A Somali girl who said she had been raped has been stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery, a human rights group has said.
Amnesty International said in a press release on Friday that the victim, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, had been 13 years old – not 23 as earlier reports had suggested.
Duhulow was stoned to death on October 27 by dozens of men in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses.
It makes no difference what voice in your head you listen to, it’s still crazy.
There is something uniquely “American” about the obsession with pointless and trite symbols of nationalistic fervor. As I sit here on a flight to NC, I am struck by the sheer number of flag pins, t-shirts and other detrius of modern life.
Where were these “patriots” when the Constitution was being trampled and out basic liberties abridged? Busy shopping for more crap.
The government seems to believe that, if they can open a suitcase at the border, then they can open a laptop as well. This simplistic legal theory ignores the massive factual differences between a quick glance into a suitcase and the ability to copy a lifetime of files from someone’s laptop, and then examine those files at the government’s leisure.
[...]
This issue has come into sharp focus since the April decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in U.S. v. Arnold. That panel clearly ruled that CPB can seize a laptop computer at the border, and examine its contents, without any reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity. Affidavits in that case and other credible reports show that agents at the border are going further—they are requiring travelers to reveal their passwords or encryption keys so that government agents can examine the full content of the laptop or other computing device.
This is the effective equivalent of key escrow, which is a damned stupid idea. Given the near total lack of accountability, this is an epically stupid idea that only a high-ranking bureaucrat that struggles with email could possible have originiated. That, or someone was mining George Orwell again.
I can promise you that more and more people will make sure that nothing crosses the border that is discernible by the jack-booted thugs.
In a shocking turn of events, legalizing the marriage of same-sex couples in Massachussets has not brought about the end of the world, or even a few frogs falling from the sky.
Nearly five years after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, the vitriolic battle that brought international attention and apocalyptic fears to Massachusetts is all but dead. Since the first marriages on May 17, 2004, more than 11,000 couples have tied the knot. They’re busy mowing lawns and hauling kids to soccer practice, and the sky has not fallen.
Updates on whether dogs and cats are now living together are, however, still forthcoming.
If the good God had wanted people of the same sex to marry, he’d have created laundry baskets with separate compartments. The gender-neutral clothes hamper speaks volumes about reality’s well-known heterosexual bias.
Aaron Shwartz and James Robertson trade discussion points about the impediments to start-ups in America, namely the social safety net and the time requirements. I’d like to just recount a story from a previous employer.
Some years ago, when Bush was in his ascendancy, I worked for a CEO of a small start-up that was a staunch Republican support. This is important because one day, over lunch, we happened upon the topic of health care, specifically nationalized health care. What shocked me was that he admitted that of late, he had come around to be a big believer in nationalizing the health care system. The reasoning he gave me, which is distinctly capitalistic, was as follows:
As a tech start-up, hiring the “best and brightest” requires competitive benefits to be offered.
The “best and brightest” often are slightly older, more established, which means they’re considered higher risk.
For a small company, the cost of good insurance is very high because of the risk pool.
Risk of losing insurance discourages the best people from taking a risk at a small company.
Starting a company means giving up insurance and other “necessaries” in this world.
What this does is place start-ups at a severe disadvantage to more established companies. By nationalizing health care, you take that major issue out of the equation, and people can consider a broader set of opportunities. More freedom is better for everyone.
James discusses the issue around hours, etc., but that’s much further down the consideration process than “I can’t do it because my kids need insurance” decision point.
It’s difficult to deal with the Democratic primary without the issue of race rearing its ugly head. While many Americans would like to pretend that they are “blind” to it, it’s simply the refusal to admit it exists. What we saw during the election was the difference between yesterday and tomorrow.
Yesterday, there was us (white) and them (non-white). Identity was entangled in the simplistic explanation of skin color. There was a time for this; a time of Jesse Jackson and Jeramiah Wright; a time of Black Panthers and the KKK. That time, however, is not now. That time was then.
For those of us who came of age and awareness after the race riots, after Jim Crow, after sit ins, after anti-miscegenation laws, the concept of race has a more nuanced feel. While race continues to be a defining characteristic for many people, it is not the only characteristic that we define ourselves by. We have witnessed inter-racial marriages and relationships first hand, and many of us have found that skin tone plays little role in determining attraction or opinion.
We are all different, and yet, underneath, we are all Americans; we are all human. Just as the views of sexuality have progressed from simplistic labels of “normal” and “other” to one that understands that our desires and attractions span a gamut of individuals, we have seen that calling someone “black” or even “white” is rarely instructive.
