the benefits of colonialism - part 237416

an estimated 125,000 Egyptians perished in forced labour
during the construction of the Suez Canal

"10,000 Palestinian prisoners... do not move anything, while 3 Israeli prisoners have shaken the world." - Ayman al-Zawahiri

Tony Blair is one of those politicians who sucks up to those more powerful than himself (Bush and Murdoch), and stomps on everybody else

and of course he gets his reward - a future of lucrative speaking engagements in the US and a job on the board of the Sun

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forget the New Labour jingles and spin - look at what they've doing -

* preventing the democratisation of the House of Lords

* selling peerages to raise money to keep themselves in power

* modifying legislation to allow rich donors to continue advertising harmful products

* attempting to privatise the health and education systems

* allowing UK airspace to be secretly used for transporting abducted people to countries where they will be tortured

* supplying money and arms to dictatorships

* supporting the overthrow of elected governments

* invading resource-rich countries

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"How many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?" - Bob Dylan

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Lebanese Solidarity Appeal

news updates from Lebanon

Sanayeh Relief Centre

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it's easy to spot the politically dangerous - they're the one who divide the world into people who are good (us), and people who are evil (them)

the black rhino may now be extinct

what a disaster! no more black rhino horn!

(from now on, rich sheiks will have to kill each other using daggers with handles made of plastic)

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the world would be a much more peaceful place if everyone changed their religion every five years

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Japan and the USA have both invaded Korea within living memory - and no doubt they would like to retain the option of doing so again

perhaps that's why they're so opposed to North Korea's nuclear policy

the UK Government claims there is little demand for extended sunday trading, so they're restricting it to 6 hours a day

why should politicians have the power to tell people at what times they can and can't sell things to each other?

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more than a quarter of a million killed in Iraq and Afghanistan

all because people believe their country / religion is best -
because they think they're right and others are wrong

what the world needs is more apathy

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i grew up being taught that a police state is a country where the Government uses its intelligence services to abduct and torure "enemies of the state" and then imprison them indefinitely without a fair trial

as in "extraordinary rendition" and Guantanamo?

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Blair's Government has created 1000 new criminal offenses in the last 6 years, and there's thousands more in the pipeline - no wonder the UK has the highest prison poulation in Europe

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why does the UK need a new generation of nuclear weapons?

so it can invade foreign countries without fear of retaliation!

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since the start of the moratorium on whaling more than 25,000 whales have been hunted and killed

(Norway is the only country that ignores the ban)

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"The US policy is to treat all detainees humanely" - Pentagon

Iraqi prisoners held on 1 metre chains, fed on bread and water, with detainees' eyes being taped shut for up to seven days at a time

and then Bush wonders why the vast majority of people in the world consider US foreign policy the greatest threat to world peace

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Thatcher's closure of mines in the 1980s means that the UK now imports coal from Australia, Colombia, Poland, S Africa and the US

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so that's why Tony Blair is fighting for democracy in Iraq -

to defend the right of the Saudi Arabian government to rape and torture UK citizens

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Bush and Blair's so-called "War on Terror" encourages the attitude that it is better to murder the innocent rather than risk sparing the guilty

(misquoting Voltaire)

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40% of the World Bank's aid budget went to consultants in 2004
- well it's good to know someone benefits from it

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Israel's high court upholds a law barring West Bank Palestinians from living with spouses & children who are Arab citizens of Israel

i wonder if Heaven has a Jewish Quarter?

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more than half the countries named by UN Watch as human rights abusers sit on the UN Human Rights Council

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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Tony Blair's orderly withdrawal from being Prime Minister looks as likely to happen as an orderly withdrawl of US troops from Iraq

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Guantanamo Bay is one of the main reasons why the US lost their so-called "War On Terrorism". It showed the world that America was more interested in controlling the world's oil supply than in supporting freedom and justice for non-Americans.

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25 percent of Iraqi children between six months and five years old suffer from either acute or chronic malnutrition

and they still won't say say "Thank you George. Thank you Tony."

(so we'd better drop some more bombs on them)

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only 0.2 per cent of annual health related research is spent on pneumonia, diarrhoea, and tuberculosis

they account for 18 per cent of the global disease burden, but drug companies are not very interested in poverty related diseases because they mainly take place in third world countries where there are less profits to be made

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adverse drug reactions are the fourth commonest cause of preventable death in the UK

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60 years after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
there are 30,000 nuclear weapons in place world-wide
(most of them American, aimed at the rest of the world)

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Prime Minister's wife's haircuts cost Labour Party £7,700

it's good to know the union subs are going to a worthwhile cause

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Great Britain is a monarchy with a hereditary aristocracy -
and UK troops invaded Iraq to bring about "democracy" ??

ha ha!

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oil prices at $70 a barrel!
production costs constant!

the Iraq invasion means Bush and his oil cronies are raking it in

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sectarian violence has displaced 25,000 Iraqis in the last month

and Blair just grins, getting richer every day,
simpering "Yes Sir, Mr President" and "No Sir, Mr President"

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so this is what "the fight for freedom and democracy" comes down to?

