Armchair Revolutionaries

Saw this... and thought of you guys. Take a look, it's interesting, though not groundbraking. It's an interview between John Reppion and Dr Benny Peisner, a social anthropologist with particular research interest in human and cultural evolution.

Here's the interview:

http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/the_new_age_of_apocalypticism/

Hi to everybody...have just watched the voting going on in the Senate and was amazed to seeing the bail out bill failed with 205 ayes to 227 nays...think we're in for a bumpy ride now for the next few days, weeks, months or even years if the government can't get their people to change their minds...apparently they are still trying...the gavel hasn't come down according to the reports...now it's politics and arm twisting on both sides to get minds changed and another vote to take place, but think they'll have a damned hard job because the American people are so totally against it...think the days of wine and roses and great fat bonuses are well and truly over for a long while if not indefinitely...

Lets say someone wanted to deliver a bunch of tanks to Puntland. This is a country carved out of the Balkanised mess that is Somalia, (not to be associated with the Islamic insurgents in south who are again threatening control of Mogadishu), but which is not one officially recognized by the rest of world.

When would you do it? When the world is busy thinking about something else really scary?

How would you do it? Maybe this way?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7637257.stm

A true armchair revolutionary doesn't give a damn about who is or is not running the country as they are fully convinced that they themselves could make a much better job of things from the comfort of their own armchair.

This is also an opinion held by most if not all Taxi Drivers.

At least we have Blogging and can discuss the important issues of the day with a high level of freedom of speech.

What irritated me today? People telling me something in writing and then doing the exact opposite in reality.

Nobody likes broken promises.

FULL ARTICLE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

On the "Saturday Night Live" season debut last week, homeschooling families were portrayed as fundamentalists with bad haircuts who fear biology. Actor Matt Damon recently disparaged Sarah Palin by referring to a transparently fake email that claimed she believed that dinosaurs were Satan's lizards. And according to prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, traditional religious belief is "dangerously irrational." From Hollywood to the academy, nonbelievers are convinced that a decline in traditional religious belief would lead to a smarter, more scientifically literate and even more civilized populace.

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won't create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that's not a conclusion to take on faith -- it's what the empirical data tell us.

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's former denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's former denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead.

The full article is short and worth reading.

FULL ARTICLE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178219865054585.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Is there such a thing as 'Bloggers Rights'? Are we supposed to have more freedoms on the internet to say things than we would have under the laws of our own countries, in say, the print media?

I ask this because I am aware of increasing censorship of the internet in some parts of the world. Is it getting tighter or are we just more aware of it? In South East Asia we have recent reports of Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin an online commentator being put in police custody and served a two year detention order (without trial) last night under the Internal Security Act.

In next door Thailand, as followers of the discussion on Australian Harry Nicolaides plight may have noticed, it may be his reviewed blogging about a book some suspect has not even been written which has caused his arrest. He faces 15 years for insulting the Crown Prince (and possibly the King himself).

Hi to everybody...I've heard this quite a few times here...when mentioning libertarians, it's rarely as a compliment, more an insult..or with veiled contempt...why is this? The same thing happens when liberalism is referred to by quite a few people...an insult for example is to be told you're a soft liberal...strange that...I would have thought that real liberty was what everybody should aim for, but seems not...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7631500.stm

He said that during the hearing Fed chairman Mr Bernanke disclosed that the Treasury would attempt to buy these debts from banks at close to their "hold-to-maturity" value, not the market value.

In practice, it means banks who sell their debts to the Treasury would receive cash equivalent to something like twice the value in their books of these poisonous assets..

In other words they would book a profit from selling to taxpayers.

It would represent a massive injection of new capital into the US banking system - for which taxpayers would receive nothing in return, except for the assurances from Mr Paulson and Chairman Bernanke that their banking system would not collapse

This is not capitalism - this is a very peculiar form of socialism.

Under capitalism weak businesses fail, this is meant to happen, this allows others to have a crack at the whip .. (Tescos?)

“To big to fail” should not happen – we explicitly stop companies becoming that big – via anti monopoly regulation – right??

To bail or not to bail - the US Senate is wincing at splashing the taxpayers cash - too late! The bankers have taken their slice and walked. All that’s left in the bucket are our savings, pensions etc. If we throw the bucket away, it’s our loss. If we plug the holes, we’re only saving what was ours in the first place.

like many other libertarian economists Ron Paul (republican – Texas) called it in 2003 (take a look http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul128.html )

So we need a trip to blamesville – the two front candidates seem to be “greedy banks” and “government regulatory failure”. Banks ARE greedy, but we knew that already. They are SUPPOSED to be greedy and make as much $$$ as possible for their share holders. Asking a business to restrain itself from making money is like .. well... like asking somthing very crazy.

That would leave the regulator then.

Hi to everybody...for anybody that hasn't had a chance to hear Gordon Brown's speech at the Labour Conference, and might want to...

