Ends and Means

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Hullabaloo

Torture is fine if the information you get from the victim saves lives. This is the view of the US Attorney General Michael Mukasey:

The Detainee Treatment Act...engages the "shocks the conscience" standard, he explained, and you have to "balance the value of doing something against the cost of doing it." What does "cost" mean, Senator Joe Biden wanted to know. Mukasey said that was the wrong word. "I mean the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it, balanced against the value.... balanced against the information you might get." Information "that couldn't be used to save lives," he explained, would be of less value.
As Digby points out:

It's really hard for me to believe that someone who used to be a federal judge can blow that sophistry in a congressional hearing with a straight face. If you don't know what they know, then you can't know in advance if what they know might save lives, right?


White slave hysteria

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Trafficking: return of the ‘white slavery’ scare?
The Metropolitan Police’s legalised kidnapping of 10 Roma children suggests the anti-trafficking industry is the greatest threat to migrants.

They were ‘twenty-first century Artful Dodgers’, we were told, a gang of ‘Fagin’s children’ from Romania, who had been trafficked to Slough, England, in order to work like slaves in a ‘pickpocketing and begging crimewave’. The Metropolitan Police launched dawn raids on various ‘slavery dens’ in Slough last Friday; some of the police reportedly wore balaclavas and riot gear and were closely followed by film crews invited along to witness the moment the ‘child slaves’ were liberated.

There was only one problem with this story: it was as fictional as the original Dickensian tale of artful dodgers. The Roma children were not child slaves; of the 10 kids ‘rescued’ in Slough on Friday (one of whom was less than a year old: hardly pickpocketing material), all but one were reunited with their natural parents or guardians the following day (2). No evidence has been discovered to show that the Roma adults in Slough were involved in a ‘criminal gang’ or a ‘child slave ring’ or any other form of serious criminality.

Bong!

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Who wants news anyway? Debate: David Simon’s WaPo piece
A Washington Post piece written by David Simon, entitled “Does the News Matter To Anyone Anymore,” has caused quite a lot of uproar among the public and news industry insiders. Is the general audience as removed from news as some may claim, and “isn't the news itself still valuable to anyone?” Simon is the producer of HBO show “The Wire” and a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun...In his piece, Simon retraces the ‘demise’ – rather their decline since their golden age – of major newspapers through his experience at the Baltimore Sun.


The new Black?

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In the U.S. south, is Canadian a new racial slur?
Last August, a blogger in Cincinnati going by the name CincyBlurg reported that a black friend from the southeastern U.S. had recently discovered that she was being called a Canadian. "She told me a story of when she was working in a shop in the South and she overheard some of her customers complaining that they were always waited on by a Canadian at that place. She didn't understand what they were talking about and assumed they must be talking about someone else," the blogger wrote.

"After this happened several times with different patrons, she mentioned it to one of her co-workers. He told her that ‘Canadian' was the new derogatory term that racist Southerners were using to describe persons they would have previously referred to [with the N-word.]"

"I'm thirty-seven, I'm not old" **

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Youngsters not happy oldies going online
The older generations are moving in on the hi-tech, online world and the under-30s are not impressed.

Scott Seigal was awakened one morning by a mobile phone text message. It was from his girlfriend's mother. His friends' parents have posted greetings on his MySpace page for all the world to see. And his 72-year-old grandmother sends him online instant messages every day so they can better stay in touch while he is at university. "It's nice that adults know some things,'' says Seigal, 18. He especially likes instant messaging with his grandmother because he is "not a huge talker on the phone".

Increasingly, however, he and other young people are feeling uncomfortable about their elders encroaching on what many young adults and teenagers consider their technological space.
Mmm, that would be the World Wide Web wouldn't it? Invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (52) in 1989 at a time when today's under thirties were all under twelve years old. He was able to do this because of the existence of the internet, something which had it's roots back in grandpa's days in the 1950s but, according to most sources, officially started in 1974 when none of the Myspace generation were even born.

**


Save the planet!

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Say no to a third Heathrow runway...

Oooh, hang on...

Beijing plans to build 97 regional airports

The Chinese government has launched an ambitious plan to build 97 regional airports by 2020 at an estimated cost of $62.5bn in an attempt to meet soaring domestic passenger and cargo demand. The cabinet has approved the plan in recent days, stipulating that 45 of the new airports are to be finished by the end of 2010. By the end of 2006, China had 147 civilian airports.

Fringe elements?

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Festival is key terror target
One of Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officers has warned it is only a matter of time before Edinburgh is subjected to a devastating attack. Superintendent Brett Lovegrove said Scotland's capital would be an "extremely attractive" objective for terrorists – and said the Edinburgh International Festival, which last year attracted 380,000 visitors, was a prime target. Speaking at an anti-terrorism seminar in the capital, Mr Lovegrove, the head of counter-terrorism for the City of London Police, said: "Edinburgh is an extremely attractive proposition to terrorists, as it has many international businesses, an airport, sports stadiums and crowded streets. "In particular, the Festival ticks all the right boxes, so it's essential the public are made aware of the threat and what action should be taken.

"Like London and New York, it is also an iconic city which is flooded with tourists all year round. "Last year's Glasgow airport attack proved Scotland isn't immune to the threat of terrorism. Unfortunately, it isn't a case of 'if' there will be an attack on Edinburgh but 'when'." Mr Lovegrove went on: "Festivals by their nature can be a risk. Edinburgh also has the Tattoo. events at Edinburgh Castle, Hogmanay, and even this weekend there is major rugby match attracting upwards of 70,000 people. "It is important not to be complacent. Just because Edinburgh had not been attacked doesn't mean it won't be.

The Super went on to say: "However, I don't have specific intelligence that Edinburgh is going to be the next target."

Translation: I plucked this out of my arse because I'm speaking at a seminar in...erm, Edinburgh.


Share and share alike

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SHARE beta
“Share” beta is a web-based service that allows you to upload and share files. You can distribute the URL for the file to a selected number of users, post the link for the URL on a website, or embed the code for previewing the file in a web page. You have the option to allow recipients to invite others to view your shared files or limit access to only the specified recipients.

Using Share enables you to upload and share large files with others without attaching the files to an email message. Users have access to the latest version of the files through Share. It also enables the recipients to preview PDF, JPG, GIF, and PNG files using the web browser before downloading them.


Via Robin Good

Betreffs Evakuierung von Araber

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Israel’s Chief Rabbi calls for ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in Palestine
A leading Israeli rabbi has called for ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians who have been living in Palestine from time immemorial. The rabbi, Yona Metzger, who hold the official title of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in Israel, was quoted Monday as saying in an interview with the British Weekly, the Jewish News, that the Palestinian people could have a nice country in the Sinai desert.

"Take all the poor people from Gaza to move them to a wonderful new modern country with trains, buses and cars, like in Arizona. This will be a solution for the poor people-they will have a nice country, and we (the Jews) shall have our country and we shall live in peace."

Metzger also reportedly said that he would discuss the "matter" with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, adding that he thought the idea would find popularity among Israelis. The rabbi also suggested that Muslims had no right to Jerusalem, saying that Muslims had Makka and Medina, and that Jerusalem belonged solely to Jews.

Prepare to die, blogperson!

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Your Death Online: 20+ Helpful Tools
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