Eideard

Inuit choirs gathered around the port of Greenland’s capital sang traditional songs Sunday to welcome a new era of self rule after 300 years under Danish authority.

The prospect of global warming opening up access to Greenland’s potentially rich oil and mineral wealth put an international spotlight on the ceremonies which saw thousands of the island’s 57,000 citizens pack the port of Nuuk for the day.

Denmark’s Queen Margrethe and her husband, Prince Henrik, were strongly applauded as they walked in Inuit traditional costume to a church that overlooks the port for a service of commemoration…

Greenland’s Prime Minister Kuupik Kleist said in a speech: “This morning we awoke with new hope in our heart…”

The new status took effect as Greenland celebrated its national day, six months after 75 percent of voters approved a referendum demanding more power for the local government and control of the island’s vast natural resources — gas, gold, diamonds and oil…

The social democratic Siumut party was ousted from power after 30 years amid allegations of misuse of public funds and corruption.

Spurred on by deepening social and economic problems, voters rebelled against Siumut, putting the extreme-left Inuit Ataqatigiit (Community of the People) party into power with some 44 percent of votes.

Inuit Ataqatigiit, which wants complete independence from Denmark, is led by 51-year-old intellectual Kleist who has vowed to improve public services.

I probably have too much experience with this sort of struggle. Even through a jaundiced eye I can see much been achieved through the ballot box instead of bullets.

I presume Denmark will help – and hang onto – a big chunk of the prospective mineral wealth of Greenland. That helps. In Copenhagen, anyway.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Married same-sex couples will be counted as such in 2010, Census Bureau officials said, reversing a decision of the Bush administration.

Steve Jost, a spokesman for the Census Bureau, said same-sex couples would be counted, “and they ought to report the way they see themselves,” adding, “In the normal process of reports coming out after the census of 2010, I think the country will have a good data set on which to discuss this phenomenon that is evolving in this country.”

Same-sex couples could not be married in the United States during the last decennial count. But last year, after two states had approved same-sex marriages, the bureau said those legal marriages would go uncounted because the federal Defense of Marriage Act prevented the government from recognizing them…

The White House announced Friday that its interpretation of the act did not prohibit gathering the information.

First, the Obama government and our heroic Democrat-majority Congress should dump the Defense of Marriage Act (sic) for what it is. Bigoted, reactionary legislation passed by opportunist politicians to cater to the most backwards elements in American society.

Yes, the same holds true for the environment and alternative energy, inclusive rights for workers, actively working for peace everywhere we stick our noses – especially the Middle East. I’m not a single issue kind of dissident. Civil liberties and civil rights, peace and prosperity are what we’re always promised. I just would like to see the folks who say they’re leading the political side of these struggles – prove it on a daily basis.

For patients with prostate cancer, it is a common surgical procedure: a doctor implants dozens of radioactive seeds to attack the disease. But when Dr. Gary D. Kao treated one patient at the veterans’ hospital in Philadelphia, his aim was more than a little off.

Most of the seeds, 40 in all, landed in the patient’s healthy bladder, not the prostate. It was a serious mistake, and under federal rules, regulators investigated.

But Dr. Kao, with their consent, made his mistake all but disappear. He simply rewrote his surgical plan to match the number of seeds in the prostate, investigators said.

The revision may have made Dr. Kao look better, but it did nothing for the patient, who had to undergo a second implant. It failed, too, resulting in an unintended dose to the rectum. Regulators knew nothing of this second mistake because no one reported it.

Two years later, in 2005, Dr. Kao rewrote another surgical plan after putting half the seeds in the wrong organ. Once again, regulators did not object.

Had the government responded more aggressively, it might have uncovered a rogue cancer unit at the hospital, one that operated with virtually no outside scrutiny and botched 92 of 116 cancer treatments over a span of more than six years — and then kept quiet about it, according to interviews with investigators, government officials and public records.

The team continued implants for a year even though the equipment that measured whether patients received the proper radiation dose was broken. The radiation safety committee at the Veterans Affairs hospital knew of this problem but took no action, records show.

There was a time when VA hospitals were among the best in the nation. I had friends and family who only survived their wartime injuries because of the dedicated care and concern of VA hospitals and staff.

Crap treatment for our vets – regardless of history’s judgement of the politics of American wars in the last half-century – is unforgivable. Please, someone nudge the chickenhawks in Congress into getting off their rusty dusties and doing something about preventing this meanness.

People on the government’s terrorist watch list tried to buy guns nearly 1,000 times in the last five years, and federal authorities cleared the purchases 9 times out of 10 because they had no legal way to stop them, according to a new government report.

In one case, a person on the list was able to buy more than 50 pounds of explosives.

The new statistics, compiled in a report from the Government Accountability Office that is scheduled for public release next week, draw attention to an odd divergence in federal law: people placed on the government’s terrorist watch list can be stopped from getting on a plane or getting a visa, but they cannot be stopped from buying a gun.

Gun purchases must be approved unless federal officials can find some other disqualification of the would-be buyer, like being a felon, an illegal immigrant or a drug addict.

“This is a glaring omission, and it’s a security issue,” Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who requested the study, said in an interview.

Mr. Lautenberg plans to introduce legislation on Monday that would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales to people on terror watch lists.

Good luck, of course. The NRA and the nutball Right in this land of political Oz will battle tooth and claw to protect everyone’s heaven-ordained right to kill and maim their fellows. As long as it’s done with firearms.

So they believe.

I probably could post a photo like this every Saturday – from the morning’s grocery shopping. Santa Fe – like most northern New Mexico towns and villages – ain’t very strong on skills like spelling.

You can see why I took the snap of this “sale” sign. I didn’t even notice till I was home and uploading the shot to my desktop that the “special” price was a reduction of exactly $0.00.

Lucky us!

These Brooklyn lovebirds are head over heels.

Noah Fulmore and Erin Finnegan Saturday became the first people on the planet to tie the knot while weightless.

The couple took off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral with a small group of friends and photographers. They were in an aircraft owned by the Zero Gravity Corp. – the only federally approved provider of commercial weightless flights.

Space tourist and adventurer Richard Garriott, the son of an astronaut, officiated at the ceremony, and the couple exchanged vows, smooched as husband and wife and tossed the bouquet to the bridesmaids while literally walking on air.

Good luck. They may not have their feet planted firmly on the ground; but, I think their hearts are in the right place.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Ten years ago, I was sent from Britain by a global Islamist group to recruit in Pakistan. Stepping off the plane in Lahore, I slowly breathed in the scene around me. With minarets and azans almost like background props and mood music, the Muslims I saw in every direction whetted my appetite for revolution. We were going to radicalise the country and foment a military coup against the democratically elected “client” ruler, Nawaz Sharif. I was 21 years old. I was part of a vanguard to set up a Pakistani branch of Hizb ut Tahrir (HT), so that their future caliphate could go nuclear. Nothing was going to get in my way. Nothing did.

Ten years on (during which I spent five years as a prisoner of conscience in Egypt), I recently returned. I had left HT and recanted Islamism. I was back, determined to reverse some of the Islamist fever I had helped instil…I was older, wiser and smarter. This time, the revolution would be against Islamist hegemony.

I was on a four-week, nationwide university tour to speak against Islamism and to urge students towards pluralistic, democratic values. Contrary to western mythology, Islamist radicals are found among the educated, the elite and the socially mobile. Yes, a minority of Pakistani madrasas provide an ample supply of jihadists, but the ideologues are smart and modern…The poor are simply used as jihadist cannon fodder.

Thus it was that we began in Karachi and worked our way around the country. We ventured deep into the deserts of interior Sindh and then across into the turbulent outback of Quetta, Balochistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are said to be headquartered. From there, we crossed into the Punjab, ascended into Kashmir and then finally up to Islamabad. In our flak jackets, with a security detail in tow, we addressed thousands of students…

Pakistan and its problems are not monolithic and are not all related to Islamism. Corruption, ethnic and economic factors and a lack of leadership all play out differently in each province. I found the people of Sindh to be hugely sympathetic to our message. Conversely, the people of Mirpur, in “free” Kashmir, from where more than 90% of British Pakistanis come, and where sterling is a currency of choice, were hostile to the west. It was in Punjab where I found most of the denial culture. The west was to blame for everything, including sending me as an agent to set up HT in Pakistan and then as an agent trying to push back HT. You see, the trouble with conspiracy theories is that they were invented by the infidel west to stop Muslims thinking.

