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Well I'm not sure if it's "most", but it's a hell of a lot. Murdoch is the man The Independent called "so powerful that no politician dare take him on." According to Business Week:

his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175 newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered.

Murdoch's global corporations pay an average of 6% corporation tax. Wikipedia's tax rates around the world should tell you that there's something odd about this. Murdoch even had a special tax credit for himself written into a US bill during the Clinton era. In the UK it was revealed that News International pays only 1.2% tax, and the governing Labour party refused to say anything on the issue. It is worrying that, in a democratic society, any single individual can influence public opinion so convincingly that even the governing left-leaning politicians, who would be his traditional enemies, must do underhand deals in order to gain his support and stay in power.

Well I'm not sure if it's "most", but it's a hell of a lot. Murdoch is the man The Independent called "so powerful that no politician dare take him on." According to Business Week:

his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175 newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered.

Murdoch's global corporations pay an average of 6% corporation tax. Wikipedia's tax rates around the world should tell you that there's something odd about this. Murdoch even had a special tax credit for himself written into a US bill during the Clinton era. In the UK it was revealed that News International pays only 1.2% tax, and the governing Labour party refused to say anything on the issue. It is worrying that, in a democratic society, any single individual can influence public opinion so convincingly that even the governing left-leaning politicians, who would be his traditional enemies, must do underhand deals in order to gain his support and stay in power.

Well I'm not sure if it's "most", but it's a hell of a lot. Murdoch is the man The Independent called "so powerful that no politician dare take him on." According to Business Week:

his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175 newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered.

Murdoch's global corporations pay an average of 6% corporation tax. Wikipedia's tax rates around the world should tell you that there's something odd about this. Murdoch even had a special tax credit for himself written into a US bill during the Clinton era. In the UK it was revealed that News International pays only 1.2% tax, and the governing Labour party refused to say anything on the issue. It is worrying that, in a democratic society, any single individual can influence public opinion so convincingly that even the governing left-leaning politicians, who would be his traditional enemies, must do underhand deals in order to gain his support and stay in power.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/star-wars-fake-fooled-the-world-1461979.html

I see a press release from the people who claim to have pulled it off... which doesn't mean a thing.

Well I don't know if you're being facetious but that already happens on a large scale in (at least) the English and Australian public health systems:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-gives-wrong-treatment-to-500-hospital-patients-a-week-456782.html

"Hospital staff gave the wrong treatment to the wrong patient on almost 25,000 occasions last year, leading to deaths, serious injury and long-term harm, official figures show. Errors in identifying patients led to at least 500 a week getting the wrong operation the wrong drugs or diagnostic tests, the National Patient Safety Agency said.

No breakdown of the figures was available yesterday to show how many had died or been seriously harmed and how many escaped injury. The agency admitted the total could be much higher because many incidents went unreported."

Here in Australia in the public system it's a pretty regular occurrence as well.

There seems to be quite a few people in the US at the moment who think Government run healthcare is some sort of magical kingdom where all problems are solved and everyone can let out a sigh of relief and never have to worry about getting sick again. They would be wrong. Now there's good and bad points to both public and private and some of the cheerleaders in the US need to get educated into just what they are getting themselves into. As there are some absolutely *terrible* public systems around and the US could easily wind up having one of the worst as centralised planning of public health care for a country of 30 million is a *hell* of a lot different than centrally planning for a country of 300 million.

We have comprehensive free public care here in Australia but also a thriving private industry and if government run health is as perfect as so many claim and private so inefficient and awful then surely the private hospitals here would have gone out of business years ago. Especially since the government caps the amount they are allowed to charge their customers *and* their customers ALSO have to pay for public that they don't use as well (small tax breaks but nowhere near 100%)...

The definition is not "up to the authorities".

Local authorities in the UK defined 955,000 as potential terrorists and searched them under the stop and search laws in 06/07. As far as I see it it's the officers and officials that enforce those laws who decide the definition. I mean if they don't arrest/search someone then they've defined them as NOT a potential terrorist and if they search them under stop and search then they've HAVE defined them as a potential terrorist.

