Only In America

Mulcaire Ordered To Spill The Beans

2012-02-01T20:43:00.004Z

Mulcaire is told to reveal who commissioned phone hacking
Tom Harper
1 Feb 2012

News International suffered a fresh blow today when senior judges ordered its former private investigator to reveal who commissioned him to hack phones.

Glenn Mulcaire lost an appeal against a court order that found he cannot rely on privilege against self-incrimination over his illegal interception of voicemail messages at the News of the World.

The private detective, who hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler for the defunct Sunday tabloid, lost his legal battle against a claim brought by comedian Steve Coogan and Nicola Phillips, a former assistant to publicist Max Clifford.

The Appeal Court ruling was issued by the country's highest-ranking judges Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger and the vice-president of the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Maurice Kay. Mulcaire was granted leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Sources close to the case said the decision could trigger an "avalanche" of fresh claims against the Murdoch media empire as Mulcaire now has to reveal the identities of journalists who asked him to hack phones.

Together with ex-NoW royal editor Clive Goodman, the private investigator was jailed in 2007 after pleading guilty to hacking the phones of aides to Prince William.

Mark Lewis, Ms Phillips's solicitor, said his client "hopes that she will soon get the answers that she wants as to who from the News of the World instructed Glenn Mulcaire". thisislondon

Assange Appeals 'Invalid' Warrant at Supreme Court

2012-02-01T18:18:00.002Z

Assange appeals 'invalid' warrant at Supreme Court

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is appealing his extradition to Sweden at the Supreme Court, arguing the arrest warrant is "invalid and unenforceable".
1 February 2012

His lawyers say the Swedish prosecutor who issued the European Arrest Warrant against him did not have the authority to do so as she was not impartial.

Mr Assange is wanted by the Swedish authorities for questioning over alleged sex offences, which he denies.

Judgement is expected to be reserved to a later date.

The 40-year-old Australian, who remains on conditional bail in the UK, claims the allegations against him are politically motivated.

He is accused of raping one woman and "sexually molesting and coercing" another in Stockholm in August 2010.

Mr Assange's Wikileaks website published a mass of material from leaked diplomatic cables embarrassing several governments.

The key legal question for the seven judges is whether the prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant had the judicial authority to do so under provisions of the 2003 Extradition Act.
Invalid

Mr Assange's lawyer, Dinah Rose QC, said it was "a matter of fundamental legal principle" that the person issuing such a warrant was both independent and impartial.

But she said the Swedish prosecutor was a party in the Assange case and therefore was not either of these things.

Ms Rose submitted: "Since the Swedish prosecutor cannot fulfil those conditions, she is not a judicial authority and not capable of issuing a warrant for the purposes of he 2003 Act."

The arrest warrant itself was therefore invalid, she said.

In the UK, judges can issue arrest warrants, and courts honour warrants issued by "judicial authorities".

Lawyers for Sweden argue that in Sweden, prosecutors play a judicial or semi-judicial role.

But Ms Rose said a prosecutor "does not, and indeed cannot as a matter of principle, exercise judicial authority.''

The High Court, which previously approved his extradition, had recognised that the status of the public prosecutor was debatable.

But Ms Rose said it had "nonetheless concluded that the Swedish prosecutor was a 'judicial' authority within the meaning of Part 1 of the 2003 Act" and was "wrong to reach that conclusion".

Draconian instrument

Ms Rose said Swedish prosecutors could investigate without Mr Assange being extradited using telephone, by video-link or in person at an embassy.

She said: "The EAW is a draconian instrument which affects individual liberty, freedom of movement and private life: it should only be resorted to if other, less invasive, measures for achieving the general interest have failed or are unavailable."

Supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court to greet Mr Assange as he arrived for the hearing.

In December, two High Court judges, Sir John Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley, decided that Mr Assange had raised a question on extradition law "of general public importance" and allowed him to ask the Supreme Court for a final UK ruling.

Later that month, a Supreme Court spokesman said its justices had agreed to hear the case "given the great public importance of the issue raised, which is whether a prosecutor is a judicial authority". BBC

I Think We Need To Cut Europe's Power

2012-02-01T15:14:00.006Z

If the blog wasn't already half full of it, I would start a new tag: Shit You Couldn't Make Up!

Europe to cut power of vacuum cleaners to save energy

The cleanliness of Britain's homes is being threatened by European bureaucrats who want to reduce the power of vacuum cleaners in a bid to cut energy use.

First it was traditional light bulbs, then it was plasma televisions. Now European bureaucrats are targeting the nation's vacuum cleaners as part of plans to cut energy use in the home.

Officials at the European Commission are proposing to restrict the power of domestic vacuum cleaners in a move which experts fear could reduce their effectiveness in sucking up dust and dirt.

Manufacturers say it could also reduce cleaners' ability to remove fine particles from the air they pump back into the atmosphere, potentially leading to nasty side-effects for allergy and asthma sufferers.

The EU experts propose restricting the power of vacuum cleaners to levels last seen in the 1960s.

Britain's current best selling upright bagged vacuum cleaner, the Hoover Pure Power, has a power rating of 2.1 kilowatts (kW) – about the same as a typical kettle. A rival, the Vax Power 2 Pet has a power input of 2.2kW. More Telegraph

I Have Nothing To Say

2012-02-01T14:04:00.013Z

Having waded through three or four hundred news items from the past week, I can honestly say that there wasn't one item that I wanted to blog. One of us is getting jaded, me or the world, I'm not sure which? I did try watching the Julian Assange proceedings for awhile, but it was all legaleese,

So for something a little different, a picture gallery of just some of the the stuff that, as a blogger who likes to decorate his posts, I save as a matter of course when I happen on them.

In the main, uploaded alphabetically and named correctly. The only exception being this latest offering from Martin Rowson on the stripping of Goodman's knighthood. I do have to say, I have become a recent fan of Rowson, if for nothing else than his brilliant lampooning of Cameron. Or should I say Camerface?

The four images below, I captured from the other bit of Wikileaks Collateral Murder. For me personally, I found this particular part of the film even more unacceptable than the multi-murder sequence that got the most coverage. Watch the man approaching from the left, and if you have watched the whole of the film, you will know as I, that there was no hurry for the death from above jockey to unleash his deadly load.

No border for the Hubble Deep Field photo, (the dawning of the universe) it's a 1280 wallpaper.

Be Careful What You Tweet The Yanks Are Listening and The Yanks Are Paranoid

2012-01-31T07:10:00.005Z

And the Yanks are ever so slightly batshit and ever so pissed with power.

Oh, and did I mention, lacking a tad in the sense of humour department?

Whatever happened to:

''Are you now, or have you ever been a member of, or in any way connected or associated with the Communist Party?''

"Do you intend to engage in the United States in any activity to overthrow the United States government?"

All joking apart kiddywinks, this is scary shit.

Brit pair deported from US for 'destroy America' tweet

Also intended to disinter Marilyn Monroe, Homeland Security claims
By Lester Haines
30th January 2012

A couple of Brits were unceremoniously ejected from the US last week after one of them ill-advisedly tweeted he was off to "destroy America".

Leigh Van Bryan, 26, and pal Emily Bunting, 24, jetted into Los Angeles last Monday ahead of what they hoped would be a lively Stateside holiday. Their shorter-than-expected trip certainly delivered, although the pair weren't expecting to be arrested, internally probed and thrown in a cell for 12 hours with hungry Mexican narcos.

The Department of Homeland Security had already earmarked Van Bryan and Bunting for a warm welcome before they even touched down at LAX. The agency had picked up on a couple of Van Bryan's tweets, which suggested they intended to wipe out the US and disinter Marilyn Monroe.

The first, posted on 3 January, said: "3 weeks today, we're totally in LA pissing people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin' Marilyn Monroe up!"

The second, written on 16 January, declared: "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America."

Van Bryan and Bunting had their collars felt after clearing passport control. They were first quizzed for five hours, during which they failed to convince the authorities of the innocent nature of the tweets.

According to the Daily Mail, Bunting said: "The officials told us we were not allowed in to the country because of Leigh's tweet. They wanted to know what we were going to do. They asked why we wanted to destroy America and we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party.

"I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh's lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe. I couldn't believe it because it was a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show."

She added: "It got even more ridiculous because the officials searched our suitcases and said they were looking for spades and shovels. They did a full body search on me too."

Van Bryan described the ordeal as "almost funny" but "really scary". He said: "The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist. I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me 'you've really fucked up with that tweet boy'."

The two then spent the night in jail, where the Mexican drug cartels put Van Bryan on involuntary hunger strike. He explained: "When we arrived at the prison I was shoved in a cell on my own but after an hour two huge Mexican men covered in tattoos came in and started asking me who I was.

"They told me they'd been arrested for taking cocaine over the border. When the food arrived on the tray they took it all and just left me with a carton of apple juice."

Van Bryan and Bunting were deported back to the UK the next day. Van Bryan's rap sheet, explaining why he was refused entry, says: "Mr Bryan confirmed that he had posted on his Tweeter [sic] website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe. Also on his tweeter account Mr Bryan posted that he was coming to destroy America." Register

Some of the stranger parts of US immigration discussed here.

How's the tourist trade these days?

Gingrich: I'd Be Quite Happy Nuking Every Fucker In Sight But I'll Ban Stem-Cell Research

2012-01-31T01:59:00.005Z

Is there a competition going on that I don't know about, one where the wannabees see who can sound the most ridiculous?

Talk about Talibangenical! Fuck me! these people are utterly insane.

Gingrich vows to ban embryonic stem-cell research, questions in vitro practices

By Karen Tumulty
January 29, 2012

LUTZ, Fla. — As former House speaker Newt Gingrich courts evangelical voters in advance of Tuesday’s Florida primary, he is drawing an increasingly hard line against the use of embryonic stem-cell research — a position that contrasts not only with that of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, but also with statements that Gingrich himself has made on the subject in the past.

Speaking at a Baptist church in Winter Park on Saturday, the former speaker received a standing ovation when he declared that embryonic stem-cell research amounts to “the use of science to desensitize society over the killing of babies.”

And in a news conference Sunday, he said he would ban all embryonic stem-cell research, including that done on discarded embryos created by in vitro fertilization.

Gingrich added that he would also create a commission to study the ethics of in vitro fertilization, which has involved the creation of hundreds of thousands of excess embryos stored or discarded by fertility clinics.

“I believe life begins at conception, and the question I was raising was what happens to embryos in fertility clinics, and I would favor a commission to look seriously at the ethics of how we manage fertility clinics,” Gingrich said at a news conference outside another Baptist church here. “If you have in vitro fertilization, you are creating life; therefore, we should look seriously at what the rules should be for clinics that are doing that, because they are creating life.”

Scientists say embryonic stem cells are valuable in research because they can develop into any type of cell in the body. They are thought to hold the promise to treat or cure a variety of illnesses and injuries. However, social conservatives oppose the practice, because it destroys days-old human embryos.

In 2001, when then-President George W. Bush was considering new guidelines for federal funding of stem-cell research, Gingrich had indicated in at least two interviews on Fox News that he would support using government money for research on embryos in fertility clinics that would otherwise be discarded.

“For many of us, there’s a very, very real distinction between doing something with an unborn child, a fetus that is implanted, and doing something with cells in a fertility clinic that are otherwise going to be destroyed,” Gingrich said in one of the interviews, on July 10, 2001.

In the other, 10 days later, he added: “I think that there are ways to have appreciation for life, to recognize the sanctity of life, but nonetheless to look at fertility clinics where there are cells that are sitting there that are not going to be used to create life. They literally today, they’re unregulated, they can be thrown away. And I think the president, I hope the president, will find a way to agree that there ought to be federally funded research.”

Bush allowed federal funds to be spent only on 21 stem-cell lines that existed before his August 2001 decision. President Obama lifted that restriction in 2009. washingtonpost.com

Julian Assange to Guest on 'The Simpsons'

2012-01-30T20:38:00.003Z

Something gentle to end the day.

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange to guest on 'The Simpsons'
by Dan Snierson

Here’s some news that we couldn’t wait to leak: Julian Assange will play himself in the 500th episode of The Simpsons! EW has learned exclusively that the WikiLeaks founder/editor-in-chief recorded a guest spot over the summer that is part of the animated Fox comedy’s landmark episode airing Feb. 19.

So, how did this casting curveball come about? Simpsons exec producer Al Jean says that series creator Matt Groening heard a rumor that the polarizing and elusive activist who runs the whistle-blowing website was interested in guest-starring on the series, “so we asked our casting director Bonnie Pietila — who had been able to unearth Thomas Pynchon and got Tony Blair to do the show — to find Mr. Assange. And she did.” Assange recorded his lines at a location unknown to Simpsons producers — he was and is still under house arrest in Britain — as Jean directed him remotely from Los Angeles. (“I was just given a number to call,” sums up Jean.)

In the milestone episode, Homer and Marge discover that the residents of Springfield are holding a secret town meeting to kick them out of Springfield for all of their shenanigans over the years. As a result, “the Simpsons go off the grid to this very rugged place where they meet [Assange], who’s sort of their new Flanders,” explains Jean. And how exactly is he like pious neighbor Ned? “Well, he lives next door,” quips Jean. “The similarities end there… He invites them over for a home movie and it’s an Afghan wedding being bombed.”

Assange, who will unveil a talk show on Russia’s English language channel RT in March, is slated to appear before Britain’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to appeal extradition to Sweden in connection with sex crimes allegations. “He’s a controversial figure, and there’s a good reason he’s controversial,” says Jean. “There was discussion internally whether or not to have him on the show, but ultimately we went ahead and did it.” Jean points out that “there’s nothing we did that has anything to do with the legal situation that he’s in…We wanted to make sure it was satirical, and he was willing to do that.”

Get more EW: Subscribe to the magazine for only 33¢ an issue!

Assange isn’t the only guest in the 500th episode. Hints Jean: “There are a couple of other cameos that are more familiar to fans of the show. And much less controversial.”

Season 23 of The Simpsons also features guest spots by celebrities including Kiefer Sutherland, Michael Cera, Jane Lynch, Andy Garcia, and Jeremy Irons. insidetv

Clarence Mitchell Is a Twunt

2012-01-30T14:11:00.016Z

Yes, that Clarence Mitchell, the same one that Carnival Cruise Lines, in their infinite wisdom, have brought in to spin the sinking of the Costa Concordia.

The title of this post was actually meant to be, Clarence Mitchell is a Twat, but I couldn't ignore the first thing that came up under those search terms. Hence the hybrid header.

Clarence Mitchell

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCanns, has become a Tory spin-doctor cunt.

He's gone from being paid to defend a couple of rich, devious,

spending-other-people's-money, uncaring, two-faced,

unemployable cunts who are going to disappoint millions

when they are exposed as frauds and liars...to.... ....is a cunt

~ ~ ~

Nevertheless, a search for Clarence Mitchell is a Twat does bring up rather a lot of stuff, some of it quite familiar, extremely so in fact, but for purposes of this post, which is to remind Clarence Mitchell, that there is, and always will be, a price to pay for his previous high crimes and misdemeanors. But, as I started to say, for purposes of this post I shall ignore the more familiar stuff and look to third parties for a more eclectic mix than I could ever provide.

Still on the first page of search results, this looked as though it might hold some interest.

And lo and behold, what did it render? a veritable feast of the outpourings of Joe Public. I remind you these are comments found on Youtube, not as you might have thought, on some dedicated forum or other.

The video in question can be found at the bottom of the page. Now as then, then being when it was first aired, I have never watched the performance of this slithering globule of puss, save but a few seconds in order to grab a screen shot.

Some of the comments accompanying the video then.

It's not only Mr Amaral's work- THE WHOLE WORLD THINKS THE PARENTS WERE INVOLVED...
~

Its the slick and at times sinister spin machine surrounding the whole Madeleine saga which makes people very uncomfortable and leaves many people having nothing but contempt for the McCann's.

~

Clarence ! Who pays your salary cunt ? The fake fund ( which only used 13% to search for Madeleine. Or is it the government ?

So what's the McCanns got on you all ? More debauchery towards little kids ? That is all hushed up when Tony Blair called a media blackout to protect paedo ministers.

Your days are marked in this country. Only a matter of time before the people take the power away from you lot.

Bunch of high level paedos, the lot of you.

~

they should have helped the police in the investigation when first the little girl vanished instead they refused to answer 47 questions (?) why? now its too late, all they doing here is trying to clear their names. presence of blood and bodily fluids does not suggest she has been harmed?and shave that fucking toupee off u lying cunt!

~

Oh Clarrie you really are a buffoon...

Clazza...just what kind of look were you going for here? So, listen up Claz... You're telling me you got up that morning, showered, washed your hair and then STYLED it to look like THAT. What? On purpose? Holy F^**!

Your hair is hiliarious - even after all this time - I just can't look at it without laughing until my stomach .

~

i cannot stand this tory twat and i wish he would fuckin die

~

WTF's with that hairdo????

~

Why did this man leave a secure well paid government post to take on a role that would have been rendered redundant had Madeline actually been abducted and then recovered just days / weeks later.

A role for which his salary is wholly reliant on donations to the McCanns fund, which, like his job security, is wholly reliant on the continued disappearance of the child.

Shrewd career move?

~

Not too long before he starts wearing a toupee, I dare say. Its strange; even from the start of this sorry charade, anyone with a brain would have realised the McCanns were slightly dodgy. It all comes down to connections, of course, and Mr Clarence wanted to be a piece of the action. What he doesn't have - piquantly for a man in Public Relations - is the gift of self-awareness - he looks like a complete twonk.

~

How much are you making out the fund you pathetic liar ? Go spin somewhere else, off the planet perhaps. The UK public aint listening no more. Dispicable... and while your at it go get your hair cut the fund will see to your expenses.

~

In every answer to the journalist, Clarence Mitchel says "there is no evidence that she (Madeleine) was harmed".

Trying some brainwashing, hun, Clarence!

And the Oscar for the best liar goes to... Clarence Mitchel!!

~

Erm. We don't believe you CM - nor your 'clients'. Tell you what though.... get your 'clients' to officially request the case be RE-OPENED (not that review rubbish), get them to take polygraph tests, complete a reconstruction with their other warped friends; get KM to answer those straight-forward 48 questions and maybe we WILL have faith in them. Until then, we find your 'clients' behaviour extremely odd, suspicious and guitly of a terrible crime. And that's before we even consider neglect...

~

Watching this Toad makes my skin crawl,

and he's going to work for the Tory party, as there spin Doctor,

~

lying cunt should be shot

~

Watch out boys and girls. Dont take the piss out of his hair or he will have you on "defamation of barnet" Just when you thought this man couldnt make himself more ridiculous he goes and does this.

~

I could only watch the first 20 seconds or so of this tosser doing his bla bla about disrupting the search! What bloody search? The McScams have never searched and neither have their dodgy defectives!

~

How can parents be given hope from hearing that a young girl was abducted and held in a shack by a paedophile for all those years? She was raped, had children when she was not much more than a child herself, and that gives the McCanns hope? Even so, Madeleine will not have come to any harm!

~

That is why I said it was act of desperation. Why not also bring up the Austrian evil dad as well? The glib way in which Mitchell dragged up the Duggard case shows you how stupid this wanker is.

http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=gFZy2f2yQJA

Clarence Mitchell, Carnival Cruise Lines Spokesman!

~ ~ ~

What, thought I, would a similar search render, if one searched, gerry mccann is a cunt not inconsequential as you might appreciate. But unlike the comments for Mitchell, I shall limit those for the repulsive Gerry, and family McCann, to just the one. It being quite sufficient of purpose, putting it somewhat mildly.

Doctoring standards: officially slipping

Doctors have an age-old tradition of moonlighting as murderers, from Crippen through to Shipman. However, they also have a vague reputation for not being thick-as-pigshit fuckwits.

Which brings us to anonymous blogging medic Dr Rant. For those of you who’ve been on Mars for the last six months, god-bothering doctors Kate and Gerry McCann went on holiday in Portugal and ~~murdered their child abandoned their child to be murdered~~ were the cruel victims of Evil Child Abductors and Sinister Foreign Policemen. Unsurprisingly, this has become something of a news story.

Just a couple of things before I go; unless they give excellent English lessons in Poland these days, I don't really think Stanislav is a young plumber from Cracow, or Kracow for that matter. And if you want a little fun, try a Google image search, safe search off of course, Clarence Mitchell is a Twat,

Responses to “Doctoring standards: officially slipping”

stanislav,a young plumber from Cracow says:
September 17, 2007 at 1:49 am

No, it won’t. War on Portugal, that’s the only remedy. And cuntfaced pharmaceuticals salesman, Brother Righteous John McCunt should be put in charge of Interpol. And fuckwit teachercunt fishwife sister Philo mcCunt should be in charge of UNICEF and Kate and Gerry be put in a Cabinet of all the talents by snot-eating McCannite Gay Gordon McBroon. Make Gerry McCunt minister for child welfare and make the Mrs minister for running issues. And anyone who questions John ‘n’ Yoko McCunts’ bizarre, surreal version of events should be damned for a sick weirdo, child-molesting, internet creep in the pay of incompetent and corrupt Portugeezers determined to frame two fine british doctors. One of them a drugged-up scouse headbanger and the other a smarmy Glasgow git in love with his own ghastly voice. Kate and Gerry McCann, what a pair of cunts. There. Everyone should say it out loud. And feel much better. One-two-three, Kate and Gerry McCann are a pair of cunts. Kate and Gerry McCann’s family are all cunts. Kate and Gerry McCann’s friends are all complete and utter fucking cunts. Richard and Judy Wotsit, Alison Pearson, Melanie Phillips, India Knight and the rest of the stupid cocksuckers in the McCann media circus are all cunts. Stupid cunts.

Richard Branson is a complete cunt, too, but everybody knows that, even Branson himself.

Remember stupid readers, should your child “be abducted” first thing is phone Philo McCunt in Ullapool, Scotland, organise a fund for your own expenses, recruit a top-notch PR team, retain a couple of ruinously expensive lawyers and then and only then, notify cops of “abduction.” Oh yes, don’t forget to have a dozen drunks rampage over the crime scene before the cops arrive. This is perfectly normal behaviour after your child is “abducted.” First things first, PR team, expenses fund, lawyers and then the cops. Innocent until proven guilty. Cunts. Pigdogfucker

The relevant bit from the link in the comments.

• Unusual to hear directly from Dirty Des, proprietor of the Star and Express, but we did last week at the Leveson inquiry. A short contribution. There one minute, gone the next. As was this helpful, erratically crafted, reader posting that appeared immediately afterwards on the great man's website. "I agree the news papers heve been scapegoated. No one knows what happened to that poor wee girl Madelaine. Untill what has happened to her has been established then no one can be rulled in or out of the enquiry. Unless their is absolutley compelling and unrefutable evidence that the parents were not involved then they should remain as suspects." They should "consider themselves lucky that they have not been charged with child neglect". Another case of system failure at the "world's greatest newspaper", and although the rant was deleted the following day, he'll want to get his story straight. He's already had to pay the McCann's £500,000 in damages.

• They could turn again to Clarence Mitchell, the former BBC reporter who represented them at the outset. He's now managing director of PR giants Burson-Marsteller UK but before that he gave a talk on it all: "Missing Madeleine McCann: The perfect PR campaign". But that was then; right now he's busy. Costa Crociere, the cruise ship operator whose fortunes, and vessel, hit the rocks in Italy needs PR help. Someone has to do it. Might as well be him.

A Russian Eye View of the Netherlands: Islamists Dying for Power in Holland

2012-01-30T10:13:00.003Z

Come back Geert, all is forgiven.

Islamists Dying for Power in Holland
30.01.2012

For the first time in the history of Europe, Islamic organization can participate in the elections. Party For Muslim Netherlands wants to get into parliament in 2015. The Netherlands could become the first country on the continent where the Islamists will participate in the legislature. The far-right sentiment is increasing in the country as well.

