Friday Music

Justice vs. Simian - We Are Your Friends

Friday Cat Blogging


George the kitchen cat







Heidi resting on the highest part of the living room

British Politics

Labour boss quits over donations

Labour general secretary Peter Watt has resigned following the revelation that a property developer made donations to the party via three associates.

David Abrahams, who gave almost £600,000 over four years, said Mr Watt's resignation was "sad".

Mr Watt told a meeting of officers of Labour's National Executive Committee he had known about the arrangement.

Under the law, those making donations on behalf of others must give details of who is providing the money.

Gordon Brown's administration is lurching from one crisis to another

The Tories must feel like Christmas has come early and there is little point of creating policies, because Gordon Brown is messing up so spectacularly.

Typical arrogance, the government makes a law but then they think that it doesn't apply to them. Dear Dog what a sorry state British politics in, they are all a bunch of bloody crooks.

David Abrahams gets a front row seat at Blair's leaving bash in his constituency and the party didn't even know he was a donor.

If you had a cynical view of British politics already, this will just deepen it

Sunday Fun

Friday Music

Dizzee Rascal - Flex

Friday Cat Blogging


Handsome George




George staring at the sink


Heidi as Cat-in-a-Box


Fight!







Kitchen Cats


Heidi-Fi

The Ongoing Iraq Occupation

IRAQ-SYRIA: Lack of money, visa problems prompting Iraqi refugees to return home

DAMASCUS, 22 November 2007 (IRIN) - Lack of funds and the Syrian government’s refusal to renew their visas, more than the perception of improved security in Iraq, are prompting some Iraqi refugees in Syria to return to Iraq, according to personal refugee accounts and figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The Iraqi government recently announced that 46,000 refugees returned to Iraq in October, mostly from Syria, while a Syrian immigration source said that between 1 October and 19 November 60,000 people had returned to Iraq.

Some media reports and Iraqi government officials have suggested the refugees are returning because of improved security following the US military “surge” earlier this year.

However, in a report released on 22 November, the UNHCR - which interviewed 110 Iraqis in Syria this week - found that only 14 percent of respondents said they were returning to Iraq because they believed the security situation had improved, as opposed to 70 percent who cited financial and visa reasons.

Iraq sees "catastrophe" with new cholera cases

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq is facing a health "catastrophe" in the capital Baghdad, with reports of cholera rising sharply over the past weeks to more than 80 new cases, the Health Ministry said on Thursday.

Most of the new cases have been reported in the eastern part of Baghdad, especially in poor areas routinely deprived of water and other basic services, an official at the ministry said.

Doesn't that give you the warm fuzzies

these Iraqi refugees are going back to Iraq, not because it is safer but because they have no money

and they will most likely end up dead, either from cholera, bombs, death squads or disappearing into prisons.

Whats even worse is how this was all predicted before the invasion, but the war cheerleaders chose to ignore, its sickening.

Knowledge is Power

Translation project to bring cream of foreign writers to Arabs

Books by Stephen Hawking, Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami and other star writers past and present have been chosen as the first works to be translated into Arabic, in a major initiative to widen access to foreign literature.

The Abu Dhabi-based project, Kalima ("word" in Arabic), aims to publish 100 books in its first year and 500 titles a year by 2010, it announced yesterday.

The first 100 are from 16 languages, including Greek, Japanese, Swedish, Czech, Russian, Chinese, Yiddish, Italian, Norwegian, Latin and ancient Greek. Half the candidate titles are English.

Four years ago the UN's Arab human development report identified a lack of translated foreign works as an issue restricting Arab intellectual life. The UN report noted that Spain translates in one year the number of books that have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years.

"The rest of the world enjoys a wealth of domestic and translated writing, why should the Arab world be any different?" Karim Nagy, Kalima's Egyptian chief executive, said as the first titles were announced. "We can start putting Arabic readers back in touch with great works of world literature and academia, and begin filling the gaps in the Arabic library."

I think its rather wonderful, the translation of seminal books into Arabic. I can't think of a better way to encourage true free thinking, better than dropping bombs. Its a peaceful method, we just don't stop to consider alternatives, instead rushing into war because the Ann Coulter's or LGFers of the world masturbate over violent death of people with a different skin colour or religion.

Books, tv, radios, if you wanted to bring a regime down to it knees, those three tools would suffice, less bloody than war thats for sure. Ok so its a slower way but it creates a much better outcome, you only need to see Iraq to see how bombing the shit out of a place does no good at all.

Iraq's History

IRAQ: No trace found for thousands of manuscripts U.S. troops discovered in 2003

Thousands of manuscripts have disappeared among them priceless copies of the Holy Koran, an Iraqi librarian said.

The librarian, who wanted his name kept secret, said the manuscripts were "expropriated" by a U.S.-led force shortly after the 2003 invasion of Baghdad.

The former government had moved the manuscripts from the national library shelves to a cellar close to the Umm al-Teboul mosque in Baghdad for fear of damage or theft.

The librarian said the troops removed the manuscripts from the cellar but there is no trace of them.

He said there were about 50,000 manuscripts in the national library which were all moved to the cellar. The collection, he added, was "the largest and the most valuable in the whole Middle East."

Of the most valuable manuscripts that have gone missing is a copy of the Holy Koran hand-written by Imam Ali only a few years after the death of the Prophet Mohammed.

"There was a Koran written on snake skin. The miniature copy was no more than a few centimeters wide," said the librarian.

Makes me cry when I think what has happened to Iraq's antiquities

The destruction and thieving and general philistine behavior. Bit by bit Iraq is losing its past and may never get it back.

I guess it suits the Bush Junta that Iraq would have no history, all the better for their delusions of creating 'democracy'. I would of thought it would of been one of the major priorities after the invasion to secure ancient artifacts and archaeological sites. This taps into their utter failure to create any form of security post invasion, spending too much time sitting in rooms dreaming up ways to privatize Iraq's industries or downloading traffic plans from the internet. The fact decisions were left to people who had no experience in this area, instead handing it over to lickspittles, toadies, flunkies, ideologically pure types, etc. and thus we are at the situation we have today in Iraq.

Friday Music Blogging

Von Sudenfed - Fledermaus Can't Get It

Friday Cat Blogging


George enjoying the Novemeber sunshine




Heidi all snuggled up to the radiator

Remembrance Sunday


(In probably the most poignant scenes of the series, Blackadder, Baldrick, and George sit in the dug-out, waiting for the big push. There is a real sense of time being on their hands)
Baldrick: Permission to ask a question, sir.
Blackadder: Permission granted Baldrick, as long as it isn't the one about where babies come from.
Baldrick:No. The thing is - the way I see it, these days there's a war on, right? And ages ago, there wasn't a war on, right? So there must have been a moment where there not being a war on went away, right, and there being a war on came along, right? So, what I really want to know is how we went from one case of affairs to the other case of affairs.
Blackadder:You mean, how did the war start?
Baldrick:Yes, sir.
George:The war started because of the vile hun and his villainous empire-building.
Blackadder:George, the British Empire at present covers a quarter of the globe while the German Empire consists of a small sausage factory in Tanganyika. I hardly think we can be entirely absolved from blame on the imperialistic front.
George: [Loudly] Oh, no sir! Absolutely not! [Quiet, to Baldrick] Mad as a bicycle.
Baldrick: I heard that it started when a bloke called Archie Duke shot an ostrich 'cause he was hungry.
Blackadder: I think you mean it started when the Archduke of Austro-Hungary got shot.
Baldrick: No, there was definitely an ostrich involved, sir.
Blackadder:Well possibly. But the real reason for the whole thing is that it would be too much effort not to have a war... you see, Baldrick, in order to prevent a war in Europe, two super blocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast, opposing armies, each acting as the other's deterrent. That way, there could never be a war.
Baldrick:Except, well, this is sort of a war, isn't it?
Blackadder:That's right, there was one tiny flaw in the plan.
George:Oh, what was that?
Blackadder:It was bollocks.
Baldrick: So the poor old ostrich died for nothing.

Blackadder Goes Forth, Plan F: Goodbyeee

Iraq

Employment centers have names of more than 1 million jobless Iraqis

By Ahmad al-Taai

Employment and training centers across the country have to deal with an army of jobless Iraqis whose numbers have recently shot to more than 1.2 million, a statement by the ministry of labor and social affairs said.

The massive jobless figure includes only those who have registered with these centers in the hope of finding a job.

Ministry officials estimate that the jobless figure maybe twice that number as many unemployed Iraqis simply do not bother to register with these centers.

The statement said only 101,890 names in the country’s bloating jobless books were women.

The figure also does not include the nearly two million Iraqi refugees almost all of them jobless who have fled to neighboring states.

You know I wonder if the Bush Junta has even considered the link between unemployment and the insurgency?

because people without jobs end up a) having lots of spare time on their hands and b) creates resentment, which the various insurgency groups can use as a recruiting tool.

Friday Music

My Bloody Valentine - Soon

Friday Cat Blogging

George and Heidi having fun with their new toy




George


Heidi snoozing

Afghanistan

Troops may soon be 'not fit for purpose'

THE massive expenditure incurred fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan could sound the death knell for the British armed forces leaving troops "not fit for purpose", a report warns today.

Senior armed services commanders "obsessed" with both conflicts stand accused of losing touch with ordinary servicemen and women putting their lives at risk in war zones. In a hard-hitting report, the UK think-tank Demos says stretched military budgets remain tied up in "big ticket" high-profile hardware, while the "software" - the men and women making up the armed forces - are being overlooked in terms of training, conditions, pay and welfare. The report also claims the Military Covenant - the contract between the nation and service personnel and their families - has been "damaged almost beyond repair".

At this rate, in 3 years time we won't have any combat ready troops, and many will simply refuse to go.

As we (and the Canadians) are the only ones doing the fighting there, we have to provide all the troops, our other NATO allies are not helping us.

Rant of the Day

Hows this for madness, on my local news show they were reporting about overcrowding on one of the train lines than run through the south west (Salisbury-Bristol), their are only two carriages (even if its a major event say a rugby match say at Cardiff, they still only run two carriages)

And this is a whtf part! the trains themseleves are not owned by the operators nor are the tracks

Basically those who run the trains don't own anything, even the Tories admit the way they privatized the trains was totally bonkers

whats even more appalling is that the train companies are making a lot of money out of this fucked up situation and we the taxpayers are paying for it.

Friday Music

Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler (Not Work Safe)



The Chemical Brothers - The Salmon Dance

Friday Cat Blogging


Heidi, the glowing eyed sentinel


George on his throne


Heidi and George trying to wash each other at the same time

Education

Brown threatens failing schools

Gordon Brown has pledged to eradicate failure from England's schools, saying those which let children down will be taken over or closed.

He said local authorities would be encouraged to use new powers to intervene in failing schools.

Once again the British government is taking the wrong approach, if they really wanted to improved reading and writing skills they would start at Primary school, with small classes, now this method takes time and the real results won't appear straight away, but this is no good for a politician locked into short term thinking, he or she just wants to grab headlines.

Its depressing how politicians cannot think long term.