Save us from useless political stunts

Activism
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Useless political stunts like this reshelving George Orwell’s 1984 from fiction into current affairs. My sides split from unrefrained joy at that prospect. That’ll tell Bush we’re serious.

Yes it looks like a harmless, even charming stunt, but. The one thing to ask with any form of protest is, what does it accomplish? This accomplishes nothing, other than making the participants feel good. It’s replacement activity, sucking up energy that could’ve been put into fighting Bush and worse it’s replacement activity that makes you look stupid. Its the sort of granola eating birkenstock wearing treehugging hippie crap that a Republican operative would like you to do. It changes nothing and it’s meant to change nothing. Politics as a hipster game.

In other words, I completely agree with Chris from Qwghlm:

I’m sorry – this guy has been in charge of your country for, what, over four and a half years? In that time, he’s exploited a terrorist atrocity in order to start an illegal war, destroyed your country’s credibility in the international community, passed draconian laws, imprisoned people without trial, privatised your social security system, given enormous tax breaks to the already obscenely wealthy, run up a massive national debt, done nothing in response to global warming and… this is the best you can come up with? For fuck’s sake, how does pissing off a few hard-working bookstore employees, who will inevitably have to spend time undoing your pathetic sub-Mark Thomas jape, equate in your minds to making a political statement? But then you’ve probably never had to do a crap job in your lives, you hipster douchebags, so you wouldn’t actually know what a pain in the arse you actually are. Why not actually try working for once, instead of being a smug, lazy showoff prick? While you’re at it, why not actually broaden your horizons, gain some sophistication, and find out about books other than Nineteen Eighty-Four, because quite frankly, referring to it all the damn time and trying to use it as an allegory for whatever you want to whine about is the height of intellectual laziness, and something that is probably making Orwell somersault in his grave as I type. In summary then, you are a grade-A fuckwit, who’s more concerned with trying to gain kudos for being a “subversive” amongst your braying sub-Nathan Barley peers by making this “statement”, when actually you have less sophistication than a cunt rolling downhill in a shopping trolley. It’s wankers like you who deserve to have the government you have at the moment, and if I could have it my way, you’d have Bush for a third term, all the fucking way to 2012 – maybe by then you’ll realise that there’s more to political action than merely going ‘Barnes & Noble! Pwn3d!’. Now, do the whole world a favour, and fuck off.”

Stop Press! Police lied about CCTV footage

Jean Charles de Menezes, Policing
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Yesterday I posted that there was no cctv footage of the killing of Menezes, according to the police. Turns out they lied, as the British tv network ITN has gotten its hands on internal police documents, including the supposedly missing CCTV footage!
Apparantely, footage of it was shown on air yesterday; since I’m not in the UK, I haven’t seen it myself. From the article:

A document describes CCTV footage, which shows Mr de Menezes entered Stockwell station at a “normal walking pace” and descended slowly on an escalator.

Menezes lying in the carriage after his murder

The document said: “At some point near the bottom he is seen to run across the concourse and enter
the carriage before sitting in an available seat.

“Almost simultaneously armed officers were provided with positive identification.”

A member of the surveillance team is quoted in the report. He said: “I heard shouting which included the word `police’ and turned to face the male in the denim jacket.

“He immediately stood up and advanced towards me and the CO19 officers. I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side.

“I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been previously sitting. I then heard a gun shot
very close to my left ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage.”

Emphasis mine.

What is clear from this (and see also the Channel 4 report (WMV file)) is that the Metropolitan Police have been lying about this killing from the start. None of the initial statements, apart from the bare fact of his killing, were true.

Menezes wasn’t killed because he behaved in any way suspicious or even looked suspicious: none of the excuses made for the officers who shot him are valid. He wasn’t wearing bulky clothing, he didn’t run into the station, but used his travelcard and even picked up a free Metro, ran to catch his train than sat down. When an officer shouted “police” he stood up and faced them, at which point he was pushed into his seat and murdered.

In other words, this wasn’t a man chased by police, but a man whose first awareness that he is chased is with the bullet entering his head! He wasn’t a criminal, did nothing wrong and still was killed. The moral? In the UK today, anyone of us can be killed without warning because some police officer gets jumpy and there’s nothing you can do about it. Even if you comply with all police directions you can and will be shot: Menezes was.

Suprise, surpise! No CCTV of Menezes being killed

Jean Charles de Menezes, Policing
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CCTV footage was lost, The guardian reports:

Now an Observer investigation has raised fresh questions about the death of de Menezes, whose killing is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The Observer has discovered that a key element of the investigation will be scrutiny of a delay in calling an armed team to arrest de Menezes, which meant he had already entered the station by the time the officers arrived.

Jean Charles de Menezes before he was murdered

That delay was crucial. If the police thought de Menezes was dangerous – perhaps a bomber – the fact that he was already in the station would have heightened tension and increased the chances of something going wrong.

