German Carnival features ‘Jihad on Danish Cartoonist’ float

Fake Hate Crimes

Nanny State Targets my Wiener

The problem here mommy is you are putting it in their mouth. it goes in much nicer in other orifices.

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(USAToday) Nutritionists have long warned of the perils of hot dogs: fat, sodium and preservatives to name a few. Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants foods like hot dogs to come with a warning label — not because of their nutritional risks but because they pose a choking hazard to babies and children. Better yet, the academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs "redesigned" so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster's throat. More than 10,000 children under 14 go to the emergency room each year after choking on food, and up to 77 die, says the new policy statement, published online today in Pediatrics. About 17% of food-related asphyxiations are caused by hot dogs. "If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child's airway, it would be a hot dog," says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "I'm a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they're wedged in, it's almost impossible."

Roger Cohen’s Game With Israel | Judea Pearl | Jewish Journal

Cohen’s reasons for negotiating with Hammas. “The Hamas charter is vile,” Cohen admits, “but the breakthrough Oslo accords were negotiated in 1993, three years before the Palestine Liberation Organization revoked the annihilationist clauses in its charter. When Arafat and Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn, that destroy-Israel charter was intact. Things change through negotiation, not otherwise. If there are Taliban elements worth engaging, are there really no such elements in the broad movements that are Hamas and Hezbollah?”

If only I were an analyst, I would be exonerated from checking the facts, and I would be spared the embarrassment of finding that the Oslo accords were negotiated only after Arafat proclaimed, three years earlier, before the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva (Dec. 13, 1988) that the Palestinian National Council renounced “all types of terrorism” and had accepted resolutions 242 and 338 as a basis for negotiations (in truth, it did not, but the world heard what it yearned to hear).

As an analyst, I would not need to find out that things did not exactly change through those negotiations in the 1990s — the PLO, to this very day, has not amended the annihilationist clauses in its charter, as openly admitted by Farouq Kadoumi in an interview with a Jordanian newspaper (Al-Arab, April 22, 2004; see Benny Morris’ book “One State, Two States” for a detailed chronology).

On the contrary, an intractable Gordian knot has been created: Every Westerner now believes the charter is amended; every Palestinian says it is amended but believes it is not, and every Israeli knows what Palestinians believe. Not a healthy mindset for peace negotiations.

via jewishjournal.com

Boiling Sting: Another Amnesty International Hypocrite sells soul for pretty young thing

Sting with Gulnara Karimova at the fashion show in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. If she looks like this then her daddy couldn't possibly boil his enemies?

He is a superstar lauded for his commitment to human rights and passionate defence of Brazil's rainforests.

But Sting has been labelled 'a hypocrite' after playing at a concert in Uzbekistan organised by the brutal regime of Islam Karimov.

Enemies of the 72-year-old dictator have been shot in the street and a former British ambassador to the ex-Soviet state even accused him of boiling alive his political opponents.

Yet according to reports by two of the few remaining independent Uzbek media organisations, Sting, 58, accepted up to £2million to sing for Gulnara Karimova, the despot's glamorous daughter and anointed heir.

Uznews.net and Eurasia.net claim the former Police frontman sold out the National Opera House in the capital, Tashkent, in October last year. Tickets went for £1,400 - 45 times the average local monthly salary.

One report said huge screens were erected outside the venue to show the concert to thousands unable to buy a ticket. It was the highlight of a week-long festival organised by Ms Karimova's Forum of Culture and Arts of Uzbekistan Foundation.

Despot: Gulnara's father, the Uzbek President Islam Karimov

Britain's ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray said: 'It appears Sting is a hypocrite. He's incredibly stupid to be unaware of what sort of regime it is. His human rights and environmental activism seem to have flown out the window.'

Ex-Communist official Karimov, who came to power in 1989, has locked up 6,000 people who have dared to question his rule.

In 2005, the army slaughtered hundreds who protested against poverty and corruption in the city of Andizhan. And thousands of children are used as slave labour in huge state cotton plantations.

Sting has been a tireless Amnesty International activist for 30 years, yet just last week, the organisation criticised the conviction in Uzbekistan of film-maker Umida Akhmedova for a documentary exposing how the country's women have to prove their virginity on their wedding night.

The concert is also at odds with Sting's long-standing eco-activism. The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth biggest lake but has lost 80 per cent of its volume thanks in part to the Karimov regime's intense irrigation of desert-based cotton fields.

Analysts say Western stars are invited to boost domestic support for the dictatorship.

Real Madrid soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo flew to Tashkent in December to meet Ms Karimova, 37, who owns the country's largest football club, Bunyodkor, where ex-Chelsea boss Luiz Felipe Scolari is the world's highest-paid manager on £16 million a year.

Singers Rod Stewart and Julio Iglesias have also recently played there .

A European diplomat said: 'This is a strategy to give credibility to a government with blood on its hands. It's a personal initiative of Ms Karimova, presumably linked to her ambitions to succed her father.'

In a statement, Sting said: 'I played in Uzbekistan a few months ago. The concert was organized by the president’s daughter and I believe sponsored by Unicef.

'I supported wholeheartedly the cultural boycott of South Africa under the apartheid regime because it was a special case and specifically targeted the younger demographic of the ruling white middle class.

'I am well aware of the Uzbek president’s appalling reputation in the field of human rights as well as the environment. I made the decision to play there in spite of that.

'I have come to believe that cultural boycotts are not only pointless gestures, they are counter-productive, where proscribed states are further robbed of the open commerce of ideas and art and as a result become even more closed, paranoid and insular.

'I seriously doubt whether the President of Uzbekistan cares in the slightest whether artists like myself come to play in his country, he is hermetically sealed in his own medieval, tyrannical mindset.'

Ms Karimova's spokeswoman did not return calls.

via dailymail.co.uk

Posted via web from noahdavidsimon's posterous

Jordan and France sign uranium deal

Jordan and France sign uranium deal

Jordan suffers enduring shortage in water resources and energy

Jordan has signed an agreement with France's nuclear giant Areva, giving the company exclusive uranium mining rights.
The deal was agreed on Sunday during a visit by Francois Fillon, the French prime minister, who was received by King Abdullah II.

The agreement gives Areva exclusive rights to extract and mine uranium in the central parts of Jordan.
The desert kingdom, which is poor in energy and water resources, is seeking to develop nuclear energy to generate power and desalinate water.

Fillon said he also spoke with Samir Rifai, the Jordian PM, about the prospects for building nuclear plants by French firms in the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea.

via english.aljazeera.net