White Privilege: A term created by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons. #tcot #p2 #uniteblue #teaparty #tgdn
— Patrick Dollard (@PatDollard) May 11, 2014DONETSK, Ukraine—Pro-Russia separatists in two eastern regions prepared polling stations for a referendum on Sunday intended to seal their independence from Ukraine but denounced as illegal by Kiev and the West.Keep reading.
At an "electoral commission" in downtown Donetsk, activists glued paper flags of their self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic over the Ukrainian coat of arms on ballot boxes and sealed them before sending them to polling stations.
Election officials say they have more than 1,500 voting stations across Donetsk alone, and even intend to hold the vote in the port city of Mariupol, where fighting Friday left several dead as Kiev tried to stamp its control there.
The separatists would have little chance of winning a free and fair vote, as a majority here want close ties with Russia but to remain part of Ukraine, polls show.
Although Kiev and the West say they won't recognize the referendum's result, it could allow the separatists to declare a de-facto divorce from Ukraine. That could lead to a descent into international isolation akin to the Russian-backed breakaway statelets in Moldova and Georgia. For the Donetsk region, whose heavy industries are dependent on exports, an international pariah status could cause serious economic pain. Barring Crimea-style annexation by Russia, in which Moscow publicly has expressed no interest, Donetsk People's Republic could find itself with crimped export markets and unemployment problems. Asked about this, Roman Lyagin, Donetsk People's Republic's election chief, said that "it's better to live in isolation than under occupations."
Liberals inveighing against “dark money” in politics mean money contributed anonymously to finance political advocacy. Donors’ anonymity thwarts liberals’ efforts to injure the livelihoods of identifiable conservatives by punishing them for their political participation and thereby deterring others from participating...RTWT.
This year, once again, the center of Moscow will be shut down as a military parade rumbles through Red Square and past a very serious Vladimir Putin. Ostensibly, it is to celebrate the 69th anniversary of the day when the Germans formally surrendered to the Soviets in Berlin. But the parade, now an annual affair, with its planes and its tanks and its trucks pulling intercontinental ballistic missiles through the city has become a cornerstone of Putinism, a way to bind the country with the only thing that its citizens still have in common.Keep reading.
This year, the day has become even more politicized. The orange and black ribbons that once held the medal commemorating victory in the war are now a symbol of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine and of Putinists in Russia. There will be a victory parade in freshly annexed Crimea, too. Victory in the Great Patriotic War, as it’s known in Russia, has been used to justify the annexation of Crimea and to fight opposition to Putin at home. The war has somehow become Putin’s personal possession, the victory—his personal achievement.
This year, the holiday is even harder to celebrate for those that support neither Putin nor his foreign policy, but, unlike Putin, lived through it all. It is, after all, their memories of the war that make up the history of those bloody, hungry years; they are the bright and morbid pixels in the larger, increasingly manipulated picture.
Satan! Fighting for your freedom to do evil since the Garden of Eden. Meet Satan, guest of atheists, @Harvard or not. pic.twitter.com/18h3ZUOE9q
— Lisa Graas (@CatholicLisa) May 9, 2014
Leave it to the atheists to pretend to be Satanists and claim that Catholics objecting to the mockery of Catholicism are "intolerant."
— Lisa Graas (@CatholicLisa) May 9, 2014
It takes a special kind of insanity to claim that Catholics who object to the mocking of Catholicism are "intolerant."
— Lisa Graas (@CatholicLisa) May 9, 2014
I'm intolerant of many things. Satan is definitely at the top of the list.
— Lisa Graas (@CatholicLisa) May 9, 2014
Re “Building a DREAM Center: CSULB students seek resource center for the undocumented” (May 4):Well, you would think.
It’s upsetting to read that $9 million is being given to undocumented-immigrant students attending colleges and universities in the California State University system and Cal State Long Beach.
The article mentioned how difficult it is to attend college by paying tuition and working part-time. That is everyone’s dilemma attending college. It is very expensive, and students have to work to pay for it.
Why not give the $9 million to those students who also dream of attending college and can’t afford it but are legal residents?
This is just another example of undocumented immigrants draining the system. This is not what our state tax dollars are for. These individuals are illegal residents; therefore they don’t have Social Security numbers and don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
— Betty Garcia, Lakewood
Since the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria last month, the meaning of Boko Haram—the name used by the terrorist group that seized the girls—has become more widely known. The translation from the Hausa language is usually given in English-language media as "Western Education Is Forbidden," though "Non-Muslim Teaching Is Forbidden" might be more accurate.Keep reading.
But little attention has been paid to the group's formal Arabic name: Jam'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-da'wa wal-Jihad. That roughly translates as "The Fellowship of the People of the Tradition for Preaching and Holy War." That's a lot less catchy than Boko Haram but significantly more revealing about the group and its mission. Far from being an aberration among Islamist terror groups, as some observers suggest, Boko Haram in its goals and methods is in fact all too representative.
The kidnapping of the schoolgirls throws into bold relief a central part of what the jihadists are about: the oppression of women. Boko Haram sincerely believes that girls are better off enslaved than educated. The terrorists' mission is no different from that of the Taliban assassin who shot and nearly killed 15-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai—as she rode a school bus home in 2012—because she advocated girls' education. As I know from experience, nothing is more anathema to the jihadists than equal and educated women.