Evidence of this hold-up should have been provided by CCTV footage from dozens of cameras covering the Stockwell ticket hall, escalators, platforms and train carriages.

However, police now say most of the cameras were not working. Yet pictures are available of a bombing suspect leaving another station nearby, and after the 7 July attacks tube boses could have been expected to make extra efforts to see that all their cameras were in action.

The questions are mounting. Initial claims that de Menezes was targeted because he was wearing a bulky coat, refused to stop when challenged and then vaulted the ticket barriers have all turned out to be false. He was wearing a denim jacket, used a standard Oyster electronic card to get into the station and simply walked towards the platform unchallenged.

It has also been suggested that officers did not identify themselves properly before shooting de Menezes seven times in the head.

In the absence of CCTV footage the inquiry will have to rely on the testimony of eyewitnesses, though many of those who claim to have seen the incident have provided contradictory accounts of what happened.

Figures. Strangely enough, in an earlier Guardian article, it was reported that “Nick Hardwick, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian he had all the footage in his possession and it was “very, very helpful” to the inquiry“. Was Hardwick referring to the CCTV footage of the killing of Menezes and if so, what happened to it? If this footage existed on July 30th but not now, when did it disappear? Who disappeared it?

Science fiction gets the reputation it deserves

science fiction
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With representatives like Vox Day:

But the greatest evil of women’s rights is demographic. Europe’s demise is all but assured, thanks to them, as women’s individual choices taken in the collective have stricken European society and brought on successive waves of feminist-friendly Islamic immigration by reducing Europe’s birth rates far below replacement levels. And women’s-rights advocates are now finding themselves in an ironic intellectual bind, as the onset of sex selection technology has them arguing that while a woman has a right to choose abortion, she can only do so for approved reasons.

Leo Frankowski:

I’d been getting less and less happy with America. I mean, I love my country, volunteered to join the service, paid taxes and all of that. But this Political Correctness thing was really getting me down. I was in my late fifties, a company president, a writer with lots of books under me, the holder of seven US patents, and a bachelor. Now, if I couldn’t speak my mind in public, just who in the hell could? The Feminists bothered me, too. It seemed to me that they were trying to be both men and women at the same time and failing badly at both. And there were a dozen other social changes going on that I didn’t like. I suppose that some of it was the way I was getting old, but I was sure that all of it wasn’t. I’ve often looked at the kids goofing off and thought “Amateurs! Hell, I’ve done dumber things than that!”. So there I sat, thirty miles from where I was born, old, fat, and lonely. Getting old just sort of snuck up on me. The fat was because I just didn’t much care about anything any more. Lonely happened because my family was gone, my friends were scattered across the country, and I couldn’t find a woman who wanted anything to do with me. And the more that I looked at the women of America, the less I wanted to do anything with them. I wanted a woman like my grandmother was. Intelligent, tough, and self reliant. Warm, loving, and absolutely straight. Compassionate with all that lived, caring and supportive, but don’t you DARE cross her! There don’t seem to be any of those any more in America.

And John Ringo:

“Well,” he said, grinning, “if you ever see me again, for the first time, be overwhelmed by a wave of lust and need to give me a blowjob right then and there, even if it’s in public. Okay?”
“Sure,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “Men. Maybe not in public, but we’ll talk, okay? This has . . .”
“Don’t let this put you off of men, God damnit,” Mike said, firmly. “I didn’t risk my fucking life to have you go lesbo. All men aren’t these filth. And if you decide they are, you’re spitting on what I did. Because the good guys want to get laid, too. Understand?”
“Understand,” Ashley said, nervously. “Christ, you sound like my dad.”
“Oh, that’s really what I needed to hear!” Mike said, spinning away.

Dialogue from one of Ringo’s latest novels, not the one in which revitalised Waffen SS soldiers save Germany from an alien invasion.

It makes you ashamed to like science fiction, reading these assholes. Especially the latter makes me sick.

Two for my sweetie

Natural World
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pciture of vampire squid, nicked from Pharyngula
Picture of vampire squid nicked from Pharyngula

S—, as you may or may not care to know, loves the cephalopod: squid, octopus, cuttlefish, she likes
them all. The following two links, both found at Pharyngula are for her.

First, there’s an interesting overview of cephalopod evolution, slightly marred by forced attempts to be hip involving Kang and Kodos, the alien squid monsters from the Simpsons, that’s right. Ignore this and you still have a good article, especially for those not as into the cephalopod as S—.

Second, take a look at what happens when a big octopus meets an equally sized shark in this videoclip from the Seattle Aquarium (Realplayer required). Suffice to say that the aquarium staff got a slightly surprising answer to their question as to why the sharks in this tank kept dying….