Kuala Lumpur: Bush Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes

How much more than symbolic this verdict is, remains to be seen, still it's a start I guess.

Bush, Blair Found Guilty of War Crimes

By Press TV
November 25, 2011

A War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia has found former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair guilty of war crimes for their roles in the Iraq war.

The five-panel Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against humanity by leading the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a Press TV correspondent reported on Tuesday.

In 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction allegedly stockpiled by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Malaysian tribunal judges ruled that the decision to wage war against Iraq by the two former heads of government was a flagrant abuse of law and an act of aggression that led to large-scale massacres of the Iraqi people.


Bombings and other forms of violence became commonplace in Iraq shortly after the US-led invasion of the country.

In their ruling, the tribunal judges also stated that the US, under the leadership of Bush, fabricated documents to make it appear that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

However, the world later learned that the former Iraqi regime did not possess WMDs and that the US and British leaders knew this all along.

Over one million Iraqis were killed during the invasion, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The judges also said the court findings should be provided to signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, and added that the names of Bush and Blair should be listed on a war crimes register. ICH

Watch The Trial of Tony Blair

http://www.youtube.com/user/LadyAmaltheaUnicorn








http://www.stirringtroubleinternationally.com/2011/11/26/the-mccanns%E2%80%99-motto-must-be-no-pr-is-bad-pr/

Seymour Hersh: Propaganda Used Ahead of Iraq War Is Now Being Reused over Iran’s Nuke Program

If I post nothing else today, this is the one post that I really want to publish.

The night before last in the small hours, I listened to this fairly lengthy Democracy Now report that for the main featured an interview between Amy Goodman and Seymour Hersh.

Hersh went into quite exacting detail regarding Iran's nuclear program. To save me furnishing all the details, I shall just give you the bottom line according to Hersh.

Iran has no capacity whatsoever to manufacture a nuclear weapon. None, period.

I found the whole thing quite essential viewing, because let's face it, as it is with many others, the excuses for invading Iraq are still crystal clear in my mind, and what we are witnessing now with Iran, is deja vous, pure and simple.

Far too much detail in that particular department for me to write about, but I thought I might bring your attention to this little nugget concerning my old friend, the IAEA.

Previous:

Fukushima No Ill Health Effects - IAEA

Fukushima - IAEA You Couldn't Make It Up: But They Just Did

- - -

Seymour Hersh: The big change was, in the last few weeks, the IAEA came out with a new report. And it’s not a scientific report, it’s a political document. It takes a lot of the old allegations that had been made over the years, that were looked at by the IAEA, under the regime or the directorship of Mohamed ElBaradei, who ran the IAEA for 12 years, the Egyptian—he won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work—somebody who was very skeptical of Iran in the beginning and became less so as Iran went—was more and more open.

But the new director of the IAEA, a Japanese official named Amano, an old sort of—from the center-right party in Japan—I’m sure he’s an honorable guy, he believes what he believes. But we happen to have a series of WikiLeak documents from the American embassy in Vienna, one of the embassies in Vienna, reporting on how great it was to get Amano there. This is last year.

These documents were released by Julian Assange’s group and are quite important, because what the documents say is that Amano has pledged his fealty to America. I understand he was elected as a—he was a marginal candidate. We supported him very much. Six ballots. He was considered weak by everybody, but we pushed to get him in. We did get him in. He responded by thanking us and saying he shares our views. He shares our views on Iran. He’s going to be—he’s basically—it was just an expression of love. He’s going to do what we wanted.

Nice Huh?


But it was another clip from another organisation, ABC News, a clip that somehow and only by accident, I watched immediately after the Democracy Now. It was this consecutive timing that enabled me to compare the two views on Iran. Such was the contrast between the two that I have captured the ABC piece and upped it to Youtube, and now is embedded below.

Having watched Hersh, in a calm and collective manner, parse all the bullshit emitting from the White House, to then watch Brian Ross present his little piece, was to put it mildly, quite a jaw dropper.

...Especially with the country (Iran) on the verge of building a nuclear weapon. - Brian Ross ABC

Really!

But it was the tone of the whole thing that showed it up further, you could be forgiven if you came away with the impression that Hezbollah and Iran were going to pile over the Mexican border the day after tomorrow and rape the women and eat the children.

That could have been your impression, or you might have seen the story for what it really was, the burning of a dozen CIA assets due to SNAFU by the CIA.

Have at it and see what you think.

Seymour Hersh: Propaganda Used Ahead of Iraq War Is Now Being Reused over Iran’s Nuke Program

While the United States, Britain and Canada are planning to announce a coordinated set of sanctions against Iran’s oil and petrochemical industry today, longtime investigative journalist Seymour Hersh questions the growing consensus on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. International pressure has been mounting on Iran since the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency revealed in a report the "possible military dimensions" to Iran’s nuclear activities, citing "credible" evidence that "indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device." In his latest article for The New Yorker blog, titled "Iran and the IAEA," Hersh argues the recent report is a "political document," not a scientific study. "They [JSOC] found nothing. Nothing. No evidence of any weaponization," Hersh says. "In other words, no evidence of a facility to build the bomb. They have facilities to enrich, but not separate facilities to build the bomb. This is simply a fact." Full transcript

Towards the end of the clip, there are a few seconds given over to Obama signing the Kate Pusey whistleblower protection bill. I don't think I need to say more do I?

Although I did cover the subject previously, towards the bottom of the page.

Bradley Manning: The New Mafia - US Army

Link to the ABC page, you will have to add an haitch at the front, I'm not too sure about the copyright of the clip.

ttp://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/cia-spies-caught-fear-execution-middle-east/story?id=14994428#.Ts0GtvJ-TqE

Bill O'Reilly Pepper Spray ‘It’s A Food Product, Essentially’

With all Billo's usual subtlety.

Fox News Host Dismisses Pepper Spray Attack By Cops: ‘It’s A Food Product, Essentially’ more

How White Supremacists Are Trying to Make an American Town a Model for Right-Wing Extremism

I'm rather glad I dropped on this story, of which I shall leave some few lines and a link.

The main reason for running with this is the mention of the the extremely photogenic twins, Lamb and Lynx Gaede, former darlings of the Neo Nazis and white supremacists, perhaps more easily recognised as the singing duo, Prussian Blue.

It was always obvious to me how these two munchkins were being manipulated and used by the adults that surrounded them to further their own hate filled agenda. But it was perhaps just a couple of years past that I saw when they interviewed just how uncomfortable the had become with themselves and their past.

Seemingly now though, they have both renounced their (mothers) previous doctrine and have now adopted one of tolerance. Good for them I say, they were far too lovely to have their lives fucked up those that should know better.

Unfortunately there is another younger sister, that on the face of it is being subjected to similar abuse as that experienced by her older sisters.

Story link below, which includes this link to two video reports on the current situation.

How White Supremacists Are Trying to Make an American Town a Model for Right-Wing Extremism

A recent influx of white supremacists and Patriot group members to the town of Kalispell, Montana, is causing alarm.
By David Holthouse
November 22, 2011

At first glance the Pioneer Little Europe website seems like it could be the work of the Montana Office of Tourism. Photographs depict the rugged beauty of the Flathead Valley region near Glacier National Park in northwest Montana.

One image shows a young blond-haired girl playing in a meadow overlooking Kalispell, the largest town in the area, with a population around 20,000.

The site also features short news items about the Northwest Montana State Fair and a wildflower beautification program along with Kalispell job postings.

