LONDON, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Forcing store clerks to listen to the same holiday music over and over could be akin to torture and should change, a British noise pollution group said.
The UK Noise Association and labor unions are suggesting legal action on behalf of store employees who listen to endless looped recordings of holiday music, the Observer said Sunday.
"What we're saying is that, if Christmas carols are being played on the same CD repeatedly, that could create an unhealthy working environment. It must drive people to distraction," said Paul Clarke, spokesman for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.
Exposure to the same music constantly is "no different to being tortured," added Val Weedon, the noise association's national coordinator.
Legal action could be difficult. An employment lawyer said employees would have to demonstrate that their employers could reasonably foresee any illness.
This means there would have to be some form of notice that an employee "had some vulnerability to Christmas music, the ill health in question, or both," the lawyer said.
Wow. I wonder about the previous decades of employees everywhere in the West who were "vulnerable to Christmas music" or were "totrured by the repetition". Obviously, there will be Heaven to pay for this egregious harm.
#1
Made to hear that album in the graphic some 40 hours a week? Yeah, that might legally qualify as torture. Spending the Yuletide season around caroling and holiday displays doesn't count as same.
You want the sort of caroling that would really hack me off? That would be some sucker thinking it's his right to scream his religious chants throughout my neighborhood five times a day every day. Not a few weeks a year, every bloody single day. Now we're talking lawsuit time.
This "vulnerability" bullshit is the latest version of "enabling" behavior-type crapulence that touchy-feely people are so fond of instead of ever recognizing the importance of taking personal responsibility.
I just spent the other Saturday evening at a holiday party playing Christmas carols all night on flute and saxamaphone. We've done this same thing for the past TWENTY years. Did it make me "vulnerable" to anything except having a good time with old friends? I'll let you guess.
#2
To all the boyz incarcerated at Gitmo: talk or you get to hear Alvin again ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/25/2006 10:30 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I sent a message to XM: Bring back Radio Hanukkah, now. Play that at Gitmo, will ya.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
12/25/2006 11:26 Comments ||
Top||
#4
"What we're saying is that, if Christmas carols are being played on the same CD repeatedly, that could create an unhealthy working environment.
Good lord. Can't the union buy a second CD and give it to store management as a Christmas present? Or burn a bootleg copy on the computer -- blank CDs are so cheap as to be practically free, if the union is feeling a bit short this time of year.
TUNIS - Two people were killed and two police officers wounded in a shoot-out overnight Saturday in northern Tunisia, the countrys official TAP news agency reported Sunday. Two other people were arrested in the incident, which took place in a suburban Tunis house.
Preliminary investigations indicate that elements of the group are dangerous, wanted criminals, TAP added, without offering details of their alleged crimes or the circumstances of the shoot-out.
Locals said the events occurred in the town of Hammam-Lif, roughly 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of the capital. Police Sunday stepped up security around the area, which appeared calm.
Except where permission for hunting has been granted, firearms are illegal in Tunisia.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/25/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
Goromonzi, Zimbabwe - 21 December 2006 02:59
From a vantage point among the dilapidated grass-thatched huts in the Yafele village, one could not help but marvel at the massive show of grandeur at the nearby Goromonzi High school.
From chauffer-driven Mercedes Benz saloons to the latest SUVs from Japan, they were all part of the grand show of affluence that disturbed the tranquil environs of this rural setting.
Villagers going about their daily chores were searched at random by grim-faced security personnel and the notorious Green Bombers (the governments North Korean-style youth brigade).
So tight was the security at the venue of last weeks conference of President Robert Mugabes ruling Zanu-PF party that even fruit vendors were required to obtain special clearance from the party's security personnel to be allowed into the school grounds.
Those who tried to circumvent the tough security measures by selling fruits from just outside the school gates were quickly rounded up, detained and questioned. For the ordinary folks of Yafele and Chimanikire villages just outside the school gates, the conference was a massive show of affluence by "foreign" people who had no knowledge of their daily lives of poverty and starvation.
That the conference may have had little to do with ordinary people could not have been highlighted any better than the spectacle of Zanu-PF delegates tucking into scrumptious food during the meeting, while not far from the conference venue, at Majuru rural shopping centre, scores of hungry mothers waited for hours on end for food handouts to take their starving children.
