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.

Quote of the Day

For Obama, success is not the delivery of watertight nuclear security for America; it is a feel-good news conference and photo opportunity that will create huge approval ratings on liberal campuses where the delusions of 1968 and the anti-Vietnam war movement still linger on in these isolated Jurassic Parks.

Read the whole thing.

Great But Failed Handguns

Hell in a Handbasket as a very good post up on some innovative firearms designs that ultimately failed to succeed. Go check it out here.

As I read a few thoughts occurred to me.

The LeMat- make it a break action like a Webley so that the revolver cylinder and shotgun can both be loaded at the same time. It would obviously require some ingenious work to re-fashion the design so that the shotgun barrel was firmly locked in place while the cylinder continued to revolve around it but I'm sure some engineering whizz could figure that out. These days I'm sure some would want to see the shotgun chambered for a .410 shotshell but personally I'd opt for a 20 gauge or 16 gauge.

The HDH Machinegun - this is a neat idea and a weapon that I'll admit I'd never heard of before. Seems to me that the time for another double barrelled revolver has come- it evidently needs a small cartridge so why not go for a rimmed version of the P90's 5.7mm or HK's 4.6mm?

More Twitter

I've been using Twitter to post lately- simply because it's faster than blogger. You can view my page here. You don't need to be signed up to the service to see the items or click the links. And you can also see my Twitter posts further down this page below the links.

A few examples-

Actress Lynn Collins has been picked to play Dejah Thoris in the upcoming John Carter of Mars movie. Sorry, but she is no Dejah. The guy who played Gambit in the Wolverine movie is to be John Carter. I'm underwhelmed by that choice but I'll reserve further judgement until I actually see that film. I doubt very much it will convince me he's right for the part though.

An "expert" has designed a revolutionary new knife which *gasp* cannot be used to commit crimes! How does it manage this? Well, it has a blunt tip. The pointless design (couldn't resist) evidently doesn't take into account that knives are known to not only stab people but also to slash them. No doubt the next version will take this into account and come fully featured with a blunt edge too.

The US is to send financial aid- to be used to combat global warming- to...wait for it...China. Let me see if I have this right- US borrows money from China, US gives money to China because they are "a developing nation", US then repays loan to China plus interest.

Museum Shooting

There appears to have been a mini-blog storm about Debbie Schlussel's column which argues that the climate of tolerance for Islamic anti-Semitism essentially motivated the Holocaust Museum shooter to carry out his crime. I think she has a definite case to make about the shocking rise of anti-Semitism and its link to the politically correct climate around not offending Muslims, but it's a stretch to go from there to "he committed the shooting solely because of it". Perhaps he did feel more comfortable in his hate but there were other factors at play too.

Having said that, the links between white supremiscists and Muslims have been summarily dismissed or ridiculed by Schlussel's critics. She does bring up Hitler's links to the Grand Mufti and also to the Muslim SS Divisions in response. More pertinent to the argument I think would be this more recent news from 2005-

A couple of hours up the road from where some September 11 hijackers learned to fly, the new head of Aryan Nation is praising them -- and trying to create an unholy alliance between his white supremacist group and al Qaeda.

"You say they're terrorists, I say they're freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah."

That's right - the head of the Aryan Nation wants to join forces with Al Qaeda, reasoning that they two disparate groups have common enemies- the American government and Jews. There's also this report from 2003-

"Western-made terrorists motivated by Marxist, anarchist and neo-Nazi ideology are forming alliances with jihadists and are planning copycat-style attacks and others utilizing funding from Islamists, according to intelligence sources."

Schlussel may have overstated her argument but there is no denying increased anti-Semitism nor is there the "common cause" that white supremiscists feel they have with jihadists.

Twitter

Trying out Twitter to see what all the fuss is. Certainly less time consuming to highlight a story than do a blog post. I may use it to point out items of interest which wouldn't normally make it into the blog, but we'll have to see how it holds my interest.

Any readers use it? Let me know.

Here's the link.