Hi to everybody...thought she saw herself already as the prospective president...LOL

Would love to see McCain's expression when he heard this...

I came across this polemical comment by a person called Stanlislav, a young Polish Plumber in response to this post:

http://www.order-order.com/2008/09/nec-comrades-we-are-all-united-behind.html

"All these worthy Labour members - slithering out from under their stones, muttering about principles, each avoiding the other’s shit-reeking halitosis, glistening in the arse-slime sheen of Mandelson and Campbell, their impresarios, their malevolent puppeteers; caked in the blood of Hoon’s eviscerated Iraqi babes, festooned with the guts of innocent Afghani wedding guests minding their own business, blitzed by Freedom’s friendly fire, a uniquely NewLabour contribution to world history, the world a so much better place without our boy, Saddam Hussein; the Guantanamo Bay waterboarding civil libertarians, the bad news buriers, the Hinduja tarts and the Mittalites, British passports4sale, British industries4sale, cheap4cash ; Money’s rentboys, like the politically cankerous, smirking Oily Vaz, the revolting, incompetent clowns Milburn, Clark & Hewitt, a whole horrid unHeavenly host of grasping nobodies, grafters, chisellers, thugs and degenerates; jumped-up council thugs, doctrinaire, idle potheads, bent lawyers, ponces, pimps, procurers, slags, child-molesters, blackmailers, and self-serving union windbag phoneys – who is it, one wonders, that they think they are kidding ?.

They would have us applaud their lifelong cowardice, hymn their wretched fear for their jobs and pensions and expenses and stolen gewgaws as though they were motivated by anything other than venality, as, furtively, each avoids grasping the dagger which all want thrust into their erstwhile hero, this freakish, stuttering, grubby, nail-bitten intriguer, foisted on us, by pretend journalists, as a fiscal Solomon, instead of properly caricatured as the repressed, fevered, deranged, bombastic lunatic which all could see; even as their shabby, long overrun pantomime unravels, none has the courage to venture centre-stage and denounce him to the Gods, instead, whispering and leaking and letting-it-be-known, via redundant, inebriate fluffers like the consgenitally obnoxious Sir Michael Kneepads White, that, skulking, shitting themselves, they are unhappy little shit-eating cocksuckers wishing only to get off their knees, rinse-out their mouths and reconnect, as they put it, with the values of those they have long sold down the river, our fourth richest economy providing the worst pensions and benefits in Europe, they are wishing to revive their grim snuff movie, with some equally flaccid, poxed-up bullyboy, maybe Boy Milliband, who buys the best US babies money can buy, maybe Postman Johnson, FilthyHospitalsRUs Supremo or some other vile, unemployable freak vowing to shit, more fragrantly, in our faces, all we have to do is trust him.

Back at the start of what has become impoverished HMP UK, A N Wilson, the last proper writer on the Telegraph, did a weekly piece lampooning the nauseating extravaganza of spin that was Tony & Imelda’s Cool Britannia, rich and dark as it was, Wilson gave up the slot after a while, explaining that this wasn’t funny anymore, that the grinning, rimming Blairs and their Court of grasping, incompetent polysexual stooges, slags and bandits, Mr Vaz, were beyond parody.

Bron Waugh was as dead as a smoker and there was no-one capable of adequately, routinely ridiculing Mandelson, as he, in his own words, born to govern, lubed-up every madcap chancer with some expensive nonsense to display in the Millenium White Elephant – the taxpayer-funded folly, conceived by another vain, mouthy jackanapes, Heseltine the Brooding Hysteric and which, in the end, they couldn’t even give away - a more pungent metaphor for NewLabour’s future than even the tiresome Mr Clarkson could conjure from the amazing steam-driven simile generating engine his doting mummy bought him – this car is so fast your hair catches fire ! this car is so slow you get overtaken by continental drift ! and so on, endlessly recycled, re-announced, like NewLabour’s so called spending.

There were none to mock and condemn whatever hippyshit troilism it was which so engaged bi-Tone, Imelda Gob and Carole Caplin, Mrs Gob’s number one paid best friend, ahead of number two, Fiona Wotsit, Alistair Campbell’s bint, both of them, and poor depressed, drunken pornographer Campbell, himself, conveniently on the Blairs’ payroll, or ours. Imelda, then as now, permitted to charge whatever she wanted, the horrible Scouse slag, either to the Labour Party – which loyally paid her seven grand, yes, seven grand hairdresser’s bill or to the British taxpayer.