When 169 of those stop and searches were investigated 88% were found to be unfounded and when the definition of a terrorist/suspected individual in law so all encompassing I find it quite incredible that only 12% were founded. You know it almost sounds like they maybe getting creative with their interpretation of the definition...

I got my stats from here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/steep-rise-in-stop-and-search-complaints-941727.html

There's also The Independent. It has a nice level of coverage with about the right depth and breadth for me. For that reason, I prefer it to the Guardian which also has a bit more of an axe to grind sometimes. But the Independent has gone downhill quite a bit over the last two years, showing an increasing agenda and bias. The commemorative Obama poster was pretty much the last straw for me, causing me to change from buying it every weekday to only when it has some interesting stories or columns (about 4 times a month).

Stalin thought to produce super-soldiers by producing these primate hybrids. In fact, Africans were involved in the experiment, because they were thought to be genetically more "compatible"(trailing behind the evolutionary timeline) . This is the best google link I could find: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stalins-space-monkeys-808978.html

Actually I believe one of the strongest correlations is with the prevalence of leaded petrol. The fact that heavy metals can cause violence and mental degeneration has been well known for a long time, and the 25 years preceding 1990 were notable primarily for a massive expansion in car travel and trucking based on leaded petrol. Lead exposure in children is highly correlated with violence when they grow up. Levels of violence started to slowly drop once leaded petrol started to be phased out and this has been observed across all developed countries, with Britain one of the last to phase out tetra-ethyl lead and one of the last to enjoy a drop in violent crime.

You're right about the Express being what it is. There are some other sources confirming the idea of "24-hour supervision", and encouraging other parents to snoop on them:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5888162/Worst-families-in-Britain-will-be-put-in-sin-bins.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-the-mad-democracy-of-snooping-1759137.html

Although I can't find any other sources about CCTV specifically.

Some more general information at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8165209.stm

It's not a matter of being a conspiracy theorist. Consider the facts: The study focuses on the nutritional value exclusively; not overall health benefits, of which nutritional value would be a factor. I don't know about you, but when I hear people talking about organic food, I've never heard it mentioned that one of their discriminating criteria is because it has a higher content of nutrients. Even advertisments and propaganda literature that promote organic products typically mention the fact that they contain no chemical enhancers or additional growth hormones, which can affect our metabolisms. It seems to me rather strange that these are precisely the factors that the study did not address.

You're either not living in the same world as I am, or you're being dishonest. Google seems to think the latter...

http://www.organicfoodinfo.net/
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/its-not-just-a-fad--organic-food-is-better-for-you-say-scientists-443086.html
http://cookingallergyfree.blogspot.com/2009/03/organic-food-has-more-nutrients.html
http://stanford.wellsphere.com/organic-food-article/organic-food-has-more-nutrients-here-are-some-stats/685668

There's more. I'm tired of copy+pasting them. Look it up, people say it all the time. It is a perfectly valid thing to study, even if it were the only thing they looked into.

The thing that annoys me the most is that people get all flustered over this. Why not just eat what you want to eat and leave others to do the same?

I think you're missing the point. I'm not arguing against the killing of animals (although I do respect those who take a stand against it). I said quite clearly, I'm not a vegetarian. I don't mind people eating meat.

The point is that we torture them for their entire, short, miserable lives. Lions don't imprison 823 million impala in huge concentrations, artificially increasing their weight to grow abnormally fast in shorter time spans and thereby crippling some 27% them, keeping them in their own shit for so long that they suffer burns on their legs.

And unless you consider humans to be just dumb beasts that simply cannot make ethical choices, saying it's "nature" is a cop out. We can change things. Compassion in World Farming is a good place to start.

