Guilt trip

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sp!ked review of books | A depletionist view of history and humanity
Do we believe that future generations can carry on and develop human civilisation by developing science, technology, the arts and culture? Or do we simply see the future as an era of limits, where we will gradually exhaust the planet and fail to create and construct a better world? Our children’s futures have not been stolen by the baby boomers. The future is there for the taking if the world of adults takes its moral responsibilities more seriously, and properly prepares young people for their freedom and authority.

Getting Away With Murder

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The Palestine Chronicle: 
Check this out. Here's a story of two countries from the Middle East. One is an ancient civilization with a rich history that goes back five thousand years. It’s a functioning democracy with free elections held at regular intervals. It’s a huge country of 70 million people. It has remained within its borders and hasn’t attacked any country in the last 100 years. It is pursuing a nuclear power program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes.

Second country also claims to be a democracy. In this democracy though you get citizenship and voting rights not on the basis of your origins even if you were born in this land but on your ancestry.

This country was founded on the land stolen and forcibly taken from its original inhabitants. It has fought at least three wars and is locked in permanent conflict with its neighbors on all sides. It has a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and other state-of-the-art killing machines. It pursues assassination as a state policy and regularly sends death squads around the world to take out people it doesn’t like.

Which country do you think is a real threat to world peace? The first country that has no history of aggression or the second state that has killed tens of thousands of innocent people in wars of aggression against neighbors and in coldblooded executions?

Meaningless, yes, but still significant

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First they came for the neo-fascists… | spiked
By threatening a political organisation with civil legal proceedings unless it changed its constitution – a constitution which reflected that group’s beliefs – the state is effectively deciding the nature of opposition in the political sphere, what views can be tolerated, and what views can’t.

That the object of state-enforced configuration is the BNP ought not to detract from what is a serious affront to democracy. Yes, the BNP holds obnoxious views, and yes, its membership and employment policy was repellent – but freedom of speech, and its accompaniment, the freedom to associate with those whom one agrees with, ought not to be negotiable. Just because in this case it’s the freedom to hold racist opinions, and to associate with those who hold similarly abhorrent views, it does not mean that fundamental democratic principles should just be abandoned.

Where are the real victims?

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Cutting Clare Short By William Bowles
What I can never escape from is the knowledge that in spite of all the hot air that gets expended and all the ‘breast-beating’ done by conscience-stricken politicians, the Iraqi people are nowhere to be seen in the ‘debate’. They figure not at all whilst the privileged members of the fourth richest country in world ‘debate’ the workings of the imperium.

Bugger me!

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Cranmer - Catholic education – Douglas Alexander's bare-faced hypocrisy
It appears that the Secretary of State for International Development met with Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday ‘to thank him for the Church's role in international aid, especially for the earthquake victims in Haiti’. Quite why Douglas Alexander should presume the need to express gratitude to the Pope is unknown, but Cranmer finds it quite incredible that he also thanked His Holiness for the ‘Catholic Church's unique role on the world stage – particularly at the grassroots level delivering health and education service
Yeah, but the real question is, did Alexander thank the Catholic Church for its services to paedophilia and choirboy buggery?

OP in, TP out

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Machine To Turn Your Office Paper Into Toilet Paper
Do you think that there is too much paper being wasted in your office? Well, the smart folks over in a Japanese company called Oriental have come up with a machine called White Goat. If you’re wondering what a machine with such a funny name does, it converts your normal paper into toilet paper.
At $100,000 you'd have to be a really big shitter to make this economically viable. Perhaps Tony Blair should get one?
Via J-Walk

I suppose they'll make it illegal too

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Ridiculing the obese is the new gay bashing
My son begged me to switch the show off. “It’s too cruel,” he said. But that seemed to be the point of Fat Families. “You make me feel sick,” said the smug presenter as the obese couple looked forlornly at their takeaway supper. Later they were stripped naked — she weeping, he head bowed — while the camera boggled obscenely at their bodies. I hope they were well paid, this good-hearted pair, who clearly loved their kids and each other. What price to be paraded as an object of hatred and disgust.

A public health message? No, this was the All-New Fat & White Minstrel Show. The obese are the last group — should you feel enraged today by a parking penalty or Blair — at which you can vent your fury with legal and social impunity.
Yes, it's nasty. And yes there is no excuse for being offensive to people, no matter what their size. But there is a fundamental difference between homophobic and racist remarks and 'fatist' ones. With very, very few exceptions people are fat because of the lifestyle decisions they have made. It is this obvious and undisguisable manifestation of those decisions which is derided.

Listen up, Murdoch

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Subscription result in for Newsday's Paywall Web Site

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen.

It's their home life, stupid.

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Children cite family conflict as main cause of unhappiness
Family conflict is the biggest factor in causing unhappiness among children, according to a survey by The Children's Society involving around 7,000 10- to 15-year-olds. The charity asked children how different aspects of their life affected their happiness.

The survey found that seven per cent of children were significantly unhappy. Family arguments were the biggest determining factor, while the structure of families made a negligible impact on children’s sense of wellbeing.

So, the internet isn't killing music after all

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How Bands You've Never Heard Of Are Making Tons Of Money On iTunes
A band you've never heard of -- AC/DC cover band AC/db -- made over $32,000 from music sales in November.  How is that possible?
Under the old business model of music sales on physical media, it wouldn't be. For a band to end up with that much money in its pockets after the distributor and record label had taken their cuts, its music would have to have posted gaudy, unmissable sales numbers.

AC/db, on the other hand, just had to do around $45,000 in sales at the iTunes store. After Apple took its 30 cents on the dollar, that left $32,000, of which the band's distributor -- TuneCore -- took nothing at all

Every cloud, (and earthquake) etc, etc.

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War in Context - ‘The painful truth: Haiti’s disaster is good for the Jews’
If I came up with a headline claiming the devastation in Haiti is “good for the Jews”, I could reasonably be accused of being anti-Semitic. But it’s not my headline. It comes from this report on a site run by Israel’s popular Hebrew daily, Maariv. Every disaster needs a hero, the report says, and the heroes in Haiti are the Israelis.

The message that Israel is saving Haiti was likewise captured in an editorial cartoon in Yediot Aharonot which shows American soldiers digging for earthquake survivors. A voice from beneath the rubble calls out, “Would you mind checking to see if the Israelis are available?”