On This Day January 15th

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Mistaken identity: cops shoot woman, sparks Brixton riots.
Stalinist purge in East Germany.
Nixon ceasefire.
Tony Benn. Princess Di. Mark Scrathcer found in desert, should have done us all a favour and left the fucker there. more







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On This Day January 14th

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UK free of foot and mouth.
Lesley Whittle kidnapped.
Matt Busby retires.
Duchess of Kent joins the buggery club.
Mistaken identity: cops shoot someone in the head, no not him another one.


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On This Day January 13th

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Ivan turns off Lithuanian TV, thirteen dead.
Riots in Calcutta.
Earthquakes in Salvador.
Allied bombs in Iraq.
Rigor mortis in the good Doctor Shipman and other.


What did I just say about cartoons? I take it all back.
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1911 Census Comes Online

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At £3 a pop, but it should make for an interesting excursion.


Things have come a long way since then, not least the cartoons.

Almost the entire 1911 census goes online for public access on Tuesday. Rob Liddle looks at what we can hope to find out from it and how organisers hope to avoid a repeat of the deluge that shut the 1901 census website last time.

The answers to thousands of questions lurk within the two kilometres of shelving space taken up by the 1911 census documents at the National Archives in London.

Among the eight million returns are family secrets that have lain undiscovered for generations and pages inhabited by the previously unknown relatives of those alive today.

These families - as yet untouched by the horrors of a new kind of war - seem to exist in a different world from ours....more

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Another Nail In The Coffin of UK Civil Liberties

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Every story I have ever read on building a national data base of the soon to be next generation always cites enabling students to be able to buy their lunch.

I won't say does this government think we're fucking stupid because the answer is patently obvious, as patently obvious as the contempt that it holds for its citizens.

Given the UKs four million plus CCTV cameras, (includes very short clip) one for every fourteen citizens, are expected to double by 2018 one doesn't have to consult the entrails of a goat to predict where all this is heading.

When each of those eight million cameras has a facial features recognition camera alongside it then we will have the totalitarianism that this government is so blatantly trying to achieve. I say alongside but of course technologically speaking the cameras will be integral by then. (If not already.)

And having achieved this goal kiddywinks, you're fucked, you're fucked and you're living in a goldfish bowl.

I don't know why the government doesn't just have done with it and enforceably chip every sprog at birth.

And I will hazard a guess to what comes next; the surreptitious taking of DNA to expand the world's largest DNA database.

Democracy, don't you just love it?

Update: Well fancy that, whodathunkit?

The Government has admitted it wants to store patients’ DNA samples on the new NHS computer system.

Face Scanners To Be Installed In Schools

The system, which is being trialled in a UK school next week, can also be used to allow children to take out library books and buy their lunch.

It is among a host of high-tech security measures introduced in schools in a bid to keep pupils safe.

Some schools have brought in fingerprint and eye scanners, while others are planning to put radio transponder chips in pupils' uniforms to keep tabs on them.

But there are fears the technology breaches children's civil liberties.

One school installed an iris scanner in 2003 but removed it a year later after it failed to recognise some students and led to lengthy queues.

Aurora, a Northampton-based biometric firm, will exhibit its new "face recognition software" at an education technology conference in London next week.

The company has developed a prototype aimed at schools for "ultra fast student registration, easy cashless catering and secure access control".

Each system - costing around £1,000 - can verify a face in 1.5 seconds and claims to be more accurate at identifying people than a human.

Patrick Usher, the company's technical director, told the Times Educational Supplement that adapting the technology for children was a challenge as their faces changed quicker than adults.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the system would be welcomed if it cut bureaucracy - but he said: "You always seem to get queues behind security devices".

Guidance issued in 2007 gives headteachers permission to collect pupils' biometric data to use when taking the register, paying for lunch or using the library.

But civil liberties campaigners are concerned that the data could be given to police or the Government without parents' knowledge - or stolen by identity thieves.

"These systems store fingerprint templates, which are used by the police. It leaves children open to identity fraud later on," said the pressure group Leave Them Kids Alone. Source Telegraph

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On This Day January 12th

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US Congress votes for Iraq One.
Agatha Christie gone.
Maurice Gibb gone.
Witchcraft sighted in abuse case.
Sven Erickson.
Rhodesia.
MP bombed and more.


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On This Day January 11th

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Huge loss of life in Peru quake.
Hundred slaughtered in Algeria; the religion of peace.
Open University, first degrees awarded.
Seven feared drowned as Irish Sea scalloper Solway Harvester lost and more.


