extra! extra!

The "Green Thing"

2011-12-11T18:10:00.006Z

(A friend in Canada emailed me this, and it struck a chord. For now, author unknown. Comments by me in italics.)

"At the checkout, the young girl suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bag because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and said, "We didn't have this green thing in my younger days."

The checkout girl responded, "That's our problem now. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the "green thing" in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. [There were no soda or beer bottles in my family home, but yes, we returned the milk bottles every day.] The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. They really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. [We didn't have one anyway]. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a clothesline, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in those days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing [in fact, very rarely, and they were made by my mother.] But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV [if that!] and one radio in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand, because we didn't have electric machines to do everything. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up newspapers to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working, so we didn't need to go to a gym to run on treadmills that operate on (yet more) electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a water fountain or the tap when we were thirsty, instead of using a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying new ones, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade had got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked, instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint. [We didn't have any 'pizza joints' in Dublin then, but we knew what was on in the local cinema, by word of mouth.]

So isn't it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we older folks were, just because we didn't have the 'green thing' back then?"
_______________

Thanks Sue :)

Thanksgiving - for what exactly?

2011-11-24T21:35:00.002Z

"Native Blood: The Myth of Thanksgiving"

Revolutionary Worker #883, November 24, 1996

Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists -- and of the ruthless ways of capitalism ...

Continue here

Meltdown

2011-09-21T11:15:00.003+01:00

Al Jazeera:

"In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.

"The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.

"But how did it all go so wrong?

"Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.

"Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.

"All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.

"Meltdown is a four-part investigation that takes a closer look at the people who brought down the financial world.
It can be seen on Al Jazeera English from Tuesday, September 20, at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2000; Wednesday: 1200; Thursday: 0100; Friday: 0600; Saturday: 2000; Sunday: 1200; Monday: 0100; Tuesday: 0600."

Meanwhile, here's Action Man Putin

2011-09-18T23:31:00.004+01:00

Click here for Putin horse-riding, Putin jet-skiing, Putin car-racing, Putin with tiger, you get the drift ... no golfing pics. Although they're popular.

Great thumping oligarchs

2011-09-18T23:17:00.003+01:00

From Al Jazeera

That stress ...

2011-09-13T11:41:00.006+01:00

Having had a double bypass, and having been in the care of one cardiologist or another since 1998, I have often bemoaned the lack of interest they show in stress -- my stress. I've been pumped full of pills (many with obnoxious side effects) and warned about diet, but never given one class -- or even one A4 sheet of paper -- on the subject of how to manage stress.

Wandering around the net this morning, I happened to come across "Melissa's Heart", where there are some good pointers about dealing with stress. It's not only cardiac patients who benefit from easing the stress burden. It may be useful to you even if you're in the whole of your health.

Getting the facts right: Eilat, and Israel's attack on Gaza

2011-08-21T13:23:00.002+01:00

A deadly three-pronged attack by unidentified gunmen on Israeli soldiers and civilians near the Red Sea resort town of Eilat on Thursday triggered a serious escalation in violence, with Israel launching three nights of air raids on the Gaza Strip.

Get the facts here

The Man Behind the Anti-Shariah Movement

2011-08-01T17:23:00.003+01:00

Andrea Elliott, at the New York Times:

"NASHVILLE — Tennessee’s latest woes include high unemployment, continuing foreclosures and a battle over collective-bargaining rights for teachers. But when a Republican representative took the Statehouse floor during a recent hearing, he warned of a new threat to his constituents’ way of life: Islamic law ...

Continues here

Attack on Norway

2011-07-25T15:55:00.003+01:00

From MacLeod Cartoons

Wall Street’s Euthanasia of Industry

2011-07-17T13:03:00.003+01:00

Dr Michael Hudson interviewed on Guns N Butter with Bonnie Faulkner. Read and/or listen here.

"His 1972 book, Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, is a critique of how the United States exploited foreign economies through the IMF and World Bank. He is also author of Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: The Myth of Aid and Global Fracture: The New International Economic Order.

"Today we discuss the crisis of the economy in the United States, the jobless recovery, the debt ceiling debate, default [and] China. We also talk about the economic crisis in Europe and financial warfare against Greece."

(and Ireland is in there too - N)

about time

2011-07-14T09:46:00.003+01:00

Source

We must stop Israel from becoming a theocracy

2011-07-07T11:29:00.002+01:00

From Haaretz.com:

"Should Israel be a democracy in which a minority enjoys equal rights, or an ethnocracy for Jews who believe that their right to the Land of Israel is greater than any other human right?"

Read in full here

Age of Greed

2011-07-06T15:08:00.002+01:00

More at The Real News

Jesus was a Palestinian

2011-06-29T23:07:00.004+01:00

and why it matters

Time Out

2011-06-26T00:51:00.002+01:00

Back in a while.
Taking a Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, etc, break.
For the good of my soul.

The collective

2011-06-23T17:32:00.003+01:00

Doing some checking on correct (British) use of collective nouns, I came across this amusing list here.

If the Titanic sank today, how they'd spin it

2011-06-20T23:46:00.003+01:00

From NaturalNews.com

Imagine the Titanic hitting an iceberg in 2011 ...

The White House Press Secretary: The iceberg was placed in the Atlantic ocean by Osama Bin Laden.

The chemist: That's not an iceberg. It's merely solid-state di-hydrogen oxide.

Al Gore: That iceberg wouldn't have even been there if the polar caps weren't melting.

The Congressman: Quick, let's pass a new law that says ships shall not sink.

President Obama: The Titanic isn't sinking. It's merely engaged in "aquatic action."

Former President Bush: Icebergs are weapons of mass destruction planted in the ocean by terrorists. We must avenge [sic] the iceberg terrorists!

The Pentagon: We will equalize the hole in one side of the ship by blowing a matching hole in the other side.

The TSA inspector: You're not allowed onto a lifeboat until we check your anus for explosives.

The Cancer Doctor: We can't fix the hole in the ship, but through the miracle of chemotherapy, we can make you suffer so much that you won't care.

The Wall Street investment banker: Don't worry, the Fed will bail out all the water we're taking on. The Titanic is too big to fail.

The teenage girl: Can I still text on my iPhone under water?

Congressman Weiner: Yes you can, and by the way, here's a very special "going away" message for you to remember me by.

Average Joe: Is the ship's buffet still open?

The FDA: We believe the ship is sinking because of an e.coli infection that spread from the galley.

The CDC: Everybody should get vaccinated before the ship sinks, just in case there's a shark-flu virus in the water.

The New Ager: There is no hole in the ship unless you believe there is a hole in the ship.

The Academic: I have published a paper that proves this ship is unsinkable. Would anyone like to read it? Please?

The Catholic priest: I think we should save all the children first. Which lifeboat are they on again?

The Journalist: The Titanic has a hole in its side, but official sources tell us it's only "aquatic action" and there's no cause for alarm. And we believe them.

The Federal Reserve: We have decided to dump more water onto the ship in the hope of making it float.

The Federal Government: Hey, these deck chairs look pretty nice. Let's rearrange them!

The Doctor: We need to order a couple dozen CT scans of the ship's hull and bill them to Medicare before we have any idea at all what to do.

The Denialist: Stop talking about negative things. Stay focused on the positive and you won't need a life vest.

The Realist: This ship is going down, folks. You might want to think about taking action to keep yourself alive.

The Gullible Masses: Don't worry, this ship is unsinkable.
Even if it did sink, there are plenty of lifeboats.
Even if there aren't enough lifeboats, we all have life jackets.
Even if we don't have enough life jackets, the government will come save us.

Source

Keiser Report: Regime Change in Greece Now!

2011-06-05T17:08:00.002+01:00

Putting the lie to my remark in my last post (about R&R) here's Max Keiser talking about Greece and Ireland, and our urgent need for "regime change":

Cats are nothing if not curious

2011-06-05T15:37:00.005+01:00

After spending half the morning reading and posting serious stuff on Twitter, I thought I'd post this here. Will my blog become a place for R & R? We'll have to wait and see.

