Lucky Lucky Lucky

A pictures says a thousand words, or so they say .....

.....  at least this one is close to that, because would you believe that after this accident no one was seriously hurt, when the front of the car was separated from the rest of the vehicle in the crash.

The car was split in two when it crashed, but the male driver and the two children who were in the saloon when it left the Fletchamstead Highway in Coventry, all got out of the vehicle with just a couple of minor scratches, but were otherwise uninjured.

Sometimes the fates were looking kindly down upon you, and that's a fact ......

The New Mad Sultan Of Istanbul

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fast becoming my new 'Gadfather' ..... not only has he beefed up the Presidents role, so that he, and not the prime minister, effectively still runs the Turkish state ...

 

One Of Erdogan's Presidential Palace Complexes

 

.... and he  is now building palaces suitable for his ego and status as the new 'Sultan of Turkey'.  

Any Excuse Will Do

The violent reaction of the black community of the State Grand Jury of Missouri's decision not to prosecute Police Offer Darren Wilson, over the death of black teenager Michael Brown, was as predictable as day following night.

It seems that the idea of a peaceful vigil in the black community is long gone, replaced by the urge to burn and loot at the first 'excuse' (remember the London riots were ostensibly over a similar event, but quickly became an excuse to loot all the shops and supermarkets, then burn down the buildings) .... how long ago does the peaceful of protests of Dr King seem now?

Martin Luther King - Peaceful Protest

In fact the similarities in the end events in London and Ferguson, and the reactions afterwards, suggest that there are violent tendencies inside black communities worldwide which simple 'cultural' excuses can't really explain.

There is no proven such thing as an inherited 'culture', based upon skin colour ... For example what common culture do the black peoples in Johannesburg South Africa, or Kingston Jamaica, or St Louis USA, share? None I would suggest, they just don't share the same life experiences ... they only share the same skin colour. But as we are not allowed to suggest that there is any other genetic factor such as intelligence involved, then there's no obvious cause for this propensity for violent protest.

A few facts:

• Mr Brown had a criminal rap sheet for violence despite his tender years.
• On the day in question he had already robbed a shop keeper (it was filmed)
• When challenged by the police officer there was according to the police a brief struggle between the officer and Mr Brown.
• Officer Wilson said that before the shooting occurred, Mr Brown pushed him back into his car, hit him and briefly grabbed his drawn gun.
• Mr Brown had been shot at 12 times and hit 6 times.
• The State Grand Jury was randomly chosen and comprised 9 white and 3 black members, randomly chosen. 
• The jury was very well aware of the pressures to find the officer 'guilty enough to be charged' but after weeks of sifting the evidence found that they had to separate fact from fiction, and that some witness statements had been contradicted by physical evidence. 
• Seven or eight witnesses largely backed up Officers Wilson's account of the shooting in testimony before the grand jury. Those witnesses, like most of the people in Ferguson, are African-American.

The jury also noted that much of the evidence against the police officer turned out to be by people who had not even been at the scene, or who altered their evidence to match the facts put before them, or were simply repeating hearsay ... in other words most of the evidence from the black witnesses was lies.

And yet, still they rioted .... and looted .... lots of looting.

Ferguson Riots In Memory of .... well, who cares its just an excuse.

In fact in the reports I read, the only part of the events that I could not see fully explained, was why 12 shots and six wounds from that range? ... however I am led to understand that this can depend very much on the calibre of the hand guns the police use. If its a Dirty Harry magnum .45 then one shot and you don't get up, but smaller calibres may not stop an big guy immediately. So 12 shots (and I am assuming that the police officer didn't fire a full magazine, stop and reload, and fire another full magazine), suggests that the bullets were closer to being the Beretta 9 mm semi-automatic semi-automatic magazine which they have only just started replacing, which may not have as much stopping power, and that he missed with most of the shots.

Of course it wasn't long before the copycat rioters were out in Oakland California and the shops were soon being targeted in righteous anger .....

Righteous Anger Is Better At T-Mobile Stores

Yet lets compare and contrast with the killing of a white teen by a black police officer in Salt Lake City in similar circumstances .... no rioting, a peace vigil and a petition .. that's it. Strange isn't it? PC nonsense means that we can't really speculate why faced with a similar event, two sets of human beings from the same country, whose only difference we are told is skin deep, react so differently nearly every time.

The 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report, a compilation of annual crime statistics, shows that: 

• 83 percent of white victims were killed by white offenders; 
• 90 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders; 
• 14 percent of white victims were killed by black offenders;
• 7.6 percent of black victims were killed by white offenders

Racial Homicides USA

 ..... so who is persecuting blacks in the US?

Update 30/05/2020: Its interesting to note that the killing of black American George Floyd, has resulted in a spate of rioting, arson and looting by protesters, following the arrest and charges against the white Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin. These are following much the same pattern as the riots, arson and looting that occurred on earlier 'black protests' in America and elsewhere. 

