Random News Stories

[Junkenstein]

Oh yes. Scottish nationalists are dickheads as well, make no mistake but I've not seen any of them come out with anything quite as vile. Depressingly, this probably just means I'm not aware of it.

More depressingly, these fuckers will get countless votes just based around "English votes for English policies" rhetoric.

[Cain]

Yeah, Scottish nationalists also tend to be more socialist in orientation - whether that's a genuine ideological position or taken simply to piss off the English neoliberal consensus is a matter for debate.

UKIP, by contrast, are very enamoured with the Tea Party, American style-libertarianism, right wing populism and culture war of a counterjihadist kind.  Spend some time reading today's Daily Mail and The Sun, and imagine a political party run off those espoused viewpoints.  Voila, you have UKIP.

Also, can't help but snigger at Farage crowing about a "revolution" in British politics...by re-electing someone who has already sat in Parliament for the best part of a decade.  Much lol, very amuse, so revolt.

[Junkenstein]

Senior clerics taking part in a review of Catholic teachings on the family have called on the Church to adopt a more positive stance on homosexuality.

A preliminary report written by bishops during a Vatican synod said homosexuals had "gifts and qualities to offer".

The report does not challenge the Church's long-held opposition to same-sex marriage, but some gay rights groups hailed it as a breakthrough.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29603496

No real progress. I'm reading this mainly as an attempt to keep themselves relevant and allow priests who are outed as homosexual to continue in their posts. A suspicious man might think that someone has list of priests with unconventional tastes. A cynical man might think the list contains details of those with illegal tastes and this is a positioning move to allow the church to give legal and financial backing to any who find themselves in legal difficulties.

There's also some fairly wide ranging implications for Africa. Homosexuality is still a serious crime in many nations there and I assume I don't need to mention the HIV issue. If we get a positive statement about rubbers out of this I may have to revise my rating of the pope above "Scum". May.

[Junkenstein]

Mexico working as usual:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-29609409

Protesters in Mexico have attacked the local government headquarters in the state of Guerrero in anger at the disappearance of 43 students.

Hundreds of demonstrators broke windows and set fire to part of the building in the state capital, Chilpancingo.

The students have been missing since clashes with police on 26 September in the town of Iguala.

Several officers accused of colluding with a drug gang were arrested after the violence, in which six people died.

The protesters allege that the police rounded up the missing students before handing them over to a local drug gang called Guerreros Unidos.

The Guerreros Unidos gang has been linked to the family of Iguala's Mayor Jose Luis Abarca Velazquez.

He, his wife and his head of security went on leave after the clashes and have not reappeared. A formal search has been launched for them.

Authorities are investigating whether the students were killed and buried in several mass graves found outside Iguala, some 200 km (125 miles) south of Mexico City.

Governor Aguirre said on Saturday that the students were not among the bodies identified so far from 28 burnt corpses recovered from the graves.

"I have big hopes of finding our young students alive," he told reporters.

Prosecutors have detained 26 police officers in connection with the clashes on 26 September, as well as four gang members and four other unidentified people.

This is a charming little bout of FUCKED UP. The gang name is unfamiliar to me but it sounds like they're trying to make a name for themselves to compete with the bigger boys. I'm not sure if they're being successful at this or not. My other thought is that they are a local branch of one of the larger cartels and sending a message to local competitors.

Either way, bodies, pits, business as usual.

[Junkenstein]

Pistorius sentencing occurring, slowly:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-29607774

Nothing particularly of note, bar this:

The next defence witness was Annette Vergeer, a probation officer.

Reading out a report commissioned by the defence, she said Mr Pistorius should receive a suspended sentence, community work, therapy, and correctional supervision.

She added that he was "extremely broken" and would "only deteriorate" in prison.

"It is virtually impossible in prison to teach a person how to become a useful member of society," she said. "There is also no facility to cater for the accused's disability."

It's amazing that prison has no chance of rehabilitating celebrities yet it's apparently the ideal environment for criminals who aren't famous.

I'd also question the "no way to cater for the disability" thing too. I didn't know you needed legs to be in a cell.

[Junkenstein]

Mexico working as usual:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-29609409

Protesters in Mexico have attacked the local government headquarters in the state of Guerrero in anger at the disappearance of 43 students.

Hundreds of demonstrators broke windows and set fire to part of the building in the state capital, Chilpancingo.

The students have been missing since clashes with police on 26 September in the town of Iguala.

Several officers accused of colluding with a drug gang were arrested after the violence, in which six people died.

The protesters allege that the police rounded up the missing students before handing them over to a local drug gang called Guerreros Unidos.

