- Way to take the situation eight steps too far, Bahrain. No
country likes its people rising up and demanding change by its government, but
there is no reason to revoke their citizenship. That’s exactly what Bahrain’s
government has done, much to the chagrin of two human rights groups, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and
the Bahrain Youth Society for Human
Rights. The groups decried the government’s announcement that it had
revoked the citizenship of 31 Bahrainis, described by human rights activists as
mostly former political detainees. A joint statement by the two groups voiced their
“grave concern over the systematic targeting of prominent political activists,
former members of parliament, clerics and others.” Although their plea for United
States, U.K., United Nations and others to put pressure on the Bahraini
authorities to reverse the decision and allow freedom of expression, don’t bank
on it. Sure, the kingdom has systematic and widespread human-rights violations,
but just because it is home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet doesn’t mean America
will intervene. Pro-democracy protests have occurred throughout the past year,
but the government remains entrenched in its position. An official statement by the Ministry of Interior
that cited a law allowing “the re-evaluation of nationality when a holder of
the Bahraini citizenship causes damage to state security,” which is complete
horse sh*t but which no one with any muscle to affect change will challenge.
Oddly enough, the list of names of 31 people whose citizenship had been revoked
included Ali Hassan Mushaima, the son of the leader of the Haq
movement, Hassan Mushaima, who is serving a life sentence. It has to be a
weird coincidence because if it’s not, then the Bahraini government would seem
to be oppressing the basic rights of its people in über-cowardly fashion. “The
Minister of Interior will take the necessary measures to implement this in
conformity with the kingdom's commitments under international law,” the
statement said. The lone piece of good news in this sheet cake of injustice is
that many on the list are living abroad with at least eight in the U.K., and
others in Iran, Iraq, Sweden and Australia and have been granted political
asylum by other countries……….
- Is this the NFL or European soccer? Players faking
injuries is endemic to “the world’s game,” but there are fakers in other sports
too and one of them plays for a team typically known as one of the toughest and
most physical in the NFL. Pittsburgh Steelers Emmanuel Sanders and his team
have been fined a combined $50,000 by the league because the receiver faked an
injury during an Oct. 21 game in Cincinnati. Sanders grabbed the back of his
leg and collapsed to the ground like he had taken a bullet from a sniper during
the fourth quarter of Pittsburgh's 24-17 win. NFL executive vice president of
football operations Ray Anderson reveiwed footage of the incident and fined
Sanders $15,000 and the team $35,000. Initially Sanders tried to play coy when
asked about the matter, but eventually he stopped talking about it entirely. It
didn’t help his cause that during the game, NBC announcers openly discussed
their belief Sanders apparently was deliberately feigning an injury to help his
team save a timeout. Anderson said the incident appeared to be isolated on the
part of the Steelers and found no indication there was a system of faking in
place. "If I believed that to be the case, the discipline would be
substantially more," Anderson said. "Instead, it reflects the
commissioner's strong view that it is the responsibility of the club to insure
that its players are familiar with and in compliance with the league's
competitive rules." Anderson penned an open letter to Sanders and Steelers
general manager Kevin Colbert citing video evidence showing Sanders being
attended to by trainers to keep up the (alleged) ruse and then returning to the
game for the next play, a Pittsburgh punt on which Sanders outran his teammates
and downed the ball. "The video of the play shows Sanders running swiftly
and effortlessly toward the punted ball, and then leaving the field with no
sign of discomfort," Anderson wrote. ‘Nuff said……….
