Three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been jailed

Just to follow on from the previous post:


Three members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been jailed for two years after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral.

Judge Marina Syrova convicted the women of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, saying they had "crudely undermined social order".

Apparently, Mr Putin is head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which must be one hell of a leap of faith for an ex KGB man.

So, in short, why bother to overthrow a crude dictatorship when you just replace it with more of the same?

And just to add,  for the sake of Judge Marina Syrova, I hate religion too.

South African police shoot dead striking miners.

From today’s Guardian:

South African police shoot dead striking miners.

The deaths came after a week of turmoil at the Marikana mine that had already seen ten people killed, including two police officers and two security guards. Lonmin, the world's third biggest platinum producer, was forced to suspend production at the mine, about 60 miles north-west of Johannesburg, after what it called an illegal strike escalated into an alleged turf war between rival unions.
His voice shaking with anger, the union leader Joseph Mathunjwa accused the Lonmin management of colluding with a rival union to orchestrate what he described as a massacre. Mathunjwa, president of the militant Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), told the eNews channel: "We have to send condolences to those families whose members were brutally murdered by a lack of co-operation from management. We have done our bit. If the management had changed their commitment, surely lives could have been saved."
South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, condemned the killings but made no reference to the handling of the situation by the police. "We are shocked and dismayed at this senseless violence," he said. "We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence.








When I read this the last passage from George Orwell’s Animal Farm sprang to my mind:

"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Muslim and Jewish groups denounce German circumcision ruling

From Today’s BBC webpage
European Jewish and Muslim groups have joined forces to defend circumcision for young boys on religious grounds after a German regional court ruled it amounted to bodily harm.
A joint statement says the practice is fundamental to their faiths and calls for it to be awarded legal protection.
The ruling by the Cologne court - also criticised by the Israeli parliament - does not apply to the whole of Germany.
But Germany's Medical Association told doctors not to perform circumcisions.
Thousands of Muslim and Jewish boys are circumcised in Germany every year.
The unusual joint statement was signed by leaders of groups including the Rabbinical Centre of Europe, the European Jewish Parliament, the European Jewish Association, Germany's Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs and the Islamic Centre Brussels.
"We consider this to be an affront (to) our basic religious and human rights," it said.
"Circumcision is an ancient ritual that is fundamental to our individual faiths and we protest in the strongest possible terms against this court ruling.
"To that end we will vigorously defend our right to maintain our mutual tradition and call on the German parliament and all political parties to intervene in overruling this decision as a matter of urgency."
The leaders also met members of the European parliament and the Bundestag to express their anger and insist that the German parliament establish clear legal protections for the rite.
The BBC's Stephen Evans in Berlin says the German government is clearly uneasy about the ruling, particularly after accusations that it was inappropriate for the country of the Holocaust to outlaw a fundamental ritual of Judaism.
The ruling by the Cologne court followed a legal case involving a doctor who carried out a circumcision on a four year-old that led to medical complications.
The court said that a child's right to physical integrity trumped religious and parental rights.
The doctor involved in the case was acquitted and the ruling was not binding. However, critics fear it could set a precedent that could be followed by other German courts.


In my opinion this is the tip of the iceberg.


I have a major beef with organised religion and that is the freedom of individuals to choose their religion. If for example, you are born into a Catholic household you are brought up a Catholic and this applies to all other faiths. 
If as you reach adulthood you decide that the religion you have been brought up is not right for you, can you just pop along to your local religious leader and opt out?
The answer in most cases is no. If you renounce Islamism, I believe the penalty is death. 
Try and leave the Jehovah Witnesses and you face ostracising by your family and friends. 
Scientology? Men in suits wearing dark glasses and driving SUVs follow you around.
My bottom line is this. Believe in what you want but don’t force your beliefs on me or anybody else, is that so hard? 

RBS and NatWest customers could face weeks of turmoil as a result of computer chaos

