text:
Google Removes 'Bisexual' From Its List of Dirty Words
BY Michelle Garcia
September 11 2012 11:01 AM ET
Since 2009 the word "bisexual," to Google, was only meant to find pornography. That caused the search giant to throw the word on a list of other banned terms, which were all deprioritized by the Google search algorithm, leading to a drop in search rankings for all bisexual organizations and community resources.
At the urging of bisexual advocacy organization BiNet USA, Google unblocked the term "bisexual," and phrases such as "bisexual quotes," "bisexual rights," and "bisexual parenting" are now automatically suggested to Google users as of this month.
"It's not every day one of the biggest companies in the world changes its mind, but we are thankful that Google now sees bisexual people just like everyone else," said BiNet USA president Faith Cheltenham. "It will take time for bisexual search terms to be ranked as they were before the ban, but now bisexual people and their allies have a fighting chance to be seen, heard, and understood."
- #TBT: They Died in the Closet
- WATCH: Obama Bundler, HRC Founder Terry Bean Arrested on Sex Crimes Charges
- Smoke Signals' Gay Actor Turned Doctor Lands New Career-Defining Role
- Op-ed: How Gay Genius Alan Turing Got Me Through Middle School
- Robbie Rogers's Memoir Kicks Around Depression, Redemption, And Coming Out
- PHOTOS: Jesus Days


text:
Insights from our Editorial Team
Every year the Knowledge Executive Summit gives out annual KITE awards for knowledge, innovation, technology and excellence. If someone in your organization fits those marks and has made a real difference in the areas of IT, operations or customer service, you should nominate them now for a KITE award. (Nominations close Sept. 5.)
Picture this: you're in the kitchen assembling a tasty sandwich. You pull out the turkey, unscrew the mayo jar, and start to slice the tomato. Just as you begin to un-twist the bag of bread, your electricity goes out, leaving you utterly ravenous and perhaps a bit frightened. You should be making your way to check the fuse box, but all you can think is, "Damn you, power companies. I didn't toast my bread!"
Jennifer Curran manages a lot of stuff. She manages her division. She manages staff. She manages corporate strategic matters. She manages customer and regulatory outreach efforts. And, she determines strategic direction on important policy topics, trying to tease out the details: Who should pay? What are the benefits? How will we respond to FERC Order 1000?
A veritable "perfect storm" of challenges and opportunities is profoundly changing the fundamentals of urban areas throughout the world. The driving force is the exploding growth of urban populations caused by both global population growth combined with dramatic relocation to urban centers. The United Nations predicts a near doubling of city dwellers by 2050 as the global population increases from 7 billion to 9 billion with the urban population to grow between 2.5 billion and 3 billion people in the next 30 years.
I hate the term prosumer for one reason: I don't want to be one. I don't want to be forced into managing both the things I have to and all the tangential life things, too. Rather than being a prosumer, I want to be an endsumer (just left out of everything but the end result, thanks).Comments: 2
Should time-varying rates-such as time-of-use (TOU) rates and critical peak pricing (CPP) and other dynamic pricing rates-be deployed as the default tariff for residential and small business customers?
By now most will be aware of the dreaded utility "declining demand death spiral": As solar PV grows, utilities' demand drops. Utilities respond by raising prices and/or network charges - either for solar or non-solar customers - further incentivizing solar (and battery storage), thus further reducing demand.Comments: 5
DONG Energy is Denmark's largest energy company. For this installment of the utility2utility article series, we spoke to Ivan K. Pedersen, head of DONG's Power Hub about renewables and partnerships.
In late 2008 the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PPUC) passed legislation requiring the state's seven major electric utilities to reduce their customer's consumption and demandÊlevels over a period of three years.
I sat down with Jill Feblowitz, VP of Energy Insights, to ask some wide-ranging questions about what she and IDC see happening in the utility industry.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Why Peaky Blinders tells us all we need to know (and more) abo...Matt Houlbrook Two episodes into the second season of the BBC television series Peaky Blinders and Im already reminded of why the exploits of Thomas, Polly, and the rest of the Shelby family tell us all we need to know (and more) about 1920s ... University of Birmingham, 1 month ago
Op-Ed: Scotland - The Caledonian Question
A democratically-minded person should support the view that the people of Scotland should get the government they feel they deserve. And in this sense, the independence referendum is a red herring. The (only) question to be put on the 18th is Should ...Daily Maverick, 2 months ago
Realtime News
on your WebpageAdd Widget >Get your members hooked!


text:
Welcome, International Customer!
Choose your location and preferred currency for a localized shopping experience.
Customer Reviews
4 Item(s)
- Great for childs mini album Review by ss
Price Value Quality
I used these for the first time for a childs color & shape mini album I made. The magnets were easy to peel and place in album sleeves & had a strong magnetic pull. A 25 month old boy had a fun & easy time looking through the book & seperating the pages.
(Posted on 1/25/2013)
- Great in mini albums Review by Aleta
Value Quality Price
I use these in photo albums to hold down the flaps and doors that hide secret pictures. They are nice and thin with a strong hold.
(Posted on 12/30/2012)
- Great magnet for paper crafts Review by Garby
Price Value Quality
I use them for note books. They are great and everyone loves the books when I open them and show the magnet.
(Posted on 9/26/2012)
- Excellent Product & Value Review by Whimsy Art Cards
Value Quality Price
I make handmade greeting cards & sell them online. I've used these magnetic snaps as closures for my handmade box envelopes and bulkier gift card holders. I love them! They are small, so they don't take up much room on your project, but they are strong. I used to use small adhesive velcro dots, but these have a much cleaner look & feel. Best of the best!
(Posted on 5/9/2012)
4 Item(s)


text:
A remote native community in Canada has declared a state of emergency.
The housing conditions for the Attawapiskat tribe have deteriorated to the point where many residents are living in sheds and tents.
Now they are getting emergency help from the Red Cross.
Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Canadian Member of Parliament, Charlie Angus, about the problems facing the Attawapiskat.


text:
The Burden of Proof -- What must plaintiffs prove to win their case?
Bringing a Lawsuit to Find Out What Happened and Why
Subrogation: Piggyback Claims by Health Insurers in Injury Lawsuits
Who Can Sue the U.S. Government for Injuries? A Legal Primer
Why Secret Settlements of Injury Lawsuits Are Bad (for Everyone but the Defendant)
How Big Tobacco Handles Lawsuits -- Attrition and Wait for Deaths
Podcast: Preventing Injury: A Focus on Distracted Driving
Back to School Safety Tips
The Evolution of Informed Consent in U.S. Courts
How Auto Defects Can Cause Passenger Injury
What patients misunderstand about their right of informed consent
Chiropractic Stroke: Informed Consent
Long-Term Disability Benefit Claims: What You Need to Know
Operating Room Fires: Surgical Fire Malpractice Information
Failure to Diagnose: Time is of the Essence
Blecker: GM Recalls Show Need for Harsher Penalties for "Red Collar" Criminals
Medical Malpractice Law: Orthopedic Malpractice
Attorney Client Privilege
Podcast - Motor Vehicle Coverage Travelling Outside Ontario
Medical Malpractice Law: Infant and Child Death
On Friday, the Supreme Court of Texas issued a 5-4 decision holding a plaintiff needs to establish jurisdiction over an anonymous blogger before a court will allow pre-suit discovery that would likely unmask the blogger's...more
Just wondering, but what does the phrase "acted with substantial justification" mean in the sanctions statute for motion to compel depo testimony, CCP 2025.480 (pdf)?
Does it mean the conduct that led the moving party to...more
As every lawyer is aware, a party may propound more than 35 specially prepared interrogatories or requests for admissions simply by attaching a Declaration of Necessity pursuant to C.C.P. §2030.040 and C.C.P. §2033.040...more
By a vote of 8 – 0, the United States Supreme Court recently ruled that congressional delegation of authority to EPA to regulate pollutants under the Clean Air Act ("Act") speaks directly to regulation of carbon dioxide...more
If you are like most lawyers, you are using the typical discovery devices to gather up all your information--form interrogatories, special interrogatories, requests for production of documents, and of course the deposition...more
Find a Personal Injury Author »
Back to Top
Copyright ©


text:
Wed., November 26, 2014 12:34am
Top of Their Class: Ansley Edwards
Ansley Edwards is a senior at Stratford Academy, the top flight private school on Macon's north side. She packs her day with activities meant to wow college admissions officers. Now with a relative coast into graduation, she wonders if there is something she missed.
Full Story
Tue., November 25, 2014 12:24am
Top Of Their Class: Tristan Benns
Tristan Benns is a senior at Central High School in the academically demanding International Baccalaureate, or IB, program. Graduates often head to Ivy League schools after high school.
Fri., November 14, 2014 4:13pm
Historic Macon House Demolished
Demolition began, from the inside out, on the Historic Douglass House in downtown Macon Thursday. The house was once home to the preeminent black entrepreneur in Macon, Charles Henry Douglass.
Mon., November 3, 2014 4:25pm
University Neighbors Wonder How Development Helps Them
Mercer University asked Macon-Bibb County for financial aid on a proposed residential and retail development near campus. What do the people who already live near the proposed project think?
Thu., October 2, 2014 9:28am
Last Open Mic for Grant's Lounge?
Grant's Lounge in Macon was once the haunt of the Allman Brothers Band and the Southern rock bands that followed them. After 43 years, the landlord may be shutting the place down.
Tue., September 30, 2014 4:48pm
Where The Music Never Dies
Bibb Music Center in Macon has been the place to get your instrument fixed for over 50 years for marching band kids and rock stars alike. Now the shop is for sale and its future is uncertain.
Tue., September 16, 2014 4:30pm
Monroe County Mourns Slain Deputy
Monroe County is mourning the death of Deputy Michael Norris, killed in the line of duty.
Mon., September 8, 2014 5:02pm
Who Should Have Medical Marijuana In Georgia?
Katie Crosby has lived with chronic pain for years. She feels that the lives of people like here need to be considered in the Georgia medical marijuana debate.
Wed., September 3, 2014 5:51pm
Ebola Stops Mercer University Outreach
Mercer University is suspending education related mission work in Liberia in the wake of the West African Ebola epidemic.