The party program leaves no doubt about its nature. Let's start with the fact that only Muslims can be members of the organization. Its aims are to fight against abortion, homosexuality, abuse of religion and religious texts and all kinds of discrimination. It proposed to prohibit all kinds of drugs, including recreational. The main authority in the Netherlands should be the Shura (Islamic council).

There are also no doubts with regard to foreign policy. Activists of the Party for Muslim Netherlands insist on the cessation of support for Israel, withdrawal of Dutch troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, an early admission of Turkey into the EU. Party members are promoting their ideas through the members of city councils of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Many Muslims live in the major cities of Holland, so Party for Muslim Netherlands has enough voters.
Share

Some of the demands of the organization are shared by the conservative Dutch (there are still some of those). Many residents of the country do not like the open sale of marijuana, gay marriage, and "red light" neighborhoods - in short, everything that made modern Netherlands famous. However, the topic of discrimination and harassment of religious texts is quite slippery. The indigenous people are unlikely to be thrilled with the idea of life under Sharia law under the authority of the Shura.

What are the chances that the Islamists will get into the parliament? The threshold for getting into the States General of the Netherlands is five percent. The number of adherents of Islam is approximately one million people (out of 16), or over six percent. It is not a given that all followers of Islam will vote for the Party For Muslim Netherlands. But even participation in the election of such an organization is a significant event. Never before has Islamist party "stormed" the parliament of a European country. And then, everything is possible: the birth rate in Muslim families is high. The time may soon come when the Islamists break through to the power. More Pravda

Ahmadinejad: Just Another End Times Religious Nutter?

2012-01-30T07:16:00.004Z

Should the West be worried about Ahmadinejad's preoccupation with the Twelfth Imam? Is it any different to the crazies of the religious right in the US, and their preoccupation that Israel must be in place in order to facilitate the second coming of Christ?

Or are both sides equally insane, and both to be feared equally?

Listen to Ahmadinejad towards the end of this 2007/2008 clip.

Just another self deluded religious headbanger. Unfortunately, one with a nuclear agenda. And he has, make no mistake about that. His time as President is supposedly up in 2013, is a nuclear weapon meant to be his legacy?

Not that I advocate the immediate bombing of Iran, but then I don't have to; it's on the cards; it's the American way. It's the only way they know.

Is this below the bit he is talking about? Don't see much of an aura, do you?

Iran, with a serious hard on.

Mark McGowan gives us, among others, a little bit on the Iranians and their marching.

America: Can We Have Our Drone Back Please

Clarence Mitchell Spokesman For Carnival Cruises

2012-01-29T12:45:00.003Z

For updates follow COSTA CONCORDIA IMBROGLIONE

Clarence Mitchell You Are Such a Twat

2012-01-28T19:29:00.009Z

Rather more disturbingly, Mitchell went on to say: "I am, of course, fully aware of the blog you wrote on January 24 and was somewhat disappointed that you chose to publish such assertions about me without any attempt to seek comment or balance."

COSTA spokesman Clarence Mitchell has responded to my request for information regarding the company's future plans - but not with answers. I had emailed him three specific questions earlier this week and when he had not replied by Thursday evening, I sent a gentle reminder.

This brought a quick response, but only to say: "Your questions were received and are currently being processed by my colleagues in London. [They] will be dealt with in due course." Fair enough; as I acknowledged when I posed the questions, Mr Mitchell has a lot on his plate since being drafted in to leading Costa's PR team.

Rather more disturbingly, Mitchell went on to say: "I am, of course, fully aware of the blog you wrote on January 24 and was somewhat disappointed that you chose to publish such assertions about me without any attempt to seek comment or balance." More

Ministers vote for Dutch ‘burqa ban’

2012-01-27T15:44:00.003Z

Ministers vote for Dutch ‘burqa ban’
27 January 2012

People wearing burqas, balaclavas or all-in-one motorbike helmets in public in the Netherlands will soon face fines. On Friday, government ministers voted to outlaw all clothing which covers the face.

Interior Minister Liesbeth Spies said what has become known as ‘the burqa ban’ was “incredibly important”. She went on to say that she found it vital that in an open society people’s contact with each other should also be open.

The government said earlier that the European Treaty of Human Rights allows member states to regulate the freedom of religion in the interest of public order. In the past two years France and Belgium issued similar bans on clothing that hides the face.

People who dress up in disguise for traditional Dutch festivities like carnival or Saint Nicholas need not fear the law, the government said.

Financial crisis
Political reactions to the cabinet decision varied across the political spectrum. Geert Wilders, whose party supports the minority rightwing government, tweeted in elation 'Great news! At last the Netherlands has a burqa ban! Cabinet passes proposal. Great!'.

From the other side of the house, opposition Green Left MP Tofik Dibi put the measure against the background of the financial crisis in Europe. He said in a Twitter message dripping with irony, 'Yo cabinet! While people are unsure about their own future and their kids', lets focus on fining a handful of burqa wearers...'

Leader of the small evangelical Christian Union, Arie Slob said, also in a tweet: 'That's how the Rutte cabinet wants to face the crisis: by banning the burqa. That will help. #unemployment #500,000 #dosomething'. RNLW

~ ~ ~

Holland split over burqa ban (2006)

Opposition condemns Dutch government's 'stunt' in election dominated by race and religion
Jamie Doward
The Observer
19 November 2006

A bitter debate about multiculturalism was raging in Holland yesterday following Friday's pledge by the leading party in the coalition government to introduce legislation banning the wearing of burqas in public if it is re-elected on Wednesday.

The pledge by the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party to outlaw the full-length veils has caused uproar among the Muslim community and civil rights groups. It has also shone a light on the shifting politics of a country long considered one of Europe's most welcoming for immigrants. However, since the murder in 2004 of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim fundamentalist, the country has become increasingly polarised on racial and religious issues.

Integration and Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk justified the move on security grounds. 'People should always be recognisable, and from the standpoint of integration we think people should be able to communicate with one another,' she said. 'The Cabinet finds it undesirable that face-covering clothing - including the burqa - is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens.' She said the ban would also apply to headgear such as ski masks and full-faced helmets.

If it should pass in parliament, women would be barred from wearing burqas in a variety of places, including schools, trains, courts and even the street.

But the plan was condemned by Muslims as an overreaction and by the opposition Labour Party as an election stunt that will breed resentment among Holland's one million Muslims.

'This is a big law for a small problem,' said Ayhan Tonca of the Dutch Muslim organisation, CMO. She estimated that as few as 30 women in the Netherlands wear a burqa and warned the law could be unconstitutional if it is interpreted as targeting Muslims. In the past, a majority of the Dutch parliament has said it would approve a ban on burqas, but opinion polls suggest public enthusiasm for such a move has dissipated recently.

Labour MP Jeroen Dijsselbloem said: 'I'm very much worried that in the Muslim community many people will see this as Islam bashing.'

Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen said he would like to see burqas disappear, though he did not advocate a ban: 'From the perspective of integration and communication, it is obviously very bad because you can't see each other, so the fewer the better. But actually hardly anybody wears one. The fuss is much bigger than the number of people concerned.'

Racial and religious issues have become key platforms on which the election is being fought. Yesterday as Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and the CDA campaigned in the southern city of Tilburg, Labour leader Wouter Bos addressed a rally in a borough of Amsterdam that is home to large immigrant community.

In a clear bid to distance himself from the CDA's increasingly tough stance on immigration, Bos has said he will sign a general pardon for thousands of asylum seekers who have been living in the Netherlands for years, despite their applications having been rejected.

According to polls, Balkenende's party is on target to become the largest party in the 150-seat lower house of parliament when voters go to the polls this week. Labour is trailing in second place while Verdonk's Liberals, part of Balkenende's ruling coalition, is fighting the Socialist Party for third place. Balkenende, who has been in power since 2002 and is campaigning on his economic credentials, remains the most popular choice for the next Prime Minister, ahead of Bos.

The government's decision to speak out against burqas echoes comments made by former British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, who prompted a national debate on the issue when he urged Muslim women to remove full facial veils when talking to him, arguing they were a visible statement of separation and of difference.

The issue has also been hotly debated in other European countries. France has passed a law banning religious symbols, including Muslim headscarves, from schools. Some German states have banned teachers in public schools from wearing headscarves while Italy has outlawed face coverings. Gruniad

Visions of The Year 2000

2012-01-27T14:18:00.011Z

For me, a fellow whose first love would be history, this gallery of (now postcards) is for want of a better expression, doubleplusgood.

To be admired not just for their historical value, but for a brief glimpse into the mind of free thinking French artist Villemard. Perhaps not quite on the scale of Leonardo, but an original outside the box man, nonetheless.

"The Bibliothèque nationale de France has a wonderful gallery of illustrations by Villemard from 1910 imagining what life would be like in the year 2000. It's part of a larger exhibition titled Utopia: The Quest for the Ideal Society in the Western World. BB's Paris liaison, Alex Boucherot, editor of Fluctuat, kindly provided a rough translation of the Villemard gallery description:

Visions of The Year 2000 These labels, most probably intended to be found in food products, were presented on panels of a dozen little scenes. They illustrate the way our grandparents imagined the year 2000. The inventions meant to improve everyday life are seen side by side with more erudite or searchful vocations, but curiously the clothing fashion remains that of the Belle Epoque!" Wiki

The easiest way to view, right click, open in new tab.

Help yourself, any or all.

Senate Panel OKs Creationism Teaching Bill

2012-01-27T08:57:00.007Z

Senate panel OKs creationism teaching bill
Associated Press
January 26, 2012

An Indiana Senate panel has approved a bill that would allow creationism to be taught in Indiana's public schools.

The Times of Munster reported that the Republican-controlled Senate Education Committee voted 8-2 Wednesday to send the legislation to the full Senate despite pleas from scientists and religious leaders to keep religion out of science classrooms.

The bill allows schools to authorize "the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life" and specifically mentions "creation science" as one such theory. Creationism is the belief that the Earth and its creatures were created by a deity.

Purdue University professor of chemistry John Staver told the panel evolution is the only theory of life's origins that relies on scientific investigations. He says creationism "is unquestionably a statement of a specific religion." IBJ

~ ~ ~

Which fits in ever so nicely with the agenda of mega charlatan, Ken Ham and his ridiculous Answers in Genesis

Answers in Genesis is adamantly against the mandated teaching of Creation in schools.

"While we don’t support compulsion to teach the creation position (imagine how unbelievers would distort our position), it would be good if Christian teachers had the legislative freedom and encouragement to present critiques of evolution and discuss alternatives." Santorum Amendment supports teaching alternatives

They don't want creationism officially mandating, because if it were, it would, as Ham says, get torn to shreds by anyone with two neurons bolted together.

Far better, legislation like this, where the creationists can sneak in through the back door like thieves in the night and fuck with the minds of vulnerable children.

It is child abuse, nothing more nothing less.

Abuse your own mind, Creation Wiki. Tip, coal, oil, sedimentary rock and and Noah's flood aren't bad places to start, but please.

Breast Cancer Behind Bars: How a Prison Sentence Can Become a Death Sentence

2012-01-27T07:36:00.002Z

Breast Cancer Behind Bars: How a Prison Sentence Can Become a Death Sentence

by Victoria Law,
25 January 2012

Imagine finding a lump in your breast. Imagine that your efforts to schedule a medical check-up are stymied and you have to wait weeks, if not months, for that initial exam. In the meantime, the lump continues to grow. Imagine that, when you finally do see a doctor, you are told that you have breast cancer. When you walk out of the office, you are locked into your prison cell with no more information or sympathy than when you walked in. This is the daily reality for women in prison....

....Despite these numbers, prevention, screening, diagnosis, care, pain alleviation and rehabilitation for breast cancer remain virtually nonexistent in prisons. In 1998, a study at an unnamed Southern prison found that, although many were at high risk because of family histories, women were not provided with a clinical breast exam, information or basic education on self-examination upon admittance. Seventy percent of women who should have had mammograms under standard medical procedure had never been tested. [Williams, Roma D, Terry D. Mahoney, and R. M. Williams, Jr, "Breast Cancer Detection Among Women Prisoners in the Southern United States," Family & Community Health 21.3 (1998): 32.] Even women who enter prison already diagnosed with cancer must fight to receive lifesaving medical care. more

Eugenics Alive and Well and Living in Sweden

2012-01-27T06:54:00.004Z

As if Transgender folk didn't have enough to deal with without the likes of this.

And it is a cruel game that nature plays on these people. Not all trans are beautiful sylph-like ladyboys. I have a friend who has undergone the whole thing, surgical restructuring, but in her case nature has been doubly cruel, as a bloke his physical appearance was that of a bruiser, and despite a few bumps and frills added, it's not an awful lot different today.

Forced Sterilization for Transgender People in Sweden

By Nicole Pasulka
Jan. 25, 2012 3:19

Little known fact about Sweden, that supposed bastion of liberal idealism: If a Swedish transgender person wants to legally update their gender on official ID papers, a 1972 law requires them to get both divorced and sterilized first.

Sweden is considered extremely gay-friendly, with one of the highest rates of popular support for same-sex marriage, and more than half the population supports gay adoption. Arguing that the current law is both unpopular and abusive, the country's moderate and liberal parties want to see it repealed. In response, the small but powerful Christian Democrat party formed a coalition with other right-of-center parties to join in upholding the requirement for sterilization. End result: a proposal for new legislation that allows trans—a preferred term for many people who undergo gender reassignment—to be married but continues to force them to be sterilized.

When trans people can't present official identification matching their preferred gender presentation, they can suffer "frequent public humiliation, vulnerability to discrimination, and great difficulty finding or holding a job," says Boris Dittrich, advocacy director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Program at Human Rights Watch, in response to the law.

Sweden's relationship with forced sterilization goes way back. In 1997 journalist Maciej Zaremba, a reporter for Dagens Nyheter, discovered that over 60,000 people between 1935 and 1976 were sterilized against their will, including "'mixed race individuals,' single mothers with many children, deviants, Gypsies, and other 'vagabonds.'"

Then, like now, marginalized groups were obligated to sacrifice their reproductive freedom to gain basic rights. According to an article in the Columbia Journalism Review about Zaremba's investigation:

The person concerned was either declared "of unsound mind"—a simple procedure—or was subjected to irresistible pressure. Sign this or we'll take the children, sign this or there'll be no social benefit, no flat, no leave…and so on. Sweden went furthest in the way of legalized blackmail. More Mother Jones

Teddy Joins Barnaul Siberia Protest

2012-01-26T17:08:00.005Z

He's a bugger is Teddy, he don't half get about.

When you read the details in these two articles, you know one thing, the establishment have already lost.

Doll 'protesters' present small problem for Russian police

Police in Siberian city ask prosecutors to investigate legality of protest involving display of toy figures holding miniature placards
Miriam Elder in Moscow
26 January 2012

Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.
Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".
"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events – using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."
Activists set up the display after authorities repeatedly rejected their request to hold a sanctioned demonstration of the kind held in Moscow to protest disputed parliamentary elections results and Vladimir Putin's expected return to the presidency in a March vote.
Passersby admired the display with giggles, but police took it more seriously, examining its details and writing down each placard.
"The authorities' attempt to limit citizens' rights to express their position has become absurd," said Lyudmila Alexandrova, a 26-year-old graduate student and protest organiser. "We wanted to hyperbolise this attempt and show the absurdity and farce of officials' struggle with their own people."
They are not the first. Russia's Blue Buckets group, formed to protest officials' wanton flouting of traffic rules, have run across government cars while wearing buckets on their heads, drawing the state's ire.
Voina, the rebellious art collective, won worldwide fame after painting a 65-metre-long phallus on a drawbridge in St Petersburg that, when erected, faced the city's Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters. Its members have been repeatedly detained.
The activists in Barnaul say they have no choice but to adopt creative measures. Local authorities have refused to issue approval for opposition protests since 10 December, the first nationwide day of protest in Russia. Around 2,000 people turned out in Barnaul that day, an unprecedented number for the small city.
Police have tried to pressure them into shutting down the doll protests, organisers said. "They tried to tell us our event was illegal – they even said that to put toys in the snow, we had to rent it from the city authorities," Alexandrova said.
All authorities appear to be on high alert, as Russia prepares for its next day of protest on 4 February, one month before a presidential vote that Putin hopes will sweep him back into the Kremlin. On Thursday, the Moscow mayor's office approved the opposition's request to gather up to 50,000 people for a march through part of the city centre.
The jumpiest police were found this week in Kaliningrad, Russia's Baltic exclave. As two dozen nationalist youth took to the streets for a jog designed to promote a healthy lifestyle, carrying their traditional black, yellow and white flag, police descended upon the rally, having confused it for a gay pride parade. Gay rights remain largely unrecognised in Russia, and gay rights rallies are regularly banned. Police questioned the activists before releasing them, local media reported. gruniad

Outdoor market Barnaul Siberia

Siberian Police Crack Down on Toy Rally Organizers
Russian Poll Protests
Maria Kuchma, Moscow
January 26, 2012

Not amused by the creativity of liberal activists in the South Siberian city of Barnaul, police have moved to punish the organizers of toy demonstrations that took place in the city earlier this month in the wake of nationwide election protests.

After two unsanctioned demonstrations against alleged fraud in the December 2011 parliamentary polls were dispersed by Barnaul police, Kinder Surprise, Lego and other toys marched in to campaign for fair elections.

Armed with tiny placards denouncing supposed violations in favor of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, toy monkeys, bears, sheep and horses “protested” in central Barnaul on January 7 and 14.

“While the authorities restrict our constitutional rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, the rights of toys have so far been untouched,” one of the protest organizers, 30-year-old IT specialist Andrei Teslenko, wrote in a post on Russia’s most popular social network Vkontakte.

But local police believe the law might have been violated as the demonstrations, called “nano meetings” by the initiators, have not been agreed with the authorities.

Noting that the organizers were also present at the events, deputy Barnaul police chief Andrei Mulintsev said he believed those demonstrations were “public events.”

“Somebody has brought the toys there and therefore expressed his opinion in such a way,” Mulintsev told RIA Novosti in a phone interview on Thursday. “People were approaching, looking [at the toys]… There is some kind of publicity in those events, right?”

However, unsure about their own interpretation of the law (“there is no such term as “nano meeting” in the federal legislation regulating public events”), police turned to prosecutors for advice, Mulintsev said.

“There is nothing to discuss,” prosecutor Sergei Kirei told RIA Novosti by phone. “I don’t understand why police decided to consult with us. I believe there are certainly grounds to initiate administrative cases.”

“People are not stupid,” he went on. “The figurines did not come there by themselves. They did not write the placards on their own. They have not invited anyone in social networks to join the public event.”

The toys, he said, were used as “agitation material,” adding that those complaining of legal nihilism during elections have themselves “gravely ignored the law.”

Activist Teslenko described as “absurd” the police move to “launch a trial against toys.” He said “no more than ten people” brought toys to the square in front of Barnaul’s Drama Theatre on January 7, and “no more than 15” joined the action a week later.

“This is again proof of willfulness of the local authorities,” he told RIA Novosti via VKontakte. “I wonder where our nano meetings would feature on the list of meetings that require official sanction.”

“I am certainly not going to plead guilty,” he added.

Kirei said he believed the gathering was a "picket."

“At least one person learned as a result of this that such an event had taken place, and I believe proving that [an unsanctioned public meeting has been held] will not be a problem,” he said.

The toy demonstration organizers face fines of up to $33 or arrest for a period of up to 15 days if found guilty of staging an unsanctioned public gathering and disobeying police orders. en.rian.ru

The Big Iranian Capital Punishment Post

2012-01-26T13:36:00.009Z

I would take an awful lot of convincing as to the accuracy of the charges brought against the six hundred plus people that Iran executed in 2011. In my mind it's nothing more than Iran's ongoing reign of terror against its own citizens.

What more convenient way of shutting up political opposition and stifling descent, than to publicly execute such numbers of people only exceeded by China and in a manner of barbarism that is only exceeded by that of Saudi Arabia.

What more convenient way of doing this than to accuse someone of any one of a catalogue of ''crimes'' that carry the death penalty in Iran. Most, to us in the west, might be considered laughable, certainly archaic, but not so I fear, if you are on the receiving end of such charges.

Such a list can be found here, courtesy of Wiki, but you won't find all there, you won't find for instance, ''crimes against chastity,'' a charge brought against Atefeh Sahaaleh, whose accuser was also the judge, jury and executioner. How's that for Iranian justice?
The Execution Of A Teenage Girl. BBC 49 mins.

Nor am I alone in this way of thinking, try this fellow.

Cloaked in a language of morality, capital punishment in Iran is used by the government to prevent threats to the legitimacy of the country’s religion-based political system. In other words, the government conflates threats to the religious order with threats to the political order.

Under Islamic law as applied in the country, a gamut of crimes is punishable by death. Homicide, rape, incest, homosexuality, adultery, and prostitution are capital offenses. Execution sentences are sometimes given out for drug-related crimes. The protesters sentenced to death last week were charged with mohareb, or “taking up arms against God.” freedomhouse.org

Perhaps this latest 'shopped' image ain't quite befitting the tone of the article, I did put it together before I started writing, but there's one thing for sure, the context certainly is. And to borrow a passage from a previous article:

Great satire does just this: it turns reality on its head, making us laugh while, at the same time, revealing some sort of ugly truth that we can't confront without laughing. "Photoshop Justice" Cop Art: The Rise of the Citizen Satirist

I am putting up two versions of the same story, read one or both, or just the offering from the Guardian, but I couldn't let this one sentence pass unnoted, the irony is breathtaking.

Drewery Dyke, of Amnesty International, said that it seems Iran believes its law can be extended to other countries.

Iran to kill Canadian web developer

Claims his software promoted porn
by Edward Berridge
23 Jan 2012

Iran has decided that a Canadian man who visited the country a couple of years ago deserves to die for promoting porn.

Iran's supreme court has upheld the death sentence for a web programmer who faces imminent execution after being found guilty of developing and promoting porn websites.

Saeed Malekpour was visiting the country in October 2008 when he was picked up by plainclothes police and taken to Evin prison in Tehran, where he spent a year in solitary confinement without access to lawyers and without charge.

After a year, Malekpour was wheeled out in front of the television cameras, confessing to a series of "crimes" in connection with a porn website. On the basis of his TV confessions, he was convicted of designing and moderating adult materials online by a court in Tehran.

He later retracted his confessions in a letter sent from prison, in which he said they had "extracted under pressure, physical and psychological torture" and in the face of threats to him and his family.

Malekpour is a permanent resident of Canada. He wrote photo-uploading software which was used by a porn website without his knowledge.

After an international campaign and expert evidence, the supreme court suspended Malekpour's death sentence in June 2011 and ordered a judicial review

According to the Guardian, the view of the court was that it was all fair enough to execute a visitor to their country for something which is not a crime in the country they reside, and in any event they are probably innocent.

Drewery Dyke, of Amnesty International, said that it seems Iran believes its law can be extended to other countries.

Malekpour was charged with the crime of spreading corruption on Earth which is vaguely worded. So, basically, if you do anything that might miff the Iranian top brass and their ideologies, it might not be such a good idea to visit the country which once was a flower of human civilisation. That is unless you want to be strung up in a car park, which we can't imagine is on anyone's agenda. techeye.net

~ ~ ~

Iran confirms death sentence for 'porn site' web programmer

Saeed Malekpour faces imminent execution on basis of confessions he retracted in letter, saying they had been beaten out of him
Saeed Kamali Dehghan
18 January 2012

Iran's supreme court has upheld the death sentence for a web programmer who faces imminent execution after being found guilty of developing and promoting porn websites.
Saeed Malekpour was picked up by plainclothes officers in October 2008 and taken to Evin prison in Tehran, where he spent a year in solitary confinement without access to lawyers and without charge.

