Sunday - June 14, 2009

Well Done

Posted by Drew458     on 06/14/2009 at 09:05 PM   
Filed Under: • Israel •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Saturday - June 13, 2009

Top Brass At Heathrow Have Lost Their Marbles

ARMED cops patrolling Heathrow Airport have been banned from wearing tiny Union Jack badges in support of British troops.

Top brass claimed the tie-pin badges - which cost £1 with proceeds going to the Help for Heroes charity - were OFFENSIVE.

But one officer asked: “How can the Union Jack be offensive?

“This ruling is even more absurd coming this weekend on the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

“We must be the only country ashamed to display our national flag.” [ um, no. You’re not even the only English speaking nation that way. Well, at least where the bosses feel that way. ]

Pride

About 100 officers in the Metropolitan force’s SO18 Aviation branch, which patrols Heathrow, bought the inch-square badges.

Seventy per cent of them served in the Forces and many have children fighting in Afghanistan.

Another cop said: “We’re wearing the badges with pride. Most importantly, they are to show support for our soldiers at war.

“Nobody has put out orders to remove rainbow symbols that gay and lesbian officers wear. Why discriminate against us?”

A statement from the Met said: “The dress code states only approved corporate badging may be used.”

What, are your mooselimb overlords complaining? Is it now a thought crime over there to show any form of patriotism?

Help for Heroes is a charity that aids the returning wounded and disabled veterans. Good enough reason for me to spend a few bucks.  I went and found the Help for Heroes website, but I couldn’t find these badges for sale.  Similar pins and patches are easy enough to find, but none of the money goes to a charity.

Peiper, do us a favor please, ring them up and find out how to get hold of these things.

“TPTB” - aka Top Brass - won’t let the cops wear flag pins/badges, even when most of them are veterans themselves? British people, rise up! Stop your knicker wetting quivering and take back your country!

Do you know that there is not a single bridge, overpass, or outside elevated walkway in the entire United States that does not have a US flag on it, usually one on both sides? And they are all fairly clean; each one has been “adopted” by someone, and those flags are kept in decent shape and replaced when necessary. Yes, it drives the leftists nuts. GOOD. We do it anyway. It started after 9/11, but nearly 8 years later it’s still going strong.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2009 at 02:01 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (9) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

PART TWO OF …. Exploiting the Human Rights Act to defy the law.  THE OTHER SIDE, THE LAW ABIDING.

Right. The folks who count for s!#t!  The law abiding home owner. The everyday person.
You know the one. The people with rights, but less then other people. 

I don’t generally look at the wkend Telegraph property section.  That cos the wife never misses it and when she finds something she thinks I’d be interested in, she brings it to my attention.

Well, I just posted an article from The Mail on the land stealing, unlawful vermin who have somehow achieved “racial” status called, travellers.  These folks are above the law and above criticism.
So ... this is what appeared in another paper, the property section called Ask The Expert, in the Telegraph.
Another eye opener.

Our property experts answer your questions on all aspects of buying, selling and owning a home.

Published: 12:00PM BST 09 Jun 2009

POINTS OF LAW

I live in a house on 18 acres and have two holiday cottages. I’d like to build a third, because of demand, but this is a rural area so planning was refused, as was our appeal.

Adjoining my land is a long-standing, unauthorised but tolerated, travellers’ camp. Recently the council’s gipsy liaison officer was granted planning permission for 12 log cabins. Could I argue my human rights are being infringed on the basis that I am not a traveller?

David Fleming writes:

Your question takes us to the dangerous area where law meets politics so I must tread carefully.

Local authorities are under a duty to provide for travellers so special rules apply to such sites.

But even if planning permission should not have been granted for the cabins, that would not help you – for the same reason that you can’t complain when the police stop you for speeding, even though other motorists, who could equally have been stopped, pass by.

The courts have held that the Human Rights Act has little application in planning law. All the rights granted, including free use of one’s property, are subject to “public interest” exceptions; it is the role of the planning system to strike a balance between an individual’s right to do what he likes with his property and the public interest in the control of development.

Note: David Fleming has practised law for 27 years and is head of property litigation.

POINTS OF LAW

Now I ask you BMEWS. Is this placed screwed up totally er what? 

