Meanwhile, back in the Stone Age...

Afghan parliament upholds right to marry children

Texan lawmaker raffles off assault rifle

June 14, 2013 - 5:45AM

Republican Steve Stockman in recent weeks has been peddling a bumper sticker on his website which reads: ‘‘If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted.’’

Washington: One of the most conservative members of the US Congress says he is raffling off an AR-15 assault rifle like the one used in a deadly school shooting last December.

Republican Steve Stockman of Texas will give the military-style weapon away on Independence Day next month, appalling those who have come to Washington to mark Friday's six-month anniversary of the massacre at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 children and six adults dead.

"You don't need to be an IRS agent to get your own Bushmaster AR-15. I'm giving one away for FREE on July 4! Sign up!" Mr Stockman posted on Twitter.

Internal Revenue Service agents reportedly have been seen training with the weapons.

Mr Stockman is a frequent critic of President Barack Obama and his push for stronger gun laws. "Grab this gun before Obama does!" Mr Stockman posted in an earlier message.

Democrats in Congress led a push to tighten gun laws across the country in the wake of the Newtown shooting, including efforts to broaden background checks and ban military-style assault weapons including the AR-15.

The efforts were strongly opposed by lawmakers like Stockman and the powerful National Rifle Association, and the measures, watered down to attract Democrats from conservative states, failed to pass the Senate.

Mr Stockman is known on Capitol Hill for his strident or bristling comments.

In recent weeks, he has been peddling a bumper sticker on his website which reads: "If babies had guns they wouldn't be aborted."

The lawmaker's latest tweet came as Sandy Hook relatives were in the US capital making a renewed push for gun legislation, something Vice President Joe Biden has signalled the White House wants to see happen.

"Personally it is absolutely appalling," a volunteer from Newtown who works with some of the relatives on seeking common sense gun legislation, said of the timing of Stockman's tweet.

The "Stockman for Congress" web page said the gun winner will be drawn randomly but that he or she "must meet all legal requirements and will be subject to a dealer's background check."

AFP

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/texan-lawmaker-raffles-off-assault-rifle-20130614-2o7mr.html#ixzz2WBBG8hxv

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2013/06/gay-porn-pakistan

Stickers r srs biznus.

...and it started with stickers.

Israel have issued similar rhetoric with regard to Iran. Don't pretend like they're innocent.

Watching them is one thing, accusing them of wanting another Holocaust is another thing entirely.

FTFY

It wouldn't be an issue if they'd shut the hell up about it. The only thing that makes Iran want to bomb Israel is Israel claiming that Iran want to bomb them every 3-4 months.

You don't know your history do you?

The only "nakba" is the million Jews who were kicked out of Arab countries post-1948. There were assaults, beatings, executions, nazi-style bans from working in certain jobs, you name it. They were nearly a million refugees, kicked out if Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, etc, etc. That's the real nakba or whatever you want to call it. Look it up.

And the reason Iran is wanting to nuke Israel has nothing to do with Arabs.

Btw, Israel has never threatened the sovereignty of another country, while the Arabs continually call for Israel's destruction.

Another six million dead Jews would be exactly that. It doesn't matter what anti-semites think or what Netanyahu says publicly, Israel can't rely on anyone to protect them and will do all it can to protect itself. And the rest of the world can condemn them as much as they like - the risk of a nuclear, sabre-rattling Iran is too great.

Hard to make yourself look like the victim with all those nuclear warheads...unless you play the holocaust card.

Netanyahu :oops: has the biggest nuclear arsenal in the region alongside the US military and their bases....

If Israel gets nuked it will have more to do with a certain little ongoing al-Nakba than just some simplified, holocaust narrative. Even most Israelis know that...

Beat those war drums....

What's going on with all this anti-G8 rioting in London?

Israeli PM warns of another Holocaust from Iran

WARSAW, Poland — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his two-day visit to Poland, which Germany's Nazis occupied during World War II and where they committed the worst crimes ever against the Jewish people, with a stern warning about a potential Holocaust from Iran.
Netanyahu said Wednesday the upcoming "so-called" Iranian presidential election will "change nothing" in the Islamic republic's quest for nuclear weapons and that the regime will continue to pursue a bomb aimed at destroying Israel. Iran insists its uranium enrichment program has only peaceful goals.
Iran's election overseers have approved a list of would-be hopefuls, most of them loyalists favored by both the theocracy and the military, and any future president will likely side with the supreme leadership's nuclear aspirations.