Wed., August 27, 2014 3:12pm
How Does Death Row Clemency Work In Georgia? We Might Never Really Know
Botched executions across the country have people talking about the death penalty again. While that trend hasn't touched Georgia, another rare occurrence occurred on the state's Death Row. Tommy Lee Waldrip's clemency in July was only the ninth in Georgia since the resumption of executions in the 1970s.
So, how does an inmate escape execution in Georgia?
©Copyright 2014, Georgia Public Broadcasting. All Rights Reserved
Georgia Public Radio®


text:
Get Rich Hacking Twitter
A bit earlier today someone got their hands on the official AP Twitter account and falsely reported that Barack Obama had been injured by an explosion in the White House. As you can see above, the financial market reaction was swift and decisive. A huge crash followed by a large rally once it became clear this was fake.
It makes you wonder if there isn't a profit-making opportunity out there in the realm of Twitter hacks. The Internet seems to spread both the rumor and the correction very quickly, and U.S. financial markets are deep and liquid enough to respond in a big way in real time. As Oliver Willis writes, instead of his elaborate stock market hijacking plan Bane could have just sent out some errant tweets.
Inside Higher Ed
Colleges and Cosby Universities patronized by Bill Cosby wrestle with whether to distance themselves from the actor.
Slate Picks
What Happened at Slate This Week? See if you can keep pace with the copy desk, Slate's most comprehensive reading team.
Sports Nut
Bad as They Wanna Be Is the Philadelphia 76ers' lose-on-purpose approach to team-building ingenious or morally bankrupt?


text:
Junior Member
hahaha i've honestly never really seen someone get so raged at kids like that.
stop being trolled so hard, relax, and enjoy yourself.
learn your champions a bit better and your stats will improve over time.
Senior Member
cLHx1's posts have gradually moved from argumentative, to trollish, to jokes the more I read them.
hola me gustaria saber como hago para parar lo de el bug splat que siempre que juego me salta, en los momentos mas importantes como en un team five o como cuando estoy por matar a alguien... ya me esta desesperando..... muchas gracias
hello I would like to know how do I stop it from the bug splat that whenever I play jump, the most important moments in a team as five or as when I'm about to kill someone ... and I this desperate ..... thank you very much
I'd vote for a game match filter that TRIES to place teams against each other with similar amount of games played. A team of 30s with 1000's of games played vs a team of fresh 30s will not go well for the latter team.
© 2014 Riot Games, Inc. All rights reserved. Riot Games, League of Legends and PvP.net are trademarks, services marks, or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc.


text:
|Product & services pricing
|Chance of future purchase:
|Shipping & packaging:
|Customer service:
|Return/Replacement policy:
"This is a scam and they are basically stealing from their sellers. I sent them a bag full of brand-new (with tags attached) and like-new pieces from Citizens of Humanity, Laundry by Shelli Segal, Banana Republic, Seven for All Mankind, Paige Premium Denim, BCBG Max Azria and several other higher-end designers from their approved list. Guess which pieces didn't get approved? The brand-new, highest end ones. But my older, lesser quality items from LOFT and the GAP were accepted. There was no explanation as to why my items were rejected or where they went. My inquiries to customer service have gone unanswered (good luck finding a phone number to call). I wish I had done my research before sending my items in - it seems that a scary amount of sellers have had the same experience. I firmly believe that they are stealing the higher end pieces from their sellers and selling them elsewhere on the side. I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau (where ThredUp already has 100+ complaints). Take your clothing to a local consignor instead and beware of these blatant thieves."
"I sent 40+ items in a bag and they took 11 items for $30.25. I say, better $30 bucks than nothing! maybe 3 of the items were new with tags, which they did not take. I did try to sell/consign these items at two local shops before sending to thredup, so I felt that I did all I could before saying bye to the bag of clothes. It took a few weeks for the email stating what was received came thru but nothing unacceptable."
"SCAM! I sent them a bag of stuff and requested return assurance. They are telling me that I did not, and now I can not get my items back. They kept some, but how ironic the two Coach Handbags I wanted back if they were not going to accept them can not be returned. This company is a scam. I will be filing a complaint with the BBB of San Francisco. Stay Away!"
"My buyer experience was solid. I ordered about ~$180 of items and found, among other things, two gorgeous cardigans and a wool skirt in amazing condition. I ended up sending back a lot of my order because the sizing wasn't perfect (not ThredUp's fault; brands are inconsistent and this is just what happens with online shopping).
Shipping back was an annoyance - I wish it were flat-fee instead of figure-it-out-yourself - but they processed my return and refunded me quickly, which was great. Even with $12 for shipping, the fact that I scored these amazing Ann Taylor and 525 America cardis for under $10 made it all forgiven; you don't get that kind of selection or quality anywhere else.
I've shopped on eBay and other direct-from-seller places, and the quality and condition of merchandise is never as good; I really appreciate ThredUp checking things for me because it instills such confidence. Having the option to return (paying shipping) for whatever reason I want, like "oh, it looks bad on," is also incredibly important when I'm shopping for designer pieces like Diane von Furstenberg dresses that are close to $100 pre-owned... I don't want the drama of eBay returns.
Overall, in terms of the buyer experience, ThredUp is great. Highly recommended.
(Note: I did NOT send them anything of mine. This review is about the shopping experience only.)"
"I'll admit, I still order from ThredUp despite their ridiculously obvious incompetence with regard to categorizing items and correctly labeling their sizes. They screw up at least one thing in almost every single box I get. They refund me for some things with no explanation at all. I am constantly writing customer service to complain. Though most of the time I am frustrated with the screw ups, I am still a sucked for good prices and I do get some stuff at a good price. However, I have stopped recommendrecommending thredup to friends and family because honestly, they just need to do better. They should hire me, haha. I can pick out almost every item that they've mislabeled. Do better, ThredUp!
One redeeming factor: they do ship very quickly and items are well packaged."
"HORRIBLE COMPANY! I ordered two things from this company After I had placed my order they flagged it. I emailed them asking why it was flagged and they claimed I already had another account for my household which I did not. They treated me like some common criminal. Hopefully I get a refund but I have a feeling it won't happen based on previous reviews. Buyer beware!"
"SCAM!!! I sent 4 bags of clothes in at the same time. Many were NWT. I was meticulous when packing these bags. Nothing I would not buy and followed all of their guide lines. I even took the time to document what I sent in and what the they said the payout would be for each item. NO WHERE EVEN CLOSE to what they estimated. I could kick myself, GYMBOREE, GAP, HOLLISTER, AE, etc. all very high end clothing and not even half of it was acceptable to them including the clothing with tags still on them. Sorry I participated and wish I had found this site first :( Terrible customer service also. I have sent several e-mails with no response yet."
"I thought that some of the reviews on Thredup could not be true. So I sent them a huge bag full of name brand clothes. They claimed they only accepted one item and gave me .40 cents!!! I called the number and it's not even a real number. It's a google number and it says to leave a message. I sure did eave a message and I asked fr my clothes back. I put items in bag like Abercrombie kids, The Children's Place. Do not sell to this company!"
"They don't get a rating at all, i found this company accidentally on google and looked to make sure they had secure checkout and were a ligit website and company i placed an order for 24 items to get my daughters started on spring/summer clothes i paid $148.80 which was taken from my visa and i have proof my card was charged and this was on march 6th i was never sent a confirmation email and still have not received any of the items, this company is a complete fraud DON NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THREDUP ! "
"I had used Thredup several times and had a great experience until now. I had filled up several bags in the past and received credit for my items. Not much credit but better then nothing at all. I would use that to purchase more clothes for my daughter. My last transaction with them, I sent in 2 bags, completley full.I filled them just like I did in the past. I went over every article to make sure that it would be something I would be happy with receiving. I just got an email that my cashout was $2.73. Out of 32 articles of clothing they only accepted 4. I emailed asking why and was told it was due to some pieces being stained, worn or pilled. One pair of pants listed as "worn" were never even worn. It was part of a set and I didn't like the print on the pants so it sat folded in my daughters closet until I sent it. Same with some other articles. They were nowhere near being worn. I am VERY dissappointed with this company. Its a shame because it was a great idea. Unfortunately they are now taking advantage of people. I will never send them another bag of clothes or purchase from them. I cashed out my balance and I'm done"
"Wow! I feel so scammed! Thought the whole recycling clothing ideas was great. Then I sent them 59 items and only 13 were paid for. They sent me pictures of every single item saying "wear" or "pet hair" or "stain". Hard to see any of this. Especially when 95% of the clothing I sent was lightly used and in good condition for a used clothing site. Really a waste of time!"
"Everyone who has posted reviews should file a complaint with the BBB of San Francisco. They followed on my complaint within 2 days and am waiting for resolution. There are 47 other complaints to date and the more they receive, the better for the people getting taken advantage of. After sending in a bag full of Gymboree, Dockers and Izod clothing many new with tags. They kept only the good items and rejected all of the new with tag clothing. Their website does state rejected items are "recycled" but they BEG for top end merchandise and deceptively lead you to believe that only THOSE items will be accepted. What happened is that only a few of the items were accepted and none of the new with tag items and all the Gymboree were rejected. There is no reason given other than a reply that they "didn't meet our standards." They couldn't get any better than new, name brand, with tags. Poor customer service. Scam. Stay away from this company. They take the best items and are intentionally misrepresenting the service they will provide you for sending in top quality clothes. FILE A COMPLAINT WITH BBB."
"Complete rip off! Used them twice. First time there were a couple missing items (kids Harley Davidson jacket in perfect condition) second time we sent 27 items and were paid for 6. All items were name brand and in great condition. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!"
"I also agree SCAM! I sent in a bag I went over at least 3 times to make sure everything looked brand new. They accepted very little of this bag. Strange thing is the clothes they did accept they marked as condition Excellent. I also find it very odd that of the identical items I sent that belonged to my 2 girls only one out of each set was accepted. Seriously makes me wonder if both were not and I only got paid for one.
My regret is I didn't do a little bit more research before sending my bag. If I had and saw all these reviews there is no way I would have sent my stuff, hopefully this review along with all the others will save someone else some money. If nothing else donate your clothes to a family in need because if you send to these people you will get very little. At least you will feel good donating them."
