Sometimes, it seems, misguided, institutional obsessions with “human rights” leads to common sense being abandoned. Surely it cannot be that the freedom to behave irrationally and kill people is considered a “human right”?
Why would an “asylum seeker” whose application had been rejected and who had been served with a deportation order be expected to behave in a rational manner?
Why would a person with a high risk of behaving in an irrational manner be quite free to wander into an IKEA store, pick up some knives and kill two quite unrelated, innocent people?
Monday’s attack saw a mother and her adult son stabbed to death at a store in the central town of Västerås, with police arresting two Eritrean asylum seekers. One of the suspects, a 35-year-old man, was found at the scene with serious knife injuries while the second, aged 23, was waiting at a bus stop outside Ikea.
According to Aftonbladet’s website, the images appear to show that the perpetrator was the injured Eritrean who was evacuated to hospital in critical condition. The footage shows a man grabbing two knives from the kitchenware section “several seconds before the murder”, then attacking the two shoppers, a 55-year-old woman and her 28-year-old son, the paper said. “The attack ends when the alleged murderer stabs himself in the stomach,” it said.
…….. Swedish media reports said on Wednesday that the injured man had been handed a deportation order which would have returned him to Italy. The day before the attack he had met with immigration officials in Västerås to discuss his case, the reports said.
It is not clear what role the second man arrested played.
What were they thinking? Presumably the prime suspect had a right to appeal the deportation decision. Would it really have been an infringement of his human rights to curtail his freedom to behave irrationally?
CBS News: The Environmental Protection Agency is taking the blame for a huge leak of contaminated water into a Colorado river. Government officials said Sunday three million gallons spilled into the Animas River. That is three times larger than the original estimate. The once-clean waterway that was a popular place for kayakers is now filled with yellow, contaminated water.
Three million gallons of toxic waste are now pushing down two rivers that cross Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
Last Wednesday a crew working for the Environmental Protection Agency accidentally breached a dam holding back heavy metals used in gold mining. Colorado’s governor declared a disaster.
EPA caused pollution colorado August 2015 – cbs news
The EPA had no alternative to taking the blame. After all they did do it. A scapegoat will no doubt be found but no EPA heads will roll.
That most of the US media want the Trump campaign to die is fairly clear. That the Republican party establishment are in a little panic about Trump becoming the Republican nominee or – even worse – being an independent third candidate is also fairly clear. In fact, for the Republican party an independent Trump could be worse than a Trump nomination. There has been more than a whiff of wishful thinking in the headlines over the last 3 days. But the latest NBC post-debate poll shows that the anti-Trump spinning and even the Megyn Kelly hullabaloo have done nothing to dent his commanding lead in the polls.
Despite a debate in which Fox moderators repeatedly attacked him and three days of hostile press coverage which came after it, Donald Trump remains in a commanding lead in the race for the Republican nomination, according to a poll released Sunday evening by NBC News. The results confound weekend press coverage suggesting Trump’s campaign was foundering.
The online poll was conducted by the Analytics Unit of NBC News and the University of Pennsylvania’s Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies over a 24 hour period from Friday evening into Saturday, thus coming entirely after the debate on Thursday evening.
According to poll, Trump has the support of 23% of Republican voters, followed by Ted Cruz with 13%, Ben Carson with 11%, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina tied at 8% and Jeb Bush and Scott Walker at 7%. The poll showed Trump essentially unchanged from a poll taken one week ago in which he garnered 22% support.
Numerous commentators speculated over the weekend that Trump’s public spat with Fox News host Megyn Kelly might finally spell the end of his surge in the polls. Top Republicans openly cheered his apparent downfall. But NBC’s weekend poll suggests that assumption was misplaced.
The media headlines were quite clear in their hopes. For some reason the UK Guardian is very perturbed about Trump and is quite openly anti-Trump in its wishful thinking (though it is schizophrenic in its views about the UK’s very own left-wing clown in Jeremy Corbyn):
But a formally “recognised clown” – as Trump clearly is – has an “authorisation” to be as politically incorrect as he wishes. He is now capturing the attention of a large section of the disaffected Republican electorate and attacking him for being politically incorrect can only be counter-productive. Any candidates who wish now to displace him need to create their own independent story-lines which can live their own lives.
As in any show, a clown is not necessarily just a B-act. An accepted clown is not susceptible to ridicule. I suspect that Trump cannot be shot down by the conventional bullets of political correctness. He now can only be over-taken by a “faster” candidate with a better story.
