Not yet in Mississippi

/
An Increasing Number of Openly Gay Politicians...In the South? | Gay Rights | Change.org
Mike Huckabee. Newt Gingrich. Ron Paul. Jim DeMint. Bobby Jindal. All are southern politicians who have taken a wide range of anti-LGBT positions -- from blasting gay marriage as a threat to the family, to saying that gay people are ill-suited to be parents, to even suggesting that HIV-positive people should be locked up. But while these faces have long been the face of Southern politics, there's a new crew in town that is reframing and reshaping the political fabric in the south.

And it's a whole bunch of queer folk.

Specifically, openly LGBT politicians who have increased their numbers steadily in the South in some of the most conservative environments the United States has to offer. From Annise Parker, the newly-minted lesbian mayor of Houston, to Mark Kleinschmidt, the next mayor of Chapel Hill, there are folks breaking new ground in the world of LGBT politics.

A decade of death and destruction

/
The decade in news photographs - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Call it what you will, "the noughties", "the two-thousands" or something else, the first decade of the 21st century (2000-2009) is now over. Looking back on the past ten years through news photographs, it becomes clear that it was a dramatic, often brutal decade. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks and wars were by far the most dominant theme.

A woman takes her dead son into her arms, as she grieves for her six-year-old son, Dhiya Thamer, who was killed when their family car came under fire by unknown gunmen in Baqouba, capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, in this Sept. 16, 2007 photo. The boy's ten-year old brother, Qusay, was injured in the attack as the family returned from enrolling the children in school, where Dhiya was to begin his first year. (AP Photo/Adem Hadei) #

"The internalisation of the fatwa”

/
Index On Self-Censorship?

IoC chairman, Jonathan Dimbleby on why the board of Index on Censorship decided not to publish a sample from the Danish cartoon controversy to illustrate an interview in the magazine:
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/year_in_review1.gifIndex is not a coterie of fundamentalists who enjoy preaching to the converted in a vacuum of purist invisibility. We have a greater vision and purpose, which is to reach out to those in the United Kingdom and elsewhere who are not yet aware of how vital freedom of expression is to an open society and how easily and rapidly it can be eroded.
Kenan malik, the only board member to disssent from the decision had this to say in reply:
...pre-emptive censorship often creates a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. In assuming that an “offensive” work will invite violence one both entrenches the idea that the work is offensive and helps create a culture that makes violence more likely.
Read the whole post at The Spitoon

Environmentalists can fuck themselves

/
'Green' vibrators promise sustainable pleasure - Yahoo! News
When world leaders in Copenhagen argue for days in knife-edge talks to save the planet, what more fitting way to relieve the tension than an environmentally-friendly vibrator?



The global sex toy industry is worth an annual 15 billion dollars (22 billion euros), and uses up a mountain of batteries in the process, many of which end up as toxic waste. But now one Irish company reckons they've got the solution to shake up the market: a vibrator they are calling the world's first-ever "green technology sex toy". The Earth Angel, described as "eight inches with a sleek white finish", is a wind-up vibrator which comes with a handle built into the base. "You just flip out the handle, grab a hold of it there, and you just wind it," said Janice O'Connor, the co-founder with her husband Chris, of Caden Enterprises which makes the gadget. "So for four minutes of doing that, you should generate enough power to give you 30 minutes of full-on, right-to-the top vibrations."

Wonderful, wonderful, Copenhagen...

/
Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure
Deal thrashed out at talks condemned as climate change scepticism in action
What bollocks. It wasn't climate scepticism in action in Copenhagen it was incompetent, overblown bureaucracy in action (or inaction). Tens of thousands of delegates, officials and hangers on were never going to produce anything. The whole thing was farcical. Failure was widely predicted. For Obama to commit to anything that could be seen as damaging US interests, the US economy or US jobs would be political suicide. He may as well hand the keys of the White House to Sarah Palin now and be done with it. 

I see that travellers were stuck in the Channel Tunnel for 12 hours last night and the motorway is shut down because the ferries aren't sailing and Calais is closed. It's snowing and we have sub-zero temeratures. Is this Mother Nature's attempt at a joke at the expense of the Copenhagen crowd? I'd like to think so.