No, among the people’s tribunes, like the rotund Mr Andrew Read My Book Rawnsley, it was all Fuck me, readers, look at all this money at long last being invested in larcenous IT providers and being flushed down the toilet into their pockets; Look, finally the country is getting the level of useless management consultants it has always needed and our hard-working politicians are now able to appoint their own most talented rentboys, Mr Balls, as Special Advisers and they can then be parachuted into safe parliamentary seats in the time-honoured tradition of the Labour movement; horny-handed sons of toil are all very well for a bit of rough, Mr Skinner, but a modern, reformist party needs modern, reformist male prostitutes, Mr Draper, if it is to meet the challenges and make the changes to whatever it is I was preaching about. Look, readers, people don’t need to scrimp and save on the minimum wage, they can just borrow whatever they want because boom and bust has been abolished, no more downturns, buy a shed today for a hundred quid, next week it’ll be worth a million, economic miracle, Gordon is a genius; just keep on taking up the market and it’ll never collapse, because he says it won’t. Just as long as we don’t have those ghastly Tories back, enthused Polly Mascara, blowing Tony for all she was worth, longing for Gordon.

And now, as though none could have foreseen it, all our wine is water, all our pearls are clay, all is tragedy of Shakespearian or Greek dimensions and brave men and true like Gisela Stewart and vengeful, skriking Ulster harpy, Hoey, and whatever gender of cowardly, self-serving plotter best describes the VileThing masquerading as Decency that is poisonous Frank Field, the Christian Socialist, foregather in dark corners to save the Kingdom from the usurper they all so enthusiastically installed, only last year; the authors of our collapse, they insist, will regroup under a new King and redeem our busted nation - but mainly their own employment prospects - they imagine.

Eleven years this Wreckers’ crew has been in charge, should they decide now to selfishly tear the prime minister, their own chosen, acclaimed, gibbering, spasming, ranting, nail-shredding, snot-eating prime minister limb from limb and post his bits around the Kingdom it will count for nothing, none will forgive them their towering incompetence, Mr Byers: their cruelty, Mr Hoon; their greed, Ms Hewitt; their vanity, Ms Abbott-Lard: their spiteful rancour, Mr Clark; their crimes and atrocities and tortures, Mr Straw; their craven lickspittle mediocrity, Frau Schmidt and the shameless, bare-faced grossness of their class betrayal, Mr Prescott.

The absolute vileness of the NewLabour MP is a place from which there is no return to decent society. Who cares what they say, how they plot, whom they eventually elect? Hijacked by the ginger filth, Kinnock, the Blairs, the freak Brown and by simpering, cowardly scum like John Monks and Brendan Barber and Dave Prentiss, what remained of the Labour movement has been completely trashed by this gang of thieves in parliament, by the TUC and by the revolting Dewar-McLeish-McConnell-Alexander succession in Scotland.

Their epitaph should be that they tarnished and corrupted and prostituted the very idea that people might choose to serve each other, rather than, greedily and entirely shamelessly, themselves; that they trampled underfoot such global respect and admiration as Tommy’s and others’ sacrifice bequeathed us in the years between 1939 and 1945; that, thanks to the deft diplomacy of the posturing hypocrite Blair, we are now, to many in the world, the bad guy, our ill-equipped troops spat upon and derided; best of all, thanks to their efforts, Labour, for the foreseeable future, will remain a dirty word. Constitution, nomination papers? Bollocks.

Let's sort-out Dave Thing when he comes to office, the empty headed prick; for now down with Labour, all of them.

Fuck ‘em all and their scurrying hither and thither, screeching. What these people need, never mind a leadership election is a good old-fashioned dose of Up Against The Wall Motherfuckerism. Romanian-style.

September 16, 2008 4:49 PM"

I do not ask if people agree with it. I ask is this the most comprehensive piece of anti-Labour invective ever seen on the internet? Or have people seen examples which surpass it? Or can they point me to an anti-Tory post of similar stature?

Hi to everybody...here's a book that might be interesting to read...

Deer Hunting With Jesus, By Joe Bageant

If you fell within the category of people who are the focus of this impassioned polemic, subtitled "Guns, Votes, Debt and Delusion in Redneck America", then you would not be reading these words, for 89-94 million members of the US adult population are "functionally illiterate". Joe Bageant exposes the vast social gulf in America, and how the poor are exploited and betrayed by those for whom they work and vote: big business and government.

Far from allowing them to remain faceless statistics, however, Bageant aims to humanise those clinging to society's fringes; those who "smell like an ash-tray in the check-out line"; the overweight and the underpaid. His informed sketches succeed in inciting not derision and scorn, but compassion.

In 1999, after a 30-year absence, Bageant returned to his hometown. In the poor, white, working-class neighbourhood of Winchester, Virginia, dwell the ghosts of his ancestors and the ghosts of his own youth. There, his father worked at a gas station, his mother at a textile mill, Bageant smoked his first cigarette and married a girl from down the street. He discovers that his neighbourhood has since been degraded, and the three preferred avenues of escape are "alcohol, Jesus and overeating".

Bageant depicts both the causes and effects of poverty, the "brutality of environment" and its "intellectual bareness". Television presides over a country which has become a corporation, pulling the purse strings and even dictating the seasons – marking its viewers' lives into the football, shopping, election and marketing seasons.