But then there's this: A scan of a full-page advertisement in a recent edition of the Flathead Beacon, the local paper, with photographs of 47 babies newly delivered in the Kalispell Regional Medical Center. All but one are fair-skinned with light-colored hair. "Wonderful white babies being born in Kalispell," the website reads. "What do the babies look like being born in your town?" Another item on the Pioneer Little Europe site depicts white families relaxing on the shore of a lake. A caption reads,"This is how white our beaches are, and I'm not talking about sand."

And that little girl in the meadow? Her name is Dresden Hale. That's Dresden for the German city firebombed by the Allied forces in World War II, and Hale for the 1990s leader of the neo-Nazi group World Church of the Creator, Matt Hale, who's doing 40 years in prison for soliciting the murder of a federal judge.

Dresden Hale is the youngest daughter of Kalispell resident and neo-Nazi activist April Gaede, the public face of the Pioneer Little Europe (PLE) movement. Launched in 2008, PLE invites "racially conscious" white Americans to relocate to the Flathead Valley to help create a heavily-armed Aryan homeland.

(Gaede's other two daughters, Lynx and Lamb, are identical twins who gained widespread media attention by performing neo-Nazi folk ballads as the musical act Prussian Blue. They have since renounced white supremacism.) more

The bad old days.

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

Child Rape Penn State Catholic Church ''Everyone's doing it''

They may well be, but that hardly makes it right.

In one with which I am in total agreement, the writer argues throughout the article that reality and the behavioural safeguards that it keeps in place, all but disappear when the incredible, in the form of religion, takes precedent to become the guiding light and the moral compass of its adherents.

What was it that Orwell said, ''As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents''

Yes quite, he also said, ''One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up'' although I feel he did a disservice to the truth by singling out Catholicism, rather he might have said, one cannot really be religious and grown up.

The free pass we atheists, we realists, are expected to afford those that embrace the most preposterous beliefs, is quite frankly far beyond the pale. I'm not going list even a few of the thousands of bizarre beliefs that we are asked to respect the believer for, suffice to say, were the ''religious'' tag not attached to ridiculous articles of faith, then half the world would be in the asylum.

Perhaps a better quote might have been, one cannot be a realist and religious. The two are totally incompatible. And it this point that the writer repeatably makes throughout her essay. If religion becomes your reality and the ''law'' of a deity takes precedent of the laws of man, then all things become possible in the unreal world that these people have chosen to create.



Child Rape, Penn State and the Catholic Church: Is Religion Especially Bad?

The child rape scandal at Penn State raises inevitable comparisons with the Catholic Church. Does religion make these kinds of abuses worse?
By Greta Christina
November 22, 2011

I can't be the only person who heard about the Penn State child rape scandal and thought, "Holy crap -- it's just like the Catholic Church." The abuse of power by a trusted authority figure; the coverup by people in authority; the unwillingness of witnesses to speak out; the grotesque, morally bankrupt defenses of a beloved institution by its followers... all of it is depressingly familiar.

And I can't be the only critic of religion who's been wondering, "Hmm. If Penn State has been acting like the Catholic Church... then did the Catholic Church child rape scandal actually have anything to do with religion?"

I still think it does. But it's a complicated question. Let's take a closer look.

Apologists for the Catholic Church and its role in the extensive child rape scandal often use the "But everyone else does it!" defense. "Priests aren't the only people in positions of trust and power over children who abuse that power," they say. "Parents, relatives, teachers, babysitters, coaches -- they rape children as well. It's all terrible... but it's unfair to single out the Catholic Church as if it were special."

Atheists and other critics of the Church typically respond to this defense -- after tearing their hair out and screaming -- by pointing out: The rapes aren't the scandal. The coverup is the scandal. The rapes of children are a horrible tragedy. The scandal is the fact that the Catholic Church hid the rapes, and protected the child-raping priests from discovery and prosecution: lying to law enforcement, concealing evidence, paying off witnesses, moving child-raping priests from diocese to diocese so they could rape a whole new batch of children in a place where they wouldn't be suspected. The scandal is the fact that it wasn't just a few individuals in the ranks who protected and enabled the child-raping priests: it was large numbers of Church officials, including high-ranking officials, acting as a cold-blooded matter of Church policy. The scandal is the fact that the Church treated their own stability and reputation as a higher priority than, for fuck's sake, children not being raped.

And many critics of religion have concluded that the nature of religion itself is largely to blame for this scandal. They have argued that religion's lack of any sort of reality check, and its belief in a perfect supernatural moral authority that transcends mere human concerns, makes religious institutions like the Catholic Church far more vulnerable to abuses of this kind.

By some strange coincidence the original photo in the article is the exact same one as this from my archives. Well perhaps not exactly the same, as I'm sure the sharper eyed among might discern.

I've made this argument myself. And in my own writings on this subject, I've asked what I thought was a rhetorical question: "If these scandals had taken place in any organization other than a religious one -- would you still be part of it? If it were your political party, your softball league, your university, your children's school, your employer? Would you still be part of it? Would you still pay your league dues and show up for softball night? Would you still pay your tuition and send your kids off to the school every day? Or would you be walking out in moral outrage?"

But it seems that this question wasn't so rhetorical. It seems that, at least sometimes, the answer to that question is, "Yup -- we'd be defending our school."

At least sometimes, the answer is, "If we see our coach raping a child -- we won't alert the police. If we're in positions of authority in a school and we hear reports about our coach raping a child -- we won't alert the police, and we won't investigate. And if we hear that a coach at our school raped children, and that the authorities at the school knew about it and didn't alert the police or investigate, we will become outraged -- not at the fact that the rapes occurred, not at the fact that the witnesses and school authorities did nothing, but at what we see as unfair treatment of the perpetrators, and at the very fact that the media is covering it."

Clearly, defending the indefensible is not unique to religion.

Clearly, institutions centered on something other than a belief in the supernatural are perfectly capable of inspiring this grotesquely contorted form of loyalty. This unwillingness to believe that the people and institutions we admire could do anything that vile; this ability to rationalize actions we would normally find thoroughly despicable when we've made a commitment to the people who perpetrated them... this clearly isn't just about religion. This is about the more fucked-up directions that the human brain can go in.

So I want to take a step back. I want to be rigorous, and ask: Is there anything special about the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church? Does the fact that the Catholic Church is a religious organization have any effect on how the child rape scandal has been playing out for them? Is there any real difference between the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church, and the child rape scandal at Penn State?

I've been looking at this hard. And I'll acknowledge that I don't think the difference is as great as I'd originally thought. The degree to which many students and supporters of Penn State have behaved like blind religious zealots has, quite frankly, shocked me.

But I still think there is a difference. There are non-trivial differences between these two scandals: differences of degree, and differences of kind. I want to look carefully at those differences and at whether religion has any part in how the Catholic Church has behaved, and continues to behave, when it comes to the rape of children.

How Much Worse Was It?

1: Scope. At Penn State, one man, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, has been charged with the rape of seven children. In the Catholic Church, over 4,000 priests raped over 10,000 children. According to conservative estimates. The actual numbers are likely to be much higher.

And at Penn State, about eight school officials and staff members are currently thought (according to grand jury records) to have turned a blind eye to the alleged rapes. In the Catholic Church, the Church officials who either ignored the rapes or deliberately acted to conceal them number in the hundreds -- going all the way up into the top echelons of the Church hierarchy.

That is a huge freaking difference. To be comparable in scope to the Catholic Church child rape scandal, the Penn State scandal would have to extend to multiple major universities across the country, with a deliberate campaign of concealment extending throughout the Association of American Universities and into the top levels of the Department of Education. And as appalling as the recent events at Penn State are, that's clearly not what we're looking at.

