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Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Better the devil you know?

07 May

The results of the 2010 General Election are now in and a hung parliament has been declared. It seems likely that we shall have another general election quite soon, and should this happen, what will those who switched from Gordon to Nick do?

Thanks to the ‘First past the post’ system, the number of seats won by the Lib Dems was much lower than expected. They came in 3rd place with just 57 seats, even though they received a very respectable 6.8 million votes. Compared to Labour’s 8.6 million, but a much higher 258 seats, it’s not hard to see why the Lib Dems want to change the way the votes are counted. That is 5% fewer votes but around 80% fewer seats. It seems grossly unfair.

Most policies of the Conservative party are so detached from those of left-wing voters that many of us would be happy with any party in power, so long as it isn’t the Conservatives.

With this in mind – and knowing that lots of people feel like they took a chance on the Liberal Democrats, will some of these new converts switch back to voting Labour?

Its an interesting thought because the root of this problem lies in the exact thing that the Lib-Dems want to get rid of (the First past the post system). If there is another election and Lib Dem’s don’t get enough votes, it could mean that the Conservatives get a majority and David Cameron actually becomes the next Prime Minister. The Conservatives may then perform their own version of electoral reform and that would make it difficult to get proportional representation back on to the agenda.

I decided to vote Liberal Democrats because I felt it was the right thing to do. Their policies were in tune with how I feel, the timing seemed right and there was genuine public outcry for real change. There was also a huge amount of support for them on the Internet and in the left-wing press which helped make it all seem possible… Then on the day, the system let us down.

It seems to me that we are presented with a paradox. Either all vote Labour to ensure we keep Tories out, or take another chance; vote Lib Dem again but run the risk – this time around possibly greater – of letting in a Tory government and eliminating the prospect of the very thing we hoped to achieve.

I want to vote Lib-Dem again but my verdict will depend on how all the parties present themselves over the next few months. Hopefully Nick Clegg and his party will stay strong, hold out for proportional representation and not sell out to the potential power the Tories can give them.

Interesting times ahead!

 
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General Election 2010

27 Apr

How can anyone make definitive assumptions about what things will be like under a Liberal Democrat or hung parliament? Even the best political and economical minds are unsure. The world is a very different place to what it was like the last time we had one, in 1974 – four years before I was even born. In my opinion, it will definitely not be as frightening as lots of people (and papers) are making out.

A hung parliament just means that no one party can make decisions without the backing of the others. If Labour don’t think they have had enough time to do this already then they have serious problems. The only reason things will not get done is if our MP’s do not use their powers correctly, and by this I mean that they vote as they are told to vote, either by lobbyists or by their party whips. I would like to see our MP’s attend and debate bills so they can make informed decisions, rather than just showing up in the last few minutes to cast their already decided vote.

Those who followed the Digital Economy bill’s progress through the Wash Up will know how infuriating the process can seem. Several MP’s made incredible speeches (Labour MP’s Fiona Mactaggart and Tom Watson to name just two) opposing the bill. Many of the 30 or so present MP’s (yes, only 30 – which is disgusting in itself!) seemed to agree with what they said and it seemed as though progress was being made. Then time for the vote and in stroll around a hundred more, who have had no input to the debate and who had no obligation to even listen to what was said. Needless to say, the bill was passed and your internet could soon be disconnected because of it – even though every Liberal Democrat MP who voted, voted against.

The Tories know that the ‘First Past The Post’ electoral system is basically bias toward them and have no reason to want to change things [they will try to scare you in to voting Tory or Labour as there is more chance of them getting a full mandate that way] and Labour know they cant win if the left-vote is split between themselves and the Liberals [which is exactly why the system favours the right-wing Tory party, as there is really only one serious right-wing party]. This system is clearly flawed. It makes it seem as though the UK is far less liberal than it really is and with the additional bias that comes from most of the media, liberalism in the UK is marginalised far more than it should be.

The Liberal Democrats have always pushed for electoral reform.

