All-purpose news and politics thread: One Step Beyond!

[the4thpip]

Congrats to Vibranium for making post #1000 on the old one. I did not read it.

[the4thpip]

An official with Germany's domestic intelligence agency apparently shredded files relating to the neo-Nazi Zwickau cell after it became clear that they were responsible for a series of murders.

I don´t even....

the intelligence agency had destroyed files on an operation to recruit far-right informants on Nov. 12, 2011. On the previous day, it had been revealed that the NSU were apparently responsible for the murder of nine small businessmen of Turkish and Greek origin.

(...)
"Such incidents make it difficult to convincingly refute the conspiracy theories," said committee chairman Sebastian Edathy, a member of the center-left opposition Social Democrats. There has been persistent speculation that the domestic intelligence service may have used members of the NSU as informants.

[the4thpip]

... and the head of said agency just offered his resignation.

[o1pickleboy]

Congrats to Vibranium for making post #1000 on the old one. I did not read it.

I am only seeing 9991 posts in the old one.

[king mob]

For the sake of nine posts we might as well move on to a shiny new thread.

Carrying on a conversation from there and now I'm vastly more sober:

its what employers exploit...times are tough and they know they can underpay because people are sooo desperate for work

Companies like A4E are supposed to provide the services the Jobcentre do, and help the unemployed find work. Now I hate posting links to the Daily Mail but they do have a good summary of just how much of a fraud this company is here.

Essentially Welfare 2 Work providers secure funding from the government and they are supposed to spend that to help the unemployed get back into work, while really what they act as is a publicly funded employment agency, so an employer might come to them with positions in a call centre and A4E will get paid 20 quid an hour and pay the applicant just above minimum wage at about 7 quid an hour while pocketing the 13 quid an hour for themselves.

This is not what these companies were supposed to do. Neither were they supposed to intimidate and threaten people, they were supposed to help people back to work but they're not but people are making an awful lot of money out of it and it's taxpayers money.

So, another example of the wealthy making money from the misery of the poor.

[the4thpip]

I am only seeing 9991 posts in the old one.

odd.. there were more this morning, I could swear. Maybe a mod had to delete some rude ones?

[o1pickleboy]

odd.. there were more this morning, I could swear. Maybe a mod had to delete some rude ones?

Did your post count go down?

[Vibranium]

Congrats to Vibranium for making post #1000 on the old one. I did not read it.

I didn't even know until just now

yay for me? I guess

[Iangould]

As expected, Enrique Pena Nieto of the PRI is Mexico's new President.

He says his top priority is to reform Pemex, the state oil monopoly, but he'll need a Constitutional amendment to do it and his supporters failed to get control of Congress.

Pemex is hugely corrupt and extremely inefficient. Its production costs are amongst the highest in the world, even for on-shore oil in fields they've been exploiting for decades. Reform, if its done properly, should lead to a big increase in Mexican oil production, much more revenue for the Mexican state and many more opportunities for small and medium business to sell services to the oil industry.

Too many Mexicans remain desperately poor despite the country's economic growth. What Mexico needs is to distribute the wealth more widely, not through transfer payments or subsidies but through breaking up the big private and public monopolies which will allow the growth of small and medium businesses and also bring down the price of goods and services.

There's a reason Carlos Slim is busily selling down his Mexican interests and buying European assets. (Actually there's two: he knows that the monopoly profits that have made him the world's richest man aren't going to last forever and he knows European assets are undervalued.)

[Iangould]

There's been another mass defection of Syrian army troops:

Eighty-five Syrian soldiers, including one general and at least 14 lower-ranking officers, fled into southern Turkey’s Hatay Province on Monday, Turkish news agencies reported. It was one of the largest mass military defections since the Syrian conflict began 16 months ago.

Turkey’s government is now allowing the insurgent Free Syrian Army to operate from bases inside the Turkish border and is housing more than 35,000 Syrian civilians who have sought refuge from the conflict. The Turks also have sent antiaircraft batteries to the border in response to the June 22 downing of a Turkish military plane by Syrian gunners. On Monday, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said it scrambled warplanes from its Incirlik air base in southern Turkey when three Syrian military helicopters were seen approaching the border.

The number of ranking officers in the Syrian military who are defecting and seeking sanctuary in neighboring countries, mostly Turkey, appears to have increased in the past few weeks. On June 24, a Syrian general, two colonels and major and a lieutenant were among 33 soldiers who fled Syria. A few days earlier a Syrian Air Force pilot, who was both a colonel and squadron commander, defected in a commandeered MiG to Jordan, and Syrian rebels reported that eight Syrian pilots had fled to Jordan overland.

The own side of such desertions is that they make the regime increasingly dependent on ethnic militias based on the Alawite, Shia and Christian minorities increasing the risk of a political conflict turning into an ethnic/religious conflict.

[Vibranium]

The own side of such desertions is that they make the regime increasingly dependent on ethnic militias based on the Alawite, Shia and Christian minorities increasing the risk of a political conflict turning into an ethnic/religious conflict.

more like genocide by machete

[Iangould]

To return to the theme of wealth built on poverty:

Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked.

When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.

For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that “two can dine for $5.99,” is not about innocence.

It is, rather, about the mushrooming of fines and fees levied by money-starved towns across the country and the for-profit businesses that administer the system. The result is that growing numbers of poor people, like Ms. Ray, are ending up jailed and in debt for minor infractions.

“With so many towns economically strapped, there is growing pressure on the courts to bring in money rather than mete out justice,” said Lisa W. Borden, a partner in Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, a large law firm in Birmingham, Ala., who has spent a great deal of time on the issue. “The companies they hire are aggressive. Those arrested are not told about the right to counsel or asked whether they are indigent or offered an alternative to fines and jail. There are real constitutional issues at stake.”

Because, you know, those tax cuts for the "job creators" have to be paid for somehow.

[Vibranium]

the gaps grow ever bigger...even in the smallest of places

[FalconX2000]

http://www.mediaite.com/online/forme...p-and-liberal/

If anyone remembers this little 14 year old conservative sensation at CPAC 2009, Johnathan Krohn took a break, read some philosophy, and is kinda liberal now. Not some huge important piece of world shaking news, but interesting to read, I think.

[Iangould]

Alexander Müller, a Zurich politician from the far-right Swiss People’s Party has caused outrage by appearing to call for “another Kristallnacht” in a hateful anti-Islamic tweet.

The offending message, which has since been taken down from Müller’s @DailyTalk account, said: “Maybe we need another Kristallnacht… this time for mosques.”

link

Maybe we need another 1,000 bomber raid - this time for Zurich.

(Please note tha unlike Muller, I'm not seriously proposing that.)