Project Valor-IT

Hi folks, I've just made a donation to Soldiers' Angels Project Valor-IT. It's a very worthy cause helping wounded servicemen and I'd strongly recommend you donate whatever you can.
Pick a team- Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines- and give what you can to help those who have been wounded. Team Marines are currently in the lead- so do what you can to either keep them in front or help your preferred branch to do better. It also helps to spread the word so tell your friends and family too.

Project Valour-IT helps provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries. Items supplied include:

# Voice-controlled Laptops - Operated by speaking into a microphone or using other adaptive technologies, they allow the wounded to maintain connections with the rest of the world during recovery.
# Wii Video Game Systems - Whole-body game systems increase motivation and speed recovery when used under the guidance of physical therapists in therapy sessions (donated only to medical facilities).
# Personal GPS - Handheld GPS devices build self-confidence and independence by compensating for short-term memory loss and organizational challenges related to severe TBI and severe PTSD.

I just want to add- I'm a British citizen but the work American servicemen do, currently fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, serves to benefit not just America but the UK and many other nations. I'm thankful for the courage and dedication of America's servicemen and women.

Police Apathy

A British man discovered a gang-land gun- loaded and left in a plastic bag at a playground- so he did the decent thing and phoned the police. They first of all offered to come to his home but as he had just had a confrontation with the gang he was afraid they would follow him there. So, instead of driving to him at the scene, they told him to walk to the nearest police station to hand it it- two and a half miles away.

If he had been stopped by police en route and discovered with a gun he would- according to the police themselves- have been charged with possession.

The authorities seemed to be completely unperturbed by the thought of the man walking alone with a gang's gun- and cash and a passport; even though he had just had a run in with them over it. Why did they not show any concern not only for his safety but for the risk of a loaded firearm falling back into the hands of the gang?

No doubt their reluctance to drive to meet him at the playground indicates that they were in no hurry to go to his home either. Their disinterest in a gang's loaded firearm, possibly one used in a crime, is pretty surprising. Why were they not interested in questioning the thugs who demanded that the gent hand over their gun? Why no interest in obtaining the best possible forensic testing of the weapon, etc? Why tell a member of the public to carry a loaded firearm through city streets- when he faced arrest or a confrontation with armed police officers if some member of the public spotted the gun in the bag?

The only answer can be a shocking level of apathy on the part of the police.

In fact, it turns out that the gun was used in a gangland shooting just five days before it was discovered but police were unable to link it to an individual and so no case has gone to court.

Quote of the Day

Obama in one Monty Python quote.

Operation Rize

Hard to take a small sample of the article to illustrate this story. In short, UK police used a relatively new law designed to seize the assets of criminals to raid some safety deposit boxes. What's startling- and frightening- is that instead of raiding the boxes of identified criminals, the police obtained a warrant to raid every single box in the facility. They cut them open with angle grinders, catalogued the contents and then basically argued that if you had cash or valuables in the boxes, you were assumed to be guilty and had to prove that you had obtained the valuables legally.

I always thought that a man was innocent until proven guilty- not any more.

Under POCA, the burden of proof lay with the box-holders. Finding evidence for wartime treks across Europe, or charting migration stories from the Partition of India and beyond, would cost many of the box-holders tens of thousands of pounds.

For example, one Jewish family fled Europe before the war with some diamonds sewn into their clothes. Fearful that at some point they or their children might need to flee again they kept the diamonds in a safety deposit box. To get their belongings back they had to pay to carbon date the diamonds, proving they were cut in the 1930s.

And that's just one example of many. It's also worth noting that the law used to carry out the raid was never intended for this kind of operation- dubbed a fishing expedition. In fact, the first judge in London they took the case to turned down the warrant request. So the police went "judge shopping", travelling outside of the capital to a nearby town where the judge was less knowledgeable about such cases- and they dazzled him with statistics that proved to be incredibly wrong in order to obtain the warrant. No need for things such as evidence here.

I strongly urge you all to read the whole article to get the full picture of this scandalous raid- inspired, it would seem, by the police failing to meet their seizure targets. The fact that officers are not being sacked for this shocking abuse tells you all you need to know about how far the notion of individual liberty in the UK has fallen.

