Tag The Guardian

Entries 19 Total

Obama perpetuates “wiped off the earth” lie

Sep 25, ’10 4:51 PM

Barack Obama:

Under­stand­ably, Israel is very con­cerned when the pres­id­ent of a coun­try, a large coun­try near them, states that they should be wiped off the face of the earth.

Which is simply a lie. Is it any won­der Amer­ic­ans are so brain­washed?

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Hey hey Tony hey, how many kids have you killed today?

Sep 4, ’10 9:51 PM

Tony Blair has penned a six-page intro­duc­tion to the Amer­ican ver­sion of his blood money mem­oirs, in which he had this to say about recent U.S. presidents:

‘Mere mor­tals are still inspired by a cer­tain awe,’ he gushes.

Bill Clin­ton is ‘an extraordin­ary mix­ture of easy­going charm and fero­cious intel­lec­tual capa­city. Prob­ably … he is the most for­mid­able politi­cian I ever met.’ Pres­id­ent Bush ‘has great intu­ition.’ And of Barack Obama, he says: ‘The per­sonal char­ac­ter is clear: this is a man with steel in every part of him.’

Stay classy Blair.

Mean­while he’s been pel­ted with eggs and shoes at a book sign­ing in Ireland:

Skir­mishes broke out between pro­test­ers and police at the first pub­lic sign­ing for Tony Blair’s mem­oirs, with shoes and eggs hurled at the former prime minister.

Pro­test­ers shouted … “Hey hey Tony hey, how many kids have you killed today?”

“It really is shame­ful that some­body can be respons­ible for the death and destruc­tion that he was respons­ible for in Iraq and Afgh­anistan and walk away without any account­ing for that and become a very wealthy man off the back of it.”

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Doctors think you’re a vegetable but you can hear everything they say

Feb 4, ’10 1:07 PM

I watched The Diving Bell and the But­ter­fly the other night, a film based on real events about a man that is totally para­lysed and can only com­mu­nic­ate by blink­ing his eye.

But this is some­thing else, amaz­ing:

For seven years the man lay in a hos­pital bed, show­ing no signs of con­scious­ness since sus­tain­ing a trau­matic brain injury in a car acci­dent. His doc­tors were con­vinced he was in a veget­at­ive state. Until now.

To the aston­ish­ment of his med­ical team, the patient has been able to ­com­mu­nic­ate with the out­side world after sci­ent­ists worked out, in effect, a way to read his thoughts.

They devised a tech­nique to enable the man, now 29, to answer yes and no to simple ques­tions through the use of a hi-tech scan­ner, mon­it­or­ing his brain activity.

To answer yes, he was told to think of play­ing ten­nis, a motor activ­ity. To answer no, he was told to think of wan­der­ing from room to room in his home, visu­al­ising everything he would expect to see there, cre­at­ing activ­ity in the part of the brain gov­ern­ing spa­tial awareness.

His doc­tors were amazed when the patient gave the cor­rect answers to a series of ques­tions about his family.

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Help arrest Tony Blair

Feb 2, ’10 1:17 PM

Great piece by George Mon­biot on the cam­paign to arrest Tony Blair:

Already the cam­paign has borne fruit. Out­side the Chil­cot inquiry a woman called Grace McCann, inspired by the web­site, tried to appre­hend Mr Blair, before she was restrained and removed by the police. She qual­i­fies for the first bounty: one quarter of the total pot at the time of her attempt. She has pledged to give the money to rel­ev­ant char­it­ies. The fund will remain open until Blair is offi­cially pro­sec­uted, and we will keep pay­ing out to those who fol­low Grace’s example.

You can donate here.

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Apple iPad will choke innovation

Feb 1, ’10 12:59 PM

While I’m a big fan of the iPad’s ease of use, this aspect wor­ries me.

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A broken society, yes. But broken by Thatcher

Feb 1, ’10 12:49 PM

Richard Wilkin­son and Kate Pick­ett writ­ing for The Guard­ian:

The evid­ence shows that almost all the prob­lems that occur most often in the poorest neigh­bour­hoods — includ­ing those that make us a broken soci­ety — are sys­tem­at­ic­ally more com­mon in more unequal soci­et­ies. Rates are not just a little higher, but between two and eight times higher. Wider income gaps make soci­et­ies socially dys­func­tional across the board.

