My latest SCANNER ARTICLE is up on the Scanner-zine website. Entitled “General Election 2010 – How Ignoring Minor Differences Can Lead to Major Disappointments”, it deals with my thoughts on the impending UK election…
Showing posts with label Links. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Links. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 February 2010
Saturday, 23 January 2010
The True Face of Liberation
Remember when we were told we had to go into Iraq because Saddam was a tyrant who used chemical weapons against his own people? Well, according to this story from the Guardian today -Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds - guardian.co.uk – our going in there to “save” the Iraqis from such atrocities has left them with a legacy of radiation and toxicity that will contaminate the country for decades. Who needs Saddam when we can commit his tyranny ourselves?
Friday, 22 January 2010
Throwin’ Out The Trash #1
Late Friday afternoons are traditionally the time that politicians, businesses, celebrities, etc, release bad news to the public in the hope that they won’t see it. Season 1, episode 13, of The West Wing calls this “Take Out The Trash Day”, and with that in mind I give you the first instalment of a new semi-regular feature on the Blog: Throwin’ Out The Trash.
Each week, there are so many fucked up stories and newsy bits and pieces that cross my path in this 24/7 media blitzkrieg that we’re living in, and I simply do not have the time or inclination to write a full-on commentary piece about all of them. Throwin’ Out The Trash is my chance each week to clear the decks of all these niggling odds and sods without ignoring them completely…
*
So, multi-millionaire pop mogul, Simon Cowell, has decided to release a charity pop single of REM's classic song, "Everybody Hurts", in order to raise some much needed funds to help the devastated victims of the January 12th Haitian earthquake. A nice idea, and a lot of people are out there doing what they can to raise money to help with this terrible tragedy. But when the guy proposing the charity single has a personal fortune of £120m – and just signed a brand new £100m deal to bring his television show, X-Factor, to the United States on the very day that Haiti suffered the earthquake – you have to wonder why he isn’t just putting a hand into his own pocket to help out the aid effort instead of making us, the not-so-wealthy British public, do it for him?
To put this into perspective, whilst Cowell could personally afford to give several million pounds to the Haitian aid effort if he wanted to without the British public spending a single penny, Peter Kay’s 2009 charity single for Children in Need, released last November, raised only £170,000. Cowell’s own recent charity efforts have done a little better, with last year’s X-Factor single for Great Ormond Street raising at least £200,000 in its first week, and the 2008 single raising over £1m for Help for Heroes and the Royal British Legion. But the fact remains that Cowell himself could personally contribute the amount of money earned by all three of those charity singles to Haiti combined, plus an extra million, and still have a very comfortable £117m to live off without the generous British public having to give a thing.
*
If anyone out there reading this still thinks that free-market capitalism is a great idea, maybe they can explain to me why I should support an economic mentality that sees stock-prices drop and Wall Street panic when the President finally says that he’s going to do something about the dangerous financial de-regulation that so recently brought the world economy to its knees?
For the majority of Americans, and people all around the world, the last year and a bit has been a hellacious time of recession and unemployment. Life has become a struggle, work has become scarce, homes have been taken away and dreams have been shattered. All of this misery and turmoil – every single bit of it – was down to the rapacious greed of an unregulated financial industry who sucked the economy dry and then had the temerity to ask us to bail them out or die.
This wealthy minority of money-obsessed gamblers and con-men (or “motherfuckers”, if you want the correct term) essentially gang-raped the world’s economy for their own material gain and sent the globe into a depression-risking downspin and yet, yesterday, when the President finally announced his plans – at long last; a dollar short and a year too late – to place some much needed restrictions on the out of control banking industry, they responded by sending a petulant and unrepentant message to the Whitehouse that, if he dare tell them to curb and regulate their greed, there would once again be hell to pay.
The worse thing is, the media actually reported this bullshit tantrum as news. A bunch of out of control wealth-addicts get told they’re going to have some restrictions placed over their previously unfettered playground of destruction and they throw their toys out of the pram in protest? Good. It’s time these fat-cat motherfuckers felt some of the same ramifications from what they’ve done as the rest of us, instead of thinking that cutting their bonuses down to a measly $498,000 per person counts as suffering!
