Be the good people I know you are, and slow down in school zones and for crosswalks, k?
Hoover Dam visitor plaza and Mike O’Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge
OND is a community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
The OND concept was borne under the keen keyboard of Magnifico - proper respect is due.
Current Contributers are ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader,Oke, rfall, JML9999 and Neon Vincent.
I am subbing tonight for Bent Liberal and happy to be back here with you-all. It's been a heck of a year ;-)
Around the World
Libya: the hunt for Gaddafi goes on
The battle for Tripoli turned into a manhunt for Muammar Gaddafi, as pockets controlled by loyalist forces dwindled rapidly and the Libyan leader's last vestiges of power fell away at the end of a 42-year dictatorship.
Libyan state television, the vehicle for relentless government propaganda throughout the Gaddafi years, went off the air as rebels seized its transmitters.
Government troops kept up resistance in some areas of the city but were pummelled by Nato warplanes, which struck at least 40 targets in and around the city in 48 hours – the most intense bombing since the air campaign started more than five months ago.
By nightfall, the battle was focused on the wreckage of Gaddafi's central stronghold, Bab al-Aziziya. The compound has already been nearly flattened by earlier Nato sorties but it is believed to sit atop a network of reinforced tunnels and underground bunkers. Last night, Nato said pro-Gaddafi forces fired at least three Scud missiles from the city of Sirte, Gaddafi's birthplace.
The Guardian has thorough coverage, but I can't link to the section, just their front page.
Kashmir graves hide thousands
More than 2000 corpses, believed to be victims of Kashmir's long-running insurgency, have been found buried in dozens of unmarked graves in the divided region, an Indian government human rights commission report has said.
The graves were found in dozens of villages on the Indian side of the line of control, the de facto border that has split the former kingdom between India and Pakistan for nearly 40 years.
Though campaigners and community leaders in Kashmir have long said such graves exist - and often provided extensive documentary evidence to back up their claims - the report is the first official statement confirming their existence.
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Released over the weekend, its publication is the result of a three-year inquiry by a team led by a senior police official.
Up to 70,000 people died in the 22-year insurgency in Kashmir, which pitted armed separatist groups, many backed by Pakistan, against Delhi's rule.
Human rights abuses were routine, with militants intimidating local communities and killing so-called spies while Indian authorities resorted to abductions, torture and extra-judicial executions on a wide scale. The graves appear to date from this period.
Though violence has declined dramatically in recent years, in part due to a peace process between India and Pakistan, clashes still occur. On Saturday, Indian soldiers shot dead 12 separatist militants trying to cross from Pakistan into the disputed region. An Indian officer was also killed in the incident.
This is what Pakistan is really concerned about - India in general and Kashmir in particular.
‘Surgical operation’ in Karachi on cards
As the wave of violence gripping Karachi for a almost a week continued unabated and at least 12 lives were lost on Monday, the government decided to launch a surgical operation immediately without discrimination in all areas which have become combat zones because of target killings, extortion, land grab and politicised turf wars.
This was stated by Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon on Monday night while briefing newsmen about the decisions taken by the government after two marathon sessions of the Sindh cabinet at the Chief Minister’s House with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in the chair.
Terming the meetings as fruitful which will give positive results, Mr Memon said there was a detailed discussion on the situation in the city and different options were taken into consideration.
He said the government had decided to ensure protection of the life and property of people by foiling all conspiracies being hatched against democracy because if Karachi was disturbed, the entire country was disturbed.
For love and profit: Marriage in China
The dream of millions of young Chinese couples - to fall in love, get married, buy a home and raise a family - just got a rude wake-up call.
Following a controversial interpretation of the country's Marriage Law by the Supreme People's Court this month, love and marriage may never be the same again in China.
After studying the issue for three years, the court ruled that, in the event of divorce, any property purchased by one spouse before the conjugal knot belongs solely to that spouse and, moreover, that property parents buy for their children before or after marriage belongs solely to those children.
Of course,
24 million Chinese men will never get married, thanks to generations of female infantcide.
