Senator Craig Lies, Again

I am resigning he said, but apparently he had his fingers crossed. Ok he ain't gay, he didn't solicit sex in a public washroom, and he is not resigning. Wow just for lying he should be run out of town on a rail way before the end of the month.

But the pièce de résistance is that he is so incompetent he left a message about his clever subterfuge on a complete strangers answering machine.

U.S. Sen. Larry Craig says he might reconsider his decision to resign if he clears his name in his arrest for disorderly conduct in a restroom sex scandal.

That’s why Craig chose his words carefully during his resignation speech Saturday in Boise, according to a voice mail message he mistakenly left on a stranger’s phone. In the message obtained by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, Craig tells a man named “Billy” that his choice of language is deliberate because it leaves the door open for him to stay in office.

In the message, Craig mentions that he has the support of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a backer who Craig saw as pivotal for giving his efforts political legitimacy.

The day after Craig’s resignation speech, Specter went on Fox News Sunday. “I'd still like to see Senator Craig fight this case," Specter said. "He left himself some daylight, when he said he "intends" to resign in 30 days. I'd like to see Larry Craig go back to court, seek to withdraw his guilty plea and fight the case.”

The voice is indeed Craig’s, spokesman Dan Whiting said. Whiting would not say who “Billy” is. Later that day, Craig announced that he had hired high-profile criminal defense lawyer Billy Martin, whom Craig hired to help him unravel the guilty plea Craig filed last month.

Whiting confirmed in an e-mail that his boss “intends to resign on Sept. 30th. However, he is fighting these charges, and should he be cleared before then, he may, and I emphasize may, not resign.”

H/T to Cowboys For Social Responsibility.


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Senator Craig's Tearoom

Senator Larry Craig who likes to have sex in public washrooms asserts he is not gay.

"Idaho Senator Asserts: 'I Never Have Been Gay'."

He may be 'technically' correct. Some 'straight' men like to have anonymous sex in public washrooms too.

For over 100 years, police surveillance and sting operations have targeted public toilets - or "tearooms" - frequented by gay men in search of sex.

But tearooms were also frequented by other classes. The washrooms of New York's subway system were "(the) meeting place for everyone," as one man put it. A businessman on his way home to his wife and children in one of the outer boroughs could engage in quick sex at the end of the workday but still not identify as gay.

And somethings never change.....

10% Of Straight Men Have Sex With Men, New York

Almost 10% of men who said they were straight had had sex with at least one man during the last twelve months, according to a new study carried out by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. 70% of them were married. Many of these men said they had not used a condom and had not been tested for HIV.

Men who have sex with men (MSM) is a term used mostly in the United States to classify male persons who engage in sex with other males, regardless of whether they self-identify as gay, bisexual, or heterosexual. The term is intended to reference a particular category of people as a risk-group for HIV, and is considered a behavioural category

In a study conducted by Preeti Pathela and colleagues (reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine) nearly 4200 New York City men were interviewed by telephone and asked 130 questions about health-related matters. Embedded in the demographic questions midway through the survey was a question about the man’s sexual orientation. Later, at the end of the survey, each man was asked about the number of men and women with whom he’d had sex during the previous 12 months.

Of the men who labeled their sexual orientation and reported having sex in the past year:

• 85.8% identified as straight and reported sex only with women
• 3.3% identified as gay and reported sex only with men
• 1.1% identified as bisexual and reported sex with men, women, or both.

But:

• 8.9% identified as straight and reported sex only with men
• 0.7% identified as straight and reported sex with women and men.

Combining the last two groups, nearly 10% of the men identified themselves as straight but had at least one male sexual partner in the previous 12 months. About 70% of these men were married. Nearly all reported having sex with only one partner in the past year.

This comment attached to the Wall Street Journal blog on Senator Craig's denial of being gay, makes the same point.

