Google in China

So Google have gone into China. They seem to have overturned their philosophy of "Do no evil." and subjugated themselves to the Chinese governments wishes. Ignoring China's deplorable human rights issues and single party communism to give the Chinese access to the parts of the WWW that the Chinese government allow. Right thinking left of centre liberals are understandably up in arms about this. But I think they're missing an obvious point here that perhaps may not be so obvious to the "shoot from the hip" reactionaries.
Google have a damn good understanding of the net. I should think that they have employees who have been online since their Amstrad 464's enabled then to hook up to the then fledgling internet. The concept of trojan horses and backdoors are not alien to them. OK, there are others in there in reciept of the kings shilling, but none with the kudos, the broad expanse of Google who's sole aim is to disseminate information freely. I don't think Google are in China for the money.
They now have the chance to put their servers into mainland China. They have had to filter, block or censor a whole host of information. But i'm sure that is just a cover. A cover in the old fashioned cold war sense. A shield for their true motives. To supply the backdoor to the Chinese. A way out. A true (L.Ron Hubbard please excuse me...) bridge to freedom.
Time will tell, and I may be as wrong as a very wrong person. But... perhaps, just perhaps, acting as a trojan horse, Google has penetrated the shield that the Chinese government has erected against the free flow of information in and out of it's borders. And will, sometime hence, release the keywords, the anonymous public servers or the code to enable the average Chinese citizen to access the WWW and Usenet. Disseminated by word of mouth (I think it's called viral marketing now) and through chatrooms and email, the keys to the Jungian Collective will be made available.
It's the first thing I thought when I heard that Google had "gone native". I hope this isn't letting the cat out of the bag. The internet is the one thing governments fear. Not just the free flow of information. But the meeting of minds of people seperated by distance and political boundaries. You can not demonise a people if a fair percentage of your population chat with them on a regular basis. Propaganda fails. Truth will out. And humans are human wherever you find them.

Millitant Atheist Declaration

Why do we want to leap in and denounce theist diatribes? Why should we cut in between a group of theists and confront them with our rational, atheistic logic? Many times we are confronted with a plaintive "Why can't we agree to disagree and respect each others points of view?" I will try to explain my own personal stance here.

Enough is enough! It's time to draw that line in the sand. For too long, for millennia, since man first started to form societies we have had our view of the universe tainted with religion. To say that theists have had a fair crack at the whip would be an understatement in the extreme. Theistic dogma has caused more misery, more wars, more suppression and held back the discovery of the universe we inhabit than any other invention.

From the indoctrination of generations of innocent, inquiring children in the home, through schools and their mandatory acts of worship of fictitious, vengeful gods, the foul distortions introduced by the likes of the Dover School Board, the theft of a woman's right to control of her own body, the intrusion of a false morality upon our daily lives and the stifling of science. All these things must stop! It is no longer a matter of respect, of tolerance or of agreeing to disagree. The stakes are far too high.

No! You cannot blow people up in the name of your mythical being. No! You cannot kill doctors who choose to help women regain control of their lives. No! You cannot divert money that should be healing the sick to spend on your costumes and buildings. No! You cannot tell me how to think any more. No! You cannot claim that your damn stupid, lame, small minded little creation myth has equal value to Darwin's evolution and modern cosmology.

The time has come to leave the nursery, cast off these childish, dangerous stories and grow the fuck up! Religion has sapped enough of man's resources. Time, money, effort, emotion and whole damned races have been swallowed up by these deluded zealots. Every theist that EVER went into battle always had a god on their side. Every poor sap who worked till they dropped was promised their reward after their death. The crippled, the sick, the outcast and the insane have turned to religion and been rewarded with nothing except vacuous empty promises.

It's time to stop the madness. It's time to confront this awful cancer, this creeping, insidious lie. It's time to free humanity from the shackles of the past. from the guilt. from original sin. from the cringing inferiority. It's time to stop the killing. The gang mentality. Them and us. The threats of heaven, the lure of hell, the hell of the faithful.