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Wot U Say Harry?

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Popcorn: Snow Cake. BBC i Player

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I don't generally do movies on the blog but I watched Snow cake on the box last night, superbly cast with more than credible performances from Alan Rickman and Carrie-Anne Moss but Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of the autistic Linda Freeman was scintillating.

Drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman, Linda, and a man who is traumatised after a fatal car accident. Ex-convict Alex Hughes picks up a hitch-hiker called Vivienne while driving to Winnipeg to see an old friend. She is killed when Hughes's car crashes, and he decides to seek out her mother.

Alex Hughes - Alan Rickman

Linda Freeman - Sigourney Weaver

Maggie - Carrie-Ann Moss

Probably only accessible within the UK but if you do manage to hook up to it from outside the country you might let me know in the comments.
Available streaming for six more days or download and keep for thirty.

BBC i Player Snow Cake
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On This Day January 10th

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Gulf One.
Comet crashes to earth, the plane not the visitor.
Eight dead in London gas blast.
Everything tickity boo declares Callaghan.
Concerns over road safety of Sinclair C5.
The manufacture of which just goes to prove, a half ounce of common sense beats a pound of brains any day of the week. and other and you can read all about the C5 here, if you must.




Should pull a few with that!
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Can We Please Stop The Outrage About Madeleine McCann

The following was part of the story below, which I have now removed from there and expanded here.

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And on a different note, rather than make a dedicated post to this bullshit of a fuss that's going on with this, how I hate to utter the term, Young Tory I say this:

Whatever the bloke did it's absolutely nothing compared to the disgraceful behavior of the parents.
They or those about them have dropped the kid in a hole somewhere, turned her death into a business, opened an obscenity of an online shop, defrauded thousands out of millions and took the piss, and still are, out of millions of gullible fools.

And everybody is up in arms about this lad! will you stop, will you wake up, and will you smell the goddamned coffee!

This grotesque grubby little pair think they've got the job sorted, well I have a message or a little prediction if you will for the Doctors McCann.

Don't be worrying yourself about Tony Bennett, don't be worrying yourself about Goncalo Amaral, don't be worried about standing before twelve of your peers because you will never see the inside of a courtroom.

There is enough known about this case, and it's all in the public domain, as equally there is enough known about your ever changing stories and lies that only the stupidest and most gullible of people would consider that you were not involved in the death of your daughter and the subsequent disposal of her remains.

And here's the rub, should the truth look anywhere near like coming out, how many rich and powerful gullible fools, or probably more specifically, political gullible fools, can afford to be associated with you two creatures and with the truth?

And one last little observation; little wonder we here nothing from the rest of your holiday chums even though the strain of living with what they know must be hardly bearable, they are perhaps wiser than they appear.

Or more terrified.

Doctors McCann, j'accuse.




Update: It appears I'm not the only one to take exception at this hullabaloo.

Watch Out For Forgeries.
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Remember Clarence Mitchell? How Could I Forget?

Remember Clarence Mitchell?

The former BBC journalist and spokesman for the parents of Madeleine McCann has developed a nice little niche as a spin doctor of misery.

First he took on Fiona MacKeown, the mother of the teenager Scarlet Kelling, who was murdered in Goa. Then he started representing the parents of murdered London teenager Jimmy Mizen. And today we’ve discovered that Mr Mitchell is also speaking for the wife of Jeremy Hoyland the British jet skier who went missing off the coast of Bali last October.

Mr Mitchell is not charging for his services. But his presence can hardly be reassuring – the PR equivalent of an angel of death. source

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My apologies to Fred Astaire.
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On This Day January 9th

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Plane crashes on motorway.
Mitterand gone.
Train stops passenger doesn't
French Algeria.
Vietnam Kmer Rouge.
Charles, Vive le Quebec Libre , de Gaulle elected. more


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Stroll On!

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Stroll right fucking on! the batshit crazies are about.

Update: More batshit crazies.

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Is Richard Dawkins Bus Campaign Getting Out Of Hand?

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He's such a dear isn't he, always polite, never aloof and always the diplomat, a thoroughly likable bloke all in all, I would think even the Jezoids would have trouble taking exception.

Some of you will be aware of the bus ads that Richard Dawkins endorses and for those that are not the bottom line is, life is for living, so fuck the miserable theocrats and their miserable fucking ways, get partying, though I do have to admit he does tend to put it rather more eloquently than I.

