the recent US raid into Syria is yet another example of America's "do as we say, not as we do" foreign policy

bankers spend years doing shady deals, earning huge bonuses, and when they get found out the Government rewards them by giving the banks billions of taxpayers' money

the Chinese Government claimed that the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games were "basically carbon neutral"

i look forward to seeing the figures

why is it that the representatives of the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are the only ones not being heard in the Western media?

if the majority of the people in South Ossetia and Abkhazia want to be independent of Georgia, then what business is it of the British Government to try and stop them?

there may be a worldwide economic slowdown, but it doesn't seem to have stopped the richer countries wasting resources fighting foreign wars

Russia's actions in Georgia are those of a local bully.

The actions of the United States in Iraq are those of a global bully.

"It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy... The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States."

- Boutros Boutros-Ghali (former Secretary General of the UN) (1922-)

how long will it be before the apologists for war criminals Bush and Blair try and convince us that the illegal invasion of Iraq was carbon neutral?

the people who benefit most from marijuana being illegal are the large criminal gangs -- are they paying US politicians to keep the War On Drugs going?

what is a psychologist?
someone who advises the US military on how to torture people

now that British forces are now longer so active in Iraq, Gordon Brown is increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan to make sure that Bush's War On Terror continues unabated

i used to listen to George Galaway's UK radio program until he sneered at a woman caller over what she said -- he told her she didn't know what she was talking about -- i checked it out -- she was right -- he was wrong

Gordon Brown leads spineless MPs in vote for detention without trial
so much for the Magna Carta...

Genghis Khan prohibited the use of torture
(maybe because, unlike George Bush, he wasn't a Christian?)

Gordon Brown is determined to bring in detention without trial for the UK -- he calls it sticking to his principles -- i call it removing the basis of a civilised society

which is the worst country in the world to be living in?
the Democratic Republic of Congo or Uzbekistan?

UK tax changes means five million low-paid families will be worse off

(New Labour ensuring the gap between rich and poor in the UK continues to increase)

"The world owes George Bush a huge debt of gratitude..."
- Gordon Brown (UK Prime Minister)

when will the UK get a Prime Minister who doesn't lie for a living?

leaders of opposing groups often have more in common with each other than with their respective followers

so Tony Blair has finally come out as a Catholic -- it's a pity he didn't become a Moslem; then we wouldn't have invaded Iraq

a UK man was jailed for 6 months for stealing 7000 rare birds eggs

if a bird of prey stole and killed 7000 babies, would it be let loose again after 6 months confinement?

when the President of the most powerful country in the world, a fervent Christian, endorses the use of torture, it's clear that people haven't changed much since the days of the Inquisition

before being interviewed by the media, spokesman should first state how much they're being paid to say whatever it is they're going to say

one law for us, another law for them

while inner city kids get nicked for smoking a bit of dope, the plod allows huntscum to break the law with impunity -- equality in the uk? yeh, we all get an equal chance to lick the arse of the aristocracy

if one of the bush brigade married one of the clinton crowd, and there were offspring, then there'd be no more need for presidential elections in the USA

being older than both Bush & Blair, it's always tempting to offer them advice -- however i suspect there are times when my views don't reflect those of the majority, which isn't completely disastrous, as in the past i've argued with a certain amount of success that as a rule of thumb the majority is always wrong -- before throwing your teddy out the pram and spouting tautologies at me, please bear in mind that this argument has a philosophical pedigree of sorts -- (a possible exception to the rule is the belief in the existence of a human soul) -- obviously if the majority agreed with me then err.... anyway i've just added the Political Compass app to my Facebook page, and it comes out at -

      Economic Left/Right: -8.25
      Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.97

(which isn't quite at the bottom left hand corner of the graph)

---------------------------------

perhaps England would now be a better place if it'd had Neil Kinnock and William Hague as Prime Ministers instead of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair

---------------------------------

Trash Vortex - the world's biggest rubbish bin

---------------------------------

if i added affiliate links to my most popular pages i could probably generate more than enough to cover all my net costs -- but i think it'd be the thin end of a slippery slope on the road to hell -- i've got something of an addictive personality and the last thing i need is to become obsessed with making money -- so this is a free plug for my main web host -

