Is Prince William marrying his nanny like good ole dad?

The National Enquirer reports that a new furor in the UK!



Prince William is following in his father's footsteps - by marrying a woman who's the mirror image of his childhood nanny!



The 28-year-old royal's fiance Kate Middleton bears an uncanny resemblance to his nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, while his father Prince Charles' wife Camilla Parker Bowles looks strikingly similar to his nanny, Mabel



Anderson.William, who recently announced his engagement to Kate, has been close to Tiggy since she became his nanny in 1993 when the prince was 11. It was a time of turmoil for Wills as his beloved mother



Princess Diana had recently separated from his father. Tiggy's love helped him get through those difficult days.



More details here



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In the UK Higher tuition fees apply only to the English

Imagine if only Christian students in the United States were faced with higher tuition rates, but Muslims were exempt.



Sounds crazy?



Well a form of educational apartheid is going in the UK. Can the U.S. be far behind?



The UK Telegraph reports that English face a university education "apartheid" after Welsh students were told they would be exempt from a sharp rise in tuition fees.



The Welsh Assembly government announced that it would heavily subsidise the degree courses of about 90,000 students each year, even if they studied at universities in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland.



It means that Welsh students will pay about £3,200 a year to attend university, while the English will be charged up to £9,000 under Coalition reforms. English students taking courses at Welsh universities will still have to pay full fees.



The disclosure led to claims last night that English taxpayers would effectively be subsidising cheaper courses for Welsh undergraduates.



At present, the Welsh Assembly receives an annual grant of £15 billion from the Treasury to fund devolved services including health, education and housing. Spending per head was about £5,500 this year, compared with £4,800 in England.



The Welsh announcement coincided with growing conflict in the Coalition over higher education policy.



Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said he would be prepared to abstain from the vote on raising tuition fees, despite being involved in drawing up the policy.



Thousands of students clashed with police in London in the third major protest against the fee rises, with children as young as 10 joining the marchers. Further demonstrations took place in Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol.



More details here



I can see it now. African American students will pay a third of tuition and the U.S. govt (the rest of us) will pick up the rest of the tab as a form of reparations.



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Eric Cantor believes in being a little bit pregnant: wants to keep some parts of ObmamCare

Attention!

The Pussies-R-Us Club will now take over the leadership of the House.

If you thought these leftover Republicans like Eric Camtor had the unabashed courage to stand up to the Obama agenda, this announcement today blows that thought out the water.

These feckless bastards haven’t even taken control of congress and they’re already caving in to keep parts of ObamaCare that quote “people like”.

So now we know what kind of leadership we having and I’ve been warning people since June that Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, and John Beohner are a bunch of punk-ass pussies that care more about pole testing than showing actual Reagan-like conservative leadership.

This is a very bad sign of things to come!

The Hill reports that House Republicans are looking to repeal the healthcare reform law and replace it with one of their own early next year without interrupting two popular parts the administration has already begun to implement.

They include a mandate that bars discrimination of pre-existing conditions and a stipulation that allows young people to remain on their parents' insurance plans until age 26.

Incoming Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Monday that they would do this by passing a GOP healthcare bill at the same time as repeal efforts are underway.

Speaking to more than 100 students at American University, Cantor said, "What you will see us do is to push for repeal of the healthcare bill, and at the same time, contemporaneously, submit our replacement bill, that has in it the provisions [barring discrimination due to pre-existing conditions and offering young people affordable care options]."
Cantor stressed that while he supports full repeal of the current law, Republicans share some of the same goals as Democrats, although they propose different ways of achieving them.

"We too don't want to accept any insurance company's denial of someone and coverage for that person because he or she may have pre-existing condition," Cantor said, addressing a young woman in the audience who noted that she had a pre-existing health condition.

More details here

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There are many reasons why I am inspired to write a blog post about Maoist Third Worldism (MTWist). One main reason is the high amount of chauvinism and xenophobia shown by first worldist communist toward the MTW movement. Another few reasons is their theory of what a proletariat is, their ideas of international proletarian revolution, and their attitude towards the present conditions in imperialist countries and finally just the heavy amount of myths that surround this ideology are some reasons why I am writing this blog post.


Let me start by saying as a Marxist it is important to take a scientific approach to all ideas, situations and circumstances. Please keep this in mind while reading this. This post is not meant a promotion nor a condemnation of Maoist Third Worldism (MTW).


One thing I find very interesting about MTW is their idea that not everyone who is part of the working class is a proletariat. While most communist refer to all workers or anyone who sells their labor as a proletarian the MTWist see this as incorrect as did Marx. The proletarian is someone who has nothing to lose but their chains, who has nothing to sell but his labor. The proletarian is also someone who produces value or engages in productive labor. Now this hardly applies to many people in the united states let alone anyone in the first world. As the LLCO correctly point out in one of their blogs "This effect is magnified even more by the relative ease with which First World peoples gain access to large amounts of credit. Significantly, First World workers also receive a share of imperialist super profits extracted from the Third World–just because they are from the First World. Furthermore, First World workers are generally not involved in productive labor as Marx’s model proletarian is. Rather, First World people are employed in non-value-creating positions such as management, merchant capital enterprises, white-collar work, distribution, the service industry, etc. They are often employed in positions that are purely parasitic and drain value. Also, they are often employed in work that may be necessary to realize value, but is not itself value creating."(1)


"global median is about $2.50 a day. There are more people in India earning less than $0.80 a day than people living in the USA." These are staggering numbers that knock me to the floor. It is hard to believe that anyone thinks a revolution will happen in a place where the minimum wage is $5.50 higher then what the average worker in the rest of the world makes. A person making $10,000 a year is in the top 13.3% of the worlds wealthiest people annual income wise. The average American home brings in around $50,000 dollars a year that would put you in the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the world. Now try to imagine you were given only $3,000 dollars to live off of for a whole year, just $3,000 you would still be in the top 15% of wealthiest people on earth annual income wise. The MTWist actually make more sense the more of the ideas I explore.