Have non-religious institutions sheltered and defended child rapists? Yes. But have any of them done so on anywhere near the scale that the Catholic Church has? Not to my knowledge.

And it's hard to see religion as irrelevant to that. Religion is uniquely unfalsifiable -- and it thus has a unique lack of any sort of reality check. And most religions have a belief in a perfect moral authority, and a belief that it understands the wishes of that moral authority and knows the right way to interpret them. So because of this lack of reality check, and because of this belief in a perfect supernatural moral authority that trumps human morality, religious institutions have a uniquely powerful armor against any sort of criticism or self-correction. And because of that armor, appalling situations -- like the widespread rape of children by priests -- have the capacity to spin wildly out of control, with a scope that's hard to imagine in secular institutions.

2: Duration. As far as we know, the alleged rapes of children by Sandusky at Penn State, and the conspiracy of silence about them, have been going on since about 1996. The rapes of children by Catholic priests had been going on for decades -- possibly centuries -- before people finally began talking about them. Go to page three.

Cannabis and the Kool-Aid Cop

Hopefully I'm back in the saddle as of old, I have been rather preoccupied with my mother after she suffered a fall recently. Glad to say though, she is much recovered.

When I read this story, I thought, hmm, this sounds familiar, but rather than the subject matter being pot, the items in question in this particular instance were vibrators.

After you have read the doomsday scenario, courtesy of Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department’s Robert McMahon, and then watched the clip, not Reefer Madness, but rather, Marijuana Will Get You, which probably says the same in three minutes as the original movie said in ninety, you can read below what Republican Representative Ralph Davenport of South Carolina, had to say about vibrators. And no, I'm not making it up.

Reefer Madness: CA Cop Worries Legalizing Pot Will Make Window Washers Fall From High-Rises -- And Kill Passersby
By Kristen Gwynne
November 22, 2011

Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department’s Robert McMahon has been drinking the Kool-Aid, and he is very worried about how decriminalized pot may affect California's future. His vision is straight out of a 1930s pot propaganda film.

“What will happen to our kids if this stuff is legal? Think about 20 years from now what L.A. will look like?” he asks RollingOut.com.

McMahon is of the following opinion:

“We’re talking about loss of work and collisions, work-related industrial injuries. Somebody comes to work stoned, and they are working some heavy equipment or up on a high-rise — a window washer that’s stoned — not only could he [or she] injure himself, but some of his or her negligence could cause someone else to be injured.” (emphasis added)

Of course, marijuana is not nearly as impairing or dangerous as alcohol. And legalizing marijuana does not necessarily mean more people will smoke it, or that more window washers will smoke it, or that more window washers will smoke it before work and then fall from a giant high-rise only to land on a mother pushing her infant in a stroller. Okay, so I added that last part.

But when I imagine a California where marijuana is legal, I don't see any of this at all. Instead, I imagine 1,401 fewer people in California jails. I imagine a more racially just society because California’s African-American population faces 10 times greater odds of being imprisoned for marijuana than other racial/ethnic groups. If marijuana were legal nationally, I would go so far as to imagine a Mexico with less inter-cartel violence and fewer drug-related deaths. I imagine adults smoking marijuana in the comfort of their own homes, or on the street, without facing ramifications that may ruin their lives in ways that pot alone never could have. I imagine kids with futures not defined by the fact that they were caught smoking weed, locked-up, and trapped by criminal records that hammer away at educational and employment opportunities. I imagine more possibilities, more justice -- not the marijuana-induced mayhem that McMahon and fellow prohibitionists can only dream of, because weed is not the demon they believe it to be. AlterNet

Republican Representative Ralph Davenport of South Carolina on the subject of vibrators.

He said some constituents had asked him to introduce the bill, and he hoped that if someone is caught kidnapping someone and using these devices on an unwilling victim, that this would be another offense with which they could be charged.

Whoa boy,whoa whoa whoa, say that again.

if someone is caught kidnapping someone and using these devices on an unwilling victim,

Full story: It's A Funny Old World

I love The Sound of Jackboots in The Morning Policing Today: Chesire Police Fail - Motorman Leveson

''Britain has the finest police on Earth, and most of the world knows it.''

Quite a statement to make in anybody's book, and an even harder one to live up to. Especially if one is engaged in intimidation and fishing for data that one has no right to access.

I use the term data rather than information, because misuse of 'data' is the pretence for Cheshire plod to raid the target in question. Which, given the recent revelations regarding plod and the press, is by even the most outrageous standards, a tad rich.

And with that said, the timing of the raid might strike the cynical among you as not altogether accidental. But let's face it, what's the point of having power if you don't abuse it

Power corrupts, but absolute power is much more fun. Ain't that so Cheshire plod?

A better (worse) follow up to the 2009 Motorman piece that I ran a couple of days ago, a fellow couldn't wish for, not if he wanted to bring attention to corrupt practises and the abuse of power he couldn't.

Quite a Stasiesque little tale below, I use the term Stasi, because as dated as the Stasi is, it's not quite so dated as a term I could have used, though in all accuracy, the Gestapo.

Plod really should refrain from tweeting, because given their record all across this green and pleasant land, they are always going to be on a hiding to nothing no matter what they say. Or Tweet.

Police target former officer who exposed the dirty tricks of the press

Police seize disks in raid on home of key Leveson witness
Ian Burrell
19 Nov 2011

Police raided the home of a retired Special Branch detective who acted as a whistleblower on the failure of authorities to investigate media dirty tricks, just days before he is to give evidence as a witness to Lord Leveson's inquiry.

Alec Owens, formerly of Merseyside Police, was the lead investigator for the Information Commissioner's "Operation Motorman" inquiry, which uncovered the vast scale on which the media used private detectives to obtain private information, including criminal records and vehicle registrations.

But he is a critic of the ICO's decision not to interview any of the hundreds of journalists named in the 17,000 transactions listed in files seized from Hampshire private detective Steve Whittamore in 2003. No journalist was charged in Operation Motorman.

Mr Owens contacted Lord Justice Leveson about his concerns over the way the matter was handled and is due to give evidence in person to the public inquiry on media standards on 30 November. Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner at the time of Operation Motorman, will appear before the inquiry the next day.

At 7.25am yesterday, two police officers from Wilmslow, Cheshire, armed with with a search warrant, knocked on Mr Owens' door. They demanded documents and electronic files and asked him to come to a police station to be questioned under caution.

Cheshire Police said it had acted "following information received". A spokeswoman added: "The warrant relates to an investigation into allegations concerning breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998."

Mr Owens agreed to hand over his copy of the Operation Motorman computer file but declined to provide the statement he has prepared for Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry. He was asked to attend an interview on Monday and bring the statement with him.

Mr Owens, who has notified Lord Justice Leveson's office of the development, said he believed the raid was connected to his inquiry evidence. "They have come on a fishing expedition to find out what I'm going to say," he said. "But I have told them that statement is for Lord Leveson's eyes only at this stage."

He has already provided a statement and a copy of the Motorman disk to Strathclyde Police, which is investigating media dirty tricks in Scotland. "This is vindictiveness," he said of yesterday's raid. "They want to know what hard evidence I have got and what I am going to say to the Leveson Inquiry." Mr Owens maintains that there are errors that need to be corrected in official reports on Operation Motorman.

In September, The Independent revealed that the Operation Motorman files included previously unpublished details of how tabloid newspapers used private detectives to target figures such as the Duchess of Cambridge and Chelsea Clinton when they were students.