Theists, you've had your chance. You've had millennia of chances. Look at the planet now. Is it better for religion or do the world's major human conflicts have their very basis in religion. Theism is a mind numbing death shroud for humanity. It can not be allowed to continue. We have to stop lying to our children. To ourselves. This is why I leap in and denounce theists wherever I find them. If I upset a few simpletons who cannot think outside their late bronze age shackles then so be it. But your not going to poison this race forever. If you theists have your way you will be the end as you always predicted. Self fulfilling prophecy. I will do my level best to rid my race of this handicap.

The future of man lies in the stars. Our Earth is finite, eventually our sun will leave the main sequence and go red giant. If we're not out of here by then then we, as a race. are doomed. It is via the scientific method that is our route to our true home in the universe. You can't pray your way out of this one.

The Protection of Education

I've had a passing interest in Scientology ever since reading Cyril Vospers book "The Mindbenders". But after South Park's episode entitled "Trapped in the Closet" i've been reading further. What makes people fall for such awful, third rate space opera? How is it that normal, right thinking people go for cults such as scientology, christianity, the moonies, islam & all the other myriad fictions that people spend so much of their time, resources and thought upon. I think it's education, or the lack of it.
At the moment here in the UK it's cool to hate science. Nobody turns a hair when someone says they have no idea how their car works, how their computer displays the web they surf, that they dislike mathamatics to the point of a numerical dyslexia, how they hate "chemicals" in their food (of course, they, their food and the whole damn universe is made of "chemicals"). The list goes on and on. I don't think this way of thinking is limited to the UK either. Over in the US the number of people who believe the christian creation myth is actualy the way the Earth is the way it is is frightening! And that they are forcing education boards to include creationism in schools is something america should be ashamed of. Add to this the poor quality and lack of enthusiasm shown by the teachers of the sciences and you can see why media studies has overtaken physics (by a huge margin) at A level. A recipe for disaster.
This is how these cults get a handle on our youth. Poorly educated, often with parents who are up to their necks in one of the religions, have no defense against these cults when they come into contact with them. A little decent grounding in a few of the sciences and the picture would be much different. Try and explain the scientology xenu myth to someone who has a "general reader" grasp of cosmology and geology and he'd laugh in your face. The same goes for dianetics and scientology's denouncing of modern psychiatry (and their personality tests & e-meters). Even a basic grasp of psychology would reveal their infantile writings to be the tawdry clap-trap it really is. Go to the paleontology dept. of your local university and mention the christian flood, see how far you get.
There will be many who will say that we must respect others beliefs no matter how stupid thay are and how much damage they cause. I can't disagree more. There have been more wars fought over people's fictional mythical beings than for any other reason. When people could have been fed, clothed and housed these cults build churches, mosques, synagogues, orgs. The money people earn is taken in tithe for their mythical deity. Babies suffer the mutilation of circumcision. And the nastiest con trick of all. That if you work like a dog in this life and give all your money to the church, then your reward will be in the next life.
Religion is just a form of social control. When man first started settling into communities and gave up hunting and gathering something new arrived. Inequality. All of a sudden there were haves and have nots. Also, one man could not break, till, sow, tend, harvest and store all the crops that came with agriculture. How could the haves not only protect their advantage but also use the labour of the have nots to their gain whilst all the time making sure no uprising occured? The answer was religion.
What can reach under the into the huts and inside the very thoughts of those to be subjergated? An omnipresent, wrathful god who sees all. Lets take a look at the ten commandments from the point of view of a succesful landowner / farmer in one of these new communities. His problem is to keep his elevated status whilst using the labour of the serfs around him. Always bearing in mind that he is vastly outnumbered and cannot, in the way a hunter would guard his kill, keep hold of his stores of harvested food by his own personal threat.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

This is the new shit! All you old myths are superceded.

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing

All your previous icons are superceded.

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.

No discussion, be it serious, in jest or as a swearword is forbidden.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

We're going to have one day a week to reinforce this myth. By order!

5. Honour thy father and thy mother.

I've hoodwinked one generation. I don't want to have to keep doing it!

6. Thou shalt not kill.

Read as "Thou shalt not kill me!"

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Could be my daughter / wife. Hands off!

8. Thou shalt not steal.

Read as "Thou shalt not steal my stuff!"

