Random News Stories

[Cain]

Much the same deal for Abu Qatada, too.

We were letting all kinds of Islamists set up shop in London in the early 90s, and had all kinds of underhand dealings with them.  I suspect we, along with the CIA, were planning extensive operations in the former Soviet Union using Muslim proxies, and that plan went in the shitter post 9/11, though elements of it keep being resurrected.

[P3nT4gR4m]

When you say "went in the shitter" you mean "blew up in their face", right? 

[Junkenstein]

Sorry, did someone say something about shitters blowing up in people's faces?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukip-free-speech-row-police-tell-blogger-to-take-down-legitimate-facts-taken-from-official-eurosceptic-party-policy-9358196.html

HO HO HO?

Officers reportedly asked Green party member Michael Abberton to "take down" tweets in which he attempted to verify the truth behind a number of claims made in an anti-Ukip poster – despite police admitting that no offence had been committed.

Writing on his blog, Mr Abberton explained that he hadn't even been the one to create the original list of 10 "great reasons to vote Ukip" – which included "making it legal for a man to rape or assault his wife" and "speeding up privatisation of the NHS".

Yet the blogger said two Cambridge Police officers visited his home on Saturday afternoon to tell him that, while he had not committed any crimes and no police action would be taken, a complaint had been made "by a certain political party".

Writing on his website, Axe of Reason, Mr Abberton said he was advised to delete the posts on Twitter.

He said: "They asked me to 'take it down' but I said I couldn't do that as it had already been retweeted and appropriated, copied, many times and I no longer had any control of it.

"I'd like to be absolutely clear - the police officers were extremely professional and polite and I couldn't fault their behaviour in any way.

"But it wasn't until after they left that I questioned why they had visited me in the first place.

"Why would a political party, so close to an election, seek to stop people finding out what their policies are or their past voting record? And is it not a matter for concern that a political party would seek to silence dissent and debate in such a manner?"

HO HO HO!



Never mind any of that! Look at this fella! He ain't from round here, he's from over there!

[Junkenstein]

They just keep getting dumber:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukip-calls-for-police-to-arrest-protesters-who-call-us-fascists-ahead-of-showdown-with-antifascist-groups-in-brighton-9362483.html

A senior Ukip MEP candidate has called for police to arrest protesters who call its members 'fascists', ahead of a showdown with activists in Brighton this evening.

The rest of the article is hardly required, you know what you're dealing with here.

[Cain]

She said: "I have no problem with free speech but talk of fascism and Nazism to the third-biggest mainstream party in Britain is disgraceful.

Yeah.  I mean, I don't like Nick Clegg either, but calling him a Nazi is a bit ridiculous.

On a serious point, I'm trying to give a fuck about this.  I really am.  But this is, apparently, the politics we demanded.  Anyone who looks at Farage's freak show and concludes "that's the kind of people I want to have control of our nuclear arsenal" is clearly too wound up with spite over something, whether it be gay marriage or the EU or that we still have a barely functioning social network that nothing is going to bring them around.

I mean, my mockery cannot even begin to approach the mockery of willingly associating with UKIP brings.  So why bother?  And it's not like if, like much of the commentariat, if I "condemn a little less and understand a little more", which I understand to mean not calling UKIP a racist party, despite all the obvious evidence, and give them sloppy blowjobs in the national press will bring them around to any form of reason.

I might have spoken with a UKIP supporter recently.  Unlike him, I didnt have a bunch of pre-arranged talking points of bollocks to cajole the masses with, but I did have direct experience of some of the shit he was talking about.  Any attempts to tell him that actually he was wrong were either met with angry rebuttals, strawmen or putting words in my mouth.  This doesn't seem to be much different from how UKIP standing officials debate.

[Junkenstein]

My only concern with UKIP is that they're doing a half decent job of acting like how people expect politicians here to act. They look wrong, they say stupid and offensive things at random and that's EXACTLY how we expect our politicians to be here.