Posted by peiper     on 06/13/2009 at 11:32 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Government • Insanity • Nanny State • Outrageous • Travelers/Gypsies/Squatters • UK •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Exploitng the Human Rights Act to defy the law, and winning because nobody does a damn thing.

Booted late today with another story to start and found this from Drew, who got it from Theo.
Don’t know how I missed it unless it was one of those days I never booted up.  So must thank Drew. Even if the damn article does cause agro plus.

Nobody seems willing to simply put a stop to these outrages.  The Mail here explains in plain English how it’s done.  Nothin’ complicated about it. And still, no action taken by authorities.  And all in the name of that new and growing religion, Human Rights!

Ah, but as someone points out in the comments section, try getting planning permission for a house extension or a garage. Lots-a-Luck.

Here, see for yourself. Notice the cement slabs on what once was part of the Green Belt.  Maddening!

As for race, everyone critical of this is branded a racist. ??  I don’t get the race issue here. Do you? 

There really and truly does need to be a final solution to this particular problem.

Traveller sites are booming as they exploit the Human Rights Act to defy the law

By Matthew Hickley
Last updated at 12:01 AM on 11th June 2009

The number of illegal traveller sites has soared since Labour introduced the Human Rights Act, figures showed yesterday.

A new site is appearing every three days as travellers use the controversial legislation to sidestep planning laws.

They buy cheap green-belt farmland and construct sites without planning permission, then contest any efforts to evict them as a breach of their human rights.

The figures show a particularly sharp increase in illegal sites ‘ tolerated’ by councils which feel helpless to challenge them.

When Labour introduced the Human Rights Act in 1999, fewer than 300 illegal sites were tolerated on land in England owned by travellers.

By January this year that had risen more than fourfold to 1,279.

The total number of illegal sites - including those built on other people’s land - soared by 1,166 to 3,680.

This is equivalent to more than one new site every three days for almost a decade.

Conservative critics warned last night that planning rules are straining community relations.  They called for a return to ‘fair play’ where the same rules apply to everyone.

(fair play my butt. guns, bullets and swift, brutal death will do far more to curb this sort of thing then kind words or reason. which is beyond these ppl.)

The Human Rights Act made it possible to fight cases in British courts using the European Convention on Human Rights instead of having to travel to the European Court in Strasbourg.

Travellers have used their right to respect for their homes and family lives under the Act to stop councils evicting them from illegal sites.

Critics also blamed planning guidelines introduced in 2005.

These ordered local authorities to consider ‘diversity and equality’ in planning matters and to take ‘positive action’ to avoid discriminating against any groups.

By contrast, homeowners face masses of red tape in order to build an extension, and often have to demolish buildings put up without planning permission.

Some of those who have written protest letters about camps have had their complaints dismissed because they are deemed racist.

The figures from the Department of Communities and Local Government show the number of illegal sites in England on land owned by travellers rose from 729 in January 2000 to 2,365 this year.

With a further 1,315 illegal sites established on other people’s land, the total number in England has risen from 2,514 to 3,680.

That does not include the 4,820 authorised sites provided by local councils at taxpayers’ expense.

With more travellers buying land and then abusing the planning laws, there is evidence councils are losing their appetite for enforcing the rules.

Since 2006, the number of sites where officials are trying to evict the travellers has fallen from 1,440 to 1,086. But the number of ‘tolerated’ illegal sites rose from 964 to 1,279.

Bob Neill, Tory local government spokesman, said it was wrong that law-abiding homeowners face huge bureaucracy to build an extension while travellers flout the rules.

‘The perception of unfairness this breeds causes tension in local communities,’ he added.

‘We need fair play, with the same planning rules for everyone, rather than special treatment for certain groups.’

Last month, the Mail reported how 50 travellers descended on the Gloucestershire village of Newent at 5pm one Friday, just as council offices closed for the Bank Holiday weekend.

They spent three days and nights concreting over a beauty spot and installing sewerage, toilets and electricity, all without permission.

It followed a series of similar incidents in which travellers have exploited holidays to move in.

Posted by peiper     on 06/13/2009 at 10:22 AM   
Filed Under: • Travelers/Gypsies/Squatters •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Phew, Princeton University Narrowly Escapes Disaster

Four juveniles are in custody after one was spotted with what appeared to be a gun — but turned out to be a toy — on the Princeton University campus, police said.

Princeton Borough authorities are questioning the children after the confusion that caused a lockdown at the Ivy League school was cleared up.

“The suspected handgun was determined to be a plastic handgun that was dark in color,” the university said in a press release about the incident.

The New Jersey school’s Web site and alert system advised people around 11 a.m. EDT to stay inside following a report of a male with what appeared to be a handgun near Dod Hall dormitory.

An all-clear was issued around 11:25 a.m. EDT, and Princeton’s Public Safety Department said there was no gunman despite the earlier reports.

Police continue to investigate.

It was not clear how many students remained on campus because graduation took place on Tuesday.

It is always best to PANIC FIRST and then stop to think and use a half grain of common sense. Geex. Get a grip already.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2009 at 09:33 AM   
Filed Under: • Education • Guns and Gun Control • Insanity •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

ACORN Brownshirts Strike In NY

The ongoing Senate circus in Albany is pure farce at its most absurd, but at one point this week, things turned downright ugly.

On Thursday, some 150 protestors—many of them from the thuggish far-left group ACORN—turned up outside the Senate chamber and actually assaulted members of the Republican faction.

The demonstrators nearly knocked to the floor Sen. James Alesi (of upstate Monroe County); they also spat in the face of his chief of staff, according to published reports.

Not only was this violence uncalled for, the ACORN crowd shouldn’t even have been there in the first place: The Senate lobby is a restricted area, and public protests are explicitly prohibited.

Sen. George Winner (R-Elmira) accused Senate Secretary Angelo Aponte—the Malcolm Smith ally who earlier had locked the entire Senate out of the chambers—of having “clearly sanctioned” the riot.

Violence from ACORN hardly surprises: It has a history, dating to the ‘80s, of engaging in trespassing, illegal seizure of private property, physical harassment, intimidation and outright extortion.

Those tactics, along with its notorious, fraud-tainted “voter registration” efforts, have been bolstered not only with millions in union cash, but also with $53 million in direct federal aid since 1994.

Personally, I think ACORN members ought to be arrested on sight. They have more than proved themselves to be members of some kind of subversive group, and now they are adding violence to their repertoire. 

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2009 at 09:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Insanity • Politics •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

This One Really Takes Balls

Low-cost pet sterilization would be available to a wider range of dog and cat owners under a bill an Assembly committee approved yesterday.

To qualify for the subsidized operations, owners would have to show proof of benefits from state or federal public-assistance programs. Animals eligible for the spay or neuter surgery—which renders them unable to breed—would have to come from a shelter, pound or nonprofit rescue group.

The operation can cost from 60 to several hundred dollars, depending on the type and gender of the animal. The extent of presurgery testing and care after the surgery also plays a role in the cost.

For each subsidized procedure, the owner pays $20 to the state’s Animal Population Control Fund. Veterinarians’ charges would be reimbursed by the state.

The bill, approved by the Assembly Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, must go before both houses of the Legislature and be signed by the governor before it becomes law.

The discount would apply to participants in the following: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; the Women, Infants and Children food program; Senior Gold prescription drug plan; and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. New Jersey residents would still be eligible for the low-cost program, including inhabitants of subsidized housing and recipients of Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid.

Yes, right now it’s just a bill. But this is New Jersey. It will pass. Oh, it will pass.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/13/2009 at 09:02 AM   
Filed Under: • Government • Insanity •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

   Friday - June 12, 2009

Missed it, miss him

Yesterday, June 11th, was the 30th anniversary of the death of John Wayne.

Talk about a clear moral vision.

Kim DuToit never put a start date on his Pussification essay, but if he had it would coincide closely with this date. Or perhaps it started a few years before that, when Mr. Wayne and his film genre were losing their popularity.


Mary Kendall, over at Big Hollywood, has more:

“When people saw (Duke) on the screen” in movies like The Longest Day, about the Normandy Invasion, Lyles said, “they always wanted to be on his side because they knew that under (his) leadership… they were going to be on the winning team. He was Americana.” Like Reagan, “he made us all proud to be Americans.”

Posted by Drew458     on 06/12/2009 at 03:38 PM   
Filed Under: • History • Hollywood •  
• Comments (7) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Sounds Just Like Me

No, I didn’t write this piece over at Reason.