Their idea of international revolution is easy to follow and makes a lot of sense. They basically follow the ideas of Lin Biao set out in the book "Long Live the Victory of People's War". In the book Lin Biao puts forward that in an international revolution the smaller third world countries would act as the rural areas and that imperialist first world countries would be the cities, and in order to win the international revolution the proletarian army would have to first gain control of the rural country sides (poor, third world countries). After they gained control of the international country sides then the people's army would have to encircle and take over the cities of the world (the first world imperialist nations).



This takes me into one of the myths Ive heard over and over not just about MTWist but Maoist in general. That they are nationalist. I have no clue where this notion came from and I don't care. As a Maoist I can say that not only are we not nationalist but we are the strongest internationalist in the world ideologically. Every Maoist has called for international proletarian revolution. From Mao in China to Fred Hampton in the US we have always called for the start of an international revolution. MTW are no different in fact they are more internationalist than most people claiming to be communist because those who even live in the first world call for the freedom and empowerment of the third world before focusing on their own-selves. That is real internationalism, they call on themselves to uphold the need to lower their living standards so that the people of the world can live more equally. In my opinion that is about as far away from nationalism as possible.



Ive heard so many myths swirling around this ideology that it is hard to chose one to talk about. One time some one said they had heard that MTWist want to "enslave the first world workers" not only is this silly but this is a case of one "socialist" party trying to cause xenophobia towards MTWism. After reading through the LLCO/MSH material I think where the idea of this came from is that the LLCO (correctly) asserts that in order for socialist redistribution to work the workers in the first world imperialist nations would have to lower their standards of living in order for the standards of living in the third world to go up. I agree because we can not pull random nonexistent value from no where. The earth can only produce so much value at a time and in order for everyone on earth to live up to the living standards of the US we would need like 2-3 earths.


Last thing I wanna touch on is what the MTWist mean by "first worldist". A first worldist is someone who thinks that workers in the first world imperialist nations are more advanced than workers in the second and third worlds. Advanced meaning they think the first world workers have more revolutionary potential and that the first world worker is more class conscious. This is mainly just childish chauvinism but where it is dangerous is that it is anti-dialectal. It instills a false sense into the "communist" of the first world that a revolution is not only possible in their country but that if one happens that it will happen in a advanced first world nation. Now lets be clear that with Russia being the one exception (and it is debated rather they were even a first world nation during 1917) there has never been a successful proletarian/communist revolution in a first world country. All great proletarian revolutions took place in third world countries. So it is anti-dialects if a leader of you party/ORG tells you otherwise.


Other times they refer to FWist as people who fight for gains for the first world workers but the MTWist warn that these gains are not free and that the gains won by these struggles come on the backs of third world proletarians. And the MTWist claim that first world worker gain from their nations imperialist exploitation. The counter argument Ive heard to this is that "No imperialist CORP is going to share its profits with the people of their nation" on this issue I am torn. I think we in the first world do slightly benefit from the exploitation of the third world by our government. But I also think that most of the profits stolen from the third world end up in the banks or the big CORP's pockets for the most part.



I think MTWism is something that is a hint of fresh air to a rather stale and old movement. They have a lot to contribute to the movement and I believe their use of Marxism as a science is as good as anybodies. I would encourage my reader to check out their site and read some for themselves before turning their nose up at the Maoist third worldist. You can find the link to the Leading Light Communist Organization at the side of this page I invite you to go and read their material you might like what you see.


By: Dustin Slagle










(1)http://llco.org/archives/4911, FEB, 1, 2010

Serious Questions about the Obama Administration's Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco

We all applaud the successful thwarting of the Christmas-Tree Bomber and hope our government continues to do all it can to keep us safe. However, the latest round of publications of leaked classified U.S. documents through the shady organization called Wikileaks raises serious questions about the Obama administration’s incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.

First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop Wikileaks director Julian Assange from distributing this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months? Assange is not a “journalist,” any more than the “editor” of al Qaeda’s new English-language magazine Inspire is a “journalist.” He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?

What if any diplomatic pressure was brought to bear on NATO, EU, and other allies to disrupt Wikileaks’ technical infrastructure? Did we use all the cyber tools at our disposal to permanently dismantle Wikileaks? Were individuals working for Wikileaks on these document leaks investigated? Shouldn’t they at least have had their financial assets frozen just as we do to individuals who provide material support for terrorist organizations?

Most importantly, serious questions must also be asked of the U.S. intelligence system. How was it possible that a 22-year-old Private First Class could get unrestricted access to so much highly sensitive information? And how was it possible that he could copy and distribute these files without anyone noticing that security was compromised?

The White House has now issued orders to federal departments and agencies asking them to take immediate steps to ensure that no more leaks like this happen again. It’s of course important that we do all we can to prevent similar massive document leaks in the future. But why did the White House not publish these orders after the first leak back in July? What explains this strange lack of urgency on their part?

We are at war. American soldiers are in Afghanistan fighting to protect our freedoms. They are serious about keeping America safe. It would be great if they could count on their government being equally serious about that vital task.

- Sarah Palin

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BREAKING STORY: Armed Student Holds Hostages in Wis. High School-Shoots himself

Update: Chief: Armed student in Wis. high school shot self

AP reports that a student armed with a handgun held nearly two dozen students and a teacher hostage in a Wisconsin high school for about five hours before shooting himself when police broke into the classroom, authorities said Monday. No other injuries were reported.