Investigators were also used to target the private information of families of murder victims such as Sarah Payne and Holly Wells. Independent

As previously on this story, h/t Steel Magnolia.
Related: Not much data going to be recovered here! Link

Got Jesus in your Headlights Goddamnmuthafucker?

Question: Which of the above words might be considered obscene?

Answer: They all are.

This story about a proposal to filter SMS/Text messages containing certain keywords that Pakistan considers obscene, becomes even more bizarre when you read the list.

Most are obvious, but there are a few in the list that make a fellow ponder. F'rinstance 'K Mart' unless of course, I'm out of the loop on that one, but it seems to me we getting into the...... see below.

And then there is the obvious part to this story. It is the twenty first century and not the Victorian era, and trying to whack electronic moles by the billion!

Pakistan orders text message filtering

Nov 18, 2011,

Islamabad - Pakistani authorities have directed mobile phone companies to ban what they called 'offensive' text messages, officials confirmed on Friday.

Telecommunication watchdog Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) ordered all mobile phone operators this week to arrange to filter the text messages containing 'obscene' words by November 21.

'We have taken action on the innumerable, repeated complaints from consumers,' said Mohammad Younis, a PTA spokesman. 'They say they constantly receive text messages that contain unwanted, undesired and obscene words.'

Officials from the five major operators - Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone, Warid and Zong - confirmed that they were working on software that could block the words deemed unwanted by the PTA.

Younis did not explain how many words were in the initial list, but he confirmed they included words in English, the national language Urdu as well as Punjabi, Pashtu, Sindhi and Balochi.

Media reports said the list initially contained 1,500 words.

The unconfirmed list circulated on the internet contained medical terms like athlete's foot, breast and condom. Everyday words like deeper, fairy and harder made the list. Jesus Christ was also included.

The move to control SMS content stirred suspicions among the country's 100 million mobile users and 18.5 million internet users among the population of more than 170 million.

Contributors to various social networking sites condemned the move.

'This funny and extremely foolish decision will have one outcome: the emergence of a new language, where the ordinary words will be used to communicate the profane. And that is very dangerous,' wrote Noon Memon on the website of The Express Tribune.

'So I cannot message about Dick Cheney, Randi Zuckerberg, an American internet entrepreneur and a former marketing director of Facebook.' In Urdu randi means a prostitute and the term 'dick' is included in the banned list.

The authorities defended the plan and said it was to protect Islamic culture.

'Abusive language has become so common in our society these days that even the girls use such a language that nobody wants to hear,' Younis said.

'The way the girls talk - this is terrible. Our society does not allow that. Many families were destroyed due to this. Divorces took place and even people were murdered. We cannot control it 100 per cent but we are doing as much as we can do,' he added.

Some analysts see it as a first step to control text messages that have been a major source of criticism of government and the military's attempts to deal with the problems the country faces - a declining economy and terrorism.

A writer at the Express Tribune said that the whole scheme was devised 'to control texts/jokes regarding the Supremo of Pakistan,' an apparent reference to President Asif Ali Zardari, who is widely disliked for his alleged involvement in corruption. M&C

h/t Ellie Mae O'Hagan

A man goes to see a clinical psychologist. After completing the clinical interview, the clinical psychologist decides that she will administer the Rorschach Inkblot test. The clinical psychologist shows the man the first inkblot and he says he sees a man and a woman making love at the beach. In the second, a man and a woman making love in a hot-tub. The third, he says has a man and a woman making love in a park. In all of the inkblots, the man sees a couple making love. At the end of the test, the clinical psychologist looks over her notes and says, "You seem to have a preoccupation with sex." The man replies, "You're the one with the dirty pictures." (Sourced from the web)

Operation Motorman: The Full Story Revealed

An old story I will grant you, so why am I running it?

The answer to that lies in the reading and I suppose, the 'file under' tag.

That being of course, 'Stuff you couldn't make up.'

Operation Motorman: the full story revealed

As the information commissioner prepares to address Commons investigation into privacy and press standards, one private investigator's work for news organisations emerges
Nick Davies
31 August 2009

Joanna Lumley, Ian Hislop and Caprice Bourret: among those of interest to investigators.

From his cramped office at the back of his family home on a quiet street on the Hampshire coast, Steve Whittamore was for years the link between news organisations and a network of sources who could penetrate the security of confidential databases.

Eastwards, on the Sussex coast, he paid a long-haired Hells Angel who had perfected a spiel that allowed him to phone up British Telecom to extract home addresses and ex-directory numbers. To his north, in Salisbury, he used a fellow private investigator who worked on mobile phone companies as well. To the west, in Devon, a civil servant in the Department for Work and Pensions had access to the giant database of the social security system. Inside a regional office of the DVLA, he had two men who sold him the private details of any registered car owner. At Wandsworth police station in south London, a civilian worker sold criminal records and other personal information from the Police National Computer.

Whittamore is only one of a dozen or more private investigators who have been involved in breaking the law for Fleet Street. There is the former actor who uses his skills as a mimic to "blag" the same databases; the former detective who was bounced out of the police for corruption and who has spent years carrying cash bribes from newspapers to serving officers; the London investigator who paid police to moonlight for his agency and to provide live intelligence that he sold on to newspapers. Some have supplied the technology that allows journalists to use "trojan horse" emails to steal information from computers, tap live phone calls and hack into voicemail messages, the technique that led to prison two years ago for a journalist and a private investigator working for the News of the World.

Whittamore's network has become notorious simply because it was busted. Operation Motorman led to the information commissioner's staff descending on his office in New Milton in March 2003, emerging with a vast cache of handwritten records of requests from journalists, many of which appear to lack any sign of the kind of public interest that would make them legal. The sheer scale of the activity indicates the collapse of the security walls around organisations that are trusted by millions to protect their privacy and the rapacious will of the news media to rush through the gaps. And yet, when the information commissioner obtained the material, it was so short of resources that it approached and warned only a handful of those whose privacy had been compromised even where potential targets for terrorism or other crime were involved.

Lord Imbert, a former commissioner of the Metropolitan police and also a former special branch detective with a long history of investigating terrorist groups, had his home address and ex-directory phone number scammed out of BT. In spite of Imbert's position as a potential target for terrorists, the information commissioner's office never informed him of this.

Even though high-profile footballers have been the victims of burglary while playing matches, BT was tricked into handing out the home addresses and ex-directory numbers of eight members of the England football squad who played in the World Cup in Japan in 2002. They also disclosed the carefully protected home addresses of journalists, such as the former editor of the News of the World, Phil Hall, and the investigative reporter Martin Short, both of whom had specialised in exposing gangsters and violent criminals. "I incurred the long-term wrath of many violent folk," Short says. A woman who had been tracked down and raped at her secret address by her violent ex-husband then had that address released to journalists.

Gross violations

In other cases, where the physical safety of victims was not obviously in jeopardy, the victims simply suffered gross violations of their privacy. The actor Joanna Lumley was targeted repeatedly by news groups who were trying to uncover the identity of the father of her child. In one 18-month period, News International paid a total of £1,726 in five different invoices, apparently for printouts of phone numbers she had been dialling.

In another gross invasion of privacy the editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop, is named in the paperwork as a victim of the notorious celebrity newspaper photographer Jason Fraser, who hired the network to obtain his phone records. Hislop says this followed the publication of a series of stories in his magazine that criticised Fraser for invading the privacy of his subjects. Fraser reacted by invading Hislop's privacy. "It was fantastically vindictive," Hislop says. "He had my list of Friends and Family. He even had my bank manager's number. He rang me up and just said: 'I've got your number', which was ex-directory. That was when we lived in London and then we moved out, and he rang me up at our new house, too. He just wanted to gather information about me. It was rather spooky that somebody could pay a little money and have all this information."