But it echoes my 2A beliefs 100%:

• 2A is incorporated by the 14th, duh


• Cruikshank is outdated


• Overturn Slaughterhouses

So what does all this mean for the future of the Second Amendment and gun rights? Last January, the 2nd Circuit, including Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, reached the same erroneous conclusion about incorporation as the Seventh did last week. Yet in April, the 9th Circuit got it right, holding in Nordyke v. King that, “the right to keep and bear arms is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’… [and] is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty.” This split among the circuits means the Supreme Court will almost certainly take up the issue.

Given that Gura’s provocative and sharply reasoned appeal is now in the Court’s hands, and given that Chicago’s contested handgun ban so closely resembles the D.C. ban nullified last year in Heller, this case offers the perfect opportunity for the Court to fully restore the Second Amendment to its rightful place in our constitutional system.

So, duh, I think it’s a great little essay. Go Read.

Now, the only real question is how to get this through the Supremes before Obrilliant totally loads the courts with anarchists and commies.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/12/2009 at 12:21 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Judge in racial slur storm .  Naughty, naughty judge hasn’t yet learned PC Speak.

I did a post yesterday and in the comments were the following from GrumpyOldFart and Drew.

Grumpy said:
Hmmm… I can’t say “The ‘N’ Word"(tm) and other racial slurs cos that’s basically projecting my own ignorance onto you, using my own wilful ignorance as an excuse and justification for my insults. Okay, I get that part. Now you can’t insult a German the way another German would cos that’s somehow racially insensitive as well.

Does anyone sell scorecards for this kinda stuff? How do you keep track without one?

And Drew said:
This is only the beginning. The wurst is yet to come.

Well Sir Drew, it came sooner then we thought. Grumpy will keep score.
Get an eyeful of this.

Judge in racial slur storm for telling fraudster he ‘gypped’ eBay customers in online scam
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

A judge has been accused of using a ‘racial slur’ against gipsies when sentencing a conman.

Judge Christopher Elwen told the fraudster he had ‘gypped’ a student out of money on the eBay website.

The slang verb ‘to gyp’ means to defraud or steal. Experts suggested there is ‘scholarly consensus’ that it is derived from the word gipsy.

Romany gipsies also claimed the word began life as ‘gypsied’ and is an insult.

But the judge insisted there is ‘no evidence to connect it to any racial group’.

Judge Elwen used the word at Truro Crown Court while sentencing bogus eBay electrical goods trader Lee Scott-Major to three years’ jail.

He said that the harm the conman had done was not reflected in the sums involved, whether in the case of those ripped off for thousands of pounds or ‘the young student who was gypped out of £169’.

Travellers Times editor Jake Bowers said: ‘Gypped is an offensive word.

‘It is derived from gipsy and it is being used in the same context as a person might once have said they “jewed” somebody if they did an underhand business transaction.

‘Basically what Judge Elwen has done is ascribed thievery to an entire ethnic group.

‘Of course there are criminals in the gipsy community, but there’s no evidence there is a higher level of criminality than in any other community.

‘I’d say his comment reflects the amount of ignorance that there is, from the bottom of society to its top in the judiciary, about gipsies, and the idea that it’s okay to have a go at the gipsy or traveller community without thinking about it.

Romany activist Maggie Bendell-Smith said: ‘I would have been right up on my feet if I’d heard that in court, asking the judge to justify his choice of words.

‘It is derogatory and I think an apology is called for.’

A spokesman for the Judicial Communications Office defended the judge’s choice of words, saying: ‘Gyp is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as an act of cheating, nothing more.

‘There is no evidence to connect this term to any ethnic group and this is certainly not how it was used in court.’

The OED defines gyp as a late-19th century verb of unknown origin that means to cheat or swindle someone.

Its principal etymologist Dr Philip Durkin said: ‘The consensus of most people who have looked at this word recently is that it does indeed derive from “gyp: thief”, which itself derives (as a racial slur) from gypsy.’

But he added: ‘The main problem with the “gyp: thief” explanation is that there seems to be very little evidence for this use of gyp as a noun, either in the 19th century or later.’

It is not the first time Judge Elwen, recently appointed presiding judge in Truro, Cornwall, has come to attention for outspoken comments related to nationality.

Last year the judge said Britain had ‘lost control of its borders for the first time in 1066.’

He made the remark while sentencing asylum seekers who rioted at Harmsworth Detention Centre.

His latest gaffe came as he was sentencing cocaine-addicted conman Scott-Major for a six figure EBay swindle in which unlucky punters were duped into buying non-existent phones, hoovers and other items from ‘Cornwall Electrics’.

The 29-year-old’s two-year con was run from his two-bedroom flat in Penzance while he was still serving probation.

Judge Elwen told Scott-Major: ‘Whether the sum was £100,000 or £200,000 does not reflect the harm done to your victims, whether that be Mr and Mrs Andrewartha, Mr Kingshott, or the young student who was gypped out of £169.

He then sentenced him to a three year jail term.

The row over the judge’s latest comments may only finally be resolved with the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Etymologist Dr Durkin said: ‘One other suggestion - given by the Dictionary in an entry published in 1972 - is that it derives from “gyp” “pain” (as in to “give someone gyp").

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 06/12/2009 at 12:08 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Racism and race relations • UK •  
• Comments (6) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.  Mark Steyn, on O. & the USA

Here’s a few hundred words from Mark Steyn I found a week ago. Or was it two. ?
Good grief. Talk about late.  Sorry. Thought I’d already posted it. Guess not.

Something to think and worry about.

This editorial may be late, but for those who haven’t read it I would urge you do so. Steyn says it all very well. 

Mark Steyn: Obama’s message of weakness
A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past.
By MARK STEYN
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

“Fundamentally, Obama’s goal was to tell the Muslim world, ‘We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don’t hate us and murder us in return.’”

As recently as last summer, General Motors filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week. But it’s not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened the market barely noticed, and the media were focused on the president’s “address to the Muslim world.” As it happens, these two stories are the same story: snapshots, at home and abroad, of the hyperpower in eclipse. It’s a long time since anyone touted GM as the emblematic brand of America – What’s good for GM is good for America, etc. In fact, it’s more emblematic than ever: Like General Motors, the U.S. government spends more than it makes, and has airily committed itself to ever more unsustainable levels of benefits. GM has about 95,000 workers but provides health benefits to a million people: It’s not a business enterprise, but a vast welfare plan with a tiny loss-making commercial sector. As GM goes, so goes America?

But who cares? Overseas, the coolest president in history was giving a speech. Or, as the official press release headlined it on the State Department Web site, “President Obama Speaks To The Muslim World From Cairo.”
Let’s pause right there: It’s interesting how easily the words “the Muslim world” roll off the tongues of liberal secular progressives who’d choke on any equivalent reference to “the Christian world.” When such hyperalert policemen of the perimeter between church and state endorse the former but not the latter, they’re implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not merely a faith but a political project, too. There is an “Organization of the Islamic Conference,” which is already the largest single voting bloc at the United Nations and is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an “Organization of the Christian Conference” that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and Presidents, and vote as a bloc in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no “Christian world”: Europe is largely post-Christian and, as President Barack Obama bizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Perhaps we’re eligible for membership in the OIC.

I suppose the benign interpretation is that, as head of state of the last superpower, Obama is indulging in a little harmless condescension. In his Cairo speech, he congratulated Muslims on inventing algebra and quoted approvingly one of the less-bloodcurdling sections of the Quran. As sociohistorical scholarship goes, I found myself recalling that moment in the long twilight of the Habsburg Empire when Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress were found dead at the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling – either a double suicide, or something even more sinister. Happily, in the Broadway musical version, instead of being found dead, the star-crossed lovers emigrate to America and settle down on a farm in Pennsylvania. Recently, my old comrade Stephen Fry gave an amusing lecture at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the popular Americanism, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade” – or, if something’s bitter and hard to swallow, add sugar and sell it. That’s what the president did with Islam: He added sugar and sold it.

The savvier Muslim potentates have no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush, sharing a latrine with a dozen half-witted goatherds while plotting how to blow up the Empire State Building.

The speech nevertheless impressed many conservatives, including Rich Lowry, my esteemed editor at National Review, “esteemed editor” being the sort of thing one says before booting the boss in the crotch. Rich thought that the president succeeded in his principal task: “Fundamentally, Obama’s goal was to tell the Muslim world, ‘We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don’t hate us and murder us in return.’” But those terms are too narrow. You don’t have to murder a guy if he preemptively surrenders. And you don’t even have to hate him if you’re too busy despising him. The savvier Muslim potentates have no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush, sharing a latrine with a dozen half-witted goatherds while plotting how to blow up the Empire State Building. Nevertheless, they share key goals with the cave dwellers – including the wish to expand the boundaries of “the Muslim world” and (as in the anti-blasphemy push at the U.N.) to place Islam, globally, beyond criticism. The nonterrorist advance of Islam is a significant challenge to Western notions of liberty and pluralism.