A year after his arrest, the 35-year-old appeared in a state television programme confessing to a series of crimes in connection with a porn website. On the basis of his TV confessions, he was convicted of designing and moderating adult materials online by a court in Tehran, which handed down death penalty.
Malekpour later retracted his confessions in a letter sent from prison, in which he said they had been made under duress.
According to Malekpour's family, he is a permanent resident of Canada and is a programmer who wrote photo-uploading software that was used by a porn website without his knowledge.
His sister, Maryam Malekpour, said the supreme court had confirmed the death sentence despite many discrepancies in the case. "Saeed's lawyers were told that his death sentence will be issued this week," she said in an interview with the Iranian website Roozonline.
After an international campaign and new expert evidence, the supreme court suspended Malekpour's death sentence in June 2011 and ordered a judicial review.
Speaking to the Guardian, Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a human rights activist based in Toronto who has followed Malekpour's case closely, said: "Saeed is in imminent danger of execution. He has never been provided with a fair trial at any point during this horrific and twisted ordeal.
"There are various discrepancies in Saeed's case file that were supposed to be reviewed and investigated by the revolutionary court, but the judge ignored the discrepancies and reissued the death sentence anyway.
"Saeed is being used as a scapegoat in a string of political games led by the revolutionary guards."
In his letter, Malekpour said large proportions of his confessions had been "extracted under pressure, physical and psychological torture" and in the face of threats to him and his family.
"Once, in October 2008, the interrogators stripped me while I was blindfolded and threatened to rape me with a bottle of water," he wrote. "While I remained blindfolded and handcuffed, several individuals armed with cables, batons, and their fists struck and punched me. At times, they would flog my head and neck.
"Such mistreatment was aimed at forcing me to write what the interrogators were dictating, and to compel me to play a role in front of the camera based on their scenarios."
Drewery Dyke, of Amnesty International, said: "The death sentence recently upheld in the case of Saeed Malekpour extends the long, cold reach of execution in Iran.
"He is alleged to have created 'pornographic' internet sites and [is accused of] 'insulting the sanctity of Islam', for which he was charged with 'spreading corruption on earth', a vaguely worded charge which attracted the death penalty in Iran.
"The use of vaguely worded charges is not new in Iran, but the allegation that these were carried out on the internet is. It is an unwelcome addition to the catalogue of ways in which Iran finds it can execute its own citizens.
"In advance of March's parliamentary elections, when you would expect the right to exercise one's freedom of expression to increase, this case exemplifies 'innovative' ways as to how Iran is setting itself against access to online information."
Iran has faced international criticism for escalating its use of the capital punishment in recent years. In December, Amnesty warned against "a killing spree of staggering proportions" in the Islamic republic, and said Iran had executed at least 600 people between the beginning of 2011 and the end of November. guardian.co.uk

~ ~ ~

Iran criticised over capital punishment 'killing spree'

Amnesty International warns of 'new wave of drug offence executions' in Iran as well as public and secret hangings
Saeed Kamali Dehghan
15 December 2011

Iran has escalated its use of the capital punishment to what has been called "a killing spree of staggering proportions" in an effort to contain drug-related crimes amid concerns about the west's continuing support for the regime's anti-narcotics campaign, according to a report.
Amnesty International warned of "a new wave of drug offence executions" in Iran in a report published on Thursday, which highlights the country's extensive use of the death penalty, especially in a series of public and secret hangings.
According to the report, at least 600 people were executed in Iran from the beginning of 2011 up to the end of November, of which a minimum of 488 executions were carried out for alleged drug offences.
Amnesty said the figures showed a threefold increase in comparison to drug-related executions it documented in 2009. "Members of marginalised groups – including impoverished communities, ethnic minorities suffering discrimination, and foreign nationals, particularly Afghans – are most at risk of execution for drugs offences," it said.
Iran's judicial system has been criticised for holding "grossly unfair trials" in a majority of the cases. Many trials are reported to have been held behind closed doors without the presence of a defence lawyer and families have not been given prior notice of the execution.
Iran is a neighbour to Afghanistan, a leading producer and supplier of the world's drugs. As for the Afghans imprisoned in Iran for drug offences, Amnesty said it appears they are "particularly poorly treated" and as many as 4,000 of them are believed to be on death row.
The sharp rise in the number of drug offence executions in Iran comes at a time when the international community, especially many European countries, including Germany, Belgium, France, Ireland and Britain, continues to provide the Islamic republic with financial and technical support for its anti-drug campaign.
Paradoxically, many of these countries have repeatedly condemned executions in Iran while praising its achievements in the anti-drug field. According to Amnesty, the EU has provided Iran with €9.5m over three years and the UN office for drugs and crime (UNODC) has also given the country £14m since 2005 for its anti-narcotics campaign.
Many activists have raised concerns in recent years about the west's support for Iran. Fazel Hawramy, the editor of Kurdishblogger.com, who has campaigned on the issue, said Iran has received "body scanners, drug detecting kits, drug catalysts, sniffer dogs, vehicles, night-vision devices and radio communication equipment" as part of the west's support despite international sanctions.
"It cannot be ruled out that some of this equipment was used by the police to crush the pro-democracy demonstrations in 2009," wrote Hawramy in an article published by the Guardian earlier this month.
"All countries and international organisations helping the Iranian authorities arrest more people for alleged drugs offences need to take a long hard look at the potential impact of that assistance and what they could do to stop this surge of executions," said Ann Harrison of Amnesty. "They cannot simply look the other way while hundreds of impoverished people are killed each year without fair trials, many only learning their fates a few hours before their deaths."
Activists fear that Iran might have executed political prisoners and activists among those killed secretly for drug offences. In one example in the city of Mashhad, at Vakilabad prison, Amnesty has received reports of secret mass execution involving 89 individuals in August 2010.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is one of a number of activist lawyers who have fallen foul of the Iranian regime for highlighting Iran's high rate of executions.

In recent years, many Iranian activists and lawyers have fallen foul of the Iranian regime for highlighting Iran's high rate of executions. Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer, is currently kept in Tehran's notorious Evin prison after being arrested in September 2010 for speaking out on the execution of juvenile offenders in Iran.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "The UK has contributed to the UN's Iran country programme, with the majority of funding in recent years being given in 2007. Work funded included a variety of projects including a project to reduce demand for drugs and a project to improve capacity to tackle money-laundering.
"We take the human rights implications of our counternarcotics work very seriously and human rights are a central consideration in all decisions. We are opposed to the use of the death penalty in all circumstances including for drugs offences, and have made our views on this matter absolutely clear. We have regularly raised our concerns with the Iranian regime about its human rights record including its appalling use of the death penalty as evidenced in this Amnesty report.
"More broadly, the illegal drugs trade causes huge damage to the UK and to countries all around the world. The UK's overseas work in tackling this threat involves a range of activities including improving policing and law-enforcement standards and promoting best practice." Guardian

And not another word shall I write until I can get my spell check set back to English en. For reasons best known to itself it has jumped to US en. and no matter what I try, nothing's working. To say it's driving me feckin insane, would be an understatement. It wants me to spell everything with a zed instead of an ess, or should I say, goddamned zee.

Unedited

Fetus and Chips Please Mushrooms On The Side

2012-01-26T10:19:00.004Z

Makes a change from a baby on a bun I guess.

Is insanity a prerequisite to becoming a US lawmaker? Talk about shit you couldn't make up! boy oh boy oh boy.

Oklahoma lawmaker wants to ban fetuses in food
January 25, 2012

Based on something he read online, an Oklahoma state senator has introduced a bill that would ban the use of aborted human fetuses in food.

Yes, you read that correctly.

No, he's never heard of any instances of this happening before, Sen. Ralph Shortey told the Associated Press.

But Shortey read that it might be happening, so he thought the bill would, at the very least, give any food companies toying with the idea an "ultimatum."

The legislation, known as SB 1418, is only a couple of paragraphs long. It states:

"No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients."

Shortey, a father of two who worked as an oil and gas production consultant, told the Associated Press that he found online evidence that some companies outside of Oklahoma use embryonic stem cells to develop artificial flavors.

Shortey did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday, but the Daily Oklahoman reported his motivation for the bill: "Shortey said he filed the bill after reading last fall that an anti-abortion group, Children of God for Life, had called on the public in March 2010 to boycott products of major food companies that partnered with a biotech company that produces artificial flavor enhancers, unless the company stopped using aborted fetal cells to test their products. The company has denied the allegation."

Federal food safety officials have never heard of such a thing. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the agency has never gotten any reports of fetuses being used in food production.

Shortey, elected in 2010, has introduced a spat of controversial bills including denying Oklahoma citizenship to children of illegal immigrants born in the state. Another bill he wrote would have allowed police to confiscate the homes and cars of illegal immigrants. He also tried to advance a bill that would have required presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship before being allowed on Oklahoma's primary ballot.

None of Shortey's controversial bills have become law.

As news began circulating of his latest legislative priority, the Twitterverse responded with disbelief and amusement.

One person wrote: "This may conflict with my dream of eating aborted fetus dumplings, but Sen Ralph Shortey is hilariously delusional."

Another: "Today in Oklahoma crazy: Sen. Ralph Shortey (R) proposes banning "human fetuses in food." Didn't know it was a thing."

Combing through all the tweets, finding one in support of the bill was as likely as finding fetus fries as a side order at your nearest fast-food joint. latimes.com

My Fellow Meerkats: Phil Hellenes - Speculum

2012-01-25T19:10:00.003Z

http://www.youtube.com/user/philhellenes Catch up with Phill's latest, Oh, Really? A compilation of all that's holy.

Richard Dawkins: ‘Don’t waste time, there is no God’ Oh Yes There Is, Oh No There's Not

2012-01-25T16:39:00.004Z

A perfect vehicle for my my vehicle, the Big No God Bus.

Click again when opened.

‘Don’t waste time, there is no God’
Amitava Sanyal
January 24, 2012

It will remain one of the abiding ironies of the Jaipur Literature Festival: For an event that got the loudest publicity because of the threats of ungodly communal trouble, a number of sessions were dedicated to denouncing god and religion. The most strident among the speakers on the subject, however, was Richard Dawkins, author of the bestseller The God Delusion.
At one of his three sessions at JLF, where he read out from his latest work The Magic of Reality in tandem with his wife and actor Lalla Ward, the British author said, “Religious faith deserves a whole chapter in war technology, alongside tanks and guns… Religiosity usually recedes with the advancement of knowledge. In the fullness of time, we may see the death of all religions.” He followed the broadside with a statement in support of Salman Rushdie, which he said was a modified version of what he had written at the time of the earlier fatwa against the author. Dawkins’s eloquence on the “magic of truth in science” led a member of the audience to accuse the author of “fostering a religion of science”.

It’s a line of counter-attack the 70-year-old Dawkins is familiar with. The evolutionary biologist has been called ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’ for his passionate defence of the subject in works such as The Selfish Gene, the bestseller from which he read out in another session at the festival. Not long ago, he won a bruising battle against the British government to keep out religious Creationist myths from school science texts.

Off stage, when asked whether he would want to be immortal with the help of science, Dawkins said, “Eternity is a frightening thought whether you are in it or not. I can only go through it under general anesthesia.” He parried a question on why faith and emotion spurred humans to greater efforts – such as love and war – than reason ever could.

Such questions were straight down the line for AC Grayling, whose quote, ‘Religion and science have a common ancestor, ignorance’, features at the top of the quotes page of the Richard Dawkins Foundation website. At an earlier session in Jaipur, ‘In Defence of Enlightenment’, Grayling said, “Earlier, doubt about the existence of god was seen as a sin. This is what changed with the Enlightenment in the 18th century, which taught us scepticism; that humans can be fallible.”

“One of the best known examples of this divide between emotions and reason was Dr Spock of Star Trek. He thought he was a poor logician because he was always in love with someone or the other. It’s another matter that he was suspected to be in love with Captain Kirk,” Grayling told to a ripple of laughter. “But seriously, the rights of the individual are not in exclusion to his deep emotional bonds with family or society.”

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, who was on the dais with Grayling, addressed the ‘faith-versus-reason’ question head-on. He told Hindustan Times, “Emotions can be very destructive. And reason even lets you choose the right belief.”

The last throw on the subject, however, was Dawkins’s. At the last session of the festival on Tuesday, a debate on whether man has replaced god, Dawkins said, “You are utterly wasting your time – all of you who are indignant at being attacked about your god – because there is no god.” Hindustan Times

Dawkin’s Theory of God

2012-01-25T16:23:00.005Z

Dawkin’s Theory of God
Jan 25 2012

Eminent British biologist and author Richard Dawkins was one of the most vociferously spoken writers to defend Salman Rushdie’s right to express his views while demolishing the idea of faith and religion. An ardent proponent of atheism, professor Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, called Rushdie’s absence a “lamentful disgrace” and “deplorable”, a day before the Midnight’s Children author’s video link at the Jaipur Literature Festival was canceled due to protests outside the venue.

“ Religious faith is a state of mind, that leads people to believe in something, without a whisper of doubt. It is so strong in some cases that they are prepared to kill and die for it. This is the terrifying thing about faith; wherein those taken over by it, are not open to reason, argument or persuasion. Faith is powerful enough to unite people against pity, forgiveness and decent human feeling,” said Dawkins, lashing out at the idea of faith with precision taking over every word he uttered in his packed session.

Author of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker — books dealing with gene-centric view of evolution — Dawkins is known for his strong views on evolution and the origin of the universe. At the overcrowded festival, Dawkins’ charming style of decoding science, paired with his views on faith, was sprinkled with many ‘Dawkins moments’ lauded at regular intervals.

“ Our whole society is soft on religion. The assumption is remarkably widespread. Without being religious, we might find all sorts of things offensive. I have been deeply offended by things that are a part of Christmas — Baby Jesus and Rudolf, the reindeer — but if I like to act on these prejudices, then I will be held accountable. I will be challenged to justify myself. But let somebody’s religion be offended, and it another matter entirely,” said Dawkins, who added that “the antidote to any kind of religious indoctrination is education specially scientific and critical education and protecting children from indoctrination,”

Talking about separating religion from politics, the antagonist in him wants to have “no privileges given to religion via the state.” He said, “I suspect we have already seen several atheist US presidents, they just didn’t admit it. I suspect Lincoln was an atheist, probably so was Kennedy. Obama is an intelligent man, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a closet atheist.”

When asked if he would like to be immortal, Dawkins said, “The idea of eternity is frightening; would never want it.” indianexpress.com

Click again when opened.

"But Allah willing, Belgium will soon be freed from polytheism and idolatry''

2012-01-25T15:13:00.008Z

I wish I could say this lot just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace, but their goals go a tad further than that. Utopia for this lot would be to turn Belgium into an Islamic State, that by comparison would make Iran look like a beacon of benevolence and compassion.

Not only are they insane, they are dangerously insane. While we, as enlightened Europeans, have cast off the yoke of superstition and dogma and just go about getting on with our lives, these headbangers are constantly working away to return Europe to the Eighth Century.

"Let's Turn Belgium into an Islamist State"

by Soeren Kern
December 19, 2011

An Islamist group in Belgium is intensifying a propaganda and intimidation campaign aimed at turning the country into an Islamic state.
Over the past several months, Sharia4Belgium, a Muslim organization that wants to implement Islamic Sharia law throughout Belgium, has become increasing belligerent in its appeals to fellow Muslims to overthrow the democratic order in the country.

The latest installment of Islamist agitprop comes in the form of a video in which the Belgian Islamist Sheik Abu Imran declares that the black flag of Islamic Jihad will "soon be flying on top of all the palaces in Europe."

The December 11 video, which has been translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), shows Imran dressed in military camouflage calling for the destruction of the Atomium, a monument in Brussels that is the national symbol of Belgium.

Imran says: "This is a short message to the King of Belgium and specifically to the Muslims in Belgium. This is the flag [black flag of jihad] that, Allah willing, will soon be flying on top of that building over there [the Belgian royal palace]. There you see the flag [Belgian flag] of the Taghut, the infidels, and soon the flag of 'there is no god but Allah' will be flying there, on top of that palace, and on top of all the other palaces in Europe, until Allah willing, we reach the White House…We will not rest, we will not stop, until this flag flies on top of that building [the royal palace]."

The video then continues from another location in Brussels, namely directly in front of the Atomium. Imran says: "We can see nowadays how people are taking photos, and how people from all over Brussels and from all over Europe, come here for what is called 'tourism' and take photos of this monument. They hold on to this monument. On top, you can see the Belgian flag. This monument is a symbol of Belgium…Soon, Belgium will fall apart. May Allah disperse them and their country. Amen. Then this symbol will be useless to them."

Imran continues: "Look how people view this monument as their Taghut, their idol…We should destroy these monuments. How can we demonstrate that we are Muslims? … We must free ourselves from this idolatry…we call upon everyone to stay away from idols and idolatry. One of these idols is this Taghut [the Atomium] here behind us, with the flag of the Taghut government [Belgium] on top of it, a symbol of the Taghut regime, the Taghut system ruling this country.

"But Allah willing, Belgium will soon be freed from polytheism and idolatry…We promise to clean Belgium from the system of idolatry as well as of the idols themselves. Then we will demolish this symbol, this monument. Why? … We need to ensure the safety of Belgian Muslims and non-Muslims in the Islamic state that will replace this Taghut. Allah willing, the more Muslims who participate, the faster we will reach our goal of freeing Belgium from tyranny, and from idolatry, and of implementing the purest form of Tawheed [Islamic doctrine] in our lives. Let us live in an Islamic state, in which there is no idolatry, and there is only 'There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.'"

This video came just days after a mob of extremists belonging to Sharia4Belgium stormed a debate in Amsterdam that was featuring two Muslim liberals: the Canadian writer and Muslim feminist Irshad Manji and the Dutch-Moroccan Green Left MP Tofik Dibi.

Waving an Islamist jihadist flag, the Islamists yelled "Allahu Akbar!" (Allah is Greater) and threatened to break Manji's neck. They then demanded that both Manji and Dibi be executed for apostasy.

The December 8 debate on how liberal Muslims can prevent Islam from being hijacked by Muslim extremists was held at the De Baile venue in downtown Amsterdam, and was sponsored by the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy. The event resumed after police arrested several of the Islamists.

Previously, 40 members of Sharia4Belgium engaged in "Campus Jihad" by disrupting a speech about Islam by the Dutch author Benno Barnard. The lecture, entitled "The Islam Debate: Long Live God, Down with Allah!," was part of a series of talks at Antwerp University about the Enlightenment.

In September, Sharia4Belgium established Belgium's first Islamic Sharia law court in Antwerp, the second-largest city in the country. Leaders of the group say the purpose of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium in order to challenge the state's authority as the enforcer of the civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.

The self-appointed Muslim judges running the Islamic Sharia court apply Islamic law, rather than the secular Belgian Family Law system, to resolve disputes involving questions of marriage and divorce, child custody and child support, as well as all inheritance-related matters.

Unlike Belgian civil law, Islamic Sharia law does not guarantee equal rights for men and women; critics of the Sharia court say it will undermine the rights of Muslim women in marriage and education.

Sharia4Belgium says the court in Antwerp will eventually expand its remit and handle criminal cases as well.

But Sharia4Belgium also expects non-Muslims to submit to Sharia law.

A partial archive of an earlier version of Sharia4Belgium's website includes a threat in the form of an invitation calling for all Belgians to convert to Islam and to submit to Sharia law or face the consequences. The text says:

"It is now 86 years since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate. The tyranny and corruption in this country [Belgium] has prevailed; we go from one scandal to another: Economic crises, paedophilia, crime, growing Islamophobia, etc."

"As in the past we [Muslims] have saved Europe from the dark ages, we now plan to do the same. Now we have the right solution for all crises and this is the observance of the divine law, namely Sharia. We call to implement Sharia in Belgium.

"Sharia is the perfect system for humanity...As a result, we invite the royal family, parliament, all the aristocracy and every Belgian resident to submit to the light of Islam. Save yourself and your children of the painful punishment of the hereafter and grant yourself eternal life in paradise."

A cache of the background image for the Sharia4Belgium website has the black flag of jihad flying above the Belgian Parliament. Until recently, the Sharia4Belgium Youtube page (which has been shut down) was used to incite Muslims to Jihad, or Holy War. The group had posted videos with titles such as, "Jihad Is Obligatory," "Encouraging Jihad," "Duelling & Guerrilla Warfare," and "The Virtues of Martyrdom."

In a recent debate with Filip Dewinter, a Belgian politician who has raised public awareness of the dangers posed by radical Islam, Imran said: "There are a lot of Muslims in Belgian politics, which is something I cannot understand. You are either a Muslim or a democrat, you cannot be both. I have no business with infidels. My mission is to please Allah, not infidels."

Imran continued: "Let's turn Belgium into an Islamic state. We have enough judges, scholars and leaders who can become caliphs…Filip Dewinter is right. This is the beginning of the Islamization of Antwerp. And to all infidels: Adjust or get out!" stonegateinstitute.org

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook.

Drowning in Hypocrisy: Paul Craig Roberts

2012-01-25T11:30:00.010Z

Drowning in Hypocrisy

By Paul Craig Roberts
January 24, 2012

The US government is so full of self-righteousness that it has become a caricature of hypocrisy. Leon Panetta, a former congressman who Obama appointed CIA director and now head of the Pentagon, just told the sailors on the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier, that the US is maintaining a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers in order to project sea power against Iran and to convince Iran that “it’s better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy.”

If it requires 11 aircraft carriers to deal with Iran, how many will Panetta need to project power against Russia and China? But to get on with the main point, Iran has been trying “to deal with us through diplomacy.” The response from Washington has been belligerent threats of military attack, unfounded and irresponsible accusations that Iran is making a nuclear weapon, sanctions and an oil embargo. Washington’s accusations echo Israel’s and are contradicted by Washington’s own intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Why doesn’t Washington respond to Iran in a civilized manner with diplomacy? Really, which of the two countries is the greatest threat to peace?

Washington sends the FBI to raid the homes of peace activists and puts a grand jury to work to create a case against them for aiding a nebulous enemy by protesting Washington’s wars. The Department of Homeland Security unleashes goon cop thugs to brutalize peaceful Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Washington fabricates cases against Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Tarek Mehanna that negate the First Amendment by equating free speech with terrorism and spying. Chicago mayor and former Obama White House chief-of-staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, pushes an ordinance that outlaws public protests in the City of Chicago. The list goes on. And in the midst of it all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Washington hypocrites accuse Russia and China of stifling dissent.

Washington’s grotesque hypocrisy goes unremarked by the American “media” and in the debates for the Republican presidential nomination. The corrupt Obama “Justice” Department turns a blind eye while goon cop thugs commit gratuitous violence against the citizens who pay the goon cop thugs’ undeserved salaries.

But it is in the War Crimes Arena where Washington shows the greatest hypocrisy. The self-righteous bigots in Washington are forever rounding up heads of weak states whose countries were afflicted by civil wars and sending them off to be tried as war criminals. All the while Washington indiscriminately kills large numbers of civilians in six or more countries, dismissing its own war crimes as “collateral damage.” Washington violates its own law and international law by torturing people.

On January 13, 2012, Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers reported that Spanish judge Pablo Rafael Ruz Gutierrez re-launched an investigation into Washington’s torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Prison. The previous day British authorities opened an investigation into CIA renditions of kidnapped persons to Libya for torture.

Rosenberg reports that although the Obama regime has refused to investigate the obvious crimes of the Bush regime, and one might add its own obvious crimes, “other countries are still interested in determining whether Bush-era anti-terror practices violated international law.”

There is no question that Bush/Cheney/Obama have trashed the US Constitution, US statutory law, and international law. But Washington, having overthrown justice, has established that might is right. No foreign government is going to send its forces into the US to drag the war criminals out and place them on trial.

The War Criminal Court at the Hague is reserved for Washington’s show trials. No foreign government is going to pay Washington several hundred millions of dollars to turn Bush, Cheney, Obama and their minions over to them in the way the US bought Milosevic from Serbia in order to create the necessary spectacle at the War Crimes Tribunal to justify Washington’s naked aggression against Serbia.

