At his May 7 event, [Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, the spokesman for the “Home of the Migrants” mosque] urged Boko Haram to change its view of Islam, even as he declined to challenge its religious claims. “Groups like Boko Haram desire to take us back to a medieval … world where kidnapping of women and girls and enslavement and rape are acceptable,” he said.
“The world has changed … [and] in particular we are saying as modern day Muslims that we now reject all of these acts and that they are contrary to our faith,” he said.
However, Abdul-Malik didn’t promise any religious or political action by U.S. Islamic groups. When pressed May 9 by TheDC to cite Islamic texts that contradict Boko Haram’s Islamist arguments, Abdul-Malik quickly ended the phone call.
Free Ethical Oil!
Vivian Krause: New U.S. funding for the war on Canadian oil
For more than a decade, there has been a complex international effort to stymie the oil industry in Canada. It’s called the Tar Sands Campaign and the main sources of funding for this campaign are the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the Sea Change Foundation, the Tides Foundation and other charitable foundations, most of which are based in California. By my calculations, these foundations have provided at least $75-million for campaigns and land use planning initiatives that thwart the development and export of Canadian oil. Until now, little information has been available about the specific activities that have been funded. Not anymore.
Earlier this month, an unprecedented amount of detail came to light in a series of covering letters for 70 payments sent by the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation (“Tides USA”) to 45 organizations in the U.S., Canada and Europe. These payments total $3.2-million. I came across these covering letters using Google. All of the letters that I’ve seen are signed by Gary D. Schwarz, the interim CEO of Tides USA. Most of these letters were sent between June and October of 2013.
Reader Tips
As tonight’s Reader Tips come to you from a ridge high over the City of Angels, I shall turn to the Chili Peppers for an obvious selection. Tips open.
#graveyardofpoliticians
Fire Them All: Veterans Affairs Canada spent $100,000 on promoted tweets
H.R. Giger, RIP
I remain in your debt.
*
The Children Are Our Future
And that’s why I’m melting down my silverwear into crucifixes.
Right To Be Forgotten
The highest court in the European Union decided on Tuesday that Google must grant users of its search engine a right to delete links about themselves in some cases, including links to legal records.
The decision by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is a blow for Google, which has sought to avoid the obligation to remove links when requested by European users of its service.
By ruling that an Internet company like Google must comply with European privacy laws when operating in the European Union — a consumer market of about 550 million people — the court is indicating that such companies must operate in a fundamentally different way than they do in the United States.
Instead of operating as a single around-the-world, around-the-clock forum for other people’s information, Google — and potentially companies like Facebook and probably Twitter — would need in the 28 European Union countries to become more actively involved in refereeing complaints from users about information carried online. The companies would also assume the responsibility and cost for removing that information if requested to do so by national data officials on behalf of people raising complaints.
[…]
Because the European Court of Justice is the highest court in the European Union, Google cannot appeal Tuesday’s decision.
Good. Google is morphed from a search engine into an all-powerful online stalker, and while I’m sure there are drawbacks, it seems at first glance to help reinstate the right to be left alone. I’d invite our legal friends to weigh in on the potential of similar challenges in Canada.
Renegade Regulator
Requirements for one duration safety test on the Viking cooktop prescribed three days for which Mustafa had allocated only four hours of time. At risk of insulting the intelligence of the reader, one cannot compress seventy-two hours of duration testing into four hours, it offends the laws of physics.
The engineer responsible for this testing complained, in the parking lot. Hence the argument. Mustafa advised the engineer, in colourful and creative language and at high volume, that the engineer would indeed find a way to cram seventy-two hours of testing into four hours “or I’ll cancel your vacation.” Well, that’s incentive.
That’s also pretty normal at [the Canadian Standards Association]. On one occasion, Mustafa conducted a month-long duration test in two days. Or so says the product file, and so confirms our sources. But, again, the laws of physics get in the way. What CSA claims as having happened isn’t physically possible. The file may indeed record a magical result, but that result says more about CSA practices than the flexibility of the laws of physics.
So what happened with the Viking cooktop? Well, “he ended up copying off the previous certification for a similar product, itself having been copied from a previous certification for a similar product, making the results of the current ‘test’ meaningless.” That cooktop, so thoroughly certified as safe, is now on sale across the land. This is how CSA does safety certifications of consumer products. These products are in your homes.
“Why am we not hearing this on the news?” you ask. “The heavy investigative lifting has already been done!”
Well, with so many in media now married to politics, the journalistic offspring are too lazy to steal.
I Amuse Myself
If someone tells you to #CheckYourPrivilege it means someone is spending their privilege on a worthless degree.
— Katewerk (@katewerk) May 12, 2014
Borg Hive Mind Meets Amateur Dramatics
Portland State University’s 5th Annual Law and Disorder Conference, a gathering of self-styled anarchists, feminists, anti-capitalists and other radical titans, was a little disorderly.
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
Homeless shelter in Toronto’s entertainment district cost city more than $12-million: “The shelter, which has 40 beds…”
h/t Kevin B
Free Ethical Oil!
Heh. Go Ezra.
Reader Tips
For our readers in the good state of Colorado – Chainsaw ice sculpting. Comments are open for tips.
Quote Of The Day
“30. The ability of the press to miss this story so badly makes me wonder about the accuracy of their reporting on everything else.” – Bob Lefsetz
Do tell.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
Sure, those sprawling ugly wind farms blight the landscape, kill wildlife, and send electricity prices soaring, but so long as they reduce dependence on conventional …
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
Hear my prayer. (h/t Carol)
“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal”
The acting deputy U.S. attorney general in charge of overseeing “public integrity” prosecutions testified Friday that he doesn’t know who’s in charge of the criminal investigation of Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the tea-party targeting scandal.
David O’Neil, whose job atop the DOJ’s criminal division puts him in charge of public corruption prosecutions, told Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan that he also doesn’t know how many prosecutors are assigned to the case, or how many attorneys from his division are working on it.
Linkage and Whatnot
Some things of possible interest. Among them, this:
Readers may wish to ponder Mr Monbiot’s urge to romanticise poverty and pre-modern living, an urge perhaps best expressed in his claim that “we” should be more like the peasants of Southern Ethiopia, who “smile more often” than we do and whose fields “crackle with laughter.” These noble, laughing peasants may live in homes constructed from leaves and packing cases, and they may have Stone Age sanitation and alarming child mortality, but at least they’re not being “isolated” by sinful material trappings, like dentistry, double glazing and TV remote controls. Think I’m kidding? Think again.
Y2Kyoto: Koch-O Haram
Is there nothing that C02 can’t do?
The kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian school girls, and the massacre of as many as 300 civilians in the town of Gamboru Ngala, by the militant al-Qaeda affiliated group, Boko Haram, has shocked the world.
But while condemnations have rightly been forthcoming from a whole range of senior figures from celebrities to government officials, less attention has been paid to the roots of the crisis.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is “executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development”. And a 9-11 truther.
The Guardian has no shame.
h/t Robert of Ottawa
The Tolerant Left
Bill Maher, caught in a moment of sanity.
Via