Saturday night silly from Storyful:

Fact-Check Netanyahu's speech to US Congress

2011-05-27T21:38:00.002+01:00

Fact check it at the The Institute for Middle East Understanding.

"NETANYAHU: "You don't need to export democracy to Israel. We've already got it."

"REALITY: For more than 43 years, Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, a population now numbering 4.36 million people. Except for a few thousand Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, this population has no voice in Israeli national policy despite being subjected to long-term Israeli occupation.

"As well, 1.2 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel and subject to more than 30 laws which discriminate against them solely based on their ethnicity, rendering them second or third-class citizens in their own homeland. From 1948 to 1966, those Palestinians who remained in what became Israel after the ethnic cleansing of the vast majority of the Palestinians from their homeland were governed by Israeli military rule (not unlike what exists in the Occupied Territories today). Thus for the entirety of its 63-year existence, there has been a period of only about one year, between the lifting of martial law in 1966 and the occupation which began in 1967, that Israel did not rule over large numbers of Palestinians to whom it granted no political or human rights."

CONTINUE HERE

One of the reasons NATO is attacking Libya?

2011-05-27T21:18:00.001+01:00

Obama's Mideast Speech

2011-05-22T00:28:00.003+01:00

President Obama said a Palestinian state must be based on the 1967 borders, the first time a U.S. president has explicitly taken this position. The Israeli government immediately rejected Obama's comments, calling the 1967 borders "indefensible."

Roundtable with author Norman Finkelstein, Palestinian human rights lawyer Noura Erakat, and Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of the lobby group J Street.

Gorse fires in Donegal and Offaly - photo

2011-05-03T14:08:00.002+01:00

(Oddly enough in the circs) the story in the Irish Times has a lovely photo, almost like a watercolour:

"Large gorse fires are burning in Falcarragh, Co Donegal and in parts of Co Offaly this afternoon. Three Air Corps helicopters fitted with giant “Bambi” buckets capable of dropping 1,200 litres of water on the flames are at the scene in Donegal. An army spokesman said troops were on standby to help tackle a number of fires on the Offaly/Meath border."

Full text here
Photograph: Eamonn Farrell/Photocall

Time-Lapse Video Of Earth & Sky

2011-04-23T15:38:00.002+01:00

H/t to The Good Human who asks, "Still on the fence about whether our environment is important enough to make drastic lifestyle changes in order to preserve its beauty?"

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Max Keiser on Ireland

2011-04-19T22:08:00.001+01:00

Part 2 here

Stop the torture of Bradley Manning

2011-04-19T15:45:00.007+01:00

Alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning is being tortured in a US military prison. He has not yet been tried. His pre-trial detention has already been unusually long. Manning is subjected to isolation that can drive many people insane.

Manning allegedly released documents to Wikileaks -- including a video of US soldiers massacring Iraqi civilians. His treatment appears to be part of an intimidation campaign to silence whistleblowers and crack down on Wikileaks.

We need to show Obama that his reputation and credibility (and those of the United States) are at stake here. Despite praising whistleblowers during the 2008 election campaign (such "acts of courage and patriotism" ought to be "encouraged, rather than stifled," said his website) Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president in U.S. history. (You thought that would be GW, didn't you.)

Please sign the petition at Avaaz -- the message will be delivered through ads and actions in Washington as soon as signatures reach 250,000.

'GENERATION RX'

2011-04-15T08:57:00.000+01:00

From an 'Rx Drug Pusher'

2011-04-15T08:27:00.003+01:00

"Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness"

http://www.gwenolsen.com/

We're not being told the truth about Libya

2011-04-08T13:28:00.007+01:00

Please do read Johann Hari at Independent.co.uk today. I'm linking you to the "print" version as the original page has some script running on it, which is slowing everything down.

Chill out

2011-04-07T20:40:00.003+01:00

Statins: "wonder" drugs or wreckers?

2011-04-05T15:58:00.012+01:00

If you, or a relative, is taking a statin (like Lipitor, Crestor, Lipostat, etc) you might want to read on. These so-called "wonder drugs" may be keeping atherosclerosis patients alive longer than they might otherwise have expected, but are they wrecking our quality of life?

What's undisputed is that Lipitor alone made $8.6 billion for Pfizer in 2010. And apparently undisputed is that doctors have swallowed the "wonder drug" notion hook, line, and sinker, to the extent that in the UK, statins are now heavily promoted as a preventative, to people who are not even ill.

I'd suggest reading this article at the Telegraph. Not only is the content of the article of concern, but there are about 140 comments that are well worth reading too. Comments from people who have either been on statins and come off them, or are seriously considering doing so now. It's not just a question of muscle damage (in rare cases, fatal), and hair loss, but if statins are affecting our memories, and causing depression, they're affecting our brains.

Have you been losing your hair? Have a look here.

The second point to note is that there is controversy over cholesterol, and whether it's really a big player in atherosclerosis. Google "Is cholesterol really the problem?" and see what you find. I've read that well over 50% of those who die of heart attacks in the USA have normal cholesterol levels.

Statins do more than lower cholesterol. Apparently, they also act as an anti-inflammatory on the inside of the arteries. If we come off the drug willy-nilly, we may be letting ourselves in for serious trouble. But can we live with the side effects? I'm finding it very hard.

Here, in brief, is my story:
I had a double bypass in 1998, and was put on 10mg Lipostat (among other things). When it was found in 2005 that half my bypass had failed (but my body had found itself another little "route" for the blood) the 10mg was increased to 40mg, and I've been on that ever since. (When I changed cardiologists, an attempt was made to put me on the highest recommended dose of Lipitor as well, but I refused. Then he tried Crestor, but I refused that too - muscle agony.)

Since the 40mg Lipostat, I've developed many "ailments". Originally I didn't connect the dots, or connect any of them with Lipostat. I "pull" muscles at the drop of a hat, and they take ages to heal. I get vicious cramps, sometimes in my feet and sometimes under my ribs. My hair has been thinning and falling out. My eyelashes have disappeared. I have irritated, dry eyes, and they never clear up. My legs are freezing, so I wear leg warmers day and night. (Got them on eBay). I've developed sinusitis, which I'd never had before. And (for example) my favourite film stars ... I can't say their names when I want to. I can see the faces, but I can't say their names. I feel like I'm 90 most of the time.

Now, after doing some research, I find that all of the above "ailments" (in various combinations) are mentioned by people on statins. As is the fact that many people feel "unable to exercise" -- which seems an atrocious side effect to dump on atherosclerosis patients.

I'm going to discuss all this with my cardiologist, urgently, with a view to change. (I will get off this statin if I can, or at least cut down the dose to half or quarter.) If you're suffering like me, you might want to talk to your own doctor. But be prepared: another frequent complaint from patients is that their doctors brush them off, or tell them that their statin side effects are being caused by something else. Stick to your guns. You know your own body better than anyone.

Cholesterol is the building block for the major hormones: aldosterone, cortisone, testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. It's a vital part of our body chemistry. So who keeps lowering the recommended levels, and what is their relationship with the pharmaceutical industry?

My "malformed" template

2011-04-05T12:15:00.010+01:00

Not being overly keen on this new template, I attempted last night to reinstate the old one. I had carefully saved it so I could change back if I liked. And, I had checked the top and tail to make sure no bits were missing, and no tags were left open.

Last night I decided to switch back. But when I pasted in the old code, this is what I was told:

"Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly. XML error message: Content is not allowed in prolog."

Now it looks like I'm stuck with this new template whether I like it or not. Ho hum ... I shouldn't complain. The blog is free ...

STOP PRESS!

