GRIMLY FIENDISH

Oh, yeah, I mean, obviously it's a good thing that it's less people... But still, 68 slaughtered, innocent teenagers is one horrific death toll... :(

My thoughts exactly.... I'm just curious to know how they arrived at that particular, precise-sounding figure... You can understand estimating the Twin Towers or civilian casualties in war, but this is a very precise figure, and for it to turn out to be totally innaccurate is bizarre, IMO....

Yeah, but the media should not have been reporting this 84 figure as if it was hard fact.... What was wrong with them saying X number have been confirmed dead with others missing or unaccounted for..?

Right, okay, I am now VERY confused by an update to that report I just posted..... "Police have now revised down the island killings to 68 but increased the bomb death toll by one to eight" (BBC News) What the f/uck is going on here...? I mean, I dont mean to sound callous or brutal, but unless 20-odd people have suddenly resurrected themselves from the dead, you have to seriously wonder about what else the media has been reporting if they cant get the casualty figures right.... Charlie Brooker is right.....

BREAKING NEWS Norway gunman 'has accomplices' Source - BBC News.. Norwegian police are investigating claims by Anders Behring Breivik, who has admitted carrying out Friday's twin attacks in Norway, that he has "two more cells" working with him. Mr Breivik made the claim as he attended his first court hearing following the bombing in Oslo and a massacre on an island youth camp that killed at least 93 people in total. Mr Breivik said his attacks were a "shock signal" to Norway's people. He was detained for eight weeks. Oslo police asked for Mr Breivik to be held in full isolation for the first four weeks. Judge Kim Heger agreed, saying Mr Breivik could not receive letters or have visitors except for his lawyer. Judge Heger said police must be able to proceed with the investigation into Mr Breivik's claims without the accused being able to interfere. Mr Breivik has been charged under the criminal law for acts of terrorism. The charges include the destabilisation of vital functions of society, including government, and causing serious fear in the population. The judge said Mr Breivik had admitted carrying out the attacks but had not pleaded guilty to the charges. Judge Heger had earlier ruled that the hearing should be held behind closed doors. He had said: "It is clear that there is concrete information that a public hearing with the suspect present could quickly lead to an extraordinary and very difficult situation in terms of the investigation and security." There had been concern among many Norwegians that Mr Breivik would use the hearing to deliver a speech seeking to justify his actions. Instead Judge Heger summarised Mr Breivik's words in his post-hearing statement. The judge said Mr Breivik had argued that he was acting to save Norway and Europe from Muslim colonisation. The gunman had said his operation was not aimed at killing as many people as possible but that he wanted to create the greatest loss possible to Norway's Labour Party, which he accused of failing the country on immigration. Separately, Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, in his first interview with a British broadcaster, told the BBC's Jon Sopel that the attacks would change his country but that it would "still be open and democratic". Mr Stoltenberg said he knew many of those who had died and now was the time to look after the wounded and the families that had lost loved ones. He said he believed no country could ever fully protect itself from attacks such as these He also thanked the international community for its response. Meanwhile, Norway has postponed the start of party political campaigns ahead of the 12 September election, the Aftenposten newspaper reports. The campaigning is now set to start during the second half of August. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah, so, now can we knock the "lone nutter" theory on the head please Mr Tabloid Media, and deal with the fact that we're potentially facing something really, really nasty here.....

Spot on....

Here's the irony to all this, this prick hates "liberlism".... Funny that, eh..? I mean, it's this very "liberalism" that he hates so much that means he aint gonna be facing the Death Penalty... He MAY want to ponder that one for the next 15-20 years...... Oh, you know, unless, he meets a less liberal in-mate who hates "nonces" who kill kids, and sticks the prick with a knife in the showers...... -_-

That's odd, a report I read yesterday said that the guard was missing and they had no idea where they were..... But, you have to wonder why it is that with a bomb going off outside a Government building, just why it wouldn't occur to the Police or SWAT to shore-up all possible Government targets just as a formality, including the kids on the island who were attending a Govt-sponsored camp..... I know that Norway has no history of this kind of thing, but still.....

