Sim-O

The Guardian:

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama’s advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton’s foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

Pour 10 tons of concrete down a hole for three days. Wait a month and then start digging…

Via

If you came across this list of BNP activists, what would you do?

It would be bloody tempting to publish it, reveal the bastards to the world. Let the everyone see who is a fascist git.
But, someone is bound to take it too far and not stop at ostracisation and start with the physical stuff.

And that someone is bound to be a dim twat that gets the wrong person.

Update:
Matt Wardman:

Implications for the Database State

The BNP has strong encryption systems in place, as noted months ago by the Spy Blog. This membership list leaked due to human failure (betrayal – we are told).

Is that not another nail in the coffin of allegedly secure national databases by demonstrating a different failure mode for a database that *is* “secure”? The only answer is to keep as many of them as possible small to minimise the scale of the statistically inevitable failures, and hence increase the resilience of the system.

A Prototype for Attitudes to the Sexual Offenders Register?

Is this a good analog for what will happen when names from the Sex Offenders Register are parcelled out on demand as proposed in future – a widely reviled group published on a potentially unreliable database?

Electronic Intifada:

The blockade has been pursued relentlessly since, even if the desired outcome has been no more achieved in Gaza than it was in Iraq. Instead, Hamas entrenched its control and cemented the Strip’s physical separation from the Fatah-dominated West Bank.

Far from reconsidering its policy, Israel’s leadership has responded by turning the screw ever tighter — to the point where Gazan society is now on the verge of collapse.

In truth, however, the growing catastrophe being unleashed on Gaza is only indirectly related to Hamas’s rise to power and the rocket attacks.

Of more concern to Israel is what each of these developments represents: a refusal on the part of Gazans to abandon their resistance to Israel’s continuing occupation. Both provide Israel with a pretext for casting aside the protections offered to Gaza’s civilians under international law to make them submit.

With embarrassing timing, the Israeli media revealed at the weekend that one of the first acts of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister elected in 2006, was to send a message to the Bush White House offering a long-term truce in return for an end to Israeli occupation. His offer was not even acknowledged.

Instead, according to the daily Jerusalem Post, Israeli policy-makers have sought to reinforce the impression that “it would be pointless for Israel to topple Hamas because the population [of Gaza] is Hamas.” On this thinking, collective punishment is warranted because there are no true civilians in Gaza. Israel is at war with every single man, woman and child.

Guardian:

Just how low will your mortgage payments fall if, as predicted, the Bank of England slashes interest rates over the next few years towards 3% or even lower? If you have a fixed rate, then there’s no joy for you.

But before holders of “tracker” mortgages look forward to steep cuts in monthly costs, be prepared for a nasty shock.

Some of the biggest lenders have small print terms which allow them not to pass on rate cuts, even if the contract says the loan is tied to the Bank of England base rate.

And households whose mortgages track the “standard variable rate” may also see little benefit from cuts in base rate.

So far, mortgage lenders haven’t exactly been rushing to pass on the most recent base rate cuts. It emerged this week that half haven’t cut standard variable rates following the emergency rate cut of 0.5% last month.

Fucks sake. The banks and shit take all this money that the government suddenly found (can’t find a bloody penny when a hospital or school need it) cos they’ve got a ‘fluidity problem’, The Bank of England cut the interest rates so the punters have more chance of actually repaying the fucking loans and and the cunting fucks in the city don’t pass on the rate cut.

Fuck ’em. Let em go. Bring on the bloody revolution.

*And yes that is a euphemism. It’s a euphemism for greedy money grabbing whinging cunts.

Compare these two:

1. A couple of mountian bikes get knicked from the garden of a family who were killed in a road accident. Although it could be called callous, it is a non-violent, non-confrontational crime. There is no little boy coming out of his house in the morning expecting to get on his bike and being disappointed. It is effectively a victimless crime.*

2. A couple of blokes knocking on doors in the evening pretending to be from an energy company that does not operate in the area, so has no sales people or customers in the location, trying to work there way into peoples houses, for what, I don’t know. It could be a distraction robbery it could be for some sort of assault. Either way there will be a victim that will feel violated, intimidated, or at worst physically abused and will be feeling the consequences of this for a very long time.

Put the following Police response to the correct scenario (they are not exact quotes as that would give the game away):

a. They’re [the Police] are keeping an eye out
b. I am disgusted that this has happened and promise to bring the persons responsible to justice

How did you do?

I wish the police round here had as much enthusiam

*I realise that this sound cold and unfeeling, I do not mean it in a ‘so what’ kind of way. But what is felt is disgust that someone would try to benefit from this families awful situation, not because some horrible person has taken a little boys’ bike.