The US gov hasn't got a good track record when it comes to international law; they kidnap, torture and kill people with impunity.

Conservatives ‘screw’ Obama by modifying trucks to spew toxic black smoke



Slightly off-topic but it's good to see the rightwing stickin' it to the man 


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/07/rolling-coal-conservatives-screw-obama-by-modifying-trucks-to-spew-toxic-black-smoke/


Conservatives who detest President Barack Obama and EPA clean air regulations are modifying their vehicles to purposefully spew black smoke into the atmosphere. So-called “coal rollers” install smoke stacks and special equipment in their diesel trucks that makes the engine think that it needs more fuel, resulting in plumes of black smoke. According to Slate’s Dave Weigel, the phenomenon is not new, but it is becoming more popular among conservatives who want to protest the president and his efforts to clean up the environment.

“I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all,” a smoke stack seller in Wisconsin told Weigel. “If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not. I hear a lot of that.”

“To get a single stack on my truck—that’s my way of giving them the finger,” he added. “You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.”

In June, Vocativ reported on the trend of “coal rollers” using their toxic exhaust as revenge against “nature nuffies” who drive environmentally friendly cars, like the Toyota Prius.

“The feeling around here is that everyone who drives a small car is a liberal,” a South Carolina truck owner named Ryan explained. “I rolled coal on a Prius once just because they were tailing me.”

“It’s bad for the environment. That’s definitely true,” he admitted. “And some of the kids that have diesel trucks can look like tools. And you can cause a wreck, but everything else about it is pretty good.”

The Clean Air Task Force estimates that pollutants from diesel vehicles “lead to 21,000 premature deaths each year and create a cancer risk that is seven times greater than the combined risk of all 181 other air toxics tracked by the EPA.”

Former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove says extremists are now focused on Middle East and giving them publicity in west is counter-productive.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/07/islamist-terror-threat-out-proportion-former-mi6-chief-richard-dearlove





The government and media have blown the Islamist terrorism threat out of proportion, giving extremists publicity that is counter-productive, a former head of Britain's intelligence service has said.

Sir Richard Dearlove, chief of MI6 at the time of the Iraq invasion, said that Britons spreading "blood-curdling" messages on the internet should be ignored. He told an audience in London on Monday there had been a fundamental change in the nature of Islamist extremism since the Arab spring. It had created a major political problem in the Middle East but the west, including Britain, was only "marginally affected". Unlike the threat posed by al-Qaida before and in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks 13 years ago, the west was not the main target of the radical fundamentalism that created Isis, (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Dearlove said.
Addressing the Royal United Services Institute, the London-based security and defence thinktank, he said the conflict was "essentially one of Muslim on Muslim".

He made it clear he believed the way the British government and the media were giving the extremists the "oxygen of publicity" was counter-productive. The media were making monsters of "misguided young men, rather pathetic figures" who were getting coverage "more than their wildest dreams", said Dearlove, adding: "It is surely better to ignore them."

The former MI6 chief, now master of Pembroke College, Cambridge University, was speaking to a prepared text hours after the ITV programme Good Morning Britain broadcast an interview with a Briton who had appeared in an Isis video saying he was recruited through the internet and was prepared to die for his cause.

Abdul Raqib Amin, who was brought up in Aberdeen, appeared in an online video last month with two men from Cardiff urging western Muslims to join the fighting with Isis. He told Good Morning Britain: "I left the UK to fight for the sake of Allah, to give everything I have for the sake of Allah. One of the happiest moments in my life was when the plane took off from Gatwick airport. I was so happy, as a Muslim you cannot live in the country of kuffars [non-believers]."

Amin added: "I left the house with the intention not to go back, I'm going to stay and fight until the khilafah [rule of Islam] is established or I die."
Dearlove said he was concerned about the influence of the media on the government's security policy. It was time to take what he called a "more proportionate approach to terrorism".

MI5, MI6, and GCHQ devoted a greater share of their resources to countering Islamist fundamentalism than they did to the Soviet Union during the cold war, or to Irish terrorism that had cost the lives of more UK citizens and British soldiers than al-Qaida had done, Dearlove noted.

A massive reaction after the 9/11 attacks was inevitable, he said, but it was not inevitable the 2001 attacks would continue to "dominate our way of thinking about national security". There had been a "fundamental change" in the nature of the threat posed by Islamist extremists. Al-Qaida had largely failed to mount the kind of attacks in the US and UK it had threatened after 9/11.

It was time, he said to move away from the "distortion" of the post-9/11 mindset, make "realistic risk assessments" and think rationally about the causes of the crisis in the Middle East.
The al-Qaida franchises that had emerged since had largely "fallen back" on other Muslim countries, Dearlove said. What was happening now was a long-awaited war between Sunni and Shia Muslims that would have only a ripple effect on Britain, he suggested.

Pointing the finger at Sunni Saudi Arabia, Dearlove said the Isis surge in Iraq had to be the consequence of "sustained funding".
He made it clear he believed more attention should be paid to security threats from Europe and China, which he warned was heading inexorably into the paradox of a "strong government but weak state".

Exactly, union membership in the US had been declining for decades now, the only reason we have a minimum wage in the UK is due to pressure from the unions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States

"In 2013 there were 14.5 million members in the U.S., compared with 17.7 million in 1983. In 2013, the percentage of workers belonging to a union in the United States (or total labor union "density") was 11.3%, compared to 20.1% in 1983.[1] From a global perspective, the density in 2010 was 11.4% in the U.S., 18.4% in Germany, 27.5% in Canada, and 70% in Finland.[2] Union membership in the private sector has fallen under 7%[3] — levels not seen since 1932".

This, I remember back on the Quark logo contest, one dude had over 100 sockpuppets voting for his design.

Doesn't help having scumbags like Rupert Murdoch's monopoly over the media:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/01/rupert-murdochs-interest-in-time-warner-fuels-industry-speculation/

Not really that bothered, tried some fluoride free toothpaste once and it tasted like shit  

Read on some tinfoil sites that it can lower your IQ, more than likely bullshit.

The US press freedom ranking (including the UK) has gone down over the last few years though we're still a lot better than say China and most parts of the Middle East.

https://image.guim.co.uk/ni/1398941918470/Press_Freedom_map.pdf

Koch Industries and ExxonMobil were two of the largest supporters of climate science denial, along with hundreds of conservative think tanks / foundations.



Taken from: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-koch-brothers-reveals-funders-climate.html

....."Conservative foundations have bank-rolled denial. The largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial are a number of well-known conservative foundations, such as the Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. These foundations promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.

    Koch and ExxonMobil have recently pulled back from publicly visible funding. From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding climate-change denial organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions.

    Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to denial organizations by the Donors Trust has risen dramatically. Donors Trust is a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation now provides about 25% of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.

    Most funding for denial efforts is untraceable. Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75% of the inc."

MediaCrush is a decent file host for video, audio and images.

https://mediacru.sh

"Spit on your own and you can't do anything, but if you all spit together you can drown the bastards"

                                                                                                                                    Bob Crow

The bailouts were corporate welfare, dirty rich benefit scroungers of the highest order.

"All in all, average American and taxpayers are getting net benefit from the bailout and the wealth fare system"

lol do you honestly believe that? Would love to see how you figured that out.

Yeah unfortunately there's quite a lot of selfish Ayn Rand worshippers on this forum, I think a dedicated bitcoin forum for non-profit / charity organisations would be a great idea.

Also doesn't help that increasing numbers of the US police are war vets who are used to fighting in warzones, what could go wrong with trained killers upholding the law in a civilian environment?

No doubt China has a huge military (and Russia), China's People's Liberation Army alone has 1.6 million personnel. Think the big game-changer will be when China gets more aircraft carriers.

Fail to see why the colour of his skin has anything to do with his actions as the Prez of the US?

I've critisized Obama pretty much from day 1, I do think some of his leftwing supporters are in denial, especially considering his hawkish foreign policies / drone strikes etc.

I read a while back that they had estimated China's defence budget will overtake the US within 20 years, still got a fair way to go, think they've only got one warship. Wont be long til Fox News starts screaming about the yellow peril 

In the words of Ill Bill "Society is brainwashed"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjNmGsQ16Vg

Aye it's a bit sensationalist but the UK does have a problem with sexual violence / rape etc.

Dank, send us a list of all the shit you take. Sound like you're on some next level high