Why did British bystanders watch a soldier get hacked to death? -
The recent attack on a British soldier by assassins wielding meat cleavers while bystanders looked on raises the question:“Why didn’t anyone try to help the victim?”“Why didn’t anyone try to help the victim?”
Because British citizens are prohibited from carrying objects that could be used as “offensive weapons.”
While it is well known that Brits cannot carry guns, a lesser known law prohibits any subject of the Queen from carrying a knife of consequence, pepper spray or a stun gun.
According to the United Kingdom government website, the online storehouse of British government regulations, it is illegal to:
- sell a knife of any kind (including cutlery and kitchen knives) to anyone under 18
- carry a knife in public without good reason – unless it’s a knife with a folding blade 3 inches long (7.62 cm) or less, eg a Swiss Army knife
- carry, buy or sell any type of banned knife
- use any knife in a threatening way (even a legal knife, such as a Swiss Army knife)
Also: a court will decide if you had a “good reason” to be carrying a knife.
BFM La Douze salted golden strong ale at @thebirchbar.
(Source: goodgolly-missmolly11)
Igor Stravinsky. What a bawss.
(via blogthoven)
California Senate Votes 28-8 to Exempt Itself from California Gun Laws -
California Senate Votes 28-8 to Exempt Itself from California Gun LawsOne law for the serfs and one law for the nobles.
what the fuck california
And to think there are still people out there who trust politicians.
Per usual, the politics of Animal Farm:
[video]
NYPD Data Proves White People Are More Likely To Possess Drugs Or A Weapon Than Racial Minorities When Stopped, Yet 84% of Stop & Frisk Victims Are Black/Latino
During the just-concluded trial on the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, the city argued that officers’ disproportionate targeting of black and Latino New Yorkers was not due to racial profiling but because each stopped individual was doing something suspicious at the time. The data, however, tells a different story: weapons and drugs were more often found on white New Yorkers during stops than on minorities, according to the Public Advocate’s analysis of the NYPD’s 2012 statistics.
White New Yorkers make up a small minority of stop-and-frisks, which were 84 percent black and Latino residents. Despite this much higher number of minorities deemed suspicious by police, the likelihood that stopping an African American would find a weapon was half the likelihood of finding one on a white person.
• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded a weapon was half that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered a weapon in one out every 49 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 71 stops of Latinos and 93 stops of African Americans to find a weapon.
• The likelihood a stop of an African American New Yorker yielded contraband was one-third less than that of white New Yorkers stopped. The NYPD uncovered contraband in one out every 43 stops of white New Yorkers. By contrast, it took the Department 57 stops of Latinos and 61 stops of African Americans to find contraband.
It’s unlikely that the appropriate lesson to take from these findings is that stops of white people should increase because they are more likely to carry weapons and drugs. Rather, they suggest that police are excessively targeting minorities. Officers may be netting more successful stops of white New Yorkers because they are only likely to stop a white person when they actually suspect that person of committing a crime. Considering one officer’s testimony that superiors explicitly directed him to target young black men, minorities are judged by a much more flexible definition of “reasonable suspicion.”
In general, stop-and-frisk has proven to be remarkably ineffective; nearly 89 percent of all stops result in no charges. The city has also had to settle a surging number of civil rights lawsuits against police to the tune of $22 million in one year.
(via butwhowillpayfortheroads)
[video]
Thinksquad: How many drones does the U.S have and how much do they cost? -
According to recent reports, the Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago. The fiscal year 2012 budget included nearly $5 billion for drone research, development and procurement. This figure represents the known costs; it does not include funding that…
I eat so much of this. I may have a problem. Also, dinner at 11:45pm.
“Listening to Barack Obama right now on CNN helps me to better understand why so many of my good and honest “liberal” friends cannot see through his rhetoric and make the break. He is an incredible orator with fantastic speech writers and has mastered the “Orwellian” double-speak. Absolutely incredible how his wonderful words have nothing to do with the truth.” — Daymon J. Hartley via Facebook (via eltigrechico)
(Source: fuckyeahmarxismleninism, via eltigrechico)
Marine gets no jail time in killing of 24 Iraqi civilians -
Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich will not serve a jail sentence following his guilty plea in the killing of 24 Iraqis in 2005, a military judge said Tuesday. The announcement by Lt. Col. David Jones…
(Source: thefreelioness, via byulibertarian)
“[C]ompanies such as Facebook and Google may now face monetary fines if they refuse to share client data and consent to wiretaps requested by government agencies. In a world where people increasingly use the ample cloud-memory space afforded by services such as Gmail as a storage locker for information, the apparent belief on the part of government that individuals’ email accounts do not qualify as “private” is deeply troubling.” —
Murtaza Hussain, “An increasingly unchecked surveillance state”
The whole article is definitely worth a read.
(via hipsterlibertarian)
Don’t tweet about food, or exercise, or animals! If you do, you might be a terrorist.
Other words that terrorists apparently like to use include wave, pork, and metro — so definitely nix those Facebook complaints about how slow the Red Line is today, because the Department of Homeland Security is watching.
If this sounds ridiculous, overreaching, and like a huge violation of privacy, that’s because it is:
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) just released DHS internal documents about the surveillance of social media and the information collected daily. EPIC gained access to the documents with a lawsuit, pushing the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents included hundreds of keywords that the government tracks.
The Department of Homeland Security initiative started in February 2011. The department aimed to use social media to stay in-the-know about breaking news as it’s happening. Tweets mentioning “attack” or “shooting” could, for instance, alert officials disturbances to national security right away.
Yes, if we’d only had Twitter in 2001, I’m sure DHS could have prevented everything by intercepting bin Laden’s “Big plans to attack American today! #twintowers #terrorism” tweet.
All joking aside, this program isn’t legal, and it isn’t right. Click here to learn more, and here to see a full list of terms DHS monitors, as well as a larger version of the graphic.
“Man belongs neither to his language nor to his race; he belongs to himself.” — Ernest Renan (via eltigrechico)