Valencia, Spain is now the heart of Europe's "Fertility Tourism". When you go there, the streets have a high proportion of couples with asian babies. Valencia has the foremost fertility clinics in Spain, and renowned in all of Europe for their top research facilities like the "Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad" in Valencia Uni. Valencian men have amongst the poorest quality sperm in all Spain, possibly Europe. Valencia also happens to be the focal point of a massive basin where intense agricultural activity takes place, growing among other things, Oranges for Europe. All water tables lead to Valencia. Now discounting environmental effects and just judging by sterility levels, what _possible_ beneficial effects could outweigh having your population being sterile? Perhaps you mean profits? Please don't say the industry line of "feeding the worlds poor" - rice does that, and pushing genetically modified rice that is "resistant" to disease and needs companies like Monsanto to sell pesticides just to keep it alive and seeds to reproduce is creating a fragile monoculture, destroying poor communities. The world renowned Dr Vandana Shiva can educate you better based on decades of experience.

Phosphate fertilizers tend to have radioactivity from trace elements like polonium.

Some plants like tobacco concentrate these substances in their leaves. If you consume their leaves regularly, you might increase your chances of getting cancer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/01/opinion/01proctor.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-kept-quiet-on--polonium-role-in-cigarettes-907194.html

Quote: "There was a 1977 study that found, of the daily intake of the polonium 210 in a smoker, 77.3 per cent came from food and 17 per cent from tobacco."

Now depending on what the source animals have been eating, the manure used for organic fertilizer might have a lot less polonium than the usual phosphate stuff.

Thing is those phosphate fertilizers have been so popular that they're "everywhere", even your organic stuff might have as much polonium.

Lastly, even fully organic stuff can be radioactive. For example brazil nuts tend to concentrate radium (they also concentrate beneficial minerals).

There were nearly enough ( 19,000 * 250,000 = 4.75 billion, more than half the world's population, but we used them up in Iraq.

I think that's called the "prosecutor's fallacy." If there's a 1/10,000 chance of a child dying of cot death, and a woman has two children die of cot death, the prosecutor tells the jury that the chances could only be 1/10,000 * 1/10,000 = 1/100 million that both deaths were a cot death, so she must have murdered them.

This only works if the deaths are statistically independent, which they're not. The parents could have a genetic defect which cause 2 successive infants to die.

If each parent had 1 fatal recessive genetic defect, then 1/4 of their children would die, so the odds are 1/16 that two successive children would die. But actually a lot of fatal birth defects are more complicated than that simple mendelian pattern.

It's even more complicated because some mothers have been captured on video trying to smother their children.

This will end very badly for him.

Yes because here in the UK we always punish our criminally inclined police . . .

Your source thinks evolution is science and gives interviews to Rush Limbaugh. He also participated in a movie that:

• Misrepresents the views of interviewed scientists.
• Claims that anthropogenic global warming is a giant conspiracy to oppress Africa.
• Relies heavily on the well-debunked theory that solar activity can account for present-day warming and blatantly misrepresents data to support that view.
• Mislabels the axis of a graph, presenting data up to the early 80s as data up to 2000, because showing the actual data going that far would contradict its claims.
• Says that volcanoes produce more CO2 than man.
• Parrots the oft-repeated claim that scientists are just in it for the money. All of them, every single one. It's a giant conspiracy and nobody involved has come out and said anything.
• Is made by an immature, childish asshole.

And is in general laden with half-truths and outright lies.

Forgive me if I'm a tad bit skeptical.

Yes, UAE is very progressive. Anybody who chooses to expatriate and live in such a slave-state really can't complain if things go against them after a time. I would never trust a contract to work in Dubai, not only because it would violate my own moral code, but because anybody who chooses to live there is probably not someone I should trust.

I agree, I've seen this in the UK too. Lobbying groups such as the NSPCC put out claims such as 20,000 images a week (they're a charity, but they're also lobbying for new laws, such as criminalising possession of cartoons that appear to depict an under-18 year old).

And not just child porn - we have politicians such as Martin Salter making claims about a porn trade involving women from Guatemala being raped and murdered on camera, in order to push his law that criminalises possession of images involving consenting adults (even when the acts are staged).

Not to mention the scaremongering put out by Government-funded groups such as the POPPY project to do with sex trafficking, in order to support the Government's own proposed laws on consensual prostitution.

Not sure why your post would be marked insightful since it is pure speculation.

No, it's happened. Not sure why your post would be marked insightful since it is wrong...

There are plenty of known cases of police harassing photographers in public in the UK. A quick Google finds:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/27/pretend-cops-bully-v.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/18/uk-police-seize-amat.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/22/police-warn-uk-man-t.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/17/uk-cop-war-on-terror.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/photographers-criminalised-as-police-abuse-antiterror-laws-1228149.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7888301.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/12/photographers-anti-terror-laws

I've also experienced this first hand - I was taking a photograph, when suddenly an undercover policeman revealed himself to me, telling me I wasn't allowed to take photos without someone's permission, and demanding I delete the photo.

The London police have always been running a scaremongering advertising campaign against photographers:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/04/london-cops-declare.html

There are valid concerns with top secret items and the gov't not wanting you to take pictures of them.

Ir's not top secret if it's in public, and you're only taking a photo of what people can see in public with their own eyes! According to your original post, even material that can only be visible from the air is fair game.

Moreover, even if your argument is true, then you've still lost, as it means that your original assertion of "There is no expectation of privacy when you leave the protection of a building" isn't true in the first place. So which is it? Or are you conceding my point that buildings have more rights to privacy in public than people do? (Although note, my links do not just refer to buildings - people have been hassled for taking photos of police officers.)

For example if the gov't came out with a new plane that had some new, awesome and secret technology it makes sense they don't want you taking a picture of it.

Who cares what they want? I don't want to have a plane or CCTV taking photos of me all the time. But according to you, there's no expectation of privacy in a public place, when I want it or not. So if the Government wheels its so-called "secret" plane into public, then what it wants is irrelevant.

So people are just imagining the ice that is melting?

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7738

Now I'm not saying humans are 100% responsible, but you can't deny that ice all over the world that has existed for thousands of years is melting (well I guess you can, if you ignore the sheets of ice turning into water).

How about the animals arriving in the north that have never been seen there before?

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-and-unfamiliar-species-leave-inuit-lost-for-words-534866.html

Yeah you can deny it all you want, and we can argue all day about the causes (until it is too late for us to do anything about them), but it is indeed happening. Wouldn't it be a real bummer if this was part of a "normal" warming cycle and because of our stupidity we tipped things too far and made the earth uninhabitable?

Oh, and did I mention that Murdoch stopped broadcasting BBC News, which relied on a Newscorp satellite in China, because they refused to take part in the Tiananmen Square cover-up?

And how come it's taken almost 20 years of monopolisation of the UK pay-TV market before any government organisation has said anything? (Ofcom just announced results of its investigation)

Or maybe it's because an editor and a private investigator have already been jailed for their part in the hacking?

Or maybe because News International has already paid out over £1 million to settle court cases brought by some of the people they listened in on, on the condition that they can't say anything about the case or settlement to anybody else, ever? And News International has not denied any of the allegations?

The fact that a single, unelected individual can become as powerful as Murdoch is worrying in this day and age. After Tony Blair flew out to Australia to breakfast with Murdoch, the British tabloids switched overnight and Blair won the next election. According to the Independent, Murdoch is "so powerful that no politician dare take him on." According to Business Week:

"his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175
newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered."

So Murdoch owns many of the most influential TV stations and newspapers in the UK and US, and yet he pays almost no tax, only 6%. Murdoch even had a special tax credit for himself written into a US bill during the Clinton era. In the UK it was revealed that News International pays only 1.2% tax, and the governing Labour party refused to say anything on the issue.

It is worrying that, in a democratic society, any single individual can influence public opinion so convincingly that even the governing left-leaning politicians, who would be his traditional enemies, must do underhand deals in order to gain his support and stay in power.

Or maybe it's because an editor and a private investigator have already been jailed for their part in the hacking?

Or maybe because News International has already paid out over £1 million to settle court cases brought by some of the people they listened in on, on the condition that they can't say anything about the case or settlement to anybody else, ever? And News International has not denied any of the allegations?

The fact that a single, unelected individual can become as powerful as Murdoch is worrying in this day and age. After Tony Blair flew out to Australia to breakfast with Murdoch, the British tabloids switched overnight and Blair won the next election. According to the Independent, Murdoch is "so powerful that no politician dare take him on." According to Business Week:

"his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175
newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered."