Officers who were outside the Marinette High School classroom said they heard three gunshots shortly after 8 p.m. and busted through the door, said Police Chief Jeff Skorik. The 15-year-old male gunman then shot himself.

Skorik said the teen was taken to an area hospital and his condition was not immediately known Monday night.

Five of the 23 students who had been taken hostage about 3 p.m. had been released about 20 minutes before police entered the classroom because they told the gunman they had to use the bathroom, Skorik said.

The other 18 students and the female teacher, who had acted as a mediator between the male hostage-taker and authorities, were released unharmed once officers were inside.

Skorik said the gunman had refused to communicate with officials during the standoff, but allowed the teacher to speak with authorities by phone.

UPDATE 8:51 PN

CNN reports a handgun-toting student is holding 23 classmates and a teacher hostage inside a room at a northeast Wisconsin high school, police said Monday night.

The young male took over the classroom sometime near the end of the school day Monday, preventing anyone from leaving and eventually communicating with police through ateacher, Marinette Police Chief Jeffrey Skorik told reporters.

Refuting rumors circulating on social media sites, Skorik said authorities did not believe anyone had been hurt thus far at Marinette High School or that any shots had been fired.

The chief said that the student had no previous run-ins with the law, adding that it wasn't clear why he took hostages.

"We have no idea, as far as his motivation at this point," Skorik said.
A school administrator called police at 3:48 p.m. (4:48 p.m. ET) Monday, after most students had left for the day, reporting that an armed student had gone into a classroom and taken those inside hostage.

About 40 law enforcement personnel converged on the scene, including hostage negotiators who set up inside the school, according to Skorik. They had not talked directly with the student some three hours into the incident, but did get regular updates from the teacher.

Skorik said that the hostage-taker is a student at Marinette High, and that he believed -- though he could not confirm -- was assigned to the class that he took over.

Police know the identity of the student, though they haven't name him publicly, and have talked with his family members. Skorik said law enforcement believe the the young male, armed with a single handgun, is acting alone.

Law enforcement urged parents who didn't know their children's whereabouts to go to the Marinette County Courthouse, where they could see those on the affected class's roster, talk with police and get help from mental-health counselors.

Dozens of students and family members also gathered at a nearby hair salon, and the street to the high school was blocked off, according to CNN affiliate WBAY.

Marinette has about 11,600 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Bordering Lake Michigan, the city is just over 50 miles north of Green Bay.


CBS News reports an emergency management official in Wisconsin says an armed student has taken hostages inside a high school classroom in Marinette. Marinette County emergency management director Eric Burmeister says a high school administrator called authorities after 3 p.m. Monday to say an armed student had burst into a classroom. Burmeister says he's unsure how many people are in the classroom and no injuries have been reported.

Choral teacher Bonita Weydt tells The Associated Press that school ended about 10 minutes later and the principal told her to leave the building immediately. Burmeister says parents are being asked to go to the county courthouse. Marinette is a little more than an hour north of Green Bay and sits on the border with Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

CBS News affiliate WFRV reports that a Marinette High School administrator made a call to Marinette Co. Communications Dispatch that an armed student was holding hostages in a classroom.

WFRV reports that police are at the scene and no injuries are reported.

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TEXANS VS TITANS BRAWL ) FULL HD (REAL VIDEO)

Houston Texans, Tennessee Titans Brawl Results In Hair Loss & Fines

Story here

Did you hear about the guy who went to a football game and a hockey game broke out?




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Actor Leslie Nielsen, Naked Gun and Airplane, Dead at 84

What made Leslie Nielsen so funny was for the last third of his long career he poked fun of his own serioes image. I remember him primarly for his fine dramtic roles, many times as the heavy or just the straight good guy. But his appearance in Airplane changed his image and he ended up very well in comedic. roles. It’s not an easy transition from drama to comedy. Comedy is much harder to do, and Nielsen did seamlessly.

Rediff reports that Canadian-American actor Leslie Nielsen, who famously switched from dramatic roles to comedy towards the tail-end of a long and successful career, died Sunday of complications related to pneumonia.

He was 84.

Nielson broke into Hollywood in the 1950s, where, owing to his striking good looks, he soon found himself typecast as usually a serious autocrat or a handsome ladies' man. He enjoyed success in this vein for many years, including as the captain of a sinking ocean liner in 1972's

The Poseidon Adventure. But with 1980's Airplane!, Nielson's showed that he'd actually always been closet comedian. Straight-laced, deadpan delivery of absurd lines quickly become his trademark, and the style was reprised in TV show Police Squad! and the wildly successful Naked Gun trilogy, which brought Nielson further critical and commercial success.

After Naked Gun, Nielson starred in a string of late-1990s comedies, including Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Spy Hard, and Mr Magoo.




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3 Michigan Boys missing Andrew 9, Alexander 7 and Tanner Skelton 5 since Friday

Ever so often I like to scan stories from different states. This story from Michigan quickly caught my attention. It hasn’t hit the national news, but it deserves the attention.

TheDetriot News reports that an overflow crowd of more than 200 people from Ohio and Michigan came to Morenci United Methodist Church for a brief vigil for three missing boys tonight.

As they left, there were many hugs and evidence of even more tears as the community tried to come to grips with the disappearance of Andrew, Alexander and Tanner Skelton.

"It's just a terrible time," said Iola Burton, who attended the service with her husband, Wally. "It's just so sad that it takes an event like this to bring our community together."

Teams are regrouping for another wave of searching Monday in Lenawee County near the Ohio border for the boys police fear are in "extreme danger," left by their father with a stranger just before he attempted suicide.

A task force of law enforcement agencies that include the Morenci police, FBI, the Lenawee and Fulton County, Ohio, sheriff's departments and the Michigan State Police, is looking for the boys, ages 9, 7, and 5, who were reported missing Friday.

