Middle East Peace? Not if Israel Has Their Way!

Yet again Israel hangs it’s violent, racist, fanatical and inflexible pedigree out in public.

On the one hand they are not prepared to slow down their illegal settlement activities while they negotiate for peace with Palestine. And on the other they continue to destroy all areas of Palestinian life.

They plan to build almost 1500 new houses in one of the West Bank settlements, using the relocation of 50 families from elsewhere as justification, taking control of more Palestinian land in the process. This almost sounds the same as what Mugabe did by taking possession of white farmers’ land in Zimbabwe – at least as violent and illegal. So why doesn’t Israel get the same attention and condemnation that Mugabe’s regime did? I’ve said it before (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/08/19/axes-of-evil/), and I say it again here.

Israel are obviously not prepared to let the peace negotiations proceed without substantially shifting the goalposts in their own favour using every means possible.

Meanwhile the borders to Palestine are kept closed, even to medical supplies and basic childcare requirements. These are not the actions of a country striving for peace. Clearly Israel has no humanitarian outlook, and takes no care to avoid unnecessary harm to innocent civilians. It has prejudged all Palestinians as terrorists, treating them as such, when all the Palestinians are trying to do is survive from day to day. This is exactly what the Jewish people endured prior to the creation of Israel as a country. And now the Jewish state takes revenge by brutalizing someone smaller than themselves.

All it would take to calm the situation down, to end the violence, the persecution of civilians is one thing: for Israel to stop what they are doing. I am not advocating a permanent cessation of all activities vis-à-vis the Palestinians and their land, just stop. Now. And start talking.

The basic fact about violence is that it needs two sides in order for it drag on unchecked. If one side is not fighting, the conflict will cease almost immediately. However it must be the dominant side that takes the first step. If it is Palestine that stops first, the last Israeli strike could cause considerable damage to what’s left of Gaza. Whereas if it is Israel that stops first, the last suicide bomb or missile will probably only knock a hole in a wall or two in Israel.

It is about time that the USA woke up to the extremist country they are supporting. Israel could not afford to survive without the huge cash donations it gets from the USA, but America is washing its hands of the actions Israel takes with American money to destroy Palestine. For how much longer must this go one?

The US says that the building must stop to enable a viable Palestinian state to emerge alongside Israel through negotiations. But what are the USA doing to add teeth to this political wet sop? Nothing. No restrictions on support to Israel, no sanctions, just talk. All hot air and nothing else.

Wake up USA, Israel only wants you for your money. They don’t care about anything else. The only way to get Israel’s attention is to stop the money. Forget the talk, the speeches of outrage, the media posturing – stop the cash!

Only when Israel runs out of American cash with which to raze Palestinian life will the region be able to make any progress towards creating a lasting peace for all peoples. Then they might be able to tear down the walls instead of building them higher.

EU Elections – or The Fringe Festival

What is in it for the average EU citizen to vote in the upcoming EU elections? To answer that we must ask – what does the EU do for that same average citizen?

And the answer to that is not difficult to work out – nothing. Or even less than that – it gets in the way of the average citizen

If I want to go out and buy some of my local feta cheese – I can’t. If I want to drive my Finnish truck on European roads – I can’t. If I want to plant some sugar beet when I want – I can’t. Feta cheese is a ‘named’ product that can only come from a small part of Greece. So the biggest feta cheese producer in Europe – Denmark, is forced to call it’s cheese something else. Trucks built in Finland are apparently about 6cm too wide for European road standards, and so must either be trimmed down the side by that amount, or stay at home. And in the agricultural arena, if there is too much of one product in the EU, you are not allowed to produce it, even if there is a shortage in your local country. Again the Finns seem to prefer the quality of their local sugar beet, but the farmers there are not allowed to grow it because there is a surplus of inferior product elsewhere in Europe!

So tell me – what does the EU actually do for the average citizen: it hinders and obstructs and taxes them at just about every opportunity, for no real return.

There are three groups that benefit significantly out of the EU. Firstly is the politicians who otherwise would have no-one to listen to all their hot air and useless pronouncements. Secondly the multilingual circus of bureaucrats that is required to keep the whole organisation functioning. Note that they do nothing for anyone in Europe, they just shuffle the parliament backwards and forward between Belgium and France every couple of months, and translate every single document into every single language. Do you really think that the Italians or the Portuguese want to know the details of the Arctic reindeer policies? Of course not, but to justify their existence, the bureaucrats claim that the translation is required.