Interesting article. Like any turncoat making a living from his liberation I have to question the function of opportunism within his original convictions. I have to question the life and breadth of his conversion.

Read it. It will increase your knowledge of this land in turmoil.

Google last month reserved 1 million phone numbers with Level 3, signaling that it may finally be ready to roll out its long-anticipated Google Voice service.

The free service, announced in March, lets users unify their phone numbers, allowing them to have a single number through Google Voice that rings a call through to all their phones.

Sources could not say when the 1 million numbers may be assigned. Level 3 has been supplying Google with phone numbers since the introduction of Google Voice, so the 1 million numbers are an indication Google is close to adding a significant amount of users.

A Google spokesperson would only say “as a matter of policy, we typically do not comment on contracts with third-party technology suppliers…”

Google Voice has a number of unique features including call transfer between a user’s devices, multi-party conferencing, conversion of voice calls to text messages, cut-rate international calling, and call transcription…

But the gem is the fact that a user can have one phone number people can dial to reach them regardless of where they are located, either home or mobile. Google Voice uses VoIP to link collections of phone numbers.

Yeah, I just checked. Google Voice ain’t available, yet.

Leave ‘em your email address and they say they’ll drop you a note as soon as they hit the cyberstreets.

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, escaped Friday night and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr. Rohde, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, was abducted outside Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 10 while he was researching a book. Mr. Rohde was part of The Times’s reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize this spring for coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan last year.

Mr. Rohde told his wife, Kristen Mulvihill, that Mr. Ludin joined him in climbing over the wall of a compound where they were being held in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. They found a Pakistani Army scout, who led them to a nearby army base, and on Saturday they were flown to the American military base in Bagram, Afghanistan…

Until now, the kidnapping has been kept quiet by The Times and other media organizations out of concern for the men’s safety…

Both Mr. Keller and Mr. Rohde’s family declined to discuss details of the efforts to free the captives, except to say that no ransom money was paid and no Taliban or other prisoners were released.

“Kidnapping, tragically, is a flourishing industry in much of the world,” Mr. Keller said. “As other victims have told us, discussing your strategy just offers guidance for future kidnappers.”

RTFA. Long, detailed account – not only of this adventure; but, of David Rohde’s dedication to good, traditional journalism. He’s had no shortage of despots and murderers to cover whether it be in Bosnia or Afghanistan.

Fortunately, there remain a few media outlets in the world ready and willing to employ the services of those who gather news and information about what’s really happening in the world. People like David Rohde. All the rest is entertainment.

Some legal experts question the constitutionality of a $1.92 million fine given to a woman accused of pirating 24 songs. A Minnesota jury ordered Jammie Thomas-Rasset to pay that yesterday, saying she “willfully” violated music copyrights and should cough up $80,000 per illegally downloaded track.

The verdict brings a new twist to a seemingly endless legal battle brought about by the Recording Industry of America (RIAA)….

The size of the fine was guided by U.S. copyright law, which provides for a penalty of anywhere from $750 to $150,000 per violation. It was up to the jury, however, to decide where to land within that spectrum. The problem, von Lohmann says, is that there are no meaningful guidelines on how that decision should be reached….

Here’s where things start to get dicey: The Supreme Court has previously indicated that “grossly excessive” punitive damage awards are a violation of the U.S. Constitution. An award can be considered “grossly excessive” if there’s too big of a gap between the actual harm done and the amount of money being named.

This story isn’t so much about the RIAA as it is about how our legal system works. The better your lawyer, the lower the fine. If you’re poor, you’re screwed. Besides, many jurors are sheep, and are  incapable of judging the law as well as the facts, or even knowing the difference.

Who thinks that this is an equitable punishment? No one of merit is my guess.