No government can be perfect, because all governments are composed of humans, especially those humans most attracted by power and profit. Nevertheless, in my lifetime I have witnessed an extraordinary deterioration in the integrity of government in the United States. We have reached the point where nothing that our government says is believable. Not even the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, the GDP growth rate, much less Washington’s reasons for its wars, its police state, and its foreign and domestic policies.

Washington has kept America at war for ten years while millions of Americans lost their jobs and their homes. War and a faltering economy have exploded the national debt, and a looming bankruptcy is being blamed on Social Security and Medicare.

The pursuit of war continues. On January 23 Washington’s servile puppets--the EU member states--did Washington’s bidding and imposed an oil embargo on Iran, despite the pleas of Greece, a member of the EU. Greece’s final ruin will come from the higher oil prices from the embargo, as the Greek government realizes.

The embargo is a reckless act. If the US navy tries to intercept oil tankers carrying Iranian oil, large scale war could break out. This, many believe, is Washington’s aim.

It is easy for an embargo to become a blockade, which is an act of war. Remember how easily the UN Security Council’s “no-fly zone” over Libya was turned by the US and its NATO puppets into a military attack on Libya’s armed forces and population centers supportive of Gaddafi.

As the western “democracies” become increasingly lawless, the mask of law that imperialism wears is stripped away and with it the sheen of morality that has been used to cloak hegemonic ambitions. With Iran surrounded and with two of Washington’s fleets in the Persian Gulf, another war of aggression seems inevitable.

Experts say that an attack on Iran by the US and NATO will disrupt the flow of oil that the world needs. The crazed drive for hegemony is so compelling that Washington and its EU puppets show no hesitation in putting their own struggling economies at risk of sharply rising energy costs.

War abroad and austerity at home is the policy that is being imposed on the western “democracies.” ICH

Santorum: Pregnant Rape Victims Should "Make the Best" of It As GOP Anti-Choice Insanity Ramps Up

2012-01-25T09:31:00.003Z

Santorum: Pregnant Rape Victims Should "Make the Best" of It As GOP Anti-Choice Insanity Ramps Up
By Sarah Seltzer
January 24, 2012

Perhaps you missed this little gem from GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, perhaps one of the most aggressively anti-choice candidates ever to run for such a high office. Despite this reputation, he still managed to shock people with this rather callous response to the question on his position that abortion should be illegal in cases of rape or incest (emphases mine). From the CNN transcript:
MORGAN: But do you really -- do you really -- let me ask you this. Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that -- I know that you believe, even in cases of rape and incest -- and you've got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped.
SANTORUM: Yes.
MORGAN: And was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion, would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father?
SANTORUM: I would do what every father must do, is to try to counsel your daughter to do the right thing....
MORGAN: And they are looking at their daughter ,saying, how can I deal with this, because if I make her have this baby, isn't it going to just ruin her life?
SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn't have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn't, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I've always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created -- in the sense of rape -- but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you.
As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can't think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.
The video of this exchange is below, thanks to ThinkProgress.
But Santorum isn't the only candidate trying to prove his forced-birth bona fides.
Last night, Rachel Maddow had an important segment--and an interview with former Rep. Alan Grayson--about how the GOP race in Florida is turning into the "anti-abortion primary." AlterNet

I will pass on the videos if you don't mind, they can be found at the link.

Righteous Abortion: How Conservative Christianity Promotes What It Claims to Hate

2012-01-24T19:32:00.001Z

Righteous Abortion: How Conservative Christianity Promotes What It Claims to Hate
Valerie Tarico
January 22, 2012

One of the great ironies of American society is that most abortions in the U.S. are caused by conservative Christians. Read the statistics: Forty nine percent of pregnancies in this country are unintended, a rate that has been painfully stable for almost 30 years. Almost half of those pregnancies end in abortion. Or, to turn it around, over 90% of U.S. abortions are the result of accidental pregnancy. U.S. rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion far exceed any other country with similar economic development. So does our rate of religiosity. The fact that we are outliers on both is not a coincidence.

Three aspects of conservative Christianity promote abortion: pro-natalism, an obsession with sexual sin, and an emphasis on righteousness over compassion.

Biblical Christianity is not pro life. It is not even pro human life. Steven Pinker recently estimated that the Old Testament alone describes 1.2 million deaths at the hand of Yahweh or his servants. It is, however, pro-birth. Be fruitful and multiply. (Genesis 1:28) Women will be saved through childbearing. (1 Timothy 2:15). Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant reformation, put it in his own words: “If a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it matters not. Let her only die from bearing; she is there to do it.” Christian competitive breeding, a strategy for increasing adherents, is at the heart of the Catholic anti-contraceptive stance and the Protestant Quiverfull movement.

Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe. We all know what it means. By the time the Abrahamic religions emerged, the male desire to invest in only their own offspring had taken the form of men owning women. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Exodus 20:17) Women caught in adultery (or missing their hymens) were killed by the ancient Hebrews, just as they are by conservative Muslims today. The Christian obsession with sexual sin or rather with female purity has produced the American virginity myth. In contrast to more secular, open societies, American teens typically don’t seek contraception for a year after becoming sexually active. Contraception would make them guilty of the sin of premeditated sex.
38,000. That’s the number of Christian denominations. more

Why Mega Cruise Ships Are Unsafe: Opinion

2012-01-24T15:32:00.010Z

Many of you will have by now seen multiple photographs of the stricken Costa Concordia. Just as surely as many of you will have seen photographs of the Concordia's stabiliser and dismissed as just that, a stabiliser.

But it is far more than just a stabiliser, it is the mother and father of all stabilisers, it is simple enormous. And it is enormous for reasons other than to stop passengers honking up their foie gras when the ship experiences inclement weather.

It is the only thing that keeps the ship upright in any bit of a breeze.

Although I might be in danger of wearing out my own analogy, the one where I describe the Costa Concordia as a plank with a block of flats stuck on top, there is no better one that I can offer up, the thing is quite simply, a naval architect's nightmare, and quite frankly, I personally wouldn't cross the boating lake on the thing.

Before we address the design factors of the Costa Concordia, let's take a look at the way ships should be designed, and what better example given the subject of this post, than the infamous Titanic. If we look at the ratio between draft, the amount of ship below the waterline, and that of the air draft, the amount above the waterline we see a vessel of reasonable and safe proportions.

Now let us look at the Costa Concordia. What you see regarding draft, (the plank) is what you get, about twenty foot of it, there isn't but a few foot more than what's visible.

And air draft? (the block of flats) a good two hundred feet of it. Generically referred to as top hamper. Now I don't think you need to be a naval architect to appreciate that things look somewhat amiss. There is an old saying in boat building, if it looks right, it is right. Something we can never accuse the Concordia of looking. To really put things in true perspective, just compare the size of the people on the stern of the vessel. The amount of draft is equivalent to four of those people. Scary; very scary indeed.

So what we have so far is a vessel that, although it must have passed some kind of inclination test, doesn't exactly fill one with confidence regarding its seaworthiness. Enter the stabilisers.

With a vessel of air such air draft comes one thing, windage, lots and lots of windage. And the only thing combating that windage, preventing the ship heeling at an alarming rate, is the forward motion of the vessel and the deployment of the aforementioned monster sized stabiliser.

The photograph below shows an unnamed cruise ship, just getting underway leaving Charlotte Amalie harbor in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. There is no sea running, the wind is offshore and is striking the vessel on its starboard quarter, not even beam on. And if I were to make a guess, the wind would be no more than force four, about fifteen knots, judging by the ripples on the water. But as you can see, she is struggling to keep upright in this breeze.

She too will be fitted with a similar stabiliser, and you can bet the farm it's doing all it can to try and pull the ship back on an even keel. As will the port side stabiliser; it will be set to try and fly, whilst starboard side is trying to reach the sea floor. That is why they are so huge, they need to be effective as soon as the ship lets go and gets underway at low speed.

So basically what we have, is a ship that is inherently unstable that has to rely on oversized stabilisers to make a passage.

As long as they don't go wrong, and as long as the ship doesn't break down. And don't forget, a ship that is dead in the water will invariably lay across the wind, side on if you will, presenting her windage to whatever is blowing at the time.

Italy wanted to relax safety standards before Costa Concordia

.....As is almost always the case after a major maritime casualty in European waters, the commission will now launch a review of existing passenger safety legislation. As it happens, a revision of passenger ship construction rules was on the commission's work program prior to the Costa Concordia grounding. The body has, however, until now not considered major changes to the way cruise ships are designed and built.

"Gargantuan" cruise ships such as the Costa Concordia are "not safe, terribly unstable" and start listing in the wind as soon propulsion is cut - according to John Kuehmayer, chairman of the Austrian Marine Equipment Manufacturers.

"The only vessel designed for yearlong passages across the North Atlantic is Cunard's Queen Mary 2. All the other cruise ships have to be cheap money-making machines", he says. If the commission engages in a serious review of cruise ship safety, it might not like the evidence it uncovers. Significant changes would be opposed tooth-and-nail by the multi-billion dollar industry. The commission scored a significant victory over Italy on passenger safety. Taking on the cruise industry would be a battle of a different magnitude. Full story publicserviceeurope.com

A bit extra found on the web. "block of flats on a barge" LOL.

One of the things bothering me most is the sudden loss of initial stability leading to the rapid, and ultimately fatal, listing. I have dug up some numbers that might shed a bit of light. The original Queen Mary is 1,019' 6" long, 118' beam, with a 40' draft. Gross Tonnage is listed at 81,237. The air draft (distance from water line to the top of the forward funnel) is 181'. Passenger capacity listed at 1,957 with 1,174 crew. 3,131 total.

Compare this to the Queen Mary 2. Length, 1,132', beam, 135', draft, 32' 10" air draft 236'! and 151,400 GRT. Passengers, 2,620, crew, 1,253. Total 3,873. The Costa Concordia is even more extreme. Length, 951'. Beam, 118'. Draft, 26' 10"!!. 114,500 GRT. Air draft 215'.! Passengers, 3,570. Crew 1,068. Total 4,638.!! The purpose is to illustrate that modern naval architecture has a much greater portion of the ships volume and weight above the waterline. this is compensated in part by wider beam but mainly is accomplished by computer controlled ballast and fuel stowage.

Costa Concordia has 14' less draft but 34' more air draft and 33,000 more GRT in a 68' 6" shorter hull. Consider that the Titanic, with a similar gash type damage sank more slowly and for practical purposes the decks remained level albeit down by the head. They would have had time to launch many more lifeboats had they had them. This sudden loss of stability is a scary issue. In fact, passengers have been injured in modern cruise ships when a steering malfunction caused a sharp turn and a severe list from the turning forces.

Perhaps safety standards will be modified and the "block of flats on a barge" style of naval architecture will have to revert to a more "seagoing" style of ship. One thing for certain, there will be repercussions from this. Had the ship had this sudden loss of stability in deep water, I fear the results would have been much more terrible.

http://cruiseforums.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=31972708&postcount=43

Here is a ferry that came to grief a bit nearer home, virtually on my doorstep as it were. And for all my saying, that I wouldn't cross the boating lake on such a vessel, I have in the past, bummed a ride on this thing. Never realising of course, just how shoal drafted the thing really was. Story

Costa Concordia: Were ''Salutes'' an Accepted Part of Company Policy?

2012-01-24T11:08:00.011Z

I suppose the only thing that you can rely on regarding the hype surrounding the Costa Concordia, is that you can rely on nothing surrounding the Costa Concordia.

Listening to lawyers that are falling over themselves to bring a class action against Carnival, is about as reliable as listening to Clarence Mitchell, aka the Angel of Death, a transparently lying son of bitch brought in by owners, Carnival Cruise lines, to paint Carnival whiter than white, and to paint the unfortunate Francesco Schettino, skipper of the Costa Concordia, blacker than black.

Well I don't think it is going to be quite so easy for Carnival and the odious Clarence Mitchell, to achieve such an effect. Not when it was seemingly common practice, and we have to assume with full knowledge of the owners, for the Costa Concordia to carry out these types of salutes. (and other Carnival cruise ships?)

(U.S. lawyer Mitchell Proner) “While they might be trying to indicate that the incident is the fault of this one rogue captain, we know that they’ve had some precedents going close to these islands along the Italian coast,” he said.

He said the same ship had earlier cruised dangerously close to the island of Procida in the Gulf of Naples.

“Procida set up mortars and saluted and the Concordia responded by blasting their sirens. So this is something that they have done in the past as a way of generating publicity and advertising for their company,” he said.

So not quite the same ''The Captain deviated from his course'' that we first heard from Carnival, in trying to distance itself from the hapless Francesco Schettino. And it is this prior knowledge of such salutes by owners Carnival, that is going to play a major role in this investigation.

And an even greater role altogether, if in fact it was company policy to ''show the flag'' in such a manner.

I hadn't realised until I read the article below, that the Concordia had lost propulsion after she hit the rock, and if we are to take the graphic and the information thereon as something like accurate, Schettino displayed a fair degree of seamanship in bringing the boat about and running her aground.

But it is the loss of power, in part, that I want to deal with in my next article. An article that doesn't deal with the loss of the Concordia, but where I try and address the question, Why Mega Cruise Ships Are Unsafe

Update: Photographer claims company encouraged captains to take their ships close to shore... linky

Further update below: Costa Concordia captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

Costa Concordia criminal probe may widen as passengers file class-action

By Antonella Cinelli and Gabriele Pileri
Jan 23, 2012
GIGLIO — A criminal probe into the Costa Concordia’s doomed voyage, which ended with at least 15 dead and the cruise ship lying off the Italian coast, may be widened, a lawyer for the captain said on Monday.

The toll includes the bodies of two women, their nationalities so far unknown, found by divers on Monday.

Captain Francesco Schettino is accused of causing the accident and is under investigation for multiple manslaughter and abandoning the 450 million-euro ($590 million) ship before it was evacuated.

Schettino’s lawyer Bruno Leporatti said in a statement that evidence from his client about phone calls with the ship’s owners, Costa Cruises, at the time of the accident could lead to the investigation being widened.

He said the calls with Costa’s marine operation director had “opened further channels for investigation that could reasonably lead to an increase in the number of those under investigation.”

Third parties “could have at least contributed to creating the tragic event,” Leporatti said.

According to leaked transcripts from the investigation, Schettino has admitted steering too close to shore. Leporatti has said that while Schettino is willing to accept his share of responsibility, other factors were involved in the accident.

Investigators say he brought the ship to within 150 meters of the shore, apparently while performing a “salute” to the island. Schettino says this maneuver was common but the company says it should not be performed so close to the shore.

Costa Cruises, a unit of Carnival Corp, the world’s largest cruise ship operator, has suspended Schettino and declared itself an injured party in the case. It has said “unfortunate human error” by Schettino caused the disaster.

CLASS-ACTION

A U.S. lawyer said Monday the Costa Concordia had earlier cruised recklessly close to other islands to impress passengers.

Mitchell Proner of New York law firm Proner & Proner, which is planning to file a class-action suit in Miami on Wednesday on behalf of passengers in the disaster, said the ship owner would be a main target of the lawsuit.

“At this point we’re exploring numerous defendants; certainly you’ve got (ship owner) Costa Cruise lines,” Proner told AFP.

“While they might be trying to indicate that the incident is the fault of this one rogue captain, we know that they’ve had some precedents going close to these islands along the Italian coast,” he said.

He said the same ship had earlier cruised dangerously close to the island of Procida in the Gulf of Naples.

“Procida set up mortars and saluted and the Concordia responded by blasting their sirens. So this is something that they have done in the past as a way of generating publicity and advertising for their company,” he said.

“It’s thrill-seeking for the passengers, but it’s reckless.”

Proner & Proner is teaming up with Italian consumer rights’ association Codacons and another New York law firm, Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, to lead the lawsuit on behalf of victims in the January 13 shipwreck, which occurred after the vessel moved too close to the shore of the island of Giglio.

Proner said they would likely file the suit on behalf of all victims on Wednesday in Miami, home base of Carnival, the giant U.S. cruise ship operator which owns Costa Cruise lines.

They would seek at least U.S.$160,000 for each of the victims.

“If they sustained injury it can be a multiple of that number. If they have a disability as a result of the incident and certainly in the cases of fatalities, we’re expecting in excess of a million euros per individual.”

He said they would also be examining whether the equipment on board the vessel designed to prevent such accidents had failed or were disengaged.

NOTIFICATION

The vice president of Carnival Corp, Howard Frank, arrived in Italy on Sunday to help oversee the situation, according to a source close to the company.

Frank and Pier Luigi Foschi, chairman and chief executive of Costa Cruises, met some of families of the victims of the tragedy on Giglio island on Sunday, the source said.

Costa Cruises has not received any notification that it is being investigated, according to a company spokesman. The company will be forthright with investigators and has full faith in the magistrature, he added.

According to transcripts of Schettino’s questioning by prosecutors leaked to Italian media, the captain said that immediately after hitting the rock he sent two of his officers to the engine room to check on the state of the vessel.

As soon as he realized the scale of the damage, he called Roberto Ferrarini, marine operations director for Costa Cruises.

“I told him: ‘I’ve got myself into a mess, there was contact with the seabed. I am telling you the truth, we passed under Giglio and there was an impact’,” Schettino said.

“I can’t remember how many times I called him in the following hour and 15 minutes. In any case, I am certain that I informed Ferrarini about everything in real time.”

Separately, Leporatti said that Schettino tested negative in hair and urine tests for drug use, but was not tested for alcohol on the night of the accident.

If the probe is broadened, it will reduce the glare of the spotlight on Schettino, who has so far been assigned almost exclusive responsibility for the disaster. His first officer Ciro Ambrosio is also under investigation.

A judge has said Schettino showed “incredible carelessness” and a “total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency,” according to documents from a hearing.

SEARCH CONTINUES

Search operations were still under way for nearly 20 bodies missing. Navy divers blasted underwater holes in the hull of the ship to provide additional points of access. Debris floated out and was gathered by coastguard boats.

An Italian navy ship, the Galatea, which is equipped with a sophisticated undersea radar system, has been sent to the area to help search for bodies.

Reports on Sunday of the possible presence of unregistered passengers, including one Hungarian woman, raised questions about the exact number of people missing.

Costa Cruises on Monday denied the presence of stowaways. The Hungarian foreign ministry said it had no news that any of its nationals had been secretly on board, according to Italy’s civil protection agency.

Franco Gabrielli, head of Italy’s civil protection authority, said the ship was stable and there appeared to be no immediate risk that it could slide off the rock outcrop where it is caught and slip into deeper waters.

He said search operations could continue, and operations to pump some 2,400 tons of fuel from the vessel could begin while the search for bodies was still under way.

On Tuesday, a platform boat for the fuel recovery team will be positioned hear the Costa Concordia and preparatory dives will be made, according to SMIT, the Dutch company hired to salvage the fuel.

Giglio’s economy depends on tourists seeking clean beaches and clear water for snorkeling and scuba diving. Its drinking water, too, is drawn from the sea and desalinated.

UNESCO DECREE

United Nations cultural body UNESCO urged the Italian government Monday to restrict the access of cruise ships to World Heritage Site Venice in the wake of the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster.

In a statement, Paris-based UNESCO said it had called on the Italian government “to restrict access of large ships to culturally and ecologically important areas, particularly Venice and its lagoon which are visited by some 300 large cruise ships a year.”

It said cruise liner traffic in Venice “is particularly damaging because of the fragile structure of the city.

“The ships cause water tides that erode the foundations of buildings. They contribute to pollution and impact the cityscape as they dwarf monuments in the heart of the city,” UNESCO said.

Amid efforts to eventually pump out hundreds of tons of fuel remaining in the ship, environmentalists have warned of an ecological catastrophe in Europe’s biggest marine sanctuary.

DISCOUNTS

on Monday, it emerged that the ship’s owner, Costa Cruises, a division of Carnival, the largest cruise ship operator in the world, is offering survivors a 30% discount off future cruises.

The move is the first obvious effort to limit the corporate damage done by the shipwreck, the result of a failed nighttime sail-by in which the ship was gashed by a rock, then beached to facilitate rescue, only to topple over on the rocks when the tide went out.

But with people still missing, and the rescue operation complicated by the question of unregistered passengers, the offer was criticized as “insulting,” by one British survivor.

The Daily Telegraph also reported that the Florida-based company had been telephoning survivors “asking if they are suffering nightmares or sleepless nights,” which are the hallmark symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. nationalpost.com

It's a big rascal, click it again once you have opened it.

H/T Costa Concordia Imbroglione

Costa Concordia captain not solely to blame, says prosecutor

Investigators urged to consider role of ship's owners in incident as salvage experts begin pumping out fuel from wreck
John Hooper in Rome
Tuesday 24 January

The chief prosecutor overseeing the inquiry into the Costa Concordia shipwreck has urged investigators to look beyond the behaviour of the captain to the role played by the liner's owners, Costa Cruises.

His remarks were published as salvage experts began the delicate task of pumping out around 2,400 tonnes of fuel to prevent an environmental disaster in the area where the vessel ran aground on 13 January.

Beniamino Deidda, the chief prosecutor of Tuscany, said in an interview carried by several Italian newspapers on Tuesday: "For the moment, attention is generally concentrated on the responsibility of the captain, who showed himself to be tragically inadequate. But who chooses the captain?"

He said investigators needed to lift their gaze to the decisions taken by "the employer; that is to say, the ship's owner".

Costa Cruises has from the outset put the blame for the accident squarely on the allegedly reckless behaviour of the captain, Francesco Schettino. He lost control of the 114,500-tonne Costa Concordia after hitting a rock as he skirted the shoreline of the island of Giglio in a 'salute' to a retired cruise line commodore.

But Deidda, who has spent a large part of his career dealing with health and safety cases, said numerous other issues needed to be addressed.

He specifically mentioned "lifeboats that did not come down, crew who did not know what to do [and] scant preparation in crisis management".

He added it was "absurd" that in at least one instance, recorded on video after the Costa Concordia was holed, a member of the crew should have told passengers to return to their cabins.

Schettino has also maintained his employers have a shared responsibility for what happened. Among questions the inquiry is seeking to answer is why more than an hour elapsed between impact and the order to abandon ship.

Questioned by prosecutors last week, the captain said he was in frequent contact with a representative of the company during that period.

Schettino and his first officer are the sole formal suspects in the inquiry, which is considering whether to bring charges of manslaughter and the illegal abandoning of a ship.

On Monday, islanders reported seeing a large fuel slick in the waters off Giglio, which are protected as a marine nature reserve. The fuel, however, is thought by the authorities to have come from the ship's initial impact with a cluster of rocks just south of the port of Giglio.

The official co-ordinating operations on the island said on Monday there was still no evidence that fuel had leaked from the Costa Concordia's tanks. gruniad

The Caging of America

2012-01-24T10:44:00.004Z

The Caging of America

Why do we lock up so many people?
by Adam Gopnik
January 30, 2012

A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic—the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happens. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich is all you need to know about Ivan Denisovich, because the idea that anyone could live for a minute in such circumstances seems impossible; one day in the life of an American prison means much less, because the force of it is that one day typically stretches out for decades. It isn’t the horror of the time at hand but the unimaginable sameness of the time ahead that makes prisons unendurable for their inmates. The inmates on death row in Texas are called men in “timeless time,” because they alone aren’t serving time: they aren’t waiting out five years or a decade or a lifetime. The basic reality of American prisons is not that of the lock and key but that of the lock and clock.

That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling. Time stops. A note of attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia—anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog, covering the guards as much as the guarded. “Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard, / Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,” Dylan sings, and while it isn’t strictly true—just ask the prisoners—it contains a truth: the guards are doing time, too. As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment. For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.