Iran As You Don't Know It

Adam Michnik, a Polish historian who helped to overthrow the Communists in Poland, once said: “Revolutions have two phases: first comes a struggle for freedom, then a struggle for power. The first makes the human spirit soar and brings out the best in people. The second unleashes the worst: envy, intrigue, greed, suspicion and the urge for revenge.”  .... and Iran followed this dictum. But now, it is being argued that its past stage two and is in a post revolutionary stage ... and this could best be described as the 'cynicism cycle'.

So here's some facts about modern Iran that may surprise you: they did me.

Iran's Nuclear Timeline .... Ticking Away.

•  Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, led the revolution but seven of his 15 grandchildren have openly criticised the regime .... "Westoxification” (the title of a book by Jalal Al-e Ahmad, published in 1962), is rampant in the shopping malls that spring up despite the Western sanctions.

• Both Facebook and Twitter are officially 'banned', but Twitter is used by officials to put out statements and Facebook is the primary medium of communication for half the country’s youth

• Azad University, has over 100 campuses and 1.5m students as tertiary education levels boom.

Iranians The Best Educated In Region.

• Iran’s cabinet has more members with PhDs from American universities than that of America itself .... maybe not a surprise under Bush, but under the Obama regime.

• Iran’s scientific output has increased by 575% in the past decade.

• Iran publishes three times more books than all Arab nations combined ... excluding Koran's I suspect.

• Most Iranians access the Internet using virtual private networks (VPN) to bypass State censorship. So ubiquitous is this service that its made millionaires of backstreet providers. One example cited is a 21 yr old, who charges a dollar a month or $10 a year to his 80,000 clients. He pays the 'cyber-police' a few hundred dollars in bribes every few months to turn a blind eye.

• The fastest internet speeds in Iran are achieved near seminaries, since clerics preach online to few viewers but still get priority on fibre-optic cables .... but pornography, although strictly banned, apparently blazes a trail for freedom, as its the primary usage for the older user.

• Iranian GDP per person rose from $4,400 in 1993 to $13,200 last year (at purchasing-power parity), and they are by far and away the most prosperous of the large population countries in the region.

• After the revolution the birth rate soared, but as Iranians became more prosperous and more importantly women became educated, it started falling and now is below pre-revolution levels ... experts now put it at between 1.6 - 1.9 children per woman, and broadly in line with European rates. By comparison, in neighbouring Iraq it is 3.5 children per woman.

• By law all public buildings in Iran must have prayer rooms as you might expect. Yet officials have silenced many muezzins public calls to prayer to appease citizens angered by the noise.

• The state broadcaster used to interrupt football matches with live sermons at prayer time; now only a small prayer symbol appears in a corner of the screen. It is suggested that by forcing religion on people it has meant that they have become sick of being preached at, and have turned away. Possibly, privately the country is now 'Islamic' in much the same way that Italy is 'Catholic'.

• Misogyny is still organised and state sanctioned, with heads having to be covered and religious 'morality' police on the streets, but female students outnumber men by 2:1 at many Iranian universities. There are even calls for male education quotas to address the imbalance. 

• A recent survey of young adults by Iran’s parliament suggests that 80% of unmarried women have 'boyfriends' (with or without their parents knowledge).

• In Qom, Irans religious capital face veils used to be common among women, but were banned after three men wearing them entered a local school and groped the girls. 

So there you are. There are no absolute certainties in human societies, so just as the old Soviet block was a slowly melting without us noticing, the revolutionary regime in Iran is not a stagnant regime of complete religious jihadists .... there are changes going on that we in the West don't always see.

Iran's Nuclear Ambitions Continue Despite The Sanctions

I still don't want them to get a nuclear bomb though ....  

Scooby Dooing Bad Things?

I was always vaguely suspicious of 'Shaggy' in the ScoobyDoo TV show and films. I mean he eats like a horse, and obviously likes his recreational substances to be organic, but has no job or visible means of support. He is usually too out of his tree to help when the rest of the gang perform their sleuthing ....

My suspicions were based on the fact that he wanders around with a dog, which only he can talk to and understand ..... and any trip to your local city centre will uncover a number of characters who are very similar. They usually have an upturned cup in front of them, and congregate near bank cash dispensers. The only difference is that they don't eat like horses, usually preferring their nutritional intake to come in liquid form and their other recreational substances to be less organic, and more man made.

But I could never prove my suspicions about 'Shaggy' aka Norville Rogers (yet another unlikely moniker), so imagine my surprise when I saw this artists impression of a murder trial suspect ......

Is It Shaggy?

I immediately thought of my earlier suspicions about Shaggy .......  so with a little tweak, and maybe the likeness becomes even more so.

Shaggy Is Exposed As 'The Moncton Killer!!'

I know I shouldn't make light of the murder of three policeman by Justin Bourque, but as he has admitted the charges, there will be no ordeal for the families .... and it was just one of those little moments that take you back in time to something you had almost forgotten about.