"SCAM! I was meticulous when selecting the items I sent, cutting any loose thread off, using a lint brush on them and MAKING SURE THEY ALL HAD TAGS, because of the company's fair warning that they're very selective. And still most weren't taken for reasons like "MISSING TAGS." All together I received under $30 for a bag full of like-new designer items. Find somewhere local where you can see what they're going to offer and you have the option of saying "no thanks." Where do the items they don't take wind up? I'm guessing those are sold too. If they're donated, where is my tax receipt ThredUP? SCAM!"


text:
Thanksgiving hasn't arrived yet, but the Northeast Times has already heard from residents requesting help this holiday season. The 66th annual Eleanor Smylie Community Fund has helped thousands of families during the Christmas season.
The Northeast Times is kicking off its 66th annual Eleanor Smylie Community Fund charitable effort.Since originating in 1949, the fund has helped thousands of local families during the Christmas season.The fund matches families in need with community members who can offer help. All money collected is used to buy gift cards to provide holiday dinners to those who are struggling to make ends meet.
The Times would like to thank all of the people who contributed to our Eleanor Smylie Community Fund.
It's Christmas week, and the Times would like to thank all of the people who have contributed to our Eleanor Smylie Community Fund.
Christmas is just a week away, and stores are going to be especially crowded these next few days as folks try to find just the right gifts for loved ones.
It's just two weeks until Christmas, and families are making plans for big dinner celebrations. Kids can't wait to find out what Santa Claus will leave under their trees.
Thanksgiving is over, and the Christmas shopping season is in full gear.
Many Northeast families will be gathering around the dining-room table for a big Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday while others will be eating a turkey meal at a local restaurant.
The holiday season unofficially gets under way next week as families sit down for Thanksgiving dinner.
Thanksgiving is just two weeks away, and Christmas isn't too far behind.
Letters to the editor and a notice from Star's sister newspaper, the Northeast Times.
It's a Northeast tradition 58 years in the making.
So far this holiday season, the Northeast Times' Eleanor Smylie Fund has collected $9,058 from readers who have donated to their neighbors in need.
Because of the kindness of our readers, the Northeast Times this week was able to mail gift cards to 103 families who have let us know that they could use a little help at Christmas time.
This time of year, our mailboxes tend to be full of requests from charities, food banks and others who are asking us to donate to their causes.


text:
oOohhh ................. - et j'ai failli oublié!!!!.............. Sur leur demande,j'ai réalisé un dessin pour un couple charmant qui s'est dit OUI au mois de septembre! ils l'ont ut...
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Oh sweet sweet Dolphins!
that was my treat while we were in Bermuda....I got to swin with Doplhins! Oh so so sweet, still have a smile on my face just thinking about it :)!!! The instructor that was around when we swam told us that their skin sorta feels like a "wet and cold hot dog" - hehe, alright, I'd rather not think about dolphins in that way! :)
Posted by Audrey at 8:01 PM
2 comments:
- Celine said...
Vos vacances ont l'air juste paradisiaques! Avec en plus la rencontre avec les dauphins! Ca du etre comme dans un reve!! Xx
- September 23, 2009 at 1:22 AM
- Soaz said...
Waou! I didn't know you swam with dolphins! la chance! superbe.
bisou ma gogole
- October 6, 2009 at 12:54 AM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Originally published November 16, 2012 at 8:57 PM | Page modified November 17, 2012 at 3:48 PM
Cougs hope team that almost beat UCLA shows up today
Which Washington State football team will show up at Sun Devil Stadium to play Arizona State on Saturday?
The Spokesman-Review
TEMPE, Ariz. — So, who is it going to be?
Which Washington State football team will show up at Sun Devil Stadium to play Arizona State on Saturday?
It could be the Cougars in Salt Lake City two weeks ago, the ones whose effort "bordered on cowardice" at times, according to coach Mike Leach, the ones who lost 49-6 to a Utah team that is 4-6.
Or it could be the Cougars (2-8, 0-7 Pac-12) who dug a 37-7 halftime hole against UCLA last week before scratching their way to a more respectable 44-36 loss, one coaches and players both insist would have been theirs for the taking if not for a series of special-teams mishaps in the first half.
"I think the biggest thing we have to do is take a step and get better this week," center Elliott Bosch said. "We took a step when we played Stanford and then we took a step back when we played Utah. We took a step forward this week, and then we just have to build on that."
This will also be the first time WSU plays a game since the school announced it was investigating claims made by former receiver Marquess Wilson that players had been abused, both physically and verbally, by the coaches.
Investigators have concluded interviews and are now compiling information, according to a source. But if the players are distracted, they aren't showing it.
"I do think we've got a bunch of guys starting to get it here," Leach said Tuesday. "We had a real enthusiastic day today. Chemistry's a lot of any team sport, and our chemistry's as good now as it's been since I've been here."
Is it good enough, though, to help WSU snap its seven-game losing streak and secure its first conference victory of the season?
ASU hasn't won recently, either. The Sun Devils (5-5, 3-4 Pac-12) have lost four games in a row to teams currently ranked in the Top 25.
Trending with Readers
On seattletimes.comMore Trending
- Thanksgiving: What can and can't be prepped ahead
- Richard Sherman and cutout Doug Baldwin criticize NFL policies
- Sally Clark says she quickly informed city of collision with cyclist
- Theater of the absurd: Richard Sherman, Doug Baldwin stand up for Marshawn Lynch | Larry Stone
- 'Exotic' orcas visit inland waters in unprecedented numbers
- Seahawks vs. 49ers: Old foes get reacquainted with Thanksgiving showdown
- Best Thanksgiving movies? Here are 6 favorites to savor
- How Kam Chancellor fired up the Seahawks with his pregame speech, physical game
- Protester had firearms, Seattle police chief says
- We're no better than Ferguson; maybe worse | Danny Westneat


text:
- 319 Pins
Related Boards
Oh MY
Men Fashionhair, Style Second, Men'S Fashion Styles, Street Style, Vlahos Arbulić, Men Fashion Shoese Hair, Beautiful People, Start Post, Goran Čižmešija
Liam at Wembley Stadium
Direction Infection, Liampayne, Boys, Daddy Direction, Wwa Tours, Liam Payne, Σyye Ιyaye Tισy, Directioners 3, Wembley Stadium
Niall Horan Adorable, Directioners Niall Horan, Favorite Things, Niall Horan Smile, Niall Horan Cute, Directioners 3, Niall Horan Angel, Awww Adorable, Niall'S Smile
Direction Infection, Daddy Directioners, Liampayne, Payne'S 3, Love Liam Payne, Payne Training, Leeyum, Babes, Directioners 3
Liam James, Direction Infection, Liampayne, Boys, One Direction, Machu Picchu, Liam Payne, James Payne, Harry Style
Direction Infection, You And I, Boys, One Direction, Directioners Forever, Music Videos, Σyye Ιyaye Tισy, Directioners 3, Onedirection
God Bless Rita Ora! #MTVMovieAwards
Zacefron, Future Husband, Zac Efron, God Blessed, Man Candies, Baby, Getinm Mtvmovieawards2014, Rita Ora, Mtv Movie Awards
One Direction The Next Single is You & I!
Cant Wait, Direction Infection, Niall Horan, One Direction, Mr. Big, Youandi, Music Videos, Liam Payne, Onedirection
chris hemsworth..I hereby give you permission to divorce your wife and marry me, Kaleigh.
This Man, Chris Hemsworth, But, Chrishemsworth, Future Husband, Hot, Celebrities, Eye Candies, People
Liam Hemsworth
Hot Celeb, Liam Celebrities, Male Celebrities Hot, Liam Hemsworth Hot, Liamhemsworth, Man Candies, Eye Candies, Celebrities Gallery, Beautiful People
Brits 2014
Direction Infection, Awards 2014, Red Carpets, Brit Awards, One Direction, Uk 2014, Group Pictures, Awards Tonight, Onedirection Britawards2014
Mark McMorris
Hotties, But, Mark Mcmorris, Eye Candies, Man Candies, Celebrities Crushes, People, Guys, Boys Boys
Nick Goepper
Yahoo Shinee, Greatest Athletic, Photos Gallery, Mental Health, Watches Photos, Yahoo Health, Beautiful People, Weights Loss, Nick Goepper
Gus Kenworthy. See you in Sochi bby
Animal Lovers, Olympics Crushes, A Real Man, Eye Candies, Gus Kenworthy, Boys Boys, Olympics Hotties, Attraction, Athletic
Stairs, Direction Mania, Direction Infection, Directioners Yay, Direction September, Direction Stuff, Directioners 3, One Direction You And I Photos, Onedirection
It's ok, Liam. You need time to yourself now mate. Sometimes it's too much at once and the press want to see you crumble. You can't help but express your hatred for that. But then you need to clear your head and realise that you're better than what they expect, you're more gracious and, like all human beings, we make mistakes. ~B.c
It's ok, Liam. You need time to yourself now mate. Sometimes it's too much at once and the press want to see you crumble. You can't help but express your hatred for that. But then you need to clear your head and realise that you're better than what they expect, you're more gracious and, like all human beings, we make mistakes. ~E.E
Direction Fangirl, Liam James, Handsome Men, Directioners March 3, Daddy Directioners Leeyum, Payne Experiments, Liam Payne, Σyye Ιyaye Tισy, Imagine Liam
One Direction
Direction3, Direction Infection, Boys, One Direction, Zayn Malik, Directioners 3, 464700 Pixel, Harry Style, Onedirection
PLEASE READ:) Okay guys, the band twitter account for One Direction is having a pinterest style for the boys competition... if you could tweet The One Direction account with this link: http://www.pinterest.com/bonjourmis/where-we-are-style/ and use the hashtag #WhereWeAreStyle I'd be so happy an thankful! Thank you guys.:)
One Direction


text:
Mall Walker's Association of America.
I just joined the MWAA and all I got was this cheap shirt.
by Joeseph Stalin February 25, 2008
10 Words Trending Now
Alphabetical List
Type your email address below to get our free Urban Word of the Day every morning!
Emails are sent from email@example.com. We'll never spam you.×


text:
As many as 2,000 Britons are fighting alongside Islamist militants in Syria and Iraq, a senior Muslim MP has claimed. Officials had suggested that the number of British jihadists within the ranks of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and other terrorist groups was about 500.
However, Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, a constituency with a significant number of Muslims, has suggested this was a fourfold underestimate of the number of British jihadists fighting in the region. "The authorities say there are 500 British jihadists but the likely figure is at least three to four times that," he said. "I think 2,000 is a better estimate. My experience in Birmingham is it is a huge, huge problem."
Evidence from one posting on a social networking site last week suggested that as many as 20 British jihadists have been joining Isil forces every day. And on Saturday it emerged that two more Britons – Abu Abdullah al Habashi, 21, and Abu Dharda, 20, both from London – had died fighting in Syria.
It was reported that Dharda, who grew up in west London, had been questioned by counter-terrorism police at a British airport and allowed to travel because they were "satisfied with the explanation he gave" for the trip.
The Government has refused to say how many Britons had been arrested at UK borders in connection with terrorism in Syria, adding to concern the figure is very small and that the borders are worryingly porous.
But Mr Mahmood said the Home Office had so far failed to do enough to crack down on British jihadists coming and going through UK ports.
Mr Mahmood, England's first Muslim MP and a former member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: "The Government does not have significant people at border control. The fact is these jihadists are coming in and going out without almost ever being arrested. We have had hardly any arrests. We have had people coming back in after six months in Syria and they are not being picked up."
The official figure of 500 jihadists was released by the authorities six months ago and has not been revised. Isil has since stepped up its recruitment drive by issuing gruesome videos of the murder of Western hostages.
Evidence gathered by The Telegraph suggests at least four Muslims, who had their passports confiscated either by the authorities or concerned parents, had still managed to leave Britain in recent months. It is estimated that at least 250 British fighters have returned from Syria and Iraq – about 30 of whom have been arrested – raising the prospect of a growing number of hardened jihadists on the streets.
The Muslim Council of Britain, which represents the UK's 2.8 million Muslims, accused the Government of not doing enough to stop would-be jihadists from leaving the country. The Home Office has refused to disclose how many jihadists have been picked up at Britain's borders.
I heard the news about the two jihandist killed while in a small art gallery in rural Suffolk. The lady proprietor was reading the news on her laptop and called to her husband 'Good news - another two of them jihadists dead!' The general opinion amongst people I speak to while out and about (hardly a scientific sample I admit) is that as many as wish should be allowed to go, but none allowed re-entry.
On Saturday, police said a 19-year-old man from Coventry had been arrested at Heathrow airport on suspicion of preparing for acts of terrorism. He was detained by officers from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit on Thursday afternoon as he got off a plane from Jordan. In February, three teenagers, including Mohamed Hadi, nicknamed "Bin Bieber" because of his youthful looks, left Coventry to fight for Isil. Police refused to confirm the identity of the arrested man.
The police on Monday will call on the public "to be prepared to play their part in keeping the country safe".
The new appeal comes ahead of a "very substantial" report to be published on Tuesday by Parliament's intelligence and security committee into the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich in May last year.
The report will examine the security and intelligence agencies' prior knowledge of his murderers.
It is expected to highlight the basic and random nature of the attack and is likely to stop short of saying his death was preventable.
Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
The deadline is looming Monday, November 24, 2014 for a proposed final agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Don't count on it. The British, French and even the US say that "huge gaps remain". If any alternative remains it is likely to be an extension given major problems that have arisen including the P5+1 caving to Iranian refusal to disclose information to the UN nuclear watchdog, the IAEA. As of yet, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif hasn't decamped to confer with Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rouhani about the terms of a deal. At best there might be a statement of principles or a so-called Framework Agreement necessitating another interminable round of negotiations to complete. Iran is alleged to be in possession of enough fissile material to achieve nuclear breakout within months, if not weeks. Secretary Kerry has engaged in debriefing sessions with querulous allies Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates endeavoring to mollify them regarding the terms of an accord, which sources say has already been hammered out save for resolution of gap issues. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) said in a Washington, DC Capitol Hill briefing on November 20, 2014 suggesting that Saudi Arabia might prevail on Pakistan, the repository of the Islamic bomb, to provide it with some nukes. The Kingdom may have underwritten the costs of development of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. This hypothetical action by the Kingdom could trigger dangerous proliferation in the Middle East with Sunni Salafist Islamic State lurking in the background.
Among those gaps that were objectives in the original P5+1 plan of action that Iran has refused to budge on are:
In the words of veteran Iran watcher Ken Timmerman, the P5+1 negotiations with the Islamic Republic have been "an unmitigated disaster"?
To assess the extent of that looming 'disaster" and significant gaps, the following are expert panel; discussions and interviews that were conducted in Washington and Vienna in the closing days of the P5+1 negotiations with Iran. This is an expanded version of an earlier post by this writer at Dr. Rich Swier's eMagazine, Expert Panel on Negotiations with Iran Over Nuclear Program
Looming Deadline and Unanswered Questions- Washington, DC Capitol Hill Expert Panel
On November 20, 2014 there was a 2.5 hour panel discussion on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC co-sponsored by the B-National Policy Center, Foreign Policy Initiative and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies that was both highly informative with acknowledged experts and both Democrat and Republican Members of the House and Senate.
You can listen to the discussion on-line at YouTube:
Cliff May, President of the Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies sent out this digest of the high points of Capitol Hill panel discussion:
In advance of the November 24 nuclear negotiation deadline between the P5+1, and consistent with FDD's ongoing assistance to members of Congress, FDD's Mark Dubowitz took part this morning in an expert briefing on Capitol Hill followed by a testimony in the afternoon before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.
Mark noted that while administration officials have said they are looking for an agreement that would "dismantle a lot" or "significant" portions of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, the terms of a deal could fall short of that. "The more flawed the deal, the more important it will be for Congress to defend the sanctions architecture to maintain economic leverage," he said.
FDD joined with the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Foreign Policy Initiative to hold a briefing with members of Congress and their staff regarding next Monday's nuclear negotiation deadline. Mark was joined by Ambassador Eric Edelman, who most recently served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Dr. Ray Takeyh, and a former senior advisor on Iran at the State Department, and Olli Heinonen, the former Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Blaise Misztal the director of the Foreign Policy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center moderated the discussion.
· Ambassador Eric Edelman on the current state of negotiations: The US team is talking about the diplomatic acrobatics they are trying to come up with in order to meet Iranian demands. Given its successful track record, why should Iran believe that it should abandon its hardline demands?
· Dr. Ray Takeyh on the White House's strategy: I believe that the US administration will advocate for a multistage agreement with Iran. In the first stage, sanctions relief comes in the form of presidential waivers. In future stages – if the agreement is being abided by Iran – the administration will then ask Congress for more permanent sanctions relief. Thus, if Congress does not agree to relief, the administration will be able to point to Congress for breaking a successful agreement.
· Olli Heinonen on Iran's lack of nuclear compliance: Per the latest IAEA report, Iran is already in violation of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA). Before we even have gotten to the comprehensive agreement, we have Iran violating the interim agreement. Iran is in noncompliance with UN Security Council resolutions and IAEA safeguards agreements. Regardless of a good deal or a bad deal, we are rewarding Iran for its ongoing violations. This is a playbook for future proliferators.
· Mark Dubowitz on the false illusion of sanctions "snapbacks": If an agreement is eventually reached, what happens after we detect that Iran is in noncompliance? The White House says, we can – in law – "snap-back" the sanctions that were temporary lifted on Iran. However, this may in fact prove virtually ineffective due to the economic realities on the ground and market psychology that will change when sanctions are temporarily lifted in the first place.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), the leading architect of many of the sanctions that Congress has built against Iran, joined our briefing and offered comments:
· Rep. Ted Deutch: Any comprehensive deal or framework agreement with Iran must: (1) close off of all of Iran's pathways to a bomb; (2) must address Fordo and Natanz; (3) resolve Iran's history of nuclear work; (4) dismantle [Iran's] nuclear program; (5) include a robust verification and monitoring regime; (6) restrict Iran's ability to obtain material used to develop its nuclear program; and (7) be long enough that Iran will not simply "wait it out" until all restrictions are dropped.
· Sen. Mark Kirk: As long as Iran has a nuclear program, we should continue our sanctions regime which would improve the chances for monitoring and verification. Congress needs to see the deal that is being negotiated to determine whether it meets the necessary requirements.
Later in the afternoon, Mark Dubowitz was invited by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa to testify alongside General Michael Hayden, the former Director of the CIA (and an advisor to FDD) and Karim Sadjadpour, a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
· General Michael Hayden on US intelligence regarding Iran's nuclear program: Our knowledge of the Iranian nuclear program is incomplete. As Mark [Dubowitz] points out, we have a lack of knowledge about Iran's covert nuclear program and its capabilities. Absent an invasive inspection regime, American intelligence cannot provide adequate warning of Iranian nuclear developments.
· Mark Dubowitz on the necessary role of Congress: Regardless of the post-November 24 scenario, Congress has a vital role to play to protect and enhance US economic leverage. The more flawed the nuclear deal, the more important it will be to maintain sanctions as an instrument for Iranian non-compliance. If a comprehensive agreement falls short of important parameters, Congress needs to defend the sanctions architecture in a way that is not overly reliant on mechanisms to re-impose sanctions.
Lisa Daftari Fox News Contributor Interview with Sen. Mark Kirk.
Sen. Kirk has steadfastly opposed a deal with the Tehran and has worked together with a group of bipartisan lawmakers to push forward sanctions legislation, believing that economic leverage still remains the best approach to curbing the Iranian government's actions.
"My biggest fear is the President condemning the next generation of Americans to witnessing a nuclear war in the Middle East, which he should not pass on to his successors. We should make sure we execute policies so that Americans never have to witness that," Kirk said.
The Obama administration doesn't get the Iranian regime, Kirk said, adding, "They want a deal very badly and are willing to surrender the security of the American people up in the future, to get a deal."
I asked the Senator about the people of Iran, and how a policy of sanctions against the government, ultimately is affecting the people's economy.
The Senator agreed, but argued that the Iranian people also must understand that "nuclear weapons will make them less secure. Already we've seen 800 or more people executed (under President Rouhani). Iran is now at the fastest ever rate of executing people. It's a very bloody, suppressing regime."
