2008 Presidential candidate Ralph Nader discusses the situation in the Gaza strip and challenges Senator Barack Obama’s comments to AIPAC.

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An off-beat video tackling Colombia’s image problem.

Y el mismo video abajo en español.

Colombians will no longer tolerate interference in our internal affairs. That means you Sarkozy and Chirac. That means you Ortega and Chavez. That means the Swiss, the Swedes, the Italians or whomever supports the FARC. We will no longer allow our country’s good name to be mispelled or dragged through the mud. The days of Colombia being a pawn in other’s people’s games are over.

I have never seen any of Clear and Present Danger until I saw this clip. I am offended and outraged that such a line was used and of such an absurd portrayal of Colombia in a Hollywood movie.

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The great Scottish comic Stanley Baxter gives us his take on take away (take out in the US).

It’s pure gay camp full of sexual double entendres. “Ice Cream, All it takes is a lick,” he is determined to lose his cherry in the ice cream skit. Just for the record, Baxter is not gay but he sure can pull it off.

This choice of tonight’s camp is, of course, tied to today’s report on obesity in the United States.

Despite wide-ranging efforts to encourage Americans to lose weight, the number of U.S. adults who are obese increased almost 2 percent between 2005 and 2007, a new report found.

In 2007, 25.6 percent of adults reported being obese, compared to 23.9 percent in 2005, according to the finding in the July 18 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’sMorbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“The epidemic of adult obesity continues to rise in the United States, indicating that we need to step up our efforts at the national, state and local levels,” Dr. William Dietz, director of CDC’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, said in a news release. “We need to encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables, engage in more physical activity and reduce the consumption of high-calorie foods and sugar-sweetened beverages in order to maintain a healthy weight.”
The percentage of adults who are obese varies by state and region, according to the report. For example, in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, 30 percent of the residents reported being obese, compared with 18.7 percent in Colorado, which had the lowest prevalence of obesity.

Obesity was most prevalent in the South, with 27 percent of residents classified as obese. In the Midwest, the number was 25.3 percent; in the Northeast, 23.3 percent; and in the West, 22.1 percent, according to the report.

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This weekend the By The Fault Weekend Reader looks at language.

From the TED conference, linguist Steven Pinker questions the very nature of our thoughts — the way we use words, how we learn, and how we relate to others. In his best-selling books, he has brought sophisticated language analysis to bear on topics of wide general interest. Dr. Pinker teaches at Harvard University.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. My post, my views.

Via the Independent,

“Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country’s first gay honour killing. (…)

Bungled efforts by a religious-minded government to loosen the grip of Turkey’s authoritarian version of secularism have triggered a court case aimed at shutting the ruling party down, with a verdict expected within a month.

Against this backdrop, the issues of women’s rights, sexuality and the place of religion in the public arena have been particularly contentious. Ahmet Yildiz’s crime, his friends say, was to admit openly to his family that he was gay.

“From the day I met him, I never heard Ahmet have a friendly conversation with his parents,” one close friend and near neighbour recounted. “They would argue constantly, mostly about where he was, who he was with, what he was doing.”

The family pressure increased, the friend explained. “They wanted him to go back home, see a doctor who could cure him, and get married.” Shortly after coming out this year, Mr Yildiz went to a prosecutor to complain that he was receiving death threats. The case was dropped. Five months later, he was dead. The police are now investigating his murder. For gay rights groups, the student’s inability to get protection was a typical by-product of the indifference, if not hostility, with which a broad swathe of Turkish society views homosexuality. The military, for example, sees it as an “illness”. Men applying for an exemption to obligatory military service on grounds of homosexuality must provide proof – either in the form of an anal examination, or photographs.

“The media ignores or laughs off violence against gays,” says Buse Kilickaya, a member of the gay lobbying group Pink Life, adding that Ahmet Yildiz’s death “risks being swept under the carpet and forgotten like other cases in the past”. Turkey has a history of honour killings. A government survey earlier this year estimated that one person every week dies in Istanbul as a result of honour killings. It put the nationwide death toll at 220 in 2007. In the majority of cases, the victims are women, but Mr Yildiz’s friends suspect he may be the first recorded victim of a homosexual honour killing.

“We’ve been trying to contact Ahmet’s family since Wednesday, to get them to take responsibility for the funeral,” one of the victim’s friends said yesterday, standing outside the morgue where his body has been for three days. “There’s no answer, and I don’t think they are going to come.” The refusal of families to bury their relatives is common after honour-related murders.

Mazhar Bagli, a Turkish sociologist who has interviewed 189 people convicted of honour killings, has never heard of a death revolving around homosexuality but has no doubt that it could be used as justification. “Honour killings cleanse illicit relationships. For women, that is a broad term. Men are allowed more sexual freedom, but homosexuality is still seen by some as beyond the pale.”"
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John McCain held a Town Hall meeting today with GM Tech Center employees in Warren, Michigan. Here is part of the Q&A session.