      Dreamhost

i first came across the internet in 1991, and started using it regularly in 1993 -- my first web site was put together in 1996 while working at a web design and hosting company -- and Dreamhhost is the best i've come across yet -- they're an employee owned company that's been around for 10 years and hosts over half a million web sites, providing terrabytes of bandwidth and hundreds of gigabytes of disc space at remarkably low cost, with the best customer service you're likely to find in a major web host (tho i guess that's not saying much, given the general standard of technical support in most places) ... but be warned, they're not for everyone -- check out why they think people who work in other web hosting companies are crazy -

      why Dreamhost are err.. "special"

Saudi Arabia to execute woman for witchcraft

her confession was extracted after weeks of police beatings -- hmm... Saudi Arabia is one of the staunchest allies of Bush in his grand fight for "freedom" -- now why is it that the US and the UK are so often on the side of barbarous regimes and tyrannical dictators? of course, it couldn't possibly be anything to do with trying to control the world's mineral and energy resources for their own benefit?

the UK Government is proposing to hold 'suspects' 6 weeks without charge
that's longer than anywhere else in the western world

it's also intending to remove the independence of coroner's courts, one of Britain's oldest defences against the State hiding the reasons for the deaths of its citizens

when i was young, two of the accusations levelled against the USSR were that they held people without trial and they did not hold public investigations into people's deaths, and this was why we in the West were better off because we were living in a free society -- how times have changed! and all this is in the name of Neo Labour's "progressive democracy" -- not even Orwell would have believed it!

what's happening in the UK this month?

UK Ministry of Justice plans to microchip British citizens

Just in case anyone has any doubts, or is in danger of being suckered in by their slick marketing, let me repeat once more, VIRGIN MEDIA ARE CRAP.

Being too far from my local BT exchange to be able to get fast broadband over a BT line, I'm stuck with these greedy incompetents. I was with Telewest for 5 years, who were fine, but after getting taken over by Virgin Media, technical support is now on a premium line number and their performance is lowest of all the major service providers. Worst of all is getting cut back to 25% of the advertised download and upload speeds for 5 hours every night. This seems to happen as soon as my upload speed goes over 256Kb regardless of whether anything is downloading. (I'm paying an extra 10 quid a month for a measley additional 128Kb upload which is really needed).

There are better suppliers out there. If you have the choice, use it!

US elections? No doubt the Presidency will continue to alternate between the Bush and Clinton families, as it has done since the 1980s.

Such is democracy.

to solve the problem of unplanned starving childen we need better birth control and better food distribution, not genetically modified products from Monsanto

in 2007, my UK ISP (Telewest) was taken over by Virgin Media

Telewest Blueyonder were ok, and i was happy to recommend them to friends

Virgin are not ok, and i don't recommend them -- most evenings they throttle back my internet access by 75% or more -- also the quality of technical support has droppped, and calls to them are no longer free, but are charged at a premium rate

so it looks like i'm going to have to get my BT line reconnected and find another ISP (sigh!)

my verdict on Virgin Media? - they are crap!

livestock production accounts for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions

(that's more than all the world's transport combined)

carbon trading is capitalism's way of trying to have its cake and eat it

detention without trial is law without justice
good men are turned into terrorists
those who oppose the government become enemies of the state

the TBLF yesterday disowned one of its members for what it claimed was an insult to teddy bears throughout the world -- an outraged spokesbear demanded that the offending teddy be publicly flogged

the planned 104 acre US Embassy embassy in Baghdad is six times bigger than the whole UN complex in New York

(where there's muck, there's brass)

i've just come across a strangely evocative video, Robbie Dingo's "Watch The World(s).", showing the creation of a complete village in the virtual reality metaverse Second Life -- it's a village which many people will recognise -- except it's not a picture - it's a virtual reality -- or was... he did it on a temporary sim he had the loan of...

hmm.. a bit like Leonardo making a film of himself painting the Mona Lisa, throwing away the painting, and then releasing the movie

*** don't forget to have your sound on -- (there's a link to a high res version of the vid in the "About This Video" section)