Once Obama moved on from the more generalized Islamoschmoozing to the details, the subtext – the absence of American will – became explicit. He used the cover of multilateralism and moral equivalence to communicate, consistently, American weakness: “No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.” Perhaps by “no single nation” he means the “global community” should pick and choose, which means the U.N. Security Council, which means the Big Five, which means that Russia and China will pursue their own murky interests and that, in the absence of American leadership, Britain and France will reach their accommodations with a nuclear Iran, a nuclear North Korea and any other psychostate minded to join them.

On the other hand, a “single nation” certainly has the right to tell another nation anything it wants if that nation happens to be the Zionist Entity: As Hillary Clinton just instructed Israel regarding its West Bank communities, there has to be “a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.” No “natural growth”? You mean, if you and the missus have a kid, you’ve got to talk gran’ma into moving out? To Tel Aviv, or Brooklyn or wherever? At a stroke, the administration has endorsed “the Muslim world’s” view of those non-Muslims who happen to find themselves within what it regards as lands belonging to Islam: the Jewish and Christian communities are free to stand still or shrink, but not to grow. Would Obama be comfortable mandating “no natural growth” to Israel’s million-and-a-half Muslims? No. But the administration has embraced “the Muslim world’s” commitment to one-way multiculturalism, whereby Islam expands in the West but Christianity and Judaism shrivel remorselessly in the Middle East.

And so it goes. Like General Motors, America is “too big to fail.” So it won’t, not immediately. It will linger on in a twilight existence, sclerotic and ineffectual, declining unto a kind of societal dementia, unable to keep pace with what’s happening and with an ever more tenuous grip on its own past, but able on occasion to throw out impressive words albeit strung together without much meaning: empower, peace, justice, prosperity – just to take one windy gust from the president’s Cairo speech.

There’s better phrase-making in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, in a coinage of Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The president emeritus is a sober, judicious paragon of torpidly conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, musing on American decline, he writes, “The country’s economy, infrastructure, public schools and political system have been allowed to deteriorate. The result has been diminished economic strength, a less-vital democracy, and a mediocrity of spirit.” That last is the one to watch: A great power can survive a lot of things, but not “a mediocrity of spirit.” A wealthy nation living on the accumulated cultural capital of a glorious past can dodge its rendezvous with fate, but only for a while. That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.
©MARK STEYN

Posted by peiper     on 06/12/2009 at 09:53 AM   
Filed Under: • Editorials • International • Obama, The One •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

How To Kill An Hour

Gotta kill them all!

Posted by Drew458     on 06/12/2009 at 09:50 AM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Ho-Hum. What’s New? Oh, nothin’ much. Another stabbing. Really? Yawn. Yeah. Mental defective. Again?

Of course it is. Not that they’re the only ones who run around stabbing people here. That’s understood.  Thing that bothers me I guess is that when authorities know of someone like that, why aren’t they monitored better? Or better yet, euthanized.
If they already knew this creep was violence prone, and they did, then why wasn’t the higher security mentioned in this article already in place?

Don’t ya love the terms used in cases like these?  The old standby.  “Learning Disabilities.” What’s that?  An excuse for easy time in a hosp. mental ward.

BMEWS readers will recall my post from a day or two ago wherein a young woman 7 months pregnant was stabbed on a busy street here, by a nutcase who should never have been on the streets. He probably had learning disabilities too.  I don’t much care. The woman and baby are dead. I care nothing for the killer nor do I feel anything even approaching compassion for these sub-humans.  Once they show any sort of sign of violent behaviour, if they can not be put away somewhere at family expense, then they should be put down.  Sure, the family will jump up and down and bellow about rights, but guess what? Society is safer by one.

If you think I’m overreacting, it’s only because this story keeps repeating itself over and over and over again!  New victims, same story.

