if it wasn't for the fact that they're being slaughtered in huge numbers for Chinese "medicinal" products, i'd like to be reborn as a manta ray... tho i'd miss the stars

BBC Natural World - Andrea, Queen of Mantas

Afghanistan is as important to the security of the UK as Vietnam was to the security of America

why aren't countries competing to see who can do the most to alleviate the effects of climate change, rather than competing to see who can do least?

(maybe because they're reflecting the views of those they represent?)

RIP  Mercedes Sosa  (4th October 2009)

looking back though our history on those who have been tortured and killed for their beliefs, it's obvious that the 'morality' proclaimed by authorities is often little more than superstitions being used to control the people

according to UK army chief, UK forces will be in Afghanistan for 30 to 40 years -- did anyone ask the Afghanis about this?

how strange it is, that most people in most countries consider their own country to be superior to all others -- it seems to me that every country has its good points and its bad points, and these are changing all the time -- i used to want to go to the moon before it had half a dozen US flags stuck in it

Lest We Forget

once Tony Blair had pledged his support to George Bush's planned overthrow of Saddam Hussain, he had two months to come up with excuses to justify taking the UK into an illegal and immoral war

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/03/iraq.usa

these are the people who lied -

* Tony Blair, the Prime Minister
* Alastair Campbell, the spin doctor
* John Scarlett, the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee
* Sir David Manning, the adviser on foreign affairs

these are the people who pretended to believe the lies -

* John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister
* Gordon Brown, the Chancellor
* Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary
* David Blunkett, the Home Secretary
* Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary
* Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the Chief of the Defence Staff
* John Reid, the Labour Party chairman

if there was such a thing as impartial international justice, they should all be charged as war criminals -- but might is right, and power fears neither legality nor morality

when it was finally accepted that the war in Iraq could not be won using weapons, the enemy was paid to stop fighting -- now Barack Obama and Gordon Brown are moving their troops to Afghanistan to waste yet more of the world's resources and end yet more innocent people's lives

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

- Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Commander, Nuremberg Trials 1946
from "Nuremberg Diary" by GM Gilbert (Signet, New York, 1947)

what is needed for those being held in CIA prisons is not "fairer" treatment, but fair treatment

if i lived in a small village, and one day it was bombed by US planes and unmanned drones, and over 100 of my neighbours, men women & children, were killed i wouldn't think Barrack Obama was the best thing since sliced bread

the house martins are back again from Africa - their return always renews my confidence in the natural world -- i'm waiting to see whether they will nest again above my kitchen window, but fear that the gas boiler outlet, installed by local council workmen, which emerges a couple of feet away will probably frighten them off

i'll believe there's a serious economic crisis when the UK Government stops refitting its Trident nuclear subs (cost estimates range from £20 billion to £100 billion)

the USA's primary influence on 21st century morality so far has been to justify the use of abduction, torture, indefinite detention without charge, and a global network of CIA run secret prisons

this is the evil legacy left us by George W Bush and his sycophantic sidekick Tony Blair in their holy crusade to control the world's oil supply

BBC Radio 4 News gleefully covered the demise of The Pirate Bay.
They wish!
The Pirate Bay is dead? Long live The Pirate Bay.

the Tony Blair Faith Foundation

England's best known fantasist's latest attempt to spin the world

support globalization! give him your money!! and praise the lord!!!

if governments are so concerned about their citizens' health then perhaps they should fight less [ahem... fewer] wars rather than make laws about what people can eat, drink and smoke

at 1978 memory prices, my current hard disc storage (internal and external) is worth more than £50,000,000,000 -- although i'm even poorer now than then, i feel like one of the richest people in the world lol

Much of Albinoni's music was lost in the destruction of Dresden in WWII by vindictive allied air raids which destroyed Europe's most beautiful city

human society sees reformers as more dangerous than criminals

in January 2009, more cars were sold in China than in the US

i'm glad Jehovah didn't tell the Jews that where i live belongs to them - (it's bad enough he told the Normans and the Hanoverians)

the UK government's plans for identity cards is just one more step in its attempts to control the lives of its citizens -- how long will it be before all babies are chipped at birth?

for those who say if one has done nothing wrong then one has nothing to fear, think 'holocaust', think 'inquisition', think 'Hiroshima', think 'gulags', think 'cultural revolution', think 'witchcraft trials', think 'Irak', think 'Armenia', think 'Palestine'

yes we can... spend $1,600,000,000 to elect a president

the young worry about their love life
the old worry about their health

no matter how bad the financial situation gets, the UK government is unlikely to give up the Trident nuclear missile program
throughout history, rulers have generally regarded killing people as having priority over feeeding and housing them

Oxford University opens up new animal torture lab

"You do not settle whether an argument is justified by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments but between barbarous and civilized behaviour." - George Bernard Shaw

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