tagged w/ Showdown
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A gunman entered the Arkansas Democratic Party headquarters Wednesday and shot and killed the party chairman, authorities said.
The gunman asked to speak to the party chairman, Bill Gwatney, and fired three shots at the office near the state Capitol.
"He came in and went into this office and started shooting," police Lt. Terry Hastings told reporters near the party headquarters.
The suspect was chased into Grant County, south of Little Rock, and apprehended after being shot, the police spokesman said. The suspect's condition and motive were not known.
Sarah Lee, a sales clerk at a flower shop across street from the party headquarters, said that around noon Gwatney's secretary ran into the shop and asked someone to call 911.
Lee said the secretary told her the man had come into the party's office and asked to speak with Gwatney. When the secretary said she wouldn't allow him to meet with Gwatney, the man went into his office and shot him, Lee said.
She said the secretary described the man as in his 40s and white and drove off in a blue truck.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - A gunman entered the Arkansas Democratic Party headquarters... more
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Creators of violent video games should be prosecuted if copycats take their content into real life.
This reaction comes after the brutal killing of a city taxi driver by a teenager obsessed with blood-and-guts shoot-'em-up game Grand Theft Auto. The 19-year-old assailant stabbed the driver repeatedly when he resisted being robbed.
"When a player copycats a crime he or she sees in the game, the game maker should be prosecuted," says Somchai Jaroen-amnuaysuk, the deputy director of the Welfare Promotion, Protection and Empowerment of Vulnerable Groups Office.
"Prosecutions will automatically force game makers to act more responsibly," Somchai says.
Game maker Take Two Interactive faces multi-million-dollar liability lawsuits from the victims' families. They say it should be held responsible for the killer's actions. The murderous gamer was handed a death sentence.
Is this the start of a moral panic? Do we video games really have the power to drive people to murder or should we be looking at the criminal mindset? What are your thoughts?Creators of violent video games should be prosecuted if copycats take their content... more
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Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers' brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders. Read More ...Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their... more
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Prince Charles has warned that genetically modified crops could spark "the biggest disaster environmentally of all time".
Charlie is a massive environmentalist and has accussed multi-national corporations of conducting an experiment with nature which had gone "seriously wrong".
"What we should be talking about is food security not food production - that is what matters and that is what people will not understand," he said.
"And if they think also that somehow it's all going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
Prince Charles said relying on gigantic corporations for the mass production of food would threaten future food supplies and he warned that small farmers would be the victims.Prince Charles has warned that genetically modified crops could spark "the... more
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A British trawler has sparked an international incident after being filmed taking a boatload of endangered fish caught in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea and then dumping the majority overboard in UK waters.
Norwegian government coastguards filmed the crew of the Prolific, a Shetland-based trawler, openly discarding more than 5,000 kg of cod and other dead white fish, or nearly 80% of its catch.
According to the coastguard, the boat had previously been inspected in Norwegian waters and declared legal, before crossing into UK waters where it dumped its load. The incident took place on 2 August but the video only came to light yesterday.
It is illegal to discard fish in Norwegian waters, but boats are forced to do so in European Union waters if they have caught the wrong species of fish or fish that are too small. Last year the EU estimated that between 40% and 60% of all fish caught by trawlers in the North sea is discarded. The practice of dumping is widely recognised as unsustainable but inevitable given the present EU quota system.
Yesterday, Norwegian minister for fisheries and coastal affairs Helga Pedersen, speaking to angry fishing communities in northern Norway who had seen the film, said she would press for review of the EU fishing policy and wanted to ban any boat discarding fish that were caught in Norwegian waters.
"Discarding fish not only means a massive waste of food and potential income, it also leads to unrecorded catches, resulting in a poorer scientific basis for our management decisions", she said. "I want a requirement that all fish caught in Norwegian waters, also by foreign vessels, must be taken to port, regardless of which final port is used. We will introduce new requirements, as a condition for obtaining licenses to fish, that vessels cannot discard valuable fish caught here".