Kirk also pointed out that a nuclear arms race in the region will bring about global repercussions, reasoning that "the Iranian government has been so hostile to so many of its neighbors, that once they get a nuclear weapon, all of their neighbors will too. That means the day to day security of each Iranian family will then depend on the goodwill of Saudi Arabia, who will likely have nuclear weapons."
We talked about President Obama's recently exposed letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei regarding collaboration against the Islamic State.
"Thinking that Iran, the biggest state sponsor of terror can help fight terror, is a fundamentally flawed strategy," Kirk said, arguing that this administration is a "pacifist administration," believing that by "sheer force of its personality, it can make people like them more."
I asked the Senator why the President has not attempted to demand the release of Americans Pastor Saeed Abedini and Marine Amir Hekmati as a pre-condition to negotiating with the Iranian government. I asked him if we would see a last-minute demand.
I think there should be, but I fear that the President will be too politically correct, not wanting to raise this point. This is no way to lose against the Iranians, to forget our fundamental values of freedom and dignity of the individual, and in the case of the President, he doesn't fully realize that we are the most powerful country in the world, not because of our economy, but because of our values."
And lastly, I asked Kirk to make a prediction regarding Monday's deadline:
"I'm expecting an extension. Because the one thing the Iranians want now is time to build a bomb. The President keeps surrendering time."
The Israel Project Conference Call with Executive Director Josh Block in Vienna
On November 21, 2014 Josh Block of The Israel Project held a briefing from Vienna on the current status of the P5+1 Iran negotiations and prospects for any possible agreement, or form of agreement that might be announced on Monday. As you will hear, Block, a veteran Democratic political operative, is not only dour about the prospects but seriously questioned the objectives of the Administration that appear to diverge from the problems raised by both the UK and France. Moreover, he opined, in response to my question below, Iran implacably resisted all of the commitments in the Plan of Action, continued enrichment and research on advanced centrifuges, has benefited economically from the lifting of sanctions in the interim agreement and may have in the interim produced enough enriched material to readily achieve nuclear breakout.
This writer's question was:
Given evidence of Iran's bad behavior seen in violations of the Safeguards Agreement, UN Sanctions and evidence of Advanced Centrifuge Research, do you realistically believe that anything substantive will be agreed upon between the P5+1 and the Islamic Republic's negotiators by Monday's deadline other than a set of guiding principles and/or Framework Agreement, if any?
Listen to The Israel Project Conference Call with Executive Director Josh Block.
Marzzouki was once a "secularist." I thought him so, but see that I was wrong, or rather, he's revealed himself more fully now that he's running. He's a "secularist" but one willing to work with, not oppose, Rachid Ghannouchi and his sinister Ennahda party. He's no "secularist" in the line of adamant Bourguiba, or those who were always in his camp, like the formidable 88-year-old hope Beji Caid Essebsi, who were never enthusiastic about, and preferred to dampen the enthusiasm of other Tunisians for, the Jihad against Israel. If Essebsi is elected, there is at least a chance of sanity prevailing, and some foreign investment. If Marzouki does, Tunisia will suffer. Oh, women won't be hijabbed, of course, but the cancer of Israel-hatred will do its damage, and both potential investors in the West (including a considerable group of Tunisian Jews in France, some of whom have sentimental affection for Tunisia) and those Arabs who see Hamas -- the Muslim Brotherhood -- as a threat to themselves, will be much less interested in aiding Tunisia. But Marzouki may be thinking: "We'll always have Qatar." Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Marzouki's expression of pride and delight in meeting the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, can be seen here.
Dr. Raphael Israeli is Hebrew U (ret.) renowned expert in Islamic, Middle East and East Asian History, author of books , including Islamikaze: Manifestations of Islamic Martryology
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Washington, DC-based Center for Immigration Studies and nationally recognized expert on immigration policy and issues.
Col. Dick Brauer, USAF (ret.) is a Founder of Special Operations Speaks, Member of the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi, and former Commandant of the United States Air Force Special Operations School (Hurlburt Field, FL)
In Pakistan, for example,as reported here.
Listen here.
The version by Parov Stelar is here.
Arthur Krystal writes in Chronical Review:
When, in 1942, Lionel Trilling remarked, "What gods were to the ancients at war, ideas are to us," he suggested a great deal in a dozen words. Ideas were not only higher forms of existence, they, like the gods, could be invoked and brandished in one's cause. And, like the gods, they could mess with us. In the last century, Marxism, Freudianism, alienation, symbolism, modernism, existentialism, nihilism, deconstruction, and postcolonialism enflamed the very air that bookish people breathed. To one degree or another, they lit up, as Trilling put it, "the dark and bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet."
Trilling belonged to a culture dominated by New York Intellectuals, French writers, and British critics and philosophers, most of whom had been marked by the Second World War and the charged political atmosphere of the burgeoning Cold War. Nothing seemed more crucial than weighing the importance of individual freedom against the importance of the collective good, or of deciding which books best reflected the social consciousness of an age when intellectual choices could mean life or death. And because of this overarching concern, the interpretation of poetry, fiction, history, and philosophy wasn't just an exercise in analysis but testified to one's moral view of the world.
"It was as if we didn't know where we ended and books began," Anatole Broyard wrote about living in Greenwich Village around midcentury. "Books were our weather, our environment, our clothing. We didn't simply read books; we became them." Although Broyard doesn't specify which books, it's a good bet that he was referring mainly to novels, for in those days to read a novel by Eliot, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Lawrence, Mann, Kafka, Gide, Orwell, or Camus was to be reminded that ideas ruled both our emotions and our destinies.
Ideas mattered—not because they were interesting but because they had power. Hegel, at Jena, looked at Napoleon at the head of his troops and saw "an idea on horseback"; and just as Hegel mattered to Marx, so Kant had mattered to Coleridge. Indeed, ideas about man, society, and religion suffused the works of many 19th-century writers. Schopenhauer mattered to Tolstoy, and Tolstoy mattered to readers in a way that our best novelists can no longer hope to duplicate. If philosophy, in Goethe's words, underpinned eras of great cultural accomplishment ("Epoche der forcierten Talente entsprang aus der Philosophischen"), one has to wonder which philosophical ideas inspire the current crop of artists and writers. Or is that too much to ask? Unless I am very much mistaken, the last philosopher to exert wide-ranging influence was Wittgenstein. Although Wittgenstein certainly mattered to every person interested in ideas around midcentury, in the end he was co-opted by portentous art critics of the 1970s and 80s who thought the Tractatus could prop up feeble paintings and shallow conceptual installations.
Photo illustration
by Andrea Levy
for The Chronicle Review
That Wittgenstein could have been so casually diluted by the art world was a sign that the intellectual weather had changed—perhaps for good. A new set of ideas had begun to assert itself, one that tended to lower the temperature of those grand philosophic and aesthetic credos that for decades had captivated writers and scholars. The new precepts and axioms began their peregrinations in the 20s and 30s when language philosophers were unmooring metaphysics from philosophy, and two French historians, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, were altering approaches to historical thinking. Instead of world-historical individuals bestriding events, as Hegel and Emerson had suggested, the Annales School stipulated that unique configurations of economic, social, and geographic factors determined the customs and behaviors—indeed, the fate—of regional people. Popes and princes may have fomented wars, revolutions, and religious schisms, but subtler, more far-reaching forces were also at work, which could be extrapolated from the quantifiable data found in everything from hospital records to ships' manifests.
This focus on the endemic components of society soon found its analogue in deconstruction, which elevated the social-semiotic conditions of language over the authors who modulated and teased it into literary art. Whatever the differences among the various poststructuralist schools of thought, the art of inversion, the transferring of significance from the exalted to the unappreciated, was a common feature. To read Barthes, Baudrillard, Derrida, Foucault, and Kristeva was to realize that everything that was formerly beneath our notice now required a phenomenologically informed second glance. And for theorists of a certain stripe on both sides of the Atlantic, this created a de-familiarized zone of symbols and referents whose meaning lay not below the surface of things, but out in the open. Say what you want about the French, they made us look at what was in front of our noses. Warhol's soup can didn't just fall out of the sky; it had begun to take shape in Paris in the 30s; Warhol simply brought the obvious to the attention of museumgoers.
Art and literature survived the onslaught of critical theory, but not without a major derailment. The banal, the ordinary, the popular became both the focus and the conduit of aesthetic expression. This may be something of an exaggeration, but it's hard not to view the work of John Cage, Andy Warhol, and Alain Robbe-Grillet as compositions less interested in art than in the conceit that anything could be art. And while this attempt to validate the ordinary may have been in step with the intellectual tempo, it also summoned from the academy an exegesis so abstruse, so pumped up with ersatz hermeneutics that, in reality, it showcased the aesthetic void it so desperately attempted to disguise. And this absence was nothing less than the expulsion of those ideas that were formerly part of the humanistic charter to create meaning in verbal, plastic, and aural mediums.
Not that this bothered postmodern theorists whose unabashed mission was to expose Western civilization's hidden agenda: the doctrinal attitudes and assumptions about art, sex, and race embedded in our linguistic and social codes. For many critics in the 1970s and 80s, the Enlightenment had been responsible for generating ideas about the world that were simply innocent of their own implications. Accordingly, bold new ideas were required that recognized the ideological framework of ideas in general. So Barthes gave us "The Death of the Author," and Foucault concluded that man is nothing more than an Enlightenment invention, while Paul de Man argued that insofar as language is concerned there is "in a very radical sense no such thing as the human."
All of which made for lively, unruly times in the humanities. It also made for the end of ideas as Trilling conceived them. For implicit in the idea that culture embodies physiological and psychological codes is the idea that everything can be reduced to a logocentric perspective, in which case all schools of thought become in the end variant expressions of the mind's tendencies, and the principles they affirm become less significant than the fact that the mind is constituted to think and signify in particular ways. This may be the reason that there are no more schools of thought in the humanities as we once understood them. Obviously one can still learn about the tenets of the Frankfurt School and Prague School in courses across the country, just as one can study the works of Marxist and psychoanalytic critics (Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard, Marcuse, Norman O. Brown) and the deconstructionist writings of Derrida and de Man—but the frisson is gone, the intellectual energy dissipated as historical memory. Ironically, the last great surge of ideas in the humanities was essentially antihumanist. And because the academy eagerly embraced and paraded these ideas, the humanities themselves began to shrink. For when literature professors began to apply critical theory to the teaching of books they were, in effect, committing suicide by theory.
