taking a dump with http://xrl.us/CodePink

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Apple admits using child labour - Telegraph

Apple has been repeatedly criticised for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Photo: EPA

At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple.

The company did not name the offending factories, or say where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China.

via telegraph.co.uk

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Another Western Liberal Ends Up Dead From Islamic Culture: British Abu Dhabi Teacher killed herself after ex-boyfriend posted naked photos on Facebook

A warning to infidel women thinking of working in Islamic countries.

Emma Jones pictured on the day of her graduation from Greenwich University. Photo: Wales News Service

Emma Jones, 24, drank poisonous cleaning fluid after confiding in friends that she feared she could be jailed in the Muslim country over the explicit images.

The hearing was told one of Miss Jones’s colleagues had seen the photographs after they were uploaded onto the social networking site allegedly by her former lover Jamie Brayley.

via telegraph.co.uk

NOTE:

Emma Jones, 24, drank poisonous cleaning fluid after confiding in friends that she feared she could be jailed in the Muslim country over the explicit images.

The hearing was told one of Miss Jones’s colleagues had seen the photographs after they were uploaded onto the social networking site allegedly by her former lover Jamie Brayley.

The colleague accused Miss Jones, who was working in an international school in Abu Dhabi, of being a prostitute and she feared he would report her to authorities, the inquest heard.

“He put them on her Facebook and she said she was accused of prostitution by a man working at the school.”

Pathologist Dr Thomas Hockey concluded that Miss Jones, of Caerphilly, south Wales, died after drinking a corrosive substance.

Mr Atherton said he could not be sure Miss Jones, a sociology graduate, meant to kill herself and recorded an open verdict.

He said she may have accidentally drunk cleaning fluid from an unlabelled container, mistakenly believing it was water.

He said: “For whatever reason Emma expressed concern she was about to be arrested and put in prison.

“She agreed the best course of action was to leave Abu Dhabi and return to Britain. Her clothes were out and her passport was in her pocket.

Fight! : Bagels Vs. Pizza

Hobbits really went on a long journey according to anthropological evidence?

...According to the statistical analysis of fossils, Homo floresiensis is not a diseased sub-population of healthy humans:

Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans. Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

In 2003 Australian and Indonesian scientists discovered small-bodied, small-brained, hominin (human-like) fossils on the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago. This discovery of a new human species called Homo floresiensis has spawned much debate with some researchers claiming that the small creatures are really modern humans whose tiny head and brain are the result of a medical condition called microcephaly.

Researchers William Jungers, Ph.D., and Karen Baab, Ph.D. studied the skeletal remains of a female (LB1), nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo" to confirm the evolutionary path of the hobbit species. The specimen was remarkably complete and included skull, jaw, arms, legs, hands, and feet that provided researchers with integrated information from an individual fossil.

The cranial capacity of LB1 was just over 400 cm, making it more similar to the brains of a chimpanzee or bipedal "ape-men" of East and South Africa. The skull and jawbone features are much more primitive looking than any normal modern human. Statistical analysis of skull shapes show modern humans cluster together in one group, microcephalic humans in another and the hobbit along with ancient hominins in a third.

Due to the relative completeness of fossil remains for LB1, the scientists were able to reconstruct a reliable body design that was unlike any modern human. The thigh bone and shin bone of LB1 are much shorter than modern humans including Central African pygmies, South African KhoeSan (formerly known as 'bushmen") and "negrito" pygmies from the Andaman Islands and the Philippines. Some researchers speculate this could represent an evolutionary reversal correlated with "island dwarfing." "It is difficult to believe an evolutionary change would lead to less economical movement," said Dr. Jungers. "It makes little sense that this species re-evolved shorter thighs and legs because long hind limbs improve bipedal walking. We suspect that these are primitive retentions instead."