Reidar Kaarbø, an independent analyst of Norwegian government policy said: "This must stop now. The EU community cannot be taken seriously if it allows this kind of behaviour. This is certainly not how to manage the world's resources."
A British trawler has sparked an international incident after being filmed taking a... more
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1] Print at your workplace - thickest of black toner on 88+ brightness white imaging stock.
2] Apply *everywhere* that seems fit; ie: Everywhere.
3] Rejoice in *your own* knowing of the Truth.
4] [optional] Read Emerson's 'Essay on Nature'¹. Bonus: Recite said writings to a group of local children.
[ image cred: Adbusters No.79, US Ed. "Journal of the mental environment'. ]
¹ http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature1.htm1] Print at your workplace - thickest of black toner on 88+ brightness white imaging... more
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Larry Charles (Seinfeld, Borat [the movie]) and comedian Bill Maher (Philosopher, genius, host of 'Real Time with..') enter the 'restricted area' in "Religulous".
Bill Maher thinks your religion sucks, and he’s going to tell you about it.
"We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels and free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep and conformists." - Bill Maher
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Richard Dawkins
"Bueller..? Bueller.. .? Bueller.. .?" - Ben SteinLarry Charles (Seinfeld, Borat [the movie]) and comedian Bill Maher (Philosopher,... more
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“There are two rules of thumb: if one of you is doing something that would make the other uncomfortable, it’s wrong,” says Dr. Bethany Marshall, a marriage and family therapist and author. This definition is pretty broad for the word "uncomfortable" can include numerous causes. This difficulty in defining the act of cheating often leads men and women into its grey zone. The writer shares her own experience with innocent flirtation to her full on infidelity. “There are two rules of thumb: if one of you is doing something that would make... more
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KCKate
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added this
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3 years ago
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Barack Obama's on a working vacation, John McCain goes after Georgia, and they both divide up the U.S. like so much pie.Barack Obama's on a working vacation, John McCain goes after Georgia, and they... more
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Indian security forces fired into crowds of protesters for a second day today as they defied curfews in Indian Kashmir, killing a reported 14 people, in the worst violence seen in the region since an anti-Indian uprising in the 1990s.
The demonstrations were sparked when Hindus of the Jammu region began blocking the main highway in the state — preventing Muslim traders from selling their goods.
The clashes have broadened into a pro-independence protest and have raised fears that relations between India and Pakistan could once again be destabilised.
Although the army imposed the first curfew in the Kashmir valley in 13 years, it was almost immediately broken. More than 20,000 Muslims defied the ban in Bandipora, about 40 miles north of Srinagar and took to the streets in the morning.
Police also fired on another protest rally just south of Srinagar, killing two people. A local journalist was also killed.
The funeral of a Kashmiri separatist leader, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, was another flashpoint, with security forces facing down 10,000 people who defied the curfew to take the body to Srinagar's main mosque.
Aziz was killed yesterday when police fired into a large crowd of Muslims trying to march to the Pakistani portion of Kashmir in protest at the "Hindu blockade" of the highway linking the Kashmir valley with the rest of India. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of the separatist umbrella group the Hurriyat Conference, said that India "should not be surprised at the nationalism of Kashmiris. There has been a facade of normalcy in Kashmir. Tourists coming and mobile phones arriving do not mean that people are not angry".
Farooq said India had "wasted chances to come up with a creative solution with Pakistan and Kashmiris". He added: "I think the blockade made people realise that Kashmir at the moment totally depends on India and that we need to be economically independent."
Under Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan had begun a peace process with India and refrained from making statements about troubles in Indian Kashmir. But the new Pakistani government surprised the Indian government today with a statement condemning "the excessive and unwarranted use of force against the people of Indian-occupied Kashmir".
Navtej Sarna, the Indian foreign affairs spokesman, hit back saying: "These statements constitute clear interference in the internal affairs of an integral part of India — such statements by leaders of a foreign country do not help the situation. Nor do they contribute to creating the atmosphere necessary for the dialogue process between India and Pakistan to move forward."
