planet impiazzi

A setback for renewable power: "After producing electricity for only eight days the government's £30m renewable energy project, a wood burning power station in Yorkshire, has gone bankrupt and been sold for £3m to an American who may dismantle it and ship it off to India.
The sale is a disaster for Britain's green energy policy, which plans to have wood burning and other biomass projects account for half of all renewable energy generated by 2010. The Department of Trade and Industry said yesterday that it had no idea who had bought the plant from the receiver.
Thirty-five farmers, who had signed 12-year contracts to provide the power station in Eggborough with coppiced willow, have been left without a market".

As if that wasn't bad enough, here's a story I read in my local paper a couple of weeks ago, about how "Millions of tonnes of palm nuts are grown every year to produce palm nut oil. The oil extraction process means that the woody outer shells the nuts are discarded", of which "Drax will be burning 10,000 tonnes of ground palm nut shells along with the coal".
Well, we don't have many palms growing round here. So they are being imported, travelling I don't know how many miles which surely defeats one of the objects of the exercise, ie to reduce pollution. I ask myself WHY are we importing palm nut shells when we could be burning our own local material?


Here is a handy site, if you are interested in sustainable energy.

"The official version is that Britain's foreign policy is basically benevolent: that it promotes democracy, peace and human rights. The truth is that Britain supports terrorism, argues John Pilger", in a review of Mark Curtis's book 'Web of Deceit'. Curtis has written in the Guardian, here discussing how Britain has historically poked its big guns into other countries' business:
"overthrowing governments and backing repressive regimes is as British as afternoon tea.
Fifty years ago, MI6 and the CIA overthrew the popular, nationalist government in Iran, which had threatened British interests by nationalising oil operations. Churchill's government continued covert operations begun by Attlee, to install what foreign secretary Anthony Eden called "a more reliable government". Formerly secret files reveal that our ambassador in Tehran preferred "a dictator" who would "settle the oil question on reasonable terms". The Shah took control and ruled Iran with an iron fist for 25 years, while Britain and the US helped train his secret police.
Britain's invasion of British Guiana in the same year is long forgotten. Democratic elections had resulted in victory for a popular, leftist government committed to reducing poverty. Its plans also threatened the British sugar multinational, Bookers, who pleaded with London to intervene. Britain dispatched warships and 700 troops to overthrow the government, and ruled out elections since "the same party would have been elected again", the colonial secretary stated".

Meanwhile, "The Pentagon is advocating a massive covert action program to overthrow Iran's ruling ayatollahs as the only way to stop the country's nuclear weapons ambitions, senior State Department and Pentagon officials told ABCNEWS".

"Downing Street doctored a dossier on Iraq's weapons programme to make it "sexier", according to a senior British official, who claims intelligence services were unhappy with the assertion that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ready for use within 45 minutes", reports The Guardian.

Iraqi people will soon start dying of leukemia - and not just from the depleted uranium dropped on them by US & UK forces. They will die because, "During the war, however, the security gates [of a nuclear facility] were destroyed, the Iraqi guards fled and the entire compound was left unguarded for five days after the Americans arrived on April 5.
The villagers had lived in grinding poverty in wrecked houses just outside the compound boundaries when suddenly, for the first time, they could enter.
As he sat with other men in a local wicker-walled café, Wardia al-Jabouri, a village elder, said: “The Americans opened the doors and they knew what was inside, but they just left again, so all the people went inside”, reports The Times. I reckon that makes US forces responsible. After all, if I left a barrel of something toxic in my unlocked shed (unlocked because the local kids smash it open on a regular basis), and those local kids were poisoned by it, I would be held responsible.

"Tony Blair vowed that the West would not walk away from Afghanistan. But in a remarkable journey, meeting militia leaders and the heavily guarded President, Peter Oborne found a nation left to fend for itself - and Taliban thugs undeterred".