So, how many seats DOES the UK hold in the EP

/
How I failed the citizen test
Most of the questions betray a weird obsession with immigration, multiculturalism and the intimate workings of the welfare system. It beggars belief, for example, that to become a British citizen, I would need to know exactly how many refugees from South East Asia have settled here since 1979 - but not the name of a single Shakespeare play or Dickens novel.

Weirdly, I would also need to know by heart the percentage of practising Muslims in the UK, the number of seats we hold in the European Parliament, the proportion of people who have ever taken drugs, and the ages at which children take SATS, as well as details of the Government's New Deal. As it happens, I got all of those questions wrong. I also made a mess of the statutory paternity leave, the maximum hours that a 15-year-old can work during the school week, and the exact minimum wage for 21-year-olds - though I did at least know where Scousers come from. What the examiners want is merely the regurgitation of their welfare and immigration-obsessed textbook - even though most of their cherished facts can be found on the internet in seconds.

But the truth is that citizenship, as the Romans understood, should be earned, not taught. Membership of a community is not something that can be tested by multiple-choice questions... It should be a reward for months of service, not for hours revising the world's dullest textbook. Citizenship should be the ultimate prize, recognising a newcomer's commitment to his adopted homeland.
Apart from anything else at least one question is completely wrong: "Children must go to school between the ages of? ...
Fact: There is no compulsion for children to go to school. There is a legal requirement for them to receive an education 'at school or otherwise'.

Gareth Thomas - "I'm gay'

/
British Lions rugby legend Gareth Thomas: 'It's ended my marriage and nearly driven me to suicide. Now it's time to tell the world the truth - I'm gay

Of course we all know the Daily Mail is the font of all evil and the newsletter of Beelzebub himself but this piece on Gareth Jones's coming out is as sensitive and decent as you'd find anywhere.
'A coach named Scott Johnson, a great man, came up to me in the dressing room after the game for a chat and I just broke down in tears. 'He said: "What's up?" 'I said: "Me and Jemma have split," and he said: "Oh no, what's happened?" Then he said: "I know what's happened, I know what it is."'
Somehow, the coach had guessed.

He took me out of the team room to the medical room, locked the door and I told him everything. After keeping it secret for so long, I felt a huge rush of relief. 'Scott said: "Right, I've got to speak now to three or four players in the Welsh team because you need the boys to surround you and support you. You can't cope with this on your own," and he was right. 'He told two of my team-mates, Stephen Jones and Martyn Williams, and as I sat in the bar waiting for them, I was absolutely terrified, wondering what they were going to say. 'But they came in, patted me on the back and said: "We don't care. Why didn't you tell us before?" 'Two of my best mates in rugby didn't even blink an eyelid. Martyn said he never had a clue, would never have thought it. 'I felt everyone was protecting me and closing in tight around me. No one distanced themselves from me, not one single person.'

Whatever happened to: "Hold my hand"?

/
Boy, 4, 'left looking like an Avatar extra' after sickening travelator accident

Naturally, it's the store's fault. The boy's father, Darren Webb, said:
'There was no kind of protection or barrier to stop this from happening but the shopping centre manager still wants to make out that this is our fault. 'It's unbelievable - my son nearly died.
Mr Webb reviewed CCTV footage which clearly showed the boy's mother completely unaware of what her four year old was doing. He then said:
'I'll put my hands up and agree my child was playing while his mum's back was turned - but four-year-olds do that sort of thing.'
Exactly!

Which is why parents need to take responsibility for them when they are in shops and walking on the pavement. It's a fucking travelator! It's not a fucking children's slide. A big machine with moving parts. Pay attention, dopes. Look after your children! But then,  isn't it so much easier to blame the store for not making it utterly impossible for any child to hurt themselves in any way whatever regardless of where their mother is or what she is doing at the time?

If this child had suffered these injuries in the home because of neglect there would be an outcry but here it is simply referred to as a 'sickening accident'.