Stupid people of the week

’66 Chevy C10

‘Wicked’ Slapped with Trigger Warnings in U.K.: ‘Green-Skinned Woman Is Mocked,’ ‘Talking Animals Are Persecuted’

Did they not realize that the origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West would involve her being mocked? If she was normal colored and pretty, she probably wouldn’t have resorted to a life of evil with flying monkeys.

The British Board of Film Classification has slapped content warnings on Wicked, advising audiences about potentially triggering moments including scenes where a “green-skinned woman is mocked” and “talking animals are persecuted.”

Wicked received a “PG” rating from the the board, which posted its content warnings to its official site. One of the board’s content categories is called “Discrimination” — a vaguely social justice-themed category that warns viewers of scenes in which characters experience prejudice.

“A green-skinned woman is mocked, bullied and humiliated because of her skin colour. A disabled woman in a wheelchair is treated in a condescending manner by able-bodied people. Talking animals are persecuted in a fantastical society,” the board stated.

Cynthia Erivo plays the “green-skinned” Elphaba, the character who grows up to become the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. The movie also stars pop sensation Ariana Grande as Glinda, who becomes the Good Witch of the North.

Wicked — which is based on the long-running Broadway musical — has ridden a wave of popular enthusiasm to become the biggest box-office hit of the fall season. The Universal release is a two-parter, with the second half set to open next year.

In addition to its popular success, Wicked is also expected to do well at the Academy Award nominations, where the field of competition is rather slim compared to recent years.

Source; Breitbart

Army officer charged after grenade found at airport

Oh, was that not allowed? Were we not supposed to do that?

A senior officer in the British Army has been charged after allegedly taking a decommissioned hand grenade through Scotland’s busiest airport.

Lt Col Hugo Clark, 54 is accused of taking a deactivated explosive through security at Edinburgh Airport on 16 October.

A bomb squad was called to the scene and the item, a dummy grenade used in training according to reports, was assessed as “non-viable and posed no threat”.

He was released from custody at the time and will appear before a court at a later date.

A spokesperson for Police Scotland said: “Around 08:05 on Wednesday October 16, police were called by security at Edinburgh Airport after a decommissioned ordnance device was found during scanning of a passenger’s hand luggage.

“A 54-year-old man was arrested and charged in connection and released on an undertaking to appear in court at a later date.”

A spokesperson for the Army said: “A service person was involved in a security incident at Edinburgh Airport on 16 October.

“As the matter is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings we won’t comment further.”

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has been approached for comment.

Source; BBC

Mom pulls gun on Lyft car in McDonald’s parking lot – but ends up accidentally shooting daughter

A Florida woman was arrested following a dispute with a Lyft driver and his passengers in a McDonald’s parking lot, which resulted in her pulling a gun and accidentally shooting her own daughter, cops say

Melissa Valbrum, 32, threatened to “shoot and kill” three people who were trying to get into the rideshare after a misunderstanding, according to police, before firing and hitting her own child,

Valbrum now faces three charges following the Miami-Dade incident on Friday: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, battery and culpable negligence inflicting personal injury. She appeared in court on Sunday.

According to Miami-Dade police, officers were called out to the McDonald’s in Pinewood following reports of “a dispute where a firearm accidentally discharged” by a woman. The bullet had struck the woman’s 15-year-old daughter in her left shoulder, according to a police affidavit seen by The Independent.

According to the arrest affidavit, the teenager and her mom were in the restaurant along with another group prior to the incident.

When a Lyft arrived, one member of a group waiting on the ride told police they were pointing outside to alert the group the Lyft had arrived. Valbrum’s daughter said a member of the group was pointing at Valbrum.

This led to an argument inside the restaurant that later continued outside. By that time, the three members of the group were inside the rideshare.

Valbrum then allegedly retrieved a gun from her vehicle and began threatening to “shoot and kill” all three of them while pointing the firearm in their direction, the affidavit stated. As the Lyft drove off, the passengers heard a gunshot and saw the teen had been shot.

The Lyft driver told police that Valbrum was acting “extremely aggressive” while pointing a gun at him and other members of the group. He also told police that he saw Valbrum reach inside his car and allegedly assault one of the passengers – also a minor.

Valbrum denied that she had pulled out the gun and threatened the passengers, later telling officers that the weapon had been on her waistband during the incident and it “accidentally fell,” causing it to go off and shoot her daughter.

The police affidavit also noted that police watched surveillance and phone video of the incident that showed Valbrum with a gun in her hand while knocking on the rear passenger window of the Lyft.

Valbrum was arrested and booked into Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
On Sunday, a judge ordered her to stay away from all of the victims and set her bond at $22,000, which she posted.

Source; The Independent

‘I had to get out’: the US military officers filing for conscientious objector status over Gaza

Was there nothing in the past…ah…50 years of American foreign policy that might lead even a poorly informed enlistee that they might have to go to the Middle East and do war stuff?

For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.

But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.