Further analysis of the remains using a regression equation developed by Dr. Jungers indicates that LB1 was approximately 106 cm tall (3 feet, 6 inches)—far smaller than the modern pygmies whose adults grow to less than 150 cm (4 feet, 11 inches). A scatterplot depicts LB1 far outside the range of Southeast Asian and African pygmies in both absolute height and body mass indices. "Attempts to dismiss the hobbits as pathological people have failed repeatedly because the medical diagnoses of dwarfing syndromes and microcephaly bear no resemblance to the unique anatomy of Homo floresiensis," noted Dr. Baab.

via eurekalert.org

A painting of what researchers believe Homo floresiensis may have looked like. Illustration: Peter Schouten

It remains one of the greatest human fossil discoveries of all time. The bones of a race of tiny primitive people, who used stone tools to hunt pony-sized elephants and battle huge Komodo dragons, were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004.

via guardian.co.uk

How a hobbit is rewriting the history of the human race:

The discovery of the bones of tiny primitive people on an Indonesian island six years ago stunned scientists. Now, further research suggests that the little apemen, not Homo erectus, were the first to leave Africa and colonise other parts of the world....

It remains one of the greatest human fossil discoveries of all time. The bones of a race of tiny primitive people, who used stone tools to hunt pony-sized elephants and battle huge Komodo dragons, were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2004....

The end result caused consternation. These remains came from a species that turned out to be only three feet tall and had the brain the size of an orange. Yet it used quite sophisticated stone tools. And that was a real puzzle. How on earth could such individuals have made complex implements and survived for aeons on this remote part of the Malay archipelago?....

That is odd enough. However, new evidence suggests the little folk of Flores may be even stranger in origin. According to a growing number of scientists, Homo floresiensis is probably a direct descendant of some of the first apemen to evolve on the African savannah three million years ago. These primitive hominids somehow travelled half a world from their probable birthplace in the Rift Valley to make their homes among the orangutans, giant turtles and rare birds of Indonesia before eventually reaching Flores.

via volokh.com

Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim urged Arab countries to thoroughly check any Jewish person who carries a non-Israeli passport

via facebook.com hmmm.....

wonder if Randi Zuckerberg intends on going back soon?

Juden Rats time to flee!

According to Emarat Al Youm, a newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates, Tamim urged Arab countries to thoroughly check any Jewish person who carries a non-Israeli passport in order to "prevent Mossad's infiltrations".

meanwhile Avinunu blames Jew hunting on Israel. Is this Anti-Semitism yet?

http://twitter.com/avinunu/statuses/9729492273

After announcing that he was in possession of the DNA of at least one of the assassins of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim called on Mossad Chief Meir Dagan to "own up to his crime or unequivocally deny his organization's involvement (in the assassination)".

The Dubai police chief also called on European countries to take more stringent measures in order to make certain "Mossad does not make use" of the passports they issue, Emarat Al Youm reported Saturday.

On Friday Tamim told Al-Arabiya satellite TV that he plans to appoint an international investigation team to pursue the 26 people suspected of killing al-Mabhouh, and estimated that Interpol would put 15 of the new suspects on its most wanted list as early as next week. via ynetnews.com

Thomas Friedman Trashes Sen. Inhofe as Sellout, Says 'I'm a Dick Cheney Guy' | NewsBusters.org

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was chewing the scenery in a Wednesday discussion of global warming on CNN’s Amanpour show. He trashed Sen. James Inhofe for demanding an investigation into U.N. climate science, suggesting Inhofe needs to be investigated: "I'd love to see all the e-mails between his office and various coal and oil companies over the last 20 years....we'll let citizens and voters decide where the real science is."

Friedman also invoked Dick Cheney, oddly comparing Iraqi WMD to climate change: "I mean, I'm a Dick Cheney guy on this. I'm with Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney said, if there's a 1 percent chance that Iraq has a nuclear weapon, we need to take that on. Well, if there's a 1 percent chance on climate change, just like Cheney said -- I'm with Cheney -- we need to prepare for it."

via newsbusters.org

Iran Forces Down Airliner and Abducts Passenger, Where's the Condemnation?

