A Dutch court has sentenced a 27-year-old radical Islamist to life in prison for the November murder of controversial film-maker Theo van Gogh.

Mohammed Bouyeri, who has joint Dutch-Moroccan nationality, had made a courtroom confession and had vowed to do the same again if given the chance.

The murder in Amsterdam stunned the Netherlands. The court ruled that it was a terrorist act.

The judge said the murder had triggered “great fear and insecurity” in society. “The murder of Theo van Gogh provoked a wave of revulsion and disdain in the Netherlands. Theo van Gogh was mercilessly slaughtered,” said Judge Udo Willem Bentinck.

Bouyeri had told the court he had acted out of religious conviction.

Clutching a copy of the Koran, he said that “the law compels me to chop off the head of anyone who insults Allah and the prophet”.

Hey, when you stupidly invite 12th-century nutcases to your country to live, what do you expect? Now it will cost the taxpayers of Holland $2-3 million to house and feed this dolt for the rest of his life.

Vanity Fair

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

In recent months, President Bush has repeatedly stated that the last great ambition of his presidency is to broker a deal that would create a viable Palestinian state and bring peace to the Holy Land. “People say, ‘Do you think it’s possible, during your presidency?’ ” he told an audience in Jerusalem on January 9. “And the answer is: I’m very hopeful.”

The next day, in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, Bush acknowledged that there was a rather large obstacle standing in the way of this goal: Hamas’s complete control of Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, where it seized power in a bloody coup d’état in June 2007. Almost every day, militants fire rockets from Gaza into neighboring Israeli towns, and President Abbas is powerless to stop them. His authority is limited to the West Bank. It’s “a tough situation,” Bush admitted. “I don’t know whether you can solve it in a year or not.” What Bush neglected to mention was his own role in creating this mess.

Will we ever learn?

Thanks to Ian Warner

A nun from southern India…is set to be named by the Vatican as the country’s first woman saint.

Sister Alphonsa of Kerala…will be formally canonised in October. She had burnt and disfigured herself to avoid a marriage, having chosen to dedicate her life to Christ…

Marco Tosatti, Vatican correspondent for Italian daily La Stampa, said the canonisation would offer support to Christians in India “who are often subject of persecution and violence by some Hindu groups, for political motives…”

Indian Christians have been accused by hardline Hindu nationalists of “forced conversions” – especially among low-caste and tribal peoples. They are also accused of making conversion to Christianity a condition for receiving treatment at medical centres they run.

The state Orissa has a law obliging people to ask for police permission before changing religion – thought to be a measure aimed at curbing Christian missionaries.

Cripes – though such cumulative silliness isn’t limited to a single country or culture – how many regressive laws, rules and customs are recounted in this article?

People will make a big deal about this, but I think everyone knows what he meant. On the other hand, I think all “Royals” are expendable.

For those who feel a bit lonely just talking on the phone, a Japanese company is offering a cellphone that turns into a robot buddy ready to chat.

Softbank Mobile Corp.’s new mobile line looks like a small humanoid with attachable arms and legs, with the screen showing various faces.

The PhoneBraver will be released in April – named after a character in an upcoming television drama series entitled “Cellphone Investigator 7…”

“We haven’t decided on specifics yet on the communication between the user and mobile, but your mobile would grow into a buddy different from others that is unique in the world,” said Softbank Mobile spokesman Katsuhide Furuya.

Just what we need.

Margaret Seltzer (if that is indeed her REAL name)

International Herald Tribune

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

The problem is that none of it is true. Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed. Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published “Love and Consequences,” is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Seltzer’s book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Oregon, where she currently lives. In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview from her home on Monday, Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.

Cripes, how do people think they can get away with this?

THQ’s Michael Fitch places the blame for the closure of Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment, squarely on the shoulders of game pirates, though he does suggest that they may have had a bit of help from dumb players, hardware vendors, and one particularly stupid reviewer…

“If even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today. You can bitch all you want about how piracy is your god-given right, and none of it matters anyway because you can’t change how people behave… whatever. Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren’t so rampant on the PC. That’s a fact…”

Fitch is clearly very frustrated — and rightly so — by the obstacles and difficulties inherent in making PC games, but it’s difficult to see Titan Quest’s problem as unique. Given that game piracy and configuration difficulties seem to be particularly problematic for the PC gaming world, we have to wonder, would Iron Lore have survived if Titan Quest had been a console game?

