Brilliant news in a rotten world

Iraq managed to get to the final and win the Asian cup for the first time, despite all the death threats, the problems of finding a place to train, and having your country fall to pieces. And the real joy is that Sunnis, Shias and Kurds all played together - now isn't that amazing? Nice one, Iraq.

BBC SPORT | Football | Internationals | Iraq 1-0 Saudi Arabia

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Putin: amongst the lies a grain of truth

Putin recently talked about Britain still having a 'Colonial' mindset, which quite frankly is absurd unless you consider football hooligans who still think Britain is great and so therefore deserves to win. Putin's ideas are wretched, stinking lies that are trying to deflect from the fact that the Russian elite, of which Putin is a firm leader, has no problem with sanctioning state murder at home and abroad, and whether they expose thousands of other innocent people to deadly poisons is of no consequence to them.

Putin, like Bush, is a stinking, vile leader who should never have been given access to an ounce of power. They are both destructive and are a danger to humanity.

However, inside Putin's dunce-like comments are truths which Britons must be aware of: the British government, now and in the past, has been far too lenient in allowing foreign nationals of dubious backgrounds, wanted abroad for terrorism and incitement, to live freely in Britain. This has to change immediately. People like the previously laughable Omar Bakri Mohammed who went on to inspire suicide bombers and who was EVENTUALLY banned from Britain is an ugly case in point. This man, and his entire family, should no longer be allowed to set foot in Britain. Britain's policies towards these vermin has to be stronger, and at the same time we need to continue our campaign of rightly bringing the murderer Lugovoi to justice. Until then we should be firm but fair with Russia, but aware too, that its murderous ways are there for all to see.



BBC NEWS | UK | Putin rebukes 'colonial' Britain

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Russia's bluster makes you weep

So, a KGB assassination squad turned up in October last year, carried out a dry run, then did the murder itself in November. The extremely rare chemical - polonium-210 is only manufactured in Russia. The idiotic murderer Lugovoi didn't realise that wherever he went he carried traces of the poison, thus implicating himself as the murderer. No other person could have done it. He is guilty. He is a murderer who threatened the lives of thousands of other civilians in bars, hotels and other public places. This was a state Russian killing. You cannot simply ask for Polonium-210 because it is deadly, rare and expensive. And the outcome to all this, after Britain quite rightly expelled four Russian 'diplomats' from London? The Russians drone on about 'serious consequences' as if they are the ones who have been wronged. Russia now, is more than ever, back to its cold war ways and attitudes. Gone are all the freedoms and back comes the bloody solution to all problems.

I dreamt of going back to Britain by the Trans-Siberian Railway but that dream has been scotched, for I wouldn't set foot in that fucking wretched villainous, murderous dump. Russia does not deserve to be taken seriously in the world when their behaviour continues to be that of boorish brutal thuggery. On that score, there is no hope.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Russia warns UK over expulsions

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Why Japanese women live so damn long

I guess this should primarily be a blog about Japan, seeing as that's where I live and that was the original purpose. But since starting a few years back, America has got worse, Bush and co. are so far out to lunch it's absurd, and the environment is now all over the news whereas even a year ago it was still just a few scientists, ranters and Al Gore.

So, things got in the way of Japan, which this afternoon had yet another earthquake - a 6.8, which if you consider Kobe had a 7.2 and that killed 6,000 people then it seems that with a few deaths being reported that Japan has this time got off lightly. Also, we moved recently from a thin house that swayed like a jelly at the least sign of a rumble, to a place that is far more chunky and spread out and a lot younger, though it still swayed today enough to make you realise that things aren't as solid as they look. I rolled over in bed the other night and my girlfriend had a panic that it was a fatal earthquake. Am going to do this more often from now on. Anyway, since 1981, all buildings have supposedly been built with certain standards, which means that they are not supposed to collapse in earthquakes, merely to sway, or go with the flow. It's the older wooden buildings that are more at risk with their heavy roof tiles that fall on Japanese heads.

Anyway, to answer the post, news came out in recent months of how Japanese women live longer than any other on earth (an average of 86 years). Even the men come in pretty high at 81. Now, I did wonder in fact how come Japanese men can get still into their 80s considering the ludicrously long hours they work + the cigarettes 50% of them smoke relentlessly, and the alcohol they consume in after work drinks gatherings, which seem to be some kind of neverending rites of passage initiation ceremony.

The women, on the other hand, do bugger all. This, I have come to realise, is why they live so damn long. They get married in their mid to late-20s, they stop work and have one child. This they farm out to their parents before the school comes and takes them at the age of six. The women at this time revert to coffee mornings, nail gel monstrosities and interminable shopping. The men stress themselves to an early grave at 81, and the women get to plough on for 5 more years on his company pension. One would think with what they do that the men should die around 66 and the women make it to 90, and I am still puzzling as to why these figures are so far out.

