If women were allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, the result would be catastrophic and lead to “no more virgins,” said clerics from the Majlis al-Ifta al-Aala, the country’s highest religious council.

Women in the country have been pushing to drive, and a number of women have driven in protest to the ultra-conservative country’s ban on female drivers in recent months.

They face public lashings, jail and ostracism if discovered driving in the only country in the world where women are not allowed to take the wheel.

The report from the Majlis, in coordination with former professor at King Fahd University Kamal Subhi, reported their findings to the Shura Council, the country’s legislative assembly.

It warned that allowing women to drive would “provoke a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce.”

Within 10 years of the ban being lifted, it claimed, there would be “no more virgins” in the Islamic kingdom.

It comes after a previous report stated women should cover their faces in order to avoid showing off “tempting eyes” to men in the country.

According to the spokesperson of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) in the conservative Gulf kingdom, women may soon be forced to don a full-face covering.

Spokesman of the Ha’eal district, Sheikh Motlab al-Nabet said the committee has the right to stop a women whose eyes seem “tempting” and order her to cover them immediately.

Saudi women are already forced to wear a loose black dress and to cover their hair and in some areas, their face, while in public or face fines or sometimes worse, including public lashings.

"For all his perspicacity, George Orwell would have been stymied by this situation; there is nothing "Orwellian" about it. The President does not have the press under his thumb. The New York Times and The Washington Post are not Pravda; the Associated Press is not Tass. And there is no Newspeak here. Lies have not been defined as truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference.

Which is why Aldous Huxley would not in the least be surprised by the story. Indeed, he prophesied its coming. He believed that it is far more likely that the Western democracies will dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march into it' single file and manacled. Huxley grasped, as Orwell did not, that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcoticized by technological diversions." (Postman, N. 1985)

In 2009, Peter Van Buren, a two-decade veteran of the Foreign Service, volunteered to go to Iraq. Drawn by "the nexus of honor, duty, terrorism, and my oldest daughter's college tuition," he signed on as the head of an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team, part of a "civilian surge" to rebuild the country and pave the way for the withdrawal of American combat troops. He'd joined the biggest nation-building exercise in history, a still-unfinished $63-billion effort that Van Buren compares to "past[ing] together feathers year after year, hoping for a duck.

Something positive.... for a change

PARIS (Reuters) - L'impact de la crise économique sur l'économie et le marché du travail en France s'est traduit en 2009 par le ralentissement de la progression du niveau de vie et par la remontée du taux de pauvreté, montre une étude publiée mardi par l'Insee.

Le seuil de pauvreté, qui équivaut à 60% du niveau de vie médian, s'est établi cette année-là à 954 euros mensuels. Et 8,2 millions de personnes vivaient en dessous de ce seuil, soit 13,5% de la population, un demi-point de plus qu'en 2008 et le niveau le plus élevé depuis 2000, précise l'Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques.

Sur ces 8,2 millions de pauvres, la moitié vivaient avec moins de 773 euros par mois, précise l'étude.

Plus fréquente, cette pauvreté s'est aussi faite plus sévère: l'"intensité" de la pauvreté, qui mesure l'écart entre le niveau de vie médian des personnes pauvres et le seuil de pauvreté, a atteint son plus haut niveau en cinq ans à 19,0%.

Well, the "no war" is a bit of a stretch...

Invitée dans l'émission BFM TV 2012 pour discuter de sa candidature aux primaires socialistes, Martine Aubry a répondu aux questions de plusieurs citoyens, dont un jeune "Jérémy" interrogé dans la rue... Jérémy est en fait Jérémy Coste, président des Jeunes centristes et attaché parlementaire d'André Santini (NC), maire d'Issy-les-Moulineaux. Une "omission" de taille pour BFM TV. Après l'affaire Ciotti, une affaire Santini ? BFM TV 2012, le rendez-vous politique d'Olivier Mazerolle, est en tout cas entaché ce soir après avoir omis de préciser la véritable identité d'un intervenant "micro-trottoir". L'information a été révélée sur Twitter, où le jeune Jérémy Coste, diplômé en sciences politiques de 24 ans, a été reconnu. Collaborateur parlementaire d'André Santini, il est également président du mouvement des Jeunes centristes depuis juin 2010.

As president of the United States, I would pray. I would pray and ask the Lord for guidance," she said. "That's what presidents have done throughout history. I'm extremely grateful to have a faith in God. ...He's been very good to our country. It's important for us to seek his guidance and to pray and to listen to his voice.

This country is going down... fast