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Your not to tell people what I actually do. If you do, you a liar! (& that's a no-no)

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, wife etc.

Because they may be mine. Hands (and thoughts) off!

OK, so there we are. Now to make all this stick we have stories told around the fire of plagues, storms and tempest, boils and a myriad of other very nasty things. Don't forget the good old work ethic. Your rewards to be reaped in the afterlife. Nauseating! Religion as a social control. Upholding the class structure and promising rewards that never materialise. Scientologists take note! You are promised the whole damn universe and immortality for only your life, friends, family, freedom, thought and of course money. More and more money. They get to the end and are told there's been a few mistakes and your going to have to start again. Oh, and by the way, start paying again too! It's at this point that many who reach scientology's OTVII realise there's something amiss and bail out.
Education (if the information had been available) would have protected those early communities from the barbarous control engendered by religion. It will protect you kids from cults like scientology (they will come accross it) and other cults. It will protect them from from the other more traditional cults like islam and christianity. And it will open your eyes too.
There is more wonder to be had in modern cosmolgy than all the creation myths rolled into one. And to stand and face the universe as a short lived primate, to start to grasp this wonderful universe we inhabit, to realise we only have one life to make the best of, takes more courage than to lean on the mouldy, corrupt crutch of cults / religion. Plus, it offers so much wonder, joy and sheer pleasure in knowing than any fictional, faith based myth can ever offer you.

Scientology

Please take a monet or two to read www.xenu.net and then vote at http://www.petitiononline.com/yarbaro/petition.html . I know electronic voting means little, but it will be an interesting vote none the less. I'll add my own thoughts about scientology and the other cults (Islam, Moonies, Christianity etc.) later.

US Re-Define Torture.

I have just come accross this in the Washington Post (see below). Now I know why Condi Rice is flying all over Europe deftly dodging the questions about 1000's of logged CIA flights by saying that the US doesn't torture it's detainees.
Well if the definition of torture is "Organ failure or death" of the person being questioned then leaves the questioners with a whole host of nasty, barbaric techniques developed over 1000's of years by the Inquisitions of this world designed to inflict maximum pain, suffering and fear without causing the death of the poor sod on the recieving end. I expect a euphamism soon (this administration are good at euphamisms, remember "manipulative self injurious behaviour" for suicides in Guantanamo?) along the lines of "Questioning in a sensory input controlled environment" or some such bullshit.
War is Peace, Ministry of Truth.... sound familiar?