But let’s not have the discussion that America really needs to have: gay men don’t have sex in public bathrooms. They have their gay bars, clubs and websites for that. It’s the straight men traveling on “business” that play footsies in the public johns, who wouldn’t be caught dead in a gay bar or bookstore. Who’s have sex in a public restroom? Your “straight” husband is!!!! LOL I should know. I’ve had sex w/ many “straight” men who were cheating on their families, only to tell me after I took care of their needs…cheating me, their families and themselves. Wake up America. Stop shooting gay folks as scapegoats. It’s the straight men who don’t want to come out of the closet for fear of being labeled queens who are troublemakers.
http://www.williamcastillo.com

Comment by William Castillo - August 28, 2007 at 9:55 pm

However for truly anonymous sex Senator Craig might have considered sticking to the internet where you can have a relationship with a man and remain straight.

The Internet has created a space where people can experiment with their sexuality. Many heterosexual men, who have previously merely fantasized about it, take the plunge and have cyber sex with other men. These are some of the findings in Typing, Doing and Being-­A Study of Men Who Have Sex with Men and Sexuality on the Internet, a new dissertation from Malmö University College in Sweden. Michael W. Ross will defend the thesis on March 10, and the public defense will be the first ever at the Faculty of Health and Society as well as the first in the new research field of Health and Society.

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Outing BP

A scandal occurred this spring when the British CEO of BP, British Petroleum, the British petrol giant which branded itself as green; Beyond Petroleum 'its a start', Lord Browne was outed for being gay, and supposedly lying about it in court.

The reality is that his resignation had less to do with covering up his homosexuality then covering for BP. Which had not gone Beyond Petroleum as a result of Lord Browne's corporate decisions but had become a Bad Player in the oil business.

British Petroleum used the cover of a post-Hurricane Katrina refinery bill in Congress for a sneak attack on legal protections against supertankers in Puget Sound. Reps. Jay Inslee and Dave Reichert thwarted it.

You will remember that BP had faced a number of oil field scandals prior to the outing of Lord Browne by his Canadian lover and rent boy; Jeff Chevalier.

A long list of misfortunes has battered this venerable company, including an explosion at its Texas City, Texas, refinery that killed 15 workers and injured scores more, and protracted outages at other refineries. There was also an Alaskan oil spill resulting from a corroded pipeline, along with 2005 hurricane damage to its big Gulf of Mexico Thunder Horse production platform, which delayed that facility's production start-up.

As if that weren't enough, the company's longtime CEO Lord John Brown stepped down abruptly this spring amid allegations about his private life. And more recently, BP was pressured by Russian authorities to sell much of its stake in a big natural gas field to state-run gas company OAO Gazprom.

Lord Browne the ultimate company man was still that despite his lovers outing of him. The reality was that his corporate maneuvering of BP in the oil business had been less an economic success than a failure in protecting the environment and workers.


As they say here is the rest of the story.

Blackmail, Sex & Corporate Secrets

While much has been written in Britain about the seedier side of the scandal, the critical role that BP and its executives played in it has been largely overlooked. Company officials, for instance, reportedly encouraged the C.E.O. to out himself on one of the BBC’s most popular radio shows, a plan that fizzled when Browne lost his nerve in the studio. Before that, BP leaders were secretly enlisted to serve on the board of Chevalier’s company, which was underwritten by Browne. And in the end, the disclosure of corporate secrets was as much a concern to Browne as the revelation of his homosexuality. The threat that internal BP matters might be leaked led Browne to lie in a court statement, which in turn led to his humiliating resignation and public shaming. Among the secrets Browne wanted to protect: He was considering relocating BP overseas—a potential economic ­disaster that would have been a huge blow to Britain’s corporate psyche—and he placed a dollar value on the heads of his workers in the event that they were injured or killed in an accident. In one memo, company executives gamed out different disaster scenarios for BP, comparing them to the outcomes in The Three Little Pigs.

