[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The bare-boobied breasted exhibitionist activist from feminist group Femen who snatched the baby Jesus figurine from St Peter's Square Nativity scene on Christmas day remained under arrest in the Vatican on Friday. She doesn't like religion. She wants to make sure nobody else enjoys it, too.
The woman, Iana Aleksandrovna Azhdanova from Ukraine, remained under arrest in a Vatican cell awaiting possible trial for "disturbing the peace, obscene acts in a public place, and theft" for storming the Vatican Nativity scene Thursday. They all sound appropriate. The auto-da-fe's gone out of style, darn it.
Respecting Femen's provocative protest dress code, Azhdanova was bare from the waist up, but sported the message "God Is Woman" on her torso to thousands of pilgrims packed into St Peter's Square who looked on. How does she know God has a gender? Why would God have a gender? Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2014 00:00 ||
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The bare breast protests, although now stereotyped are much preferred to the arson and looting and shooting protests.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A young Israeli woman claimed she was kicked off a bus in Israel for having blue hair after the driver, joined by passengers, yelled at her to get off, the Jerusalem Post reported this week.
"What a disgrace to the State of Israel! How do you take the color of the flag and put it on your head?" the bus driver said, Nati Ni posted on her Facebook page in Hebrew.
"You despicable person! You vile human being! Don't you have any parents that educated you?"
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Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2014 00:00 ||
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UVA grad maybe? R ember even if she made it up, it could be true and that would be horrible beyond belief. So I for one Hail this Social Justice Soldier.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A hippo that panicked while being transported by truck in Taiwan jumped from the vehicle, breaking a leg and causing confused residents to report spotting a dinosaur on the loose.
Television footage showed the enormous animal lying on the road with a white fluid oozing from its eyes after it jumped through a truck window and landed on a parked car before falling onto the road on Friday.
The sound of the collision startled people nearby who flocked to see the animal and contacted the police in central Miaoli county.
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[IraqiNews.com] For centuries it was believed that Christopher Columbus was the first man from the Oldcontinent to cross the Atlantic to the New World, but new evidence from a research team from the University of Rhode Islandsuggests Moslem seafarers might just be the first people to have settled on the shores of America, a possibility that could rewrite history as we know it.
Wherever Islam has conquered belongs to Dar al Islam forever, even if the shipwrecked crew died without leaving so much as a ripple on history? Molon labe, doods.
The discovery completely took the researchers by surprise admits professor Evan Yuriesco, in charge of the research team. Do you smell a hoax? I do.
Apparently it is. But Turkey's President Erdogan recently talked about Muslims colonizing North America first, and now here is the "proof" reported by the Iraqi News. How will the gullible and ignorant respond?
?We were expecting to find traces of prehistoric Native American settlements, as we have in the area for the past decades. We were not prepared to find 9th century clay pots containing ancient manuscripts written in the Arabic language? he explains.
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#2
the term "Dar al-Islam” or the "territory of Islam” and "dar al-harb” or "territory of war” and "Dar al-ahd” or "territory of pact/treaty” are jurisprudence terms that did not occur in Quran and authentic sunnah. This fact was mentioned in the book Bayan Lel-nas (Statement for the People) published by Al-Azhar: "dividing countries into dar kufr, or territory of infidelity and dar Islam or territory of Islam is an issue of ijtihad or personal effort based on the reality situation at the time of the mujtahid scholars that involves no evidence from the Quran or sunnah”. This proves that the scholars of fiqh did not agree over these three terms.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
12/28/2014 8:57 Comments ||
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WNDR assumes however all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any persons, living, dead, or undead is purely a miracle.
#9
I love that image of the Chinese voyages that Alistaire Elmailing8877 posted. As if they sailed through the arctic.
I'd seen claims the Chinese made it to the west Coast of Latin America and there is evidence they made it to Africa when the fleet was recalled, but the arctic? Might as well claim they found the Northwest Passage as well.
[Khaama (Afghanistan)] A set of photographs have gone viral on social media websites in Afghanistan which shows a young lady walking in the streets of Kabul city with bare legs. The brazen hussy!
The young woman was reportedly spotted in Karte-3 area in the western part of Kabul city but there are no reports regarding the exact date and time the photographs were taken.
The photographs were widely shared on social media, specifically on Facebook which have created confusions among the users of social media.
