President Obama will visit Australia next month.  The trip coincides with the 70th anniversary of US-Australian diplomatic relations.  So, if you do the math, that puts the establishment of relations at 1940.

Prior to 1901, Australia consisted of six self governing British colonies.  Through a process called Federation, the colonies joined together and became the Commonwealth of Australia.  From 1901 to 1940-ish, Australia was in a transition period.  Around the WWII era they became fully self governing, though they still consider the British Monarch to be their head of state.

Every now and then you’ll hear/see the small print at the end of an ad for a cruise company that mentions that the Ship’s Registry is the Bahamas.

I know that you all come here to learn what random bits of information like this mean, so I will now oblige you.

A ship’s registry is like a car’s registration.  According to international maritime law all major seagoing vessels must be registered to some country.  It doesn’t really matter which country.  However, the vessel must comply with laws pertaining to safety, taxation, and environmental regulation for the country that registers the vessel.

So, certain countries have created open registries that allow foreign owners to register ships.  These countries have laws that are written to attract business.  This is much like how the state of Delaware has pro-business laws that attract corporations.  (Almost all of the Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware.  So is my business.)

The Bahamas have created one of the most successful open registration programs, so they attract the vast majority of cruise ships. You could say they are the Delaware of cruise ship registration.

When a ship flies under a foreign flag it is typically referred to as flying a flag of convenience.

Source: here and here.

Kenya gives washing machines to bronze Olympic medalists.

They give TVs and cash to silver and gold.

Other governments give out cash as well.  China allocated 800 million yuan (about $115 million – I did this math myself!) annually from sports-oriented lotteries.  Greece offered around 190,000 euros ($280,000) for Beijing Games gold medals, 130,000 euros for silver and 70,000 euros for bronze medals.

This story is a few weeks old, but I’m just now getting around to it.

A leading Al-Qaeda militant on Wednesday called on Muslims worldwide to defend Uighurs in China’s restive northwestern region of Xinjiang. He told Uighurs to prepare for a holy war or Jihad and urged a “vast media campaign” to raise awareness of their fate at the hands of “oppressive” China.

In the video posted to jihadist websites, Abu Yahya al-Libi appeared to launch a frontal assault against China.

The coming war between China and Islam has been boiling under the surface for some time now.  China, having the benefit of a closed media and an existing international reputation as bad guys, will react to this war in a much different way than the west.

They will react in ways that countries like the US or Great Britain, or even Russia cannot.

He [ed. the Al-Qaeda militant] also accused China of using “satanic ways” to oppress Muslims in the province and replace them with other ethnicities while “looting their wealth and undermining their culture and religion.”

“Tens of thousand of people have been silently killed to prevent a revolt. The communist Chinese government has tried to eliminate all links between eastern Turkestan and the Islamic nation by sending colonisers to constantly reduce the number of Muslims,” he stated.

Another tactic China is using to exterminate Muslims is calling the province Xinjiang instead of eastern Turkestan, just as Palestine’s name as been changed to Israel, al-Libi argued.

He described China’s presence in Xinjiang as an “occupation” and claimed the colonisation of the province has made the Muslim population a minority.

“The Chinese have closed all the Islamic schools, forbidding the study of the Muslim religion. They have arrested and killed all the Muslim leaders,” he said.

Xinjiang is also the province where China is carrying out the largest number of nuclear experiments, al-Libi alleged.

“Thousands of people have died from the radiation emitted by the many nuclear missiles that have been launched and the experiments carried out in the area,” al-Libi concluded.

Uighurs make up 8 million people out of Xinjiang’s population of 20 million. It covers one-sixth of the country and is relatively sparsely populated.

I wouldn’t be surprised if 8 million Uighurs just ended up disappearing one day.  It’s surely not beyond the ability of the Chinese to execute.

China has been mostly silent as the rest of the international community deals with the threat of Islam.  (See, for instance, Iran.)

It will be interesting to see how they react when the threat is in their own back yard.

I’m not kidding.

Mariamu Stanford, a soft-spoken, 28-year-old single mother from rural Tanzania, has earned a grim distinction: She’s one of only two people with albinism — a group that has faced discrimination in East Africa — to survive a brutal attack by those wanting to sell the limbs of albinos on the black market.

Video story at ABC

Here’s the vid from Al Jazeera. Shock at 1:40, and the last 30 seconds nails the look of horror to your face.

