Scantily clad prostitutes are being pushed out of their neon display windows by fashion mannequins in a battle for control of the busiest red-light district in Europe.

“If you come to this area, you know what you are coming for – and it is not fashion,” Jan Broers, the owner of an hotel and eight prostitute windows, said. “... there are some crazy people in the Government who think they can take control of the whole thing, not only the prostitutes but also the coffee shops.”

The city council claims that the famed Dutch permissiveness, which also turns a blind eye to cannabis being sold in coffee shops, is being exploited by organised crime.

Prostitutes are pushed out to provide a window for fashionistas

Red-baiting is a dangerous tactic in a country where even in the late 1980s the Communist party still boasted around 800,000 loyal members. They included a number of Hungary’s now shrillest super-patriots. But then, as the saying goes: “We are a small country; we only have one mob”.

Budapest diary: Open secrets | Economist

“Trying to guess General Petraeus’s next assignment is the most popular parlor game in the Pentagon these days,” Mr. Morrell said.

Pentagon Weighs Top Iraq General as NATO Chief

Union 1812 shows that the fate of the American Experiment was not decided at the end of the American Revolution; instead, the ambiguous confederacy needed to be sewn together by the Herculean efforts of men like James Madison, who gave the nation it’s backbone in the U.S. constitution, and the strength and determination of the early presidents. Even then, it took a second war with Britain to galvanize the people and truly forge the more perfect union familiar to modern readers.

While the book mainly focuses on the War of 1812, author A.J. Langguth spends ample time on the formation of the Constitution. As he details the measures undertaken my Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and their fellow Federalists who argued for a strong central government, it becomes apparent that this was the decisive moment in determining what the United States would become.

One of the most amusing lessons to be learned from Union 1812 is that although American society may make great strides in certain respects, in the end, human nature is virtually immutable. The political campaigns of the time were marked with mudslinging and vicious partisan assaults. The press was cultivated and manipulated by shrewd politicians looking for an edge. Even Thomas Jefferson’s hands were dirtied in such activities; he provided a do-nothing job in the State Department to a man named Philip Morin Freneau in an effort to fund the man’s newspaper, the National Gazette, with the sole pursuit of haranguing the Republican Jefferson’s Federalist political enemies. Freneau’s criticisms of Hamilton and Adams weren’t erudite deconstructions of their political ideals. Instead, he took Hamilton to task for his “long nose,” and Adams for his “breath of belly.”

Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence

It has now been more than ten years since Congress enacted section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. During that time courts have held that CDA 230 grants interactive online services of all types, including blogs, forums, and listservs, broad immunity from tort liability so long as the information at issue is provided by a third party. Relatively few court decisions, however, have analyzed the scope of this immunity in the context of “mixed content” that is created jointly by the operator of the interactive service and a third party through significant editing of content or shaping of content by submission forms and drop-downs. Accordingly, this is an area that we will be watching carefully and reporting on in the future.

So what are the practical things you can take away from this discussion? Here are five:

1. If you passively host third-party content, you will be fully protected against defamation and defamation-like claims under CDA 230.
2. If you exercise traditional editorial functions over user submitted content, such as deciding whether to publish, remove, or edit material, you will not lose your immunity unless your edits materially alter the meaning of the content.
3. If you pre-screen objectionable content or correct, edit, or remove content, you will not lose your immunity.
4. If you encourage or pay third-parties to create or submit content, you will not lose your immunity.
5. If you use drop-down forms or multiple-choice questionnaires, you should be cautious of allowing users to submit information through these forms that might be deemed illegal.

Primer on Immunity — and Liability — for Third-Party Content Under Section 230 of Communications Decency Act

I believe in aristocracy ... — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke. I give no examples — it is risky to do that — but the reader may as well consider whether this is the type of person he would like to meet and to be, and whether (going further with me) he would prefer that this type should not be an ascetic one. I am against asceticism myself. I am with the old Scotsman who wanted less chastity and more delicacy. I do not feel that my aristocrats are a real aristocracy if they thwart their bodies, since bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world. Still, I do not insist. This is not a major point. It is clearly possible to be sensitive, considerate and plucky and yet be an ascetic too, and if anyone possesses the first three qualities I will let him in! On they go — an invincible army, yet not a victorious one. The aristocrats, the elect, the chosen, the Best People — all the words that describe them are false, and all attempts to organize them fail. Again and again Authority, seeing their value, has tried to net them and to utilize them as the Egyptian Priesthood or the Christian Church or the Chinese Civil Service or the Group Movement, or some other worthy stunt. But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut, they are no longer in the room; their temple, as one of them remarked, is the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide-open world.

