RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/July 2013

July 2013
An excerpt from Romney's first interview after the 2012 electionsis published on the Washington Post, half a year after it was conducted. Among other things Mitt talks about the doubts he had regarding his campaign, his poll denialism and the infamous 47% comment. US wants its police to be able to enforce US law in Canada during cooperative US-Canada border activities. Up next: Arresting Canadians in Canada for acts that would be criminal in the US. Oh, wait... Your Government Spying at Work, Part #4: "We don't need a warrant to know where you have been,because location data was 'clearly a business record' and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment." News: Russians to implement devices in the subways to read everyone's cellphone data. Not News: Nobody believes their purpose of finding "stolen" phones. Yet another Alberta spill, when Keystone XL proponents think Obama's not caring about his job numbers. A man nearly died after being locked in a cell in a US jail and forgotten for 4 days. The Ku Klux Klan makes headlines again by starting a neighborhood watch program. You'd think we wouldn't have another human rights clusterfuck after Beijing 2008, but no. Reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic, and ... revolvers?

Bradley Manning: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23506213 Guilty on 20 charges. Not Guilty of aiding the enemy.] Manning could be facing a sentence of more than 100 years. It sounds awful until you get to the end of the article: Ireland just passed the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act.(Spoiler: It legalizes, not prohibits, abortion.) Companion article: What the law changes. Your Government Spying at Work, Part #2a: Now you know where their money come from. Free speech in the USA! Interviewing someone with a microphone shaped like a dildo can earn you jail time.  A month ago, but worth it for the headline: Ku Klux Klan foils Jewish plot to kill Obama with X-ray beam weapon. Science trying to explain everything, Part #1: Evolutionary origin of monogamy. (Mechanisms for) Origin of life RNA revised. Birtherism, style.

What's the proper response to replacing Charles Darwin with Jane Austen on a UK bank note that gets replaced once every decade? Ooh, I know, rape threats! Seriously, GOP,really sick of calling you stupid. Vatican-backed very small embryonic-like stem cells, touted as an alternative to stem cells, turn out to be fake. Would someone please tell the Baton Rouge, Louisiana PD that we've moved on from treating gay men as criminals solely for being gay? Detroit cops:Stand back and let the masters show you how it's done. Mixed news on the "Pope Francis is a good guy" front. He's okay with the gays, as long as they don't, y'know, do gay things; women as priests is a a non-starter. Baby steps. With capitalism failed and fascism unappealing, workers in a shuttered Greek factorygive seizing the means of production a try. It's North Carolina's turn to shove a giant middle finger to voting rights after the Supreme Court ruled against the Voting Rights Act. To no one's surprise, the UK's censorship program is not going to be limiting itself to just pornography. "Fat shaming" is making people more obese. EDL leader Tommy Robinson (that's what he's calling himself this week) holds a Q&A session on Twitter.Lulz ensues. Americans who believe entirely in evolution jump to 1-in-5. (sigh) Fewer than 1/3 Americans oppose creationism in schools. Iowa ethics board may investigate the National Organization for Marriage. Epic xkcd experimental comic is finished.(...best way to follow it from the start is here) Attacking a free press for posting something you don't like isn't democratic, you know.

Your Government Spying at Work, Part #3: First it's the encryption keys, and now your account passwords. What do they think they are trying to do, impersonating you? Desmond Tutu would rather go to Hell than worship a homophobic God. Remember that campus police officer that pepper sprayed the line of Occupy protestors back in 2011? He's applied for worker's compensation because his actions have caused him psychiatric injuries. Define "torture", Mr. Holding. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries, Hollande! The Ohio kidnapper cops a plea, avoids the death penalty, blames pornography for messing up his mind. Of course, the best companies to do your censorship should have close ties with places where everything is censored. The OED willupdate its entry for marriage to include gay unions in response to gay marriage becoming law. Cue predictable screams that this is a Marxist plot to give us all cancer from the Daily Mail comments. The Conservatives' darling, Halliburton, pleads guilty to destruction of evidence relating to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Sometimes you'd hope videos like this wouldn't go public. Your Government Spying at Work, Part #2: Congress fails to put it down. But at least you know who wants it there. Update: Coming Soon - What do you mean SSL is secure, now that the government has the keys? Sex addiction may no longer be a thing. Your Government Spying at Work: The NSA not have the technology to search through its own employees' emails. I believe one should expect certain things to happen if they want to mess with people's basic needs. Or mess with the internet. We can't quite tell which one. How to get to Mars, and come back again It seems like we haven't learned anything since 2010, have we? George Zimmerman gets out of his car ... Anti-government and anti-graft protests in Bulgaria, which have been going on for 40 days contiguously, have just become radicalized and violent: blocked the National Assembly building and scuffled with the police. This happens in a matter of hours afterEU justice commissioner Viviane Reding backed the protesters, saying that she agreed with them that corruption and organized crime should be fought to the extreme and that there is a serious need of reforms in the country, mainly in its judicial system. Federal judge orders Ohio to recognize same-sex marriage performed in Maryland. Woman Gives Birth To Baby [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07/23/anthony-weiner-acknowledges-more-explicit-texts/ No, Weiner! Stop! Control yourself!] Here's a woman who wants her legs voluntarily amputated because she fancies she suffers from "Bodily Integrity Identity Disorder". Please tell me we don't have to humor this one too. What stunts the development and maturity of a crack baby? you a guess: it isn't crack. Derek Black, son of Don Black, renounces white nationalism. Pope Francis makes all Vatican residents and employees subject to 12 years in prison for committing acts of "sexual violence" including paedophilia. He also made it a crime for those same residents and employees to "leak or receive confidential information or documentation" with a penalty of "six months to two years in prison and a €2,000 euro ($2,500) fine; the penalty goes up to eight years in prison if the material concerns the "fundamental interests" of the Holy See or its diplomatic relations to outsiders." What else do you think is going to happen if you keep asking for a vaccination ban? NOTE: The article is behind a paywall, so try itthis way. Struggling to get ISPs to go along with blocking porn, the government has tried to coax them intoa deception worthy of Conservapedia, according to a letter leaked to the BBC. In short, they wanted ISPs to change the porn blocking prompt so they could weasel word a triumph and the Daily Mail could announce victory. would you look at that. Are we seeing Antonin Scalia's mind decay before our eyes? At the Utah Bar Association's summer convention this weekend, he said that one contributing factor to the Holocaust was all the (supposedly left-wing) judicial activism in Germany during the 1930s -- when the You-Know-Whos were in control. Helen Thomas dies at 92 FBI is reviewing forensic evidence in 27 death penalty convictions. The US House of Representatives now endorses VLC. Did anyone tell them VLC circumvents CSS for DVD's yet? Oh the twist of logic toward content protection! Cherry on top for this week's Royal Assent of gay marriage: It seems Alan Turing will finally be pardoned. US fast food homophobia response: "If you don't like us, don't go here, commies!" Canadian fast food homophobia response: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/tim-hortons-faces-backlash-for-blocking-gay-and-lesbian-news-website-on-wifi/article13320893/ "Sorry, we'll stop being douchebags." "Don't worry, eh?"] Woman in Dubai reports rape to police, gets sentenced to 16 months in gaol for having sex outside of marriage. Please sign the petitionhere. UPDATE: She's been released, but the rapist was also pardoned. A third of US-Americans believe that the First Amendment goes too far. Further credence is given to the designation of previously discovered "hobbits" as a separate Hominid Species. The comments section is already a lost cause: Gawkergives up the hunt for the Rob Ford crack video. Funds instead to go to four charities as planned. (We're still not going to get a resolution to thisuntilSeptember, nonetheless.) At the third hop, NSA is already half way to get everyone in the game of 6 degrees of separation. Detroit files for bankruptcy. Free lunches surely worth every penny you paid for. Is the government of Ukraine providing wingnut welfare? Satanists hold a pink mass (same sex marriage for two couples, one gay and onelesbian) at Fred Phelps' mother's grave and proclaim that they have made her gay in the afterlife in a manner similar to the way Mormons baptize the dead. This is how anti-government rhetoric in the United States has gone down to. The four orders that ran the Magdalene laundries have decided towash their hands of the entire matter. Coming soon: cellphone charger powered by (your own) urine. Free electricity for the poor! Until about 20 years ago, cosmologists theorized that the universe is expanding, but would eventually begin to collapse in on itself. Then along came a new model wherein the expansion is actually accelerating and an eventual collapse won't happen. Now another new model has been introduced wherein the universeisn't expanding. Instead, the mass of everything is increasing, and that just makes it seem as if the universe is expanding. I'll wait while you go get a measuring tape. A bill in Ireland to allow transgender people to have their gender legally recognised moves forward, but with some problems, including an age barrier and being only available to unmarried people. Everybody laugh at the Taliban. Yay! Gay Marriage becomes legal in England and Wales. Not so yay: It's not happening in Scotland, and if you're transgender you have to get your spouse's consent to get legal gender recognition. Pope Francis to Catholics on the Twittersphere: For 140 characters or less, I'lllet you have "time off purgatory." Liz Cheney for Senate. Of course, the fact that North Korea need containers full of sugar would be a red flag itself. On the eighth 24-hour day, God created 2500-year-old manure. If you visit a lot of porn websites, you need a good anti-virus program. But, can you guess which type of website is three times more likely to infect your computer? HBO demonstrates the psychopathy of the entertainment industry by (ineffectively and likely erroneously)trying to memory hole the open-source media player VLC off Google's search index. For added incompetence fun, they have also issued at least one DMCA takedown notice against their own official website in the past. So, to a degree, domestic propagandais legal in the US now. Noted anti-vaccine crank Jenny McCarthy nowgets to spew her nonsense on national TV on a daily basis. Back in Florida, another black teenager is killed by a white male who "felt threatened" and stood his ground. How did it begin? Loud music. And of course, he acted "as any responsible firearms owner would have". Nowadays you can buy all sorts of things on eBay, including patient records. George Zimmerman walks free. Whether this constitutes as evidence of a working justice system is left as exercise for the readers. Nobody noticed, but just before Canada Day, hate speech quietly fell out of the Human Rights Act. Hate speech is now handled by the courts, not a human rights tribunal, and criminal charges for hate speech require the attorney general's cooperation. And this, students, is when Texas became a purple state. Meanwhile: North Carolina shows Texas what finesse is: No hope for your anti-woman bill? No problem, jam it up the ass of a motorcycle safety bill at the last second without telling anyone until everyone's already got their voting hat out, and done. Bigotry + stupidity. Ahead of the Texas state abortion bill vote, capitol security guardsconfiscated tampons and condoms. Guns are still okay, however. Remember, if you outlaw tampons, only outlaws will have tampons! Head of Department of Homeland Security call it quits. Cure forsome lethal genetic diseases brought to you by the HIV. Microsoft: "Your privacy (or the lack thereof) is our priority." How much does it cost to spy on you, paid for by your money. Sanity finally achieved in Ireland. Obamacare constitutionality challenge by Liberty Universitydismissed by appeals court. More of U.S. surveillance architecture, brought to you by LinkedIn searches. Blackberry capitulated to the government of India in the area of spying people of India. At the 2006 wedding of Tom Cruise to Katie Holmes, actress Leah Remini asked David Miscavige theverboten question: Where's Shelly? (Mrs. Miscavige hasn't been seen in public since she attempted a coup of the Church of Scientology the previous year.) Now, after seven years of the relentless bullying, harassment and interrogations that followed that simple question -- not to mention millions of dollars flushed down the L.Ron Hubbard memorial sewer -- Ms. Remini says "I quit!" Exoplanet is blue because of glass rain That'll make sure NSA doesn't intercept what you are typing. Sure. The Advertising Standards Authority tells Amazon that saying "our computer did it" isno excuse for displaying a publisher's description if it's dangerous nonsense. Ah, the smell of patronage. Nope, men's rights activists are not sexist. Just ignore it and everything will be fine, mkay?