In today's Guardian;
"The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.
The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.
The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.
But suspicious finds in Iraq have made front-page news (before later being cleared), given the failure of US military inspection teams to find evidence of the weapons that were the justification for the March invasion.
Even more embarrassing for the Pentagon, there was no documentation about the various biological agents disposed of at the US bio-defence centre at Fort Detrick. Iraq's failure to come up with paperwork proving the destruction of its biological arsenal was portrayed by the US as evidence of deception in the run-up to the war".

Irony. Well, I hope so anyway.

"Genetically modified (GM) crops will need monitoring for years if they are grown in the UK, British scientists say", reports the BBC today. I couldn't agree more.
We have an amazing planet full of fabulous plants, a massive variety of foodstuffs, and some people think we need to muck around with fragile ecosystems to create new species, new genetic organisms. Our planet has managed - all by itself - to produce plants that flourish in all sorts of habitats. Shouldn't we be cultivating them?
The Henry Doubleday Organisation researches such things, and gives advice on how and what to grow organically. They do a lot of work to preserve species that have fallen out of favour - potatoes, perhaps, that don't look quite the right shape, or such like. There are vegetable facists, who will refuse to have anything to do with something that isn't exactly the right colour etc.
The Permaculture Association offers help with...well, permaculture. If you aren't familiar with it:
"There are three main ingredients to permaculture.
1. Shared ethics of 'earth care', 'people care' and 'fair shares' (which is shorthand for limits to populations and consumption, and the fair distribution of resources to further the work of earth care and people care.) Permaculture also stresses the importance of taking personal responsibility for our actions.
2. Ecological principles derived by the observation of natural systems, by ecologists such as Birch and Odum.
3. Design tools and processes that allow an individual or group to assemble conceptual, material and strategic components into a 'pattern' or 'plan of action', that can be implemented and maintained with minimal resources".
Basically, working co-operatively with each other and our environments, not trying to fit square pegs into round holes - or grow rice in the sahara.

Stuart Jenks' work reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy.

This site collects old photos.

Here is a veritable Aladdins Cave of visual titilation.

I got most of this stuff via Amber Glow.

Night photography. Beautiful.

More amazing images.

Interesting collection of images here. This one I particularly liked.

Also among today's gleanings is this creative blog, which is where I got the link to the images I just mentioned. And this newsy one.

Week 3 of The Guardian's series on food brings articles on groups of people who are involved in the production or distribution of cleanly, sustainably grown food. There is a Directory containing details of shops, farmers etc around Britain.
The Directory seems to me to be the weakest part of the series, which has featured some excellent writing. My city, Leeds, gets only one mention in the listings, and that is for a shop that sells organic beer. I appreciate that they can't include every single prducer or retailer, but I know there is more in Leeds than one ale shop. There is Beano Wholefoods, a workers co-op in the city centre. They sell a range of organic stuff, including locally grown veg and locally baked bread. On the first Sunday of the month there is a farmers market. There you can buy meats and cheeses, jam, honey, vegatables and more. John Brook of Brickyard Farm has a stall there, and he does veg box delivery. And there is Org Organics; a shop/cafe who also run a delivery service.
Leeds has 2 city centre fair trade shops; Trade for Change, which sells gift-type stuff, tea & coffee, yummy chocolate, and also does educational projects. And Shared Earth sells beautiful hand-crafted items. I do most of my gift shopping there, and usually end up buying something for myself/my house too (got 2 lovely lightshades!).
The Guardian didn't include restaurants in their Directory, but I think its good to know where you can go for a treat. Leeds has The Mill Race. If you are ever in Leeds looking for somewhere special to eat you should head there. Better book first though - its a popular place.

"How is it that the United States of America, which so prides itself on dedication to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," not only has, by a vast margin, the biggest military budget on the planet Earth, but has also, by some implicit collective agreement, turned science and technology toward developing some of the most horrendous weapons in human history?". Look at this.