The prose style errs into tautology and flabbiness, but this is an emotive and evocative exposé of the "dead-end social construction that all but guarantees failure". That this book exists at all is testament that the determined may find ways around brick walls.

Hi to everybody...thought you might like to read this...one more woman who finds Sarah Palin dangerous...
Editor-At-Large: No woman is an island, Mrs Palin

John McCain's running mate shares the dangerous tunnel vision of George Bush junior in her avoidance of foreign travel

Janet Street-Porter
Sunday, 14 September 2008
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Are women voters in America really that hungry for power that they will endorse Sarah Palin? She makes my flesh creep – that one-note voice. That limited script. That constant referral to her twin motifs – God and Our Boys. A carefully stage-managed series of network television interviews on ABC last week only reinforced my certainty that the election of this particular female would represent a backward step, not just for her sex, but for her country.

This is someone who didn't apply for a passport until two years ago, who has only visited Canada – her next door neighbour – and Mexico, apart from one trip to Kuwait to visit the Army, with a stop-off in Germany on the way home to visit wounded soldiers. This, she told ABC's Charlie Gibson, was the "trip of a lifetime". Sarah Palin embodies all that is most insular about the American psyche. If you thought George Bush didn't do foreign travel, welcome to the frighteningly xenophobic world of Mrs Palin.

When asked if her lack of experience in foreign affairs was a drawback, she retorted something along the lines of "most vice-presidents have not met that many foreign heads of state... the desire now is for no more politics as usual... people with big fat résumés from the Washington establishment". In other words, she's proud of the fact that she's been nowhere, met no foreign politicians and possesses a curiosity which is limited to how to skin and cook a moose. She tells Gibson, "you can actually see Russia from Alaska!" I'd be more thrilled if she had ever considered visiting the place she sees on the horizon.

Is my heartfelt belief that travel broadens the mind and adds immeasurably to my understanding of the world a middle class bit of snobbery?

Do I sneer at Sarah Palin because she's happy at home in the featureless tundra of Alaska and doesn't feel the need to stare at the wonderful ceiling of the Sistine chapel, admire the Eiffel Tower, gasp at Ayers Rock or be enchanted by the Taj Mahal? A couple of hundred years ago, the upper classes toured Europe as part of their education. Young people today travel all over the world in their gap year, helping with charity projects in the Third World. Previous American Presidents, from Franklin Roosevelt to George Bush senior, realised they had to go abroad to promote their policies. President Clinton holidayed in Africa, Spain and Australia, and his daughter attended Oxford.

Sarah Palin, however, continues the tradition established by George Bush junior – why go anywhere when you can have it all in your own backyard? This fellow would rather walk around an arid ranch in Texas and round up cattle than spend one hour on holiday in a foreign land. And when he does turn up in one of the locations where he is engaged in war, he is surrounded by security and sees nothing that isn't stage-managed.

Ironically, since the US embarked on its post-9/11 foreign policy – the so-called war on terror – its leaders have spent less and less time trying to understand how people outside their own culture live and think. They talk of Muslim culture but only experience it in the confines of a combat zone. They debate global warming but have no appetite to walk across the land in the parts of Africa where crops are failing.

Sarah Palin regularly invokes a Higher Power – The Almighty – as her adviser and running mate, not John McCain, but when it comes to life on earth her tunnel vision is chilling.

Hi to everybody...I put this video up last night but it's disappeared so here it is again...
Sarah Palin's interview on the Bush Doctrine, which she clearly hasn't heard of at all...

There are five interviews on YouTube with Charles Gibson, and this woman may control the nuclear button one day if McCain wins...

Hi to everybody...as Hektor put up a post on celebrities talking about politics, I thought I'd show you the Matt Damon interview and what he said about Palin...Personally, I think the more people who speak out now in the USA, the better...

Can't find anything to object to in it...can you?

Hi to everybody...unusual for The Times newspaper to come down so hard on a right wing candidate, but it has in the case of Sarah Palin...here's what it says...
Sarah Palin: a loveable woman, but an appalling candidate
Her zest for life gives her an appeal even to those who oppose her views. But is she really White House material?
Alice Miles

Call that a woman? A gun-toting, vehement anti-abortionist with the hide of a grizzly bear draped over her sofa, who was so aggressive on the basketball court that she was nicknamed Sarah Barracuda? She makes Barack Obama look like a girl.

Call her inspirational? A former winner of beauty contests and runner-up in Miss Alaska, whose kids are named after a suburb (Willow), a salmon fishery (Bristol) and a high-school track?

Call her a “mom”? The mother of a pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old daughter, presumably going through one of the tougher periods of her life, who decides at that point to run for president and make the teenager vulnerable to the scrutiny of the entire world? Gee, mom, thanks.