On February 23, a Kyrgyzstan Airways flight from Dubai bound for Bishkek was ordered by the Iranian government to land in Iran and a passenger, Abdol Malik Rigi, was taken off in handcuffs. Have you seen it in the newspapers? Is there an emergency session of the UN General Assembly? Are the British or the French or the Australians complaining?

No, they're too busy beating Israel over the head about the dispatch of a man for whom a violent end should not have been a surprise. But emerging information about the death of Mohammad al Mabouh in Dubai makes the theory that the Mossad was behind al Mabouh's death less credible every day, and should be making people wonder what's going on.
First, the emerging information: According to Dubai authorities, more than 20 people were involved in the killing; all of them primped in front of the ubiquitous security cameras; Mabouh appears to have been tortured and left; two of the conspirators left Dubai for Iran (hardly the destination of choice for Israeli agents); and British passports were matched with American credit cards-all very sloppy and un-Mossad-like. Immediately afterward, Jordan extradited two Fatah-related Palestinians to Dubai, where they seem to have disappeared.
But never mind. The Australians summoned the Israeli ambassador to explain why three Australian passports were used. The British are considering suspending intelligence cooperation with Israel (which one do you think will suffer?), and Germany, France and Ireland are demanding answers. And journalists-including Israeli journalists-are feeding the frenzy, denouncing Mossad and insisting without evidence that Israel is behaving as a rogue nation.
In the meantime, a real rogue nation hijacks an airliner and removes a passenger.
Abdul Malik Rigi is the leader of Jundullah, a Sunni group that claims to provide protection to Iran's Baluch minority; Iran calls it a terrorist organization and accuses Rigi of masterminding a series of bombings, including one that killed 42 people, including six Revolutionary Guard commanders. The Iranians also claim Rigi is an agent of the CIA, to which Rigi attested in a videotaped "confession" shortly after his arrest. The BBC aired the tape, claiming not to know whether the "confession" was "coerced." You decide:
Rigi claimed to have been contacted shortly after the 2008 election. "The Americans said... that we don't have a problem with al Qaeda or the Taliban, but the problem is Iran and we don't have a military program against Iran." He further claimed that he was promised U.S. support to launch attacks on Iran in return for the release of Jundullah prisoners. "They [Americans] promised to help us and they said that they would co-operate with us, free our prisoners and would give us [Jundullah] military equipment, bombs, machine guns, and they would give us a base."
Somebody was slick here, and it wasn't the Mossad. Western intelligence agencies-the heart of the battle against violent Islamic radicalism-are being slimed with the active assistance of Western governments and journalists, and Iran forces down an airliner and abducts a passenger off the plane without a whisper of criticism.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

Why Does the American Left Fear the Rise of India?

