A council has banned the term "brainstorming" and replaced it with "thought showers".
Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent was accused of taking political correctness to extremes after instructing staff to make the change. The move came as council chiefs feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy. The buzz term is often used by executives to generate ideas among their staff.
But memos have been sent to staff asking them not to use it and some have been given training which encouraged them to use the alternative of thought showers.
Even charities representing epileptics said the ban was taking political correctness too far. Margaret Thomas, of the National Society for Epilepsy, said: "Brainstorming is a clear and descriptive phrase. Alternatives such as thought shower or blue-sky thinking are ambiguous to say the least. Any implication that the word brainstorming is offensive to epileptics takes political correctness too far."
Silly Margaret, there's no such thing as taking political correctness too far in Britain.
Richard Colwill, of mental health charity SANE, said: "This ban goes too far. Few would be genuinely offended by the word brainstorming in the context of council meetings."
A spokesman for Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent said: "We take diversity awareness very seriously. The majority of staff have taken part in training and been asked to use the term thought showers."
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/22/2008 00:00 ||
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#5
Our hopes and prayers are with our brethren folks in England. When the majority of the populace get more excited over a football (soccer) game than about what their proud nation is coming too, we can only fear the worst.
It's coming here to the States also and hopefully, by watching the outcomes of follies such as this one, we are more cognizant of their beginnings and able to stop them early on. Sadly, we are being somewhat lax at that too.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
06/22/2008 12:05 Comments ||
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#6
Thought showers! What a cleansing idea. Now brainstorming involves several people of one, two, or more sexes doing this together. It's starting to sound like fun to do thought showers, if you do them with the right sort of people. If you don't do them with the right people, then it could be risky. Think what might happen if you were to drop the thought soap and then bend over to pick it up. Yeh, it's good to be careful.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
06/22/2008 12:24 Comments ||
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#7
The last whimpers of a great western power as it slowly collapses like a flan in the cupboard.
A three-legged, one-eyed, cancer-afflicted dog named Gus has been crowned the World's Ugliest Dog at a fair in California. Gus, a Chinese Crested dog, beat allcomers to take the title at the Sonoma-Marin Fair. Owner Jeanenne Teed, from Florida, said she would spend the $1,600 prize on treatment for Gus's skin cancer.
The competition has been running for 20 years, and is one of the fair's top attractions, organisers said. Vicki DeArmon, marketing director of the fair, said that in the past few years, winners had been dogs that had been abandoned or neglected before being adopted by dog-lovers. "They may look hard to love, but apparently they are not. I've never seen dogs better cared for," she added.
Gus was rescued from a bad home. One of his legs was amputated as a consequence of his skin tumour. He lost an eye to a tomcat in a fight.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/22/2008 00:00 ||
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#6
I have nothing but pity for small dogs like that. My tomcat in Germany was bigger than most of them, and meaner than ANY of them. I never could get very friendly with something only slightly larger than an overgrown rat, even though my mom had Chihuauas for many years. I don't know that ol' Gus is all that ugly, though. I've got a hairless cat that will make him look plumb handsome!
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/22/2008 16:07 Comments ||
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#7
I've got a hairless cat that will make him look plumb handsome!
ROLF! sounds like a warrior cat OP!
Ima glad Ima not the only one who is GRRRR irritated by small whinny dogs..
Two teenaged girls from Pakistan-administered Kashmir entered the Indian territory crossing the Line of Control (LoC) Saturday apparently to escape forced marriages back home, army officials here said.
They said the two girls, in their late teens, approached the Indian troops in Rajouri sector, saying they had come to the Indian side to escape marriages being arranged by their family members. More details were not available.
The officials said the girls, who say they are sisters, would be handed over to the Pakistan Army after questioning.
Posted by: john frum ||
06/22/2008 09:25 ||
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would be handed over to the Pakistan Army after questioning.
Bad juju.
Posted by: ed ||
06/22/2008 9:36 Comments ||
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I don't think they have much of a choice. Two minor girls crossing the border without visas will have to be sent back. The Pakistani state apparatus will claim that they will guarantee the girl's safety.
Hopefully someone in the Pak government will take an interest and prevent the parents from going forward.
Posted by: john frum ||
06/22/2008 10:07 Comments ||
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#4
These girls are dead sometime in the next three months; the 'crime' will be 'dishonoring' their families. We all know it.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/22/2008 12:20 Comments ||
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A local court of Swat district has ordered the district police to arrest the persons involved in handover of two minor girls as swara (mostly practiced in interior Sindh and NWFP that requires young girls to marry members of rival groups to resolve disputes) for resolution of a bloody dispute.