Another vid, have a trash can near, in case of vomit:
Youtube Link … the “more info” part has a few more articles.

The basics are, Hamas hosted/funded a mass wedding for 450 couples. The men appear to be in their 20’s. The girls are half their height, appearing to be around 9-ish. Each couple is given cash (sources differ on the amount, $500usd or $612usd) to fund their journey into rape-ville.

There’s several articles published online from July 31st. Most are middle eastern, and the American ones have the least info. Several from Canada, Europe, Australia have basically the same story: Link.

The anti-radical-islam blogs have published it the most and have more photos than what is shown in the Al Jazeera video. Tim Marshall, of Sky News seems to be the first to dispute the apparent pedophilic wedding ceremony, claiming that he was there, and that the little girls are neices of the grooms, which is a cultural norm for weddings. Here’s a link to the best pro-Hamas event summary I found. Strange how Tim and other deniers of child brides can’t come up with one blasted photo of age-appropriate brides at this ceremony. Additionally, nobody I’ve read has yet attempted to explain the last 30 seconds in that video, and how incredibly obvious it seems that the little girl is getting into the rape-mobile and then gazing mournfully out the window of her marital home.

None of my preliminary searches have uncovered anything about nieces dressing up as brides for play during the wedding. Admittedly, most documents are a brief overview of the event such as this. There are however, several references (like this) to Islamic wedding norms that include marriage of an older man to a girl as young as ten. It seems odd that if pedophilia could in any way be suggested by these ceremonies, they would officially address it in an article like this.

But hey, I’m sure that we culturally ignorant Americans just don’t understand.

So there are apparently things called Sailing Stones, also called Sliding Rocks or Moving Rocks.  But basically it refers to a phenomenon where rocks move along smooth valley floors without human or animal interaction… and no one knows how or why they do it.  But they know they do it because they leave grooves and tracks behind them as they move!

Well, after I read the article, that’s a half truth.  There is a good theory, it’s just not proven.  Basically, some scientists marked several large rocks positions and monitored them.  If any of them moved, it was after winter, so they are pretty sure winter is involved.  Since they are in flat valleys, they are pretty sure stream-line winds are involved.  So the theory basically goes that wind in these flat areas is intensified through some type of icy phenomenon, and these rocks catch blasts of 90+ MPH wind gusts… when they start to slide, it doesn’t take as much sustained wind to keep them moving… like a train that takes a lot of power to start, but not so much to keep moving.

You can read more on the wiki.

You have presented me with a highly undesirable option. I am troubled.

A RADICAL Muslim group sparked outrage last night as it launched a massive campaign to impose sharia law on Britain.

I haven’t been able to fake surprise yet, but I’m still trying, so bare with me.

The group declared: “We hereby request all Muslims in the United Kingdom, in Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow and all other places to join us and collectively declare that as submitters to Almighty Allah, we have had enough of democracy and man-made law and the depravity of the British culture.

“On this day we will call for a complete upheaval of the British ruling system its members and legislature, and demand the full implementation of Shari’ah in Britain.”

Last quote, my personal fav…

Mr Choudary has said that under sharia law in Britain people who commit adultery would be stoned to death, adding that “anyone who becomes intoxicated by alcohol would be given 40 lashes in public”.

He has also mocked the deaths of British soldiers, and branded an Army homecoming parade a “vile parade of brutal murderers”.

The Islam4UK website is currently down. I’ll try to get in for an update later on.

Yeah, this sounds like a good idea…

A Swedish couple believe so strongly that gender is a social construction that they do not reveal whether their 2.5-year-old is a boy or a girl.

Only those who have changed the toddler’s diapers know if “Pop,” which is not the child’s real name, is male or female. “We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mold from the outset,” the tot’s 24-year-old mother told the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

No, moron. What’s cruel is that this poor kid will have to grow up with you as parents.

Renting friends.

Best man Ryuichi Ichinokawa took his place before the assembled wedding guests, cleared his throat and for the next few minutes spoke movingly about the bride and groom. But his speech omitted one crucial fact: that he knew the beaming couple only marginally better than the waiters and waitresses serving their wedding breakfast.

From the moment the guests sat down until they belted out the final karaoke song of the evening, Ichinokawa was part of a grand, though well-intentioned, deception.

He is a professional stand-in, part of a growing service sector that rents out fake spouses, best men, relatives, friends, colleagues, boyfriends and girlfriends to spare their clients’ blushes at social functions such as weddings and funerals.

I find it… sad.