Well, well, well. I was Googling idly looking for a Woe is Me image or something lighthearted to include in this post. What did I find only this post, about moving back to Old Blogger, or Classic Blogger. I had thought the main problem was that I had saved the old template as an .rtf and not in Notepad. But hey presto, when I reverted to Classic, I didn't even need to paste in my old code! It was already there! So there you have it. Old template is back. And thanks very much to "T - Another Geek Girl" at the above link.

PS: I'm really pleased. I had become a dab hand at editing my old html template, even the CSS and Javascript. It's such a relief to be back to square one again!

This is not a joke

2011-04-01T02:04:00.004+01:00

Between zombie banks, sovereign debt, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, general climate change, revolutions in the Arab world, not to mention the unresolved nuclear emergency at Fukushima, I am thinking of stashing basic supplies like we did for Y2K. Can't hurt can it?

So that's it then (until the next time?)

2011-04-01T01:30:00.007+01:00

"The Government has agreed to a €24 billion recapitalisation of the main Irish banks without attempting to force senior bondholders to share the burden.

"It will be the fifth bailout of the banks since 2008 and brings the total State support to €70 billion.

"The governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, described the Irish banking crisis as one of the most expensive in history." [Irish Times this morning]

Most of us on Twitter are sitting around waiting for the anti-Irish April Fool's jokes to come in. What the hell else can we do? Taking to the streets didn't do the Greeks much good. Apparently it's as if every working person in Ireland now has €35,000 of debt on their heads. Reckless debts incurred by careless, greedy bankers, debts later guaranteed by our bloody stupid Fianna Fáil Government. (Yes, yes, along with a few Greens who hardly covered themselves in glory.)

Excerpt from The Economist:

"the best hope lies with the IMF. Its economists have the most experience of debt crises. Some privately acknowledge that debt restructuring is ultimately inevitable. It is time the Fund’s top brass said so publicly and, by refusing to lend more without a deal on debt, pushed Europe’s pusillanimous politicians into doing the right thing."

Read: "They’re bust. Admit it." here

Ireland's Black Thursday

2011-03-31T16:05:00.002+01:00

"The scale of Ireland's latest banking black hole will be revealed at 4.30pm on Thursday" (roughly half an hour after this posting)

Lisa O'Carroll on Ireland Business Blog at the Guardian:

Bank of Ireland, Ireland's oldest bank, is facing the prospect of being nationalised on Thursday afternoon – one event on a day that is expected to bring untold carnage to the retail banking sector in Ireland and has already been dubbed Black Thursday.

Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks shares have been temporarily suspended pending publication of the long-awaited stress tests at 4.30pm.

These are expected to confirm another black hole in the four main Irish retail banks and lead to the fifth bailout of the country's banks since the 2008 financial crash ...

This will come as a shock to the Irish public and be seen as an even greater watershed than the bailout of the toxic Anglo-Irish Bank whose reckless lending to developers brought the country to its knees and led to last year's IMF-EU €85bn (£75bn) bailout ...

The bailout comes as Pimco, the world's largest bond fund, said on Wednesday that the Irish government and the ECB had to "face reality'' that some senior bondholders would have to face taking a loss on their bonds which were guaranteed by the Irish state.

Andrew Bosomworth, one of the fund's European strategists, told Bloomberg that bondholders needed to face "bail in'' arrangements in the Irish banks, code for forcing some losses on these investors. "I am reasonably concerned,'' he said.

He said the line that senior bondholders could not be touched had not worked. "This is fuel for moral hazard,'' he said. "Look, Ireland is closing kindergartens to pay senior bondholders – ethically that is a very questionable policy".

Full text here:

The moment the tsunami hit Japan

2011-03-13T09:35:00.002Z

The world's biggest cave?

2011-02-28T19:27:00.003Z

From National Geographic:

"A giant cave column swagged in flowstone towers over explorers swimming through the depths of Hang Ken, one of 20 new caves discovered last year in Vietnam."

See the stunning pictures here

Robert Fisk: The destiny of this pageant lies in the Kingdom of Oil

2011-02-27T23:29:00.001Z

Excerpt:

"Who would have believed that the old man in the cave would suddenly have to step outside, dazzled, blinded by the sunlight of freedom rather than the Manichean darkness to which his eyes had become accustomed. Martyrs there were aplenty across the Muslim world – but not an Islamist banner to be seen. The young men and women bringing an end to their torment of dictators were mostly Muslims, but the human spirit was greater than the desire for death. They are Believers, yes – but they got there first, toppling Mubarak while Bin Laden's henchmen still called for his overthrow on outdated videotapes ... "

Read the whole thing here

This is the regime the UK has been selling arms to

2011-02-27T13:18:00.002Z

Qaddafi Forces Shooting From Ambulances, Witnesses Say

"Tripoli, Libya - An increasingly gruesome picture began to emerge Saturday of the violent tactics used by the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to quell protesters in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, with several witnesses confirming that forces loyal to the government had been shooting people from ambulances and using antiaircraft guns against crowds.

"Witnesses to the violence in Tripoli, where a tense standoff held on Saturday, also said that the government had removed dead bodies as well as the wounded from hospitals in an effort to disguise the mounting death toll in the uprising against Col. Qaddafi sweeping Libya ..."

Continue here

And from the Guardian:

UK arms companies visited Tripoli three months ago

"A company that supplies riot control ammunition and a manufacturer of electrified razor wire were among a UK government arms delegation to Tripoli as recently as three months ago.

"Amid concern that British equipment may have been used by the Gaddafi regime to suppress unrest in Libya, it has now come to light that representatives of at least 50 UK arms companies accompanied officials to meet military figures in November. They included Birmingham Barbed Tape, which produces razor wire that delivers a "repulse shock", and Lincolnshire-based Primetake, which offers teargas cartridges and rubber bullets ..."

Continue here

Robert Fisk: These are secular popular revolts – yet everyone is blaming religion

2011-02-20T10:08:00.002Z

"Mubarak claimed that Islamists were behind the Egyptian revolution. Ben Ali said the same in Tunisia. King Abdullah of Jordan sees a dark and sinister hand – al-Qa'ida's hand, the Muslim Brotherhood's hand, an Islamist hand – behind the civil insurrection across the Arab world. Yesterday the Bahraini authorities discovered Hizbollah's bloody hand behind the Shia uprising there. For Hizbollah, read Iran. How on earth do well-educated if singularly undemocratic men get this thing so wrong? Confronted by a series of secular explosions – Bahrain does not quite fit into this bracket – they blame radical Islam. The Shah made an identical mistake in reverse. Confronted by an obviously Islamic uprising, he blamed it on Communists.

"Bobbysocks Obama and Clinton have managed an even weirder somersault. Having originally supported the 'stable' dictatorships of the Middle East – when they should have stood by the forces of democracy – they decided to support civilian calls for democracy in the Arab world at a time when the Arabs were so utterly disenchanted with the West's hypocrisy that they didn't want America on their side. 'The Americans interfered in our country for 30 years under Mubarak, supporting his regime, arming his soldiers,' an Egyptian student told me in Tahrir Square last week. 'Now we would be grateful if they stopped interfering on our side.' At the end of the week, I heard identical voices in Bahrain. 'We are getting shot by American weapons fired by American-trained Bahraini soldiers with American-made tanks,' a medical orderly told me on Friday. 'And now Obama wants to be on our side?'

"The events of the past two months and the spirit of anti-regime Arab insurrection – for dignity and justice, rather than any Islamic emirate – will remain in our history books for hundreds of years. And the failure of Islam's strictest adherents will be discussed for decades. There was a special piquancy to the latest footage from al-Qa'ida yesterday, recorded before the overthrow of Mubarak, that emphasised the need for Islam to triumph in Egypt; yet a week earlier the forces of secular, nationalist, honourable Egypt, Muslim and Christian men and women, had got rid of the old man without any help from Bin Laden Inc. Even weirder was the reaction from Iran, whose supreme leader convinced himself that the Egyptian people's success was a victory for Islam. It's a sobering thought that only al-Qa'ida and Iran and their most loathed enemies, the anti-Islamist Arab dictators, believed that religion lay behind the mass rebellion of pro-democracy protesters."

