Telling The 'Guardian' Some Unwelcome Truths...

On to Mamet’s much-documented swing to conservatism, from his stand against the NFL’s kneeling-during-the-anthem protests to his support for Donald Trump. It seems so far away from the leftist leanings of his youth, the critiques of capitalism clearly visible in American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross.

“I was never, ever a communist,” he says. “All you need to know about communism is that Marx was a sponger. He lived off Engels’ family who had a furniture factory.”

He was raised as a “red diaper baby”, he adds – meaning his parents were communists – so even to say he is a Republican “sticks in my throat”. But he is a conservative because “I would like to conserve those things I grew up with: the love of family, the love of the country, love of service, love of God, love of community.”

You can just imagine the look on the interviewer's face at this point, can't you? And there's more:

And love of the American constitution too. “For those who say the constitution is over 200 years old and can’t still be relevant, I say, ‘Well, what about the Ten Commandments?’ What’s going to rule in its place? Savagery.”

And there's still no escape for our hapless interlocutor: 

Mamet became a vocal Trump supporter during his presidency, which can’t have been easy in the Democratic stronghold of California. “Well, he did a great job as a president.” Really? “Well, if you put everything you see on these little screens aside and look at what happened during the Trump presidency. We told China to knock it off. We told Nato to start paying their fair share. We moved the Embassy of the United States to Jerusalem in Israel, fixing the only instance in history of a country that didn’t have an embassy in its capital city. Gas prices were down. There was the lowest black unemployment in history …”

The sweat must by now be rolling down his back.  

There was also Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged. Does Mamet believe America’s democratic process to be flawed too? “It’s an interesting question. I grew up in Chicago, which was run as a mob’s fiefdom by Mayor Richard J Daley. So all elections were rigged. The idea that people are not going to steal elections is ignorance because people steal elections all the time. The question is: ‘What was the extent of the election rigging?’ I don’t know. But was it questionable? Yes.”

Poor guy will need therapy after that interview! 

This is dirtier even than Biden & Son

The Phantom Digger sends:

http://dilyana.bg/the-pentagon-bio-weapons/

"The US Army regularly produces deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins in direct violation of the UN Convention on the prohibition of Biological Weapons. Hundreds of thousands of unwitting people are systematically exposed to dangerous pathogens and other incurable diseases.  Bio warfare scientists using diplomatic cover test man-made viruses at Pentagon bio laboratories in 25 countries across the world. These US bio-laboratories are funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) under a $ 2.1 billion military program– Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP), and are located in former Soviet Union countries such as Georgia and Ukraine, the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa."

Taking Your Work Home With You...

...it seems some take it just that little bit too far!

Despite his PCSO role having been based in Derbyshire, he lives in Wales, according to a statement on the Constabulary's website.

 Well, when your work is virtual, why not?

Bennett also presided over 74 misconduct hearings, involving 90 officers, between June 2010 and February 2012, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request lodged in 2021.

Out of these hearings involving Bennett, 56 officers were dismissed - more than 75%.

Which must all now be re-investigated, surely? 

We can't see Russia and the Ukraine in isolation

By definition, in presenting the snippets below, on the grounds that it presents diametrically opposed views in places, quite divergent angles, there is going to be guffawing and rejection of some of it by certain readers, nonplussed silence by others.

Update Thurs 18:06: 

https://www.barnhardt.biz/2022/02/24/putin-is-very-possibly-taking-out-the-u-s-bio-labs-in-ukraine-if-true-we-should-wish-him-every-success/

Update Thurs 20:40:

Anyone fancy some Chicken Kiev?

The golden rule, as Churchill pointed out, is that what we have here is a riddle wrapped in an enigma.  All very well for someone to say to me, 'Shirley you know what this invasion is about ...'

You Don't Have To Be Mad To Work Here...

...or, , if you work for Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust, maybe you do:

A psychiatrist who downed three bottles of wine before a head-on crash has been allowed to keep her job after she was deemed 'no risk' to patients.

Unless those patients are driving home when she's clocking off, I presume? 

Dr Deborah Staite, 50, was uninsured and did not even have a driving licence at the time of the collision in 2020.

She had failed to renew it after serving a previous ban for drink-driving, a tribunal heard.

/facepalm 

GMC lawyer Laura Barbour told a hearing of the medical practitioners' tribunal service: 'The public are entitled to assume that the doctor treating them abides by the law.

'This is a case where the doctor's conduct was so serious that action must be taken to protect members of the public and maintain confidence in the profession.

'There is a risk of repetition.'

Well, yes. clearly. She's already a multiple offender! 

Philip McGhee, for Staite, told the tribunal: 'A reasonable and properly informed member of the public would not expect Dr Staite to be punished by an order of suspension… given what she has already gone through.'

Wanna bet? I'm one of those, McGhee, and I expect her to be suspended. 

The tribunal found Staite's fitness to practise was impaired but that suspension would be 'unnecessary, disproportionate and punitive'.

She will face a review hearing in three years.

What's wrong with a punitive measure? Do they think she shouldn't be punished? 

I Don't Blame You, So Would I...

Mr Butoy was arrested, charged and sent to jail for stealing £208,000. It took until last year to get that conviction overturned in the High Court.