This is the Left? Obama and Hilary Clinton are giving the shaft to the most populous third world countries merely because the majority aren't Muslim. These people are our friends. They behave and we award the Jihad instead of the real needy poor. India has shown us that they deserve to advance into an industrial revolution and yet Clinton and Obama would prefer to mend ties to totalitarian regimes that show nothing but hostility. how is this prudent? Just goes to show that Obama is not so much a progressive that is concerned with the global poor as he is interested in furthering the interests of the Muslim world. How does shafting a friend like India work as prudent foreign policy. It is merely bias.
The American relationship with the republic of India is heading in the wrong direction. Given recent history, where strong and positive U.S.-Indo relations were in full bloom, this is especially disconcerting. President George W. Bush’s administration, long maligned as arrogantly unilateralist, solidified a close bilateral partnership — friendship, even — with the rising South Asian power. Bush saw India as a natural ally: the world’s largest multiethnic democracy, looking at its place in the world at the turn of this century through much the same prism our own ancestors looked through in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As Harvard historian Sugata Bose observed, the strengthening of ties between India and the United States “may turn out to be the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Bush administration.”
Under President Barack Obama, however, those ties are in moderate though steady and not insignificant decline. Since Obama’s inauguration, our relationship with India has begun to erode. To its credit, the Obama administration authorized a $2.1 billion arms sale with New Delhi last year. But there is more — there should be more — to the American-Indian friendship than signing off on a Boeing contract with the Indian defense ministry.
For instance, trends in trade are worrisome. Whereas in 2008 the United States exported $17.6 billion worth of goods to India, by 2009 that figure had dropped by more than $1 billion. Some of this is due to the recession, but consider: from 2001 through 2008, imports from India to the United States had gone up by $2 or $3 billion annually, culminating in $24 and $25.7 billion worth of goods imported in 2007 and 2008. That figure plummeted by $4.6 billion in 2009. During Bush’s tenure, protectionist economic policies were done away with. Outsourcing, that dirty word, was embraced. The United States became India’s largest investment partner; foreign direct investment in petroleum exploration, infrastructure, mining, telecommunications, and other good things accounted for much of all investment into India.
The free trade policies agreed upon by President Bush and Prime Minister Singh liberated markets and destroyed barriers in agriculture, textiles, iron, steel, coffee, tea, information technology, pharmaceuticals, and more — and as a consequence, helped develop the rise of India’s first genuine middle class in history. According to the National Council for Applied Economic Research, there are approximately 220 million “aspiring” Indians — a “consumer class” — living in households earning between $2,000 and $4,400 per year, who can now afford to buy niceties and luxuries. Some estimates have India’s middle class even larger. This was not the case fifteen or even ten years ago.
And when a caveat in this relationship deemed less beneficial to the United States arose, President Bush still kept things in long-term perspective so as not to denigrate our newfound camaraderie with India. When American food prices skyrocketed in 2008, Bush attributed it to India’s progress and implored Americans to place developments into a broader context: “Their middle class is larger than our entire population,” Bush said. “And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food. And so demand is high and that causes the price to go up.”
Today, President Obama sounds markedly different about India. He has employed populist oratory, criticizing “a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York.” Such language has increased anxieties in New Delhi. “We are already witnessing signs of protectionism in the world’s biggest economy,” the Indian external affairs minister was quoted as saying, proclaiming that “we will need to argue against this trend at the international [forums].” Just one month into Obama’s presidency, India was prepared to present its grievances with the new administration’s protectionist policies to the World Trade Organization.
The Obama-Reid-Pelosi trio eagerly canceled the highly successful H-1B visa program, which was designed to encourage U.S. companies to hire Indian IT services (as well as tens of thousands of Indian engineers at a time of talent shortages). Congress barred U.S. corporations with bailout dollars from hiring foreign workers. This sparked largely overlooked outrage across India’s polity. “This is just irrational protectionism. … It makes no economic sense at all,” said the deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission. Opposition leaders called for boycotts of U.S. companies. “If these policies hurt Indians abroad,” said heavyweight politician Praveen Togadia, “then we have to take steps to hurt American companies in India.” In just a few short weeks, during the Bush-to-Obama transition, U.S.-Indo relations had gone from having never been better to tense and laced with rhetorical rancor.
For those of us who view India as an invaluable future ally, these are disturbing developments. Not unsurprisingly, as trade between the two countries deteriorates, so too do other arenas. Our current disregard of India is risking nothing short of causing “great damage … to the foundations underlying the geostrategic partnership” itself, in the words of National Interest columnist J. Peter Pham. When President Obama seemed to blame India over the Kashmir dispute with Pakistan, India’s national security advisor promptly said Obama was “barking up the wrong tree.”
Additionally, Secretary of State Clinton skipped a visit to New Delhi during her maiden voyage to South Asia, stoking concerns that the new administration was putting India on the back burner (opting instead to prioritize relations with an ascendant China). As former U.S. ambassador to India Robert D. Blackwill phrased it, “China today appears … to be on a substantially higher plane in U.S. diplomacy than India, which seems to have been downgraded in the administration’s calculations.” Validating this view, India was not mentioned even once in the Obama administration’s official foreign policy agenda. The world’s largest democracy, more than one billion people — ignored.
This antagonism towards New Delhi is not merely an Obama phenomenon; the American left itself has expressed its unease with a powerful India for quite some time. It was in 1998, after all, when President Bill Clinton imposed sanctions on India for conducting underground nuclear tests — treating an ally and proud democracy as if it were a rogue enemy and brutal tyranny. President Bush, on the other hand, lifted those sanctions in 2001 and signed a historic civilian nuclear agreement with India in 2006, whereby the U.S. would share nuclear reactors and fuel with Prime Minister Singh’s government.
Why is there such a disparity of views on India between conservatives and liberals in these states united? Not all members of the left, of course, hold a hostile opinion of India (Christopher Hitchens comes to mind). But by and large, the American left seems to consider India the “biggest pain in Asia,” in the words of Barbara Crossette, a writer at Foreign Policy. Crossette criticizes India for not adhering to international accords which infringe upon a democracy’s sovereign right to control its nuclear destiny, as well as climate change treaties which would destroy India’s growth — some of the very reasons American conservatives respect India. The left is wary of India for the same reasons it remains wary of Israel: both democracies are fiercely nationalistic and unapologetically defend themselves against the “downtrodden” “other,” i.e., Islamic lunatics.
The American left simply prefers to play hardball with allies than with adversaries. Recall President Carter’s handling of Iran: the allied shah was condemned as an autocrat; the enemy Khomeini, a “holy man.” For Carter, our anticommunist allies were violators of human rights first, second, and third; the Soviets, murderers of tens of millions, were benign enough for Carter to proclaim Americans had an “inordinate fear of communism.”
Contemporaneously, the left’s is a world where dictatorial Venezuela is to be apologized for, democratic Colombia economically punished; where the fascists and racists and bus-bombers in Palestine are “misunderstood” and the democrats in Israel are Nazi brownshirts incarnate. Anti-American terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Lebanon are euphemized as “guerrillas,” whereas pro-American militiamen are castigated as “warlords” — and on and on it goes.
Embroiling the Indians in such amoral nonsense would threaten not only our present rapport with India, but also what could potentially become the most significant American alliance with another country this century — an alliance rooted in a commonality of values, genuine companionship and affection for one another, and solidarity against the totalitarian evils of the world. The United States should welcome India’s rise. We’re largely the reason it’s occurring.