My heritage is mixed. I am part Italian, English, Scottish and Cherokee. My mother is from Appalachia, and that cultural background is powerful. I have always looked at the inevitable “race” question on school forms and job applications and said “other”. I’m not simply white, nor am I simply Native American. I am a new race, one that has been centuries in the making. I am simply American.
This road has been long, and it has been difficult. Many before us have not survived the long journey, but as each generation begins to dominate the discussion—as mine is beginning to now—the old fears pass just a little further into the hazy memory of yesterday. Like so many before him, and more to come, Barack Hussein Obama is nothing more, and nothing less, than the great melting pot of America, where we have progressed from allowing others to define us as a group to defining ourselves, but still as a group, and now we are finally looking out, not in, for our place. We are simply us: an earth-tone rainbow of humanity.
For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when—according to Christian end times dogma—Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.
Really? Could it be? Could it be even better?
Users can also upload up to 150 megabytes of documents, which will be protected by an unidentified encryption algorithm until the Rapture, then released to up to 12 nonbelievers of your choice. The site recommends that you use that storage to house sensitive financial information.
A minister at a Dallas-area megachurch was charged with online solicitation of a minor after police said Friday he was caught in an Internet sex sting.
Undercover officers posing as a 13-year-old girl communicated with 52-year-old Joe Barron of Plano for about two weeks. The online conversations were sexual in nature, police said.
Thirteen! WTF is wrong with people? Why is it the more people preach about sin and the evils of others the more likely it is that they are the lowest form of scum imaginable. I’d like to say “innocent until proven guilty”, and I will, but it sure don’t look good for the “good minister”:
Police said they found a web-cam and condoms in Barron’s car.
In this case, nobody thought twice, nobody blinked an eye, when Wall Street took a truly unique American institution, Sears, and turned it from a fine, respected American society matron into a common streetwalker reduced to pimping through the night for Eddie Lampert.
As I was reading some of the reactions and blog postings this morning about yesterday’s primaries in Pennsylvania, something sparked in the far reaches of my memory. Something I had read many years ago, and, as with so many things of this persuasion, I had to seek it out. I found it in the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, and inscribed 168 years ago in a still-prescient volume:
I want to imagine with what new features despotism could be produced in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Each of them, withdrawn and apart, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his particular friends form the whole human species for him; as for dwelling with his fellow citizens, he is beside them, but he does not see them; he touches them and does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone, and if a family still remains for him, one can at least say that he no longer has a native country.
Could anything better describe the culture of consumerism better?
Have you ever spoke the name of our Lord in vain? Yup.
Have you ever killed another human being? Not that I’m aware of, but my cooking may have at some point, and they were simply too polite to tell me.
Have you every lied? I’m human, therefore yes.
Have you ever had relations before marriage? Since you bloody Christians won’t let me get married, yes. It’s your fault. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Do you go to church every Sunday or once a week? Isn’t that the same thing? Never mind. The last time I was in a church for anything other than a wedding or funeral, my parents were still together and I was probably 12.
Do you wish you had more stuff? I’m an American, so yes. It doesn’t drive my life, but I do sometimes buy a lottery ticket, knowing I’ll never win, just to yammer with friends about what we’d do with $300M.
Do you gossip? Why else do you go to parties?
Do you give to charity? With time and money.
Do you listen to rap or heavy metal music? Hip-hop yes. Heavy metal just annoys me.
Have you ever had an abortion or been pro-choice? Um, as a guy, I’ll say “no”. I am pro-choice, as it’s none of my business, and I’ve been supportive to friends who have had to go through the decision process, regardless of their final decision.
Have you ever read Harry Potter or Spiderwick Chronicles or the Golden Compass? Bunch of amateurs. How about Diane Duane’s Tale of Five, where the main characters are not only two wizards, but gay wizards in love. (Thanks, Brian).
Do you see movies with unwholesome content? I consider the warnings a recommendation, honestly. If it’s wholesome, why would I want to watch it?
Do you pray every day? Only when I drive on the beltway. Seriously, though, no.
Do you believe that God is the creator of heaven and earth? If by “God” you mean a bowl of pasta. But that’s mostly ‘cuz I just love pasta.
Are you overweight because you eat too much? As I tell people, “I didn’t get this body eating at McDonalds”. And if you did, shame on you—it won’t fit in a Happy Meal.
Do you take pride in accomplishments other than service to God? In mine and others? Yes to both.
A scout leader who once sued the City of Berkeley for challenging a national Boy Scout ban on members who are gay or atheist has been arrested on felony charges that for at least five years he sexually abused young males in the troops he led.
I think the idea that the more someone talks about how wrong being gay is, the more likely they are to have repressed feeling of their own. The more radicalized they become in those opinions, the more likely that their own feelings come out in abusive and exploitive fashions.