his ministry and its affiliates are working
among, including:
• Multiple cases of entire mosques coming to faith
• Thousands of ordinary men and women being used by God to achieve seemingly impossible outcomes
• Tens of thousands of Muslim background Christians becoming dedicated
intercessors who fast and pray for the gospel to penetrate the next
community
• Muslim people groups that never had even one church among them now
have more than fifty church planted, and in some cases more than one
hundred churches – within two years of engagement
• Former sheikhs, imams and militant Islamists making up 20 percent or more of the new Christian leaders in Muslim regions
Whoever chooses to
merely dismiss the significance of today’s exchange between our President and
Russia’s President should have their intelligence and patriotism questioned.
Let this exchange be a warning to voters: President Obama will have “more
flexibility” to weaken us if he’s re-elected in November. He was caught
speaking candidly to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev before a “hot mic”
today (and surely one must believe he didn’t know the mics were still on; surely
he’s not so audacious as to purposefully broadcast his intentions)…
Let’s consider what
this “flexibility” might mean. We know that he has repeatedly conceded to
foreign demands and backed down on missile defense. I pointed this out as
Governor of Alaska when he proposed reducing Alaska’s missile defense system
capabilities. I explained then that the President’s proposed military cuts
would diminish Alaska’s opportunity to defend the union with our strategic
location’s defense infrastructure. We also know that in 2009, as part of his
“reset” with Russia, President Obama turned his back on our Eastern European
allies by abandoning past promises for a missile shield in Poland and the Czech
Republic.
We can’t know for
certain what this newly revealed “flexibility” means, but considering President
Obama’s past actions, be sure it won’t involve a position of strength for
America and our allies. Russia has been thwarting us on one issue after
another, including the rushed-through New START Treaty that many of us
questioned after Obama insisted America ratify it first, then allow Russia to
sit on it – unratified on their end – until it suited that foreign power’s
needs.
Meanwhile, North Korea
is planning another long-range missile launch, and the United States and our
allies are still vulnerable to the threat of ballistic missiles. Our president
has done nothing to alleviate this vulnerability; in fact, he’s done just the
opposite. He has consistently taken a position of weakness and naïve trust in
Putin’s Russia. Consider that one-sided New START Treaty as an example of this.
Or consider those cuts to Alaska’s missile defense system, which leaves us much
more vulnerable in the face of a nuclear North Korea. Now consider the state of
our national defense under a President who whispers to a foreign power that he
needs even “more flexibility” to weaken us further.
Obama has undercut his nation’s defense, his eastern
European allies’ defenses and has pretty much made a deal with Russia, the
backer of such regimes as Syria and North Korea.
The man cannot remain in office.
Medvedev, embarrassed at being caught, attacked Mitt Romney for rightly pointing out how his deal with Obama is against American interests:
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Mitt Romney on
Tuesday to use his head and stop reverting to Hollywood stereotypes
after the US presidential hopeful branded Moscow as Washington's top
foe.
"I recommend that all US presidential candidates, including the
candidate you mention (Romney), do at least two things," Medvedev told
Russian reporters on the sidelines of a nuclear security conference in
Seoul.
"That they use their head and consult their reason when they
formulate their positions, and that they check the time -- it is now
2012, not the mid-1970s," said the outgoing Russian president in
comments broadcast on state television.
Medvedev said Romney's quip "smelled of Hollywood" because it
typecast Moscow as Washington's main enemy from the Cold War era just
like in the popular spy movie thrillers of the time.
"As for ideological cliches, I always get nervous when one side or
the other starts using phrases such as 'enemy number one' and so on,"
Medvedev said.
Romney had roundly criticised Obama on Monday for getting caught by
an open mike making a controversial promise to Medvedev about missile
defence.
Obama appeared to suggest at the Seoul meeting that he was ready to
make a concession on the issue if he wins the November presidential
election.
Romney told CNN in a transcript released by the station that Obama
should understand that "Russia is not a friendly character on the world
stage" because it has old ties to the governments of Syria and Iran.
Russia "is without question our number one geopolitical foe," Romney said.
It is unusual for world leaders to get involved in a foreign state's
elections and the foreign ministry quickly moved to make light of
Romney's "emotional statement."
Romney is absolutely correct in pointing out Russia's animosity towards the US. Accusing him of stereotyping Russia as a Cold War enemy is only valid if Russia didn't back Iran, Syria and North Korea, threaten eastern Europe or not live up to the START treaty.
Japan steered off the
agenda at a nuclear security summit on Tuesday to hit out at North Korea's
plans for a rocket launch next month, as U.S. President Barack Obama cautioned
against complacency in dealing with the threat of nuclear terrorism.