Justice Expands 'Torture' Definition
Earlier Policy Drew Criticism
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan EggenWashington Post Staff WritersFriday, December 31, 2004; Page A01
The Justice Department published a revised and expansive definition late yesterday of acts that constitute torture under domestic and international law, overtly repudiating one of the most criticized policy memorandums drafted during President Bush's first term.
In a statement published on the department's Web site, the head of its Office of Legal Counsel declares that "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms" and goes on to reject a previous statement that only "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" constitute torture punishable by law.
That earlier definition of torture figured prominently in complaints by Democrats and human rights groups about White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, who oversaw its creation and is Bush's nominee to become attorney general for the second term. The new memo's public release came one week before the start of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Gonzales's nomination.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin said in the new memo that torture may consist of acts that fall short of provoking excruciating and agonizing pain and thus may include mere physical suffering or lasting mental anguish. His opinion is meant, according to its language, to undermine any notion that those who conduct harmful interrogations may be exempt from prosecution.
This second effort by the Bush administration to parse the legal meaning of the word "torture" was provoked by the damaging political fallout from the disclosure this summer of the first memo, drafted in August 2002 and criticized by human rights lawyers and experts around the globe.
Many of the critics charged that the first memo -- which they said laid out a very narrow view of what behavior might constitute torture and was crafted to help interrogators at the CIA evade prosecution -- created the context for a record of persistent ill treatment by that agency and the U.S. military of detainees at prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and undisclosed locations.
"Clearly the release of this now is backfilling for Gonzales's confirmation hearing," said I. Michael Greenberger, a senior Justice Department official in the Clinton administration who now heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "These memos have been a tremendous source of embarrassment to both Gonzales and the administration."
Greenberger said that recent accounts of widespread abuse at U.S. detention facilities -- including disclosures that military interrogation practices were sharply criticized over the past two years by FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel in the field -- have given ammunition to those within the administration who favor adherence to international norms against torture.
"It could be that this is not just a cynical ploy but a real sign of change," Greenberger said.
One of the most controversial provisions of the earlier memorandum, signed by Levin's predecessor, Jay S. Bybee, was an assertion that the president's executive powers were sufficient to permit tolerance of torturous acts in extraordinary circumstances. The International Committee of the Red Cross had declared in response that the prohibition on torture, embodied in a global convention signed by the United States, has no exceptions.
But advocates of strict adherence to the convention previously lost interagency battles to hard-liners in the Defense Department, the Justice Department and the White House, who maintained that the president has expansive powers during the war on terrorism. The new memo pointedly sidesteps this issue, stating that the "consideration of the bounds of any such authority would be inconsistent with the president's unequivocal directive that United States personnel not engage in torture."
The memo, which states that it "supersedes the August 2002 memorandum in its entirety," also drops an attempt in the earlier version to rule that harmful acts not specifically intended to cause severe pain and suffering might be legal, and to define "specific intent." Instead, it deliberately left the notion of "specific intent" undefined to avoid, Levin wrote, any notion that conduct amounting to torture might under some circumstances be considered legal.
The memo also explicitly states that "a defendant's motive (to protect national security, for example) is not relevant to the question" of his or her intent under the law.
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, which has been critical of the Bush administration's legal opinions regarding the treatment of detainees, gave the memo a generally positive review and said its "definition of torture is not as tortured as it was."
But John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who helped draft the first memo while working in the legal counsel's office, said the new version "makes it harder to figure out how the torture statute applies to specific interrogation methods. It muddies the water. Our effort . . . was to interpret the statute clearly

Open Letter to Dr.Steve Abrams.

I emailed the letter below to Dr.Steve Abrams at sabrams@hit.net after reading the BBC News report mentioned in the mail. Perhaps you should drop him a line too...

Sir,
I notice that at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4419796.stm you are quoted as saying "This is a great day for education." after the Board of Education's vote approved the new language criticising evolution by 6-4. Here in the UK we can only watch in saddened awe as you, your country, and worst of all, your children, are dragged down into the blinkered, dark of using theology to explain the universe around you. Your children, if they ever leave your borders, will be ill equipped to join the rest of the world in our search for knowledge. Your country will become as strange a backwater as the Afghanistan of the Taliban. Just as closed, just as fundamentalist. But what frightens me most is, much more powerful. As you, in your everyday life, use the fruits of the scientific method. Your computers, automobiles, textiles, buildings and medical services. And the myriad other wonders that science has given you. You decry the very method that has produced them. And in your selfishness, remove from your children, and their children, access to proper science uncoloured with your medieval superstitions. You Sir, are a coward! Unable to face the universe alone. You must use the crutch of religion so you may keep your fictitious father figure holding your poor, frightened little hand. It is time you grew up, took on the role of mankind. An eager, curious animal lucky to find itself in a universe full of majesty and wonder. More than enough for any man. Your theological mumbo jumbo pales into insignificance. Time to leave the nursery little boy...
Les. J. Hemmings Folkestone, UK

Been Gone for a While.