<musing>
if only it had been kept and sold off in small plots, it would have been possible to buy one of the cottages and actually live there -- no doubt a nice neighbourhood, tho probably expensive, and the cottage would still need to have been furnished... i've seen classic jukeboxes for sale in some of the SL retro stores, so maybe i should look out for a virtual Seeburg Q160 -- the gardens don't look big enough for a swimming pool (so i could have put to use my recently acquired swimming animations) -- but maybe a small pond with water lilies, some circling goldfish occasionally coming to the surface, a couple of frogs splashing in and out of the water, a bit of bird song in the background, and how about a heron flying over as dawn comes up? (earlier today i spent 10p on a drinking fountain -- when switched on, it burbles away nicely enough in the background, and it doesn't run out of water... but it's not exactly a top of the range model) -- oh, to be a master builder!
</musing>

how to recognise spam (#273) -

*********************************************
Subject: URGENT
From: MR THUGZY BUBBLE <mrthugzybubble@gmail.com>

This is Rev Thugzy Bubble and here interesting in buying flyers ..I will like to know if you do print flyers and if you do .... I want to Inform you that i will need the Following Type and size of the Flyers i am in need of:
<snip>
*********************************************

estimated cost to the US of the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions is $1.6 trillion

annual cost to ensure basic water supply and sanitation to all is $20 billion

but hey, this is the Viet-Rak era

IRAQI DEATH TOLL FROM OCCUPATION PASSES A MILLION

to paraphrase Josef Stalin -
"A single American death is a tragedy; a million Iraqi deaths is a statistic."

it would appear that the severity of global warming depends on me not using the central heating but putting on an extra jumper instead

the world is a kaleidoscope - we all have a different point of view

I have one question for Gordon Brown - if he had been Prime Minister in March 2003, would UK troops still have invaded Iraq?

most parents would not accept a 1 in 100 chance of being run over when crossing the road with their baby -- but they would accept a 1 in 100 chance of every man, woman and child on earth dying because of climate change

"A degenerate society is characterised by expansionism and imperialism"

(from "The Tao of Politics - Lessons of the Masters of Huainan")

the first thing that happens when US troops arrive, is the setting up of a local branch of al-Qaeda

There are good terrorists, and there are bad terrorists.
Our's are the good terrorists, and their's are the bad terrorists.
Every so often the terrorists swop sides.

waffle of the day (28th Aug 07)

"To be honest...." - David Milliband, UK Defence Secretary (BBC Radio 4)
(before talking a load of rubbish to avoid answering the question)

the USA has 16 intelligence agencies
hard to believe

UK road works to cost a thousand pounds an inch

the 51 mile M6 road widening scheme is estimated to cost twice the UK's total yearly aid budget to Africa

more roads - more cars - more pollution
good to see we've got our priorities right

"They will welcome us as liberators" - Dick Cheney

there are more English speakers in China than there are in England

"Our position is that there are two kinds of people in Iraq: not Sunni and Shia, Kurdish and Arab, Muslim and Christian, but those who are with the occupation and those who are against it."

- Abdallah Suleiman Omary (an Iraqi resistance leader)

the UK has 4.2 million CCTV cameras
this is more than the rest of Europe put together

why does the UK have the highest crime rate in Europe?

the first European country in modern times to ban smoking at work was Nazi Germany, as part of Hitler's campaign to eliminate smoking

now that the UK Government has got an opt out from the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, it can proceed with plans to bring in detention without charge and trial without jury

the really dangerous people, the ones who do the greatest harm, are often the ones who are convinced they are doing the greatest good

some say we are overdue for a major plague, but even if it killed 99.999% of us we'd still outnumber gorillas -- more positively, there'd be a sigh of relief from most of the other animals (except cats and dogs), and it really would help with global warming

how about a leaving present for soon to be ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair?
such as a one-way ticket to Iraq

the young dream of what they will do when they are older
the old dream of what they did when they were younger

JS Bach's Brandenburg Concertos were sold in 1734 for €1
they were not published until 1850 (100 years after Bach's death)
they did not achieve their current popularity until the 1930's

New Labour has created 3,000 new criminal offences since 1997

no wonder UK jails are overflowing

it's 18 years since the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster and the company still hasn't paid the damages it owes

see http://www.exposeexxon.com

carbon trading? ha!

what is needed is not less people flying, but less planes flying

so why is New Labour planning to expand all the major UK airports?