Continue

Obama has joined Likud

2011-02-20T09:40:00.004Z

Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

"This weekend, a new member enrolled in Likud - and not just in the ruling party, but in its most hawkish wing. Located somewhere between Tzipi Hotovely and Danny Danon, U.S. President Barack Obama bypassed Dan Meridor and Michael Eitan on the right and weakened their position.

"The first veto cast by the United States during Obama's term, a veto he promised in vain not to use as his predecessors did, was a veto against the chance and promise of change, a veto against hope. This is a veto that is not friendly to Israel; it supports the settlers and the Israeli right, and them alone.

"The excuses of the American ambassador to the UN won't help, and neither will the words of thanks from the Prime Minister's Office: This is a step that is nothing less than hostile to Israel. America, which Israel depends on more than ever, said yes to settlements. That is the one and only meaning of its decision, and in so doing, it supported the enterprise most damaging to Israel.

"Moreover, it did so at a time when winds of change are blowing in the Middle East. A promise of change was heard from America, but instead, it continued with its automatic responses and its blind support of Israel's settlement building. This is not an America that will be able to change its standing among the peoples of the region. And Israel, an international pariah, once again found itself supported only by America.

"This should have disturbed every Israeli. Is that what we are? Alone and condemned? And all for the continuation of that worthless enterprise? Is it really worth the price? To hell with the UN and the whole world is against us?"

Continue here

Oops

2011-01-01T11:04:00.003Z

Deleted my domain and my hosting account. In the process, deleted the masthead picture for this blog! Will have to sort it out later. Meanwhile you get the 'minimal' look.

Why Are Wars Not Being Reported Honestly?

2010-12-12T13:57:00.001Z

John Pilger, at Anti-War.com:

"In the US Army manual on counterinsurgency, the American commander General David Petraeus describes Afghanistan as a 'war of perception… conducted continuously using the news media'. What really matters is not so much the day-to-day battles against the Taliban as the way the adventure is sold in America where 'the media directly influence the attitude of key audiences'. Reading this, I was reminded of the Venezuelan general who led a coup against the democratic government in 2002. 'We had a secret weapon', he boasted. 'We had the media, especially TV. You got to have the media' ..."

Continues here

What's happening to the word "that"?

2010-12-07T14:45:00.003Z

Why is the word "that" disappearing from newspapers and online material?

This new habit seems to have originated in the USA, and have carried over to the UK and Ireland, as various speech and writing patterns have done in the past. But I have no real evidence to back that up. Other than the fact that I noticed it first in American writing, and am now noticing it more and more over here.

For example, I would write, "It's quite clear that the man was on his way home when the attack happened." Now what you see is, "It's quite clear the man was on his way home ...". Much of the time the sentence is still comprehensible. But this morning I came across a humdinger in the Guardian which is definitely a tripper-upper and causes confusion (read it fairly quickly):

"There is a strong tendency to find patterns and meaning in our lives, but the truth is unlikely things happen very frequently". (Here)

The first time I read that, I read "but the truth is unlikely" together, and then had to start again to make sense of the thing. The only way to understand it is to insert a pause after "is".

Surely had it been written, "There is a strong tendency to find patterns and meaning in our lives, but the truth is THAT unlikely things happen very frequently", it would have been easier to comprehend? Why sacrifice one word and end up with a stumbling block?

Wikileaks mirrors updated

2010-12-07T12:39:00.001Z

Wikileaks is now mirrored on 748 sites.

You can view the list here and/or add your mirror to the list, at the Mass Mirroring Wikileaks page.

Kittens and the Rosary

2010-12-06T17:29:00.009Z

When I was little, our family said the Rosary together every night. Wooden chairs would be placed in a semi-circle around the fire, and we'd kneel with our arms on the seats and our feet to the fire. My father would give out the Rosary in sombre tones, and we'd all be dutifully subdued.

We had a lovely cat called Smokey. One Autumn evening, four of her kittens were playing around the fire while the Rosary was on the go. My brother and I were surreptitiously watching them.

Suddenly one kitten scooted inside the leg of my father's trousers. (Trouser legs were wide in those days.) We were riveted. We waited for him to shift or shake his leg, but he carried on with the next Hail Mary without as much as a blink. Then eagle-eyed kitten number two spotted a movement and dived up the trouser leg after number one, and a major scuffle ensued -- lumps appearing and disappearing in the trouser leg accompanied by muted kitteny squeals and spits. Pro wrestling in a flannel tunnel.

We erupted in splutters. We clamped our hands over our mouths, but the laughter couldn't be hidden. Now he'd move, surely. But he didn't. He finished the Rosary and launched into the prayer to St Joseph without moving a muscle.

Such was the importance of the Catholic faith. The hilarities of Nature hadn't a chance.

Wikileaks Mirrors

2010-12-06T12:18:00.003Z

From here

"Wikileaks Mirrors - Updated 12/05 @ 10:45 EST
by In Case You Missed It RSS Feed on Sunday, 05 December 2010 at 19:45

2010-12-06T00:10:00.004Z

Click logo to go to Wikileaks

Wikileaks update

2010-12-04T23:33:00.005Z

Great round-up from Greg Mitchell at The Nation:

6:10 NYT finally posts story on White House ordering military and contractors to avoid WikiLeaks stuff -- love the typo "icontractors." Note: "The effort, while understandable, seems entirely futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit group that has combated government efforts to keep certain government documents secret. 'It just may be a little too late for the government to push these documents down the memory hole,' Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center did not support the initial public release of the material. 'This is Orwell thought police in the age of the Internet, as these are already so widely accessible on servers around the world.'”

5:15 NYT's Tom Friedman's Sunday column opens: "O.K. I admit it. I enjoy reading other people’s mail as much as the next guy, so going through the WikiLeaks cables has made for some fascinating reading. What’s between the lines in those cables, though, is another matter. It is a rather sobering message. America is leaking power."

4:30 Reporters Without Borders hits the "hounding" of WikiLeaks in strong statement.

3:45 Big boost: Despite pressure from U.S. and France, Swiss host for WikiLeaks refuses to take them offline. The Guardian reports: "The site's new Swiss host, Switch, today said there was "no reason" why it should be forced offline, despite demands from France and the US. Switch is a non-profit registrar set up by the Swiss government for all 1.5 million Swiss .ch domain names."

3:35 NYT gets Columbia Univ to confirm it did send that email to some students warning them not to go to Wiki sites or they will jeopardize their careers.

3:00 Ace blogger Digby defends her support for WIki releases.

2:00 Media collaboration w/ WikiLeaks amazing: NYT & Guardian publish their scoops at virtually same time every day--a daily embargo?

1:30 WikiLeaks continue on weekend: Here's Guardian on China vs. Google.

1:15 Editor of Guardian: Wash Times published column calling for Assange assassination yesterday (as I covered here) -- after paper asked HIM for WIki files earlier in week.

1:10 Yes, now there is a Boycott Pay Pal For Dumping WIkiLeaks page at Facebook -- and remember, Pay Pal owned by eBay.

1:00 Matthew Dowd, former Bushite, raps U.S. media for blasting WIkiLeaks in column that is going viral. The Guardian's media critic Greenslade hits U.S. media for ripping WikiLeaks.

12:35 Cover line for NYT "T" magazine: "Happy Holidays from Chloe Sevigny...Hilary Swank...Maggie Gyllenhaal....Julian Assange." Here's the snooze of a piece.

11:00 Pay Pal suspends WikiLeaks account "permanently."

10:50 For Sunday NYT: WIki cables show Obama's high level of "engagement."

Original HERE

Fabricating terror

2010-12-01T09:02:00.003Z

Paul Craig Roberts at OnlineJournal.com asks

Why does the FBI orchestrate fake terror plots?