By the time the Zanu-PF officials left Goromonzi in their glitzy cars and luxurious buses after about three days of deliberations on the "people's welfare", there was still no joy for the hungry mothers at Majuru.
"We are not sure whether the maize will eventually come but we are sleeping in the council hall [at the shopping centre] hoping that it will be delivered soon, said 79-year old Margaret Chinzara.
With Santa Clauses in trendy malls, giant Christmas trees in hotels and holiday treats on supermarket shelves, Christmas cheer is can't be missed in this Muslim city. In fact, the holiday kitsch is at an all-time high in Dubai where many residents revel in the commercial hype of the Christian holiday.
Though winter temperatures feel more like summer here, it hasn't stopped people from purchasing Christmas trees, which are shipped in from colder, northern countries, and taking pictures with Santa amid fake falling snow inside a local mall.
Despite a growing rift between some Muslims and Christians, it's no surprise that the commercial side of Christmas is all the rage in Dubai, home of other over-the-top, flashy attractions including an indoor snow skiing park and man-made islands created in the shape of palm trees. The majority of the 800,000 citizens of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates are Muslim. But an estimated 3.7 million foreigners also live there. Though most are guest workers from other Arab and Muslim countries, many come from predominantly Christian countries including Britain.
Anger toward the West and Christians by some Muslims has escalated over the past year after cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad were first published in a Danish newspaper and following the explosive comments made by Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI in September about violence and the prophet.
Unlike conservative Islamic Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, which bans celebrating non-Muslim holidays, and Kuwait, where debates spring up about whether it's un-Islamic to wish people Merry Christmas, Dubai has long been the liberal bastion of the Arabian Peninsula where people from all countries and religions seeking to reap the benefits of its booming economy live.
But unlike conservative Islamic Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, which bans celebrating non-Muslim holidays, and Kuwait, where debates spring up about whether it's un-Islamic to wish people Merry Christmas, Dubai has long been the liberal bastion of the Arabian Peninsula where people from all countries and religions seeking to reap the benefits of its booming economy live.
The commercialized Christmas shopping spirit is most prominent in Dubai's vast malls, which feature displays of fake snowmen, furry polar bears and fuzzy reindeer wagging their heads as they pull sleighs full of presents.
A snow storm erupts every hour at the Emirates mall, where for US$11, children can visit Santa and receive a gift. Across town at the Ibn Batutta Mall, fake Santas strum electric guitars, singing "Jingle Bell Rock." At the Wafi City mall, an Egyptian-themed shopping center built around a fake pyramid, children played among gingerbread houses and shoppers listened to Christmas carols.
A snow storm erupts every hour at the Emirates mall, where for US$11, children can visit Santa and receive a gift. Across town at the Ibn Batutta Mall, fake Santas strum electric guitars, singing "Jingle Bell Rock." At the Wafi City mall, an Egyptian-themed shopping center built around a fake pyramid, children played among gingerbread houses and shoppers listened to Christmas carols. "It's lovely," said Donna Ralf, 43, from England, while shopping with her granddaughter. "It definitely makes home seem closer."
Dubai's legions of hotels and clubs also seem to be competing to outdo each other to attract well-heeled residents to luxurious Christmas dinners. Many have sent teenagers to slip fliers under apartment and office doors in neighborhoods favored by expatriates. One hotel, the Mina a-Salaam, even boasts a giant, brightly lit Christmas tree that floats on a raft in an artificial lake.
The Christmas frenzy has spilled over to residential neighborhoods. At one apartment complex, fliers are posted inviting residents of all denominations to Christmas parties, and the greeting "Happy Christmas" is in vogue here, even among non-Christians.
Newspapers also have jumped on the Christmas bandwagon, with the top headline of the Khaleej Times, an Arabic daily newspaper, on Sunday reading: "Look, it's Christmas" above a picture of a mother and daughter wearing Santa's hats.
Emirati resident Loloa al-Khalifa, dressed in the traditional black cloak or abaya, said she welcomed the Christmas cheer while taking photographs of her 1-year-old son in front of holiday decorations at one of the malls recently. "I'm very proud of our traditions but happy that my son is growing up in such a cosmopolitan city," al-Khalifa, a Muslim, said.
#5
Great observation, Joe. One huge exception being that Godless Soviet communism was much more susceptible to creeping Westernization than theocratic Islam will prove.
