Straight To The Point

(From the BBC - just like all my news lateley):-

In a new book, the former head of the CIA, George Tenet accuses the US administration of failing to properly debate the evidence for going to war.

"We got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible," he writes.

Hey, I've got a good idea Mr Tenet. Why don't you write down everything that you knew was wrong at the time but never said, and then post it back 5 years ago to when it might have saved approximately several million lives?

It annoys me that he's so casual about the mistakes he knew were being made in the run up to war. "Ooops, we made a mistake! Read about it in my new book! Okay, a whole country has been ruined, 2% of the countries population has been wiped out, and America is caught in a quagmire costing it trillions, but it makes great reading!".

(Story from the BBC):

Figures published by the NHS's information centre last November, showed boys aged 11 to 13 drank an average of 12 units of alcohol a week in 2006 compared to eight in 2000. The figure for girls increased from five units to eight.

Charity Concern's Blairite interpretation: We must stop children drinking alcohol so ban them from drinking it!

Sensible Person's Interpretation: These statistics tell us nothing. What are the circumstances of the children who are drinking too much? Were they introduced to alcohol at an early age in a home environment, or were they prevented from drinking it and thus went to the park at the earliest opportunity to gulp down as many cans of Special Brew as possible?

Thankfully, Public Health Minister Caroline Flint, speaking on Today, seemed to be sensible enough to mention that there is no evidence that introducing alcohol to children in the home led to alcohol abuse.

In following up one of my previous posts (M$ to sell Windows for $3), I just stumbled across this quote from Joel Spolsky:-

It is extremely frustrating how much you have to run in place just to keep where you were before with Microsoft's products, where every recent release requires hacks, workarounds, and patches just to get to where you were before.

I couldn't put it better myself. When will people realise that the choice of Microsft is crippling technology advancements and reducing choice? I often deliberately anger myself by just thinking how much more advanced computers and software would be if Microsoft wasn't so useless.

I reckon that just be writing the bug-ridden, standards-non-complient, spyware-prone webbrowser called IE, they've stunted software advancement by years if not decades. Every minute of every day, millions of people are wasting their time trying to get around problems created by Microsoft, when they could be writing better software.

The Church of England has covered up child sex abuse carried out by former choirmaster Peter Halliday, who will be sentenced after pleading guilty to sexually abusing boys in Hampshire in the late 1980s. Rather than call the police the churchmen advised Halliday he should leave quietly and agree to have no more contact with young children.

And two quotes from the article that show the church has plummetted to new depths of lying:-

"The bishop, David Wilcox, said they had sought to act in the best interests not only of the Church but of the family and everybody concerned at the time." - How was the best interests of the child and family served by letting the criminal disappear quietly without police involvement - especially when he went on to work with more children?

And:

"In a statement, the Church of England said it was committed to the safeguarding, care and nurture of the children within the church community." - And black is white and white is black.

The message from the church is this:- homosexuality is evil, but paedophilia and sexual abuse is nothing serious.

(From the BBC)

Even though they "put lives at risk", Blair has surprisingly decided to rejected a call for an independent inquiry into leaks of police anti-terrorism intelligence to the media, even though he apparently has no idea where the leaks are coming from.

When asked for assurances that no minister, civil servant or special advisor leaked the information, Mr Blair said: "The only guarantee that I can give is that, as far as I'm aware [a classic get-out clause for when the truth outs], they did not". But still he doesn't want an investigation! His motto is "if you don't want to see a problem, don't look for one".

And this is a classic line from Blair and his double-standards: "I don't think it's right to leave an allegation suggesting that may be a minister who has done this, unless he's got actual evidence that that is so." But it's alright to shoot people several times in the head of course, without actual evidence. Or imprison someone for months without charge. But heaven forbid someone suggests a minister is up to no good! Stop this madness!

The greatest trick that our leaders have pulled when erroding our freedom is disguising it. This article describes exactly what is happening in the West and why we should stop it now. Even though you may not have been banned from flying, or arrested for a crime you haven't committed, it may only be a matter of time, as thousands of people already have. And the more insignificant the problem may seem, the easier it is for it to encroach on your world.

A few highlights:-

• Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.
• Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution.
• A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism".
• "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.
• a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance.
• The president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant".
• Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial.

Any organisation or government that thinks they are getting a bargain by buying Windows for $3 must already be on drugs. Once they are tied into the Microsoft platform, they will be stuck with it, and it will cost them far more than $3 per platform to either continue to use it or wean themselves off it.

[It goes without saying that there are far better operating systems available for about $3 less than this supposed "bargain" Windows].

(From the BBC)

A bill which would exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act is to be debated again - a week after its critics thought they had killed it off.

[Critics] believe the intention is to cover up information on subjects like MPs' expenses and allowances. Labour's David Winnick: "It will be the height of hypocrisy if Parliament, having passed the Freedom of Information legislation, decided that we should be exempt from it."