1
POPSNo Thanksgiving for investors: Dubai's debt woes rattle stocks "But I did not anticipate that Dubai's inability to repay its debts would be the straw that would break the back of commercial real estate." "How so? The New York Times reports that a subsidiary of Dubai World -- the corporate arm of a country that will pay Rihanna $500,000 to sing at a New Years Eve party at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi -- has asked its creditors for a break."
3
POPS"Teabagger" The term Teabagger is not very PC. Then again it would appear that most people have become less concerned with civility, and more concerned with the egocentric need to discover new terms with which to degrade and dehumanize one another. Sad that they have politicized what was once just common civility, even referring to it as POLITICAL correctness, to a point that now there is an anti-civility movement growing by adults who prefer to maintain the ignorant childishness of name-calling and incivility by invoking that it is merely exercising free speech. Of course free speech entitles us to say whatever we want, even when it is hateful, but treating others, even those with whom you disagree, with human dignity does not take away free speech, nor should this somehow be equated with communism or naziism unless one also would liken the Bible to communist doctrine. Matthew 7:12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you... one of many verses. Be civil people.
4
POPSSick Around the World One secret to Japan's success? By law, everyone must buy health insurance -- either through an employer or a community plan -- and, unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit. Reid's journey then takes him to Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system. For its 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health, homeopathy and spa treatment. Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, describes it as "a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy." As they do in Japan, medical providers must charge standard prices. This keeps costs down, but it also means physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts.
7
POPSModern Day "Caveman" Lives Without $$ Daniel Suelo lives in a cave. Unlike the average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn't worried about the economic crisis. That's because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit it, like a bad drug habit. His dwelling, hidden high in a canyon lined with waterfalls, is an hour by foot from the desert town of Moab, Utah, where people who know him are of two minds: He's either a latter-day prophet or an irredeemable hobo. Suelo's blog, which he maintains free at the Moab Public Library, suggests that he's both. "When I lived with money, I was always lacking," he writes. "Money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present.
3
POPSDetroit Pistons Org. Gives Help To Military Families "There is a lot of support for families where someone is deployed, but service people at home don't get the same help," Schroeder said. "We are here to help them." The food distribution was in conjunction with the Pistons Military Salute to be held at 7:30 tonight during the game against the Charlotte Bobcats at the Palace of Auburn Hills. The Pistons are to salute those who have served or are serving in all branches of the U.S. military. Current members or veterans are to receive free tickets while their families can go to the game for $11 a person. In March, the Pistons raised more than $450,000 during the 17-hour 2009 Pistons Care Marathon in support of Feed The Children. Since the telethon, the organization has distributed 25,000 aid boxes throughout the state, including Lansing, Pontiac, Benton Harbor and Kalamazoo.
1
POPSSwiss Decide On Minarets The two largest Jewish groups said the referendum infringed religious freedom, a concept enshrined in the Swiss constitution. Part of the Swiss People's Party's argument against minarets is that they are a symbol of political power - more than they are about religion.
4
POPSWhose God is Allah? But Christian leaders - representing a little under 10% of the population - say Malays have been using the word Allah to refer generally to God for hundreds of years. Christians are now fighting back. An Evangelical church launched a legal action in an attempt to win the right to refer to God as Allah in children's books. The Roman Catholic Church has also gone to court after its newspaper in Malaysia was threatened with the loss of its licence if it continued to use the word. Christians are turning the issue into one about how minorities are treated in Malaysia. The Christian Federation of Malaysia says the country's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and it's asking whether that can still be meaningful if Christians are denied Bibles which use their own language. So, Allah and God are two different people/concepts, and what about יַהְוֶה ?
9
POPSThe Story of the Red Poppy So the Americans arranged for artificial poppies to be made by women in war-ravaged northern France. The funds raised from selling the poppies were for children who had suffered because of the war. In Britain, the weary soldiers came back from the grimness of war to find that life was hard at home too, though in a different way. Many of the men were wounded or disabled or suffering the effects of gas and shell-shock. Many were physically or mentally unable to work; many others found that there were no jobs anyway. The provision made for them by the state was less than adequate. They certainly didn't get the heroes' homecoming that they had been led to expect. So ex-servicemen's societies united in 1921 to form the British Legion. Its purpose was to provide support to ex-servicemen, especially the disabled, and their families, and it was to become one of the most successful British charities ever.