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Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2014 00:00 ||
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Maybe we should send the Taliban thousands of Playboy or Hustler magazines to keep em busy for awhile.
[ARABNEWS] Saudis are eagerly awaiting the approval of a new draft law by the Shoura Council which prevents women under 18 from getting married. The draft law pending approval sets the age of adulthood at 18 and allows women under that age to marry only upon procuring a court order.
The move comes in the wake of recent reports of girls as young as 10 being married off to men in their 70s which sparked a nationwide debate in Saudi courts compelling critics to denounce the practice. They called upon religious and legal authorities in the country to rule against the phenomenon which, they feel, is dangerous to society.
The Ministry of Justice released in its recommendations that marriages of girls below 18 could only take place upon a court approval in writing. Currently, the Qadi, (person who solemnizes marriages) has the authority to marry girls off at any age.
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Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2014 00:00 ||
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18 = Old Hag in Mo's Islam
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/28/2014 8:29 Comments ||
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...allows women under that age to marry only upon procuring a court order.
A court made up of a bunch of sexually repressed old men. Yeah, that's going to work.
[Dhaka Tribune] Police tossed in the slammer ... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not... a nephew of Tangail 3 constituency MP Amanur Rahman Khan Rana in possession with firearms and ammunitions at Akur Takur Para area of the district town.
Rezowan Khan Punom, who is known as an Awami League cadre in the area, was arrested from his residence around 2pm yesterday.
Officer-in-Charge Golam Mahfizur Rahman of Detective Branch of Police in Tangail said: "Police conducted a raid at Punom's house around 2pm and arrested him from his room."
Police also recovered a foreign revolver, two 7.65mm pistols, one 9mm pistol, 17 rounds of bullets, four magazines, nine chocolate bombs, four sharp weapons, three Chinese axes, 45 pieces of yaba tablets, foreign currencies and several other weapons from his house.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2014 00:00 ||
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Defenses on the Falklands are being reviewed after it emerged Russia plans to offer Argentina ...a country located on the other side of the Deep South. It is covered with Pampers and inhabited by Grouchos, who dance the Tangle but only in pairs because it takes two to tangle. They used to have some islands called the Malvinas located where the Falklands are now. They're not supposed to cry for Evita... long-range bombers. The aircraft, which Moscow will swap for beef and wheat, would be able to mount air patrols over Port Stanley. Argentina can't run their own economy yet are always pushing to take back the Falklands against the island residents wishes, Why? (hint - see below)
Ministry of Defence officials fear Buenos Aires would take delivery of the planes well before the deployment in 2020 of the Navy’s 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and its F-35B fighters, leaving a "real window of vulnerability".
Defence cuts have left the Falklands with just four RAF Typhoon fighters, Rapier surface-to-air missiles and fewer than 1,200 troops, supported by a naval warship that visits throughout the year.
I think I see the problem...
President Putin’s visit to Argentina in July laid the groundwork for exchanging Russian military hardware for wheat, beef and other goods Moscow needs due to EU food embargoes.
The deal involves a lease/lend of 12 Sukhoi Su-24 supersonic, all-weather attack aircraft.
They are ageing but Nato still regards what it codenames "Fencers" as "super-fighters", with their 2,000-mile range and laser-guided missiles. The money graf:
Tensions over the islands resurfaced after exploratory seabed drilling revealed the promise of an oil bonanza.
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/28/2014 07:56 ||
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(hint - see below)
Something about an oil dispute involving claims off the islands. Guess Buenos Aires hasn't paid attention to Caracas. Oil ain't going to save your grubby socialist thieving hands today.
#3
Fishing licenses worth way more than oil for the foreseeable future. Not certain if the 1200 defenders include the Falkland Island Self Defense force which is of reinforced battalion strength. Local light infantry kinda Boering.
[ARABNEWS] Belarussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko on Saturday sacked his prime minister and other brass hats as the ex-Soviet state reels from the effects of Russia's economic crisis next door.
Lukashenko dismissed Mikhail Myasnikovich, in office since December 2010, and appointed his chief of staff Andrei Kobyakov as his new head of government, his administration said.
Lukashenko also replaced the head of the central bank as well as several other brass hats including the ministers of economy and industry.
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Posted by: Fred ||
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Tied their economy to Putin instead of the west. They lose.
For a map, click here. You can enlarge the map, if you open it separately.