RBS and NatWest customers could face weeks of turmoil as a result of the banks’ computer chaos, the Financial Ombudsman Service warned today.
Meanwhile sophisticated internet fraudsters tried to cash in on the confusion by launching a phishing attack on NatWest customers in an attempt to steal crucial personal financial information.
And the pain continues for some 100,000 Ulster Bank customers who still have a frustrating wait until at least the beginning of next week to have their banking facilities restored.
The beleaguered Royal Bank of Scotland said today that just a few customers of NatWest and RBS will still experience delays after the update of account balances cleared for those banks.
But Ulster Bank customers will “continue to  experience unacceptable delays to their accounts being updated” until “the start of next week”, RBS said in a statement.
The computer mistakes that have hit an estimated 12 million customers of the two banks, as well as having a knock-on effect on millions more, could leave problems for many weeks to come, the financial watchdog said.
The FOS’ David Cresswell urged those affected to keep detailed records of what has happened to their accounts as the knock-on effects would take some time to identify and rectify.
"It is really important to make noted of what is happening, of conversations you have with people, of difficulties you are facing, because this is a ripple effect from the original problems," he said.
That includes making lists of extra charges for inadvertently going overdrawn or paying a credit card bill late, and making sure that a your credit rating is not damaged.
NatWest said it has extended branch opening hours to 8am to 6pm in an effort to clear the backlog of problems.
"But the full focus of our efforts will now be on delivering the same result for our Ulster Bank customers,” an RBS spokesman said.
Customer unhappiness was mounting today with many expected to switch banks once their accounts have been restored.






Before I comment I have to declare a vested interest, my job has recently been outsourced from Germany to the Czech Republic. (On a clear day if I went to the top of the TV tower in Berlin I could probably see it.)


Who gains from outsourcing?
First and most importantly, the manager in the company that outsources, he or she gets a big fat bonus for reducing the companies wage bill.
Secondly, the person who gets the outsourced job.
Finally the country which gets the outsourced job, as they have one less unemployed person to support.
Who loses from outsourcing?
Firstly, obviously the person whose job is outsourced.
Secondly the country that loses the outsourced job, as they now have to support an additional unemployed person. 
Finally and most importantly, the customer as they get a worse service, a less reliable product, with longer delays in resolving problems.


If you were about to have open heart surgery, would you want the operation to be performed by a surgeon with ten years experience and training or a cleaner who had no idea what they were doing but was incredibly keen and had watched every episode of Grey’s Anatomy? 

Jimmy Carr admits 'terrible error' over taxes

From today's Independent Newspaper:


Jimmy Carr spoke out after Prime Minister David Cameron branded his tax dodging "morally wrong".
The comedian released a statement saying: "I appreciate as a comedian, people will expect me to 'make light' of this situation, but I'm not going to in this statement as this is obviously a serious matter.
"I met with a financial advisor and he said to me 'Do you want to pay less tax? It's totally legal'.
"I said 'Yes'.
"I now realise I've made a terrible error of judgment.
"Although I've been advised the K2 Tax scheme is entirely legal, and has been fully disclosed to HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs), I'm no longer involved in it and will in future conduct my financial affairs much more responsibly.
"Apologies to everyone."

Mr Cameron, speaking last night during a visit to Mexico, joined a chorus of criticism of the comedian, whose tax arrangements were revealed in The Times on Tuesday.
Describing them as "straightforward tax avoidance", the PM said it was unfair on the people who pay to watch the comic perform that he is not paying his taxes in the same way that they do.
Mr Cameron said: "I think some of these schemes - and I think particularly of the Jimmy Carr scheme - I have had time to read about and I just think this is completely wrong.
"People work hard, they pay their taxes, they save up to go to one of his shows. They buy the tickets. He is taking the money from those tickets and he, as far as I can see, is putting all of that into some very dodgy tax avoiding schemes.
"That is wrong. There is nothing wrong with people planning their tax affairs to invest in their pension and plan for their retirement - that sort of tax management is fine.
"But some of these schemes we have seen are quite frankly morally wrong.

My heart goes out to Mr Cameroon, how it must hurt him to hear of morale wrong doing. If only he was in a position where he could do something to change the laws relating to UK tax.
If only he was prime minister, I'm sure he'd do something in an instant.
Hang on a second............................................. He is.
And once he's sorted out this particular loophole, maybe then he could look into UK tax avoidance by large companies, such as, Glaxo Smith Kline, Northern and Shell, Amazon and News International.

Beating the tattoo and other things.

Watching the European Championships I have been struck by the number of footballers sporting tattoos. It almost seems compulsory to have them. When I was young the only people who had tattoos were sailors, Polynesian Islanders and ex members of the SS.
Speaking of the SS, I have been amazed at the reaction to the member of Greece’s neo Nazi Golden Dawn party assaulting two female panellists on a televised debate. People have thrown up their hands in shock as to how someone could behave that way. During the debate he threw water on one woman and then slapped another around the face. His defence was that he had been provoked, I presume he meant verbally, which is the sort of thing that happens in a debate. The idea is when this happens you are supposed to confound your opponent with an incredibly witty response. This is obviously beyond the powers of a right wing Neanderthal.
Having a neo Nazi in a debate with his opponents and expecting him to behave in a civilised manner is the equivalent of dressing a chimpanzee in a suit, calling him a waiter and expecting him to serve you dinner.

The Daily Mail on line poll for today

TODAY'S POLL

Are U-turns the sign of a weak government or one that listens to the public?

No

Yes

Above is the poll question from today's Daily Mail.
The Daily Mail is the world's most read on line newspaper,
and if that doesn't depress you, then nothing will.


You might be interested to know that people voted :


No 35%
Yes 64%
WTF? 1%  (that was me)


I presume the Daily Mail used the picture of David Cameroon attached to the question
to illustrate a weak government, or possibly one that listens to the public.

Suicide bomber kills 90 in Yemen, al Qaeda vows more attacks

(Reuters) - A suicide bomber in army uniform killed more than 90 soldiers in the heart of the Yemeni capital on Monday and an al Qaeda affiliate threatened more attacks if a U.S.-backed campaign against militants in the front-line state did not stop.
The bombing, which wounded more than 200 people, underscored the dangers Yemen faces as it battles Islamist militants entrenched in the south and threatening shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
The explosion left scenes of carnage in Sanaa's Sabaeen Square, where the military had been rehearsing for a parade. Body parts lay strewn across a 10-lane road not far from the presidential palace.
"We had just finished the parade. We were saluting our commander when a huge explosion went off," said soldier Amr Habib. "It was a gruesome attack. Many soldiers were killed and others had their arms and legs blown off."




When ever I read these sad reports a couple of questions spring to mind. 


1. How do you persuade a person to strap high explosives to his or her body and then perform an act of mass murder on people he/she has probably never met and therefore does not know?
2. If I was the person having the high explosives strapped to his or her body, I would ask the person who was doing the strapping. "If this is such a good idea, why am I the one who is shortly going to be blown into oblivion and not you?" 


The above goes double for the suicide bomber who had a stick of dynamite shoved up his rectum, which he then detonated in a room containing a Saudi Prince. An elementary knowledge of physics would have told him that the only thing that was going to happen was the splattering of his own offal over a relatively small area.

2012 Games: Rooftop missiles set to protect London

Surface-to-air missiles are set to be deployed on top of a residential block of flats this summer to protect the Olympic site in east London from airborne terrorist threats.

People in Bow were handed a Ministry of Defence (MoD) leaflet yesterday alerting them that a squad of 10 soldiers would be based in their gated, private estate during the Games. Missiles installed there will only be fired as a "last resort", it said.
Brian Whelan, 28, a journalist and resident of the block, said: "They are going to have a test run next week, putting high-velocity missiles on the roof just above our apartment."
The move is part of what is set to be the biggest peace-time security operation in the capital, with more than 40,000 staff reported to be involved in guarding venues and protecting competitors and the millions of visitors heading to the Games. FBI agents from the US are also expected.


The Olympic motto is  Citius, Altius, Fortius , which is Latin for "Faster, Higher, Stronger", so it looks like the UK is really getting into the Olympic spirit for the upcoming games to be held in London. Let's be honest, you don't get much faster, higher or stronger than a  surface-to-air missile. 

Think-tank calls for all bank holidays to be scrapped

If public holidays were scrapped it would add £19bn to Britain's annual economic output, a think tank says.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research says each bank holiday costs the UK economy £2.3bn.

England and Wales usually get eight bank holidays a year, with nine in Scotland and 10 in Northern Ireland.

This year Easter and the extra bank holiday for the Diamond Jubilee means there are five in April, May and June in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research says that if bank holidays were scrapped, Britain's GDP would be £19bn higher every year.

They also suggested that public holidays should be spead more evenly throughout the year

BANK HOLIDAYS 2012

England and Wales - 2 January; 6 and 9 April; 7 May; 4 and 5 June; 27 August; 25 and 26 December

Comparison of public holiday entitlement
Selected countries	Number of days
Source: Mercer HR, December 2011
Japan, South Korea	15
Spain, Malta	14
Portugal, Austria	13
Greece, South Africa	12
France, Italy, Brazil, New Zealand	11
Australia, Finland, Norway, Belgium, US	10
Canada, Ireland, Germany	9
UK, Netherlands	8

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17654781

The above figures show, the UK is one of the countries with the least number of public holidays per year.

