Random News Stories

[Thurnez Isa]

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/12/282006g.asp

Year In Review: 'Net Neutrality' a Must for Most Christian

Christian broadcasters are concerned about legislation that could make it tougher for the public to access their websites. Recent action by a House committee would seem to allay some of those fears.

The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a bill that would allow broadband network operators to offer streamlined access to websites that pay them extra for a higher level of service. Frank Wright, president of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), says such an arrangement would put many nonprofit radio stations at a disadvantage.

"The telephone companies and cable companies that control access to the Internet are talking about creating kind of a better level of service for those who are willing to pay for it," Wright explains, "and everyone else sort of gets what's left over."

Broadband Internet providers such as Verizon and AT&T have been lobbying for a sort of "fast lane" on the web that would be reserved for video and other high-priority content. But last week, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill [PDF] that would require such providers to abide by strict "Net neutrality" principles -- that is, operate their networks in a nondiscriminatory manner.

Wright obviously sees merit to such a move. "A system of Internet control that shows favoritism to one group over another would probably disadvantage non-profits like religious broadcasters," he says. "We don't have the revenue streams that would help us pay for a better level of Internet service that they're talking about."

Despite being opposed by several Republicans on the committee, the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 (H.R. 5417) was passed out of committee on a 20-13 vote. Committee chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, a congressman from Wisconsin, said the measure "will provide an insurance policy for Internet users against being harmed by broadband network operators abusing their market power to discriminate against content and service providers."

The president of the Christian Coalition of America is asking Congress to preserve what supporters of what has come to be known as "net neutrality." Roberta Combs says Sensenbrenner and others on the committee have stood up for continued freedom on the Internet.

"We urge Congress to move aggressively to save the Internet -- and allow ideas rather than money to control what Americans can access on the Worldwide Web," she says. Congress, says the Christian Coalition, must make sure the Internet remains accessible to all Americans, rich or poor.

[Cain]

Wow, they must be deluded.  Sometimes, Christian paranoia actually works in peoples favour.  Amazing.

[Thurnez Isa]

I made this thread cause i notice sometimes we have 2/3 threads of the same newstories
ie. planet eris, james brown
this way we have a thread to dump it all on

[Cain]

Point.  But now we also have non-absentee mods who will actually merge stories too.  Still, this can be good for random shiz.

[Thurnez Isa]

Wow, they must be deluded.  Sometimes, Christian paranoia actually works in peoples favour.  Amazing.

yes
this could make some really strange bed fellows

and allow ideas rather than money to control what Americans can access on the Worldwide Web

[Thurnez Isa]

http://www.tv.com/story/7321.html

 

[AFK]

I just think it's funny to see who qualifies as a "celebrity"

[Thurnez Isa]

Come on "La Toya Jackson"
She's as famous as her brother Tito

[AFK]

I imagine they contrived this whole idea just to get Erik Estrada in a police uniform again.  The rest were afterthoughts when everyone else turned them down. 

[DJRubberducky]

Ah shit, man!  I know somebody in Muncie.  And he only knows me by a different online handle.  Maybe I should call the show and rat out a stoner who works at Blockbuster and see if he makes it onto an episode.

[Cain]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2145136.ece

Ali Ansari on the lastest Iran happenings.  I think alot of Ansari's opinions, the dude is one of the best experts on the country.

[Thurnez Isa]

time for the bunkers?

[Thurnez Isa]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/070116/world/international_iraq1_dc

U.N. says 34,000 Iraqis killed in 2006

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence last year and it chided the government for allowing the killers, some of them inside the security forces, to go unpunished.

Several bombs that killed 35 people in Baghdad were a reminder of the violence that killed 94 every day last year, by the U.N. count. It was not clear if the bombings, among the bloodiest this month, were related to the hangings on Monday of two aides to Saddam Hussein, which angered minority Sunni Arabs.

The government is preparing a security plan backed by U.S. reinforcements and billed as a "last chance" for Iraq to pull back from a sectarian civil war pitching Sunni rebels against Shi'ite militias and dragging in millions of armed civilians.

"Without significant progress on the rule of law, sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control," the U.N. human rights chief in Baghdad, Gianni Magazzeni, told a news conference presenting his latest report.

Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the botched execution of Saddam's aides. The ousted president's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was decapitated by the noose. Mourners visited the two fresh graves in the home village where Saddam himself was buried after he was hanged two weeks ago.

Magazzeni said 34,452 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006. He accused the government of failing to provide security and blamed some of the violence on militias colluding with or working inside the police and army.

"The root causes of the sectarian violence lie in revenge killings and lack of accountability for past crimes as well as in the growing sense of impunity for on-going human rights violations," the U.N.'s latest report on Iraq said.

The casualty figures are much higher than statistics issued by Iraqi government officials. The government itself branded the United Nations' last two-monthly report in November grossly exaggerated and banned its civil servants from releasing data.

"The focus of this report is actually on the need for the government to increase its action with respect to the rule of law," Magazzeni said. "Law enforcement agencies do not provide effective protection to the population of Iraq."

[Thurnez Isa]

"DEATH SQUAD KILLINGS

According to the latest U.N. report, based on data from hospitals compiled by the Health Ministry and from the Baghdad morgue, 6,376 civilians were killed in the last two months of 2006 -- comprising 3,462 in November and 2,914 in December.

Of 4,731 people killed in Baghdad in November and December, Magazzeni said most died of gunshot wounds -- an indication they were victims of individual death squad killings, not bombings.

Though Baghdad is the epicenter of violence, the U.N. report said increasing violence in typically less restive provinces such as Mosul illustrated the overall deterioration in security.

It said more than 470,000 Iraqis had fled their homes and now claim refuge within Iraq since the February bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra that prompted a surge in violence. Many more do not register or have fled the country altogether.

A roadside bomb followed by a blast from a motorcycle rigged with explosives killed 15 people and wounded 70 near a Sunni mosque in central Baghdad on Tuesday, an interior ministry source said. Two more bombs in the capital killed 10 people.

University students were among the dead in a car bombing that killed 10 people and wounded 25.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with the help of some 20,000 more U.S. troops being deployed by President George W. Bush, is preparing a major crackdown on sectarian killers in Baghdad -- including militias loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and other fellow Shi'ite allies of Maliki.

Senior Shi'ite politicians call it a "last chance" to avert civil war and save a government that represents Shi'ites' first real taste of power in Iraq for centuries.

U.S. commanders have said crucial to success will be whether Maliki fulfils his commitment to deal as strongly with Shi'ite militias as with Sunni Arab insurgents."

[Cain]

Whats interesting is that no-one so far has reported that a Baathist insurgent group has hung 100 Shiite muslims in retaliation for the death of Saddam Hussein.  Thats a grizzly way to go and I'm surprised the media hasn't reported, for the sheer "urgh" factor.