Laser cannon set to blind pirates

The International Chamber Of Commerce's International Maritime Bureau said there were 430 pirate attacks worldwide reported last year, up from 406 in 2009

Australia floods: 72 missing and at least eight dead

The latest flash floods in Queensland are some of the most violent so far

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik: "People Who Are Mentally Unstable Are Susceptible to the Rhetoric Going on in this Country"

I think that when the rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates, and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, has impact on people, especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with.

Horror films in Malaysia irk Islamic scholars

Image via WikipediaPortraying of religious preachers as ghost-busters using verses from holy Quran in horror films being made in Malaysia has irked Islamic scholars.

The preachers, called 'ustaz' are shown appeasing spirits of ghosts in many horror films that are made locally and are popular with the cine-goers.

Islamic scholars and preachers have called on film directors and scriptwriters to consult religious experts 'to protect the faith of Muslim viewers', New Straits Times reported Monday.

An independent Islamic preacher, Daud Che Ngah, said it was inappropriate to dish out horror movies to Muslims as this could negatively influence their beliefs and practices.

'The elements of horror and violence cause the public, especially children, to fear ghosts and spirits depicted in the movies rather than god, and this should not happen because it will weaken the minds of Muslims,' Ngah said.

Muiti-racial Malaysia is an Islamic nation with a majority population practising Islam.

Facebook Allows Users to Upgrade to the New Messages Product, Why You Should

Facebook Rolls Out December 2010 Profile Redesign to All Users

January 10th, 2011

Kudos To Twitter For Not Just Rolling Over When The US Gov't Asked For Info

Hephaestus (profile), Jan 10th, 2011 @ 4:37pm

I wonder if this will work out better for the US government than it did for the record labels. I some how doubt it. With RIAA and the labels you had an annoyance. With the US government you have a world superpower that is a threat to the first amendment and free speech on the internet. Confiscating domain names, shutting down peoples access to financial services, violating the first, fourth, and fourteenth amenedments of the constitution, calls for the assasination of the head of a foreign news organization. All in all power blatantly abused at the highest levels of government.

With RIAA and the labels actions we have seen a slow gradual change in technology. With the US government getting involved in online affairs I expect to see a huge, and very fast increase in encryption usage and distributed systems. The words "Wake Up Call" come to mind.

I wonder who will win this battle over free speech, freedom to express our thoughts, and privacy on the internet? The billions of us or couple tens of thousand of them.

How a Red Herring About WikiLeaks Killed Whistleblower Protections

When the lights went out in the Capitol Building on December 22, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act was dead. It may be one of the few times in history when legislation has passed both chambers unanimously within two weeks and still failed to get to the president's desk. ...

This bill was about preventing leaks by protecting lawful disclosures by federal employees for more government accountability. Dozens of the most trusted good government groups from across the ideological spectrum made this clear in an urgent plea to Issa, and yet he persisted in the WikiLeaks propaganda.

Obama’s Liberty Problem: Why Indefinite Detention by Executive Order Should Scare the Hell Out of People

The idea that any US President can bypass Congress and bypass the Courts by issuing an Executive Order setting up a new legal system for indefinite detention of people should rightfully scare the hell out of the American people.

Leaving the People Out of the Debate

It's not just the unemployed we don't tend to see on U.S. TV. Take public workers. They're in the news every day, but it's not actually them. It's people talking about them. Politicians, pundits and propagandists targeted them for cuts and layoffs. But public workers themselves are barely in the conversation.

We're having a huge national debate about cutting public workers' jobs and pay -- without talking to most of the players. There may be an anonymous source, sharing an anecdote about how selfish and overpaid his fellows are, but apart from that, we're letting a few decide who gets paid and who doesn't, and Americans who are neither public workers nor politicians are in a fix: we're supposed to decide which wars, or budgets, or taxes to support, without ever hearing from and getting to know the people who are most affected by our decisions.
It's not just the news, either. While reality shows showcase Real Housewives of Rich Counties, when was the last time you saw a working-class family in a sitcom?

Our Nation of Weeping Executioners

A recent Los Angeles Times' profile of Rev. Jane Adams Spahr wonderfully captured the loving spirit of one of my few heroes in the Presbyterian Church. This courageous lesbian minister has fought prejudice and fear within our denomination, refusing to surrender to voices of intolerance within the church.

The article also captured the sense of helplessness which threatens to unravel not only the Presbyterian system of democratic government, but, possibly, our nation's as well.

The Times reporter noted that at Rev. Spahr's third trial, a religious tribunal found her guilty of violating the Presbyterian constitution because she conducted same-sex marriage ceremonies.

But then several of [the tribunal] members apologized to Spahr, and their decision admonished not the faithful minister but the faith itself.

"We call upon the church to reexamine our own fear and ignorance that continues to reject the inclusiveness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ," panel members wrote while finding Spahr guilty in Napa last August. "We as a church need to be able to respond to ... reality as Dr. Jane Spahr has done with faithfulness and compassion."
Maria L. La Ganga, "Hers is the ministry of ‘yes,'" Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2011. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-minister-profile-20110104,0,6767588,full.story

In other words, the liberal members of the church court agreed with Rev. Spahr's theology and practice but found her guilty anyway, apparently unable to step out of a system they themselves described as unjust.

The Westminster Confession of Faith went so far as to forbid surrendering one's conscience to any human council. The refusal to surrender responsibility applied to national as well as church governments. Needless to say, that revolutionary spark now lies buried under centuries of accumulated ash. When citizens in a democracy feel their only power is to vote for candidates who then tell them what to do, they have forgotten what liberty means. They become beasts of burden who think they are free if they can vote on who rides them. Democracy demands an active courage. Unless citizens are brave enough to follow its principles in times of crisis, democracy loses its sinew and dies.

Martin Luther King wrote a letter from the Birmingham Jail to his own weeping executioners to say "justice delayed is justice denied." Later, he also wrote the following call to courage:

I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live. You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.
You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you're afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice.