The Daily Mail has a great story here about how the fear is now rapidly spreading round the globe - direct result of ebola victim and Minnesota man Patrick Sawyer throwing up on a plane to Nigeria.
Nigerian film star flees Africa first class wearing an ebola mask.
Sparks outrage after posting pic on Instagram #ebola
Hong Kong tests a woman returning from - kenya!
The UK tests 2 suspected patients while UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond declares it a very serious threat, chairs emergency meeting.
One must also ask: why are the US and Canada not quarantining for 21 days the returning Samaritan's Purse volunteers and family? especially the wife and family of Dr Brantly who fled Liberia to the US just days before he went down with ebola.
2 Samaritans Purse infected.... therefore quarantine for all colleagues and associates returning. It's not hard just inconvenient for 21 days.
The one piece you want to read today, dear Reader. Go. We'll wait.
[Jpost] ...The IDF's discovery of Hamas's Rosh Hashana plot was the last straw for any Israeli leftists still harboring fantasies about picking up our marbles and going home. Hamas's plan to use its tunnels to send hundreds of terrorists into multiple Israeli border communities simultaneously and carry out a massacre of unprecedented scope, replete with the abduction of hostages to Gaza, was the rude awakening the Left had avoided since it pushed for Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
In other words, in their discussion Sunday night, Netanyahu and his ministers were without illusions about the gravity of the situation and the imperative of winning -- however defined.
But then the telephone rang. And Obama told Netanyahu that Israel must lose. He wants an unconditional "humanitarian" cease-fire that will lead to a permanent one.
And he wants it now.
Of course, all involved denied the conversation went anything like that. In almost exactly the same words, oddly enough. Brilliant diplomacy, guys. Smartest in the room, forsooth.
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But then the telephone rang. And Obama told Netanyahu that Israel must lose. He wants an unconditional “humanitarian” cease-fire that will lead to a permanent one. And he wants it now.
Israel is fighting a two-front war; One with Hamas, one with Obama?
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Israel is fighting a two-front war; One with Hamas, one with Obama?
Just put the WH on call block. Make Kerry use the back door if he comes slithering in.....
[DAWN] US DRONE strikes have resumed in Fata in the wake of Operation Zarb-e-Azb ..the Pak offensive against Qaeda in Pakistain and the Pak Taliban in North Wazoo. The name refers to the sword of the Prophet (PTUI!)... . There is anger over this campaign, because it leads to violations of Pakistain's territorial illusory sovereignty and political independence.
However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... many individuals, including government officials, feel that if drones, their delivery system and operating technology were transferred to Pakistain, the state's use of such weaponry to target militias in Fata would comply with national and international law. For them, the use of drones is preferable to other modes of military engagement with murderous Moslem outfits.
However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... one must approach this proposition with caution. Drones are not just legally and ethically problematic because of their challenge to state illusory sovereignty. They are problematic for other reasons too. Most notably, their use can undermine fundamental rights.
In the hands of a military like Pakistan's absolutely. How quickly would their use be turned from jihadis of all sorts to Ahmaddis, Hazaras, Hindus and Christians?
Extrajudicial killings in the form of drone strikes contravene international human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. law, irrespective of whether such targeting is undertaken by a host or a third state. If drone attacks qualify as violations of peremptory norms of international law — norms that include torture, crimes against humanity and war crimes — then Pakistain can neither use, nor consent to the use of drone strikes on its soil.
Legitimising drone warfare will set a dangerous example.
Drone technology, inclusive of the workings of the drone delivery platform, is constantly being upgraded by militarily advanced nations employing these weapons. Effective targeting requires real-time data communication, which depends on specialised computers, satellites and an assemblage of sophisticated hardware and software.
While drone technology rapidly evolves, it naturally requires continuous R&D expenditure and the ability of a state to indigenously produce all the components required for a successful operation. Thus, if drone warfare is accepted as a legal form of engaging in armed conflict, the asymmetrical advantage that will be enjoyed by developed and militarily ad""vanced states in warfare will prove decisive.
Pakistain cannot compete in a drones' race with states it perceives as hostile, such as India, because of their advantage in developing advanced combative drone programmes. Pakistain should, therefore, resist the push for legitimising the use of combative drones under international law.
One should note the ethical and humanitarian challenges posed by drone warfare. The combative drone system is not unchanging. Technology is driving this form of warfare with the objective of lowering the military costs of wars through increased automation. In fact, the US Defence Department reported in 2009 "that the technological challenges regarding fully autonomous systems will be overcome by the middle of the century".
The logical conclusion of such developments in drone technology is an unmanned system that will coordinate and direct an attack solely on the basis of a code or algorithm, without direct human involvement.
A machine cannot qualify as a lawful combatant under the law of war and hence cannot be tried or held responsible for war crimes. Even with limited human involvement, it is becoming increasingly harder to allocate responsibility because of the layers of human decision-making combined with the role machines play in conducting even a single drone strike. Social psychology experiments seem to confirm that human reliance on machines and the transference of responsibility for decision-making during drone strikes result in the disproportionate and unnecessary use of lethal force.
Another issue is that drone technology relies on signatures to target suspected murderous Moslems. These signatures are based on pre-identified patterns of behaviour that allow machines to make probabilistic assessments of who and when to target. However, a lie repeated often enough remains a lie... social and cultural differences are not accommodated. Hence, drones often end up targeting civilians. Signatures such as having a beard and carrying weapons in Fata are not useful indicators for determining who is a murderous Moslem actively engaged in hostilities.
Ethically, the question arises whether the human race can accept machines making qualitative decisions about the value of life during armed conflict. What level of civilian causalities is acceptable 'collateral damage' when targeting a military target, and what is the proportional use of force, with regard to human suffering? The determination of a military target is itself a qualitative determination. Such assessments are difficult to make, but we accept them if made by human combatants acting reasonably.
While currently machines cannot make these assessments, with improvements in artificial intelligence, will they be able to substitute for human decision-making to measure the value of life in conflict? Are these assessments not the sole prerogative of humans? Can fully automated drones ever be capable of being coded to think emotively about the repercussions of actions that result in death? A terminator-like scenario as far as drones are concerned is not a distant reality. Hasta la vista, human rights.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/30/2014 00:00 ||
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Can fully automated drones ever be capable of being coded to think emotively about the repercussions of actions that result in death?
There are many types of 'Drones.' Obviously the author has not been following trends in Obamacare computerized actuarial cost-benefit analysis as it relates to patient treatment. Interestingly, those with so-called 'Cadillac insurance plans' [gov't employees and the wealthy] are exempt from the ACA analysis and patient treatment regimes. The targeted audience is painfully obvious.
[DAWN] "It is not something that we can control", was what the SHO of the local cop shoppe said to the Ahmadi men, watching the burning down of their fellow community members' homes in Gujranwala the night of July 27.
Arshad Mahmood, one of the eye witnesses of the arson from the Ahmadi community of Gujranwala had reached the neighborhood where a mob of some 250 men had gathered to intimidate Ahmadi residents.
Attack on Ahmadis
Mahmood told me the mob was pelting stones at Ahmadi homes and beating down doors with batons. When the violent mob – which included some neighbors from the street of Peoples’ Colony where the incident took place – dragged a motor cycle out of one of the houses and set it on fire, the police voiced their helplessness.Mahmood says the SHO ran from the spot once he saw people getting aggressive; he tried to pacify the mob by offering them an FIR against the Ahmadi boy who had allegedly committed blasphemy. Some from the members of the mob went to the station with him but eventually the size of the mob got bigger in Peoples’ Colony.
And they got horrifically bloodthirsty.
Those who had gone to get an FIR registered rejoined later; the fire spread from one house to another; roads were blocked and two police vans with constables from the local cop shoppe silently looked on, hoping that the local peace committee holy man’s pleas on the microphone would distract the mob – which it never did, as was realised at the cost of four deaths.
Mahmood and other community members say the police managed to recover the dead bodies of two minor girls Kainat, Hira and their grandmother Bushra from one of the houses after 12am. The rest of the trapped residents, mostly women were rescued by the kinder Barelvi and Wahabi neighbors.
How things fall apart
There is now a ‘system’ in place for the ongoing discrimination and decimation of the Ahmadi community.
When holy mans and anti-Ahmadi individuals who are trying to intimidate local Ahmadis fail, they go to the police and file a complaint. Then, a group of coppers go to the administration of the Ahmadi community, and ask them to do whatever it is the holy mans want them to.
The community says, the act demanded by the holy mans is against their faith, so the authorities get pro-active and for the sake of maintaining peace in the area, actually commit the hurtful acts which the bigoted clergy were threatening to do themselves.
Three years on, no justice for 86 dead Ahmadis
This is pretty much the standard procedure used by the Punjab police to counter any threats to peace given out by mob-minded holy mans whenever an allegation is imagined against the Ahmadi community.
Over the last few years, the has been an increase in the number of incidents where the police goes to the Ahmadi community, asking them to “co-operate”, and further, acts on covering the Kalima with a black sheet from the place of worship's facades, demolishing minarets of the community’s place of worship, removing scriptures from their shops or just the word “Moslem” from their gravestones or scratching away the name of a Pak citizen from his shop name-plate because it resembles a Moslem name, like Muhammad Ali.
However, a woman is only as old as she admits... unlike the last few years where police complicity prevented bloodshed, more recent attempts by the police to control hate campaigns against Ahmadis have not worked out according to the ‘system’ in place.
In May, Khalil Ahmad was murdered while he was in the custody of the Punjab police in Sharaqpur district. Maqsood Ahmad, a local from the village of Ahmad told me that the hate campaign instigated by holy mans from nearby villages after an open congregation of the said holy mans in Kot Abdul Malik had resulted in the Kalima, MashAllah and Bismillah being removed from the façade of two Ahmadi houses in May. Then came the alleged blasphemy FIR registration, which led to the police hunting down the four accused Ahmadis.
The locals insist Ahmad’s murderer was not carried out by a teenager, as the official police record states, but by a married father at least in his early 20s, who worked at a doctor’s clinic.
“The police wanted a cover for their criminal negligence, they allowed a grown man with a weapon to enter the cop shoppe,” Maqsood said.
Tahir Malik has dealt with many cases of Ahmadi persecution as the Faisalabad ...formerly known as Lyallpur, the third largest metropolis in Pakistain, the second largest in Punjab after Lahore. It is named after some Arab because the Paks didn't have anybody notable of their own to name it after... area Ahmadi administrative committee’s member – including grave desecrations and numerous 298-C FIRs, where the police have blatantly snubbed the rights of Ahmadis by siding with the mobs and holy mans.
Malik says the attempt to speak to senior police officials has been futile, “pursuing senior police officials never helps, as they are the ones who give out such orders”. He adds,
Who do we go to speak to for the violations of our rights? Are we aliens? At least give us the right to breathe.
A senior police officer of the Punjab police, behind a closed door conversation says there are no legal means available for addressing this matter of discrimination against religious minorities, even when it comes to minorities within Islam and their cases of blasphemy against each other.
In the case of Ahmadis, the police mostly does end up hurting an already persecuted community as there is no legal cover - hence, the complicity.
He admits that the Pak police still operates like the colonial force that it was conceived to be by the British. The police want as little focus on itself in the matter, which results in snubbing the persecuted community.
Whenever I have spoken with a DPO or an SHO in the Punjab police in a town where an incident of Ahmadi persecution has occurred and the police have taken an active role in curbing the zealots by committing an act of harming the Ahmadis, the responding officer goes out of his way to explain to me their well-meaning cause…
“As you know this is what the law says about the Qadiyanis.”
The faith-based killings of Ahmadis has reached their homes in the past as well, men have been rubbed out in front of their homes. But the arson attack of July 27 is a rare incident as it killed babies, a woman and critically injured another woman. Eight faith-based Ahmadi killings have taken place, according to the community’s data and reported cases in 2014 so far.
While the Pak mainstream Urdu media contributes to the dehumanisation of the Ahmadis by hiding the facts and motives of the arson attack and never bothering to report on hate crimes and faith-based murders of Ahmadis across Pakistain, the area police would at most, face transfers.
In a month’s time anti Ahmadi conferences will take place openly in Punjab and the business of bigotry will continue to thrive.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/30/2014 00:00 ||
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while ahmadis in Pakland and Bangla are persecuted by mainline moslems, ahmadis in England loudly proclaim the 'religion of peace' mantra to credulous journos and others.
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/30/2014 7:36 Comments ||
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They go door to door in Houston saying the same, lord garth. They have given up the strong jihad of the sword, and they want people to know there are, indeed, Muslims who so believe. It is for this they have been declared by law not to be Muslim in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Ummah.
The idea that one of Hamas’ main command bunkers is located beneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is one of the worst-kept secrets of the Gaza war. So why aren’t reporters in Gaza ferreting it out? The precise location of a large underground bunker equipped with sophisticated communications equipment and housing some part of the leadership of a major terrorist organization beneath a major hospital would seem to qualify as a world-class scoop—the kind that might merit a Pulitzer, or at least a Polk.
So why isn’t the fact that Hamas uses Shifa Hospital as a command post making headlines? In part, it’s because the location is so un-secret that Hamas regularly meets with reporters there. On July 15, for example, William Booth of the Washington Post wrote that the hospital “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Back in 2006, PBS even aired a documentary showing how gunmen roam the halls of the hospital, intimidate the staff, and deny them access to protected locations within the building—where the camera crew was obviously prohibited from filming. Yet the confirmation that Hamas is using Gaza City’s biggest hospital as its de facto headquarters was made in the last sentence of the eighth paragraph of Booth’s story—which would appear to be the kind of rookie mistake that is known in journalistic parlance as “burying the lede.”
"Though he often ignores any mention of the Christian celebration of Easter, President Obama never misses an opportunity to officially recognize a Muslim…"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Daily Mail has a great story 
[DAWN] "It is not something that we can control", was what the SHO of the local 