“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian.

“All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”

As the war in Gaza enters a second year, some disillusioned members of the US military have turned to the Vietnam war-era conscientious objector policy to terminate their military service because of religious or moral convictions.

There are few avenues to express dissent in the army. Earlier this year, Harrison Mann, an army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of US support for Israel. In a far more extreme gesture, 25-year-old US airman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in February.

The conscientious objector route is a seldom-invoked alternative that few service members are aware of – though some advocates say there has been an uptick in interest in the last year.

The defense department referred questions about the number of conscientious objectors to each branch of the military. A spokesperson for the air force said that it has received 42 applications since 2021 and granted 36. Applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages”, the spokesperson added. (The army, navy, and Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment.)

But while the numbers remain relatively low, the war in Gaza is top of mind for those service members who have considered conscientious objector status this year, said Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector and director of counseling at the Center on Conscience and War, one of a handful of groups that helps military members navigate the complex bureaucratic process.

Galvin said his group helps roughly 50 to 70 applicants a year, across military branches, and that there’s been more interest than usual this year.

The US has subsidized Israel’s war in Gaza to the tune of nearly $18bn over the last year, and is growing more deeply entangled as the conflict spills into the broader region. The Biden administration recently announced the deployment of 100 troops to Israel to man a missile defense system in anticipation of an escalation against Iran.

“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said: ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’”

Metzler said she was raised to believe that Israel is “the nation of God’s chosen people” and “terrorists were morally bankrupt people, who hate us because of who we are”.

When the war in Gaza started, the images of Palestinian civilians’ suffering disturbed her, but it wasn’t until Bushnell’s self-immolation that she started reading about the history of the conflict and the role of the US government in it. “A lot of the things I had been told about the US’s role in the world were wrong”, she said.

The war pushed Metzler to re-evaluate her time in the air force academy. She recalled laughing with her classmates as they watched footage of people running from a drone – she wasn’t sure in which country. She felt ashamed.

“I had come out of the academy glorifying the act of warfare,” she said. “There’s a certain disregard for human life that you just have to have to be a member of the military.”

Metzler learned about the conscientious objector option when she met a group of veterans at a pro-Palestine protest at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s completing a master’s in aerospatial engineering.

The defense department first introduced the objector application process in 1962. Tens of thousands obtained the status over the following decade, as the Vietnam war, and a mandatory draft, sparked a mass antiwar movement. But since then, the number of applicants has fallen drastically, with many members of the military unaware that the option even exists.

“It’s not common knowledge,” said Metzler. “You don’t want to advertise to the people that are working for you that there’s a legal way for you to break your contract if you start to feel weird feelings.”

For the few who embark on it, the process is rigorous and lengthy – Metzler’s application filled 19 pages and she is still waiting for final word after filing it in July. Applicants must demonstrate that they are opposed to all wars and that their beliefs about military service changed after they enlisted. They have to interview with a chaplain and with a mental health professional before an investigating officer reviews their case and makes a recommendation to a committee that decides whether to grant the status. In the past, the military has approved about half the conscientious objector applications it received.

Larry Hebert, another US senior airman, said the process was “excruciatingly long”.

A six-year veteran, Hebert reached what he called “a moral break” as horrific images of Palestinian children resembling his own filled his TikTok.

During a leave from his service in Spain in March, he traveled to Washington and staged a hunger strike in front of the White House to highlight the plight of starving children in Gaza. He later applied for conscientious objector status, but as the wait became unbearable, he filed for voluntary separation, another avenue to legally end one’s service. When that was rejected, he took off his uniform and refused to obey orders. He was disciplined and is currently waiting to be released on administrative grounds

“I had to get out,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a part of any of it.”

Bettancourt and Hebert [Ed. Note: The Venn diagram of “Shaving waivers” and “Suddenly finding God when war comes calling” is a perfect circle]

Juan Bettancourt, a US airman who also filed for conscientious objector status earlier this year, told the Guardian that many of the service members he has spoken with have fear of speaking out but are privately appalled by US support for Israel. “There’s a lot of deep-seated criticism and moral disgust at the complicity of our government in the genocide in Gaza,” he said.

Because dissenting voices are so rare, the military just tries to “brush them under the rug”, Bettancourt added, noting that Bushnell’s self-immolation was portrayed by the air force exclusively as a matter of “mental health,” Bettancourt said.

A lot more of this rubbish at the source; The Guardian

My personal opinion is that conscientious objector shouldn’t be an option to get out of an all volunteer military. As with some of the very brave and motivated conscientious objectors I’ve highlighted before, Alvin York, Desmond Doss, Thomas Bennett, Joseph LaPointe (all earned the MoH), Jonathan Spicer (Navy Cross), and Wendell Meade (Dist. Service Cross), unarmed combat roles exist, so it should be a retrain/reclass situation more than removal from service. The world needs ditch diggers.

Category: "Teh Stoopid", Crime, Police, Stupid Criminals