Happy Face

https://hacked.com/wikileaks-reveals-secret-handshake-uk-saudi-arabia/

It was the UK that voted them into the chairmanship of the human rights commission. The choice that prompted the thread

No, not "aah!"

As is not uncommon, I have no idea what you're getting at, either with yopur comment or your video It's not like Charles isn't well versed in bizarre pageantry though... http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/18-reasons-why-the-queens-speech-is-a-really-weird-ceremony#.ro6D0EMM7b

That's not so bad then. I had visions of Vera Drake doing the rounds.

Is it taboo to pop over here for an abortion?

I didn't even realise abortion was still illegal for rape victims in Northern Ireland. Backwards savages a rung below on the evolutionary ladder tbh.

It's interesting from a few angles. There's the conspiracy theorists who ignore the video footage of the assassination, the confession of the killer and his brother who was in on it and explain clearly & logically why they did it (Oslo, as you say), the eyewitness testimony of everyone involved including his driver and guards. You'd think they were barnpots, but it's half the population, despite the piles of evidence they have compared to JFK. Even the killers mother won't believe her son when he says he and his brother did it. She says they only think they did, but the spooks changed the bullets for blanks on the route They take his shirt for analysis and present new evidence though, they don't just laugh at the conspiracies. He was supposed to be shot in the back but there are supposed bullet holes in the front of his shirt. Then they look at the political shift from left to right that followed, the abandonment of Oslo that the killers had wanted and the increased settlements "legal" or not. They interview a right winger who's been pushing settlements from before the assassination and she describes how on the night he was killed she new they were going to become dominant for a long time. She's got a plaque in her garden with a Rabin quote about the first settlements saying basically "let them try to settle, no water no electricty, they won't last the winter" because she's delighted to have been involved with defying that.

Good This American Life this week http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/570/the-night-in-question

Still 6' 4"

It's not shocking that you say anything like that, because like I say, western conversations about middle eastern nations are ALWAYS framed in terms of them being backwards, medieval, savages, so we're all used to it and take it as the standard view. It's perfectly normal that you would say that. Western acts of backwards savagery that could come from medieval times are never considered in those terms publicly though, only in terms of whether or not it was justified as an isolated incident. So it seems to have been shocking for you that I would make any comparison. My view is that policy shouldn't be gauged on volume or method, but simply as policy. Whenever I've made a comparison I've been careful to say the Saudi's are clearly worse and what their leaders do is abhorrent and that I'm delighted to live in a less oppressive country and holiday in others I frequently criticise. It's not at all false comparison or in any way a defence of Saudi actions to say that the US have applied the death penalty harshly too, that they will kill their own citizens without any trial whatsoever, that they kill child criminals and mentally handicapped, that we Brits will strip people of citizenship so that the US can kill them without a trial or that we have recently tortured many hundreds, or locked them up for over a decade without a day in court and all of that. While I'm happy to call these policies horrible, grotesque, disgraceful practices in direct opposition to what is supposed to be a liberal, free society governed by rule of law, I'm not inclined to call the UK or US medieval, backward thinking nations struggling down the evolutionary ladder though, nor would I expect Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Finland (who have far better human rights records) to look down their nose at the UK/US as evolutionary throwbacks. Similar rhetoric is not something I feel should be applied to the middle east. Especially in a climate where the BNP, Britain first and all those others are look to capitalise on the perceived savagery of people fleeing those awful conditions. We've done this to death now though, think we've all followed each others rational and understand it even if we don't agree. We're at a point of arguing semantics - "It's not just completely horrific and disgusting human behaviour, it's barbaric medieval behaviour because they're backwards over there". I know it's a semantic argument that I started, but it's certainly not a piss-taking wind up like you suggested. Wiki says she's been charged, not sentenced. Grotesque stuff.

The savage. Nail him up.

Fair enough. I thought I was arguing for more nuance than "they're all savages". I think it's facile to reduce the Saudi political and religious situation which the west fully supports, to a shoulder shrug and "They're medieval bastards eh?"

Go on.

Perhaps. Personally I think hoying a sack over someone's head, shoving a stick in their mouth and pumping electricity through them repeatedly until they're dead is every bit as horrific as taking their head off. The advantages of technology do give heinous things a veneer of acceptability though. Lethal injections have failed a few times, but by and large are seen as much more humane. Doing these distasteful things behind closed doors is also seen as more civilised, rather than in front of a blood-thirsty mob, which would surely turn up in ANY country that allowed it.

I'm talking about as a society. I don't think anyone who's posted in here is actually racist. But the conversation in Britain is framed by certain parameters depending upon who it is abusing human rights. Every time someone on death row in the US is about to get fried there's reports on the news and a very grown up discussion ensues about the rights the wrongs and the efficacy of the death penalty, Every time someone gets the death penalty in the middle east they're unevolved savages. End off.

To be fair to Parky, he did say in his OP "A barbarous cruel dictatorship of wahabi princelings" so my lefty liberal racism Geiger counter took a high reading from the subject and sub-heading, without looking at the detail there which is spot on

But calling an entire nation (of brown skinned people who wear funny looking clothes) unevolved savages on the back of their death penalty while never ever calling the white people (who wear Levi's and t-shirts) unevolved savages despite their death penalty is somewhat.

Heh. I suppose handling talent wouldn't be a problem if he did get the England job. *pow*

Who are the Palace journalists? I want to tweet them to ask Pardew what he thinks of the season Ben Arfa's having. After Tevez and Mascherano does he not worry that he fixates on hard work and is therefore incapable of exploiting pure talent.

Anyone listened to Hamilton? Hip-Hop musical which made the jump to broadway this year. Follows Alexander Hamilton, the US secretary of the Treasury, instrumental in the implementation of the constitution and creation of their financial system. At first I kept thinking of Trapped In The Closet, but that faded fast and I quite enjoyed it. https://play.spotify.com/album/1kCHru7uhxBUdzkm4gzRQc

I think it's going to be a result that will boost us over the next 5 games and we'll be as average as we are, rather than as awful as we've been. But it was a complete lightning strike. Our problem has been that we aren't good enough to score as many on the break as we need against good teams but poor teams wouldn't normally be chasing the game so desperately as Norwich were, so we usually struggle to break them down at all. We'll get nothing like as much space in the next 5 games without fortuitous early goals. Taking 15 minutes to manage a shot at goal would normally be very worrying. As would conceding 2 and being saved by the woodwork twice at home. As would having less possession and shots than relegation bait opponents through the whole game. The fact our central midfielders (Colback & Anita) had less touches than anyone else in our team is crazy in a home game. But it's forwned upon to publicly express any concern when the positivity train is building up steam to get out of the station, especially before a derby. So I'll drink the kool-aid and hope this wave can at least be ridden through mackemland. …

"Unga Bunga ftm"

You mentioned "evolution" first

Taking the averarge over a year (2015 having been horrific from the start) we remarkably still have higher avearge crowds than we did for most of Ashley's first 4 years.