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[Helgoland]

NYTimes article on Israeli and Arab water issues. Has a strong focus on the technical side; a very interesting read.

[Sheb]

Hard to say, from what I get hardline opposition started protests to evicts Maduro from power. Lots of people joined up, fed up with the 50% inflation rate and huge murder rate and stuff. Then some pro-government militia shot at least on protester, a cop and some other pro-government guy died, which make me thing some opposition group wants a fight.

Of course, there is a large media clampdown by the government who just blame everything of "fascists" and "neo-nazis". Since everyone was also too busy watching Ukraine, no one seems to know exactly what happened.

[Reelya]

Well, blaming violence on Fascists in Venezuela is actually a lot more plausible than you would think. The coup was only in 2002, and many current opposition leaders were signatories to the coup declaration.

If you look at documentary evidence from the 2002 coup, it appears that the Venezuelan opposition leaders pre-positioned snipers to shoot and kill their own supporters so that they could justify a military coup. And what was the first thing they did after the coup? Well, for their part, the cops instantly sided with the coup leaders and are on video firing machine guns out of armored cars, and running around shooting shotguns at pro-Chavez protestors. As for the leaders, they formally abolished the constitution, the parliament, supreme court, human rights ombudsman's office and electoral commission, thus allowing the new "president" to rule as a dictator. This is not a conspiracy theory, they were quite open about it, they're on video cheering as they announce that the constitution and all checks and balances on the president were abolished.

So the Venezuelan Right back in 2002 had their own "burning the reichstag" moment, and straight out acted like Fascists from the 1930's in Italy or Spain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Uqx_mkhPs
This video, which you can see from the watermark is from SBS News Australia, at 5:00 in they start to talk about the snipers who shot at the right-wing rally in 2002. It appears that the coup-leaders pre-recorded their TV statement condemning the sniper attacks, hours before the shootings actually occured, even naming the number of deaths and the method of shooting (snipers).

The rally was originally meant to be at one location, but they made a "spontaneous" decision to move the rally to confront a left-wing civilian rally at another location. It was only after they changed direction "spontaneously" that they came under fire (and somehow were able to produce a video about it before hand).

Now, the original rally just happened to be hosted in front of the headquarters of the national oil company, and the crowd there are on video being encouraged to give what look suspiciously like NAZI salutes, whislt they scream about "kill them all" and "death to Chavez" etc.

Meanwhile, the "evil" socialist rally they planned to attack with this enraged mob, had a stage with musicians, with families watching and people dancing etc.

Then there are media outlets, such as RCTV. After the coup failed, RCTV had a lot of problems with the Chavez government. But this was purely because they were directly involved in the planning and execution of the coup. RCTV promoted the rallies beforehand, and provided pro-coup censorship and media distortions during and after the coup. How do you think America would take to a news outlet that sided with a violent overthrow of the elected government, the imposition of a dictator in Washington? Under the Chavez government, nobody even went to jail for that. But, when their broadcast license expired, it went to another channel. They didn't get their broadcast license renewed. That was almost the entire extent of the payback. Chavez could have dragged them through the mud on treason charges, but he didn't.

[Glowcat]

Nefarious gay agenda propaganda by Europe's first transgender lawmaker stamped out by Russian law enforcement.

Because grown Russian men are terrified of a intimidating message like "Gay is OK", Putinforce was mobilized to deal with this terrible instance of malicious propaganda. /cynicalsarcasm

Circumstances in Russia are hell right now, and it makes me very uneasy how the situation worsened after LGBT people were made a public target by its government who can pretend that their laws are humane while not prosecuting the rampant hate crimes being committed with the latest surge of (government supported) anti-LGBT rhetoric. The IOC ignoring these atrocities because of political convenience only highlights how little protection LGBT people actually have, even in countries where the culture is supposedly more friendly towards their basic human rights.

[penguinofhonor]

Flame baiting is... most definitely a type of trolling, for any reasonable definition of the term. I've seen you argue this a whole lot of times - might be good to publicly get it out of the way somewhere. But not here. Stupid semantic debates are less important that actual stuff happening.

He's done that already.

edit: you were aware of this already, weren't you

[Sheb]

So a Federal judge struck Texas' gay marriage ban down. No gay Texan weddings yet, he suspended it waiting for an appeal though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's going to keep happening, by the way. The Supreme Court was basically trying to buy themselves time by being narrow with the DOMA decision, but even that is opening the door to this. It's hard to make judges ignore the Equal Protection Clause.

[Sheb]

Yeah, I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner. Of course, no conservative will dare take this to the Supreme Court so it'll have to be a state-by-state affair.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It has happened before, it was just that with DOMA codified only the particularly liberal justices had the bias to make such rulings (see: the original Prop 8 strikedown by District IX). Now that the important part of DOMA is gone, any judge who is not particularly unfair will have to face the reality that the Constitution guarantees equal protection, and these laws are blatantly and openly unequal.

[misko27]

So a Federal judge struck Texas' gay marriage ban down. No gay Texan weddings yet, he suspended it waiting for an appeal though.

Ehh, I've stopped bothering to report them anymore. Oklahoma's was struck down a while ago, Virginia's a few weeks ago. The interesting thing about the latter is that the District's court could also strike down the laws in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia (and Maryland, but they're ahead of the curve and legalized it a year ago).

Utah's is on a speeded-up schedule though. The marriages in legal limbo means the Supreme court will have to deal with it either way. Like it or not the DOMA decision opened the floodgates. And yes, it's already being appealed; it's the last hope for many conservatives. I mean at this rate gay marriage will be legal throughout the country by the end of the year. The race to be the last is on: with Texas and Utah out, Alabama and Mississippi would've standed out as the front runners. But given the judicial climate, Alabama is already facing a challenge, and Mississippi's could be invalidated by the 5th district (to where Texas's ban goes now).

Also, Arizona, which was quietly speeding along with a bill similar (but less expansive then) the bill we saw earlier regarding the right to refuse service. It has already passed both houses, but the governor is leaning against it after a media storm and threats from businesses to remove themselves from the state.

Edit: Brewer to make statement at 7:45 eastern. That's in 14 minutes.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Ha, I thought that sounded like a veiled threat when I heard businesses talking about costs concerning the 'right to refuse service' shit. Good. My money's on them being last, they've really been sticking out for being backward recently.

[Vector]

This was in the New Yorker, and it is hilarious.

[Putnam]

This was in the New Yorker

It is hilarious, but...

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs

Looks about as much New Yorker as the various blogs (example) that start with "forbes.com/sites/" are forbes.

[Vector]

frack believed someone else's commentary again =/  Thanks for the fact-checkin', siblings!

[Descan]

Borowitz is basically the Onion, only hosted by The New Yorker and written by one dude.