The crowd at the church Sunday evening spilled out of the available pews requiring additional chairs to be brought in. In a solemn service, those in attendance filed to the front of the church to light a vigil candle. In the background an unaccompanied piano played seasonal songs including "Peace on Earth" and "O Holy Night."

Relatives of the missing trio were on hand but did not address the crowd, which included several people still wearing yellow safety vests after participating in afternoon searches.
Bob Dister, a lay leader at the church, thanked the congregation for their outpouring of support and said of the boys' family members: "They know your love."

Meanwhile, Morenci officials will close city hall Monday so the building can serve as the operational headquarters for the search operations.

"We are not leaving any stones unturned," Morenci Police Chief Larry Weeks said.

Investigators completed a search today at Harrison Lake State Park in northwest Ohio, about 10 miles south of Morenci, but turned up no clues, according to the Fulton County Sheriff's Department.

Police issued an "Amber Alert" for the boys Friday, after their father, John Skelton, 39, said he turned the boys over to a woman named Joann Taylor, asking her to take them to the boys' mother. Skelton then attempted suicide by hanging.

After he failed, he contacted an acquaintance who took him to an Ohio hospital.

More details here

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Pooktre Tree Art

"In 1986 Peter had the idea of growing a chair. Nine years later Peter and Becky became partners. Pooktre was born. Together they have mastered the art of Tree shaping. Pooktre has perfected a Gradual shaping method, which is the shaping of trees as they grow along predetermined designs. Designing and setting up the supporting famework are fundamental to the success of a tree. Some are intended for harvest to be high quality indoor furniture and others will remain living art." http://pooktre.com/index.html

This is what an anti-rape/rape awareness campaign should look like. This is SO much better than those horrific, triggering, titillating, victim-blaming ads that Tfl have only very recently taken down. Here some of the regressive, sexist ideas that I got from the last Tfl campaign:

a. It is a woman's responsibility not to get raped.
b. If you have been in an illegal minicab, worn revealing clothing, had a drink, flirted, spoken to someone, walked home alone, kissed someone, walked home in the dark, walked home with female friends, been outside with female friends, danced in a club, been inside with your windows open, failed to fight back enough, passed out in your friend or boyfriend's bed, fallen asleep generally, not shouted 'no!' repeatedly, loudly and clearly enough when someone is trying to rape you, AND SO ON AND SO ON AND SO ON you are in some way responsible or to blame for the fact that someone has raped you.
c. There will always be rapists because rape is a natural male urge, therefore anti-rape campaigns should just be damage limitation.

The point is, no matter how many precautions you take, you may still get raped. The point is, men face no such restrictions on their movements. As long as there are still rapists, there will still be rape survivors. As long as advertising solely urges women to take precautions, there will still be a world of ignorance out there, in women and men, about what is and isn't rape. So, you know, maybe the London authorities could allocate just one of their campaigns to raising awareness about what rape actually is? So that when a woman, having taken all other precautions on all the other days of her life HEINOUSLY SLIPS UP AND HAS ONE TOO MANY DRINKS, the person who may otherwise have committed rape, thinks about it and does not do so?

Here are three counterarguments to what I've just said. First, there will always be rapists so it is unrealistic to expect advertising to stop rape. Second, 'women-take-precautions!' adverts do something concrete to help so it is counterproductive to argue against them. Third, we don't campaign against other crimes by asking people not to commit them, i.e. a campaign saying 'don't murder' would be ludicrous.

I find the third the most immediately convincing of these counterarguments, and certainly its the one I've seen most used on internet forums and other places where such issues get discussed by calm, rational people. But the problem with it, as an argument goes, is that it fails to take into account just how much confusion there is surrounding rape. Like, killing is killing. If you kill someone you are a murderer, unless you are in some way legally less responsible, in which case it is manslaughter, which is also a very serious crime. Nobody thinks it is not real killing if you get killed by your partner. The only way you might be in some sense responsible for your own murder is if you have a history of violence against the person that kills you. If you walk home by yourself it's not your fault if you get killed. There might be other issues to discuss, but it is still killing. Rape is a different story. So many people, myself included, are unsure, in some cases, about whether what has happened is rape or isn't rape.

The recent 'Wake Up To Rape' (I think it's an unfortunate title, but hey) survey run by The Havens, based on a random sample of 1061 people in London, found that:
-Close to one in five respondents agree with the statement, "most claims of rape are probably not true" (18%)
-Close to one in five respondents do not know whether in a committed relationship it is rape when a man makes their partner have sex when they don't want to (18%)
-One in ten do not believe it is rape when a man makes their partner have sex when they don't want to (10%)
-20% of people have been made to have sex when they didn't want to.

Even taking into account a possible bias either way from the kinds of people who respond to rape surveys, I think some of these statistics might be related? Here's a feasible argument: if quite a large percentage of people are unsure what is and isn't rape, some people are committing rape through ignorance rather than willful criminality. Isn't it possible that some people may be stopped from raping if they know that what they are doing is a crime?