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com
With a prisoner exchange ongoing, and without a further discussion of the issues on the table, peace talks held in Minsk have stopped, according to Russian language news accounts.
Now dubbed by Russian language media as Minsk 2, the talks with the tripartite contact group consisting of the heads of state of Ukraine, Russia and Germany were expected to go into Saturday, but now, with representatives of the two breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk demanding a revision of the September Minsk Peace Accord -- and at least Ukrainian officials refusing to talk unless the original Minsk agreement is complete -- the talks have been halted without even a notice to the press.
Previously, it was announced from the Ukrainian government that humanitarian supplies from their government would be delivered to areas the Ukrainians control, and it had been speculated among rebel media that talks could begin over the lifting of the economic embargo of rebel held territory, a deal that rebels say must be concluded before talks can start on completing the Minsk agreement.
The impasse has led an unidentified Ukrainian official to declare that the Donetsk and Lugansk representatives were "incompetent" and "unable to make a decision".
But from the beginning, Ukraine's stance has been singular: complete the ceasefire agreement by disarming, something the rebels have steadfastly refused to do.
The Russian language pro rebel Voice of Sevastopol said that another problem in reaching a solution to the peace talks is the line of demarcation set last September. Part of it runs through Donetsk city, and has been a constant beef from the rebel side.
Fighting in Donetsk
Pro rebel media said that firefights have been ongoing in the vicinity of Peski Thursday, which is a suburb of Donetsk city, using mortars and small arms against rebel positions.
The fighting near Peski continued into December 25th. Rebel media reported Ukrainian tank gunfire was laid against rebel positions at Oktyabrskaya mine.
Ukrainian military journalist Dmitriy Tymchuk said that fighting had broken out between "local insurgents" and "Russian mercenaries" said to be from Chechnya, and that wounded were reported on both sides Friday near Makiivka, an eastern district of Donetsk city.
Tymchuk also reported rebel artillery fire near Dokuchazhevsk, south of Donetsk city, an operational area for "Russian mercenaries".
Fighting also continued Thursday near Gorlovka, northeast of Donetsk city, where rebels and Ukrainian military units have been fighting over a road that links Gorlovka and Dzerzhinsk, to the west.
According to the Voice of Sevastopol, Ukrainian tanks struck at areas in northern Gorlovka, but the rebels responded with their own tanks and with heavy 152mm self propelled artillery. Most of the fighting took place between nearby Mayorsk and Shumy, while local residents, according to rebel media, said that some of the fighting took place closer to Gorlovka.
Dmitri Tymchuk said that on Friday rebel units were firing on Ukrainian Army positions near Gorlovka using D-30 122mm towed artillery in a direct fire role, and that the area has been reinforced by the rebels with a total of five tanks along with a total of 12 cargo trucks.
On Friday, the fighting continued overnight, according to the Voice of Sevastopol, as Ukrainian artillery units fired 120mm and 82mm mortar into rebel positions at Mayorsk. The tank battle continued as well, with rebel media reporting unspecified Ukrainian losses.
Ukrainian forces shelled northwestern outskirts of Gorlovka as well from their positions in Shumy using tanks, armored personnel carriers and small arms fire. The Michurino district in Gorlovka was hit by 82mm and 120mm mortar fire. One unidentified man was wounded in the shelling.
Fighting near Stanitsa Luganskaya
Rebel media reported that a Ukrainian probe consisting of a rifle company and five tanks was driven back by rebel artillery fire near Valuiskoye Thursday.
A separate report said that Ukrainian artillery fire hit nearby settlements of Zelyonaya Roscha, Vesyolenkoye, Bolotnoye, Valuiskoye, at Kolesnikovka and Olkhovskoye, and that rebel losses totaled four killed, 15 wounded and, one Ural transport truck, one tank, two technicals (armed commercial pickup trucks) and one 82mm mortar destroyed.
The same report said that in the fighting the Ukrainians lost ten killed, 30 wounded, one APC, two tanks, three Ural transport trucks, five 82mm mortars and two self propelled 120mm mortar vehicles, known as the 2S9 "Nona".
Another report said that the Ukrainian Battalion "Chernigov" was hit by rebel artillery fire, and that Ukrainian units inside Stanitsa Luganskaya responded with mortar and small arms fire against rebel positions. Fighting was also reported near Pervomaisk-Popasnaya.
