Some good news to start off the day.

Turns out that the worthless sacks of shit who willingly committed prisoner abuse and torture are suffering awful PTSD now of course this is nowhere near what their victims are suffering if they even survived and the higher ups who ordered this and bear the true responsibility are sitting pretty but its nice that a little bit of justice has occured.

How the US govt is attempting to hide real controversy.

The Propaganda model requires that if dissenting or controversial opinion is put forward in the media then good tame journalists will throw up "flak" contravening opinions presented as fact, insinuations about the dissenter's motivations and related propaganda about the subject showing that even if the disputed suggestion is true in general what the elite want us to think is true.

However the leak of ninety odd thousand government documents causes two major problems for the propaganda model. Firstly Wikileaks is too secretive and not well known enough to really pin specific blame on, its' leaks have covered a wide range of subjects. Nonetheless attempts are being made to suggest they some kind of malignant, ill defined ideology, as seen in the article I posted yesterday David Finkel, a good little journalist who despite knowing about the events of the helicopter gunship attacking civilians video for well over a year before it was released didn't make a fuss about, suggests that Wikileaks reason for leaking is suspect because "They provided artificial agenda driven context." Afterall, people merrily murdering civilians and laughing about it isn't a big deal unless you put some evil context on it.

Secondly though given the papers are government documents not meant to be released it is very difficult for the press to assert they're suspect or ideologically motivated, the sheer volume as well as the source undermines that. Unless the US military and government is deliberately lying to itself about Afghanistan (something of a controversy in itself) most of the tools of flak simply don't work.

However flak is mainly a tool of second resort, to suppress issues that have gotten past the first line of defence, the media defining what the elite talked about as the entire scope of news. But this is not the media's news, it is the governments so the US government is trying very hard to make out that while EVIL HILTER WIKILEAKS has endangered every brave Troop and destroyed Afghanistan with its' carelessness the actual information contained in those 90k documents is pretty boring and uninteresting. For instance Obama had this to say.

And yet mean old members of the media who are evil enough to point out the leaked documents do point out a range of things previously unknown or at least not acknowledged. Al Jazeera's report summarises most of the major problems but for specifics the leak revealed: a different death squad operation separate from JSOC's death squads called Task Force 373, at least 144 civilian deaths were known about but not reported by the US Military, the US government believes that the ISI (Pakistani intelligence service) is aiding the Taliban oh and we've actually known where Bin Laden was much more recently than claimed but capturing him might end the forever war and the contractor bonanza so it was kept quiet.

But yeah members of the public just trust the President and don't look too closely at what the leak actually contained, theres far more important things to do, like watching The View!

Politico have some very important things to say about the journolist controversy.

The left should never ever ever ever be allowed to organise in any form or capacity.

Russia outlaws all dissent.

The future intention to commit a crime is now a crime in Russia. Anything to stop people getting uppity about rights or massive corruption I suppose.

But really, those who have no intention to commit a crime, in the eyes of a security officer, have nothing to fear.

After going a period way longer than Bush II ever did without facing the Press Obama goes on The View!

First up I'm going to use this as an excuse to post this picture that was made following McCaine's appearance on The View. I wish I could remember the name of the woman who drew this.


With that out of the way lets move on to the pathetic state of the world where the "leader of the free world" doesn't even pretend to be accountable to the tame media thus forcing five women who present a light entertainment show to pick up the slack. Here is the Guardian's blow by blow account.

Note how much Obama blames the media he roundly ignores for problems in the country. If those darned newspaper folks were just a little bit less nosey and just believed what he said everything would be swell and dandy. With that said The View's presenters didn't softball him and did about as well as you could expect any journalist to do in this day and age (which is poorly, but blame journalists, not them, for that.)

Al Jazeera's front page photos are constantly awesome.

The rulers of Syria and Saudi not photographing well

Seriously, their photos editor / front page editor gets a lot of subtle, or not so subtle, digs in at very people and events through these photos.

Richard Dawkins on Animal Rights

Someone posted this on the infamous sceptical discussion group I'm part of, I think its really very good:

"Peter Singer: Richard you, perhaps you've been set up a little in this, but in discussing things, I wanted to try and link what I said in my session, which I know you and I had a discussion about earlier today, with what you've been saying, because we share a Darwinian view of the world, and one of the claims I made in my session is that the Darwinian view undermines the basis for some of the distinctions we draw between ourselves and animals, undermines the idea that we're special because we were made in the image of God, or that God gave us dominion over the animals. And that if we get rid of these preconceptions, we would take a different view of the moral status of animals. That it would require us to treat them in very different ways from the idea that they're simply things for us to use as we see fit. So I wondered if I could ask you as a Darwinian, whether you share that view?

Richard Dawkins: Yes, let's not say animals, let's say non-human animals.

Peter Singer: Okay, I'd be very happy to do that.

