Random Politics & Religion #00

I do. He was one of my favourites back then when I was little.

An eight-year-old girl in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. was told she's no longer allowed to read books on the school bus because it poses a risk to the safety of other students.

​Sarah Auger loves reading and used to enjoy using her 20-minute ride to and from school to read for pleasure.

But recently, her bus driver told her she had to stop.

She says she was told reading posed a risk to other students on the bus.

He suggested they might stand up to see what she was reading, or she might poke herself in the eye with the corners of the book.

Father wants rule changed

The no-reading rule is not sitting well with her father, Daniel Abel.

Abel says he's proud of his daughter for loving to read, and wants to encourage her to do so as often as possible.

He wants to see the rule on her school bus change.

"I find it stupid and useless," he said.

Abel complained to the school board, which deferred to the driver, saying the person who drives the bus is allowed to make the rules.

"The responsibility of a school bus driver is to transport students safely," said Mario Champagne, general secretary and director of communications for the Hautes-Rivière school board.

In a statement, the board concedes that "obviously" reading is not dangerous.

The statement also specified that personal belongings of students, including books, must stay in their bags during the duration of their trip home.

Meanwhile in CanadaQuebec:

You need to be specific. Quebecois are *** weirdos.

READING IS DANGEROUS
but for different reasons.

Fair point, lol.

I remember the 30min bus ride to school from 6-8th grade was crucial for doing homework. Not only did I have a book out, but pen/pencil and paper for writing. Imagine how dangerous that must seem to Quebecois.

Russian twerking redux: Women jailed for ‘inappropriate’ dancing next to WWII memorial (VIDEO)

Three young women in southern Russia will serve up to 15 days in prison, on charges of hooliganism, after posting a video of themselves performing the hip-hop dance on YouTube, with a war memorial looming in the background.

Two more of the six women in the video had their punishments reduced to a fine, for health reasons. One of the dancers was under 16, and avoided punishment, which was transferred to her mother, who was reprimanded for failing to “carry out measures to ensure the proper physical, intellectual, psychological, spiritual and moral development of the child," a court in the city of Novorossiysk ruled on Saturday.

Russian news website LifeNews reported that after the video first surfaced earlier this week, it was brought to the attention of the mayor of Novorossiysk, where the women reside, who was “outraged” and personally charged officials with identifying the names of the performers, who posted the video to bring new recruits to their modern dance school.

“We condemn these women. Every inch of this land is covered in blood. It is inappropriate,” said Viktoriya Dikaya, the press secretary for the city’s education department.

Prosecutors in Novorossiysk said they are conducting sweeping checks at the institutions were the twerkers, who were all under 30, are enrolled, to make sure they are in compliance with “programs aimed at ensuring respect for the law among their members.”

The Malaya Zemlya memorial, completed in 1982, which is seen behind the twerkers, commemorates a battle to free Novorossiysk from German occupation in 1943.

The response to the twerking video, appears to have taken root from two widely-discussed controversies.

Pussy Riot, a Russian punk rock protest group, performed a dance and anti-Putin song in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral in 2011, and were similarly imprisoned for hooliganism, albeit for much lengthier terms. A society-wide debate followed on the limits of free expression, and what constitutes desecration.

With the 70th anniversary of the Victory Day only weeks away, and piety towards World War II at an all-time high, the twerking performance could be viewed in a similar light, although the dancers apparently exhibited no political intent in their gesture.

The second issue appears to be a new-found intolerance for twerking among Russian officials, despite the dance being taught to thousands of youths throughout the country. A suggestive twerking video performed by teenagers in front of their parents in Orenburg earlier this month, led to a federal investigation for “lewdness,” with the Russia’s children’s ombudsman calling the choreographers “swine.” City officials soon officially shut the dance school that put together the routine. In one notable difference with the current case, most of the twerkers in Orenburg were underage.

Parallels have also been drawn in the media with the Soviet era, when the authorities disapproved of boogie-woogie, the foxtrot and other “ideologically alien” dances.

"We're going bust." "No, you're not." "You're strangling us." "No we're not." "You owe us for World War Two." "We gave already."

The game of chicken between Greece and its international creditors is turning into a vicious blame game as Athens lurches closer to bankruptcy with no cash-for-reform agreement in sight.

Europe's political leaders and central bankers and Greek politicians agree on only one thing: if Greece goes down, they don't want their fingerprints on the murder weapon.

If Athens runs out of cash and defaults in the coming weeks, as seems increasingly possible, no one wants to be accused of having pushed it over the edge or failed to try to save it.

