ok, u.s. democrats, anybody but bush, but does it really have to be this anybody?

something came to mind the other day. i was in conversation with my sister about the wonderful music that cat stevens used to produce; fantastic albums like teaser and the firecat and tea for the tillerman, foreigner and catch bull at four.



it reminded me of the reaction of many of the american radio stations, when cat converted to islam and adopted the name muhamed yusuf.



in an act of the grossest religionism (racism?), they burned his records.

i see that book burning is rife, albeit metaphorically.



apparently, amazon.co.uk has refused to stock craig ungar's house of bush, house of saud, for 'legal reasons'.



spine-free bastards.

the end of anglo-american imperialsim?



i hope so, but i also hope against hope that the death-throes will be short and gentle - i don't want either cunt (bush, to you an' me) or bliar deciding to go out in a blaze of glory and start lobbing nukes around the planet as they go.

kirk walters : how much of the iraq mission is about profit?



how fucking naïve can you get? ALL of it is.

employers guilty of flouting employment law.



what a fucking shock. british companies have always been such paragons of virtue. i can't believe it. it must be a lie. or a mistake.



no, not a mistake at all, and not, as the article claims, a case of 'the lack of businesses protecting themselves'.



it is typical business priactice. companies fail to provide people with contracts 'cos they think they can escape their obligations if they don't provide one.



further it says: 'with the number of employees prepared to bend the truth in order to claim compensation pay-outs from firms'. firms are more likely to 'bend the truth' than employees, since they have more to lose.



most british companies treat their staff like shit. if they get caught treating people like shit and it ends up costing them money : tough titty, they deserve what they get.

beatrix campbell : an infantile disorder; roy hattersley : rhetoric becomes reality.



the labour party's guaranteed never to get my vote until it finds out where its bollocks are and stops allowing bliar and brown to run the country with no reference back to the party and to stop the fucking spin: 'spin doesn't so much provide blue cover for a slightly red project as lay claim to the party's social democratic logo for a post-thatcherite project.'



'tony bliar plays leapfrog with his own party, and each leap moves Labour further to the right of the political spectrum. that technique, like so much in his campaign to rebuild Labour in his own image, is a brilliant stratagem. it is being passively accepted by members of parliament who think of nothing other than retaining their own seats. i hear them rejoice at the thought of the prime minister outflanking michael howard. do they not care that, at the same time, he is side-tracking socialism?'



why does everyone wait for 'respectable' journalists to tell them things like this. private eye, s.w.p., me and other bloggers have been writing about it for fucking ages.



'new' labour is theft of a socialist symbol in order to promote capitalism, corporatism, fascism, never-ending war and real terror - terrorism of the people by the government and its puppet armed forces.



real labour needs to put an end to it.

lying bastard bliar gets more like that american twat bush every day. now he's sacked an intelligence officer who dared to criticise him over his lies.



this country gets more like that capitalist, fascist shit-hole the u.s.a. every day: government bullying and sacking critics, politicians getting more and more authoritarian, police becoming less tolerant of people's little pleasures (now preventing the sale of unprocessed magic mushrooms - apparently putting them in a bag is 'processing' them), using surveillance to 'solve' crimes that have been created just so that surveillance can solve them so that it looks like anti-crime policies are working.



bliar is the man who should be being sacked. he's lied to the british people from day one, he continues to lies and now he's pretending that he's going to do something about workers' rights - lying cunt.

nurit peled-elhanan : on the necessity of refusal.

jack dalton: an old vet's opinion: bush and the torturing of iraq's children

in his article 'torturing children', william rivers pitt asks 'torturing children in the name of freedom? is this what we have become?'.



the answer is that the u.s.a. has not been far off this for decades. it has treated children like scum for years, taking welfare benefits away from them because their parents cannot find work, allowing them to be bullied at school (where's the difference between bullying and torture?), allowing them to be imprisoned for inhumanly long periods and even to be killed by their judicial system.



so, yes, william, that is what you've come to, but it's been in the wind for a long, long time and you have done nothing to stop it.



