Things that make you go What the F**k?

[Mike Sheehy]

After studying american politics the guts of 10 years ago I came to the conclusion that following a law from the 1700's, ie, the right to bear arms, is one of the main reasons why america has so much violence and a rampant gun culture. 

I'm not saying that guns wouldn't have found their way into society if that particular law was abolished, but certainly incidents like this may not have happened. 

An example, imagine walking down the street where you live and you see a twelve year old have what looks like a genuine handgun.  Would you be inclined to think it is real? Probably not, we live in a country were guns aren't as common, and children walking about with them even less so. 

America will never change their constitution, guns will always be freely available, and the chances of a child getting their hands on a gun are more likely than not, that's the truley fucked up thing!

It's because the US is a settler country that was settled violently.
The natives had to be dispossessed and they were dispossessed at gunpoint.
To decide who owned the land afterwards, guns were used.

If you look at murder stats by country the highest tend to be in the Americas.
That is where colonialism was most violent for longest.
Honduras is the worst. A small white elite and a dispossessed mestizo underclass.

Mexico isn't much better.

The US also has the highest percentage of population incarcerated.

blah, blah , I hate the US
blah, blah, I hate Americans

blah, blah...no, really..I'm not a xenophobe, what gave you that impression ?

Tell us about why the Yanks have so many guns when you get a minute.

tell us why you hate Americans so much when you get a minute.

[gallsman]

http://youtu.be/gLDYtH1RH-U

Dunno if this has been up before. Mad bastards climb Shanghai Tower, freehand.

[seafoid]

After studying american politics the guts of 10 years ago I came to the conclusion that following a law from the 1700's, ie, the right to bear arms, is one of the main reasons why america has so much violence and a rampant gun culture. 

I'm not saying that guns wouldn't have found their way into society if that particular law was abolished, but certainly incidents like this may not have happened. 

An example, imagine walking down the street where you live and you see a twelve year old have what looks like a genuine handgun.  Would you be inclined to think it is real? Probably not, we live in a country were guns aren't as common, and children walking about with them even less so. 

America will never change their constitution, guns will always be freely available, and the chances of a child getting their hands on a gun are more likely than not, that's the truley fucked up thing!

It's because the US is a settler country that was settled violently.
The natives had to be dispossessed and they were dispossessed at gunpoint.
To decide who owned the land afterwards, guns were used.

If you look at murder stats by country the highest tend to be in the Americas.
That is where colonialism was most violent for longest.
Honduras is the worst. A small white elite and a dispossessed mestizo underclass.

Mexico isn't much better.

The US also has the highest percentage of population incarcerated.

blah, blah , I hate the US
blah, blah, I hate Americans

blah, blah...no, really..I'm not a xenophobe, what gave you that impression ?

Tell us about why the Yanks have so many guns when you get a minute.

tell us why you hate Americans so much when you get a minute.

I don't hate Americans. Richard Ford is American. Philip Glass is American.
El_P is American. Deep Dish are American .
The New York Review is American.

But America has a lot of structural problems.

[pullhard]

County Championships not being finished by December, its a joke.

[muppet]

http://www.thejournal.ie/ned-okeeffe-says-army-coup-a-real-possibility-in-ireland-2011-02/

It's not the first time O'Keeffe, a former junior agriculture minister, has been outspoken with his views. In 1995, he called for the film 'Babe' to be banned because it could harm Christmas ham sales.



He also said there were too many intellectuals in Fianna Fáil. In fairness it would probably look that way alright if you were him.

[Denn Forever]

This guy was hidden in plain sight.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-30293066

[Gabriel_Hurl]

Family leaves dead man in room for 6 months - believed he would be resurrected

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/12/01/hamilton_family_left_corpse_upstairs_for_six_months_expecting_resurrection.html

[muppet]

Family leaves dead man in room for 6 months - believed he would be resurrected

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/12/01/hamilton_family_left_corpse_upstairs_for_six_months_expecting_resurrection.html

As assistant Crown attorney Janet Booy put it, the devout Christian woman's faith had "tainted and warped her better judgment."