For most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a mere brush, encountered after a kid’s arrest, say. For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. Ours is, bottom to top, a “carceral state,” in the flat verdict of Conrad Black, the former conservative press lord and newly minted reformer, who right now finds himself imprisoned in Florida, thereby adding a new twist to an old joke: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a conservative who’s in one.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men—a full house at Yankee Stadium—wake in solitary confinement, often in “supermax” prisons or prison wings, in which men are locked in small cells, where they see no one, cannot freely read and write, and are allowed out just once a day for an hour’s solo “exercise.” (Lock yourself in your bathroom and then imagine you have to stay there for the next ten years, and you will have some sense of the experience.) Prison rape is so endemic—more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year—that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized. Though we avoid looking directly at prisons, they seep obliquely into our fashions and manners. Wealthy white teen-agers in baggy jeans and laceless shoes and multiple tattoos show, unconsciously, the reality of incarceration that acts as a hidden foundation for the country. new yorker

H/T xklamation

Anonymous Hacks Into The FTC Online Security Site

2012-01-24T06:57:00.002Z

Anonymous hacks into the FTC online security site, warns of more protest action
24 Jan,2012
If SOPA/PIPA/ACTA passes we will wage a relentless war against the corporate internet, destroying dozens upon dozens of government and company websites. As you are reading this we are amassing our allied armies of darkness, preparing boatloads of stolen booty for our next raid. We are sitting on hundreds of rooted servers getting ready to drop all your mysql dumps and mail spools. Your passwords? Your precious bank accounts? Even your online dating details?! You ain’t even trying to step to this.

Anonymous has brought down yet another US government website, as the FTC’s federal online security site was hacked by the anonymous collective, as it continues to attack sites in protest at a number of US Internet laws and the closure of file sharing site Megaupload.

The front page of the site has been replaced by a screen featuring the now infamous Anonymous logo, a rap song and a message to politicians and US authorities, which warns of future attacks and action should SOPA, PIPA and ACTA be passed as laws: More

Surrey Police Covered up Dowler Hacking for Nine Years

2012-01-24T06:30:00.007Z

Nice huh?

Police Covered up Dowler Hacking
James Cusick
24 January 2012

Surrey Police knew for nine years that the News of the World had been hacking Milly Dowler's voicemails – and was even played a recording of one message by a journalist from the Sunday newspaper – but never took action about the law-breaking or told her anguished family.

The force, which was investigating the schoolgirl's disappearance and murder in 2002, has stayed silent for a decade despite repeatedly being given evidence of the NOTW illegally accessing the 13-year-old's mobile phone messages during the middle of its inquiries. Two other police forces also had knowledge of the hacking, it emerged yesterday in highly damaging evidence released by Parliament.

In a trail of logged exchanges between Surrey Police and journalists from the now-defunct Murdoch-owned tabloid – finally released yesterday after months of demands from this newspaper and another – officers and public relations officials from the force are shown to have been fully aware of how NOTW journalists illegally hacked into her mobile phone during 2002, and yet did and said nothing until late 2011.

The report, which details exchanges during the crucial weeks of the police hunt, is a heavily redacted summary of the initial findings of Surrey's deputy chief constable, Jerry Kirkby.

The report, published by the Culture and Media Select Committee of MPs, which has been investigating the phone-hacking scandal, backs up the central claims made in an investigation carried out by The Independent last October.

Surrey Police, despite its stonewalling, had discussed phone hacking with the NOTW in 2002 and had failed to take action against the News International title – action which could have halted the tabloid's criminal activities, which continued for almost a decade.

The logged exchanges in the Kirkby report reveals journalists from the NOTW interfering in the Surrey investigation, offering excuses about where they were getting information from, and attempting to bully police press officers into backing its theories on Milly's disappearance.

The report also confirms The Independent's claim that there was also a formal meeting between representatives of the tabloid and Surrey Police. The report says this meeting took place in July 2002. However, no notes have been given of what was discussed.

The report edits out the names of the NOTW journalists and the senior police officers who exchanged information. Mr Kirkby said this was done at the request of the Metropolitan Police which is currently pursuing a criminal investigation into key individuals at the centre of the hacking scandal.

Surrey officers admit they knew the NOTW held a recording of Milly's voicemails messages; that the force was played the message; that they were told the NOTW had got Milly's phone and pin number from "school friends".

The NOTW journalists redacted in the report are shown to be engaged in harassment, blagging, bullying, deception and a refusal to accept the views of the police investigation.

One unnamed individual tried to "blag" information about Milly by calling a recruitment agency and pretending to be her mother, Sally.

Last night the Dowler family said in a statement: "Surrey have not explained why they did not investigation that deception in 2002." More Independent

Creationists, Every One of Them, Are Today's Cunts of The Day

2012-01-23T14:37:00.001Z

Creationists, every one of them, are today's Cunts of the Day.

The UK's Guardian reports that annoying Richard Dawkins is celebrating a UK government decision to cut funding to free schools that teach intelligent design as fact. This is an excellent move on the part of the UK government to stem the tidal wave of stupidity that is behind creationism and intelligent design.

Obviously, these morons whose literal understanding of religious texts leads them to reject science will instill creationism in their children anyway. At least in the UK they won't be doing so getting government funding.

You have to wonder how many children who are brainwashed into sharing their parent's beliefs grow up questioning what they have been told once they realize what nonsense has been put in their heads. Perhaps it's when they figure out their beliefs land them on the same page as the likes of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and supreme knobcheese Ben Stein.

Everyone should stand up against religious based teaching in schools. It is, after all, stone cold horsepiss. People should, like Dawkins, be even more vocal when these idiots try and get their hands on tax dollars with which to brainwash children. The world, after all, has enough stupid people in it. Today these cunts have received a set back that rational people everywhere should be celebrating.

Sponsored by people who are delighted to see the UK's Telegraph newspaper is ever on the case of Tony Blair, particularly when it comes to his ever increasing finances. Rightly fucking so. Shrub Monkey

Responsible for close to 200 deaths so far this year, Boko Haram, whose name means "Non-Islamic Education is sacrilege"

2012-01-22T08:37:00.003Z

Scores dead in northern Nigeria as Islamist militants terrorise the country

Group bidding to impose sharia law claims responsibility for wave of attacks in city of Kano
Monica Mark in Lagos
21 January 2012

More than 140 people have died in the northern Nigerian city of Kano after a series of attacks by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram. In a series of attacks on Friday, as residents were leaving mosques, five police buildings, two immigration offices and the local headquarters of the national intelligence services were targeted.

"We are still collecting the bodies so we cannot confirm the total death toll. We have nine so far. We will know the final number once we have finished collecting," a spokesperson for the National Emergency Management Agency told the Observer.

Witnesses reported seeing at least 100 bodies sprawled around the regional police base alone. Officials in the main hospital said the wounded and dead were still being ferried in on Saturday, some after being trapped by overnight gunfights.

Authorities largely refused to offer casualty statistics as mourners began claiming the bodies of their loved ones to bury before sundown, following Islamic tradition. However, a hospital official told the Associated Press at least 143 people were killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to release the death toll to journalists. The figure could rise further, since other bodies could be held at other clinics and hospitals.

Olusola Amore, a police official, appealed for members of the public to come forward "with information on the identity and location of these hoodlums".

Britain's Foreign Office updated its travel advice, warning people not to travel to Kano. On its website the FCO said: "We advise against all travel to Kano whilst the curfew remains in force and for those in Kano to remain vigilant and to exercise caution.

It urged British nationals in Nigeria to comply with all curfews.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said: "The nature of these attacks has sickened people around the world and I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of those killed and to those injured.

Responsible for close to 200 deaths so far this year, Boko Haram, whose name means "Non-Islamic Education is sacrilege", wants to extend sharia law – already in place in some northern states – across Nigeria's 160 million-strong population, which is evenly split between Muslim and Christian.

Analysts say the group has so far failed to gain significant traction outside its homebase states of Yobe and Borno in the north, but the group stages near-daily shootings on police targets there and claimed responsibility for the first ever suicide attack in Nigeria, which killed 24 people in the capital, Abuja, in August. A Christmas Day attack on a Catholic church just outside the capital killed at least 37 people.

"The temptation is going to be to see these attacks as an indication of greater co-ordination, to which I would say maybe, maybe not," said John Campbell, the former US ambassador to Nigeria. "It's not rocket science for the various groups to go around planting bombs in government headquarters."

However, he warned that a slow response to a movement that, analysts say, has used a fanatical ideology to stoke local economic and tribal rivalries, is eroding faith in the ability of Nigerian authorities to manage the threat. Kano, an ancient city on the cusp of the Sahara that has a long history as a bustling trade and learning centre, had largely escaped the violence that has plagued the north of the country.

The most deadly spree yet by Boko Haram came just days after popular protests forced the government to partially back down over plans to remove fuel subsidies in Africa's top oil economy. As thousands took to the streets last week, President Goodluck Jonathan acknowledged that Boko Haram had infiltrated the government and security services. In a belated statement regarding the Kano attacks, he said: "As a responsible government, we will not fold our hands and watch enemies of democracy, for that is what these mindless killers are, perpetrate unprecedented evil in our land."

A security source said community reports had foiled two attacks in Kano last year. "The population recognised the Boko Haram people from their tribal markings and reported them to us. They are ordinary people known to the communities. So people are now wondering why the government cannot protect them," he said.

By Saturday afternoon residents began to venture outside, looking for bodies of relatives and friends that Muslim custom dictates should be buried within a day. Most were still reeling from the ferocity and speed of the attacks. Police officers, who apparently bore the brunt of casualties, had been pulled off the streets and replaced by soldiers.

In the main Kano hospital, Musa, a police officer wounded in the attack, wondered if his colleagues at the regional headquarters had survived. He told how, as he started work on Friday, a Honda approached the building at high speed. "There was a powerful sound, then complete darkness. Darkness and smoke. Then the noise of shooting and then I couldn't feel my leg. I was shot in the leg," he said.

While Musa was trying to crawl out of the burning building, in another part of the town centre Nura Maaji, whose Advocacy Nigeria group fronted protests to reinstate the fuel subsidy, was meeting with colleagues. At first he thought the explosion was an attempt to stop the group convening.

"Then we heard a sound like thunder. Before we knew it, there was another explosion," he said. "We saw black smoke with fire in it coming from the [state police building]."

Running gun battles erupted as he attempted to drive back home. "People in cars were exchanging gunshots with the police," he said. "Kano has never been like this. It was terrible, it has cast fear in the minds of residents."

Kano's governor, Rabiu Kwankwaso, appealed to residents to remain calm and said a 24-hour state curfew would be lifted shortly.

Religious leaders have mediated with Boko Haram in the past, which has threatened to make the country "ungovernable" in retaliation for the imprisonment of its members.

The tense mood has spread beyond Kano. "People are really angry – they are thinking where could be next?" said Abuja resident Abdulkadir Alkasim. "They need some sort of reassurance from the president which they are not getting at the moment." more Terror Timeline

H/T @w_nicht

SOPA Sponsor Has Another Internet Bill That Records You 24/7

2012-01-22T07:59:00.000Z

I don't need to add anything, the writer says it all, except perhaps a word or two about the usual bogeyman.

SOPA sponsor has another Internet bill that records you 24/7
Chris Burns,
Jan 20th 2012

Senator Lamar Smith, lead sponsor of the currently dead SOPA bill you’ve heard so much about, has another bill in the works that uses Child Pornography as a screen to push through an amendment that’ll have your internet service provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times. This bill is H.R. 1981 and will have more dire consequences than SOPA or PIPA ever had the potential to have.

What it does is to amend several rules that have to do with Child Pornography and preventing it, the bill itself called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.” What it also does is to change the U.S. code Chapter 18 section 2703 Required Disclosure of Customer Communications or Records to include a requirement that your internet service provider do the following:

A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

While it was legal for the government to issue a subpoena for the viewing of the information they speak about here before, it was not part of the law that internet service providers capture or retain that information at any point. In effect, while before the authorities would need to first find a reason for you to need to be watched to get the ISP to start collecting information from you, that information will already exist on file, effectively meaning you’re being watched and recorded even if you’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t worry though, there’s an additional set of lines that should placate you because it’s so very kind of them to think of:

(1) to encourage electronic communication service providers to give prompt notice to their customers in the event of a breach of the data retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18 of the United States Code, in order that those effected can take the necessary steps to protect themselves from potential misuse of private information; and

(2) that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records.

So don’t worry, your information will be “stored securely” so noone else can access it! But if they do access it, your ISP will give you “prompt notice” so you can change all your credit card numbers, hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband. This bill has currently cleared its committee, this meaning that the next step is a full vote. This bill needs to be stopped, and if I might go one better, Lamar Smith needs to be stopped, for the good of the internet and YOUR privacy. slashgear.com

Costa Concordia Information Update

2012-01-22T07:29:00.003Z

Dedicated blog here for all up to date information. Mikey's Cruise Blog

Teenage Sailor Laura Dekker Becomes Youngest to Circumnavigate the Globe

2012-01-21T16:31:00.006Z

I think you may have had to have done a bit of single handing yourself, to truly appreciate what a staggering achievement this kid has managed to pull off. Fair play to you girl, fair play indeed.

Teenage sailor Laura Dekker becomes youngest to circumnavigate the globe

A year and a day after she set out to sail single-handed around the globe, Dutch teenager Laura Dekker will finish her 27,000 mile voyage on Saturday.
By Nick Meo and Joan Clements
21 Jan 2012

Miss Dekker, who is 16 years and four months old, has cut six months off the unofficial record set in 2010 by Australian teenager Jessica Watson, who was days away from her 17th birthday when she completed her own non-stop voyage.

Miss Dekker has had to cope with weeks of solitude, ocean storms and a fear of pirates while navigating and sailing a 38-foot yacht called Guppy, all the time trying to keep up with her schoolwork.

But she will not be sailing into the record books. After the controversy she caused when she announced she was going to try to break the record in a small boat aged just 13, the Guinness Book of Records decided to stop recognising records for “youngest” sailors.

Miss Dekker fled abroad in 2010 when Dutch child welfare authorities took legal action to try to stop her making the voyage. She later won a 10-month court battle, promising judges she would buy a bigger boat with advanced navigation equipment, take courses in first aid and coping with sleep deprivation, and enrol in a special correspondence school.

Her grandparents, divorced parents, and younger sister Kim are among those waiting to greet her in the Dutch Caribbean island of Saint Martin, her starting point last January. She is finishing a long leg from her last port of call in South Africa in November.

“A small flotilla will sail out to greet her, including the coastguard, and then we have a big ceremony planned in the yacht club,” said her manager Gerard van Erp, who is in daily radio contact with Miss Dekker.

“She said she is a little nervous about what is waiting for her. It may seem a bit strange to her after spending so long alone at sea.”

Miss Dekker effectively grew up on boats with her sailor father Dick, who has encouraged her voyages. At the age of 12 she sailed from the Netherlands to Britain and back.

Mr van Erp said there was no sign of Dutch officials at Saint Martin, after fears were raised that the authorities may not yet have lost interest in her. Truancy officers reportedly issued her father a summons to appear before them late last year, after a newspaper quoted her admitting that she hadn’t been able to pay full attention to her correspondence course because she had to concentrate on sailing through a series of storms.

Unlike other youthful round-the-world sailors, Miss Dekker made several stops at ports to ensure her vessel was properly maintained, and to brush up on her studies.

Mr van Erp said her route was carefully planned to avoid areas off the west and east African coastlines where pirates are active, forcing her to sail far out into the ocean.

Not all youthful sailors have been as lucky as her. Miss Dekker’s voyage began two months after Abby Sunderland, a 16-year-old American, had to be rescued when her mast broke in a remote part of the Indian Ocean.

Miss Dekker’s achievement has divided the Netherlands, where her father has been branded “irresponsible” and a publicity seeker. In the blogs she has written at sea Miss Dekker has described her anger with Dutch officials, after five court appearances which she said would “haunt her for a long time”.

On Friday night she wrote: “I do not want to be totally negative about Holland, I know I have many supporters there. I feel sad for them that I am not sailing into either Hoek van Holland or Ijmuiden. That would have bene a great party for everyone.”

She has written a book on her two-year fight with Dutch officials before embarking on her voyage, called Mijn Verhaal (My Story).

She now expects to go back to school, Mr van Erp said, though not necessarily in the Netherlands.

Miss Dekker said in blogs written during her voyage that she was so tired of the controversy it had aroused in Holland that she might move abroad. She holds a New Zealand passport as she was born in New Zealand waters - on a boat - during a seven-year voyage made by her parents. She also hopes to work for conservation, after using her voyage to raise funds for the charity Sea Shepherd. Telegraph

I love Grannies

2012-01-21T16:18:00.005Z

Especially when they are feisty old gals who get the boot in.

H/T @Timcast

That Must Be Because Most Americans Are Fucking Stupid: Fox News Poll

2012-01-21T15:01:00.007Z

Poll: Americans Trust Fox News The Most And The Least
David Taintor
January 19, 2012

For most Americans, Fox News is both the most — and least — trusted television news source.
According to the third annual Public Policy Polling (PPP) TV News Trust Poll, 34 percent of respondents trust Fox more than ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Comedy Central, MSNBC, NBC News and PBS. Likewise, 34 percent trust Fox least among those same news sources.

In a way, the numbers make sense. Fox enjoys huge ratings, and when choosing one network out of a handful, a viewer is basically saying I watch this network more than the others. Fox News’ out-in-the-open partisanship explains its “least trusted” nod, as well. But, it’s popular.
PBS scored highest on the individual questions. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they trust the public broadcaster. Dull? Perhaps, but definitely trustworthy.

Shockingly, 68 percent of Republicans picked Fox as their most trusted source. Interestingly, Democrats don’t look at MSNBC in the same way: “Despite having a reputation for appealing to the left MSNBC actually polls in only 6th place among Democrats at 8%, finishing slightly behind even Fox News’ 9%,” the poll’s summary states. TPM

See the poll’s full results here.

This fellow, the second one in the clip, is my ''Adolf Hitler.'' Just as the religious right keep rolling old Adolf out, usually as a non sequitur, in an attempt to make something of what they are trying to argue, well I roll this fellow out, only I don't have to make my argument, this fellow does it for me, and in spades.

I remind you, he has a vote.

My Thoughts on SOPA: Paulo Coelho

2012-01-21T13:17:00.003Z

An interesting philosophy: Pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written!

My Thoughts on SOPA
Paulo Coelho
January 20, 2012

IN THE former Soviet Union, in the late 1950s and 60s, many books that questioned the political system began to be circulated privately in mimeographed form. Their authors never earned a penny in royalties. On the contrary, they were persecuted, denounced in the official press, and sent into exile in the notorious Siberian gulags. Yet they continued to write.
Why? Because they needed to share what they were feeling. From the Gospels to political manifestos, literature has allowed ideas to travel and even to change the world.

I have nothing against people earning money from their books; that’s how I make my living. But look at what’s happening now. Stop Online Piracy Act (S.O.P.A) may disrupt internet. This is a REAL DANGER, not only for Americans, but for all of us, as the law – if approved – will affect the whole planet.

And how do I feel about this? As an author, I should be defending ‘intellectual property’, but I’m not.

Pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written!

The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever. First, because all anyone ever does is recycle the same four themes: a love story between two people, a love triangle, the struggle for power, and the story of a journey. Second, because all writers want what they write to be read, whether in a newspaper, blog, pamphlet, or on a wall.

The more often we hear a song on the radio, the keener we are to buy the CD. It’s the same with literature.

The more people ‘pirate’ a book, the better. If they like the beginning, they’ll buy the whole book the next day, because there’s nothing more tiring than reading long screeds of text on a computer screen.

1. Some people will say: You’re rich enough to allow your books to be distributed for free.

That’s true. I am rich. But was it the desire to make money that drove me to write? No. My family and my teachers all said that there was no future in writing.

I started writing and I continue to write because it gives me pleasure and gives meaning to my existence. If money were the motive, I could have stopped writing ages ago and saved myself having to put up with invariably negative reviews.

2. The publishing industry will say: Artists can’t survive if they’re not paid.
In 1999, when I was first published in Russia ( with a print- run of 3,000), the country was suffering a severe paper shortage. By chance, I discovered a ‘ pirate’ edition of The Alchemist and posted it on my web page.
A year later, when the crisis was resolved, I sold 10,000 copies of the print edition. By 2002, I had sold a million copies in Russia, and I have now sold 12 million.

When I traveled across Russia by train, I met several people who told me that they had first discovered my work through the ‘ pirated’ edition I posted on my website. Nowadays, I run a ‘Pirate Coelho’ website, giving links to any books of mine that are available on file- sharing sites. And my sales continue to grow — nearly 140 million copies world wide.

When you’ve eaten an orange, you have to go back to the shop to buy another. In that case, it makes sense to pay on the spot. With an object of art, you’re not buying paper, ink, paintbrush, canvas or musical notes, but the idea born out of a combination of those products.

‘Pirating’ can act as an introduction to an artist’s work. If you like his or her idea, then you will want to have it in your house; a good idea doesn’t need protection.
The rest is either greed or ignorance. Paulo Coelho's Blog

Paulo Coelho Wiki

Two Lessons From the Megaupload Seizure: Glenn Greenwald

2012-01-21T13:06:00.003Z

Two Lessons From the Megaupload Seizure
Glenn Greenwald
Jan 21, 2012

Two events this week produced some serious cognitive dissonance. First, Congressional leaders sheepishly announced that they were withdrawing (at least for the time being) two bills heavily backed by the entertainment industry — the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House – in the wake of vocal online citizen protests (and, more significantly, coordinated opposition from the powerful Silicon Valley industry). Critics insisted that these bills were dangerous because they empowered the U.S. Government, based on mere accusations of piracy and copyright infringement, to shut down websites without any real due process. But just as the celebrations began over the saving of Internet Freedom, something else happened: the U.S. Justice Department not only indicted the owners of one of the world’s largest websites, the file-sharing site Megaupload, but also seized and shut down that site, and also seized or froze millions of dollars of its assets — all based on the unproved accusations, set forth in an indictment, that the site deliberately aided copyright infringement......

.....(1) It’s wildly under-appreciated how unrestrained is the Government’s power to do what it wants, and how little effect these debates over various proposed laws have on that power.

.....(2) The U.S. really is a society that simply no longer believes in due process: once the defining feature of American freedom that is now scorned as some sort of fringe, radical, academic doctrine. Article

Costa Concordia: Fears for Missing Twenty Four Passengers & Crew

2012-01-21T09:41:00.009Z

Over the coming days and weeks we will be witness to the vilification of Francesco Schettino, though hardly necessary one would have thought, by paid liar Clarence Mitchell.

Mitchell who was brought in to help cover up the death of Madeleine McCann, who died whilst in the care of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, will, by innuendo and leaks to his cronies in the press, do a hatchet job on Costa Concordia Captain, Francesco Schettino.

What we mustn't loose sight of however, is that Francesco Schettino is Costa's man. They judged him fit enough to take command of the Costa Concordia, and they paid him to do so.

And if the reports are true, that this isn't the first time Schettino has pulled this stunt, ''driving his ship like a Ferrari,'' and skirting dangers, then so much more damning it is for owners, Carnival Cruise Lines.

As I say, IF Schettino has put his vessel at risk on previous occasions, and given that, as we have seen quite recently, that ship's movements can be tracked to the nearest foot, then Carnival doesn't have a leg to stand on.

If my local council takes the trouble to scrutinize the tacks of all its vehicles that are on the road, and it does, speeding here speeding there, then one might expect the owners of a hundred million dollar gin palace to exercise a similar procedure.

Five More Bodies Found.

17 January 2012

Rescuers find five more bodies in the wreckage of the , bringing the known death toll of the cruise ship accident to 11. There are still 24 people missing.

Hopes are beginning to fade for the missing, four days after the giant cruise liner carrying 4,200 passengers and crew ran into rocks off the coast of Tuscany, Italy and capsized.