Now the company is trying to right ­itself under a new C.E.O., Tony Hayward, who has taken over amid a growing outcry over BP’s shoddy environmental and safety record, which Browne managed to keep as secret as his private life.
Throughout the 1990s, he made a series of acquisitions that won him enormous praise in Britain and heralded the consolidation of the major oil companies. It seemed novel then that British ­Petroleum grew not by increasing its oil exploration and development but by taking over American oil companies such as Standard Oil of Ohio and Amoco. The BP-Amoco merger was the largest of its kind and launched the company into the big leagues overnight. When Exxon bought Mobil the next year, Browne quickly retaliated by purchasing Atlantic Richfield for $32 billion.

Browne was also, like any great C.E.O., a P.R. genius. In 1997, to the horror of many of his oil-industry peers, Browne admitted in a speech that he ­believed global warming was real. He then hired a San Francisco firm to ­rebrand British Petroleum and come up with a new corporate slogan. The old BP logo was replaced with a green-and-yellow sunburst, and ads suggested that BP now stood for . . . Beyond Petroleum. It was a masterstroke: BP had only $100 million invested in solar power at the time of the renaming, compared with at least $10 billion invested in conventional energy. But thanks to BP’s green logo and green C.E.O., its reputation as a green company flourished.

Browne was not quite so popular in the U.S., where experience on the ground is more important than a taste for fine art. “They pounded their chests a lot, but they didn’t know how to run refineries,” a former Amoco employee says of the BP executives. Because refineries are among the most intricate and dangerous workplaces on the planet, the old-timers feared that the BP ­executives’ ignorance would compromise safety, especially as BP cut jobs and budgets to reduce redundancy and raise profits for shareholders. (Similar allegations would later take center stage in the Texas refinery explosion lawsuits.) Other executives were skeptical of the hierarchical management structure at BP; they particularly complained about the handpicked “turtles” (named after the mutant ninja variety), who served as interns to Browne and were supposedly fast-tracked to replace other executives. There was also something known internally as the promise: a written business plan that could be used against employees who didn’t meet their projected goals. “They would use it to cut your throat if you failed,” a former engineer explains. Gradually, the company’s culture became less about innovation than intimidation. Fearful of losing their jobs, few spoke up about deteriorating conditions at some of the refineries. Behind Browne’s back, employees nicknamed him the “elf,” an acronym for “evil little fucker.”

Browne had his critics outside the oil industry too. The company was accused of committing human rights violations while building a pipeline in Colombia, and concerns were expressed about North Sea pollution. Greenpeace selected Browne for its Best Impression of an Environmentalist award. Matt Simmons, whose Houston-based Simmons & Co. is one of the largest investment-banking businesses serving the energy sector, was deeply skeptical of Browne’s 1999 prediction that, because of a worldwide market glut, oil prices would never reach $40 a barrel. “There was a vision of unreality in John Browne’s business plan,” Simmons says. “That generally works until you slip up.”

No one would dispute that Texas City, Texas, is a very long way from St. James’s Square. It is a rough-and-tumble blue-collar town on the Gulf Coast, where people know all too well that refinery work is often life threatening but just as often the only work available. On March 23, 2005, something went very wrong at BP’s Texas City refinery, the third largest in the U.S. An aging tank used to separate gas and fluid overflowed, filling the air with flammable vapor. A driver unwittingly left his truck running, igniting a fireball that by the end of the day had killed 15 people and injured more than 200. Not surprisingly, the blast led to the launch of hundreds of multimillion-dollar lawsuits and several investigations, including one by a commission that former secretary of state James Baker headed. A probe by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board specifically blamed BP’s closed culture for the explosion. In 2006, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $21.3 million, the largest penalty of its kind ever issued.

That wasn’t all that would befall BP. The next several months brought a cascade of problems, almost all blamed on lax oversight and poor management. In March, 200,000 gallons of crude leaked out of a BP pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, forcing the company to partially shut down a major field. The pipe, it turned out, hadn’t been cleaned in years. In April, the U.S. Department of Labor fined BP for unsafe operations in an Ohio refinery. Also during this time, the company was unable to capitalize on its Thunder Horse offshore oil platform—the world’s largest—which was damaged during Hurricane Dennis in 2005. And in June, the government charged some of BP’s traders in Houston with trying to manipulate the price of propane in the Midwest and Northeast.