Boy, 6, stabbed in the stomach by man as he played outside his house
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 1:45 PM on 12th June 2009

A mentally ill knifeman randomly stabbed a six-year-old boy in the stomach as he played in the street with friends.

Joseph Hutton, 19, of Leeds, is today beginning an indefinite detention under the Mental Health Act after stabbing Jack Stott outside the boy’s home with a kitchen knife he pulled from his sock.

Neighbour Hutton, who had previously been treated for psychiatric illness, admitted the stabbing and told police he was angry after claiming Jack and a friend had called him names on November 9 last year, Leeds Crown Court heard.

Hutton told police he had found the knife in a field and said: ‘I just stabbed him with it, that’s it - on his belly, just once, not lots of times.

‘It wasn’t that bad - I didn’t kill him or nowt. I didn’t mean to do it, I won’t do it again.’

The court heard how Jack’s mother June Stott, 44, had told police: ‘Jack came into the house holding his stomach with both hands saying, “I’ve been stabbed with a knife.” He was very upset, crying and said he felt sick.’

The housewife said: ‘He came in bleeding and screaming and crying. I couldn’t believe what had happened.’

By sheer chance the knife wound had left Jack’s internal organs undamaged and just needed stitches at St James’s Hospital, Leeds.

The mental scars would take far longer to fade for Jack, now seven, who has ‘constant nightmares’, Mrs Stott said.

After one dream he ran to the door and was wrenching on the handle to get out.

‘He was screaming, “He’s coming to get me, he’s coming to get me.” We had to lock the door to keep him in. I watch him 24/7 and I daren’t let him off the street.’

The mother-of-two said her unemployed husband Thomas, 45, was also profoundly affected by the attack.

Hutton, who suffers from a learning disability, was deemed unfit to plead to charges of wounding and possessing an offensive weapon but a jury ruled that he did wound Jack with the knife.

A report to the court from consultant psychiatrist May Badee said Hutton posed a serious risk to the public.

He had been involved in a number of previous incidents of unprovoked random violence using weapons and no amount of therapy or medication would improve his condition, she said.

‘He has a serious mental disorder and moderate learning disability. He doesn’t learn from his experiences. It is a chronic condition.

(A chronic condition? Fine. Then gas the bastard and put him out of the public’s misery.  )

‘He has a long history of compulsive and aggressive behaviour. He presents a high risk of serious harm to the general public.

‘He will need a higher level of security than he has had in the past.’

The court heard that Hutton repeatedly absconded from hospital, his parents and grandparents, and found this amusing rather than inappropriate.

Recorder Graham Hyland QC made a hospital order and ruled yesterday that Hutton should be detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.

He said: ‘I’m satisfied this defendant presents a high risk of serious harm to the general public.’

Mrs Stott said after the case: ‘I’m relieved he’s off the streets. Now he’s locked up he can’t do it to anybody else.

‘I do feel safer now he had been put away, but it is worrying to think that people with serious mental disorders are free to roam our streets... The authorities knew about this man and still he managed to stab my son.

‘Luckily Jack was not hurt so much physically, but it could have been much worse. I get shudders down my spine when I think about what could have happened.’

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 06/12/2009 at 08:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • Daily Life • UK •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

Student left permanently disabled in drunken fall sues school for £300,000.  (naturally. what e

Yeah I’m a mean spirited cold hearted SOB because really, I do not feel sorry for her.

Yes I was once 16. Yes I got pie eyed once or 2wice, but nothing like this.  Wasn’t that I was smarter or anything, just that once I recognized I was having trouble remembering my own name I thought, whoops. Enough!  Another time I embarrassed the family at a gathering. Old enough to have known better but never had Champaign and, well ... you can imagine.  So ok.  I’m not pure as the driven snow.  That’ll surprise everyone.

Thing of it is, 16 may be very yootfull but. You are no longer a baby and frankly I would think girls, of all ppl, would be or should be wary given the hormones of young boys in that situation.  But girls here btw have caught up to the guys according to the papers, and are raising glass for glass with the guys.  And getting just as stoned in public at all age levels.

Blaming the school which, if you look at the photo at the link, is a very old building.  Perhaps nobody thought a different window could be fitted. No matter.
She got blind drunk and fell.  BUT ... it’s the fault of the school.

