Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday urged the police to keep up its crackdown on social vice that has also targeted un-Islamic dress.

"The police must strongly press on with the 'social security plan' and avoid seasonal and temporary initiatives so that its goals are implemented in society," state television quoted Khamenei as telling police commanders.

Police launched the crackdown in April in a drive to "elevate security in society" with arrests of "thugs", raids on underground parties, seizure of satellite dishes, and street checks of improperly dressed individuals.

Thousands of women have been warned for wearing tight, short coats and skimpy headscarves and for flouting the Islamic dress code, which requires every post-pubescent women to cover their hair and body contours.

Some moderates have questioned the need for the moral crackdown but conservatives have applauded police for a drive they say is popular with the public and necessary to improve security in society.

The Islamic republic's all-powerful leader urged police to "fulfill its duties regardless of some opposition and propaganda."

Iran has in recent months stepped up executions of criminals rounded up in the drive, in a clear warning to those deemed a menace to society.

Nineteen men were hanged in Tehran and Mashhad after being arrested in a sweep on "arazel va obash," a Persian phrase that translates loosely as thugs. It is used for rapists, drug-traffickers and criminals who disturb public security.

Hmm... a social security plan and a drive to elevate security in society... which nation is this again?

Iran leader urges police to keep up social vice crackdown.

By Georgina Gustin
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
11/06/2007

MASCOUTAH — A 13-year-old junior high school student was given two days of detention after school officials spotted her hugging friends after school last Friday.

Megan Coulter, an eighth-grade student at Mascoutah Middle School, was hugging her friends goodbye after school Friday when vice principal, Randy Blakely, saw her and told her she would receive two after-school detentions.

Blakely had previously warned Coulter that she was in violation of the school's policy on public displays of affection after she was seen hugging a student at a football game.

The school's policy says that “displays of affection should not occur on the campus at any time.”

Coulter's mother, Melissa Coulter, says she has requested to speak with the School Board at its next meeting, and is mystified about the punishment leveled at her daughter.

Mascoutah Superintendent Sam McGowen said today that the district's policy helps prevent misunderstandings and unwelcome expressions of affection.

A public bitch-slapping is in order for Randy Blakely and his ilk.

Girl Gets Detention For Hugging Friends

Pullman has not been shy in the past about verbalizing his beliefs — or, some might say, nonbeliefs — and his intentions in writing the "Dark Materials" novels.

The novelist has said they are in response to C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia," the popular children's fantasy series of which "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is the first book — written by Lewis to teach Christian ideals to kids.

"I loathe the 'Narnia' books," Pullman has said in previous press interviews. "I hate them with a deep and bitter passion, with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling away." He has called the series "one of the most ugly and poisonous things" he's ever read.

Wow! ...sounds like one of my rants about the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Golden Compass

2. The London Brew-nami of 1814

The Industrial Revolution wasn't all steam engines and textile mills. Beer production increased exponentially, as well. Fortunately, the good people of England were up to the challenge and drained kegs as fast as they were made. Brewery owners became known as "beer barons," and they spent their newfound wealth in an age-old manner -- by trying to party more than the next guy.

Case in point: In 1814, Meux's Horse Shoe Brewery in London constructed a brewing vat that was 22 feet tall and 60 feet in diameter, with an interior big enough to seat 200 for dinner -- which is exactly how its completion was celebrated. (Why 200? Because a rival had built a vat that seated 100, of course.)

After the dinner, the vat was filled to its 4,000-barrel capacity. Pretty impressive, given the grand scale of the project, but pretty unfortunate given that they overlooked a faulty supporting hoop. Yup, the vat ruptured, causing other vats to break, and the resulting commotion was heard up to 5 miles away.

A wall of 1.3 million gallons of dark beer washed down the street, caving in two buildings and killing nine people by means of "drowning, injury, poisoning by the porter fumes, or drunkenness."

The story gets even more unbelievable, though. Rescue attempts were blocked and delayed by the thousands who flocked to the area to drink directly off the road. And when survivors were finally brought to the hospital, the other patients became convinced from the smell that the hospital was serving beer to every ward except theirs. A riot broke out, and even more people were left injured.

Sadly, this incident was not deemed tragic enough at the time to merit an annual memorial service and/or reenactment.

Drinking Stories That Put Yours To Shame

After more than a decade on the air, Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” has its own online home. The new Web site will go live at noon EST, today, presenting nearly the entire video archive of the show for the past nine years.

The Daily Show Arrives Online

PCMAG.com
October 10, 2007
by Sascha Segan

We need less anonymity on the Internet. And we need more privacy. And the two should go together.

Meanwhile, you may have a false anonymity, but you have no privacy—not from Google's database of Web searches, private addresses, and phone numbers, nor from goverment agencies' searches of your ISP's records. False anonymity leads to a complacency where we forget that we don't have privacy where it really counts—because we're able to act like idiots in front of strangers who don't matter. You may think you can pretend to be somebody else on the Internet, but the Department of Homeland Security doesn't see the distinction between you and your cyber-self.

Real privacy would help the people who actually need to be anonymous on the Net: corporate whistle-blowers, teenagers seeking advice from Planned Parenthood, that sort of thing.

So, minors need "real privacy" when going behind their parents' backs? Bad example... the corporate whistle-blowers made the point well enough. That aside, Segan has some interesting points, although I think he sees anonymity as a larger problem than it really is.

On the Web: Less Anonymity, More Privacy

The Chinese government has instituted an elaborate system for Internet censorship that employs tens of thousands of censors and police responsible for maintaining control over the flow of information, a report released by international free press advocates showed.

Despite self-censorship and the filtering of government-banned words or phrases from articles, sites do occasionally broach subjects inadvertently. Penalties for such mistakes range from criticizing the site, imposing a fine, ordering the dismissal of the employee responsible, or closing down the site section or the entire site, the report said.