Yes, she is running for president, Sarah Palin. Any deputy to a 72-year-old man with four bouts of cancer behind him has to be seen as doing just that. If politics is soap opera, here is the Hollywood movie: she's tough, she's beautiful, she's a “mom”, and she's headed for the White House.
Background

* Palin: my teenage daughter is pregnant

* Investigation: the real Sarah Palin

* Conservatives find the girl of their dreams

* Pure genius or McCain’s mad gamble?

Mrs Palin may be a feminist (you can hear, by their silence, old leftie feminists grappling with the concept of a “Feminist for Life” anti-abortionist, the group that Mrs Palin belongs to) but there is little feminine about her. She may be the supermum who can “just put down the BlackBerry and pick up the breast pump”, as she put it - but there's nothing maternal in flinging a vulnerable teenage daughter at the flashlights of the world. It's the sort of self-interested decision a softer “mom” would not make.

If someone is to present womankind on the international stage, please let it not be Mrs Palin. Please not her, I think.

Or part of me thinks. For even as I think it, another part of me cheers.

There was that cool observation when her nomination was first suggested: “What is it exactly that the vice-president does all day?” There speaks, gloriously, a working mother.

Somewhere inside me is another person who glories in this woman. I hate her beliefs, but I love that she has the guts to hold them. I hate her campaigning against abortion, but I love her personal decision to have the baby with Down's syndrome. I hate her steering her pregnant teenage daughter on to the world stage, and apparently giving her no choice about having the child and marrying the father, but I love that thing she said after her son Trig was born with Down's: “I'm looking at him right now and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking: ‘In our world, what is normal and what is perfect?'.” (And Trig came in handy too for hiding Bristol's bump when the family posed for pictures at the announcement of Mrs Palin's run.)

Strange hybrid of a woman. I love her beehive hairdo and glasses, the sexy librarian look. I hate that her daughter is a cheerleader - but I love the way that Mrs Palin took John McCain shopping for a cheerleader outfit for her daughter on the day that her candidacy was announced. What zest.

She is such a mass of contradictions, that alone may qualify Mrs Palin as all woman after all.

While I revel in her as a character, an extraordinary creation scripted uniquely in the US, still I would hate to see her in the White House. And that's the problem. What Mrs Palin represents is mesmerising this side of the Atlantic for its very political incorrectness.

So sick are we in Britain, with our centre left-centre right politicians of the centre, not one daring to have a view out of line with the very thin consensus that passes for acceptable opinion here, that we stand stunned by a woman who opposes abortion and shoots moose; who believes in creationism and drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge; who supports the aerial shooting of wolves and opposes same-sex marriage; who says to hell with the kids and just get back to work; who even campaigned against saving polar bears!

Could you be less politically correct than suing the Federal Government to prevent it making polar bears an endangered species because the move would restrict oil drilling?

Nothing like Mrs Palin has, could ever, be seen in the British political system. She turns liberals into conservatives and conservatives into feminists. Stand back, Mr Obama, a new character is storming the ratings.

How Hillary Clinton, all safe lines and patronising empathy, must be hating it. How fast Michelle Obama must be recalibrating her soft little tales about baking cookies and enjoying The Brady Bunch. Mrs Palin would eat Carol Brady for breakfast, and still have space for some moose stew. Hell, yes.

But the Sarah Palin Story is not just a show and in America, they are equally agog but not aghast - they are adoring. The American Right loves this woman. They would have her in charge of the country.

Seriously. And that is where the trouble starts. A far-right fundamentalist creationist in charge of the United States? No. Not even for the fun and the glory and the sheer spectacle of it all. Not even for the joy of seeing that beehive and specs sex appeal on our television screens every day. Not even, sadly, for the triumph of seeing a woman, a working mother of young children, in the White House, magical though that would be.

And no, not even for the magnificent scene where Mrs Palin squares up to puny President Putin with his guns and his tiger hunts and his laughably macho outfits.

They call it feminism, but the Republicans have done women a disservice. They have selected a female candidate who is a cartoon - the joker in the pack who will end up just a joke.

I think Matt Damon is a good actor. His portrayal of Tom Ripley in the Talented Mr Ripley was rather good, in my view.

Here (http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=WlTGkZq5NV8) is a link to an interview with him, where he talks about Sarah Palin and his concerns about her being a US Vice Presidential candidate.

Which brings me to the question that I have in mind - is it right and proper for celebrities to opine upon political and international affairs with the expectation that people will both listen and be influenced by their views, simply because they are celebrities?

It strikes me as supreme arrogance to think that someone's celebrity status makes them more qualified, more worthy, to pour forth their views on a particular issue. The United Nations, for instance, is filled with a plethora of major and minor celebrities performing "ambassadorial" functions, each of them in the name of the UN but without, in many instances, any relevant experience to perform such a role.

What makes Bono an authority on poverty, AIDS and climate change? It is, his leather trousers, his ability to sing in tune or fill stadiums on every continent? What makes Jude Law more qualified than others to promote the UN's Peace Day?