Richard Dawkins: That's consciousness raising, by the way. That's a good example, it's just like what the feminists did with consciousness raising about sex-biased language. It is a logical implication of the Darwinian view that there is continuity between all species, at least theoretically continuity. I am very fond of pointing out that it's an accident of history that the evolutionary intermediates between ourselves, and for example chimpanzees, or actually between any species and any other species, it's an accident that they happen to be extinct. If they were not extinct, and thought experiment would be, suppose we discovered relic populations of Australopithecus, Lucy, in the jungles of Africa. And relic populations of a continuous series of intermediates from ourselves back to the common ancestor with chimpanzees, and a continuous series from that from chimpanzees to the common ancestor with chimpanzees. And let's say that the series is sufficiently continuous, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be, that we could actually mate and reproduce all the way along the chain. So I could mate with a female in the jungle, who could mate with a male, who could mate with another one and we could link all the way in a chain, all the way to chimpanzees.

Now, it is pure historic accident that we actually can't do that. If only all the intermediates had survived we could literally do that. And if that were the case, then the only way we could maintain our present speciesist morality, which draws an absolute wall around homo sapiens, and distinguishes us from every other species on the planet, the only way we could maintain that, under the conditions of the thought experiment that I've I have advanced, would be to have courts exactly like the apartheid courts in South Africa which decided whether so-and-so would pass for white. And when you put it like that, we all of course shrink back in horror from such a prospect, and yet most of us accept without question the presumption that we are a completely unique species. Well in many ways we are a completely uniques species, but lots of other species are that. The point I'm making with the thought experiment is that there is a continuum. I've thought about it, and I mentioned this to you this morning about possibly writing a science fiction novel in which this thought experiment is realized, or another way to do it would be to hybridize humans and chimpanzees to produce a natural hybrid. And the point of the novel would be to explore the implications.

What effect would that have on society? What effect would that have on moral philosophy? What effect would that have on religion? It would be dynamite. And I would love, in some ways, not in all ways, but in some ways I would love to see that actually done. It shouldn't be necessary to do it in actuality, because the thought experiment is clear. I mean, nobody could possibly deny, unless they deny evolution of course, but as long as we're evolutionists, as long as we're Darwinians, nobody could possibly deny that. Which means that all of us, who are meat eaters, including me, are in a very difficult moral position. We are, at least speaking for myself, what I'm doing, is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm. And it requires a level of sort of a social courage, which I haven't yet produced, to break out of that. It's a little bit like the position which anybody, not everybody, but many people would have been, a couple of hundreds of years ago, over slavery, where lots of people felt kind of morally uneasy about slavery, but went along with it, because, I don't know, the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery. "Of course, none of us like the idea of slavery, but you can't seriously contemplate doing away with it, I mean, you know, the economy would collapse."

So, I find myself in something like that situation. I think what I'd really like to see would be a mass consciousness raising movement, so that we all become vegetarian, and then I mean it would be so much easier for those us who find it difficult to go along with that. And quite apart from that, you'd then have brilliant chefs making wonderful recipes and you wouldn't have to …

Peter Singer: Thank you very much for that.

A profile of Julian Assange, founder of wikileaks.

The tone of this seems to be leaning towards being too trusting of the official line for my tastes but still its quite interesting to read about his background and what the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers thinks about all of this. Plus making WANK appear on the screens of NASA is pretty funny.

Also don't miss the fact Obama's administration is even more secretive than Bush's was. Hope and change folks.

edit: link now works!

I :heart: Brad Shoemaker

Hes a good looking guy

So American Dad can be pretty cool.

In between the fart jokes Seth Macfarlane does get some pretty good political jabs in, such as the Saudi episode and now this song:



Maybe he deserved being able to touch Eliza Dushku, who knows?

HAHAHAHAHAHA

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/27/boat-crashes-oil-creating-new-spill-gulf-mexico/

Its good to laugh.

A detailed narrative of how US Troops raped a 14 y/o girl and killed her family

The title says it all really, the article, an extract from a book about a platoon stationed in a dangerous part of Iraq early on in the occupation, details how four soldiers carried out the act and to an extent examines why they did it.

The usual defence of a few bad apples will likely be applied and it certainly has more merit as an argument than it did in defence of the top down tolerated abuse of prisoners in detention centres in Iraq such as Abu Ghraib (though it is noteworthy some of those who did not commit the crime didn't feel compelled to report their later knowledge of the incident to superiors) rape and cold blooded murder are not official US tactics in Iraq or Afghanistan (JSOC notwithstanding), this ain't Vietnam kids.

That to me is irrelevant, the reality of war is that horrifically unpleasant events combine with periods of complete boredom to adversely affect people. In addition those who are awful people to begin with can take advantage of the confusion and their relative power within a conflict zone to do awful things. The deification of Troops means neither appropriate questions are asked nor appropriate oversight is given to the activities of these young, often disturbed young men in unstable and chaotic parts of the world. Maybe most soldiers are nice people (well nice trained killers) but the fact remains that when you inflict armed conflict and invasion upon a country, no matter how noble your rhetoric, you are opening the door to this kind of event. As a civilian majority we need to be much more aware of this and much more cautious to endorse military intervention given the amount of suffering this will inflict upon the civilian population of the countries we choose to invade.

Details of Pentagon's new anti-child soldier initiative leaked.

Combat paedophiles have been discovered at the pentagon.

Well at least thats the only interpretation I can put on the revelation a number of people have been downloading child porn while at the pentagon. Still the US Military's principal concern seems not to be the horrific sexual abuse of children child porn entails but instead how it affects national security. Heck some of the kids in that porn might not even have been American so n great shakes.

