Oooh, what a card!

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I see both Guido and Dizzy comment on John Bercow's 'Godless' Christmas card. I'm not sure what's wrong with 'Godless' cards. Most of the ones I've sent out and received have no reference to God, Jesus or any other religious symbol on them, but mostly snowmen, fat Santas, crackers and lot's of jokes. Dizzy is concerned not with the Godlessness but with what he sees as the narcissism of using a picture of yourself and your family.

Personally, I think it's a very sweet picture. Not narcissistic in the slightest. Unlike the Christmas card the Blairs sent out, and which Guido couldn't help referring to again, mentioning, in passing, ahem, that he had received one. Oooh, er, missus.

Brewery...Piss-up

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Copenhagen summit veering towards farce, warns Ed Miliband
http://www.citris-uc.org/files/cop_logo_1_r.jpgThe climate change summit in Copenhagen was in jeopardy tonight with the complex negotiations falling far behind schedule as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, warned of a "farce". With just two days remaining, the inability to overcome disagreements about the shape of a deal to combat global warming led to hours of inaction today , while outside the negotiations police clashed with protesters who broke through a security cordon but failed in an attempt to storm the conference centre. "We have made no progress" said a source close to the talks. "What people don't realise is that we are now not really ready for the leaders. These talks are now 18 hours late." More than 115 world leaders arrive tomorrow and on Friday and had expected only to bargain over the final details in a prepared draft agreement but the earlier impasse could condemn the talks to failure.
It's not in danger of turning into a farce, it's been a farce from day one. Indeed it was always going to be a farce. Even if some deal is finally cobbled together it will have absolutely no effect on what countries actually do. China will do what it damn well pleases as will the USA. And why not? Who will stop them. Who will sanction them? The whole thing is complete nonsense.

And the idea that we need to get 115 world leaders together in some god-forsaken corner of Denmark for any reason whatsoever, let alone for this pathetic waste of time, is plain bonkers.

Save the planet? Jeez, these tossers can't even organise a conference.

"Vomitous eruptions of moral nullity"

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Chris Floyd: Miraculous Organ: Blair, Obama and the Narcissist's Defense
In recent days we have all witnessed two vomitous eruptions of moral nullity that would tax the powers of a Voltaire or a Vidal to do them proper justice; they quite o'er-crow the meager gifts of a hack like me. But I will sketch a few observations here nonetheless, if only to add one more small voice to those few who bear witness to the evils perpetrated by our unaccountable leaders.

We speak of course of Barack Obama's Nobel speech and Tony Blair's recent comments on the Iraq War.

Read the whole article

Lardarses for Jesus

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Christian Missionaries Are Doing God’s Work
Fat ChristiansI leaned over to one of my teammates. "Why are there so many fat, white people on the plane? We're going to Ethiopia. We're flying Ethiopian Airlines."

"They're missionaries," she responded, completely uninterested.

"What?" I gasped. It had never occurred to me. I was not pleased.

Everything became so obvious. The Texas drawls. The recitations of Bible verses. The prayers. The seasoned braggarts recounting their prior trips to the Horn of Africa. The newbies airing out their nerves. They couldn't wait to get to Africa to start saving souls for Jesus. I wasn't sure I could take a full day of travel with a cabin full of bombastic Texas Christian missionaries, giddy with evangelical fervor. I tried to force myself to sleep.
Read the rest

Trust the UN with figures? Ha!

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The Copenhagen climate conference has been a shambles with journalists queing for up to nine hours and still failing to get in.
Copenhagen diaries
What was behind the monumental screw-up? A staggering inability to do maths.

The conference centre has a maximum capacity of 15,000, yet NGOs alone were allowed to register 20,000 delegates. That's not counting the 5000 members of the media, nor the 7000 staffers who are running the place, totalling 32,000 before you even get to the people who are meant to be doing the real work here: the negotiators. There were ministers hopelessly waving their diplomatic passes in the queues outside. They weren't let in any faster than anyone else.

They should ALL be hanged

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Three guilty of post office murder

Three men have been found guilty of murdering a sub-postmaster's son during an armed raid in Worcestershire.

Craig Hodson-Walker, 29, was killed at Fairfield Post Office on 9 January, Birmingham Crown Court heard. Anselm Ribera, 34, and Christopher Morrissey, 32, both from Birmingham, and Declan Morrissey, 34, of Solihull, were found guilty of murder. They were also convicted of attempting to murder his father Ken. Adrian Snape, 25, was cleared of both charges.Snape, of Camelot Way, Small Heath, Birmingham, had pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and admitted he was the getaway driver. After he was cleared of murder, he leapt up in the dock and shouted obscenities.

Say no more. Useless vermin.

Beat the Trafigura gag on the BBC

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Via Though Cowards Flinch: Copied wholesale from A Very Public Sociologist – everyone should repost, as widely as possible in solidarity:

Following a call by Left Outside and Liberal Conspiracy for bloggers to thwart the gagging of the BBC by Trafigura over allegations of toxic waste dumping in the Ivory Coast, I thought “that’s one bandwagon I’m happy to be part of”. If you’ve got a blog this is what you have to do:

1) Embed this BBC report:

2) Link to this censored report (pdf) of Trafigura’s activities.


What 'facts?

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Labour MP, Greg Pope, offers an apologia for Blair and the sexed-up dossier. And contributes to the attempted rehabilitation of that dirtbag, Alastair Campbell


Iraq Inquiry: separating myths from facts over the 45 minute claim

There is much to concern us, not least the over-reliance on a single intelligence source; and, despite the fact that Saddam had previously used battlefield CBWs, the stockpiles to which he referred were never found. But we shouldn’t be distracted by tales of taxi drivers and media myths about Alastair Campbell.

Another warmonger, just more intelligent

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Chris Hedges: Fighting Another Dumb War
Obama uses the veneer of intellectualism to promote the dirty politics of Bush. The president spoke in Oslo, when he accepted the Nobel Prize, of “just war” theory, although the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not meet the criteria laid down by Thomas Aquinas or traditional Catholic just-war doctrine. He spoke of battling evil, dividing human reality into binary poles of black and white as Bush did, without examining the evil of pre-emptive war, sustained military occupation and imperialism. He compared al-Qaida to Hitler, ignoring the difference between a protean group of terrorists and a nation-state with the capacity to overwhelm its neighbors with conventional military force. “The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,” Obama insisted in Oslo. The U.S., he said, has the right to “act unilaterally if necessary” and to launch wars whose purpose “extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor.” Obama’s policies, despite the high-blown rhetoric, are as morally bankrupt as those of his predecessor.