I finished Blue Afternoon. Good story, well written, though I stand by my opinion that he doesn't do female narration too well. One male writer who I think has written quite well using a female narrator is Daniel Defoe, in Moll Flanders. But that was rather a long time ago.
Now I'm reading Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Oh joy! Tis truly wonderful. And it happens to be set in my part of the world. Well, about 20 miles or so away.

Interesting piece here about the UK & US governments' relationship to mass killings. (thanks to Codshit).

Padacia has found a Death Clock. The image providing the link is very thought provoking in itself..

"For 20 years, say the residents of a town in Kenya, soldiers from the nearby British army camp have been systematically raping its women. Now they're not going to take it any more". Natasha Walter reports.

Bud has some astute comments on gas guzzling.

Here's a bit of Schnews for you; "The Group of Eight (G8) summit is happening on June 1-3 in Evian, France. The Group is made up of the richest seven industrialised nations of the world - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – plus Russia. Twenty one other countries have been invited as observers. To cheer on our great leaders thousands will be demonstrating on the streets.
The annual summit was initially the idea of France in the mid-1970s to help the world’s richest economies deal informally with big crises, but as one commentator said “Its list of memorable achievements is almost zero. Recent summits have been noticeable only because of the length of their vacuous final communiqués, the distance at which the political leaders have been kept from the public and the outrageous cost of organising the meetings.”
Last year’s bash in the Canadian Rockies cost around £347 million, while the one in Japan a record £460 million. France, fighting rising unemployment and urging its public to tighten their belts and save for their old age because of a pension crisis, isn’t letting on how much this one will cost, but there’s no doubt that the champagne will be flowing freely, and the security costs will be astronomical.
Groups such as Oxfam are asking the leaders to declare a war on poverty, but as a recent Amnesty report shows these nations are far too busy making money out of war to care about that. Between 1997 and 2001 at least two-thirds of all arms sales came from five of the G8 members - America, Russia, France, Britain and Germany, busy arming some of the world’s worst human rights abusers. As Oxfam commented “If the same amount of money and the same political will committed to the war on Iraq were put into aid, trade, and debt relief, it would end the suffering of millions of people. For the cost of just two stealth bomber planes, 48 million children in Africa, who have never had the chance to learn to read or write, could attend school for a year.”

"Indonesian forces were yesterday accused of massacring civilians during a raid against separatist guerillas in Aceh province on Monday.
The 18 killings, which included the reported shooting at point-blank range of two 12-year-old boys, happened during dawn raids in four villages in Bireuen district, villagers alleged", writes John Aglionby. British fighter jets were used during the attacks, "Britain's ambassador to Indonesia, Richard Gozney, said yesterday that Indonesia's defence minister, Matori Abdul Djalil, had reassured him on Tuesday "that the Hawks would not be used in a ground-attack role". But he made no mention of their use in other offensive roles. Britain sold the fighters to Jakarta on the understanding that they would not be used in offensive operations in Indonesia".
Oh, well of course, you wouldn't expect fighter planes to be used aggressively, would you?

There has been a lot in the news here in the UK recently about plans to expand airports and increase the capacity for air travel. This seems like a very short sighted policy to me, considering the huge amount of pollution generated by air travel. Sure, I love travelling, and considering the grotty weather we get in Britain, the lure of sunny places is very strong. But should we put our own wants before the health of the planet?
Friends of the Earth think not.
"A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), published today (Wednesday) says that the Government cannot meet its targets on climate change without measures to control greenhouse gas emissions from aviation. Building new runways, it says, would only make the problem worse".

Arundhati Roy writes eloquently about war on Iraq, and the US push for control of our planet. She suggests; "Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism". The article is quite long, but thorough, fascinating and well worth reading.