elect a different president if you want to stop it - and make it clear to the next one that it will not be tolerated for any reason under the sun.

george monbiot : the lies of the press.

kim sengupta and andrew grice : bliar: the attacks mount up.



why has this taken so long?



all the people who had the real evidence of what was going on in iraq, e.g. hans blix, scott ritter etc, said that saddam was not a threat to anyone except his own people. that made him no more of a threat to world peace than most other presidents.



also, the u.s.a. and u.k. don't exactly have a history that gives them permission to complain about others' morality.



do we need to remind the world of churchill's army opening fire on striking welsh workers?



or that the british created concentration camps in south africa during the boer war?



or that british army and police tortured irish nationalists in northern ireland during the 1970s, '80s and '90s?



or about the u.s. spending years deciding on which side they'd join ww2? it was only the japanese attacking pearl harbour that decided tham to join the side of the anti-fascists. without that, hitler's successors would be ruling europe with u.s. assistance.



or about the u.s. continuing to execute people (mainly black) despite overwhelming evidence that most of those executed are either innocent or have been denied proper representation in court?



this list goes on and on, yet bliar and bush are being allowed to use the excuse that removing saddam from power was reason enough to invade iraq.



it wasn't reason enough. and it wasn't the reason they did it.



the real reasons were to cow the remainder of the middle-east by having massive numbers of u.s. and u.k. troops stationed next door to saudi arabia, to allow u.s. and u.k. oil companies easy access to iraqi oil and to allow u.s. companies to make a fortune in iraqi money for rebuilding an iraq destroyed by bliar and bush's fascist activities.

---

further, clair short shows that bliar did not act in good faith. he denied the u.k. cabinet a proper discussion of the "intelligence" he supposedly had and railroaded them into accepting his decision to invade, acting like dubya's loyal little puppy all the way. the lying, murderous cunt.

paul foot, r.i.p

well done, tone and dubya, you got a real beaut as new p.m. of iraq.



what're the words of that who song? oh, yes, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

result!!!

the world really has gone fucking mad when i am able to, mostly, agree with a man who has a special place in my book of most-hated politicians; douglas hurd, one of thatcher's most illiberal hatchet-men, has given all the right reasons for bliar to leave his post : it is time for tony bliar to leave no. 10.



the very important point on which i disagree with him is his contention that israel is using "self-defence" in its maltreatment of the palestinians. this is simply a lie: israel is an invading force in palestine;.the palestinians are fighting the invading army, as i would if some other country's army marched into wales in order to subjugate its people.

tom crumpacker : the birds of guantanamo sums up the obscene depradations of capitalism, corporatism, naziism on the world - not just the third world, as he says, but all of it.

new zealand cuts israeli links in spy row.



why wouldn't they cut links because of israel's illegal invasion of palestine, its genocide, its use of chemical weapons and nerve agents against palestinians? why did it take two incompetent spies to make them do it?



because the n.z. government cares not a fuck about the oppression and murder of the palestinians.

it's good to see that uncensored political discourse is alive and well in that nice mr putin's domain (russia's "spitting image" is silenced).



old joe would be proud.

curt andersen : cheney finds foul language irresistible; and no wonder, it is fucking irresistible, i should fucking know.



cheney's problem is his fucking hypocrisy, the cunt.

arthur lenk : my tale of two courts.



bullshit, crap, nonsense, rubbish. how many ways can you say it?



one quotation says it all about this bloody man's attitude: "the [israeli supreme] court ruled that israel had a right to build a fence to protect its citizens but it needed to weigh those concerns proportionately with concerns about those affected by the route of the fence. it was a fair, reasoned decision that understood what has gone on in the region since the palestinian leadership decided to adopt a strategy of violence and terrorism instead of compromise and dialogue."



so, israelis invading palestine, killing palestinians - especially children - just for being on the streets, building settlements on palestinian land and stealing palestinian farmers' livelihoods, cutting down palestinian olive trees, using chemical weapons and nerve agents on palestinians is not israelis "adopt[ing] a strategy of violence and terrorism", is it?