Why the US will never win another war

Reading these excerpts from US veterans from the latest war in Iraq, it's clear to see why the US will never win another war. Overwhelming use of force seems to be their only strategy. After that, it's a case of treat the local population - that you have come to save - as vermin lower than you on the evolutionary ladder, humiliate them, punish them at random, violate their homes, their culture.

No, the US will never win another war, because all it understands is firepower, not the more subtle ways in which to get a local population on your side. They have done nothing right in Iraq, and everything completely wrong. For this, they are paying the price, with 4,000+ young soldiers dead, and thousands more without arms and legs, and hundreds of thousands more who, like the Vietnam generation, will suffer more than most with mental problems, crime and imprisonment. It is interesting to note that more US soldiers who died in Vietnam - 58,000 - have committed suicide since, unable to live with what they did. Here, in Iraq, is another remorseless timebomb waiting to happen.

On top of this is the astonishing rise in worldwide terrorism, and there's another irony there, that the US wanted to take the war to Iraq or face it on its doorstep. Well, it has both, and so, unfortunately, do the rest of us.

It is ironic that the US military has such a high standing in its own country, for these testimonies prove that they do not deserve such praise. They appear trigger happy fools, uncomprehending of their task, frightened, incompetent and badly led - especially the latter; even the best soldiers if not given specific instructions for a task will fail. They are failing abysmally, and everything is out there in the world for all to see. Can you now see more clearly where all the hatred is from? I certainly can.

'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?' - Independent Online Edition > Americas

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Religion: the lunatic fringe of human thought

I can't believe that religion is still on the table, still being discussed in the 21st century. What is there left to say? I've been reading books on it, on the birth of Christianity and Islam, and like their laughable cousin, Scientology, there are no grounds for reason here, no shred of evidence, that what is being spoken of has any basis for rationality. Religion is, indeed, a huge, fearsome delusion that spreads warmth and hope in some but violence and evil in others. Not all car drivers who drink cause accidents. Not all people who smoke will die of cancer. Not all religious people are driven to random acts of terror, but many today choose to do so. It should be outlawed and pushed to the far edges of society to be left to die out, and like smoking and drink-driving it is a curse that may then affect us less and less.

Comment is free: A force for evil?

In Christianity in school and in church we are taught about the goodness and calm intellect of Jesus, but if you read the bible you will undoubtedly soon come across barbarism, even spoken by him. He curses those who refuse to listen to his sermons with eternal hellfire and damnation. Just for refusing to listen to him speak? Where is the love? The reason?

Islam was created by an intelligent man who saw more clearly than many that the disparate muslim tribes were being squeezed by the encroachment of other religions. Mohammed even said that Muslims needed their own religion to compete. And so he alleged that God spoke to him in the wilderness (no witnesses there, you see?) which he then dictated to others over the course of several years. His words were interpreted differently, thus eventually creating different sects of Sunnis and Shias, and that ability to interpret words differently has led us to this appalling time in history; a time when religion is used more than ever to spread hate, animosity, fear and violence. Billions of people base their lives on myths with not one shred of evidence.

They say God is good, God is great, but if your God demands that you murder innocents who follow other religions then that annihilates all the foundations of your religion: your religion is nothing more than a mouthpiece of hatred.

And if God is inherently good and has created this world, this universe, for our sole delight, then what about the animals who live in it whose habitats we destroy without moral argument? Don't they get a say in this? What about the 300,000 people who died in the tsunami 3 years back? Some would say they were sinners. What? All of them? Some dumbshit American evangelist said that the devastating flood in New Orleans was because some people there practised sin. That doesn't sound to me like a God who is great, who cares at all about us. That sounds to me like the God of the Old Testament; a vengeful, violent God who kills for fun.

And if this God, who reeks havoc and misery and poverty on much of the world's billions, is in fact good, then why did he create the crocodile, or the piranha, or the mosquito, which has killed more through the spread of malaria then all wars put together. Either a vengeful God, whose brutality knows no bounds and whose worship is not justified, or, more likely, it is that this universe is scientifically explained, and that there really is no-one driving the bus.

God is a pitiful excuse: an excuse for evil, for apathy, for leaving it up to someone else. It is, indeed, the worst kind of curse.

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The most wretched person in the world just got worse

When George Bush sank so low as to commute Scooter Libby's jail term it just to me summed up absolutely everything about this rotten, stinking administration. A government who lied and lied to get their war in Iraq, then lied about how bad it was, then lied when they protested their innocence at having publically named Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, thus wrecking her career and endangering her life. And why? Because her husband went to Africa and found that the Bush administration had lied when it said that Saddam was trying to get nuclear materials there. It was their smoking gun on Iraq, and it was a lie. But then again, Bush, Cheney and the other vermin are nothing but lies.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush not ruling out Libby pardon

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