The Indonesian government has sent troops in to Aceh in an attempt to deal with "up to 5,000 fighters for the Free Aceh Movement (Gam), the separatists who have been fighting for an independent state since 1976 after becoming disillusioned with Jakarta's decades of broken promises of greater autonomy". Conflict in Indonesia is certainly nothing new, and both the British and US governments have done their bit by supplying and training military forces. "Four of the 13 aircraft used in what were mostly choreographed manoeuvres rather than attacks on fighters of the Free Aceh Movement (Gam), were British-made Hawk-200 fighter jets, sold to Indonesia on the understanding that they would not be used for internal repression". The UK government says it is concerned about what is going on, but they knowingly supported Suharto while he orchestrated violence and repression on the people of East Timor, so it's difficult to really believe that they are now really concerned now.
"Concern about the military's role in Aceh and other conflicts is not confined to foreign NGOs or brave individuals such as Britain's Lesley McCulloch. Indonesian critics also castigate their government's disgraceful failure to bring to justice those most responsible for atrocities during East Timor's war of independence. The US Congress is not silent, either. "Members of the Indonesian security forces ... continue to commit many serious human rights violations, including extra-judicial killings, torture, rape and arbitrary detention, particularly in areas of conflict," the House international relations committee said this month. Some in Congress oppose the Bush administration's policy of rebuilding military-to-military contacts, including training and "non-lethal" arms sales. But the White House gives priority to Indonesian cooperation in its "war on terror". And politically influential US companies like ExxonMobil have a big stake in Aceh's oil and gas. As Human Rights Watch warned yesterday, "the stage is set for gross human rights violations", writes The Guardian.

Read this story, about Blair's attempts to justify the war on Iraq; "Blair knows perfectly well that these recently-discovered dead go back many years to uprisings in Iraq after the first Gulf war. The graves can be no surprise since virtually every detail of the uprisings was known to British and American governments. The CIA had many informers, both inside Iraq and as refugees, it had genuine information from spy satellites and high-flying aircraft, it had telephone and Internet interceptions, and it had information from Mossad, people who keep a very close watch on that neighborhood. This information would have kept the two governments about as well informed as Hussein himself.
For some reason, I don't recall any great outrage expressed at the time. I don't recall the British or American governments doing anything, or even threatening to do anything, at the time. Could that possibly be because the uprisings in Iraq were actively encouraged from outside? The United States did this knowing full well that it had no intention of helping those it incited to revolt, and it did this knowing the dreadful price that would be exacted by Hussein for the rebels' almost-certain failure".

In today's Independent: "Only days ago, Mr Bush declared that "al-Qa'ida is on the run" and that "about half of all the top al-Qa'ida operatives are either jailed or dead". In either case, he said, "they are not a problem any more". Try telling that to the families of those killed in Saudi and Morocco.

I'm going to try and give up shopping at supermarkets, after reading The Guardian's series on food. This week, John Vidal discusses the changes in Britain's countryside as a result of intensive farming, and the real cost of the damage done.
Paul Brown writes about the state of the oceans. Did you know that, "Scientists now believe that the massive bottom-trawling nets of the factory boats have not only wiped out the fish stocks but also the entire eco-system of the seabed on which the cod relied. Each time a net passes over the seabed, it rips up boulders, plants and structure-building organisms. The factory trawlers may also have changed the ecology of the seabed forever"?
And then consider the banana and coffee industries.
But exploitation of the environment and of people doesn't stop with food production. What you wear has to come from somewhere. Personally, I dress almost completely from second hand clothes bought from charity shops, which means I sometimes look a bit odd, but rather that than support even more exploitation.
There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Labour MP Stephen Byers has changed his mind about the way global trade is currently carried out, indicating that "The IMF and World Bank orthodoxy is increasing global poverty".