This throws up two pretty obvious problems. Firstly it brings up serious questions about vetting procedures at the Pentagon, as the article mentions the people convicted had been accessing overseas child porn sites. If they can access illegal sites of that nature pretty sure sites that threaten US national security could've been accessed without the vetting procedure realising either. In addition some of the people charged had been using government computers to do it but an investigation was required to catch them suggesting they weren't initially caught doing that on government computers.

Secondly it raises an ugly spectre of what people with lots of security clearance and influence at an organisation that controls troops all over the world, often in warzones with lots of vulnerable people in them. The potential for abduction for child prostitution or porn creation is worryingly strong in such positions. Enhanced by the fact any questionable behaviour can be dismissed as classified, for national security or whatever. In light of the fact the intelligence industry alone is now nearly a million strong the potential for misuse of this power to abuse children and commit all sorts of other crimes is overwhelming.

The US Federal Reserve does not know where over $9 TRILLION of its' money is.

The title says it all really, here is a link to an article and a youtube about how the woman in charge of auditing the Federal Reserve (Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman) has no idea where the money is.

(Fake Edit: I just realised this is from May last year, I assumed it was new because The Exiled linked it today. still if the mainstream media didn't report this in the first place its news to me and unless proof is provided this is now fixed I'm not going to be kind enough to make the assumption for them.)

"Poor people need to bootstrap some water" - the anglosphere

In 1943 a dude named Abraham Maslow created something called the hierarchy of needs it was an attempt to map what a human being requires for positive mental health. Its' most famous outcome was a pyramid diagram showing the different levels of requirements people have to be happy, the base being the most basic, the tip being more esoteric:


You'll note (unsurprisingly) that water is included as one of the most basic human needs, we of course need it regularly to function in the most basic mechanical sense. This however, according to the English speakers of the world, doesn't mean the poor have a basic right to water or at least their political donors' basic right to profit trumps the need for water.

There is a draft resolution currently facing political opposition from pretty much every English speaking country in the west simply because it would limit their ability to profit off of the sale of drinking water to citizens and of course their multinational allies' ability to rip off the rest of the world.

God damn its good to be an Anglo.

this link was found on The Exiled

God is a second rate novelist.

Parasailing donkey sparks probe

That is all.

Greek Journalist investigating corruption killed by professional hit team.

BBC give details here. The odd thing is that US news sources are blaming anti-government terrorist group "Sect of Revolutionaries" see here and here whereas the BBC and other British news sources state the Police don't think terrorists were involved. It would be a bit strange for "Sect of Revolutionaries" to kill this journalist because their core aims are stated to be fighting corruption.

Oddly those two I linked seem to be from the same source (most published news these days is just slightly altered news agency releases) and were updated longer ago than the BBC release. Its odd if the US is trying to tar left wing groups so blatantly but still, something to ponder on.

Cameron in rare moment of honesty.

He has admitted one of his rolemodels is a racist bully

A video of all nuclear detonations that have occured up to 1998.

Well thats not quite technically accurate, South Africa / Israel may have carried out a test in 1979 but thats splitting hairs. A Japanese artist created this animation of where all the nuclear explosions that we know about have occurred and plotted them onto a world map. You can see it here.

Its more interesting than you might imagine.

It really reminds me of primates hooting and hollering at each other to mark their territories. But we're way more advanced than those fucking chimps, we use the power of the atom for our petty displays!

thanks jonny

The Onion New Network still owns.

Examines the short term short attention span blame culture following big incidents. I am pleasantly surprised by just how long they've managed to keep the fake panel shows funny for.

A dissertation on Ke$ha

This article by Martin Seay looks at one of the most utterly vapid and worthless of songs in recent memory and then in several thousands words uses it to draw some exceptionally interesting conclusions. It gets unexpectedly (but completely justifiably) political towards the end. If you can spare the time its well worth a read.

It also caused me to have a mini-epiphany on IM:

paul: "it is—as we say in the post-Rumsfeld parlance of our time—what it is."
more big lebowski references need to be made in regards to Rumsfeld
In fact my mind is currently being blown by the fact Rumsfeld pretty much is the human form of the Big Lebowski
Lots of minor details and intricate plots that go nowhere and in the end, don't matter.

More media friendly oppression deployed to Afghanistan!

Pain rays will be used to break up protests and anything else US forces occupying Afghanistan dislike. Still though rejoice in the fact that theres only a 0.1% chance of someone getting injured. Of course that means that for every thousands people this is used upon someone will likely be injured and we've seen with Tasers (remember the original rationale that tasers were only to be used as a nonlethal weapon in situations which would've required a gun?) this is likely to be deeply overused.

It will however allow right wing talking heads to bawl about how terrible the "terrorists" are for using weapons to resist US Imperialism when the US just uses pain rays to stifle dissent.

Leading critic of Bolshevism admits fraud.

Figes is the most successful and well known of first generation human-insect hybrids.

He's been very successful and his attacks on Communist Russia (which are often warranted, the Bolsheviks did some very unpleasant things) are warmly received by the centre right but that wasn't enough for figes, he decided to fake positive reviews for his already popular books and negative reviews of his competitors pretending to be someone else.

All in all its pretty pathetic really.

ConDems start to move openly against BBC.