So Murdoch owns many of the most influential TV stations and newspapers in the UK and US, and yet he pays almost no tax, only 6%. Murdoch even had a special tax credit for himself written into a US bill during the Clinton era. In the UK it was revealed that News International pays only 1.2% tax, and the governing Labour party refused to say anything on the issue.

It is worrying that, in a democratic society, any single individual can influence public opinion so convincingly that even the governing left-leaning politicians, who would be his traditional enemies, must do underhand deals in order to gain his support and stay in power.

Or maybe it's because an editor and a private investigator have already been jailed for their part in the hacking?

Or maybe because News International has already paid out over £1 million to settle court cases brought by some of the people they listened in on, on the condition that they can't say anything about the case or settlement to anybody else, ever? And News International has not denied any of the allegations?

The fact that a single, unelected individual can become as powerful as Murdoch is worrying in this day and age. After Tony Blair flew out to Australia to breakfast with Murdoch, the British tabloids switched overnight and Blair won the next election. According to the Independent, Murdoch is "so powerful that no politician dare take him on." According to Business Week:

"his satellites deliver TV programs in five continents, all but dominating Britain, Italy, and wide swaths of Asia and the Middle East. He publishes 175
newspapers, including the New York Post and The Times of London. In the U.S., he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations that reach more than 40% of the country...His cable channels include fast-growing Fox News, and 19 regional sports channels. In all, as many as one in five American homes at any given time will be tuned into a show News Corp. either produced or delivered."

So Murdoch owns many of the most influential TV stations and newspapers in the UK and US, and yet he pays almost no tax, only 6%. Murdoch even had a special tax credit for himself written into a US bill during the Clinton era. In the UK it was revealed that News International pays only 1.2% tax, and the governing Labour party refused to say anything on the issue.

It is worrying that, in a democratic society, any single individual can influence public opinion so convincingly that even the governing left-leaning politicians, who would be his traditional enemies, must do underhand deals in order to gain his support and stay in power.

Indeed - and the episode Proper Condom Use shows Cartman wanking off a dog (Red Rocket!). This would come under one of the clauses in the planned UK law for criminalising cartoon "child" images ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/graphic-artists-condemn-plans-to-ban-erotic-comics-1652270.html ).

Of course, it won't be Trey Parker, or anyone showing it in the UK, who gets done. It'll be the guy who has the clip on his computer when the police raid his home for some irrelevant other thing that he's not guilty of (or perhaps he sends his PC in for repair). "What's this? Child porn! It doesn't matter that the original was legal to produce, you're obviously some kind of pervert."

Same in the UK. And not just some mistake in the law, the law on child porn was explicitly raised in 2003.

Soon, it will also be illegal to possess a drawing of a 17 year old even though you can legally do it for real.

As another oddity: the law on "child" porn (or as it should be known, under-18 porn), has a defence for married couples. The new law on drawings - despite the insistence from the Government and lobbyists that this is merely applying existing child porn to drawings - doesn't have this defence. So, you can have sex with your wife, take a photograph of your wife, but making a sexy drawing of her will be illegal!

In fact, a 17 year old drawing a naughty picture of his or herself will mean they face a three year prison sentence. So much for protecting children! Child charities such as the NSPCC may claim they are trying to help children, but Dr Zoe Hilton wants your children locked up for drawing a picture of themselves.

I entirely agree - even if we accepted that there should be a law on fictional child porn (which I don't), how on earth is an image, where the sexual features are clearly adult, counted as child porn? That's not fictional child porn, it's adult porn.

If the argument is that getting off on a child's face is wrong, then are we going to criminalise all images of children? (I suspect that Miley was hardly shy of being photographed in the public eye, when it came to following her million dollar career...) And if the argument is that we're criminalising the person because we think he was fantasising about Miley, then we've clearly crossed the line into Thought Crime.

This reminds me of the law that the UK is passing ( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/graphic-artists-condemn-plans-to-ban-erotic-comics-1652270.html ) that explicitly covers not just images appearing to be under-18s, but also *adults*, if they have some "predominant features" of someone under 18.

