today

IMO: Probably about time too. I thought of taking a jaunt to the North Pole on a Russian icebreaker recently, just before my recent trip to Greenland, but was appalled by earlier US reports about the high degree of radioactivity on these vessels. Now it seems that there is a Russian icebreaker travelling around more or less in circles near Murmansk, rather like a car travelling round and round the same roundabout (for US readers, there is a roundabout in Coral Gables, Fla.). Now a car in that situation would doubtless eventually have an accident. Our problem here is that the icebreaker in question is apparently loaded to the gunwales (whatever they are) with dangerous spent nuclear fuel and cannot pull in to land as part of Russia's help in the 'war on terrorism'. i.e. if it lands the terrorists are likely to hijack it.

Surely the Russians can set up a uranium storage centre with the money they get for renting icebreakers to Americans, who cannot afford their own. USA are actually starting to lose capacity to build big shipping, it seems. But economy matters and doubtless we will all find this out.

Now it is said that Shakespeare used sometimes to write his plays when drunk. The people who disseminate this idea are simply 'the usual suspects', like the Guardian newspaper, thelondonpaper ('too much weekend ale gave bard the Monday blues'), Dominic Dromgoole, Peter Hall, etc.

IMO: Apparently the game is to find out which lines are written when Shakespeare was drunk, but the whole thing sounds like something to occupy the time of those who should be doing something more useful, like those lazy people who should be should be educating kids or freeing the world from bullying and terror instead of sounding like a bit part in Gilbert and Sullivan,. The University of Canvey Island will clearly soon be upon us. This is where, in some classic BBC joke program., the University Vice-Chancellor allegedly says "I know which of you lot wrote on the lavatory wall, it was the one who can read". At proposed student fee rates, that wallwriter won't exist as all students will be out shovelling shit to pay for their Uni grants.

I have been overwhelmed with enquiries as to the welfare of these creatures. I am pleased to say that there are now three of them, all fat, happy and well. They come into my house regularly, and stroll around, and are sleek and fit.

In his memoir, Musharaf says he now believes that the equipment sent to 'infidel' North Korea several years ago by Pakistan’s nuclear chief included some of Pakistan’s most technologically advanced nuclear centrifuges.

IMO Pakistan seems to be bringing the subcontinent into disrepute. This is not in its own benefit. There are no serious problems between India and Pakistan. Pakistan is a bust country who itself admits that it's only victory in history is killing an 80-year old rebel, referred to as the Bugti murder. It has problems in Baluchistan and Waziristan, though the ridiculous US - inspired Taliban is partly the cause. There is no real problem with Kashmir and any difficulties should be sorted out once the Indian Free Trade Area, now getting under way, properly encompasses Pakistan. This is a potential no lose situation all round. There should not even be any real need to displace Musharaf and to do so could be a grave mistake, if he behaves himself properly in the USA, unlike Japan's Koizumi, pictures referred to in earlier blog.

Moral: USA can be Pakistan's friend.- up to a point. Some of us who remember the UK experience of lend-lease, where England paid America dearly for its support over Adolf Hitler and fascist US companies were warmongering profiteers throughout world war II at the expense of the lives of America's own citizens will not be surprised or feel as a disgrace the 'bust nation' status of any country dealing with USA.

Telugu film industry's superstar, Chiranjeevi's latest flick, Stalin has created a rage among Telegu cinema fans world-over. The movie with its socially relevant theme has the actor playing a saviour of the masses. It’s the first time that a Telugu film is releasing with a large chunk of 400 prints worldwide, targeting Europe and American markets simultaneously. And as expected the actor's fans are queing up.

"He's a megastar of Andhra. It’s tough to get tickets.", says Nagesh fan.

IMO: It could be alright but he'll need at least English and/or Hindi subtitles. A home production, more details and pictures at URL Said to be "with a compact entertainer even while delivering a strong message." There's a large Telegu audience in USA.

The United States threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" in 2001 unless it cooperated in the US-led war on terror, President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview.

IMO: So now we know, apparently via Musharraf's own mouth, why Pakistan is so happy to 'co-operate' with UK, apparently by torturing UK citizens to get to any kind of claptrap statement about plane bombings on Rashid Rauf to confuse the issues, annoy airline passengers and waste UK money. But you can't help feeling sorry for the poor guy, he has to play two ends (USA and his electorate) against the middle (staying alive). And as I have often said, for Pakistan, Musharraf is probably the best they can find and in practice mistakes are certainly not all down to him.

