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POPSUganda Anti-Gay Seminar
Just in case you didn't get it, this is known as confirming your sources, so that you can speak with some authority. There is very definitely a conservative christian movement within the U.S. that supports punishment, imprisonment and other means of disenfranchisement for LBGT people on an international level as well as domestic. More from the article below: But Dr. Warren Throckmorton, associate professor of Psychology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, finds it troubling that the American Christian leaders spoke at a conference that supports the criminalization of homosexuality and that none of them had reportedly publicly opposed the law. He noted that the people in charge of the conference called for stricter enforcement of laws against homosexuality. “It is illegal to be homosexual in Uganda. There’s also a category of homosexuality (act) that has a potential for life imprisonment,” said Throckmorton to The Christian Post on Wednesday. “How often it is enforced is not cle
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POPSUgandan Seminar Against Homosexual Equality From the horse's mouth, more from article below: "He says these groups have support from within and outside the country, have well trained activists, who have a clear vision, an agenda and are determined to accomplish their objectives. Participants will be facilitated by experts on the topic including Dr. Scott Lively (USA), founder of Abiding Truth Ministries; Mr. Don Schmierer (USA) from International Healing Ministries; and Mr. Lee Brundidge (USA) who works with a ministry that is rehabilitates homosexuals and lesbians. Langa says the seminar to take place at Hotel Triangle in Kampala is intended for parents, guardians, teachers, government officials, policy makers, members of parliament, religious leaders, counselors and activists who need in-depth knowledge on the subject of homosexuality. Participants will pay 25,000 shillings per day."
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POPSU.S Christian Right Pushes Death Penalty For LGBTs If they can't legally kill non-heteros and their friends in the U.S., they'll try to see that it happens somewhere else. More from yhe article, below: " The speakers were Don Schmierer, a board member at Exodus International; Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries and author of a book that equates Nazism and homosexuality; and Caleb Lee Brundidge who works at the International Healing Foundation which ostensibly "cures" homosexuals. "They told us all things are going wrong because the family is being neglected. Not having more children is one of the things that they said are going wrong. Homosexuality is a way of stopping us from having more children," said Senyonjo. "The law forces Ugandans to spy on each other because you can be punished if you don’t report suspected homosexuals to the police," said Senyonjo. The problem of patriarchy is even more urgent than addressing fundamentalism in the church, Oberholzer told IPS. "LGBTI rights and women’s rights go hand in
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POPS"Defund Acorn Act" May Be Unconstitutional Rachel does her usual superb job of muckraking. A little more from the article below: The GOP smear machine tries to link ACORN to prostitution. Beyond the hypocrisy of Republicans denouncing prostitutes (long history of using them), do they really want talk of prostitution? One former Blackwater employee recently stated in a sworn declaration that Blackwater owner Erik Prince "failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men." Another former employee described "having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the 'Blackwater Man Camp' in exchange for one American dollar." Even if ACORN did provide inappropriate tax advice to a prostitute, is that really on the same level as this conduct being conducted on a huge U.S. government contract? If you think these are just the allegations of disgruntled employees, read the Justice Department’s perspective on Blackwater’s crimes and how its
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POPSMen No Longer needed to Create Sperm OOOpsie! No wonder George W. and all those (male) church elders didn't like stem-cell research. But, don't worry, guys. If you'uns will just act right and clean up your own messes (including straightening out the more clueless of your sex), women will still love ya and want you around.
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POPSCamp Lejeune Psychiatrist Whistle-Blower Fired An old chestnut from the '60s: "War is not healthy for children and other living things." More below: "But instead of being praised for preventing what might have been another Fort Hood massacre, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him, NiteLines Kuhana LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm says it let Manion go at the Navy's behest. The Navy declined to comment on this story." While military officials and the media examine whether the Army missed warning signs that might have indicated an unhinged Nidal Hasan was capable of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Manion's Camp Lejeune story is a cautionary tale of what happens to those who blow the whistle on conditions for military personnel with mental problems. He still worries. "I don't like seeing these guys mistreated," Manion said. "This is akin to somebody dying on the battlefield and not being attended to," he added. "These guys are saying they are broken and need help, and the system is saying, 'next, next, next.'"
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POPSPledge Of Allegiance Is Un-American Interesting and thoughtful article on the history of the pledge and why, perhaps, its use is not such a great idea. Also, though it never occured to me to ask before now, do schoolkids in other countries (England, Canada, Italy, Peru, Japan, etc...) have to say a pledge to their government/flag before starting their day? The essay is not very long and interesting to read.
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POPSInterviewing an American-Egyptian Marine More from the article follows: What about the fact that he was a psychiatrist? He was probably treating guys with PTSD and there’s a lot more overt racism in that crowd than there is in the rest of the military. Talk about that. Well, your average service member is not particularly racist and not necessarily more racist than your average American. But in order to go be involved with killing large of other human beings, you have to dehumanize the enemy, and the easiest way to dehumanize them is to racialize them. In my experience, they’re much more prone to talking about "f** hajji’s," if only "these f** hajjis wouldn’t be here, this wouldn’t have happened."
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POPS"Drug War" Does More Harm Than Marijuana Another essay from J.H.. More below: " and so are today's leaders (from the White House to nearly all local governments), who are keeping us mired in the longest, most costly, and most futile war in U.S. history: the drug war. As one adamant opponent of this ongoing madness put it, "I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the War on Drugs is a failure. Americans are paying too high a price in lives and liberty for a failing War on Drugs, about which our leaders have lost all sense of proportion." That was no ex-hippie stoner expressing himself through a haze of herbal smoke. It was America's "Uncle Walter," the journalistic icon Walter Cronkite, calling earlier this year for a new truthfulness and sanity in American drug policy.