How to explain this phenomenon to baffled Westerners, who these days seem more eager to smear the critics of jihadism as "Islamophobes" than to stand up for women's most basic rights? Where are the Muslim college-student organizations denouncing Boko Haram? Where is the outrage during Friday prayers? These girls' lives deserve more than a Twitter hashtag protest...
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Thursday sharply questioned Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, about the persistence of unemployment and the slow pace of the economic recovery during a hearing that highlighted the growing prominence of election-year considerations on Capitol Hill.More.
The hearing before the Senate Budget Committee flipped the standard script of congressional sessions in recent years with Ms. Yellen and her predecessor, Ben S. Bernanke. Generally, Democrats are the ones who fret about unemployment and the weak economy, while Republicans question whether the Fed will lose control of inflation or destabilize financial markets.
With the midterm elections approaching, however, Democrats are increasingly eager to claim credit for the progress of the economic recovery, while Republicans are emphasizing that the recovery remains weak and incomplete.
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, was particularly critical of the Fed’s performance, sharply questioning Ms. Yellen’s statement that the labor market was showing signs of progress.
“We’ve got fewer people working today than there were in 2007 and the population has increased by 15 million,” he said. “So how is this progress? Please tell me.”
When Ms. Yellen responded that things were getting better, but were still not good, Mr. Sessions suggested the Fed should not overstate the improvement. “From the point of view of working Americans, this is the slowest, most anemic recovery that we’ve seen, ever,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to get better at it.”
In a world where asking a date to prom has become more romantic than asking for a partner’s hand in marriage, one group of high school boys has gone the opposite direction.Wow. Even the chicks on campus dig it. But hey, never let a little teenage prom-date innovation get in the way of good old bureaucratic authoritarianism!
For years, junior and senior boys at Corona del Mar High School have selected their dates for the formal dance through an NFL-style “Prom Draft.” The school’s principal is now condemning the tradition, saying it has the potential to objectify or judge those involved.
Though the draft is not affiliated with the school and secret for the most part, some of the draft results were broadcast on Twitter, with pictures of sport-coated teens making their selections. One tweet posted by the senior class Twitter account joked the day before Thursday’s draft that “Many drafters on the prowl tomorrow for #freeagents so dress nice ladies.”
A rule book sent out in a tweet notes that “sophomores can be drafted,” and some pictures show girls’ names printed on the back of jerseys. The Twitter account has since been deactivated, but several students continued to chatter about it on Twitter in the days following the draft.
Sophomore Jessie Harris was one of the girls included in the draft and said the negative coverage it generated on Tuesday was unnecessary.
“I am part of the draft and am friends with many girls in the draft and yes, in some instances girls can be picked by appearance,” she wrote to the Register. “It is all just a fun way to decide who you will be going to prom with. It is not meant to harm those who are picked and I do not believe that it does. It is not, was never, and will never ever be used to objectify the girls at our school.”
At neighboring Estancia High School, also in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, a club dedicated to discussing women’s rights issues released a statement saying the draft was “insulting.”Remember, this is Newport-Mesa Unified School District, afflicted by de facto segregation, so it's about inequality and the white hegemonic patriarchy!
“Prom should be about having a fun time with your peers and celebrating the end of a successful academic year,” wrote senior Emily Flores, co-president of the Feminists United club at Estancia. “These boys must be very confused about the time we live in if they think that being asked to prom is such a high honor.”
Strains between China and its neighbors burst to the surface in two parts of the South China Sea, taking the high-stakes struggle for control over the waters to new levels of friction.Well, if Japan gets involved I wouldn't expect the Obama administration to lift a finger. They haven't been too forthcoming in the Ukraine situation, that's for sure.
Off Vietnam, dozens of Chinese military and civilian ships clashed with the Vietnamese coast guard, with Vietnamese officials complaining its vessels were repeatedly rammed. On the same day, Philippine police apprehended Chinese fishing vessels loaded with hundreds of sea turtles in disputed waters.
About 80 Chinese vessels moved into an area near the disputed Paracel Islands, where Hanoi has sought to prevent China from deploying a massive oil rig, said Rear Adm. Ngo Ngoc Thu, vice commander of the Vietnamese coast guard. He said the flotilla included seven military ships and that it was supported by aircraft.
He said the situation, which started brewing over the weekend, was "very tense" and said six Vietnamese officers had been injured in the standoff.
The confrontation—by far the most serious in recent years between the two neighbors—marked a significant escalation in Beijing's willingness to press its natural-resource claims, analysts said.
Theresa Fallon, a senior associate at the European Institute for Asian Studies, a Brussels-based think tank, said China's move represented the regional energy sector's "worst nightmare" and was bound to provoke Vietnam's anger.
"This is a huge rig—it's the size of a couple of football fields," Ms. Fallon said.
A senior administration official said the White House views the latest escalation as part of a pattern of behavior as China continues to try to advance its territorial claims. "We're obviously very concerned about it," the official said. "We have conveyed our concerns to the Chinese."
The standoff is "an unprecedented situation," said Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. The sheer number of Chinese vessels that appeared to be involved was a clear indication of China's "resolve to make sure this rig can operate in these waters."
China's state councilor described the move as part of Chinese business's normal operations and asked Vietnam to stop interfering, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said at a daily briefing.
China's Defense Ministry didn't respond to a request to comment.