Perhaps it is something the celebrities now feel that they must do? (I imagine the following conversation taking place between an actor and his/her agent: "Well, let's look at your achievements: blockbuster film, tick; treading the boards, tick. It's good, but you need something more. What about one of those goodwill ambassador thingies?") Ostensible acts of kindness and humanity, as Beckett suggests in Waiting for Godot, often mask less noble and more selfish aims.

Maybe I am just being curmudgeonly, but it seems to me that simply being a celebrity does not give you a divine right to opine upon anything and everything as though you are an authority on the subject.

I sincerely look forward to hearing any views about this.

Kind regards to all.

Hektor

Hi to everybody...hubby switched on Radio 4 this morning and heard an interview between a Democrat and the head of the evangelical Church that guides McCain...he was the person who advised McCain to select Palin...towards the end of it, he said 'she's an End Timer, like me'!! I suspected she may be but now it's been confirmed...damnation...if McCain wins and she's eventually becomes President if anything happens to him, the whole world will be in huge trouble...End Timers believe that they're going to live through Armageddon and the Rapture...and no doubt, will do nothing to prevent the ultimate conflict occurring, if not be the cause of it, because it will herald the Second Coming of Christ and bring in the thousand years of peace...minus, of course, billions of people who will die in the conflagration, and the Jews will be converted to Christianity...spokespeople on her behalf are trying to cover this belief up by saying that she believes in Revelations and that the end of times is here now, but that's hardly a denial that she's an End Timer...
Here's an article on their beliefs...it's frigging scary...

The Doomsday Code

First shown on Channel 4 in September 2006

In this Channel 4 documentary Tony Robinson investigates the people with powerful political friends in the White House, who are trying to bring about the end of the world. Julia Bard reports

Revelation, the last book in the New Testament, is filled with bizarre, violent and terrifying images. Its origins are unclear and its content is controversial. Some say it is the work of St John but many others believe he could not have been the author. But whoever wrote it, described apocalyptic visions of plagues, famines, wars, devils, wild beasts and rivers of blood. It is so strange and complex that scholars down the centuries have continually reinterpreted its message and meaning.

Today, though, a growing number of American evangelical Christians reckon they have cracked the code. These End Timers believe that every weird word of Revelation predicts real events. Like a Hollywood sci fi movie they say that any time now the world will end. And when it does, true believers in Christ will be whisked up to heaven in an event called The Rapture while non-believers are left behind on earth to face famine, war, terror and destruction as the forces of good and evil fight to the bitter end.
Political implications

If this was confined to the personal beliefs of a few fundamentalists it would be of little significance but, says Tony Robinson, the leaders of the End Time movement are rich, well-connected and very powerful. Though the USA constitution enshrines the separation of church and state End Timers are frequent visitors to the White House. No one knows if George W Bush is an End Timer himself, but his policies are at one with those of the evangelical Right and his language is often apocalyptic, such as when he describes the 'war on terror' as 'the epic struggle of good and evil'.
Jerusalem

According to the prophecy, Jerusalem is where this final battle is to be played out. No stranger to conflict and violence, this city is the focus of End Timers' dreams of eternal paradise, because, according to their beliefs, this is where Christ will come back to earth. But first, they say, the Jews must return. End Timers believe that the establishment of the State of israel in 1948 was a fulfilment of the biblical prophecy and that since then 'the last days clock has been ticking'.

Many of them interpret the US government's policies on Israel and the Middle East from a biblical point of view. Before the war in Iraq, the USA supported a negotiated settlement in which Israel would return the Occupied Territories to the Palestinians. By 2004, after a torrent of criticism of the Roadmap to Peace, Bush's position had changed and now there is no call for a large-scale withdrawal from the West Bank.

End Timers parade through the streets of Jerusalem and take large amounts of cash to illegal West Bank settlements to encourage the residents to entrench themselves more deeply on this Palestinian land. In Jerusalem itself, Jews are being bankrolled by Christian fundamentalists to reside in Arab houses. The End Timers think that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke ('was removed from the scene') because he wanted to give back some of the Palestinian land.

Many Israelis are very worried about the kind of 'support' they are being offered. One journalist says that this is not based on Israel's needs and that there is no support for peacemaking. On the contrary, the agenda of the Evangelicals is war, so as to fulfil violent prophecy of Revelation.

Provocatively, some End Timers have joined forces with a fundamentalist Jewish group who want to rebuild the Temple of Solomon – touching on the ancient Jewish yearning for their destroyed Temple. But the place where they plan to build it has deep meaning for the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Temple Mount, where Islam's 3rd most holy site, Al-Aqsa Mosque, is situated, is the spot where Muslim, Jewish and Christian believers think that God created Adam, Abraham prepared his son Isaac to be sacrificed, and according to his vision, Muhammed was carried on a winged horse.