Royal Society simply tells the truth about firms like Exxon (Esso). Protesters emerge from the woods, presumably badly advised and/or corrupt individuals similar to those who claimed passive smoking did no harm.

Many large firms are telling too many blatant lies. Concerning just the internet, if you Google "wolves site:www.commoncause.org" (omitting ") you can find a lot of "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing".
For example, "Hands off the internet"
Who They Say They Are: “A nationwide coalition of Internet users.”
Who They Really Represent: AT&T and other telecommunications companies.
What They Say They Do: “[Support] state and federal public policies that ensure the broadest possible range of choices for consumers and businesses using the Internet.”
What They Really Want: To eliminate long-standing net neutrality protections so that telephone and cable companies can maximize profit and minimize competition on the Internet.

And there are many more. Well, maybe this sort of thing is simply so-called 'US democracy in action' but IMO it stinks. These people may all be caught in the public backlash and one may reasonably hope so.

These crooks should get extremely long prison sentences, for the good of their affiliates and employees as well as for the public good. For example, the directors of companies like Ford and Mobil should be jailed. There is at least some hope. Many of the Enron people are now dead or in jail, for example, and the US State of California is suing most of the larger car companies for ruining the environment. We can only hope that it will not come to consumer violence and the blowing up of some major firms, still less their total nuclear annihilation, which is a real possibility. It could be the only way if these crooks don't realise people won't put up with it. Dodgy businessmen frequently claim honesty right till the end, but nobody should be fooled.

TNA leader R. Sampanthan said only New Delhi had the capability to resolve Sri Lanka's dragging ethnic conflict. Sampanthan, whose party considers the LTTE the authentic representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils, made it clear that Gandhi's killing by a LTTE woman suicide bomber at an election rally near Chennai could never be condoned.

IMO: I'm not so sure. Rajiv Gandhi condoned or was involved in a lot of things that hurt the Tamil people. Kowtowing to a Sikh, Manmohan Singh, may hardly be the way to put things right. Rightly or wrongly, the Indian people elected a Gandhi not primarily a Singh and I am not sure that the Byzantine complexities of the situation merits premature apology (unilaterally on behalf of a dead widow) to the Congress party for supposed wrongdoings caused by reasonable passion, and hatred of Rajiv Gandhi's believed corruption.

Is the Congress Party going to improve its act in future ? I doubt even that.

We have to remember that the suicide bomber was not a mad or misinformed person, like some current Muslim suicide bombers, but the widow of a Tamil who was stricken with grief at Rajiv Gandhi's behaviour. Is it fair to the memory of the suicide bomber to apologise for what might well be construed as a benign act, however unwise. That is not to condone suicide bombing. but why distort the facts to appease a Singh or a Gandhi? We will be appeasing Adolf Hitler next. In fact at least one Sri Lankan MP has already requested Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka.

Well, I like Greenland but I have somewhat mixed feelings about Iceland.

Halldor Laxness, the Nobel laureate, wrote a novel entitled "The Atomic Station" (Atómstöðin) which criticised various aspects of US behaviour towards Iceland. The period covered was roughly 1945-6. Since then Iceland seems to have come much closer to being a Blairish poodle of the USA and to have lost, or mislayed, some of its true comitment to itself which it must have had in those years. This is a pity - and it shows. One is reminded of the feeling of many Jews towards Berlin during the era of checkpoint Charlie. I think it was Bernard Levin of the "London Times" who reckoned that subsequent to Adolf Hitler, Berlin seemed to have lost its soul and whilst my own view is that, in retrospect, during that period Berlin, East and West (and I did know both), had a "real soul", just as CAMRA people talk of "real ale" - a soul which Berlin, now almost a new branch of McDonalds, sadly lacks today. One could nonetheless understand Levin. In Iceland, just as in the UK Labor has become 'new Labor', we somehow have an Iceland which has become a 'new (pre-unification) West Berlin'. Just a lot of newish buildings and people complaining, in Iceland's case, of stuff like valleys being flooded to produce electricity for US-style bauxite plants, fat civil servants and all the impedimenta of a dodgy over-rich democracy unhappy with itself. As for the adventure of earlier days, nowadays any fat drunken tourist slob can take a skidoo ride over a glacier, to pay more money to Iceland's dodgy Enron-style economy. I worry about Iceland's approach as it puts the lives of tourists and guides at risk. [ e.g. "no one in the USAP has been killed as a result of a snowmobile (skidoo) crevasse fall, but there have been numerous close calls." And that is during seriously controlled arctic trials, not with really dumb tourists to Iceland. And whilst guides in Iceland have to say these rides are quite safe, I saw a smallish accident in the brief time I was there and there are many fatalities and accidents leading to total paralysis, whatever excuses are made. This is not a proper sport and it is done for profit by vile capitalist scum. Also, the effect of global warming is likely to make the frequency of falls into crevasses become increasingly likely as Icelanders have to enthusiastically pursue cash for its own sake.]

