Shorter Question Everything

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 8, 2010

Israel

  • As Israel keeps threatening the regional countries with war, Egyptian maritime sources say the Israeli navy has deployed two missile ships to the Persian Gulf.
    Citing the sources, Yediot Ahronot reported Saturday that two Israeli missile ships passed through the Suez Canal en rout to the Red Sea on Thursday morning.

Iran

  • Iran has arrested seven people linked to a Farsi-language radio station funded in part by the United States, accusing them of fomenting unrest.
    According to the Associated Press, the Official Iranian News Agency and state radio both cited a statement by the Iranian Intelligence Ministry which claimed the seven individuals were trained outside of Iran in sabotage, spreading rumors and overthrowing a government by soft means.
    The suspects were not identified and it is unclear exactly when they were arrested.
  • Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran is set to deliver a “punch” that will stun world powers during this week’s 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
    “The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned,” Khamenei, who is also Iran’s commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel.
    The country’s top cleric was marking the occasion when Iran’s air force gave its support to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a key event which led to the toppling of the US-backed shah on February 11, 1979.

UK: Chilcot Inquiry

  • Reappeared before Britain’s inquiry into the Iraq war, former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has rejected claims that he ignored advice that the UK did not have enough legal backing to invade Iraq in 2003.
    Straw, the current Justice Secretary, was summoned to the inquiry on Monday after his senior legal adviser at the time of the Iraq war, Sir Michael Wood, told the inquiry Straw had ignored his warnings.
    Wood said he had stressed that the war was not legal and would amount to a “crime of aggression.”
    Straw insisted Monday that he had given it “the serious attention it deserved,” adding that he had had “reasonable grounds for taking a contrary view.”
    Straw defended his position by arguing that Wood’s comments that there had been “no doubt” in anybody’s mind about the illegality of war was wrong.
Posted in Espionage, Europe, Middle East, North America, Shorter Question Everything | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Arnold Schwarzenegger to carry torch in Stanley Park

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 8, 2010

Jonathan Fowlie with John Mackie, Vancouver Sun

Califonria Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was in B.C. in May of 2007 to tour the Canada Line with Premier Gordon Campbell, will carry the Olympic torch in Stanley Park. Photograph by: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun Files

Former film actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will run with the Olympic torch in Stanley Park Friday morning, Vanoc announced today as it unveiled a star-studded cast of runners for the coming week.

Joining Schwarzenegger will be Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, singer Jann Arden, former Canuck Richard Brodeur, singer Michael Bublé, former British Olympian Sebastian Coe, Terry Fox’s father Rolly, Wayne Gretzky’s father Walter, B.C. rugby legend Gareth Rees, Canucks alumni Stan Smyl and B.C. Lions great Lui Passaglia.
Read More »

Posted in North America | Tagged | Leave a comment

Iran severs cultural ties with British Museum over Persian treasure

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 8, 2010

London Telegraph

The Cyrus Cylinder, which was acquired by the museum after being discovered in 1879, is regarded as the world’s first declaration of rights

British Museum officials were due to lend the 2,500-year-old artefact to Iran’s national museum last month, but announced they were holding on to it to do some more research.

The clay cylinder – which was acquired by the museum after being discovered in 1879 – is regarded as the world’s first declaration of rights.
Read More »

Posted in Europe, History, Middle East | Tagged , | Leave a comment

U.S. soldier ‘waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn’t recite alphabet’

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 8, 2010

What the fuck gets into a person’s head where they think this is the way to go, that this is okay? Where does this seem right? Oh yeah, I guess when this is just seen as good old fun and a prank, maybe it gets okay. I understand, due to his arrest, that – thankfully – not everyone sees it as being okay of course, but still, you just know some evil right wing whackjob is just lurking out there, waiting to say it isn’t torture and that maybe, just maybe, it’s justified. Ever read something and get the overwhelming urge to just smash stuff?:

Daily Mail

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter ’squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.
Read More »

Posted in Created Terror | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Rep. John Murtha, Iraq War Critic, Dies at 77

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 8, 2010

ABC

A spokesman says Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a retired Marine Corps officer who became an outspoken critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 77.

He had been suffering complications from gallbladder surgery.

In 1974, Murtha became the first combat veteran of the Vietnam War elected to Congress. He wielded considerable clout for two decades as a leader of the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending. But frustration over the Iraq war led him to call for an immediate pullout of U.S. troops in 2005.

Murtha’s congressional career was clouded by questions about his ethics — from the Abscam corruption probe in 1980 to more recent investigations into the special-interest spending known as earmarks and the raising of cash for election campaigns.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

She needs at least another hand for all that

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 8, 2010

There’s one woman that could definitely use a teleprompter…or at least one other hand. Maybe some duct tape:

Posted in Humor, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Common sense absent at school

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 8, 2010

A shame schools seem to have lost the basics of common sense somewhere along the way.