The latest one snared Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American teenager in Portland, Oregon. The Associated Press report by William Mall and Nedra Pickler (11-27-10) is headlined in Yahoo News: “Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Oregon.”

This is a misleading headline as the report makes it clear that it was a plot orchestrated by federal agents. Two sentences into the news report we have this: “The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the [FBI] agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.”

The teenager was supplied with a fake bomb and a fake detonator.

Three sentences later the reporters contradict the quoted authorities with a quote from Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon: “The threat was very real.”

The reporters then contradict Balizan: “White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Saturday that President Barack Obama was aware of the FBI operation before Friday’s arrest. Shapiro said Obama was assured that the FBI was in full control of the operation and that the public was not in danger.”

Then Shapiro contradicts himself by declaring: “The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad.”

The story arrives at its Kafka highpoint when President Obama thanks the FBI for its diligence in saving us from the fake plot the FBI had fabricated ...

Continue reading here (and find out why they're doing it.)

Eating the Irish

2010-12-01T00:38:00.002Z

In case you missed it.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times, on our wonderful bailout.

"O.K., these days it’s not the landlords, it’s the bankers — and they’re just impoverishing the populace, not eating it. But only a satirist — and one with a very savage pen — could do justice to what’s happening to Ireland now."

Read it all here

WikiLeaks cable reveals secret pledge to protect US at Iraq inquiry

2010-12-01T00:17:00.006Z

Via the Guardian:

Ministry of Defence told US that UK had 'put measures in place' to protect American interests during Chilcot inquiry

"The admission came in the cable sent on 22 September 2009, which recorded a series of high-level meetings between Tauscher and UK defence officials and diplomats, which involved the then foreign secretary, David Miliband."

Full text here

America really doesn't care about injustice in the Middle East

2010-11-30T19:20:00.002Z

Robert Fisk in the Independent:

"I came to the latest uproarious US diplomatic history with the deepest cynicism. And yesterday, in the dust of post-election Cairo – the Egyptian parliamentary poll was as usual a mixture of farce and fraud, which is at least better than shock and awe – I ploughed through so many thousands of American diplomatic reports with something approaching utter hopelessness. After all, they do quote President Hosni Mubarak as saying that "you can forget about democracy," don't they? ..."

Continues here

The finance manager who tried to play by the rules

2010-11-29T15:10:00.004Z

Published in the Irish Times April 2010.

The experience of this former IFSC banker is a parable of Celtic Tiger Ireland, illustrating the culture of light-touch regulation that led the country to NAMA and bank bailouts.

Here

Eine kleine Nachtmusik via Chopin and Yundi Li

2010-11-16T00:31:00.003Z

Walk a mile in his/her shoes

2010-11-15T23:56:00.004Z

(click to embiggen)

The Stench of American Hypocrisy

2010-11-15T22:27:00.002Z

Paul Craig Roberts:

"Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story? No the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar) ..."

Full text at Information Clearing House

Amnesty wants Bush to face trial over torture

2010-11-14T20:35:00.003Z

The London-based Amnesty International (AI) has called for a criminal investigation into former US President George W. Bush's admission of torture.

Amnesty is calling for Bush and others involved in torture to be tried under the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the US ratified in 1994.

"Under international law, the former President's admission to having authorized acts that amount to torture are enough to trigger the USA's obligations to investigate his admissions and if substantiated, to prosecute him," AI said.

"Failure to investigate and prosecute in circumstances where the requisite criteria are met is itself a violation of international law," it added.

Source

In this interview below, Matthew Alexander, a senior US military interrogator, contradicts The Dick Cheney and says:
"Torture does not save lives. Torture costs us lives."

CIA created 'safe haven' for Nazis

2010-11-14T18:31:00.003Z

From ynetnews.com:

WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II for intelligence gathering purposes, the New York Times revealed Sunday, citing a 600-page report "which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years."

According to the American daily, the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the C.I.A.'s involvement with Nazi émigrés. "Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the CIA’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations," the NYT article states.

Full text

Shayne not Shane

2010-11-14T18:01:00.004Z

Glad to see this lad back on X Factor:

I have no idea what went on with The Louis and The Simon about his recording contract, but I suspect he deserved better. Downright scary to think it was 2005 when he won the thing. Five. Whole. Years.

Learn to cook

2010-09-07T17:44:00.008+01:00

I could cook by the time I was ten. I could make a pretty good chocolate cake, a cocoa-flavoured Madeira sandwich with cocoa and butter icing. I could cook potatoes too, or scrambled eggs, or bacon and sausages. I had absorbed the info through helping my mother in the kitchen. Later on, at school, we had to take "Domestic Science" which covered how to make potato soup and soda bread and rock buns (and how to make a shirt-waister dress and sew French seams).

If they were going to inflict cookery lessons on us and not on the boys, I wish we had had a more creative curriculum. But it was only an add-on to what most of us knew from home. We'd seen whole chickens and fish gutted, and potatoes and cabbage and other veg dug from the garden.

I don't believe I have ever met a woman of my generation who didn't know how to make a basic dinner for several people. Anywhere. Ever.

I watched this the other night. A Big Brother Winners Come Dine With Me special. At least, I watched half of it, during which Sophie Reade (whom I didn't know from Adam) asked Brian Dowling (whom I half-recognised) where potatoes come from. In the ground or growing on trees? Brian, being Irish, was suitably and exaggeratedly astonished. Cue shrieks ... Could she have been serious?

She reminded me of a programme about city (London?) youngsters who were brought to the countryside to learn about farming. One of them had no idea that carrots grow in the ground. Apparently, many of today's youngsters think salad starts life in a plastic bag in a supermarket.

This is frightening. I couldn't survive for long in a jungle or in the Australian outback as I don't have the necessary knowledge or skills. But it's looking more and more like today's youngsters couldn't survive in a suburban vegetable garden if they had to find food for themselves.

We now have working parents who come home and give their children microwaveable dinners or takeaways because they're too tired, or don't have time to cook, and large numbers of them don't know how, anyway. What's the next generation going to do if there's an emergency and there's a big bag of flour sitting there but nobody knows where bread comes from?

People Are Different

2010-09-05T19:25:00.002+01:00

See on Twitpic here:

The Audacity of Cynicism – Barack Obama’s Iraq Speech

2010-09-02T18:16:00.003+01:00

An American president may never make such a speech, or any speech, about Iraq again. Read this "lest we forget".

From Meldungen aus dem Exil.

Excerpt:

"Before we begin, a challenge: I defy anyone to find a single phrase in Obama’s speech on Iraq last night that couldn’t have issued forth from the foetid maw of George W. Bush (with the possible exception of his mentions of George W. Bush).

"Barack Obama’s Iraq speech last night is an impressive entry in the annals of war propaganda. In it, he glosses over a criminal war as ‘a remarkable chapter’ in US history, and creates the false impression that the occupation of Iraq is over. He places the responsibility rebuilding a society out of the rubble we created on the shoulders of the Iraqi people (we are, of course, blameless), and tells us that it’s time to ‘turn the page’ on a crime that is continuing, and for which not a single perpetrator has yet even been indicted. It is a wonder that he wasn’t struck by lightning before finishing ..."

Continues here

2010-08-21T17:26:00.001+01:00

67,000-year-old human bone unearthed in Philippines

2010-08-03T21:51:00.002+01:00

Archaeologists in the Philippines have unearthed a 67,000-year-old human bone in a discovery they claim proves the area was settled by man 20,000 years earlier than previously thought

"The foot bone - found during a four-year excavation project of a network of caves - predates the 47,000-year-old Tabon Man that was previously known as the first human to have lived in the Philippines.

"The discovery was made at the Callao caves near Penablanca, 210 miles north of Manila."