As for the suggestion of spacing them more evenly throughout the year, most of the holidays are connected with religious holy days, so without a hasty re-write of the bible I can’t see them changing.

And as a final, point regarding working hours, no employer ever gave his workers one extra minute off, let alone an hour or a day without it being squeezed out of them like blood from a stone and being accompanied by howls and cries that it would ruin them.

Bus crash kills 22 children in Switzerland

Two small Belgian towns are in deep trauma after a devastating bus crash in the Swiss Alps left at least 22 schoolchildren dead.

A further six people died in the crash, on Tuesday night in a tunnel in the south-western canton of Valais, or Wallis. The classes of 11- and 12-year-olds were returning from a school skiing trip to the small Flemish towns of Heverlee and Lommel, east of Brussels.

Distraught parents gathered at the Saint Lambert school in Heverlee anxiously awaiting news of who had died and who had survived the crash, which is believed to be the worst road accident in Switzerlands history.



Children's bus crash kills 28 in Switzerland

As a general rule I do not discus religion or politics with strangers and I try to avoid the subjects with friends and family.

My wife is presently extremely ill and staying in a clinic about 100 km from our home, I drive to visit her every day. This means that I use the same road each day at roughly the same time and I have picked up the same hitchhiker on three separate occasions and given him a lift.

He knows the reason for my journey and always asks after my wife. On the last occasion he said that all we can do is pray, I nodded, he then asked if I believe in God and when I replied no he shook his head and said that I should, as it does no harm.

Fortunately we arrived at the spot where I drop him off before he asked the question that all believers ask of non-believers, why?

I think this very sad news article explains why I cannot believe in the all-powerful benevolent god as portrayed in the Christian religion. 

New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America

From todays Independent.

A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

When I read articles like this I often wonder what  Christian fundamentalists think about it, do they chuckle and shake their heads safe in the knowledge that the earth is only 6000 years old?

So I decided to look into why they believe that the earth is 6000 years old and I found this:

The date that many Christian fundamentalists believe the earth was created on is based on a chronology of Biblical events prepared by a seventeenth-century Irish bishop, James Ussher.

The chronology first appeared in The Annals of the Old Testament, a monumental work first published in London in the summer of 1650. In 1654, Ussher added a part two which took his history through Rome’s destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The project, which produced 2,000 pages in Latin, occupied twenty years of Ussher’s life. Ussher lived through momentous times, having been born during the reign of Elizabeth and dying, in 1656, under Cromwell. He was a talented fast-track scholar who entered Trinity College in Dublin at the early age of thirteen, became an ordained priest by the age of twenty, and a professor at Trinity by twenty-seven. In 1625, Ussher became the head of the Anglo-Irish Church in Ireland. 

As a Protestant bishop in a Catholic land, Ussher’s obsession with providing an accurate Biblical history stemmed from a desire to establish the superiority of the scholarship practiced by the clergy of his reformed faith over that of the Jesuits, the resolutely intellectual Roman Catholic order. (Ussher had absolutely nothing good to say about “papists” and their “superstitious” faith and “erroneous” doctrine.) Ussher committed himself to establishing a date for Creation that could withstand any challenge. He located and studied thousands of ancient books and manuscripts, written in many different languages. By the time of his death, he had amassed a library of over 10,000 volumes. 

The date forever tied to Bishop Ussher appears in the first paragraph of the first page of The Annals. Ussher wrote: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth, which beginning of time, according to this chronology, occurred at the beginning of the night which preceded the 23^rd of October in the year 710 of the Julian period.” In the right margin of the page, Ussher computes the date in “Christian” time as 4004 BC.

So now I know.

ANCHSoon after

British boxers fight at Munich press conference.

From various newspapers:

Dereck Chisora believed David Haye glassed him during their disgraceful brawl. Haye, with a glass bottle in his right hand, punched Chisora. Drink spilled on to Chisora's shirt and the end of the bottle appeared to catch his chin. Women screamed as more members of both camps joined the fray involving the two British heavyweight boxers, and huge men lurched around the room, scattering bottles, tables and chairs.

Dereck Chisora's promoter Frank Warren described his client's brawl with David Haye as "ugly, horrible, disgraceful and an embarrassment for British boxing".

"It's brought the sport into a bad light, which is a great shame for all the fighters that do behave, and 99 per cent of them do behave and carry a lot of honour into the sport.

"I would say they were total idiots. 


So this brawl has cast in a bad light the noble art of punching someone in the head until they suffer brain damage. My guess is that it has also significantly increased the amount of money Frank Warren will make from the eventual contest between these ’total idiots’.

