Strangely Perfect

Block ACTA and Stop ACTA! Truly, our freedoms are at stake.  While notionally an idea to prevent copyright theft, it’s real purpose opens the floodgates for any undemocratic organisation to walk over our freedoms (such as they are) for which our forefathers slugged their guts out.  Read this, then either; walk away (wondering in a [...]

Introduction Yesterday’s News The use of intercept evidence in courts in England and Wales is not “legally viable”, …the Home Office has said.  This is reported on the BBC here, Using intercept evidence in court ‘not yet viable’ Security From the earliest days of the British (English) Secret Service, back in Elizabeth I’s time, all [...]

Introduction You may not have noticed the co-incidence yesterday, but an Iranian aircraft crashed and the US Space Shuttle took off.  the co-incidence was in  the strange reporting that envelops such events. Iranian Crash This, as air crashes go, was pretty ordinary – something went wrong, it crashed, everyone died.  You’d expect some reasoned discussion, [...]

Freedom and the Law In stark contrast to the US which still insists on draconian measures against people thought to be bad (the lowest of the low Rumsfeld called them), the UK has had a landmark ruling for common sense in a democratic, freedom-loving country. Nine Law Lords have unanimously ruled it was unfair for [...]

High Hopes Replaced by Low Expectations It’s the torture, see? UK In the UK, when Blair was first elected Prime Minister, the people in the country had such high hopes.  There were promises of an ‘end to sleaze’ and an ‘ethical foreign policy’. Since those heady few weeks in the UK; We’ve had years of [...]

As well as being true to his words about Guantanamo; we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations – [...]

Today’s the 90th anniversary of the armistice, the end of the war to end all wars as it was called.  All we seem to have had here in the UK is pictures of loads of stark white, neatly arranged tombstones for weeks now.  It’s as if en-masse, the people get an obligation to feel sadness, [...]

Introduction I’ve nabbed the content of this from Ted Penfold.  My wife, has told me that she heard this lecture of Dick’s and found it and him some of the most inspiring things in her life.  I came across this wonderful piece by chance, looking for some background information on Nikko, the second guy after [...]

Or Does it Mean, Ignoring History? Key Links: US, Poland OK missile defense base, riling Moscow Russia condemns US missile deal I can agree with US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, for her statement, “Missile defence, of course, is aimed at no one. It is in our defence that we do this.” And it sounds [...]

Two items this week have prompted this post which follows on from others like Laughable Big Brother. The Viz character, Roger Irrelevant is the link. (Viz flash version of a Roger Irrelevant cartoon.) Quoting from the Wikipedia description of Roger: “Roger Irrelevant is utterly detached from reality. The premise of the strip is that he [...]

Sorry to keep banging on about this, but the new laws in the UK which severely limit our freedoms and liberties gained over centuries should be compared to the current Zimbabwe situation and then taken forward in time as a thought experiment. The nearly current state of affairs in the UK I’ve summarised here in [...]

I’ve just seen a news article today about a man who’s been locked in a jail for about 30 years and no-one knew where he was! He belongs to the world’s largest democracy, India, and has been jailed in Pakistan since 1973! This is the same Pakistan that George Bush has decided is a friend [...]

There’s a neat book just been released by a Nobel prize winning author Joseph Stiglitz, and Linda Bilmes of Harvard, that counts the true financial cost of the Bush conspired conflict. This is a BBC article and a similar one on The Guardian written by Aida Edemariam who met him. It’s a truly staggering piece, [...]

Who is this guy who’s registered on my site, hasn’t ever posted, has been deleted by me three times and re-registers each time? !!! This is who: Mark B Wilson While sympathising with some of his “pledges” and stuff, (you know; Bush is a twat, war is bad, clean energy – something must be done…), [...]