Full text at the Telegraph

"Dove World Outreach" plans Quran-burning event

2010-08-02T01:22:00.002+01:00

"(CNN) -- In protest of what it calls a religion 'of the devil', a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an 'International Burn a Quran Day' on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks ...

"'We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times', Pastor Terry Jones told CNN's Rick Sanchez earlier this week."

Watch the CNN video here

Grizzly bear euthanized - for what?

2010-07-31T00:51:00.002+01:00

We go into bear territory, to camp adventurously in the outdoors. There's a female grizzly around with three cubs. She attacks us, one person is killed, and two mauled. The grizzly mother and cubs are caught, the mother is euthanized, and the cubs are sent to a zoo.

"The bears — crying and scratching at the steel sides of traps — were taken from the Soda Butte Campground in a three-truck convoy to Bozeman."

All because we humans want to "taste" the great outdoors, and do so without adequate protection from known existing wildlife. Does this sound fair to you?

Source and full text

The Ugly of War: Dying children in a helicopter

2010-07-31T00:45:00.002+01:00

A US medical evacuation (Medevac) crew chief recounts the most traumatic mission he has ever flown

Short film at the Guardian.

Monsanto: The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit

2010-07-31T00:35:00.002+01:00

From NaturalNews.com:

"At a biotech industry conference in January 1999, a representative from Arthur Anderson, LLP explained how they had helped Monsanto design their strategic plan. First, his team asked Monsanto executives what their ideal future looked like in 15 to 20 years. The executives described a world with 100 percent of all commercial seeds genetically modified and patented. Anderson consultants then worked backwards from that goal, and developed the strategy and tactics to achieve it. They presented Monsanto with the steps and procedures needed to obtain a place of industry dominance in a world in which natural seeds were virtually extinct ..."

Continues here

This is the final straw for women

2010-07-29T18:21:00.004+01:00

A good analysis of the so-called theological reasons for the blatant misogynism in the Catholic Church.
By Mary Condren, in the Irish Times:

Latest Vatican document is final straw for women

"The Vatican's recent Normae de Gravioribus Delictis document prescribes automatic excommunication for anyone involved in the ordination of a woman. In according greater penalties to those who “attempted” women’s ordination than to clerics who abused children, it has further shocked many loyal Irish Catholics, prompting them to inquire about the theological reasons why the Roman Catholic Church objects to women’s ordination.

"A Vatican document issued in 1976 set out some of these arguments clearly ..."

Continue here

Leak exposes NATO's incoherent civilian casualty policy

2010-07-29T16:25:00.002+01:00

Afghanistan leak exposes NATO's incoherent civilian casualty policy
26 July 2010

Amnesty International has called on NATO to provide a clear, unified system of accounting for civilian casualties in Afghanistan, as leaked war logs paint a picture of an incoherent process of dealing with civilian casualties.

Around 92,000 leaked US military files on the war in Afghanistan covering the period 2004-2009 were released Sunday by the website Wikileaks.

"The picture that emerges from the leaked data on civilian casualties is that NATO's leadership did not know exactly what was happening on the ground," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director.

"The military logs bear out Amnesty International's longstanding concerns that there is no coherent or consistent system for accounting for civilian casualties."

Continues

A Plea for Common Sense

2010-07-29T14:44:00.004+01:00

Why NATO Should Withdraw from Afghanistan
by Christoph Schwennicke at SpiegelOnline:

It is difficult for politicians to admit they were wrong. But when it comes to Afghanistan, the consequences of not doing so could be high. It is time for the West to cut its losses and withdraw.

"The most difficult thing to do in politics is to change course -- admitting that everything that was right yesterday is wrong today. It is a particularly challenging maneuver when the decision is between war and peace.

"Winston Churchill, stubborn as he was, never could admit that he had made a mistake in 1915 when, as first lord of the Admiralty, his strategic error helped lead to the bitter defeat of the Entente troops at the hands of the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli. Similarly, it took 30 years for former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to acknowledge that the Vietnam War had been a mistake.

"The German government, NATO and the West shouldn't wait that long ..."

Continues here

There ain't no pleasin' you

2010-07-28T01:24:00.002+01:00

Ship made of plastic bottles crosses Pacific

2010-07-27T00:13:00.000+01:00

Mind Meld

2010-07-26T22:25:00.003+01:00

From Wired Science:

"When two people experience a deep connection, they’re informally described as being on the same wavelength. There may be neurological truth to that.

"Brain scans of a speaker and listener showed their neural activity synchronizing during storytelling. The stronger their reported connection, the closer the coupling.

"The experiment was the first to use fMRI, which measures blood flow changes in the brain, on two people as they talked. Different brain regions have been linked to both speaking and listening, but “the ongoing interaction between the two systems during everyday communication remains largely unknown,” wrote Princeton University neuroscientists Greg Stephens and Uri Hasson in the July 27 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ..."

Continue here

Julian Assange on the Afghanistan war logs

2010-07-26T00:09:00.001+01:00

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, explains why he decided to publish thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan:

Video at the Guardian

Wikileaks does it again: The Afghanistan War Logs

2010-07-26T00:00:00.003+01:00

Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

• Hundreds of civilians killed by coalition troops
• Covert unit hunts leaders for 'kill or capture'
• Steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on Nato
• Read the Guardian's full war logs investigation

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks

2010-07-24T19:05:00.001+01:00

and about the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative:

US State Dept Planning To Field A Small Army In Iraq

2010-07-23T20:09:00.003+01:00

"WASHINGTON — Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky.

"In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance ..." [emphasis mine]

Continue at McClatchy

Viva Palestina 5 - a global lifeline to Gaza

2010-07-23T13:06:00.001+01:00

"Viva Palestina is launching 'Viva Palestina 5 - a global lifeline to Gaza', a gigantic land convoy leaving London on Saturday, 18th September in conjunction with convoys leaving from Casablanca and Doha and timed to coordinate with a larger and even more international flotilla aiming to reach Gaza by sea at the same time as the land convoys reach by land.

"Viva Palestina will be leading the Land Convoy, a Global Lifeline To Gaza, working in partnership with the International Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza and organisations from Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Australasia, India, South Africa and more."

Full text here

New NASA image reveals the oceans' dead zones

2010-07-22T23:15:00.003+01:00

From mongabay.com

"A new image by NASA reveals the extent of the world's marine dead zones, which a study in 2008 found were doubling every decade. At that time 415 dead zones had been identified worldwide. Dead zones are regions of the ocean where dissolved oxygen has fallen to such low levels that most marine species can no longer survive ..."

Continue, and see large scale image

A demeaning moment for the Obama admin

2010-07-22T23:00:00.004+01:00

"The Obama administration’s most unlikeable moment yet"

Archie Bland at the Independent:

"Perhaps you couldn’t blame the White House for acting quickly. When the Obama administration heard that video had emerged of an obscure black official in the Agriculture Department cheerily outlining how she had decided not to help a white farmer as much as she might have otherwise because of the colour of his skin, it must have seemed like a crisis waiting to happen ..."

Continues here

Easy listening ...

2010-07-21T23:16:00.004+01:00

Mary Black, Emmylou Harris - By The Time It Gets Dark

here

Maura O'Connell, Nanci Griffith - Trouble In The Fields

here

550 IDF Officers And Soldiers Interrogated About Possible War Crimes In Gaza

2010-07-21T02:35:00.006+01:00

From Max Blumenthal

"On July 18, a bombshell report appeared in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharanot. The article, which has only been published in Hebrew and was buried on page 8 as a small news item, stated that 550 officers and soldiers who participated in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in late 2008 and early 2009 have been investigated by IDF military police for possible war crimes ...

Continues here

Facebook Using Tagged Photos for Authentication

2010-07-21T02:31:00.002+01:00

Matthew Hurst:

"Logging on to Facebook from Japan triggered a lengthy authentication process. Having only used the site from US IPs logging in from a Japanese address forced me to go through an authentication process which involved answering a number of face identification questions in a multiple choice format. This was quite un-nerving for the following reasons ...

