Avalanche on Berthoud Pass
Just had some friends report that a truck has been overturned. They returned to us here at the cabin. No other news.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Brown to stay.
The YouGov survey places David Cameron’s Conservatives on 37%, as against 35% for Labour — the closest gap between the parties in more than two years.
It means Labour is heading for a total of 317 seats, nine short of an overall majority, with the Tories languishing on a total of just 263 MPs. Such an outcome would mean Brown could stay in office and deny Cameron the keys to No 10.
Eta leader arrested.
Ibon Gogeascotxea was arrested with two other suspected Eta members in a French and Spanish operation in Normandy.
A militant group fighting for an independent Basque homeland, Eta has been blamed for more than 820 deaths during its 41-year campaign in Spain.
Eta called a short-lived truce in 2006, but broke it in December of that year.
This hasn’t worked that well.
Another war that refuses to end.
Cristina Kirchner racked up her war of words with Britain over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands last week, but then Argentina’s glamorous president tends to lay it on a bit thick. “Slaps it on” would be more apt. “I have painted myself like a door since I was 14 years old,” she said once, “and I spend more time on makeup and dressing than I do at the gym.”
Kirchner’s excessive maquillage may appear to have little to do with crude oil in the Falklands’ disputed waters. Yet to many Argentinians there was something distasteful about their 57-year-old head of state posing as a diva on the world stage, enhanced by designer suits, stiletto heels and — it is rumoured — cosmetic surgery, while thousands of poor people were camping out in the cities to protest at their lack of jobs and welfare.
Problems in Jerusalem
A riot erupted on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on Sunday morning when Palestinians hurled rocks at non-Muslim visitors to the site. When Israeli police who normally refrain from entering the area arrived to quell the violence, the rock-throwers moved into one of the mosques. The Israelis did not follow. One arrest was reported. The incident occurred as fighting between Palestinians and Israeli forces has been ongoing for several days in the city of Hebron where rioting is being blamed on Israel’s inclusion of the Tomb of the Patriarchs there and the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem on its national heritage list – an act the Palestinians call “provocative.”
A mistake for freedom of the press.
In any case, the complaint against the cartoon was so ludicrous that if Politiken’s editors had any sense they shouldn’t even have even written a pro forma letter acknowledging receipt. The groups that the Saudi lawyer claimed to be acting on behalf of “94,923 of Mohammed’s descendants”. Now I know he got around, but 94,923? Really? Are they sure? Mind you, in my experience it is hard to find people who don’t claim to be descendants of Mohammed once the cartoons start flying. The last such claimant (against the author Mark Steyn) was Canadian.
The problems that will come from this, and the implications it will have for the free press in free countries, may take some time to emerge. But to pose the question baldly: why should people who claim to be descended from a dead historical figure have their feelings respected any more than anyone else?
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Making sure that this happens on a regular basis.
A ransom has been paid to Somali pirates in a bid to secure the release of a Greek-owned freighter and its crew of 19 being held off the Seychelles.
According to the Navfor, the EU’s naval mission, on Saturday, “a ransom drop was successfully made for the release of the Greek owned Panama-flagged bulk carrier, Navios Apollon”.
It was the second ransom drop to the pirates in two days, demonstrating the dilemma governments and companies are in over the need to recover their ships and crews and the fears of encouraging further piracy.
In both cases the amount of money handed over to the pirates was not given.
Almost immediately after the earlier ransom drop, a Singapore-flagged Indonesian chemical tanker and its 24-strong crew were released by the pirates, Commander John Harbour, a Navfor spokesman, told AFP.
The pirates disappeared back to the shore of impoverished Somalia.
He’s still not serious.
While one opposition party cautiously welcomed the move, it was unclear whether Rajoelina would be able to rally enough cross-party support to strike a deal and head off the punitive measures.
The AU said last week it would slap travel bans and asset freezes on Madagascar’s leadership on March 17 if the government had still not complied with power-sharing agreements struck last year in Mozambique and Ethiopia.
Stranger and stranger.
Deleted from the bill.
Specifically, the proposed Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Interrogations Prohibition Act proscribes “forcing the individual to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner” — a la Abu Ghraib — “beatings, electrical shock, burns, or inflicting physical pain; waterboarding; using military working dogs; inducing hypothermia” — it happened at Guantanamo to Mohammed al-Qatani — sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, denial of medical care, “using force or the threat of force”; “mock executions;” religious desecration in an intelligence context; “sensory deprivation”; “prolonged isolation”; “placing hoods or sacks over the heads of the individual;” “exploiting the phobias of the individual” and more. Basically, it clarifies that the entire parade of outside-the-Army-Field-Manual-on-Interrogation horrors during the Bush administration are criminal acts. We’ll see if this ever actually makes it to President Obama’s desk.
Waterboarding could become an Olympic event.
With his ‘Countrywide’ problems he’d better be careful.
This seems a little convoluted.
The Senate Democrats’ top budget guy told reporters today that the Senate can’t pass a reconciliation package tweaking a comprehensive health care bill unless the House passes the Senate bill first. And if the House won’t do that, he says health care reform is “dead.”
“The only way this works is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then, depending on what the package is, the reconciliation provision that moves first through the House and then comes here,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) outside the upper chamber this morning. “That’s the only way that works.”
An inconvenient time.
Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore—the public face of global warming—has been silent on the topic.
Guilty plea in Canada
Jahmaal James, 26, entered a surprise guilty plea in a Brampton, Ont., court yesterday. Because he spent three years and nine months awaiting trial - and got a two-for-one credit for the “dead time” - he has effectively served all the seven-year, seven-month sentence he was meted.
This week, Conservative legislation to eliminate the two-for-one pretrial credit took force, meaning that had Mr. James been arrested today, he would have spent up to four more years in jail.
Mr. James was arrested in 2006, as police rounded up 18 young Muslims in the Toronto area.
Boulder Time