But he doesn't feel like his ordeal is over yet. "People say you've had your name cleared you're all right now. But it's not, you want justice," he tells BBC News. "I want someone else to be charged and jailed like I was."

...but you must know it's never going to happen.

On Monday, 14 February, the public inquiry into the wrongful of conviction of 706 Post Office branch managers, like Mr Butoy, will begin to hear evidence. Those convictions are the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history, and are now gradually being overturned in the courts.

Far, far too late for many. 

Crucially, it will ask whether those at software developer Fujitsu, the Post Office itself or even their biggest shareholder, the government, knew about faults in the system while using that data in court to convict sub-postmasters.

The answer cannot be anything other than 'Yes, they did.' 

One such expert, Jez Thompson, worked as a team leader for Fujitsu's Horizon Training Project, covering 60,000 Post Office branches over five years from the late 1990s....he also remembers regular glitches and bugs that made the software fail to calculate the books accurately.

"Occasionally it would work, but a lot of the time it wouldn't work," he says."Anything that was wrong with our system would be wrong on the live system as well," he explains.

"And we used to, on a monthly, probably even a weekly basis, pass information up to our managers just informing them that we'd found a glitch and this doesn't work. That's just the way it went."

"I reported them [these issues] to my line manager and he then reported that to a weekly meeting with Fujitsu Training Services, where both Fujitsu and The Post Office would have been present and glitches would've been discussed," he says. "Computers have reels of data. Somewhere there is evidence that somebody knew something."

I suspect that might turn out to be the wrong tense, Mr Thompson... 

Blame it on everything and everyone but yourself

Where do we start with this one at The Conservative Woman:

Control is attractive to alienated, damaged people. Such people fear life and deplore weakness. When young they were unwanted or resented. In many cases they were eclipsed by a more attractive or gifted sibling who received all the attention and praise. Some suffered physical abuse from their family, or were sent far from home to an institution where cruelty was routine.

Such experiences deny a child the opportunity to learn the value of empathy and kindness. Life becomes a matter of survival, and an astute child observes the methods of control and the strategies needed to avoid punishment and pain, and how to gain advantage.

These techniques become automatic. The person becomes cunning, untrustworthy; and techniques which get results are reinforced and persist and produce a person who is, unfortunately, a thoroughly nasty piece of work.

Hmmmm.  Yes, but we all, to a greater or lesser extent, learn strategies to get our way.  Some go full Sigma and just do as they wish, unsocialised like a Jack Reacher.  But the thing with Reacher was that he did have a code of right and wrong.  

What the writer is on about here is that danger to society which needs snuffing out.  Either they're jailed for longer or summarily hanged, I'm not sure which yet but one thing is for sure ... the type needs stopping with max prej. Immediately.

Stick To Dipping A Paintbrush, Not Your Hands In Our Pockets...

A successful artist is seeking £33.6million in damages claiming he now paints too slowly after being run over by a stolen moped in central London - preventing him from creating 14 extra masterpieces per year.

Wow! Isn't he lucky the chap who hit him is a billionaire! That is what happened, right?

...he is now suing Mr Hinds and insurers Aviva ...

Ah. Of course.  

However lawyers for Aviva at the High Court in London today branded the claim 'extraordinary' and 'overstated', and suggested the collision had actually helped Mr Mathieu's career, citing interviews in which the artist discussed the 'positive impact of the accident' which 'influenced his subject matter.'

Whoops! 

They also argued that he often fails to sell a 'sizeable portion' of his work at events, undermining his claim that he could sell more works every year. And while not disputing some liability, they are challenging the amount of the payout demanded, arguing the claim is 'inflated' and 'based on hypothetical guess work'.

It's based on what he - and his lawyers - think he can get away with... 

Mrs Justice Hill is considering arguments at a High Court trial in London due to last about two weeks.

That long? 

UK Human Rights repeal

Just saw this on Gab ... shall explore:

A Snowflake Opines...

I remember the first violent message I received on Instagram. It was a veritable bingo of hate: he mocked me, told me no one would want to look at my “dirty” crotch – though his language was worse, of course. He asked if “sluts” like me, moaning until they “get what they want”, was “what our country was coming to”, before reminding me that nothing was going to change. He finished by saying he hoped I was gang-raped “senseless” by 20 men. But, he didn’t use the word “men”. He used a racist slur instead, finishing the message with five middle-finger emojis.

So you blocked and deleted and got on with life. right? 

I remember how my chest tightened and I grew hot with fear.

Oh... 

I hadn’t been surprised to become the target of online hate.

Wait, you expected it? 

When abuse fills up your DMs and your inbox, there’s no way to escape it.

Yes there is. Block, report, delete.

Those in charge of tackling of this abuse (sic) are usually men. They don’t really understand the impact it has on victims and survivors. They haven’t been in our shoes.

Some have, sweetie!  

No single bill from parliament will solve this, and no single software update will either. A holistic and collaborative effort from the platforms, lawmakers and independent initiatives who know the reality of the issue, not just the theory, would be a positive start. Until then, we’ll share our locations with friends, add another dick pic to our screenshots folder and delete messages with trembling hands, hoping that one day our safety will finally become a priority.

Why should it? Everyone's safety should be a priority. What set of genitalia you possess shouldn't give you a head start, given young men are assaulted and killed at a rate of at least two to one...