- Dream the impossible dream and it can come true in outer
space. For example, if your dream was to successfully control a small robot in Germany from
the International Space Station (ISS) with the help of a new networking
protocol designed for deep space communication, it could have come true just
this week. NASA announced the miraculous news that will certainly change the
world in (no) very real and tangible ways any time soon, telling the tale of an
experiment in which it deployed a small Lego robot at the European Space
Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, and space station commander Sunita
Williams connected to the robot from a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p laptop on board the
ISS's Columbus Orbital Laboratory. The idea behind the simulation was to
replicate a spacecraft orbiting any other planetary body and the test relied on
NASA's Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol, which the space agency a
decade ago jointly developed with TCP/IP co-inventor and Google VP Vint Cerf. Because
the technology can withstand delays and disruptions that might be common in
space due to long distances and obstacles like planets and solar storms, it is
much different than the Earth-bound Internet Protocol, which establishes an
end-to-end connection before sending data. Disruption Tolerant Networking, or DTN,
moves data node-to-node and can pause and wait for new connections to open up
before relaying information to further nodes. NASA expects DTN to be one of its
primary future space protocols and play a key role in future space exploration
and communication. "The experimental DTN we've tested from the space
station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to
operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay
stations," NASA deputy associate administrator for space communications
Badri Younes said in a statement. NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency and now the European Space Agency are all involved in the research and
hope their progress will benefit the world of space exploration on a large
scale………
- Clearly, not everyone in America has fully accepted and
digested the results of Tuesday’s presidential election. More than a few people
(no names named, Fox News conserva-Nazi ass hats) are still pissed about President Barack Obama and at least a few of
those people reside in Mississippi. They also happen to work at a Siemens plant
in Jackson, Miss. It was at the electronics manufacturing plant that employee
Robert White and a few of his co-workers were t-shirts to work this week that
both represented their union and trumpeting Obama’s success. Supervisors weren't
enthralled with the shirts and eventually the issue made its way to the
numb-nutted squares in human resources, who told the workers sporting Obama
shirts that they had to either remove their shirts or go home. White, who works
on the plant’s assembly line, said he and his cohorts purchased the shirts
through a local union and have worn them before. He also alleged that a double
standard is in play at the plant and pointed to a racially tinged example of
what he is talking about. "I've seen Romney and Ryan shirts on a couple of
white guys," White said. "You got people coming out there with
confederate flags and different things…other political type of statements, and
I can't wear the president of the United States of America - I don't know where
I'm at anymore." You’re in the Deep South, bro. You’re also rocking a
massive portrait of Obama on your back and maybe the powers that be don’t find
his face as delightfully pleasant as those Messrs Romney and Ryan……….
- Do the ancient Greeks smelllllllllll………what The
Rock…..is……cookin’? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has mostly put his
professional wrestling days behind him and is now full-fledged action star,
will next play Hercules in a film based on a popular graphic novel called “Hercules: The Thracian Wars,” which
was published in 2008.The chiseled Johnson seems like an ideal fit to play the
muscle-bound hero in a script adapted by rookie writer Ryan Condal with script
revisions by Evan Spiliotopoulos, who's also been working on the ridiculously
unnecessary and sure-to-suck “Wanted 2”
recently. Brett Ratner, the man to go to in Hollywood when making a big-budget,
mega-hyped blockbuster sure to spend way too much money and not bring in nearly
as much as expected, will direct. Ratner is best known for (other than wasting
loads of cash on his films) the “Rush Hour” movies and 2006's “X-Men: The
Last Stand.” Production isn't scheduled to begin until early next year and
in the meantime, Johnson will have plenty of new projects to promote and debut.
He will reach the big screen at some point with the blockbuster sequel “GI
Joe: Retaliation,” which has been repeatedly delayed but is due out in
March. One month later, he will appear alongside Mark Wahlberg in “Pain
& Gain,” an action comedy. Playing Hercules will bring him back into
the same general cinematic territory he explored in one of his first big acting
breaks, 20XX’s “The Scorpion King.” Many well-known actors have played Hercules
over the years, including Arnold
Schwarzenegger starred in the cult 1970 film “Hercules In New York.”
An animated project in 1997 saw Disney task Tate Donovan with voicing the Greek
hero. Now, the former World Wrestling Entertainment champion will have hit shot………
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