Sim-O

BBC:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has signed a historic power-sharing deal with his long-time rival, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The two smiled and shook hands at the ceremony in the capital, Harare, attended by African dignitaries.

Mr Tsvangirai said the agreement provided the best hope for Zimbabwe and called on President Mugabe to work together to implement the deal.

Mr Mugabe said he was committed to national unity and would do “his best”.

Mugabe will do “his best”? What the fuck does that mean? He’s gonna try not to have people beaten shitless? He isn’t going to make people disappear?

Part of me thinks the MDC are kidding themselves and shouldn’t go into an agreement with that cunt. Would you trust him? They should’ve ousted him.

The other part of me, thinks it’s easy for me to say the above when there aren’t any so called ‘war veterans’ on their way round to my house wanting to show me their collection hammers, drills and bits of wood with nails through the end.

Slow, gradual change generally leads to a more stable result in the end anyway, doesn’t it? And again, I can accept a slow transformation, I don’t have to pay millions for a loaf of bread.

The petition:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to promote a meaningful public debate on voters’ experience of elections, and let voters determine if there is a case for changing the way we elect MPs.

The response:

…the Government continues to believe that the current voting system for UK general elections works well, and that any future change would require the consent of the British people in a referendum.

The system can’t be changed without a referendum, fair enough, but if we can’t have a referendum for the EU constitutionthere certainly won’t be one for this.

Ben Goldacre on The Guardian fighting a libel case brought by ‘vitamin pill’ magnate Matthias Rath:

I should also mention that I am extremely pleased and – cheesily – proud that the Guardian fought this case. It’s exactly the kind of thing I’d have expected from them, it’s the paper my grandparents bought, blah blah blah, and to me today everything they stand for is still very good indeed.
…
Newspapers can be very good things, and today the Guardian is a very good one indeed.

Bravo and well done to the Guardian and Ben, but if you read the piece, they have been awarded interim costs of about £250k, with the total cost of it all coming to about £0.5 million, which they are seeking.

if that had been a private individual, that money would need to found from somewhere, and in all likely hood, not found and so silenced.
Freedom of speech has a price. And that price is whatever the lawyers say it is.

Craig Murray:

I am trying to write a memoir giving a first hand account of what I did and what I personally witnessed. It has the same honesty and shows my own warts as Murder in Samarkand did. I also give some opinions based on my experience.

That may sound straightforward, but under this country’s crazy libel laws you cannot even retell things you did yourself unless you have other objective evidence that you did it. And you may not express opinions that are not mainstream, or which may upset the government or the rich and powerful.

That is not exaggerated. What follows is yesterday’s correspondence with lawyers on the text of the Catholic Orangemen. This is a lot to plough through, but to give some nuggets:
– I must refer to Sandline as a “Private Military Company” and portray their activities in Africa as supporting legitimate government against rebels
– I must portray Western action in Iraq as “peace-keeping”
– I must say Shell were involved in corruption in Nigeria “inadvertently”

When you read through the following dialogue, it is astonishing to realise that these are the lawyers of my publishers who are supposed to be on my side. Yesterday my publisher told me I should view their censorship as enabling me to get at least some of the truth published. That reminded me so strongly of Uzbekistan, where journalists would tell me they had to shove out state propaganda but could get in little anti-government nuances here and there. When it comes to publishing, we do not really have that much more freedom in the UK.

For example:

[Excerpt] 26: The defence industry is full of newly retired military personnel, and we provide military training to governments all around the world. I should confess that I didn’t yet on 6 January 1998 mentally attach the word ‘mercenary’ to Sandline, and I did not connect Sandline with Executive Outcomes during that initial telephone conversation with Spicer.
[Lawyer 1] Spicer is objecting to the description of himself as a mercenary – but surely this is a matter of fact, so nothing to worry about here?
[lawyer 2] Agree, there has always been talk about Sandline being a company employing mercenaries, although they objected to the term as you suggest which they view as pejorative. Certainly should not use it in its adjective form but here bearing in mind the context is OK. Just also spell out private military company also to appease (see above and later edits).
[Craig Murray] I reject the euphemism Private Military Company, for reasons explained in the book. Again it is not my purpose to project Sandline’s image of itself. Spicer did that in his book – which Mainstream published with apparently none of these concerns about where he was libeling others (including me).

More

Lembit Opik:

The Segway PT (personal transporter) has the potential to do for personal transport what the mobile phone did for personal communication.
…
Segways are clean, quick, safe and simple. If we’re serous about our environment, we’ve got to get serious about the Segway.

CheekyEx:

Isn’t this a bit rich coming from you? You looked very chuffed on the TV recently flying your cheeky ex girlfriend to Paris for the weekend on a private flight (which you piloted.) Get off the eco soapbox before someone kicks you off it.

my first post about the US elections, hopefully the first of few.

Peter Preston, in the Guardian, spots a bit of funny adding up by the Equality and Human Rights Commission:

It’s awful, says the Equality and Human Rights Commission: top women are even thinner on the ground than they were last year. The percentage of women national newspaper editors has plummeted from 17.4 per cent in 2006 to 13.6 per cent in 2007-08 (having happily risen from 9.1 per cent in 2003). And this sad slump in female fortunes gets big news treatment (including a full page in the Mail.

Yet puzzle over the figures a moment. At the end of 2003, there were four women editors already in place: Rebekah Wade at the Sun, Dawn Neesom at the Star, Tina Weaver at the Sunday Mirror and Veronica Wadley at the Standard.

The only change since then has seen Sarah Sands and Patience Wheatcroft sit briefly in the Sunday Telegraph chair, then depart.

How did 9.1 per cent in 2003 become 13.6 per cent in 2007 when the actual numbers involved are exactly the same? Maybe there should be more top women statisticians, too.

I’m no mathmatician, but even I know that one of the figures somewhere is wrong.

Taken from The Register:
[[image:consensus.jpg::center:0]]

Via B3ta

There’s RSS/Atom to get it in your feedreader.
Or you could read it the old fashioned way and actually go to the site itself to see it.

Now, there is a third way.
Yes, you can now get notified when a new post goes up on The Sun – Tabloid Lies from Twitter.

Go on, you know you want to.

Two excellent new posts over at The Sun – Tabloid Lies.

The first, showing a case of complete bullshit reporting on the return of Gary Glitter.

The second, about aChristian fundamentalist extremist (call ’em what they are) bringing a private prosecution, against an art gallery, possibly because of a picture the Sun published of a different art installation . It features many of your favourite characters too.