Five more bodies were found on Tuesday, bringing the total death toll to 11, after rescuers used controlled explosions to try to reach parts of the wrecked vessel which were previously inaccessible.

Before the five bodies were found, those missing were 14 German, five Italian, four French and two American passengers and four crew from Italy, Peru, India and Hungary.
The hull of the Costa Concordia remains wedged on a slope off the coast, near the island of Giglio.
The captain of the ship, Francesco Schettino, has been blamed for causing the disaster, risking thousands of lives and millions of pounds of ship, by sailing too close to the nearby island. He is in jail accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck by sailing too close to shore and abandoning ship before all his passengers and crew managed to scramble off.

New transcripts (see grey box, below) also suggest that Mr Schettino also refused orders from the coastguard to get back on the ship to co-ordinate the rescue.

State of emergency

Italy is preparing to declare a state of emergency following the incident, and the Italian government has pledged funds to prevent an environmental disaster.

Concerns are growing that rough seas could result in tonnes of fuel leaking from the wreck into waters that are part of a protected sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales. The Italian government says the salvage company dealing with the vessel has until Wednesday to come up with a plan to remove the fuel, and 10 days with a plan to remove the ship.

Clarence Mitchell, who is representing Costa Cruises, said: "(Costa Cruises CEO) Mr Foschi confirmed the captain had been approaching the island of Giglio to 'make a salute'.
"The company says this (incident) was caused by an attempt by the captain to show the ship to the port. But there's a criminal investigation going on and we're not going to say anything that's going to compromise that or the captain's case."

Mr Schettino's lawyer issued a statement saying the skipper was "broken up, troubled and saddened by the loss of life", but he believed he had saved many lives by carrying out a difficult emergency manoeuvre with anchors after the accident, which turned the ship closer to the shore. He denies being too close to the coast and says the rock he hit was not on the charts.

Prosecutors also say the captain refused to go back on board when requested by the coastguard. Ch4 + video

Watch GPS Track of Costa Concordia Running Aground

2012-01-20T13:59:00.005Z

The detailed reconstruction of the route of the Costa Concordia on the night of January 13. The track was produced by Dutch company QPS - specializes in navigation software - based on the GPS information of the ship. La Repubblica

And that rock is exactly where the chart says it is. No matter how old your charts, the rocks are still in the same place.

H/T @veniviedivici

John Pilger: The World War on Democracy (New)

2012-01-20T12:58:00.006Z

Essential John Pilger.

Not to be confused with Pilger's previous The War on Democracy.

In view of the early part of Pilger's article being given over to Diego Garcia, and the fate that befell the Chagos islanders at the hands of the then Labour government under Harold Wilson. I have pasted a previous post, Diego Garcia. Chagoans,"They Died Of Sadness" -John Pilger's 2004 film, Stealing a Nation, at the bottom of the page.

The article is by no means all about Diego Garcia, Pilger has a word or two to say about various people and subjects, and as we have come to expect of this extraordinary journalist, he takes no prisoners, including, I'm pleased to say, the late Christopher Hitchins.

The World War on Democracy
19 January 2012
by: John Pilger,

Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people's resistance to the war on democracy. I first glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a tiny creole nation located midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean.

The camera panned across thriving villages, a church, a school, a hospital, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace. Lisette remembers the producer saying to her and her teenage friends, "Keep smiling girls!"

Sitting in her kitchen in Mauritius many years later, she said, "I didn't have to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in the islands, my paradise. My great-grandmother was born there; I made six children there. That's why they couldn't legally throw us out of our own homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out. At first, they tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving [then] they spread rumours we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs."

In the early 1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony, be "swept" and "sanitised" of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. "They knew we were inseparable from our pets," said Lisette, "When the American soldiers arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the trucks' exhausts. You could hear them crying."

Lisette and her family and hundreds of islanders were forced onto a rusting steamer bound for Mauritius, a distance of 2,500 miles. They were made to sleep in the hold on a cargo of fertilizer: bird shit. The weather was rough; everyone was ill; two women miscarried. Dumped on the docks at Port Louis, Lisette's youngest children, Jollice and Regis, died within a week of each other. "They died of sadness," she said. "They had heard all the talk and seen the horror of what had happened to the dogs. They knew they were leaving their home forever. The doctor in Mauritius said he could not treat sadness."

This act of mass kidnapping was carried out in high secrecy. In one official file, under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction," the Foreign Office legal adviser exhorts his colleagues to cover their actions by "re-classifying" the population as "floating" and to "make up the rules as we go along." Article 7 of the statute of the International Criminal Court says the "deportation or forcible transfer of population" is a crime against humanity. That Britain had committed such a crime - in exchange for a $14 million discount off an American Polaris nuclear submarine - was not on the agenda of a group of British "defence" correspondents flown to the Chagos by the Ministry of Defence when the US base was completed. "There is nothing in our files," said a ministry official, "about inhabitants or an evacuation."

Today, Diego Garcia is crucial to America's and Britain's war on democracy. The heaviest bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan was launched from its vast airstrips, beyond which the islanders' abandoned cemetery and church stand like archaeological ruins. The terraced garden where Lisette laughed for the camera is now a fortress housing the "bunker-busting" bombs carried by bat-shaped B-2 aircraft to targets in two continents; an attack on Iran will start here. As if to complete the emblem of rampant, criminal power, the CIA added a Guantanamo-style prison for its "rendition" victims and called it Camp Justice.

What was done to Lisette's paradise has an urgent and universal meaning, for it represents the violent, ruthless nature of a whole system behind its democratic façade, and the scale of our own indoctrination to its messianic assumptions, described by Harold Pinter as a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis." Longer and bloodier than any war since 1945, waged with demonic weapons, a gangsterism dressed as economic policy and sometimes known as globalization, the war on democracy is unmentionable in Western elite circles. As Pinter wrote, "it never happened even while it was happening." Last July, American historian William Blum published his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy." Since the Second World War, the US has:

Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of them democratically elected.

Attempted to suppress a populist or national movement in 20 countries.

Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.

Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.

Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

In total, the United States has carried out one or more of these actions in 69 countries. In almost all cases, Britain has been a collaborator. The "enemy" changes in name - from communism to Islamism - but mostly it is the rise of democracy independent of Western power or a society occupying strategically useful territory, deemed expendable, like the Chagos Islands.

The sheer scale of suffering, let alone criminality, is little known in the West, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications, nominally freest journalism and most admired academy. That the most numerous victims of terrorism - Western terrorism - are Muslims is unsayable, if it is known. That half a million Iraqi infants died in the 1990s as a result of the embargo imposed by Britain and America is of no interest. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Western policy ("Operation Cyclone") is known to specialists, but otherwise suppressed.

While popular culture in Britain and America immerses the Second World War in an ethical bath for the victors, the holocausts arising from Anglo-American dominance of resource-rich regions are consigned to oblivion. Under the Indonesian tyrant Suharto, anointed "our man" by Thatcher, more than a million people were slaughtered. Described by the CIA as "the worst mass murder of the second half of the 20th century," the estimate does not include a third of the population of East Timor, who were starved or murdered with Western connivance, British fighter bombers and machine guns.

These true stories are told in declassified files in the Public Record Office, yet represent an entire dimension of politics and the exercise of power excluded from public consideration. This has been achieved by a regime of noncoercive information control, from the evangelical mantra of consumer advertising to sound bites on BBC news and, now, the ephemera of social media.

It is as if writers as watchdogs are extinct, or in thrall to a sociopathic zeitgeist, convinced they are too clever to be duped. Witness the stampede of sycophants eager to deify Christopher Hitchens, a war lover who longed to be allowed to justify the crimes of rapacious power. "For almost the first time in two centuries," wrote Terry Eagleton, "there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the Western way of life." No Orwell warns that we do not need to live in a totalitarian society to be corrupted by totalitarianism. No Shelley speaks for the poor; no Blake proffers a vision; no Wilde reminds us that "disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue." And, grievously, no Pinter rages at the war machine, as in "American Football":

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things ...
We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust …

Into shards of fucking dust go all the lives blown there by Barack Obama, the Hopey Changey of Western violence. Whenever one of Obama's drones wipes out an entire family in a faraway tribal region of Pakistan, or Somalia, or Yemen, the American controllers in front of their computer-game screens type in "Bugsplat." Obama likes drones and has joked about them with journalists. One of his first actions as president was to order a wave of Predator drone attacks on Pakistan that killed 74 people. He has since killed thousands, mostly civilians; drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of the lungs of children and leave body parts festooned across scrubland.

Remember the tear-stained headlines when Brand Obama was elected: "momentous, spine-tingling": The Guardian UK. "The American future," wrote Simon Schama, "is all vision, numinous, unformed, light-headed ..." The San Francisco Chronicle's columnist saw a spiritual "lightworker [who can] usher in a new way of being on the planet." Beyond the drivel, as the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg had predicted, a military coup was taking place in Washington, and Obama was their man. Having seduced the anti-war movement into virtual silence, he has given America's corrupt military officer class unprecedented powers of state and engagement. These include the prospect of wars in Africa and opportunities for provocations against China, America's largest creditor and new "enemy" in Asia. Under Obama, the old source of official paranoia Russia, has been encircled with ballistic missiles and the Russian opposition infiltrated. Military and CIA assassination teams have been assigned to 120 countries; long-planned attacks on Syria and Iran beckon a world war. Israel, the exemplar of US violence and lawlessness by proxy, has just received its annual pocket money of $3 billion together with Obama's permission to steal more Palestinian land.

Obama's most "historic" achievement is to bring the war on democracy home to America. On New Year's Eve, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a law that grants the Pentagon the legal right to kidnap both foreigners and US citizens and indefinitely detain, interrogate and torture, or even kill them. They need only "associate" with those "belligerent" to the United States. There will be no protection of law, no trial, no legal representation. This is the first explicit legislation to abolish habeas corpus (the right to due process of law) and effectively repeal the Bill of Rights of 1789.

On 5 January, in an extraordinary speech at the Pentagon, Obama said the military would not only be ready to "secure territory and populations" overseas, but to fight in the "homeland" and provide "support to the civil authorities." In other words, US troops will be deployed on the streets of American cities when the inevitable civil unrest takes hold.

America is now a land of epidemic poverty and barbaric prisons: the consequence of a "market" extremism which, under Obama, has prompted the transfer of $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises in Wall Street. The victims are mostly young jobless, homeless, incarcerated African-Americans, betrayed by the first black president. The historic corollary of a perpetual war state, this is not fascism, not yet, but neither is it democracy in any recognizable form, regardless of the placebo politics that will consume the news until November. The presidential campaign, says The Washington Post, will "feature a clash of philosophies rooted in distinctly different views of the economy." This is patently false. The circumscribed task of journalism on both sides of the Atlantic is to create the pretence of political choice where there is none.

The same shadow is across Britain and much of Europe, where social democracy, an article of faith two generations ago, has fallen to the central bank dictators. In David Cameron's "big society," the theft of 84 billion pounds in jobs and services even exceeds the amount of tax "legally" avoid by piratical corporations. Blame rests not with the far right, but a cowardly, liberal political culture that has allowed this to happen, which, wrote Hywel Williams in the wake of the attacks on 9/11, "can itself be a form of self righteous fanaticism." Tony Blair is one such fanatic. In its managerial indifference to the freedoms that it claims to hold dear, bourgeois Blairite Britain has created a surveillance state with 3,000 new criminal offenses and laws: more than for the whole of the previous century. The police clearly believe they have an impunity to kill. At the demand of the CIA, cases like that of Binyam Mohamed, an innocent British resident tortured and then held for five years in Guantanamo Bay, will be dealt with in secret courts in Britain "in order to protect the intelligence agencies" - the torturers.

This invisible state allowed the Blair government to fight the Chagos islanders as they rose from their despair in exile and demanded justice in the streets of Port Louis and London. "Only when you take direct action, face to face, even break laws, are you ever noticed," said Lisette. "And the smaller you are, the greater your example to others." Such an eloquent answer to those who still ask, "What can I do?"

I last saw Lisette's tiny figure standing in driving rain alongside her comrades outside the Houses of Parliament. What struck me was the enduring courage of their resistance. It is this refusal to give up that rotten power fears, above all, knowing it is the seed beneath the snow. John Pilger.com

- - -

Diego Garcia: Chagoans "They Died Of Sadness"
April 24, 2007

John Pilger exposes the inhumane and shameful actions of successive British Governments in their treatment of the dispossessed indigenous population of Diego Garcia, the main island of the Chagos group.

The film is testimony to just how little people are worth when the "Land of Hope and Glory" colludes with the "Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free" in pursuing global expansion.

The conduct of the British, still to this day, can only be described as sordid.

Fifty five minutes, and will play in full screen.

STEALING A NATION (2004) is an extraordinary film about the plight of people of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean - secretly and brutally expelled from their homeland by British governments in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to make way for an American military base. The base, on the main island of Diego Garcia, was a launch pad for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.Stealing a Nation has won both the Royal Television Society's top award as Britain's best documentary in 2004-5, and a 'Chris Award' at the Columbus International Film and Video Festival.

Hypocrisy: Nobody Does It Better: Pentagon Manning Assange Wikileaks

2012-01-20T10:03:00.004Z

Accusing WikiLeaks of Murder
19 January 2012
by Chase Madar, TomDispatch

Blood on whose hands? Bradley Manning, Washington, and the blood of civilians.

Who in their right mind wants to talk about, think about, or read a short essay about... civilian war casualties? What a bummer, this topic, especially since our Afghan, Iraq, and other ongoing wars were advertised as uplifting acts of philanthropy: wars to spread security, freedom, democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, etc.

A couple hundred thousand dead civilians have a way of making such noble ideals seem like dollar-store tinsel. And so, throughout our decade-long foreign policy debacle in the Greater Middle East, we in the U.S. have generally agreed that no one shall commit the gaucherie of dwelling on (and “dwelling on” = fleetingly mentioned) civilian casualties. Washington elites may squabble over some things, but as for foreigners killed by our numerous wars, our Beltway crew adheres to a sullen code of omertà.

Club rules do, however, permit one loophole: Washington officials may bemoan the nightmare of civilian casualties -- but only if they can be pinned on a 24-year-old Army private first class named Bradley Manning.

Pfc. Manning, you will remember, is the young soldier who is soon to be court-martialed for passing some 750,000 military and diplomatic documents, a large chunk of them classified, to the website WikiLeaks. Among those leaks, there was indeed some serious stuff about how Americans dealt with civilians in invaded countries. For instance, the documents revealed that the U.S. military, then the occupying force in Iraq, did little or nothing to prevent Iraqi authorities from torturing prisoners in a variety of gruesome ways, sometimes to death.

Then there was that gun-sight video -- unclassified but buried in classified material -- of an American Apache helicopter opening fire on a crowd on a Baghdad street, gunning down a dozen men, including two Reuters employees, and injuring more, including children. There were also those field reports about how jumpy American soldiers repeatedly shot down civilians at roadsidecheckpoints; about night raids gone wrong both in Iraq and Afghanistan; and a count of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, a tally whose existence the U.S. military had previously denied possessing.

Together, these leaks and many others offered a composite portrait of military and political debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan whose grinding theme has been civilian casualties, a fact not much noted here in the U.S. A tiny number of low-ranking American soldiers have been held to account for rare instances of premeditated murder of civilians, but most of the troops who kill civilians in the midst of the chaos of war are not tried, much less convicted. We don’t talk about these cases a lot either. On the other hand, officials of all types make free with lusty condemnations of Bradley Manning, whose leaks are luridly credited with potential (though not actual) deaths.

Putting Lives in Danger

“[WikiLeaks] might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” said Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the release of the Afghan War Logs in July 2010. This was, of course, the same Admiral Mullen who hadendorsed a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan, which would lead to a tremendous “surge” in casualties among civilians and soldiers alike. Here are counts -- undoubtedly undercounts, in fact -- of real Afghan corpses that, at least in part, resulted from the policy he supported: 2,412 in 2009, 2,777 in 2010, 1,462 in the first half 2011, according to the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan. As far as anyone knows, here are the corpses that resulted from the release of those WikiLeaks documents: 0. (And don’t forget, the stalemate war with the Taliban has not budged in the period since that surge.) Who, then, has blood on his hands, Pfc. Manning -- or Admiral Mullen?

Of course the admiral is hardly alone. In fact, whole tabernacle choirs have joined in the condemnation of Manning and WikiLeaks for “causing” carnage, thanks to their disclosures.

Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, also spoke sternly of Manning’s leaks, accusing him of “moral culpability.” He added, “And that's where I think the verdict is ‘guilty’ on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences."

This was, of course, the same Robert Gates who pushed for escalation in Afghanistan in 2009 and, in March 2011, flew to the Kingdom of Bahrain to offer his own personal “reassurance of support” to a ruling monarchy already busy shooting and torturing nonviolent civilian protesters. So again, when it comes to blood and indifference to consequences, Bradley Manning -- or Robert Gates?

Nor have such attitudes been confined to the military. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Manning’s (alleged) leak of 250,000 diplomatic cables of being “an attack on the international community” that “puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.”

As a senator, of course, she supported the invasion of Iraq in flagrant contravention of the U.N. Charter. She was subsequently a leading hawk when it came to escalating and expanding the Afghan War, and is now responsible fordisbursing an annual $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt’s ruling junta whose forces have repeatedly opened fire on nonviolent civilian protesters. So who’s been attacking the international community and putting lives in danger, Bradley Manning -- or Hillary Clinton?

Harold Koh, former Yale Law School dean, liberal lion, and currently the State Department’s top legal adviser, has announced that the same leaked diplomatic cables “could place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals -- from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security.”

This is the same Harold Koh who, in March 2010, provided a tortured legal rationale for the Obama administration’s drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, despite the inevitable and well-documented civilian casualties they cause. So who is risking the lives of countless innocent individuals, Bradley Manning -- or Harold Koh?

Much of the media have clambered aboard the bandwagon, blaming WikiLeaks and Manning for damage done by wars they once energetically cheered on.

In early 2011, to pick just one example from the ranks of journalism, New Yorker writer George Packer professed his horror that WikiLeaks had released a memo marked “secret/noforn” listing spots throughout the world of vital strategic or economic interest to the United States. Asked by radio host Brian Lehrer whether this disclosure had crossed a new line by making a gratuitous gift to terrorists, Packer replied with an appalled yes.

Now, among the “secrets” contained in this document are the facts that the Strait of Gibraltar is a vital shipping lane and that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is rich in minerals. Have we Americans become so infantilized that factoids of basic geography must be considered state secrets? (Maybe best not to answer that question.) The “threat” of this document’s release has since been roundly debunked by various military intellectuals. more truthout

Christian Pro-Lifers. What About These Children?

The Murder Of A Society: Iraq

Bradley Manning: Traitor or Hero?

The Shame Of Being An American

Clarence Mitchell Costa Concordia: The Spin Starts

2012-01-20T08:47:00.007Z

I was about to say the spin starts with a straw man, only it's a straw woman on this occasion.

Mind you, it won't be the first time for a straw woman will it, Barcelona anyone?

Update:
Costa Concordia cruise tragedy: Search for girl aged five as death toll rises

Angel of death.

Costa Concordia skipper Francesco Schettino 'drinking with mystery woman'
by James Bone
January 20, 2012

THE captain of the Costa Concordia is alleged to have been drinking at dinner with a Moldovan dancer on the night of the shipwreck off Italy.

Italian police want to question Domnica Cemortan, a 25-year-old former ballet student who says that she was with the captain on the bridge. Ms Cemortan is a Costa Cruises employee, but she was starting a holiday to celebrate her birthday with friends.

She had worked as an interpreter for Russian passengers on a previous leg but bought a ticket to stay on board after the ship left the Italian port of Civitavecchia.

"The woman who on the evening of the accident appears to have dined with Captain [Francesco] Schettino had regularly embarked on the vessel in Civitavecchia," Clarence Mitchell, a company spokesman, said. "Costa Cruises is ready to provide the authorities with her identity and the details of the ticket she bought."

A passenger claimed yesterday that he saw the captain having dinner and drinking from a decanter of red wine in the ship's best restaurant with an unidentified slim blonde woman and another officer shortly before the vessel hit the rocks on Friday night.

Angelo Fabbri, from Savona, said that he and his wife saw Captain Schettino in the Concordia Club restaurant at 9.05pm on the evening of the accident. A menu was served for special guests: prawn cocktails, pasta with shrimps and a fish grill.

"Schettino, in a dark suit, was sitting in front of the woman. She seemed young. At first, we thought it was his daughter. A pretty woman, 35 or 40 years old, slim, with shoulder-length blonde hair, with a black dress with open arms," he told Il Secolo XIX newspaper in Genoa.

"They were laughing. There was trust between them, great happiness. There is no doubt they were drinking, at least a whole decanter. The last drop was poured into the captain's glass.

"They left the table crossing the room single file, walking between the tables: first Schettino, then the woman and finally the third diner."

The claim that Captain Schettino had been drinking directly contradicts a statement by Pier Luigi Foschi, the chairman of Costa Cruises, that the captain was a non-drinker. All Costa officers, he said, were subject to random drug and alcohol tests.

Police were conducting urine tests on Captain Schettino yesterday, almost a week after the accident. He told the investigating magistrate that he had not drunk alcohol.

The Barcelona debacle, the bottom half of this post:
Clarence Mitchell: LIAR

Now back in Moldova, Ms Cemortan, who trained as a ballet dancer in Paris, also denied that she was the mystery woman seen dining with the captain. She added that she went on the bridge only after the ship ran aground.

"I was at dinner with friends, at 9.30pm. I climbed on to the deck and translated information provided by the officers for Russian passengers," she told the local Advarul newspaper. "The Russians were the first passengers evacuated."

She defended Captain Schettino as a hero for saving thousands of passengers. "I left the bridge at 11.50pm and he was there," she said.

"It was dark. Knowing the ship saved me. Trying to move to the exit, following the fluorescent lights, I could hear all sorts of objects falling. People were screaming. A man had a three-month-old baby in his arms and another had a three-year-old ... The ship was pitching more and more. When I reached the lifeboat, I thought we were saved. But a large piece of metal began to push the boat. Many people had jumped."

Ms Cemortan, who has a two-year-old child and has worked on cruise ships for five years, was reported to have got the ticket on the internet as a birthday present.

Costa Cruises said last night that it was not clear when the woman who was dining with the captain went on to the bridge. "I cannot either confirm or deny if the woman concerned was on the bridge at the time of the accident," Mr Mitchell said. The Australian

And for folks around the world who have never followed the McCann case with the same vigour as we in the UK, you can experience Clarence Mitchell in full spin mode in this illustrated post.
Clarence Mitchell "Operational Reasons" and Other Buffoonery

Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Learn more

2012-01-19T23:43:00.001Z

Wikipedia:SOPA initiative/Learn more

Results of the blackout, and looking ahead

The English Wikipedia joined thousands of other web sites in protesting SOPA and PIPA by blacking out its content for 24 hours. The purpose of the blackout was twofold: to raise public awareness, and to encourage people to share their views with their elected representatives. more

Christian Death Threats For Atheist Student

2012-01-19T13:18:00.005Z

How easily could I have made use of a previous header: 'Your religious values are not superior to the laws of the republic.' Only on that occasion it was addressing the extremes of Islam, as opposed to the extremes of American Christianity.

Aren't they lovely, these Christians? And before anybody starts with the, ''but that's not Christianity'' well it fucking well is. Just the same as, ''but that's not Islam.'' And that fucking well is too.

Why Is an Atheist High School Student Getting Vicious Death Threats?

