THE MEAT GRINDER IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Two hundred and thirty-five British soldiers have been killed in the Middle East (especially Afghanistan), one hundred this year,(so far, the year isn’t over yet) and for what?
Seriously, for what?
To bring democracy to the Afghanis?* To see to it their girls are allowed to go to school? To keep out the Al Qaeda mob? To stop the Taliban from crawling back? To stop terrorism?
Why on earth can’t they see to their own democracy? Why can’t they see to it their girls can go to school? Why can’t they fight to keep out Al Qaeda and the Taliban? And if we did withdraw there would be no fear of terrorism.
So what’s happening? Our troops are being fed in one end and coming out the other end in coffins just to prove a point. To prove to the Afghanis we won’t be messed with. It’s not achieving except the death of another soldiers.
The soldiers are dying to prove a point.
Never mind, you Mother and wives and sisters etc. When you open the letter informing you your beloved is dead, and for no good reason.** Your man will get a good homecoming at Wootton Basset, with layers of people crying. You might even go to meet Her Maj and get medal for your man.

*We say Afghanis and Iraqis and Israelis and Saudis so why do we say Iranians and not Iranis?
**I am saying this not to derogate the youngsters in Afghanistan this Christmas. They are heroes all. But I am making it clear that the government who sent them are not achieving anything, hence their deaths are without good reason.

LAST CHANCE FOR PLANET EARTH+

The Copenhagen climate conference, an attempt to get countries cut carbon emissions planet-round, has begun. Leaders of nations have got together to decide to cut the amount of carbon being sent off into the atmosphere to end global warming, and stop the planet from heating up, or, conversely, freezing up.
And, you know, I don’t think they’ll do it. Because it’s every nation for themselves and every leader will put the needs of their own country before the needs of the planet. For once, to save the earth from heat death, we can’t even act like one big planet. The boundaries get in the way. Stupid, blind, xenophobia will be the death of us all.

From the planet to the personal; A bit back I added a posting to my blog which has been proven wrong. Lyra Tab isn’t a mute. She has started to make the sweetest meows.

THOUGHTS ON 11th NOVEMBER

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below…

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields…

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands, we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields…

Written in 1915 by the Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, allegedly the inspiration for the wearing of poppies as a tribute to the dead of the Great War and subsequent wars.
And men today are still falling ninety years and three thousand miles away from Flanders, and where the poppies still blow.

AND WHY NOT SAY IT?

I’ve been thinking about BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on BBC’s ‘Question Time’. I didn’t see it, but apparently the other panellists ganged up on Mr Griffin and the Unite Against Facists picketed outside Broadcasting House in London.
In other words, those UAF members who are supposed to defend the rights of minorities and stop facism were using very facist Nazi tactics against the minority BNP; I don’t like what you’re saying so I’m going to stifle you and deny your right to say it. Everyone hates the BNP, but they do have a right to freedom of speech without being threatend to be smashed for having an opinion different than the UAF.
Did you know that there is only one race? The human race. Human beings are all the same, and I dislike them all equally irrespective of height, colour, age, sex, sexuality, background, etc. The only way we are going to end this stupid divide and conquer I’m-from-here-so-I’m-better-than-you-from-there is to bring all the borders down. We share one big round planet and at the moment it’s carved up into different sections within which people are supposed to stay, and if they wander across an imaginary line on a map they are entering someone else’s country. This has to end. Apart from the influences of the religions, this seperating of peoples is the biggest cause of war and persecution.
We have to be taught we need to work together to save the planet not hate our neighbour because he is across the line over there.
Just imagine if the nations had decided to bring the borders down at the turn of the last century? Would there have been a Great war? That was all about nationalism, and would the Jews had been persecuted if it was not seperate countries but one planet? The Hutu and Tutsi people would not have been the hacked and hackers if there had been no need to divide them on behalf of their named origins. Ethnic cleasning in Eastern Europe would not have entered the minds of people if there had been no ethnic differences, just one large nation. And the Soviet Union. Red China and the Khmer Rouge would not have existed if there had just been one vast planet.
See, the only way we can prevent more massacres is to stop this indentifying with one section of the planet and bring the borders down, to make it one planet.
Just imagine how much wildlife would not be persecuted if people could just uproot and move away instead of having to hack into the territory and invade the land of other species for space.
Just imagine how people would work together to help heal the wounds caused by humanity once they woke up to the fact that this planet, and not just a bit of it, was their responsibility.
All right, yes, at first, there would be thousand coming West and North from the Middle Eastern and Southern bit of the planet, but once things had settled down, people would be able to live, with equal rights, where they wanted.
Imagine if it was decided, mutually, without coercion, for the planet’s salvation, (it’s the only one we’ve got) that all the borders were brought down at say midnight (depending where it was for you) on 31st December 2009. There would be breathing space for all. There would be no need for wars over land, which after religious difference is the biggest reason for war.
If you wanted to move to another part of the planet, you could. I doubt I would see the full benefit in my lifetime but my nieces and nephew would be able to say, proudly, they were not residents of a certain nation but, as they are in reality, citizens of the planet earth.
It would certainly end the chronic stupid of racism than would shouting down someone on a BBC programme.

