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Het gemeentelijke computer van het Groninger raadslid Woudstra wordt niet onderzocht. Dat is besloten in het wekelijkse overleg van de fractievoorzitters.

Woudstra wordt ervan verdacht dat ze onder een valse naam mailtjes op het internet heeft verstuurd. Daarin moest vooral oud-fractiegenoot Geert Spieker van de Stadspartij het ontgelden. Woudstra zelf ontkent nog steeds in alle toonaarden.

Ze zegt het slachtoffer te zijn van spoofing: een vervalsingstechniek waarbij iemand anders misbruik maakt van haar computer. Burgemeester Wallage laat wel uitzoeken of spoofing technisch mogelijk is, maar daar is de computer van Woudstra niet voor nodig.

*zucht*

Politici blijven elkaar door dik en dun steunen.

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There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: the biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion — to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions, and religious diversions of scarce resources — is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

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The record industry may next aim its legal guns at satellite radio over a dispute involving new portable players that let listeners record and store songs, an analyst and industry sources said Wednesday.

The record industry, led by major labels such as Vivendi Universal, Warner Music Group Corp., EMI Group Plc and Sony BMG, believe the recording capability is a clear copyright violation and could take revenue away from paid download music services.

Illegal song trading has been blamed by the record industry for declines in sales, and labels have become increasingly aggressive in their legal battles to defend their product. Now that focus includes portable players.

“There are genuine issues here, but it is our continuing hope that we can resolve this on a business to business basis,” said an RIAA spokesman.

Here’s a suggestion for the RIAA – replace all current music distribution channels with the following:

When you wish to listen to music, you proceed to an RIAA sponsored Listening Center that will be located in most major cities. You wait in a convenient line and then purchase a ticket specfiying which music selections you wich to listen to. After a brief detour through a metal detector and a body cavity search for recording devices by courteous staff (former mob enforcers), you proceed to an individual soundproof listening chamber. In the chamber, you are permitted to listen to each musical selection one time, through DRM protected headphones that give short-time-memory erasing electroconvulsive shock to the listener when session is over (or attempt is made to remove them from one’s head).. Afterwards, you’re free to leave provided you sign a legal document stating that you will not hum or sing any of the songs you’ve just heard.

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An experimental vaccine has proved highly effective at preventing cervical cancer in a two-year study involving more than 12,000 women, researchers reported today.

The vaccine works by making people immune to two types of a sexually transmitted virus that cause most cases of the disease.

The vaccine, Gardasil, is made by Merck, which plans to apply for approval to the Food and Drug Administration before the end of this year and, if the vaccine is approved, to market it in 2006.

If it were widely used, the vaccine could save many lives. Worldwide, there are about 500,000 new cases of cervical cancer a year, and 290,000 deaths. Most of the cases and most of the deaths occur in poorer countries where women do not have regular Pap tests, which can detect cancers or precancers early enough for them to be cured. In the United States, where Pap tests are common, 10,400 new cases are expected in 2005, and 3,700 deaths.

“A lot of people are really excited,” said Dr. Deborah Saslow, director of breast and gynecological cancer at the American Cancer Society. “This is the first major cancer prevention vaccine. The potential, particularly in the undeveloped world, particularly if they can overcome the logistics and get the vaccine to those women, could be enormous. It could prevent 70 percent to 90 percent of those deaths.”

And what do the Religious Wingnuts think of this?

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In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

“Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex,” Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

Why is it, that every time they get to choose between life and death, they choose death?

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Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) met for at least 30 minutes with the top fundraiser of his Texas political action committee on Oct. 2, 2002, the same day that the Republican National Committee in Washington set in motion a series of financial transactions at the heart of the money-laundering and conspiracy case against DeLay.

During the meeting at his Capitol office, DeLay conferred with James W. Ellis, the head of his principal fundraising committee in Washington and his chief fundraiser in Texas. Ellis had earlier given the Republican National Committee a check for $190,000 drawn mostly from corporate contributions. The same day as the meeting, the RNC ordered $190,000 worth of checks sent to seven Republican legislative candidates in Texas.

Texas law prohibits donations from corporations. So DeLay and company sent the corporate cash to the RNC, which then cut a check for those candidates in Texas. The texbook definition of money laundering.

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US President George W. Bush allegedly said God told him to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, a new BBC documentary will reveal, according to details.

Bush made the claim when he met Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and then foreign minister Nabil Shaath in June 2003, the ministers told the documentary series to be broadcast in Britain later this month.

The US leader also told them he had been ordered by God to create a Palestinian state, the ministers said.

Shaath, now the Palestinian information minister, said: “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I’m driven with a mission from God.

‘God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan’.’

“And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq…’ And I did.

“‘And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.’ And by God I’m gonna do it’,” said Shaath.

Abbas, who was also at the meeting in the Egyptian resort of Sharm al-Sheikh, recalled how the president told him: “I have a moral and religious obligation.

“So I will get you a Palestinian state.”

A BBC spokesman said the content of the programme had been put to the White House but it had refused to comment on a private conversation.

Here is another source.

At the same time, in a speech W warns against religious extremism. The irony is thick.

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The murderous ideology of the Islamic radicals is the great challenge of our new century. Yet, in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century. Like the ideology of communism, Islamic radicalism is elitist, led by a self-appointed vanguard that presumes to speak for the Muslim masses. Bin Laden says his own role is to tell Muslims, quote, “what is good for them and what is not.” And what this man who grew up in wealth and privilege considers good for poor Muslims is that they become killers and suicide bombers. He assures them that his — that this is the road to paradise — though he never offers to go along for the ride.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life. We’ve seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, and Margaret Hassan, and many others. In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim’s grieving mother and said, “I do not feel your pain — because I believe you are an infidel.” And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.

When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing, or Iraqi teachers are executed at their school, or hospital workers are killed caring for the wounded, this is murder, pure and simple — the total rejection of justice and honor and morality and religion. These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity. (Applause.) We have seen this kind of shameless cruelty before, in the heartless zealotry that led to the gulags, and the Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy pursues totalitarian aims. Its leaders pretend to be an aggrieved party, representing the powerless against imperial enemies. In truth they have endless ambitions of imperial domination, and they wish to make everyone powerless except themselves. Under their rule, they have banned books, and desecrated historical monuments, and brutalized women. They seek to end dissent in every form, and to control every aspect of life, and to rule the soul, itself. While promising a future of justice and holiness, the terrorists are preparing for a future of oppression and misery.

I have a little hint for you, George. Mohammed Bouari was told by God to kill Theo. Sounds familiar?