Messages

1

Apple Zone / Re: Open Bar VII: written by George Lucas!

« on: Yesterday at 07:38:37 pm »

I can't fucking stand it any longer.

I'll see you guys again when you decide to be less retarded.

2

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Random News Stories

« on: Yesterday at 05:13:20 pm »

No problem.

Obama's speech was full of rhetorical bullshit.  "Signature strikes" will continue as and when ordered by the White House - that is the bottom line.

3

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Company that couldn't get their shit together for the Olympics has been given...

« on: Yesterday at 02:57:35 pm »

It might interest our American friends to know that 4GS are the company who bought out Wackenhut in the US.

4

Apple Zone / Re: Another TGRR prophecy comes true.

« on: Yesterday at 02:19:18 pm »

Cain, you hearing any buzz about this?  Werner's been wrong before, but he IS the guy that told me to get the fuck out of the market in late 2006.

Bits and pieces.  My German is rusty, though, and I dont trust German banks whining about regulatory capture.  What worries them is their share of the regulatory capture, would be my suspicion.

Which may amount to the same thing when looking at their initial actions.

As far as I can see internationally, the following is happening:

Shinzo Abe caused the Japanese markets to collectively shit themselves.  Somehow.  No-one's quite sure how, which means no-one knows how to read the 7% drop in the Nikkei, especially in light of its recent, extraordinary growth (about 45% overall in the past 5 months).  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is getting apocalyptic however, which is rarely a good sign.

The Fed is stopping QE.  This has investors worried as hell, because the Fed cannot control rates when investors start dumping bonds.  Mortgage rates are rising as a consequence of the Fed's statement, which is harming the US "housing recovery", such as it is.  However, the Fed is committed to this course of action due to the mostly illusionary "recovery" which it commits itself to seeing in the data. 

Europe is a fucking mess, part eleventy gajillion of a never ending series of suck and fail.

Obama is trying to finalize the TPP and USA-EU trade deals, both of which will tie the US economy even more closely with European and Pacific happenings.

5

Apple Zone / Re: Pope says doing good is what matters, not what you believe

« on: Yesterday at 01:34:48 pm »

I'd be more impressed if he had been inclined towards "doing good" during the Argentinian junta.

I mean, applying the Pope's own standard to himself here: his belief is that atheists can be good people.  Great.  His actions were supporting a regime that treated atheists as crypto-Marxists and actual socialists as enemies of the state.

So yeah.

6

Apple Zone / Re: Open Bar VII: written by George Lucas!

« on: Yesterday at 01:29:16 pm »

Roommates just realized Monsanto was evil. Welcome to the party, y'all.

I had one of my Politics students try to tell me about CCA yesterday.  I laughed.

Which was probably a bit mean.  He's a good kid, knows his politics better than most.  It was just like "and welcome to the party".  I also added to his knowledge, by pointing out the racist roots of slave labour in the US, and how, among other things, Congressional offices are furnished by items made by prisoners.  So I wasn't entirely mean.

7

Apple Zone / Re: Open Bar VII: written by George Lucas!

« on: Yesterday at 01:24:09 pm »

Fuck me, but these last two days have been horrible.

Because most of the exams are over, yet students don't have classes for another week, most have decided to go on holiday.  This means announcing, at the last minute, they are going home/to stay with a relative/to some random place, and I'm the one who has to run around speaking to all their parents and guardians to find out if this is correct and if they have permission or not.  The kids don't wait until permission is given, they just wander off, like this place is a hotel or something.  Typically, I have no support from my boss, who should really be the one dealing with this, and my co-worker is a useless lump who shouldn't be trusted with anything more complex than....well, I was going to say organising the paperwork, but given I went through our files recently and noted a number of missing documents and out of date information, she cannot even be trusted with that.

Dear God I cannot wait for September.  Boarding school's are more work up front, but shit like this simply doesn't happen.  You can't wander off.

8

Apple Zone / Re: Open Bar VII: written by George Lucas!

« on: May 24, 2013, 11:23:23 pm »

The only thing that bothers me is the prospect of going to school with a bunch of rich 20-year-olds. But hell, why not?

Because they could be the kids I was overseeing last year?

 

9

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Company that couldn't get their shit together for the Olympics has been given...

« on: May 24, 2013, 07:57:54 pm »

GS4's security arm, as employed by the Home Office for the purpose of expelling illegal immigrants, also has a bad reputation in the business for racism.  Oh, and people dying in their care.  That too.

I can just imagine the number of men with histories of sexual violence they'd probably put on the payroll at a contact centre.

10

Apple Zone / Re: What the fuck is up with Britain these days?

« on: May 24, 2013, 04:32:54 pm »

To be fair, in this case, two guys were allegedly trying to force their way into the cockpit.

11

Apple Zone / Re: What the fuck is up with Britain these days?

