If not here, where?

This Is Not The Place Or Time For The Truth

YouTube has suspended the account of Wael Abbas, an Egyptian anti-torture activist, because he posted videos of police brutality. The account...“This account is suspended” message. YouTube’s guidelines are very clear on this: “Graphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it.” OK, why then can I find dozens of videos of people getting tasered by the police? If you ask me, a video of someone getting shocked with a high voltage weapon can definitely be described as graphic violence. And many will argue that the violence in such videos cannot be qualified as gratuitous.

This is an ongoing problem with practically all sites which aggregate user-submitted content: double (or simply unclear) standards. We won’t give away your info, unless you live in China. You can’t use a fake identity on our site, but we (and some other users) can. We don’t allow videos depicting graphic violence, except sometimes we do.

'I'm the one paying for the bandwidth and I bore easily'

Dennis The Peasant on mouth breathers and room-temperature IQ levels

Dennis doesn't give a fuck, that's why I love his blog. He is also funny which, for a Republican accountant ain't bad! He is also on record as having very little time for bloggers, blog readers and blog commenters - which might seem a strange position for a blogger (with comments enabled) to take but I know exactly where he's coming from.
Here he is on why he closed down comments on his last two posts:

There seems to be this widely held belief that if you repeat the arguments you made four years ago, verbatim, to the same group of people who didn't buy them then, the magical Argument Fairy will suddenly appear and allow you to carry any and all arguments on any and all topics.

...it is getting increasingly difficult to have an intelligent conversation about anything while you're in the political blogosphere. When you stray from the room-temperature IQ "You're Bad!/I'm Good! dichotomy that dominates just about every site worth mentioning, it seems a large percentage of folks just cannot cope with the vastness of the intellectual horizons that open before them.

...no matter how you try, you're going to end up with a certain percentage of mouth-breathers showing up in your comments section. But much of the rest of it comes from people who take their sense of self-importance to Jerk levels. They're the ones who hijack a thread because what they have to say is just too damned important to wait for the appropriate moment...

Adding to the fun is fact that because what these I'm-going-to-save-the-world-before-bedtime types have to say is just too damned important to wait, they also tend to pay absolutely no attention to what anyone else is saying that doesn't feed their need to spout. So there really isn't even an attempt at having a meaningful debate. It's more like Monty Python's Argument Clinic sketch updated for our times. Only without the humor.

The Woman's Place In The Classic Age Of Advertising

Adverts from the time equality forgot

Hey, it doesn't look half bad actually.

Minister proposes a redesign for the union flag

When I first read this I thought, more bollocks from Hodge but actually I think this looks pretty cool:

The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, has said she will consider a redesign of the union flag to incorporate the Welsh dragon. Her surprising commitment was made in the Commons during a debate on the frequency with which the union flag flies above public buildings. The discussions on a new flag design bring a new dimension to Gordon Brown's debate about Britishness. Hodge told MPs: "The Welsh dragon was not included on the union flag, as the principality of Wales was already united with England by 1606 when the first union flag was created. I can assure all MPs that the issue of the design of the union flag will be considered. As the current flag is formed by merging three heraldic crosses representing the three kingdoms of the UK, the original design was a challenge.

Psycho analysis

Obsolete

Melanie Phillips: the story of her journey into madness.

For Mel, the obsession with jihadist takfirists has now reached such a proportion that any election anywhere is somehow influenced by "the threat", and the very fact that Australia booted out Howard and installed Rudd means that the jihadists have just won another victory without having to lift a finger. It makes no difference to Mel that Howard was widely loathed for the very reason that she so supported him; Australia, a nation which due to its location and size has very little to nothing to fear from anyone, but due to Howard's belligerence was led into the Iraq adventure anyway, was also dragged into an era of mistrust, dislike and even paranoia thanks to the hardline stance on outsiders and refugees that he took. There's a rich irony and hypocrisy in nations of immigrants shutting the door to the next generation, but to Mel that was just another sign of his strength. Even that though isn't enough; Australia's stupidity in changing prime ministers somehow, in Mel's twisted and frankly bizarre logic, has made both them and us less safe. It's a statement jaw-dropping in its full frontal lunacy

Please do read the whole piece. I suggest building a 'separation barrier' around the mad woman.

Your papers pleeeze!

Fears over pan-EU electronic identity network

New concerns have been raised over the Government's multi-billion-pound ID project as it emerged that Britain's identity database could be shared with 26 other European Union countries. The Home Office is taking part in a scheme, codenamed Stork, which aims to make all EU electronic identity networks ''inter-operable'' within three years.

If you want to scupper the ID scheme then forget about lost discs, which the government can spin to add even more justification for its ID proposals, this plan to share the ID database with every country in the EU is the one to concentrate on. There are many people in Britain who aren't bothered enough to oppose a national database but the thought that their details will be availabe to thousands of petty officials in Bulgaria, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and 21 other countries will, I'm convinced, get right up their noses.

Looks like the way forward is a Liberal-Xenophobe Alliance!

Who'd want to live to 99?

A 98 year old?

This is a clip of Konrad Thurano, who died recently aged 98, performing with his son last year. At 97! Amazing.

(Via NTDWA)

Not irregular enough for my liking

Cheney found to have irregular heartbeat

I'm surprised they found a heart!

Getting his own back

Please don't demonise us

'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested

A British schoolteacher has been arrested in Sudan accused of insulting Islam's Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad..The naming of the teddy happened months ago and was chosen by the children because it is a common name in the country...Ms Gibbons, who joined the school in August, asked a seven-year-old girl to bring in her teddy bear and asked the class to pick names for it, he said. "They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad," Mr Boulos, the school's director said, adding that she then had the children vote on a name. Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad as their favourite name. "This happened in September and the parents did not have a problem with it," he said.

The school has been closed until January for fear of reprisals. Fellow teachers at Khartoum's Unity High School told Reuters news agency they feared for Ms Gibbons' safety after receiving reports that men had started gathering outside the police station where she was being held...The BBC's correspondent Amber Henshaw said Ms Gibbons' punishment could be up to six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine.

At the risk of upsetting religious sensibilities - WHAT A BUNCH OF FUCKING MORONS!

That bear has got more sense than these stupid and ignorant religious nuts. 

'Iraq Has Only Militants, No Civilians'

Tomdispatch: Dahr Jamail, How to Control the Story, Pentagon-style

If, four decades ago, the Vietnamese were "gooks," "dinks," and "slopes," the Iraqis of the American occupation are "hajis," "sand-niggers," and "towel heads." Latent racism abets the dehumanization process, ably assisted by a mainstream media that tends, with honorable exceptions, to accept Pentagon announcements as at least an initial approximation of reality in Iraq.

Whether it was "incidents" involving helicopter strikes in which those on the ground who died were assumed to be enemy and evil, or the wholesale destruction of the city of Fallujah in 2004, or the massacre at Haditha, or a slaughtered wedding party in the western desert of Iraq that was also caught on video tape (Marine Major General James Mattis: "How many people go to the middle of the desert.... to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."), or killings at U.S. checkpoints; or even the initial invasion of Iraq itself, we find the same propaganda techniques deployed: Demonize an "enemy"; report only "fighters" being killed; stick to the story despite evidence to the contrary; if under pressure, launch an investigation; if still under pressure, bring only low-level troops up on charges; convict a few of them; sentence them lightly; repeat drill.

Just read this, and weep

Alexander Cockburn: The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD

Welcome to the jackboot state, not to mention the jackboot campus, anno domini 2007. A doctor gives verbal advice to protect the life of an unconscious man and she duly gets hit with attempted felonies by vindictive campus cops, with the connivance of the University of Michigan. (Her trial starts today)...

From 'Defend Wilkerson':
As the senior medical professional on scene, Dr. Wilkerson took responsibility for the well-being of a middle-aged man who was forced by police to the floor. The man, at least twice, told the two police officers on top of him, "I can't breathe." After he lost consciousness, Dr. Wilkerson exhorted police to get off him and allow her to check his breathing and pulse. Wilkerson later protested when Emergency Medical Service (EMS) personnel adopted a punitive, potentially dangerous approach and breached ethical medical practices by forcing ammonia into the man's nostrils and face. It was at this time that she was physically assaulted and detained by Ann Arbor police. To this day, Wilkerson still requires physical therapy for the shoulder injury she needlessly suffered at the hands of Officer Warner. Wilkerson was never handcuffed or even required to produce identification because she had committed no crime in advocating for a patient in her care. However, nearly two months after the incident and just seven days after she filed a police brutality complaint, she was charged by the Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie's office, at the request of the UM police, with two attempted felonies—one against Officer Warner and one against the EMS personnel.