The various upcoming elections will be quite interesting due to them at least. Clegg will be looking at a massacre and probable all time low, labour obvious gains but possibly not enough. That leaves UKIP as a very ugly dealmaker, potentially. If they target the right areas with low turnouts, which they appear to have been doing.

Really, all I want is someone half reasonable who doesn't appear cloned from lard for a politician. Maybe in a couple of generations you fucks will stop electing shiny cretins. Or perhaps make it some kind of legal obligation to adhere to manifestos when taking power. They might then be worth the paper they're printed on in that event. At the least the writers would actually have to take them remotely seriously.

[Cain]

Yes, the Tories have been grooming them to take over from the Lib Dems since about...well, 2011 was when I first noticed, so probably from the moment the coalition deal was agreed upon.

[Junkenstein]

"You can't play this time but next time...."

I wonder, which notable political donors became UKIP donors around 2011? Still yet another reason to suspect a potential Labour/Ukip coalition too.

A stooge is always a handy tool in any con game.

[BadBeast]

UKIP's casually racist attitude towards wogs, nig-nogs, homogays and people from "Bongo Bongo land"  might seem dangerously progressive at first glance, but I don't think this should put the electorate off from voting a UKIP Government into power next election. Their non-committal "leaked" ideas about the immigration, social engineering, and foriegn policy they intend to implement in a post-electoral UKIP Britain, are even less likely to happen than David Cameroons promise to have a referendum on EU Membership (Just as soon as he gets his feet under the table at #10) no later than last year sometime. Cameron is as slippery as 3 eels in a bucket of snot, and he's almost as smart too.

Still, the one thing we DO know about the Tories, is that they're the only European Political Party in the past 200 years, that consistently forge ahead with implementing no-nonsense "Zero Tolerance" policies for racism, hate-speech, or bigotry of ANY kind. And now they have made our once, institutionally racist Police Force into a modern, multi-culturally aware, gender sensitive equal opportunities employer, they can begin to enforce the actual LAW, (IKR?) using our new"Fluffy, but Firmly non-partisan Police Force that is ALREADY the envy of the free thinking World. (Just as soon as "Call me David" is safely ensconced again in #10 as Chanceller. I mean, Fuhrer. I mean Capo erm, Heil, Caesar!  . . . well, you get the idea.

Their word is their bond, and lying is anathema to every principle they stand for. Thing is, it's the covert principles they all raced to grease up and bend over for, while they buried their snouts in the trough that have always been the problem in the past but they have assured ALL the select comittees they selected, to give us a better illusion of accountibility on this question of their honesty that they've turned the corner, and are well started on the roadmap to ending racism.

So that all seems to be in order then. 

Farange's promises to send the "tens of thousands" of Romanian immigrants set to flood the UK this year will sadly have to be put on hold, due to the fact that there have been 4000 LESS Romanian immigrants than there were before those huge "floodgates" were opened. He's now claiming that Cameron engineered this just to make him and his Party look stupid. Next, he'll be demanding the previous extrapolated numbers of people must be to be flown into the UK immediately, so we can point at them all, sneer, then fly them all straight back to Rome, or wherever the fuck it is they came from.

And if the E.D.L are the unspoken Brownshirts to Farage's 'Tard Reich, then I don't think we need to worry about them coming up the stairs in the night for us. Just publish a bogus FB Page, giving them bogus directions to, for instance, the wet end of Brighton Pier instead of Tottenham's Broadwater Farm, and they'll probably march right off the end of it. It might stink the beach up for a while at low tide, but fuck them, the whole E.D.F / U.K.I.P "covert" Coalition smell of shit anyway. (Even without Robbo at the helm) Even so, they would have to be fuckin' quick off the mark to be any worse than the shameful and repeatedly proven track records for lying, cheating, stealing, top level corruption, (and subsequent cover-ups) and then not giving a fuck, (even when caught red handed) that have consistently been blatantly committed by  A/ "New"Labour Government. And B/ Every single Tory Government. And lately, every Tory Opposition Party too. (In fact, during Blair's administration, the Tories were so crap at their job, The Daily Mail were actually given the job of official opposition Party)

