Seeing through it all

Conditions: Warm and sunny.


Officers in Menezes shooting get off

Police officers who followed and shot dead a Brazilian electrician mistakenly identified as a suspected suicide bomber were told yesterday they will not face misconduct tribunals.

telegraph.co.uk

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The decision by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) drew immediate and angry condemnation from the family of Mr Menezes who said the police had, in effect, been "allowed to get away with murder".

They insisted there were grounds to support gross negligence manslaughter criminal charges against the four senior officers.

The IPCC said no decision has been taken on four more senior officers involved in the shooting.

Independant.co.uk

This is an outrage. That in our modern age, in one of the most modern cities in the world, that some innocent kid can get gunned down so ruthlessly, dangerously, and totally incorrectly, BY THE AUTHORITIES, and the people responsible just get to take a walk, totally undermines any faith I have in the system. What kind of a message is this, that police officers can just shoot twenty bullets into some stranger, not because he's acting weird or even has a weapon, but because someone else told them to, based on mistaken intel. They're meant to keep the peace, not act like the high executioner at the drop of a hat! I am incoherent on this one, these assholes get away with a cold blooded execution. Bah!



Billions in Oil Missing in Iraq, US Study Finds

So, how goes the blossoming Iraqi oil industry, the only real resource the ravaged country has left? Well...

Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq's declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily.

The report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, but the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country's oil industry.

truthout.org

Just in case you thought the oil industry in Iraq was the only thing still operating


Gagging Order as Two Are Jailed for Leaking Blair-Bush Memo

An Old Bailey judge yesterday imposed gagging orders on the media after jailing a civil servant and a Labour MP's researcher for disclosing the minutes of a meeting between Tony Blair and George Bush about Iraq.
[...]

The judge also ordered Keogh to pay £5,000 of the £35,000 prosecution costs. He told him: "You decided that you did not like what you saw. Without consulting anyone, you decided on your own that it was in the best interest of the UK that this letter should be disclosed. Your reckless and irresponsible action in disclosing this letter when you had no right to could have cost the lives of British citizens. This disclosure was a gross breach of trust of your position as a crown servant."

After the sentencing, Keogh's solicitor, Stuart Jeffery, said: "He took a moral stance on something that he found shocking and has to accept the decision of the court as far as his guilt is concerned. It was never his intention to put lives at risk. He would state rather that it was his intention to save innocent lives." Mr Jeffery said he would be looking at avenues of appeal."

truthout.org

This is why people get so disillusioned, when the big crimes are ignored and instead the petty crimes by the ones who try to find and point out the actual big crimes are prosecuted.



Transparent computer screens.




Here's an idea you might find a little see-through... It seems a little thin to me... You know what they say, seeing is believing... I'll stop now.

http://pileofphotos.com/view/104/Transparent-computer-screens



One more time to the well

Since it seems increasingly obvious the Star Wars saga was really just an elaborate exercise in selling toys to kids, the folks at mcmorran.org decided to pitch a few new ideas for squeezing out some more bucks from the franchise. Is it just a box of rocks, or the Planet Alderaan playset?
Behold! New Star Wars toys!



Teachers stage fake gunman attack

MURFREESBORO, Tennessee (AP) -- Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.
[...]

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

Cnn.com

Ok. When I was a kid they used to have fire drills at my school. And sometimes they wouldn't say it was a fire drill, the bell would just go off. - It could be because the authorities had decided to take a little time out of their day and jerk us around a little (more), or it could be because the WW1-era furnace had finally exploded, and half of F-block was a raging inferno. The important thing was to stay calm and organised, and quietly exit the building. It was a good learning experience. Nowadays kids face a few more dangers, from idiot skateboarders, to RSI of the thumb, to gun-toting assholes on the rampage. So I think it's actually quite important to get the kids comfortable with the idea that they could be executed At Any Moment. Give the little bastards something to think about in school.



Soldiers on both sides in Iraq don't care about civilians

As if things weren't bad enough, a recent survey found that 41% of American soldiers in Iraq condoned the idea of using torture on Iraqi's if it could save the lives of their buddies. This is pretty awful. I understand that they're in danger and under attack from the insurgents, but that shouldn't be an excuse for ignoring simple things like the Geneva convention. The Americans are supposed to be bringing Democracy to Iraq, not learning to be terrorists from the insurgents. It makes me crazy that this is actually happening, and not some elaborate play.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=80&ItemID=12810

U.S General wants troops to Just Say No. To Torture.
http://www.army.mil/-news/2007/05/14/3134-gen-petraeus-urges-troops-to-adhere-to-ethical-standards/



Nudists are recruiting

Article at Huffpost.com

Suffering from dropping numbers, nudist camps are trying to recruit newer, younger people with lower sign up fees. But there's a problem.

When you think 'nudist camp' in today's world, you're not thinking about hot cute naked girls... playing volleyball. [...] Sorry, I drifted for a moment there. What was I? Oh yeah, no, you're not thinking of anything good when you think 'nudist camp', in fact you're thinking about fat old people who aren't wearing any clothes. It's like being smacked in the face with your own mortality, and nobody wants to see that, not even the fat old people themselves. The people who run these camps want to emphasize that it's about nature, and relaxing, and accepting people for who they really are, but I think that's a crock. If these camps really want to appeal to the younger crowd they're simply going to have to use the same tool that everyone else uses - hot young girls. And, oddly, this should be the easiest thing to sell since, well, ever.



Iraq parliament about to vote America out

On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time
[...]

For at least two years, poll after poll has shown that large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnicities and sects want the United States to set a timeline for withdrawal, even though (in the case of Baghdad residents), they expect the security situation to deteriorate in the short term as a result.
[...]

The administration, along with their allies in Big Oil, has pressed the Iraqi government to adopt an oil law that would give foreign multinationals a much higher rate of return than they enjoy in other major oil producing countries and would lock in their control over what George Bush called Iraq's "patrimony" for decades.

Al-Shammari said this week: "We're afraid the U.S. will make us pass this new oil law through intimidation and threatening. We don't want it to pass, and we know it'll make things worse, but we're afraid to rise up and block it, because we don't want to be bombed and arrested the next day."

alternet.org

I hate the idea of the country falling into civil war, and I find it hard to believe the people of Iraq are prepared to risk it in order to be rid of the Americans. Is this an indication of how much they hate the occupation of their country?


On patrol in Iraq

So, what's it like to be in a convoy driving through Baghdad and suddenly get attacked? A short animated film at LiveLeak demonstrates what it feels like through the eyes of an American soldier.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=391_1178060828&p=1




Peace out.