Last Octo­ber Cameron roun­ded on Labour, say­ing: “Who made inequal­ity greater? No, not the wicked Tor­ies. You, Labour. You’re the ones that did this to our soci­ety. So don’t you dare lec­ture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the mod­ern Con­ser­vat­ive party, to fight for the poorest who you have let down.”

But the truth is that we are suf­fer­ing the impact of the massive increases in income inequal­ity under Thatcher, which Blair and Brown have since failed to reverse. In the 1980s the gulf between the top and bot­tom 20% widened by a full 60% — much the most dra­matic widen­ing of income dif­fer­ences on record.

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War criminals looking after their own

Dec 16, ’09 11:32 PM

Soli­citor Daniel Machover, after politi­cians — includ­ing Gor­don Brown — hatch a plan to insu­late fel­low politi­cians from uni­ver­sal jur­is­dic­tion:

I feel hon­est revul­sion at the idea of a case where a judge has gran­ted an arrest war­rant and a politi­cian gets on the phone and apo­lo­gises. They have got to stay out of indi­vidual cases and legal decisions.

Of course Gor­don Brown and the gov­ern­ment he is a part of played an integ­ral role in the inva­sions of Iraq and Afgh­anistan. He’s just look­ing out for his own kind.

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The Guardian’s new iPhone app

Dec 14, ’09 11:49 AM

The Guard­ian has just released an iPhone app. It’s only avail­able U.S./UK/Ireland for now but they’re work­ing on other countries.

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Oil lobby behind climate change denial

Dec 8, ’09 8:43 AM

Cli­mate change deni­al­ism fas­cin­ates me. How does one become a deni­al­ist in the face of sci­entific con­sensus? Hav­ing talked to people who exhibit vari­ous levels of denial and scep­ti­cism my hunch is that it’s an inherit psy­cho­lo­gical defect of humans. People can’t bring them­selves to accept that they might be partly respons­ible for a crime of such enorm­ity, so they deny. A clas­sic psy­cho­lo­gical response.

But while this might explain why so many are ready and will­ing to be duped into think­ing man-made cli­mate change is a con­spir­acy, it doesn’t seem to explain why so many are duped. Turns out there’s an explan­a­tion for that:

Think envir­on­ment­al­ists are stooges? You’re the unwit­ting recruit of a hugely power­ful oil lobby – I’ve got the proof.

I have placed on the Guardian’s web­site four case stud­ies; each of which provides a shock­ing example of how the denial industry works.

Remem­ber this the next time you hear people claim­ing that cli­mate sci­ent­ists are only in it for the money, or that envir­on­ment­al­ists are try­ing to cre­ate a com­mun­ist world gov­ern­ment: these ideas were devised and broad­cast by energy com­pan­ies. The people who inform me, appar­ently without irony, that “your art­icle is an ad hom­inem attack, you four-eyed, big-nosed, com­mie sack of shit”, or “you scare­mon­gers will des­troy the entire world eco­nomy and take us back to the Stone Age”, are the unwit­ting recruits of cam­paigns they have never heard of.

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Jacqui Janes is wrong about why her son is dead

Nov 10, ’09 8:37 PM

Jac­qui Janes believes her son is dead because the war in Afgh­anistan is under-resourced.

He’s not. He’s dead because he was fight­ing an unjust war.

The stated aim of the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking Al-Qaeda mem­bers. On 14 Octo­ber, 2001, the Taliban pub­licly offered to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third coun­try, provided the U.S. hal­ted the illegal bomb­ing of Afgh­anistan and pro­duced the neces­sary evid­ence about involve­ment of bin Laden or any of his asso­ci­ates in the 11 Septem­ber attacks.

George Bush junior dis­missed this offer and con­tin­ued with the offens­ive, put­ting an end to any pos­sib­il­ity of a poten­tially peace­ful, legal res­ol­u­tion to the events of 11 Septem­ber 2001.

The United Nations Secur­ity Coun­cil never author­ised the inva­sion of Afgh­anistan and it cer­tainly wasn’t an act of self-defence. It was an act of aggres­sion, the supreme inter­na­tional crime.

Neither George Bush nor Gor­don Brown had to go off to war, but Jac­qui Janes’ son did, and now he’s dead.

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