Fighting near Lopaskino in Lugansk
Fighting erupted along the North Donetsk River as rebels continue to try to establish a bridgehead near Slavyanoserbsk, which both sides have been fighting for for at least two months.
According to the report with the Voice of Sevastopol, Ukrainian artillery fire fell on the settlements of Vesyoaya Gora, Rayovka and Prishib near from Ukrainian positions at Stary Aidar and Schastye. The Ukrainian military units firing used mortars, anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms in their attacks.
On Friday, Ukrainian artillery fire hit the locality of Lopaskino, fire so intense rebel units were forced to abandon Lopaskino. A quick rebel counterattack retook the town, but Ukrainian artillery fire continued.
According to the report, rebel losses over the two day period amounted to 12 killed, 50 wounded and one IFV, two tanks and three howitzers destroyed. The rebel report estimated Ukrainian losses at unknown number of dead, 100 wounded, three IFVs, one APC, two tanks, five mortars, four AA-mounted artillery.
Dmitri Tymchuk reported that a rebel armored group consisting of four tanks and six armored vehicle fired on Ukrainian positions at Trokhizbenka, on the left bank of the North Donetsk River.
Trokhizbenka and Lopaskino are near highway T1303, a road formerly held by Ukrainian police units. Tychuk said that a battery of 2S1 SP artillery vehicles were observed deploying and displacing at various points near the highway.
Chris Covert writes about foreign military issues for Rantburg.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com. You can read past articles about the 2014 war in southeastern Ukraina by clicking here.
Moved to Page 3 ... and back to Page 1. Once is an accident, twice is coincidence. You know the rest. My analytical radar is pinging like crazy.
Indonesia and Singapore have launched a search-and-rescue operation after an AirAsia flight disappeared over the Java Sea with 162 people on board early Sunday.
Flight 8501 was scheduled to make a relatively short early-morning flight from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore but lost contact with Jakarta air traffic control at 6:24 a.m. local time (6:24 p.m. Eastern Time Saturday), approximately an hour before it was due to land.
Eleven minutes earlier, according to Djoko Murjatmodjo, Indonesia's acting director general of transportation, the pilot had "asked to hinder cloud by turning left and go higher to 34,000 feet." Murjatmodjo said that there was no distress signal from the plane. AirAsia Indonesia had earlier confirmed that the pilot had asked to change course due to bad weather in the area.
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
12/28/2014 00:12 ||
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I believe there was a USN vessel within 100 miles of it when contact was lost. We should have active radar on that bird or am I mis-estimating the radar coverage of a LCC?
Posted by: abu do you love ||
12/28/2014 4:56 Comments ||
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LCC? Blue Ridge has a tprecycled SPS 48E, good in theory to 250 miles. In a screaming thunderstorm storm who knows. It might not have even been radiating if there were escorts.
#5
Seriously, I'm sorry for the people who have lost their lives in this obvious airliner crash, and hope their families can find solace in the idea that their deaths were relatively quick.
#6
I just remember when the (financially well endowed) people with prepaid tickets who panicked when the prototype space craft crashed a couple weeks back and were concerned about the safety of an afternoon outing. No prototype here. Yet passengers get on board playing the odds sh!t won't happen. There is no perfect.
#7
MA 370 was a Boeing operated by Malasia Air. Subsequent investigation of the pilot indicates his wife and three kids had moved out of his house the day before the flight. He should not have been allowed to fly.
AA 8501 was an airbus operated by Indonesian Air. No info yet on the pilot and co pilot.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/28/2014 16:19 Comments ||
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Macmillan CEO Jim Sargent, who wrote those words, should certainly know. Sargent, along with his counterparts at publishing giants Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and HarperCollins, recently agreed to settle charges that they conspired with Apple Inc. four years ago to dilute Amazon’s power over the e-book industry.
The idea was to create a new pricing scheme, in which the publishers, not Amazon, would set prices over the fast-growing e-book category. Amazon, which dominates book sales, normally purchases works at a wholesale price and offers customers a significant discount. The new plan would have given Apple a 30 percent cut of whatever price the companies charged for e-books.
Over the past few months, however, Amazon agreed to let the publishers determine prices. But in a weird twist of fate, a federal judge has effectively allowed Apple to continue to set its own prices, the very power the publishers sought to deny Amazon.