My Parents Were Awesome

Discovered this website yesterday and I love it- essentially old photos submitted by folks of their parents when they were young and cool.

Definitely worth a look- some interesting characters and great photography. I love looking at old photos like these.

I'm going to have to see if I can get my scanner out of storage and send in some pics of my Mum and Dad- I have a few of them looking great when they were younger.

White House Admits Joe Was Right

Well, well, well, look what we have here. Buried late on a Friday night the White House releases a statement that, let's not beat around the bush, proves that Joe Wilson was right to declare that Obama was lying when he said Obamacare would not provide cover to illegal aliens.

The question, as we all know, arises from the Wilson “You lie” outburst, and the core claim that notwithstanding specific bill language barring illegal immigrants from participating in the “exchange,” as a practical matter, there is no way of verifying the citizenship of applicants — which is the current state of play. Republicans say that then means illegal immigrants would end up being enrolled in plans — bill language or no bill language.

Today, for the first time as far as we know, the administration is backing a provision that would require proof of citizenship before someone could enroll in a plan selected on the exchange.

In other words, Obama was either just plain ignorant-wrong when he made his no illegal cover statement or else he knew what the bill said and he was, in fact, lying to Congress and the American people. So which was it smartest-president-ever? Were you lying or did you just not know what you were talking about in your carefully prepared big speech?

Big hat tip to Stop The ACLU for catching this.

9/11 Never Forget

Seems hard to believe that it happened eight years ago.

Gateway Pundit has a small round up- I strongly suggest watching the video of the second plane's impact on the WTC from a different angle than is normally seen. Nothing brings back memories of that terrible day (or crystallises the horror of it all) quite so vividly as seeing the actual footage again- which is what follows:



And from Cox and Forkum, originally posted in 2003.

Liberal Reaction To Joe Wilson

A moronic so-called comedian who goes by the name "DantetheComic"was so incensed by Joe Wilson's daring to call out Obama's lies to Congress that he goes off the deep-end. First off, he send this tweet to me (after I congratulated Wilson's stand)-

you are a f**ktard and need to read a book and a newspaper and not comic books and neo nazi books

Yeah, apparently Monster Hunter International (the only book I can remember referencing on Twitter) is a neo-Nazi book. As for comics, I'm not sure what he's talking about because I'm not much of a comic fan any more and don't think I've ever referred to reading one on Twitter. Incredibly he missed the many links to newspapers there. Well, I say incredibly but given his own output it's perhaps not too surprising. He went on to spew the following bile on Twitter-

Joe Wilson you are a good example why there should be a white christian Rebublican holocost

JOE WILSON...........You are like the 5th person to screw up from S. Carolina in the past year. We may have to blow that state up.

luciferiscoming and his name is JOE WILSON

President Obama is our president. I believe in him and our country and Joe Wilson SPIT on our flag tonight

(To another Twitter user who agreed with Wilson) are you nuts, you c*nt, please go kill yourself

JOE WILSON is alive and well and Kennedy is dead. Shame.

JOE WILSON......if a demacrat yelled out durring a BUSH speech he would have been arested. (Note - not exactly true.)

Joe Wilson thank you since I have ranted about what a piece of crap you are I have gained 30 followers

Joe Wilson eat my nuts

Joe Wilson should resin (Note- I believe he means that Wilson should resign, not turn into resin)

Joe Wilson needs to be punished

(To a Joe Wilson supporter) are you nuts? F**k Joe Wilson and you. That was our president he heckled not Carrot Top

I had Obamas speech on DVR and just watched it. Brilliant. That man is going to change the world. Screw Joe Wilson and other whackjobs

As a comic I hate Hecklers! JOE WILSON is the top piece of sh*t heckler in the world. You f**ktard. (This delicate blossom should never watch Prime Minister's Question Time)

Hey to all the pussys that were following me until I spoke my mind about Oboma and Joe Wilson go f**k yourselves and dont follow me anymore

Go Oboma. Fuck those peice of sh*t republicans who sat there and heckled you and acted like children

Joe Wilson resign now you f**ktard

Joe Wilson if you were a dem durring a Bush speech, you would have been escorted out. How dare you (See above)

F**k you Joe Wilson you piece of sh*t, who the f**k do you think you are yelling at our president.