Let's talk about the second of the counterarguments, that if this kind of advertising stops even one person from being raped, it's doing its job and therefore, to campaign for removal is ridiculous. To some extent, this argument has a point. Of course it is better to have advertising that helps even slightly than nothing at all. But neither is it right to be entirely uncritical about what there is. When what there is could be improved, why not improve it? I do not frankly believe that there could be many women who have not been told repeatedly all their lives not to take endless, onerous security measures. I can't walk home by myself without hearing my mother's 'I don't like you out alone at night, it's not safe. Don't wear that skirt. Be careful not to drink too much.' voice resounding around my head. I don't think there is really a lack of awareness amongst women about staying safe, but there definitely is a lack of awareness among people about what consent is, what consent isn't, and about in what situations sex is rape. I will continue to contend for as long as it takes to anyone who will listen that it is in no way necessary or good to have anti-rape advertising that is so very distressing to both rape survivors and non-rape survivors (I MEAN, WHY ARE WE LOOKING AT THE WOMAN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE RAPIST IF THE AD IS TARGETING POTENTIAL ATTACKEES?! Talk about male gaze!). The same point can be made in a million different, almost invariably better ways. The Tfl campaign was made with little to no collaboration with women's groups who, you know, work on this stuff for a living. The new one, which has just gone up, is a little better if just less graphically traumatising, but still doesn't really hit the mark in the way that 'Don't be that guy' does. If it is felt that a safety based campaign is necessary, why not couple it with one like the Canadian one featured above? Its not like there could be too many.

Last, the first counterargument, that it's unrealistic to expect advertising to stop rape. I've pretty much answered this already anyway. It's hugely patronising to men to suggest that rape on such a large scale is inevitable. We can, at the very least, reduce occurrence of rape to roughly the same occurrence as most other crimes.

Back to the Canadian campaign. Its not just that it places the onus squarely where it belongs, on those who may not know what constitutes rape or who may otherwise feel tempted to rape. It also makes clear that those men who become rapists are not, generally, psychopaths or lurking-behind-bushes-weirdos, rather, rapists are everyday men who for whatever reason (pick some: they don't think its rape, lack of awareness/understanding/empathy, patriarchy, dehumanisation of women, misogyny, participation in culture that blames women for rape, internalisation of raunch culture ideals about female sexuality, fallout from society that demonizes women for saying yes or no or nothing, etc etc etc) choose to exercise unwanted power over a woman, man or queer against their will.

I'll leave you with a really great comment I saw on a facebook group called 'Please please stop victim blaming on the London Underground', from a person called Kay Ri, who I hope won't mind me reproducing it here:

"Incidentally, when a thief is found with his hands full of stolen Christmas gifts, legal professionals tend not to conjecture that the theft was a willing donation.

"But Mr. Smith, you give to charity all the time-are you sure you didn't just make a big donation and then regret it the next morning?"

"You say that they were Christmas presents Mr. Smith; is it not true that Christmas is a time of giving? And yet you *claim* they were stolen...""


And finally finally, here are some other good links on this:
-Sexual Assault Prevention Tips That Work
-But Why Shouldn't She Take Some Responsibility Too For The Rape?

How the U.S. government should respond to WikiLeaks.

The Weekly Standard reports that the editors at Der Spiegel can’t contain themselves. Even before publication of the WikiLeaks documents, they’ve taken to their website to announce jubilantly that the leaking of these documents “is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.”

Nonsense.

And the Obama administration and Congress can, acting together, ensure that this is nonsense. They can even turn this disgraceful crime into a moment of American strength. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has properly given our allies and others a heads-up as to what is coming. But that should be it. From now on, a policy of no comment about anything in any of these documents should be the absolute rule. No apologies, no complaints, no explanations, no excuses. No present or former government official should deign to discuss anything in these documents.

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Sen John McCain compares Sarah Palin to Ronald Reagan

What separates Sarah Palin from other Republicans is she’s not afraid to articulate conservatism-period.



We have too many whipish Republicans that are more concerned about being loved by the media to offer bold colors instead of pale pastels.



Thank God we have Mark Rubio on the man’s side of the ledger too. He’s not even in the Senate and already out Reagans all the GOP already there.



The Washington Post reports McCain compared his former running mate, Sarah Palin, to former President Ronald Reagan, noting that some viewed Reagan as divisive too. "I think that anybody who has the visibility that Sarah has is obviously going to have some divisiveness," McCain said. "I remember that a guy named Ronald Reagan used to be viewed by some as divisive. ... I think she had a positive impact on the last election, and I'm proud of her."



More details here



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Obama’s DOJ encouraged 11 Foreign Countries to file suit against Arizona over Immigration Law Video

If you believe in American sovereignty, this video will make your blood boil.

Left Coast Rebel via Maggie's Notebook has this video about the potential interference of adjudicating Arizona's border enforcement law by foreign nations and the seeming complicity of Eric Holder and the oxymoronically named Obama justice department.



Its stuff like this that caused the conservative tidal wave on election day. Pass this video to all your friends and family to get the word out.

Story cross posted at Proof Positive

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Jenni-Lyn Watson's Remains Believed to Be Found

CBS News reports that 20-year-old Pennsylvania student who vanished last week while on Thanksgiving break in her hometown was killed by her on-again, off-again boyfriend, who then dumped her body in a park "like garbage," a prosecutor said Saturday.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said 21-year-old Steven Pieper of Liverpool, N.Y., had been arrested on a charge of murder in the death of Jenni-Lyn Watson, a junior dance major at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa.

He was scheduled to be arraigned Saturday night in Clay town court. Pieper did not have a phone number listed at his home address.

A message left at a relative's house was not immediately returned Saturday. It was unclear whether he had an attorney yet. Eden Mishler, a dance major who had met Watson three years ago during her freshman year at Mercyhurst College, told The Associated Press that she had met Pieper several times but didn't know him that well.

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U.S. Carrier in Korean Seas as North Warns of ‘Brink of War’

NewsMax reports that the U.S. and South Korea were set to begin naval exercises in the waters west of the Korean Peninsula today, a show of force that North Korea warned would bring the region to the “brink of war.”

U.S. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. is trying to prevent the tensions over North Korea’s attack on a South Korean island on the disputed maritime border from escalating into a more significant confrontation.

