What's Islam? Don't Ask Google

Type a few words into the search field on Google's home page and the engine automatically returns a helpful list of popular, similar searches for the words you've typed in so far -- a convenient way to find the right information.

Enter "Christianity is" and you'll find results that, while offensive, at least indicate common discussions on the Internet. Likewise, type "Judaism is" and Google suggests other, potentially offensive searches such as "Judaism is false" and "Judaism is not a race."

But type "Islam is" into the search engine and Google's auto-results pane mysteriously vanishes, leading some to conclude that Google, whose mantra is "don't be evil," is censoring its search results.  FOXNews.com

Italians cheer as police move African immigrants out after clashes with locals

Local people clapped and cheered yesterday as hundreds of Africans were moved by police out of a small town in Calabria following clashes in which immigrant farmworkers were shot at, severely beaten and run over.

More than 300 immigrants were loaded on to buses in the riot-torn town of Rosarno, destined for immigrant holding centres. Meanwhile, an immigrant was shot from a moving car with a pellet rifle, bringing to five the number who have been shot.

The first shooting, last Thursday, provoked a violent protest march by Africans through Rosarno, which left 66 injured. A second immigrant was beaten with metal bars yesterday despite a heavy police presence in and around Rosarno.

"There is a very serious security problem here and many immigrants working on local farms are scared and just want to get out, even though many have not been paid," said Laura Boldrini, a UN official, after touring some of the disused factories in which immigrants sleep after returning from poorly paid shifts in nearby fields.

The Observer

Goldman Sachs bonuses bigger than its earnings

A lawsuit filed against investment bank Goldman Sachs by a shareholder alleges that the company spent more money on corporate bonuses than it earned in 2008.

Shareholder Ken Brown's lawsuit is one of two suits filed against the company this week over its controversial decision to hand out billions of dollars in bonuses even after it was accused of playing a central role in the financial collapse of 2008 and receiving $10 billion in direct aid from the US government.

In his lawsuit (PDF), Brown states that Goldman Sachs gave out $4.82 billion in bonuses in 2008, despite earnings of only $2.32 billion that year. The lawsuit alleges that the company spent 259 percent of its income in the first quarter of 2009 on compensation.

Raw Story

The Love Police

A nice The Love Police compilation of clips by the 'Everything is OK guys'. Have you seen the nice new website?

Whale Wars

Japan vs. Sea Shepherd on Newsy (The news with more views)

The Airport Scanner Scam

Scan, baby, scan. That’s the mantra among politicians at all levels in the wake of the thwarted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet. According to conventional wisdom, the would-be “underwear bomber” could have been stopped by airport security if he’d been put through a full-body scanner, which would have revealed the cache of explosives attached to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s groin.

Within days or even hours of the bombing attempt, everyone was talking about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing hearings by the Senate Homeland Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone conclusion, saying one of the "big, urgent questions that we are holding this hearing to answer" was "Why isn’t whole-body-scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?" Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post, "You’ve got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren’t easy to get at. It’s either pat downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven’t figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."

Mother Jones

David Icke

Take a look at David Icke Website

Dubai waiter rapes British girl – then SHE and fiancé are held for illegal sex

A British woman on a break in Dubai went to police after being raped - but SHE was arrested for having illegal sex.

The 23-year-old Londoner was attacked by a waiter in a hotel toilet after celebrating her engagement to her boyfriend with drinks.

But after she admitted boozing and sharing a hotel room with her fiancé, cops in the strict Islamic state arrested her for "illegal drinking" outside licensed premises and having sex outside marriage.

Her 44-year-old fiancé, also from London, was charged with the same offences. And both were thrown in police cells by officers who paid little heed to the rape.

The devastated couple were last night understood to be on bail awaiting trial and have had their passports confiscated. They could be jailed for up to six years if found guilty of the illicit sex charge.  The Sun

Obama: "We Are at War"

President Obama Thursday afternoon publicly called for the intelligence community to do better in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt. In the process, he offered a response to critics on the right who have complained that he has not used rhetoric indicating the seriousness of the situation. "While passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let's be clear about what this moment demands," the president said. "We are at war."

The president went on to say that while America will strengthen its defenses, "we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don't hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust."
"That is exactly what our adversaries want," he said. "And so long as I am president, we will never hand them that victory." CBS News

Nice speech, but:

Meanwhile, Janet Napolitano, Obama's secretary for homeland security, said on Thursday that she would travel to Spain this month to meet her foreign counterparts to seek tougher international aviation security measures.

She also told reporters that the US was scheduled to deploy 300 additional advanced imaging scanners at US airports this year and may deploy even more machines.

US authorities have already imposed stricter screening regulations for US-bound airline passengers from Yemen, Nigeria and 12 other countries, including possible full-body pat-downs, searches of carry-on bags, and full-body scanning. Al Jazeera

Japanese Whalers Ram Sea Shepherd Ship Ady Gil

In an unprovoked attack captured on film, the Japanese security ship Shonan Maru No. 2 deliberately rammed and caused catastrophic damage to the Sea Shepherd trimaran Ady Gil.

Six crew crewmembers, four from New Zealand, one from Australia, and one from the Netherlands were immediately rescued by the crew of the Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker. None of the crew Ady Gil crew were injured.

The Ady Gil is believed to be sinking and chances of salvage are very grim.

According to eyewitness Captain Chuck Swift on the Bob Barker, the attack happened while the vessels were dead in the water. The Shonan Maru No. 2 suddenly started up and deliberately rammed the Ady Gil ripping eight feet of the bow of the vessel completely off. According to Captain Swift, the vessel does not look like it will be saved.

“The Japanese whalers have now escalated this conflict very violently,” said Captain Paul Watson. “If they think that our remaining two ships will retreat from the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary in the face of their extremism, they will be mistaken.  We now have a real whale war on our hands now and we have no intention of retreating.”

Sea Shepherd

Secrets of the Vatican

Clash in Egypt over Gaza aid effort

At least 55 people have been injured in clashes between Egyptian police and pro-Palestinian activists who were trying to deliver aid into the Gaza Strip, eyewitnesses say.

Some 520 activists broke down the gate at the port in El-Arish late on Tuesday in protest against an Egyptian decision to ship some of the goods through Israel, medical workers and protesters said.

The protests were sparked by an Egyptian decision to allow 139 vehicles to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, about 45km from the port in al-Arish, but requiring a remaining 59 vehicles to pass via Israel.

Around 40 members of the convoy had minor injuries while over a dozen policemen were hurt in the clashes with protesters, who also blocked the two entrances to the Sinai port with vehicles, medical workers said.

The Viva Palestina convoy, led by George Galloway, the outspoken British MP, had already been delayed by more than a week, after he and a delegation of Turkish MPs failed to persuade the Egyptians to change their mind.

Al Jazeera – More about this on Viva Palestina

Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado

Spanish conquistadores ventured into the rainforest seeking fortune, followed over the centuries by others convinced they would find a lost civilisation to rival the Aztecs and Incas.

Some seekers called it El Dorado, others the City of Z. But the jungle swallowed them and nothing was found, prompting the rest of the world to call it a myth. The Amazon was too inhospitable, said 20th century scholars, to permit large human settlements.

Now, however, the doomed dreamers have been proved right: there was a great civilisation. New satellite imagery and fly-overs have revealed more than 200 huge geometric earthworks carved in the upper Amazon basin near Brazil's border with Bolivia.

Spanning 155 miles, the circles, squares and other geometric shapes form a network of avenues, ditches and enclosures built long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world. Some date to as early as 200 AD, others to 1283.

Guardian.co.uk – Antiquity journal

Climategate on Finnish television

The program was first broadcast on YLE, The Finnish Broadcasting Co., TV1, Monday Dec. 7th, 2009.

Part 2. Part 3

CIA murder plot in Germany

The U.S. magazine Vanity Fair had reported that the CIA had in 2004 sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill Mamoun Darkazanli, who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda.

January's edition of the magazine cited a source familiar with the program as saying the mission had been kept secret from the German government. The report has been widely picked up in the German media and could become a source of tension between Washington and Berlin. The CIA declined to comment.

"The CIA team supposedly went in 'dark', meaning they did not notify their own station -- much less the German government -- of their presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the logistics of how and where they would take him down," reported the magazine. Reuters

Read Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy on Vanity Fair

Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.

The Love Police is Pirating The Open Spaces

Once again, the Love Police attempt to spread a message of freedom in a public area, only to be surrounded by agents of the Matrix―I mean private security personnel, who not surprisingly regurgitate the whole ‘this is private property’ argument in an attempt to make us leave.

Unless we do something about it, pretty soon the whole planet will be the ‘private property’ of private bankers and mega-corporations, and the personal freedoms we once enjoyed will become vague, distant memories.

The Love Police

China says 5,394 arrested in Internet porn crackdown

Chinese police arrested thousands in a drive against Internet pornography throughout 2009, officials said, vowing a deepening crackdown that critics say is being used to tighten overall censorship.

The Chinese government has run a highly publicized campaign against what officials said were banned smutty and lewd pictures overwhelming the country's Internet and threatening the emotional health of children.

Chinese police said late on Thursday the crackdown on Internet pornography had brought 5,394 arrests and 4,186 criminal case investigations in 2009 -- a fourfold increase in the number of such cases compared with 2008.

The announcement on the Ministry of Public Security's website (www.mps.gov.cn) said the drive would deepen in 2010.

Police would "intensify punishments for Internet operations that violate laws and regulations", said the statement from the ministry's Internet security section.

"Strengthen monitoring of information," it urged, "Press Internet service providers to put in place preventive technology."

Yahoo! News (Reuters)

After Americans Visit, Uganda Weighs Death for Gays

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

NYTimes.com, more here  and on Gays Without Borders

Yummy! Ammonia-Treated Pink Slime Now in Most U.S. Ground Beef

You're not going to believe what you've been eating the last few years (thanks, Bush! thanks meat industry lobbyists!) when you eat a McDonald's burger (or the hamburger patties in kids' school lunches) or buy conventional ground meat at your supermarket:

According to today's New York Times, The "majority of hamburger" now sold in the U.S. now contains fatty slaughterhouse trimmings "the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil," "typically including most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass" that contains "larger microbiological populations."

This "nasty pink slime," as one FDA microbiologist called it, is now wrung in a centrifuge to remove the fat, and then treated with AMMONIA to "retard spoilage," and turned into "a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips".

Thus saving THREE CENTS a pound off production costs. And making the company, Beef Products Inc., a fortune. $440 million/year in revenue. Ain't that something?

More Yummy stuff at AlterNet

Migrants face dangers in Mexico

El Universal, an influential Mexican newspaper, says that there is increasing sex trafficking by drug-linked gangs who are taking advantage of the Guatemalan and Honduran women and children passing through the country.

They are frequently hauled off the trains and sold into sex slavery for as little as $40.
At present there are 20,000 prostitutes from Central America in Mexican brothels according to El Universal.

Susanah says that the young girls are especially at risk. "There are girls that are 15, 16 years old, and those are the ones most at danger of being abused."

Even the Mexican contractors that migrants rely on to guide them are not to be trusted. Many turn their charges over to be kidnapped by gangs who then beat them to obtain phone numbers of family members in the US. Once they have the numbers they call these relatives to extract a ransom. Al Jazeera

Also see Central American immigrants seek rights in Mexico - azcentral.com

Obey

 The Cult of the Dead Fish art department

Next target is Yemen

The US has shut its embassy in Yemen's capital Sanaa, citing "ongoing threats" by an al-Qaeda offshoot linked to an alleged failed US plane bomb plot. In a statement on its website, the embassy urged US citizens in Yemen to be vigilant and aware of security.

It comes a day after top US soldier Gen David Petraeus visited Yemen to pledge US support for its fight with al-Qaeda. There is mounting Western concern that Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, is becoming an al-Qaeda haven.

BBC News

Al Jazeera - Yemen: New frontline for US wars?

HP computers are racist

Iran, last week…

More footage of recent protests

Somali shot after allegedly attempting to attack Danish cartoonist

A Somali man believed to have ties to terrorist groups was shot as he allegedly tried to enter the home of Danish political cartoonist Kurt Westergaard -- known for his controversial depictions of the Muslim prophet Mohammad -- on Friday, police said.

The 27-year-old man, who was not identified, wielded an ax and a knife and cracked a window at Westergaard's home in Aarhus, said police spokesman Morten Jensen. A home alarm alerted police to the scene at 10 p.m., and they were attacked by the man, he said.

The officers shot the man in the right leg and left hand. He was hospitalized, but was not seriously injured, police said.

Danish intelligence officials said the suspect is connected to al-Shabaab, al Qaeda's ally in east Africa.

More on CNN.com or AFP