Some of the targets whose home details were obtained from BT are particularly sensitive because of crimes that have been committed against them or their families. They include Valerie Storie, who nearly died when she was attacked in the notorious 1961 crime for which James Hanratty was hanged; Lady Pamela Hicks and separately Lord Brabourne, respectively the daughter and grandson of Lord Mountbatten, who was killed by the IRA in 1979; Frances Lawrence, whose husband, Philip, was stabbed to death at the school where he was headmaster in 1995; and Elisa Ferraina, who died in the twin towers attack in September 2001.

Sometimes, the number appears to be sought simply so that a reporter can phone up for a quote, for example from the former director general of the National Trust, Sir Angus Stirling. On other occasions, it is part of a campaign of bitter harassment. When Brian Paddick was being pursued as a south London police commander, newspapers fished in the BT database in search of his former home addresses, apparently hoping to locate his ex-wife. When the Southampton football manager Dave Jones was wrongly accused of sex abuse during his earlier career as a care worker, a Fleet Street reporter paid Whittamore, who paid his Hells Angel, who rapidly acquired Jones's home address and ex-directory number. Among thousands of requests for confidential data, only one shows any sign of being defeated by BT's security system. When the Mirror Group tried to obtain the ex-directory numbers of George Harrison's home near Henley-on-Thames, the record of the request is marked 'No go – security tags'.

The security of other organisations proved to be just as porous as that of BT. The two bent employees at the DVLA routinely handed over personal data. Through Whittamore, journalists passed them car registration numbers in search of home addresses for the model Caprice Bourret; the former England football manager Glenn Hoddle; a football supporter caught up in a riot; a man who happened to park his car at a game of cricket in which the actor Hugh Grant was playing; and Robert Kilroy-Silk's son because they were interested in the state of his marriage. On one occasion, the DVLA sources handed over the details of a Jaguar that appears to have been used as an undercover vehicle for a government department.

The civilian police worker casually rifled the Police National Computer, covering his tracks by recording phoney reports from the public to justify each log-on and searching for dozens of criminal records, for example: for a young man who had died of a drugs overdose, who was of interest because his father is a well-known actor; of an actor who had appeared in a TV soap; the father of a Big Brother contestant; three Millwall football fans; the partner of a famous singer; and a woman suing her health authority.

The security around mobile phone companies was also penetrated, leaking home details, for example, for the snooker player Steve Davis and the former England footballer Tony Adams. One of the tabloids bought a photograph of a woman kissing a man who had once been married to a well-known comedian – and the woman's mobile phone company was conned into handing over her details. Frantic efforts by several different papers to uncover the romantic life of the former head of Ofsted, Chris Woodhead, included tricking a mobile phone company into providing his home address. In their efforts to prove that a Labour MP, Clive Betts, was having a relationship with a male Brazilian student, journalists hired the network to trick City of London College into handing over the student's mobile phone number and then to trick the mobile phone company into disclosing his home address.

The seized paperwork includes numerous requests for the home addresses of targets, some of which may have been found through perfectly legal searches of the electoral register. Others, however, appear to have involved accessing the social security database to find targets whose jobs exempted them from the electoral register, including a forensic psychologist working with criminals, and the then head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove.

The 1998 Data Protection Act would allow access to some confidential databases if the journalist were acting in the public interest. However, the public interest is not obvious in the work summaries that Whittamore listed on his weekly pay claims: "Bonking headmaster, Lonely heart, Dirty vicar, Street stars split, Miss World bonks sailor, Dodgy landlord, Judge affair, Royal maid, Witchdoctor, Footballer, TV love child, Junkie flunkie, Orgy boss, BBC gardening blunder, Hurley and Grant, EastEnders star … "

Text messages

In some cases, there is a strong scent of hypocrisy, for example in a Sunday paper's exclusive story about the relationship between the singer Ms Dynamite and her boyfriend's former partner, Sanshica Carew. The newspaper accuses Ms Dynamite of sending hostile text messages to Carew who, it reports, changed her phone number and was "horrified" when Ms Dynamite managed to get hold of it. On this very story, that newspaper also commissioned three illegal searches of the Police National Computer at £500 a time, looking for any sign of a criminal record for Ms Dynamite, her boyfriend or her manager.

There is the same scent around the newspapers covering the imprisonment of Michael Ahearne, formerly a star of the television programme Gladiators, who acted as a go-between for criminals who were bribing a police officer to supply information: those same newspapers were using Whittamore as a go-between for their own bribes to be paid to the civilian police worker to supply information.

Beyond the potentially illegal extraction of information from databases, Whittamore's network also conned information out of organisations including banks and prisons. Crédit Lyonnais, for example, was tricked into handing over the home phone number of one of its clerks, who had written an email describing a recent sexual adventure. Whittamore's network then got the clerk's home address out of the BT database.

Goldman Sachs and Hang Seng Bank also show up as targets as well as a Los Angeles hotel where a BBC executive was suspected of entertaining his lover; a theatre where Britt Ekland was performing; various locations that might have been used for Prince Edward's stag party; the post office that handed over the details of PO boxes owned by the former chancellor Nigel Lawson and the jockey Kieren Fallon; and two prisons, Glen Parva and Stocken, apparently in search of information about Winston Silcott, who had been wrongly jailed for the murder of a police officer during the 1985 Tottenham riot.

This is by no means limited to the rich and powerful. The bulk of the victims appear to be ordinary people who happen to have strayed across the media's radar. Sometimes it is because they are linked to a celebrity: the people who moved into Lady Thatcher's former home in Dulwich; Wayne Rooney's mother; Carol Vorderman's brother; the former wife of the poet laureate Andrew Motion; the murderer Harold Shipman's daughter; and a man whose name happens to sound like Andrew Lloyd Webber's. Others are simply news fodder for the week: the man who was accused of driving his van into his former girlfriend's car, or the family whose teenage daughter ran off with her teacher.

And, with the exception of a handful of victims who were asked to make witness statements for the Information Commissioner's Office, none of them has ever been told.

Syrita Collins-Plante complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the Sunday People had invaded her privacy and harassed her in search of a story about the boxer Lennox Lewis, phoning her repeatedly until a police officer asked the newspaper to stop. The PCC ruled that her privacy had not been breached – without knowing that her private address and phone number had been blagged out of BT by Whittamore's network.

The newspapers who commissioned this activity were never prosecuted and attempts to prosecute Whittamore's network ended in fiasco with Whittamore and three others receiving conditional discharges, and a trial of other members collapsing before it even started. Gruniad

h/t Steel Magnolia

It's a Funny Old World: Romney Hard Drive Edition

Shortly before Mitt Romney departed the governor’s office, 11 of his top aides purchased 17 state-issued hard drives, (The ones in use) purging the Romney administration’s email records in advance of his presidential campaign. In retrospect, the move seems rather odd, especially for a Republican candidate who likes to talk about transparency.

Maybe this was a standard practice for modern Massachusetts governors? Apparently not. more

'A Symbiotic Relationship' The New Euphemism For Corruption

''which he obtained from the police national computer''

File under: Shit you couldn't make up.

Reporter and Officer Cleared
Vikram Dodd
21 July 2000

A tabloid newspaper journalist and a detective were yesterday cleared of having a corrupt relationship.

Neville Thurlbeck, the News of the World's chief crime reporter, and Detective Constable Richard Farmer were each cleared of conspiracy to corrupt, after a judge at Luton crown court ruled there was no case for either to answer.