Her state representative has called the student "evil" and she has been threatened with violence, rape and death. What gives?
By Greta Christina
January 18, 2012

If you take away just two things from the story about atheist high school student Jessica Ahlquist, and the court case she won last week to have a prayer banner taken out of her public school, let it be these:

The ruling in this case was entirely unsurprising. It is 100 percent in line with unambiguous legal precedent, established and re-established over many decades, exemplifying a basic principle of constitutional law.
As a result of this lawsuit, Jessica Ahlquist is now being bullied, ostracized and threatened with violence in her community. She has been called "evil" in public by her state representative, and is being targeted with multiple threats of violence, rape and death.

Which leads one to wonder: What the hell is going on here?

Let's get #1 out of the way first. This court decision -- that as a public school in the United States, Cranston High School West cannot promote religion, either any particular religion or the idea of religion in general -- is, in any legal sense, entirely non-controversial. In ruling after ruling, for decades now, this principle has been made eminently clear. There have, of course, been some genuinely controversial court cases recently about separation of church and state, which examined previously untested questions and established new legal precedent.

But Jessica Ahlquist's was not one of them. Not even in the slightest. This was a no-brainer. If the school district's lawyers didn't uncategorically advise the district that they didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell, and fervently plead with them to concede the case before trial, they should be disbarred. (A PDF of the full court ruling, including extensive citation of clear precedent, can be found on the Friendly Atheist blog.)

For anyone who doesn't understand this ruling or agree with it, let me take a moment to explain. First of all: No, the majority does not always rule. In a constitutional democracy, people with minority, dissenting, or unpopular opinions and identities have some basic rights, which the majority cannot take away. If the majority thought that everyone had to dye their hair brown, or that all witches should be burned at the stake, the majority would not rule. Redheads have the right not to dye their hair brown; witches have the right not to be burned at the stake. No matter how much in the minority they are.

And the right to not have your government impose a religious belief on you is one of these basic rights. The right to make your own private decisions about religion or the lack thereof, without your government enforcing or promoting a particular view on religion that may or may not be your own, is one of the most central rights that this country was founded on. In fact, it's the very first right established in the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." As U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux said in his ruling, "When focused on the Prayer Mural, the activities and agenda of the Cranston School Committee became excessively entangled with religion, exposing the Committee to a situation where a loud and passionate majority encouraged it to vote to override the constitutional rights of a minority."

Oh, and no, this case was not about "history" or "tradition." Many people opposed to this ruling are making a very disingenuous argument: saying that the prayer in question wasn't really a prayer, that the religious content wasn't really religious but was simply "history" and "tradition," and that it therefore shouldn't be a problem. Bull. When a public school has a banner in its auditorium beginning "Our Heavenly Father" and ending "Amen"... that's a prayer. The religious fervor with which the banner was defended attests to that. As Judge Lagueux pointed out in his ruling, "No amount of debate can make the School Prayer anything other than a prayer, and a Christian one at that." Furthermore: Go to page two.

Expansion of Indefinite Detention under NDAA Compounds Extradition Fears of WikiLeaks’ Assange

2012-01-18T21:09:00.007Z

I don't think it was too wild an assertion when I offered this the other day.

I wouldn't put it past the US to even snatch the man, and who in this country would say boo, if they did just that? We have witnessed very recently what kind of backbone this country displays when dealing with its masters. The Manning Assange Connection: We're Off!

Expansion of Indefinite Detention under NDAA Compounds Extradition Fears of WikiLeaks’ Assange

Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings was with WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange when the pretrial military hearing for accused Army whistleblower Private Bradley Manning was taking place in Fort Meade, Maryland, last month. Hastings says the military’s case against Manning, coupled with President Obama’s recent authorization of a measure expanding indefinite detention anywhere in the world in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), has added further urgency to Assange’s effort to avoid extradition from Britain. "Julian Assange’s fear is that he will be extradited to Sweden...and then there will be some kind of media campaign where the U.S. government or the Swedish government starts leaking things about 'Oh, Assange helped the Iranians' or 'Assange helped the Taliban with this information,'" Hastings notes. "And then they’ll say, 'Well, you know, we need to try him as a spy.' And though that case might be very, very difficult to prove, it’s the threat of it that, in my mind, is so damning." transcript

The Mail Online’s Spinning Moral Compass

2012-01-18T20:25:00.002Z

The MailOnline’s spinning moral compass

.....The Daily Mail has a special distaste for the Internet and the fact the entire spectrum of human depravity is available at the click of a button (providing you have entered the right key words into the search engine of course). The Internet – according to the gospel of the Daily Mail – corrupts us, keeps teenage boys locked in bedrooms with boxes of tissues, whilst teenage girls chat to pensioners in anonymous chat forums. Middle-aged people seek out suicide partners and meet in deserted industrial estates possessing nothing more than a desire to end it all with a stranger and a length of hosepipe. more Angry Mob

Costa Concordia: Stuff You Couldn't Make Up - ''I Tripped''

2012-01-18T17:28:00.001Z

Francesco Schettino, you're a star, ''I tripped and fell into a lifeboat.'' He reminds me of Larry Craig, he's not gay, he just trips and falls onto penises.

Costa Concordia captain claims he tripped and fell into a lifeboat

Francesco Schettino explains at hearing why he could not lead evacuation of stricken cruise liner but admits crashing ship into rocks
Tom Kington in Giglio
18 January 2012

The cruise liner captain accused of abandoning ship after he struck rocks off the Tuscan coast last Friday has reportedly claimed he was unable to lead the evacuation because he slipped and tripped into a lifeboat while helping passengers leave the stricken vessel.

During a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, captain Francesco Schettino said it was an accident that he left the Costa Concordia, according to La Repubblica.

"The passengers were pouring on to the decks, taking the lifeboats by assault," the newspaper quoted him as telling a judge during a hearing to determine whether he should be held in custody on charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship.

"I didn't even have a life jacket because I had given it to one of the passengers. I was trying to get people to get into the boats in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, since the ship was at a 60-70° angle, I tripped and I ended up in one of the boats. That's how I found myself in the lifeboat," said Schettino.

"Suspended there, I was unable to lower the boat into the sea, because the space was blocked by other boats in the water."

The captain did however admit responsibility for crashing the ship into rocks which tore a hole in the Costa Concordia, forcing him to ground the vessel.

"I made a mistake on the approach," he said.

"I was navigating by sight because I knew the depths well and I had done this manoeuvre three or four times. But this time I ordered the turn too late and I ended up in water that was too shallow. I don't know why it happened. I was a victim of my instincts."

Schettino confirmed he sailed close to the island of Giglio to salute a retired captain, Mario Palombo, and was on the phone to Palombo at the time.

Schettino said he was not afraid of a drugs test: "I don't do drugs and I had not drunk." By grounding the vessel close to the shore after it struck rock he believes he saved the lives of many passengers.

On Wednesday, a Dutch-owned salvage vessel arrived in Giglio port ready to go into action once divers resume their search for passengers on board. The brother of an Indian waiter who worked on the cruise ship and who was still missing arrived on Giglio on Wednesday to search for him. gruniad

Barbie Dolls Un-Islamic Hanging Women Islamic

2012-01-18T17:16:00.001Z

Updated below.

Not much point in saying anything; it's all been said before.

Iran: Morality Police Cracking Down On Barbie Dolls

* Morality police get tough on "un-Islamic" dolls

* But Barbies still on sale to discreet customers

* Iran to make models of downed U.S. drone

By Mitra Amiri

TEHRAN, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Iran's morality police are cracking down on the sale of Barbie dolls to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values, shopkeepers said on Monday.

As the West imposes the toughest ever sanctions on Iran and tensions rise over its nuclear programme, inside the country the Barbie ban is part of what the government calls a "soft war" against decadent cultural influences.

"About three weeks ago they (the morality police) came to our shop, asking us to remove all the Barbies," said a shopkeeper in a toy shop in northern Tehran.

Iran's religious rulers first declared Barbie, made by U.S. company Mattel Inc, un-Islamic in 1996, citing its "destructive cultural and social consequences". Despite the ban, the doll has until recently been openly on sale in Tehran shops.

The new order, issued around three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police.

A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters.

The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes.

"My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat," said Farnaz , a 38-year-old mother, adding that she could not find Barbie cartoon DVDs as she was told they were also banned from public sale.

Pointing to a doll covered in black long veil, a 40-year-old Tehran toy shop manager said: "We still sell Barbies but secretly and put these in the window to make the police think we are just selling these kinds of dolls."

Iran has fought a running battle to purge pervasive western culture from the country since its Islamic revolution overthrew a western-backed king in 1979, enforcing Islamic dress codes, banning Western music and foreign satellite television.

As another swipe at the West, Iranians will soon be able to buy toy versions of the U.S. spy drone that it captured in December, Iranian media reported.

Models of the bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel - which Iran's military displayed on TV after it was downed near the Afghan border - will be mass produced in a variety of colours, reports said. Huffpo with video, blocked in UK

Well if Barbie gives them a problem, I wouldn't know where to start with this fellow?

Better not tell the Japanese then.

I remember my youngest having a Cabbage Patch Kid, the very same as this one if I'm not mistaken. As with all loved dollies, it never left her side.

Slim Whitman's, China Doll, a double rendition, aptly in Chinese as well.

I used this Maureen O'Hara doll in a post to highlight the utterly tasteless and cynical age progression graphics employed by the directors of Madeleine McCann Inc.

And we know who they are don't we? The same directors responsible for the child's death, mummy and daddy.

The Criminal Conspiracy of the Guardian and Wikileaks

2012-01-17T16:47:00.000Z

This video reveals how the Guardian orchestrated the public dissemination of classified US government documents. Rather than act as a passive reporter of news, the Guardian has been an active player in the one of the biggest criminal conspiracies of all time.

An extended version of this video can be viewed here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvP_QGl9WKE&NR=1

Clarence Mitchell to Spin the Sinking of The Costa Concordia

2012-01-17T15:21:00.010Z

I can't wait to hear Clarence Mitchell spin this lot. Yes you heard right, Mitchell has got the job of spinning the sinking of the Costa Concordia.

It should be quite hilarious, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall in a certain house in Rothley, where the occupants can sit back and enjoy Mitchell in full cringe factor warp nine.

Every time Mitchell opens his gob, people are going to associate it with the McCanns.

A public relations masterpiece. Drive on!

Sounds familiar.

Clarence Mitchell, who is representing Costa Cruises, said: "Mr Foschi confirmed the captain had been approaching the island of Giglio to 'make a salute'.

"The company says this (incident) was caused by an attempt by the captain to show the ship to the port.

"But there's a criminal investigation going on and we're not going to say anything that's going to compromise that or the captain's case." The Scum

- - -

Burson-Marsteller MD Clarence Mitchell started working on the comms last night.

- - -

Port Authority to cruise ship captain: 'Get on board, damn it'
January 17th, 2012

Recordings between the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship and the Livorno Port Authority, which is part of the Coastal Guards, have given new insight into what happened on the ship when it hit rocks Friday night just off Italy's western coast.

A total of 23 people remain missing following the wreck, which led to 11 deaths, Italian officials said Tuesday. Capt. Francesco Schettino is under arrest and may face charges that include manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning a ship when passengers were still on board, according to an Italian prosecutor.

Questions abound for captain of doomed cruise ship

Below are several transcripts of recordings between authorities and the captain published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and translated by CNN's Hada Messia:

Livorno Port Authorities: "Concordia, we ask you if all is OK there."

Concordia: "All is well."

-----------------------

Port authority: "Concordia. We ask you if all is well there."

Concordia: "All is well. It is only a technical failure."

Port authority: "How many people are on board?"

Schettino: "Two-three hundred"

Port authority: "How come so few people? Are you on board?’

Schettino: "No, I’m not on board because the ship is keeling. We’ve abandoned it."

Port authority: "What? You’ve abandoned the ship?"

Schettino: "No. What abandon? I’m here."

-----------------------

Port authority: "You must return on board. Climb the ladder (rope ladder), return to the fore (stem) and coordinate the work."

Schettino does not reply

Port authority: "You must tell us how many people are on board, how many women, how many children. You have to coordinate the rescue operation. Commander, this is an order. Now I’m in charge, you have abandoned ship and now you are going to go to the stem and coordinate the work. There are already dead bodies."

Schettino: "How many?"

Port authority: "You should be the one telling me this…What do you want to do? Do you want to go home?...Now go back on the stem and tell me what to do.."
-----------------------

Port authority: "Listen, this is De Falco from Livorno. Am I speaking with the captain?"

Schettino: "Yes."

Port authority: "Tell me your name."

Schettino: "This is Captain Schettino, commandant."

Port authority: "Listen Schettino, there are people trapped on board. Now, you have to go with your lifeboat and go under the boat stem on the straight side, there is a ladder there."

Port authority: "Get on board on the ship and tell me, you tell me how many people there are."

Port authority: "Clear? I’m recording this conversation, Captain Schettino."

Schettino: "Well then commandant, I need to tell you something."

Port authority: "Speak loudly."

Schettino: "The ship now…I’m here in front of it..."

Port authority: "Captain, speak loudly."

Schettino: "Commandant, at this moment the ship is tilted."

Port authority: "I understand. Listen. There are people who are coming down the stem ladder. You must take that ladder in the opposite direction. Get on board the ship and you tell me how many people are on board, and what do they have. Clear? You tell me if there are children, women, people with special needs. And you tell me how many there are of each category..."

Port authority: "Is that clear?"

Port authority: "Look Schettino, you might have been saved from the sea, but I will make sure you go through a very rough time…I will make sure you go through a lot of trouble. Get on board, damn it."
-----------------------

Schettino: "Commandant, please…"

Port authority: "No...please. No, you get on board. Assure me that you are getting on board."

Schettino: (Hard to understand) "I’m here with the rescuers. I’m here. I’ve not gone anywhere. I’m here."

Port authority: "What are you doing captain?"

Schettino: "I’m here coordinating the rescue."

Port authority: (Speaks over captain): "What are you coordinating there? Go on board and coordinate from there the rescue operation. Are you refusing?"

Schettino: "No, no, I’m not refusing."

Port authority: "You are refusing to go on board? And why are you not going on board?"

Schettino: "I am going because now there is the other motorboat (Lancia) that has stopped now."

Port authority: "You go on board. It is an order. You cannot make any other evaluations. You have declared abandoning ship. Now I’m in charge. You get on board. Is it clear?"

Schettino: "Commandant..."

Port authority over captain: "Are you not listening to me.."

Schettino speaks over Port authority: "I’m going..."

Schettino: "Call me immediately when you get on board. Our rescue officer is there."

Schettino: "Where is your rescue officer?"

Port authority: "My rescue officer is at the stem…Go …(can hear captain saying OK)…There are already bodies, Schettino."

Schettino: "How many dead bodies are there?"

Port authority: "I don’t know. I know of one. I’ve heard of one. You are the one to tell me how many there are. Christ!"

Schettino: "Are you aware that it is dark here and we cannot see anything?"

Port authority: "So? Do you want to go home Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Climb the ladder and get on the stem."

Port authority: "...and tell me what can be done, how many people are there, what do they need. Now."

Schettino: "Commandant, we are with the second in command…"

Port authority: "Then both of you climb up. What is his name?"

Schettino: "Dimitris Christidis."

Port authority: "You are your guard. Go on board, now!"

Schettino: "Commandant… I want to go on board, it is just that the other lifeboat here…there are other rescue operators... it has stopped and it is stuck there... now I’ve called other rescue operators..."

Port authority: "It is one hour that you are telling me this. You go on board. On b.o.a.r.d (says the word slowly almost spelling it out). And you immediately tell me how many people there are"

Schettino: "OK."
Source and videos

The Costa Concordia, a plank with a block of flats on top! Otherwise known as ''top hamper.''

Taking The Piss With Tokyo Electric Power Company

2012-01-17T09:19:00.005Z

Jesus H! I've heard some blags in my time, but if this don't take the biscuit.

Corporate imagery at its best, what you see is what you get.

Fukushima's Owner Adds Insult to Injury - Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn't Theirs
by John LaForge
Monday 16 January 2012

In the amoral milieu of the corporate bottom line, you can't blame Tokyo Electric Power Co. for trying.

Tepco owns the six-reactor Fukushima complex that was wrecked by Japan's March 11 earthquake and smashed by the resulting tsunami. It faces more than $350 billion in compensation and clean-up costs, as well as likely prosecution for withholding crucial information that may have prevented some radiation exposures and for operating the giant station after being warned about the inadequacy of its protections against disasters.

So, when the company was hauled into Tokyo District Court October 31 by the Sunfield Golf Club, which was demanding decontamination of the golf course, Tepco lawyers tried something novel. They claimed the company isn't liable because it no longer "owned" the radioactive poisons that were spewed from its destroyed reactors.

"Radioactive materials that scattered and fell from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant belong to individual landowners there, not Tepco," the company said. This stunned the court, the plaintiffs and the press. An attorney for the golf club said, "We are flabbergasted...."

The court rejected Tepco's notion that its cancer-causing pollution is owned by the areas it contaminated. But you have to hand it to Tepco. For brash balderdash, there's hardly a match in the world.

Even Union Carbide, whose toxic gas in Bhopal, India, killed 15,000 people in 1984, hasn't tried that one. Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, is still fighting India's demand for $1.7 billion in compensation. Perhaps Dow could try Tepco's dodge: "The gas belongs to the breather now, since possession is nine-tenths of the law."

Meanwhile, babies in Japan may be in for a life of debilitation and disease because radioactive cesium-137 and cesium-134 was recently found in infant milk powder. A December 6 announcement by the Meiji Holdings Company, Inc. said it was recalling 400,000 cans of its "Meiji Step," powdered milk for babies older than nine months. The powder was packaged in April - at the height of Fukushima's largest radiation releases - distributed mostly in May and has an October 2012 expiration date.

The amount of cesium in one serving of the milk powder was about 8 percent of the total contamination allowed by the government. But no one knows how much formula individual babies may have consumed prior to the recall. It is well known that fetuses, infants, children and women are harmed by doses of radiation below officially allowed exposures. Most exposure standards have been established in view of radiation's projected effect on "Reference Man," a hypothetical 20- to 30-year-old white male, rather than women and children, the most vulnerable.

Even tiny amounts of internal radioactive contamination can damage DNA, cause cancer and weaken the immune system. Fukushima's meltdowns dispersed radioactive contamination found in vegetables, milk, seafood, water, grain, animal feed and beef. Green tea grown 250 miles from Fukushima was found contaminated. Rice harvested this fall from 154 farms in Fukushima Prefecture was found in November to be poisoned with cesium 25 percent above the allowable limit. Shipments of rice from those farms were banned, but not before many tons had been sold. Presumably, that radiation is now the property of each consumer under the inventive assertion of Tepco's corporate attorneys. truthout

Michael Gove MP: My Sycophancy Knows No Bounds

2012-01-16T16:50:00.005Z

I notice recently that a driblet of puss, in the shape Michael Gove MP, has slithered from his stinking liar, to join in odious sycophancy with royal shit eater, Robert Hardman, then going on to congeal with Dacre's Daily Mail, to form a homogeneous globule of fawning obeisance.

Three men in a boat, three men in a Mail boat, but thankfully, not a Royal Mail boat.

It was in December that I had this to say about the Mail and its, ''distinguished royal author and Mail writer Robert Hardman.''

The Daily Mail and The Queen's New Boat

I only went in search of a link to add to the post above this one, to epitomise just how far out of touch the Mail is, in this relatively austere twenty first century. Not to mention the mood of us plebeians concerning the one percent, and let's face it, there is no one represents the one percent more than hangers on extraordinaire, the ~~Saxe-Coburg-Gothas~~ Windsors.

Yet in spite of the economic and political climate, the Mail, with all the judgement of Icarus, and with all the sycophancy of Uriah Heap, are trying to tell us that unless Liz gets a new boat, we can never aspire to seeing the Great put back in Britain.

And talking of sycophants, fuck me! will you get a load of this geezer.

Why we need a 21st-century Britannia fit for a Queen!

.....If we can’t afford aircraft carriers, some will say, then what are we doing even considering a Royal Yacht? But then, let us think again. To start with, let us imagine this is not built with taxpayers’ money, but donations from business and the public. Then, let us envisage something that does not resemble an oligarch’s floating fun platform, something without gold taps, Jacuzzis and waterbeds.

In fact, let us think of something that is not a ‘yacht’ in the sense of a pleasure boat at all.

Think, instead, of a national flagship with a national purpose — diplomacy, trade promotion, education and scientific research. It would need accommodation fit for a head of state, of course. And it would need to encapsulate the best of Britain — and the Commonwealth — in every aspect of its design. blah blah fucking blah!

And now it appears, along with the same aforementioned judgement of Icarus, and equal sycophancy of Uriah Heap, the odious little gargoyle Michael Gove, previously content to poke his fingers into the royal turd in private, now shamelessly waves in public his shitty fingers while having this to say.

Let's give the Queen a yacht for the Diamond Jubilee: Gove call for a taxpayers' present to say thank you

Last year the Daily Mail launched a campaign for an £80million majestic new Royal Yacht to replace Britannia – but one which is funded by donations, rather than by the taxpayer.

Mr Gove said the gift would be a mark of respect and may even lift the country’s spirits.

The Education Secretary wrote in the letter: ‘I feel strongly more should be done to achieve a longer lasting legacy.

‘Events such as proms and the party at the palace organised for the Diamond Jubilee, and street parties, although excellent, are transient.

‘It would be appropriate to do something that will mark the significance of this occasion with fitting ceremony.

‘My suggestion would be a gift from the nation to Her Majesty; thinking about [Universities Minister] David Willetts’s excellent suggestion of a royal yacht, and something tangible to commemorate this momentous occasion. The Wail, pictures n'all.

But perhaps as a better tribute to this little dicked, arse licking excuse for a man, I shall leave it to my recently found spokesman, the inimitable Mark McGowan.

Michael Gove reportedly claimed £7,000 for furnishing a London property before 'flipping' his designated second home to a house in his constituency, a property for which he claimed around £13,000 to cover stamp duty. Around a third of the first £7,000 was spent at an interior design company owned by Gove's mother-in-law. Gove also claimed for a cot mattress, despite children's items being banned under the Commons rule. Gove said he would repay the claim for the cot mattress, but maintained that his other claims were "below the acceptable threshold costs for furniture" and that the property flipping was necessary "to effectively discharge my parliamentary duties". While he was moving between homes, he stayed at the Pennyhill Park Hotel and Spa, charging the taxpayer more than £500 per night's stay. Wiki

Obama Administration Comes Out Against SOPA, PIPA

2012-01-16T03:25:00.006Z

Why do I have trouble with Obama pledges? Why am I not filled with confidence?

Obama Administration Comes Out Against SOPA, PIPA

Carl Franzen
January 14, 2012

The Obama Administration on Saturday took a stance on two pieces of anti-online piracy legislation moving through Congress — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate —- saying it would not support the bills as currently written, handing the biggest victory yet to a growing chorus of critics of the bills.
Fittingly enough, the Administration’s response came by way of a blog post published in response to two online petitions. As the post states:

“While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet….

Even more promising for critics of the bills, the Administration came down firmly against one of the most vehemently opposed portions of the bills — the part that would give the government the power to force Internet Service Providers to stop loading overseas webpages accused of piracy. Under the original versions of SOPA and PIPA, ISPs would be required to change their Doman Name System settings to block sites accused of piracy, a measure that critics said would essentially break the Internet and make it more insecure.

The Administration statement basically agrees with the critics wholeheartedly on this one:

“We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

The two primary architects of the bills — Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) both decided late last week to remove the DNS-blocking provisions before even the Administration released its public statement.
Further, SOPA’s passage through the House seems to have been indefinitely stalled, as SOPA critic Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said on Saturday that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) promised not to bring the bill up to the full House for a vote until a consensus is reached, The Hill reported. TPM

Murdoch slams White House over SOPA in Twitter row
Accuses Google of buying political favor

Your God is My God: Sam Harris

2012-01-15T21:09:00.005Z

Brilliant stuff.