Here then is a report from the Guardian and an accompanying two minute film featuring the creator of the campaign Ariane Sherine and not least the good professor being his usual pleasant self although he does manage a little barbed one liner at the end.

Have a take on Polly Toynbee the Guardian columnist, I couldn't help but wonder how long she would have been in employment were she reporting for some Yankee news organisation.

Atheist bus campaign spreads the word of no God nationwide

Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.

The principal slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500. more

Oh least I forget, the header, brought about when I happened on this yoke the other day.




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The Spanish Are Revolting, Well The Catalan Atheists Are

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Enough! they cry.

Eee by gum Richard you've certainly set the cat among the pigeons, you and that lass both, but I'll come to you in a moment.

Biterness in Barcelona

The posting of atheist on Barcelona's buses has been branded "an attack on all religions".

Next week, Barcelona will become the first city in predominantly Catholic to copy the controversial UK campaign when its buses use a direct translation of the slogan adopted in Britain by the scientist Richard Dawkins and other prominent atheists.

"Probablemente Dios no existe. Deja de preocuparte y goza de la vida," it reads. "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life."

Madrid, Valencia and other cities are being targeted to run similar campaigns.

Campaigners say that with 20% of Spaniards professing they do not believe in God, it is time becomes a visible phenomenon. more

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Nice Company Mister Blair

Yes, you might well look embarrassed.

There's nothing much new in this Al Jezera report on the Medal of Freedom being awarded to these two mongrels below, but it did remind me of who else has been the proud recipient of this gong for their role in this genocidal jolly.







What! no Scooter, no Judith?
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Have You Ever...

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Google imaged "patriotism"



Patriotism has it's own label on this blog.
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On This Day January 7th

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Things hot up in the Cod War.
Tower of Pisa closed to Joe public.
Kray twins nicked.
Jonathon, I'm such a lying Tory cunt, Aitken released from jail. and more.

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Bike Lane Terrorists and Other Threats To Society

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I came across this while I was putting the previous post together. It won't come as a surprise to anyone, just more of the same old.

Surveillance Of Groups More Widespread Than Originally Believed

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored -- and labeled as terrorists -- activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a "security threat" because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible "crimes" in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: "civil rights."

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two men on death row.

The operation has been called a "waste of resources" by the current police superintendent and "undemocratic" by the governor.

Police have acknowledged that the monitoring, which took place during the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), spiraled out of control, with an undercover trooper spending 14 months infiltrating peaceful protest groups. Troopers have said they inappropriately labeled 53 individuals as terrorists in their database, information that was shared with federal authorities. But the new documents reveal a far more expansive set of police targets and indicate that police did not close some files until late 2007.

The surveillance ended with no arrests and no evidence of violent sedition. Instead, troopers are preparing to purge files and say they are expecting lawsuits. more blacklistednews

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Murdered

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This is why guns shouldn't be given to people of limited intellectual capacity who possess authoritarian attitudes, should they Mister de Menezes, oh I forget he can't answer, some cops blew his head off, seven times. If you follow this link be sure to read the last report.

A BART police officer struggling to handcuff a 22-year-old man, stood up over the facedown Hayward resident and fired a single shot into his back while a handful of officers watched, a video taken by a train passenger apparently shows.

The attorney for the family of Oscar Grant III, fatally shot by an unidentified BART officer early New Year’s Day, said Sunday he plans to file a $25 million lawsuit against the department and asked prosecutors to consider filing murder charges against the officer.

The shooting occurred shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday after five officers responded to the Fruitvale station to reports of a fight on a train, officials said, though they have not confirmed whether Grant
was involved in the fight.

The new video, obtained by television station KTVU, shows two officers restraining a struggling suspect. While the man is lying face down on the ground, one officer appears to be seen pulling out a gun and firing a single shot into his back.

Civil rights attorney John Burris, known for his work in several high-profile cases involving police abuse and corruption, said at a Sunday news conference that the shooting was “the most unconscionable shooting” he has ever seen. He said that the Alameda County district attorney should consider filing charges of second degree murder or manslaughter against the officer.

source Blacklistednews

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An Interview With Captain Paul Watson

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And I saw something else in that eye – it was pity and not for himself but for us – that we could kill so thoughtlessly and so mercilessly and I realized that the reason the Soviets were killing Sperm whales was for spermaceti oil used for lubricating machinery and one of the uses was in the construction on inter-continental ballistic missiles for the purpose of exterminating mass numbers of human beings and that is when it struck me that we, the human species are insane. So from that day on I have chosen to serve whalekind and the species in the sea – they are our clients – not people.

