I'm Baaack!

I haven't been following the news, so I was wondering- did they catch the French right wing, white supremecist who has been shooting Jews and Muslims to express his rage at immigration?

A Foolish Streak.

Streakers at public events are idiots and bores but this is a ridiculous punishment:

A football fan who ran naked across the pitch during a televised Premiership match for a £100 bet has been put on the Sex Offenders Register.
Unemployed Sam Gorman's genitals were clearly on show as he dashed out in front of thousands during the Aston Villa home game against Manchester City.

Aside from the injustice to the idiotic Mr Gorman it undermines the purpose of having a sex offenders register.

I thought the register was there to enable local forces to keep track of people whose predatory behaviour means that they remain a potential danger to the public even if they are free. By diluting the list to include the likes of streakers (even repeat offenders like Mr Gorman) they are making it less useful, because keeping a close tab on every drunken exhibitionist is not going to help solve any sex crimes that will occur in the West Midlands over the next few year.

Race Baiting In The New York Times With Lee Siegel

Apparently Mitt Romney's campaign is succeeding because he's waycist!!!!! According to Lee Siegel:

But there has yet to be any discussion over the one quality that has subtly fueled his candidacy thus far and could well put him over the top in the fall: his race.

Yes, why haven't people noted the role of Romney's whiteness in beating Gingrich, Perry and Huntsman? I can't work it out.

Of course, I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density. I’m referring to the countless subtle and not-so-subtle ways he telegraphs to a certain type of voter that he is the cultural alternative to America’s first black president.  

"Subtle" is the race baiter's code for "invented".

In this way, Mr. Romney’s Mormonism may end up being a critical advantage. Evangelicals might wring their hands over the prospect of a Mormon president, but there is no stronger bastion of pre-civil-rights-America whiteness than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

What about the New York Times editorial board? Mitt Romney's father George was a prominent supporter of civil rights and was spoken of favourably by Martin Luther King.

Yes, since 1978 the church has allowed blacks to become priests. But Mormonism is still imagined by its adherents as a religion founded by whites

So no Mormons can be president. I think Lee Siegheil needs to look closer to home for subtle racism.

It’s true that Mr. Romney’s opponents are all white as well. But each is tainted in his own way. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich appear soft on Hispanic immigration, and Mr. Gingrich is hardly the standard-bearer for the invincible nuclear family.
Rick Santorum is an Italian-American Catholic

 What? So Catholicism means Santorum is insufficiently mainstream but Mormonism doesn't?

And Ron Paul’s isolationist conspiracy-mongering recalls, if anything, the radical-right fringe of the ’50s and ’60s, of the John Birchers and the followers of George Wallace, a manic moment even most evangelicals would rather forget.

So his being Mormon is even more racially provocative than you know- hating black people.

Contrast that with Mr. Romney’s meticulously cultivated whiteness. He is nearly always in immaculate white shirt sleeves. He is implacably polite,

Ah, so being polite and well dressed are white traits. Who's the racist here? Barack Obama got praised effusively for being polite and well dressed back in 2008. I'm glad I can prove my anti racism by saying that Lee Siegheil is a gutter dwelling, race baiting whore.

The whole fundamental conceit of Seigel's rant is that there is a significant body of opinion that is uniquely uncomfortable with Barack Obama and regards him as illegitimate because he is black. No evidence is made to support the notion that opponents of Obama would be perfectly relaxed if a white person was enacting the same policies or if Obama faces more delegitimisation than other Presidents (the conspiracy theories over Bush's wins in 2000 & 2004 would be an interesting place to start).

On the other hand the author clearly does regard Mr Romney as illegitimate because of his ethnic identity.

Scaremongering

I'm not a Ron Paul fan but I can see why he gets support when mainstream Republicans are coming out with horseshit like this by GOP congressman Steve King of Iowa:

“To paint an image of what I think it looks like under a Ron Paul presidency, it would be Iranian nuclear missiles placed in Cuba and Katyusha rockets in Tijuana."