All these incidents inevitably prompted this question: How could a company that was supposed to be a model of corporate citizenship have gone so wrong? The answer that emerged was simple, and the weakness of Browne’s highly praised policy of acquiring big companies and instituting massive cost cuts was suddenly, fatally exposed. Instead of putting excess cash into maintenance and safety, the executives in London had ordered the company to “bank the savings.” But as plaintiffs’ attorneys have alleged, a rubber band can be stretched only so far before it breaks. BP led the industry in refinery deaths from 1995 to 2005. For 10 years, there was a fire a week at the Texas City plant, and many were afraid to work there, fearing that disaster was imminent. As an employee explained in a survey, “No one here in management cares. . . . We have been very lucky so far with this.” At the same time, the arrogance of BP executives was easily recognizable. One memo, prepared for a meeting held before the Texas City explosion, insisted on cost cuts, a familiar refrain at the plant: “Which bit of 25 percent don’t you understand??? We are going to be wasting our time on Monday unless you come prepared to commit to a 25 percent cut.”

In the end, Browne lied less to save his image than to save the image of his company. It’s notable, for instance, that there was no talk of resignation when word first emerged that the press had its hands on Chevalier’s story. Only after Browne learned that the corporate secrets could leak did he finally decide to step down.

Browne’s early departure will not prevent continued legal battles for BP, but it is perhaps as close to a sacrificial act of love as Browne is capable of, and it has allowed the company to start fresh. Though Browne also resigned from the board of Goldman Sachs, he still works for Apax Partners, a global private equity firm, and goes to his office when it suits him.

And as usual in the corporate world despite his fall from grace Lord Browne has landed on his feet.

FORMER BP boss Lord Browne has walked away with a pension worth just over £1million a year.The disgraced peer tops the list of 100 leading execs who look forward to pensions of £200,000 a year or more.

The former chief executive of BP PLC Lord Browne of Madingley has resigned as non-executive chairman of the advisory board of private equity firm Apax Partners to join energy and power private equity specialists Riverstone Holdings LLC.

His appointment at Riverstone Holdings, which specialises in the energy sector, comes almost four months after he quit oil giant BP when it emerged he lied to the High Court during a battle to block stories about his private life.

Lord Browne takes on the post of managing director and managing partner of Riverstone’s European business and will be based in London, where the group is soon to open an office.

Tags:

BP, Kyoto, environmentalism, homosexual, scandal, Lord Browne, John Browne,

Beyond Petroleum, British Petroleum, oil, Jeff Chevalier,

Foot Tapping

Well I guess I won't be tapping my foot while waiting for a bowel movement or while listening to my IPod in the mens room at the Minneapolis airport. I could get busted.

...According to the police report, Craig entered a bathroom stall next to the police investigator, placed his bag against the front of the door and tapped his foot in a gesture commonly used to try to pick up men in public toilets.

"I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct," Roll Call wrote, quoting the investigator in the police incident report.

Another Republican Senator for Family Values bites the dust.

Craig is in his third term and up for re-election next year. He is a former member of the Senate's Republican leadership and played an active role in the 1998 impeachment of former President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

In a June 2006 Senate vote, Craig voted in favour of an amendment to the Constitution to define marriage in the United States as a union between one man and one woman. The amendment was defeated by one vote.

Craig is a strong advocate for the rights of gun owners. He has a close association with the National Rifle Association and at one time sat on its board of directors.

Expect social conservatives to come out and defend Craig, in a backhanded way as they did with Senator Foley; claiming this as another example of gay bashing (sic) by Democrats.

In October last year, a gay rights activist claimed in an Internet blog that Craig had had several gay relationships. Craig's office denied it, saying the allegations were "completely ridiculous" and had "no basis in fact."

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Mr. and Mr. Brison

Canada will now have its first Federal Gay Political Marriage. And no it will not be John Baird and Stephen Harper. But it will be a conservative marriage, albeit a progressive one.