Sorry all... no posts for a long long time. Nothing to post about? Hardly... with the Iraq war still decending into civil war. Iran and Syria in the frame. Bush's cronies starting to get busted over their lies about WMD and the malicious outing of CIA agents. There's been lots to post about.
It's been here at home, lifes little details. The things that mostly fill our minds. Health, love, money, work etc. These things need to be settled before you can turn your mind to the outside world.
I had an operation (Google Jeep Disease if your feeling brave), got over a bout of depression. (I think.. I hope..) with the aid of my partner Claire and a drug called Tramadol. Prescribed for the post operative pain but with the side effect of making my moods much like other peoples around me. No more stepping off of the precipice into that monochrome world of hurt and lonliness. These little capsules have saved my relationship, dropped 20 years off of my age, given me a future to look forward too and let me feel love again. Big claims for a what is a synthetic opiate not prescribed for depression. But i couldn't be without them.
It's not only me though. A friend of Claire's at her work has a partner who got prescribed Tramadol for Sciatica. When Claire mentioned Tramadol and my mood stabilisation she squeeled "What were they called?" It seems her partner has a huge alcohol problem, low self esteem and depression. When he takes Trmadol for his Sciatica he levels off into a loving, stable, nice bloke to be with.
Luckily, when Claire and I bowled into my doctors and told him the effects these capsules were having he agreed to continue prescribing them. Although he had never heard of the effects I was experiencing. I'm so glad he did. Life is good again. So perhaps my blogging will become a little more frequent with some personal stuff now I feel I can open my life a little to the outside world. I think you have to be settled inside before you can drop the barriers and let people in.
Anyway, it's good to be back :o)

The Price of Oil

OK, I'm sat here listening to this for the first time. ( God bless WinMX! ) It's "The Price of Oil" by Billy Bragg. If only this was understood by more of the people that sent young men into "harms way" as the awful term is used. After that, listen to "Everywhere" by the same chap. It's about a different war and a different time. But it's the same frightened kids we're sending out to do our polititians dirty work. Who say's music doesn't change anything? Listen to these lyrics, then tell me you agree to what Shrub does......

One of Those Days

Well, it started with staying up to watch the last debate for the US presidency. It started at 02:00 GMT and threw our body clocks way out. Next morning, dreary and grey even by UK autumn standards there was no hot water. The boiler completely stuffed. OK, no worries, we rent so the landlord can fix it. It's now Saturday and it's still waiting to be fixed...
So on with opening the post. Ahaa! I need to renew the road tax on the car. Easy, just assemble the Insurance.. Dammit! No documents, paid for but not sent by the insurance company, so it's onto the 'phone to remonstrate with them. Now then, need the MOT to get the tax as well. M.O.T. Hmm.. here it is .... Bugger, MOT's run out a few days ago.
So the car's taken to the garage, it fails dismally. Needs a tyre, drivers seat, new exhaust and a fog light switch. Off the road till Wednesday at the earliest. Looks like Monday will be a trip around several breakers yards to find a suitable seat. Why do these things come in clumps? One minute all is comfy and rosy, next minute all hell breaks loose!
There's lots to blog about really, the possibility of British troops being put under US control, Kerry showing a faint lead etc etc.... but at the moment it's a time of boiling a kettle to wash ( it's 1952 in our bathroom at the moment ) walking everywhere, searching on the net for car parts and huddling in blankets accompanied with much swigging of gin to keep warm. Hmmm.. perhaps things ain't quite as bad as all that after all!

War Crimes and Imperial Fantasies

Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian.

I'm new to the writings and words of Noam Chomsky but find him a total breath of fresh air. Everytime I read something of his I learn a little more, see things a little clearer and find myself heartened that there are still people in this world that are brave enough, especialy in the current climate, to stand up and say "The Emperor has no Clothes!" and intelligent enough to take a step back and look through the "Doublespeak" and dogma our governments bombard us with. Whatever your politics, you will come away with a new perspective and a deeper understanding of not only what is happening now, but it's roots in recent history and the real reasons why our leaders do and say what they do.
This interview, for the International Socialist Review Issue 37 2004, is no exception.