North Korea and Iran's
nuclear weapons programs are not on the agenda at the summit in the South
Korean capital, Seoul, and neither country was invited to the forum involving
some 50 world leaders tasked with improving security at nuclear facilities.
The secretive North
has been widely criticized on the sidelines of the meeting, including by main
ally China, but host Seoul has explicitly stated Pyongyang's weapons of mass
destruction programs were off the table during the summit itself.
Japanese Prime
Minister Yoshihiko Noda used his opening speech at the summit to say the
international community strongly demands North Korea exercise self-restraint on
next month's planned rocket launch.
"The planned
missile launch North Korea recently announced would go against the
international community's nuclear non-proliferation effort and violate U.N.
Security Council resolutions," Noda said.
No other major leaders
mentioned North Korea's nuclear ambitions or the ballistic missile launch which
the Pyongyang says will carry a weather satellite into orbit. The West says the
launch is a disguised test of a long-range missile designed to reach the
American mainland.
North Korea said last
week it would consider it a "provocation" if its "nuclear issue
is placed on the agenda at the Seoul summit" and if any statement is
issued against the North for pursuing such a program.
On Tuesday, it said
there was no reason to fire a missile after February's agreement to suspend
nuclear tests in return for food aid with the United States.
Obama has said the
destitute North could be hit with tighter sanctions if it goes ahead with the
rocket launch, but experts doubt China will back another U.N. Security Council
resolution against it.
Why shouldn’t Japan give a very restrained warning to a
nation that most likely strike it? South Korea walks on egg-shells, China will
continue protecting its North Korean lapdog and the US doesn’t want to rock the
boat. North Korea’s planned launch is a clear violation of its promise (nothing
it hasn’t done before) and anything anyone does is a “provocation”.
Japan should get the Bomb. What have they got to lose?
Our prostitution laws
are a mess, but the prohibition on operating a brothel was one of the few tools
that law enforcement and social services could use to pry women out from a life
that precious few of them would ever choose. In the euphemisms employed by the
plaintiffs, prostitutes are “sex workers,” as if they were selling real estate
or peddling cosmetics. A more accurate term would be “sex slaves” — women
forced to turn tricks by their drug dealers, the violent gang culture of the
streets, or even abusive boyfriends.
Now the Ontario Court
of Appeal has said it be would better for these (mostly) men if prostitutes are
able to ply their trade more openly. The upshot is that, after these laws take
effect, Ontario will have more prostitutes. It’s simple economics: Reduce the
barriers to entry and more firms will enter. As a public policy matter, it is
also simple. At the margin, this judgment will ensnare women in prostitution
who otherwise would not have been.
Jonathan Kay argues persuasively that the underworld culture of
prostitution is a brutal and dangerous place for women. He thinks, along with
the Court of Appeal, that the solution is to get it out from the underworld. But what if prostitution is inherently
brutal and dangerous, the inevitable consequence of a trade that invites people
of repellant moral character to degrade the poor and vulnerable for depraved
pleasure or commercial gain? The solution then is not to bring the brothels
out of the darkness and into the strip malls, but rather to use creative public
policy to flush out the underworld.
The suicide bomber behind the first Australian civilian casualty in
Afghanistan was a boy of about 12, apparently drafted into a chilling
new Taliban campaign to use children as weapons.
The injured man is frontline veteran David Savage, whose role with the Australian Federal Police as a peacekeeper in East Timor inspired a TV mini-series.
Mr
Savage, 49, of Canberra, whose condition is serious but stable, was
treated at the Australian base at nearby Tarin Kowt before being flown
to Kandahar, then Germany.
The
bomber attacked as Mr Savage was with a group of soldiers and staff
outside a bazaar in the Chora Valley, Uruzgan, where he was working with
local communities on development activities.
A Taliban spokesman claimed the attack was payback for the alleged massacre of villagers by a US soldier.
The
suicide bombing follows a series of "insider" attacks by Afghan
soldiers on foreign troops, including separate attacks on Monday that
killed two British servicemen and a US soldier.
Three business people, five students, a teacher and a North Korean
refugee in South Korea won copies of Obama's personal political
manifesto as a prize for submitting questions to the president in
advance of his visit to Seoul for an international nuclear summit.
The
top three questioners to the "Ask President Obama" competition also got
actual replies from the president, including a rare reflection on the
favorite speeches that he has delivered.
Not surprisingly, he
listed his 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, an address
that immediately made him a national political figure. He also listed
his 2008 speech on race, a discourse forced upon him by the
controversial sermons of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his Nobel
Peace Prize speech in Oslo that tried to reconcile the prosecution of
just wars with the pursuit of peace.