Continue reading here.
If so, then you should really think of applying for the position in Pennsylvania announced here.
From Channel Four News
The Islamist group al-Shabaab claims responsibility for killing 28 non-Muslims on a bus in Kenya. Witnesses said the gunmen spared Muslim passengers but ordered the rest off the bus to their death.The attack happened outside the town Mandera near Kenya's border with Somalia and Ethopia, while the bus was travelling to the capital Nairobi.
Surviving passengers said a group of 10 heavily armed men boarded the bus and separated the Somali and non-Somali passengers.
Passenger Ahmed Mahat told the BBC what happened next. "The non-Somalis were ordered to read some verses of the holy Koran, and those who failed to read were ordered to lie down. One by one they were shot in the head at point blank range."
The Islamist group said it carried out the attack in retaliations for raids on mosques in the port city of Mombasa. "The Mujahideen successfully carried out an operation near Mandera early this morning, which resulted in the perishing of 28 crusaders, as a revenge for the crimes committed by the Kenyan crusaders against our Muslim brethren in Mombasa," Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab's spokesman, said in a statement.
A Jordanian indignant at Christians who, he claims, are not obeying the Pact of Omar.
From the Continuing Legal Education Seminar (Property Law), here.
By JOSEF FEDERMAN
JERUSALEM (AP) — The mayor of a southern Israeli city sparked a national uproar Thursday by barring Israeli Arab construction workers from jobs in local preschools, citing security concerns after a rash of attacks by Palestinian assailants elsewhere in the country.
The proposal was condemned as racist by Israeli leaders, but it reflected the tense mood in the country and deepened longstanding divisions between the nation's Jewish majority and Arab minority. An opinion poll showed solid public support for the measure.
Israel has been on edge following a wave of Palestinian attacks that has killed 11 people over the past month, including five this week in a bloody assault on a Jerusalem synagogue. Most of the attacks have occurred in Jerusalem — whose population is roughly one-third Palestinian — with deadly stabbings in Tel Aviv and the West Bank as well.
Responding to the unrest, the mayor of Ashkelon, Itamar Shimoni, announced that Israeli Arab laborers renovating bomb shelters in local kindergartens would be barred from their jobs. He also ordered security stepped up at construction sites where Arab laborers are employed.
He said the order was a response to the synagogue attack Tuesday, in which Palestinian assailants killed four rabbis and a Druse Arab policeman with meat cleavers and gunfire.
"Anyone who thinks this is illegal can take me to court," Shimoni said. "At this time, I prefer to be taken to court and not, God forbid, to attend the funeral of one of the children from kindergartens."
The workers in Ashkelon are Arab citizens of Israel, in contrast to the Palestinian attackers from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and it appeared unlikely the order would last for long. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni called it illegal and ordered the attorney general to take action.
"We must not generalize about an entire public due to a small and violent minority," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. "The vast majority of Israel's Arab citizens are law abiding and whoever breaks the law — we will take determined and vigorous action against him."
Israeli leaders proudly boast the country is the only democracy in the Middle East, and say they place great importance on protecting the civil rights of the Arab minority, a diverse group that includes Muslims, Christians, Bedouins and Druse.
But the situation for Israel's Arab citizens is complicated — particularly in the current atmosphere.
Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of Israel's population of 8 million, often complain of being treated as second-class citizens, and suffer from a high poverty rate, job and housing discrimination and poor public services. Many openly identify with the Palestinians, drawing accusations that they are disloyal.
In recent years, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has called on Israeli Arabs to take a loyalty oath and proposed redrawing Israel's borders under any future peace deal to place large numbers of them on the Palestinian side.
Tziona Koenig-Yair, the equal employment commissioner in Israel's Economy Ministry, said she has seen a jump in claims recently by Arab workers who say they have lost their jobs on racial grounds. She said she planned to fight the mayor of Ashkelon in court if his order is not reversed.
"We have to realize that citizens of this country who want to live here cannot be held accountable for things that are being done by extremists," she said.
In a letter to Shimoni and Interior Minister Gilad Erdan, the Arab civil rights group Adalah called the decision "arbitrary and racist" and urged it be reversed. "There is no doubt that this decision is aimed at the Arab workers because of who they are and their national affiliation," the letter said. Erdan called the order "unacceptable."
In Ashkelon, dozens of people demonstrated late Thursday in support of Shimoni. Channel 10 TV said an opinion poll found that 58 percent of the Jewish public supported the mayor, while only 32 percent opposed him. It said the poll was conducted by the Panels agency, but gave no details on how many people had been questioned or a margin of error.
Liraz Makhlouf, a mother of two young children in Ashkelon, said she supported the mayor's decision "100 percent." She insisted there was no racism behind the move, and that in the current climate of violence, such measures were needed to protect children.
"It's clear that there are good (Arabs) and bad ones, and it's clear there are more good ones than bad ones. But no one can point at them and say who is good and who is bad," she told Channel 10.
The recent unrest has been focused around Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site — the hilltop compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Muslim leaders fear that Israel is encroaching on the site — a charge that Netanyahu denies — and are furious over Israeli security measures that have restricted access for Muslim worshippers.
Most of the violence has been concentrated in Jerusalem, but the unrest has begun to spread beyond the city.
Earlier this month, an Israeli policeman shot and killed an Arab rioter in northern Israel, apparently as he was walking away from the officer, sparking several days of violent demonstrations. Netanyahu later suggested that protesters who denounce Israel should move to the Palestinian territories.
On Sunday, Netanyahu plans to present a "nationality" law to his Cabinet that he said is meant to solidify Israel's status as the homeland of the Jewish people.
Netanyahu said the law "will enshrine the full equality" of every citizen. But the legislation has raised fears among Arabs that it will undermine their status.
Jafar Farah, the director of the Mossawa Center, an Arab advocacy group, said the new law would "deepen the discrimination we face, and the Ashkelon mayor's order is part of the incitement against the Arab community led by the prime minister himself."
He urged government leaders "to work toward calming tensions across the country, instead of fanning the flames of fear and mistrust."
In Jerusalem, Israel pressed forward with a pledge to step up the demolitions of homes belonging to families of Palestinian attackers involved in recent violence.
Israeli police handed demolition notices to the families of four attackers in east Jerusalem, including the two assailants who carried out the synagogue attack. The demolitions are expected to take place after a 48-hour appeal period.
On Wednesday, Israel demolished the east Jerusalem home of an attacker who rammed his car into a crowded train station last month, killing a baby girl and a 22-year-old woman.
On Thursday, Israeli authorities said investigators had concluded a hit-and-run accident that injured three Israeli soldiers in the West Bank on Nov. 5 was an intentional attack. The driver, identified as a 23-year-old Hamas operative, turned himself into police, claiming he lost control of his car. But the Shin Bet security agency said he admitted during questioning to targeting the soldiers.
Dr. Burton Visotsky speaks to Jewish Muslim panel at Jewish Theological Seminary
November 18, 2014
Source: JTA/JTS
16 are dead in Jerusalem, four of them rabbis, the victims of a wave of Islamic anti-Semitic rampage by Arab Muslim residents. But that didn't cause the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in Manhattan to cancel an interfaith Jewish-Muslim luncheon earlier this week that included a leader of Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA is one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the 2008 federal Dallas Holy Land Foundation trial that convicted the leaders of the Muslim charity for funneling upwards of $36 million to Hamas for following in the way of Allah, Jihad. We have learned over several years that the venerable flagship of American Conservative Judaism has been unstinting in promoting the myopia of Jewish – Muslim dialogue under the leadership of Chancellor Arnold Eisen. See our January 2012 NER article, "Dialogue with Radical Muslims is Dangerous for American Jews".
Rabbi Kalman Levine, Kansas City, z"l Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Boston, z"l Aryeh Kupinsky, Detroit, z"l
Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, UK, z"l
The Times of Israel reported the latest ill-timed display of questionable outreach, "Amid religious violence in Israel, American leaders celebrate interfaith success". Here are some excerpts:
On Tuesday, November 18, 2014 about 30 high-profile Muslim and Jewish scholars and leaders came together for a kosher-halal lunch (arugula salad, salmon with a fried potato on top, tiramisu for dessert) at New York's Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) to celebrate their work bridging the gaps between the two communities.
The violence in Israel wasn't mentioned, specifically. But it was felt, undoubtedly.
"Our work is the work of peace, and yet, as the prophet says, 'shalom, shalom, v'ein shalom,' we pray for peace, we work for peace, and yet, we still don't have peace," said Burton Visotzky, a professor of Midrash and Interreligious Studies at JTS.
Visotzky is short but not quite stout with a beard that's black around his chin but begins to gray as it travels up toward his kippah-covered head.
His exuberance couldn't be clipped by the day's tragic beginning, and he bounced around from table to table, greeting some with 'shalom' and others with 'As-salamu alaykum,' the Arabic counterpart.
The escalating conflict in Jerusalem did not dampen Visotzky's joy about what he feels is a momentous step in advancing Muslim-Jewish relations in the United States. Together with the Hartford Seminary and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), JTS just published "Sharing the Well: A Resource Guide For Jewish-Muslim Engagement." The guide (available for free PDF download) is the outgrowth of a series of annual conferences titled "Judaism and Islam in America" that began in 2010 under Visotzky's leadership.
"Sharing the Well" includes guidelines on how to begin and maintain interreligious dialogue, as well as essays on shared values between the two religions and a list of 24 Muslim-Jewish projects around the country, from a Muslim-Jewish "speed dialogue" modeled after speed dating to an interfaith Thanksgiving service. The authors hope the book inspires Jews and Muslims to reach across religious divides at a time when world events are increasingly pitting them against one another.