US troops shooting Iraqi women and children

- My Lai all over again

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73 UK landings of suspected CIA rendition flights in the last 5 years

when governments conspire to facilitate the torture of suspects, they become the enemy of democracy and of freedom

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"An unmanned US Air Force Predator fired a Hellfire missile..."

(with "Jesus Loves You" painted on the side?)

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let us rejoice in globalisation - since water privatisation 10M South Africans have had their water supplies cut off (and thousands have died from diarrhoea and cholera)

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Adverse drug reactions now account for 20-25% of hospital admissions in the UK. An estimated 70,000 people in England each year are killed or seriously disabled by medical drugs previously tested on animals.

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of course Tony Blair fought hard to prevent a fully elected Parliament - he needed to be able to sell off seats in the House of Lords to keep his slush fund topped up

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US warplanes have attacked at least 18 Iraqi cities in the last 6 months

peace-keeping Bush-American style - killing for Jesus and the holy dollar

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Iran has proposed to start selling oil in Euros on 20th March 2006. For several months now it has been common knowledge in the world's media that the US will do all that it can to prevent this. Yet little mention is made of it in the UK. The BBC ignores it completely, preferring to discus the latest announcements made by US Government officials on Iran's plans for developing weapons of mass destruction and why sanctions and/or military action need to be implemented to prevent this. The only other country which has tried to sell oil in Euros is Iraq. The pattern is almost identical, and may well end with American troops in every country from Pakistan to Turkey, which has long been a policy advocated by the more extreme supporters of the current US administration.

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"never before have we had a US administration so wilfully, dishonestly and ruthlessly reinterpreting tragedy as success, defeat as victory, death as life" - Robert Fisk

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husband of UK minister "given" a third of a million quid by a foreign politician - and his wife doesn't know about it?

ha! bloody ha! do they really think we're that stupid?

Q. how can a public official lie so blatantly?

A. because she's one of Tony Blair's Cabinet

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bad taste caption of the month (seen on US Fox TV) -

"All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?"

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US debt = $8.25 trillion - oil can only be sold in US dollars
Iraq intended to sell oil in euros and was invaded
Iran intends to sell oil in euros from 20th March 2006

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Since 1991 there have been over 70 murders in mainland Britain with a suspected or known racial motive

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another 'first' for Tony Blair to brag about - Britain has the highest prison population per head in Western Europe

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more people have been killed by police in North America using the taser "crowd control" stun-gun (immobilisation by pain) than have been killed worldwide by bird flu

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$1,000,000 offered for deaths of Danish cartoonists

sounds very tempting to any suicidal artist wanting to leave something to their favourite charity

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Ford's current range of cars achieves on average fewer miles per gallon than its Model-T did 80 years ago

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US death squads assassinated about 40,000 people in Vietnam

US-led killing squads started operating in Iraq in April 2003

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Images of Mohammed have been part of Islamic and Western culture since the Middle Ages

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the US occupies 702 military installations in 132 countries
and possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads
and so far it's the only country that's barbaric enough to have used them

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67 UK universities hold significant investments in arms companies

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The UK is the most-watched nation in the world, with more than 4 million surveillance cameras monitoring people's movements

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"Excited Delirium"

a popular cause of death for people dying in US police custody

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RIP Google

once dedicated to being the best search engine in the world
now a Chinese Government propaganda tool

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if Tony Blair wasn't so enthusiastic about the UK's nuclear industry, his opposition to Iran's nuclear policy would be less hypocritical

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if anyone doubts what happens when rulers get too much power...

reporters in Turkmenistan can not mention the height of President Saparmurat Niyazov (thought to be 153 cms, just over 5 feet)

neither can they mention that he wears a toupee (men are forbidden to have long hair or beards in Turkmenistan)

President Niyazov renamed the calendar months after his family - what vanity!

all watches and clocks in Turkmenisatn must have a portrait of the President printed on the dial-face

Mr Niyazov thinks opera and ballet are unnecessary - so he banned them

Wikipedia page on Turkmenistan

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"The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history." - Lt. General William Odom (ret)
- former director, America's National Security Agency
- former US Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence

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Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94% have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad in 2003

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Bush and Cheney's bid for legal right to torture fails

maybe there is hope for the world after all...