ADVICE ON POLITICS

Don’t vote Conservative.
Not only do they hate the ordinary people, and are going to cut vital benefits to those who need them the most, they are also going to bring back fox hunting.
Bastards.

AT LAST

From the Prime Minister, to all those who signed the petition to get recognition and an apology for the grossly unfair treatment received by Alan Turing;

Prime Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection a chance for
Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who
came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred
in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British
experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to
honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches
of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which
have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take
up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am
both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists,
historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and
celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of
dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on
breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that,
without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could
well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can
point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt
of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that
he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross
indecency’ in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he
was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical
castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own
life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing
and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt
with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his
treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance
to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and
the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted
under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more
lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this
government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT
community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most
famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long
overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to
humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united,
democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once
the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in
living memory, people could become so consumed by hate, by
anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices
that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European
landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls
which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is
thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism,
people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war
are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely
thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved
so much better.

Gordon Brown

Hurrah, yes hurrah! As a B of the LGBT community, I understand that there is a sense of justice at last.
Thank you, Mr Brown!

THE RETURN HOME ETC+

On the 20th of August, a certain chap named Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi left Scotland to return home to Libya to die. He had prostrate cancer and according to doctors only a few months left. This single has caused an international uproar, and the ire of the US has been firmly aimed at Scotland, with calls for a boycott on Scottish goods, even from the Scots themselves.
Back now, in time, to December 1988. Pan Am Flight 103, ‘Clipper Maid of the Seas’, was cruising over southern Scotland when a bomb on board ignited, killing everyone on board, the majority of who were US citizens on their way home for Christmas. The ruined plane came apart and parts crashed onto the small town of Lockerbie where eleven people were killed. The death total was finalised at 270, the majority, 189 of which were American citizens. The explosion was so violent and so total that the crew of ‘Clipper Maid of the Seas’ didn’t even have time to send a distress signal.
Forward again, to May 2000, when, after much wangling ad diplomatic actions, two men were finally extradited from Libya to the Netherlands stand trial under Scottish law for what was to be known as the Lockerbie bombing. One was Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who was found not guilty. The other was Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi. He was found guilty in the May of 2001 and sentenced to life in prison for the murders. There was how it rested until this year, August, the Scottish Justice Secretary, a one Kenny MacAskill, decided to release the dying Megrahi on compassionate grounds, allow him to die at home. Megrahi was met by cheering crowds off the plane, some waving Scottish flags, and treated to an audience with Muammar al-Gaddafi, Revolutionary leader of Libya. A bit like meeting the Queen, the US President and the Prime Minister all rolled into one. He was treated, in other words, like a celebrity hero.
Now, in case you haven’t guessed, we come to the point as to why Scotland is facing a boycott. A murderer, a mass murderer, has been freed and allowed to go home and treated like a hero, and Scotland is responsible. Now, Megrahi has not been pardoned, so he is still the guilty one, the only one ever deemed responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.
But once the steam of indignation has been wiped off the window of truth, and you can see through, it’s just possible that Megrahi was set up. The only evidence came from clothes wrapped around the remains of the suitcase bomb, which were said to have been sold to Megrahi by a one Tony Gauci in Malta. That was it. No other evidence linked our Libyan sick man to the bombing. It’s possible that Gaddafi excepted the verdict because he no longer wanted to be the head of a country that was a byword for terrorism. It’s possible that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was sacrificed by those who wanted to see closure. Not on purpose. There were clothes with the bomb, and our Maltese shop keeper Tony Gauci claimed to have sold them to Megrahi, but isn’t it just possible that the whole thing was rushed through as quickly as possible. Before you shout ‘give over! Are you a terrorist lover?!’ Think on this;
The only reason why Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was found not guilty was because he had an alibi that put him somewhere else other than Malta at that time.
Use reason; the man is still guilty in the eyes of the law, and he’s only got three months to live. I know it must be hell to see someone whom you believe is responsible for the brutal, bloody death of someone you love more than your own heart let go, but a lot of the Scottish victims families, who are suffering just as much as those of the other nations, weren’t happy with his conviction. They’d rather see no closure and an innocent man go free than rub their hands with glee at the thought of someone, who just might not have done it, be locked up. And if he was sacrificed on the altar of international politics, (a story is going around that Libya and Scotland did a deal; let the chap come home and you can have our oil. How true it is I’ve no idea) he’s still going to die. That’s why he was sent home, on compassionate grounds, to die. It’s not as if he’s going to spend the next thirty years or so admired and feted by the Libyans, doing the rounds of chat shows, getting money, perhaps writing a best-selling book. He’ll be dead before Christmas.
And he’s still officially guilty.
And the rest of Scotland aren’t to blame.

