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POPSPolitican Cartoons "The United States, some years back, found its new bogeyman "Islam" to replace its former imaginary enemy "Communism." And now the European press appears to have finally (?) found a replacement for the Jewish people that they used to malign and attack. Anti-Islam/Muslimism appears to now have officially replaced anti-Jewish sentiments in Europe. The roots of these attacks are the same: an inability to acknowledge and respect a diversity of people that might result in a Europe that is non-White and/or non-Christian. The anti-Muslim/Islam cartoons of today are little different than the anti-Jewish cartoons that were published by the Nazis during WW II."
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POPSSaudi woman to be beheaded for being a "witch" Being beheaded by sword in a public place... For being a "witch" or practising "witchcraft"... Welcome back to the Middle Ages: "Burn the witch!" or "Behead the witch!", by the name of God. Correct me if I'm wrong, Saudi Arabia is a close ally of the US, who enthusiastically invaded Iraq to bring "human rights and democracy" to Arabs, right?
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POPSMind Reading Is Now Possible "The more detailed the thought is, the more different these patterns get, because different people have different associations for an object or idea," says Haynes. "We're much closer to this than we were two years ago, but still far from a universal mind-reading machine." How far? The CMU group is determining the brain patterns that encode abstract ideas (honesty, democracy), words and sentences, a big step toward a mind-reading dictionary.
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POPSWho Will Cry For Innocent Iraqis? Half of Iraq's population are children. Children! Who can condone dropping bombs on babies and tormenting children, no matter how "noble" they may think the cause? Who can know of Iraq's suffering and still proudly wave the flag, droning off hollow words of security, democracy and freedom? How can anyone, anyone keep supporting this terrible murderous war? How??
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POPSThe Biggest Threat to the West Lies Within Itself, Not with Islam Simon Jenkins on threats to peace and democracy. This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.
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POPSState of the world as we end 2007 This is an incredibly powerful paragraph. I wonder if when George Bush looks at the cover of Time Magazine and stares into the eyes of Vladimir Putin, he still says, "ah, those trusting eyes of Vlad." The U.S. is getting completely outplayed at the chess table and its leaders don't have a clue.
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POPSA Tragic Legacy And the president who vowed to lead the war for freedom and democracy has made torture, rendition, abductions, lawless detentions of even our own citizens, secret "black site" prisons, Abu Ghraib dog leashes, and orange Guantánamo jumpsuits the strange, new symbols of America around the world. New essay by Glenn Greenwald on the future legacy of America's reaction to 9/11.
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POPSDozens Report Mile-Wide UFO Over Texas Just imagine if aliens exist!! Abductions, secret flights, missing time, men in black, being probed and tortured and terrorised by alien foreign invaders!! Hmm.... I don't think we should fear UFO's. If aliens exist, I'm pretty sure they're just trying to liberate us and bring us some freedom and democracy. Optical Illusion?
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POPSInternet access cut in Myanmar Without being an expert in how international affairs like this should be dealt with, I know that i've recently witnessed the military of one or more countries entering other countries to initiate change. Does the current situation in Myanmar not warrant this type of action!!?? Do the people of Myanmar not deserve some kind of outside help!!??
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POPSArtificial brain predicts death-row executions Since the direct approach had failed, the researchers turned to an artificial neural network (ANN) - an intelligent computer system, modelled after the human brain - that is able to deduce how various factors within a jumble of data relate to each other. The system can then take what it has learned and make predictions about a new set of data.To find out which factors might be linked to executions, the researchers first "trained" their ANN by entering the profiles of 1000 death row inmates between 1973 and 2000. Half of this sample of prisoners had been executed and the other half had survived. Each profile contained 18 factors, including the inmate's sex, age, race, marital status, educational level and information on their capital offences.
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POPSThe Next Renaissance The next renaissance (if there is one)—the phenomenon we're talking about or at least around here is not about the individual at all, but about the networked group. The possibility for collective action. The technologies we're using—the biases of these media—cede central authority to decentralized groups. Instead of moving power to the center, they tend to move power to the edges. Instead of creating value from the center—like a centrally issued currency—the network creates value from the periphery.