As a kid, yeah, I wrote on my desk. Didn’t we all?

The punishment wasn’t getting arrested and being terrified out of my mind (and potentially hating school, the teachers, the law and anyone else I could blame). The punishment was cleaning off all those desks. Did it suck? Sure, but it was fair and tied logically to writing on the desks. I didn’t like it but I sure as hell couldn’t say, even then, that I didn’t see it coming, and I never ended up hating anybody for it.

I wonder what lesson this little kid is coming away with?

So, a twelve year old was handcuffed and detained for writing on her desk. But before the little overactive hippie civil libertarian in you gets all crazy up in arms about it, look at the foul language she wrote:

Alexa Gonzalez was scribbling a few words on her desk Monday while waiting for her Spanish teacher to pass out homework at Junior High School 190 in Forest Hills, she said.

“I love my friends Abby and Faith,” the girl wrote, adding the phrases “Lex was here. 2/1/10″ and a smiley face.

Everyone knows that “Abby and Faith” is MS-13 code for “kill all the white bitches”. Those street gangs are clever. And oddly sentimental.

Posted in Education | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lots of curious sharks caught on cam

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 7, 2010
YouTube Preview Image

Reefcam captures interesting shark footage

TheDorsalFin

Footage from the Australian Institute of Marine Science’s Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) is making news in Australia’s The Courier-Mail. While The Courier-Mail article claims the video features a tiger shark “stalking” a sea snake, it certainly looks more like the tiger shark is “stalking” bait attached to the BRUVS unit, based on the footage. Regarldess, the footage (which appeared on the AIMS site back in August) is definitely worth a watch…

Posted in Sharks | Tagged | Leave a comment

Shorter Question Everything

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 6, 2010

Israel: Kurdistan

  • According to recent media reports, Israeli military and intelligence agents are currently operating in Iraqi Kurdistan. Their primary role, according to reports, is to train elite Kurdish commandos in guerrilla warfare and anti-terror tactics. The Kurds – whose country is currently occupied by Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria – are reportedly again, after many years, accepting Israeli assistance in their struggle for independence.
    Apart from rumors of Israel training Kurdish commandos, Israeli-Kurdish relations have expanded considerably in recent years. In July 2003 the Israeli government reversed its embargo on Iraq, allowing trade between the two peoples including the export of Israeli military products to the Kurds.
    Kurdish commandos have also reportedly accompanied Israeli operatives across the Iraq-Iran border in recent years to install sensory devices meant to monitor suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

Haiti

  • Amid allegations that the US is using Haiti’s earthquake to occupy the country, Washington says its military forces would stay in the Caribbean nation as long as needed.
    “We are in Haiti as long as we are needed,” US Army Colonel Gregory Kane, the director of US Joint Task Force Haiti operations, said on Saturday.
    This is while Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive had earlier announced that it would take about 10 years to reconstruct the country devastated by the quake.

Iraq

  • An Iraqi militant group said on Saturday it kidnapped a U.S. civilian contractor last month and was negotiating the release of the body of another.
    A senior leader of Shi’ite militia Asaib al-Haq, or Leagues of Righteousness, said the abducted contractor, whom he did not name, was seized because the government was not keeping a promise to free Asaib al-Haq supporters from prison.
    Such a deal was widely believed to have been behind the release by the same group of British computer programer Peter Moore in December after 2-1/2 years in captivity, despite Iraqi and British government denials of a link.

Syria

  • The head of Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Walid Jumblatt vows solidarity with Syria in the face of what he calls ‘a frenzied Israeli attitude.’
    “Amid the Israeli madness and radical threats, I tell the Syrian people and leadership that we are with you above all else,” he said in a statement issued by the PSP and quoted by pan-Arab A-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, the Lebanese portal Naharnet reported on Friday.
Posted in Latin America, Middle East, Military Industrial Complex, Shorter Question Everything | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tritium Leak At Vermont Nuclear Plant Grows

By xxxevilgrinxxx | Published: February 6, 2010

Slashdot/Soulskill

mdsolar writes:
“The tritium leak into ground water at Vermont Yankee has now tested at 775,000 picocuries per liter, 37 times higher than the federal drinking water standard. ‘Despite the much higher reading, an NRC spokeswoman said Thursday there was nothing to fear. “There’s not currently, nor is there likely to be, an impact on public health or safety or the environment,” the NRC’s Diane Screnci said in an interview. She had maintained previously that the Environmental Protection Agency drinking water safety limit of 20,000 picocuries per liter had an abundance of caution built into it. … The National Academy of Sciences said in 2005 that any exposure to ionizing radiation from an isotope like tritium elevates the risk of cancer, though it also said with small exposures, the risk would be low. ‘ At what level should the NRC shut down the troubled plant?”

Posted in CBRN | Tagged | Leave a comment