Chinese internet censorship machine revealed

By ANDREW MIGA
Associated Press Writer
AP - Friday, October 12

WASHINGTON - Rep. Barney Frank, a leading gay rights champion in Congress, on Thursday urged fellow gay rights advocates not to let their dispute over protecting transgender workers doom a job discrimination ban that could mark a major civil rights advance for gays in the workplace.

The debate over including transgender people has sharply divided gay rights activists, many of whom are trying to kill a stripped-down bill without protections for transgender workers that Frank and Democratic leaders hope will win House passage this year.

"We're not going to be split off this way," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "We're driven by principle. No civil rights movement has ever left a part of its community behind - and we're not about to be the first."

Frank, D-Mass., one of two openly gay members of Congress, supports transgender protections, but said they don't have the votes.

"Politically, the notion that you don't do anything until you can do everything is self-defeating," he said.

Frank said the public has more awareness because gay activists began educating people about the unfairness of prejudice based on sexual orientation a long time ago.

"These things take awhile," Frank said. "The transgender issue is of relatively recent vintage."

Legislation banning workplace discrimination against gays, lesbians and bisexuals _ but not those who have had sex-change surgery or cross-dressers _ has stalled after an outcry from the transgender community and its allies, including many gay rights organizations.

"Transgender" is an umbrella term that covers transsexuals, cross-dressers and others whose outward appearance doesn't match their gender at birth.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act would make it illegal for employers to make decisions about hiring, firing, promoting or paying an employee based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Churches and the military would be exempt.

But when Democrats took vote counts and realized the measure would fail, they substituted a new scaled-back version dropping transgender people from the bill. A second bill to ban workplace discrimination against transgenders was also drafted.

Gay rights groups that oppose a ban that leaves out transgender people have waged an aggressive lobbying campaign.

"Fighting your friends can sometimes be difficult," said Frank.

Foreman agreed.

"I never thought in a million years we would be on the opposite side of Barney Frank and it is painful," he said.

Federal law bans job discrimination based on factors such as race, gender and religion. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have laws against sexual orientation discrimination.

However, only nine states specifically protect transgender people from discrimination: New Jersey, Minnesota, Rhod... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

Gay Rights Backers Split on Bias Bill

"From the moment I started making the film I thought I have to show an abortion, which at the time had never been done before," Kaye, best known for his 1998 neo-Nazi feature "American History X," told AFP in an interview. "There was no question about whether or not that was the right thing to do because if I'm documenting two sides of the argument, that is one side of the argument and you have to show it," he said.

Even after spending years working on the project, Kaye, however, admits to not knowing where he stands in the debate. "My position on the subject is that I don't really know what's right. I didn't know much in the beginning... and at the end I was just as confused."

Lake of Fire - New documentary takes unflinching look at abortion in US

Here's the YouTube video (language not safe for work).

NEW YORK — New York City Councilman James Oddo may have had a meltdown during his first experience with gotcha satire media, but he wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

Dropping the “f-word” no fewer than 16 times in the course of what has become a popular You Tube video, Republican Oddo became irate when he realized the attractive, seemingly harmless young reporter who sat before him last week for an interview in his office was really a comedienne of note for the Norwegian program "Rickets Rost," a sort of Scandinavian "Daily Show w/Jon Stewart."

The video, which garnered more than 44,174 hits on YouTube as of midday Wednesday, shows Oddo exploding at reporter Pia Haraldsen, 26, after she asked whether Obama could legally run for office because he is African American, and about Hillary’s “cigar,” an obvious reference to President Bill Clinton’s scandal-ridden affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.

He blasted the woman, telling her repeatedly to “get the f—ck out of my office,” at one time telling her he would beat “the sh—t” out of them if she and her camera crew didn’t get out fast enough.

Oddo, who is up for borough president as a representative of both Staten Island in 2009, was unapologetic in a follow-up interview with FOX News.

Anyone who thinks they are going to come in and waste time while mocking him and other American leaders like the Clintons, while implicitly saying “America is a racist nation ... I’m going to throw you out of my office,” Oddo said. He apparently did apologize to his mother for the curse words.

The city councilman was somewhat more introspective in a NY1 cable news television interview.

“My language was inappropriate, I'm apologetic for it, I regret it,” said Oddo. “I don't regret the sentiment. In fact, I think that people across the country will see that I reacted the same way any Staten Islander walking down Hylan Boulevard would have reacted.”

Meanwhile, according to the Staten Island Advance on Wednesday, Oddo is not, so far, feeling the heat from thwarting a successful satire, or being "punked" — a format made popular by The Daily Show, and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat and Da Ali G Show, where interviewees believe they are engaging in sincere and legitimate interviews and typically are made to look foolish.

"It could be hurtful in that everyone expects their representatives to be civil. However, it is tough to be civil when you’re being set up,” New York Democratic consultant and lobbyist George Artz told the newspaper. “This is such a miniscule issue. It won’t affect anybody, and he was scammed.”

Others have suggested the video celebrity will boost his image with no-nonsense New Yorkers.

For her part, Haraldsen, 26, seemed unruffled and even jazzed by the interview and the media attention she was getting for it.

When asked by FOX News in an on-air phone interview on Wednesday, the “reporter” said she was used to angry responses, and in the case of Oddo thought it was an attractive character trait.

“I think Mr. Oddo’s reaction was quite normal and I’ve always been fond of men with a temperament,” the heavily-accented Haraldsen said, adding that she wouldn’t mind having Oddo as a “rumba and salsa” partner on "Dancing with the Stars," a reference that indicates she is perhaps more of an American celebrity-seeker than an Ali G protégé.

Exploding New York City Councilman Refuses To Get 'Punked'