It has long been suspected that Murdoch switched from backing New Labour to the Conservatives in return for Cameron agreeing to do his bidding. Murdoch's son James, who controls the European branch of the News International empire is vehemently anti-BBC after all, any media share he and daddy don't profit off of is super badwrong. Jeremy "rhyming nickname" Hunt, Tory culture secretary has floated the idea of cutting the license fee but acting like he is doing us poors a favour by making out lowering the price of a less than £150 license will help us in the midst of the thousands it'll cost the average person in cut essential services.

Ofcom is the independent regulator of television and enforcer of the British version of the fairness doctrine, expect it to be labelled as a necessary cut in this time of crisis in the near future.

Well... theres something you don't see every day.

A bull somehow managed to end up at a hospital.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is expected to announce efforts to privatise hospital grounds because bull attacks on private hospitals are unheard of.

Sellouts now have study to cite.

As I've pointed out before (and others have stated for more eloquently and substantially) student loans, healthcare costs, mortgages and so on are all engineered to make you buy into the status quo, failing to do so harms your safety and financial security. However if you ignore all context the idea that as we get older we drift to the right can be explained away as "wisdom" as the sellout in this article about how middle aged people tend to misjudge how left wing their ideas are.

Perhaps most noteworthy is this statement:

In his paper, Dr Rockey suggested that this was due to the fact that "people compare themselves not to the population as a whole but to the people they know"

So the worldview we are presented with every day is the one we compare ourselves too? Its interesting that extremely right wing paper The Telegraph has seized on the conclusions to claim how great being right wing is but don't strangely don't report on the fact that political context affects one's views.

Then again maybe I'm drifting to the right because I'm agree with one of the comments posted after the article:

The problem is a lot of people are neither "left" or "right" wing. They are just "trendy" and would frankly follow Orville the Duck's political manifesto if they deemed it cool enough. Think for yourself, not just within the tramlines of others.

D Dortman, Durham

Tories copy months old Republican Idea.

Hey lets pretend we're listening to people by setting up a website. Then we have a mandate to enrich our friends and fuck everyone else over.

But the people have spoken and the people demand action.

Do read the comments, nearly every one a mix of yer is jokin and BUT WE SHOULD KILL ALL BLACKS RELE!

another good one here.

Bear in mind while these are jokes the serious ones about deporting immigrants and so on are sadly very real.

Documents detailing British complicity in torture of its' citizens.

A series of documents have been released detailing clearly the Labour government's willing complicity in the torture and abuse of its' citizens. You can look at the bits of the documents that aren't "redacted" with annotations here.

As you know I am no fan of the concept of nationalism or the idea of countries but the sickening thing about this is that it is clear that one of the few positive elements of nationalism, that the nation state will protect all of its' citizens and ensure their equal rights to fair treatment and safety is a lie. Just as whites can't be terrorists it seems that brown and black people aren't citizens.

The heir apparent to the leadership of the labour party David Miliband is a former foreign secretary and has yet to change his position that no torture occurred with Britain's acquiescence.

You maths types will probably like this.

It seems neat but I don't think I get it.

Andrew Lansley is working for the food industry.

Just a week after announcing the ending of Jamie Oliver's successful healthy school meals system Tory Health Minister Andrew Lansley is getting rid of the food standards agency, a regulatory body that was fighting very hard to make the health impact of food much easier for the consumer to understand.

So more fat people, which would be an increased burden on the NHS but happily the Tories are trying to get rid of that too.

Take that Amber!

British Civil servants reccomend switch to Linux.

Well sort of and it likely wont get picked up when budget cuts can be used to fuck over the poor that little bit more but hey, its nice its getting mooted.

Oprah hates disabled people

http://www.oprahhatesdisabledpeople.com/

So yeah a white woman got boosted over the second place black woman and a disabled guy who was way out in the lead suddenly lost millions of votes, just a coincidence I'm sure.

Tony didn't like this video...

...so you bet its going to be linked:



As someone who plays video games too much this is basically like a government anti-drugs advert. Its also hilarious, I like the giant bomb guys a lot.

Weird speedruns.

Speed runs for games are when people play games really fast but they use glitches to go faster than they should and it gets pretty boring pretty fast. However, there are exceptions:

I saw this like 10 minutes ago:

which reminded me of:



so there you go I guess.

Ya'll better watch your step...

A number of "hoax" reports of Democratic politicians' deaths so they'd best be careful what they say and do lest something bad happen.

Socialism works.

Ok so this article is actually about how how pervasive the pentagon system is in our every day lives (anyone who thinks this just affects America is a prize fool) but while we probably weren't it was quite as pervasive as it is we did know GE owned NBC and so on, the corporations run the world.

No no lets take something positive from this, it is clear that substantial state funding is essential for a "capitalistic economy" to function. This offer to very slim hopes for the future, firstly if people were able gain back some power from the elite, as happened during the last depression this socialism for the rich could be directed more towards the poor and secondly, hey at least now you have evidence for libertarian assholes that the free market doesn't work.

This article might not be satire.

Terry Savage doesn't come out of this article well, either hes a terrible terrible scumbag or he was beaten to the punch by this five year old webcomic:


Imagine the most positive thing somone could say about you was that you were five years behind webcomic humour. Just getting up in the morning would be a herculean task and I am of the opinion Mr Savage shouldn't bother.

article provided by Jonny

Blizzard getting rid of anonymity on their forums.