I have also been very impressed with the Oxford and Abingdon MP, Evan Harris. His take on all things science and skepticism have been a breath of fresh O2; in particular his input to the Simon Singh and BCI’s libel court case.

This election is the first in a long time where there has been a real opportunity to shake up how things are done. There has been very little progress and so much sleaze, spin and downright lying in government for such a long time that people are in the exact mind-set that the current leaders want us to be in… Complete and utter apathy.

For the last 40 years, Government has become synonymous with management. They are so boring and give the common people nothing to aspire to. What we want, and have the opportunity to have for the first time in a long time, is what seems like real leadership, vision and the potential for progress. Thousands of young people are now personally involved in politics for the first time and that potential seems very real.

The expenses scandals, The Murdoch mud slinging, The Poll Tax, The Digital Economy Act, The cash for honours, The Iraq war, The Charles De Menezes shooting, The Section 5 – Stop and search Terrorism act, The sacking of Professor Nutt and reclassification of Cannabis, Heavy handed policing, No-protest zones… This is off the top of my head, Im sure the list of bizarre, non-representative decisions of the last 20 years is practically endless.

Politics in the UK is so out of touch with the majority and what they hope for, that I can see no other option than to try something new.

For the above reasons, I have decided that for the first of the four opportunities I have had to do so, I will be voting with my head and heart – rather than just voting safe in order to keep the Tories out.

 
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Charlie Sheen’s Questions

23 Sep

North Tower explosionRecently, Charlie Sheen went on the record saying that he didn’t believe the official story of what happened in New York on 9/11. He hasn’t said what he thinks happened, he has just come up with a list of difficult questions that he (and millions of other people around the world) wants answered. He has posed the questions in a format that reads as 20 minutes with the President, where Charlie talks to Obama and lets him know about the questions.

He has asked that anyone (press or otherwise) who can seriously dispute any of these points contacts him, or even goes live on any talk show to debate him. The gauntlet has officially been thrown…..

Just to prove that this is Charlie Sheen, here is a link to a video of him discussing things.

I have just copied the questions here – but you can read the full story at Prison Planet.

20 Minutes With The President

CS – Thank you Mr. President. Okay, first; On the FBI’s most wanted list Osama Bin Laden is not charged with the crimes of 911. When I called the FBI to ask them why this was the case, they replied: “There’s not enough evidence to link Bin Laden to the crime scene,” I later discovered he had never even been indicted by the D.O.J.

CS – Number 2; FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was dismissed and gagged by the D.O.J. after she revealed that the government had foreknowledge of plans to attack American cities using planes as bombs as early as April 2001. In July of ‘09, Mrs. Edmonds broke the Federal gag order and went public to reveal that Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban were all working for and with the C.I.A. up until the day of 9/11.

CS – Number 3; The following is a quote from Mayor Giuliani during an interview on 9/11 with Peter Jennings for ABC News. “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.”

WHO TOLD HIM THIS??? To this day, the answer to this question remains unanswered, completely ignored and emphatically DENIED by Mayor Giuliani on several public occasions.

CS – Number 4; In April 2004, USA Today reported, “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.” One of the targets was the World Trade Center.

CS – Number 5; On September 12th 2007, CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360’, reported that the mysterious “white plane” spotted and videotaped by multiple media outlets, flying in restricted airspace over the White House shortly before 10am on the morning of 9/11, was in fact the Air Force’s E-4B, a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit; otherwise known as “The Doomsday Plane”.

Though fully aware of the event, the 9/11 Commission did not deem the appearance of the military plane to be of any interest and did not include it in the final 9/11 Commission report.

CS – Number 6; Three F-16s assigned to Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, DC, are conducting training exercises in North Carolina 207 miles away as the first plane crashes into the WTC. Even at significantly less than their top speed of 1500 mph, they could still have defended the skies over Washington well before 9am, more than 37 minutes before Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, however, they did not return until after 9:55am.

Andrews AFB had no armed fighters on alert and ready to take off on the morning of 9/11.

CS – Number 7; WTC Building 7. Watch the video of its collapse.

CS – Number 8; Flight 93 is fourth plane to crash on 9/11 at 10:03am. V.P. Cheney only gives shoot down order at 10:10-10:20am and this is not communicated to NORAD until 28 minutes after Flight 93 has crashed.

Fueling further suspicion on this front is the fact that three months before the attacks of 9/11, Dick Cheney usurped control of NORAD, and therefore he, and no one else on planet Earth, had the power to call for military sorties on the hijacked airliners on 9/11. He did not exercise that power. Three months after 9/11, he relinquished command of NORAD and returned it to military operation.

CS – Number 9; Scores of main stream news outlets reported that the F.B.I. conducted an investigation of at least FIVE of the 9/11 hijackers being trained at U.S. military flight schools. Those investigations are now sealed and need to be declassified.

CS – Number 10; In 2004, New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi went public to say they had found the black boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to keep their mouths shut by FBI agents. Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue volunteer Mike Bellone.

As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time, “Their story raises the question of whether there was a some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”

CS – Number 11 – Hundreds of eye witnesses including first responders, fire captains, news reporters, and police, all described multiple explosions in both towers before and during the collapse.

CS – Number 12; An astounding video uncovered from the archives shows BBC News correspondent Jane Standley reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. Tapes from earlier BBC broadcasts show news anchors discussing the collapse of WTC 7 a full 26 minutes in advance. The BBC at first claimed that their tapes from 9/11 had been “lost” before admitting that they made the “error” of reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it happened without adequately explaining how they could have obtained advance knowledge of the event.

In addition, over an hour before the collapse of WTC 7, at 4:10pm, CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that the building “has either collapsed, or is collapsing.”

CS – Number 13; Solicitor General Ted Olson’s claim that his wife Barbara Olsen called him twice from Flight 77, describing hijackers with box cutters, was a central plank of the official 9/11 story.

However, the credibility of the story was completely undermined after Olsen kept changing his story about whether his wife used her cell phone or the airplane phone. The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004. American Airlines confirmed that Flight 77 was a Boeing 757 and that this plane did not have airplane phones on board.

According to the FBI, Barbara Olsen attempted to call her husband only once and the call failed to connect, therefore Olsen must have been lying when he claimed he had spoken to his wife from Flight 77.

CS – Number 14; The size of a Boeing 757 is approximately 125ft in width and yet images of the impact zone at the Pentagon supposedly caused by the crash merely show a hole no more than 16ft in diameter. The engines of the 757 would have punctured a hole bigger than this, never mind the whole plane. Images before the partial collapse of the impact zone show little real impact damage and a sparse debris field completely inconsistent with the crash of a large jetliner, especially when contrasted with other images showing airplane crashes into buildings.

CS – Number 15; What is the meaning behind the following quote attributed to Dick Cheney which came to light during the 9/11 Commission hearings? The passage is taken from testimony given by then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, “The plane is 50 miles out.” “The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to “the plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

As the plane was not shot down, in addition to the fact that armed fighter jets were nowhere near the plane and the Pentagon defensive system was not activated, are we to take it that the orders were to let the plane find its target?

CS – Number 16; In May 2003, the Miami Herald reported how the Bush administration was refusing to release a 900-page congressional report on 9/11 because it wanted to “avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the report,” particularly regarding pre-9/11 warnings as well as the fact that the hijackers were trained at U.S. flight schools.

CS – Number 17; Top Pentagon officials cancelled their scheduled flights for September 11th on September 10th. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, following a security warning, cancelled a flight into New York that was scheduled for the morning of 9/11.

CS – Number 18; The technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not created until 2004, and even by that point it was only in the trial phase. Calls from cell phones which formed an integral part of the official government version of events were technologically impossible at the time.

CS – Number 19: On April 29, 2004, President Bush and V.P. Cheney would only meet with the commission under specific clandestine conditions. They insisted on testifying together and not under oath. They also demanded that their testimony be treated as a matter of “state secret.” To date, nothing they spoke of that day exists in the public domain.

