Halloween

This is the view from Willesden on Halloween, taken in the last few minutes.

Oni

"What planet is The Guardian on?" - Skynews

"It's hard to know sometimes what planet the Guardian is on" says Skynews, commenting on today's Guardian's front page. That's rich from Murdoch's sputnik.

15,000 or 100,000 or 1

Guardian Unlimited Special reports 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study: "The researchers criticise the failure of the coalition authorities to attempt to assess for themselves the scale of the civilian casualties."



Jack Straw is sceptical about the figure of 100,000. "Harumph, only 15,000 old boy." He splutters his chardonnay. Only 15,000. What does it matter if it's 15,000 or 100,000 when 1 would've been 1 too many?



Isn't it a pity a few governmental figures couldn't have been sacrificed instead. Thousands of ordinary people would still be with us, and we'd be free of the sharks that are feeding on us. Make these cosy shysters get out and do individual battle to settle their "issues of principal." Blair and Tariq Aziz in a mudwrestling ring. Bush and Saddam in a lancing joust.



To hell with them all, and the arms exporters too.



Zoz

The little people

Flores man special

Zoz

Fatal logic

What the Israeli retaliation raids say is this, "The attacks on us were completely without justification, but after our disproportionate devastations and killing sprees, they have now been justified post facto." The impression is conveyed is that their revenge is a source of pleasure and smugness to them. In this way they are inviting escalation, and challenging the ingenuity of their enemies to come up with even more disproportionate attacks, and all the time they are thinking, "We have nuclear weapons." If they can't see where this leads them, they need to have their eyes tested, if they have any left. The actions of the IDF are not in keeping with the plausible sounding denials of their politicians. The febrile antics in the Knesset comprise a pantomime to obfuscate the land grabbing and ethnic cleansing that the state of Israel continues to perpetrate in reality. They are only fooling themselves. People can justify any actions to themselves, and they should know that, and that is what they are doing.



Zoz

Say goodbye to Euro asshole

Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event: "Robert Kilroy-Silk has resigned from the UK Independence Party over his failed campaign to oust the leader."

"It was the Herald wot Willes-done it."

"When will the Black Watch roll? When is the election?"

It looks like Zozimus was right.

Extortion charge zone / Livingstone is a reptile

Congestion Charge website down

I am trying to pay for my wife who is about to drive through Livingstone's Extortion Charge zone, and their fucking website is down. Rotten bastards. How am I supposed to pay their extortion? I can't afford to fall foul of the protection racket they run, when they bump the charge up to £80 if it's not paid in advance. They double it after that. Fuckers. Absolute fuckers. Livingstone is a reptile.

Ed.

Update

I've just spent half an hour of my life slaving for the Bureaucracy in order to get through their hoops and pay £5 by credit card to their protection racket, so that my wife can travel on the public highway to where she needs to get to today.

When you add up all these half hours of yours they waste, and all the half days queuing for Vehicle Duty discs, and all the days filling in tons of self-punishment tax forms, across the population (the serfs) it adds up to many lifetimes per year. This is the equivalent of mass murder, and the whole establishment should be rounded up and exiled to Rockall or Hell, and let us get on with our lives.

Let us post playbills. Yay! Let us park wherever we like. Yay! Let bureaucrats work in productive employment. Yay! I am happy to contribute for the NHS, Education, Housing and benefits, but not for systems of persecution and exploitation of the public. Don't even start me on the "Community Charge" - the rates. The Liberal Democrats are right, there should be a local income tax, and it doesn't need any additional bureaucracy to operate it. A simple calculation programmed into one computer and run once per year will apportion the levy across the local councils. If they can't do it, they should resign and get real workers to install it for them. Bastards.

How can they sink billions of pounds into black holes in companies like Fujitsu, for computer systems that never work, are never fully delivered or completed, and then scrap projects and start over. I could program and organise those systems MYSELF, and I wouldn't need billions of pounds to do it. We are being robbed blind.

Now open Willesden, Neasden and Prague

This travesty of womanhood and dance dominates the road up to Neasden from Willesden. Would it be a bigger crime to rip it down, or to leave it there?

When will the Black Watch roll? When is the election?*

Cannon to the right of them

Cannon to the left of them

...

Into the triangle of death

Rode the six hundred eight hundred and fifty



*The election is in "weeks rather than months" (less than 2 weeks.) Of the same calendar order as the length of the mission. The other election is in "months rather than weeks"; it's nothing to do with that one.



Zoz

This is where all Bush's praying has led

soliloquist: War Crimes



(Salon 15 July 2004) - Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tape: "Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."



If only a fraction of this were true, Bush and his cronies should not just be defeated in the upcoming election, they should be facing life sentences in prison for crimes against humanity.

Zoz

Glimmer of Hope : Go Johnny Go!

Sky News



John Kerry has moved ahead of George Bush in opinion polls, just a week before the US election.



The latest tracking poll from Rasmussen Reports gives Mr Kerry 48.4% of the vote, compared to 46.4% for Mr Bush.



Meanwhile, the authoritative ABC News poll gives Mr Kerry 49% to Mr Bush's 48%.



He's not perfect, but he's far better than the alternative.

Zoz

Public rejects Blair's casino plans

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports: "The finding follows Tony Blair's uncompromising defence yesterday of the government's proposed gambling bill, insisting that it is '90% about better regulation, better protection for children' and the removal of existing slot machines from 6,000 high street premises where youngsters now play them."



10% is not about better regulation or better protection for children then. That's Blair's 10%, I presume.