Blizzard will be requiring forum users to use their real names for all discussions from now on. Best of luck to all women who play blizzard games and want to discuss it at all. Also note how much dissent is tolerated, very few of the post numbers are sequential.

This is a prime example of why monopolies are a bad thing, now they have millions of players locked into their e-drug the company feels secure enough to follow regressive policies that are beneficial to themselves but extremely negative for their customers. For a further critique of the RealID system of which this is a part go here.

This likely has repercussions for the wider internet because if blizzard carries it off it will be copied. Anonymity on the net is a good thing for the individual and bad for big organisations and vice versa.

thanks jonny

Global problem of biased medical research

One of the more trumpeted argument against UHC in America was that without gouging the sick and needy there wouldn't be enough money for research. This was proven to be wholly false with Pharmaceutical companies pending twice as much on advertising as they do research but it seems pharam companies shouldn't be involved in research at all. Not I imagine a especially surprising to anyone but it seems over 50% of drug trial results aren't published so as to make drugs seem much more effective than they are. When filthy lucre is involved it seems reality takes a distant second place in drug company's considerations.

Doesn't capitalism own?

French government finds holy grail; cut costs while weakening the press.

The Pax Americana is breaking down and European riders of America's coat tails are starting to have to foot the bill and commit military to areas they only recieve passive benefits from, this is expensive and offers little return on investment so unsurprisingly countries are looking to cut costs. (France's success at keeping its own little empire going in Africa on the downlow is a topic for another time but even that is threatened by weakening US power). The French government has proposed a law where those rescued from Somali pirates by commandos or from Colombian rebels via breaches of international law would foot the bill if it was decided it was their fault they got into the dangerous situation.

Now on the face of it this sounds pretty good, the tax payer shouldn't have to foot the bill for the rescue of rich bastards who decided to take their yacht through a dangerous area for a bit of a thrill or whatever but Sarko and his cronies are refusing to exempt journalists or aid workers from this legislation. So if aid workers go to an area and help people that French foreign policy doesn't want to be helped and they captured and need rescuing the charity has to pay. Of course if they were giving aid in one of France's client states its not impossible their kidnap and rescue could be arranged specifically to take funds from a disliked charity (or indeed journalistic organisation). Even if that isn't the plan it certainly will have a deterrent effect for charities and journalists to go to the world's dangerous places, especially if the French government doesn't want them going.

While I'd doubt the US would do this, it'd look too much like weakness, I wouldn't be surprised if similar legislation is proposed in other European countries, Canada or Australia.

Vocal critic of Iraq war blamed for Iraq war.

Clare Short who gave a barnstorming account to the Chilcot Inquiry has been blamed by her former deputy Sally Keeble who said Short "hampered aid efforts". However given Short resigned from the cabinet weeks after the 2003 invasion (and had been misled by Blair into sticking around that long) and Ms Keeble only left government when Labour lost power on May 6th one has to question who was more complicit and more to blame for this. Ms Keeble also lost her seat on that day and likely will be wanting to impress the powers that be so she'll be selected for a winnable seat come next election, attacking a vocal critic would likely do that.

Then again if this is the extent of the revenge of blairites she has gotten off lightly, Robin Cook resigned before the Iraq war started and gave the only speech in the commons ever to recieve a standing ovation. Two years later he was dead, to quote wikipedia:

In early August 2005, Cook and his wife, Gaynor, took a two-week holiday in the Highlands of Scotland. At around 2:20 pm, on 6 August 2005, whilst walking down Ben Stack in Sutherland, Scotland, Cook suddenly suffered a severe heart attack, collapsed and lost consciousness. A helicopter containing paramedics arrived 40 minutes after a 999 call was taken. Cook then was flown to Raigmore Hospital, Inverness. Gaynor did not get in the helicopter, and was left to walk down the mountain. Despite efforts made by the medical team to revive Cook in the helicopter, he was already beyond recovery, and at 4:05pm, minutes after arrival at the hospital, was pronounced dead. Two days later, a post mortem revealed that Cook died of hypertensive heart disease.

Now of course its likely his death was natural causes but given Dr David Kelly's "suicide" one can't help but wonder. More to the point while one is generally willing to accept Blair was co-architect of the deaths of over a million Iraqis the idea he'd conspire to kill a single white person seems almost unthinkable, do we truly subconciously privilege our skin colour so much?

Tory MP opposes NHS Trusts generating funds.

Ok ok, as a right winger her main opposition to a hospital making money (aside from the fact its not making her a profit) is that a ward was used for filming a high budget porno. Her attack rather loses any point though when it turns out the hospital gained a tidy sum from renting the ward out to a "film company" and that it was only discovered it was a porn company after the fact. If it caused so little disruption as to only be noticed later on its difficult to see why the Tory opposes it other than prudish assholishness.

Con-Dems move forward with plan to remove right to strike.