CS – And finally Mr. President – Number 20; A few days after the attack, several newspapers as well as the FBI reported that a paper passport had been found in the ruins of the WTC. In August 2004, CNN reported that 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s visa was found in the remains of Flight 93 which went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

At least a third of the WTC victim’s bodies were vaporized and many of the victims of the Pentagon incident were burned beyond recognition. And yet visas and paper passports which identify the perpetrators and back up the official version of events miraculously survive explosions and fires that we are told melted steel buildings.

 

HAR panel discussing copyright and file sharing

26 Aug

An interesting discussion about file sharing for those interested in DRM, copyright and patents. Most people agree that the business model based around copyright no longer works in the digital age. The question is, what other options do we have, and how many people are going to get sued along the way?

HAR panel from TorrentFreak on Vimeo.

For information about HAR (Hacking at random) please see their website: https://wiki.har2009.org/

 

Bush hid evidence of global warming

26 Jul

I read this story and think it deserves more attention. Hopefully Obama is on the case now, but as you can see, one year of doing nothing makes a lot of difference in situations like this.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/26/climate-change-obama-administration

Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world’s weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating.

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images – selected from the 1,000 photographs released – includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free. Read the rest of this entry »

 

Lack of action on the environment

23 Jul
Guiding a bus through smog

Guiding a bus through 1950s smog

I have recently seen or heard a few things about the 50s, and it has made me think on how progress is made…

In the 1950′s the air in London was so polluted that sometimes it was literally impossible to see your hand in front of your face. The pollution was largely caused by the high volume and low quality of post-war coal used throughout a cold winter, and new diesel fueled buses that had replaced the tram system. Thousands of people died from smog related illnesses and everyone knew that the pollution was a major problem.

In 1956 the government introduced the ‘Clean Air Act’ which among other things set regulations about what fuels could be used and set a minimum height for chimneys. It also forced power stations to be situated away from residential areas and the result was a much cleaner London.

Even though the people already knew the causes of the deaths and illnesses they did very little about them until the government actually legislated.

The same story is true today. People are concerned, scientists even more so. Everyone wants to do their bit but it is impossible without government action. We recycle and try to help where possible, despite knowing we cant make any real difference on our own.

If you need evidence that nothing gets done without government action, I was just sent this link to a story on New Scientist about how the efficiency of US automobiles has hardly changed since the Model-T Ford…. and that is a very very long time ago.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17506-us-vehicle-efficiency-hardly-changed-since-model-t.html

I’m not an expert in this field, nor am I any kind of tree-hugger, but it seems obvious to me that if the government were to legislate that all cars sold after Jan 1st 2015 have a maximum of X emissions (no matter what X is) that the industry would adapt and the target would be met. There could be government incentives in order to make this happen: grants, loans, tax breaks, property, equipment…. whatever it takes to make a change. Once this was in place they could even reduce the threshold by 1% every Y months / years and I suspect that the same auto manufacturers would still be selling vehicles for years to come.

As the saying goes, Where there’s s a will, there’s a way – but with governments of the last few decades it seems there is very little will to do anything real about this issue at all. What is stopping them?

 

A question of leadership

22 Jul
The houses of parliament

The houses of parliament

Watching the house of commons is dull. Watching and listening to most politicians is dull. Do they ever just sit down and think on the really big things anymore – or are they just worried about massaging numbers and reaching their targets?

It has been 40 years since the first manned moon landing, and that’s a long time ago. The last time a human set foot on the moon was December 7th, 1972, and that’s a long time ago too. I understand why we haven’t been back. It is largely unnecessary, and flying in to space is dangerous and costs lots and lots of money.

What I cant understand is why nobody in our government seems to be looking at the bigger picture anymore. It seems there is nothing ever planned or discussed by current governments that resembles inspirational leadership… Something that everyone can get behind.

People will always want to be part of something amazing, and are largely willing to change in order to do so. Governments seem over-scared of upsetting the media, and they are not confident enough about making big, important decisions, especially when they may not go down well with big businesses and the newspapers.

