Despite all the rhetoric, when detailed studies are made that explore the actual empirical evidence, suspicions about the dangers of cats are revealed time after time to have little basis in reality. – David Nutt
I’m sorry if I’ve been slow to answer correspondence lately; my husband got home Tuesday and we’ve been working all day, every day since Friday on rebuilding the terrace in our new house (long story short: the combination of a design flaw, overly-optimistic assumptions and the financial crash of 2008 resulted its being ruined). But after Wednesday, it should be all done and I really hope we don’t have any more issues. Our top contributor this week was Radley Balko, with all of the links down to the first video; both of them this week are ones I found a while back, but for some reason never featured. The links between the videos were provided by my cat (“catflakes”), Nun Ya (“cat ban” and “soccer”), Jesse Walker (“chimps” and “journalists”), EconJeff (“place names”), and Wendy Lyon (“Sweden”).
- Washington, D.C. threatens flower-lover with prison “for his own good”.
- During Ramadan, Guantanamo prisoners will only be force-fed at night.
- So much for the third amendment being the only one still intact…
- Cops arrest a man for recording them, then murder his dog.
- Hello, NSA!
- Catflakes.
- A plan to ban cats?
- Chimpanzee death rituals.
- Journalists against journalism.
- Drunk Russian severed-head soccer.
- The real meanings of American place-names.
- Mike Siegel on mathematical malpractice in one of last week’s links.
- Sweden makes non-consensual videography harder for individuals, but easier for the state.
From the Archives
- Third-grade math skills and a sense of New York City’s size are not required for a position on its city council.
- How Ashton Kutcher escaped from his handlers and made a complete ass of himself.
- Hawaii’s tolerated brothels and the power struggle which doomed them.
- Partisan prohibitionists use bad study to blame GOP for “sex trafficking”.
- Why a Norwegian politician called for the Swedish Model to be scrapped.
- Why Sarah Woolley winces through Hollywood sex scenes and not porn.
- The inherent racism of “trafficking” mythology isn’t usually this obvious.
- It’s good to see at least a few countries stand up to American bullying.
- Vietnam moves forward in its treatment of sex workers, while the US…
- It’s nice to see the attacks on Nicholas Kristof continuously increasing.
- Not quite as bad as arresting someone for moving out of a dumpster.
- Montgomery County, Maryland wages war on kids’ lemonade stands.
- The American obsession with “safety” has created an evil nightmare.
- Google encourages Irish prohibitionists, censors rights campaigners.
- How one of the great masterpieces of children’s literature was born.
- Two ads from Europe: one anti-sex worker and one pro-sex worker.
- MTV protects itself against STD liability claims from dirty amateurs.
- In which some prohibitionists enter a battle of wits half-armed.
- Georgia learns about the Law of Unintended Consequences.
- Methinks Professor Kubistant needs to find a regular escort.
- An example of governmental insanity in Western Australia.
- The end of Louisiana’s wicked “crime against nature” law.
- Village Voice’s campaign against “sex trafficking” hysteria.
- Zahia Dehar isn’t doing too badly for a “trafficked child”.
- Another cop scheme to destroy sex worker safety nets.
- Another flying leap onto the “trafficking” bandwagon.
- Bubbles Burbujas on the problems with “pole taxes”.
- My two previous columns for Independence Day.
- In support of loosened immigration restrictions.
- Is there anything cops don’t wildly exaggerate?
- The growing insanity of “trafficking” hysteria.
- Cops, testilying and “climbing the ladder”.
- The “trafficking” article that was neither.
Why are we force feeding Club Gitmo prisoners?
They don’t wanna eat – let ’em starve.
Tell ’em they won’t get a Muslim burial if they starve themselves and see how their attitude changes.
Oh that’s right – we’re America, we don’t fuck with the “beheaders” like this.
Which is why we’re going to lose.
For those that actually are “beheaders,” I’d agree with you. What about those that are not and never were?
Then I doubt they have the dedication to hang with a hunger strike.
There seems to be this belief that Gitmo is full of poor little innocent Muslim schoolchildren who were just walking their way into school – trying to better themselves and get a good education so they could improve the world – when suddenly – out of nowhere – EVIL U.S. special ops troops dressed in ninja-wear scooped them up and flew them off to permanent imprisonment in Gitmo.