Here's a very good piece by Charlie Brooker on the media coverage.... The news coverage of the Norway mass-killings was fact-free conjecture Let's be absolutely clear, it wasn't experts speculating, it was guessers guessing – and they were terrible Source - The Guardian I went to bed in a terrible world and awoke inside a worse one. At the time of writing, details of the Norwegian atrocity are still emerging, although the identity of the perpetrator has now been confirmed and his motivation seems increasingly clear: a far-right anti-Muslim extremist who despised the ruling party. Presumably he wanted to make a name for himself, which is why I won't identify him. His name deserves to be forgotten. Discarded. Deleted. Labels like "madman", "monster", or "maniac" won't do, either. There's a perverse glorification in terms like that. If the media's going to call him anything, it should call him pathetic; a nothing. On Friday night's news, they were calling him something else. He was a suspected terror cell with probable links to al-Qaida. Countless security experts queued up to tell me so. This has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaida attack, they said. Watching at home, my gut feeling was that that didn't add up. Why Norway? And why was it aimed so specifically at one political party? But hey, they're the experts. They're sitting there behind a caption with the word "EXPERT" on it. Every few minutes the anchor would ask, "What kind of picture is emerging?" or "What sense are you getting of who might be responsible?" and every few minutes they explained this was "almost certainly" the work of a highly-organised Islamist cell. In the aftermath of the initial bombing, they proceeded to wrestle with the one key question: why do Muslims hate Norway? Luckily, the experts were on hand to expertly share their expert solutions to plug this apparent plot hole in the ongoing news narrative. Why do Muslims hate Norway? There had to be a reason. Norway was targeted because of its role in Afghanistan. Norway was targeted because Norwegian authorities had recently charged an extremist Muslim cleric. Norway was targeted because one of its newspapers had reprinted the controversial Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Norway was targeted because, compared to the US and UK, it is a "soft target" – in other words, they targeted it because no one expected them to. When it became apparent that a shooting was under way on Utoya island, the security experts upgraded their appraisal. This was no longer a Bali-style al-Qaida bombing, but a Mumbai-style al-Qaida massacre. On and on went the conjecture, on television, and in online newspapers, including this one. Meanwhile, on Twitter, word was quickly spreading that, according to eyewitnesses, the shooter on the island was a blond man who spoke Norwegian. At this point I decided my initial gut reservations about al-Qaida had probably been well founded. But who was I to contradict the security experts? A blond Norwegian gunman doesn't fit the traditional profile, they said, so maybe we'll need to reassess . . . but let's not forget that al-Qaida have been making efforts to actively recruit "native" extremists: white folk who don't arouse suspicion. So it's probably still the Muslims. Soon, the front page of Saturday's Sun was rolling off the presses. "Al-Qaeda" Massacre: NORWAY'S 9/11 – the weasel quotes around the phrase "Al Qaeda" deemed sufficient to protect the paper from charges of jumping to conclusions. By the time I went to bed, it had become clear to anyone within glancing distance of the internet that this had more in common with the 1995 Oklahoma bombing or the 1999 London nail-bombing campaign than the more recent horrors of al-Qaida. While I slept, the bodycount continued to rise, reaching catastrophic proportions by the morning. The next morning I switched on the news and the al-Qaida talk had been largely dispensed with, and the pundits were now experts on far-right extremism, as though they'd been on a course and qualified for a diploma overnight. Some remained scarily defiant in the face of the new unfolding reality. On Saturday morning I saw a Fox News anchor tell former US diplomat John Bolton that Norwegian police were saying this appeared to be an Oklahoma-style attack, then ask him how that squared with his earlier assessment that al-Qaida were involved. He was sceptical. It was still too early to leap to conclusions, he said. We should wait for all the facts before rushing to judgment. In other words: assume it's the Muslims until it starts to look like it isn't – at which point, continue to assume it's them anyway. If anyone reading this runs a news channel, please, don't clog the airwaves with fact-free conjecture unless you're going to replace the word "expert" with "guesser" and the word "speculate" with "guess", so it'll be absolutely clear that when the anchor asks the expert to speculate, they're actually just asking a guesser to guess. Also, choose better guessers. Your guessers were terrible, like toddlers hypothesising how a helicopter works. I don't know anything about international terrorism, but even I outguessed them. As more information regarding the identity of the terrorist responsible for the massacre comes to light, articles attempting to explain his motives are starting to appear online. And beneath them are comments from readers, largely expressing outrage and horror. But there are a disturbing number that start, "What this lunatic did was awful, but . . ." These "but" commenters then go on to discuss immigration, often with reference to a shaky Muslim-baiting story they've half-remembered from the press. So despite this being a story about an anti-Muslim extremist killing Norwegians who weren't Muslim, they've managed to find a way to keep the finger of blame pointing at the Muslims, thereby following a narrative lead they've been fed for years, from the overall depiction of terrorism as an almost exclusively Islamic pursuit, outlined by "security experts" quick to see al-Qaida tentacles everywhere, to the fabricated tabloid fairytales about "Muslim-only loos" or local councils "banning Christmas". We're in a frightening place. Guesswork won't lead us to safety.