I am not a student of the Psychiatric discipline. I have learned through my experiences and reflection to manage my thoughts. I was 'diagnosed' with Schizophrenia a few years ago, and took Risperdal for about 2 1/2 years. During the first six months of the 2.5 years, my dosage increased from 0.5 mg to 4 mg. I stopped taking the medicine in October, 2008. The voices returned in about 2-4 weeks. "People with schizophrenia have reduced brain receptors for the dopamine messenger. " from: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/unlocked-the-secrets-of-schizophrenia-1727987.html I believe that this is inconsistent with 'facts' that my ex-psychiatrist told me ( although I could be remembering wrong, which just creates the need to investigate the facts that scientists have found by means that, well, I do not possess knowledge of). I thought that Schizophrenia is a result of an overproduction of dopamine, oh, oops, now I get it.\ I think the Risperdal is supposed to suppress the production of dopamine, perhaps the surplus of the messenger creates the hallucination. For me, the hallucinations are (attempting mental reconstruction to change the present state of is to past tense) my interpretation of the source of the voices. I used to think that other people's thoughts were being transmitted into my mind. I honestly believed it was, just because the 'hear-think' (that's my term for the voices) always had personal information about me, and well, I was around people that would have facts to produce the analysis (negative at first...). I used to conclude that the voices were not invoked by my volition. Well, yeah, OK, whatever, let's shoot that one down. How do I know that it isn't just my brain using the presence of the those around me, to help me realize new perceptions on past situations in order to affect my future choices in a way that I perceive will increase my self-image. Typing of self-image, maybe my mind/soul/etc is just creating a way to reflect so that my volition doesn't have to be the naysayer. With my mind operating this way, I can now respond to the critique of the voices, as if I am holding a conversation in my mind. Oh yeah, one interesting thing about hear-think is that is seems to be occurring outside of my body, in a variety of locations in space. I hear male and female voices, with classic gender roles intact, with a varying degree of acuity in expression, tone, knowledge, and insight. I think the longest phrase lasted between 1-2 minutes. Another unusual occurrence is how in sync the voices can be with my surroundings, meaning that the voices will match body language of other people, and the hear-think seems to be originating from their bodies. I think that I am just imagining an interpretation. the real struggle for me was learning not to trust the voices by using scientific method, by testing their validity against family and friends. have heart.

problems they raise are real.

No, they're not. Really. Only the fears they whip up.

I mean, this is a party that doesn't believe you can be black and Welsh. Who used their first major media interview after winning seats in the EU election to highlight the 'real problem' that the actor playing Friar Tuck in the current BBC TV series is black.

And I'm sorry, but the segment they represent is no bigger than the batshit insane fringe it always was - their vote numbers actually dropped from last time round. The only reason they got anywhere was because Labour voters all stayed at home. Hardly surprising as the Labour campaign was written on the back of a fag packet.

But now they're elected, you see, they have to play by the rules. Including allowing non-white people to join the party. So, here's what we should do: have a couple of hundred people from ethnic minorities join the party. And then the rest of us join, and elect them into all the leadership positions. And change the party name to "Bloated Navy Pterodactyls." Which would be particularly amusing as most BNP members wouldn't be able to work out that the last word starts with P.

No doubt you thought that was a cute quote and copy-pasted it.

Nope. Original.

Please provide some proof that Hoover was a cross-dresser other than Anthony Summers' discredited book.

Citation.

"I don't think anyone outside of Iran knows the truth.

Hell, I doubt many people inside Iran know the truth. "

What he said. Twitter is ablaze with the revolution and attempts to sort fact from fiction. One of the accepted "facts" is that embassies are taking in the wounded.

A buddy of mine is the guy that conncted Iran to the net in the 90s. He's over there still and says this is a complete myth.

There is *so* much misinformation now it almost lends credence to the notion the CIA is doing it again.