Analysts raised concerns that Kashmir, divided between Pakistan and India but claimed by both, could destabilise relations on the subcontinent.
"The first thing is the whole event is very undesirable in terms of both the domestic situation and its linkage with the larger bilateral peace process," C Uday Bhaskar, a senior strategic analyst, said. "I see this will have a bad impact and considering that Pakistan is going through a bad turmoil now, the overall impact on the peace process will not be very positive."
Indian Kashmir, formally known as Jammu and Kashmir, has been rocked by violence between Hindus and Muslims in recent weeks. The troubles began in May when the state government handed over 100 acres of land for pilgrims to Amarnath, a Hindu shrine in the Himalayas.
Muslim protests faded after the government rescinded the order, but Hindu nationalists in Jammu responded by blocking the key highway linking the Kashmir valley, with its Muslim majority, to northern India. Some analysts fear Hindu nationalist right-wing groups may keep the issue burning.
Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, held emergency talks last night but there appeared little progress towards peace in Kashmir.Indian security forces fired into crowds of protesters for a second day today as they... more
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The government's more afraid of its own gays than international terrorists, said MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.
After firing over 300 gay translators under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which prevents gay and lesbian personnel from serving openly, the military is now preparing to offer retention bonuses of up to $150,000 to those who remain, as the Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday. The policy that put the military in such a position, which Olbermann called "moronic," he notes, remains in place, as costs to replace the translators, in bonuses alone, could reach $45 million.
"George Bush," Olbermann said, "has told us for seven years that Iraq is the front line in the 'War on Terror.' John McCain has screamed it at us for seven months and talked about needing to keep an American presence there from anywhere from a month to a millennium. But we're kicking out Arabic translators who want to stay, while we're offering $150,000 to the ones who want to leave."
"The U.S. military, the presidential administration, and our nation as a whole are officially more afraid of American gays than of Middle East terrorists," he closed. "That is insane."
The following segment is part of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, aired on August 5, 2008:
The government's more afraid of its own gays than international terrorists, said... more
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A withdrawal plan currently being worked out between American and Iraqi negotiators includes the acknowledgment that military security contractors such as Blackwater, whose employees have been accused of recklessness and mass murder during the occupation, would be newly subject to Iraqi law, the Washington Post reported Sunday.
Negotiators are in agreement on most of the plan, which will have to meet the approval not only of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, but also officials within his Council of Ministers and, finally, the Iraqi parliament.
It could be weeks, if not longer, before the agreement sees those votes, said one official. "They are obviously going to be extremely attentive not just to the substance but also to the presentation," added another.
Excerpts from the article follow:
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The Bush administration has opposed such a timetable but has bowed to Iraqi demands for target dates. Officials on both sides said dates will be couched in language that allows the withdrawal to speed up or slow down, depending on conditions on the ground.
The U.N. mandate authorizing the U.S. troop presence in Iraq expires at the end of this year. Negotiations on the bilateral arrangements to replace it began in March, with a completion target of July 31 that would have given the two governments time to gain political and popular approval and arrange logistics for the transition.
Negotiators initially began with two separate agreements. The first, called a strategic framework, outlines long-term political, economic, cultural and security arrangements between the two countries. A second accord, a status-of-forces agreement, was to cover more specific rights and responsibilities of the U.S. military in Iraq. When negotiations over the status-of-forces agreement stalled in June, negotiators decided to attach it to the larger framework as an implementing memorandum on security arrangements.
A withdrawal plan currently being worked out between American and Iraqi negotiators... more
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Conservatives have turned a vast government built for our protection into a device for exploiting us.
By Thomas Frank...
Washington is the city where the scandals happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandals are a thing of the past, that the golden age of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cavalry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time presidents stopped wearing beards.
I moved to Washington in 2003, just in time for the comeback, for the hundred-year flood. At first it was only a trickle in the basement, a little stream released accidentally by the president's friends at Enron. Before long, though, the levees were failing all over town, and the city was inundated with a muddy torrent of graft.