Kabal Police on the court directives registered first information report (FIR) against five accused involved in two swara cases and started investigation for including jirga members in the cases, police said.
The Swat District and Sessions Judge Mohammad Sher Shah initiated action on the complaint of Sher Rehman, stating that two minor girls Balanishta and Nazia, were given as swara to two brothers Ali Rawan and Raimoz Khan, sons of Khan Bahadar, resident of Manri area of Kabal tehsil, in compensation for his son Umerzadas killing allegedly by the rival groups.
Khan Bahadar had charged Mahir Khan, brother of Balanishta, and two brothers of Nazia including Azzatmand and Payanda Sher, in the killing of his son Umrzada on December 22, 2006.
According to FIR, Khan Bahadar first booked Mahir Khan in his sons death. He through a jirga received Rs 600,000 and his sister Balanishta as swara for his son Ali Rawan.
Then he registered another FIR against Azzatmand and Payanda Sher claiming that his son was found dead at their house. Later, through jirga he received Rs 1600,000 and their sister Nazia as swara for his other son Raimoz Khan.
The police have booked Khan Bahadar, Ali Rawan, Ramoz Khan, Azzatmand, Payanda Sher and Mahir Khan in the FIR. The jirga decision is a violation of the Supreme Court orders that banned the offering of females in Badl-e-Sulh (swara) to a rival party for resolution of disputes, police officials said, adding that they have started raids for the arrest of the accused. The police officials said that they were also investigating the locals so as to include jirga members in the cases.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/22/2008 00:00 ||
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TEHRAN - An Iranian women's rights activist has been sentenced to five years in prison on security-related charges, her lawyer said on Saturday. Hana Abdi, a 22-year-old woman from Iran's Kurdistan province, was accused of "illegal gathering with the intention of committing a crime against the nation's security", lawyer Mohammad Sharif told Reuters by telephone.
"The verdict was communicated to me on Wednesday," he said, adding it would be appealed.
Abdi is a member of a campaign to try to gather 1 million signatures in support of greater women's rights in the Islamic Republic, a fellow activist said. Rights groups accuse Iran of discriminating against women, a charge Tehran denies. "We're all very shocked by this harsh sentence," the campaigner said, declining to be named.
An unidentified Iranian judge was in December quoted by an official news agency as saying Abdi and another woman arrested in a Kurdish region a few months earlier were accused of being members of a rebel group, PJAK, and of involvement in bombings.
The Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) is an Iranian offshoot of the separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) movement that is fighting neighbouring Turkey. Several clashes between Iranian forces and Kurdish rebels have been reported over the past year in northwest Iran.
Iranian women's rights campaigners say dozens of activists have been detained since the countrywide One Million Signature Campaign was launched in 2006, most of them released after a few days or weeks. But last month, a male activist in the campaign was sentenced to one year in prison, his lawyer said.
Judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi earlier this year said collecting signatures was not a crime, but "making propaganda against the system and disturbing public opinion" was.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/22/2008 00:00 ||
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Pakistan Times publisher Sheikh Najam Ali has been looking over his shoulder every day for a month since running an ad that proved controversial in the local Muslim community. The ad, announcing a local Ahmadiyya celebration and describing the faith as Muslim, prompted death threats from anonymous callers, cancellations from advertisers and the removal of his papers in bulk from various distribution sites, he said.
The ad and subsequent coverage of the event has drawn criticism from some Muslims who say Ali has insulted them by giving authenticity to a sect that they consider non-Muslim. 'I had no idea there would be this kind of reaction' said Ali, whose free Urdu weekly has a circulation of 15,000 in the Houston area.
Members of the Ahmadiyya faith, an estimated 70 million worldwide, follow Islam's main tenets. But contrary to mainstream Muslims, they don't recognize Muhammad as the final prophet. Instead, they believe another prophet followed in the 19th century named Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who came in the spirit of Christ to revive the religion of Islam, said Mohammed Zafarullah, a local imam for Ahmadiyya followers. Established in 1889 in Punjab, India, the faith is considered non-Muslim by Pakistan's constitution and heretical by some Muslims.
Ali's decision to run the newspaper ad, twice, and cover the event in a subsequent news article brought his values as a businessman and journalist against his sensitivity toward offending fellow Muslims. So far, he's put his job first. 'I don't care how many advertisers I lose. I'm taking a stand on this one. I have rights,' said Ali, who is Shia. 'It was just an advertisement. It has nothing to do with my beliefs.'