Meanwhile, in the Midlands in the UK, a small girl child has been found strangled in the cab of a wagon, while her Mum’s boyfriend who had taken her out as a treat on delivery trips, has been found hanging from a cord within walking distance.

A KILLING AND A SAVING-THOUGHTS ON THE SUBJECTS

So, the names are out.
The torture killers of baby P are out in the public domain. As soon as the court order to kepe their identities secret ran out, before an application could be made to renew it, the names and faces were all over the Internet and other media sources. No, I’m not going to give the details. This is a blog from a deist Brit misanthrope, not a red top site. You can find them if you’re interested.
As you can imagine, the backlash has been mostly vicious, with snuff-novel level descriptions of what should be done to the three ‘monsters’ who killed this little angel. Actually, they are not monsters or animals, but human beings like everyone else, like the Nazi concentration camp guards and the Hutus in Rwanda, and (and I’m genuninely upset about this) Baby P is not an angel, he’s not anything, he’s dead, but never mind that.
Anyhow, apparently, some of the most angry repsonses are those who aren’t happy about them being given new id’s when they are realised from gaol. The consensus seems to be that if they aren’t hanged or tortured they should live the rest of their lives in fear, like Baby P, and the same people who wanted to know who they were are now complaining that they will have to pay their tax money to provide protection when these three get out.
Fair enough; let’s get into the mind of an ordinary avarage person who is sickened by what happened in that council owned house in Haringey. Suppose the calls to the government to bring back hanging are heeded. Suppose these three end up on the gallows on the end of a rope. What then? Seriously, what then? What will this hanging achieve, apart from a feeling of self satisfaction that revenge has been taken? Will this save a child’s life?
Now before you answer, remember that a while back baby farming, the system of taking babies from say unwed Mothers or poor families, was a common event. More often than not the baby ended up dead at the bottom of a canal or somewhere. This happened when a body could be hanged for stealing. Plus, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady committed four of their five murders when hanging was still on the books. I’m sure you’re getting my point. Hanging didn’t save Pauline Read, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett or Lesley Ann Downey or all those poor unwanted sods killed at the hands of baby farmers. One of the most famous British hangman concluded his memoirs by saying that hanging did nothing but satisfy the desire for revenge. It didn’t make people think twice about taking a life. It was no deterrent.
I bet I know what you’re thinking; All right, what do we do with these evil baby killers, you left-wing excuser for evil acts? Let ‘em go to kill again? Treat ‘em with houses and new id’s and protection all on our tax money? No, I didn’t say that, and if you dig deep enough into my real feelings, you will see that I think that Britain today is soft on crime, due to the liberal bias which has permeated every section of legal society. But hanging them will just kill them, it won’t make much of an inroad on the abuse that leaves children dead which is at such a pace that new cases are being uncovered weekly. What should we do with child killers? What should we do with people who would torture a toddler until his little exhausted body shut down due to the level of abuse it was forced to take?
Study them. Talk to them. Ask them why they did it. If they refuse to take part in the study, give them some extra punishment, take away something they enjoy doing in the confines of their gaol setting. If they take part, well, they’re doing it for the good of everyone. Surely no one could argue that a killer’s human rights are being infringed for having their priviledges taken away for refusing to explain to the authorities what they got out of killing a toddler. Take the results and study them. Perhaps if it’s discovered why these things happen, a system can be put into place to finally stop it happening again. Maybe (and me with my DNA tops upbringing attitude) it can be discovered that a criminal behaves as they do because their brains are wired wrong. Maybe, just maybe, if money and time is concentrated on studying instead of locking away and forgetting or hanging, it will be discovered there is a genetic component then, like with various genetic illness, some tablet or injection or surgical procedure can be formed to keep the killing thoughts under control.
It will save tax payer’s money in the long run a lot more than spending money on skimming the surface, whenever a baby is killed or some other outrage is committed by someone who has a history of such actions.
Yes, even people like Ian Huntley and Ian Brady (although from what I’ve read Ian Brady won’t involve himself because he’s given up on being alive, he just wants to die, so no removal of priviledges would entice him) Rosemary West, Peter Sutcliffe, Steve Wright, Denis Nilsen (I can imagine Denis Nilsen especially absolutely loving being brought from his banal gaol life into the spotlight of being taken notice of). Don’t lock them up and forget them, for a red tops to occasionally discover something about them to engage us in fresh waves of indignation and calls for the death penalty.
After all, hanging, locking up and throwing away the key, or violent mob threats has not cut into the crime figures, who knows reasoning and studying might.
And that’s what it’s all about, right?

