The rain-forests we cut down to make Tahitian Noni juice, cocaine, and hamburgers in the ’80s are somehow coming back. [New York Times]
The Iranian government is celebrating thirty years since it co-opted public dissatisfaction with the monarchy to craft a regime equally as despotic. [BBC]
Antisemitism reaches new heights in Venezuela, thanks to convenient left-wing simplification of the Israeli-Arab conflict that is in no way antisemitic. [BBC]
Somalia may be downgraded from hell to failed state soon. FT (who, along with BBC and TheEconomist, has a bizarre colonialist fetish with Africa) reports:
Somalia’s moderate Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed won the presidency on Saturday and vowed to end conflict in the Horn of Africa nation, make peace with neighbours and rule with honesty and justice.
Legislators applauded, and Mr Ahmed smiled and raised his arms aloft, after winning the election around 4 am local time in a run-off vote during an all-night parliament session.
Analysts say Mr Ahmed’s Islamist roots and his backing from parliament give him a better chance of stabilising the country than his predecessor, a former warlord.
Hey, archaic law is better than lawlessness! But I seriously doubt anything good will come from this. Then again, this was the dude who made Mogadishu decent before Ethiopia decided a strong Somalia would be bad, and this time he came to power legally.
After being sworn in at a hotel in Djibouti on Saturday morning, the Islamist will fly to the very country that chased him from Somalia to attend an African leaders summit. He then returns to Somalia to try and put together a unity government.
May your death photon torpedo also land softly on Planet Genesis with katra safely stored for a bright new day, provided Kirk once again has the balls to ignore High Command. Maybe in your re-birth you will actually be recognized in your prime.
Senator Valentine’s half-hearted speech to us. For some reason, I’m not convinced that the state government will actually do anything, as the Senate is controlled by wingnuts, who hate anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy. Good thing I have a full-ride scholarship.
meh. Meanwhile, some nutcase wants to waste your money on a court battle that we are guaranteed to lose. THISis Ceti Alpha V!!
One of the seven states currently executing gay people is on the road to formally criminalizing gay marriage, providing them a way to introduce even more draconian measures, according to a press release by several charities and human rights NGOs:
The Bill would introduce criminal penalties for marriage ceremonies between persons of the same sex as well as for persons witnessing or helping to formalize such a marriage. This is in contravention of the Nigerian Constitution and inconsistent with Nigeria’s obligations under international and regional human rights treaties which the country has ratified.
Prohibiting gays from marrying one another, as in Utah, is quite a bit different from this. I think all Americans, regardless of their opinion on gay marriage, should condemn this action, which goes far beyond banning gay marriage and actually calls for the punishment gay couples. This could set dangerous precedents, as there are currently 90 or so countries legally prohibiting their gay citizens from coming out or being outed. With several of Nigeria’s states currently executing gays, this law could have horrible repurcusions across the third world.
The State Senate seems to be thinking about reality, rather than ideology or how much they hate gay people:
Republican leaders in the Utah Senate said Thursday they have no intention of building the state’s budget around the pending federal economic stimulus package.
“Why would we change our course based on the unknown?” asked Sen. Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse. “It would be one-time money … and you have to build budgets around long-term solutions.”
That’s probably the way we need to go, unfortunately. My proposal, to cut corporate welfare while maintaining education and medicare funding, will likely go unheeded, because oil and coal aren’t ready to for weaning just yet. They may be doing something profoundly stupid, like refusing to bond or cutting education, but at least they appear to be thinking rather than spouting whatever crap the Sutherland Institute or Eagle Forum feeds them. Then again, they are probably just hiding their idiocy. They still want to keep the food tax, so the poor people can’t eat, because… there’s actually no reason to support the food tax.
Glen Warchol has come up with the perfect argument to convice Utah conservatives to go along with Huntsman’s plans:
It’s worth noting that the Founding Fathers, who are near deities in some parts of conservative Utah, liked to knock ‘em back. The tailgater for the constitutional convention included 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of port, 8 bottles of hard cider, 12 beers and seven bowls of spiked punch large enough that “ducks could swim in them.”
For the folks in the State Senate who seem unconcerned with increasing revenue or enacting the will of the people, this may be the way to go. Remember, Kansas increased its tourism revenue with liquor reform, and nobody has ever willingly entered that state.