Shock and Awe

Am I talking about the American invasion of Iraq? In a way. But not that first night of pyrotechnics we all saw on out TV's. It's what has happened afterwards that this entry is about and "Shock and Awe" is a pretty good description of my feelings towards the way the US handled it's first four weeks in Iraq. Shocked by their crass stupidity and in awe of the way they brazenly lie to the world about their motives. First, lets look at one of the main reasons we were fed about why we went in to Iraq. It was this; "To stop the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and to keep them out of the hands of terrorists."
On the news tonight we were shown how in the first four weeks after the invasion a systematic dismantaling of the Iraqi regime's nuclear programme occured right under the noses of the US. Not vandalism, not looting by locals for scrap, but the removal of whole instalations. Often comprising of multiple buildings and all their equipment contained within. These were then spirited away accross the border to where? No one knows. It seems the US had absolutely no idea that this was going on. Before the invasion these facilities were closely monitored by the UN. Mothballed and inactive, we knew exactly where they were, what was there and kept close tabs on all of them. Now it's chaos. The UN has to rely on sattelite imagery to keep an eye on these places and it's only by this method we know that they've been spirited away because no one is allowed in to check. No weapons inspectors are tolerated by the US invasion forces.
This means that the invasion has actually dramatically increased nuclear proliferation. We've given someone, somewhere, capabilities they could only dream about previously. Take Iran. Just starting out on it's weapons programme. How they would love an entire facility, with all the bugs, glitches and teething troubles worked out, to fall in their laps. This isn't about know how, anyone with the time and inclination could do the research needed to collate the information to make weapons grade material. This isn't even about the machinery needed to make weapons. Although they took all the machinery contained in the buildings along with the buildings. This is about the whole process. From raw material to finished product. The layouts of the facility, the step by step process. The buildings, the machinery and the raw materials. Somewhere, people unknown, have the whole kaboodle from the gas centrifuges down to the cafeteria, from the yellowcake down to the urinals.
Now Bush has even more explaining to do. All he did was go in and protect the oil. Nothing else. Iraq's museums were looted, losing thousands of priceless items from Iraq's past. Irreplaceable. Then the palaces were looted, losing vital information and documentation about the Ba'athist regime. And now this, Iraq's nuclear facililities unguarded and loaded lock, stock and barrel onto trucks and shipped out to who knows where. What was once tightly monitored by the UN is now lost and no one has a clue where it all went.
So yes, i'm shocked, and completely in awe of how incompetent the US has been. One of the major tennets of the invasion was anti nuclear proliferation and once they were there they didn't give a toss about anything except the oil fields. This should tell you all you need to know about Bush and his wars of conquest. Everything you've been told is lies. There were no WMD's, the British have just today withdrawn the intelligence about the 45 minute claim. Iraq was not a "Clear and Present Danger." Bush was after the oil. Nothing more and nothing less, and the bodies of many thousands of American, Iraqi and British were not going to get in his way.
Sadly, it seems, nor was the security of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme.

What if the Whole World Could Vote?

Go to Betavote and find out. Voting for the US Presidential election country by country. Seeing that the outcome will effect just about everyone on the planet, this is very interesting. What interests me isn't that the vast majority of the world would rather Kerry made it into the Whitehouse, it's the few countries that want Bush to hold the Presidency and trying to puzzle out why they think that way. Strangely, it's only a handfull of African countries that come out for Bush.

The worldwide percentages as I write this are: Bush 34935 (11%) to Kerry 257353 (88%)

Cabbages and Kings

Being an ardent anti-royalist the idea I had this morning was pretty surprising. My normal stance on the royals could be summed up as "Turn them into meat pies, feed them to the nations homeless. Then divide their assets equally anongst the bottom 25% ( by wealth ) of the general populace." So actually discovering a reason why having a royal family is a good thing was a shock to say the least.
Ms Morpheus and I were talking about the way the americans treat their politicians so deferentially that they never get asked any difficult questions by the news media. Investigative journalism in the US can only be described as gentle by UK standards. This deification of people in the public eye, actors, musicians and of course polititians and presidents severely hampers journalists from putting them on the spot. It's as if americans are searching for a figurehead, a psuedo royal family. The Kennedy dynasty is a prime example. JFK's death was mourned nationally, and as deeply, as when Queen Victoria died in th UK. Jackie O was held in much the same regard in america as Diana Spencer in the UK. Ronald Reagan's death, although he was despised by a huge part of the US whilst in office, was remembered and honoured as a passing hero. All his problems, mistakes and wrongdoing whilst in office wiped from the collective memory. It's as if the US is looking for a national figurehead and they're looking to many areas of society for one to appear.
But it's the elevation of polititians to the psuedo-royal status that causes the greatest problems. Take the president. An elected, supposedly accountable career polititian suddenly protected by a huge barrier of deference. "Yes Mr President, No Mr President". Journalists inteviewing the president stumble and never call him to account properly. This deference percolates down through the levels of power. Giving polititians in the US a status that protects them from proper investigation.
Here in the UK it feels very different. We have a royal family. Now powerless tucked away in a palace somewhere, bought out for the odd opening of a bridge or sent abroad for a bit of PR work. All the deference due a countries figurehead can be safely beamed their way and it seems to fill a need in many. But the result of this is interesting. Polititians are here seen as what they are. Elected, accountable representatives of the people that vote them in. The prime minister is often questioned hard, interupted during trite contrived answers and often embarrased by a good journalist doing his job as he should. The relationship between the people and their polititians here is much more healthy. Much more distrustful. They don't get such an easy ride.

