Hanged

Somehow, I fail to see how one more death will do anything to help the Iraqi people - especially not the death of such an important man in Iraq. This will do nothing but escalate the violence. This means that not only will the Kurdish people not be given justice for the brutal anfal campaign, but he will also never be tried by the International Criminal Court for War Crimes and genocide.

BNP Fresh Nazi Tacticts

A news article on the Stop the BNP website (from the Daily Mail of all places), drew attention to a shift in BNP tactics from trying to appeal solely to the working class to trying to appeal to the middle classes. This resembles perfectly a conscious move made by the Hitler in the mid 1920s to gain support from the middle class, and it was the middle classes that in the end propelled him to power. Lets hope everyone else sees through such a cynical ploy.

Billy Bragg on Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson

Went to see him at Hackney Empire on Sunday. He was very good.

Iran

Ok Ahmedinejad, you are a jackass, but you already know this don't you. You are also a racist, but you also know that. What you also are, is a two-faced liar - but that's the same old story.

What really bugs me about Ahmedinejad and his Holocaust "conference", is the grounds he uses to justify it. He paints himself to be the sole champion of free speach standing up to western hypocrisy ... hah! It is a measure of his own hypocrisy when he bars entry to people intending to address the conference so that they might show that the Holocaust did in fact happen and is not just a "Jewish myth". Khaled Mahameed, an Israeli Arab lawyer who runs the worlds first Holocaust museum catered to the Arab population (including photographs from Yad Vashem), was invited to the conference and then refused a visa by the Iranian foreign ministry because he is an ISRAELI arab. Germany attempted to gain entry for a group of Israeli survivors, but this was also denied. What a shining example of free speach on the part of Iran and its backward, theocratic, undemocratic regime.

Veggie Chilli

2 tins (800g) of chopped tomatoes
2 tins (800g) of kidney beans
1 jar (300g) of tomato puree
300g of meat-substitute (quorn, tofu, veggie mince, chopped peppers)
6 cloves of garlic
2 red chillies
1/2 a glass of port
2 teaspoonfuls of tabasco sauce
1/2 a teasponnful of salt.

Watch out Bruce ...

... Mayor Bloomberg has stars in his eyes.

Kazakhstan

Where will the urine cultivation fields go, Borat?

Pinochet

I can think of no better day for The Bastard of Chile© (I know it's a bit crass but I think it's extremely accurate) to finally leave this world than Human Rights Day. My thoughts are with his victims and their families (although Maggie Thatcher's aren't)

Old Scars Never Heal

A german department store has been forced to remove a collection of wooden santas from their shelves because some felt uncomfortable with the way in which their arms were pointing to the sky and thought that it resembled a Hitler salute. The department store expressed their shock at the reaction as well they should, but I think the main thing that one gets from this is that the German people are still so touchy about something that happened sixty years ago, and have never really come to terms with what they and the Nazis did. This is not constructive in any way. How is it possible to move on when you still can't bear to see a wooden figurine whose arm may or may not be in a position resembling a Nazi salute? One of the main problems is the older generations' seeming unwillingness to talk about the past. "The past is history, it doesn't matter any more" they say, but it does matter. If you can't talk about the past, then the truth gets distorted, and the historical revisionists and holocaust deniers are allowed to further spread their lies because they're the only ones talking about the past. How is one supposed to accept the truth of what happened when those who were there won't talk about? The Nazis cunningly distorted history to get the people to believe that their government had betrayed them, and it is the neo-Nazis who are distorting history now, and the apparent increase in support for neo-Nazis across Europe is testamant to the fact that their tactics are working and will work as long as everyone in Germany remains silent about what happened.