The Guerreros Unidos gang has been linked to the family of Iguala's Mayor Jose Luis Abarca Velazquez.

He, his wife and his head of security went on leave after the clashes and have not reappeared. A formal search has been launched for them.

Authorities are investigating whether the students were killed and buried in several mass graves found outside Iguala, some 200 km (125 miles) south of Mexico City.

Governor Aguirre said on Saturday that the students were not among the bodies identified so far from 28 burnt corpses recovered from the graves.

"I have big hopes of finding our young students alive," he told reporters.

Prosecutors have detained 26 police officers in connection with the clashes on 26 September, as well as four gang members and four other unidentified people.

This is a charming little bout of FUCKED UP. The gang name is unfamiliar to me but it sounds like they're trying to make a name for themselves to compete with the bigger boys. I'm not sure if they're being successful at this or not. My other thought is that they are a local branch of one of the larger cartels and sending a message to local competitors.

Either way, bodies, pits, business as usual.

Update:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-29624801

Mexico's attorney general says DNA tests have shown that 28 bodies found in a mass grave are not those of a missing group of students.

Jesus Murillo Karam said further tests were being carried out on four other recently discovered grave sites.

Oh, good. It's a bunch of bodies no one was even looking for. I have a feeling this may become a bit of a recurring theme with this one.

[Junkenstein]

Nigeria is apparently Ebola-Free.

Can't help but suspect that's a really optomisic announcement that will probably be changed by the end of the week.

In other Nigeria news, still no-one giving a shit about Boko Haram and the missing kids. It's only been 6 months or so, I suppose it would have been stupid to expect some kind of progress on that.

[Cain]

Well, except for this, sure.

[Junkenstein]

Oh, Awesome.

That's actually made my day, assuming everything proceeds without any issues.

No Ebola and positive outcomes from negotiations with terrorists, it's a good day in Nigeria.

[Junkenstein]

Terror strikes Canada:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29699876

A man who struck two Canadian soldiers with his car before he was shot dead by police had been "radicalised" and was known to security officials, Canada's prime minister has said.

The 25-year-old, identified in local media as Martin Couture Rouleau, was killed by officers at St-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec after a car chase.

One of the troops was seriously hurt, the other had minor injuries.

On Monday, Rouleau ran down the two members of the military in a car park near a Canadian military office, police told local media. It was not immediately clear whether the soldiers were in uniform.

He fled and was chased by police at high speed for about 4km (2.5 miles), until the car drove off the road and rolled over several times.

He then left the car and police opened fire, the Montreal Gazette reported. The shooting took place at St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, about 42km (26 miles) southeast of Montreal.

Rouleau was taken to hospital where he died some hours later.

Television pictures showed a large knife on the ground near the crashed car.

Mr Harper's office said in a written statement on Monday evening. "Federal authorities have confirmed that there are clear indications that the individual had become radicalised."

While it may just be an incompetent attack, there's a few things about this that are quite uncomfortable. Shooting a guy who's just had a car crash is one of them. The ability for everyone to quickly confirm his radical beliefs is another. There's also the odd thing about this guy being unable to kill people with a car. "Crazy terror spree" ending with basically two hit and run incidents doesn't ring quite right.

[Junkenstein]

Daily lack of words:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-29203663

A rubber fetishist who raises money by going out in public in a bondage suit said he hoped his efforts would start a debate on stereotypes.

'The Gimp Man of Essex' gives £1 to Colchester Mind every time someone posts a photo with him to his Facebook page, which has more than 2,000 likes.

He said most people he met on the streets were friendly, but others made assumptions that he was "a paedophile or a pervert".

So far he has raised £375 for charity.

Mask and suit available from Dr P3nt's BDSM Boutique.

[Aucoq]

Daily lack of words:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-29203663

A rubber fetishist who raises money by going out in public in a bondage suit said he hoped his efforts would start a debate on stereotypes.

'The Gimp Man of Essex' gives £1 to Colchester Mind every time someone posts a photo with him to his Facebook page, which has more than 2,000 likes.

He said most people he met on the streets were friendly, but others made assumptions that he was "a paedophile or a pervert".

So far he has raised £375 for charity.

Mask and suit available from Dr P3nt's BDSM Boutique.

So that's what the guy from American Horror Story has been up to since the first season ended. 

[The Wizard Joseph]

Terror strikes Canada:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-29699876

A man who struck two Canadian soldiers with his car before he was shot dead by police had been "radicalised" and was known to security officials, Canada's prime minister has said.