I'm beginning to think that one single justification for banning Islam is so that no sort of referendum to overthrow constitutional rule of law can ever be passed, even by a majority of the popular vote. Those who refuse to live in such a nation are welcome to immediately leave.
Just as reformation needs to be conducted from within Islam, it becomes increasingly clear that the World's immigrant Muslim population may need to be returned entirely to their place of origin. Allowing a policy of Qua'rntine forced repatriation may be one of the only possible ways of diminishing the threat of Islamic terrorism.
It's radical aspect and intention of overthrowing the process of elected representation in favor of installing Sharia make it an irreconcilable enemy of constitutional law. Let Islam's reformation take place with its adherents all located within their legal (Sharia) sphere.
Let them demonstrate that such internal terrorism (as in Sunni versus Shiite), can halt before there is any thought of lifting the Qua'rntine. This will be one of the only hopes that may force the Muslim Majority nations to reconcile themselves against terrorism in general. So long as they cannot resolve that much then they are forbidden to migrate out of the existing Muslim majority nations and neither may their borders increase or change.
Whatever it takes, there are some serious answers that have to be found in dealing with a religion that permits taqqiya. It is the ultimate ethical and moral sin or crime in many respects. This and gender apartheid form a huge core of what must be reformed before Islam is anywhere near neutralized.
A British man, whose wife made a passing comment about a Muslim womans full face veil, suffered a broken nose and lost his front teeth after being attacked and head butted by the womans partner, police said on Sunday. The victim, a 46-year-old white man, was walking through Londons Regents Park with his family when they passed a Muslim family. A police spokesman said that the victims wife told her husband that it might be difficult for the Muslim woman to see, since the veil covered her face. The suspect began shouting and returned approximately 10 minutes later on his own and repeatedly punched and head butted the victim. The man was taken to hospital, suffering from facial injuries including a broken nose and a black eye, but was discharged later in the day. According to the police spokesman, the suspect was about 35-years-old and of Middle Eastern appearance. The police were treating the incident as a racially motivated assault. The attack occurred in mid-November but police were only alerted to the incident last week.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
Four prisoners on death row in Japan have been hanged, the country's justice ministry has said. They are the country's first executions under Japan's new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. It has been reported that those hanged included a taxi driver convicted of four murders. The last hanging in Japan was in September 2005.
Japan, like the United States, is one of the world's few developed countries to exercise capital punishment.
The inmates have been identified as Yoshimitsu Akiyama, Yoshio Fujinami, Michio Fukuoka and Hiroaki Hidaka. Kyodo News and Jiji Press report that Hidaka, a taxi driver in Hiroshima, was convicted of murdering a girl and three women. Akiyama, 77, was said to be the oldest and had spent the longest time of the four on death row, having been sentenced in 1987, Kyodo added.
Under former Justice Minister Seiken Sugiura, no execution orders were signed during his 11 months in office, because he said they went against his Buddhist beliefs. But he was replaced by Jinen Nagase three months ago, when Mr Abe took office.
Japan has faced international criticism for giving inmates little notice that they will be executed, so as to prevent last-minute appeals. Critics have also noted that Japan conducts executions while parliament is in recess, allegedly to avoid debate on the topic. The last session of parliament ended on Tuesday.
Posted by: john ||
12/25/2006 12:03 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[2 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Gawd.. a noose for christmas morning... stay out of Santa's bad book
Posted by: john ||
12/25/2006 12:09 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I'm surprised that the MSM missed an opportunity to tie the site of nuclear test #2 (Hiroshima) with the obvious mental instability of the taxi driver.
Posted by: Almost Anonymous5839 ||
12/25/2006 14:01 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Nuclear test # 2? I get it, you're referring to test # 1 at a site called Trinity; Hiroshima would be test # 2 with Nagasaki being # 3, and Tehran # ... oh, we're not there yet.
#5
The Japanese have an unusual way of execution. When you are sentenced to death, you are given a year's window in which it will take place, unannounced.
Any day that year, without warning to you or anyone else, they take you out and hang you. Only after you are dead is your family or the press informed.
New Zealanders looking for some extracurricular activity are now able to apply for the position of condom tester.
Condom manufacturer Durex is looking for test pilots of its products, and says New Zealanders were chosen because they are among the most sexually active and adventurous in the world.