Thurlbeck was also cleared of corruptly offering a police officer payment in return for information.

Stephen Kramer QC, prosecuting, had alleged that Thurlbeck paid DC Farmer to supply information about people on confidential police computer records. DC Farmer was said to have supplied information for 36 stories, including an unnamed Labour MP with a conviction for committing an obscene act; a sex offender who raped a child shortly after being released from prison; and an alleged threat to the Queen from stalkers.

Thurlbeck also supplied information, but there was no suggestion that Thurlbeck behaved illegally or benefited financially as a result of his role as a "confidential police source", the court heard.

"This was a symbiotic or two-way relationship," said the judge, Mr Justice McKinnon. "Mr Thurlbeck undoubtedly supplied information to Mr Farmer which was of interest to the police. In return for which, Mr Farmer provided to Mr Thurlbeck, not confidential or sensitive information, but information principally about criminals' previous convictions which he obtained from the police national computer." Gruniad

h/t News Alliance

It's a Funny Old World: Condom Edition

Particularly for those of us that live in the enlightened parts of the west, unless you have watched specific* television programs on the subject, I don't think you can begin to understand the effort that goes in to targetting sex workers in the US by the police.

Whole police departments are given over to planning meticulous raids and scams (entrapment) to such a degree that it staggers the imagination. And let's face it, at the end of the day, does it matter?

*I couldn't swear to it being the program in question, but irrespective, the wretched lives led by the majority of the street girls as depicted in HBO's Hookers at The Point, was enough to garner anybody's sympathy. Life was tough enough for these women without being hassled by cops with a plank stuck up their arse.

Stopping Police and DAs from Using Condoms to Convict Sex Workers
By Crystal DeBoise
11.14.2011

Last winter, “Sheila,” a sex worker in her early 20s, had just finished her counseling session with me at the Sex Workers Project, and was heading out the door. Sheila was seeking counseling from the Sex Workers Project to help her make a career change, but had no financial support and was still working in the sex industry. I gestured towards our colorful shoebox of condoms, lube and pamphlets about safe sex and reminded her to take whatever she needed. She looked at me as if I were suggesting she walk into the January snow barefoot and said, “Are you crazy? I’m not carrying those things around! You want me to get arrested or something?”

Sheila was referring to a situation in New York that permits the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution, resulting in their collection and confiscation from women who are detained by the police. This practice is an outright slap in the face to the decades of hard work that public health advocates have undertaken to increase safe sex, decrease HIV and create a positive shift in the cultural acceptance of condom use. This policy discourages a stigmatized and marginalized group of sexually active people from carrying the tools they need to be healthy and safe. And this occurs despite the fact that the New York City itself runs a free condom distribution program because “Using a condom every time you have anal, oral or vaginal sex protects you and your partners from getting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases … and prevents unplanned pregnancies.”

Staff at the Sex Workers Project had been seeing police reports of arrested sex workers that listed the possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution for some time. Many of the arrests were not of even sex workers, but, rather, incidents of profiling transgender individuals as sex workers — their personal condoms were confiscated and used as “evidence” of prostitution.

Sentiments like the one Sheila shared have become more prevalent among sex workers, and for good reason. Prostitution convictions have an extremely negative impact on the lives of sex workers.

Arrests themselves are often abusive and traumatic, as well as costly. A criminal record is a major hurdle to joining the mainstream job force. Many jobs require disclosure of crimes or out-and-out disqualify people who have such records. When hired despite their records, those with prostitution-related crimes on their record often face discrimination on the job; others encounter sexual harassment when arrests for prostitution are disclosed. If carrying condoms increases the chance that a sex worker will have to experience these consequences, there’s a difficult decision to be made.

New York State Bill A1008/S323, cosponsored by more than a dozen state senators, would stop police and prosecutors from using possession of condoms as evidence of prostitution in specified criminal or civil proceedings. According to the summary of the bill, it “provides that possession of a condom may not be received in evidence in any trial, hearing or proceeding as evidence of prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, promoting prostitution, permitting prostitution, maintaining a premises for prostitution, lewdness or assignation, or maintaining a bawdy house.”

The explanation for the bill says, “It does not promote public health and welfare if the law discourages prostitutes from carrying condoms. If anything, their use by prostitutes should be encouraged by public policy ….” As of fall 2011, the bill was sitting in Judiciary Committee of the NY State Senate and the Codes Committee of the NY Assembly.

The Sex Workers Project is participating in an active campaign to support the passage of the bill this legislative session. Our online public service announcement explains its importance, and we have an ongoing petition with over 5,600 signatures at Change.org. Thirteen organizations have signed statements in support of the bill, and our staff holds legislative advocacy sessions for sex workers and allies where supporters can join our “pink postcard” campaign to send a message to state senators and assembly members.

Our activism is needed to make sure that this simple health and safety measure is put into place. If the bill passes, sex workers and the general public will be able to feel confident that the condoms they have in their pockets will not be used to assist law enforcement in accusing them of committing crimes. Feministe

It's a Funny Old World: Persian Incursion

"Is Iran building a nuclear weapon? Little is known for certain. However, on June 6, 2008, Israeli Transport Minister, Shaul Mofaz said; "If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it".

Persian Incursion explores the political and military effects of an Israeli military campaign against Iran. It uses rules adapted from Harpoon 4 to resolve the military action. But its goal is to look beyond the military action by modeling the political and intelligence actions and consequences of a potential political conflict by including a card-based diplomatic/political component to the game. more

Europe Bans X-Ray Body Scanners

Europe Bans X-Ray Body Scanners Used at US Airports
by Michael Grabell
15 November 2011

The European Union on Monday prohibited the use of X-ray body scanners in European airports, parting ways with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which has deployed hundreds of the scanners as a way to screen millions of airline passengers for explosives hidden under clothing.

The European Commission, which enforces common policies of the EU's 27 member countries, adopted the rule “in order not to risk jeopardizing citizens’ health and safety.”

As a ProPublica/PBS NewsHour investigation detailed earlier this month, X-ray body scanners use ionizing radiation, a form of energy that has been shown to damage DNA and cause cancer. Although the amount of radiation is extremely low, equivalent to the radiation a person would receive in a few minutes of flying, several research studies have concluded that a small number of cancer cases would result from scanning hundreds of millions of passengers a year. more

Five Republican Would-Be Saviors Flame Out in Hilarious Ways

I quite like this article if only for two reasons. The writer, in the first two paragraphs alone, says all there is to know about the current state of US politics and that of both parties.

And secondly, I'm far from unappreciative of the writers style. Some great little one liners included.

The Great GOP Primary Crash and Burn: 5 Republican Would-Be Saviors Flame Out in Hilarious Ways

The GOP's "anyone but Romney" strategy has backfired.
By Brad Reed
November 16, 2011


In a normal democracy, a competent opposition party would have no difficulty in defeating Barack Obama next year.

After all, unemployment is still around 9 percent, economic growth is sluggish at best and the Democratic base feels disenchanted with the hope and change they voted into office a mere three years ago. A competent opposition party shouldn’t have to nominate a superlative candidate in this environment; instead it can win by simply nominating someone with decent hair, who can string together words in a language vaguely resembling English and who has no obvious debilitating mental illnesses.

For Republicans, this generic good-hair, able-to-talk, not-overtly-insane candidate is Mitt Romney. But there’s just one problem with this scenario: The Republican base hates Mitt Romney. The reasons for this are pretty obvious since Romney’s work establishing a universal health care system in Massachusetts provided the main blueprint for Obamacare, the healthcare law passed in 2010 that the GOP base feels is the ultimate symbol of an overreaching and tyrannical government. And that’s in addition to Romney’s assorted flip-flops on issues such as abortion and gay rights that have given social conservatives fits over the years. In fact, Multiple Choice Mitt is such a notorious opportunist that his entire political career can be summed up by paraphrasing a classic Snoop Dogg song: “Take a stance when it’s popular, but drop it when it’s not, drop it when it’s not.”