Liberal MP Scott Brison is set to become the first federal politician to tie the knot in a same-sex ceremony since MPs made gay marriage the law of the land just over two years ago.

Brison, 40, will marry partner Maxime St. Pierre next Saturday in his Kings-Hants riding, a bucolic corner of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.

Brison, a former Progressive Conservative party and Liberal party leadership hopeful, came out in 2002 and became Canada's first openly gay cabinet minister in 2004. But he's never defined his political persona around the issue and has closely guarded his private life.

I hope he is not Anglican.




H/T to Scott Tribe for this.


SEE:

Brison Kennedy Debate On QP

Brison Knew Better

Gay Liberal Leader

Fete Accompli

The Sexual Revolution Continues

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Not Queer Enough To Be Canadian

The story of Alvaro Orozco, a young Nicaraguan man who has claimed refugee status for being gay is a story of the stupidity of the social conservatives both in his home country and in Canada.

As I posted here in February when this story first surfaced; the Refugee Board in Calgary refused his request saying he didn't look/act gay.

Unlike our PM who occasionally looks like one of the Village People. Or that famous Conservative Cabinet Minister who is still in the closet.

And since Nicaragua is such a progressive country, having recently reelected Daniel Ortega as President, the refugee board figures that he would be safe from harm in that most Catholic of countries. A country that recently totally banned abortion.

Many LGBT Nicaraguans held prominent roles during the Sandinista Revolution, however, LGBT rights were not of any priority to the Sandinista government due to an overwhelming Roman Catholic population and was thought to be a huge political risk sure to be met with hostility from the Roman Catholic church.^[1]

After the United States lifted the economic embargo against Nicaragua many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) promoting LGBT rights began to operate in the country due to the absence of pressure from the United States. As a result, Nicaragua hosted in first public gay pride festival in 1991.^[1] The annual Gay Pride celebration in Managua, held around June 28, in still in motion and is used to commemorate the uprising of the Stonewall riots in New York City.^[2]

After gaining support the LGBT community suffered a huge setback when a bill formerly written to protect women from rape and sexual abuse was changed by the Social Christians.^[1] The change imposed a sentence of up to three years in prison for "anyone who induces, promotes, propagandizes, or practices sex among persons of the same sex in a scandalous manner." Activist did not keep quiet and along with their allies they protested in Nicaragua and at embassies abroad, however, no change occurred and former President Violeta Chamorro signed the bill into a law in July 1992 under Article 205 of the penal code.^[3] In November 1992 a coalition known as the Campaign for Sexuality without Prejudices, comprising, amongst others, lawyers and lesbian and gay activists, presented an appeal to the Supreme Court of Justice, challenging the law as unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal in March 1994.^[4]

A country that refuses to recognize a womans right to choose is not about to recognize the right to sexual orientation. And in that macho Catholic country declaring yourself gay is tantamount to a jail sentence. A damn good reason not to deport Alvaro Orozco.

A Nicaraguan national who fears persecution in his homeland because of his sexual orientation was ordered deported yesterday by Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board -- a decision his lawyer said came as a "huge surprise."

Alvaro Orozco, 21, says he was just 12 when he fled Nicaragua -- a country where homosexuality is considered a crime punishable by up to four years in prison -- because his father beat him for being gay.

Yesterday's decision places Orozco's safety at risk, his lawyer, El-Farouk Khaki, told a news conference.

And I like this; the Minister responsible for Orozco's deportation is NOT taking phone calls!!

Thursday August 9, 2007
Urgent Press Conference – Stop the Deportation of Alvaro Orozco

6 months after community action and national media coverage resulted in the deferral of Alvaro Orozco’s deportation order – Alvaro received today, August 9th, 2007, a completely shocking negative response to his Pre-Removal Risk Assessment, which means that his deportation is now imminent. His last resort is for the Minister of Immigration, Diane Finley, to intervene.

NDP Member of Parliament Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina), as well as many other prominent supporters, have already called for the minister of immigration to allow Alvaro to stay in Canada.

