What a hero!

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PC cleared of assaulting OAP
"There is no dispute here that PC Morton (30) did use some force upon Mr Slack (90) and there is no dispute that, as a result of that, Mr Slack suffered some injury. The issue in this case was whether the prosecution could prove whether that force was unlawful."
Judge John Burgess
CUNT!  CUNT!  CUNT! CUNT!  CUNT!

Naturally there was both a traffic warden and one of those useless (female) PCSOs involved:
Judge Burgess said: "A call came over the radio firstly that assistance was required. Then there was a second call in which she (PCSO Martin) sounded fearful and panicked and was complaining of being assaulted herself. That would have been in his (PC Morton's) mind when he arrived. A police officer faced with violent situations cannot be expected to work out on the spur of the moment exactly how much force may be necessary." (emphasis mine)
Help! Help! I'm being attacked by a nonagenarian.

Useless fucking twats.

Obama drones on

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US drone missiles slaughtered 700 Pakistani civilians in 2009
US drone missile attacks have claimed the lives of over 700 Pakistani civilians since Barack Obama took office a year ago, according to figures released this week by officials in Islamabad. The escalation of Washington’s AfPak war, now in full swing, will mean the slaughter of thousands more men, women and children in 2010.

The grim death toll was announced in the Pakistani English-language daily Dawn Monday, just as news of the latest strike by a Hellfire missile made its way from an impoverished village near the Afghanistan border.

The missile strike left dead and buried in the rubble of their home a Pakistani teacher and his nine-year-old son. According to media accounts citing unnamed US intelligence officials, the teacher’s home had been targeted for a Predator drone attack because of reports that militants had frequented the house.

Who provided these reports? How were they verified? Was there any evidence that the teacher—not to mention his child—were in any way implicated in the activities of the alleged "militants?"

Blame the victim

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I've only just come across this appalling piece in the Guardian.

Prejudiced Danes provoke fanaticism
Why did the editors of Jyllands-Posten want to mock Islam in this way? Some of us believed it was in bad taste and also cruel. Intentional humiliation is an aggressive act. As a journalist now living in the same town as Westergaard, I thought some at Jyllands-Posten had acted like petulant adolescents. Danes fail to perceive the fact that they have developed a society deeply suspicious of religion. This is the real issue between Denmark and Muslim extremists, not freedom of speech. The free society precept is merely an attempt to give the perpetrators the moral high ground when actually it is a smokescreen for a deeply rooted prejudice, not against Muslims, but against religion per se. Muslims are in love with their faith. And many Danes are suspicious of anyone who loves religion.
So what? Why should we 'respect' religious views any more than we respect other daft, deeply irrational ones? And most certainly, why should we respect any religion who's adherents believe the appropriate response to being disrespected is murder?

Texas Straight Talk

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Keynesianism Delivers a Decade of Zero - Ron Paul
You cannot spend your way out of a recession. You cannot regulate the economy into oblivion and expect it to function. You cannot tax people and businesses to the point of near slavery and expect them to keep producing. You cannot create an abundance of money out of thin air without making all that paper worthless. The government cannot make up for rising unemployment by just hiring all the out of work people to be bureaucrats or send them unemployment checks forever. You cannot live beyond your means indefinitely. The economy must actually produce something others are willing to buy. Government growth is the opposite of all these things...

...we cannot survive much longer if government is our only growth industry.

In memoriam

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There is one aspect of the Anjem Choudary/Wooton Bassett story that disturbs me.  Choudary is a vile scumbag, that much we can all agree on, and his plan for a march through Wooton Bassett is nothing more than a cynical attempt at self-promotion. But where are the lives of dead, innocent Afghans commemorated in this country? Surely there is a perfectly good case to be made for publicly mourning the tragic losss of life of Muslims in both Afghanistan and Iraq? Nobody seems to be doing it and if they did what sort of reception would they get? Would Alan Johnson be 'filled with revulsion'? Would Gordon Brown think it 'inapproriate'?

So, in the absence of an honest and humane response to the wars we get this buffoon who is now able to make a perfectly reasonable case about the slaughter of innocent Muslims to further his own agenda. There was a time when all the victims of war were commemorated, but that has never been on the agenda at Wooton Bassett.


LibCon calls for censorship

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Liberal Conspiracy -  We’re giving terrorists what they want
Press blackouts were tried in the past, both in the fight against terrorism in Northern Ireland and at the height of the RAF and Red Brigades’ campaigns in Germany and Italy respectively. What if governments and security forces around the world set up a concerted plan not to give Al-Quaeda the oxygen of publicity, unless of course there were damage and casualties to report? Wouldn’t the blackout deal at least a partial blow to the campaign of fear and hatred that the Islamic funda-mentalists(sic) have been inflicting upon the world?

And using a soundbite made famous by Margaret Thatcher too. Ooh, er, missus!

No news is, indeed, good news, so it seems. 

Of course, let us remember, as Shawn Bryant points out: "Politics thrives on the oxygen of publicity far more than terrorism does."

Develop!

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A Photo Student:  Twenty-Six Thought-Provoking Essays on Photography  From Bazin's "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" to Sontag's "On Photography".
http://www.glasgowbarstaff.co.uk/images/old-camera-2.pngAward-winning photojournaist James Pomerantz is studying for an MFA in Photography, and now you can read the books that he’s reading. His list is dense and scholarly but your grey matter (and your photographic output) will thank you for peeking over James’ shoulder.
Via Photojojo