Well, I did it. Found a reason to keep the royals. I'm still getting used to it, it's an odd feeling. But every time i see how the americans treat their polititians, and especially their president, I'm sure it's a good thing. All that sickly sweet drivel that some ameriacans spout when the president appears really looks very strange from over here. I still can't understand what happens to a polititian, in an americans eyes, when he gets elected president. It's the deification of a career polititian. These are people that have lied, schemed and stuck on a false smile for years to get that office. They should be questioned, held to account and mistrusted more than anyone else.

Deference is their cloak behind which they hide. I'm sure UK prime ministers would love to get the respect that their american counterparts recieve. But I, for one, am bloody glad they don't.

The Price of Subversion

Well, hosting the Bush Chirac video on my free web host totally stuffed my bandwidth limit and they suspended my site. OK, I don't mind. It's a service and if I want it I have to pay. It's cost about £30 for the year to increase the bandwidth. Lets hope it has enough to cope now!
The heartening thing was the conversation on the hosts tech help IRC channel. There's me in the UK, the web hostess in the US and a chap in Australia. We were all there to sort out varous web hosting glitches. Not a representative sample I'll grant you, just three people meeting by chance. The Ozzie was bemoaning the fact that their anti war, anti bush candidate lost today. Our American hostess was supportive in the hosting of the video to help get Bush out and myself with a position completely opposed to my government and it's US lapdog prime minister Blaire. That's three people roughly spaced evenly around the globe. All with the same view. Bush, along with his poodles, the UK and Australia are wrong! The people around the globe know this. It's not bleeding heart liberalism, it's common human sense and decency. It's the people in power that ignore their respective populaces to carry on regardless of opinion. Blundering around the world with ill thought out, violent, insensitive policies they call "Spreading Freedom" in the saddest Orwellian ways. When all they do is secure their own energy reserves for the coming oil crisis.
The Palestinians would not be in the situation they're in if they had oil. Darfur would not be a "Genocide" in Colin Powell's words, if they had oil. It's so obvious, I can't understand how so many people in so many countries swallow the official line and quake in their homes. Thankfull that Bush and Blaire are busy stripping away their human rights and freedoms to "Make them Safe". Keep a population suitably scared and you can do what the hell you want to them and they will thank you in the name of "Homeland Security".
Why do they fall for it every time? When the eveidence is staring them in the face. I don't understand, perhaps I never will. But today's chance meeting of three like minded people on the net gives me a whole lot of hope. Someday, sometime, someone will stand up and say "Hang on, this is all bollocks!"

Mindless Wetware

I can't stop watching the .mpg of the Bush-Chirac meeting for the D-Day celebrations last June. It has Bush speaking with another voice bleeding over the translation equipment feeding him what to say next. Right down to which reporter to go to first for the question and answer session afterwards. The POTUS even mimics the sigh and tone of the prompter when he goes to the first questioner.

There has been much talk online recently about the possibility of the POTUS being wired enabling his handlers to feed him lines, facts and figures. The Mysterious Bulge, has just reached the mainstream news here in the UK. As I write Channel 4 news has a few sentences and the famous picture. OK, I know politicians don't write their own speeches, use teleprompters etc. But the two parties in the recent Presidential debates specified a whole host of rules before either would agree to them taking place. A wire feed worn during these debates breaks the very groundrules they formulated and discloses the fact that the most powerful leader on the planet can't even string a few coherant words together on the subjects he should live and breath every day without covert outside help.

There is much more at isbushwired. Required reading on the subject.