In a February 2014 Iconoclast/ Dr. Rich Swier eMagazine post we commented an earlier JTS Jewish Muslim dialogue with Dr. Visotzky, "The Future of Judaism and Islam on America's Campuses?" that colleague Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein had brought to our attention:
Having written about the dangers of Jewish Muslim Dialogue and the banal cupidity of Jewish communal leadership and in this instance the faculty of the Jewish Theological Society ( JTS )regarding this and other similar events on college campus with Jewish students threatened by Muslim Student Associations, I find this program naive and dangerous. It is no wonder that most Jews are ill informed about the underlying Qur'anic doctrine of hatred towards Christians, Jews and other unbelievers. Why Chancellor Eisen, Professor Visotzky support such dialogues is appalling, as they neither educate or inform Jewish and non-Jewish audiences of the realities of why Islamic anti-Semitism exists on college campuses and in the West generally. As Dr. Jacobs cogently argued in response to a caller on a Lisa Benson Show on the subject of Jewish Myopia Towards Islam:
The "J" Streeters and the left again want us to think that we Jews have done it to ourselves. It is our behavior that has made the Muslims hate us. That is a very empowering thought because if it's true, if you could make yourself believe it was true, then you could change the reality. You could just simply change your behavior and the hatred would go away. Unfortunately Islam is a religion, a political and an economic system. In it there is a demand for worldwide supremacy. When Islam conquers the land, the people on the land have a choice. If they are Jews or Christians, they can choose not to be killed if they accept the status of dhimmitude.
Being a dhimmi is lower than second class status where you may not have political independence. You may not have freedom. You are subjugated. However, if you allow yourself to be subjugated and you follow their rules you can still be a Jew or a Christian. Now if you don't, however, if you rebel against that, then the entire theological house of Islam with sword behind it comes after you and that is what happened with Israel. Israel is a rebellious dhimmi state. The Jews were never supposed to have self-rule just like the Christians. South Sudan came about as a Christian state after having defeated a Jihad against it so too the Jews.
The Jews and the Christians in the Middle East are not allowed to have self-rule. A theological Israel is a theological catastrophe for Islam. It is not a border war. If it was that, then, if it were, you could make concessions and you could make compromises with two people living in peace.
Unfortunately that's not the case.
Unfortunate that is for the sixteen killed in Jerusalem because of Islamic anti-Semitic hate, especially the four rabbis z"l and the valiant Israeli Druze police officer who shot and killed the two Arab Muslim cousins, who entered the Kehillat Yaakov synagogue at 7:00AM in Har Nof on Monday, November 17, 2014. The two Arab Muslim killers, equipped with guns and knives and a meat cleaver to commit their butchery, disrupted the morning minyan prayers leaving behind them the charnel of dead and wounded in the blood splattered scene. We wonder if Dr. Visotzky asked the assemblage of Jewish and high profile Muslim leaders to rise for the traditional mourners' prayer for the rabbis and the Druze police officer who lost their lives?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's robust words to Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Australia were welcome, appropriate and should be supported by all Canadians. They complemented the similarly forthright position taken by the G20 summit host, Australian prime minister Tony Abbott. Unfortunately, Russia has never in its history paid the slightest attention to any cautionary note from anyone except someone sufficiently strong, militarily or economically, to deter it. The czars and the communist leaders who followed them paid some attention to the strongest German, French, British and Turkish leaders. In current memory, the Kremlin listened rather impatiently to Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping, and to almost all American presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton.
When our prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King wrote to Stalin, professing continuation of the war-time alliance despite startling evidence of vast Soviet espionage unearthed in the Gouzenko Affair in Ottawa in 1945, he received no reply. (King considered Gouzenko "a manly patriot" who had been won over from communism "by Canadian democracy," not unreasonable assessments.) Louis St. Laurent and Lester Pearson, men of proven diplomatic aptitudes, never got a rise from Stalin, who by the late Forties was like a reclusive crocodile straddling Europe and Asia, or from his successor, Nikita S. Khrushchev. Neither did John Diefenbaker when he angrily reproached Khrushchev at the United Nations for the illegal Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Pierre Trudeau was no more successful with Khrushchev's successor Leonid I. Brezhnev on several bilateral issues, although he claimed to believe (wrongly) that Churchill and Roosevelt had ceded Eastern Europe to Stalin at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. Trudeau also facilitated Cuban intervention in the Angolan Civil War as Soviet mercenaries by giving them transit landing rights in Newfoundland, and he publicly referred to heroic Soviet human rights activists Andrei Sakharov and Anatoly Sharansky as "hooligans."
Russia became a great power under Peter the Great (czar from 1689-1725) when he consolidated Russia's hold on Ukraine, pushed the Turks southwards, expanded across Asia and founded St. Petersburg as "a window on the West;" beginning the struggle that continues to this day between the Western emulators and the nativists. The latter faction are the reactionary upholders of Holy Mother Russia's isolationist exceptionalism, much romanticized in Russian literature and familiar to any reader of Tolstoy or Solzhenitsyn. This current of opinion and psychology has been largely hijacked by Putin.
Since the apotheosis of the brilliant American strategy of containment of the Soviet Union and of international communism, pursued assiduously by 10 American presidents (five of each party), with the abandonment of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union, after the brief, bibulous, near-anarchy of Western emulator Boris Yeltsin, Putin has been playing to great Russian nationalism by mischief-making in almost every corner of the world. Putin has perversely assisted Iran in attaining a nuclear military capacity, and has aided other terrorism-promoting states, especially Syria, although Russia has itself been a victim of Islamist extremism, even in Moscow itself. Putin has played a seminal role in promoting the present impasse in the Middle East, as Stephen Harper has rightly denounced. The beleaguered and blood-stained Syrian leader Bashir Assad is the puppet of the Iranians and the Russians, but is mortally opposed by the Turks, Saudis, and Egyptians.
Those powers are supporting both the moderate reformers and the Islamist opponents of the secularist Assad, but also oppose the Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) ultra-extremists, who are at (professedly holy) war with everyone. Islamic State arose from the wreckage of (to take an expression from Balkan politics of a century ago) "the ungrateful volcano" of post-American Iraq. Syria has become the chief recruiting ground for the ISIS and Turkey will not assist in the repulse of ISIS unless the United States resumes its former determination to be rid of Assad. Readers will recall prolonged official American waffling on that subject, from Hillary Clinton's infamous description of Assad as "a reformer," to Barack Obama's complacent decree that Assad "must go," to his imposition of the violated "red line" when Assad poison-gassed his own citizens, to his abdication to the Congress of the president's right as commander-in-chief to enforce the red line by military retaliation, to fumbling the matter in anticipation of defeat in the Congress to the ubiquitous Slavonic sorcerer Putin.
While this fiasco has been wrought by former president Jimmy Carter's complicity in the eviction of the pro-American government of the Shah of Iran and by Europe's haughty straight-arming of the pro-Western Kemalist leadership of Turkey for decades, Russia has been the chief recent troublemaker. The absurdity of the present affray is highlighted by the fact that after 35 years of U.S. demonizing of the loopy theocrats in Tehran, and after all the threats of "crippling sanctions" and air attack being an "option on the table," Iran is now a quasi-ally of the U.S. against ISIS.
This may well mean American toleration of Iran becoming a "threshold" nuclear power, and that may entrain an Israeli air strike on Iran's nuclear program, with whole-hearted Turkish and Arab approval. There remains a chance that Saudi Arabia's reduction of the oil price could cause the Iranians to come to their arithmetical senses and stall their nuclear program, but unintended consequences have fallen like confetti, from the latest problems with the Keystone XL pipeline because of pricing scenarios, to Putin's comparative restraint in Ukraine, neither of which was of the least interest to the petro-nomads of the House of Saud. The disintegration of Iraq has already virtually created an independent Kurdistan, which is agitating Turkey's 20 million Kurds.
The Euro-fantasy of influencing the Middle East is over, and the ineffectuality or failure of American efforts in the region, since the first Gulf War — which at least ejected Saddam from Kuwait, had an exit strategy, and ended quickly and without heavy casualties — and the almost mindless cynicism of Putin, may leave it to the countries and factions, sects and tribes in situ to sort it out, even if it is a sun-drenched version of the Thirty Years War. Bismarck warned against the great powers becoming involved in the quarrels of the Balkan "sheep-stealers;" he was ignored and the hecatomb of The First World War followed. The same advice applies to the Middle East now. The U.S. should leave completely, apart from advancing its allies full anti-missile defences, which it partially withheld in Eastern Europe as part of the fatuous "reset" of relations with Russia, and not come back until it has rediscovered its "containment" era genius for foreign and strategic policy.
A positive thought: It emerges from the newly produced research on the origins of the First World War a century ago that the British, French, Germans and Austro-Hungarians were all convinced in 1914 that Russia was the rising power in Europe and Asia and was putting up such economic growth rates and technological advances that it was thought to be rivalled only by the United States as the land of the future. That is why several of those countries thought a war might not be a bad idea, before the Russians became impossible to contain. So it may not be entirely true that, horrible though it was, the First World War had no purpose, and that the communist victory in Russia was one of its most baleful consequences. The triumph of the Bolsheviks may have spared the West a greater, if somewhat less barbarous Russian challenge. Communism liquidated 20 million Soviet civilians, enabled the Second World War with the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and then took over 90% of the casualties in subduing Nazi Germany, while Germany, France, Italy and Japan became prosperous democratic allies of the English-speaking countries. And then the U.S.S.R. fragmented, almost bloodlessly.
Harper is right to call Putin the thug that he is, but perhaps we should be even more grateful than we have been to those who served in the First World War for the fact that Putin's despotism misgoverns fewer than half the people of the empires ruled by the Romanovs and the Supreme Soviet.
First published in the National Post.
New York Times:
LONDON — Across Pakistan, the black standard of the Islamic State has been popping up all over.
From urban slums to Taliban strongholds, the militant group's logo and name have appeared in graffiti, posters and pamphlets. Last month, a cluster of militant commanders declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State.
Such is the influence of the Islamic State's steamroller success in Iraq and Syria that, even thousands of miles away, security officials and militant networks are having to reckon with the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
Its victories have energized battle-weary militants in Pakistan. The ISIS brand offers them potent advantages, analysts say — an aid to fund-raising and recruiting, a possible advantage over rival factions and, most powerfully, a new template for waging jihad.
The ISIS cause became openly divisive in October when a group of six commanders led by Sheikh Maqbool, a former Taliban spokesman, openly pledged loyalty to the Islamic State. "A large number of mujahedeen are with us," said Abu Zar Khurassani, a senior figure in the breakaway faction. "Soon we will decide on how to help the Islamic State."
