Three posts for the price of one:
Obreptitious overload: [edited 10 pm] at Westminster there's a mind boggling list of All-Party Parliamentary Groups; the one on Islamophobia seems a bit superfluous to me: its purpose is
"To investigate the forms, manifestations and extent of prejudice and discrimination against Muslims in the UK today. To review the effectiveness of all legislation with a view to improving the rate of success in the prosecution of hate crimes. To review existing mechanisms for the recording of anti-Muslim hate crimes both through police forces across the country and through third party reporting sites with a view to improving data quality and comprehensiveness. To investigate and review the role of the media in fostering mutual respect and tolerance and guarding against misrepresentations of Islam and intolerance towards Muslims."
With this Invention Of Islamophobia do we hear mention of "Christianophobia", or "liberalophobia" or "socialistophobia"; should we? No: '"Islamophobia" is one of the words that we urgently need to delete from our vocabulary'. Have they noted the seemingly continuous stream of daily/weekly Islamist atrocities (at least two more this weekend) and [Advocatus_Diaboli_69's comment from here] "the fact that Britain is a safe haven for jihadists and their supporters, I wonder if by any chance the [Parliamentary] Group has been able to spot the connections?"
The press this week was full of a poll [pdf] that said 27% of 18 to 24 year-olds in the UK didn't trust Muslims. However, nobody head-lined that 16% said they didn't trust Hindus or Sikhs (or Jews 15%, Buddhists 13% and Christians 12%) so given the aforementioned and linked Islamist atrocities I'd say that 27% was a favourable result!
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Obstrobogulous obsecrations seem to have worked on the US Congress after the vote this weekend: maybe these sinister 'Creepy Uncle Sam' horror movie Opt-Out-Of-Obamacare ads played a part: if you're really interested then there is a fairly good fact check HERE with all sides being economic with the truth. They're "happy to report that one of the most paranoid claims about the law — that all patients would be implanted with microchips — appears to have died off" although I guess we can assume the current administration would be happy to get any non Democrat 'chipped'.
That said the Affordable Care Act (if I don't like the Bedroom Tax misnomer I guess I shouldn't use 'Obamacare') is actually the result of decades of ideas from both sides of the political divide and based around 'Romney Care'!
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Orinoco Ordure: things go from bad to worse in Venezuela. Shortages of everything (except cocaine and murder), no toilet paper (been going on for a few months!) but plenty of the Devil's excrement: "When it hit the jackpot ["1973 revenues were larger than all previous years combined"], Venezuela had a functioning democracy and the highest per-capita income on the continent. Now it has a state of near-civil war and a per-capita income lower than its 1960 level."