Shi No Numa

Well, downloaded Map Pack 2 for Call of Duty: World at War. Haven't even looked at the new multiplayer maps but I have been playing the new Nazi Zombies game, Shi No Numa (Swamp of Death) for a good part of the afternoon.

It's fantastic- with the new additions to the game and the Imperial Japanese zombies it feels unlike the other two Nazi Zombies games. Treyarch have really outdone themselves with this one. The map is big and sprawling with lots of doors and windows for the zombies to come shambling or running through. I had thought that the randomly generated Perks machines would be frustrating but it works well- especially since you don't have to first go turn on the power to get them working. Also the Box, source of all the good guns, seems to be more rationally programmed- no more getting a useless bolt action rifle on level 12. Fingers crossed they don't change this come the next upgrade- the game is hard enough as it is.

The Hellhound levels are brilliant- I like that they occur randomly and each begins with the whole level filling up with fog, before the Hellhounds spawn and begin attacking. It's a wonderfully spooky touch. Easy to imagine the jungle temperatures plummeting as the air turns to mist. Really, Treyarch- make a whole game of this stuff.

Thus far, the best I've managed is level 15 solo. If you have the pair of MGs, the Browning and the MG-42, stick with the latter when confronted with Hellhounds- the higher rate of fire seems to put them down much easier.

If you have any strategy tips, feel free to leave them in the comments!

One last thing- seems I was right about the Wunderwaffe- not a night-scoped MP-44 but a nifty Nazi electric rifle. I'm not quite sure what to make of the new weapon just yet as I only got to handle it a couple of times. Not quite as effective as the Ray Gun (which appears to still be in the Box) but it's still pretty destructive. If you haven't used it yet, wait until you get a group of zombies coming at you before firing.

Oh, and just one other last thing! The Flogger? It's awesome.

Friend and Mentor

While Obama panders to the "Muslim world", shakes his finger at the US for having the temerity to worry about a genocidal thug obtaining nuclear weapons, he makes demands of Israel unheard of from any previous American administration- to cease even the natural growth of settlements.

Now, apart from his weekly dinner-and-chats with former PLO spokesman Rashid al-Khalidi and his attending a dinner with Edward Said, his anti-Israel foreign policy team during the campaign, was there any clue as to his apparent animus to Israel? You know, apart from attending a church that printed Hamas propaganda in its newsletter.

Maybe this new comment from Obama's "crazy uncle" Rev Wright will shed some light on matters.

Asked if he had spoken to the President, Wright said: “Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office…

Wright also said Obama should have sent a U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Racism held recently in Geneva, Switzerland, but that the president did not do so for fear of offending Jews and Israel.

What was the phrase I was looking for? Oh yeah, now I remember- told you so.

A Dangerous Decision

This is not going to end well.

If Tenet is right, it’s a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

So foreign terrorists captured on the battlefield are essentially being given the same rights as US civilians arrested by police back home. How on Earth are they going to square, "you have the right to remain silent," with obtaining actionable intelligence on terrorist plots and/or networks?

Can't have it both ways. This might salve the consciences of liberals in Washington but it will do nothing to protect American servicemen overseas or citizens back home. In short, this disastrous decision is going to get people killed.

TARP Jeopardy

Mary Katherine Ham reports on just how effective the oversight of TARP really is. From Professor Warren, head of the TARP oversight committee-

There's no discussion of the overall policy. Instead, there are specific programs that are announced, and from that, it's necessary to reason backwards to figure out what the goal must have been. It's like a "Jeopardy!" game. If this is the answer, what was the question? It's frustrating because without a clearly articulated goal and identified metrics to determine whether the goal is being accomplished, it's almost impossible to tell if a program is successful.

And then this-

Q: Do you have a clear sense of what the overall TARP plan at this point is supposed to do? Are you capable of summarizing what it's supposed to be doing?

A: No. And neither is Treasury. Treasury has given us multiple contradictory explanations for what it's trying to accomplish.

Your tax dollars at work, folks.