From the Daily Mail
A taxi driver and his three friends have been sentenced for a total of 68 years over the rape of a drunk passenger. Tamseel Virk, 42, Najim U-Saeed, 31, Wakar Akhtar, 21, and Azad Raja, 38, were each handed 17 year jail terms for the 'despicable' attack on the vulnerable woman in Bradford, Yorkshire.
A judge heard how taxi driver Virk picked up the intoxicated victim after she had been out celebrating a friend's birthday in Leeds. When she came round, she found Raja was having sex with her - while Akhtar told her he had already had sex with her.
Virk, U-Saeed and Raja were sentenced at Bradford Crown Court. Akhtar was also sentenced but is currently on the run - and is believed to have fled the country after giving evidence, the court heard.
His Honour Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC told the court that the victim had been enjoying herself earlier in the evening of May 25. But she ended up 'coming to her senses on a park bench in another city being raped'. Describing the victim's experience as a nightmare, he told the three men in the dock: 'This was totally despicable, it was utterly callous, it was a degree of inhuman behaviour hard, even for one such as myself inured to evil, to understand.'
During the two-week trial, in which the men denied conspiracy to rape, the court heard that the teacher had been drunk when she left the party without her bag and was seen at Leeds train station.
The judge said: 'On that day, as was her right, she enjoyed at the birthday party a number of drinks. That is part, gentlemen, of our culture.'
At some point she had got in a taxi to travel to wherever she was staying but had got out again in a confused state - possibly regarding getting her bag back. It was then, the court heard, that Vick saw her and 'accosted her and secured her in the presence of the cab' according to the judge.
Vick then drove the confused woman from Leeds, West Yorkshire, to Bradford, 11 miles away - and to a destination she had not asked for.
During the journey, the court heard, there were 15 phone calls made between Vick and the other defendants.
'This was four men putting into place an operation to do that which the jury have found,' said Judge Durham Hall, adding that their victim was a young vulnerable woman.
After meeting at a park in Bradford the court heard Akhtar had invited his uncle Raja to 'join in the fun'. Their victim came to in the early hours of the May 26 being held and being raped by a man. During the trial, the court heard that U-Saeed then turned up 'too late physically to join in the rape that he had set up'.
From The Telegraph
A 19-year-old man has been arrested by police on suspicion of preparing for acts of terrorism. He was detained by West Midlands Police officers as he stepped off a flight from Jordan at Heathrow Airport.
The arrest took place at around 3pm on Thursday . . . the West Midlands counter terrorism unit said the man was from Coventry.
The statement added: "He is currently in custody in the West Midlands area. The arrest was pre-planned and intelligence led.The suspect did not pose any risk to the flight."
And here is Arwa Othman.
From the Center for Immigration Studies:
WASHINGTON, DC (November 21, 2014) — President Obama's executive amnesty announced this week may well come at the expense of the most vulnerable and poorest American workers. Once given work authorization, illegal immigrants are likely to compete with Americans for better-paying jobs that are now generally off-limits because they require background checks and valid Social Security numbers. Such jobs include: security guards, screeners, janitors, grounds keepers and clerks employed in the public sector, as well as most jobs associated with interstate transport and delivery.
The president does not seem to have given any consideration to the abysmal employment picture for less-educated Americans, people who will now face increased competition for the dwindling number of relatively well-paying jobs that are available to them.
The employment situation in the 3rd Quarter of 2014:
Only 45 percent of adult American citizens (native-born and naturalized), age 18 to 65, without a high school education are working.
Only 65 percent of citizens, age 18 to 65, with just a high school education are working.
For less-educated U.S.-born blacks the situation is even worse. Only 32 percent, age 18 to 65, without a high school education are working, as are only 56 percent with only a high school education.
All of the above figures represent a dramatic deterioration from historical averages. None of these groups have come close to getting back to the share of those working in 2007.
In total there were nearly 27 million adult American citizens, age 18 to 65, with no more than high school education not working in the third quarter of 2014.
All of the above data comes from the public use files of the Current Population Survey collected by the government in the third quarter of 2014. The survey is the source of unemployment and labor market statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Polls also show rising hostility to Obama's granting work permits to illegals.
Long-standing — but weak — public support for the ideal of immigration crashed this summer, when a wave of 130,000 migrants from Central America crossed into Texas, [Pat] Caddell said.
"We've had a sea change in attitudes on immigration that is stunning in the last three or four months," he said.
The wave "became the reality of 'Let's be nice to everyone,'" which has been the public's traditional attitude toward immigrants, he said. But the wave ensured that Americans "talked to each other and said 'Oh my God, this is insane,'" Caddell said.
After the wave of migrants, Americans aren't focused on what's fair to immigrants, said Conway. "Now people are asking 'What's fair to the rest of us? What's fair to the high school or college student who is looking for a job? What is fair to the guy who can't find employment? What's fair to the business owners?" she said. Many business owners are disadvantaged when their rivals hire low-wage illegals.
The shift has been missed by most pollsters because they won't push past respondents' polite comments about immigrants to discover their real strongly held attitudes, Conway and Caddell said.
From Capital News Kenya and the BBC
At least one person has died in the Kenyan city of Mombasa after police clashed with protesters who tried to enter a closed-off mosque. Police were forced to fire in the air and lob teargas to eject the group of youths who forced their way into Masjid Swafaa mosque in Kisauni for prayers.
A police raid on Swafaa mosque on Wednesday resulted in a grenade, petrol bombs and other weapons being found.A city-wide crackdown on groups allegedly linked to the Somali militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, began earlier this week.
Others closed are Masjid Shuhadaa, Sakina and Minah mosques where firearms and explosive materials were seized. More police officers have been deployed to patrol Mombasa streets following reports of a planned demonstration later on Friday over the mosque raids.
A reading of the Fatiha from the Qur'an, with every member of the Jordanian Parliament standing, palms out, to honor the memory of those Muslim Arabs who died that day, performing, with guns and meat cleavers, their acts of derring-do.
From the BBC, the Telegraph, the East London Advertiser and The Times
Pupils at six small Muslim private schools in east London are at risk of extremist views and radicalisation, says Ofsted's chief inspector. Sir Michael Wilshaw said the pupils' "physical and educational welfare is at serious risk" following a series of emergency inspections.He said all the schools focused too heavily on Islamic teachings.
The independent schools are Mazahirul Uloom School, Ebrahim Academy, East London Islamic School, London East Academy, Al-Mizan School and Jamiatul Ummah School. In each case, inspectors declared the schools failing, or identified areas where the schools had failed to meet independent school standards.
"The physical condition of all six schools' accommodation was found to be unacceptable. Three of the schools are sited within mosques. In all three, access to the school was insecure because it was shared with the mosque. In another, the school shared an entrance with a café, giving members of the public open access to the school...Four of the schools were dirty and poorly maintained, with electrical sockets and switches hanging off walls in one, and broken furniture and rubbish in stairwells in another. "
At one school, inspectors found pupils did not know the difference between sharia and British law... (Pupils) were unable to tell inspectors which laws they should follow and which were more important. . . Mazahirul Uloom, a small secondary boys' school that professes to teach the National Curriculum and Islamic Sciences, faces the most criticism. . . the curriculum "focused solely" on Islamic themes.
Pupils here believed it was wrong to learn about other religions, were not taught art, music or drama and pupils had a "narrow view" of women in society. Some students told inspectors: "Women stay at home and clean and look after the children. They cook and pray and wait for us to come back from school with homework."
The report also said there were no systems in place to check suitability of external speakers and that children were not safe because staff recruitment checks were not rigorous enough.
Ebrahim Academy, a secondary boys' school with 97 pupils, was also found to offer too narrow a curriculum. Ofsted said students were not prepared for life in modern Britain.
The London East Academy, a 150-pupil boys' secondary, was not providing enough opportunities for students to learn about other faiths and most of the books in the the school's library were Arabic.
An emergency inspection of the 185-pupil boys' secondary Jammiatul Ummah found good opportunities to study and practise the Islamic faith but pupils were not provided with a broad and balanced curriculum. The report said: "The narrowness of the curriculum means that students' spiritual, moral, social and cultural education, in particular their understanding of the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance, is underdeveloped."
Sir John Cass Foundation and Red Coat School in Stepney, east London, (A Church of England School with more than 80% Muslim pupils) had excellent results, including outstanding progress in English and maths, the education regulator reported. It added, however, that it was an inadequate school and placed it in special measures because of the behaviour and safety of pupils.
"Arrangements for vetting visiting speakers and monitoring the activities of student groups are not robust enough to ensure that students are kept safe. The school's approach to the use of playgrounds and common rooms has resulted in the separation of boys and girls when they are out of lessons. The governing body is not demonstrating sufficient capacity to bring about improvements.
The school's leadership has not responded with sufficient urgency or decisiveness to concerns brought to their attention by the police in 2013-14.This concern related to social media sites bearing the name of a school sixth form society and containing links to individuals associated with extremist activity. . .These sites include links to individuals associated with extremist views and actions. They also include messages to discourage students from attending school events, such as a fundraising karaoke evening, because the activities do not adhere to a particular religious viewpoint.
"One posting states that any sixth form students who attended a 'leavers' party' and engaged in 'free-mixing' or 'listening to music' would face 'severe consequences later'. A further uploaded video included a speaker who mocked perceived 'feminine' behaviour in men."
Tower Hamlets' education director Robert McCulloch-Graham has admitted to the East London Advertiser that Sir John Cass, which comes under Town Hall control, was "not robust enough" in tackling concerns about safeguarding pupils after the school's sixthform Islamic Society was found to have Facebook links with extremist preachers.
But the authority has little powers over the six privately-run Muslim faith schools in the East End that have also been inspected by Ofted over the 'fundamentalist links' issue.
A Town Hall spokesman said: "We have no jurisdiction whatsoever as a local education authority over teaching and standards at independent faith schools. We do have responsibility for safeguarding children, but our powers limit us to offering training and advice to schools. We have repeatedly offered this assistance to independent schools locally—but cannot compel them to accept."
Muslims of the Islamic State make a video in which they threaten attacks in France, relying on perfectely orthodox Islamic teachings in expressing their hatred of the French until such time as they submit to Allah.
The story here.