"This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel's 6 million Jews," Netanyahu said, alluding to the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II. "We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust."
Israel considers Iran its greatest threat because of its support of Islamic militant groups, its arsenal of long-range missiles and primarily its advanced nuclear program.
Netanyahu's comments in Warsaw carried added significance since they came a day before he travels to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in southern Poland, where he is to inaugurate a new pavilion meant to educate visitors about the Holocaust and the Nazi Germany's quest to exterminate the Jewish people.
Netanyahu, whose father was born in Warsaw, has an emotional connection to the Holocaust, although he has faced criticism for citing it frequently in the context of current events, notably regarding the potential nuclear threat from Iran. For years, Netanyahu has used his annual address on Israel's Holocaust remembrance day to caution about the danger of a nuclear Iran and vowing that "never again" will the Jews be powerless to defend themselves.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Netanyahu remained undeterred by the critics, insisting the intentions of the Iranians are just as murderous of those that existed in World War II.
"The comparison is intentional. Does Iran want to destroy the state of Israel, first and foremost its Jews? The answer is yes," he said in response to a question from The Associated Press. "Here is where the comparison diverges, since there was no state of Israel back then that could defend itself. The difference is not in the hatred of Jews and the will to destroy them. This is something that is pretty consistent in history and even modern history. The Holocaust didn't change this situation."
Netanyahu and a team of five ministers met with their Polish counterparts and discussed security in Israel's neighborhood, including the stalled peace talks with the Palestinians, the conflict in Syria and a series of bilateral issues such as Poland's possible purchase of Israeli armaments. Israel has been urging Poland, as a member of the European Union, to declare the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
Speaking alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Netanyahu contrasted the painful Jewish history of the past in Poland with the current strong relations between Poland and Israel.
"The histories of our peoples are intertwined over thousands of years, in great achievement and also in great tragedy," said Netanyahu. "We are both shaped by our past and we are both focusing together on shaping our future."
Tusk concurred, saying: "We speak a common language with Israel."
The Germans carried out the Holocaust to a large extent in occupied Poland, because it had Europe's largest Jewish population and it was at the heart of a railway network that allowed the Nazis to easily transport Jews there from elsewhere in Europe. Many Israeli leaders are children of Holocaust survivors, and Israel has the world's largest population of survivors.
In recent years, Poland has become one of the friendliest states to Israel.
Auschwitz remains the most vivid symbol of the cruelty of Nazi Germany's genocide of World War II. The world marks its International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, to coincide with the date of Auschwitz's liberation in 1945. The new exhibit Netanyahu will inaugurate will, for the first time, present Auschwitz in the larger context of the Nazis' systematic attempt to exterminate Europe's Jews.
More than 1 million Jews died in Auschwitz and the adjacent Birkenau death camp in gas chambers or from starvation, disease and forced labor. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the most notorious of a system of death camps that Nazi Germany built and operated in Poland.
"We will never forget the victims of the Holocaust, we will never forget the ultimate crime against humanity," Netanyahu said Wednesday. "And we will never forget our obligation to prevent this from ever happening again."
____
Follow Heller on Twitter @aronhellerap
- See more at: http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/international/europe/2013/06/israeli_pm_warns_of_another_holocaust_from_iran?#sthash.mll9Tjzx.dpuf

Are you serial? There's a massive shit-fight over there at the moment because government organisations have a few photos of people's backyards. Imagine if that was legitimate surveillance how much shit would hit the fan!

Or do nothing and let more people die.

IMO not too many Americans will be upset at FBI doing massive surveillance on gangs and their members. Which I'm sure is being done anyway. It's more a case of being brave enough to take the gangs on by acting on the information.

Yeah, do all kinds of Orwellian invasive reports and surveillance and watch the population turn against you for invading their privacy.

Edited by afromanGT: 11/6/2013 03:33:10 PM

You and I aren't experts in this field but clearly what you describe is a good start. Yeah, do all kinds of reports and surveillance and then hit the gangs very hard.

Y'know what makes gang violence so hard to stop? How easy it is to appear like a member of th e"innocent civilian population". So unless you've got yourself a Minority Report machine that's going to tell you the who, what, when and were of a crime you're going to have a hard time doing battle on this front.

Yep, that's EXACTLY what I think they've been doing. It's a whole lot easier to take guns off the innocent, civilian population than off the gangs, which cause over 70% of America's gun deaths.

The whole gun publicity thing is just for show - some kid will go nuts with a gun and kill people and the next day it'll be all "ban the guns".

Except a gun ban won't stop the crims from using them. Only a concerted war on guns, targeting the gangs, will improve the situation.

For so long as the American people feel unsafe, they will find ways to purchase guns for what they erronously perceive to be self-defence.

Taking guns off the innocent gun owners will only band-aid the problem.

What do you think they're doing? Twiddling their thumbs?

If they target gangs and crims and take guns away from THEM, innocent people will be less likely to want to keep a weapon in the home.

I'm dead against guns (pardon the pun) but when the majority of gun deaths in the US is gang/crime related, clearly they are going for the soft target rather than doing anything concrete.

Should be charged with 2996 counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

As strange as this sounds, I think it's a good initiative. People are going to own guns, and after shootings they're going to go out and panic buy. This way they're ensuring that they're properly trained to use the weapon.

Free gun initiative begins in Houston neighborhood

Houston’s Oak Forest neighborhood is the first in the country being trained and equipped by the Armed Citizen Project, a nonprofit that is giving away shotguns to single women and residents of neighborhoods with high crime rates.