Contact the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley.
Important note: The Minister of Immigration, Diane Finely, has the final say on deportation matters. She has the authority to give me permission to stay in Canada.
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Despite the deferral, supporters should keep contacting Minister Diane Finley's office to keep the pressure and attention up. At this point, the CIC/IRB can reopen his case, grant my H&C (Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds stay), or accept my PRRA (preremoval risk assessment) (once we file the latter two). Now it's up to her. PLEASE keep sending in your support. It's only the beginning! I still has a removal date for mid August and no status yet.

NOTE: THE MINSTER'S OFFICES ARE NOT TAKING ANY PHONE CALLS. YOU NEED TO SEND AN EMAIL OR A FAX

Click Here for a Sample Letter to Minister Finley - Word Doc.

Minister Diane Finley
Immigration Office: 613-954-1064

Parliament Hill
Room 707, Confederation Bldg House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A6
Ph:(613) 996-4974
Toll Free:None
Fx:(613) 996-9749
E-mail: Finley.D@parl.gc.ca

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National Pest Gets It Wrong

This National Post editorial by Jonathon Kay finally catches up with its comrades on the right, aka the Blogging Tories, labeling NDP Leader Jack Layton as Taliban Jack. The problem is that his argument is totally fallacious, fabricated and not factual.

In the case of Afghanistan, in particular, this defeatism is grimly ironic coming, as it is, from a politician who postures as the champion of gay rights and feminism: But not for the presence of brave NATO troops, the country would fall into the hands of medieval theocrats who behead homosexuals and treat women like burka-clad dogs.

Hey guys I hate to spoil your tirade but the country is already controlled by medieval theocrats, war lords, misogynist homophobic males, which is why it is called the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

And women still are forced to wear burka's, female child brides are for sale, girls schools are burned out, freedom of the press does not exist, oh yes and it is still a crime if you are homosexual.

Liberating Afghan women from the Burqa was a sub-text of the war against the Taliban. Although some Afghan women have discarded the Burqa, after the fall of Taliban, an overwhelming majority continue to wear it as a matter of choice and social norm. So far the Burqa has survived the American bombing and the NGOs onslaught. International activists for women’s rights have been disappointed, and are now silent, by the mass of Afghan women continuing to wear Burqas.

Male with male sex is socially condoned but not as homosexuality, rather it exists because it is an outgrowth of patriarchal oppression of women. Patriarchy is about power over others; domination, S&M is the logical extension of patriarchy. Male sexuality is thus one of a dominant over a submissive regardless of the gender of the latter.

Puritanical Taliban tried hard to erase homosexuality and pedophilia from male-dominated Pashtun culture in Afghanistan; now that Taliban no longer rule, some people in Kandahar are indulging in it once again; problem is so widespread that government has issued directive barring 'beardless boys'--euphemism for under-age sex partners--from police stations, military bases and commanders' compounds; under Taliban, anyone found to be homosexual was buried alive, ancient punishment prescribed by Shariah, compendium of Islamic laws

The source pointed to the fact that behaviour between men, which would arouse curiosity in many western countries such as holding hands, kissing or embracing is not considered as explicit sexual behaviour in Afghanistan. The source was of the opinion, that homosexuality was common in Afghanistan in connection with the sexual debut due to the strong degree of separation which is practiced between the sexes. The source knew of commanders who were known of having relationships with young boys. However this does not lead to a general accept of homosexuality in Afghanistan. The source mentioned that rumours had been circulated, that people from the Panshjiri-dominated security forces had raped young Pashtun men with the aim of demonstrating their power.

In liberated Afghanistan it is still a capital offense to be a Christian.

Something the Post forgot to mention.

And speaking of burka clad dogs.




















h/t to Montreal Simon.


SEE:

Anti Islamism Manifesto

Islam And Class War

The Need for Arab Anarchism

Dr. Marx on Islam

1979 Fascist Counter-Revolution in Iran

WOMEN AND ISLAM


NDP

Afghanistan






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Prehistoric Happy Feet

What do you call a five foot penguin?
Whatever it wants to be called.