“We’re very focused on restraint and not letting this thing get out of control,” Mullen told CNN in an interview scheduled for broadcast today on “Fareed Zakaria GPS” and posted on the network’s Website.

“Nobody wants this thing to turn into a conflict.”
North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong, which killed four people and wounded 20 more, raised tensions that flared after an international inquiry concluded that North Korea torpedoed the South Korean warship Cheonan in March and more recently following North Korean claims of advances in its nuclear program.

The Korean won was Asia’s worst-performing currency against the dollar Nov. 26 as the conflict continued. The Kospi stock index fell 1.3 percent. The tension also contributed to gains for the dollar, which rose the most since August against six major counterparts.

‘Defensive’ Drill

The U.S. called the four days of naval drills, which include the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and four smaller warships, “defensive in nature” and said they were initially planned before the Nov. 23 shelling of Yeonpyeong.

The nuclear-powered carrier, which holds about 85 aircraft and is served by a crew of 6,500, was last in waters off the Korean Peninsula in July as part of drills after the Cheonan’s sinking, which killed 46 sailors.

Kim Jong Il’s regime warned that any infringement of North Korea’s sovereignty would spark another attack.
“Escalated confrontation would lead to a war,” a North Korean government agency in charge of relations with South Korea said in a statement on the state-run Korean Central News Agency. “Gone are the days when verbal warnings are served only.”

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Lesbian-Only (Pearl's Rainbow) reort in Key West Florida opened its doors to guys because of reccession

I didn’t know Key West has become such a Gay haven. They even have a Gay police chief and a Gay Chamber of Commerce.



Sounds like seggreagation to me.



The Daily Mail reports that over this Thanksgiving weekend, Key West's only lesbian-exclusive resort is going 'all welcome' for the first time.



The decision was made public around the same time Pearl's Rainbow resort was honored in October by Curve, the best-selling lesbian magazine, as the guesthouse that had the greatest impact on lesbian culture in the past 20 years.



Pearl's Rainbow's lesbian owner, Heather Carruthers, said it was a business decision based on tough economic realities and requests of some lesbian guests who would like to bring male family members or friends.

She said lesbians were being more accepted and felt more comfortable in the mainstream these days.



She said: 'They can hold hands wherever they want to. It's really the world we want to have. We don't necessarily want to be segregated.



But her 'all welcome' decision is not sitting well with all gay and lesbian businesses in the area.



Tinlin, who runs three of Key West's nine major all-men gay guesthouses, replied 'certainly not' when asked if he would be allowing women onto his premises.



He added: 'Our business is down because of the economy and BP oil spill, but it's very important for this destination to maintain its all-gay reputation.''



Idyllic setting: Miss Carruthers said Pearl's enjoyed initial popularity because of the guesthouse's central Key West location and relaxing amenities



Key West, with a population of around 25,000, has a gay police chief, gay president of the Rotary Club, more than 400 members of its gay chamber of commerce and several elected gay officials - including Miss Carruthers, a Monroe County commissioner.



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New York woman leaps to her death on Westside of Manhattan

The New York Post repors that the victim – who hasn’t been identified – leapt just before 9 a.m. from one of the upper floors of 505 West 37th Street near Tenth Avenue, authorities said. The luxury apartment building is located a block from the Javits Convention Center.

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The impact of the woman’s fall was so powerful that it split the concrete sidewalk where she landed.

The investigation into the apparent suicide is ongoing.

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Shocking Video: Savages (Crazed Shoppers) rush into a Buffalo Target Store on Black Friday

That right, these people are a bunch of savages that look like they were raised by wolves.

They ought to be ashamed for acting like a bunch of wild animals just to save a few bucks.

The Drudge Repot reports that shoppers waited out in the cold wet weather for hours. When the doors opened at 4 a.m. the Black Friday chaos turned ugly.

Seconds after the doors opened, something went dangerously wrong. Crazed Black Friday shoppers began piling up on each other.

"It went from controlled to a mob in less than five minutes and it just got nasty," said a shopper.


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boo

Boo. While there are probably more interesting things I could write about, current mood elicits a more boy-centric post.

I think I've just been shot down....

You see, there's this boy I've been digging on. I admit the chemistry isn't great, but he was cute and I'm bored. After some initial sparks I haven't heard much from him and I've recently found myself coming up with justifications for why he didn't call when he said he would or why we didn't hang out like he said he would...

*These are the things girls do. The things I like to avoid doing.*

**Stupid really, but I know I'm not alone in this. So ladies I'm going to break it down.**

1) If you text a guy and he doesn't respond... It's not because he didn't get your text, it's because he didn't want to respond.

2) If a guy asks you to hang out, but then doesn't follow through... It's because he doesn't want to follow through, he has something better to do, or he's just not that interested.

And

3) If you basically throw yourself at a guy and he doesn't take advantage of the situation, it's too late to recover.

While these sentiments could probably be derived from a copy of "He's Just Not That Into You," they deserve to be mentioned again.

Learn them, own them, live them.

TSA agents grope and humiliate female passenger because of her sanitary towel

This insamity has to end!



People with disabilities, the elderly, and other with various physical issues are really being hurt the most by these stupid procedures.



How much longer will Americans 4th amendment rights be trampled?



TheDaily Mail reports that a female passenger has claimed that she was assaulted by TSA agents when she was ordered to be patted down because her sanitary towel showed up on the body scanner.



The woman was wearing a flannel panty liner, that evidently aroused suspicion, causing her to endure what she described as a 'horrible' experience.



Humiliated by her experience, the unidentified Army vet wrote to women's health company Gladrags to detail what happened.



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Feds and Oregon Police foil bombing plot by Somali-born American citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud

Thank God the FBI and state and local police in Oregon were on the case of this plot. This American citizen that was born in Somalia needs to be also charged with treason against the United States.