*
David Cameron today cynically used the recent case of two school-aged brothers from Edlington violently torturing a nine year old and eleven year old boy as proof that Britain under Labour has fallen into “social recession”. The case was horrific – the work of two very disturbed young sadists who left their victims for dead after 90 minutes of reprehensible cruelty – but the argument that this anomalous case of horror is a sign of the times under Labour must be dismissed as spurious when we remember that the equally horrific Jamie Bulger case (in which a much younger boy – a two year old – was actually murdered by his equally sadistic young attackers) happened in 1993, under a Tory government in its fourteenth year of power.
If anything, under Labour, society has gotten better by Cameron’s preposterous argument, because the Edlington victims survived whereas Jamie Bulger did not.
The use of this meaningless and emotively charged example is hollow opportunism at its most base and ridiculous, and it is a travesty of the highest proportions that the ghastly ordeal of two unfortunate children is being exploited like this by a man who thinks himself suitable to be our next leader.
*
Finally, if you didn’t think that corporations ruled the world already, well…they will do pretty soon. The US Supreme Court, this week, made a landmark ruling to remove the limits corporations previously faced on how much they could spend to elect and defeat candidates running in US elections. That’s right – multi-billion dollar corporations can now pay whatever they want to the campaigns of the candidate of their choice to ensure that the “right” guy gets into office.
Oh functioning democracy – we hardly knew ye…
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Who’s Responsible? We Fucking Are…
The Cadbury plot thickens further today as it transpires one of the central banks lending Kraft Foods the money to buy out the company is none-other than the Royal Bank of Scotland – you remember, the bank we tax-payers bailed out last year and thus, technically, own?
As Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said to Gordon Brown during today’s Prime Minister’s Question Time: “When British taxpayers bailed out the banks, they would never have believed that their money would now be used to put British people out of work. Isn't that just plain wrong?"
I’d like to take that question further – when British tax-payers bailed out the banks, shouldn’t have the government, the opposition, or the Liberal Democrats have ensured that with that money came strict conditions and regulation that the banks were forced to follow? Shouldn’t our “ownership” have actually meant something, and shouldn’t it still mean something – for instance, shouldn’t we, as RBS owners, be able to refuse to give Kraft Foods the loan?
Technorati Tags: Cadbury Buy-Out,Cadbury,Gordon Brown,Kraft Food,Business,Capitalism,Banks,Links,Nick Clegg,UK Politics
Forget the Banker’s Bonuses – Cadbury’s Boss Makes £12m Whilst Workers Fear for Their Jobs…
Don’t worry Cadbury workers – you may all lose your jobs over the next few months, now that the company has been sold off to Kraft Foods, but at least chief executive, Todd Stitzer, will be making £12m from the deal.
“After more than 25 years at the firm, 56-year-old Stitzer is also sitting on a £15m pension pot that promises to pay out £1.5m a year when he retires.” says the Guardian. This coming after “the group's chairman Roger Carr admitted he had put shareholders first and job losses were inevitable.”
Again - “principled capitalism” anyone?
Friday, 11 December 2009
The Next Phase Is Beginning
In case there is any doubt that the latest phase of the murderous war on terror is a propaganda battle designed to prepare us for an inevitable invasion of some kind into Pakistan, check out this story about how Blackwater, and the CIA, are already there.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
If you liked Agent Orange…you’ll LOVE this…
Here’s some of the real legacy of our illegal and unjustified war in Iraq.
It turns out: “Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.”
According to the Guardian’s excellent (and tragic) piece, published on Saturday - Huge rise in birth defects in Falluja | World news | guardian.co.uk - “The rise in frequency is stark – from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. ‘Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs,’ [Falluja general hospital's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais] said. ‘There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours.’”
Oh, and don’t forget about the “baby born with two heads”…
Where are the poppies for the “flipper babies”?