By JUAN A. LOZANO
The Associated Press

HOUSTON — Houston resident Cheryl Strain’s inexperience with guns was apparent as she struggled to load shells into a 20-gauge shotgun.

Over the piercing blasts of gunfire in the shooting range, Strain’s instructor, Dan Blackford, patiently directed her on how to use her thumb to shove a shell all the way inside the barrel and feel it click.

“Now we got a round in the chamber ready to go,” Blackford said as he positioned her body the right way to hold the shotgun. “Look down your sight, put that BB right in the middle of your target and press the trigger.”

Strain’s northwest Houston community of Oak Forest is the first neighborhood in the country being trained and equipped by the Armed Citizen Project, a Houston nonprofit that is giving away shotguns to single women and residents of neighborhoods with high crime rates.

While many cities have tried gun buybacks and other tactics in the national debate on gun control, the nonprofit and its supporters say gun giveaways to responsible owners are a better way to deter crime. The organization, which plans to offer classes in Dallas, San Antonio, and Tucson, Ariz., in the next few weeks, is working to expand its giveaways to 15 cities by the end of the year, including Chicago and New York.

Others in Houston, while expressing support for Second Amendment rights, question whether more guns will result in more gun-related deaths rather than less crime.

Oak Forest residents say their neighborhood, made up of older one-story houses and a growing number of new town homes, has experienced a recent rash of driveway robberies and home burglaries. On a recent Sunday afternoon, a group of 10 residents, including Strain, went through training at Shiloh Shooting.

Mixed feelings

Kyle Coplen, 29, the project’s founder, said his group expects to train at least 50 Oak Forest residents and put up signs saying the neighborhood is armed.

“When we have a crime wave, we don’t just say, let’s just increase police and that’s all we do. We do multiple things. I see this as one aspect of what we can do,” said Coplen, who graduated from the University of Houston with a master’s degree in public administration.

It costs the organization about $300 to arm and train an individual and about $20,000 for a neighborhood. All costs are paid through donations, said Coplen, though he declined to say how much his organization has raised.

While some residents in the neighborhood are supportive, several officials expressed mixed feelings about it.

Sandra Keller, Strain’s neighbor, said she is participating, in part because of the helplessness she felt after her furniture store was robbed a few years ago.

“If you don’t have a gun, you’re just a walking victim. You’re just waiting for somebody to take advantage of you and your property,” said Keller, 64, after practicing at the shooting range.

Houston City Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, who represents Oak Forest, said: “I have serious concerns about more guns in homes.”

Cohen said she supports Second Amendment rights and thinks that such a responsibility should include proper training and background checks.

David Hemenway, a professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health who has written about firearms and health, said studies suggesting gun ownership deters crime have been contradicted by many others that say the opposite.

“Mostly what guns seem to do is make situations more lethal because most crime has nothing to do with guns,” he said. “When there is a gun in the mix, there is much more likely to be somebody dying or somebody incredibly hurt.”

Backers’ argument

Proponents of increased gun ownership point to a variety of statistics to support their argument, including ones showing that some cities with strict gun-control laws, such as Chicago, still have high homicide rates.

Blackford, the firearm instructor, said the group is teaching residents how to handle and store a weapon and when to use deadly force.

“The sad part is most people think if you’re pro-gun, that you’ve got this gunslinger attitude, that you are walking around looking for a gunfight to get into — and that is so far from the truth,” said Blackford, a former Secret Service agent.

Harris County Precinct One Constable Alan Rosen, whose deputies patrol Oak Forest, said that while he thinks the best deterrent to crime is effective neighborhood-watch programs, he says people should have the right to protect themselves.

“In terms of having a shotgun, after you’ve been properly trained on it, to have that in your home to protect your home, I’m for it,” he said.

Strain, 46, a single mother who has never owned a gun, said she was nervous firing the shotgun but thought that more training will help. She also had her son Rory, 12, practice firing the shotgun so “if God forbid something happens, he could be prepared as well.”

http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2021149040_freegunsxml.html?

Will be a very sad day when he goes, which could be very soon :cry:

The poor bloke can't have long on this coil left.

Nelson Mandela hospitalised, in serious condition

June 8, 2013 - 4:19PM

Former South African president Nelson Mandela, 94, has been readmitted to hospital with a renewed lung infection and is in ‘‘serious but stable’’ condition, the presidency said.

‘‘This morning at about 1:30am (9:30am Saturday AEST) his condition deteriorated and he was transferred to a Pretoria hospital. He remains in a serious but stable condition,’’ President Jacob Zuma’s office said in a statement.

It marks the second hospitalisation for the ailing anti-apartheid hero in two months.

On April 6 he was released from hospital after being treated for pneumonia during a 10-day stay.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/nelson-mandela-hospitalised-in-serious-condition-20130608-2nwol.html#ixzz2VbY81xl8