Bizarre just heard some Tory dude on the telly banging on about direct democracy being the only true democracy & elected representatives should be a thing of the past.... some form of hypocrisy there!

Space Bandit wrote:
The kind of direct democracy that involves endless votes on design for recycling bins and streetlight switch times all being collated and implemented by an unelected cross generational elite that takes care of the 'hard' stuff no doubt

The document published by the Guardian was signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the secret Intelligence Surveillance Court on 25 April and lasts until 19 July.
It requires Verizon - one of the largest phone companies in the US - to disclose to the NSA the details of all calls it processes, both domestic and international.

The order also contains a gagging order, requiring that "no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order".

I just caught an article about the profumo affair on BBC breakfast. 50 years ago and at the time, a shocking expose of the level of sleaze at the heart of the British state. I was born a few years later and my life has been peppered with sleaze episode after sleaze episode. And people keep thinking they are voting for people who have the public interest at heart

So in this thread, post any examples you have of sleaze, hypocrisy and corruption at the heart of the state.

Waco, Texas, 19th April 1993:

Sleaze and Corruption is in all walks of life, its basically common knowedge .. but its worse in charitable places like salvation army, all they do now is chase the almighty dollar and there extorted prices in there thrift shops

The new potentised strain of his discovery appalled him, and the more so because it contained dioxin as a by-product of manufacture. The toxicity of dioxins was not then well understood, but Mr Galston had his fears from the beginning. From 1965 onwards, as the use of Agent Orange relentlessly increased in Vietnam, he lobbied both his scientific colleagues and the government to stop. Lyndon Johnson would not answer his letters; but Richard Nixon, faced with more suggestive statistics on the human cost from the Department of Defence, eventually agreed. In 1970 the spraying stopped. The ecological damage, and the cries for compensation from sick civilians and soldiers, continue to this day.

Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed by the defoliants, 500,000 children have been born with defects from retardation to spina bifida and a further two million people have suffered cancers or other illnesses. Yet they have received no compensation from those who produced the chemicals and those who made them a weapon of war.

Porton Down was set up in 1916. It was a centre designed to test chemical and biological weapons.

Nerve gases such as Sarin and CS gas were tested on volunteer servicemen.

Servicemen were offered around £2 and three days leave as an incentive to take part in tests.

Very few servicemen knew what they were volunteering for and some were even told it was research into the cure for the common cold.

In 1953 it is alleged that serviceman Ronald Maddison died after taking part in a Sarin gas experiment.

In 1962, one of Porton Down's own scientists, Geoffrey Bacon died of the plague.

Pigs have been blown up, guinea pigs poisoned and marmosets given anthrax in germ and chemical warfare experiments at the top secret British military research base, it has emerged.

The campaign group that uncovered the details of the 'cruel and grotesque' research projects by scientists at the Porton Down labs in Wiltshire said that in some cases it appeared the animals had been given nothing to ease their pain.

Many of the experiments involved substantial suffering and led to the death of the animals, the British Union for Abolition of Vivisection's investigation found.

The latest complaint from Allstate alleges that information turned up in previous investigations of Goldman, including the SEC’s civil fraud case and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, shows the firm knew the mortgages it was packaging together and selling to investors were less-than-sound.

“Goldman knew these types of securities were, to use Goldman’s own words …’junk,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘crap’ and ‘lemons,’” Allstate claims, and the insurer alleges that Goldman misrepresented facts from the underwriting standards on the loans backing the securities to owner occupancy statistics and loan to value ratios. (See the full complaint on the next page).

Without joinder with the state the Goldman Sachs scandal is arguably tenuous in this context wub

Cheers me dear that'll do nicely
Just trying to keep tings irrefutable tha knows

How about a little gem like the one where an Argentinian frigate sailed out of iirc swan hunter after a UK state sanctioned costly refit and headed straight for the falklands. :rollmyfucking eyes!:

If someone can post a link please? I'm running on poor memory and poor tinterwebz...

Santisima Trinidad
In November 1981 she made her maiden voyage to Britain, where the destroyer carried out her first sea trials, and her crew was trained in the operation and launching of Sea Dart missiles.