News Stories

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Crontica

Update:
apparently Kaczynski ordered the pilot to land 4 times
This has allready happened before few years ago, but the pilot refused and Kaczynski threatened to kick him out of the airforce. Apparently this time he had a more servile one

This was the first thing that ran through my mind when I heard of that incident. Knowing how stubborn the Kaczynski brothers are/were, this would perfectly fit into Lech's mannerism... killing him and so many other people, just for his stupid pride (or whatever it is). I could not believe any pilot would pull that thing off without a clear order to do so.

[SaintessHeart]

Tensions Simmer in Bangkok

BANGKOK—Antigovernment protesters re-established control over parts of Thailand's capital a day after 21 people were killed in the bloodiest political violence here in nearly 20 years, leaving authorities with a dilemma: Whether to crack down and risk more bloodshed, or give in to the protesters' demands for immediate elections.

Complicating the impasse is a deeper debate over the role of Thailand's politically powerful military, which appears unwilling to allow another taste of power to the supporters of populist leader Thaksin Shinawatra, the man the army ousted in 2006.

Bangkok riot police man a checkpoint near an antigovernment rally site on Sunday, a day after clashes between protesters and soldiers killed 21 people.

Both "Red Shirt" antigovernment protesters and government officials spent much of Sunday trying to calm tensions after Saturday's violence. At least 21 people were killed—17 civilians, including a Japanese cameraman for the Reuters news agency, and four soldiers—and more than 800 injured as demonstrators fought pitched battles with riot police and soldiers across the city. It wasn't clear who started some of Saturday's incidents, though most of the worst fighting occurred after authorities positioned large numbers of troops near protest encampments in downtown Bangkok, raising tensions.

Government officials and army leaders said much of the damage was caused by non-military-issue weapons, and said soldiers fired live rounds into the air. A government spokesman said authorities would investigate how the conflicts Saturday got out of control, and promised to maintain order.

The U.S. State Department urged both sides to show restraint. The violence spilled into the famous Khao San area of backpacker hostels and bars, and several governments issued travel advisories warning their citizens away from Bangkok.

Rally leaders vowed to stay in Bangkok until Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva calls new elections. Protesters urged Thailand's ailing 82-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej to intervene as the havoc threatened to cast a further shadow over the badly damaged tourism sector.

"There's no more negotiation. Red Shirts will never negotiate with murderers," one of the rally leaders, Jatuporn Prompan, told protesters on Sunday.

Analysts say the army—the country's strongest power broker—is being thrust against its will to the forefront of the conflict in Thailand, one of Southeast Asia's linchpin economies and an important part of the global supply chain.

After the military ousted Mr. Thaksin in a coup d'état four years ago, the army-appointed government pushed through a new constitution guaranteeing the army more powers. After that, in December 2008, the military brokered a deal for Thailand's Parliament to elect a new, army-friendly government. Military budgets climbed, while army leaders said they were washing their hands of politics for good. Mr. Thaksin, now 60 years old, fled Thailand to avoid imprisonment following his conviction on a corruption charge in 2008.

Paul Chambers, a Thailand expert at Heidelberg University in Germany, says the military is free to operate outside the control of civilian leaders while pretending it is still under the command of a democratic government. In reality, he says, the military has more power now than at any time in recent memory. As the threat of more violence looms, Mr. Chambers says, "the army's strategy will be to preserve the security of the monarchy and the armed forces' own post-2006 enhanced position of power."

The Red Shirts—including Mr. Thaksin's supporters—are pushing back. Well-organized and angered by the way they say Thailand's army and bureaucratic elites have disenfranchised them, tens of thousands have traveled from rural provinces in recent weeks and have taken over parts of Bangkok.

Their rallies have closed shopping malls and choked traffic as they press their demand for new elections and test the army's resolve to hold on to its elevated status.

Army chief Gen. Anupong Paochinda is scheduled to retire Sept. 30 in a planned annual shuffle of the army's top brass. He has indicated he wants his conservative deputy, Gen. Prayuth Chan-ucha, to take over.

Neither Gen. Anupong nor Gen. Prayuth could be reached for comment.

Both men were key players in the 2006 coup that ousted Mr. Thaksin, and analysts say Gen. Prayuth's promotion to the top job would solidify the control of a traditionalist generation of military leaders who place their loyalty with King Bhumibol and his advisers rather than elected governments. It would also ensure that the anti-Thaksin faction in the army remains in control until at least 2014, when Gen. Prayuth is scheduled to retire.