Mainstream Christians in the locality are appalled. They say attempts to rebuild the Temple are inflammatory and threaten to unleash even more bloodshed in the Middle East.
Predictions of war

Could it be that this is precisely what they are trying to provoke, in order to hasten the end of days? According to End Timers, when the believers are whisked up to heaven those left behind will face the ultimate battle between good and evil. It will take seven years to count the dead, they say – the time of Tribulation, a hell on earth. Israel will survive, according to this story, but will have a sudden victory only after a long war. Some say this means nuclear war and they support the war in Iraq because they believe that will bring it closer. Megiddo is the Hebrew name for Armageddon: the town where this carnage will occur.

For some End Timers, all this is big – very big – business. Tim LaHaye's Christian fiction series, Left Behind, has sold 63 million books, and movies of the books have been made by Cloud Ten Pictures. The internet is awash with websites which tell you how to prepare for The Rapture, and there are American shops to sell you everything you need to survive (for around $3,000) if you're unfortunate enough to be left behind.

The concept of the Antichrist originated in Medieval times, and is not found in the Bible. Nevertheless these evangelical Christians believe that the Antichrist is 'walking among us right now', the incarnation of evil, luring people to his cause with false promises of peace. For End Timers, the United Nations, whose role is to seek and maintain peace across the world, fits this description perfectly.
Undermining Africa

Now End Time beliefs are now spreading to Africa, with dire consequences. Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, is a born again Christian who is lionised by American End Timers. An American preacher in the capital, Kampala, says that the answers to Uganda's problems are not political, economic or educational, but can be found in the Bible, which he describes as 'God's constitution for the planet'.

Newspaper editor Andrew Mwenda is appalled by these Doomsday preachers, who he believes are converting young people and diverting them from fulfilling their potential and pursuing their careers. He says: 'This country is on a highway to hell.'

Uganda was a model in Africa of AIDS education and prevention and the rate of infection was falling. Now Museveni is promoting abstinence rather than safer sex, the number of cases is rising.Teacher Julius Othieno describes children being taken out of school, and not taking medicine when they are ill, in order to hasten their death.
Revelation

What is the real source of these ideas that so many people attribute to the book of Revelation? Whoever wrote it sheltered in a cave on the Greek island of Patmos, probably a refugee from Roman occupied Palestine. He is also likely to have consumed the local hallucinogenic magic mushrooms. So rather than taking these bizarre visions literally, it might make more sense to try to understand them in their historical context.

There are some 40 apocalyptic books from this era but this was the only one that made it into the Bible. If the author was writing about the hated Roman Empire, it could be that the seven heads of the beast meant the seven emperors. The mark of the beast could be the head of the emperor on the coins. The dreaded 666 very likely represented three letters indicating the Emperor Nero – representing letters by numbers was, and is, common in Hebrew. If so, instead of being a description of a world in chaos, it could be seen as a book of morality, optimism and faith.

Let's hope the End Timers start to see it like that before their actions really do bring about the end of the world.

Once again, there is a call for an 'opt out' scheme regarding organ donation. Well, in an age where everybody is tightening their metaphorical belts and everything and everybody has a cost, I put this to you; why shouldn't we charge the NHS for the donation of our organs?

We are always being told, particularly if we smoke, drink or do stuff like extreme sports, that we cost the NHS/taxpayer £100 zillion pounds a year. Well, if we're financial commodities, then our organs are commodities too, something that we have and others want, so why shouldn't we place a price on our body, as the government and NHS do? Why not bow to the inevitable, and let market forces take over: 'Reduced to clear, One heart, only slightly broken, was £5,000, now £1,500', or 'Buy a liver, get a kidney free!'.

My point is a semi-serious one. I am utterly sick of hearing how much we as individuals and groups of people, cost the taxpayer (whch we all are, we all pay for these services). Why shouldn't we benefit from providing a commodity, an assett, that we have?

Hi to everybody...here's a subject that I would like somebody with more knowledge than I have in the business world to explain to me why I should not be concerned over this. I'm not nationalistic, but rather anxious that, if the world situation deteriorated for one reason or another, how would Britain be affected with so many of its businesses in foreign hands? And have any other countries got this high a percentage of foreign ownership?

Half of British companies foreign-owned

By Vanessa Houlder in London

Published: June 24 2007 17:01 | Last updated: June 24 2007 17:01

Foreign ownership of British companies has risen from 30 per cent to 50 per cent over the last 10 years, according to new analysis from the UK’s Treasury.

The surge in foreign ownership reflects the recent wave of takeovers by overseas companies and the increasingly international outlook of institutional investors, which partly stems from the controversial tax changes affecting pension funds introduced by Gordon Brown, the chancellor, in 1997.

Interactive graphic: Tackling inflation - Jul-31

The statistics, which exclude domestic unquoted companies, were described as “striking” in a Treasury discussion document on the taxation of foreign profits issued last week. It said the rise in foreign ownership made it harder to justify taxing foreign dividends paid to British companies.