See also:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-in-tehran-fantasy-and-reality-make-uneasy-bedfellows-1710762.html

Agreed. The sad thing is that censorship of the things you list aren't even just the old examples, but people continue to try today - possession of sexual imagery in comics risks you being convicted for child porn, if a character merely appears under 18, in the US, and Australia, and soon in the UK (even though the age of consent is 16 here, the law will cover depictions of 17 year olds). We in the UK now have the BBFC which can censor material even for adults (set up in 1984, before it was just guidelines). Not to mention that some kinds of adult porn are now illegal to simply possess in the UK, and the police have decided to try again at prosecuting someone for writing a fictional story (the trial is due to start 29 June).

It's a paradox: I'd like to think that public attitudes on media are becoming more liberal, but it seems the laws being passed are becoming stricter.

Here's another good article via The Independent from a reporter who defied the ban on reporters to go out and see what it's like on the streets:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-fear-has-gone-in-a-land-that-has-tasted-freedom-1706912.html

Personally I am checking The Guardian and BBC News, CNN.com (which I agree is pretty horrible),MSNBC, The Independent, Wikinews, The Daily Beast (and Slashdot of course) and some random ones. I'd be interested to know which sources people are using to get news about the situation in Iran, or for that matter other international events of interest. Also I find it helpful to try to read around to get news and articles from different perspectives and not rely too heavily on one single source.

2) All UFO related files from 1967 (when it peaked) have been "deemed" classified and the Eurocrats in collusion with MoD has voted NEVER to release those details.

This, ladies and gents, is fascinating. Ordinarily, to varying degrees, governments use fear to keep the populace in check and maintain the status quo. This is every government, to an extent. To state that doesn't make me a conspiracy nut, does it? Even honourable causes use fear as a motivator. So. Why surpress this?

There is a school of thought which says "In order for people to set aside their differences, they need a common enemy". E.g. If France started saturation bombing Northern Ireland tomorrow, you can bet they'd pull together. It works to a global scale. Movie metaphors: Watchmen or, more alieny but cheesy example, Independence Day.

My point (I have one) is: Surpressed forever... is it us they really fear?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-military-tells-jack-bauer-cut-out-the-torture-scenes--or-else-436143.html

"The United States Military Academy at West Point yesterday confirmed that Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan recently travelled to California to meet producers of the show, broadcast on the Fox channel. He told them that promoting illegal behaviour in the series - apparently hugely popular among the US military - was having a damaging effect on young troops.

According to the New Yorker magazine, Gen Finnegan, who teaches a course on the laws of war, said of the producers: "I'd like them to stop. They should do a show where torture backfires... The kids see it and say, 'If torture is wrong, what about 24'?"

Every 20 something guy with a uniform and a gun from Campus Cop to 1LT now thinks they are Jack Bauer. Yes, this is a problem.

"Good thing the FCC isn't in the UK"

The direct equivalent of the FCC in the UK is Ofcom.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/

That securedhome.co.uk article has nothing to do with the scope of Ofcom or FCC as both are about enforcing adherence to legal broadcasting. (I seem to remember there is something in the broadcasting act to allow entry into homes to check equipment, (e.g. to stop pirate radio stations), but even if they cannot there are many other organisations in the UK that can enter the home for many reasons).

As for organisations who have the right to enter UK homes, the number of them is growing all the time...

e.g.
Parking bailiffs may win right to enter homes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1548145/Parking-bailiffs-may-win-right-to-enter-homes.html

Bailiffs may get extra powers to enter homes
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bailiffs-may-get-extra-powers-to-enter-homes-1206531.html

Official snoopers get extra powers to enter homes as 13 new laws 'boost Big Brother state'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-513973/Official-snoopers-extra-powers-enter-homes-13-new-laws-boost-Big-Brother-state.html

That's just a few examples in the UK. Just look up anything Jacqui Smith is behind, because she is at the centre of the growing Police State in the UK.

This article made me wonder what had happened to the stolen one... it was returned, after all.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tvs-paxman-sent-stolen-enigma-machine-634351.html

Well - first we have doubt about Tesla's surviving to become a museum, and now this. However it goes for BP - and I do hope that it can be saved as a museum, here's a little reminder of a site that many /.ers know about - http://www.xat.nl/enigma-e/index.htm

The spirit of the machine will continue to thrive, it seems. I hope the same is true of BP, where Turing & company changed things for so many.