As a species of beings that reflexively and unequivocally identifies itself as “superior,” we human animals have taken self-deception to a level of inimitable brilliance. And we Americans who have self-servingly cast ourselves in the role of moral beacon to the world (while engaging in industrialized wholesale violence against humans, animals, and the Earth on a breath-taking scale) are the living embodiments of the word hypocrisy.

Need proof of the systemic rot eroding the very cores of our souls? Look no further than the meteoric rise of the grossly under-qualified, hyper-ambitious, morally retarded narcissist who still has a realistic chance to be one heart-beat away from ostensibly ruling the most powerful nation in the world. Palinesque tendencies to “drill, drill, drill,” exploit obscene technological advantages to “cull predatory species,” employ our “justice” system to accelerate the extinction of yet another species (to advance the interests of Big Oil no less), and perpetuate the murderous “sport” of hunting with the intellectually dishonest and morally bankrupt justifications of “necessity” and “cultural tradition” serve to shred our ridiculously thin façade of humanity and reveal the truly barbarous nature of Western “civilization” and the “American Way of Life.”

While the speciesism and capitalist obsessions with property, growth, and profit that contaminate nearly all aspects of our cultural and social modes of being are not unique to Western industrialized nations or the US, we wield the most power in the world, and hence inflict the most pain on other species. And while our economic and technological advantages endow us with the potential to shift the paradigm and significantly reduce the unnecessary suffering our non-human animal brethren experience as a result of reification, greed, and exploitation, we choose to fight tooth and nail to preserve our “right” to dominate, torture, and slaughter for profit and pleasure, while portraying those who dare to take direct action against our murderous system as ‘eco-terrorists.’

Frightening and dangerous as it may be, let’s get inside the head of a leading member of the radical environmental defense and animal liberation movements, which the FBI continues to target as America’s “number one domestic terror threat.”

Here is the back and forth between Captain Paul Watson (animal defender extraordinaire, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and courageous practitioner of extensional self defense on behalf of marine animals) and Jason Miller (associate editor of Cyrano’s Journal Online and founding editor of Thomas Paine’s Corner): more

Plenty more in the sidebar.
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On This Day January 6th

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Nancy Kerrigan gets a handicap, whodunit?
Sex Pistols. Flu outbreak. Breast implants.
British Navy arrests Captain Kirk, shureley shome mishtake!



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War Criminal To Honour War Criminal

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No comment, I dare not.

At a press briefing earlier White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "The president is honouring these leaders for their work to improve the lives of their citizens and for their efforts to promote democracy, human rights and peace abroad. "

She added: "Their efforts to bring hope and freedom to people around the globe have made their nations, America and the world community a safer and more secure world. "

Give me fucking strength!

Blair to get US Medal of Freedom

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will receive the highest civilian award in the US - the Presidential Medal of Freedom - next week.

In his last week in office, President Bush will award the medal to Mr Blair, former Australian PM John Howard and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

All three leaders had been "staunch allies" of the US, particularly against terrorism, said the White House.more

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Quote Of The Day

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And it doesn't really matter who proffered this gem, does it?

For me it’s just a hobby…not a religious belief….I think of astrology ..the study of planets ...as a science….but I have not mastered it yet...

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In England's Green and Pleasant Land.

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The government will not rest until they have spied on every last fucker in it.

Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear; O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

Police set to step up hacking of home PCs

THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gleaned. more Times Online


h/t Joana Morais
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Did Air Burst Asteroid Do For North American Mammoths?

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Sounds reasonable.

The controversial idea that space impacts may have wiped out woolly mammoths and early human settlers in North America has received new impetus.

Nano-diamonds and other exotic impact materials have been unearthed in thin sediments, Science magazine reports.

The age of these materials coincides with the start of a millennium-long climate cooling event known as the Younger Dryas - some 13,000 years ago.

Many large animals vanish from the archaeological record at this time.

It is also the period in Earth history that sees the demise of Clovis culture - the prehistoric civilisation that many regard as the first human occupation of North America.