If anything, this odd soap opera among Amazon, Apple and publishers demonstrates the unintended consequences of trying to use old-school tactics — high-powered lawyers, secret meetings, backroom negotiations — to solve business problems prompted by new technologies. Rather than explore new ways of distributing their products, publishers sat on their hands while Amazon amassed near dominance in both hardcovers and e-books.
“Through great innovation and prodigious amounts of risk and hard work, Amazon holds a 64 percent market share of Macmillan’s e-book business,” Sargent wrote in a letter last week (one that I received because, full disclosure, Macmillan publishes my book, “Rebuilding Empires.”). “As publishers, authors, illustrators, and agents, we need broader channels to reach our readers.”
Too bad Sargent and his cohorts chose collusion instead of innovation all those years ago.
In 2007, Amazon introduced the Kindle device and soon offered new and best-selling books for just $9.99. Naturally, this alarmed publishers.
“Publishers saw the rise in e-books, and particularly Amazon’s price discounting, as a substantial challenge to their traditional business model,” according to court documents filed by the U.S. Justice Department. The companies “feared that lower retail prices for e-books might lead eventually to lower wholesale prices for e-books, lower prices for print books, or other consequences the publishers hoped to avoid.”
The publishers “had concluded that unilateral efforts to move Amazon away from its practice of offering low retail prices would not work, and they thereafter conspired to raise retail e-book prices and to otherwise limit competition in the sale of e-books,” the documents said.
By the end of 2009, the publishers enlisted the help of Apple. The company was lagging Amazon despite a similar e-book business model — it was buying them in bulk and setting its own prices. But with its popular iPad combined with its dominant iTunes store, publishers believed Apple was the only retailer with enough clout to break Amazon’s $9.99 model.
Here’s how the plan worked: The publishers adopted a new “agency model,” under which the companies would set the e-book price and Apple would act as their “agent” in selling the e-books to consumers. In return, Apple would receive a 30 percent commission off each e-book.
“Yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway,” the late Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs told publishers, according to the court documents.
As a result, e-book prices for best-selling titles went for $12.99 or $14.99, $3 to $5 more than the $9.99 charged by Amazon.
Apple’s agency model didn’t last long.
Federal and state attorneys sued Apple and the publishers for antitrust violations. The publishers eventually settled and promised not to change their old pricing system for a period of time. But Apple, which was found liable during a trial in June 2013, cut an unusual deal with the court.
Until a higher court rules on its appeal, Apple can still set its own e-book prices, the very system publishers were trying to wrestle away from Amazon. Meanwhile, Amazon was busy brokering deals allowing publishers to determine digital prices on its platform.
In short, the publishers went through all of this trouble to deprive Amazon the power to dictate prices only to inadvertently (and exclusively) give that power to Apple.
Apple is now “the only retailer who is allowed unlimited discounting,” Sargent wrote. “This will ensure a muddled and inefficient market ... (and) will cause us to occasionally change the digital list price of your books in what may seem to be random fashion. I ask for your forbearance. We will be attempting to create even pricing as best we can.”
Oy.
But Sargent did correctly note that the case does not solve the publishing industry’s long-term problems. Amazon still dominates the book industry, which means publishers need to develop new ways of distributing digital products to consumers.
According to Sargent, publishers generally dislike subscription models offered by startups like Rooster and Scribd, both from the Bay Area, because “we have always worried that it will erode the perceived value of your books.”
But as the digital market continues to expand, Sargent said, Macmillan is now testing subscription services, though mostly for backlisted books and titles hard to find at brick-and-mortar stores.
One can only imagine what publishers could have accomplished had they applied the same imagination and cunning to selling digital books as they did with conspiring with Apple to fix prices.
#1
They were too busy protecting their business model to relaize it had become outdated. They should have done it the old fashioned way: buy congress off and pass restrictive regulations - like the MPAA and RIAA did with the 75 years extension to copyrights.
#4
Amazon has now introduced a subscription service for their kindle books. Kindle unlimited offers a library of 700K books for 9.99/month. Tempting...
I use e-books almost exclusively, otherwise I'll have to cart around about 800lbs of reference books.
There's also 24x7 books and Safari, I can access via my IEEE and ACM memberships tho they can be kind of a hassle to access.
I'll bet the monks were pretty pissed off when the printing press was invented too.
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.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The bare-
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] A hippo that panicked while being transported by truck in Taiwan jumped from the vehicle, breaking a leg and causing confused residents to report spotting a dinosaur on the loose.