Unfortunately, its only a matter of time before one of these bomb plots are successful in an American city. It doesn’t have to be New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.


The Oregonian reports that the FBI thwarted an attempted terrorist bombing in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square before the city's annual tree-lighting Friday night, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oregon.

A Corvallis man, thinking he was going to ignite a bomb, drove a van to the corner of the square at Southwest Yamhill Street and Sixth Avenue and attempted to detonate it.

However, the supposed explosive was a dummy that FBI operatives supplied to him, according to an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint signed Friday night by U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, a Somali-born U.S. citizen, was arrested at 5:42 p.m., 18 minutes before the tree lighting was to occur, on an accusation of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. The felony charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The arrest was the culmination of a long-term undercover operation, during which Mohamud had been monitored for months as his alleged bomb plot developed.

"The device was in fact inert, and the public was never in danger," according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The investigation involved the FBI, Oregon State Police, Portland Police Bureau, Corvallis Police Department and Lincoln County Sheriff's Office.

Mohamud will appear in U.S. District Court in Portland on Monday.
"This defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people -- even here in Oregon -- who are determined to kill Americans," said Oregon U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton.

"The good work of law enforcement protected Oregonians in this case -- and we have no reason to believe there is any continuing threat arising from this case." According to the FBI affidavit, the case began in August 2009 when Mohamud was in e-mail contact with an unindicted associate overseas who was believed to be involved in terrorist activities. In December 2009, while the unindicted associate was in a frontier province of Pakistan, Mohamud and the associate discussed the possibility of Mohamud traveling to Pakistan to participate in violent jihad.

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Unmerciful Violence Hungry Pakistan Muslims threaten anarchy if Assia Bibi, a Christian woman is not put to death

As I previously reported, the sage of the blood thirty Muslims in Pakistan continues.

The so-called practitioners of a so-called peaceful religion known as Islam want to see a Christian woman, Asia Bibi hang by the neck for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammad.

I’m still waiting for the so-called moderate Muslims around the world, President Obama included, to condemn this quest for death. But, so far they remain silent as they usually do.

Google News reports that Pakistani Muslims threatened protests and anarchy if the government pardons a Christian mother sentenced to death for blasphemy, calling hundreds of demonstrators onto the streets on Friday.

Demonstrators marched in the eastern city of Lahore after the most influential Sunni Muslim alliance in Pakistan urged the government not to grant mother-of-five Aasia Bibi clemency.
A crowd of several hundred called for "Jihad" and pledged to sacrifice their lives to protect the honour of the Prophet Mohammad, an AFP reporter said.

The rally was organised by a subsidiary of banned charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which the United Nations has blacklisted as a terrorist organization.

"We will hold nationwide protests if the government pardons the Christian woman," the subsidiary's chief coordinator, Qari Yaqub, told participants.

Politicians and conservative clerics have been at loggerheads over whether President Asif Ali Zardari should pardon Bibi, who was sentenced on November 8 to hang under controversial blasphemy laws for defaming the Prophet Mohammed.

"The pardon would lead to anarchy in the country," the head of the Sunni Ittehad Council, Sahibzada Fazal Kareem, told AFP.
"Our stand is very clear that this punishment cannot be waived."

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Argentine Woman (Elvira Gomez ) Says Father Raped Her for 30 Years

Photo via The Star.com

CBS News reports that an Argentine woman has accused her father of sexually abusing her for 30 years and having 10 children with her, including one who killed himself after learning that his grandfather was his father.

Elvira Gomez, 43, did not report the alleged abuse until her father, Armando Gomez, was recently arrested for robbery.

"I felt that I was a worse than a prisoner for 30 years because I couldn't even talk with anybody. He raped me, beat me for any reason, didn't let me approach other people and always had a loaded gun. He told me: 'I'm going to go to prison, but I'm going to kill you first,"' Gomez said in comments published Friday in the newspaper Clarin.

DNA tests reported this week confirmed that nine of her 10 children were with her father. Tests could not be carried out on her remaining son because he is dead. Elvira Gomez said she didn't have the courage to report the abuse until now because "since I was a girl he beat me with whatever he had in his hand: a rod or a machete which cut me all over. I spent days in bed."

Her mother died when she was 20 months old, she said. "Nothing can remove from my head the idea that he did something to her," Gomez said, speaking to the newspaper from her poor home in the village of Nicanor Molinos in Santa Fe province.

She said her eldest son committed suicide before he reached 18 when he learned the truth about his father. "I always thought he had decided to take his life because of a fight with his girlfriend, but they found a letter explaining it, that he had learned that his grandfather was his father," Gomez said.

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Obama gets shellacked on basketball court requiring 12 stitches on upper lip

“Did you get the number of the truck that hit me?” Poor President Obama is having a very rough November. Maybe he should switch sports to bowling? Gutter balls won’t hurt him. I think.

CNN reports that apparently no good deed goes unpunished for President Barack Obama, who was trying to make sure he didn't get a flabby belly after Thanksgiving but wound up with a fat lower lip instead.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the president received a dozen stitches after getting hit with an errant elbow during a Friday morning basketball game with White House aide Reggie Love and others at the Fort McNair military base in Washington.

Fox News reports that President Barack Obama needed 12 stitches in his upper lip after taking an errant elbow during a pickup basketball game Friday morning with family and friends visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House said.

First word of the injury came in a statement from press secretary Robert Gibbs nearly three hours after the incident.

The White House did not initially name the person who caused the injury, but identified him later Friday as Rey Decerega, director of programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

Obama received the stitches under local anesthesia in the doctor's office on the ground floor of the White House after returning home. Doctors used a smaller filament than typically used, which increases the number of stitches but makes a tighter stitch and leaves a smaller scar.