Technorati Tags: War on Terror,Iraq,Falluja,Birth Defects,Links,Agent Orange,US Politics,UK Politics,Politics,war
Thursday, 12 November 2009
How the US Funds the Taliban
Some more depressing news from Afghanistan, courtesy of The Nation…
Technorati Tags: Afghanistan,War on Terror,Links,US Politics,Politics,Taliban,Private Contractors,Privatization
Monday, 9 November 2009
Evolution is a Mystery
As evolution gains another victory for sense and reason against the superstitious forces of ignorance and religion, with the announcement that the theory will soon be added to the primary school curriculum here in the UK, I feel it’s finally time to dispel a ludicrous myth that has been doing the rounds under the guise of "journalism” over the past few weeks.
"Teach both evolution and creationism say 54% of Britons" ran a headline in the Guardian on Monday, October 26th, followed by the worrying first paragraph: “More than half of British adults think that intelligent design and creationism should be taught alongside evolution in school science lessons – a proportion higher than in the US”, and for the next 24 hours, you couldn’t move online without seeing a link somewhere to this report, citing it as some kind of evidence of our intellectual downfall as a nation.
54% of people in favour of teaching creationism? What are we – America?
Well, what people didn’t seem too keen on exploring was the actual details behind this misleading headline. Namely, that the question within the Ipsos Mori survey which led to this supposed conclusion did not actually ask British adults whether or not they thought that creationism should be taught in schools alongside the theory of evolution. Rather, it asked if participants agreed or disagreed with the statement: "Evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism."
Of the 973 people polled, about 54% said that they “agreed”.
So really, the headline is that the majority of people polled believed that evolution, not creationism, should be taught in schools, alongside theories such as “intelligent” design and creationism, which the wording of the question makes it appear are already being taught there, with evolution pitched as the interloper.
Maybe as well as adding evolution to the primary school curriculum, we might do well to add a little critical thinking and philosophy in there too, to prevent any further misunderstandings of relatively simple poll data?
Technorati Tags: Education,Evolution,Media,Creationism,Science,Religion,Statistics,Links,UK Politics,Politics,Schools
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Undercover at Royal Mail: The Army Comes to Town…
Intriguing to see the Guardian’s Steven Morris going undercover and getting a job via Manpower as one of the new Royal Mail casual workers supposedly not hired to counteract the effects of the postal strike.
Undercover at Royal Mail: parcel basketball, scabs and yorks | UK news | guardian.co.uk
More intriguing, however, is the information passed on to me from some postal worker friends: in some branches across the country, the ARMY are making visits this week to offer “employment advice” to striking workers.
Hmmm, the government supports the intentional self-destruction of Royal Mail, mass redundancies masqueraded as “modernization” and now, when the workforce is finally used up and spat out, intends to ship all the able bodies off to Afghanistan.
Is that what they call “balancing the budget” these days?
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Yet More Change We Can Believe In…
Thanks Obama…while we’re still waiting on that healthcare, the end of the war on terror, and the real economic recovery for working people that you promised, why don’t you go and allow some offshore oil drilling in the Arctic to pass the time. Oh you did? Fantastic…
US gives Shell green light for offshore oil drilling in the Arctic - Guardian - 20/10/09
NBC = JBJ
Thanks to the good folks at FAIR for passing this bit of information on…
It appears that Jon Bon Jovi is going to be saturating the NBC network soon, in order to promote a new movie…including appearances on the news.
First it was Starbucks on Morning Joe on sister network MSNBC…now this.
Whatever happened to real news?
Monday, 19 October 2009
Friday, 16 October 2009
US mixed race couple denied marriage licence
Literally: wow. This is 2009 and jackasses like this still exist….
US mixed race couple denied marriage licence - The Guardian 16/10/09
Monday, 5 October 2009
The Economic Crisis is Over…For the Banks
Another depressingly true column from the always insightful Dean Baker…whilst the people continue to suffer, the banks go from strength to strength!
| Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