Your average working-class John cannot afford to pay for the regulatory overhead (hehehe) and taxes that it would take to legalize it and turns to the street.

The German sex trade model disproves this so thoroughly that it's not worth arguing about.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/brothels-cut-prices-to-beat-the-recession-1674400.html

like they just did in Greece...

I'm not all that impressed by The Guardian. Try http://www.independent.co.uk/ - some of the best reporting anywhere is done by those guys...

as yes there actually ARE some things, like child porn, that SHOULD be censored, according to ANY ideology

Right! Life is never more complicated than an ultimatum!

yet you see people all the time, especially on slashdot, actually saying "country A censors child porn so how can it criticize another country for censoring political opinion?

Really? ALL the time? ESPECIALLY on slashdot? Lets see two examples. Not half-assed examples that might kinda sorta mean what you say if you looked at them from the most biased perspective, nor examples of people trolling, I want full-ass examples. Gotta be pretty easy to come up with since they happen ALL the time, ESPECIALLY here. Right?

Yes much better to live in an autocracy infamous for it's treatment of foreign labour and it's rather seedy recent history than the Largest Democracy In The World!

If you decide against, let Magacorp know immediately. Then get back to work, pronto. Looking back, second thoughts and re-negotiations are distractions, too. Let Megacorp know that your decision is final.

And get working on market share fast. If megacorp is Microsoft , they have a history of taking what they don't buy.

There. Fixed that for you.

Other than those typos, you're spot on. The offer to buy is often more a threat for extortion. See Sendo and a long list of corpses. Over the years, MS has taken what was a diverse and thriving industry and killed it through secret APIs and undocumented formats and protocols, price dumping and giveaways, and predatory marketing.

Well if China says it's safe, that's good enough for me!

Their safety record speaks for itself.
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/10/product_safety.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/fury-as-china-baby-milk-scandal-escalates-934993.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/08/19/MNV1RKN0L.DTL
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/business/worldbusiness/19toys.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/series/toxicpipeline/index.html

The second part is just nonsense though, the kind of tripe put out by the Daily Mail.

Presumably you are referring to this Mail article which is in fact referring to a Daily Telegraph interview with Lord Ashdown the former leader of the Liberal Democrats? This has also been reported by the Times and the Independent, making your comment somewhat disingenuous.

The Labour Party won't split into two, no one (except Daily Mail writers) is even suggesting that.

According to the Telegraph article Lord Ashdown is suggesting just that. Of course no one knows just yet how many Labour MP's have discussed this yet, but a huge election defeat may make this happen.

The UK does not have massive debt, it's actually still a lot lower than most other developed counties (including France, Germany and Japan). It's big by our standards but put in perspective it's not particularly unusual, in fact our previous low levels of government borrowing were unusual.

The Labour government has been spending like a drunken sailor in port. This has been widely reported both in the UK and abroad. While the UK may have less government debt than other nations the next UK government is going to have to cut back on spending on a large scale.

At the moment a poll of polls suggests that the Labour party would remain in power were an election called tomorrow

Please provide a link to the poll you refer to.

I'm no fan of labour, and Jacqui Smith is a particularly nasty, authoritarian powermonger, but I try not to delude myself by believing everything I read in the right wing press.

I go further and view all press reports with scepticism.

If you were the Italian government wouldn't you rather go after 4 guys running a website than the mafia?

Especially so since the Italian government now is the Mafia.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/egypt-orders-slaughter-of-all-pigs-over-swine-flu-1676090.html

Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precautionary measure against the spread of swine flu... Agriculture Minister Amin Abaza told reporters that farmers would be allowed to sell the pork meat so there would be no need for compensation.

Yeah, what's the price of pork in a vastly flooded market. Other stories on the subject report riots by the pig farmers and also note that the WHO says that you can't catch it from eating pork. This is more a case of the non-pork eating religious majority using this as an excuse to crap on the pork eating religious minority (and 'unclean' pig farmers.)