The media, every Democrat, his Republican challengers and even the Republican establishment are trying to represent, in one way or another, that the clown Donald Trump did not win the debate. They are in denial, and just cannot admit that he won the event by ignoring debate. He changed the game to be to be about the occasion and not about winning debating points. Twenty four million tuned in to the event.
HuffPo: In terms of total viewers, the debate was the highest-rated non-sports cable telecast of all time, according to Nielsen data — with the staggering viewership shattering expectations of what was already a highly-anticipated event. The telecast also made history for Fox: it was the most highly-rated broadcast of the network’s 20-year history, according to CNN Money.
That level of interest is entirely to Trump’s credit. He was chasing exposure – not some brownie debating points – and he won. Resoundingly. Neither the moderators nor his challengers had any idea of how to handle him. The moderator Megyn Kelly attacked him with a barrage of political correctness. How stupid was that? She came off as being sanctimonious and he could demonstrate – again – “that he speaks his mind”.
For the first time in many years I observe in the US that “speaking your mind” is beginning to trump being politically correct. (Sorry). And not just in the US. I suspect the pendulum is beginning to swing and there is a realisation – globally – that sanctimonious, self-righteous, “political correctness” is not an acceptable excuse to avoid asking the questions you don’t want to hear the answer to.
Donald Trump has formally taken on the role of being “clown”. And in a circus the role of “clown” is not so unimportant. In fact the “clown” is very often the star of the show. Trying to make a “clown” look ridiculous is doomed to help the clown perform his act. Trying to get a clown to be serious only demonstrates stupidity and can only backfire. A clown does not need to be politically correct. In fact to be politically incorrect is not just expected of him, it his calling-card. He feeds on the indignation of others. The others and the media are just becoming his “straight men”, and “straight men” are never the star event.
I observe that nearly all the media – and even the Republican media – are playing down what Trump achieved. But they are playing into his hands. Erick Erickson of RedState has “disinvited” him from the Red State gathering. He is by his own admission being politically correct in his own way. But he is trying to make Red State part of the establishment and the disinvitation too only plays into Trump’s hands.
The post debate polls will be available next week and I will not be at all surprised to see Trump well ahead of the others again. The one post-debate poll I have seen shows him not just the clear winner but so far ahead of the others as to be embarrassing – for the others.
Here’s an article from the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health about the implied stresses and strains of being a young father. It seems that men who become fathers under the age of 25 have a higher risk of dying in middle-age than those who become fathers when older. It seems fairly obvious that those between 30 and 44 are far more likely to have stable economics in the home and the wherewithal to support a family, than young men of 25. Considering also that the development of the cognitive faculties – especially those of judgement – are not fully developed till the age of 25, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that the stresses of fatherhood are more debilitating on the young than on the older. But I had not thought that these stresses were sufficient to be visible as an increase in the mid-life mortality rate.
The conclusions that I draw are that young men under 25 are first to be discouraged from setting up families. Secondly young fathers probably need more societal support for some 4 or 5 years if they do take on the burdens of a family. Possibly young fathers received far more support from their parents and relatives in the pre-industrial world.
“the association between young fatherhood and mid life mortality is likely to be causal”
Elina Einiö, Jessica Nisén, Pekka Martikainen. Is young fatherhood causally related to midlife mortality? A sibling fixed-effect study in Finland. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2015; jech-2015-205627 DOI: 10.1136/jech-2015-205627
Becoming a dad before the age of 25 is linked to a heightened risk of dying early in middle age, indicates a sibling study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. The published evidence suggests that men who father a child in early life have poorer health and die earlier than men who delay fatherhood, but family environment, early socioeconomic circumstances and genes are thought to explain this association.
In a bid to tease out the underlying factors, the researchers used a 10 per cent nationally representative sample of households drawn from the 1950 Finnish Census. This involved more than 30,500 men born between 1940 and 1950, who became fathers by the age of 45. The dads were tracked from the age of 45 until death or age 54, using mortality data for 1985-2005. Some 15% of this sample had fathered their first child by the age of 22; 29% at ages 22-24; 18% when they were 25-26;19% between the ages of 27and 29; and 19% between the ages of 30 and 44. The average age at which a man became a dad was 25-26, and men in this age bracket were used as a reference.
During the 10 year monitoring period around 1 in 20 of the dads died. The primary causes of death were ischaemic heart disease (21%) and diseases related to excess alcohol (16%). Men who were dads by the time they were 22 had a 26% higher risk of death in mid-life than those who had fathered their first child when they were 25 or 26. Similarly, men who had their first child between the ages of 22 and 24 had a 14% higher risk of dying in middle age.
These findings were independent of factors in adulthood or year of birth.
At the other end of the scale, those who became dads between the ages of 30 and 44 had a 25% lower risk of death in middle age than those who fathered their first child at 25 or 26. The risk of death for men fathering their first child between the ages of 27 and 29 was the same as that of men in the reference group. In a subsidiary sample of 1124 siblings, brothers who had become dads by the age of 22 were 73% more likely to die early than their siblings who had fathered their first child at the age of 25 or 26. Similarly, those who entered parenthood at 22-24 were 63% more likely to die in mid life. …… Once again, men who became dads between the ages of 30 and 44 had a 22% lower risk of a mid-life death, although this was statistically the same as those who fathered their first child at 25/26.
“The findings of our study suggest that the association between young fatherhood and mid life mortality is likely to be causal,” write the researchers. “The association was not explained by unobserved early life characteristics shared by brothers or by certain adult characteristics known to be associated both with fertility timing and mortality,” they explain.
They go on to say that although having a child as a young adult is thought to be less disruptive for a man than it is for a woman, taking on the combined role of father, partner and breadwinner may cause considerable psychological and economic stress for a young man and deprive him of the ability to invest in his own wellbeing. The researchers point out that while these factors may not be so important for today’s generation of dads, they may nevertheless experience other types of stressors.
Even growing up in a family which liked its food very spicy I was regarded as being extreme in my like of fiery dishes. The story is – and I have only some very vague reflections of this – that I sucked my thumb as a child for a very long time. After my parents gave up on their attempts to stop this depraved habit my grandmother took charge. She wrapped my thumb every morning in a gauze bandage steeped in powdered red chillies. This continued all through one winter she spent with us when I was about two. She was “accused” by mother of “child cruelty” but she was determined to bring the depraved child back into line. Apparently I did not cry or complain – unnatural child that I was. Only my right thumb was wrapped in the chillie-bandage but it did not get me to stop or even to shift to my left thumb. In any event this “torture” went on for about 3 months but did not cure me of sucking my thumb (and that continued, I am told, till I was almost four). Thumb-sucking came to its natural end in due course but by then red chillies had been established as my “natural comforter”. I no longer suck my thumb, even at times of great stress – but I do find a blisteringly fiery meal strangely comforting.
But perhaps my grandmother has helped prolong my life. A new study in the BMJ reports on an observational study which makes no claims about cause and effect but merely reports a correlation between the eating of spicy food and a decrease in mortality.
Jun Lv et al. Consumption of spicy foods and total and cause specific mortality: population based cohort study. BMJ, 2015 DOI:10.1136/bmj.h3942
Press Release: Previous research has suggested that beneficial effects of spices and their bioactive ingredient, capsaicin, include anti-obesity, antioxidant, anti-inflammation and anticancer properties. So an international team led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences examined the association between consumption of spicy foods as part of a daily diet and the total risk and causes of death. They undertook a prospective study of 487,375 participants, aged 30-79 years, from the China Kadoorie Biobank. Participants were enrolled between 2004-2008 and followed up for morbidities and mortality. ……
During a median follow-up of 7.2 years, there were 20,224 deaths. Compared with participants who ate spicy foods less than once a week, those who consumed spicy foods 1 or 2 days a week were at a 10% reduced risk of death (hazard ratios for death was 0.90). And those who ate spicy foods 3 to 5 and 6 or 7 days a week were at a 14% reduced risk of death (hazard ratios for death 0.86, and 0.86 respectively).*In other words, participants who ate spicy foods almost every day had a relative 14% lower risk of death compared to those who consumed spicy foods less than once a week.
The association was similar in both men and women, and was stronger in those who did not consume alcohol. Frequent consumption of spicy foods was also linked to a lower risk of death from cancer, and ischaemic heart and respiratory system diseases, and this was more evident in women than men.
Fresh and dried chilli peppers were the most commonly used spices in those who reported eating spicy foods weekly, and further analysis showed those who consumed fresh chilli tended to have a lower risk of death from cancer, ischaemic heart disease, and diabetes.
