The recent vote in Canada’s House of Commons to keep our troops in Afghanistan for three more years hasn’t improved public support for the mission, according to one poll released last week. Despite a joint Conservative government - Liberal opposition compromise on the resolution, 58% of the survey’s respondents opposed the decision. And 61% said the government has done a poor job of explaining why we are there.

As I’ve said before, Prime Minister Harper should stop waving the Manley report around and start talking like John Manley, the former Liberal cabinet minister who chaired the independent study which recommended both the extension and better communication about why rebuilding Afghanistan is important.

More here.

There’s a word for being forced to work without pay:

Migrant construction workers building the ‘new Beijing’ are routinely exploited by being denied proper wages, under dangerous conditions with neither accident insurance nor access to medical and other social services, Human Rights Watch said […] an estimated 1 million migrant construction workers, hailing from other parts of China, make up nearly 90 percent of Beijing’s construction workforce […] employers routinely force migrants to work, withhold wages for up to a year, then offer a lump sum payment which is considerably below the agreed wage rate and Beijing’s minimum wage rate. Some employers refuse to pay anything at all.

There have been scuffles in Athens along the route of the Olympic torch relay. Something to do with not embarrassing a state which allows no independent trade unions, no independent judiciary, where demonstrations and strikes are prohibited, where there is no freedom of movement or assembly, whose citizens are subject to arbitrary detention and torture and where elections are a sham, by mentioning nasty divisive things like politics. According to a not entirely serious column in The Times, officials are worried about expected protests along the torch relay route in London:

Our expert also criticised the proposed route for the torch: “Nelson’s Column, Downing Street, St Paul’s Cathedral–these are exactly the kinds of places protesters are expecting the torch to pass. If your priority is to give potential paint-slingers the slip, you need to think much more laterally about how you get the flame across South London.

“We’d be in favour of using a few taxi-driver’s rat runs, cutting across some of the less well-known parkland, ducking down some service alleys and going in through, for instance, the back of Marks & Spencer’s Simply Food on the Balham High Road.”

I use the term ’shithouse’ in the comments section of one of the posts below.  

What is a shithouse?   Try this;  and this;  or this.  

That is a shithouse. It is also the country where I was born. This is one of the reasons I don’t go back much at the moment.  

I think far better of the mass of Hungarians. Nor is the country to be summed up by this bunch of neo-nazis but while they continue to do brisk business and grow the whole building will smell of shit.   

Try putting ‘magyar garda’ in YouTube. I won’t do it for you.   Full David Dukes-endorsed flavour. Seen in the best public places.  

Here’s a tale of bosses spying on workers.

Lidl has been discovered spying on its staff. The German supermarket chain is accused of “Stasi methods”. I find it irritating that the Grauniad, in its sometimes patronising way, thinks its readers require a reminder that the Stasi were the East German secret police. Note to Guardian: we are intelligent people and we know who the Stasi were.

The story says

The detectives’ records include details of precisely where employees had tattoos as well as information about their friends. “Her circle of friends consists mainly of drug addicts,” reads one record. The detectives also had the task of identifying which employees appeared to be “incapable” or “introverted and naive”.

In the Czech Republic

A female worker was forbidden to go to the toilet during working hours. An internal memorandum, which is now the centre of a court case in the republic, allegedly advised staff that “female workers who have their periods may go to the toilet now and again, but to enjoy this privilege they should wear a visible headband”.

Recording how a German employee identified as Frau M spent her break, one report read: “Frau M wanted to make a call with her mobile phone at 14.05 … She received the recorded message that she only had 85 cents left on her prepaid mobile. She managed to reach a friend with whom she would like to cook this evening, but on condition that her wage had been paid into her bank, because she would otherwise not have enough money to go shopping.”

It is just wrong that any employer should snoop into the private lives of its staff. These practices breach laws on freedom of movement and freedom of expression. What makes management believe they can override the rights of workers?
Lidl said “the purpose was “not to monitor staff, but to establish possible abnormal behaviour”. So “establishing possible abnormal behaviour” makes snooping a legitimate management activity? What is “possible abnormal behaviour”? And could we have some more “abnormal behaviour”.

Far-right Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders‘ 15-minute film on Islam has been removed from the servers of London-based web forum LiveLeak.

LiveLeak decided to pull “Fitna” following threats to its staff “of a very serious nature”. In a statement the company explained its position:

“This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else… Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.”

A bit anodyne, perhaps, but I can understand LiveLeak’s position.

This may be a free speech issue, but only in part. It goes way beyond freedom of speech, and those who defend Wilders risk being co-opted to a dodgy political cause. Reducing this to an issue of free speech is politically infantile and deeply reactionary.

Wilders is a politician is of the extreme right – nationalist, populist and demagogic. The man is a racist, and no defender of the rights of individuals or groups with whom he disagrees. Wilders the fascist is as much a hypocrite as those on the left who object to his film on the grounds that they do not wish to offend Muslims.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film as “offensively anti-Islamic”, adding:

“There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence… The right of free expression is not at stake here.”

Ban is right. Free expression isn’t at stake here, and those who claim it is are either fools or wilfully serving a reactionary political agenda.

I have no views on Wilders’ Fitna, having not seen it, but doubt it is the type of analysis that helps. However, this message, where once the film sat, is totally unsurprising. CNN cover the dropping of the film here; note the UN Secretary General’s comments.

Trying to make sense of shit and shit like that:

So you can add the [1] “Iran is liquidating its no longer useful proxies” theory (which would fit this general line of speculation about Iran’s doubts about Sadr and preference for the simultaneously-US backed ISCI) to the generally most prevalent (in the Iraqi and Arab, not just Western, media) [2] “Maliki and ISCI are liquidating their more popular rivals ahead of the provincial elections” theory; the optimistic [3] “Sadr has lost power and now’s the time to take him out” theory (thus far not borne out by the course of the fighting, but who knows - it’s early, or it could be a miscalculation); [4] Maliki’s own “it’s time to establish state sovereignty over a ‘lost’ province” theory (which Bush, of course, has embraced, and is supported by the reporting that the Iraqi Army began its preparations for the attack months ago; but then why isn’t he taking on the other militias and warlords? and why would he start now, and in Basra?); and [5] Reidar Visser’s “Maliki is trying to build a power base in the Iraqi Army” theory.

Told you it was complicated…

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.

When will these posh boy cretins ever learn?

Utterly thick, stupid, fucking penny pinching cunts that they are.

The Sauce have just stopped even fucking pretending now. Gene’s last post on the subject (first for ages on the subject) amounted to “cry.. sob.. cry.. — “yanks have been killed” — this is bad — all fault of Bush — bad for yanky world domination as well - fuck it - a new post by DT about the muzzies will be along in a moment to make you feel better” — that sort of shit. Pathetic cunts. I really hate these ignorant fucking fools. Bullet. Neck. Back of.