BLOG POSTS

“George Bush surprised world leaders with a joke about his poor record on the environment as he left the G8 summit in Japan……” reports the British Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Continuing:

“The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world’s richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.”

Perhaps it’s time for a new international law – that all clowns should be restricted to circuses.

^{Read more at “Asshole-in-Chief” over at TOB’s place}

Filed under: Offensiveness personified

Both the US and UK media are making much of Iran’s recent missile tests, with much huffing and puffing from politicians, adroit whipping up of fervor from news anchors, and mutterings of ‘provocation‘, ‘retaliation‘, ‘determination‘, and many other words ending in ‘ation‘, all uttered with grim indign-ation.

Sadly, what’s missing from all this hot air is even a modicum of truth.

Iran is provoking neither the West, nor Israel, with its military displays. Iran is hardly the aggressor. It is the West and Israel who are saber-rattling once again in the region.

Only a few weeks ago, Israel undertook war games widely viewed as rehearsals for an assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Pressure by the US on Eastern Europe to accept missile defense systems on their territory, and the lengths to which Bush and his minions are pursuing that aim, invoking the threat of another cold war with Russia in order to achieve it, are further proof of the militaristic intent of the West to encircle Iran and Syria with armor.

Iran is behaving like any schoolboy under threat from a load of bullying yobs; attempting to appear stronger than it really is, with a show of military might it hopes will cause the bullies to reconsider.

Anyone who doubts the militaristic intent of countries like the US and Israel towards Iran, a nation that stands as the last real barrier to US domination of the region, should ask themselves for what other purpose Israeli warplanes would be using US bases in Iraq, and flying regularly through Iraqi airspace.^[1]

It’s strange how Western media outlets have totally failed to broadcast that item of interest to the world.

All-in-all, I think, a definite case of…… procrastin-ation?

^{[1] “Israeli jets using Iraq’s airspace” Pakistan Daily, July 10th 2008}

Filed under: Military objectives

How kind of the Boulder County District Attorney’s office in Colorado to issue a statement today officially clearing the Ramsey family of involvement in the horrific murder of six year old JonBenet Ramsey at her home – in 1996!^[1]

According to the family lawyer, JonBenet’s father, John Ramsey, was “grateful” for the statement.

Personally, I wouldn’t have been “grateful”, but furious that a case so badly bungled from the start by the Boulder Police Department, allowed to degenerate into a media witch-hunt in which the parents of JonBenet were accused and castigated, has been allowed to drag on for twelve years.

Trial by media in this country is a common occurrence. The emphasis is undeniably ‘guilty until proven innocent’. The Ramsey case is, perhaps, one of the worst examples of its type, compounded by a degree of police ineptitude staggering even for the United States. (This BBC report from August 2006 gives a concise synopsis)^[2]

JonBenet’s mother, Patricia, didn’t live to hear this verdict. She died from cancer two years ago, her disease undoubtedly aggravated by the stress of public condemnation.

Research into the case leaves one feeling there are a great number who should suffer shame for the moral crimes committed while the search for this little girl’s killer was so ingloriously conducted.

Whoever did kill JonBenet Ramsey is just one of many with reasons for remorse.

^{[1] JonBenét Ramsey Wikipedia.}

^{[2] “JonBenet: The case that grips America” BBC, August 29th 2006}

Filed under: Endemic injustice