So this year, My vote is going the same way as it always has done. Like, nowhere at all. I'm STILL refusing to participate in any form of Democratic process whatsoever. Not entirely from some misguided political sense of protest though, (I'm not THAT fucking stupid) there's perhaps a teensy bit of pathological laziness involved too..... (Let no-one say I'm blind to my own glaringly obvious and occisional character defects) 

[Junkenstein]

Today, I bring you TEN TONS OF SHIT.

Various grades.

1 - http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-is-a-hot-one

But now things have gotten really dark and weird (yes, we're on a very relative scale here.) A pro-McDaniel blogger, Clayton Thomas Kelly, was just arrested for breaking into the nursing home where Cochran's wife lives, videotaping her and then posting the video. Remember, this is an elderly woman who I'm told is in a fairly advanced vegetative state. So in addition to being a serious felony it is just ugly and awful in human terms.

So Kelly got arrested and obviously it's an embarrassment for the McDaniel campaign since he's a supporter, appears to have had some level of contact with the campaign if not necessarily a relationship and seems to have been trying to advance (in a colossally weird and immoral way) the same wife/aide something something something story the McDaniel campaign has been pushing with the reporters.

Lots going on, little of it good.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27465295

A killer who absconded while on day release is still on the run after failing to return to jail.

It is the third time Arnold Pickering, 44, from Greater Manchester, has gone on the run. He failed to return to Kennet Prison in Liverpool on Saturday.

Another "XXX has ESCAPED from prison" tale. The frequency of these is somewhat intruiging. A paranoid mind might think that relatively notorious criminals are being given fairly little oversight in a bid to drive a change in various prison regulations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10123478

Scientists at a US university say they have developed a technique to hack into Indian electronic voting machines.

After connecting a home-made device to a machine, University of Michigan researchers were able to change results by sending text messages from a mobile.

Indian election officials say their machines are foolproof, and that it would be very difficult even to get hold of a machine to tamper with it.

"Before the elections take place, the machine is set in the presence of the candidates and their representatives. These people are allowed to put their seal on the machine, and nobody can open the machine without breaking the seals."

The researchers said the paper and wax seals could be easily faked.

Given the general levels of corruption in India, this bears watching. I'd put money I don't have on something strange going on with these machines sooner or later. Sooner, if it turns out they're also used elsewhere.

[Telarus]

Interesting....


In other interesting political news: http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/this-card-being-sent-to-mississippi-voters-is-amazing

[LMNO]

Holy crap.  That's amazing.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

" If information doesn't square with someone's prior beliefs, he discards the beliefs if they're weak and discards the information if the beliefs are strong."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/mariakonnikova/2014/05/why-do-people-persist-in-believing-things-that-just-arent-true.html?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email

[Cain]

Interesting, thanks.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

" If information doesn't square with someone's prior beliefs, he discards the beliefs if they're weak and discards the information if the beliefs are strong."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/mariakonnikova/2014/05/why-do-people-persist-in-believing-things-that-just-arent-true.html?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email

That was absolutely fascinating! There have been smaller, less comprehensive studies on this effect, but this:

Normally, self-affirmation is reserved for instances in which identity is threatened in direct ways: race, gender, age, weight, and the like. Here, Nyhan decided to apply it in an unrelated context: Could recalling a time when you felt good about yourself make you more broad-minded about highly politicized issues, like the Iraq surge or global warming? As it turns out, it would. On all issues, attitudes became more accurate with self-affirmation, and remained just as inaccurate without. That effect held even when no additional information was presented—that is, when people were simply asked the same questions twice, before and after the self-affirmation.

...really caught my interest. Thanks!