When you are trying to decide what to eat today, consider this, "in order to bring delicacies such as tiger or king prawn to the supermarket shelf vast tracts of ecologically important coastal forests are being destroyed to make way for prawn farms. These farms (often built on land seized illegally and with force) threaten coral reefs and marine wildlife with harmful pesticides and antibiotics; poisoning the water supplies of coastal communities, ruining agricultural land and reducing vital food supplies.
Displaced, unemployed and existing in poverty, some people adversely affected by the prawn farms have fought back - only to be met by unprecedented violence and intimidation".

More weapons of mass destruction on the way; "The Armed Services Committee of the US Senate voted May 8 in a secret session to lift a decade-long ban on the research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons. The panel endorsed the Bush administration’s proposal, first announced a year ago, to push ahead with the production of nuclear weapons which would be more useable".

"In 1995, the U.S. fined Halliburton $3.8 million for violating a ban on exports to Libya. Four years later, a Halliburton subsidiary opens an office in Iran, despite a U.S. ban on doing business in that country. In 2001, Halliburton shareholders lash out at company executives for its pipeline project in Burma, citing that country's human-rights abuses. Also in 2001, watchdog groups blast Cheney for placing 44 Halliburton subsidiaries in foreign tax havens.
Halliburton's dealings in six countries - Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria - show that the company's willingness to do business where human rights are not respected is a pattern that goes beyond its involvement in Burma..
So how does the company continue to win such lucrative contracts with the government, as in the case of Iraq, in spite of its shady record?". Read the full story.

Found this at Codshit too: "I shake my head in confusion just from living in this Mother of all Information ages. If I turn my radio dial from classical music to "all news when it happens," I receive machine gun blasts of mis and dis-information. From the TV, radio, newspapers, billboards and computer emerge manipulative words, pictures, (spam) sounds and symbols aimed at converting my organism into an advanced purchasing instrument. No one has yet invented the equivalent of the bullet proof vest for the brain, to protect against the cartridges of blather fired at our cerebral cortex".

Aargh! I found this at Codshit. Why not use it to tell Tony and his adoring fans what you think? (whether you want to thank him or not).

Reading William Boyd's 'Blue Afternoon' at the moment. I'm enjoying the story, although I'm not convinced that the first section, in which Boyd uses a female narrator is entirely successful. Doesn't quite ring true. I'll have to have a think and see if I can come up with a novel written by a man using a female narrator that DOES work. Sebastian Faulks tries it in Birdsong, but I wasn't really impressed. I liked the sections narrated by Wraysford though, and thought it contained very moving descriptions of the First World War.
Speaking of war, I'd highly recommend Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried', written about young soldiers in Vietnam.

The discovery of mass graves in Iraq is truly awful, but maybe those bodies wouldn't be there if the Iraqis had been given the support they had been promised by the US during the 1991 uprising. Officially sanctioned killing goes on as "Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinian policemen in Gaza early today and attacked a Palestinian refugee camp, wounding 30 people, after 13 Israelis were hurt in Palestinian attacks". But Sharon is still supported by the US.
The suicide bombings in Saudi are similarly appalling, but as I said yesterday, not surprising. When are the power crazed world leaders going to realise that if they treat people like rubbish, eventually some of them are going to hit back?

The attacks in Saudi Arabia don't really come as a surprise. As Clare Short pointed out yesterday, "undermining international law and the authority of the UN creates the risk of instability, bitterness and growing terrorism that will threaten the future for all of us".

"Doctors fear that hundreds of Iraqis may be suffering from radiation poisoning, following the widespread looting of the country's nuclear facilities", reports The Telegraph. The death count continues to rise.

Can you believe this?
"A Norwegian parliamentarian nominated President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, praising them for winning the war in Iraq".

"Tony Blair was accused of caving in to evangelical Christians after it emerged that new government legislation will allow religious employers to sack lesbian and gay staff. Regulations intended to combat discrimination in the workplace contain wide-ranging exemptions for any employer "with an ethos based on religion or belief", comes from The Independent via Green Fairy. What century is this?