So the Republican base has spent the past year looking for someone, anyone, who can be the anti-Mitt Romney in the GOP primary. The problem is that the GOP has been unable to find even one half-normal human to stand in against him. The result has been a hysterical roller-coaster of a primary season where new candidates rise rapidly as GOP “front runners” for a month before flaming out in spectacular and hilarious ways. In this article we’ll chronicle the assorted saviors that Republican voters have fallen in love with for brief periods of time before quickly recoiling in horror upon realizing they’ve become smitten with a unelectable lunatic.

Failed Savior #1: Donald Trump.

How he rose: Ugh. Remember this? Trump’s major appeal to the GOP base was akin to G.G. Alin’s appeal to teenage boys: They loved him because he would say whatever the hell he wanted no matter how many media squares would get offended. Want to publicly question the validity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate? Trump went there. Want to speculate that Obama was hiding his birth certificate because it listed him as a Muslim? Yeah, that was Trump territory, too. Want to imply that Obama only got accepted into Columbia and Harvard Law due to the dread specter of affirmative action? Trump was your guy.

The result was that Trump depressingly surged to the head of the GOP pack in April, according to a CNN poll. But the Donald’s rapid rise in the polls was only matched by his epic crash less than two weeks later.

How he fell: It became more difficult for Trump to publicly crow about his birther credentials after Obama actually released his long-form birth certificate. Making matters worse, the release of Obama’s birth certificate came just days before Trump attended the White House correspondents’ dinner where he was roasted relentlessly both by the president and by comedian Seth Meyers.

This sort of public humiliation took away a lot of Trump’s mojo since he was no longer viewed as an all-American bad boy with the guts to speak truth to power. Instead he was seen, correctly, as a clown. He announced that he was not going to run for the presidency shortly afterward.

Failed Savior #2: Newt Gingrich

How he rose: The very idea of Newt Gingrich being a legit presidential candidate should be enough to violate at least 23 different laws of quantum mechanics and collapse our universe into a tiny puddle of cosmic gloop. But the GOP field in 2011 is a warped incarnation of Andy Warhol’s vision of the future where every has-been right-wing crank is allowed to nationally humiliate himself for 15 minutes.

At any rate, Newt’s entire appeal, if it can be called that, was that he’s supposed to be a “man of ideas.” It doesn’t matter that most of his ideas involved going to war with Iran or privatizing Medicare -- in the current GOP field anyone who put on shoes without causing themselves critical bodily harm is considered a visionary. So Newt was to be the primary race’s leading intellectual, which is about as useful an honor as being named the world’s most well-hung eunuch.

How he fell: He was Newt. That’s pretty much all there was to it and it was entirely predictable to anyone who knows his history.

Let’s go over the grisly recap: Newt got in trouble during the very first week of his campaign when he sought to flash his “Man of Ideas” credentials by critiquing Paul Ryan’s Satanic Randroid plan to boot seniors off Medicare and force them into the private insurance market. For many conservatives this was like standing up in the middle of a church and shouting out, “Man, this Jesus dude ain’t all that, people.”

Newt had to backtrack pretty quickly after this heresy and he did indeed back away from his statements in the only way he knows how: Through shameless bullshitting. You see Newt can never just say he's sorry and be done with it. No, that’s something that shows weakness and if people start thinking Newt is weak then dark-skinned foreigners all over the world will start pointing and laughing at him and implying that he is lacking in the manhood department. So instead of apologizing, Newt went on the attack against the media by saying it was now out of bounds to accurately quote his criticism of Ryan’s plan.

No, seriously, he actually said this: “Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood, because I have said publicly those words were inaccurate and unfortunate.”

And just as the nation had stopped laughing about this, Gingrich flack Rick Tyler added insult to injury by putting out a statement portraying Newt as a noble paragon in the style of Ulysses and William Wallace who would lead America to its former standard of greatness through the sheer force of his magical ideas.

“A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught,” wrote Tyler of the torrent of mockery directed at his boss. “But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won't be intimidated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”

Whoooa, slow down there, Homer. I don’t recall the part in the Odyssey where Ulysses decides to divorce Penelope when she’s struck with an illness so he can go shack up with a hot young Siren.

Failed Savior #3: Michele Bachmann

How she rose: Ah, why not? With Trump and Gingrich out of the picture, Bachmann was there to fill the “anyone-but-Romney” void for a brief time. Bachmann had all the credentials the base was looking for: A born-again Christian who supported outlandish conspiracy theories and who called Obama anti-American before it was cool. So over the summer Bachmann got her brief period in the spotlight and regularly came in second place in many national polls. Go to page three.

Herman Cain Makes Two Short Planks Look Like a Computer

But even he pales into insignificance when compared to Bachmann. If you don't watch the video, at least listen to the brief audio. Link

How an Idiot Could Still End Up in the White House
By Archie Bland
November 16, 2011

There is, of course, nothing to stop total idiots trying to be leader of the free world, but you'd think there'd be some sort of winnowing process that would stop them reaching the last six.

The amazing video of Herman Cain that did the rounds yesterday, in which he cheerily burrowed his way to a stratum of stupidity not explored in American politics since Alaska's own Sarah Palin explained that one of her foreign policy qualifications was living quite close to Russia, was an unfortunate reminder that this is not the case. Herman Cain is not just stupid: he's stupid and HE DOESN'T CARE IF YOU KNOW IT. I don't care if he made a fortune from Godfather's Pizza. He's brazenly thick.

This is why, when asked for his views on Libya, he doesn't mind asking his interlocutor to clarify things for him. You'd think he'd have at least tried to style it out. "OK, Libya," he begins, after an agonising pause, twitching a bit, flicking his tongue out with the unnerving air of a hungry and ill-informed lizard. "President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of Gaddafi. Just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing." He goes on like that for a bit, but it doesn't get any better.

Cain does say one sensible thing in the interview, when he gives his view that presidents don't have to be experts in everything. He's absolutely right: they can rely on advisors of the highest order. But there ought to be a basic qualifying level of not being a total ignoramus. It's a bit like driving. You don't have to understand how a carburettor works, but you do have to know which pedal's the brake and which one's the accelerator. You have to be engaged enough to learn. Herman, you feel, might easily end up trying to fly the car off a bridge.

It's sort of incredible, this. You could naively assume that even those candidates for high office lacking book smarts are at least possessed of some sort of animalistic cunning. It gets said a lot about George W. Bush. Reader, do not be fooled! Random, inexplicable things happen all the time. Stupid people can definitely get to the top. And if Karl Rove gets behind them, they can stay there!

Everyone says Herman Cain is only really in it for a shot at a Fox News gig, and it's true that he probably won't be president. But what if Mitt Romney gets knocked over by a political bus? And what happens then if unemployment keeps going up? Imagine it: President Cain. Applying the rules of suburban fast food delivery to international affairs. Bringing the people of Libya an extra-large invasion feast, when all they wanted was a side order of air support. Independent

White House Window Hit By Bullet

Pity it wasn't a drone strike.

White House Window Hit By Bullet: Secret Service Says Ballistic Glass Stopped It Blah blah

Correction Corporation of America : Immigrants for Sale

I have reported on some pretty low things before now, 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." A report where my reflections were, What shitty people, what a shitty society

As despicable a story as that one was, it doesn't come anywhere near eclipsing this tale of absolute wickedness.