And, here's another question - WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO THE POLICE GUARD THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE ISLAND????

You're asking for reasons... Well, I could give you a few.. It's the same sort of mentality that massacres the population of entire towns such as what happened in the Former Yugoslavia and caused the Rwandan massacre, it's Extremism... If you listen to this guy, he genuinely wants to start a war, or another Crusade... Remember when George W Bush said "we're on a Crusade?", yeah, a bit like that really... It's the same sort of mentality that leads people like Ratko Mladic to get up in a court, and without any sort of irony at all, claim that they dont recognise the authority of that court because, you know, massacring thousands of people in Srebrenica was somehow an "Okay" thing for him to do.... It's not a mentality that any civilised person understands or has any sympathy with, unfortunately, we're not talking about civilised people, we're talking about psychopaths..... I really LOVE the way the Right Wing media went from their fact-free conjecture that it was "muslims" or "an Al Qaeda plot", because, hey, obviously "muslims" and AQ are the only people in the world who would do something like this, right...? Then, when it transpired that it's some white Norwegian guy, it becomes completely de-politicised and it suddenly becomes the act of a "mad-man"..... The fact that he'd clearly been brain-washed by Neo-Nazi, Right-Wing "Crusader" ideology is a complete and utter coincidence... Yeah, right..... <_<