Republican State Representative Jodie Laubenberg is the author of the most recent anti-abortion bill in Texas. But just six years ago, not only did she want to deny fetuses access to the state's Children's Health Insurance Program because "they're not born yet," she went a step further by trying to get newborns to wait three months to be added to the program. The top ten most facepalm-inducing perceptions British public gets wrong Social welfare brought to you by glitch(es). CIO for the US Economic Development Administration (EDA): OMG! some other nation state has to be involved in this malware attack! Let's destroy perfectly good computers! Security flaws found within the emergency alert systems, which has led to zombie apocalypse alert in Montana. Is Israel holding someone in secret imprisonment? Again? North Carolina proves it's ready to join the 20th century. If you want to find aliens, then look for someone moving stars Florida legislature and governor make their entry into this year's "LOL! We Don't Read The Bills We Vote On, Either! So Whatcha Gonna Do About It?" sweepstakes. A new state law aimed at banning internet cafes is so badly written thatit actually bans the use of all computers and smart phones within the state. Southern Baptist leader admits his church may strike other Americans as "freakish". Not to worry, he's not becoming self-aware, he's comparing his Church to Early Christians. The lower bound on what programs like PRISM knows about you, nowbrought to you byMIT. If... you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

First Mark Sanford, Anthony Weiner, and now Eliot Spitzer. DNA found in Lake Vostok. Not the smoking gun, but getting pretty close...  The US spying clusterfuck keeps getting bigger. Mohamed ElBaradei (yes, the former IAEA chief and Nobel Prize winner) is now thePrime Minster of Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is already accusing him of being anti-Islam. Update: Wait. You want to rest your head on our precious transit windows? We'llbroadcast ads directly into your head. Oh FFS, Kerry. (Miniature) human organ in mice brought to you by human stem cells. [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-planned-to-repay-duffy-from-party-funds-but-balked-at-cost-files-show/article13012003/ We'll pay the $30,000 you stole from the Senate...  Oh. Oh shit.] Update:This is going to be fun. Gay prisoners in Israel win the right for conjugal visits. Whoopsies! A left-wing legislator in Costa Rica inserted some pro-gay marriage language into a bill that would amend that nation's "Law of Young People." The righties helped pass the amendment without reading the full bill, and now they're losing their collective shit over it. (The law now awaits the president's signature, followed by a constitutional review.)  No doubt this legislator realized that right-wingers usually don't like to read the bills that they vote on -- e.g., Eric Cantor's reasoning last week for why the House leadership didn't want to consider the Senate-passed immigration bill. You know people really hate you when you need to spend $630,000 to get people to like you on Facebook. France has 'PRISM like system' EU to decide whether to stick a giant middle finger to the NSA spying program. UPDATE:support for the finger. Just when you thought the pedophiles in the international Catholic priest molestation scandal had plumbed the lowest depths of depravity, you hear of another priest that managed to go even lower. Teen may face 10 years in prison for a comment made on a video game Morsi's out on his arse Update:The army suspends the constitution. Now we wait. Update II: Morsiarrested by Egyptian Army, and TV stations supportive of Morsi taken off the air. Update III: Now the army detains key Brotherhood members Update IV: Now some Morsi supporters are killed by 'security' forces Update V: Unsurprisingly it's now kicked off

In your face non-apology apology, if apologies are any good at all. Exodus International is no more. Same with DOMA. And unless a California elects right-wingers to restart the cause, so is Prop 8. Seeing a vacuum, the FRC has decided to inaugurate (the completely unofficial) "Ex-Gay Pride Month" and have decided to launch not one but two reparative therapy/ex-gay "rights" organizations that warrant scrutiny -- Equality and Justice For All (?????) and Voice of the Voiceless (!!!!!). Regarding that last one, didn't Paul Ryanmake a similar mistake less than a year ago? Bolivian president's plane diverted over fears he's carrying Edward Snowden. Potential head transplant/treatment for decapitation brought to you by neuroscientists. Even Romney thought that his 2012 candidacy was a bad idea. Oh George, you just had to stick your head in at the best possible time. protest at mosque in Sweden. After the death of DOMA, and lacking an understanding boththe amendment process and basic math, United States House of Representatives member Tim Huelskamp introduces a Constitutional Amendment to ban same sex marriage. What we know about the Catholic priest molestation scandal is about to get more detailed. As part of a bankruptcy settlement after victims sued their pants cassocks off, the Milwaukee archdiocese has beenforced to open their records in the case, dating back to the 1960s. In southern Kentucky, another small child found a gun that the adult owner thought was unloaded. The result: Six-year-old girl shot dead by her four-year-old brother.  The owner of the gun is the children's grandfather who had set the gun out so he could clean it. Egyptian Military issues ultimatum to Morsi.