Yesterday in passing, I mentioned shark attacks in Egypt. Could they be a plot of the dastardly Mossad? Could they be?
"What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm," he is reported to have said.
I think Israel might not be focused heavily on shark-based technology right now but that's just me.
The following beacons of freedom will not be attending the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony after buckling to pressure from China. The prize this year honors jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo:
China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq , Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco.
Can't say I'm particularly surprised by any of them. I'm sure they'd all prefer not to see their dissidents honored either. I'm a bit disappointed in Colombia though. I was under the impression that they were moving away from this sort of thing.
First gays, now computer nerds? What's a Marine to do? Apparently our armed forces are extremely vulnerable to identity theft. Mostly because they're required to scrawl their social security numbers on just about everything.
“For heaven’s sake, I stenciled portions of my Social Security number on my laundry bag in Iraq, where it was memorized by foreign-national laundry workers trying to enhance their customer service,” he said. “I’d walk in and they’d say, ‘Number 1234, here’s your laundry,’ and they were very proud of that fact.”
This is an interesting update: Some time ago I mentioned online retailer Viktor Borker, proprietor of DecorMyEyes. To say the least, he had some unusual busniness practices. In essence, he realized that numerous complaints about his business in online forums pushed up his Google ranking so he'd appear higher on the page after websearches. So, he abused his customers. To a profound degree. Allegedly up to and including threats of sexual assault. Anyways, turns out that sort of thing is illegal. And very much so. For the original New York Times story (lengthy but fascinating), click here.
The silver tongued president of Botswana is on the prowl...for love! He's pretty clear about what he's not looking for:
At a recent political party meeting he pointed to a woman and said, "I don't want one like this one. She may fail to pass through the door, breaking furniture with her heavy weight and even break the vehicle's shock absorbers."
Steelers News: The Baltimore player responsible for the helmet to helmet collision with Steeler tight end Heath Miller will be fined $40,000. Additionally, the Raven that broke Ben Roethlisberger's nose will be dinged for $15,000. Neither play was flagged during the game. Given that the league has been accused of repeatedly singling out the Steelers for penalties and fines (James Harrison has been targeted specifically), I don't think that the league had any choice but to go after these two players.
This is pretty bad news: A judge has thrown out the case trying to stop the targeted assasination of an American citizen. He dismissed the case on the basis that the mans father was not in a position to pursue it. Apparently, the person who's being targeted for death has to hand himself over to the forces trying to kill him. Let's agree on this: Anwar Al-Awlaki is unarguably an awful person. He probably does deserve to be killed. However, it is not the Presidents prerogative to have citizens hauled off and shot without any sort of oversight. That's tyranny. Plain and simple. Sadly, the judge declined to investigate any of the legal implications of the suit, choosing instead to set it aside on what amounts to a technicality.
"The serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day or another nonjudicial forum," he wrote.
Bates said the case raised "vital considerations of national security and of military and foreign affairs." Among them, he wrote, were why courts have authority to approve surveillance of Americans overseas but not their killing and whether the president can order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without "any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization."
The newly awesome Mr. Awesome.
A top Chinese diplomat has stated in an essay that China has no interest in replacing America as the worlds dominant power. Which actually sort of makes sense. I mean seriously, it's a headache.
The Guardian has an interesting piece up about the Indian sex trade and the success of targeted interventions in reducing the spread of HIV:
Despite the hardships that Das encounters on a daily basis, the good news is that targeted interventions such as these are working. In Orissa, the HIV infection rate for sex workers remains below 1%. The contrast with other areas is marked. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, nearly 10% of sex workers have HIV positive. In much of the country, and much of the world, stigma and an institutional squeamishness about dealing directly with sex workers puts lives at risk. According to UNAids, globally fewer than one in five sex workers receive adequate HIV prevention services and less than 1% of HIV funding is spent on sex work.
The reason why targeted interventions work is because people such as Das treat sex workers as human beings. UNAids' own case studies of sex workers conclude that "one of the clearest public health lessons emerging from the HIV pandemic is that protecting the human rights of sex workers is one of the best ways to protect the rest of society from HIV".
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