This may be one of those market events that signals killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The heartbroken mum of a woman killed in house fire has been told she must pay out $320 to cancel her dead daughter’s phone contract.

Kyrie Knight died in the early hours of New Year’s Day – just a few short hours after sending her mum, Mandy, a text wishing her a happy new year.

She had decided to stay in for a quite night with her five-month-old son, Caden, but died of smoke inhalation when a tea light candle set fire to her lounge in Addlestone…

A week after Kyrie’s death Mandy called mobile company 3 to cancel her daughter’s contract but was told by call centre staff she would have to pay a $400 fee – which was then reduced to $320.

Grieving Mandy, who is already struggling after paying out for her daughter’s funeral, is now forced to pay the $20-a-month contract until she can raise the $320.

It takes next to no effort for a supervisor to override the rules for a CSR. Need be, managers can bump a step higher. Anyone surprised there’s still no change, here?

Thanks, K B

A Catch-22 situation. Bad for civil liberties for the mother, good for the kid. Note that the article below requires you to register to read it. This one does not.

Measure forces care on pregnant, meth-hooked women

Pregnant women who are addicted to methamphetamine could be taken into custody and involuntarily held in treatment programs if a new state initiative is approved.

The Senate Judiciary Committee took the first steps toward approving SB 1500 Monday, mandating that state Child Protective Services workers go to court if they know or have reasonable grounds to believe a mother-to-be is using meth and is not getting voluntary treatment.
[…]
Critics of the proposal are concerned that Gorman is trying to give the measure some teeth by extending the definition of what now constitutes “child abuse” to fetuses.

Or as the other article puts it, “The bill also creates the crime of child abuse against a fetus.”

Ahhh…. The real reason: it’s a first step toward banning legal abortions.

New York Times – March 2, 2008:

Top supporters of Senator Barack Obama, joined by at least one prominent Democrat yet to endorse a candidate, put pressure on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday to bow out of the presidential race unless she scores clear victories in the crucial big-state primary contests on Tuesday.

“I just think that D-Day is Tuesday,” said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico…

Senator Kerry of Massachusetts, the unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, said Mrs. Clinton would need more than narrow victories to remain a viable candidate.

“Hillary Clinton has to win a big victory in both Ohio and Texas,” he said on the CNN program “Late Edition.”

“It’s not just winning a little bit,” he said. “In order to close the gap on pledged delegates, she’s got to win a very significant victory.”

And Mr. Durbin, Mr. Obama’s fellow Democratic senator from Illinois, said the mathematics of the electoral calendar would make it very difficult for Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination even if she broke even with Mr. Obama in the delegates allotted Tuesday.

“If, in fact, there is no measurable change on Tuesday,” he said on Fox, Mrs. Clinton would need “extraordinary percentages” in the remaining contests — averaging 62 percent of the delegates yet to be decided, by his calculation, to go on to victory.

“I hope ultimately she makes an honest appraisal of her chances,” Mr. Durbin said. “I hope after Tuesday her decision is made on the basis of the unity of the party.”

Will Hillary be a presidential candidate or a running mate tomorrow?

The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday affirmed the country’s first felony conviction for spamming, rejecting claims that a state anti-spamming law is overly broad and violates free speech.

Jeremy Jaynes was sentenced in 2004 to nine years in jail by a Loudoun County Circuit Court jury that found he violated the Virginia Anti-Spam Act, which defines spam as unsolicited bulk e-mail sent by fraudulent means.

In a 4-3 decision, the state Supreme Court dismissed Jaynes’ argument that the law violates the federal Commerce Clause of the Constitution and said the First Amendment does not protect misleading commercial speech. It also upheld the jurisdiction of Loudoun, which was chosen because Jaynes’ e-mails traveled through a server from Sterling-based AOL.

Do you feel like donating to his defense committee?

Hydrogen-Powered Lifecar Set to be Unveiled at Geneva Motor Show : TreeHugger — Anyone familiar with the funky and perpetually retro Morgan sportscar should be amused by this upgrade.

Another day, another sleek new hydrogen-fueled concept car unveiled: this one, the Lifecar, is a £1.9m joint project between the British government and Morgan Motor Company – we first reported on it here – that promises to be the ultimate “green” sports car. It will be officially rolled out at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show, which will be held from March 6 – 16.