N.M. Guariglia is a foreign policy analyst and columnist who writes on Islam and Middle Eastern geopolitics. He is a contributing editor for Family Security Matters and blogs at WorldThreats.com. He can be reached at nickguar@gmail.com

via pajamasmedia.com

Israpundit » A MUSLIM TELLS THE JEWS TO EVACUATE THE TOMB OF OUR PATRIARCHS

What is baffling is the arrogance this President has to demand that Israel cannot claim the burial site of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of Israel’s founders. I wonder if Obama, whose origins of birth have been questioned, would consider abandoning the burial sites of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, the drafters of the Constitution or the heroes cemetery at Arlington?

Any real American, if asked: Should the U.S. surrender the burial sites of her great leaders or return Mexico would be laughed out or run out of town? So, why does this hodge-podge of ethnicity, different religions, different loyalties tell Israel that the pagan Muslims, with their false claims about anything.

via israpundit.com

Statement by Robert L. Johnson: Majority Ownership Sale of the NBA Charlotte Bobcats -- CHARLOTTE, N.C., Feb. 27 /PRNewswire/ --

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Feb. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Robert L. Johnson, the majority owner of Bobcats Sports and Entertainment today announced that he has signed a definitive agreement to sell majority interest of Bobcats Sports and Entertainment to Michael Jordan and MJ Basketball Holdings, LLC. The deal is subject to NBA approval. Further details of the sale will be provided by the NBA.

CONTACT: Traci Otey Blunt, Corporate Communications
The RLJ Companies
240.743.7620

via prnewswire.com

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