Greenland was still pretty good and is trying to keep some control over things. It is the first country to have left the EU, at a time when Turkey is likely to be allowed to join though Turkey clearly is nowhere near mature enough to do so, with for example its persecution of women, something deplored in Greenland and Iceland. I think one woman in Turkey was recently threatened with jail for criticising Ataturk, a brillant but rather dodgy Turkish politician, who actually would probably be turning in his grave if he saw what Muslim fundamentalists were doing to a country which he had fought hard to make secular.

I'm not so happy about the huskies being chained up but they certainly look happy enough and they welcome visitors. Greenland is a great place which should have a splendid future. In Kulusuk (300 people) they have a splendid supermarket providing all essentials and an impressive post office, better than some I've seen in small US towns. There is a nice school, community centre and a Lutheran church. There are also floating icebergs, which is the main splendour of the place.

So, I am faced with the New News 2.0 again... and Cherie Blair didn't make rabbit's ears behind the Pope's head again after all ??

Dumb and dumber all right, but leaving aside the bigots, theology is a difficult topic and one would reasonably assume that those who simply oppose it do not fully understand its scientific, factual, historical and philosophical relevance, for 'believers' and others. Roughly speaking, you can't just ignore stuff like St. Anselm's work and shuck off the whole lot, simply by becoming a rationalist. The world is not THAT easy. Was it not General Groves who once said in another context "The atomic bomb was all right until they let these scientists in on it".

Millisecond-timescale control of neuronal spiking, as well as control of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission. It is claimed that this technology allows the use of light to alter neural processing at the level of single spikes and synaptic events, yielding a widely applicable tool for neuroscientists and biomedical engineers.

At least 37 people have been killed in bombings at a Muslim graveyard in western India, authorities say. The blasts come days after Indian Prime Minister Singh told the country there were intelligence warnings of attacks.

Malagaon is a Muslim-dominated area and strong-hold area of SIMI, a banned organization for Muslim 'students'. SIMI began many years ago as a Sufi revivalist organisation in 1879, well before the independence of present day Bharat. The stated mission of SIMI today is the ‘liberation of India’ from western materialistic cultural influence. Some might say that what Sufism requires is liberation from Islam, as well as from even more Western religions, and that Sufism has been short-changed by the West even more than simply by Islam in that regard, to the extent that it hardly follows its own aims properly. The aim to liberate India from the West is a reasonable enough though rather dated aim, in principle. In practice SIMI believes that Osama bin Laden is an outstanding example of a true Mujahid, who has undertaken Jihad on behalf of the 'ummah'.

SIMI has been under scrutiny for some time and was outlawed in 2002. It recently came under scrutiny, as some of its former members were arrested in connection to the recent Mumbai blast. Earlier this year, the police recovered a large cache of arms and explosives from the area of Malagaon. In October 2001, violence in protest at the US attacks on Afghanistan left a total of 12 people dead in the town.

IMO: Why are Muslims bombing Muslim areas ? Hardly in accord with the Koran, I would have thought, and by that I do not mean they should be bombing Hindu areas instead. These people, hardly bona-fide Muslims, do not seem to act with love and peace. And it certainly does not seem to be good Sufism either.

Thule, the period of cosmography,
Doth vaunt of Hecla, whose sulphureous fire
Doth melt the frozen clime and thaw the sky;
Trinacrian Etna's flames ascend not higher:
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry.

The Andalusian merchant, that returns
Laden with cochineal and china dishes,
Reports in Spain how strangely Fogo burns
Amidst an ocean full of flying fishes:
These things seem wondrous, yet more wondrous I,
Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry.

The above is simply one of England's best poems and is also of interest because of the synaesthesic qualities of Thomas Weelke's fine prose. Kerman remarked that this piece links Weelkes with the works of Drake and Hakluyt and 'should occupy a special place for admirers of the Elizabethan spirit'.

Anyway I'll be in Greenland (and Iceland) next week and hope I find time to blog.