Housing benefit cuts: the return of the Bed and Breakfast family Under Labour, the 'unacceptable' practice of putting homeless families in temporary B&B accomodation was almost eradicated. But a Tory-run council has warned that the Coalition's housing benefit changes are triggering a fresh crisis Source - The Guardian The housing minister Grant Shapps is fond of saying he would not support any policy that would lead to an increase in homelessness. So what will he make of the latest piece of evidence, published by a Conservative-controlled inner-London council, that suggests the government's housing benefit cuts will do precisely that? According to a paper drawn up by the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the impact of housing benefit caps will not only leave the council "unable to exercise its statutory responsibilties" under homelessness law, but will leave it facing the "unacceptable prospect" of having to place families in bed and breakfast accomodation. The council is in a tricky situation: it expects to have to find somewhere to live for around 1,000 families in the borough who will be made homeless by the capping of benefit payments from next January; but sky-high rents and booming demand for rental properties across this mostly salubrious piece of central London means it has nowhere to put them. Faced with the daunting prospect of having to acquire between 870 and 920 additional homes for its homeless residents in the next 12 months it says it finds itself in an "immediate crisis" of temporary accomodation (TA): "The supply of TA is at an all time low and we are faced with the unacceptable situation of being unable to offer homeless applicants temporary accommodation or placing households in bed and breakfast. This situation will be exacerbated as people's current tenancies in the private rented sector come to an end and they are unable to pay above the HB caps." Bed and breakfast temporary accomodation is one of the great welfare scourges, commonly acknowledged to have a hugely detrimental impact on health, education and job opportunities. According to a House of Commons research paper it is "expensive, inadequate and has unnaceptable long term effects on homeless people." New Labour targeted it, and almost eradicated it: but it has been creeping back, even before the housing benefit cuts come into play. Here's the House of Commons research paper again: "The most recent statistics show that at the end of December 2010 of the 48,010 households in temporary accommodation 36,230 included dependent children and/or a pregnant woman. Of these 36,230 households with children 660 (2 per cent) were in bed and breakfast style accommodation, up from 400 at the end of the same quarter in 2009. Of these 660 households, 150 had been in bed and breakfast style accommodation for six or more weeks (10 of which pending review). The total number of homeless households placed in B&B at the end of December 2010 stood at 2,310 (5 per cent of all households), 23 per cent higher than in December 2009." Official guidance for local authorities says bed and breakfast temporary accomodation should be avoided "wherever possible". Lack of privacy, and amenities such as cooking and laundry means it is "not suitable" for families with children or pregnant women "unless there is no alternative accomodation available and then only for a maximum of six weeks." So where will Kensington and Chelsea's 1,000 displaced families end up? Some of them, it seems, will find themselves in bed and breakfast accomodation, most likely nowhere near where they currently live. As the council report states: "It is very unlikely that new accommodation within [the Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea] and other neighbouring boroughs that will be within the cap will be found, thus alternative locations are uncertain. Where accommodation is within cap levels, demand from central London authorities will be high." Existing temporary accomodation in London is already concentrated in the outer north and east London boroughs, such as Brent, Haringey, Enfield and Newham. The housing benefit cuts are likely to intensify that centrifugal push outwards, concentrating the new homeless in the outer suburbs and beyond. Kensington and Chelsea already spends £11m a year on temporary accomodation for 1,139 homeless households, including 119 in B&Bs across London. The report estimates up to an additional 1,068 households could present as homeless and in priority need due to age, health or because they have dependent children, from January 2012. So pressing is the crisis facing K&C that officials are recomending it suspend normal contract letting proceedures to enable it to swiftly identify and procure temporary accomodation. It is not just this part of London that is likely to see the return of B&B culture, as this prediction, by Harrow council's head of housing John Dalton makes clear: "We are going to find it increasingly difficult to find satisfactory and local private rented accommodation for households who need it. This looks likely to push us (and most London councils) back to using more temporary accommodation, some of which is less suitable (bed & breakfast and hostels) and all of which is expensive". For landlords and B&B owners, the housing benefit cuts look like heralding a mini-boom. For those Kensington and Chelsea residents affected, things are looking bleak. I asked to speak to K&C's cabinet member for housing and property Timothy Coleridge, but he was too busy to get back to me. The council paper, however, seems pretty clear: "The implementation of the HB caps is resulting in the Council being unable to exercise its statutory responsibilities through the homelessness legislation; whilst this situation is currently manageable, the risks associated with this are high and we expect the situation to deteriorate." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You know, when people talk about the "80s Revival" nostalgia trip, we're talking about the MUSIC and CULTURE and HAIR-STYLES (well, maybe not that so much), what we're definitely NOT "nostalgic" for is this sort of socially divisive Thatcherite bullshit which blighted the lives of millions of people.... I'm one of "Thatcher's Children", born in the early 70s, all of my secondary schooling and most of my primary schooling was under Thatcher.. As a teenager, I became aware of what was going on around me - massive unemployment (which affected a fair few members of my own family), people thrown onto the scrap-heap, manufacturing destroyed (especially in Scotland and the North), and these sorts of really vindictive, nasty policies which basically ruined lives... I knew a kid at my school who was basically in this situation, some of the older kids absolutely tortured him because of it, calling him all sorts of really nasty names (such as "Gyppoe", "Tramp", "Dosser", etc...), he attempted suicide by slashing his wrists because of the abuse.... Thankfully he didn't succeed, but this is just one of the MANY reason why I hate the Tories with every fibre of my being, they CAUSED the conditions for that event to occur through their rancid social policies, and now history is repeating and there may be many more kids thrown into this situation... So, if anyone out there still thinks I shouldn't take it personally, well, read this and then tell me I shouldn't......

Yeah, true, but this is what happens when you start fiddling in ME politics, you get your arse absolutely bitten somewhere down the line... Look at Afghanistan in the 80s - we supported the Mujahadeen and trained Bin Laden, which then turned into The Taliban and Al Qaeda.....Oooooooops..... Who's to say we wont be at war with these Libyan "rebels" at some point down the line...?

NATO hacked by Anonymous Source - Russia Today Computer hackers working for the activism collective Anonymous announced today that NATO has been the victim of their latest Internet crime. In a tweet today from the hacktivist group responsible for such high-profile infiltrations as ones perpetrated again Mastercard, Visa and PayPal in the past, Anonymous announced that, “Yes, we haz [sic] more of your delicious data.” Anonymous doesn’t intend on disclosing all of what they’ve lifted from NATO servers, however — that, says the group, would be “irresponsible.” So far they have only released a single PDF file of a document headed with the message “NATO Restricted” dated to August of 2007. The group has hinted that some of the info will be leaked in the days to come. The group notes that they have obtained roughly 1 GB of computer data. One spokesperson for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization tells the Telegraph that it is investigating the claims. "We strongly condemn any leak of classified documents, which can potentially endanger the security of NATO allies, armed forces and citizens,” says another NATO spokesperson that would not be named by the AP. While law enforcement officials and investigators worldwide are largely condemning an attack on such an established and powerful institution, Anonymous has fired back, taking a jab at the operations of associated governments. In a document released in conjunction with fellow hackers LulzSec today, Anonymous responds to a message from FBI Deputy Assistant Director Steve Chabinsky in which he calls Anonymous’ actions “unacceptable.” “Now let us be clear here, Mr. Chabinsky, while we understand that you and your colleagues may find breaking into websites unacceptable, let us tell you what WE find unacceptable,” responds Anonymous. The hackers add their own complaints against “the FBI and international law authorities” include “Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece” and “Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for federal contracts we all know they can't fulfil.” “We become bandits on the Internet because you have forced our hand,” write the hackers. “The Anonymous bitchslap rings through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We're back – and we're not going anywhere. Expect us.” Anonymous offshoot LulzSec has previously attacked the computer servers of the CIA, Senate and SONY, among others. On Monday they hacked the website of News Corp’s The Sun and earlier today revealed that they would be releasing emails obtained from the servers of News of the World. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now, this is one hacking scandal I dont mind.... :lol:

Actually, I rather liked Max Keiser's idea - he basically said to Greece, Ireland, etc, "Set up your own Ratings Agencies and down-grade US debt to Junk..." :lol: :lol: :lol:

Any sensible person knows that Al-Megraghi was acting "under orders", so personally I actually bear him no real animosity because he was just a foot-soldier carrying out those orders, one can only imagine the possible ramifications for his family if he had failed to carry out his orders... So, I never really had an issue with the Scottish Executive releasing him on "humanitarian" grounds because of his cancer.. The problem I have is more with Westminster Govt for using Megraghi's release to strike a deal with Ghadafi....

I disagree, we had a FAR clearer reason to oust him after the bombing of Pan Am flight 101, because he was clearly guilty of a criminal act of murder, so that would've been the time for us and the Americans to have justifiably gone in and affected regime change.......

Well, that was my first thought too, and at first, I actually supported the UN resolution, but the longer this has gone on and the more obvious that it's becoming more like another Imperialist war in the Middle-East, then I am no longer inclined to support military action....

eqrRGZeN3ak&f From RT's Alyona Show... I think a rather disturbing and prescient point is being made here.. US drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan are basically killing about 50 civilians for every 1 "legitimate" target, and the only place where I'm actually hearing this being reported with any depth is on Russia Today... It also seems to me that the CIA are just playing a sort of sophisticated "PS3 game" with these things from thousands of miles away, and therefore are completely detached from the impact on-the-ground. This is the sort of thing that pundits were warning us all about in the early 90s with "Smart Bombs", and the desriptions "Nintendo Casualties" and "Collateral Damage" started coming into the general lexicon... Obviously, these drone attacks are a step beyond the "Smart Bombs" of the '91 Gulf War, but it marks a seriously disturbing trend in modern warfare... Are these civilian deaths actually "deaths" to these people, or are they just "frags", like in a video game...? Discuss....

Funny how us and the Yanks had no problems selling lots of weapons to him for most of the last decade then, innit..? How does someone like him all of a sudden become "unfit" to run a country..? We all knew what he was like, I mean, after all, he gave the order to blow up Pan Am flight 101, surely if he's "unfit" now, he was "unfit" several years ago when we were all "chummy" with him... This is the whole problem I have with the West's rather two-faced, hypocritical policy in the Middle East.... As for Syria, well, it seems to me that we're not getting involved there because it's a "domestic situation", but so's Libya... Assad is still killing hundreds of civilians every week and torturing god knows how many others, so what's the difference...? Seems to me that it's a lot to do with the "black stuff" and the fact that Libya has shed-loads of it, and Syria doesn't....

Actually, I'm not sure which question they're answering, I've kind of posed several throughout the course of the thread, including the one in the title..... :lol: :lol:

Well, I'd argue that getting involved in a civil war is never really a particularly wise course, and the fact is, we're being rather selective as well.. I'd say there were many nasty things going on in Syria too, but so far, no involvement there... The UN mandate 1973 is also clearly being breached as well...

Just proves the British record-buying public by and large don't know shit, I bet that more than half the people who bought it weren't even aware that it was a cover.... :rolleyes: I'll never really understand why Anthony Kiedis allowed All Saints to cover/butcher what was clearly a very personal song to him.......

As far as I'm concerned RHCP will never do a better album than BloodSugarSexMagik, that was just classic...

???? Can you please make a proper post on this issue? Am I actually supposed to understand what this is...?