Nail on the head.

[HiMucker]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-30396520

Child rapist Jeffrey Goodwyn sentence is 'unlawful'A child rapist has been released after a judge said it would be "unlawful" to keep him locked up.

Jeffrey Charles Goodwyn, 48, was given an indeterminate sentence in 2012 for indecently assaulting a seven-year-old girl eight or more years earlier.

He already had a previous conviction for raping a nine-year-old child.

Mr Justice Coulson said at the Court of Appeal that an open-ended sentence could only be passed for offences after April 2005.

"Despite the danger to the public which this applicant clearly represents, we are in no doubt that... The IPP (imprisonment for public protection) was unlawful," he said.

The court heard Goodwyn was given an indeterminate sentence at Cardiff Crown Court in 2012 after admitting offences against a seven year old girl and being considered "a very dangerous offender indeed" by the judge.

'No progress'

Such sentences allow the authorities to keep the most dangerous criminals locked up indefinitely until they have proved they are safe.

But Goodwyn went to the Court of Appeal about the sentence.

At the hearing on Tuesday, the judge heard that while in prison Goodwyn refused to transfer to open conditions and the Parole Board described his conduct as unsatisfactory after he threatened staff and was punished for fighting.

And Goodwyn's own lawyers said he had made "no progress whatsoever" in prison.

He had also refused to discuss his sexual offending, the court heard.

Mr Justice Coulson said: "This applicant remains a very dangerous man.

"Because of his failure to engage with the relevant assistance available to him in prison, he has not begun to address his offending."

But he said the legal problems surrounding the IPP sentence meant he had no choice but to quash the term.

He imposed a three-year custodial sentence on Goodwyn, which he has already served, followed by five years on licence.

The judge had held back his decision for a fortnight while Goodwyn's parole arrangements, including hostel accommodation, were put in place.

Responding to the ruling NSPCC Wales head of service Des Mannion said: "It is extremely frightening that a child rapist described as 'very dangerous' and unrepentant has been released back in to the community due to what seems like a legal technicality surrounding the timing of the offence."

line break
Indeterminate prison sentences

An indeterminate prison sentence is where the court sets the minimum term of imprisonment an offender must serve before becoming eligible to be considered for release by the Parole Board. There are two types of indeterminate sentence: Imprisonment for life and Imprisonment for public protection.

A sentence of imprisonment for public protection may be imposed where:

The offender is convicted of a serious sexual or violent offence which is punishable by imprisonment for life or a determinate period of 10 years or more
In the court's opinion the offender poses a significant risk to the public of serious harm by the commission of further specified offences
The offence is punishable with life imprisonment and the court is satisfied that the seriousness of the offence justifies such a sentence
The offender has a previous conviction for an offence listed in schedule 15A to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 or the current offence warrants a notional minimum term of at least two years

[orangeman]

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/marriage-proposal-from-crane-hits-the-roof-1.2037191

Proposal that rocked the place.

[brokencrossbar1]

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/03/dwp-benefits-electrician-work-placement-labour

A man who was let go at the end of a temporary job has been ordered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to work for the same firm for six months without pay.

Electronics specialist John McArthur, now unemployed, says he is living off 16p tins of spaghetti and without heating after being sanctioned by a jobcentre for refusing to work unpaid for LAMH Recycle in Motherwell, a Scottish social enterprise.

He says he was happy to work for LAMH under the now-defunct future jobs fund for the minimum wage in 2010-2011, but refuses on principle to do the same job unpaid.

McArthur, 59, says he is surviving on a monthly pension of £149 after the DWP stopped his unemployment benefit until January as punishment for his refusal to go on the 26-week community work placement (CWP).

For almost three months, McArthur has spent two hours each weekday morning parading outside the plant wearing a placard reading: "Say no to slave labour".