There needs to be a white christian republican holocost

All the white christian rebublicansneed to all move to Alabama and start thier own country, then left bomb the shit out of those dumb fucks

White christian republicans annoy the sh*t out of me.

I am so sick of dumb f**ks who can not read bashing our president. Show us proof of any thing he has done wrong.

(To another Wilson supporter) Fred let me guess....you love Joe Wilson....you are a white, republican christian. Your level of education and respect are low.

All of the spellings are his originals. Ironic, isn't it, that he slanders someone else's level of education when he can't even spell Democrat? And calling for respect when he's insulted others and called for a holocaust of Christian Republicans? Wow.

No doubt Dante's off to name-call all the liberals and Democrats who attacked Bush, calling him a liar, a murderer and even Hitler over the past eight years...

Subtle But Important Changes

Mary Katherine Ham notes an important change in the language Obama is using to sell his health care reforms. He's gone from this-

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor under the reform proposals that we've put forward. If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep it.

To this-

First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

In short, Obamacare won't force you to lose your current health insurance or doctor, but when the government mandates exactly what each policy will be required to cover (and remember, if you don't have a government approved plan you will be forced to pay a punitive tax) and so on, the chances are that you will lose your current plan and/or doctor. The government might not require it- but then again, why should they when the end result is the same? Also, if you aren't paying particularly close attention to the debate you might just be fooled into thinking that what Obama's saying is that even after Obamacare you'll be able to keep your current insurance and doctor.

So...Embrace The Minimum

The new King Cannibal single So...Embrace The Minimum is out today. Just downloaded my copy from Amazon. It's DJ Magazine's Dubstep single of the month.

The title track has, IMHO, a bit of a house vibe to it- in parts it brings to mind Slam from their Headstates days. For Cannibal this is a pretty light, smooth tune with a very rich sound to it. It also makes me want to hop in the car and go cruise along the motorway at 2:00 am. No one does dark and scary quite like King Cannibal but So... coming on the heels of Virgo proves that there are more strings to his bow than just that.

Check out King Cannibal's MySpace page to have a listen to his tunes.

Secondary Emergency

Two student nurses were threatened with rape by male intruders. They called police but it took four hours for them to respond, by which point the men had long since fled. The men told them,

'We are going to remember your faces and names, and next time, we are going to rape you'.

The police claimed that because the young women were behind a locked door, their case was prioritised as a "secondary emergency".

Their excuse? They were dealing with "a high volume of calls" at the time.

It turns out that the police force were struggling to cope with a mammoth 40 incidents at the time.

What's not said is how many of those "incidents" were violent crimes in progress - how many officers were working that evening- how many of those incidents were police responding to were actually the aftermath of a crime- what incidents were prioritised ahead of thugs threatening to rape young women in their own flat- that is, what exactly is a primary emergency- and how many of those 40 incidents were actually classified as primary emergencies?

Funny the questions professional journalists fail to ask.

King Cannibal Strikes Again

First music I've bought in absolutely ages- King Cannibal's Virgo and Call Me Mr Cold Blooded.

On the Virgo single the title track is, by Cannibal's standards pretty light and, dare I say it, bouncy. Murder Us, the B-side, is darker and more menacing by contrast. I actually like the lighter tone of Virgo, not what I was expecting but it works well.

Call Me Mr Cold Blooded (and brilliant B-side A Hundred Eyes Closed) is in a similar vein to the classic Arigami Style- like a horror movie for your ears. I don't know what specific genre of drum and bass you'd file this stuff under but the best way I can think of describing it is as the electronic equivalent of really dark heavy metal, Ministry or Nine Inch Nails gone jungle.

Looking forward to the coming release- S0...Embrace The Minimum out on August 16th.

Check out King Cannibal's MySpace page to have a listen to his tunes.

One last thing- someone should really hire this guy to score the soundtrack to a really scary horror movie, and make it twice as frightening.