Russia and China use veto to block UN security council resolution.

Russia and China have vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for the Syrian president to step down, provoking a furious reaction.

All 13 other members of the council, including the US, France and Britain, voted in favour of the resolution, which backed an Arab peace plan aimed at stopping the violence in Syria. Russia and China blocked the resolution because of what they perceived to be a potential violation of Syria's sovereignty, which could allow for military intervention or regime change.

American UN envoy Susan Rice described the veto on Saturday as "shameful", saying Russia and China aimed to "sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant".

"Any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands," she said.

I fail to see the advantage either long term or short term for the Russians and Chinese continuing support of Assad because it is inevitable that he will go the same way as Mussolini and George Formby and eventually he’ll be seen hanging around a lamppost. (See my previous post re exit plans.)

It’s good to see the United States indignant regarding the continuing abuse by the Syrian government of its citizens and continuing human rights abuses. But before the US gets all 'holier than thou' it’s worth noting that since 1972 the United States has been the single, solitary veto on 42 Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli violations of international law or human rights.

Chile Invokes Chilling Anti-Terrorist Law

Extracts from: Chile Invokes Chilling Anti-Terrorist Law Against Indigenous Mapuche, published by Indian Country.

Chile’s controversial anti-terror law dates back to the 1973-1990 reign of dictator Augusto Pinochet. The draconian anti-terror law allows for suspects to be detained for indefinite periods of time without charge and allows the use of testimony from anonymous witnesses in trials, Forbes Online said. Some aspects of the Pinochet-era legislation parallel the National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA), which was signed into law by President Obama on New Year’s Eve. The NDAA allows for the indefinite detention without charge or trial of people suspected of terrorism, including U.S. citizens detained on U.S. soil.

Chile’s anti-terrorism law was invoked last year against four Mapuche men—activists involved in the struggle for their land rights who were sentenced to 20 and 25 years in prison in what appeared to be trumped up charges under the anti-terrorism legislation. “What is happening in Chile isn’t justice; it’s a pantomime, because under the anti-terrorism law, there is absolutely no way justice can be done,” said José Venturelli, spokesman for the European Secretariat of the Ethics Commission against Torture. The Mapuche are Chile’s largest indigenous group, numbering nearly one million among Chile’s population of more than 16 million. Their struggle for their land rights has frequently pitted them against not only forestry companies but also large landholders and other private interests.

Under Chile’s anti-terrorist law, prosecutors may keep their evidence secret, anonymous witnesses can testify for the prosecution, prosecutors may apply for powers to tap telephones and intercept correspondence, e-mails and other communications, suspects can be held for up to 10 days before formal charges are brought, and detainees often face long periods of pre-trial detention and disproportionately long sentences.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/01/11/chile-invokes-chilling-anti-terrorist-law-against-indigenous-mapuche-71708#ixzz1kMucelWI

Today was one of those days I had to look at a calendar and check the date, yes it is 2012. (Unless of course you’re Jewish and it’s 5772, Muslim 1433 or Mayan, very worried.) And not the middle ages and the Spanish Inquisition, not seventeenth century America and the Salem witch trials and not the 1930’s and Nazi Germany.

Franz Kafka wrote ‘The Trial’ in 1915 & based it upon anti-Semitic laws then in force in the Austro-Hungarian Empire:

The central character, Joseph K. is arrested one morning, apparently victim of a slander. The two policemen that arrest him refuse to give any explanation.  He is tried in a court that prevents any access to its Judges, and that does not recognize his legal right to a defence. The court proceedings remain secret and the bill of indictment is not accessible to the accused, nor to his lawyers, and even less to the public in general. The accused is therefore unable to defend himself, since he doesn’t know of what he is being accused. After this entirely non-transparent proceeding, the Court orders the execution of the unfortunate Joseph K.

'She bathes in blood'

From todays Daily Mail

'She bathes in blood': Lady Gaga accused of bizarre Satanic ritual in London hotel
 

The 25-year-old Bad Romance singer has been accused of leaving a London hotel room bathtub drenched in blood.

Rumours have flown around the net that the stiletto loving singer has started taking part in morbid Satanic rituals to keep her safe from spirits.

Staff at the plush Intercontinental Hotel in London were shocked when they went to clean Gaga's room and found blood in the bath.

However, the red substance has not been identified as blood and that it was more likely that the red liquid is part of a 'weird' stage costume or prop.

So absolute bollocks then.