Sim-O

Alan Johnson…

Mr Johnson added that “the crimes he is accused of are far from trivial” and said Mr McKinnon “should be tried fairly for them in a court of law and in the country where the impact of those crimes were felt”

What the fuck is this? Some one should be tried “in the country where the impact of those crimes were felt”?

Is this some kind of new international diplomatic rules? Never mind where the law was broken, it’s where the crime has an effect that matters now is it?

Hmm. Maybe the Brazilian authorities would like to have a word with a couple of the Mets’ sharp shooters who have had an impact on the lives of a certain family in Brazil.

BBC News…

In a landmark speech, weeks after US President Barack Obama urged him to agree a two-state plan, Mr Netanyahu said the Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish state.

He said a Palestinian state must have no army, no control of its air space and no way of smuggling in weapons.

Isn’t that what the Palestinians have now*?

Israel wants to be secure, but how can they be when they are still demanding the denial of a proper state to the Palestinians. Even when they say it can go ahead!

Conor Foley @ Liberal Conspiracy…

I keep meaning to write a piece here about why the left should support a two state solution to the Middle East, but I never get around to it because the arguments just seem so obvious. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the creation of the state of Israel sixty years ago, it now expresses the legitimate right of its people to self-determination. This right should be exercised alongside the right of Palestinians to live within their own state, the precise borders of which need to be negotiated by the two parties. Pressing both the Israeli Government and the Palestinian’s elected leadership towards mutual recognition and supporting the forces of moderation on both sides is the only way to get that agreement. This seems to me a no-brainer.

Two state solution? So, ‘the left’ should either be in support of an aparthied state or hypocrits, eh?

This a new one to me…

An EU spokeswoman said the story was “too bizarre to acknowledge”.

Canadas’ Governor General eats a piece of raw seal heart to show a bit of solidarity to Canadas’ Inuit seal hunters, in a stunt reminiscient of John Gummer trying to feed his daughter a burger during the UKs’ first outbreak of ‘Mad Cows’ Disease’ to show confidence in the beef industry.

Raw seal heart may not be to most European tastes, most will never find out seeing as it’s now banned here, but it’s not that bizarre and it also sets a bit of a precedent.
The act of eating the seals heart isn’t unbelievable, like being asked to comment on someone having eaten their own head, it is a plausible and documented ‘thing’ someone has done. Instead the EU should’ve just issued the standard ‘No Comment’.

Being ‘too bizarre to acknowledge’ means that, as far as the EU is concerned, Ms Michaella Jean didn’t eat that peice of seal. It never happened.

Hmmm. What else is so bizarre that it couldn’t have happened? How about waterboarding someone 184 times? After 40 or 50 times, wouldn’t it be a bit silly to think the guy is still holding something back? We’re the good guys, we don’t torture people, not for fun anyway, so it is a bit bizarre that someone would claim to be waterboarded 180-odd times.

What about a policeman assaulting a member of the public for no reason? The police have a duty to protect the public, don’t they. It’s not an easy job but the training is excellent so isn’t it bizarre that an officer couldn’t tell the difference between a man walking away from him with his hands in his pockets and a protester that might have tried to hurt the officer? I’m not going to acknowledge that one. It’s just too bizarre.

I also think that it is bizarre that all those innocent Iraqi, Afghani and Palestinian lives should be lost in the wars and battles going on today when the level of sophistication of the weapons and recon equipment is beyond the imagination of most people. The soldiers themselves have never before been trained to such a high degree either. For instance, the pilots of the Apache gunship helicoptor use their eyes independently of each other. So with this level of sophistication it’s certainly bizarre that so many people have died. Maybe that’s why most of the mainstream media have not acknowledged it.

What would really be bizarre would be if this stuff didn’t happen in the first place.

Haaretz…

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Sunday approved a preliminary proposal which would make it illegal to hold events or ceremonies marking Israel’s Independence Day as a “nakba,” or catastrophe.

Rather than holding barbecues and parades on Independence Day, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians usually take the day to commemorate the dispersal of Palestinians during the 1948 War of Independence.

via Mike Power

Tell you what. I’ve found the party I’m gonna vote for in these European elections.

It’s the fucking United Kingdom Independence Party!

How mental is that? But look, ok. They may be a little rough around the edges, not entirely credible and maybe a little xenophobic, but look…

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has registered the name of rival political party Libertas with the Electoral Commission. It effectively prevents Libertas from fighting the European elections next month under its own name, instead having to use the less than snappy Pro-Democracy Libertas EU.

Have some of fucking that, pro-Euro scum!!