At the tail end of his 90 minute meeting with Russian President
Dmitri Medvedev Monday, President Obama said that he would have “more
flexibility” to deal with controversial issues such as missile defense,
but incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to give him “space.”
The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.
The exchange:
President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile
defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me
space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
He also hit out against France for having shot his son instead of
taking him alive at the end of a 32-hour siege at his apartment in
Toulouse.
“France is a big country that had the means to take my son alive.
They could have knocked him out with gas and taken him in,” he said.
“They preferred to kill him.”
“I will hire the biggest named lawyers and work for the rest of my
life to pay (their) costs. I will sue France for having killing my son.”
Islamophobia is also a violation of essential Western values: tolerance,
liberalism and egalitarianism. Founded on fear and ignorance, it also
flies in the face of Western rationalism. We have created a global
market in which, whether we like it or not, we’re interconnected as
never before. If we want a peaceful, stable and sustainable world, we
have to learn to live with those we instinctively regard as “other.”
Pope Benedict arrived in Cuba on Monday and told the
government it had nothing to fear from the Catholic Church, asking for
more freedoms to help the communist country in times of change.
Just three days after saying that communism no longer
works in Cuba, the pope took a softer stance as he landed in the eastern
city of Santiago de Cuba for a three-day trip aimed at boosting the
Church's role on the island.
Healthy people who exercise and also eat chocolate regularly tend to have a lower body mass index than those who eat the rich brown sweets less often, a US study suggested on Monday.
The survey of a population of more than 1,000 adults, published as a research letter in the Archives of Internal Medicine, reinforces the notion that chocolate packs heart healthy benefits, despite its high calorie and sugar content.
People in the study, whose ages ranged from 20 to 85, reported eating
chocolate an average of twice a week and exercising an average of 3.6
times a week.
Those who said they ate chocolate more often than the norm tended to
have a lower ratio of weight over height, a calculation made by taking a
person's weight and dividing it by their height times two.
A normal BMI is typically 18.5 to 24.9, while people who figure lower
are considered underweight and those above 25 are overweight.
"Adults who consumed chocolate more frequently had a lower BMI than
those who consumed chocolate less often," said the study led by Beatrice
Golomb and colleagues at the University of California San Diego.
Remember when British people possessed intellect and dry wit? Guess which one had both of those qualities (hint: it wasn't the unwashed man in the hat).
Perhaps the biggest controversy about Good Christian Beetches is that it is unoriginal, uses stereotypes to carry the plots (such as they are) and relies on unsophisticated acting and - dare I say it?- viewing to carry it through. When does the episode with the flaming imam who paints pictures of Mohammad with pink glitter glue going to air? What about the episode with Texas' majority religion- Catholicism- filmed entirely at Beth Yeshun Synagogue (one of Houston's many synagogues)? Will there be an episode filmed entirely in Spanish? How about an episode featuring life in twenty-first century Texas where people don't wear cowboy hats and go "yee ha!"?
How about it, Good Christian ect? Shake some peaches. Be bold.
The killer of French
schoolchildren and soldiers turns out to be a man called Mohammed Merah. The story
can now proceed according to time-honored tradition:
Stage One: The strange
compulsion to assure us that the killer is a “right wing conservative extremist,” in the words of NRO commenter
ExpatAsia, echoed by Chrisman and Galt’s Bain. Up north, this view was shared by Canada’s most prominent establishment Jew and the Liberal Party attack poodle Warren Kinsella (whom NR readers may recall from my
free-speech cover story, which mentioned the groveling apology he was forced to
make to “the Chinese community” after an unfortunately sinophobic cat joke).
The insistence that the killer was emblematic of an epidemic of right-wing hate
sweeping the planet is, regrettably, no longer operative. Instead, the killer
isn’t representative of anything at all.
On to Stage Three:
Okay, even if there are enough lone wolves around to form their own Radio City
Rockette line, it’s still nothing to do with Islam. I’m sad to see the usually perceptive Ed
West of the London Telegraph
planting his flag on this wobbling blancmange.
Are these isolated incidences? Are all of these culprits victims
of the West which has given them succour? Are the victims to blame for their
tragic end?
I wager this will become a non-story very soon. If the facts
don’t fit the narrative, they must be disposed of. It is galling to see that happen
but what is truly appalling is how we have let it happen. We have committed
cultural suicide by tolerating the intolerably violent and backward nature of
Islam and casting the blame on ourselves before we bury ourselves in the sand.
One will notice the gates of Rome have been kicked in.