However, a civilian government needs to sign off on Gen. Prayuth's promotion, and the Red Shirts are pushing for immediate elections. Many analysts agree that a vote now would bring another pro-Thaksin government to power. A Red government might not allow the generals behind the 2006 coup to retain their power. Political analysts here say that it is this behind-the-scenes battle for control of the armed forces that underpinned Saturday's savage street fighting.

Something similar happened in 2006, the year of the coup. Mr. Thaksin, a popular telecommunications magnate, had built what analysts regarded as an unshakable support base in Thailand's impoverished but vote-rich rural areas by offering easy credit, debt moratoriums and cheap health care.

The year before, Mr. Thaksin became the only Thai prime minister ever to have been re-elected and the army's top leaders feared he was attempting to expand his influence to the military by fast-tracking his supporters up the chain of command. Their response: Stop Mr. Thaksin in his tracks by staging a coup and eradicating any trace of his fast-growing regime.

Soldiers put a soft spin on the takeover, marketing it as Thailand's "Orchid Revolution" and emphasizing that the change of power took place without a shot being fired—unlike many of the 18 coups the army has staged since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932.

Saturday's shootings leave Gen. Anupong and other top commanders with a dilemma: Whether to let Mr. Abhisit's government sink and take their chances with a new pro-Thaksin government, or to support Mr. Abhisit in an economically damaging and potentially bloodier stand-off until the military shuffle is completed.

So far, it appears the army's top command is continuing to back Mr. Abhisit, who now spends much of his time at an army camp in northern Bangkok.

Paul Quaglia, director of Bangkok-based security consultancy PSA Asia, says calling elections now would undermine everything the army has gained since the 2006 coup and that the army's allies in the palace remain opposed to an early vote that could bring an aggressively pro-Thaksin government to power. Nonetheless, "if the army cannot clear the streets without serious loss of life, toughing things out until September will no longer look like a good strategy to staying in power," says Michael Montesano, a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

Five words : This is so screwed up. Seems like those power-hungry generals got shot in their privates (both double entendre are unintended, and no offense intended to the Thai in this forum).

[mg1942]

Vatican Blames Homosexuality For Priest Pedophilia

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by mg1942

Vatican Blames Homosexuality For Priest Pedophilia

Wow...

The more they try to sweep this one under the rug, the worse the fallout is going to be when it finally explodes.

[Vexx]

Just another reason their choice of the current Pope was an exceptionally poor one. The last Pope was more progressive and seemed to be moving towards the future. This pope is a bureaucrat, a retrogressive, and is entrenched in his mental fortress.

Whatever, with its current track that religion is on its way to being mortally wounded outside of the sole areas it is increasing membership -- the extraordinarily poor and under-informed of the world.

[Lost Cause]

^My thoughts exactly! Why don't they just turn the offenders over to the authorites?

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Five words : This is so screwed up. Seems like those power-hungry generals got shot in their privates (both double entendre are unintended, and no offense intended to the Thai in this forum).

I was born in Thailand, and I take no offense. They're all sonofabitches.

Thaksin was a genuine populist, charismatic, power-hungry and utterly corrupt. And they're right that he built his power base in the provinces. Bangkok disliked him when he was in charge -- while the rural districts received government subsidies, it saw first hand his increasing monopolization of economic sectors (eliminating telecommunication rivals for one).

The military is even worse, because they aren't just corrupt, they're corrupt and willing to pull coup d'etats to get their way. Filthy corrupt old men, reactionaries at their most disgusting, I'll be glad if they all just die. I really think they'd rather have a junta under the King (of which they'll broadcast how magnificent and civilized it is under His Majesty's benevolence compared to neighboring Burma, that shithole of a military dictatorship -- sorry, Myanmar), though if he's going to be a puppet or a real power broker is a question.

The King is deeply honored and loved by everyone in Thailand -- publicly. Reinforced by official indoctrination. No politician worth a salt would dare say anything bad about the King. It's like the ancient noblesse oblige -- I know, I used to live under it. Westerners are of course free to criticize as much as they want, question Bhumibol of his supposedly pure motives, and I'm glad they do. Noblesse oblige is bad. Bad. Bad. It's a big, big lie.

Abhisit...the poor fool. He represented -- emphasis on the past tense -- in spirit the Bangkok elite: well-groomed, foreign-educated, absolutely disconnected from the rural majority that Thaksin won over. I remember years ago he was pretty much the star protegé of the Democrat Party's then-leader. I also imagine he didn't expect his much-hoped for government (a hope dashed by Thaksin's meteoric rise earlier on) to be as the military's puppet. What ugly bedfellows.