Correction Corporation of America, a company that is designed for, is fuelled by, and profits from, the misery of man. To say nothing of the misery it spawns for the families of these unfortunate victims.

Not content with acting in such a despicable and shameful manner, that by comparison, would make the robber barons of yore seem like philanthropic benefactors of the highest order.

CCA charges inmates close to $5 a minute to make a phone call. To pay for this inmates work in the facility and earn a whopping $1 a day. 5 days of work gives them enough for a one minute phone call.

CAA, much like California prison guards union, is not content with making a profit from the status quo, but pro-actively campaigns, to the tune of several million dollars, for more draconian anti-immigration laws to fuel its own insatiable greed.

CCA's greed knows no boundaries. In the past few years they have spent $14.8 million lobbying for more anti-immigration laws, like HB87 in Georgia, to ensure they have continuous access to fresh inmates and keep this money racket going.

Just how broken and corrupt can a society be?

Immigrants for Sale

Correction Corporation of America's Stewart facility in Lumpkin, Georgia is the largest private detention center in the nation. Stewart currently profits close to $50 million a year. As if that weren't enough, CCA often cuts costs by denying basic services to its inmates and by limiting access to their family members.

CCA charges inmates close to $5 a minute to make a phone call. To pay for this, inmates work in the facility and earn a whopping $1 a day. Five days of hard work gives them just enough time for a one minute phone call.

CCA's greed knows no boundaries. In the past few years they have spent $14.8 million lobbying for anti-immigration laws, like HB87 in Georgia, to ensure they have continuous access to fresh inmates and keep their money racket going. It's time to put an end to it.

This is why on November 18th, Brave New Foundation's Cuéntame is partnering with a coalition of immigrant and civil rights organizations, in a powerful vigil and occupation outside the Stewart facility in Georgia. The demand: Shut down Stewart Detention Center now.

You can join-in too online! Add your demand message and we will read and deliver it at the action event!

Your voice is the most important tool we need to fight back against the private prison greed and abuse.

Yours,
Robert Greenwald, Axel Caballero and Brave New Foundation's Cuéntame team.

I invite you to join Cuéntame on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

More articles and videos on this issue, but I shall embed the Robert Medina and the Pedro Guzman clips, penultimate and last.

Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street

Paramilitary Policing From Seattle to Occupy Wall Street

.....The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer’s hair length, the shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and respect. In the interest of “discipline,” too many police bosses treat their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature, competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided. More The Nation

Norm Stamper was chief of the Seattle Police Department during the WTO protests in 1999. He is the author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (Nation Books).

From the comments section, and a man that mirrors my philosophy.

Most cops are fascists. That’s just a noted fact. The first thing that must be done is to change the recruitment and training of new police. All departments have candidates take a psychological test. They must use new tests to weed out the aggressive personalities which now dominate virtually all police departments at the local, county, state and federal levels. More weight must be added to candidates with strong reasoning, verbal communication and analytical skills, as well as a demonstrable moral core. Most cops have been militarized, as the article state. And, most are in for the duration - until they can retire and collect a pension. Therefore, they qualify as “Lifers”, just as in the military. You cannot de-militarize a lifer soldier.

Step one; recruit the right candidate. Step two; the switch from a paramilitary police force to a service police force must start from day one at the academy. Less emphasis on confrontation and combat ... more emphasis on psychology and communication. Step three; give cops meaningful work ... end the ridiculous “War On Drugs”. That redefines the officers’ relationship to the community. No longer is every person with their hand in their pocket a suspected drug user or dealer. Now the cops on the beat and in districts can meet the people face to face without the burden of the old, “Us against them” mentality.

It would be a start.

11. posted by: Big Dave at 11/11/2011

Talking About A Revolution

I would like to believe this is more than just rhetoric.

As the writer notes, the component parts for a revolution are in place, but that is a far cry from an actual cohesive movement that would bring about fundamental change.

If nothing else is achieved, at least the pretence is gone. No more 'democracy' bullshit, America can now be seen for what it is, what it has been for a long time, a police state.

And I have a great deal of trouble accepting the notion that the minions of corporate America, the para-military police, are going to somehow find a social conscience and join with masses in instrumenting that change.

I think the events of the last few days have more than proved just where just where the cops stand, where they have always stood, shoulder to shoulder with the establishment.

This Is What Revolution Looks Like
by Chris Hedges,
15 November 2011

Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future.

Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. They think they can clean up “the mess”—always employing the language of personal hygiene and public security—by making us disappear. They think we will all go home and accept their corporate nation, a nation where crime and government policy have become indistinguishable, where nothing in America, including the ordinary citizen, is deemed by those in power worth protecting or preserving, where corporate oligarchs awash in hundreds of millions of dollars are permitted to loot and pillage the last shreds of collective wealth, human capital and natural resources, a nation where the poor do not eat and workers do not work, a nation where the sick die and children go hungry, a nation where the consent of the governed and the voice of the people is a cruel joke.

Get back into your cages, they are telling us. Return to watching the lies, absurdities, trivia and celebrity gossip we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television. Invest your emotional energy in the vast system of popular entertainment. Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans. Be thankful for the scraps we toss. Chant back to us our phrases about democracy, greatness and freedom. Vote in our rigged political theater. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide corporations with huge profits. Stand by mutely as our bipartisan congressional super committee, either through consensus or cynical dysfunction, plunges you into a society without basic social services including unemployment benefits. Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.

The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes. But they no longer have any concept of what is happening around them. They are as mystified and clueless about these uprisings as the courtiers at Versailles or in the Forbidden City who never understood until the very end that their world was collapsing. The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are “cathartic” and “entertaining,” as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.




The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton’s next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.

I have seen my share of revolts, insurgencies and revolutions, from the guerrilla conflicts in the 1980s in Central America to the civil wars in Algeria, the Sudan and Yemen, to the Palestinian uprising to the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania as well as the wars in the former Yugoslavia. George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.

Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles. When the aging East German dictator Erich Honecker was unable to get paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig, the regime was finished. The same refusal to employ violence doomed the communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. I watched in December 1989 as the army general that the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had depended on to crush protests condemned him to death on Christmas Day. Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces to fire into crowds.




The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies. The resignations of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s deputy, Sharon Cornu, and the mayor’s legal adviser and longtime friend, Dan Siegel, in protest over the clearing of the Oakland encampment are some of the first cracks in the edifice. “Support Occupy Oakland, not the 1% and its government facilitators,” Siegel tweeted after his resignation.

There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew, as did the spectators, that I was woefully mismatched. Ringers, experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice, would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought, lie about their long professional fight records, and toy with us. Those fights became about something other than winning. They became about dignity and self-respect. You fought to say something about who you were as a human being. These bouts were punishing, physically brutal and demoralizing. You would get knocked down and stagger back up. You would reel backwards from a blow that felt like a cement block. You would taste the saltiness of your blood on your lips. Your vision would blur. Your ribs, the back of your neck and your abdomen would ache. Your legs would feel like lead. But the longer you held on, the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor. No one, even you, thought you could win. But then, every once in a while, the ringer would get overconfident. He would get careless. He would become a victim of his own hubris. And you would find deep within yourself some new burst of energy, some untapped strength and, with the fury of the dispossessed, bring him down. I have not put on a pair of boxing gloves for 30 years. But I felt this twinge of euphoria again in my stomach this morning, this utter certainty that the impossible is possible, this realization that the mighty will fall. Truthout