PM moves to close loophole that allows sexual predators to produce and possess ‘manuals' to help them commit crimes
Paedophiles will be handed the same treatment as terrorists under a crackdown on child abuse to be included in the Queen's speech.
David Cameron said he wanted to close a loophole that allows sexual predators to produce and possess “manuals” giving tips on how to identify victims, groom them, and evade capture.
In future, they will face the same kind of sanctions as extremists who download guides to bomb-making.
The issue came to light after GCHQ and the National Crime Agency found online examples of the guides in the chaotic part of cyberspace known as the “dark web”.
Cases of the MERS Coronavirus have significantly increased in the last few months, and in recent weeks there have been reports of the virus in new countries including Egypt, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, leaving officials struggling to figure out why infections have increased.
If I lived in a large city I would mount a bond issue campaign to do this. If I lived in a small community, I would organize and go into the town council. As it happens on our island telephone, internet, and cable are handled by a local company Whidbey Telcomm owned by the Henny family wh! o, for generations, have been deeply committed to the welfare of the island. If we don't take ownership of our access to the internet to the local level across America, as a citizen action, within five years the internet will be broken into ghettos and gated communities. Just another part of the Inequity Trend. Think about it. The window of opportunity will not last long.
Phi Beta Iota: Our preliminary view, pending some additional inquiries, is that Ghani will win the run-off quite easily (60-40 or better), and that he will NOT sign the Bi-Lateral Security Agreement (BSA). The roles of Abdullah and Barshadost remain to be defined. We have no doubt that everyone EXCEPT the Americans is deep into planning for a non-BSA post-2014. The way forward is positive — if you have intelligence with integrity.
01 GOVERNMENT has no rights; it is a delegation from several individuals for the purpose of securing their own. It is therefore just, only so far as it exists by their consent, useful only so far as it operates to their well-being.
02 IF these individuals think that the form of government which they, or their forefathers constituted is ill adapted to produce their happiness, they have a right to change it.
03 Governmnent is devised for the security of rights. The rights of man are liberty, and all equal participation of the commonage of nature.
04 As the benefit of the governed, is, or ought to be the origin of government, no men can have any authority that does not expressly emanate from their will.
Month-old Rowan Scarborough article at bottom and transmittal messages above it are worth reading. While I don't have Army numbers, I'd bet we have or will soon have same kinds of retention problems as the Navy.
What I am seeing are:
* A stated policy of “precision retention” whereby, in getting to end strength it thinks it can afford, Army does not intend to entice people to leave voluntarily. Rather, it intends to try to cull out those it no longer wants, essentially anyone whose record is off-perfect in the slightest respect.
* A “back to basics” push that could be intended to set people up for getting blots on their copybooks.
* Radically fewer resources for training, constrained by dollars focused on buying gadgets.
* A great deal of political correctness, just like Navy
* Massive requirements for annual online training on intractible problems, just like Navy.
We have seen parts of this before and it didn't work out well.
A Navy F-18 fighter pilot and former Top Gun instructor is publicly warning admirals that retention is beginning to suffer from the military’s relentless social conditioning programs.
Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass, until recently a Pentagon speech writer for the chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, said sailors are becoming fed-up with the constant emphasis on social issues — an apparent reference to gays in the military, women in combat and ending sexual harassment.
In the attached analysis, Jeff Madrick explains why the very real problems in the United States associated with concentration of wealth, growing income inequality, and low rates of social/income mobility should not be separated from the larger problem of stimulating overall economic growth.
While this is a stand alone essay, his links to supporting studies are particularly useful and worth surveying.
Inequality Is Not the Problem
Jeff Madrick, NYRB Blog, 24 April 2014
In his celebrated book Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty notes that Napoleon justified concentrations of wealth and high levels of inequality in France because, he claimed, the nation was a meritocracy. If you worked hard and had talent, you could rise—even back then.
Such inflated claims about income mobility have long been the refuge of the privileged at the top of the distribution of wealth. The American dream is of course built on this central assertion. Since the beginning of the year, however, the powerful findings of Piketty and other economists have entered mainstream debate as never before, challenging long-held assumptions that America is a meritocracy. Bringing into focus how lopsided the income distribution is, these findings have not only shown that inequality is widespread. They have also demonstrated that there is relatively little opportunity for those in the lower quintiles of earners to move up to a higher bracket.
Traditionally, economic conservatives have maintained that inequality is fine as long as income mobility is robust. So what if a few people make huge fortunes; everyone else has a fair chance at the opportunity to do so. But these days, even important members of the Republican Party, the traditional bastion of America privilege, have given up on this argument.
Economic data gathered since the early 2000s have shown conclusively that American social mobility is low and has been so for half a century—indeed, it is considerably lower than the nation’s supposedly stultified European competitors, where social safety nets are much larger and taxes much higher. Among the most impressive of the new work is a comprehensive study, led by Raj Chetty of Harvard and Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley, among others, published this January. It shows that income mobility has remained at roughly the same low levels since the 1970s.