It is looking increasingly likely the Tory government and their Lib Dem lapdogs are going to do as the Confederation of British Industry asked and tighten Britain's already overly stringent industrial action laws to the point of absurdity. Currently in a ballot for strike action requires a simple majority of those who choose to vote, which seems entirely reasonable. Not to the CBI though, they want 40% of all those eligible to vote to have to vote in favour before strike action can be taken. This means they have to intimidate far fewer people to prevent a strike and conversely unions have to work far hard to be in a position to legally strike.

From the article union leaders Paul Kenny and Bob Crow sum it up far better than I could:

Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB union, said: "It is a testament to the priorities of this government, led by two public schoolboys[Paul note: the term "public school" in the UK refers to elite private schools founded in the early modern period so called public because they were the first non-church schools], that they should consider attacking the rights of ordinary workers rather than the bankers who caused the recession. More and more we are seeing the well-to-do upper class targeting the lower class and make them pay for the recession. It is unfair and unacceptable."

Bob Crow, the general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, accused ministers of "declaring war" on unions and of seeking to prevent workers from fighting back against cuts in jobs and public spending.

"The ConDems [Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition] know that by far the biggest campaign of resistance to their austerity and cuts plans will come from the trade unions. They are running scared and are now looking to tighten the noose of the anti-union laws around the workers' necks to choke off resistance. Under any proposals to raise the bar [for strike ballots] hardly a single MP in the UK would have been allowed to take up their seats."

Read about it here (its the second half of the article)

Catholic Church keeps on acquitting itself well amidst controversy.

It has been confirmed by Belgian police that witnesses, victims and magistrates investigating allegations of paedophilia by Belgian Bishops have been receiving death threats. I think its fair to say when "wrongly accused" the best bet is to give death threats to the investigators so your innocence will be found much quicker and be seen as plausible to the general public.

Colombia understands the true spirit of football.

11 kg of Cocaine has been seized in the form of the world cup. I'm willing to be most footballers would try a lot harder to win the world cup if this was the prize.

Shifting the overton window, spectre of 40% cuts raised.

Chancellor Gideon Osbourne has instructed every government department except four (health, international development, defence and education) to prepare plans for forty percent budget cuts. Which is pretty damn scary, there are essentially three reasons why he is doing this:

1) As I suggest in the title he is trying to shift the overton window to the right so that 25% cuts seem acceptable compared to 40%, the opposition has to argue him down from the higher number rather than the lower one and so on. Also with the unions preparing industrial action for 40% they're less likely to fight against 25% and so on.

2) The cuts of 25% was an average and because those four departments are protected to varying degrees the other departments have to take bigger cuts for it to average out at 25%. On top of this asking for 40% cuts as well as 25% cuts empowers Osboure, he can pick and choose from both lists rather than just having to accept the 25% the department chose to cut.

3) Osbourne is a rich rightwing scumbag and the destruction of as much as the state as possible is ideologically necessary for him to bring about as much shock therapy as humanly possible, if he thinks he can get away with more than an average of 25% cuts then he will cut more.

The Japanese really hate the ocean.

A documentary about Japanese Dolphin hunting filmed secretly by activists has not had a warm reception in glorious Nippon:

Petraeus's new Afghanistan strategy revealed

People easier to kill if they stand close together.

Cops perform freelance undercover operations or "crimes".

Very much a twofer this one with examples of police crimes big and relatively small.

On the big side of things the former head of Interpol (the organisation not the band) has been convicted of accepting bribes from a drug dealer. This was a strictly South African legal case but given interpol is one of the key agencies fighthing the "war on drugs" because a supranational entity is required to fight the drug trade, which by its' very nature is international, one has to wonder if they are also corrupt, drug organisations tend to be very rich after all.

Nonetheless even without such speculation the case leads to some very unpleasant questions for South Africa with facts such as:

Vusi Pikoli, the former chief prosecutor, lost his job for charging Selebi.

and

"And here was someone who was very high, very close to the top, also at the time [very close] to the former president of this country [Thabo Mbeki]."

In a somewhat smaller case a number of Miami Police officers and an FBI agent decided to cut out the middle man and commit crimes themselves. While not specifically abusing their positions they knowingly committed fraud via straw buyers to gain fraudulent mortgages to "flip" houses so their value increased and they made a profit off of their fraudulently acquired properties.

They were in league with a prominent local lawyer, Steven Stoll, a high profile Republican in the area:

Steven Stoll and wife Rebecca are well known in Republican and philanthropic circles in Broward.

Stoll let Republican activists use his mortgage company office to phone bank for Republican candidates, and the Stolls sometimes attended fundraisers, said Bob Wolfe, a Broward Republican activist.

Stoll was one of the lawyers who fought with Broward's canvassing board about the 2000 presidential recount.

So one of the guys who opposed the recount and thus helped Bush steal the 2000 election also committed millions of dollars worth of fraud. Still I suppose it does show Republicans work better with the police.

Top UK Terror police fears theres not enough funds to profile every brown in the country.

With current funding levels the UK's anti-terrorism police have only failed to stop two attacks (1) (2) although in the case of the Glasgow airport attack perhaps high levels of funding magically caused the terrorists to be incompetent. So obviously in the face of funding cuts of 25% for nearly every government department Assistant Commissioner John Yates has turned to scaremongering to try and maintain his budget. The Home Secretary has, not unreasonably, pointed out that Yates is being alarmist for personal gain. Nonetheless a politician accusing someone else of being alarmist about terrorism can't help but seem a bit hypocritical.