i am heartily sick of israeli apologists pretending that the palestinians started all this and are the sole cause of its continuation.



israelis are in a country not their own. israelis are farming land not their own. israelis are killing palestinians on a genocidal scale. israelis are shooting palestinian children. israelis are demolishing palestinian houses with the occupants inside. israelis are using chemical weapons. israelis are using nerve gas.



who are the fucking terrorists, lenk, you cunt?

jackie ashley : there is now no doubt that bliar misled the commons .



too fucking true.



and there's more about the way bush and bliar lied their way into a war whose sole purpose was to enrich their already over-bloated greedy fat bastard friends at the expense of thousands of dead and maimed iraqis ...



crispin black : a slow-burn report to stop the rot.



sidney blumenthal : learn the code.



jonathan freedland : an elegant box of sharpened knives.



jk galbraith : a cloud over civilisation.



simon hoggart : butler provides the props for another great escape.



marina hyde : diary



update



kim sengupta and andrew grice : the damning evidence.



dan plesch : missing link.

'mexico's attorney general and other senior staff have had computer chips implanted in their arms to serve both as an identity device and a tracking mechanism should they be kidnapped' : put a chip in your arm to outfox kidnappers



what a bunch of morons. this simply means that the kidnappers will immediately cut the arms off any mexican government kidnapee so that they can't be traced.



expect a trail of chopped-off arms all over mexico.

the media only report the israeli perspective on the illegal, immoral and genocidal occupation of palestine. fact.



at least some members of the media realise this and will write about it; greg philo : what you get in 20 seconds.

bliar must resign over this story. better still, he should be impeached. robin cook : bliar and scarlett told me iraq had no usable weapons.

michele hanson : dog critics should chill out, grow up, stop making twats of themselves and stop making their children frightened of the most loyal, loving animals they could ever have as pets.

gerald kaufman : the case for sanctions against israel.

fucking zionist bastards.



get the fuck out of palestine you thieving, imperialist cunts.

vile israeli bastards are now using nerve gas against palestinians.



when will the rest of the world come to the aid of the palestinians in their uneven fight against the genocidal israeli cunts?



bush and bliar will never help, why won't the french, the germans, other european governments? i don't know, but i will continue my personal campaign by utterly refusing to buy anything produced in israel.

i went to a 'microsoft and open source 20/20 seminar'
yesterday, 7^th july.

it was held at the not unpleasant golf clubhouse at the celtic manor
resort hotel, newport.

after a lovely breakfast of coffee and lots of danish pastries, we were
treated to the following:

keynote speakers:

independent analyst, meta group, philip dawson, senior program director,
international infrastructure policies;

microsoft (m$) uk, nick barley, business marketing organisation;

microsoft uk, nick mcgrath, head of platform strategy;

customer perspective:

isv
partner, (name unknown), nationwide building society;

solutions
partner, tony kingston, deverill;

q & a session.

this was followed by a wonderful buffet lunch. i had smoked, marinated
salmon and thai fishcakes, chicken á la king with rice and
some fabulous chocolate mousse. unfortunately, there was no fresh
fruit apart from the strawberries on the mousse, so i had to have
extra helpings of mousse to increase my fruit intake.

after lunch, informal debates were held, with many of the audience
questioning the m$ representatives about the subject.

philip dawson

while billed as 'independent', mr dawson was, in fact, as partisan as it was
possible to be without having 'i love m$'
tattooed on his arse. every comment he made
praising open source (os) was immediately followed by a comment suggesting
that m$ did it better, even the area of web serving, where apache
is acknowledged as faster, more flexible and, critically, vastly
more secure, than m$' iis. he showed a slide purporting to show
which of many products was good for a particular job. in all areas
except web serving, m$ products were rated better than os products,
even iis was supposedly comparable to apache.

he showed his true colours at the q & a
where he sided entirely with the m$ squad in the face of some hostile
questioning by the audience.

nick barley

a short presentation of the benefits of windows xp service pack 2. i
have no idea why this was there, as it had nothing to do with os and little
to do even with a more general m$ sales pitch.