Continues here

Was Amiri a Double Agent who Hyped Iran’s Nukes?

2010-07-21T02:27:00.002+01:00

Juan Cole:

"The saga of Shahram Amiri points to a real danger for world peace and prosperity, with the disturbing possibility now emerging that he was a double agent. He implausibly maintains that he was kidnapped by the CIA in Mecca and held in the US against his will. US sources say that he was a walk-in, that he contacted the CIA and offered to defect, for which he was offered $5 million and a new identity. The US government has a program of encouraging Iranian nuclear physicists to defect by offering them large sums of money, and it is rumored that they have had several takers.

"Amiri’s behavior, however, is so erratic that it raises alarms ...

Continues here

Watch the angry Muslim

2010-06-21T14:35:00.002+01:00

When you're watching the News, ask yourself who is providing that News, and how has it been edited ...

Israel's gift to Iran's hardliners

2010-06-12T18:17:00.003+01:00

By Juan Cole, at Asia Times:

Iran's Green movement is one year old this Sunday, the anniversary of its first massive demonstrations in the streets of Tehran. Greeted with great hope in much of the world, a year later it's weaker, the country is more repressive, and hardliners are in a far stronger position - partly thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and sanctions hawks in the Barack Obama administration.

If, in the past year, those hardliners successfully faced down major challenges within Iranian society and abroad, it was only in part attributable to the regime's skills in repression and sidestepping international pressure. Above all, the ayatollahs benefited from Israeli intransigence and American hypocrisy on nuclear disarmament in the Middle East.

Iran's case against Israel was bolstered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's continued enthusiasm for the Gaza blockade, and by Tel Aviv's recent arrogant dismissal of a conference of nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatories, which called on Israel to join a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Nor has Obama's push for stronger sanctions on Iran at the United Nations Security Council hurt them.

Continues here

Western leaders are too cowardly to help save lives

2010-06-01T14:57:00.003+01:00

says Robert Fisk, in the Independent.

It is a fact that it is ordinary people, activists, call them what you will, who now take decisions to change events

Has Israel lost it? Can the Gaza War of 2008-09 (1,300 dead) and the Lebanon War of 2006 (1,006 dead) and all the other wars and now yesterday's killings mean that the world will no longer accept Israel's rule?

Don't hold your breath.

You only have to read the gutless White House statement – that the Obama administration was "working to understand the circumstances surrounding the tragedy". Not a single word of condemnation. And that's it. Nine dead. Just another statistic to add to the Middle East's toll.

But it's not.

In 1948, our politicians – the Americans and the British – staged an airlift into Berlin. A starving population (our enemies only three years before) were surrounded by a brutal army, the Russians, who had erected a fence around the city. The Berlin airlift was one of the great moments in the Cold War. Our soldiers and our airmen risked and gave their lives for these starving Germans.

Incredible, isn't it? In those days, our politicians took decisions; our leaders took decisions to save lives. Messrs Attlee and Truman knew that Berlin was important in moral and human as well as political terms.

And today? It was people – ordinary people, Europeans, Americans, Holocaust survivors – yes, for heaven's sake, survivors of the Nazis – who took the decision to go to Gaza because their politicians and their statesmen had failed them.

Where were our politicians yesterday? Well, we had the ridiculous Ban Ki-moon, the White House's pathetic statement, and dear Mr Blair's expression of "deep regret and shock at the tragic loss of life". Where was Mr Cameron? Where was Mr Clegg?

Back in 1948, they would have ignored the Palestinians, of course. It is, after all, a terrible irony that the Berlin airlift coincided with the destruction of Arab Palestine.

But it is a fact that it is ordinary people, activists, call them what you will, who now take decisions to change events. Our politicians are too spineless, too cowardly, to take decisions to save lives. Why is this? Why didn't we hear courageous words from Messrs Cameron and Clegg yesterday?

For it is a fact, is it not, that had Europeans (and yes, the Turks are Europeans, are they not?) been gunned down by any other Middle Eastern army (which the Israeli army is, is it not?) there would have been waves of outrage.

And what does this say about Israel? Isn't Turkey a close ally of Israel? Is this what the Turks can expect? Now Israel's only ally in the Muslim world is saying this is a massacre – and Israel doesn't seem to care.

But then Israel didn't care when London and Canberra expelled Israeli diplomats after British and Australian passports were forged and then provided to the assassins of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. It didn't care when it announced new Jewish settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem while Joe Biden, the Vice-President of its erstwhile ally, the United States, was in town. Why should Israel care now?

How did we get to this point? Maybe because we all grew used to seeing the Israelis kill Arabs, maybe the Israelis grew used to killing Arabs. Now they kill Turks. Or Europeans. Something has changed in the Middle East these past 24 hours – and the Israelis (given their extraordinarily stupid political response to the slaughter) don't seem to have grasped what has happened. The world is tired of these outrages. Only the politicians are silent.

Diplomatic storms

*Goldstone report, November 2009

Israel launched Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 with the declared aim of halting rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the three-week conflict along with 13 Israelis. The South African jurist Richard Goldstone's report into the conflict found both Israel and the Hamas movement that controls the Strip guilty of war crimes, but focused more on Israel. Israel refused to co-operate with Goldstone and described his report as distorted and biased.

* The al-Mabhouh assassination, January-May 2010

Britain and Australia expelled Israeli diplomats after concluding that Israel had forged British and Australian passports used by assassins to kill a Hamas commander in Dubai. Israel has neither confirmed or denied a role in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in January. Britain said such misuse of British passports was "intolerable". Australia said it was not the behaviour of "a nation with whom we have had such a close, friendly and supportive relationship".

*Settlements row, March 2010

Israel announces plans, during visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden, to build 1,600 homes for Jews in an area of the West Bank annexed by Israel. The announcement triggers unusually harsh criticism from the United States. Washington said it damaged its efforts to revive the Middle East peace process. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the project was an insult. Netanyahu said he was blindsided by planning bureaucrats and apologised to Biden. Today's meeting with Barack Obama at the White House, called off by Mr Netanyahu so he could return home to deal with the flotilla crisis, was supposed to be another part of the fence-mending between the two allies.

*Nuclear secrecy, May 2010

Israel, widely assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, has faced renewed calls to sign a global treaty barring the spread of atomic weapons. Signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) last week called for a conference in 2012 to discuss banning weapons of mass destruction throughout the Middle East. The declaration was adopted by all 189 parties to the NPT, including the US. It urged Israel to sign the NPT and put its nuclear facilities under UN safeguards.

~*~

As I'm posting this, word is coming through that Egypt has opened the border with Gaza today, until further notice. The MV Rachel Corrie is due in Gazan waters tomorrow. Will Israel have learned anything?

The only jam is home-made jam

2010-04-25T21:30:00.007+01:00

I've become increasingly frustrated with and disillusioned by bought foods. Not prepared meals, or microwaveable junk, or take aways or pizzas. I'm talking about ordinary items like jam, cheese, and biscuits. They're mostly junk compared to what we bought in my youth. And no, this is not a case of viewing childhood through rose-tinted spectacles. Things no longer taste like they should. They don't even taste like food anymore.

Take jam. My mother made jams either from fruit that grew in the back garden, or wild fruit we collected for her on expeditions into the fields. For marmalade she used "marmalade oranges" which I assumed were either bruised or small varieties that were sold for the purpose. Her marmalade was a little runny, but delicious. Boiled fruit with some added sugar. Splendid on soda bread or toast. When hers were used up, we occasionally had bought jams or marmalades, and they were at least recognisable alternatives.

Recently I got a hankering for marmalade, and got some supposedly with "thin peel". I found it sickly sweet and with the consistency of almost-solid jelly, with no visible bits of fruit. I looked at the ingredients and the first one listed (and therefore the biggest quantity) was of high fructose corn syrup. The plague of all foodstuffs in recent years. I won't give you the brand name -- it would be unfair to single one out -- but believe me, it's a very well known name, both in Ireland and the UK.