What will a cut to the budget of our department dedicated to keeping us constantly afraid do? Will a plague of Brazilian electricians be unleashed upon us? Only time will tell.

Capitalism eases suffering of UK poor

Given that life in poverty is so unpleasant it is heartening to know that inequality causes the poorest to live 10 years less than the rich. It is heartening to know they don't have to suffer for as long.

To be fair apparently recently things were getting mildly better for the poor but like as not with the swinging Tory cuts expected to hit the poor hardest the gap between rich and poor life expectancy will likely start increasing again.

Still given the narrowing of the gap was due to belated NHS action I shudder to think what the life expectancy gap between rich and poor in the US is.

Chomsky on the "Iranian Threat"

Chomsky lays out in his usual patient but exceptionally well supported style exactly why Iran is seen as such a threat to America that they will seemingly in short order be obliterated:

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under Obama.

Nor is it actually anything to do with stopping nuclear proliferation:

No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a NFWZ in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted – and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself.

It is merely a desire to stop an inconvenient non-conformist to US Imperial doctrine, one that in events such as the Brazil-Turkey nuclear waste deal seems to be a catalyst of action outside of Washington approved action. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Read the full analysis here.

Al Qaeda launches US website

Everyone is covering this but Jonny linked me this Yahoo article so why not eh? Their apparently buggy website features advice on how to build bombs that you likely can find all over the internet or with a modicum of chemistry education but because our enemy in the forever war has posted a website about it its big news.

I do query one element of the Yahoo article though:

The launch suggests that, as al-Qaida's core has been weakened by CIA drone airstrikes, the group hopes to broaden its reach inside the U.S., where officials have seen a spate of homegrown terrorists.

Yes, I too assume my enemy is weakening when they expand operations into my homeland and change up their methods. Why I'm sure that column of tanks moving at flank speed towards us is just coming to surrender to us as fast as they can.

New Microsoft phone sells 500 units, gets axed.

I hadn't even heard of the kin but I'm hardly the target market for it (was there a target market??) but MS's rival for the iPhone seems to have been an even bigger failure than the Zune. I'd imagine this more because hipsters think apple is wicked cool and "with it" whereas MS is old and just not cool. But still, always funny to see MS and Ballmer fail, just bear in mind one evil company has replaced another.

EDIT
We're lucky enough to have had a veritable expert (well Tony knows more than I do about this stuff anyway) on smartphones clarify exactly what went wrong:

Actually the story behind this is a lot more complicated than this blog post would have you believe. This is the product line stemming from the MS takeover of Danger which created the Sidekick. The idea was for a device that bridged feature phones and smartphones and the concept was a solid one. There are a host of reasons the Kin failed, but the simplest explanation is that Android killed it.

First off, when the product was conceived smartphones were beyond the reach of a lot of people, particularly in the target demographic which were social networking teens and twentysomethings. Unfortunately, corporate infighting pushed the launch of the Kin back about 18 months which anyone who follows Android and the rate at which "Jesusphones" have been launching will tell you is an eternity.

Secondly, it launched on Verizon who required a full smartphone plan with the phone. You can imagine the size of the market for a phone that doesn't do half of what a smartphone does, has no third party app store, and costs the same as a smartphone both upfront and for the plan.

Third, it's just not a good product. Read the Engadget review here, it's hilarious: http://www.engadget.­com/2010/05/05/kin-one-and-two-review/

Last, is Android. With the pricing structure for OS licensing on smartphones reduced to rubble by Android OS being open source, there is simply no reason for low powered smartphones to not dominate over this concept. It's reduced the cost of manufacturing smartphones significantly making them within reach of anyone and destroying any value a bridge device would have had (18 months prior) plus they're full-featured, updateable, and have a thriving app store.

It also bears mentioning that Microsoft knew this but due to arrangements with its hardware partner (Sharp) and its provider partner (Verizon) was contractually obligated to bring the Kin to market.

Does any of this mean Windows Phone 7 won't be a colossal failure? Of course not. It's as stillborn as the Kin and it's still six months from launching. That's another story altogether and one that Ballmer himself will be authoring. It's unfair to saddle him with the failure of the Kin though beyond blaming him for the corporate culture that led to its creation.

So thanks Tony, we can now laugh at MS's failure in a far more knowing fashion

British Army will maybe possibly investigate deaths of 109 Iraqis in their custody

So 109 people died while in the custody of the British army, some of them obviously beaten to death or whatever but the Ministry of Defence doesn't think we need a public inquiry or anything and anyway its unpatriotic to question the actions of "our boys". Anyway the Iraqis totally ungrateful for the opportunities we gave them for urban regeneration, massive building projects and paediatric research are now launching a legal challenge in the UK to try and force a public enquiry I don't know why they're bothering though, it'll just turn out they committed suicide anyway.

Guardian readers care about important news.

"So, wait, you're saying a hot woman was involved???"

Finishing Schools vindicated

Attempts by the US Government and Military to prove that traditional methods of creating civilised people, such as those employed finishing schools could be bettered by a system of abduction and torture in concentration camps over several years followed by release to an allied brutal dictatorship. However after nearly a decade of study it seems the American experiments have failed: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/06/201062013047249951.html

Seriously though, who would have expected victims of abuse and torture to still hate the people who did that to them??