His job entails running ads without discriminating against any particular faith and covering the entire Urdu-speaking community in Houston, he said, and that includes those who are Ahmadiyya followers.
The Pakistan Times isn't the first Urdu publication to be targeted in the U.S., says the Committee to Protect Journalists. Last year, the publisher and editor of the Urdu Times as well as the editor in chief of the Pakistan Post, both based in New York, received threats for their coverage of alleged criminal activities by Pakistani-Americans living in New York City and opinion pieces by Jewish authors.
Some Muslims in Houston have been vocal about their disapproval of Ali's decision to run the ad, in which the group calls itself Muslim and says the second coming of a religious reformer has already arrived.
A similar ad ran in English in a local South Asian weekly, Voice of Asia, but received no reaction, according to its editor. Ali should have known better than to run the ad in a paper read mostly by Muslims and Pakistanis for whom the mention of the Ahmadiyya faith raises memories of an age-old dispute, said Atif Fattah, the co-host of a local Muslim radio show, called Serat-e-Mustaqeem, or The Righteous Path. He's told listeners who called into his show about the paper's coverage to pull their support if they didn't like it. 'By doing this he's telling us he doesn't care about the community,' Fattah said. 'So we're saying, 'The community doesn't care about you.' '
Advertiser Amer Zaheer, owner of a vitamin company called Herbäl Phärma, canceled his ads via e-mail. 'My suggestion to you is pray to Allah to forgive you and guide you not to commit such a sin in (sic) future,' Zaheer's e-mail reads. He declined to comment. Other advertisers who have canceled their ads also declined to comment or said the move was an unrelated business choice.
Those against the ads are displaying their lack of tolerance for other faiths, said Rodwan Saleh, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston. He noted that the newspaper was within its legal rights to run the ad and news story. 'In America, everybody has a right to exist and worship,' Saleh said. 'What difference does it make if the Ahmadiyya group came and claimed whatever they claimed and asked to be part of the mainstream? What if this was a Jewish group or a Buddhist group?'
Posted by: john frum ||
06/22/2008 00:00 ||
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The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan defines Ahmadiyya as a "non-Muslim minority." Why? Pakis brought in some Wahabi scholars to make fatwah on the issue, and they decided that the minority weren't good slaves of allah. Surely, that Constitution trumps American law?
Can Ahmadiyyahs make the Mecca pilgrimage? I don't know, but the Saudis allow hated Shiites, Sufis, Ismailis, Farahkhanists, etc to do so.
#2
An after thought: that Urdu weekly claims to distribute 15,000 copies. Less than 10% of Pakis speak that official language. How many Pakistanis are in Houston? Did they come for the chicken fried steak?
#3
Our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. That includes the freedom to worship any way or no way that you choose. Those trying to suppress one religion because it's different from theirs are not Americans, either in reality or spirit. They don't belong in this nation. Extradite them to whatever Islamic shitistan they came from. They don't belong here.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
06/22/2008 16:10 Comments ||
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#4
I see death threats in the US as a great opportunity, if they are serious. That is, there are all sorts of ways to set up an ambush to take out assassins.
Such dumbasses can easily be lured into a rural location, hoping to put a hit on someone they hate, then find themselves SOL. Usually, no one else knows where they have gone or what they are intending to do, either, so they just disappear.
Even the FBI could set up such a trap, to catch Muslims willing to murder. For example, they could let slip that Hirsh Ali will be having a meeting with Salman Rushdie in an isolated house in the middle of the backwoods.
They would have to take several unusual roads just to get there, and would be waltzing around with deadly and probably illegal weapons.
#5
The article is in the Houston Chronicle. I imagine the Pakistan Times will be getting new ads purchased in the near future -- Texans can be so open and supportive, I hear. :-)
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.
A council has banned the term "brainstorming" and replaced it with "thought showers".
A three-legged, one-eyed, cancer-afflicted dog named Gus has been crowned the World's Ugliest Dog at a fair in California. Gus, a Chinese Crested dog, beat allcomers to take the title at the Sonoma-Marin Fair. Owner Jeanenne Teed, from Florida, said she would spend the $1,600 prize on treatment for Gus's skin cancer. 
TEHRAN - An Iranian women's rights activist has been sentenced to five years in prison on security-related charges, her lawyer said on Saturday. Hana Abdi, a 22-year-old woman from Iran's Kurdistan province, was accused of "illegal gathering with the intention of committing a crime against the nation's security", lawyer Mohammad Sharif told Reuters by telephone.