So where will I get my jams or marmalades in future? Not in the supermarket, that's for sure. And I don't have fruit trees or bushes. But I do have locally a little indoor market which trades on a Friday morning, and there I have bought, in the past week, orange marmalade, lemon and lime marmalade, and gooseberry jam, all home-made by the middle-aged ladies who run the stalls. Bingo. Real jam. Real marmalade. Real breakfasts again.

Next I have to find some real cheese.

Edit: Forgot to give you the prices. In Tesco the well known branded marmalade was 2.45, while the home-made version at the market was 2.50.

When the screw falls out

2010-03-06T11:12:00.003Z

I kept telling myself I needed a break from the net. Information overload. Headache. Eye strain. Neck pain. RSI. You name it. But I never cut down my time online.

Last night the screw fell out, followed by a lens, from my reading glasses. I have been forced offline, at least for a while. I'm typing this in the biggest font available (which is huge!). I'll reduce it just before posting. And I'll see you later. :)

Back from Twitter world?

2010-03-02T16:27:00.006Z

I may return to this blog soon. I'm exhausted by Twitter, although Twitter is a great medium, especially if you use a program like Tweetdeck to organise it.

Here in Blogland I can write my thoughts without being distracted by a stream of info, news and commentary arriving right beside where I'm typing. Here on the "inside" of Blogger, all is calm and empty. It's just me and blank space.

Twitter is amazing. Depending on who and how many users you follow, you can receive fascinating input day and night -- from the MSM, the Alternatives, activists, journalists, NGOs, and/or friends describing something funny that's going on at that moment. Or some new project they're absorbed in. Or what they just overheard on the bus. Twitter is both entertaining and informing.

You can search a #hashtag and be updated on breaking news directly from tweeters on-site or close by. The mainstream were consulting Twitter to find news on the Chile earthquake, since info was coming in rapidly via Mexico and elsewhere. And we all know the story of Iran's election aftermath, and the swift campaign against Jan Moir's Stephen Gately column.

But you end up with serious information overload. Plus, I end up with sore eyes. On Tweetdeck so far, you can't change font size, and for me it's very small. I also find it hard to concentrate when the column on the left (everyone I follow) is forever scrolling with news and comment. I have another column for Favourites, but can't resist keeping an eye on the full list. And really, reading and posting together is a bit too much for the old brain.

So all being well, you may see me pop up here again soon. A place where I have more control, can adjust the font as I wish, and am not confined to telegramese. Twitter will succeed fine without me. And who knows, I'll probably still open Tweetdeck from time to time.

Twittering

2009-07-10T08:24:00.009+01:00

Won't be blogging for a while, folks. It's easier and quicker to do updates on Twitter.

Banks versus mattresses

2009-06-10T14:50:00.000+01:00

At the height of the bank scare when we didn't know what to expect from one day to the next, I did threaten to take the few pennies out of the bank and put the lot under a mattress. But I should add that I'm still very much in control of whether a mattress gets binned or not. That's very important.

Search for million-dollar mattress

"An Israeli woman bought her elderly mother a new mattress on Monday and threw out the old one — only to discover that her mother had hidden her life savings inside. When she went to look for the mattress, it had already been taken by binmen in Tel Aviv." (Full story)

The life savings came to $1 million. Now, you see, if my stash had been close to $1 million, I'd have split it up. One eighth under the mattress, one eighth in the freezer, one eighth buried in the garden, one eighth in the toilet cistern, and so on and so forth. This poor woman was bang-on not to trust the banks. Her mistake was to have no imagination.

How high you would climb to save the planet?

2009-06-10T14:17:00.004+01:00

From Greenpeace Australia Pacific Blog:

"How far would you go for what’s right? Would you risk arrest? How high you would climb to save a planet?

"In 2007, six volunteer activists scaled a 220-metre chimney at a UK coal power station to protest against government plans to build new coal plants. If the action wasn’t breathtaking enough (vertigo sufferers be warned), a landmark court case followed, with supporting testimony by the world’s leading climate scientist, Dr James Hansen of NASA. The New York Times listed the defence of “lawful excuse” as one of the ideas that defined 2008.

"Inspired by their story, internationally acclaimed director Nick Broomfield made a 20-minute film celebrating the spirit of direct action. A Time Comes (Bright Green Pictures) follows the protest of the Kingsnorth Six and the court case that made history. Watch the full movie [20 mins]."

I confess I've only watched the trailer. I can barely look out a third floor window without getting creeped out.

RTE News online - get a grip!

2009-06-09T00:06:00.006+01:00

For heaven's sake. I went to this page on the RTE website to read about the recovery of bodies from the downed Air France plane. At time of writing there are no less than THREE moving ads (Flash) on the page -- one for O2, one for Guinness, and one for Paddy Power. How is anyone supposed to read a news story without half-blinding themselves with that lot going on?

I've just refreshed the page. One ad has changed content, and the others have changed position. But they're all still 'Flashing'. And I haven't read the story.

Sometimes I think RTE deliberately sets out to annoy.

Update:

Uh Oh ... I've just been to this page and it has three Flash ads too.
Right. That's me finished with the RTE website.

Il Silenzio -- Britain's Got Talent is over

2009-05-30T21:49:00.008+01:00

I watched the 'Britain's Got Talent' final. I couldn't resist. And I admit that the controversy surrounding Susan Boyle and that poor kid Hollie Steel who broke down last night, was part of the reason I watched. But I also wanted to see Susan Boyle sing again. I heard that some very ignorant people said during the week that she can't sing and has no voice. Such utter lunacy. I'm glad to see that she came second, and equally glad to see that fantastic dance group, Diversity, walk off with first place. I hope those lads get the best, and not the worst, out of their new-found fame. They're brilliant.

I also loved the sax player, Julian Smith (watch him there), and his performance reminded me that years ago I loved the trumpet solo, Il Silenzio, and had it as a single. I'm posting it below as my version of "your international moment of Zen". To round off a rather tense evening.

I sincerely hope none of the competitors comes to any harm from the stress induced by that explosion of reality TV. Some of the personalities -- young and old -- were well able to handle it. Some weren't. I do wonder about pushy parents. And the possibility of heartless demands (towards "good" TV) that may have been made on contestants backstage.

(Sorry about the graphics ...)

Go away Fianna Fáil - and the rest too

2009-05-29T15:03:00.009+01:00

I've just put this notice up on my front door. In big print.

It's always galled me that millions of trees are cut down so that my (and your) front porch can be littered with paper -- from dubious claims to collect used clothing for the "poor" and leaflets for dodgy gutter-cleaners and tree-trimmers, to unwanted free newspapers. I am obliged to follow the law against littering the streets, but there is no law against people littering my front porch with useless crap which I then have to recycle.

Now of course, it's worse. Elections. No canvasser has had the courage to knock on my door. But they're shoving tons of paper in the letterbox.

Let's see if this puts a stop to their gallop. If it doesn't, I'll collect all election leaflets and post them to Fianna Fáil Head Office with no stamp on the envelope.

Are all deaf people insomniacs?

2009-05-29T15:00:00.000+01:00

I don't watch much TV, but having been up late two nights in a row, I noticed that both BBC and UTV were showing programmes around 1.45am which featured signing. Are they suggesting that all deaf people are insomniac? Or do deaf folk have to stay up this late to watch their favourite programmes?

RTE seems to have a series called 'Hands On', which airs at 10.40am on Sundays, but it's all about "issues relevant to the Deaf Community". Are drama and film for the hard of hearing relegated to the small hours on RTE too?

I looked for a list of programmes from RTE that include signing but this is all I can find.

Want a pocket piglet?

2009-05-28T14:50:00.001+01:00

Something to brighten you up after previous (important) posts.