Peruvian prehistoric penguins were taller than Danny DeVito

Danny DeVito is 4'11" tall. These penguins topped out at 5 feet, and lived during a particularly sweltering time in Earth's history. 36 million years ago Icadyptes salasi plied the waters off the southern coast of Peru.

A prehistoric penguin has been uncovered that - at more than 5ft tall and with a spear-like 7in beak - is the mother of all penguins.

	A giant I salasi skull compared to Peru’s modern Humboldt penguin

The giant birds lived around the equator tens of millions of years earlier than expected and during a period when the earth was much warmer than it is now.

Researchers discovered their fossilised remains in Peru.

Evidence that the giant penguins once marched to South America was found by Dr Julia Clarke of North Carolina State University.

"We tend to think of penguins as being cold-adapted species, but the new fossils date back to one of the warmest periods in the last 65 million years," Dr Clarke said. "The evidence indicates that penguins reached low-latitude regions more than 30 million years prior to our previous estimates."

See:

March Of The Penquins to Extinction

it's natures way

Not So Cute Seals

Penquin Empiricism

Morality not from animals

Ted Morton To Outlaw Homosexuality

Brecht Meets Oscar

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Fete Accompli

Once again the PM missed attending the party of the year;

Hundreds of thousands flock to TO Pride Parade

Instead he was feted in Quebec, as he feted Quebec Nationalism.

Huge parade, concerts and fun mark Quebec's Fete nationale holiday

Huge papier mâché statues of the great builders of Quebec were among the flags and marching bands in a boisterous parade yesterday that marked Quebec's Fête Nationale provincial holiday. An image of former premier René Lévesque was featured along with that of explorer Samuel de Champlain in the march.

The links between Levesque, a sovereigntist icon, and the celebration of the Fete nationale were obvious to Yvon Trudel, who marched in the parade with the nationalist Mouvement Quebec Francais.

"It represents the future - the future country that we want," he said when asked what the day meant to him.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Roberval, Que., where he praised the contribution of Quebecers to building Canada.

"The first people in this country to call themselves Canadians were the French-speaking settlers who built their first community on the banks of the St. Lawrence then followed our rivers to places like Lac St-Jean and then across our land envisioning a country from sea to sea," he said.

And my how times have changed .

It was a far cry from the days when riots plagued Fete nationale. in 1968, Pierre Trudeau won a majority government the day after he stared down rioters at a St-Jean Baptiste Day parade in Montreal.

For Harper Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Transgendered Canada is more of a threat than Quebec Separatism.

Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal have been named Canada's five top gay-friendly tourist destinations by an American magazine.

One challenges his machismo the other embraces it.


SEE:

Harpers Legacy

Avoiding The Issue

Some Same Sex Marriage Ok Say Tories

Harper Gaffe #2: SSM

Intolerant Blogging Tories

Mortons Homophobia Rebuked

Harper

SSM

Same Sex Marriage


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Hundreds of thousands flock to TO Pride Parade


Canadian Anglicans vote no on blessing same-sex unions




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SSM

Same Sex Marriage


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Ron Paul Quotes Ayn Rand

Ron Paul quotes Ayn Rand in the Republican Presidential Debate last night on the controversy of Gays and Lesbians in the Military.

Should gays and lesbians be allowed to serve openly in the U.S. military? The audience applauded Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s answer.

“We don’t get our rights because we’re gays or women or minorities. We get our rights from our creator as individuals. So every individual should be treated the same way,” Paul said.

“If there is homosexual behavior in the military that is disruptive, it should be dealt with. But if there’s heterosexual sexual behavior that is disruptive, it should be dealt with.

“So it isn’t the issue of homosexuality. It’s the concept and the understanding of individual rights,” he said.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote;

a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a

minority; the political function of rights is

precisely to protect minorities from oppression by

majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is

the individual).

- Ayn Rand

Of course discrimination is never against an individual but against a social group the individual belongs to. Bigotry does not recognize the individual or their rights. Prejudice lumps people into categories of; them and us. Which is why it is discrimination.

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Ron Paul

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