Another point caught my attention; Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Who’s them, you might ask. They are two US journalists who in June happened to cross over into North Korean territory only to be arrested and sentenced to hard labour for spying. But the best part is yet to come. Bill Clinton, ex US president and husband of the present US Secretary of State (what is that job? Is it like our Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary or what?) went into this rogue state, all alone, with only his diplomatic status as protection (I don’t think he’s even got an offical position in the US government) and talked to Kim Jong-il the leader of North Korea. He went into a state considered to be a grave enemy of the US and democracy and all that is fair and decent and went right to the leader and engaged him into reasoned talk. And you know what? It worked. Bill Clinton came home and brought Laura Ling and Euna Lee with him, after getting a pardon for them from Kim Jong-il. He reasoned with a man who is supposed to be head of a country that is one of the axis of evil and which should not ever be diplomatically engaged with.
That is absolutely amazing, in my books, and this man is worthy of all kinds of praise. All right, he might have misbehaved with a lady not his wife in the past, but by reason, he’s got a silver tongue.
Plus, he’s a left-hander. A first-born left-hander to boot.

THE LIBERAL IDEA OF FAIRNESS

Iran has broken the record for the most people executed at one time in the past thirty years.
On the thirtieth of July, twenty-four drugs traffickers were hanged, with the hanging arranged so the hanged would die slowly and painfully, choking on the end of the rope.
I’m sure fair-minded liberals everywhere are ready to protest outside Iranian embassies around the world, call for a boycott of Iranian products, newspapers make it headline news, and politicians are standing up to protest at this gross human rights abuse.
They’re not?
Oh no, of course not. Because it isn’t Israel who is executing people. That’s how the liberal mind works, you see. Any other nation on earth can openly commit the grossest human rights abuses possible, from stoning teenage girls to death for being raped, to throwing white people off their farms, to shooting people for exercising their right to peacefully protest all the way to executions where the executed are tried without defence lawyers present and sometimes tortured as part of the prosecution’s plan to get a conviction. But if an Israeli is caught picking his nose in front of a Palestinian child the liberal world is alight with cries of horror at such blatant abuse.
There is nothing liberal about such liberals. Until they admit that Iran is a criminal state, along with Zimbabwe, and most of Africa and the Arabs nations, then they have no right to howl human rights abuse whenever an Israeli isn’t happy about a Palestinian taking over their home.
The US and the UK are also the whipping boys of the liberal intelligentsia.

NUCLEAR WAR!(?)

North Korea has been doing nuclear testing. They can now seriously be considered one of the nations with nuclear weapons. And the world is collectively trembling in it’s boots. An emergency session of the UN called. President Obama speaking out against it. South Korea and Japan, close enough to receive any potential missiles are deeply distressed. Even North Korea’s traditional ally, China, who has more than once used it’s UN veto on behalf of it’s smaller neighbour, is withdrawing support. There is even barely heard speculation from a distance as to what may happen if there was another Korean war, like the one from 1950-1953.
North Korea, a Stalinist nation with a nuclear payload. Sanctions slapped on it in 2006 has just made it more defiant, and more determined to make these weapons. So, what does the rest of the world do?
How about talking? Inviting them to the negotiating table and asking them why they need to have such weapons. Why do they feel so threatened? Treat them decently. They don’t have to be the pariah nation that the west makes them out to be. Like most people, if they are pushed enough, they might just push back. Converse. Treat them decently.
Iran is watching from a distance, on the edge of creating it’s own nuclear weapons. Once they see how the nations treat Korea, they might realise that they were wrong, that the world doesn’t hate them, and doesn’t think they are part of a group of hated and feared nations.
It might just work. As a great man once put it, jaw jaw is better than war war. And anything would be better than a tit for tat nuclear exchange which is what the world seems to be afraid of as a real possibility at the moment.

THEY MIGHT TAKE OUR FREEDOMS BUT WE’RE DAMNED IF THEY’RE GOING TO TAKE OUR MONEY

According to ‘The Independent on Sunday’ newspaper, New Labour’s popularity has dropped to sixteen points behind the Conservatives. All because of expense claims by MPs. That is, an MP can claim back expenses for almost everything they buy, and by heck have they. From Ikea bedrooms to KitKats. The lid has been blown off this behaviour, and it isn’t even a scam. That’s right. The taxpayer is paying for MP’s televisions and tampons and it’s all legal. All right, some MPs might have claimed frivolously, but nothing they have done is outside the law. And the poor ordinary sods have had enough and fought back by no longer supporting New Labour. There is a good chance that New Labour’s popularity will be at such a low that they won’t be looking over their shoulder and waiting for the Lib Dems to catch up, so low that it is almost a given thing that the Conservatives will be the next party in power following the general election.
New Labour has made a massive inroads into our basic freedoms; Health and Safety officials banning the heck out of open days and fêtes due to rules that make it illegal for people to bake their own cakes and string their own lights, certain web sites if merely looked at giving the looker up to three years inside, the banning of smoking in public houses which has crippled the industry, CCTV cameras everywhere, so we are the most surveyed nation on earth, national databases of every child in the UK, which various minor officials are good at losing in public places, plans for every e-mail to be tracked; all put in place ‘for our own good’ by new Labour. All this and more has not made the Brits, who after all are the government’s bosses, think again. But when it comes to taking our money away from us, we won’t stand for that.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR SEEGER

Pete Seeger. Spokesman for the ordinary working person, one time Communist, lover of his country but not what it had become, environmental activist, most of all, gentle folk philosopher and singer whose gentle, melodious interpretations and distinctive five-stringed country banjo playing stretch sixty-three years from the Spanish Civil War to the Obama Inauguration. One of the great men of the twentieth century. Ninety years old today. Happy birthday, Mr Seeger, may you have a wonderful birthday, from just one who admires you and all you do.

FREEDOM TO SPEAK, NO EXCEPTIONS

Everyone’s favourite pack of gay-obsessed Calvinist Baptists, the Westboro Baptist Church headed by Pastor Fred Phelps and fronted by his eldest daughter Mrs Shirley Roper-Phelps, have been forbidden permission to come to the UK to protest the Queen Mary’s College in Basingstoke showing of the Laramie Project, which is a play about the effects of the murder of the gay Matthew Shepard and is centred around the reaction of the Westboro Baptists to this murder.
In her usual no messing about full-on Christian soldier mode, Mrs Roper-Phelps has called down god’s wrath on Britain and insisted the Brits would suffer for not allowing god’s word into Britain*.
Now, these people are not doing these things just to annoy anyone, they really, truly do believe it’s a commission from god and they are doing it for love of the doomed nations. Why Biblegod himself just don’t appear in some unmistakeable form, like at the UN, and make clear ‘the WBC are right, stop being fags or you’ll burn’ is just a mystery we have to understand and not look at too closely or question. Or we burn in hell.
The funniest part is how some liberal Christ-follower was dug up to insist the WBC are not true Christians as true Christianity isn’t represented by these gay-hating picketing anti-human types. Actually, he’s wrong and Pastor Phelps and Co are right. Read your Scripture. God does hate fags.
But back to the original line of mumbling on. I have to say it;
Why not allow them into the country and allow them their say? Because anyone who cries about allowing Geert Wilder freedom to speak and doesn’t do the same, with the same solemn enthusiasm for the WBC, can’t truly be a free speech supporter and can be labelled the same as those of the left wing liberal PC brigade who only say it’s freedom of speech if they agree with it, and attempt to silence all dissent.
End of discussion.

“Like them or hate them, the members of WBC must have some Cold War type hotline to god, since they seem to know what he is thinking and what he wants from them and from everyone else. Since he certainly hasn’t appeared to them in person, surely they must have a connection that would have been the envy of the USA and USSR during the Cold War.