nick mcgrath

not a person you'd want to meet in a dark alley, mr mcgrath didn't
mention os at all, being concerned solely with selling windows server
2003 and windows xp professional.

nationwide building society

the nationwide's representative was their head
of it. i cannot remember his name. a very pleasant man, if somewhat
monotonous in speech, he only mentioned os in passing, with comments
on the lines of 'os was tested for this function but was found
lacking', offering no explanation of the selection process or
criteria and why os was lacking. excellent pitch for using m$
products for systems integration but adding nothing to the m$ v os
debate.

tony kingston

i have no idea why this man was there. he did not mention the term os
once, was concerned only with explaining why
deverill is such a wonderful company and why everyone should buy its
services. he barely even mentioned m$ products, having a brief list
of pros and cons of m$ - more pros than cons, of course, since m$
was paying for the gig - with no corresponding list of pros and
cons for os. again i ask myself why he was there, since i find it
difficult to believe that m$ were happy for him to simply make a huge
sales plug for his company.

q & a and informal debate

the q & a session was a strange mixture of what seemed to be plants
in the audience praising m$ and its products, so that the panel
could then puff themselves up even more, and a very hostile section
who were pro-os and very anti-m$ who asked difficult questions about
e.g. m$ being found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour
in both the us and the eu, their apparent fear of os, licensing
costs, lack of response to customer requests and destroying their
customers' markets.

the answers to the anti-competition accusations were glib in the extreme.
questioning nick barley during the informal debate, i made him a
little angry by suggesting that m$ were deliberately destroying the
market they're supposed to support by putting other software
companies out of business by e.g. writing their own browser, their
own media player, their own firewall and (i expect, soon) their own
anti-virus software.

other audience members tackled the speakers on
issues such as m$' withdrawal of support for e.g. windows nt4,
their licensing costs and that
organisations such as newham borough council can negotiate huge discounts
(57%) by threatening to change to os while the rest of the world has to subsidise those
discounts. m$' reply was that all companies have to withdraw support
for older products at some time, that they are 'aware' of concerns
about licensing costs and that large organisations have always been
able to negotiate price reductions on bulk purchases. so, nothing
new at all on that front.

when questioned in a hostile manner about why m$ are afraid of os, the
representatives were insistent that they are not afraid. when posed the question of
why, then, they have only just decided to start these
kind of seminars, the reply was that nick barley, as a 'new' member
of the m$ team, believed that 'reaching out' to the customer-base is essential for
all companies and that m$ are not afraid of os. i
note that it's taken him 2 years to come to that conclusion.

the dixons group representative
commented that dixons have rolled-out os software on m$
platforms at all its points of sale; using openoffice writer and calc.
the m$ representatives were blasé about losing that contract
despite acknowleding that 95% of their applications' users use
only 15% of those applications' features, making it easy and
cheap for users to replace expensive, bloated m$ office products with os
products.

bliar to offer partial apology over war and bliar: wmd 'may never be found'.



can you say "dissembling bastard"?

birds eye claims its foods are free of artificial additives.



will they make the same claim about them being free of g.m. products?

united colours of land grab.



twats.

perhaps our tone will prove his environmental credentials by banning 4x4s from the roads.



don't hold your breath, though, because the useless fucker is so far up the arse of big-money corporations that he'd sell his own children before he'd hurt the corporations' money-grasping, oil-wasting, pollution-inducing, global-warming activities.

israeli forces shoot palestinian boy dead as he plays football.



these bloody, murdering, genocidal bastards need to be reigned in.



i have started my own campaign to convince everyone i know to stop buying israeli goods until such time as the israelis pull out of palestine completely, the israelis stop interferring in palestine's internal affairs, the israelis pay proper restitution to every palestinian who has suffered under their invasion and the israelis bring to justice every single member of their armed forces who has ordered or carried-out the wounding or killing of a palestinian.



until then, please buy no israeli goods, trade with no israelis, let every israeli know what you're doing and why.

joe bageant: is our president a wackjob?