The 25-year-old, identified in local media as Martin Couture Rouleau, was killed by officers at St-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec after a car chase.

One of the troops was seriously hurt, the other had minor injuries.

On Monday, Rouleau ran down the two members of the military in a car park near a Canadian military office, police told local media. It was not immediately clear whether the soldiers were in uniform.

He fled and was chased by police at high speed for about 4km (2.5 miles), until the car drove off the road and rolled over several times.

He then left the car and police opened fire, the Montreal Gazette reported. The shooting took place at St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, about 42km (26 miles) southeast of Montreal.

Rouleau was taken to hospital where he died some hours later.

Television pictures showed a large knife on the ground near the crashed car.

Mr Harper's office said in a written statement on Monday evening. "Federal authorities have confirmed that there are clear indications that the individual had become radicalised."

While it may just be an incompetent attack, there's a few things about this that are quite uncomfortable. Shooting a guy who's just had a car crash is one of them. The ability for everyone to quickly confirm his radical beliefs is another. There's also the odd thing about this guy being unable to kill people with a car. "Crazy terror spree" ending with basically two hit and run incidents doesn't ring quite right.

That and there was no firearm and he was out of the vehicle. They mention the knife found on the ground but say nothing about further attempts to harm anybody. Might, just maybe, have been shot in hot blood by someone upset about the people run down but I doubt it. No mention of what caused the loss of vehicle control. Sounds perhaps like an attempt to flee more than an attack. Hm.

[Cain]

The bar for attempted terrorism is notoriously low nowadays.

Procuring knives and a single gun and talking about shooting police officers or possibly soldiers is proof of a "Mumbai style-attack" which requires the courts be given full secrecy in trying the terrorists, for example (note: this is not a joke, but the very real reasoning of the UK Crown Prosecution, intelligence services and government in an ongoing UK case).

Canada also has its own shady past involving Islamists.  Been reading Kurt Eichenwald's 500 Days during my work breaks recently, and he talks in length about how Canadian Intelligence are both extremely paranoid and very inclined to put the screws to anyone they think could be a terrorist.  Which is practically anyone unfortunate enough to end up in their line of sight.  Eichenwald's a mainstream, NYT style establishment journalist, so if he gives the impression that these people are awful, they probably are.

If Canadian Intelligence has switched to FBI style provocations, don't be too surprised if this turns out to be a former target of theirs (though given the nature of what occured, I doubt they will ever admit it).  Sounds more like an extreme mental breakdown brought on by stress than an actually thought out and carefully planned act of political violence.

[Cain]

And in other shady intelligence news, it looks like a new film about Gary Webb's life is going to be used to whitewash the CIA's involvement in the media campaign to undermine his credibility, which caused him to lose his job and ultimately commit suicide.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/16/kill-the-messenger-rare-truth-telling/

A recently released CIA document on how the counterattack against Webb was promoted is revealing in this regard. Entitled "Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story," the six-page internal report. described the CIA's damage control in the wake of the publication of Webb's story.

The report showed how the spy agency's PR team exploited relationships with mainstream journalists who then essentially did the CIA's work for it, mounting a devastating counterattack against Webb that marginalized him and painted the Contra-cocaine trafficking story as some baseless conspiracy theory.

Crucial to that success, the report credits "a ground base of already productive relations with journalists and an effective response by the Director of Central Intelligence's Public Affairs Staff [that] helped prevent this story from becoming an unmitigated disaster."

The Agency convinced friendly journalists to characterize Webb's series as presenting "no real news, in that similar charges were made in the 1980's and were investigated by the Congress and were found to be without substance." That, of course, was a lie. In fact, Kerry's investigation confirmed many of the Contra-cocaine allegations first reported by Parry and Barger for the Associated Press.

According to the CIA's "Managing a Nightmare" report, journalists were advised to read Webb's series critically and the CIA considered the initial attack by the Washington Post the key moment in blunting Webb's story. The CIA distributed the negative stories to other members of the press.

From there, other papers refused to pick up Webb's articles, but they often carried the articles attacking him. The CIA's report noted that the tide of the public relations battle had fully turned by October and soon became a rout. Even the American Journalism Review, which – like similar publications – is supposed to stand up for honest journalists under fire, instead joined the all-out charge against Webb.

The Agency crowed how easy it was to work with journalists to first blunt and then turn around this negative national security story.

Also read this for an explanation of how everyone's favourite media outlet of fearless truthsearching and Fighting The Power, First Look Media, is aiding in the current whitewash:  http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/the-intercepts-ryan-devereaux-is-no-gary-webb/#rssowlmlink