"It was simply a case of: 'Go here, work for nothing and if you don't we'll stop your subsistence level benefit,'" he said.

McArthur, who says he has been applying for 50 jobs a week without joy, said the CWP programme was "entirely exploitative" and came at the "expense of poor people who've got absolutely no choice". He added: "They [the government] deny it's forced labour, that you can say no, but forced doesn't always mean physical, it can be psychological or economic.

"The person who is trying to survive already on subsistence level welfare has absolutely no choice in the matter ... especially if they've got young children to look after."

LAMH confirmed it has 16 people working for six months without pay under CWP but added that since the end of June, six had progressed into paid employment.

The social enterprise, which repairs computers and recycles tin and cardboard, says it helps dozens of people each year who are long-term unemployed, many of whom have health issues.

Joe Fulton, the operations and development manager, said he believed the scheme "worked for people who want to make it work for them". He added that out of the organisation's paid workforce of 39, 25 had previously been unemployed.

McArthur said there were no jobs for someone his age in the Lanarkshire area. He said support for his placard demonstration had been overwhelming and just one person had objected.

Following conversations with local councillors, North Lanarkshire council passed a motion in October strongly objecting to forced employment schemes saying it would not get involved itself. "This council will not provide jobs or placements without pay as a condition of receiving benefits unless it is truly voluntary," the motion read.

"We do not support any mandation of unemployed people to work without pay that puts their benefits at risk."

The motion added such measures were ineffective and could "further stigmatise and demotivate" the unemployed in their search for work.

Last Wednesday, the DWP continued to battle the information commissioner and hostile court judgments ordering it to reveal where possibly hundreds of thousands of people are being sent to work without pay, sometimes for months at a time.

At the tribunal, the DWP argued that if the public knew exactly where people were being sent on placements political protests would increase, which was likely to lead to the collapse of several employment schemes and undermine the government's economic interests.

The DWP confirmed some of the UK's biggest charities, including the British Heart Foundation, Scope, Banardo's, Sue Ryder, and Marie Curie had withdrawn from the CWP scheme, causing a significant loss of placements.

Giving evidence, senior civil servant Jennifer Bradley confirmed that numerous charities and businesses were receiving cash payments as an incentive to take on the unemployed.

She said several DWP schemes used mandatory unpaid work as a tool to help people but stressed that it was written into the terms that charities and businesses could not use people out of work to replace their paid workforce.

The DWP said it could not comment on individual cases but added that community work placements "help long-term unemployed people to gain work experience which increases their confidence, helps them to gain vital skills and crucially, improves their chances of getting a job.

"We are not naming the charities and community groups involved in the scheme in order to protect them from those who seem intent on stopping us helping people into work."

[seafoid]

Human experiments were conducted by the United States in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948 to find a cure for syphilis and gonorrhea. The United States formally apologized to Guatemala in 2010.

[seafoid]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/11/11/official-mormon-founder-had-many-wives/qLfNs3ICEvxBcLMAxZLSXP/story.html

There remains one way in which polygamy is still a part of Mormon belief: the church teaches that a man who was "sealed" in marriage to his wife in a temple ritual, then loses his wife to death or divorce, can be sealed to a second wife and would be married to both wives in the afterlife. However, women who have been divorced or widowed cannot be sealed to more than one man. Kristine Haglund, the editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, said that while she found the church's new transparency "really hopeful," she and other women she had talked with were disturbed that the essays do not address the painful teaching about polygamy in eternity.
"These are real issues for Mormon women," Haglund said. "And because the church has never said definitively that polygamy won't be practiced in heaven, even very devout and quite conservative women are really troubled by it."

[Orior]

Good bit of research Seafoid. What are you contemplating?

[seafoid]

Good bit of research Seafoid. What are you contemplating?

Just wondering if catholics are also entitled to polygamy in the afterlife.
And how are all the women distributed if the Muslims get 72 virgins and the
Hindus need some for reincarnation?