You may be wondering why Our Nige has decided to do the electoral equivalent of cybersquatting, but it’s not really because he’s registered the name for a *very* good and noble reason…

it [UKIP] feared Libertas ‘would masquerade as a Euro-sceptic party when its true agenda is that they want a bigger EU.’

See? Now how bloody noble is that? Protecting the electorate form having the wool pulled over it’s eyes? It doesn’t get much more altruistic than that, does it? It’s things like that, true British values, that bring a tear to my eye and make me proud, proud I say, to be English.

And just like them lying pro European scum, gotta try every trick in the book to make us Brits look bad. Really, you couldn’t make it up…

South of England Libertas candidate Chloe Woodhead: ‘Incredibly, they offered to sell us back our own name for £10,000. It’s not just underhand, it’s pathetic.’

See? Sell? Sell? They’re not selling the name back to you, Ms Woodhead. You see, now there’s been all this exposure, all this couple of inches in the press, the whole of the UK will be wise to your tricks and know you want to behead our beloved Queen and make us drive on the right so they’ll let you have it, for nothing. See Altru-fucking-tistic. The £10k is just, er admin fees.

Come on, Farrage!! Make Britain ‘Great’ again!

I wonder what?

Via Lenin

Ben Goldacre…

What happened when Portugal decriminalised all drugs?: go on, guess.

This did…

“Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success,” says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. “It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.”

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal’s drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

BBC…

My life is destroyed. I’m still living in hiding. I’ve asked to be taken anywhere in the world – away from here. There’s no justice in the world.
…
Ali (his name has been changed to protect him) had worked for British troops in Basra for almost 12 months. To be precise, for six days short of 12 months.

Miliband statement on Iraq 30th October 2007…

Staff who are currently serving in these categories, or who were doing so on or after 8 August 2007, will be eligible to apply for assistance provided that:

* they have attained 12 months’ or more continuous service. (In this context, continuous does not refer to service in a single job or capacity. Iraqi staff who have moved between the different categories outlined above will be eligible provided that there was no break in service between moving between different categories and total length of service is 12 months or more); and
* that they are (or were) redundant by their employer OR that they are (or were) forced to resign their positions because of what we judge to be exceptional circumstances. Decisions on whether a resignation has taken place in exceptional circumstances will be made by representatives of employing Departments on the ground. Staff who are dismissed for misconduct will not be eligible for assistance.

I suppose when death threats happen as often as they do in Iraq, they stop being exceptional and if you’ve only got a week or fortnight before you hit 12 months then you can tough it out. It’s only a few more days.

The employees are still being shat on and now the Brits are out, that’ll be then end of any help any Iraqi interpreters would’ve got.

AFP:

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Israeli forces pulled out of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Monday after days of clashes that killed more than 110 Palestinians and dealt a major blow to nascent Middle East peace talks.

Residents in the north of the territory cautiously ventured out from their homes and picked through the rubble as Israeli tanks and ground troops withdrew following the deadliest Israeli military blitz on Gaza in years.

“The operation is winding down. Almost all our forces have already returned to Israel,” a military spokesman told AFP.

The bloody assault earned Israel international condemnation for excessive use of force and caused moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to cut contacts with the Jewish state shortly before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in the region aiming to push revived peace talks.

Since the dramatic escalation in violence last Wednesday, 116 Palestinians, including 22 children and dozens of militants, have been killed, according to Gaza health ministry statistics. More than 350 were wounded.

Two Israeli soldiers were also killed in the clashes and one Israeli civilian died in a rocket attack launched by Gaza militants.

Of course, there was the usual bollox spouted about not wanting to kill civilians and they brought it on themselves.
OK, they people of Sderot might be scared of the rocket attacks (I’ve heard them described elsewhere as missiles. They’re hardly that), and have to run for cover now and again, but not only do the Gazans have to worry about the might of the IDF coming to not just kill their fighters, but their children too, they also have to worry about starvation, hypothermia, lack of medical stuff and other things associated with a society being strangled to extinction. Would the people of Sderot sit on their collective arse and let their occupation carry on without letting their oppressor they’re there? No. They wouldn’t. Would Israel let someone else control it’s borders, for example, put up with Syria controlling it’s borders with Jordan? No, but that is what’s happening with Gazas’ border with Egypt. And the Palestinians are just supposed to let it happen, eh?
Oh, the figure quoted above, 116 Palestinians killed, 22 of them children. That’s over a fifth of the people killed are children. Children don’t just wander about with out at least one parents about, so just how many ‘militants’ did Israel kill? Oh, yes, in Israels’ eyes, they’re all militants, aren’t they.
All Israel has done is speed up the genocide.