Being On The Same Side As Idiots

I am against reintroducing the death penalty to the UK for reasons which I have stated before- executing innocent people is inevitable and I don't want to be party to that. Arguments that we would only use it if we were "really 100% sure" are silly because we think we are 100% sure when we lock anybody up. So to argue for the death penalty is to say that the deaths of innocent people are a price worth paying.

In addition I have to say I find many of those on the same side as me to be smug and stupid. Take Ian Dunt from Politics.co.uk for the first example from google news who manages to combine all the worst traits of opponents in one article:

• Self congratulation: "The capital punishment argument is particularly unsatisfying because it is so easy to refute."- It is not easy enough for him it seems.
  
•  Ignorance: "the US is the only developed, supposedly civilised country which still conducts executions."- Japan is not a developed and civilised country according to Dunt.
• Bad Stats:  Too long to quote but he cherry picks studies to conclude that all reputable research refutes the idea that the death penalty deters crime when in fact most recent evidence point to a small but real deterrent effect although it is difficult to be certain with the social sciences.
• Hypocrisy: "Once the deterrent argument falls apart, capital punishment proponents have very little to fall back on but their own sense of emotional outrage"- after sneering at the "supposedly civilised" USA he wants to accuse other people of relying on emotional outrage?
• Stupidity:  "In 1996, those US states with the death penalty had an average murder rate of 7.1 per 100,000 of population. Those states without had 3.6 per 100,000."- Lesson 1 of statistics is "correlation does not imply causation" and even if it did you could equally argue that the political support for the death penalty is due to high murder rate. In reality the southern states have been about twice as violent as the northern ones since the days when they were colonies and both hanged people with gusto and enthusiasm.

 I hate being on the same side as people like this.

Update: I am now feeling slightly bad about being so harsh on Mr Dunt, so if you come here via a vanity search, then please ignore all the insulting points and just not the facts.

Celebrities- Is There Anything That They Don't Know?

I don't write about celebrities often and off all the celebs out there I really feel reluctant to criticise Ashton Kutcher. He seems like a really nice bloke who always takes him Mum with him wherever he goes.

However he is peddling a US variant of the myth of widespread people trafficking that has previously been debunked over here. When challenged on the facts by the liberal magazine The Village Voice- he was claiming that up to 300000* children every year were being sold into child sex slavery- he naturally realised the error of his ways, apologised and promised to research any claims that he made in future.

Not really. He launched a hate campaign against the Voice using his herd of Twitter cretins to scare off advertisers. Oh and insinuate that the publication somehow benefits from child sex with lovely Tweets like:

fact: news outlets who have financial interest in trafficking may have interest in applying bias to facts to secure their revenue 

And:

Hey +AmericanAir. Are you aware that you are advertising on a site that supports the Sale of Human Beings (slavery)?'

Those accusations are obviously both exceptionally nasty lies. Trying to financially ruin people who have told the truth about your lying is known as "doing a Hari".

Some would say that his indifference to the the facts imply that he and fellow celebrities campaigning against child sex trafficking are doing it more for their own egos than because they have any interest in the issue. I disagree and believe that these ads are highly effective, I've certainly cut down on my use of child prostitutes since I learned that Justin Timberlake was campaigning against it and so have all my friends.

The depressing thing is that it looks like there is a real chance that people will be punished for telling the truth and shameless liars will be portrayed as being interested in child welfare.

{ Via both Rodney Balko and John B in the comments here }

* That's 300000 each year, not in total. There are about 75 million under 18s in the USA so lets say there are around 4 million in each year group. Kutcher honestly thinks it's credible that around 7% of children will be sold into sex slavery at some point.

Onwards To Defeat

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, issued the warning as angry unions threatened to walk away from talks over plans to pay more for reduced entitlements.
He told the Guardian newspaper: "It will be the biggest since the general strike. It won't be the miners' strike. We are going to win."

Er does Dave Prentis realise that the General Strike was a monumental defeat for the unions?

Anyway I'm still hoping that they go on strike one day a week for the next year in order to cut the deficit.

Hari + Economics = Fun

Johann Hari calls for a Keynsian approach to getting the economy going. Apart from getting economic history completely wrong (for example President Hoover did not slash spending, he increased it faster than anyone in history had done up to that point), there is something else about it too.