« on: May 24, 2013, 01:38:49 pm »

Britain has been the capitalist west's very own East Germany since about, oh, 1964.  "Security reasons" can be given for anything from stopping the press reporting on any given story to putting tanks around Heathrow Airport (both of which have happened in the last decade)

12

Apple Zone / Re: Machete Terror? '

« on: May 24, 2013, 10:21:00 am »

This trial is going to be a clusterfuck.

The press is airing videos of the attack at an alarming rate, which is going to mean finding jurists who haven't seen the footage nearly impossible.

John Reid is now blubbering about how the Communications Data Bill (aka "All Your Data Are Belong to Us" bill) could have prevented this though, typically, he fails to mention how.  The fact they were already on the security service radar does rather undermine his position....like with the American lists of "people of interest", the problem isn't putting ever more people onto a system, it's refining who actually deserves to be on the list and eliminating false positives.

Eric Pickles has been running around defending the security services...well, waddling around.  Exercise isn't really his thing:

Mr Pickles told BBC Breakfast: "Peers and MPs will do a thorough investigation in terms of what the security forces knew but I've seen experts on security explaining how difficult it is in a free society to be able to control everyone."

Of course, this argument will be disregarded once the Data Communications Bill is reintroduced to Parliament.  It's a cynical argument, deployed to defend the security serves for their failure in this regard.  Precisely how much blame lies with them does remain to be seen, but the facts are that they knew of these two men, but were unable to discern their intent.

Two additional people were arrested on conspiracy to murder, and are being held at a South London police station.  Press is being very quiet about that one, only a byline in the Guardian's feeds yesterday.

Islamphobic violence is spiking.  According to the publically available date, there were 38 reported incidents on Wednesday, where as the daily average of reported incidents is 4.  Beyond this, a large body of intimidating threats are coming out of far right groups, with threats to burn down mosques being a daily occurence.  The address of Fiyaz Mughal, of the inter-faith group Faith Matters, has been published on Twitter, alongside invitations to shoot him.

13

Apple Zone / Re: Machete Terror? '

« on: May 23, 2013, 11:25:07 pm »

I need an adult in government to tell me if this was terrorism or not:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/02/birmingham-murder-racially-motivated-police

A 75-year-old man stabbed to death yards from his home may have been targeted in a racially motivated attack, according to police.

Mohammed Saleem, who used a walking stick, was stabbed three times in the back as he returned home from prayers at his local mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham, on Monday night.

The blows were struck with such violence they penetrated to the front of his body.

The father of seven also had no defensive wounds in what has been described as a swift, vicious and cowardly attack by the man leading the murder investigation, Detective Superintendent Mark Payne of West Midlands police.

Officers want to trace a white man, aged 25-32, of medium height and build, spotted on CCTV footage running near the scene of the attack around the time it happened, just before 10.30pm.

Police also want to trace a seven-seat people carrier captured on CCTV, driving near the mosque with the two male occupants, both white and in their 30s, who are considered "significant witnesses".

In an emotional family appeal on Thursday, two of Saleem's daughters, Shazia Khan, 45, and Nazia Maqsood, 44, called for the attackers to hand themselves in. They tearfully described their father as a "widely respected member of the community" and "much-loved".

Payne said the possibility it was a racially motivated attack was "a significant line of inquiry" and a large number of detectives were working on the case. "To the attacker I say we will find you and we will bring you to justice," he added.

14

Apple Zone / Re: Machete Terror? '

« on: May 23, 2013, 10:59:51 pm »

How the fuck are guns relevant to a discussion about an incident in the UK?

America is NOT the world...

jeez

The UK banned guns, now people have to do each other in manually?
You're right, off-topic.

Stop being a douche.

Guns are irrelevant to this discussion.

15

Apple Zone / Re: Machete Terror? '

« on: May 23, 2013, 05:05:22 pm »

I'd guess at least half of being an effective terrorist is how good you are at PR.

Osama's frequent tapes, statements of websites and now this.

This still seems to be a random outlier in the most part. The nature of the attack and waiting around for arrest are still very strange to me. I would have assumed that a single violent incident is not the most effective strategy for terror. In this instance it seems you've got 2 arrested "terrorists" for the victim.

It's PR, and shows how devoted you are to the cause.

Think of the fi'dais, the pointy end of business for the Assassin sect.  After a killing, they never ran away, never even lifted a hand to protect themselves.  They did so to signal two things:

1) that they were responsible.  This was not an act of simple murder, it was an act of war by the Old Man of the Mountains, and
2) they were so zealous, so convinced of the rightness of their cause, that they would not flee like a common criminal.  They are willing to kill and to die for their cause.

If they had just killed the guy and ran off, then they wouldn't have had their statements beamed across the world by willing reporters.  People might have assumed it was a hit-and-run incident, a mugging gone wrong, or a personal dispute.  The message would have not been made.

Besides, a two man cell is hardly going to bring the country to its knees.  This act itself is only notable for its particular brutality, and the political reasoning behind it.  500 knife murders a year in the UK, after all.  If it were not for the act of staying to communicate their political message, this wouldnt even register as a terrorist attack in most people's minds.