How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight contracts, the no-experience contracts, the contracts handed out to friends of the vice president. We might consider the shoplifting career of one of the president's former domestic policy advisers or the habitual plagiarism of the president's liaison to the Christian right. And we would certainly have to find some way to parse the extraordinary incompetence of the executive branch, incompetence so fulsome and steady and reliable that at some point Americans stopped being surprised and began simply to count on it, to think of incompetence as the way government works.
Click the link above for the 'rest of the story'...we need to have CHANGE....in a BIG way. Conservatives have turned a vast government built for our protection into a device for... more
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Georgian forces have resumed shelling South Ossetia, ending a unilateral ceasefire declared by Tbilisi on Thursday. Fifteen people are reported to have been killed in overnight attacks. At Russia’s request, the UN Security Council is holding an emergency debate on the situation.Georgian forces have resumed shelling South Ossetia, ending a unilateral ceasefire... more
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mcamca
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3 years ago
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The Kremlin says President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered an end to the fighting against Georgia. Russian news agencies are quoting Medvedev as saying "I have taken the decision to end the operation to force Georgian authorities into peace."
There are no signs yet of peace talks, and Russia reportedly remains critical of Georgia's leadership. And military aggression continues as Russian jets have bombed the Georgian city of Gori, killing and wounding civilians and destroying buildings.
The Kremlin says President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered an end to the fighting against... more
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UK telephone provider BT has apologised to a couple after they were sent a third and final warning letter, over an outstanding bill of 1p.
This was despite them attempting to pay the bill, only to have BT say that there was no record of the transaction!UK telephone provider BT has apologised to a couple after they were sent a third and... more
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rwylie
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added this
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3 years ago
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The Usedom beach on the German-Polish border has become the unlikely place for a fresh battle between the countries - a nudist war!
On the one side white bottoms burn in the sun. On the other side conservative swimming trunk-wearers turn up their noses at the naked beachgoers. Now a heated argument has broken out between the exhibitionist Germans and the prudish Poles.
For the last fifty years sun-loving Germans have been preserving their naturist traditions from Ahlbeck (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) to Swinemünde. But following the Schengen agreement in December 2007 the fence separating the German and Polish parts of the beach was removed. Now German nudists are battling the Poles for their freedom to prance around naked in the sun.
"It's ridiculous" said Swinemündes minister Edward Zajac. And Anja (28) from Poland, who clearly think the German nudists are real swines, said: "It's horrible. We would never bathe naked - we are Catholic."
But the happy-go-naked Germans are not amused. Elke Bernholz (44) said: "It's a nudist beach. It's terrible, that the Poles come over dressed and stare." Ines Müller (46) is also shocked by the Polish behaviour: "You feel like an ape in a zoo. The Poles come with their binoculars, stare and swear."
The Usedom beach on the German-Polish border has become the unlikely place for a fresh... more
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A riot broke out and an officer was shot in the leg late Sunday in the Monday neighborhood where a young man was shot and killed by police a day earlier.
A riot broke out and an officer was shot in the leg late Sunday in the Monday... more
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Since 1991, 218 people have been exonerated through DNA testing, and in more than three-quarters of the cases, mistaken eyewitness identifications were crucial in the wrongful convictions.
In the midst of being raped, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino told herself to pay attention to details that would allow her to identify her attacker.
She was able to give police in North Carolina a description that led to a sketch of the suspect. Then she identified a man from photographs, picked him out of a lineup and told jurors she was certain he was the rapist.
That man, Ronald Cotton, received a life sentence and spent more than 10 years in prison before DNA testing cleared him of the crime.
Now victim and the innocent man she helped convict are writing a book together.
Thompson-Cannino, who is white, had mistakenly picked out one black man; another was guilty of the crime.
"Between the composite sketch and the photo identification, I had messed it up," she said, recalling the 1984 rape and its aftermath. "By the time I got to the physical lineup, Ron Cotton had become my attacker and that was that."
And as she came to learn, she was not the only one to make a mistake so devastating that it deprived someone else of his freedom.
Since 1991, 218 people have been exonerated through DNA testing, and in more than... more
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