Agents Provocateurs?

There's an excellent article over at Salon by Glenn Greenwald. It's about some flunky of Obama's with a plan for the U.S. Government (i.e. taxpayer) to employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government.

This is nothing new in the UK. The overwhelming majority in the UK want to pull out of the European Union, which has destroyed millions of jobs and indeed entire industries, such as fishing, while swamping what little business remains with red tape. If they don't in fact want to pull out, most people in the UK would prefer the EU to be what it was originally sold as - a common trading bloc - and not the de facto government of the country, which is what it has become.

But the three leading political parties are all pro-EU. The one party which represents the majority view of the British people - the UK Independence Party - is constantly defeated at the polls. One reason of course is that the UK establishment is firmly behind the three main parties (which are so similar you can barely tell them apart) so they always get plenty of airtime on the media. And the other reason is that UKIP has never been able to stop internal fighting and get its act together. Many people, including me, believe that UKIP was set up deliberately to be useless and to soak up the resources of the Anti-EU crowd, in the same way that an intelligence service will often offer one of its own to a rival agency as a "defector", when in fact the aim is to confuse the enemy and waste his time with false and misleading reports.

Don't forget that the UK has been around a long time. Although the British Secret Service started officially in 1909, in practice the establishment has been up to its neck in the "great game" for at least 500 years.

Back over on this side of the pond, in recent memory the CIA actually owned various publishing houses for propaganda purposes - not a conspiracy theory but a demonstrable matter of fact.

So don't think this is new --- and don't believe everything you read in chat rooms!

They Never Learn

You couldn't make it up. Obama's expression says it all.

When are they going to stop this lunacy? Or bomb somewhere that really deserves it like France?

Next up:

US Moves Border 100 miles North in surprise overnight move - Obama welcomes 33,000,000 new Americans

Nice

Here's an excellent vehicle they use for fighting fires in the Mont Blanc tunnel. Since they had to start hiring women firefighters they were finding the amount of time it took them to do a 3-point turn and get the vehicle pointing the right way resulted in an unacceptable number of casualties. They therefore came up with this!

As long as the firefighters remember to get in the correct end, they can be speeding to the rescue in seconds!

If the same engineering was applied to the Honda CRV, Chrysler Town & Country, etc., imagine the time it would save in your local Target parking lot.

Surely some mistake?

I think it's only one cop, but I could see how you could make that mistake

New Green Fuel

So in the UK with all the "climate change" legislation, fuel is set to become more and more expensive as higher and higher taxes are levied to discourage its use.

This doesn't affect members of the laughable government as they sit in their cosy warm offices and in the backs of their limos and private jets.

In the real world, however, the UK is having the coldest winter in years. Not that you'd know from looking at the UK Meteorological Office weather forecast - in the UK, even the weather is politicised!

In fact it's so bad that old people are having to burn books to stay warm

This might be no bad thing. You could order a bunch of books from Amazon and keep warm all winter - it'd be cheaper than all that imported Russian Gas!

May I suggest starting with this one?

Nigerian car thief targets Woody Allen

This story is a wonderful encapsulation of modern Britain where the law-abiding are ripped off and completely failed by an institutionally socialist state.

Modern cars are exceptionally difficult to steal due to the electronic immobilisers they use. There are, therefore, two options for a determined thief in the UK with a pressing drug habit who is running low on cash. Both involve getting hold of the car keys.

First option: What do a lot of people do when they come home? Drop the house and car keys on the hall table. British homes have letterboxes in the front door where mail is placed. The enterprising thieves use a hook at the end of a pole to reach through the letter box and hook the keys from the table. I included the link to the Police website because this sort of thing sounds like an urban myth.

In the case of an elderly homeowner or a very fit burglar the second option is a more direct approach, where the victim is robbed and murdered in-home and the keys taken (in the UK a 'life' sentence for murder is about seven years)

And in the event that the homeowner resists, the trusty shield of British justice is there to jail the homeowner for defending his property

Famous filmmaker Woody Allen has a thing for the UK. He's a smart businessman, so my guess is he likes the fact that the actors and crew he hires there are desperate for the work. And some of the locations can be made to look nice on film if the bums are cleared away and the trash swept up first, and the actors filmed under bright lights to make it look like the sun's shining.

He's paying about $17,000 a week for an upscale home while filming. Next door is a bunch of squatters - people who break into unoccupied homes to live for free. Recently they spotted a guy who sounds like a Nigerian illegal immigrant trying the bamboo pole hook on Woody's house.

So this story has everything
- A state which can't keep out foreign criminals
- People living in an upscale house for free
- Even paying $17,000 a week doesn't get you a home free from the anarchy
- And a justice system which enables the above

Sherlock Holmes Movie Report

Most movies today are aimed at mentally challenged, deaf, 14 year old boys. Today's directors like Michael Bay lower one's expectations to such a degree that you're relieved when a film turns out not to be completely unwatchable. Such was the case with "Mockney" Guy Ritchie's new film Sherlock Holmes (or since the whole thing was a set up for a franchise should that be "Sherlock Holmes 1")

Naturally as a Brit I can't watch anything Sherlock Holmes without comparing it to the definitive portrayal of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce:



I re-watched "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1939) last night and I have to say that as far as mood, atmosphere and the ability to understand what the actors are saying is concerned, it's better than Ritchie's effort.

Having said that, I think Ritchie did a good job. The studios need everything aimed at 14 year old deaf retarded kids of course, and he kept that in mind, with some martial arts and some explosions. But he also threw in some stuff for us old farts to enjoy as well.

The special effects were outstanding, especially the way they included Tower Bridge when it was still under construction.




Less impressive was how they had the heroes running around in the cellars under the Palace of Westminster and yet emerge at said Tower Bridge, three miles away.

The Thames was also not known for its shipbuilding industry! And the river is too shallow for a large boat to sink and completely disappear.

Well, at the moment it is, anyway...