'Course, my family used to be of upper middle class position in Bangkok, so my parents had sympathies for the Democrat Party which courted the Bangkok middle class (+ it was also the "Party of the South," where they came from). But that was way back when, and I think they gave up on paying attention to the Homeland after the coup disillusioned them of politics there (they didn't like Thaksin, but I imagine they didn't like a coup d'etat either. Way to set Democracy back a whole fucking decade). As for me, I matured politically in America, so my remembrance to this nation is essentially a look into the past through a child's eye + remembering indoctrination efforts that I once believed in, and feeling disgusted and vaguely Jacobin about it.

One wonders if it wouldn't have been so much more interesting if the communists really managed to take over after World War II. Then again, Southeast Asian communists did not exactly build the happiest regimes [=extreme euphemism].

[FateAnomaly]

Originally Posted by Lost Cause

^My thoughts exactly! Why don't they just turn the offenders over to the authorites?

Perhaps because if they do that, they will hardly be any left?

[mg1942]

im betting that this incident will be a BIG news tomorrow... (at least in the cable news realm)

Spoiler for :

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slides...cbfc87f58f4b6a

[cors8]

Originally Posted by mg1942

im betting that this incident will be a BIG news tomorrow... (at least in the cable news realm)

Spoiler for :

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slides...cbfc87f58f4b6a

LOL. Well, they own us already anyway!

Just another non-story that'll get blown out of proportion and the media will eat it all up.

[TinyRedLeaf]

How Lehman hid its risks — via an 'alter ego'

New York (April 12): It was like a hidden passage on Wall Street, a secret channel that enabled billions of dollars to flow through Lehman Brothers.

In the years before its collapse, Lehman used a small company — its "alter ego", in the words of a former Lehman trader — to shift investments off its books. The firm, called Hudson Castle, played a crucial, behind-the-scenes role at Lehman, according to an internal Lehman document and interviews with former employees.

The relationship raises new questions about the extent to which Lehman obscured its financial condition before it plunged into bankruptcy.

Entities like Hudson Castle are part of a vast financial system that operates in the shadows of Wall Street, largely beyond the reach of banking regulators. These entities enable banks to exchange investments for cash to finance their operations and, at times, make their finances look stronger than they are.

Critics say that such deals helped Lehman and other banks temporarily transfer their exposure to the risky investments tied to subprime mortgages and commercial real estate.

Even now, a year and a half after Lehman’s collapse, major banks still undertake such transactions with businesses whose names, like Hudson Castle’s, are rarely mentioned outside of footnotes in financial statements, if at all.

- NEW YORK TIMES

[MeoTwister5]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Just another reason their choice of the current Pope was an exceptionally poor one. The last Pope was more progressive and seemed to be moving towards the future. This pope is a bureaucrat, a retrogressive, and is entrenched in his mental fortress.

Whatever, with its current track that religion is on its way to being mortally wounded outside of the sole areas it is increasing membership -- the extraordinarily poor and under-informed of the world.

I'll go ahead and assume that you aren't suggesting only poor people and idiots become Catholics. Despite the lot of beef I have against the way Benedict has been directing the Vatican since his election, there are those of us who do choose to become or stay Catholic despite the many rather un-Christian choices of the clergy, beyond the simple inheritance from our parents or being forced into it, believe it or not. I sure hope the we aren't judged by the way many members of the clergy act.

We're defined by our faith and actions, not by our priests.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Another month, another killer quake:

China quake kills hundreds

Xining, China (April 14): At least 300 people have died and around 8,000 injured after a magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck China's western province of Qinghai, officials say.

The powerful tremor hit remote Yushu county, 500km (310 miles) south-west of provincial capital Xining, at 7.49am (11.49pm GMT), at a shallow depth of 10km.

Chinese TV showed wrecked buildings and people scrabbling through debris.

Officials ordered rescue crews and supplies to Yushu, but the area is hundreds of kilometres from an airport. One official told journalists more than 85 per cent of buildings in Jiegu town near the epicentre had collapsed.

"The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic — injured people, with many bleeding in the head," Mr Zhuo Huaxia told Xinhua. "Many students are buried under the debris due to building collapse at a vocational school.

"I can see injured people everywhere. The biggest problem now is that we lack tents, we lack medical equipment, medicine and medical workers."

Many of the buildings in Yushu, a county with a largely Tibetan population of about 80,000, were thought to be made from wood.

In 2008, a huge quake struck neighbouring Sichuan province which left 87,000 people dead or missing.

- BBC

=======================

Korean kids face gaming curfew

Seoul (April 13): The South Korean government is introducing policies aimed at curbing the amount of time children spend playing online games.

The first involves barring online gaming access to young people of school age between 12am and 8am.

The other policy suggests slowing down people's internet connections after they have been logged on to certain games for a long period of time.

