Straight To The Point

First and last time. Via Blogzilla (What - you didn't think I actually read the Sun do you?)

I didn't mean this to become a series, but with these news item's I'm reading, I can't think of a more appropriate headline.

An overwhelming majority of people in Britain are willing to surrender civil liberties to help tackle the threat of terrorism.

7 in every 10 people think compulsory identity cards for all adults would be "a price worth paying"

25% of adults thought the police should be allowed to question suspects for up to a week without letting them see a solicitor

About 80% said electronic tagging of terrorist suspects was "a price worth paying" to combat terrorism. The same proportion backed home curfews, travel restrictions and detention without charge for more than a week.

"only" 35% would accept a ban on peaceful protests and demonstrations.

I almost can't believe these figures. God knows who they interveiewed - Blair 100 times? I think another problem is that people always seem to equate "terrorist suspects" with "terrorist" - a common mistake people make, especially when talking about Guantanamo. How about if the question were asked more directly - "Is electronic tagging of innocent people a price worth paying?"

There are now two American Aircraft carriers being parked outside Iran. And they are for what exactly?

(And this does have similarities to the Cuban Missile Crises, but in reverse.)

I came across this posting the other day in one of the blogs I enjoy reading because I so vehemently disagree with it. The author is responding to a story about how the french are going to turn off their electricity to save the earth's resources.

...My responsibility is to live my life the way I please, and if anybody doesn't like it, they should develop a replacement for fossil fuels that doesn't compromise my lifestyle.

Europeans might say this is typical American arrogance, and perhaps it is. I'm just not interested in giving up my comfortable, six-passenger sedan in favor of a tiny "Smart Car" ("Stupid Car" is more like it). Anything less than 3-liters and 200hp is absurd.

I couldn't even be bothered to post a comment to the blog - when someone is this far gone, there's no hope left for them (or the planet).

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected. Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

And I bet Bush doesn't even regret it. He loves war!

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON’T SAY?

[Edit 21/1/06 - In the interests of fairness, there is another side to this story here. Make your own mind up whether it is true or not]

Washington, DC — Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

"In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology"

Can they be serious? Does anyone believe that Noah existed and managed to fit two of every animal in the world onto a boat? Come on.

Anyone who takes an advert at face value is frankly stupid, just as people who believe what they read in newspapers, so it comes as no surprise to me to see that Colgate has been criticised by the ASA for their claim that "80% of dentists recommend Colgate".

I remember when I first saw it that my first cynical thought was "by 'dentists' they probably include everyone from dentists receptionists to people who work on a toothbrush production line". I think I was wrong. It does turn out, however, that the "dentists" interviewed were allowed to name more than one brand. Presumably any decent dentists would recommend any and all toothpastes over none at all, so it wouldn't surprise me if all toothpastes could make the same claim. Thus what is surprising is that 20% of dentists *wouldn't* recommend Colgate.

Anyway, my point is "don't believe adverts". Even for a second. They are as good as the British Government when it comes to hiding the real truth and twisting a language to their own ends.

(Link here). And some people still whinge about how bad 9/11 and July 7th was.

I hope that invading another country and turning it into a pile of rubble, allowing death squads and suicide bombers to roam freely, makes them feel a little bit better.

...is to keep doing exactly what we've been doing for the last 3 years! (Blackadder anybody?). Only now with even more troops, so we're even more likely to win the war on terror.

Still, he does put more responsibility on the Iraqi government. Just because we bombed the country to tiny pieces, it doesn't mean that they should expect us to rebuild it for them. Not without paying Haliburton plenty of money anyway.

And does anyone remember something called the Iraq Study Group? Bush obviously doesn't.

It's blindingly obvious what Bush's plan is going to be for Iraq in the next two years: add as many troops as he can get away with to ensure that it doesn't explode into WW3 during his term in office. As long as he can get to the end of his tenure without it seeming to get far worse, the whole buck can be passed to the next unlucky sod.

I don't mean this blog entry to sound like [another] rant about America, but sometimes you discover things about a place that do make you question if it really is like that. It seems to be that the more I read about America, the less "Land of the Free" it seems to me (and, for a change, I'm not talking about the war on terror).

Here's just a couple of highlights I've discovered to give you an idea of what I mean. These aren't "crazy" laws, but things the directly affect people's freedom:-

* Since 1998, new California drivers under age 18 generally have been barred from having other teens in the car with them while they drive.

* Eminent Domain - The government can seize your land for private use if they can prove that doing it will serve what's called "the public good"

* The DMCA

* The Patriot Act. These including more attacks on civil liberty than anything Saddam could come up with.

* Postal mail can be opened by the Government without a warrant.

* Youth curfews - They are a sledgehammer to crack open a nut, and effectively house-arrest everyone for the crimes of a few.

* On-line gambling banned - This is the same country that has Las Vegas. If people want to gamble, why shouldn't they be allowed?

From Mask of Anarchy: George Bush is guilty of killing only 17 less people than Saddam, for which Saddam has been executed (and this is ignoring the current Iraq war figures). Maybe if Saddam had called the Shia's terrorists, he might have got a medal instead of the noose.

If you read blogs, you will frequently come across the argument that "leftists" and "liberals" are people who are scared and afraid; afraid of offending anyone and wanting to appease everyone. That's why we whinge about things like Guantanamo and secret torture prisons (often referred to as extraordinary rendition, but let's call a spade a spade).

The irony is that it's the complete opposite; it's the "right" that are the ones who are scared. It's too frightening for them to believe that the problems of the world aren't caused by a simple direct enemy who can easily be identified (flavour of the year being Muslim terrorists). To them, the "war" started on 9/11, and they attacked us so now we're attacking them, and whatever Goerge Bush does, we still have the moral high-ground regardless, cos we're the West!

They don't realise, or they don't want to understand, that these problems go back far earlier than that, and the enemy isn't everyone wearing a burka or talking in arabic; and that we're often just as evil (or worse) as the middle-east. They're afraid that if they start going down that route, they will come to the conclusion that maybe the West isn't so innocent and moral as we like to think, and we might have caused our own problems; and the solution can't be found down the warhead of a bomb.

I'm sending seasons greetings to all the readers of this blog. A bit late mind, but I've been busy. However, I want to get back to the real meaning of our winter celebrations, to a time before it was hijacked by Christianity for their own evil ends. After all, there's no evidence that Jesus existed, his birthday wasn't on the 25th December, and frankly, people who think that mankind are the children of just two people can't be taken seriously. Christianity (and all other religions BTW) are an affront to common-sense and logic, handed down from generation to generation and started by people who were probably having a joke anyway.