Like all of the press advocates of Keynsianism who advocate higher public spending in a downturn. Keynes encouraged counter cyclical spending- spend more in a recession but less in a boom. Hari was not demanding that Gordon Brown rein in spending while he was running budget surpluses during the boom years. Therefore it can only be concluded that Hari 's support for Keynsianism is opportunistic and he merely supports whatever theory will encourage further public spending at any given time.

Via.

Bad Job Interview Techniques

A woman is released from jail after police officer is found to have planted evidence. So how did this fabrication come to light?

The fabrication emerged after Harding, seeking a job with the CIA, bragged that he had fabricated evidence, apparently to impress the interviewer. The CIA notified New York authorities, and the investigation began, eventually leading to several other investigators to plead guilty to evidence tampering or fabrication, and the re-opening of several criminal cases.

It does suggest that this sort of corruption wasn't seen as outlandish in his own police force, if he thought it was something that would impress other law enforcement agencies, which is slightly disturbing.

Via

Keep This between You, Me & 3 Million Trusted Colleagues.

Whilst I have no sympathy for wikileaks or their narcissistic founder Julian Assange (who believes he has the right to decide whether or not Afghans cooperating with the coalition and national government against the Taliban should have their identities protected), the latest wikileaks revelations reveal a more serious problem.

Given that the leaked documents are important enough to cause serious problems for the United States and their diplomatic efforts you'd think that access would be restricted. And sure enough it- to just a few million of the most trusted people in the US.

Yeah the Wikileaks mob are grossly irresponsible but it's hard to see how something like this was avoidable given the circumstances.

The Trustafarian EDL

In what sense are the student protestors demanding that poor people give them more money- and the borderline retards who are celebrating the violence* any different from say the EDL or other groups committed to street violence? Except the student trots who were doing this would look down on the chavs of the EDL.

* Sample quote from Arthur Baker, writing on the site Liberal Conspiracy which purports to be a forum for the mainstream left in the British blogosphere:

putting a placard or an effigy of David Cameron on a bonfire is not violence, writing on walls is not violence, smashing windows is not violence and dancing on roves is not violence. Even throwing bits of cardboard placard at police clad in bullet proof jackets and helmets, armed with sheilds and battons hardly seems “thugish”.

Weiner By Name.....

The lowlife who framed a colleague for possessing child pornography in order to try to take his job deserves every minute of his 12 year sentence for his crime. The fact that the crime was so heinous and the reward so petty makes it all the more extraordinary.

A handyman who planted child pornography on his boss's computer in a bid to get promoted has been jailed.

Neil Weiner, 40, hatched the "wickedly evil and vile plot" to get caretaker Eddie Thompson sacked from Swanlea Secondary School in east London.

However I do think one aspect of the judge's summing up is a little disturbing:

"You will go to prison for a long time. The prison population is not renowned for being particularly fair or reasonable," he said.

"You will be suspected by many of being a paedophile and, like Mr Thompson, you may find that you suffer, both in prison and on release, for the rest of your life."

If the judge is merely stating that as a fact of life then fair enough, but it almost sounds as if he is relishing the prospect of extrajudicial punishment for Mr Weiner with an implied threat about what prisoners do to nonces. I am not averse to such thinking myself but I really don't think that judges should be doing it.

Worst Answer Ever?

Student politicians aren't easy to like and this one certainly isn't doing himself any favours:

It wasn't until a cheeky grenade was lobbed in that there was the night's only shocking incident. Candidates were asked "Which politician do you most relate to and respect... in Northern Ireland?"

Given that he was speaking in a room of Thatcherite right-wingers, Ben Howlett's attempt at getting the Fenian vote look spectacularly inappropriate. He cited Gerry Adams as "a conviction politician". Some were left speechless that Howlett, who had used a photo opportunity just 48 hours previously with Lady Thatcher to promote his campaign, endorsed the man who chaired the IRA Army Council that sanctioned the assassination attempt on her at the 1984 Conservative Party Conference in Brighton that left senior Tories dead and disabled for life.

Oh well there's a future political career down the drain.

PM Refuses To Meet Fantasists.

