WTF, I’m up early again. In case you missed it:
Verbatim: Search firms surveyed on privacy
By Declan McCullagh and Elinor Mills/Staff Writer, CNET News.com/February 3, 2006, 8:43 AM PST
To find out what kind of information the four major search companies retain about their users, CNET News.com surveyed America Online, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.
We asked the same seven questions of each company. Their answers are reproduced below, with the responses sorted by the companies’ names in alphabetical order.
||Drop In the Bucket||
.
Survivors say a fire blazed for hours on a Red Sea ferry before it sank, leaving 1,000 people feared dead.
The fire broke out soon after the ship left Saudi Arabia, but it sailed on towards Egypt for two hours before finally sinking, angry survivors say.
Around 380 people have been rescued, but most of the other estimated 1,400 people on board are feared lost.
Unrest broke out in the Egyptian port of Safaga as relatives desperate for news clashed with riot police.
Hopes fade for 1,000 passengers missing in the Red Sea
SAFAGA, Egypt (Al Jazeera) Feb. 4 — According to survivors’ accounts, the ferry began listing to one side shortly after it departed, but sailed on for two hours, before it started sinking. “It just went onto its side and within five minutes it had sunk, Reuters quoted one of the survivors as saying.
Coastal stations didn’t receive a distress call, said an official from the company that owned the ferry. However Egypt’s MENA news agency reported that another ship picked up a message from the ferry’s captain asking for help as the ship was in danger of sinking.
Weeping relatives of passengers are waiting at the port where the ferry should have arrived at midnight on Friday.
“They are not telling us anything,” Gadir Mohammed shouted outside the port’s gates. “Where are the corpses? Where are they taking the survivors?”
≈ Cross-posted from sybil’s diary — Egypt’s tragedy right out of Syriana ≈
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
and liberals for church burnings. (From a post at Open Letter To Chris Matthews)
During an interview about a spate of church burnings in Alabama, Matthews decides to forever cast aside any pretense of being unbiased with the following interchange with an ATF agent:
Yes Chris, do speculate without any evidence, impugn entire groups of behavior and while you’re at it, let everyone know just what a homophobe you are.
.
A district governor is among 25 people killed after a fierce battle between Afghan troops and Taleban fighters in the southern Helmand province of Afghanistan. Abdul Qoudoas, the district chief of Musa Qala, was killed by Taleban fighters fleeing after a 12-hour battle in the neighbouring Sangeen district.
UK Defence Secretary John Reid said 3,300 British troops would be sent to Helmand to help reconstruction efforts there.It is the most serious fighting between the two sides for two years. Five police officers and some 20 Taleban fighters have been killed in the fighting in Helmand province.
Mirwais Afghan of the BBC Pashto service, who has been to the area, says most of the villagers have fled.
● Afghanistan Government
● Dutch legislators OK sending troops to Afghanistan
The Dutch parliament voted for deployment, 127 votes out of 150, to follow through on its commitment to send up to 1,400 soldiers to troubled southern Afghanistan.
The lengthy parliamentary debate took place in front of standing-room only crowds, as legislators argued the merits of the Afghan mission to Uruzgan.
● Dutch Latest Report: More Troops to Afghanistan
≈ Cross-posted from my recent diary — Uruzgan Mission ¶ Outstanding Debate and Review by Dutch Parliament ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
Cost of wars soars to $440bn for US
At Least 73 Die in Manila Stadium Stampede
Cartoon row: Danish embassy ablaze
(I try to avoid linking to CNN, but so far, this is the only link I found in English.)
.
Today, in answer, Al Jazeera published its own rendition of Christ from a contest conducted throughout the Middle East this last week. The winning drawing depicted George Bush as Christ gently coddling a nuclear weapon with a mushroom cloud in the background.
The contest itself was controversial as fundamental Islamists prohibit the depiction of any religious figure be it Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or any other faith.
[links added by Oui]
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
. . . prohibit the depiction of any religious figure. . .
Didn’t know that, and haven’t seen/heard it anywhere in American media. Maybe I just missed it, but had that phrase been first out, woulda saved a ton of grief.
“..Islamists prohibit the depiction of any religious figure be it Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, or any other faith.”
I’m sure we all recall, this senseless destruction; Bamyan Buddha.
.
Some of the Protestant reformers encouraged their followers to destroy Catholic art works by insisting that they were idols. Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin promoted this approach to the adaptation of earlier buildings for Protestant worship. In 1562, some Calvinists destroyed the tomb of St. Irenaeus and the relics inside, which are said to have been under the altar of a church since his martyrdom in 202, though iconoclastic riots took place in Zürich (in 1523), Copenhagen (1530), Münster (1534), Geneva (1535), Augsburg (1537) and Scotland (1559).
Prinsenhof - Delft"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY ▼
Idaho moves forward with its anti-gay constitutional amendment. Comments from the peanut gallery:
Funny, when I read through the proposed amendment I didn’t see anything in there about all of us queers coming over to Katherine Frazier’s house and forcing her to admit we’re normal. “Say it! Say we’re normal or we’re going to make a pitcher of Seabreezes and re-decorate your blue duck themed kitchen!” And omg and did you see that the little Williams boy up the street is left-handed?! That ain’t normal. I heard his sister’s a redhead, too — really, we should just quarantine the whole family to be on the safe side, we don’t want any “not-normal” leaking out into a place like Boise fer cryin’ out loud.
But all is not lost. People are capable of learning, capable of change, no matter their party, no matter their generation.
West Virginia, that bastion of eminent class and brilliance from whence so many enviably fine cultural mores emanate, is pressing forward with an actively nasty anti-gay “family values” campaign aimed at getting a gay-bashing constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall. It’s a bipartisan effort, of course.
Let’s unpack a bit of the bigotry for just a minute. In re: the key piece of bigotry, the idea that we are voting on people’s civil rights and Americans in general don’t seem to give much of a fuck about that, the one guy says, “the rules that people want to play by”, and thereby makes the public argument that bigotry is just groovy so long as a majority supports it. And um, he’s the Democrat. Then the Republican talks smack about how this is a “family issue” and a “people issue”, revealing that he does not, even in his own mind, consider gay people to be capable of belonging to a family, and possibly does not even consider us to be people.
And there’s no outrage from the Democratic Party machine. Silence. Ho-hum. Just another gay-bashing day in another state lege. It’s all part of the New Winning Strategy™. Trusssst ussss.
Ever notice how this protection racket (family, marriage, the pre-born, freedom) is only of value when it means depriving other people of their rights but is a really bad idea if it means doing anything that might actually help but cost money.
I know, right? Helping with things like medical care, a living wage, or education would bankrupt the nation in the blink of an eye — not to mention give us all a front seat on the Express Train to Socialist Hell — but when it comes to warmongering, racism, woman-hating, and gay-bashing, the budget’s got no floor. We can always round up a few extra billion for categorical oppression.
New Move On Video calling for a Special Prosecutor to investigate domestic spying.
Peace
Betty Friedan, author of the seminal text The Feminine Mystique has passed away at the age of 85.
I was a young “homemaker” when I first read her book and understood the meaning of “Is this it, is this my life?” I made the choice to have children while still young and pursue a career later when they were both in school. Many of my friends reversed the process and never had children.
I hated the isolation of modern motherhood out in the suburbs while my “sisters” enjoyed the companionship of their jobs. It was a strange transitional time and I always found myself protesting being called “just a housewife” by women in their dressed-for-success suits. I felt feminism meant glorifying feminine principles not becoming like men.
Being a woman is good training for being in the progressive movement. So many people with so much in common but constantly offended by the language chosen by the others in the group.