What's in the News

EL:

Quote

Would that include the 50,000 cards purchased the day before the announcement by those who made the announcement?

Only 50,000? Maybe you dropped a zero there.

Maybe two zeros.

(Daily Mail) — Islamic protesters sparked fury today after they burned a model of a poppy and deliberately broke the silence at Armistice Day commemorations in central London.

As millions of Britons fell silent to remember those who have died in war, members of a group called Muslims Against Crusades clashed with police during an ‘emergency demonstration’ in Kensington, west London.

As the clock struck 11am the Islamic protesters burned a model of a poppy and chanted ‘British soldiers burn in hell’. They held banners which read ‘Islam will dominate’ and ‘Our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell’.

The Muslims Against Crusades website includes graphic images of children wounded in warfare and the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

The protest, in Exhibition Road, near Hyde Park, involved about 50 people while about another 50 counter-demonstrators had to be kept apart from the group by a line of police.  Three men were arrested at the scene – two for public order offences and one for assaulting a police officer.

Asad Ullah, of Muslims Against Crusades, said: ‘We are demonstrating because this day is a day of remembrance to remember every single fallen soldier, including those killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.  ‘We find it disgusting that innocent people, innocent children, have been killed in an illegal and unjust war and we are demonstrating against that.  We want the Government to pull the troops out from these countries and to stop interfering in our affairs.’

Mr Ullah added: ‘We would like to have a protest closer to the memorial but it is difficult to get access. We want to break the silence and say, “What about the silence for others that have died?’”

Well, indeed he's got a valid point, but this was the wrong way to go about it.

that was a really stupid thing to do

i do think there is a debate to have about the meaning of rememberance day because i totally agree that it should not include the current situation where professional armies are fighting about resources etc

but this needs to be done in a reasonable way

sometimes i cringe being a secular white british person seeing how other peoplo in my situation act and express themselves, but i think normal muslim must really cringe about stuff like this

I find this news troubling. Not because of the act itself. Yed, burning a model poppy is an asshole thing to do and is an obscenely stupid way to convey their feelings.

What really bothers me is, coming from leicester, the most multicultural city in Britain (besides maybe birmingham) I feel the undercurrent of racial tension just walking through the streets. There is always a slight feeling of unease, especially when it comes to Muslims.


This will do nothing but perpetuate it. My facebook page today way a good example of that, some of the racehate I've seen on it in reaction from people that I wouldn't expect it from is truly frightening.

Same thing is happening in The U.S.  All Muslims are being blamed for Nine-Eleven.  An Islamic community center proposed near the site of the tragedy has been dubbed the "victory memorial"; as if its construction is an act of celebration on the part of Muslims for the bombing.  It became a litmus test for every politician's patriotism running for office this year.

And the anti-Muslim sentiment is growing instead of subsiding.  Even about 20% of citizens think Obama is a Muslim and the conservatives used this as a tool against his party during the election.  It's crazy.

I see civil war building...


That nobend BMP guy famously said that the streets would run red with blood and it's gonna be a bitch if he ends up being correct

I see civil war building...


That nobend BMP guy famously said that the streets would run red with blood and it's gonna be a bitch if he ends up being correct

He wasn't BNP, he was tory and his name was Enoch Powell.

'Zombie' virus haunts cell users

WATCH out! "Zombies" are attacking hundreds of thousands of mobile phones in the city.

The zombies are not the scary kind, but they do qualify as annoying as at least 300,000 local handset users are unwittingly sending spam messages with a virus to all contacts in their address books after their phones caught the Zombie virus, said NetQin Mobile Inc, a leading mobile phone security company.

The number accounted for 20 percent of the 1.5 million mobile phones across the country that have been infected by the virus so far, making Shanghai one of the hardest-hit areas, the Beijing-based company found.

A local lawyer, Liu Chunquan, said if the hackers who created the virus are caught they will be jailed for creating and spreading a virus and damaging computer systems.

According to the country's criminal law, offenders can be jailed for more than five years if their crimes lead to severe consequences.

Anti-virus experts suggested that mobile phone users install anti-virus software and avoid clicking the links of spam messages, even those from friends or relatives.

Cell phones infected by the virus will be turned into another "zombie" phone, sending the phone user's SIM card information to hackers, who then remotely control the phone to send links of the virus to others via spam text messages.

Users who receive the messages and click the links will also be infected while the infected phones keep sending spam messages. The virus has cost handset users a total of about 2 million yuan (US$300,000) per day.

"My friend complained that he constantly received ad messages from me, but I never sent him any," said a local resident surnamed Zhang. "Then I realized that my phone was turned into a 'zombie.'"

According to a NetQin official surnamed Dong, they have studied hundreds of thousands of complaints and emergency calls, the feedback of the security software installed on mobile phones, and the information they gathered from a massive database that users had joined voluntarily.

However, the number of victims may far exceed the figures given by the company as its statistics don't cover all phone users.

The virus infected 1 million users during the first week of September, according to a previous report by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Center.

"We noticed the virus in early August and our engineers started to fight back with anti-virus software," said Dong. "It's possible to stop it from spreading quickly."

But she said they also needed government help to track down the hackers.


September?

Neon Trees

Taiwanese researchers have stumbled onto something truly magical. When gold nanoparticles were introduced into Bacopa caroliniana plants they caused the chlorophyll to produce reddish light. Bye-bye street lights? But wait, there’s more:

While lit, the glowing trees consumed more carbon from the atmosphere than normal (i.e. the luminescence causes the cells to undergo photosynthesis).


Pandora, here we come.

Man says he spent 12 years enslaved in Yunnan brick yard

http://is.gd/h7fiJ

Neon Trees

Taiwanese researchers have stumbled onto something truly magical. When gold nanoparticles were introduced into Bacopa caroliniana plants they caused the chlorophyll to produce reddish light. Bye-bye street lights? But wait, there’s more:

While lit, the glowing trees consumed more carbon from the atmosphere than normal (i.e. the luminescence causes the cells to undergo photosynthesis).

So the gold industry wants in on the up-and-coming green (alternative) energy industry, too?

Recently gold has been hovering close to US$1,400/oz. How many "gold nanoparticles" in an ounce of gold? 

Times how many nanoparticles per tree to induce neonness?

Times how many trees?

Looks like King Gold is trying to lock in long-term relevance beyond the money markets and peak oil.

england just sold all their gold lol

i would guess scientists will find a lot of uses for gold cos it is kind of magic how it doesn't decay or anything. i'm sure these things like diamonds and precious metal have much more power than just looking pretty that we don't know how to access yet

Interesting article in The Economist:

Rocky relations between China and Japan:
Bare anger

The part I like best is this'n:

Michael Yahuda, of the London School of Economics, says China’s hard line probably has a lot to do with jockeying for power among Chinese leaders, as sweeping changes to the party and government hierarchy are contemplated for 2012-13. China’s foreign ministry may have argued that the rhetoric should be dialled down. But it has never had real clout. The foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, is not even in the Politburo, let alone on the standing committee, pinnacle of Communist Party power. The ministry has found itself further marginalised, as conviction grows within the party that the West is in terminal decline and that it is time for China to assert itself as a global power. Military types privately criticise the foreign ministry for wetness in dealing with Japan and the West.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11818005


uhoh