One thing that Cameron has done which I do approve of, is publicly refuse to meet a quartet of retarded US Senators who want an "investigation" into whether BP was involved in the decision to release the Lockerbie bomber last year.

Given that there is a complete lack of evidence to suggest such a conspiracy it is clear that the Senators are indulging in irresponsible demagoguery to capitalise on BP's (deserved) unpopularity over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico the Senators should be considered to be on a par with truthers, birthers and people who insist the moon landings were faked.

Update: As Matthew points out in the comments, David Cameron has now caved and is going to meet the tinfoil hat wearing senators. So reverse everything I just wrote about Dave.

Interview Of The Day

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via

Caviar For Every Child

According to the "Left Foot Forward" blog, Michael Gove is the "regressive of the week" for:

scrapping Labour’s plans to lift 50,000 of the poorest children out of poverty, failing to extend free school meals to 500,000 of the poorest working families. The move will cost families up to £600 more a week – the equivalent of an extra penny in income tax per child.

Leaving aside the shamelessness of complaining about cuts when you supported the policies that made them inevitable just consider the figures.

Who the hell spends £600 a week on school meals? Given that children are only at school 5 days a week, LFF must believe that spending £120 a day on food is reasonable, I realise that the site's main man Will Straw is the son of an MP but even for MPs that's excessive.

Ok it does say the cost is per family, and many families have more than one child. Even then though if you assume that an acceptable lunch costs about a fiver (probably less actually) one would need to have around 24 school age children to be spending £120 a day.

Pope On A Rope?

The publicity seekers who are trying to get the Pope arrested seem to be making a very strange argument:

Geoffrey Robertson, a UK barrister, and solicitor Mark Stephens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because although his tour is a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.

Surely the relevent point is whether the Vatican is recognised as a state by the UK, not the United Nations. Britain has full diplomatic relations with the Vatican, so in order to make the case that the Pope isn't a head of state you also have to argue that the United Kingdom has no say in who it recognises as another sovereign state.

Also the Pope's supposed offences were committed abroad, so whilst simultaneously losing the right to choose who to recognise as a nation we also gain the right to run the legal systems of every other country on the planet, if we follow the internal logic of the likes of Geoffrey Robertson.

Hiding In Plain Sight

This is a fun story- teenage reality star & model jailed for her part in a burglary ring that targeted the homes of Hollywood celebrities. My favourite part:

Nick Prugo, another member of the gang who has admitted his part in the thefts, revealed they were able to gain access to Hilton's home after finding a front door key under the front mat.

He said they had chosen her because she was 'dumb' - but were shocked to find the key in the most obvious of places

Money can't buy common sense I guess.

I wish I had aspiring models breaking into my house.

Gary Younge- The Morons' Moron

The Guardian's resident race baiter, Gary Younge hates Tories because:

I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about. As a young man Cameron looked out on the social carnage of pit closures and mass unemployment, looked at Margaret Thatcher's government and thought, these are my people. When all the debating is done, that is really all I need to know.

Others have eviscerated Younge better than I could so I want go through everything he writes. However the inclusion of Bobby Sands is telling.

Sands went on his weight watchers course because the government declined to go along with IRA delusions about being political prisoners. She insisted on treating them as criminals who would be treated no differently from other offenders.

Meanwhile over the last decade the United States has been lambasted by the people like Younge for not granting terrorists civilian trials and instead opting for military tribunals.

So it seems that it doesn't matter whether terrorists are treated as criminals or not, that isn't the important point, what matters is that they aren't treated harshly in any way.

Orlando Figes- Too Stupid To Troll

Academic feuds are notoriously unpleasant and vicious, so the fact that historian Orlando Figes wrote psuedonymous reviews of his rivals works on Amazon isn't remarkable.

What is incredible is that he is such a complete moron who can't even troll properly. He posts a number of comments praising himself and trashing his rivals which might be enough to raise suspicions that he might be him. So how did he cover his trail? He used the nom de plume "Historian" as well as "Orlando Birkbeck". Orlando is a historian at Birkbeck just in case you hadn't guessed.

How can anyone that stupid be a professor?