Zoz

World press photograph of the year

soliloquist: The War on Terror?: "Iraqi man comforts his son at a holding centre for prisoners of war, Al Najaf, Iraq. Jean-Marc Bouju."

Zoz

Bush's gift to Al Qaeda

VIENNA (Reuters)



"Nearly 380 tons of explosives are missing from a site near Baghdad that was part of Saddam Hussein's dismantled atom bomb programme but was never secured by the U.S. military, the United Nations says.



"The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, will immediately report the matter to the U.N. Security Council, a spokeswoman for the agency said on Monday."

Zoz

It's not possible to impose our will on Iraq

I hate the people who massacred the 50 Iraqi recruits, and they will probably get what they deserve in return. But none of this leaves us any further forward.



I wish we could do something to make Iraq a liberal democracy (for what it's worth) but I don't think it's possible and I don't believe wars of invasion are winnable in a country of any significant size. My own native country, Ireland, is a country of about 5 million people and I doubt any invader could conquer it, for all practical purposes. Iraq's population is over 20 million and it's a much bigger country, with more resources and a proud history.



Patience, diplomacy and some of the billions wasted on the war could have been used to support dissidents to get rid of Saddam, and could have saved the lives of thousands, as well as the infrastructure of Iraq. All we can do now is eject the lousy leaders we have from office and encourage the incoming ones to turn away from war. There's no point in despairing, but unless we get rid of Bush and Blair we're in for more of the same - and worse.



Zoz

Your Fears / Four Years

The New York Times: Bush Keeps Focus on Preparedness for Terrorism; Kerry Shifts to a Theme of Hope

Support your local bookshops

If you're in northwest London, don't waste your money on Amazon delivery charges. Just pop in to the Willesden Bookshop, Kilburn Books or Queens Park Books and get yourself a copy of The London Silence while there are still a few in stock. Alternatively, I'm sure your local bookshop would be happy to order it for you.

Ossian

A penny for Saddam*

Children outside Willesden Green station this evening, with an effigy of Saddam Hussein instead of Guy Fawkes.

*The sign says "Penny 4 the Guy / Execution 5th November" (bonfire night.)

Who would you vote for, dull or stupid?

Bush cries wolf

"As the campaign approaches its last full week, Mr Kerry is focusing his efforts on south-western states today, and will make a speech tomorrow on faith in an attempt to attract undecided religious voters.

"The president, meanwhile, has surprised some of his supporters by deciding to take a rest, withdrawing to his ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the weekend."

All work and no play makes John a dull boy. All play and no work makes George a stupid boy.

Release Margaret Hassan

Sky News: "Kidnapped care worker Margaret Hassan has made an emotional plea for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq in a new video aired by an Arabic TV station."



If those rotten sewer rats don't release Margaret safe and sound, I swear I'll sign-up to blast the fuck out of them myself.



Zoz

Chequers mate

The Prime Minister has claimed £43,000 of public money on a constituency home bought for just £30,000 according to the Daily Mail.



Zoz

Iraq: January election - "weeks rather than months"?

More hoons: "An armored battlegroup of 850 soldiers from the First Battalion Black Watch complete with medics, signalers and engineers will be redeployed for a 'limited and specific period of time, lasting weeks rather than months' to relieve U.S. troops, Hoon said."

It's October. Before the Iraqi elections in January, we will have to traverse the months of November and December. Months, not weeks.

However the US Presidential election is in weeks not months.

You don't have to be Professor Kronk to work this one out. They have refused previous requests for troops, but in the run-up to the US Presidential election, they have accepted this request. What a pack of hooners.

Fear and Loathing in 2004

RollingStone.com: "Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mister President,' and then I felt ashamed." (Hunter S. Thompson)

Zoz

Science for the Confused - an occasional series

No.1: Space and Time

Did you know that space and time are really the same thing? To have space is to have time, and to have time is to have space. You can't have one without the other. Without space there is nowhere to have time, and without time there is no time to have space. We can't see timespace fully because we are functions of it. It is behind us, in a way that we can't turn around to see. We are part of a marbled edifice growing, not moving. We do not move from place to place, but grow from one place to another, but we can only see the surface, the growing tip, and not the marbled trails. We are not bodies but body-shaped tendrils trailing through the years.

It is not time travel that we need, in order to see the past, it's an additional sense. Whether it is possible to generate such an additional sense using only the ones we have to start with is a difficult question. A superior being would carry on its existence not only at the "flat" three-dimensional tip (think of two-dimensional analogy) where we exist, but simultaneously in more than one spacetime location. Therefore such a being would not need to travel in time, it would be in or span many places in time at once. Evolution doesn't look like it will ever get us there, and devices travelling at any speed couldn't get us there, because they are only trying to move from one location to another. What we need is a device that will enable us to be in more than one location simultaneously.*

Some experiments with photons and particles, e.g. sending them different ways through polarising filters and detecting where they end up, produce results indicating that a particle has gone both ways simultaneously. Also one half of a particle spins one way, the other the opposite way, no matter how far apart you separate them, when you change the spin on one of the particles the other changes too. This defies the theory of relativity, because it shows action / influence travelling faster than the speed of light, yet nothing can travel faster than the speed of light according to Relativity. But can something be in two places at once?

Next >>

Professor Kronk

*The Herald would like to offer a million pound prize for the first person to build such a device. Richard Branson would you please contact us to arrange sponsorship. I think I will call this the Padre Pio project. Ed