Greece's leftist government has already identified its culprit of choice - Germany, Europe's main paymaster, accused of having inflicted toxic austerity policies on Greeks, causing a "humanitarian crisis".

Euro zone governments are preparing the ground to blame the novice government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras for having blustered, obstructed, failed to meet commitments and evaded hard choices while Athens burned.

"We are doing everything we can to save Greece from itself, but in the end, it's up to them," is the message pouring out of Berlin, Brussels and IMF headquarters in Washington.

If Greece falls will you be there to vacation on it's beaches !

Serbia sealed an agreement with an Abu Dhabi investor on Sunday for a multi-billion-dollar, Dubai-style riverside development that has drawn fire from some Belgraders worried about the scale and cost of the project.

Belgrade Waterfront marks the first foray into central and eastern Europe by developer Eagle Hills and Emirates real estate tycoon Mohamed Alabbar.

Eagle Hills plans to spend $3 billion (2.8 billion euros) building a glass forest of hotels, office buildings and apartments for 14,000 people, the largest shopping mall in the Balkans and a curvaceous 200-metre tower on 2 million sq metres of wasteland by the River Sava.

The agreement stipulates that construction will take a maximum of 30 years, and that half must be finished within 20.

The conservative government of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic says the project will put Belgrade on the map as unofficial 'capital' of the Balkans. It expects up to 20,000 workers to be employed in the construction, set to begin in September.

Yet critics question the viability of such an ambitious project in a country where one fifth of the workforce is unemployed and the average wage is less than 400 euros per month. They say it is an expensive gamble, rammed through with little public consultation and scant care for the character of the historic city.

Several hundred protesters gathered outside the venue where the contract was signed. They were pushed into a side street by police and kept out of the view of dignitaries by two parked trams.

"It's like having a leaking roof and, instead of fixing it, deciding to build a swimming pool in the backyard," said protester Vesna Milunovic, an unemployed journalist.

Under the agreement, Serbia must pay for all infrastructure work up to the borders of the proposed site, a cost authorities estimate at 300 million euros.

The deal is the latest collaboration between Serbia and the UAE under Vucic, after deals on cheap credit, weapons, agriculture and airlines.

It gives the UAE a toehold -- while costs remain relatively low -- in a country that hopes to join the European Union, the world's biggest single market, in the next decade. It can also avoid the tough public procurement rules, transparency and regulation demanded of EU members but more easily circumvented in Serbia.

Word around the street is Montenegro has better beaches.

So on Saturday night, I was in the city center in Belgrade. Just got done drinking at the bar with some friends and was decently drunk. Before I went home I decided to get a grilled chicken sandwich. I sat down at the water fountain there and proceeded to eat my chicken sandwich and drink one more beer....

There I was at night, drunk, drinking one more beer and eating a delicious sandwich when I noticed I was a little less than 10 meters from 8 riot police in full gear with giant shields all lined up....

I wish someone was there to take a picture of me with the riot police watching me eat and drink. It would have been a good picture.

A college-age grandson of modern conservatism’s founding family comes out in The Daily Beast and makes the case for the freedom to marry.

If you had asked me a few years ago if I supported the freedom to marry, I’d have been one of many young Republicans at the time who’d have given you an unequivocal “no.”

As the grandson of former Conservative Party New York Sen. James L. Buckley and great-nephew of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., I believed that gay rights were inherently anti-conservative and anti-Catholic.

But I began to reexamine my views after acknowledging a part of myself that I’d suppressed for years—I am gay....

I was taught a “hate the sin, love the sinner” approach to moral issues while always being told to respect those with whom I disagreed. But given that you can’t separate yourself from who you love, teaching someone to hate their sexual orientation inadvertently teaches them to hate themselves. For me, this led to an intense self-hatred and a reflexive rejection of anyone that resembled the part of me I was so desperately trying to fight....

Historically, marriage was primarily considered an economic and political transaction between families. As such, it was too vital of an institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love. It was not until the dawn of the Enlightenment in the 18th century that the idea of marrying primarily for love arrived. Those who opposed this shift saw it as an affront to social order, and rejected it as a dangerous change in the definition of marriage—similar to the arguments today....

A Buckley Comes Out: A Young Conservative’s Case for The Freedom to Marry
The Daily Beast.

10 meters

I'm anxiously awaiting President Obama going all Game of Thrones on Hillary and sinking her, out of the blue, stabbed in the back (figuratively speaking)