Government climate control measures? ha!

just more spin from Blair

roll on Scottish independence - if the English are stupid enough to vote Blair back into office, they deserve all they get - but it's not really fair on Scotland and Wales

a UN study finds that the production of one complete computer and monitor takes 240kg of fossil fuels, 22kg of chemicals and 1,500 litres of water

(and that's before packaging and long distance distribution)

which is why each new operating system from Microsoft needs a higher spec computer

it's called planned obsolescence

a society motivated by profit is a society motivated by greed

liars, damn liars & politicians - example 37,752 - Tal Afar

March 2006 - President Bush: "a concrete example of progress in Iraq"

March 2007 - off-duty Shiite police slaughter up to 70 Sunnis in retaliatory killing spree

underlining the UK's committment to get rid of its nuclear weapons (as legally required under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), £70,000,000,000 is being spent on replacing and maintaining the next generation of Trident nuclear submarines

so US goons torture this guy for 2 years, and then claim he's confessed to being a terrorist
- big deal -
torture me for 2 days and i'd confess to being bin Laden's mother

it is claimed that Exxon spent $16 million between 1998 and 2005 on 'disinformation tactics' to undermine climate change science

the UK's Health and Safety at Work Act came into force in 1974

since then 10,000 people have died at work but only 11 directors have been convicted of manslaughter

"It's not our fault" - Tony Blair (talking about the situation in Iraq)

well it's certainly not the fault of the two million people who marched thru Central London past Downing Street to Trafalgar Square in February 2003

"There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath."

- Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

about 40% of women murdered in the UK are killed by their current or former partners

96% of the the people arrested for terrorist offenses in the UK during the last 5 years have not yet been convicted

75% of the oil profits from Iraq are planned to go to foreign companies

every year 90,000 people die of infections picked up in US hospitals, and now joining in the fray is the new superbug hero -
Acinetobacter baumannii

It's not Bush and Blair's "war on terror" that worries me, so much as their war on truth

UK executive pay is increasing 17 times faster than average wage rises

trickle-down economics? sounds more like trickle-up to me

6,500,000,000 people wishing for peace on Earth
spend $1,200,000,000,000 a year on arms

every hour the world's population increases by 9,000 people;
each day the world's population increases by more than 200,000

no wonder there are so many wars over resources

Britain has spent UKP 12.5M on reconstruction contracts in Basra - whereas it spent UKP 14M refurbishing one of Saddam's palaces for use as the British consulate building
(which has now been evacuated following mortar attacks)

Blair claims it's essential that the UK has an independent nuclear deterrent - so how come it's not needed by Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil etc?

and if the UK really does need it, then surely Iran needs it even more?

"So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists." - Edward Said (1980)

if the function of the UN is to moderate conflict between nations, why is NATO fighting a war in Afghanistan? oil pipelines to Europe?

i've just removed my links to Al Jazeera -
their new site disappoints -
no Shujaat; culture and environment sections gone; bad design; bugs

if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

for the UK to achieve full democracy it needs proportional representation, an elected second chamber and an elected head of state

Tony Blair complaining about "poisonous propaganda"?

like the way he deliberately whipped up hysteria by claiming that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes notice, so that he had an excuse to send British troops to Iraq?

the success of the Democrats in the US election results is a signal of hope to the rest of the world that the excesses of the Bush administration are coming to an end

the US Government will refuse to admit there is a civil war in Iraq until after it has ended - then they will claim to have prevented it!

the rise in cancer and birth defects in Iraq has been attributed to US and UK depleted uranium weapons

another crime for Bush and Blair to be charged with

"I don't know there is a God."
- Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, BBC Radio 4, 31 Oct 2006

(if you need to find God, avoid religion and use entheogens)

there were riots in Hungary because the Prime Minister lied

amazing!

in the UK there'd be riots if the Prime Minister told the truth

Jesus of Nazareth said, "love your enemy" (Luke 6: 27-38)

he didn't say, "kill your enemy"

so why do Bush and Blair call themselves Christians?

because they are are part of a proselytising fundamentalism which stretches back to when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire - when Bush talked about a "crusade" in the context of sending his army to invade Moslem countries, that's exactly what he meant

"This War on Drugs originally started as a War on Religious Experiences, and it is nothing new..." – Jonathon Ott

the difference between prophets and their followers is that prophets think for themselves

having been labelled by the US President as "evil", North Korea appears to have chosen to develop it's own nuclear weapons rather than risk being invaded

Guantánamo Bay is the world's supreme symbol of injustice and the abuse of power