There is no chocolate dessert which is not better for the addition of a sprinkle or two of red chillie powder. It is not just chillies of course. A little cumin in the cheese can do wonders. A touch of cinnamon in the Irish coffee is decadently good. A little asafoetida in the traditional Swedish pea-soup can bring it to life. Bangers and mash with hot mustard on the bangers and onions and red chillies in the mash is a student’s delight. Coriander added to the mint with any lamb dish is the way to go. A touch of saffron on any fish or crustacean dish can hardly go wrong. I even find that there is no over-rated, Michelin-starred, French dish which cannot be improved by the addition of a little of the right spice.
I have a perception – from the other side of the Atlantic – that race relations and especially the relations between the police and the black community in the US have deteriorated under Barack Obama. The number of black people reported killed by police seems much too high. Deaths of black people in police custody seems also unnaturally high. Again my perception is that Obama is dangerously risk averse both domestically and in foreign policy. He has not addressed this issue forcefully. I suspect a certain lack of capability and an undue fear of action.
Chicago is as close to Obama’s “home city” as any. Moreover the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is a close friend of Obama’s and was his former Chief of Staff (2008 – 2010). So one would expect that Chicago would lead the way in race relations under the first “black” president of the US. But it seems that Chicago has been running its own Guantanamo-style facility (Homan Square) in plain view. It also seems that during Rahm Emanuel’s term the use of the facility against black suspects has been maximised.
Chicago Homan Square arrests via The Guardian
Of course The Guardian leans very heavily to the left and has a tendency to be rather sanctimonious, but their report – even after being discounted for their “goody-goody” bias – is rather disturbing. It does not speak well of what Obama and his friend have achieved in their “home city”.
It seems a real shame that under the first “black” president of the US, race relations, especially between the police and the black community, have apparently deteriorated quite badly.
At least 3,500 Americans have been detained inside a Chicago police warehouse described by some of its arrestees as a secretive interrogation facility, newly uncovered records reveal.
Of the thousands held in the facility known as Homan Square over a decade, 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney, according to a cache of documents obtained when the Guardian sued the police.
Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system.
But an independent Guardian analysis of arrestees’ records, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that Homan Square is far from normal:
Between September 2004 and June 2015, around 3,540 people were eventually charged, mostly with forms of drug possession – primarily heroin, as well as marijuana and cocaine – but also for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seatbelt.
More than 82% of the Homan Square arrests thus far disclosed – or 2,974 arrests – are of black people, while 8.5% are of white people. Chicago, according to the 2010 US census, is 33% black and 32% white.
Over two-thirds of the arrests at Homan Square thus far revealed – at least 2,522 – occurred under the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top aide to Barack Obama who has said of Homan Square that the police working under him “follow all the rules”. ……….
The Obama legacy will certainly show that he was the first half-black president of the US. More than that, history may only record that “he was one who could have, but didn’t”.
August is silly season and most – including journalists – are on vacation. I have this perception – but no data – that even natural catastrophes take a break in August. (It might be that they just don’t get reported). In any event the political scenes in the US and in Europe are relatively subdued. Politicians have much leeway to be sillier than usual without being permanently penalised. Political polls, in August, are somewhat lightweight. Probably even those polled are inclined towards the “silly”. Too much should not be read into August poll results but of course they do have some significance.
Both in the UK and in the US, the clowns are having a field day. Strangely, Jeremy Corbyn , a clown of the loony left, has increased his lead in the race for leadership of the British Labour Party in spite of dire warnings of the imminent self-destruction of the Party. Donald Trump, a clown of the far right, has increased his lead – against all predictions – in spite of his gaffes (immigration, McCain, rape in marriage ……) in the race for the Republican nomination. It is almost as if those being canvassed have a perverse contempt for the process and are determined to clown around themselves in their responses. Or perhaps it is a deeper malaise in both the UK Labour Party and in the US Republican Party. Perhaps the Labour Party just expects to be in the wilderness for the next decade. And perhaps the Republicans see no way in which they can win next year. Perhaps they are so sunk in despair that it is only by indulging in ridiculous fantasies that they can lighten the blackness that surrounds them.
The UK race will be settled in September and there may not be enough time to “correct” the advances that Corbyn makes during the silly season. By the time September comes along, the race could be over. In the US there is ample time for Trump to be shot down or – as is more likely – for him to shoot himself. But in the very weak and uninspiring field of Republican candidates the clown may yet have the last word.
