Something is broken. After the expense of billions of dollars in new data vacuums, disruptive bureaucratic restructuring, and more than eight years of human effort, the government has become expert at collecting the dots about terrorist attacks, those fragmentary clues gathered up in the massive, constant sweep. But it is not very good at connecting the dots, at forming them into a coherent narrative that can forecast events like those of Christmas Day. |
| The master database of terrorist names, TIDE, contains half a million records. Following the failed attack in December, Mr. Obama directed that the intelligence community immediately go through them to see if any of the individuals had been issued U.S. visas. |
| We’re collecting names. Hundreds of thousands of them. And yet we’re not systematically checking if these people have already been granted entry to the United States. Read more at online.wsj.com |
I’ve been trying not to pay too much attention to Pat Robertson and his shenanigans, but this letter to him, written by Satan himself (channeled by a reader of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and sent to the paper’s editors) is too good not to post. | Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. |
| But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. |
| Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. |
| If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. |
| You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract. Best, Satan
Read more at www.startribune.com |
A Real Challenge to Marriage |
The ongoing objection to same-sex marriage by the Catholic church seems to be predicated not only on the old procreation argument, but also on a stubborn attachment to specific gender roles, as evidenced by the reiteration of the validity of marriage of heterosexual couples who are unable to procreate. The trouble for the bishops is that while these gender roles are still prevalent, they are continuing to fall away.
In addition to biology, there is the “unique role” argument. |
While the church in recent times, as well as in this document, has tried very hard to emphasize the equality of women in heterosexual marriages there is still a strong emphasis on a nebulous “difference” between wives and husbands.
To maintain the church’s teaching on procreation as the basis for marriage, the burden falls disproportionately to women. Read more at www.patheos.com |
Wow. This is fascinating. | Asian Human
Rights Commission - Statement |
| A Statement from Ms. Navanethem Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission |
| WORLD: Tearing down the wall of caste |
Caste is the very negation of the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. It condemns individuals from birth and their communities to a life of exploitation, violence, social exclusion and segregation. Caste-discrimination is not only a human rights violation, but also exposes those affected to other abuses of their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. |
| The time has come to eradicate the shameful concept of caste. Other seemingly insurmountable walls, such as slavery and apartheid, have been dismantled in the past. We can and must tear down the barriers of caste too.Read more at www.ahrchk.net |
An editorial from 2007 shows how research into three promising anticancer drugs has been abandoned. The reason is that the compounds on which the drugs are based cannot be patented (melatonin, for example), which means that pharma companies are unlikely to turn a profit. Understandable, from the perspective of the pharma companies, but unconscionable, from the perspective of cancer patients. WE could make faster progress against cancer by changing the way drugs are developed. In the current system, if a promising compound can’t be patented, it is highly unlikely ever to make it to market — no matter how well it performs in the laboratory. The development of new cancer drugs is crippled as a result. |
Early this year, another readily available industrial chemical, dichloroacetate, was found by researchers at the University of Alberta to shrink tumors in laboratory animals by up to 75 percent. However, as a university news release explained, dichloroacetate is not patentable, and the lead researcher is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test the chemical. So the university is soliciting public donations to finance a clinical trial. |
From the piece: “When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.” We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shia would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ. This despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than a decade. |
Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. But the invasion divided brother from brother, neighbour from neighbour. It turned our homes into funeral tents. |
| I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. |
| I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
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Edward Luce on why Obama is failing, from the Finanical Times