A slut by any other name
Let's talk about the Slutwalk.
I made the first move, and I played it badly. On Friday I read a random tweet, from a man I do not know, which said: "I am proud to say I'm categorically against sexual abuse in any way, shape or form. But, I will not support something called SLUTWALK." So I called him an idiot.
None of the people arguing with me initially seemed to take the time -- a Google click would have done it -- to look at the name's origins.
The "Slutwalk" started in Canada, after a police officer told a group of law students "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised".
The resulting Slutwalk generated massive media attention, and the movement (and name) caught on and spread around the world -- including to South Africa. The first walk was named as a response to two things: first a specific situation, in which the use of the word slut needed to be challenged; and, secondly, a society in which the way a woman (or man) dresses or behaves is still seen as either incitement to or justification of sexual assault.
Slideshow
Records Reveal Warm Words for Holocaust Organizer: Protestant Church Said Eichmann Was 'Kind-Hearted'
The German Protestant Church put in a good word for Adolf Eichmann, the chief logistics organizer of the Holocaust, after his arrest in Argentina by Israeli agents in 1960, SPIEGEL has learned.
The Superintendent of the Protestant Church for Upper Austria, Wilhelm Mensing-Braun, based in the Austrian city of Linz were Eichmann was born, wrote a letter to the foreign affairs department of the Evangelical Church in Germany in Frankfurt claiming that the mass murderer "had a fundamentally decent disposition," was "kind-hearted," and was characterized by "great helpfulness."
At that time, Eichmann was about to be put on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against humanity.
Braun went on that he could not imagine that the former SS officer "would ever have been capable of cruelty or criminal acts."
Eichmann's family had enlisted Mensing-Braun's help because they wanted Eichmann to be tried by an international court rather than an Israeli one.
A note of personal interest: those German and Austrian "Protestants" are Lutheran. What were they thinking?
Out of Control: The Destructive Power of the Financial Markets
Speculators are betting against the euro, banks are taking incalculable risks and the markets are in turmoil. Three years after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the financial industry has become a threat to the global economy again. Governments missed the chance to regulate the industry, and another crash is just a matter of time. By SPIEGEL Staff.
The enemy looks friendly and unpretentious. With his scuffed shoes and thinning gray hair, John Taylor resembles an elderly sociology professor. Books line the dark, floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves in his office in Manhattan, alongside a bust of Theodore Roosevelt and an antique telescope.
Taylor is the chairman and CEO of FX Concepts, a hedge fund that specializes in currency speculation. It's the largest hedge fund of its kind worldwide, which is why Taylor is held partly responsible for the crash of the euro. Critics accuse Taylor and others like him of having exacerbated the government crisis in Greece and accelerated the collapse in Ireland.
People like Taylor are "like a pack of wolves" that seeks to tear entire countries to pieces, said Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg. For that reason, they should be fought "without mercy," French President Nicolas Sarkozy raged. Andrew Cuomo, the former attorney general and current governor of New York, once likened short-sellers to "looters after a hurricane."
Riots: Metropolitan police planned to hold all suspects in custody
Senior Metropolitan police officers devised a policy of holding all people arrested on riot-related offences in custody and recommending that the courts also refuse bail after they were charged, according to a leaked "prisoner processing strategy" that lawyers argue could pave the way for a mass legal challenge.
The document, seen by the Guardian, was circulated to all investigating officers at the height of the violence two weeks ago by Operation Withern, the codename for Scotland Yard's emergency response to the outbreak of violence in the capital. It suggested that no one arrested in or after the riots should be let off with a caution – regardless of the offence – and that everyone arrested should be held in custody, with a recommendation that bail should also be denied when the case first goes to court.
Lawyers began proceedings on Monday for the first judicial review of the custody procedures, which resulted in 62% of those arrested for involvement in the riots remanded in custody compared with a normal rate of around 10% for more serious offences. They claimed the document amounted to a blanket policy of mass imprisonment of people.