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better that Stonehenge had never been built than one leg of a millipede be injured in its construction

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"we are all threatened by terror" - US national security adviser

the only terror threat i have nightmares about
is being abducted and tortured by the CIA

to paraphrase Ian Dury "there ain't half some evil bastards"

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Bushspeak - "America will help the Iraqis"
interpretation - "we'll take the oil and kill anyone who tries to stop us"

80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of US troops

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Nov 2002 - US missile destroys Aljazeera Afghanistan office
Apr 2003 - US bomb destroys Aljazeera Iraq office
Apr 2004 - Bush tells Blair he wants to destroy Aljazeera Qatar office

Nov 2005 - Bush talks about freedom of the press

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when the most powerful country in the world locks people up indefinitely without trial in secret prisons and its leader demands the right to invade anywhere and torture anyone in the world, and says "you're either with us or against us", then it's pretty obvious that civilisation has peaked and we're sliding backwards into ignorance and barbarism, and the sooner the human race exterminates itself the better off the universe will be

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if the US is going to jail people for life for having fantasies about killing George Bush they'll be locking up more than half the world's population

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to break the law is illegal
it is not necessarily immoral

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White House wants to legalise CIA torture of non-Americans

"It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways."

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5% of the world's population use a quarter of the world's oil supply
and there's people still wondering why they invaded Iraq!

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press freedom? - the UK is ranked 24th - the US is ranked 44th

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when Tony Blair talks about plans for "radical reform",
he means returning to the policies of Margaret Thatcher

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"Individuals are presumed innocent in the American legal system."

says the man who imprisons people without trial in Guantanamo

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Dylan's lyrics were seeds that crystallised the thoughts of a generation

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what is an occupied country?

there are approx 100 American military bases in the UK
there are no UK military bases in America

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guilty until shot dead

UK Crown Prosecution Service confirms new policing policy

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a pandemic reducing the human population by 99% would be good news for the 500,000+ species that humans will kill off during the next 50 years

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Labour used the UK's new terrorism laws against their own supporters at the last Party Conference

so what chance have the rest of us got?

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instead of picking on David Cameron about whether he once smoked dope, it would be far better to get rid of all the Parliamentary drunks and alcoholics

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George Bush and Tony Blair acted much like Nazi war criminals"

- Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq

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George Bush told by God to invade Iraq and Afghanistan

"I can't think for you - You'll have to decide" - Bob Dylan

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"Britain's success in bringing democracy to Iraq..." - Jack Straw

146 university professors assassinated in the past two years

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Blair said there were weapons of mass destruction - there were none
Blair said it was to stop terrorism - suicide bombers attacked London
Blair said it was to keep the peace - there's now a civil war raging

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the illegal invasion of Iraq teaches us that each generation must learn anew that governments represent rich and powerful interests and that they lie without hesitation shame or remorse

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how the foreign terrorists tortured their prisoners -

"ANYTHING SHORT OF AN INMATE'S DEATH WAS ALLOWED...
IT WAS SPORT... WE KEPT IT TO BROKEN ARMS AND LEGS"

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Tony Blair's continued babbling about progress in Iraq is a disgrace to the Labour Party, a disgrace to Parliament, a disgrace to politics, and a disgrace to the country

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when i was young, i was told the UK was a good place to live because we didn't lock people up without trial

now i'm told the UK is a better place to live because we do lock people up without trial

this must be the progress which Tony Blair keeps whittering on about

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there is something obscene about a world in which some countries spend billions of dollars on nuclear weapons and in other countries babies starve to death because of drought

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the problem with rulers who have strong religious beliefs is that they divide people into good and bad - and the worse those rulers are, the more righteous they consider themselves

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the United Nations is a forum for powerful countries to promote their idealogical amd commercial interests in return for subsidising humanitarian organisations

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UN food for oil scandal?

the real scandal is that the sanctions were ever imposed
it was pure vindictiveness

Vietnam and Cuba suffered similarly from unjust sanctions

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Ken Clarke to run for Tory leadership -
he's an honest man of common sense and wide interests
(as opposed to that cheesy lying neocon puppet Blair)

if only they'd swop parties, the future would be a lot brighter

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why were the US so keen on weapons inspectors in Iraq?

they wanted to be certain no weapons of mass destruction existed
before they invaded

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farm which breeds animals for vivisection to close

best news i've seen this year

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British justice used to be "innocent until proved guilty"
which has to be better than "guilty until shot by the police"

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vice president Richard Cheney’s former company Halliburton has received more than $10 billion in no-bid contracts for work in Iraq

it's an ill wind...

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when i lived in America, the biggest selling lapel badge said "NUKE IRAN"

why is the USA the only country allowed to use nuclear weapons?

all countries are equal, but some are more equal than others?

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if Germany had dropped an atomic bomb on New York because it would have helped them to end WWII quickly, would that have been a good thing to do?

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CIA paramilitary force tried to ferment Iraqi rebellion in 2002

how many other bombings and assassinations are the work of the CIA?

what's the difference between a CIA terrorist and an Al Qaeda terrorist?
one gets better pay - the other hopes for a better pay-off

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Tony Blair to stand down as an MP at the next election -
he intends "to do something relevant to his religious beliefs"

- like begging forgiveness from his God for illegally invading Iraq,
resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people?

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"I welcome the recognition that the only route to political change lies exclusively in peaceful and democratic means." (Tony Blair)

so why did he take part in the invasion of Iraq?

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