Michael Devereux of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation said the new statistics appeared to underline the impact of Mr Brown’s 2007 tax changes, which removed a £5bn ($10bn, €7.4bn) yearly tax incentive for pension funds to invest in British companies. The removal of the tax break prompted pension funds to diversify out of British equities, selling their holdings to foreign buyers.

The analysis of foreign ownership drew on data collected by the Office for National Statistics on the ownership of UK quoted shares and foreign direct investment into the UK.

The Treasury also acknowledged that the distribution of companies’ business interests was changing. With a third of all global trade conducted between arms of multinationals and profits growth increasingly coming from new markets, the competitive pressures facing global businesses were growing, it said.

Many big companies have been lobbying the government to stop taxing the dividends paid to their foreign subsidiaries, which causes administrative problems but raises little revenue. The companies argue the Treasury has no moral authority to tax their worldwide income, given that an ever-diminishing proportion of their profits is earned in the UK and the proportion of foreign ownership is growing. The Treasury appears to have accepted their arguments.
These are the banks not owned by us...
* Abbey and its online subsidiary Cahoot: owned by Banco Santander of Spain. It was Britain's sixth largest bank by assets when it was taken over in 2004.
* Allied Irish Bank (G: owned by AIB Group of the Republic of Ireland.
* Bank of Ireland: based in the Republic of Ireland. One of the leading banks in Northern Ireland, and present in Great Britain to a lesser extent.
* Clydesdale Bank: owned by National Australia Bank.
* First Trust Bank: owned by AIB Group of the Republic of Ireland.
* Northern Bank: owned by Danske Bank of Denmark.
* Yorkshire Bank: owned by National Australia Bank.

All points of view welcomed...

Hi to everybody...back from my hols now and came home to this news. I don't know whether anybody here is concerned with McCain's choice of running mate, but I am!! If he can't continue for any reason after winning the election, this is the woman who will be the most powerful person in the world...and, in my books, damned dangerous...you couldn't get anybody more right wing than this woman, and she's a creationist...poor Richard Dawkins must be having nightmares, alongside many of us, at the prospect that she may take over one day from McCain. Here's a good summary of her views...it leaves out whether or not she's an End Timer, but might well be...now I really am crossing everything McCain loses, even if I fear for Obama's survival if he wins...
McCain running mate too short on experience
Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, August 30, 2008

Republican John McCain's surprise pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate is hugely cunning, but risky.

The one-time beauty queen, who did a photo spread in December in Vogue, is a head turner. She'll grab voters' attention, which is the first order of business given the U.S. media's obsession with Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

After criticizing Obama's celebrity style, McCain has pocketed his own celeb. And the choice represents a few firsts, just as the Obama candidacy represents a breakthrough for blacks.
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain looks on as his vice-presidential running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin speaks at a campaign event in Dayton, Ohio Friday.View Larger Image View Larger Image
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain looks on as his vice-presidential running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin speaks at a campaign event in Dayton, Ohio Friday.
Palin is the first woman to run as a vice-presidential candidate for the Republicans and the first Alaskan to run on a national ticket for president or vice-president.

Importantly, Palin has no discernible ties to the desperately unpopular Bush administration.

At 44, she'd be there to replace the aging president should he keel over. Heck, she's three years younger than Obama.

Palin also, quite obviously, is a woman -- presumably of potential appeal to all those Hillary Clinton adherents so disheartened when their candidate cruelly collided with a glass ceiling in the Democratic party tent.

But while they have gender in common, Palin likely wouldn't be permitted to join the ranks of Clinton's "sisterhood of pantsuits." She's the New York's senator ideological opposite.

The mother of five is anti-abortion and wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned.

She opposes same-sex marriage and supports the teaching of creationism alongside evolution. In high school, she headed the school Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

When Palin was a sprout, she'd wake up at 3 a.m. to go moose hunting with her school teacher dad. She's a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association and is dead against having polar bears listed as an endangered species. She favours drilling in the environmentally sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which even McCain opposes.

Her 18-year-old son, Track Palin, is to deploy to Iraq in 10 days.

Palin has a reputation as a libertarian, possessed of strong ethics. Since becoming governor in 2006, she has tried hard to clean up Alaska's sometimes shady political practices; one of her first acts was to sell off the gubernatorial airplane.

The Idaho-born Palin, who has lived in Alaska most of her life, is also considered highly knowledgeable about a major issue for Americans -- energy and gas prices.

She chairs the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, the largest interstate organization in the U.S., and is former chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

The only whiff of dirt on her is an unresolved investigation into whether Palin abused her power when she fired an Alaska state worker last month.

It's a complicated tale involving her former brother-in-law, but it's unlikely to besmirch Palin's national standing.

Arguably, her candidacy reflects a cunning political choice. That being said, Palin is a newcomer to the big leagues. Surely voters will have serious reservations about having an inexperienced politician just a heartbeat from the U.S. presidency.

Frightening woman in my opinion....