Taken together, it all makes for a compelling story, claims the team behind the latest research.more

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America Still Number One

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This report is from the BBC and doesn't touch on what I can in all honesty say is the most disgusting thing I have read in years, the California prison guards union contributing two million dollars towards advertising to oppose Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act. A proposition that would try and address the savage and inhuman policies of Californian "justice."

To put it bluntly, the prison guards' union is built on the backs of human beings in cages. more huffpo

What shitty people, what a shitty society.

A new study of US prisons has found that numbers of people in jail are at an all-time high, with more than 1% of the adult population behind bars.

The Pew Center report calls the US the global leader in the rate at which it imprisons its citizens.

Over 2.3 million people were being held this year, it said - far ahead of other countries with large prison populations like China, Russia and Iran.

The report called for fewer low-risk offenders to be sent to jail.

Soaring costs

It claims that the growing prison population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford, and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime".

With 750 inmates per 100,000 people, imprisonment cost the 50 states more than $49bn last year, up from less than $11bn 20 years earlier.

The rate of increase for prison costs was found to be six times greater than for higher education spending. more BBC

Prop. 5 Falls to Prison Guards’ Millions Prison System Now Faces Federal Court Takeover

November 5 - Proposition 5, the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, failed to capture a majority of votes on Election Day, bringing to an end the most ambitious prison and sentencing reform in US history. Prop. 5 proponents blamed California's prison guards for funding deceptive advertising and said the No on 5 campaign misled voters about the measure.

Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy campaign manager for Yes on 5, said, "Today we saw special interests overpower the public interest. California's prison guards poured millions of dollars into stopping Prop. 5 and securing this victory for the poison politics of crime."

The prison guards union, formally the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), contributed nearly $2 million to oppose Prop. 5 - nearly 75% of the advertising budget aimed at defeating the measure.

Dooley-Sammuli continued, "The prosecutors and prison guards who led the campaign against Prop. 5 got their way tonight - but they've really lost. The next step for our prisons will probably be a federal takeover. Prop. 5 was Californians' last, best chance to avoid a takeover and make our own choices about how to address prison overcrowding. Now federal judges are likely to impose solutions that no one will be happy about." more Common Dreams.

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My Husband Is Not a Failure: Guess Who

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I've always said there was someone dumber the Dubya in the Whitehouse, would you look at the eyes on the woman, mad as a brush!

First lady Laura Bush says she disagrees with critics who say her husband's presidency was a failure.

In an interview aired Sunday on Fox News Sunday, Mrs. Bush says she knows her husband's eight years in office was not a failure, and says she doesn't feel as if she needs to respond to people who view it that way.

She says history will judge the two-term presidency of George W. Bush.

Mrs. Bush notes that under her husband's watch, the nation has been kept safe from attack since Sept. 11 and that his administration toppled Saddam Hussein and liberated millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from oppressive governments. She also talked of her husband's work to provide treatment for disease to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa. source Huffpo

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On This Day January 5th

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Ethiopian Jews airlifted.
Ten prods murdered NI.
Oil tanker aground off Shetland, disaster!
Yorkshire Ripper arrested.
Local GP Harold Shipman may have killed three hundred patients, there are some very dodgy doctors about. more
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On This Day January 4th

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Donald Campbell gone, (bio) one attempt too many.
Phill Lynott gone, one pill too many.
Hillary arrives South Pole 1958.
Wimin arrive South Pole 2002.
Babies for cash. more
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On This Day January 3rd

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Soviet puppet defends Afghan invasion, j'adore dat deja vous.
Nuke talks, Forty One and Boris.
Britain tosses Iraqi diplomats.
Plod announce art theft as "professional job," you don't say! more
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On This Day January 2nd

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Sixty dead in Ibrox football disaster.
Bosnia.
The Dirty Digger buys his first Fleet Street paper. more

Full list of Murdoch's holdings here.
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On This Day January 1st

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Fred West tops himself, buh bye.
Britain joins EU.
Batista flees Cuba, well he would wouldn't he.
Single European currency launched, Gordon Brown opts Britain out, what a sterling move, geddit? more
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On This Day December 31st

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Campbell fastest man on land and water.
Poisoner replaces piss head, Boris out Vladimir in.
Churchill. Zeebrugge heroes. Party on. more
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On This Day December 30th

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Whackjob opens fire at Boston abortion clinic, two dead many injured, ah the sanctity of life!
Fierce fighting as Castro nears Havana.
Dianna Ross on the piss.
Canaries breath a sigh of relief, no more tweeties down the pits, and more.
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