John Tyndall, in the highly controversial "Spearhead" said :Let the last word go to "Taki" in The Spectator (January 12th):-

‘Although he's hardly my favourite character, I'm seriously worried about Tony Blair. I feel he's in the middle of a nervous breakdown. As a peacemaker in India, covered by a rug, looking campy and resembling a dipsophobe who has walked into a friendly pub, Blair has to have lost it. No other explanation will do. He's always been smarmy and bogus, but this time he brought to mind a catamite in satyromaniacal ecstasy. Non-stop photo opportunities have done to Tony what cocaine and smack did to the late Lord Bristol. The man is a human wreck but he doesn't know it, as desperate for a TV-camera fix as any junkie, and only a palace coup can save him from a Flying Dutchman existence.
‘This must have been the most absurd foreign trip by a British prime minister since Munich, where at least precious time was bought. A prime minister desperately in search of a cause outside his own country can be a very funny thing - for a soap opera. In real life it is quite grotesque.’

IMO: Recent pictures of Bliar have shown him looking, shall we say, haggard. Taki is, some people allege, some kind of wealthy junkie and cokehead. Be that as it may, and I certainly would not venture a opinion at this time, undoubtedly Taki is an expert on such matters. I wonder why the party don't seem to want Blair any more. Perhaps there are obvious and sensible reasons, but "Is Blair Labor's answer to Charles Kennedy ?" Of course, to pile pelion on ossa, as the Age says "Cameron is the new Tony Blair".

But Tyndall ends his piece: "It is the tragedy of Britain, in one of the darkest hours of her history, to be afflicted with a creature like this as prime minister, surrounded as he is by other creatures equally disgusting in their craving for office, status, rank and the illusion of ‘power’, and equally willing to sanction criminality of the most subhuman kind just as they speechify against it.
In healthier times in our long island and imperial story we have hanged people for much less."

"It is our stated policy that only free software should be used for IT education in Kerala's schools. The government is introducing Linux based software as tools to teach various subjects," V.S. Achuthanandan said.

Kerala Education Minister M.A.Baby said, “We are not banning Microsoft but we encouraging open source. Unlike in other states where the Microsoft Windows platform has a dominant share, 60% of our schools here aleady are on the free GNU/Linux software for a few years now. We are just pushing the envelope further"

Kerala has also banned lolly-waters like Coke and Pepsi. A good idea as Coke and Pepsi as available on the subcontinent are poisonous , and their manufacture pollutes water supplies. People will buy cheap drinks and use bad software unless informed of the consequences. Hopefully other countries low down the cash scale like Papua-NewGuinea, will follow Kerala's example by avoiding worthless and overpriced US imports.

The Mumbai railway board claimed that the 7-11 blasts could have been averted, had electronic surveillance been implemented on time. A letter sent by the railway board after the blasts to railway officials said: “...you are advised to immediately review the security measures in your respective jurisdiction and take necessary action for providing additional dog squads, bomb detection and disposal equipments, CCTVs to avert any untoward incidences." and further “The proposals under phase I of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project, Borivali-Virar quadrupling and an additional line between Kurla and Thane, could help in reducing the pressure on suburban trains."

Additionally the proposed Metro should help if it is ever built but it will not fill all the gaps. On the road potholes deadline, referred to in an earlier blog, the deadline ended Tuesday night, but the ground situation in the city, known as the country's financial and entertainment capital, seems pretty much the same.

IMO: Oh dear, Mumbai is always as it has been.

Could be just propaganda, but I doubt it. Probably to the extent it can happen, those who could benefit will make sure it does.

According to Iran, the latest military plan includes:

1- A missile strike directly targeting the US bases in the Persian Gulf and Iraq.

2- Suicide operations in a number of Arab and Muslim countries against US embassies and missions and US military bases and economic and oil installations related to US and British companies, also targeting the economic and military installations of countries allied with the United States .

3-Attacks by the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards and Iraqi fighters loyal to Iran against US and British forces in Iraq , from border regions in central and southern Iraq .

4- Hezbollah to launch hundreds of rockets against military and economic targets in Israel .

5-In case the US military attacks continue, more than 50 Shehab-3 missiles will be targeted against Israel and the al Quads Brigades will give the go-ahead for more than 50 terrorists cells in Canada, the US and Europe to attack civil and industrial targets in these countries.

6-A world war, given that extremists will seek to maximize civilian casualties by exploding germ and chemical bombs as well as dirty nuclear bombs across western and Arab cities.

And there's more. Here's a Hezbollah booklet giving organisation details, apparently current August 2006.