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POPSHYPERPOLITICS (AMERICAN STYLE) A Talk By Mark Pesce The power redistributions of the 21st century have dealt representative democracies out. Representative democracies are a poor fit to the challenges ahead, and 'rebooting' them is not enough. The future looks nothing like democracy, because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him.
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POPSThe "Out-of-control" Military Machine Citizens must fight the militarism that's choking our democracy. Given the power and money of the military lobby, we're not likely to get any encouragement from either party or any presidential candidates, at least not at first. But we can force the issue into the dialogue and remember who listened and who didn't. Call it politics for the long run, the politics of hope with a sharper edge.
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POPSChomsky: If US was a true Democracy!
On all these topics, White House policy is completely at odds with what public opinion wants. But the media rarely publish the polls that highlight this persistent public opposition. Not only are citizens excluded from political power, they are also kept in a state of ignorance as to the true state of public opinion. There is growing international concern about the massive US double deficit affecting trade and the budget. But both are closely linked to a third deficit, the democratic deficit that is constantly growing, not only in the US but all over the western world. The US press sometimes publishes even my work, and the US is not a totalitarian country. But anyone who fails to fulfil certain minimum requirements does not stand a chance of becoming an established commentator. One of the big differences between the propaganda system of a totalitarian state and democratic societies go about things. Exaggerating slightly, in totalitarian countries the state decides the official li
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POPSCreating insignificant events -Futuristic art Vincent Callebaut 'work was lately exhibited in Paris ; ;" To believe in the world means to create events, even insignificant ones, that gets out of control, or create new space-times, even in reduced surfaces or volumes"
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POPSThe 7 habits of highly effective propagandists citing a qualified source is a good way to emphasize a legitimate idea. But you should consider whether or not the source being cited is really qualified to make judgments about a particular issue. 5. PLAIN FOLKS The “Plain Folks” technique is at work whenever a speaker promotes the idea that he or she is “of the people,” just an Average Joe despite the fact that he or she may go home to a mansion at the end of the day. 6. CARD STACKING “Stacking the deck” is a gimmick used by magicians where a deck of cards appears to be randomly shuffled but is in fact arranged in a specific way. The IPA borrowed the term to describe a technique where only one side of a topic is favored, or another side is ignored or played down. 7. BANDWAGON The idea behind the Bandwagon technique is that, since everyone else is doing it, so too should you.
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POPSPersepolis I went to see this at the cinema last night. And I absolutely loved it. It's political. It's critical. It's naive. It's full of wisdom. It's funny. It's sad. Its message is simple. Its message is deep. Just wonderful!
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POPS Myanmar's fascist junta extends Suu Kyi house arrest Those who showed their incompetence to aid the cyclone victims, proving their determinism to oppress Myanmar people. If this knave, filthy junta still holds the power and dares to extend Suu Kyi's arrest arrogantly, only one thing can be said: Shame on the world.
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POPSWeb 2.0: Opening up, or dumbing down? The aggregated "wisdom of the crowd," epitomized by Google and Wikipedia, is rife with opinion, misinformation, and lies because Web 2.0 creates an "environment where anyone can say anything," Keen argued. And that's "a bad thing for the cultural producers, the creative class,"
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POPS The social web - power to the people!!! Oh yes, a truly revolutionary web we are weaving. My hat is off to people in places such as Egypt who brave the potentially dire consequences in order to spread the truth. Their words will hopefully lead to more democratic, free societies in places that have for so long kept their people bottled up.
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POPSGlobal Hypocrisy on Burma As for the Burmese people themselves what the world’s wilful impotence in dealing with their brutal rulers indicates is that ultimately they will have to achieve democratic rule in Burma entirely on their own strength. The people of the world will of course support them in whatever way they can but to expect governments around the globe to help topple the Burmese military regime is as unrealistic as asking the regime to step down on its own. There is no option but to keep the struggle going.
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