I will say that if I were the teacher who found her drunk to begin with, I might have contacted her family and asked that they come and get her.
Short of that, I am not certain if they could have legally (the school that is) locked her up somewhere safe.  But who would have thought she’d decide to lean out a window that “opened too far” and fall out?

Her daddy is a millionaire and so perhaps she sees this as her own starting stake in life. Who knows.
Personal responsibility has flown the coop long ago.

I think I’ll sue Tesco because I have overeaten and I think I may have gained a pant size.  It’s not my fault. The market is to blame. All that yummy food and all that variety and ALL THAT CHOCOLATE and the pasta (not together) well, how can a body resist? We aren’t supposed to resist and so on those grounds I think I’ll sue them.  I might sue myself as well.

Student left permanently disabled in drunken fall sues school for £300,000
By ANDREW LEVY
Last updated at 8:07 AM on 12th June 2009

A Cambridge student is suing a top boarding school for £300,000 after a drunken fall from a window left her permanently disabled.

Amy St Johnston was a 16-year-old pupil at Oundle School when she got drunk at a Valentine’s Ball and plunged from her first-floor room.

Miss St Johnston, now 20, claims the accident happened because teachers allowed a ‘drinking culture’ to form among senior pupils at the £22,800-a-year school.

Documents lodged at the High Court also state that the window she fell from failed to meet building regulations because it was able to open twelve inches - three times the legal limit of four inches.

The accident took place on February 26, 2005, when Miss St Johnston was in the lower sixth at the mixed independent school in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire.

She claims she started drinking a ‘combination of alcoholic drinks’ with other pupils at 6pm as they prepared for the Valentine’s Ball.

She continued to drink after returning to her boarding house, Wyatt House, after supper, before going out at 8pm.

A male teacher at the ball, who noticed Amy was ‘under the influence of alcohol’, said in an email two days later: ‘As Amy went to the toilet she was bouncing off an architrave and didn’t look totally in control of her body movements.’

He made her sit in a room for 20 minutes to ‘cool off’ but the writ alleges she returned to the ball as soon as he had left the room.

The same teacher is later claimed to have sent her back to her room under the supervision of another female pupil.

Miss St Johnston was given a breathalyser test by house mistress Sheila Hipple, which confirmed she had been drinking, and taken to her room.

At some point in the next ten minutes, the writ continues, she ‘leaned so far out of the window that she fell out’, plunging 15ft to the ground below.

Her spinal cord was damaged in the fall. She now suffers from partial paraplegia, which can lead to loss of limb movement and other complications.

Following the accident, Miss St Johnston, who walks with the help of crutches, left the 1,090-pupil school to continue her studies at a different sixth form.

She is now studying classics at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

Her writ claims the school was in loco parentis, and accuses it of failing in its duty of care by leaving Miss St Johnston in a first-floor room with a window not fitted with a restricter while it was ‘known she was under the influence of alcohol’.

Miss St Johnston refused to discuss the case yesterday, saying: ‘I don’t really want to talk about it, I don’t think I should - partly because of legal reasons but also it’s just not something I want to discuss.’

Her father James, a 47-year-old millionaire financial sector worker for KNG Securities, and mother Emily, 44, also refused to comment last night at the family home in Woodbridge, near Ipswich.

However, a close friend of Miss St Johnston’s said: ‘She is a remarkable girl who has come through a lot with incredible determination.

‘She has never lost sight of how lucky she is and how supportive her family have been.

‘But she and her parents do feel she was failed by the school and that Oundle should bear some responsibility.’

Oundle’s rules state that sixth formers can drink beer, cider and wine at social events sanctioned by a house master or mistress where a ‘substantial meal’ is served.

Since 1969, the British Standard Code of Practice recommends that limiters are fitted on windows above ground level restricting opening to less than four inches, the writ adds.

The 1998 Edition of Building Regulations also made it a requirement they are fitted with limiters or safety guards to prevent falls.

Charles Bush, headmaster of Oundle School, refused to discuss the case yesterday.

However, spokesman Liz Dillarstone said: ‘The matter is being dealt with by the school’s legal advisors and Mr Bush is not in a position to comment further.’

Charles Bush, headmaster of Oundle School, refused to discuss the case

Oh well. A Bush in the picture?  Maybe it’s his fault!

SOURCE AND PHOTOS HERE

Posted by peiper     on 06/12/2009 at 05:51 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Education • UK •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner