All Purpose Politics and News Thread

[JackCollins]

Good! Even been on public transit in San Fran?

[Darth Penguin]

Mark Carney named new Bank of England governor

Mark Carney has been named as the new governor of the Bank of England by Chancellor George Osborne.
Mr Carney, the governor of the Canadian central bank, will serve for five years and will hold new regulatory powers over banks.
He was a surprise choice for the head of the UK's central bank and had previously ruled himself out.
The post is seen as one of the most important positions in the stewardship of the UK economy.
Current governor Sir Mervyn King steps down from the post next June.

[Darth Penguin]

Hugh Heffner again set to marry Crystal Harris

Hugh Hefner and his so-called "Number One Girl," Crystal Harris, have announced that they're getting hitched again after she called off a wedding last summer just five days prior. She may be his "Number One Girl," but does that make the 29-year-old blonde bombshell the sexiest of Hef's extensive list of former lovers?

Those crazy kids....

[xox2010]

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...s-assads-order

The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said.
Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.

[Darth Penguin]

Sarin was also used in a series of attacks on the Toyko subway system in 1995.

On Monday March 20, 1995, five members of Aum Shinrikyo launched a chemical attack on the Tokyo Metro, one of the world's busiest commuter transport systems, at the peak of the morning rush hour. The chemical agent used, liquid sarin, was contained in plastic bags which each team then wrapped in newspaper. Each perpetrator carried two packets of sarin totaling approximately 900 millilitres of sarin, except Yasuo Hayashi, who carried three bags. Aum originally planned to spread the sarin as an aerosol but did not follow through with it. A single drop of sarin the size of a pinhead can kill an adult.
Carrying their packets of sarin and umbrellas with sharpened tips, the perpetrators boarded their appointed trains. At prearranged stations, the sarin packets were dropped and punctured several times with the sharpened tip of the umbrellas. The men then got off the train and exited the station to meet his accomplice with a car. By leaving the punctured packets on the floor, the sarin was allowed to leak out into the train car and stations. This sarin affected passengers, subway workers, and those who came into contact with them. Sarin is the most volatile of the nerve agents, which means that it can quickly and easily evaporate from a liquid into a vapor and spread into the environment. People can be exposed to the vapor even if they do not come in contact with the liquid form of sarin. Because it evaporates so quickly, sarin presents an immediate but short-lived threat.

[DaveP]

Sarin was also used in a series of attacks on the Toyko subway system in 1995.

A more relevant and comparable use of sarin gas by a nation state against it's own citizens:

Halabja poison gas attack

The five-hour attack began early in the evening of March 16, 1988, following a series of indiscriminate conventional (rocket and napalm) attacks, when Iraqi MiG and Mirage aircraft began dropping chemical bombs on Halabja's residential areas, far from the besieged Iraqi army base on the outskirts of the town. According to regional Kurdish rebel commanders, Iraqi aircraft conducted up to 14 bombings in sorties of seven to eight planes each; helicopters coordinating the operation were also seen. Eyewitnesses told of clouds of smoke billowing upward "white, black and then yellow"', rising as a column about 150 feet (46 m) in the air.[1]

Survivors said the gas at first smelled of sweet apples;[10] they said people died in a number of ways, suggesting a combination of toxic chemicals (some of the victims "just dropped dead" while others "died of laughing"; while still others took a few minutes to die, first "burning and blistering" or coughing up green vomit).[11] It is believed that Iraqi forces used multiple chemical agents during the attack, including mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX;[3] some sources have also pointed to the blood agent hydrogen cyanide (most of the wounded taken to hospitals in the Iranian capital Tehran were suffering from mustard gas exposure).[1]

The attack killed between 3,200 and 5,000 people, and injured around 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians;[1][2] thousands more died of complications, diseases, and birth defects in the years after the attack.[3] The incident, which has been officially defined as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people in Iraq,[4] was and still remains the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history.[5]

[Patty Smyth]

Known as the Montreal Massacre. 23 years ago on a freezing December night a lone gunman kills 14 women because they were studying to be engineers.

Hate crimes againt woman never seem to diminish.


http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadians-remember-victims-of-montreal-massacre-1.1068553

CTVNews.ca Staff
Published Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012 10:42AM EST
Last Updated Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012 1:08PM EST
Canadians will mark the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on Thursday, which is the 23rd anniversary of the deadly shooting at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique that took the lives of 14 women.
s have been lowered to half-staff at the school and -- in what has become an annual tradition -- 14 white roses will be laid in front of a plaque honouring the dead. s are also flying at half-staff in Ottawa.
The Quebec Women’s Federation will host a ceremony at noon in front of the Montreal courthouse. In Toronto, a ceremony will be held at the Women’s College Hospital, with the province’s health minister Deb Matthews scheduled to attend.
Photos




A man gathers his thoughts in front of the commemorative plaque at the University of Montreal on the 23rd anniversary of the Polytechnique massacre, where 14 women students were killed by a lone gunman in 1989, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012, in Montreal. (THE CANADIAN PRESS / Paul Chiasson)

Related Stories

• MPs mark Montreal massacre anniversary

The National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women was established in 1991, two years after the fatal shooting.
In addition to honouring the victims who were killed, the day is meant to be a day for Canadians to reflect on violence against women and discuss ways to fight it.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canadians must stand united in their efforts to fight violence against women and girls.
“Around the world, violence against women and girls is a sad daily reality. Our government strongly believes in protecting the most vulnerable in society and continues to take a stand in combatting violence against women, at home and abroad, to help put an end to tragedies such as that of the Montreal Massacre,” he said in a statement.
On Dec. 6, 1989, Marc Lepine entered the Montreal-based engineering school, separated the men from the women and then shot and killed 14 female students. He also injured nine other women and four men, before turning the gun on himself. Lepine left a note blaming feminists for ruining his life.
The 14 women who were killed were: Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault,Annie Turcotte and Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.
Several memorials for the victims have been built in cities across Canada. Memorials honouring the victims have been erected in Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver and Hamilton.
A large plaque bearing the names of the victims has also been mounted outside the engineering school itself.



Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canadia...#ixzz2EIm9MP8P

[Patty Smyth]

sigh, when is the next election? he is taking a page out of the Bush/Cheney book of politics on this one



http://www.ottawacitizen.com/enterta...027/story.html

OTTAWA — The vast majority of lakes that retain federal protection under the government’s proposed changes to waterway rules lap up against ridings held by Conservative MPs.
While revisions to the Navigable Waters Protection Act has stripped federal oversight from thousands of Canadian waterways, 90 per cent of the lakes that will still be designated as protected are in Tory territory, a Citizen analysis shows.
By contrast, only 20 per cent of the designated lakes, itemized in the second omnibus budget bill, are in ridings held by New Democrats. Only six per cent splash on Liberal shores.
The list of lakes includes those surrounded by wealthy cottagers north of Toronto, in the Muskoka district of the riding held by Treasury Board President Tony Clement.
The Conservatives’ budget bill introduced earlier this month overhauls the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which currently requires federal approval for development on the thousands of bodies of water across the country that are big enough to float a canoe.
Under the new legislation, this protection will be limited to only 97 lakes and 62 creeks, rivers and canals, as well as Canada’s three oceans.
The Conservatives contend that the changes have no relation to environmental protection and are intended only to slice through the bureaucratic red tape that delays even small, inconsequential projects, such as modifications to bridges or wharves.
Critics claim the rewritten law, in concert with revisions of other regulations, further strips away environmental protection once provided by the mandatory federal review.
But the small number of lakes itemized will still enjoy scrutiny from federal law, and most of these — 87 of 97 — are within or next to ridings won by Conservatives in 2011.
In Clement’s riding of Parry Sound–Muskoka, for example, a dozen lakes retain the protection that government has lifted from thousands of other bodies of water across the country.
Among them is Lake Rosseau, where Hollywood celebrities, business moguls and NHL stars perch on its banks.
Empty lots on Lake Rosseau and its equally affluent neighbours, Lake Muskoka and Joseph Lake, start around $1 million. “Cottages” on their winding shores — typically luxury homes — routinely sell for between $2.5 million and $5 million.
Actress Goldie Hawn has a place there. So does former Detroit Red Wing Steve Yzerman and the family of late cable baron Ted Rogers.
Actor Tom Hanks, director Steven Spielberg and many Toronto Maple Leafs players are regular visitors to three lakes, according to the New York Times.
As Conservative MPs tend to hold a greater share of rural seats, it’s natural that their ridings will contain more designated lakes than those represented by New Democrats or Liberals, whose seats are more often urban or suburban and less often near water.
But the specific designation of certain lakes in cottage country under the government’s omnibus budget implementation bill will ensure Clement doesn’t face angry Muskoka cottagers.
Sixty-eight protected lakes are in Ontario and 15 are in B.C. Only four of the designated 97 lakes have shoreline in Quebec, slighting ridings held by the NDP, with a majority of its caucus from Quebec.

Transport Canada says it chose the designated waterways by looking at Statistics Canada’s freight movement data and other sources to determine which were the busiest.
To qualify, protected bodies of water must be “accessible by ports and marinas in proximity to heavily populated areas,” and support “heavy commercial and/or recreational navigation activity,” the department says.
But the department also said it did a further “qualitative analysis” that considered the historical importance of each waterway, its proximity to heavily-populated areas and other factors.
The department did not say who made the final determination or why so few lakes in Quebec cottage country were included.
The number of lakes abutting NDP or Liberal ridings would be even lower were it not for the inclusion of the massive Great Lakes on the protected list. Lake Ontario alone borders 22 electoral districts, including six urban seats in Toronto and Hamilton held by the NDP.
Many of Ontario’s protected lakes are clustered in Clement’s riding and the adjacent Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes–Brock, represented by Conservative MP Barry Devolin. Between them, their ridings contain 29 protected lakes.
Another 27 designated lakes are split between the Eastern Ontario ridings of Leeds–Grenville, held by Conservative Gord Brown, and Lanark–Frontenac–Lennox and Addington, represented by Conservative Scott Reid.
In British Columbia, most of the designated lakes are in the interior, in the Okanagan valley or the Kootenays.
The Citizen used mapping software called ArcGIS to determine which federal electoral district the shoreline of each lake named in the budget bill overlaps. This data was combined with election results from 2011 to calculate breakdowns by MPs’ parties.
[email protected]">[email protected]

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

[Darth Penguin]

Known as the Montreal Massacre. 23 years ago on a freezing December night a lone gunman kills 14 women because they were studying to be engineers.

Hate crimes againt woman never seem to diminish.

They certainly don't...At least my children should be growing up in a country where extremists are few and far between..

[Darth Penguin]

Nelson Mandela "has stopped talking"

South African leaders issued assurances about the health of former president Nelson Mandela on Sunday night after the 94 year-old was airlifted to hospital having reportedly stopped speaking amid a deterioration in his condition.

The Sunday Times, a South African newspaper, quoted an unnamed person close to the Mandela family as saying: "He has not been talking ... he is not looking good. It's clear that something is troubling him."

Mr Mandela, the country's first black president, spent a second day at the Pretoria hospital where he is said to be undergoing tests. On Saturday he was flown from his rural home in the Eastern Cape to the capital Pretoria to receive medical attention.

[Patty Smyth]

This is pretty sad , but he has had quite the life.

[vesper]

Shocking News: Politicians Still Suck!!

[Darth Penguin]

Justin Bieber kidnap plot gang wanted $2,500 per testicle

Obsessed killer Dana Martin allegedly put a $2,500 bounty on each of Justin Bieber’s testicles as he outlined a plot to kidnap, castrate and strangle the teen pin-up.
Jailed Martin — who sports a Bieber tattoo on his leg — is accused of arranging for two other men to abduct and murder the singer, his bodyguard and two more unrelated victims.
According to court papers, he recruited Mark Staake to execute his plan after becoming convinced Bieber had snubbed his efforts to contact him. Staake’s nephew Tanner Ruane was later drafted in on the plot.
Having declared the bounty — worth £1,550 — on the 18-year-old’s private parts, Martin then ordered his accomplices to strangle the Baby singer with a paisley tie, it is claimed.
The gang were allegedly poised to strike as Bieber played sold-out concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden on November 28 and 29.
But the star was spared after Martin told jail wardens about the plot.

[vesper]

No way that results in criminal conviction. That man is seriously crazy.

[DaveP]

No way that results in criminal conviction. That man is seriously crazy.

Yeah, as if Bieber has testicles...