Sim-O

Nice one Claire.

Corporate Watch – We eat Camelot for breakfast!

Listen here

Labels: Capitalism

The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has urged the world community, especially countries hosting Palestinian refugees, to annul those refugees’ internationally-recognized right of return to their homeland (what is now Israel).

Livni, who was speaking in a lecture last night at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said that the road map plan for peace in the Middle East did not mention those refugees’ right of return.
Link

It’s not going to happen. The Palestinians aren’t going to just disappear. They will fight on.

Labels: Israel, Palestine

Pierre Gemayel, the Lebanese industry minister and critic of Syrian involvement in their affairs was assassinated yesterday.

Obsolete has done an excellent job of pointing out the hypocrisy of Blairs statement, here, much better that I could ever put together.

The murder of Pierre Gemayel, Lebanese industry minister and a leading critic of Syria’s role in the country, as well as being the son of the former president, is a shocking crime that has rightly been condemned by all sides, including by Syria.

What a sharp contrast it makes though with the reactions of both Tony Blair and Margaret Beckett to the events this summer, when Israel launched air strikes across Lebanon in response to the Hizbullah abduction of two Israeli soldiers, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 Lebanese civilians, the destruction of 74 bridges and 94 roads and an environmental disaster after the bombing of Jiyeh power station, which leaked 20,000 to 30,000 tonnes of oil into the Med. The UN has put just the initial clean-up bill at $64 million.

It took 12 days for Tony Blair to even so much as say that he wanted the killing to stop. Before then, Beckett, when asked whether she thought Israel’s response was disproportionate, said that she “didn’t think it was helpful into that.” Only when it became apparent that Israel was not achieving its objectives, and that the whole international community apart from the United States, the UK and Israel wanted an immediate unconditional ceasefire, was a UN resolution finally passed, on August the 11th, nearly exactly a month after the beginning of the conflict.

Blair said:

We condemn this murder utterly. It is completely without any justification at all. We need to do everything we can, particularly at this moment, to protect democracy in Lebanon and the premiership of Prime Minister Siniora.

How strange that it’s only now that he wants to protect democracy and Siniora. The destruction of a large swath of southern Lebanon has been the catalyst for the current turmoil which Lebanon is experiencing. While Siniora appeared on TV screens daily, pleading for an end to the violence, questioning whether “an Israeli teardrop was worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood”, Blair and Beckett refused to stand up for Lebanese democracy.

Labels: Lebanon

Watched The Long Way Round the other day.

Absolutley fantastic. Inspirational stuff.
This clip is Charley and Ewan, including the support crew trying to get across a river on the Road of Bones with the help of two big trucks.

Labels: Motorbikes, Odds and Sods

more from here.

Testing the water with the first story, then.

Labels: Media

A British Airways (BA) employee has lost her fight to openly wear a cross necklace at work at Heathrow.

Nadia Eweida, 55, of Twickenham, London, has been on unpaid leave since her bosses said she could not visibly wear her cross at the check-in counter.

She found out she had lost her appeal against the decision by BA when she met with the airline bosses on Monday

She doesn’t look like a religious zealot, does she. She had my sympathy, because after all it is only a small cross, and as she says, people of other faiths can wear religious stuff, like headscarves (although there is debate as to whether the scarves and suchlike are religious or cultural).
But then…

Ms Eweida added: “I am fairly disappointed but I’m looking forward to the next stage because the cross is important and the truth will be revealed

Eh? The truth will be revealed? What truth? The truth about what? Surely you mean the judgement will be reversed? But that’s not really a truth is it Nadia? More of a, well, judgement.

And then the er, truth, is erm, revealed…

“It is important to wear it to express my faith so that other people will know that Jesus loves them.”

So it’s for our benefit you’re wearing a cross and going through court case. So we will know that Jesus loves us.

I don’t need saving, He’s your god, not mine.

Labels: Religion

“The Gaza Strip is about to turn into the biggest terrorist compound on earth,” Yuval Diskin, the head of the Israeli internal security service, warned a parliamentary committee last week. “We have no choice but to consider a massive military operation there.”

Yesterday, deputy prime minister Avigdor Lieberman called for the assassination of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. “They have to disappear, go to paradise, all of them,” he said.
Link

Never mind why the occupation is being resisted, but then what else can be expected from Lieberman.

Via a comment here

Labels: Israel, Palestine

The present Mrs -O is a little fed up of only five channels, not enough X-Factor and Eastenders apparently, and so I was swiftly dispatched to a well known store to get one of these new-fangled freeview boxes.

I got to the store, and Mrs -O knowing me better than I know myself, I already knew what I was going to buy and so went straight to the till.
The girl on the till took the product number and then looked at me through eyes framed with an inch wide border eyeliner and asked “Can I have your name please?”.
When I gave her the response she was expecting, she followed up with “and your postcode…”.
It was only when I was checking that the till had brought up my correct address that I thought ‘Why?’.
So I asked.
I think the answer to this simple question had already been provided to the girl, but had probably got distorted passing through all the hairspray on the way to her ears, and so came out as “er, for the telly company, we have to do it for DVD players an stuff.”
I presumed at the time she meant the TV licencing Agency, and followed with “would you be allowed to sell it to me if I refuse?”
This flummoxed her and said so, so I left it at that and got home and fitted my new set top box.
All that’s needed now is some decent telly programmes.

Any way, the point is, more information about you, what you are buying and such is being collected. More surveillance.

I think I might try to find out some answers.

Labels: Media, Privacy

Optimism. Oxford defines it as: Hopefulness and confidence about the future or success of something.
But it could just as easily be demonstrated as 15th November. Palestine Independance day.
I didn’t know Palestine had an Independance day. I didn’t know Palestine was independant.
Optimistic, hopeful, yeah. that sound’s right. The Declaration of Independance sounds good too, saying all the right things about democracy and protecting minorities and freedoms.

But the reality is always, and where Palestine is concerned usually depressingly different.

Comments

Labels: Palestine

Via Truthdig:

Truthdig is sickened by the former football star and actor, whose new book has a working title of “If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened.”

Labels: Media