"Kiwis have proven they're a sexually energetic bunch, and therefore it makes sense that a select few will have the chance to try our latest condom innovation, all in the name of research," said Durex New Zealand manager Victoria Potter.
"Durex wants to ensure that its condoms are best meeting the needs of New Zealanders, from delivering on sexual pleasure to keeping them safe."
Potential applicants are invited to log on to Explorersclub.co.nz and provide details of why they believe they are up to the job.
Obviously a puff piece, but it also has cultural ramifications if it should happen to catch on - lots of Islam's problems are tied to its being rooted in Arabic.
Sanskrit was the lingua franca not only of India, but also of the Indianized states of Southeast Asia, which included most of present-day Indonesia and all the land mass from Burma to southern Vietnam. The Thai court, for instance, maintains a resident Brahmin, as did the Lao court until the commies abolished the monarchy. The form of the religion in vogue at the time was heavy into the Shiva-Parvati story, with frequent appearances by Lakshmi (Lady Luck), Jaya (Victory), Mahendra, Rama, Ganesh and a host of others - definitely the "Un-Islam," and not resembling too closely today's Hinduism.
There is a unique village in Rajgarh district of Madhya Pradesh where almost all the people always converse in Sanskrit. Excellent idea...
Children are determined to teach Sanskrit to people who they meet. Villagers initially resisted the language but now after three years, they can't do without it. It's rather as if a town in Italy decided to go back to speaking Latin...
Jhiri in Madhya Pradesh's Rajgarh district has renewed the old custom and people have taken it upon themselves to popularise Sanskrit. So for the past three years, Sanskrit has been the medium of education at all schools in Jhiri. Now the children speak fluent Sanskrit, even outside the school. In fact, they want to make a career in the ancient language.
It's not just the children, even the grown-ups now speak only in Sanskrit. "I get immense pleasure in talking in Sanskrit because it is our language," said Shyama Chauhan, housewife.
Three years ago, the villagers formed the Vidyagram Development Committee (VDC), which decided that everyone, regardless of caste or religion, would learn Sanskrit. Sanskrit predates Hinduism and the caste system. It's the language of the Vedas and the Upanishads.
Now even those who may not know the technicalities of the language still speak fluent Sanskrit. "An illiterate girl of the village was stunned when she was being taught Sanskrit. She told me that the teacher asked her things like singular and plural. She said that she knew how to speak Sanskrit but did not know the grammar part," said Uday Singh Chauhan, president, VDC.
For the residents of the village Sanskrit is not only a language but also a medium to become more cultured and civilized and this has helped them to a large extent in achieving the goals of social harmony, development and prohibition.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/25/2006 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Wonderful find. I think it would be great to revive the language.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
LONDON, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Forcing store clerks to listen to the same holiday music over and over could be akin to torture and should change, a British noise pollution group said. 
TUNIS - Two people were killed and two police officers wounded in a shoot-out overnight Saturday in northern Tunisia, the countrys official TAP news agency reported Sunday. Two other people were arrested in the incident, which took place in a suburban Tunis house.
With Santa Clauses in trendy malls, giant Christmas trees in hotels and holiday treats on supermarket shelves, Christmas cheer is can't be missed in this Muslim city. In fact, the holiday kitsch is at an all-time high in Dubai where many residents revel in the commercial hype of the Christian holiday.
A British man, whose wife made a passing comment about a Muslim womans full face veil, suffered a broken nose and lost his front teeth after being attacked and head butted by the womans partner, police said on Sunday. The victim, a 46-year-old white man, was walking through Londons Regents Park with his family when they passed a Muslim family. A police spokesman said that the victims wife told her husband that it might be difficult for the Muslim woman to see, since the veil covered her face. The suspect began shouting and returned approximately 10 minutes later on his own and repeatedly punched and head butted the victim. The man was taken to hospital, suffering from facial injuries including a broken nose and a black eye, but was discharged later in the day. According to the police spokesman, the suspect was about 35-years-old and of Middle Eastern appearance. The police were treating the incident as a racially motivated assault. The attack occurred in mid-November but police were only alerted to the incident last week.
Four prisoners on death row in Japan have been hanged, the country's justice ministry has said. They are the country's first executions under Japan's new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. It has been reported that those hanged included a taxi driver convicted of four murders. The last hanging in Japan was in September 2005.