Your God is My God

What Mitt Romney Could Say to Win the Republican Nomination
January 15, 2012

Governor Mitt Romney has yet to persuade the religious conservatives in his party that he is fit to be President of the United States. However, he could probably appease the Republican base and secure his party’s nomination if he made the following remarks prior to the South Carolina Primary:

My fellow Republicans,

I would like to address your lingering concerns about my candidacy. Some of you have expressed doubts about my commitment to a variety of social causes—and some have even questioned my religious faith. Tonight, I will speak from the heart, about the values that unite us.

First, on the subject of gay rights, let me make my position perfectly clear: I am as sickened by homosexuality as any man or woman in this country. It is true that I wrote a letter in 1994 where I said that “we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern,” and for this I have been mocked and pilloried, especially by Evangelicals. But ask yourselves, what did I mean by “equality”? I meant that all men and women must be given an equal chance to live a righteous life.

Yes, I once reached out to the Log Cabin Republicans—the gays in our party. Many people don’t know that there are gay Republicans, but it is true. Anyway, in a letter to this strange group, I pledged to do more for gay rights than Senator Edward Kennedy ever would.

Well, Senator Kennedy is now deceased—so I don’t have to do much to best him and keep my promise. But, more to the point, ask yourselves, what did I mean by “rights”? I meant that every man and woman has a right to discover the love of Jesus Christ and win life eternal. What else could I have meant? Seriously. What could be more important than eternal life? Jesus thought we all had a right to it. And I agree with him. And I think we should amend our Constitution to safeguard this right for everyone by protecting the sanctity of marriage.

I don’t have to tell you what is at stake. If gays are allowed to marry, it will debase the institution for the rest of us and perhaps loosen its bonds. Liberals scoff at this. They wonder how my feelings for my wife Ann could be diminished by the knowledge that a gay couple somewhere just got married. What an odd question.

On abortion—some say I have changed my views. It is true that I once described myself as “pro-choice.” But again, ask yourselves, what did I mean? I meant that every woman should be free to make the right choice. What is the right choice? To have as many children as God bestows. I once visited the great nation of Nigeria and a met woman who was blessed to have had 24 children—fully two-thirds of which survived beyond the age of five. The power of God is beyond our understanding. And this woman’s faith was a sight to behold.

Finally, I would like to address the scandalous assertion, once leveled by the Texas Pastor, Robert Jeffress, that my church—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—is “a cult.” In fairness, he almost got that right—the LDS Church is a culture. A culture of faith and goodness and reverence for God Almighty. Scientology is a cult—this so-called religion was just made up out of whole cloth by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. But the teachings of my Church derive directly from the prophetic experience of its founder, Joseph Smith Jr., who by the aid of sacred seer stones, the Urim and Thummim, was able to decipher the final revelations of God which were written in reformed Egyptian upon a set golden plates revealed to him by the angel Moroni. Many of you are probably unfamiliar with this history—and some of you may even doubt its truth.

I am now speaking to the base of our party, to the 60 percent who believe that God created this fine universe, and humanity in its present form, at some point in the last 10,000 years. Let me make one thing absolutely clear to you: I believe what you believe. Your God is my God. I believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and the Son of God, crucified for our sins, and resurrected for our salvation. And I believe that He will return to earth to judge the living and the dead.

But my Church offers a further revelation: We believe that when Jesus Christ returns to earth, He will return, not to Jerusalem, or to Baghdad, but to this great nation—and His first stop will be Jackson County, Missouri. The LDS Church teaches that the Garden of Eden itself was in Missouri! Friends, it is a marvelous vision. Some Christians profess not to like this teaching. But I ask you, where would you rather the Garden of Eden be, in the great state of Missouri or in some hellhole in the Middle East?

In conclusion, I want to assure you all, lest there be any doubt, that I share your vision for this country and for the future of our world. Some say that we should focus on things like energy security, wealth inequality, epidemic disease, global climate change, nuclear proliferation, genocide, and other complex problems for which scientific knowledge, rational discussion, and secular politics are the best remedy. But you and I know that the problem we face is deeper and simpler and far more challenging. Since time immemorial humanity has been misled by Satan, the Father of Lies.

I trust we understand one another better now. And I hope you know how honored I will be to represent our party in the coming Presidential election.

God bless this great land, the United States of America. Sam Harris

Irish Trawler Tit Bonhomme C331 Lost Off Union Hall

2012-01-15T18:06:00.012Z

I have a connection to this vessel and to Union Hall. I went to France to tow this boat back to Union Hall, which was also my drinking hole.

I even wrote a bit of a story about the trip: Towing a Yoke.

Although it wouldn't be the same skipper aboard, he sold it on and went back to New Zealand as far as I am aware. But she was a big powerful lump of a boat, and she was nearly home, perhaps just a couple of miles from the pier at Union Hall. But blowing a strong South Easterly, the approaches to Glandore would have been quite nasty. Sad stuff, sad stuff indeed.

Tit Bonhomme under Irish registry.

At a guess this was taken somewhere near Glandore, about a mile going left would be Adam Island where the vessel foundered, about a mile to the right would be Union Hall pier.

Over-markings not mine.

Fears for five-man crew after fishing trawler hits rocks
15/01/2012

Fears are growing for five people missing after a trawler went down off the west Cork coast.

One survivor was been pulled from the sea close to Union Hall Harbour, where the 21-metre (69ft) Tit Bonhomme was thought to have struck rocks in the early hours of this morning.

The Irish-registered fishing vessel was coming into shore when it got into difficulties beside the Adam and Eve islands, just outside the harbour.

The crew made a distress call to the Coast Guard at around 6am, but it was cut off and all radio contact was lost.

It is understood the captain is Irish.

Coast Guard helicopters from Shannon and Waterford were scrambled to the scene, while lifeboats from Courtmacsherry and Baltimore have been launched.

The survivor found in the water at around 8am has been taken to Cork University Hospital, while five other crew members are still missing.

Strong winds and heavy seas which were hampering the search and rescue mission have calmed.

Vincent O'Donovan, of Courtmacsherry Lifeboat station, said the Tit Bonhomme had taken a battering in the rough waters.

"Conditions had been bad all last night and this morning," he said. "It was force 7 to 8, and it was a south-east wind, which causes difficulties off that coast."

The lifeboat launched shortly after 6am and spotted debris in the water close to the mouth of Union Hall harbour, believed to be wreckage from the trawler, around an hour and a half later.

Initial reports suggested two more survivors had made it to onshore rocks, but confusion remains, and the Coast Guard - which is leading the operation - said five people remain missing.

It is understood the man who was pulled from the sea was an Egyptian national.

Local reports suggest one of those missing was a young student from west Cork, who had joined the crew on his first fishing trip as he was interested in a career at sea.

Just last month, three fishermen were rescued from a life raft after their trawler sank at the same spot.

The Jeanette Roberta was sailing out from Union Hall pier when it went down close to Adam Island, the larger of the two islands at the narrow entrance to the harbour. Mirror

As we picked her up in Dieppe.

Out on the town, Dieppe.

Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima

2012-01-15T14:36:00.004Z

An excellent and unemotional look at the nuclear industry and it's associated lies, spin and propaganda surrounding the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Chernobyl to Fukushima.

It's a lengthy essay, but none the worse for being so, and is a worthy read. And I say that, not just because this blog gets a mention in dispatches. (ref 44 to this article) But nonetheless it's nice when a post turns up in a serious article.

Some interesting and familiar names crop up in article and for me some hitherto unknown facts, such as: “Westinghouse owned CBS for many years, and General Electric, NBC” Examples of the Walt Disney material, alluded to in the article, can be viewed at the first link, other topics mentioned in the article, but mainly propaganda, in the descending links.

Why Fallout Reminisce With Retro Radiation

Fukushima No Ill Health Effects - IAEA

Fukushima - IAEA You Couldn't Make It Up: But They Just Did

Fukushima: ''No Immediate Health Threat''

Fukushima Desolation Worst Since Nagasaki as Residents Flee Where I give special mention to Jim Al-Khalili

These are just a few of the articles, including lots of Arnie Gunderson, that can be found under the Japan tag.

Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima

Gayle Greene
It is one of the marvels of our time that the nuclear industry managed to resurrect itself from its ruins at the end of the last century, when it crumbled under its costs, inefficiencies, and mega-accidents. Chernobyl released hundreds of times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined, contaminating more than 40% of Europe and the entire Northern Hemisphere.¹ But along came the nuclear lobby to breathe new life into the industry, passing off as “clean” this energy source that polluted half the globe. The “fresh look at nuclear”—in the words of a New York Times makeover piece (May 13, 2006)²—paved the way to a “nuclear Renaissance” in the United States that Fukushima has by no means brought to a halt.

That mainstream media have been powerful advocates for nuclear power comes as no surprise. “The media are saturated with a skilled, intensive, and effective advocacy campaign by the nuclear industry, resulting in disinformation” and “wholly counterfactual accounts…widely believed by otherwise sensible people,” states the 2010-2011 World Nuclear Industry Status Report by Worldwatch Institute.³ What is less well understood is the nature of the “evidence” that gives the nuclear industry its mandate, Cold War science which, with its reassurances about low-dose radiation risk, is being used to quiet alarms about Fukushima and to stonewall new evidence that would call a halt to the industry.

Consider these damage control pieces from major media:

• The “miniscule quantities” of radiation in the radioactive plume spreading across the U.S. pose “no health hazard,” assures the Department of Energy (William Broad, “Radiation over U.S. is Harmless, Officials Say,” NYT, March 22, 2011).

• “The risk of cancer is quite low, lower than what the public might expect,” explains Evan Douple, head of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), which has studied the A-bomb survivors and found that “at very low doses, the risk was also very low” (Denise Grady, “Radiation is everywhere, but how to rate harm?” NYT, April 5, 2011).

• An NPR story a few days after the Daiichi reactors destabilized quotes this same Evan Douple saying that radiation levels around the plant “should be reassuring. At these levels so far I don’t think a study would be able to measure that there would be any health effects, even in the future.” (“Early radiation data from near plant ease health fears,” Richard Knox and Andrew Prince,” March 18, 2011) The NPR story, like Grady’s piece (above), stresses that the Radiation Effects Research Foundation has had six decades experience studying the health effects of radiation, so it ought to know.

• British journalist George Monbiot, environmentalist turned nuclear advocate, in a much publicized debate with Helen Caldicott on television and in the Guardian, refers to the RERF data as “scientific consensus,” citing, again, their reassurances that low dose radiation incurs low cancer risk.⁴

Everyone knows that radiation at high dose is harmful, but the Hiroshima studies reassure that risk diminishes as dose diminishes until it becomes negligible. This is a necessary belief if the nuclear industry is to exist, because reactors release radioactive emissions not only in accidents, but in their routine, day-to-day operations and in the waste they produce. If low-dose radiation is not negligible, workers in the industry are at risk, as are people who live in the vicinity of reactors or accidents—as is all life on this planet . The waste produced by reactors does not “dilute and disperse” and disappear, as industry advocates would have us believe, but is blown by the winds, carried by the tides, seeps into earth and groundwater, and makes its way into the food chain and into us, adding to the sum total of cancers and birth defects throughout the world. Its legacy is for longer than civilization has existed; plutonium, with its half life of 24,000 years, is, in human terms, forever.

What is this Radiation Effects Research Foundation, and on what “science” does it base its reassuring claims?

*******

The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), as it was originally called, began its studies of the survivors five years after the bombings. (It was renamed the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in the mid seventies, to get the “atomic bomb” out, at around the same time the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was renamed the Department of Energy (DOE). Japan, which has the distinction of being twice nuked, first as our wartime enemy then in 2011 as our ally and the recipient of our GE reactors, has also been the population most closely studied for radiation-related effects, for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings created a large, ready-made population of radiation-exposed humans. “Ah, but the Americans—they are wonderful,” exclaimed Japan’s radiation expert Tsuzuki Masao, who lamented that he’d had only rabbits to work on: “It has remained for them to conduct the human experiment!”⁵

The ABCC studied but did not treat radiation effects, and many survivors were reluctant to identify themselves as survivors, having no wish to bare their health problems to US investigators and become mired in bureaucracy and social stigma. But sufficient numbers did voluntarily come forth to make this the largest—and longest—study of radiation-related health effects ever. No medical study has had such resources lavished on it, teams of scientists, state of the art equipment: this was Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) funding. Since it is assumed in epidemiology that the larger the sample, the greater the statistical accuracy, there has been a tendency to accept these data as the gold standard of radiation risk. The Japanese physicians and scientists who’d been on the scene told horrific stories of people who’d seemed unharmed, but then began bleeding from ears, nose, and throat, hair falling out by the handful, bluish spots appearing on the skin, muscles contracting, leaving limbs and hands deformed. When they tried to publish their observations, they were ordered to hand over their reports to US authorities. Throughout the occupation years (1945-52) Japanese medical journals were heavily censored on nuclear matters. In late 1945, US Army surgeons issued a statement that all people expected to die from the radiation effects of the bomb had already died and no further physiological effects due to radiation were expected.⁶ When Tokyo radio announced that even people who entered the cities after the bombings were dying of mysterious causes and decried the weapons as “illegal” and “inhumane,” American officials dismissed these allegations as Japanese propaganda.⁷

The issue of radiation poisoning was particularly sensitive, since it carried a taint of banned weaponry, like poison gas. The A-bomb was not “an inhumane weapon,” declared General Leslie Groves, who had headed the Manhattan project.⁸ The first western scientists allowed in to the devastated cities were under military escort, ordered in by Groves. The first western journalists allowed in were similarly under military escort. Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, who managed to get in to Hiroshima on his own, got a story out to a British paper, describing people who were dying “mysteriously and horribly” from “an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague… dying at the rate of 100 a day,” General MacArthur ordered him out of Japan; his camera, with film shot in Hiroshima, mysteriously disappeared.⁹

“No Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin,” proclaimed a New York Times headline, Sept 13, 1945. “Survey Rules out Nagasaki Dangers,” stated another headline: “Radioactivity after atomic bomb is only 1000^th of that from luminous dial watch,” Oct 7, 1945.¹⁰ There were powerful political incentives to downplay radiation risk. As State Department Attorney William H. Taft asserted, the “mistaken impression” that low-level radiation is hazardous has the “potential to be seriously damaging to every aspect of the Department of Defense’s nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion programs…it could impact the civilian nuclear industry… and it could raise questions regarding the use of radioactive substances in medical diagnosis and treatment.”¹¹ A pamphlet issued by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1953 “insisted that low-level exposure to radiation ‘can be continued indefinitely without any detectable bodily change.’”¹² The AEC was paying the salaries of the ABCC scientists and monitoring them “closely—some felt too closely,” writes Susan Lindee in Suffering Made Real, which documents the political pressures that shaped radiation science.¹³ (Other good sources on the making of this science are Sue Rabbit Roff’s Hotspots, Monica Braw’s The Atomic Bomb Suppressed, and Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell’s, Hiroshima in America). The New York Times “joined the government in suppressing information on the radiation sickness of survivors” and consistently downplayed or omitted radioactivity from its reportage, as Beverly Ann Deepe Keever demonstrates in The New York Times and the Bomb.¹⁴ Keever, a veteran journalist herself, writes that “from the dawn of the atomic-bomb age,…the Times almost single-handedly shaped the news of this epoch and helped birth the acceptance of the most destructive force ever created,” aiding the “Cold War cover-up” in minimizing and denying the health and environmental consequences of the a-bomb and its testing.

The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission scientists calculated that by 1950, when the commission began its investigations, the death rate from all causes except cancer had returned to “normal” and the cancer deaths were too few to cause alarm.¹⁵
More Asia Pacific Journal

Costa Concordia: Quote Of The Week

2012-01-15T03:25:00.011Z

Schettino's lawyer, Bruno Leporatti told the agency: "I'd like to say that several hundred people owed their life to the expertise that the commander of the Costa Concordia showed during the emergency."

The captain was seen fleeing ship with the money. Wouldn’t allow staff to abandon ship because it would harm his career. Crew had to arrange the evacuation themselves, hence confusion.

Dedicated Costa Concordia blog.

BBC page multi-videos.

Like all vessels of this nature, it's not a ship; it's a plank with a block of flats on top. It frightens me just looking at it.

Richard Dawkins Celebrates a Victory Over Creationists

2012-01-15T03:20:00.002Z

Richard Dawkins celebrates a victory over creationists

Free schools that teach 'intelligent design' as science will lose funding
Jamie Doward
15 January 2012

Leading scientists and naturalists, including Professor Richard Dawkins and Sir David Attenborough, are claiming a victory over the creationist movement after the government ratified measures that will bar anti-evolution groups from teaching creationism in science classes.
The Department for Education has revised its model funding agreement, allowing the education secretary to withdraw cash from schools that fail to meet strict criteria relating to what they teach. Under the new agreement, funding will be withdrawn for any free school that teaches what it claims are "evidence-based views or theories" that run "contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations".
The British Humanist Association (BHA), which has led a campaign against creationism – the movement that denies Darwinian evolution and claims that the Earth and all its life was created by God – described the move as "highly significant" and predicted that it would have implications for other faith groups looking to run schools.
Dawkins, who was one of the leading lights in the campaign, welcomed confirmation that creationists would not receive funding to run free schools if they sought to portray their views as science. "I welcome all moves to ensure that creationism is not taught as fact in schools," he said. "Government rules on this are extremely welcome, but they need to be properly enforced."
Free schools, which are state-funded and run by local people or organisations, do not need to follow the national curriculum. Scientific groups have expressed concerns that their spread will see a reduction in the teaching of evolution in the classroom.
Several creationist groups have expressed an interest in opening schools in towns and cities across England, including Bedford, Barnsley, Sheffield and Nottingham. Critics say they seek to promote creationism, or the doctrine of "intelligent design", as a scientific theory rather than as a myth or metaphor.
One creationist organisation, Truth in Science, which encourages teachers to incorporate intelligent design into their science teaching, has sent free resources to all secondary schools and sixth-form colleges.
A BHA campaign, called "Teach evolution, not creationism", saw 30 leading scientists and educators call on the government to introduce statutory guidance against the teaching of creationism. The group said if the government would not support the call, an explicit amendment to the wording of the funding agreement could have the same effect. Last week the Department for Education confirmed it had amended the agreement, although a spokesman denied it was the result of pressure from scientists. He said the revision made good on a pledge regarding the teaching of creationism given when the education secretary, Michael Gove, was in opposition. "We will not accept any academy or free school proposal which plans to teach creationism in the science curriculum or as an alternative to accepted scientific theories," the spokesman said, adding that "all free school proposals will be subject to due diligence checks by the department's specialist team".
The revised funding agreement has been seized upon by anti-creationists who are pressing for wider concessions from the government.
"It is clear that some faith schools are ignoring the regulations and are continuing to teach myth as though it were science," Dawkins said. "Evolution is fact, supported by evidence from a host of scientific disciplines, and we do a great disservice to our young people if we fail to teach it properly. "
A spokeswoman for the BHA said: "The government's new wording is quite wide and in practice could prevent those who promote extreme religious or particular spiritual or pseudoscientific approaches from including them as part of the school curriculum as science or as evidence-based." gruniad

Fred Reed: Advice to a Generic Candidate

2012-01-14T12:04:00.003Z

Advice to a Generic Candidate

Fred to Change Course of History
January 8, 2012

Last night on the lobotomy box I encountered yet another candidate for the presidency, a Mr. Santorum, threatening to make war on Iran. I can't decide whether the idea is more frightening than fascinating, or fascinating than frightening. I do suggest that the combined candidates do not have the military competence of a stuffed bear. Given that the principal business of the United States is war and preparation for it, do we want a martial analphabetic in charge? One does not let children play with chain saws. (From all of this I exempt Ron Paul, who appears to be sane.)

To save the republic, if any, from another routine military disaster, I offer the following thoughts.

To begin, I will ask the following questions of the candidates, and for that matter of Mr. Obama, and of the Secretary of Defense, a generic bureaucrat.

Can you explain: Convergence zones, base bleed, Kursk, range-gate pull-off, artillery at Dien Bien Phu, IR cross-over, Tet and queen sacrifice, Brahmos 2, CIWIS, supercruise, side-lobe penetration, seven-eighty-twice gear, super-cavitating torpedoes, phased arrays, pulse Doppler, the width of Hormuz versus the range of Iranian cruise missiles, DU, discarding sabot, frequency agility, Chobham armor, and pseudo-random PRF?

These, gentlemen, are the small talk of serious students of the military. Here I mean men like David Isby, author of such books as Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army for Jane's, which you likely have never heard of, or William S. Lind, probably the best military mind (though, or because, not a soldier), that I have encountered. If you are unfamiliar with them, and with the things listed above, you are unfamiliar with the military. Yet you campaign for possession of the trigger.

Perhaps a little humility, perish the thought, and a little self-examination might be in order.

Peering into your own depths, you will probably find that the humility does not come easily. In my decades of covering the armed services, I noticed among men a belief in their innate jock-strap competency regarding wars. Men who would readily admit ignorance of petroleum geology, ophthalmology, or ancient Sumerian grammar nonetheless believe that they grasp matters military. Usually they do not. In particular, they have an utterly unexamined belief in America's military invincibility.

Candidates should be wary of this. Instead, most of you propose ultimata to Iran as one would threaten a three-year-old with a spanking. You clearly think that the American flotilla would quickly thrash the impudent Persians with no unexpected consequences. Do as we say, or the fleet will teach you a jolly good lesson.

So thought Philip II in 1588.

A little reading wouldn't hurt. I would strongly recommend A Legacy of Ashes, by Tim Weiner, on the CIA, and We Meant Well, by Peter van Vuren, a former State Department guy on how Iraq actually works. You will be most surprised. I accept in advance your gratitude for these suggestions.

Once a candidate from the relative bushes gets elected, as may happen, he becomes a captive of Washington in about ten minutes. This too you should bear in mind. You will be briefed by the CIA, which will spin things so that you believe what it wants you to believe. The spooks will radiate lethal charm and speak with the assurance of a higher order of being. This will give you a sense of admission to a special tree house where everyone has a Captain Marvel secret decoder ring (two box tops and a dollar fifty). And, in Washington, you will have access to no other view. Gotcha.

You will be briefed by the Pentagon by generals with firm handshakes, steely gaze, obvious intelligence, and a convincing understanding of the world as consisting chiefly of threats. They are very good at this. You do not become a general without expertise with Power Point and the slick gab of a confidence man. Generals too are politicians. They will carry you along like a wood chip in a spring flood. And you will pay the price.

A powerful skepticism is here well advised. The belief that military men know about war is beguiling. It is their trade, is it not? Surely they must be authorities. Dentists know about dentistry. Soldiers must know about war. But how often when you go to a dentist do you return without teeth?

In fact career officers live in a mental world not well adapted to winning today's wars. You need to understand this. Theirs is a world of aggression seeking an outlet, of institutionally inculcated confidence unrelated to external reality, of suppression of dissent. Fatal bad judgement is common, and recently almost the rule. If you think this implausible, consider:

When the Japanese attacked Pearl, their military thought it would win, Yamamoto excepted. When the Wehrmacht went into Russia, it thought it would win. So did Napoleon. When the Germans attacked in 1914, they thought they would win, the Schlieffen Plan being infallible. When the Confederates shelled Sukmter, they thought they could win. When the French took on the Viet Minh, they thought they would win. When the Americans went into Viet Nam, they thought they would win. When they went into Iraq, Somalia, Beirut, Afghanistan....

And now you, our newly elected, fresh-caught president, contemplate a shooting war with Iran. Those who favor this idea will assure you that it will be short and sweet. Shock and Awe. Duck soup. A cakewalk. The Iranians will just take it, perhaps put up some slight and hapless resistance, and roll quickly over. Our airplanes, after all, say varooom and pow-pow-pow and boom.

Good luck. More

On attaining the Presidency; Bill Hicks sixty seconds.

Off topic, but I do love these few minutes of Bill Hicks taking the piss out of us Brits.