The president had gone to nearby Fort McNair to indulge in a game of basketball, one of his favorite athletic pursuits. It was a five-on-five contest involving family and friends. Among the players were Obama's nephew, Avery Robinson, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Reggie Love, Obama's personal assistant, who played at Duke University.

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Rumor has that Rey Decerega hit Obama intentionally because the president failed to push immagration reform.

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Brothers and sisters the left wing and the communist/socialist movement in the US has been hijacked by liberals and liberal class collaborators!


In my opinion there is a huge reason why there is no strong communist movement in the states. It is because most of the parties and ORGs have adapted tailism as their main ideology. Meaning most parties or ORGs simply tail the liberal anti-war movements or use liberal slogans to gain support. And some groups even create liberal fronts for a certain subject or movement and do not use their fronts to create an opportunity to advocate for socialism. This tailism has been going on since the 60's (maybe earlier) and has proven to be an incorrect method of building a real movement.






As this picture says, the reason people are STILL protesting is because protesting doesn't work. Protesting as a tactic to "fight the power" or "fight the man" is a pacifist joke and the fact that the socialist groups in the US have bought into this crap is nothing less than a crime against the people. The masses need us to be working for them and leading them forward. Not standing on the streets with a bunch of pacifist liberals yelling their liberal slogans. The protesting activist circles are not the masses nor are they revolutionary. Why are these socialist wasting their time on reformist, pacifist liberals? I don't know the answer but if someone does then please let me know.



It is important to fight liberalism in our country because liberal slogans and the liberal activist circle has been the death of our movement. Of course like Ive mentioned in previous post it will take some converting of liberals in this country in order to build a communist movement but talking to/trying to convert liberals and playing tailism with them are two majorly different things.



Converting liberals to socialism is one way to combat liberalism but we on the left need to think of creative ways to take that battle further. Of course a huge part of being a Maoist is knowing who is a class enemy and why they are a class enemy. The ignorance in a person might say "well the liberals are poor so they are not our class enemy". But this is incorrect because while some poor people in society might be liberals, most poor people do not vote and certainly the most oppressed section of the US population (migrant workers) don't/can't vote. Most liberals still stand up for capitalism and some liberals do not even want full social services. Most liberals are middle class "blue collar" workers, or small business owners (bourgeoisie).



The liberals do not fight for the empowerment of the people or even for the betterment of the people. The liberals do not even fight for the betterment of the middle class workers. They too fight for the corporations and the big bosses just as much as the neo-conservatives do. A big sign that the liberals are a big enemy of the people are things like "Moveon.org" who fool people left of the liberals by saying "we want something better" but then just support the democrats and they refuse to criticize the democrats to any end. And this group has millions of members, it is depressing to see the people cheated like that. They are an enemy of the people, because they are herding progressives right around back into supporting the people we already know to be against the people.



But part of the blame is on US the communist. We have played tailism and have not shown the masses any alternative to the liberals to the point that some progressive democrats have called themselves "left-wing". We argue so much between ourselves that no one outside of our socialist and the activist circles even know we exist. We have no sway in politics at all, is this not depressing to anyone else? The only "communist" organization with any sway (they are not revolutionary communist that is for sure) is the CPUSA and that doesn't even count because they only have a very little fraction of a sway in the.......that's right the democratic party AKA they play tailism.



If we are to move forward to socialism in this country then all the parties need to start advocating for socialism and stop using their front groups to promote liberalism. Of course some parties and ORGs are more guilty of this than others but in the name unity I won't point them out by name. If we do not advocate for socialism how will people even know we exist? Let alone what we stand for. Every group has a "What we stand for" book or brochure but they don't advocate for socialism outside of these papers. So how would the average Joe ever convert to socialism if at all the rallies he goes to the socialist are the ones follow and chanting the same slogans as the liberals? He wouldn't, he would think that socialist are just the extreme side of the democrats.



Another way to combat liberalism is that the people reading this need to unseat all defeatist from their parties leadership. Defeatism in the leadership will only cement your parties/organizations tailism as it's main tactic. Someone in a leadership role once said to me: "you cannot just wish different conditions into existence" he said this as a defense for carrying out tailism under his leadership. To which I replied "Of course we cannot wish anything into existence, there is no such thing as magic lamps. But we can make different conditions for ourselves through hard work and advocating for socialism." He then ended the conversation.




The future is up to us. We can stay on this same 40+ year old path or we can make our own path and start moving forward. We have been the ones who have been holding ourselves back so it is time we let ourselves go in a different direction. A direction the movement has not gone since the 60's: forward!



Written by: Dustin Slagle

Blame the Brits: Karzai aide blames British for bringing Taliban impostor to talks

When in doubt, blame the Brits! Just kidding, I have a lot of British readers of this blog. But this really is a funny story that’s leaving egg on the faces of all concerned that got bamboozled by a con man.



The Washington Post reports that President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff on Thursday said that British authorities were responsible for bringing a Taliban impostor into the presidential palace and that foreigners should stay out of delicate negotiations with the Afghan insurgent group.



In an interview, Mohammad Umer Daudzai said that the British brought a man purporting to be Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, a senior Taliban leader, to meet Karzai in July or August but that an Afghan at the meeting knew "this is not the man."



Afghan intelligence later determined that the visitor was actually a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta, he said.



"This shows that this process should be Afghan-led and fully Afghanized," Daudzai said. "The last lesson we draw from this: International partners should not get excited so quickly with those kind of things. . . . Afghans know this business, how to handle it. We handle it with care, we handle it with a result-based approach, with very less damage to all the other processes."



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Maybe the British should reconsider cutting their Intelligence budget?



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