-- Edward Morgan Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy, “What I Believe” (1951)

Forster’s Aristocracy

Neighbors, friends, elected representatives—I am Margaritaville. My father was a simple shrimp-boat captain who set course for a sleepy fishing village almost 40 years ago. He didn't want much. A little plot of land, some skanks, maybe a flask of rum to warm his swollen belly. I'm not sure a little boy was in the plans, but he raised me with love and, more importantly, a love of this land.

From the crisp scent of vomit-soaked pizza boxes baking in the sunrise on East Sound Pier, to the pink-and-orange sunsets softly shimmering behind the West Railyard prostitute encampments, I love every inch of this town. I took my first body shot right around the time I spoke my first word, and that word was "body shot."

And yet I fear that our children might not grow up in the same Margaritaville we've been able to enjoy. A Margaritaville where you can get shithoused on a quiet jetty and think about what it would be like to get a dolphin high. A Margaritaville where you can take a dump on a snow-white sand dune and swear at a baby pelican. A Margaritaville where college dropouts, irrespective of race or creed, can listen to Pink Floyd and dry-hump below a rainbow. These are the experiences I cherish, and I know that I am not alone.

Toward a Sustainable Margaritaville

While many Democratic strategists are confident that the deteriorating economy virtually assures the victory of their presidential candidate on November 4, there is a quiet debate over whether the party and prospective nominee are likely to get blindsided by Republicans raising issues of terrorism and national security.

Republicans are making no secret of their intentions in the general election.

Alex Castellanos, Republican media strategist, told the Huffington Post that the continuing concerns of American voters about the dangers of another terrorist attack will be the engine behind a Republican victory in November.

I don't think McCain will sign up for that.

Will The GOP Blindside The Democrats On Terror Issues?

From the Annals of "Influencers", a new paper entitled, "Terrorist Recruitment in American Correctional Institutions: An Exploratory Study of Non-Traditional Faith Groups".

The study's main conclusion is that the danger to U.S. security from inmate adherents to nontraditional religions is not the number of adherents to Islam or to White supremacy religions, but rather the potential for small groups of radical believers to instigate terrorist acts upon their release from custody. Among recommendations for addressing this issue is the hiring of chaplains in overcrowded maximum-security prisons, so as to provide authoritative teachers who will ensure moderation and tolerance. Findings show that prisoners have been converted to the following nontraditional religious groups: Islam (traditional Islam, Nation of Islam, Moorish Science Temple, and Prison Islam); Hinduism; Buddhism; Native-American religions; Black Hebrew Israelism; Wicca; and White supremacy religions (Odin/ Asatru and Christian Identity). Although some conversions to these religions are motivated by personal crises and the need for protection, the primary motivation for conversions is spiritual searching. Although most of the prisoner conversions to these nontraditional religions exert a positive influence on inmate attitudes and behaviors, some carry the potential for ideologically inspired criminal attitudes and behaviors. This risk is especially high in overcrowded maximum-security prisons where there are few rehabilitation programs, a shortage of chaplains, and gang influences. The most significant threat stems from fringe elements of Prison Islam. Former gang rivals are joining forces under Islamic banners. Neo-Nazis are becoming Sunni Muslims. There is growing conflict within inmate Islam as various factions of this faith compete for followers. Data were obtained from interviews with 15 prison chaplains, 9 gang intelligence officials, and 30 inmates incarcerated for violent crimes in Florida and California.

Get the full text.

The Local War on Drugs Meets the Global War on Terror

What a difference a decade makes. When I worked in Moscow in 1994 and 1995 for the National Democratic Institute, an American nongovernmental organization, I could not have imagined the present situation. The idea that the collapse of the Soviet Union would be considered the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” as Putin claims, would have occurred to only a few hard-core, extremist (loony) Communist Party members. Suddenly, this view is not only mainstream but is shared by the youngest generation of Russians— even as they drink Starbucks coffee while surfing the Internet. Alongside Big Macs and iPods, a cottage industry of Soviet nostalgia has sprung up, complete with T-shirts, books, movies, bars, and restaurants. Stores even sell postcards of Stalin.

If Russians feel nostalgia for Soviet days, the run-up to the December elections stirred my own memories of a year of living not at all dangerously in what we thought of then as the new Russia. My thoughts, and those of so many others, go back to the era not only in Russia but also in the United States— the 12 years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The United States’s efforts to promote democracy abroad had not yet become singed by the war in Iraq, and the democratic balance in its three branches of government seemed reasonably stable.

Dreaming of a Democratic Russia