7
POPSThe Story of the White poppy By the end of the war the guildswomen had learned first hand the extent to which war could profoundly affect and harm their lives. Many of them were the wives, mothers and sisters of men who had been killed. They embarked on an active campaign for peace. By 1933 they were searching for a symbol which could be worn by guildswomen who wanted to show publicly that they were against war and for nonviolence. Someone came up with the idea of a white poppy. Workers from the Co-operative Wholesale Society began making the poppies almost at once. Money from selling them, after the production costs had been paid for, was sent to help war-resisters and conscientious objectors in Europe. The wearing of a white poppy on Armistice Day became a focus for the peace movement, and the Peace Pledge Union took it up in 1936 as 'a definite pledge to peace that war must not happen again'.
1
POPSShare The Sacrifice Act of 2010 “Regardless of whether one favors the war or not, if it is to be fought, it ought to be paid for,” the lawmakers, all prominent Democratic allies of Obama, said in a joint statement on the “Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010.” The proposal, a heavily symbolic measure seen as having next to no chance of becoming law, would impose a war surtax on income beginning in 2011 — though it would allow the president to delay implementation by one year upon deciding the US economy is too weak to sustain such a tax shift. “The only people who've paid any price for our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan are our military families,” the lawmakers said. “We believe that if this war is to be fought, it's only fair that everyone share the burden.”
15
POPS"New" Afghanistan Legalized Rape, Starvation of Women Okay "There was a review process - Karzai came under huge pressure from all over the world to amend this law, but many of the most oppressive laws remain," Rachel Reid, the Human Rights Watch representative in Kabul, told the BBC. "What matters more to Karzai is the support of fundamentalists and hardliners here in Afghanistan whose support he thinks he needs in the elections." Women's groups say its new wording still violates the principle of equality that is enshrined in their constitution. It allows a man to withhold food from his wife if she refuses his sexual demands; a woman must get her husband's permission to work; and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children.
1
POPSJustice and Guantanamo Bay
Two of the three detainees convicted of war crimes have served their sentences and today they are free men back in their home countries. But the more than 200 that remain inside the detention center have never been convicted, or in most cases even faced charges. The day after his inauguration, Mr. Obama ordered an evaluation of all the detainees to determine who should face criminal prosecution. Administration officials estimate that roughly a quarter of the remaining detainees will be recommended for trial in criminal courts. In a preliminary report submitted to Mr. Obama in July, the Detention Policy Task Force recommended the approval of evaluation criteria developed by the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. The task force stated its preference for trials in the federal courts, but added the decision would be based in part on "evidentiary issues" and "the extent to which the forum would permit a full presentation of the accused's wrongful conduct."
1
POPSResignations from the Guantanamo military commission Wolf, Major Robert Preston, and Captain John Carr were among the military lawyers assigned to prosecute the suspected terrorists held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. These three later requested reassignments because they had concerns that the proceeding were rigged to ensure no acquittals. On August 1, 2005, the Australian newspaper, "The Age", published an article based on the leaked memos from Preston and Carr. On August 3, 2005 "The Age" published another article that said Wolf had shared the concerns of the other two officers, and had also requested a transfer. Although Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, the Legal Advisor to the Office of Military Commissions, tried to dismiss the memos as based on simple misunderstandings, an official investigation was conducted. The Chief Prosecutor to whom the memos were addressed, Colonel Fred Borch, subsequently resigned from the military.
1
POPSCase Review: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Stevens addressed the issue of whether military commissions can try conspiracy charges. He argued that military commissions are not courts of general jurisdiction, which are able to try any crime; that the court has traditionally held that offenses against the law of war are triable by military commission only when they are clearly defined as war crimes by statute or strong common law precedent (cf. Quirin). Finally, he found that there was no support in statute or court precedent for law-of-war military commissions trying charges of "conspiracy," either in the Geneva Conventions, in the earlier Hague Conventions or at the Nuremberg Trials. On June 5, 2007, Hamdan and Canadian youth Omar Khadr, had all charges against them dismissed.