Between BART and Britain, I am wondering about . . . constitutional rights to assemble and communicate? Certainly not everyone around either riot was committing crimes?
Around the USA
Chaffetz won’t challenge Hatch
The Chaffetz calculus was never simple.
On one hand, Hatch is widely seen as vulnerable to a conservative challenger and Chaffetz is well-known and liked among Utah’s tea party base.
However, Chaffetz was a leading spokesman for House conservatives during the recent debt ceiling debate and sponsor of the Cut, Cap and Balance proposal, which advocated slashing government spending and requiring Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment.
He would have to give up that rising stature in the House to go against a senior senator in Hatch, who has a decisive fund-raising advantage and has been working feverishly for several months to repair relationships in Utah and lining up national backers, including Sarah Palin, who expressed admiration for the Utah senator last week.
How sad. ;-) However, the four house districts are not yet drawn.
Social Security disability on verge of insolvency
Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.
Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can't find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.
The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants — many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved — and worsening the financial problems of a program that's been running in the red for years.
Illinois likely site of next fight over public employee benefits Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/article_4329eb52-4886-52c0-9287-b63d1d3286e1.html#ixzz1VnuqFIaV
Unionized public employees are once again clashing with state leaders who want to roll back benefits and weaken collective bargaining to shore up a government budget.
And this time, the threat isn't coming in a Republican stronghold like Wisconsin, Indiana or Ohio, but rather in that "bluest" of states, Illinois.
Leaders in both parties in Springfield appear ready to push a major pension reform bill this fall that would remove Illinois workers' current defined-benefit plan and replace it with less lucrative options, including a 401(k) plan.
Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn — who just last year was accused by Republicans of coddling labor for votes — is now being accused by labor of trying to renege on salary and benefit guarantees for union workers.
Martin Luther King Jr. memorial opens in Washington
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took a permanent place today on the National Mall, as a federal memorial to the civil rights leader opened to the public.
A multicolored, multinational crowd of hundreds lined up early for a glimpse at the $120 million memorial, which features a 30-foot stone sculpture of King, arms folded, staring across the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial. The walls of the memorial are inscribed with quotes from King's famous speeches, including "I Have a Dream," delivered a stone's throw away at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
Another
statue is still under discussion (link to story at slideshow).
Tomatoland
Book review:
Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, "The Price of Tomatoes," investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?
Longer article regarding slavery in the United States and an abused fruit.
FCC eliminates remaining Fairness Doctrine rules
Twenty years after then-Chairman Mark Fowler and his Federal Communications Commission deemed the Fairness Doctrine unconstitutional and voted to abolish it, the Commission announced today that it would delete the remaining regulations upholding the policy.
Though the doctrine, which mandated that broadcasters air contrasting viewpoints on controversial political issues, was formally abolished in spirit in 1987, some rules enforcing the doctrine remained on the FCC’s books. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski cited a need to “remove an unnecessary distraction” in eliminating the obsolete rules.
“As I have said, striking this from our books ensures there can be no mistake that what has long been a dead letter remains dead. The Fairness Doctrine holds the potential to chill free speech and the free flow of ideas and was properly abandoned over two decades ago.”
H/T to twitter friend hrana
Oklahoma wheat harvest called "disheartening"
Oklahoma agriculture officials are calling the state's wheat harvest is dismal and "disheartening" with about 70 percent of the crop now harvested.
The state Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry has maintained its forecast of 74.8 million bushels for 2011, 38 percent lower than 2010's yield of 121 million bushes. The average yield is expected to be 22 bushels per acre for this year's crop, down from 31 bushels per acre last year.
"Overall, when you look at the entire state, it looks to be pretty disheartening," Mike Schulte, executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission told The Oklahoman.
H/T kos-friend Stranded Wind, via twitter.
Links N Stuff
Elvis Festival in the OC h/t to FB friend Lisa.
Bad Trophy, apparently.
Bad fans (sports) Shame on them - they should just be grateful their league is playing.
Quilt of the Month