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POPSDrought Drought Drought Some interesting points regarding our planet's fresh water supplies and an absolutely hair-raising excerpt from Howard Zinn.
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POPSMilitary Looks To Drugs For Battle Readiness This article is from 2002 and concerns primarily pilots. However, I have it on good authority that all branches and levels of military personnel are given access to amphetamines, tranquilizers, "cognitive enhancing" drugs, etc. More from the article below: "In April, four Canadian soldiers were killed and another eight injured when an American F-16 pilot on a long-range mission, thinking he was under attack, dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on an allied military exercise. "The initial version of the Canadian incident portrayed the pilot as behaving with inexplicable aggression tinged with paranoia, and my first thought was that the poor guy had been eating too much speed," says Mr. Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. Officials are still investigating that accident, and the pilot has been questioned, among other things, about the possibility of drug use. More recently, concerns have been raised about aggression and violence among soldiers returning from Afghanistan. In three of four
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POPSSerial Cat Killer? Here's a prime example of how animal abusers are permitted to keep abusing after being repeatedly caught. All they have to do is offer up a few jive-ass excuses and they are free to continue.
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POPSPlea For The Birds This is a longer video about Bett, the rescued Macaw, her friend Geronimo and their person. She makes the point that these beautiful birds are an incredible amount of work and expense, their need for attention is huge and that they will live longer than both you and your child. In other words, they require a major commitment and even with the willingness to do so, they are still better off wild and free.
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POPSSUperSYmmetry=Theory Of Everything? Why should we care if the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) finds the Higgs Boson? How is SUperSYmmetry, Higgs Boson, gravity, dark matter and String Theory connected? Really good, comprehensible article for us non-scientist types to help us understand the what, who, when, where and why of all this stuff. Very worthwhile to take the time to read. I think so, anyway.
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POPSHow Global warming Leads To The Ice Age Short and sweet. Makes for some interesting reading. More from the article follows: "Patterson says that sudden climate switches like the Big Freeze are far from unusual in the geological record. The Younger Dryas was brought about when a glacial lake covering most of north-west Canada burst its banks and poured into the North Atlantic and Arctic OceansMovie Camera. The huge flood diluted the salinity-driven North Atlantic Ocean mega-currents, including the Gulf Stream, and stalled it. Two studies published in 2006 show that the same thing happened again 8200 years ago, when the Northern hemisphere went through another cold spell."
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POPSOperation Iraqi Liberation: The Aftermath Remember wnen O.I.L. was changed to Operation Iraqi Freedom? Just in case you'uns haven't figured the real reason we sent our kids to Iraq, this article will give you the necessary information. More from the article follows: Before the Invasion In January 2000, 10 days into President George W. Bush’s first term, representatives of the largest oil and energy companies joined the new administration to form the Cheney Energy Task Force. As part of its deliberations, the task force reviewed a series of lists titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" naming more than 60 companies from some 30 countries with contracts in various stages of negotiation. Were Saddam to remain in power and the sanctions to be removed, these contracts would take effect, and the U.S. and its closest ally would be shut out of Iraq’s great oil bonanza. After the Invasion However, organized resistance by Iraqis and people around the world has thus far succeeded in denying Big Oil its Big Prize:
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POPSAlfred McCoy; Surveillance State U.S.A. More from the article below: "And yet for an imperial power past its prime, foreign wars, even ones fought thousands of miles from home, have a way of coming back to haunt. Alfred W. McCoy tends to be ahead of the curve in his writing. In the Vietnam era, he had to fight the CIA to get his book, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, published; in the Bush years, he was perhaps the first person to recognize that the photos from Abu Ghraib represented no anomaly but the product of a long history of CIA torture research -- and published a powerful book, A Question of Torture, on the subject. "
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POPSMad Doctor In Australia And Tesladownunder.com This site is CRAZY, but fun. The guy plays with all kinds of unusual stuff: Tesla generators (obviously), liquid nitrogen, lasers, electromagnetics. And that ain't all, folks. Check it out and be amazed!
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POPSNikola Tesla-The Forgotten Wizard Don't know about him? You should. As an "added bonus", there's a second, rather frightening video of a Tesla Coil. Don't know what it's doing, but it's definitely activated.
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POPSOur Tax Dollars At Work-Blackwater More from the article as follows: "The Nisour Square shooting was the bloodiest and most controversial episode involving Blackwater in the Iraq war. At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded." "Those responses deeply worried Blackwater officials. Before the Nisour Square shootings, the company had operated in Iraq without a license largely because the Iraqi government had never enforced the rules. Being blocked from the country would have been costly — the State Department deal was Blackwater’s single biggest contract. From 2004 through today, the company has collected more than $1.5 billion for its work protecting American diplomats and providing air transportation for them inside Iraq." "
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POPS2009 Leonid Meteor Shower More from the article below: ""We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Our forecast is in good accord with independent theoretical work by other astronomers." "A remarkable feature of this year's shower is that Leonids will appear to be shooting almost directly out of the planet Mars," notes Cooke. It's just a coincidence. This year, Mars happens to be passing by the Leonid radiant at the time of the shower. The Red Planet is almost twice as bright as a first magnitude star, so it makes an eye-catching companion for the Leonids"
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