Finally someone benefiting from the Mexican Civil War on Drugs

Bankers! Banks are receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of to launder. Some of the bankers doing this got caught but don't worry, thanks to a plea bargain they wont serve any jail time for this.

Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history -- a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.

Which all reminds me of:

The system works kids.

Ideologically pure fat children.

The new Health Secretary has informed the nation that there will be no more "Jaime Oliver style hectoring". This is in spite of near universal acclaim for improving children's eating habits and evidence it even exam results. But we must give children freedom of choice, we can't have the government tell people what to do!

However, my mother pointed out to me that other than ideological purity it might just be that some Tory campaign backers are wholesalers of unhealthy food and by reintroducing "pupil choice" their mates get back into the lucrative school dinners market. Certainly seems plausible.

Chomsky on the Pentagon system.

The Pentagon system is a sort militarised Keynesianism that emerged in the US following WW2. Basically it means that the government funds research and then this research is handed off to corporations who profit from this research, essentially having the government subsidise big business. This is an early example of the now entrenched system of socialising the risk and privatising the reward. It is simply the biggest refutation of the ideologies of the two US political parties and shows just how fucking dumb libertarians are.

Anyway Noam Chomsky wrote a far better summary of the system in 1993 and examined where the system was going now the cold war was over. In spite of not knowing the War on Terror would happen it pretty much accurately predicted where we are today by infering how the Pentagon system would be used to make the poor poorer and the rich richer. He goes into much more detail of course. Read it here

The cost in blood of precious metals.

Something thats quite well known in environmental circles and indeed among the media classes (albeit seldom reported) is that in order to maximise profit most tech companies use precious metals acquired from the DR Congo which were mined by child slaves. This is not the only source of precious metals of course but they aren't as cheap (note the stalwart Australian media reporting on African suffering when it affects national profits).

Huffpo reports a fairly cheap looking video is trying to alter people's perceptions, still its something easy to forward and related to pop culture that it might get some notice:

Huffington Post suggests Gulf Oil catastrophe could become a Methane Catastrophe too!

Methane is definitely leaking from the Deep Water Horizon spill in large enough quantities to create dead zones where oxygen breathing creatures can't live. This ya know would be very in itself but thanks to pollution other dead zones off the US south coast already exist so ya know its bad but our corporate rulers would likely to be able to get away with it.

Nah what the Methane could do is cause a huge poisonous tsunami that would strike most of the south coast. Oh yeah then it could cause a large amount of the sea to turn into steam which then might cause a large section of sea floor to rise and lower which would then create further Tsunamis from the massive amount of energy such a raising and lowering would cause. Happy fun times.

The article says this is still an unlikely scenario but as time goes on it becomes more worthy of consideration. If you've got relatives who live on or near the south coast it might be wise to advise them to get their affairs in order.

British firm deliberately poisons Iraqi Children

A British chemical firm bribed Iraqi officials so as to keep them buying a lead based petrol additive which has been banned since the 70s in the west. The consequence of inhaling lead fumes to for children is decreased intelligence and increased hyperactivity. Truly the people of Iraq should be grateful for us freeing them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/30/octel-petrol-iraq-lead

Michael Hastings' Article that toppled McChrystal

I want to let the article spreak for itself but I will quote one part:

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn't read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment" for the president.

"The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat's true actions," wrote Tillman's mother, Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the "golden boy" of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman's death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.

Two years later, in 2006, McChrystal was tainted by a scandal involving detainee abuse and torture at Camp Nama in Iraq. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, prisoners at the camp were subjected to a now-familiar litany of abuse: stress positions, being dragged naked through the mud. McChrystal was not disciplined in the scandal, even though an interrogator at the camp reported seeing him inspect the prison multiple times. But the experience was so unsettling to McChrystal that he tried to prevent detainee operations from being placed under his command in Afghanistan, viewing them as a "political swamp," according to a U.S. official. In May 2009, as McChrystal prepared for his confirmation hearings, his staff prepared him for hard questions about Camp Nama and the Tillman cover-up. But the scandals barely made a ripple in Congress, and McChrystal was soon on his way back to Kabul to run the war in Afghanistan.

McChrystal was a swell guy.

Matt Taibbi has some harsh words for an "insider Journalist"

Viewer friendly pretty face Lara Logan is deeply annoyed that Michael Hasting's article about Death Squad Commander McChrystal did not show him to be the ubermensch military god who never fails that a good patriotic journalist should. Matt Taibbi takes her to task about this: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/122137/83512

The decline of Documentary history.

Jonny linked me this article about the decline of documentary evidence which is certainly a concern for historians. However I think its overblown, officials have never openly committed to the record "it was me wot did it" such big discoveries found in public records are generally because what is controversial now was not controversial then or because committing questionable things to the record was necessary. With new and immediate ways of leaking / sharing data, such as twitter which the article mentions, I think we're just getting documentary evidence in different ways.

The challenge for every good historian has always been getting past the lies and official bluster in documents, those in power have consistently changed up and so have historians. Nonetheless it is interesting to read how the world is recorded nowadays.

Lord Mayor has "trouser malfunction" in front of school children

That is all.