But I have a tendril of a thought that maybe it is the time of the clowns. Maybe the political process needs the Corbyns and the Trumps. Maybe they have to win once in a while.
And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Quick, send in the clowns. Maybe they’re here.
And I am resigned to being “targeted” by advertisers selected specifically for me. I take some comfort in the fact that I cannot recall actually buying anything because of a web advertisement. I suppose I am just too old for them.
The soul – however you want to define it – is manifested (not defined) in your behaviour. The advent of the internet and its apparent anonymity actually makes visible some parts of your hidden self. People visit sites and make comments that they would never otherwise do if they were in public view. Of course much of that anonymity is only a perception. Your internet “self” (ID, email, passwords, sites visited, on-line community memberships,…. ) comes closer to painting a picture of your soul than just your visible behaviour.
And Windows 10 acquires more of your soul than ever before – and all with your consent. It is with your consent because few will ever read and understand the 45 pages of terms and conditions that must be agreed to. Not that Apple and Google are not also involved in photographing and capturing your soul. But even an on-line presence is only a manifestation of your soul and each of Microsoft or Google or Apple have have their own painting of your essence. And these perceptions of who you are, these paintings of your soul, are theirs to sell – to advertisers or to governments or to other interested parties.
Hundreds of commenters on sites such as Hacker News and Reddit have criticised default settings that send personal information to Microsoft, use bandwidth to upload data to other computers running the operating system, share Wi-Fi passwords with online friends and remove the ability to opt out of security updates.
Many of the complaints relate to the new personalised adverts embedded in Windows 10. When the OS is installed, Microsoft assigns the user a unique advertising ID, which it ties to the email address registered with the company. That email address is also associated with a raft of other services, such as the company’s productivity and communication programs, as well as app downloads and cloud-storage uploads.
Using that information, Microsoft is able to personalise ads to the user, during both web surfing and, for newer apps downloaded from the Windows Store, app usage. Microsoft itself is leading the way on that front, even turning the in-built version of Solitaire (the card game that has been a staple of Windows installations since 1990’s Windows 3.0) into a freemium game, complete with unskippable video adverts.
Elsewhere, Windows 10 also harvests user information in order to teach the built-in personal digital assistant Cortana, Microsoft’s answer to Siri. To enable Cortana, the company says, it “collects and uses various types of data, such as your device location, data from your calendar, the apps you use, data from your emails and text messages, who you call, your contacts and how often you interact with them on your device”.
“There is no world in which 45 pages of policy documents and opt-out settings split across 13 different Settings screens and an external website constitutes ‘real transparency’.”
……. The European digital rights organisation (EDRi) sums up the company’s 45 pages of terms and conditionsby saying: “Microsoft basically grants itself very broad rights to collect everything you do, say and write with and on your devices in order to sell more targeted advertising or to sell your data to third parties.”
In many ways, however, Windows 10 is merely moving closer towards what has become the new normal thanks to mobile operating systems. Both Siri and Google Now require access to the user’s personal information to personalise responses, while both Apple and Google offer developers the ability to deliver personalised ads to users based on information such as app installs.
The clowns went in when the Labour party in the UK and the Republicans in the US both found their own audiences were deserting them. Just some light entertainment thought the aspirants for leadership. In the UK some actually nominated the clown to “widen appeal” and liven things up, thinking he was a no-hoper.
But the respective electorates are in no mood for the clowns to be just a relieving act before the main show. They are inclined to make the comedy act the main show.
The clowns are still in the lead.
But what was initial amusement at Trump’s antics and Corbyn’s naive Marxism is now becoming a nervous panic within their respective parties. It sounds like the nervous giggling before the catastrophe. It is beginning to sink in that a Corbyn win could split the UK Labour party and keep both parts in the wilderness for decades to come. In the US, the other Republican hopefuls are all united in castigating Trump. But the disillusioned Republican voters in the country are staying with the comedy act. If the opposition to Trump continues, he could go it alone and that would fracture the Republican vote so fundamentally that they could be kept out of the White House for the next 4 terms.
Could Trump or Corbyn step aside and save their parties?
Their parties probably need them to. But that will not happen unless there are other credible and convincing candidates for the leadership position. And such figures are conspicuous by their absence, both in the UK and in the US. The Labour party only has lightweights to offer and the Republicans only some less accomplished clowns. The Republican field of candidates must be quite depressing for party members.
Still, there is little doubt that the clowns are livening things up.