Truth Out has an interesting piece about those who will make pots of money out of the war on terror, and rebuilding Iraq. Its an article from The Observer, but have a look at Truth Out anyway. Good stuff.

Well done Clare Short on her stand against Blair's actions on Iraq. I was disappointed when she didn't resign before the invasion, but at least she has now spoken her mind and done something about it. I wonder if it will make any difference, once the dust has settled?
Here's the main part of her resignation statement:
"The situation in Iraq under international law is that the coalition are occupying powers in occupied territory. Under the Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague regulations of 1907, the coalition has clear responsibilities and clear limits to its authority. It is obliged to attend to the humanitarian needs of the population, to keep order and keep civil administration operating.

The coalition is legally entitled to modify the operation of the administration as much as is necessary to fulfil these obligations but is not entitled to make major political, economic and constitutional changes. The coalition does not have sovereign authority and has no authority to bring into being an interim Iraqi government with such authority, or to create a constitutional process leading to the election of a sovereign government. The only body that has the legal authority to do this is the UN Security Council.

I believe it is duty of all responsible political leaders right across the world, whatever view they took on the launch of the war, to focus on reuniting the international community in order to support the people of Iraq in rebuilding their country, to re-establish the authority of the UN and to heal the bitter divisions that preceded the war. I am sorry to say that the UK Government is not doing this. It is supporting the US in trying to bully the Security Council into a resolution that gives the coalition the power to establish an Iraqi government and control the use of oil for reconstruction with only a minor role for the UN.

This resolution is unlikely to pass but if it does it will not create the best arrangements for the reconstruction of Iraq. The draft resolution risks continuing international divisions, Iraqi resentment against the occupying powers and the possibility that the coalition will get bogged down in Iraq. I believe the UK could and should have respected the Attorney General's advice, told the US this was a red line for us and worked for international agreement to a proper UN-led process to establish an interim Iraqi government, just as was done in Afghanistan. This would have been an honourable and wise role for the UK and the international community would have united around this position. It's also in the best interests of the US.

In both the run-up to the war and now, I think the UK is making grave errors in providing cover for the US mistakes rather than helping an old friend, which is understandably hurt and angry about the events of 11 September, to honour international law and the authority of the UN. American power alone cannot make America safe. Of course we must all unite to dismantle the terrorist networks and, through the UN, the world is doing this. But undermining international law and the authority of the UN creates the risk of instability, bitterness and growing terrorism that will threaten the future for all of us", (courtesy of The Independent).

I like this picture.

"The team searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is ending its operation without having found proof that Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
It investigated numerous sites identified by US intelligence as those likely to harbour weapons of mass destruction (WMD) but has now all but accepted that it is unlikely to find any weapons. Operations are being wound up and a scaled-down unit called the Iraq Survey Group will take over". Well fancy that!

"A New York Times reporter has fabricated and plagiarised dozens of stories that have appeared in the paper, according to a report published on its own front page yesterday. The "frequent acts of journalistic fraud" committed by Jayson Blair "represent a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper", it said", says today's Guardian. I wonder if he's the only one?

The Guardian is running a series of articles on food, in their Saturday editions. This week I read about sausages. Its over 20 years since I last ate one, and having read that article I'm really glad I don't eat them now - not that they would have been any better when I was a kid. The article is about British sausages - I don't know if the industry is the same in other countries.

Just found this fellow Yorkshire person who has some funny photos to share.

The Independent reports on conditions in Iraq, where "it is the rapidly deteriorating public health system – as summer temperatures take hold – that is most worrying. After a month of occupation it remains in a state of collapse. Drinking water, from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, contaminated with sewage, has caused outbreaks of cholera and thyphoid among children in Basra. And the World Health Organisation warned yesterday that unless the security situation improves and medical staff can work in safety, the cholera outbreak could become an epidemic". I watched a heartbreaking report on BBC2's Newsnight a couple of days ago about conditions in Baghdad hospitals, where intermittent and very limited electricity and practically no medicines mean that many people are dying. There is a constant stream of casualties arriving due to the lawlessness in the city; victims of shootings, people burned in explosions. I'm appalled that more isn't being done to help these people who are suffering as a direct result of the US & UK invasion. I know there were terrible problems for the Iraqi people before the invasion, but they don't deserve the mess they are in now. And what are the US & UK doing about it? Letting the UN help? No.

"Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons", reports The Guardian. Not much I can say about that really. Lets have some real regime change and get some people with morals in government.

Salam Pax is back! The Guardian has run an article about his blog today.

The English press is up in arms again today on the subject of asylum seekers. The right leaning papers are busy stirring things, trying to cause panic - although the government are certainly giving them plenty of ammo. But few are really looking at WHY people are coming here from other countries - there is little mention of the appalling humanitarian and economic conditions in the home countries of people coming to the UK looking for a better life. The west lives off the back of many of these people. Our shops are stuffed full of products made by cheap labour, much of our food comes from countries that would be better off if they could grow real food for their own people instead of luxury stuff for us.
Today's Independent tells us that even for those people whose families have been here for generations there are many problems. "Adam Sampson, the director of the homeless charity Shelter, said: "Coming at a time when the British National Party has been winning large electoral gains on the back of their claims black people are coming over here and taking our houses, the census data gives us a true picture of what is really happening. People from ethnic minorities experience worse housing problems than other people and are more likely to be in overcrowded, unfit homes."
So even in a wealthy country like Britain, inequality and poverty is widespread.

Ex-Python Terry Jones points a wry finger at our glorious leaders.

"The distance between American words and deeds is nowhere more evident than in George W. Bush's triumphalist declaration that he has licked terrorism in Iraq.
It turns out that he has a very selective dislike for terrorism". More hypocrisy uncovered. (Thanks to Codshit)

The Labour Party has suspended the anti-war MP George Galloway. "Mr Galloway, who has been a Labour member for 35 years, said the decision to suspend him was "completely unjust". The MP for Glasgow Kelvin said it was "grotesque" for the party to discipline him for speaking his mind on the war". Indeed. So much for living in a 'free' democratic country.

And this site has lots of good stuff.

Found a cool Canadian blog that I will add to my list of regular reads.

"Bechtel was among 24 American companies and 80 German companies that reportedly supplied Hussein with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or equipment" during the mid-80s when Iraq and Iran were fighting. Now they are going to fill their pockets with Iraqi money again. "This is according to the Berlin newspaper Tageszeitung, which obtained parts of the uncensored version of Iraq’s weapons declaration submitted to the UN in December of last year. The US seized the original report and deleted all references to private firms before handing over the document to other UN Security Council members. Bechtel was cited as one company that provided chemical weapons technology". Dunno about you, but I feel sick. I say GOOD LUCK to anti-capitalist protesters today, in any and all of their actions.

"Tony Blair is bracing himself for a middle class backlash in today's round of elections as New Labour voters punish the government for waging war against Saddam Hussein without a second UN security council resolution", says The Guardian. I certainly hope so.

Well, hey, the Iraqis are liberated people. Two months ago, if they had gone out onto the streets to demonstrate, they would have been shot. Now those lovely soldiers are there and....they get shot.
"Yesterday morning hundreds of people had taken to the streets of Fallujah, to demand the Americans – the 82nd Airborne Division – get out of town.
For the past day and a half, this Sunni town has been seething over death and injury inflicted by a company of US troops who opened fire on a crowd on Monday night. Those emotions were further stoked by the wildly implausible and inadequate explanations provided by the military.
As US Apache helicopters circled low over their heads, the crowd gathered yesterday outside a Baath party building – the Scientific and Cultural Centre – taken over by the troops.
Several US military trucks drew up. Troops inside the trucks opened fire, killing two men. According to Iraqi officials, 15 others were injured", reports The Independent.