And the final beneficiaries are the people on the edge that have got the ear of the politicians. The lunatic fringe, the flavour of the month in charity causes, the losers who cannot survive on their own. These are the groups that live off handouts from the EU, from our taxes.

So who is going to vote this weekend? The bureaucrats who believe in the way of life they have become accustomed to, and the minorities who can not survive without it.

And with the notoriously small voting turnout in EU elections, these groups will get enough votes to ensure that nothing changes, and nothing threatens their precious parasitic lives.

As for me – as soon as I hear of a candidate who pledges to downsize this EU behemoth, I know where my vote is going.

I hope you’ll see some sense and do the same, its better for your taxes in the long run.

America – Join the Dialogue or be Considered Racist

The latest attempt by the UN to resolve some of the most pressing issues in our modern world has just been scuttled. And not by some flea-bitten terrorist dictatorship grandstanding on some obscure point of protocol, but by, supposedly, the leading nation of our globe – the US of A.

 

Yet again the USA expects the rest of the world to agree with them, only them, and nobody else, ALL OF THE TIME.

 

This time it is the UN Racism forum in Geneva. It has been boycotted by the USA and other nations because, wait for it, they don’t like the mood of the forum!

Apparently the forum is lining up to accuse Israel of crimes against humanity. Well maybe not that strong – but they should! It is about time that Israel’s performance in Palestine be recognised for what it is – brutal thuggery, repressing a people with different beliefs. And if that is not racism – what is? They have labelled every Palestinian a terrorist, and are treating them accordingly.

The only way to solve the Mideast issues is through dialogue, understanding and tolerating differences – from all sides. And that includes the USA who still seems to believe that Israel is completely innocent of all charges. Despite all that ex-Pres Jimmy Carter says, the American general public still swallow the lies, fabricated facts and half stories fed to them by their government. They firmly believe in their own position of being right despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

By not participating they are fueling and escalating the very thing they are complaining about – intolerance of religious and idealogical differences. How do they expect to be able to influence and change anything if they don’t even bother to turn up to the forum to talk about it?

 

The other complaint from the USA is that the mood of the forum has an anti western bias. Well if the USA can’t take a bit of criticism itself, why does it continually ‘lay down the law’ about other countries’ behaviours!! Do unto others as you want them to do unto you. So if the USA is always berating other countries about their performances, then they can only expect to receive the same sort of ‘helpful’ comments back!

Instead of turning their back when other countries speak a different message, it is about time that the USA listened to the opinions of others. They should not trample all over them, and insist that the world kowtow to the American view of reality in all things.

World Domination of Cricket

The BCCI (Board of Control of Cricket in India) seems to have forgotten what the very initials of their organisation stand for. They seem to think that they can decide who does what anywhere in the cricket speaking world!

Whether it is the makeup of a team to play against India in a different country, the roster of commentators for a completely independent broadcaster, or even the players who are eligible to play in competitions run by other organisations in other countries. They don’t seem to have any limit to their own perception of their authority. Surely the last letter of their acronym should give some idea of where their sphere of influence in the sport? Doesn’t the acronym BCCI limit them to control of the game IN INDIA? Then why do they think that they can demand presence or absence of certain participants in other countries, other games and other companies?

In New Zealand recently India requested that NZ not select a certain player as part of its own Invitation Eleven to play against India. NZ quite rightly refused and selected the player in question. India then threw a tantrum and pulled out one of its own star players! Why just one, why not all of them? Why the star of the team? Was the player allowed to have a say – it’s his career, presumably he wanted to play!

Later in the tour of NZ, a particular person was invited to be a commentator by one of the NZ broadcasters. Again India tossed their toys out the window and demanded that he not commentate!! What arrogance! Did they really think that a company in a different country, pursuing its own profit motives as best it could, would change their mind because of the BCCI? Maybe if the BCCI backed up their demands with some wads of cash, but that’s pretty unlikely!! These, and many other, unwarranted demands around the world are causing a lot of very unnecessary furore.

The point of contention is that these people have some past connection with the ICL tournament, which runs in competition against the BCCI’s own tournament – the IPL. And to have any connection is not just frowned on, it is harshly banned. Players around the world have had their international careers cut short simply because they were involved with the ICL and thus annoyed the BCCI, who then ‘leaned’ on the national organisations of the players involved and got them ‘unselected’.

If they want to ban half the players in their own country from the international cricket scene – go ahead, their problem. But they have no mandate to try and do the same thing in any other country around the world. Stop creating turmoil in the international game, and stick to shitting in your own nest. That’s were you belong BCCIndia!

But Is It Football?

There was nothing much else on the box, so I thought I’d watch some of the European Championships football matches. Tonight happened to be Liverpool vs Real Madrid. But really it could have been any one of the matches, the clubs are all the same in terms of their antics – legal or otherwise, once they get onto the grass.

Well there were two teams, both of 11 men, all on the same pitch. There was also a ball and a referee on the pitch which both, however, seemed rather incidental to the real action.

The first goal, in hindsight, was scored after the defender had been physically pulled over and dumped to the ground. The attacker’s arm reached out, hand clasped the defender’s shoulder and jerked backwards. Lo & behold – one defender flat on his back and the goal now open.

Soon after that one of the players delivered a horizontal scissors kick across an opponent’s legs that would have scored a gold medal on the pommel horse. One leg goes in front of the player with the ball, the other leg comes swinging in from the back, aiming squarely for the back of the knee, to slam the ball holder to the ground, while pretending to go for the ball. The gesticulating afterwards, protesting against the well deserved yellow card, was the pure ego-tripping histrionics of a spoilt self-centred brat. Which, of course, is just what most football players are! Meanwhile the victim was lucky to get away without having his legs broken.

Sure they all go down when an opponent’s boot dares approach closer than a metre (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/ballet-with-boots-but-no-balls/), but they also deliver killer blows to unsuspecting opponents, without batting an eyelid, and then protest to the ref and stamp away in a sulk calling him a blind ba****d.

We often hear of various clubs employing talent scouts to watch games in order to short list the players they need to buy into their team. I think its time for a bit of thinking outside the box, or outside the pitch to be precise. Some of the entertainers (they’ve long since given up being called wrestlers!) on WWF, or whatever it is called, could do a pretty good number on their opponents on the football pitch. Likewise, I see a great future for some ‘football’ players, on the mat of a wrestling ring.

So what is – European Championships Football, or All In Hacking?

As I’ve said before – its time to get tough with some post match slow motion replays delivering some appropriate penalties to the perpetrators of the worst of the violence.

Advertising Flyers and Littering

We live in a world where finally it is being frowned on to wantonly throw litter away. At home and in the office we are encouraged to separate and recycle our rubbish. But once we get out onto the street the focus seems to have drifted a bit. Nobody seems to care that we throw rubbish onto the ground, cigarettes get stubbed out anywhere and chewing gum is tossed away regardless of how far it is to the nearest rubbish bin.

But most blatantly, it is the people who think they are doing us a service, who are actually causing the biggest mess on our pavements. At street corners and transport hubs they proliferate. Whether at election time to hand out candidate flyers, or in the evening to advertise the local nightclubs, or at any other time, we see them standing around forcing their little pieces of paper into our hands. Because it is ‘information’, and ‘for our benefit’, they feel justified in carrying on with this practice. They have to get their message across, and they’ve decided that this is the most efficient way of doing it.

It is very easy to work out the main pedestrian flow, because ‘downstream’ from these people is a huge spread of discarded flyers on the ground. It starts after about one metre, grows rapidly for another four or five meters to a full ground-covering layer, and then dwindles away over the next 10 or so metres. And does anyone do anything about it?? Of course not, freedom of speech or freedom of the press, or freedom of some damn thing, but anyway they continue handing out rubbish that is promptly dropped on the ground at their feet.

And when they have finally handed out their complete supply, what happens next? They walk away. A simple as that. No attempt whatsoever to clean up the mess they directly created. “We didn’t drop them”, they whine, “the public did, it’s their fault.”

Well guess what – you can tell by the number that were dropped immediately exactly how much we wanted that information. Not at all!! It’s their information, their paper, their rubbish, and their obligation to clean it up.

I sincerely hope that our city councils are actively charging these organisations for the right to stand on the street and litter the pavements. It looks like a great source of revenue to cover the cost of cleaning up the mess afterwards. And if the price is high enough, it might serve a dual purpose. It will bring in much needed cash and it might even dissuade them from repeating the practice again in the future. Thus we will perhaps better encourage a more responsible use of our scarce resources, instead of watching them being consumed in the printing and discarding of the paper.

So we need to understand that this mass littering is a crime, if not against the law, then certainly against us and against the planet for incredibly bad use of our resources. It must stop.

Airport Security Regulations and American Paranoia

“Strip, please, yes and your belt and shoes”. No, not under some subdued lighting in a back-streets room with a woman of dubious reputation. Instead very much in public view and under the harsh glare of an airport security checkpoint. Everyone complies, no arguments are allowed. This public humiliation, this rude interruption to our rights of safe passage, this intrusion into our personal privacy is almost completely unjustified. And then they have the effrontery to justify their invasive behaviour with the catch-all line ‘we’re doing this for your own safety’.

So what are they actually doing and are they achieving anything at all from it?

Requiring travellers to open laptops and take out the batteries prior to putting them into the scanner; allowing empty bottles to be kept, but any bottle that has any liquid at all in it will be confiscated; demanding the removal of even the smallest of men’s belts, while women’s belts remain right where they are thank you very much; and so on. A tube of toothpaste that has been through several airports is suddenly subject to confiscation from an over-zealous guard, eager to throw his unwarranted authority around on victims who are not allowed to complain.

Which particular aspect of safety is enhanced by any of these measures noted above? What better security do we get if a laptop is placed open into the scanner compared to a closed laptop – None!

How dangerous is a well-used tube of toothpaste? It has been through the scanner, no bomb was detected, but no – ‘we’ll have that’ they say.

 

All of these checks are directly driven by American paranoia, and then enforced by governments globally who are fearful of offending the mighty US of A. Americans are so scared of the rest of the world that they insist that everything and everyone is put under the microscope before getting anywhere near their borders. Maybe they should ask why they are so scared – there’s a good question!! There is no danger of terrorist attacks in countries as far apart as Finland and New Zealand, but even in these far flung corners of the globe, American paranoia prevails over common sense and customer comfort.

What would happen if governments around the world started following the US in other areas of repressing their citizens?

As I have noted elsewhere in this blog, we would lose the ability to have art shows exhibiting any part of the naked human anatomy (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/decent-exposure/ ); we would be forced to censor our literature to conform with the currently accepted American standards (http://goodtalking.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/censorship-of-the-arts-in-america/); we would be become obliged to interrupt all our advertising programs with no more than a few minutes of actual performance each hour on television; we would have to support greater safety on the streets by allowing everyone to carry whatever gun they want whenever they want; and we would force a lawyer driven perception of reality, in which every event is an opportunity to get rich quick at someone else’s expense, on our innocent and lawyer free cultures.

 

So why is it that we have all enacted their draconian ‘public safety’ measures at airports, when we realise what a lot of crap other aspects of the US culture are.

The sooner that our governments start to lead a life of their own in this area, the sooner we will have smoother and easier travel. As a sop to the US, we can maintain separate strip search security channels just for their citizens, so that they feel comfortable as they are subject to this invasive security for no real benefit.

 

And where is the forum for us to say “Enough!” Everyone is too scared to say anything as they might be seen to be sympathising with terrorism.

There is no-one we can complain to, nobody will stand up and admit responsibility for the rules governing how we are searched. Airport security guards point to airport authorities, who point to governments – but not to a particular person or department. No, just the faceless term ‘the government’ is responsible.

Well we elect the government, they are empowered to do what we want them to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Do we want them to continue with this intrusion into our privacy? I think not, so now we need say “Enough!”

Waste of Time, Money and Resources

We’ve all been there – cruising along the road, and then suddenly having to come to a complete halt. Stuck there interminably, and for no good reason. And then, just as suddenly, we’re on the way again.

No not traffic jams and gridlock, unwanted and unneeded traffic lights!

Why do councils suddenly see the need for more artificial interruptions to the traffic flow, when it has been working smoothly until now? Is it some sort of training exercise for new traffic engineers – give them a quiet intersection to see if they can stuff it up for the traffic?

There has never been a request from the public – “please can we have some lights installed at this intersection”. No, the council always knows best what we all desperately need, even if we don’t say so.

Having traffic lights, including the pedestrian crossing lights, running on an automatic cycle is a complete waste of effort. If there are no pedestrians or crossing traffic, why does the rest of the traffic have to stop and wait for their red light to change to green?

Any competent council would see from a quick survey that there is not enough traffic to warrant any form of control. But no, the councils have to justify their existence, and the only way to achieve that is to make the traffic stop needlessly. It has cost the council (ie US the Taxpayer!) money to study the intersection, time for planning the phasing, resources for building and installing the system, and then ongoing maintenance when impeded motorists take out their frustration on the lights.

And what has it all achieved? Nothing – no improved flow, no better clearing of waiting traffic in the side streets and no facilitation of pedestrians crossing (there were none there to start with!).

Just get rid of the lights, and let the traffic take care of itself without interruption.

Three Laws of Humanity

Years ago Isaac Asimov created the Three Laws of Robotics: A robot must not harm a human, a robot must obey a human, and a robot must protect its own existence (in descending order of priority). They defined the parameters of robotic action. A robot could only break one of the second two laws if it did so in order to keep one of the first two laws. That controlled the fictional interactions between robots and human society.

Should we not think then, about controlling the very real interactions between governments and our human societies? In most countries we vote to elect a government and allow them to create and enforce legislation on our behalf. This creation and enforcement of legislation is the interaction between governments and people that should be monitored.

Perhaps we can think of some principles concerning the creation and enforcement of legislation then. I would suggest the following (in order of decreasing priority):

Laws can not be enforced which harm the planet;

Laws can not be enforced which harm humanity;

Laws can not be enforced which harm individual humans.

Using the first principle of this rationale then, we would tell governments that they cannot have laws which for example allow resource stripping companies to plunder minerals from sensitive environmental areas, even though humanity might need those minerals for improved living standards. How many of our governments give in before the intense lobbying of industrial giants to the detriment of small local populations.

An example of the effect of the second principle is to say that governments should not enforce laws which give one group of people ascendancy over another. This would have a significant impact in the way dictators are protected by their status as leader of a country. A current example of this is Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe where he is stripping assets from one group of citizens, and bestowing them on another group. As soon as he steps outside his own controlled territory, he should be arrested. Is there any country in the world today with the guts to do that? I think not.

And the third principle would have the effect of not being able to enforce laws concerning a person’s behaviour in the privacy of their own home. If an individual is harming humanity in some way such as committing crime to support a drug-using lifestyle, then the third rule is superseded by the second rule. But if they are using drugs in the privacy of their own home, humanity is not affected, so no law can be enforced against that individual. It would save a lot of money in our law enforcement and incarceration of criminals.

If we were to hold our governments’ performances up against these criteria, how many of them would achieve a pass mark with the laws they are enforcing. It’s time humanity stood up and told governments exactly what we expect of them. They should stop creating legislation as a result of short-term, vote-gathering, knee-jerk reactions, and start creating a real positive legacy for humanity and our planet.

Advertising – Spam By Any Definition

When we are bombarded with glossy pictures of wonderful things, we have to ask ourselves – did we ask for this to be sent to us? And of course we didn’t. But despite this lack of mandate from us consumers, advertisers all feel compelled to thrust their message into our faces. They seem to think it is their right to intrude on our privacy and waste our precious spare time with their demand that we consider and buy their product.

 

Who gave them that idea? By what right do they stuff their rubbish into our mailboxes (real and virtual)? There is no justification for their behaviour. If we want the product, we will go and get it. We know where the shops are, we have phones and phone books, we can search the internet. But even with all these resources, advertisers still think that we are too dumb to find for ourselves a set of steak knives, or a three person leather couch, or any other simple household product. So they ‘save our time’ by doing the looking for us. And telling us what they’ve found for us. But they do it every day, every week, every month. And for every conceivable product under the sun. Any saving of time is lost with all the searching we would have to do through all the advertising rubbish to find the one useful piece of information. We do better by ignoring it all and going out and doing the searching ourselves.

Of course this volume of advertising multiplies outrageously leading up to Christmas. This is one of the few times in the year when we have more to do than time to do it – cards, presents, holiday plans, food shopping, decorations, and so on. And yet, when we have so much to do, the volume of advertising suddenly increases to a flood, inundating us in meaningless, vacuous advertising clap-trap.

We have got better things to do with our lives than read all this rubbish.

Take it away.