1
POPSEx parte Milligan It observed further that during the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, citizens may be only held without charges, not tried, and certainly not executed by military tribunals. After all, the writ of habeas corpus is not the right itself but merely the ability to issue orders demanding the right's enforcement. It is important to note the political environment of the decision. Post-war, under a Republican Congress, the Court was reluctant to hand down any decision that questioned the legitimacy of military courts. The President's ability to suspend habeas corpus independently of Congress, a central issue, was not addressed probably because it was moot with respect to the case at hand. Though President Lincoln suspended the writ nationwide on September 24, 1862, Congress ratified almost six months later, on March 3, 1863. Milligan was detained in 1864, well after Congress formally suspended the writ. That notwithstanding, military jurisdiction had been limited.
2
POPSCongressman Watt Guts Bill to Audit the Fed The thirteen Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee mentioned by Dr. Paul are: Rep. John Adler, NJ (202) 225-4765 Rep. Travis Childers, MS (202) 225-4306 Rep. Steve Driehaus, OH (202) 225-2216 Rep. Alan Grayson, FL (202) 225-2176 Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, TX (202) 225-2531 Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, FL Toll Free: 1-877-956-7627 Rep. Dan Maffei, NY (202) 225-3701 Rep. Brad Miller, NC (202) 225-3032 Rep. Walt Minnick, ID (202) 225-6611 Rep. Ed Perlmutter, CO (202)-225-2645 Rep. David Scott, GA (202) 225-2939 Rep. Brad Sherman, CA (202) 225-5911 Rep. Jackie Speier, CA (202) 225-3531 And last, but certainly not least, Rep. Mel Watt. DC: Tel. (202) 225-1510, Fax (202) 225-1512 Charlotte, NC: Tel. (704) 344-9950, Fax (704) 344-9971 Greensboro, NC: Tel. (336) 275-9950, Fax (336) 379-9951
3
POPSBullied To Death "Rosie leapt to her death from the kitchen window of Kemi's flat to escape from a prolonged period of physical and verbal abuse," said Roger Smart QC. "Immediately before Rosie fell, she was clearly in fear of being hurt physically. "This fear caused her to leap out of the window, as a result of which she met her death." Can was said by witnesses to have shouted insults at Miss Boxall as she lay dying. The girls had previously beaten her up during at least two incidents on 17 May last year while she did nothing to defend herself, the court heard.
7
POPSLonely Planet I'm in love with the planet I'm standing on I can't stop. I can't stop thinking of All the people I've ever loved All the people I have lost All the people I'll never know All the feelings I've never shown The world's too big and life's too short The world's too big and life's too short The world's too big and life's too short To be alone ... to be alone "If you can't change the world change yourself And if you can't change yourself ... Then change the world"
6
POPSThe The "The Beat(en) Generation" And our youth, oh youth, are being seduced By the greedy hands of politics and half truths The beaten generation, the beaten generation Reared on a diet of prejudice and misinformation The beaten generation, the beaten generation Open your eyes, open your imagination We're being sedated by the gasoline fumes And hypnotised by the satellites Into believing what is good and what is right You may be worshipping the temples of mammon Or lost in the prisons of religion But can you still walk back to happiness When you've nowhere left to run? If they send in the special police To deliver us from evil and keep us from peace Then won't the words sit ill upon their tongues When they tell us justice is being done That freedom lives in the barrels of a warm gun? The beaten generation, the beaten generation Reared on a diet of prejudice and misinformation The beaten generation, the beaten generation Open your eyes, open your imagination
10
POPSThe "Right" Side of Gay Would you defend the "morality" of Paris, Kim, or Carrie? Seriously. They can go about doing whatever they want, as long as it's legal, but I could never imagine rallying to defend them. But that's just me. Though I do have to wonder why people like Hannity and other so-called conservatives are so bent on defending Prejean, I haven't seen them defend Kim or Paris like this, quite the opposite for some. Which is why I ask, is it because she was on the "right side of gay"?
7
Clips
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update