A theatre of the absurd

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The Iraq "Inquiry"
Why does the extermination of an entire culture cause not a ripple in our public discourse? The answer is obvious: we don’t have any kind of discourse with those who wield power. The Chilcot ‘Inquiry’ demonstrates this down to a tee. It’s brazen in its disregard for the reality of the crimes the British state has committed in Iraq and continues to commit in Afghanistan. And brazen in the way it scoots a lot of very guilty-looking ‘witnesses’ through the process as painlessly as possible. How has this come to pass...

As far as Chilcot and his handpicked accomplices are concerned there are no guilty people here, merely passive witnesses to the crime, who regurgitate what is already known and has been for years. And if it made no difference the first (and second) time round, why should it this time? Indeed, Chilcot went out of his way to inform us that it wasn’t a trial, there was to be no attempt assign culpability or responsibility, no serious cross-examination. So what’s the point?
Read the rest

No-Joy Powder

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Fury as China executes British drug smuggler
MPs were scathing about China. Ken Purchase , a former Foreign Office ministerial aide and a member of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, called China's actions "absolutely regrettable", adding that the country was trying to position itself in the mainstream of international affairs while persisting with "barbaric actions".
Would this be the same non-entity Ken Purchase (right) who voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war; voted very strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws; voted very strongly for introducing ID cards and voted a mixture of for and against the Iraq war?

It appears that the drug smuggler, Akmal Shaikh, was about as mentally ill as Stephen Fry (and me, come to that). He has been presented as some hapless halfwit who was tricked into carrying a suitcase full of heroin. He wasn't. Should he have been executed? I don't support the death penalty for non-violent crimes but the Chinese consider heroin a lethal drug which causes the deaths of thousands of people so maybe, as far as they were concerned, it was a crime of violence after all.

Now (don't) Wash Your Hands

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Washing hands in hospital 'spreads disease'
Washing your hands in hospitals can actually make you more likely to pick up infections, according to one of Britain’s leading bacteriologists.

Prof Hugh Pennington said hospital taps were often crawling with dangerous germs. He said money needed to be spent urgently to replace hand taps with automatic infra-red systems to stop staff, patients and visitors picking up viruses.

Explosive bollocks

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The boy who grew up to be a bomber
'There are many more like me', says failed underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Let's hope so. If they are, indeed, all like this hapless, useless, incompetent Nigerian twat then we have little to fear. We might be in for a spate of burnt crotches, though.

Not that his 'bomb' attempt was a complete 'failure'. True, it failed to damage the plane in any way but this pathetic damp squid will still usher in even more disruption at airports around the world inconveniencing thousands of people and involving governments and airlines in more expense.  And, of course, it strengthens the hand of those who want to make life more restricted and controlled for the rest of us. So, thanks a bunch, Umar. You fuckwit!

Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine

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Dissident Voice : A Monster Beyond Control?
What is actually happening in the blockaded Gaza Strip, and less obviously on the occupied West Bank, is the continuation by stealth of Zionism’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. My friend Professor Ilan Pappe, Israel’s leading “revisionist” (meaning honest) historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, would and has put it another way. What we are witnessing is, in his words, “genocide in slow motion”.  And that, really, is what the governments of the Western powers (and others) are complicit in.

Twats in pairs

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Sunny H: Liberal Conspiracy - Long live the Class War strategy

Captain Jackoff: All the Torygraph wants for Christmas is the repeal of the ban on foxhunting.

Wasn't it wonderful that the great working-class-hero leader of the Labour party, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, (Fettes and St Johns, Oxford. Available for after dinner speaking appointments at circa 10 grand a minute) did so much to save the ickle, furry fox but wasn't able to do the same for the children of Iraq?

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

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The environmental movement is losing
The environmental movement is losing to a sophisticated network of right wing sceptics and deniers
A "sophisticated network of right-wing sceptics" sound remarkably like a "conspiracy theory" to me. Complete tosh, of course. The fiasco in Copenhagen had absolutely fuck all to do with right-wing pressure, denialism or sophisticated networks of powerful people. It was exactly the outcome any intelligent person would have expected from putting several thousand dopey civil servants from around the world into a big room and hoping for some kind of coherent outcome. Cock-up, not conspiracy. But a cock-up that quite a few people are perfectly happy about, nevertheless.

Of course, reading the papers this morning it's clear that China is being presented as the 'bad' guy in all this. Again, it's utter bollocks. As I said earlier, there was no way the US was going to sign up to anything that damaged US economic recovery.