That’s a fairy tale.
And I can prove that.
The proof is Obama – a guy who genuinely sympathizes with Muslims and who campaigned on closing Gitmo. Well here we are – five years into his term and it’s still open … why?
Because Obama campaigned naively and didn’t know the facts about who’s down there.
Now he does – and you can see – he’s keeping them. Why? Because releasing them would be disastrous.
One of the “schoolchildren” the liberal press likes to hold up as being held … “for no reason” … check his file here …
http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/238-nabil-hadjarab
Nabil Hadjarab – actually occupied Al Quaida positions in the Tora Bora mountain range and determined to have engaged U.S. troops in hostilities.
He’s a soldier. He should be considered a POW. POW’s are normally released at the end of a war.
This war isn’t over – and the reason is – the people he supports refuse to let it be.
We should hold him – and all his “brothers” – until hell freezes over.
I don’t care if he was caught with a meat cleaver in his hand and a stomach full of human meat; holding people indefinitely without trial is wrong. Period. In fact, I’ll go a step farther: it’s MORE wrong and MORE evil than any crime any single individual can commit, because it has the potential to affect far more people.
And I’m not part of any “we” that would sign on for such abominations.
I think that this is the problem with trying to treat these guys as criminals instead as POW’s. If they’re breaking the Geneva Conventions by fighting as irregulars, then let’s use the sanctioned means of dealing with them. If they’re uniformed fighters, then treat them as POW’s. This straddling the line between criminality and warfare is not doing us any good. And the war policies of this and the previous administration risk putting us into a state of perpetual war where “we’ve always been at war with Eastasia” until we need to be at war with someone else.
“I don’t care if he was caught with a meat cleaver in his hand and a stomach full of human meat”
There’s a vivid thought.
Sorry, don’t wish to engage in the nuanced political argument here (is “I agree with Maggie” sufficient?) but I just had to comment on that 🙂
Krulac: Until a proper trial is held, those are just accusations by a government that’s often lied to us.
I haven’t smoked cannabis in years. But I would love to get high and watch that Catflakes page for, oh, several hours.
Oh, you know, I thought that was going to be a completely different severed head soccer story:
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/south-american-football-referee-beheaded-fans-killing-player-084120459.html
The lesson I draw from these recording stories is to conceal your camera.
Prof David Nutt is a hero, regularly calling out the government here for spouting bullshit. He was so good at it that they sacked him from his advisory role when his (and his committee’s) advice wasn’t to their liking.
Cats are evil. Just sayng….
I made the mistake of clicking on the Ashton Kutcher archive story. I feel really angry now and want to ride my bike at warp speed up to the pistol range and fire lots of bullets at pieces of cardboard shaped like Kutcher.
I think that’s a normal reaction.
Note what the press isn’t writing about; that he was “exploiting” prostitutes whilst jailing their sisters.
My reaction to his plea for forgiveness is “Yeah right, Spitzer, cuz you was such a merciful bastard when you were holding the club.”
Oh, I wouldn’t want to be Spitzer, he’s under a curse. As the Sheriff of Wall Street he has tons of powerful enemies. As a guy with a libido strong enough to destroy a promising political career, I doubt he’s stopped liking the ladies because of his public “I have sinned” declarations. (What’s with this ridiculous ritual? He’s repentant only of the fact he got caught. Seriously, our society is pretty messed up demanding these mendacious empty gestures. Like a POW confessing after a year in “the hole.”)
Back in public life he either gives up the ladies, or sells out his integrity, or has another spectacular flame out. Who wants that?
I wouldn’t vote for him though. He had his shot at the brass ring and he screwed it up. Who knows if he’s still the same man he was the last time he ran as the scourge of the fraudsters? He might prefer to give in, take the filthy lucre, and spend it on expensive call girls. I wouldn’t even trust _me_ in a position like that, and no one hates high level fraud worse than me.
Besides, he was a scourge of call girls when he was a prosecutor as well… and beyond everything else, that puts him in a deep dark pit for me. It’s not as though his uncovered fondness for the same ladies he was persecuting has led to him admitting that his persecution was wrong. No… let him sink like a stone, that’s what I say.
pws wrote;
“let him sink like a stone, that’s what I say”.
I can only agree and add… “in a cesspit.”
Links. I’ll get to it.