There are very few occasions where true leadership is shown, and even fewer cases of people being genuinely inspired by the government and our so called leaders. We feel that we are largely ignored and mostly think of the government as a controlling, tax-taking authority figure who we have little interaction with, full of rich people who are so different to ourselves that they can not possibly relate to us.

What will it take for the UK government to take a stand on something and give us something to look forward to; something to all be a part of (neo-cons: war does not work);  something to really care about – instead of just telling us what we cant do all the time?

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What does Tony Blair do these days?

16 Jul
Tony Blair

Tony Blair

At the time of writing this, Tony Blair is 56. He teaches at Yale and is the worlds highest paid public speaker, getting paid upwards of $400,000 per speech. He also has his Faith Foundation, advises JP Morgan Chase and he may soon be the first president of the European Union. He is definitely cashing in.

Vanity Fair have recorded an interview by Editor, Graydon Carter, with Blair talking quite candidly about his time at Number 10, his relationship with George Bush, Iran, Obama, Terrorism, and what he believes the future holds.

The interview is obviously aimed at an American audience and from his answers, it’s clear that Tony Blair knows this. Now that opinion has largely changed on the last American President, it is nice to see Tony squirm a bit when he is asked if he still stands by the nice things he said about Bush at the time.

Personally I have little respect for Blair. With 2 wars based on lies, millions of protesters ignored and liberties taken away as if they are unimportant – even though they have been in place for hundreds of years.

Graydon Carter asks a few difficult questions, most of which are answered with a typical Blair smile, but he also piles on the compliments which makes the whole thing feel too set up. It would be nice to see someone ask him some really tough questions – how about the 45 minutes to launch lie; about Dr. David Kelly’s death; about Bush’s first election ‘win’; about Robin Cook, Claire Short and other so called “rebel” Labour MPs and about the ever increasing use of ‘police state’ tactics and CCTV presence in our country. Anyway, rant over….

Watch the full interview here.

 
 

True Stories: Taking Liberties (More4)

15 Jul
A Police State?

A Police State?

I watched a fascinating documentary last night about how our liberties are being taken away, primarily as a response to the threat we face ‘from terrorists’. New Labour seem to be the culprits and since 1997 when they came to power, many of our most important rights have now been taken away from us – including our right to protest, right to trial by jury, detention without charge… and the list goes on.

Boris Johnson manages to come across as sensible for once, when he advises the Government on identity cards: “Just butt out of it.”

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/taking-liberties

Here is what the producers of the programme have to say about it:

Riding in on a wave of optimism and real belief in their mantra that things can only get better, the New Labour government proceeded to enact some of the most authoritarian legislation in recent history. With fast-paced satirical style, this Bafta-nominated film shows how, in just over a decade, some rights and freedoms that took centuries to build up have been rolled back or cut away through a personal journey into the decline of civil liberties.

The 82-year-old holocaust survivor Walter Wolfgang was lifted bodily from a debate at the Labour Party conference for, as Tony Benn points out, ‘rightfully’ saying that Jack Straw is talking ‘nonsense’ about Iraq. We see a man who tries to protest against the treatment of Mr Wolfgang also set upon by security, and learn that he was later handled roughly – and that poor old Wolfgang was next detained by the police under the 2000 Terrorism Act.

We meet Moulad Sihali, an Algerian refugee. He was cleared of all charges relating to a non-existent plot to manufacture the poison ricin, but has now been made a prisoner in his own home. He’s been fitted with a tracking device, is only allowed outside at certain hours – and then only within a one mile radius of his house – and is forbidden to meet anyone who hasn’t been vetted by the Home Office. The specific charge against him? There isn’t one. Read the rest of this entry »

 
 

Dr. David Kelly – Assassination claims

14 Jul
Dr. David Kelly

Dr. David Kelly

I cant believe I am linking to two Daily Mail stories on the same day so I am offering a link to the Telegraph site too. Which ever site you choose, it is definitely worth looking in to.

13 Doctors are demanding a new inquest in to the death of Dr. David Kelly, UN Weapons inspector, who was found dead in woods near his home in Oxfordshire, 2003 – a short while after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the grounds for war in Iraq.

Daily MailTelegraph