Separately, Senator McCain called for a $5,000 tax credit to help American consumers buy electric vehicles. He had earlier toured the GM plant where the new GM prototype is being designed. From the Los Angeles Times:

John McCain today called for a tax credit to help American consumers buy electrically powered automobiles as part of an effort to decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

Speaking to General Motors workers after company officials gave him a tour of the design room for the prototype Chevy Volt, the Republican presidential candidate noted that a barrier to the widespread use of electric cars is their exorbitant cost.
“I don’t know if you remember, but the first cellphone cost $1,000,” he told a crowd of several hundred workers in a showroom at the GM Technical Center here.

“I would support tax credits for Americans who choose to buy the Volt and other automobiles that put us on the track to energy independence,” McCain said. He later said the credit would be worth $5,000.

He called the project an “integral part of our ability to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.”

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“It depends on the conditions, depends on the missions set, depends on the enemy,” Petraeus, who is to meet Obama when he visits Iraq soon, told NBC News today. “The enemy does get a vote and is sometimes an independent variable. Lots of different factors I think that would be tied up in that. The dialogue on that and the amount of risk, because it eventually comes down to how much risk various options entail. That’s the kind of discussion I think that is very important as we look to the future.”

Meanwhile the White House announced the United States and Iraq had agreed on a “general time horizon” for the further drawing down of US troops in Iraq as the security situation improves. Via the New York Time:

The United States and Iraq have agreed to set a “general time horizon” for the “further reduction of U.S. combat forces in Iraq” following the improvement in security conditions in the country, the White House said Friday.

The breakthrough, which was reached between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in discussions via video link on Thursday, could lead to the successful completion of a long-term security agreement covering American operations in Iraq — from combat missions to detaining Iraqis — by the end of this month, a White House official said.

“We’re converging on an agreement,” the official said, referring to ongoing negotiations between Iraq and the United States on the deal.

The suspicious minds amongst us might think that there is a conspiracy to steal Obama’s thunder on the Iraq issue. The sane might just admit the surge has worked. Still doesn’t make the war right but that is an issue that no longer matters. What matters are the conditions on the ground now and the prospects for a peaceful and prosperous Iraq and those are much improved. Not out of the woods yet either but heading in the right direction.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. My post, my views.

So the Taliban are alive and well and still oppressing women and exercising their brand of religious fanaticism over entire regions whenever and wherever they can. How do we know that? First, via the BBC, we learn that the Taliban have set up Islamic courts in the North-Western area of Pakistan they control,

“The top spokesman for the Pakistani Taleban Movement (PTM), Maulvi Omar, has told the BBC Urdu service that permanent Taleban courts were already functioning in Bajaur district, Mohmand’s northern neighbour.

“About 20 local religious scholars issue dozens of judgements each day in Bajaur, where we have the most organised judicial system in place,” he said. (…)

In addition the PTM also runs a vast network of mobile courts in the rest of the Fata areas, he said.

The cases range from land transactions and loan disputes to family matters.

All this is embarrassing for the Pakistani government, especially because the Taleban have in the past carried out cruel punishments against people accused of moral turpitude, crime or spying.

Earlier this month, two Afghan nationals accused of spying for the US were publicly killed on the orders of a Taleban court in Bajaur.

Last month, a court in Orakzai ordered the public killing of half a dozen alleged bandits.

And in March, the Taleban killed a couple after they were allegedly found guilty of adultery by a court in Mohmand.”

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Via the Anchorage Daily News:

The Barack Obama presidential campaign is pouring money into the Republican bastion of Alaska to beat John McCain and to help the Alaska Democrats running for Congress against Ted Stevens and Don Young.

“We’ve taken a look at the political dynamic of Alaska and, as a result, have made Alaska one of our 18 battleground states,” said Obama deputy campaign manager Pete Rouse. “We believe we can win in Alaska and we’re making it a priority.”

Rouse, who was Obama’s chief of staff in the U.S. Senate, has ties to Alaska. His mother grew up here, his aunt lives in Palmer, and Rouse was chief of staff for Alaska Lt. Gov. Terry Miller from 1979 to 1982. He’s well aware Alaska voters haven’t favored a Democrat for president since 1964.

But the most recent polling shows McCain with only a small lead over Obama in Alaska. Obama inspired a lot of excitement in the February Alaska Democratic caucuses, said Rouse, while McCain finished in last place among the state’s Republican primary voters. Rouse also argues voters here are open to Obama’s message of change.

Rouse said another factor in the Obama camp’s decision to launch a major campaign effort in Alaska is a desire to help the Democrats who will be further down the ballot from Obama in November.

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The McCain campaign unveiled a new ad today attacking Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan. The ad is running in a dozen battleground states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri.

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