The Culture Ministry is calling on games providers to implement the plans. It is asking the companies to monitor the national identity numbers of their players, which includes the age of the individual.

Parents can also choose to be notified if their identity number is used online.

Tthere has been growing concern over the amount of time South Korean citizens spend in virtual worlds and playing online games.

A couple whose baby daughter starved while they spent up to 12 hours a day in internet cafes raising a virtual child online have made headlines around the world.

They were charged with negligent homicide and are due to be sentenced on April 16 (Friday).

- BBC

Insight: When escape seems just a mouse-click away

Seoul (May 27, 2006): Unable to pass tough university entrance exams and under intense pressure from his parents to study harder, 20-year-old Kim Myung gradually retreated to the one place where he could still feel invincible: the virtual world of electronic games.

In front of his computer screen, Kim played hours upon hours of interactive role-playing games with other anonymous online gamers.

When he slew zombies and ghouls with particular dexterity, he recalled, the flashing words "Excellent!" or "Masterstroke!" fired him up.

Kim played from 8am until well after midnight — and in the process, over four months, gained 5kg (10 pounds) while surviving largely on one meal a day of instant noodles.

"I guess I knew I was becoming addicted, but I couldn't stop myself," Kim recalled from a clinic where he was undergoing counseling. "I stopped changing my clothes. I didn't go out. And I began to see myself as the character in my games."

Extreme gamers
In South Korea, the nation that experts describe as home to the world's most extreme gamer culture, the authorities are alarmed by what many here are calling an epidemic of electronic-game addiction.

The situation has grown so acute that 10 South Koreans — mostly teenagers and people in their 20s — died in 2005 from game addiction-related causes, up from only two known deaths from 2001 to 2004, according to government officials.

Experts are seeing more cases of game addiction in many industrialised nations — particularly the United States and Japan. But sociologists and psychiatrists have identified South Korea as the epicentre of the problem.

That is in part because young people here suffer from acute stress as they face educational pressures said to far exceed those endured by their peers in other countries — and partly because South Korea is the world's most wired nation.

Nearly 70 per cent of South Koreans — compared with 45 per cent of Japanese and 33 per cent of Americans — now gain access to the Internet via the super-fast broadband connections required for the most popular online games, according to Telecompaper, an Internet research organisation in the Netherlands.

In many other nations, video game consoles such as Nintendo or Sony PlayStation rule. But South Koreans largely opt for online, interactive role-playing games. Such games have no end and allow multiple players to come together via the Internet.

Root of the problem
"Game addiction has become one of our newest societal ills," said Mr Son Yeon Gi, president of the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity, which offers government-funded counseling.

"Gaming itself is not the problem. Like anything, this is about excessive use."

...full story on The Washington Post

[mg1942]

leftist trolls to try to infiltrate Tea Party

Arizona outlaws outlaws
^{(wonder if this will catch on with other states...)}

[Jinto]

@mg1942,

You know... actually you could just merge these insignificant news into one posting.

[Nosauz]

Originally Posted by mg1942

leftist trolls to try to infiltrate Tea Party


^{(wonder if this will catch on with other states...)}

WAIT so the Tea partiers are finally going to do what they should have been doing from the start? And not just accepting everybody and anyone and allow others to use their name to promote their political views. You know this guy isn't even going to show up, but i'm glad we'll finally get some self policing from the tea party. And any claim that there aren't racists in this country is just blind, just look at the governor of virginia...

[Xion Valkyrie]

Originally Posted by Nosauz

WAIT so the Tea partiers are finally going to do what they should have been doing from the start? And not just accepting everybody and anyone and allow others to use their name to promote their political views. You know this guy isn't even going to show up, but i'm glad we'll finally get some self policing from the tea party. And any claim that there aren't racists in this country is just blind, just look at the governor of virginia...

Haha, finally trolls being put to good use.

[mg1942]

Originally Posted by Xion Valkyrie

Haha, finally trolls being put to good use.

can't wait to see their comedy posters tomorrow
btw here's '09 greatest hits

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by mg1942

can't wait to see their comedy posters tomorrow
btw here's '09 greatest hits

Hrmm. While I thought "Don't Tax Me Bro!" was a slightly funny twist on the liberal slogan, the rest of them suck.

I mean, what is so "top" about "Thank God[underlined] for Glen[sic] Beck?" Is Glenn Beck God? Is the underlined God funny? Am I just feeling liberal rage at this reactionary humor that went old the moment Eisenhower left office?

I shan't touch the utterly discredited, racist "Obama bin Laden" "joke"

[MrTerrorist]

Rutland Telecom offers villagers fast broadband
A UK village which raised £37,000 to offer 200 homes the super-fast broadband that BT could not deliver has launched its network.